Firedance

by Steven Barnes

  He collapsed.

  She rolled him over. His face was a mess—blood bubbled from between smashed teeth. His breathing was ragged, but he would live. She searched his pockets and found his wallet.

  A communications card. Goddess. An off-duty soldier. Was there a tracer on it? Maybe. She tossed it away. There was also money. Not much—just a few low-denomination bills. But right now, it looked like a bloody fortune. She pinched his sleeping cheek. “I could almost kiss you,” she laughed. “I’ve never been happier to see a rapist in my entire life.”

  She looked both ways up and down the alley, and left.

  She took the train into the center of town, to get the hell away from there, and her temporary exuberance began to wane. There was still no path out of the Central African Republic—maybe not even out of Daglia. If she tried to get a room, she might betray herself. If she searched for someone who spoke English, that alone might betray her—although she might have no other option.

  Jenna found a tavern and bought a bowl of hot cider, letting her robes cover her as much as possible. She didn’t think she would withstand any additional attentions. She hadn’t the spirit to join in the music and gaiety. Her side felt sticky and sore, and she fought with flittering dizziness. Her skin felt hot.

  Just what I need—an infection.

  She concentrated on the conversations around her, desperately seeking to strain any fragment of information out of the cacophony.

  Listening harder didn’t make the language barrier less impenetrable. She began to wish she had killed the man in the alley. Why hadn’t she? Damn, damn damn. She was an alien, in a land where she was surrounded by enemies, and she had left behind her an enemy who could describe her. Why had she done that?

  Aubry would have killed Scar-Face without a second thought, and tucked the pain away where it would never show on the outside. She was one of perhaps three people who knew what the deaths, the murders, the destruction of human life and body had cost Aubry Knight. Others saw an external shell, a husk of a man animated by an enormous vitality, a man of gigantic melancholy and rare mirth. But as he sloughed off his sociopathic shell, the violent memories emerged to haunt him.

  Aubry Knight was paying the price of being inhuman. As she was now paying the price of being human.

  For all of her theoretical martial knowledge, except for a single foray into Death Valley Jenna had lived a sheltered existence. Welcome to the real world. And this was the world, the world of blood and death that Aubry Knight had lived in for forty years, somehow managing to hold on to his humanity.

  She was not, could not be Aubry Knight.

  But neither could Aubry be Jenna.

  She paid for her drink and left the bar. Night was coming to Daglia, and police patrols filled the streets. Her first task was to find a place to bed down.

  2

  In any society, there are those who live on the edge, those who will not or cannot conform, who slip through the cracks between welfare and social services, who cannot afford housing and yet do not resort to crime. And it is fashionable for the forces of law and order to turn their gazes away from the temporary shantytowns erected beneath bridges, on dark corners, and in the back alleys of every major city in the world.

  Jenna sought them out, and they were not hard to find. The wind coming in off the desert was cold, and it was time for settling in. She followed an elderly woman who walked with a bowed body and trembling step, toward an uncertain destination. The streets narrowed and darkened. The sounds grew thin and wavery, sounds of music played on someone’s radio, a news report, perhaps a soap opera.

  The buildings looked as if they had been thrown together with pasteboard, and patched and repatched until they resembled, more than anything, the homes of termites.

  In this land, the faces were dusky, but they echoed similar faces all over the world. They were fatigued beyond any ordinary meaning of the word, and had lived at the edge of hunger for too many years, but there was also fierce pride there. Jenna hunkered down with her back against the wall, her hands folded over her chest, and looked at the old woman as she enfolded herself in a sheath of pasteboard, preparing to bed down.

  The woman stared at Jenna, a quizzical quality to her expression. She smiled, broken yellow teeth shining in her black face. From her paltry stock of pasteboards, she offered a broad sheet. She spoke a few sharp words, loudly. Nearby stacks of rubble quavered, and dark heads poked out, speaking in questioning tones. The old woman chattered back at them. The other men and women rustled in their meager stores, and likewise offered.

  There was not much, but they shared what they had. They drew a bit closer together, and there was laughter in a language that Jenna didn’t understand. These men and women offered each other bits of cheese, and bread, the heartbreakingly small substance of their lives, sharing without reservation. She wondered if they knew each other’s names. It probably didn’t matter. Even if they had never seen each other before, they knew each other. Their stories were the same. And they didn’t need to inquire as to the particulars of Jenna’s story. She was of no language, no land, an orphan like the rest of them. How she had reached this alley was of no importance.

  She was just another homeless face, who, for this night, had found a home.

  Jenna ate, and forced her voice to laugh with them. Despite her fatigue, her pain, and the increasing dizziness, she felt herself relax for the first time in twenty hours. And with that relaxation came a series of massive yawns. The well of fatigue was so deep that it seemed bottomless. The old woman showed Jenna how to construct a bed of pasteboard and rags. In the company of strangers, Jenna fell into a deep, deep sleep, from which she did not awaken until morning.

  3

  Jenna awakened before any of them. The sun had not yet risen, but the first feathers of its warmth were stirring the air. A distant dog was barking, as if shaking off the filaments of night, preparing to greet the new day. Jenna’s companions were still asleep. Their faces were incongruously clean for the circumstances, and relaxed, as if in poverty they had found great peace.

  She felt an almost absurd kinship with them.

  Her side throbbed as she reached into her pocket and removed the thin sheaf of bills that she had taken from Scar-Face. After a moment’s consideration, she peeled off one of the larger bills and slipped it into the old woman’s withered hand. What was her savior’s name? How had she come to such a state? And how had she managed to keep her humanity? What beliefs had sustained her?

  Soberly, Jenna wondered if she could have done half so well under similar circumstances. Then again, she reflected, she might soon have an excellent opportunity to find out.

  Jenna walked the street for an hour before she found an open bakery, where she purchased a hard roll and a mug of coffee.

  Her money wouldn’t last long. And when it was gone, what then? Would she be reduced to mugging? Or worse? A floatcar, early-morning patrol, whisked past. She shivered. By sign language she pointed out the coffee brew that she desired. She walked down the street, nursing the cup with tiny sips until the liquid grew tepid and she was almost down to the dregs. The street was coming to life, filling with tradesmen and citizenry. She dared not linger anywhere, for fear that someone would recognize her.

  How long could she keep moving? She had to find a place to rest, a place to lay her head, to make plans. Despite the night’s sleep, she was dead tired, her skin was fever-hot, her side ached like hell, and she still had no plan of action.

  A tiny brown man hurried down the street ahead of her, wrapped in saffron robes. He looked as if he were a half-breed, part Indian and part African. He thumbprinted the front door of a curio shop, and it sighed open. She walked past, almost walked on, when she noticed the sign in the window. It was written in a language that she didn’t understand, but contained a small, grainy picture. Flat. Color. Clipped from a local newsfax.

  Pictures of two African boys. Thirteen years old, perhaps. Underfed. Intense.

  They
faced each other across the warlocked expanse of a chessboard. Each had a trophy by his side. The trophy of the boy to the left was almost twice the size of the other.

  Behind them, smiling like a proud father, was the little mixed-blood proprietor.

  Jenna’s mind whirled. She opened the door and followed him in.

  It was warm inside the shop, which was crammed to the rafters with boxes and trays, toys and artificial flowers and blown-glass widgets, gewgaws and knickknacks and tiny figurines, books and scrolls and oversized pencils and plastic fruits, framed paintings and dusty motors and jars filled with strange dust.

  The proprietor, a thin-faced man in his sixties, prattled at her in a singsong voice. She supposed that he was telling her to leave, to return in ten or fifteen minutes, when he was ready to open. What he couldn’t know is that she couldn’t. She was running out of options, and had to take her desperate gamble now.

  She said a single word to him, and made a motion with her hands.

  To her delight, his eyes widened.

  He narrowed his eyes, as if evaluating her anew. He went to a counter on the far side of the room, one that was in shadow. He turned on an overhead light.

  The room was filled with toys. With children’s books. With puzzles and gewgaws. She prayed that she was correct.

  He reached down under the counter and brought out a checker plaid board, and carved ivory Staunton pieces.

  The chess set was beautiful. Even in the low light, she could tell that the pieces were hand-carved from ivory, and that he was justifiably proud of them. She looked at his eyes, and knew that she had made her choice well. This man could easily be the sponsor of the local chess club. Or at the least, a devotee. He owned a knickknack shop, with an emphasis on games of logic and skill.

  Swiftly, Jenna set up the pieces, her every movement as controlled and careful, as smooth and practiced as she could make it.

  Then, from her pocket, she removed her largest remaining bill—equivalent to about five dollars American—and placed it next to the chessboard.

  For a long moment he said nothing; then he opened his wallet and placed a matching bill beside it.

  Jenna moved her queen’s pawn forward.

  He responded by matching her, refusing to relinquish the center of the board.

  She responded, moving out a knight to protect the pawn. Three moves later he was engrossed, a thin, intense smile creasing his face. A customer came in, and the little man excused himself, sold the woman a selection of ancient phonograph albums, and returned to the chessboard.

  A truck loaded with soldiers floated past the front window. Jenna tensed, praying that she wouldn’t be noticed.

  The little man had her a pawn and a knight down. Despite his scarred face and broken teeth, his thick skin, intelligence fairly seethed behind those eyes.

  Outside the window, a floatcar shooshed down. Still, the little man’s eyes were upon her.

  He carefully moved one of his own men, and studied her face.

  There was a ringing at the front door. He glanced up. Two soldiers stood at the threshold.

  Jenna felt trapped. He watched her. She slowed her breathing. As deliberately as she had ever done anything in her life, Jenna studied the board.

  She focused her attention down to a pencil point. There might have been no sound at all, nothing in the world but the two of them in that shop. The board swelled until it filled every nook and cranny of her mind, until she saw the interactions of the ivory pieces as if they were alive, and dynamic. He wanted to see something. He wanted to learn … something.…

  Jenna moved her queen forward, and a slight smile tugged at the edge of his mouth. He took the queen with his bishop, and then watched her. She moved a pawn forward, revealing check with her own bishop. He sighed, and tipped his king over.

  Something inside Jenna almost snapped. The two soldiers entered the shop.

  The little man looked at her. Jenna was as still as death in that shop. Both soldiers were armed. At this distance there was nothing she could do. She and Aubry together could have done nothing. The little man spoke out to them, once again in a language that she couldn’t understand. He pointed at her, then he pointed outside, and the soldiers nodded. They left the shop.

  The little man came back to her, his eyes filled with humor.

  Jenna touched her own throat. “My name is Jenna,” she said.

  He pointed to himself. “Name … Pattabhi,” he said. “You … good play. Play more?”

  “Please,” she said.

  Neither of them said another word. Without moving his eyes from hers, his hands scrambled with practiced precision, setting up the chessboard once again.

  4

  What followed was a time of hallucination and confusion, a time when the chasm between reality and fantasy threatened to swallow Aubry whole. Life devolved into a dream, something that roiled at the edge of his consciousness and never spilled over into awakening.

  He remembered transport in a canvas-covered flatbed truck. Beyond the roar of the engines he heard other sounds, wind and animal sounds as they traveled a rough road that extended to an infinite horizon.

  Within the truck there were touches and words, and occasional sharp pains that pierced the constant dull ache. Medication sweeping through his veins like lava. Voices sweet with song urged him back from the precipice. He was, for the moment, content to follow their advice.

  The desert howled outside the truck, battered at its canvas walls. Sometimes he slept, and sometimes he awakened to its dusty call, the scrape of its fingers against rough fabric.

  A dark woman bent over him, her face young-old, her hair tightly rowed. She had seen much of the world—perhaps too much—but was still beautiful. In a way, she reminded him of Mira.

  There was a sense of peace about her that let him slip more deeply into his coma, down and down to a single spot of light. Just a single …

  In it, there was warmth.

  And then darkness.

  When he awakened again, there was no movement, and little light. He lay in a room with a low ceiling that looked as if it might have been constructed from corrugated tin. It vibrated thinly in response to a distant, rhythmic thrumming.

  Aubry lay listening and thinking, too weak to move. He couldn’t feel his arms or legs, or his lower body. He slept for a while.

  When he awakened the next time, an elderly man sat by the side of the bed, a man who gazed upon him as a father might examine a fond child. He held a broad spoonful of some steaming broth under Aubry’s nose.

  It smelled delicious. Aubry’s mouth found the edge of the spoon, and he suckled greedily.

  “Slowly,” the man said. It was in no language that Aubry had ever heard, and yet the electronic thing within him translated it almost instantly. “Slowly. We have time. No one can find you here.”

  “Who are you?”

  His benefactor smiled. “You can call me Old Man.”

  “Where am I, Old Man?”

  “You are in the Iron Mountain, in the south of what was once called Rwanda, which existed between Tanzania and Zaire.” Old Man’s mood darkened. “All gone, now. All PanAfrica now. You are safe. You are with the Ibandi. Your people, my son. Your people.”

  5

  SEPTEMBER 18. SWARNAVILLE, PANAFRICAN REPUBLIC.

  It took the better part of a day for Promise to receive her call. The air shimmered, and there was a brief surge of light, and Phillipe Swarna stood before her.

  “Good afternoon,” he said gravely. “And welcome to the PanAfrican Republic. I trust that your journey has been comfortable.”

  A chair materialized in the middle of the room with him, and he sat in it. She observed him closely, trying to open her senses to the drama unfolding before her. He was tall—in his prime he might have been almost as tall as Aubry—but his face was thinner, his shoulders narrower, although there was every evidence that he might once have been quite muscular. His face was wrinkled and shiny. She could believe that h
e might have been well over a hundred years old, and marveled that any technology could have kept him so very well preserved. The shiny skin … she supposed that this was the result of several generations of differing, increasingly sophisticated regeneration treatments. She wondered: How many of the problems that they sought to correct had been caused by the previous course of treatments?

  “It is regrettably impossible for me to see you personally, but my very good friend Dr. Kanagawa will see to your needs.”

  There was the very slightest suggestion of a pause, and Promise suddenly had the feeling that Swarna had never heard of her, knew nothing of her visit. That this was a mere construction, a computer-generated image, programmed for the occasion, but based on some core template of Swarna’s movements and word patterns.

  It was eerily effective, but she was certain of its artificiality: there was no way that a head of state like Phillipe Swarna could afford the time to see her personally, or even make tapes for every minor dignitary who wanted his time.

  And … she had heard the state-of-emergency bulletin. And knew that Aubry had disappeared into PanAfrica to kill this man. Could there be a connection? Could Swarna be dead?

  While her mind had drifted, Swarna disappeared, and Kanagawa took his place.

  Kanagawa could have been anywhere between forty and sixty-five, his black hair graying around the sides. His body was comfortably padded, but healthy and somewhat sun-bronzed.

  Kanagawa rose from the couch where he had waited politely. He extended a hand, and a smile curled the edges of his mouth, although his eyes remained cool.

  “As President Swarna said, welcome to the PanAfrican Republic. I am Dr. Kanagawa, PanAfrican Department of Public Works. Although your initial bid did not meet with our needs, Mr. Wu has vouched for you. He has yet to fail us. The possibility of a joint venture between the Scavengers and Wu Industrial is intriguing. Your portfolio is impressive. Your bids for construction and demolition are quite competitive,”