“You are already exposed,” Aubry observed quietly.
“We are old,” One-Eye said. “And already damaged in the fight against Swarna. And we are but a single note in the Five Songs. If we die, or are captured, we will expose little. Our contact will flee, or commit suicide if we do not send the clear signal.” A knife appeared in One-Eye’s gnarled, rusty hands. “We believe that we have been betrayed. We will die, and we will take you with us.” The knife hovered near Aubry’s throat. Aubry met his eye evenly, unmoving.
Old Man spoke quickly. “No! He is one of us. He is a child of the Ibandi, raised in America.”
Scar-Cheek held up a hand, and One-Eye retracted the knife half an inch. “We heard that there was such a child,” Scar-Cheek said, “but how do we know that this is the one? He could be another clone, grown, implanted with a shadow soul. I mean no insult, but he would fool even you, Old Man. How would we know? How would he know?”
Aubry, about to argue, suddenly felt a sour question poisoning his confidence. “What do you mean?”
“Swarna and the Americans could have created you. Programmed you in America. Sent you in to uncover us. Perhaps their animosity is a sham.”
“But … they didn’t want me to come. I forced their hand.”
“So you say. Or think. But it need not be true.”
Aubry stopped, considering that. Then he shook his head. “Once, I might have doubted myself. I might have wondered. But I am no longer a man who doubts. The fire burns clean. I will kill Phillipe Swarna. No matter what the cost. I can do it—all I need is another chance.”
“Old Man,” the second woman asked. She bore no visible scars, but when she moved or spoke, it was with evident discomfort. “Why do you vouch for this—American?”
“Because of the Firedance,” he said. “It is known only to my people. Only to the warriors of my people. Swarna was a priest, not a warrior. He did not know the Firedance. This man did. Thomas Jai, who took the fetus to America, and claimed to be this one’s father, was a warrior. Thomas knew the Firedance. Aubry performed for us. It was flawed. It was partial. It was magnificent.”
“Could Thomas not have been captured, and the Firedance extracted under torture?”
“Information can be extracted, yes. But not the joy. Firedance holds the joy of our people, our love of movement. It must be taught, one to another, hands on, over a process of years. Love, given father to son, uncle to nephew. Protector to protected. You can steal the external shell, but not the nectar it holds. Aubry Jai was given the nectar. He is our child, come home.”
“Jai?” asked Aubry, confused.
“It is High Ibandi. It means protector. Guardian. Warrior. Knight.”
Old Man came and stood by Aubry, gray head rising only to the level of his shoulder. There was silence, save for the wind passing over the Iron Mountain. Passing as it had passed for ten million years, and would for a billion more.
The three men and two women gazed at Old Man, and at Aubry, and at last they nodded. “You risk your own people. You place their lives on the line. Five Songs will stand with you.”
2
OCTOBER 5. THE MENAGERIE.
The world was a nightmare of black and white streaks, frozen, edged in shattered color, like paintings glimpsed in a thunderstorm.
I hunched into my seat. Unfeeling, almost unseeing. I felt my heart dying.
Father. I cannot stop myself.
The rain blew against the skimmer windows. I saw the lightning. In that rain-dappled window, I saw my face.
I had not seen it before. It was so small, so drawn. So empty.
How had I survived, enfolding such an angry void? Surely, only by denying its existence.
Father.
Rain whipped against the window in rippling sheets. My reflection looked wet. Cold. Alive.
The transport skimmer struck an air pocket, shuddered. The seat beneath me trembled in rhythm with the engine. My feet did not touch the floor.
I turned. Mother peered at me. She looked sick. Her cheeks were drawn tight against her cheekbones. Her slender fingers gripped my shoulder. I did not feel them.
“Leslie …” she said, something present in her voice I had never heard before. Her heart, like mine, was dying.
Everything I touch dies.
She bore me within her body. Protected me with her life. Gave me her family. When I die, she will blame herself. Forever.
And still, I had to do this.
“Leslie. Darling.” She gripped my hand. Strength in slim fingers. Soft oval of face, caught in flash of lightning. Glint of moisture on cheek given fire. A falling star. I wanted…
I wanted …
Father.
“Isn’t there anything I can say?”
The room shifted minutely, left to right.
She stared straight ahead. I recorded line of jaw. Luminous eyes. High, lovely hairline. Firm mouth that had kissed mine so often.
Then, burned memories away. Suicide to take such softness into combat.
“If I stopped you—”
You could not.
“—and your father died, you would never forgive me.” Her voice labored. She swallowed thickly. The cords in her neck stood out like bundles of vine. Hands went to her face. Fingers flitted like butterflies, as if questioning the reality of the flesh they stroked. “If you … if anything happens to you … I will die, Leslie.” She looked at me. I saw now she would have been, in labor with me. Animal. Pure commitment. No turning back. This woman would not use drugs, or surgery. She would plunge into the sensation.
One life to live. One. Feel it all. Even the pain.
“So …” She wiped the back of a hand against wet cheeks, managed the travesty of a smile. “I have to let you go, don’t I? I have to pray that you’ll come back to me.” Her smile faltered. “Somehow. And bring your father, if you can.”
The rain was harder.
Soon, now.
I heard my own voice. I didn’t know who spoke the words.
“Trust me, Mother,” I said. “If Father is alive, I will find him. If I find him, and we are together, nothing in the world can stop us.”
That voice came from somewhere far away. I wanted to reach out to her, to comfort her, to say something more to her. For her sake I wore the dresses. For her, the makeup. For her, I strove to be human.
But human beings are such frail, vulnerable things. They love what cannot last. They cling to what they cannot keep. They think that passion, and caring, and love, can build a fortress against that night which claims us all.
Pitiful.
I wanted so much to be human.
But I am not, and never was. I am Gorgon. I am Medusa-16. There was no time for softness, not then. Not ever again.
I made a little adjustment, focusing on the line of light that starts near my anus, and travels up my spine. It pulsed with my heartbeat.
I was within myself. There was a sound of small, balanced feet. Amel, returning from the pilot’s compartment. “Two minutes, now,” he said quietly. I did not respond. “I suppose—it would be fruitless to try to talk you out of this?”
I could not hear Amel. He was a decent man, a good pilot. He did not, could not, understand a creature like me.
All I could think of was my father, and Aunt Jenna. Bloody. Aunt Mira. A tattered target. A harmless, sallow woman with nimble fingers and an open heart. A woman who never thought of herself. And who was killed to get Father’s attention. My aunt.
Pain.
If there was no Hell, I swore to make one. I would tear open the earth with my fingers, and cast Phillipe Swarna into it. And climb in after him.
Father.
Oh, Father, I thought. What have I brought to your life? It was the Medusas. And Gorgons. You came to save me. And killed a man called Ibumi. Swarna’s only son. And PanAfrica reached out for you and destroyed your home. I cannot forgive myself. If evil exists, I am that thing.
I took Mother’s hand from my shoulder.
You can’t love the evil out of an evil thing.
I had to remain calm, in a world of vectors and velocities. Too many people to find and kill. Too much to do.
Sensed my inner clock. It was time.
I moved to the door. We were two miles above the Menagerie. The radar was scouting us, even then. A parachute would be picked up, at once.
Strapped to my back was a three-foot fiberglass turtle shell. It was all I needed. The door opened, and a wall of wind hammered me.
Amel touched my shoulder, then drew his finger back, as if he had brushed a piece of dry ice. I looked up at him. Behind him was my mother.
Her face.
I had to forget …
Must imprint it upon my heart …
And in the last moment, it bloomed with light, revealed to me a sunrise in the midst of a storm. No longer controlled by me, my eyes burst with tears and I screamed “Mother…!”
And I stepped through the door.
3
Promise stared at the door, lids fluttering but not blinking, long after Amel sealed it. She sat, and raised her hands until she could see them. They shook, picked at each other, acted as if they belonged to someone else. Someone she didn’t know.
She thrust them into her mouth, and pressed herself back into her seat, staring out into the storm.
What have I done?
The only thing that could possibly save my family.
Aubry. Leslie. Forgive me.
Goddess, save them both.
Or let me die, as well.
4
The wind gut-punched me. Then nothing. I was of the wind, whipped by it, skating on little eddies that whipped my hair and spun me. But I saw only the skimmer, which was drawing apart and away from me. I flew, sinking slowly. The skimmer pulled farther away from me and disappeared into the clouds.
The Menagerie’s largest lake was far below me, a shimmering white patch in the rain, still radiating yesterday’s heat. I tucked my body tightly and headed for it, wheeling through space.
I had already performed the calculations: thirty-two feet per second, per second. The wind pressure: rain seemed almost to buoy me up, as my emotions could not. Terminal velocity.
I was ready. Flip to land butt-first, on fiberglass turtle shell. The patch of day-heat swam up at me, slowly at first, and then more swiftly, swiftly, and then with phenomenal speed, and I felt my way through the wind. I canted, coming at the angle, using wind pressure to change my declination. Perpendicularity would prove fatal.
I saw the sky.
White/red/black. Concussion.
World spun as fall translated into forward motion, stone-skipping across surface, back, side, then front, my body curled into a ball, forearms over face. Lost control of spin, control of everything as concentration splintered, revolving white/black/white, then pain in a flash so hot and brief it was barely registered and—
5
Awakened, coughing water. Kicked free of shell, not thinking, just moving. Water, reeds, rain in my face. Cheek against mud, mouth half in water. Puking swamp muck. Shaking. Body like bag of broken glass.
Checked inner clock. Sun still an hour below horizon.
Check: location. The Menagerie. Dead center. Around me, legs rising like dark columns from the swamp, the herd of Apatosauri.
Bioengineered small—averaging only forty feet in length, only twenty tons. Saurian. Brachiosauridae. Middle and Upper Jurassic. Sometimes erroneously referred to as brontosaurus. Herbivorous.
One raised its head, lazy-gazing at me. Struck from sleep by the din? Were there sound monitors? Were computer relays then opening, waking to the predawn even as these fleabrained creatures? Did my splash source more sound than a sleep-staggered apatosaurus sagging in the swamp?
Gasping, I made my way to shore, and dragged myself out. Sore—ache lived in every limb and joint.
Pain is life.
I lay flat. Waited, and watched. Nothing moved … or…? I heard something sniffing in the bushes.
Something was called by my impact in the water. Not a security ’bot.
Allosaurus. Theropoda. Iguana-head. Powerful claws, sharp, thick-nailed fore and hind legs. Carnivore. Not more than twelve feet long, seven feet high. Wind shifted, carrying putrid meat stench. Small, even for Swarna’s Jurassic bonsai brigade. A baby. Should have still been at the clutch-hunting phase, under mother’s watchful eye. But it was hunting on its own, its head swiveling slow to scent the air, rubbing the long grass against its nose, trying to read spoor.
I pretended to be a tree, a rock, an unliving extension of the night. Where was I? The lake map blossomed in my mind. A quarter mile to the nearest sauropod-secure concrete bubble-blind.
Felt no urge to match skill and strength against something like this. Irrational thing to ask of an injured, woozy body.
Conversely, was also uncertain of locomotive capacity. Hip felt as if smashed with a sledge. Throbbing grew more intense by the moment. Think positively: Pain is life. Still, it was hardly a desirable sensation for one pursued by a famished camosaur.
I rolled back into the swamp slowly, carefully, and watched. It couldn’t catch my scent—
And then I exploded from the water. Something almost had me, something that moved through the water so quietly and stealthily that I felt nothing, sensed nothing, until the moment before its jaws closed upon my leg. Teeth grazed me as I twisted away onto the land.
The allosaurus was after me instantly, its underlegs thundering along, lifting it with every stride, propelling it forward. My hip began to burn, and made a slight click with every step. Couldn’t keep up the pounding.
Swift inventory told me that I had my flexibility, and that my skeletal alignment would tolerate one more shock.
No choice but to fight, while defense was still possible.
The beast was almost on me. I sprang forward, dug in my left heel, balanced on my left leg, and snapped back, allowing the shock of deceleration to flow through muscles that were perfectly relaxed. My right leg cocked, everything in slow motion as the allosaurus came for the kill, not even trying to brake itself.
And I hit it with a Korean-style yop chugi side kick, focusing through my heel. I possess 99.98+ energy efficiency. My focus was the best, even among the other Medusas. And every bit of focus, every bit of energy, with perfect alignment and everything else I could muster went into that blow, timed perfectly, and aimed for the plate in the center of its chest. My heel struck cleanly, delivering in excess of thirteen hundred psi precisely on target, and I heard the ribs crunch, felt impact. Heard my own scream as my hip protested, but held.
The allosaurus registered surprise. If you tied a log to the side of a truck and ran it into a rhino at precisely the correct point, you might get a similar effect.
The lizard spun off into twelve o’clock, and I into six. Energy transference wasn’t quite perfect.
My hip roared. Now that it had done its job, it was appropriate for it to complain. The camosaur roared as well—far more audibly.
It would attract others of its kind. The sun would be up soon. Unless one of the Menagerie wardens took pity on it, it would be torn apart by its brothers and sisters.
I felt as if my hip and knee were on fire. I dragged myself the rest of the way to the shelter, leaving the dinosaur thrashing in the dirt.
The shelter was a low concrete bubble with a keypad and a voice box. The computer codes were easy to break. I dampened the security system.
I was in.
6
The canvas-covered truck had traveled for three days across the hardpack, and beneath a lazing day’s merciless sun. It was old, and rickety, a gas-driven relic capable of no more than forty miles an hour, bumping and jostling every foot of the way along a road that was maintained too rarely.
There was method to the apparent madness of Five Songs: the air, and the rails, and the seas were swept constantly, but the caravan routes across the g
reat grasslands in PanAfrica’s north country were the continent’s lifelines, and had been for a thousand years. There were too many small merchants, too many trade routes to monitor. For those who spoke Swahili, the path was open wide.
Aubry’s eyes were cold, his hands firm upon the wheel. On the dash before him was the small tracer device handed him by Go. Its digital display read 17 K. Not far now.
In the truck bed behind him were a dozen men, registered as general workers. The entire truck was one of thousands carrying human machinery from one village, one township, one province to another, seeking a place where the work might be more plentiful, the salaries a fraction higher. The men knew no explicit details of his mission, but were allied with Five Songs. They had sworn to fight and die at its call. They were of a dozen tribes and, through them, connected to other committed men and women. Sometimes, when the truck’s engine quieted a bit, he could hear them singing.
Death songs? They came to him, in the language of his people, floating on the wind. The three-quarter moon cast protean shadows upon the land, sharp darkness and cold light that transformed the landscape into a thing of dream. He felt cool, and at peace, and within himself.
Beside him, Tanesha was quiet. She had been silent for over a hundred miles, lost in her own thoughts, no energy to waste on talk. Her hair was tightly braided in ceremonial rows. She carried a gourd filled with smalls rocks and seeds, and shook it occasionally, as she hummed and chanted to herself.
She seemed so calm.
Mountains that had been distant slumbering beasts loomed up now, revealed as insensate tumbles of black rock, cairn upon cairn heaped on each other like broken building blocks. The earth beneath the truck grew rougher. The truck’s ancient suspension groaned in the attempt to level the ride.
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