It lunged at them and the chain broke, snapped with a sound like a dying dream. The hairless apes evaded but did not flee, harrying it, screaming and tormenting, but scoring again and again with their spears. The rex stood with its back to the fire, tail thrashing, face and jaws crimsoned. Its pitifully small paws wiped at its cuts, and failed to do anything but widen them. The stench of burning flesh filled the air. Blood flowed from wounds in chest and flank. Its chest labored.
There was a moment of quiet, a moment when something in that arena shifted, quieted in respect for what was about to occur.
Another spear was launched, catching the rex in its exposed throat. It pawed at the spear, splintering the shaft. It charged again, so fast that one young warrior hadn’t time to get out of the way and was trampled.
But the spears flashed now and, every time they did, left another thread of crimson. The rex was laboring now. Had its tiny mind been capable of irony, it might have asked why it had been born again, after cold eons, to die so. Still, when it walked, the Earth thundered; and if its walk was hobbled by shorn tendons, it was still the walk of a king.
An old, and tired, and wounded king, but a monarch nonetheless.
The rex’s mouth opened to the artificial sky above it, and it screamed. In that scream was all of the rage and pain of a lost race, a vanished time. Then another spear struck it in the throat. A third spear, cast by Aubry’s arm, thrown with all of the strength of his body, and powered, this time, by love.
And the rex regarded him. Aubry swore that it looked directly at him, blood flowing from its mouth, looking into him. Something passed between them, some moment, some aliveness.
It took a step toward him, and Aubry didn’t move. The fire was close behind him. He could, in some distant manner, feel its heat. And the beast, dying now, blood bubbling from its gouged flanks, seemed almost intelligent. Almost inquisitive, as if wondering who had done such a thing to it. To Aubry’s mind it was no longer a monster but merely an animal that, like all living things, must at last confront its own death.
And they knew each other.
One of the young warriors dashed in, and slashed the right leg once, twice again, until the giant bunched tendons were laid bare by a flap of skin the size of a flag. The rex twisted on the axis of the ruined leg as it buckled. It fell into the fire.
It struggled to climb out, but was prodded back at spear-point, unable to walk.
It lay on its side now, thrashing for a few moments, then quiet, then thrashing once again. The great chest heaved, striving to pump blood to legs that would no longer work. Tiny clawed hands scrabbled for purchase it couldn’t find.
Aubry ran forward and buried his spear in the rex’s eye. He drove it in, ground it in, pushed with maniac strength until it broke the wall of bone and pierced the brain.
He remembered fire.
He remembered floating in the air, as its head jerked reflexively.
He remembered striking the ground, his arm slapping hard, his body relaxed, taking, breaking the fall.
He remembered standing, looking at the King upon its pyre, flanks still shuddering.
He remembered the survivors, heaving, bloodied, exhausted, filing out the door as the flames rose up to consume the amphitheater’s floor.
He remembered his last thought:
The King is dead.
Long live …
19
SEPTEMBER 30. SWARNAVILLE.
The crowd was immense, and the police control of it merely adequate. Faces of every hue—but mostly dark—stretched through the streets. The men and women in the line were carded, one at a time, by the police, and by the recruiters for Scavengers Ltd.
Promise watched the crowd, her heart thundering. Had the announcement been made early enough? Often enough? There was no telling, but there was not enough fear in the world to stop Promise from coming.
She didn’t know where Aubry, Jenna, or Bloodeagle were—or if any of them were even alive. But she had to try. She had to gamble that if any of them were alive, they would hear, and come. But so far, she had seen nothing in the throng to tell her gamble was a good one. She saw no one resembling the three of them, and a terrible heaviness engulfed her. On some core intuitive level, she knew that someone close to her heart had died.
She wanted to cry, she wanted to do anything except continue to supervise the endless rounds of interviews.
Have you had experience in construction? Would you be available for classes, in special camps where for the first two months the only wages would be food and shelter? She watched the expressions of the people as they filed past. These were the lost and lonely, more so than in even the Maze. And they looked at her now as if she were some plutocrat from afar, the head of some ethereal Areopagus, swanning down from the heavens, offering to lift them from their misery with a wave of her pen. They didn’t know. They just didn’t know.
She caught a flash of white in the monitor, and her eye focused upon it. A handkerchief, a fold of white cloth, edged in red. A man wiped his face with it. A thin, brown-skinned man. He wiped his face again. And lowered it. And five seconds later, almost like a metronome. She zoomed in on him. Her heart froze. She knew that cloth—it was of soft leather, and she had seen Jenna clean her durga blades with it a hundred times.
The man was nervous, but resolute. Again and again, in that repetitive nervous gesture, he wiped his shining brow. And she was quite sure that the sweat upon it was caused by more than heat.
Promise had four team leaders, each in charge of five men and women. The interviews were going fairly rapidly. She crooked her finger at a man named Amel and said, “Third row. Small man. Gray shirt. I want you to walk him through personally, Amel. Find out if there is anything special. Anything we should know of.”
Amel nodded. He was a trusted contact, the brother of one of her Denver crew chiefs.
She continued to pretend that she was concerned with the flow, and consulted with a few of the other chiefs, so that it wouldn’t seem that she had given undue attention to Amel. She had to assume that she was under constant surveillance—any other assumption was suicidal.
The line crept on, and finally the little man made it to the front. He didn’t look at her, but the cloth was gone now.
Strange. His clothes were not new … but they had been cleaned. Almost as if they had come from a secondhand store.
Amel came back to Promise’s side with a clipboard, and gestured widely to the crowd, and then made a small gesture to the clipboard. There, at its side, was the cleaning cloth. It was dappled with blood. At the lower left corner was a single initial, scrawled with a shaky hand.
J.
Without changing expression, Promise said, “Find a way to bring him in. With at least twenty others.”
Promise went to the bathroom and vomited. She washed her face, and stared at herself in the mirror. Some of the tense lines around her mouth had eased. New ones had appeared.
This could be the deadliest of traps. This could be salvation for the people she loved most in this world.
The thin man was the thirteenth to be admitted to see her, and as soon as the door shut, she ran him through the standard questions. He answered crisply. In badly broken English, he said that he owned a small shop in Daglia, across the border in the Central African Republic. Business was poor at present. He had, in his youth, worked as an engineering assistant.
Promise took his information with little encouraging hems and haws, then examined the completed form and nodded with satisfaction. She pressed back into her chair. “You say that business is bad in Daglia?”
“I own … small shop in Daglia,” he said apologetically. “Business … not good. Neighborhood gone bad. Not many customer. Have much time for … hobby. Chess. You play?”
“Sometimes, yes.”
His eyes grew intense. “Variation on Queen’s Indian defense. Known as durga. You know?”
Promise’s heart soared. “If you would give me the address of the shop, I
would like to visit sometime.”
“I would suggest that you do so soon.”
“Very soon?”
He bit his lip. “Merchandise … spoiling.” He gave his address, stood, bowed deeply, and turned to leave.
Promise stopped him. “Why do you … seek employment here?” she asked, mystified.
“I gamble when I play chess,” he said, his eyes amused. “Lately, have lost much. Need to repay.”
“You should play on the rooftop, in the moonlight,” she said. “It is very beautiful.”
“Tonight, might be beautiful moon,” he said.
“Tonight would be fine.”
20
The skimmer was protected with a Gorgon-quality distortion shield, and betrayed no trace but a heat shimmer as it crossed above Swarnaville, heading north to Daglia. Dead to radar, dead to the visible spectrum, still it would show up as an infrared blur if such instruments were trained upon it.
A little distraction was needed.
At the south end of the recruitment camp, a truck blew up, and there was the sound of machine-gun fire.
PanAfrican security forces appeared as if by magic, and Promise’s own people hovered about. “It is not safe here,” they said. “The rebels are active. You know that there was a state of … emergency not a hundred miles from here?”
“No,” Promise said. She was dressed in her finest robe. It hugged her figure in the moonlight, and in the slight wind blowing in from the desert, she was quite a sight.
They never saw the skimmer lift silently from its pad and head north across the desert.
21
DAGLIA
Amel piloted the ship across the city. He bore the scars of torture upon his back, and had little love for the madman Swarna. He was glad to do something to help. Still, he was afraid, and remained so even when he maneuvered the ship in between the buildings. The moon was clouded over, and the sky was very dark.
The girl beside him made him nervous. The girl … Leslie?… said little, just stared into the city with those huge eyes. Amel sensed that those young eyes had seen things no child should ever have to witness.
In a gust of steam, the ship descended to a rooftop. There was no sound as the door opened. The girl vaulted over the side of the ship, and landed on the roof as lightly as a cat’s dream.
At first, there seemed to be nothing there. Then, bundled in one of the corners, Amel made out two human shapes. A man. A woman. The man helped her to her feet. She seemed weak, but determined. Leslie flew to them, and helped the woman into the skimmer. She looked like death, but was muttering something. “Pawn to king’s bishop five.”
The man helping her looked at Amel desperately. “Help us,” he whispered.
Amel left the controls and carried the woman to one of the seats. She swallowed hard. Her eyes seemed incapable of focusing. “Pawn,” she whispered hoarsely, “to king’s bishop five.”
The thin man smiled sadly, as if his heart was breaking. “Bishop to queen’s knight four. Checkmate.”
Jenna was silent, and still. For a moment, Amel thought that she was dead. Then, very softly, she spoke. “Yes,” Jenna agreed. “You win.”
And then she fainted.
The little man looked at her, and then at Leslie. “You … Leslie?”
Leslie nodded, stroking his aunt’s forehead. Then the child smiled shyly and looked up at the little man. “I don’t know your name,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter. Your aunt—she good. Almost dead. Hold me to … fifty-seven moves.”
Leslie took the chessplayer’s hand. “You are a friend,” Leslie said. “You brought Jenna back to us. We won’t forget.”
“You go. Care for her. Tell her … she owe me one more game.”
The little man tousled Leslie’s hair, and backed out of the skimmer’s doorway. Leslie pressed his face against the window as the skimmer floated free of the roof, heading east to circle back south.
The last thing that Leslie saw was the chessplayer’s small, slender figure on the roof, watching as they floated into the clouds.
A pawn, who had, for a critical moment of time, become a knight.
22
Aubry Knight lay on a pallet in his room, staring at the wall, unmoving. From outside the room there came the sound of celebration. It was not a surprise to him. It was a day for celebration. Last night, he had been born.
Where and who was he? He wasn’t certain. He remembered …
Another life. Long ago. A life without rhythm or purpose. A life filled with vague regrets, with anger, with hatreds.
And now, he was at peace.
“And what will you do now?” Old Man said.
“I will go home,” he said, clearly. “I will see what is to be seen, and do what is to be done.”
“And your business of death?”
“That was another man’s business, not mine.” He lay, considering. “I feel sorry for that man. He wanted so much, for so long, and now that it is here to be had, he is not the one who gets to enjoy it.”
“It is God’s.”
“Yes.” He stopped, and thought. Listened to his breathing, hissing through a throat that had breathed fire. “It is God’s.”
“There is only one thing that you should know,” the old man said, slowly. “And that is that your woman was in Swarnaville. It is said she has gone south, to New Tokyo.”
He opened his eyes. “Promise,” he said.
“Yes. And your child is with her. They are in danger.”
“They came to try to help me,” he said.
“Yes. To help you.”
“And when cornered, Leslie will revert to the most basic mode he knows. He will try to finish the assignment I began.”
Old Man nodded. “Death is not so easily cheated. One way or the other, you have an appointment.”
Aubry Knight looked at his scorched hands, and looked out through eyes that, for the first time in his life, were cleansed of anger. “There are things to be done.”
“Women can Be. Men must Do. All that is meaningful is in the Doing, and the Being.”
“Can you help me?” Aubry asked.
“It is our fight. We can help. I think that you are the one. I think that this is why you came home to us.”
“Home,” Aubry said. “Home is what I have never had, except in the hearts of the people who loved me.”
“This is your home,” Old Man said.
“Yes,” Aubry said. “This is my home.”
5TH SONG
BIRTHDANCE
Everything in Life is born of
woman.
—Ibandi proverb
1
OCTOBER 2. IRON MOUNTAIN.
“You are the American. Tell us why we should trust you.” The rebel’s voice was flat, empty as his left eye socket. He was old now; his skin was as dark and sun-cracked as the earth beneath them.
Five of them crouched around the fire, eyes shifting suspiciously from Aubry to Old Man. Five of them: three leathery men and two thin, dusty women. Elder representatives of Five Songs. Farmers and traders from PanAfrica’s northernmost province, still called Matundu, in what had once been Zaire. They were all, in one way or another, crippled. Blind. Stumps for legs. A missing hand.
Phillipe Swarna had cost them much, and they now wanted nothing other than his death. They had traveled to Iron Mountain at Old Man’s urging, to hear what the American had to say.
“Swarna is your enemy,” Aubry began slowly. “He betrayed your people, he betrayed your trust. He is your demon, and he is mine.” He paused, seeking to organize his thoughts into some sort of coherent order.
“Five years ago I killed his only son, in fair combat. Now he wants to kill me, and my family.”
“And you came here to take your vengeance?” one of the men said. His cheeks were burnt black, sun and genetics, age, fatigue and tribal branding iron combining to produce a shade beyond blue-black. It was the blackness of despair and death.
Aubry nodded, waiting for what had to come next.
“But you didn’t kill the bastard. Came face-to-face with him, and you failed.”
He bristled. ”I administered the poison. If anything failed, it was the American technology,”
Scar-Cheeks laughed. “You are a coward and a fool. Do you know what any of us would have paid for a chance to die with Phillipe Swarna? You failed because you wanted to live.”
“‘Those who fear death cannot win,’” Aubry quoted.
“’Those who love both life and death cannot be defeated.’”
They murmured approval. “You know the Songs?”
“I am learning them. And the Dances.”
One-Eye turned to Old Man. “It is true?”
Old Man nodded, the corners of his dry, cracked lips lifting in the ghost of a smile. “Truth. He was lost. He has come home. He is one with us.”
They studied him, as if comparing him to some mental pictures of their own. Then Stump-Leg said, “And one of the Six was found near you, when you were rescued.”
“Yes.”
“And he rescued you from the prison. Where you were being tortured to death.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I …” He paused. “I’m not sure. I believe that he was cloned from my flesh.”
There was an ugly murmur at this conjecture. “He did not look like you.”
“My face has been surgically altered. However they raised him, some feeling of kinship for me remained. He wanted to kill me man to man, but was unable to complete the rescue. He was wounded. This is all I can say.”
The one-armed woman stood. She seemed so thin that Aubry was afraid the wind might sweep her up screaming into the sky. But there was an intensity within her, a fire raging behind her wide, accusing eyes. “We cannot believe this. Swarna sends death to you across an ocean. And fails. You strike at him, with America’s deadliest weapons. And fail. One of the Six attacks you in Los Angeles, and then another tries to save you here. And now you want us to expose Five Songs to you, to get you into Caernarvon Castle. How do we know you are who you say you are? How do we know that this entire story has not been concocted to draw us into the open, and thence to destroy us?”
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