Ragamuffin

by Tobias S. Buckell

  “I’ve never heard of any such thing,” John said. “The Maatan and the Gahe occupied Earth, but they are their own races.”

  “Behind them lie another force,” the Loa said. “But it does not matter now. We have come to believe that the truth is, intelligence puts us in competition directly with these, and other species. Our new metamorphosis will take us to the sea here in a new, safe form. Just as we adapted ourselves when we realized occupation of this world was pointless, that there were no clean stretches of space for us to live in. When we decided to try and help your kind against those of ours who dreamt in vain that holding this world, so far from ours, would be the right thing.”

  “What will you become?”

  “Giant deep-sea fish,” the Loa said. “Deep in the dark of the ocean.”

  “And if we can’t keep this world from freezing, and the environment changes?” John asked.

  “There are triggers programmed into us for such a thing. Listen, John, we have a gift for you.”

  Mother Elene leaned forward and handed John a small wooden flask. John made to open it, but she shook her head. “What is it?” he asked.

  “We are masters of the biological,” the Loa said. Its words were getting more strained, as if its mouth was hardening. “Now that we will be changed beyond recognition, we can leave you a dangerous gift. A plague. An infection that will destroy the Teotl. We have no need of this, we can move on. You are the ones stuck with this now, you are the young race. Do with it what you will, John, and we wish the city the best of luck.”

  And that was it. The Loa’s eyes glazed over and it settled back into waiting to change into something different.

  “Come.” Mother Elene led John back toward the elevator.

  As it headed up, John looked over. “How will they reach the sea?”

  “We go help them.”

  “Even though it means they are leaving you,” John said.

  Mother Elene did not respond. When the elevator jerked to a stop, she pointed him at the basement. “Be safe with that thing and don’t get kill. Is a powerful weapon.”

  John tucked it into a pocket, gingerly. “Good day, Mother Elene, and good luck.”

  She shut the door.

  Outside, John blinked several times. Lines of Azteca soldiers marched down the street at the end of the block, making their way toward the walls of the city.

  In the distance the sound of rifle fire popped and cracked, while several explosive booms echoed all across the city.

  The occupation had begun. A large-bellied aircraft flew in over the walls and paused over the center of the city, then lowered itself into the large garden clearing by the Ministerial Mansion.

  Fires burned, smoke columns reaching high into the sky.

  “Hey, hey!” A woman peered through a crack in a nearby door and waved at John.

  “What do you want?”

  “Ain’t no one allowed out on the street. You go get shot. Get in here before any of them notice you.”

  John ducked in, and they slammed the door shut behind him. Two women in long, gray dresses stood inside the small room, lit by a single candle. Chairs and tables lay scattered around; it had once been a restaurant. The smell of fried fish dripped out of the clammy inside air.

  The woman who’d called John over wore a handkerchief over her mouth. “I’m Pam. This my sister, Violet. You know it dangerous out there. You John deBrun, right? I seen you once at the waterfront.”

  John nodded. “Thanks. Yes.” So many in the city knew him it was useless to pretend otherwise.

  “They looking for you, as well as any of the other councilmen who trying to hide.”

  “Any idea why?” John walked over to the window. They all shrank back from it as a pair of men in bright red capes and rifles at the ready walked down the street.

  “Here. They had rain these down on the city not too long ago.” Violet thrust a piece of paper in his hands.

  It was a letter to anyone who had settled this planet several hundred years ago and still lived. The new Teotl needed their help and would pay well for it and guaranteed their safety.

  John crumpled it and threw it on the concrete floor.

  “You don’t believe them?” Pam asked.

  “Never had any reason to trust the Teotl yet,” John said. “I’d rather not walk myself into my own death.”

  “What you go do next?”

  “I don’t know. What happened to the minister, was there any fighting back?”

  “Not sure, but mongoose and ragamuffin fighting some. Mainly looking to get organize, it all happen so quick. Ship coming from the sky, Azteca pouring out,” Pam said.

  “Most of the shooting you hear is people like we shooting from the window at them,” Violet said.

  John patted his coat. Hide, or put himself in a position to strike back? Could he release a biological weapon against the Teotl? Would it be enough to turn the tide? “Can I get close to the Ministerial Mansion? That way I can watch who goes in, and maybe figure out what is happening in there?”

  If they were really looking for people like him, they must need something. There were ways into the Mansion as well, and if he hooked up with mongoose-men, he could gain some help.

  “We’ll help you,” Pam promised. “But for right now, we have to sit tight. Curfew is on for the next day, no one in the street. More feather-clot coming.”

  “Door by door,” Violet said from the window. “They coming door by door to search we street.”

  “They’re looking for us door by door?” John walked toward the window, but Pam grabbed his shirt.

  “They looking for guns,” she said.

  “And?”

  “That go be a problem if they look a bit too close in here.” Pam pulled him toward the back of the room toward the kitchen. “Stacking plenty of rifle.”

  They turned the corner and she opened a heavy iron lid of a massive coal stove with a grunt. Rows of rifles gleamed underneath.

  Pam pulled a pair out. “Head out through the kitchen to the back closet. That go take you to the basement, and from there you can get out through the window to the back street.” She let the top of the stove drop. She took the lid off a large pot, pulled out a pistol, and handed it to John. “Get under the street using the grate, head north until you bump into someone. Let them know what happen. They’ll help you get where you need.”

  Azteca started knocking at the door. “Just a minute,” Violet shouted. Pam raised her dress to reveal a holster fashioned out of leather for the rifle. Another for the pistol on the left thigh.

  She dropped the dress back down. “Hopefully they go be real polite.”

  “You think you can fight back against all this?” John asked. “They’re dropping from the sky, better technology, better weapons, more people.”

  “This house been in my family since my granddad. I ain’t go be running around in no sewer and giving all this over to them,” Pam said.

  “They looking like they go break the door in now,” Voilet said.

  “Chances is they won’t spot nothing.” Pam pushed back. “Now go quick.”

  John turned and followed her directions down into the basement. He barely fit out the window, looking around for the Azteca. Knowing there was no back door, they hadn’t posted any guards.

  As he scrabbled out, he heard pans and pots thrown to the floor and feet thudding around. Pam or Violet shouted angrily back at someone.

  John tensed, waiting for the shooting. It didn’t come.

  Letting out a relieved breath, he moved toward the nearest grate and pulled it free. With one last breath of fresh air he dropped down under the streets, pulling the grate back over him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Had Pepper taken any longer to reach Jerome, he might have been too late. That bugged him. Was he getting soft? Comfortable in his ways? Nanagada might look like a tropical vacation, but Pepper wondered if he’d grown accustomed to it.

  The steam car stopped on the edge o
f a plaza dominated by Tenochtilanome’s main sacrificial pyramid. Already today blood ran down the sides of it. A Teotl spacecraft had landed in the plaza.

  “The boy stays,” Ahexotl said.

  Pepper looked over and considered killing him. “Why?”

  “So you don’t try anything strange, like attacking our gods.”

  “Fair enough.” Pepper smiled. They had each other figured out all too well. He looked over at Jerome. “Remain calm. I’ll be back shortly.”

  He stepped out of the car. Every muscle tensed, ready to spring at any second, Pepper walked forward with the several armed Azteca at either side. The wide-winged craft crouched above the stones, the pyramid rising up behind it.

  Azteca warriors made a wall of bodies on either side of Pepper, feathered capes flapping slightly in the soft wind, rifles at the ready.

  At the far end of the honor guard two Teotl stood. Warrior Teotl. Vaguely bipedal, they turned and faced Pepper. He noted the black, razorlike forearms, spiked fingers, and mirrored eyeplates. The creatures’ thick, chitinous skin would be almost impervious to low-caliber gunfire and edged objects.

  Hard nuts to crack.

  And behind the warrior-grown Teotl sat the divans on which the Teotl leaders sat, watching him from the shadows with their beady eyes.

  The Azteca guided him to the shaded pavilion under the protection of one of the swooping wings. Throngs of Azteca honor guards stood in the background, looking over the proceedings.

  The Teotl had returned from the skies and adapted to the local conditions quite quickly.

  “Proceed to within five paces. No more. No less.” The voice came out of the air. The two warrior Teotl, polished and armored skins gleaming in the sun, moved to either side of him.

  The three creatures in the couches stirred to stare at Pepper. Highly modified Teotl for thinking and planning, their bodies were crafted to support superfast brains. Radiator fans crested their skulls, the air above them rippling from dumped heat.

  “Your body is laced with devices.” The center Teotl spoke Anglic. “Your physical abilities are amplified. You are not a part of this fallow world here.” A stubby, pale flipper flapped, as if it to indicate the city around them. “You come from beyond the outleading wormhole?”

  “Yes.” He saw no reason to lie to them. Yet. Pepper looked up at the smooth underbelly of the craft. It looked like metal from the distance, but up close he wasn’t so sure.

  “Did you come recently? The wormhole out to other worlds of your kind is closed.”

  “I came before it closed.”

  “And that was hundreds of years ago,” they said in a chorus.

  “Yes.”

  Three simultaneous sighs filled the air between the couches. They seemed disappointed. Or at least, were choosing to project it to him. A sigh was just as much a language marker as anything else.

  Pepper regarded the mounds of flesh before him. “Why?”

  A single measured tick of time passed as they conferred with each other with quick glances. “We have a deep need for emissaries.” More shifting. “We can reopen the wormhole to the next system by shoring open the mouth with exotic matter. But our species has a history of antagonism with yours, and presumably a reputation out there. We need help and advice to cross over.”

  “Why?” Pepper folded his arms. Even though he didn’t trust them, if they were really going back to the other worlds, it might be a way to get back out to civilization decades earlier than planned. The Ma Wi Jung still languished on the bottom somewhere near Capitol City, useless to him. And even if fixed, it would require hundreds of years to cross the space required to get to a working wormhole.

  If the wormhole back could just be fired up again, that was appealing to him.

  “Your kind manipulates.” He spread his arms out. “We fell for your lies once.”

  “We are now refugees. We have no time for deceptions and deceit,” the Teotl said.

  Pepper stared at them. “Yes?”

  “Our worlds have been destroyed for technological violations.” The words dripped out of the air and continued. “We have been deemed dangerous, our lease on existence terminated. We orbit this planet because we flee those who would destroy us. The wormhole we came through is temporarily closed again, but we will eventually need help keeping it closed. We seek to open and travel through the other wormhole to the worlds you once knew, but we need ambassadors and assistance.”

  The beady eyes regarded him.

  Pepper looked up at the craft. A working spaceship. Unlike the Ma Wi Jung. “I’m still listening,” he said.

  “There are others like you. Ahexotl and Xippilli will be working to find more of them in the other large city. We’ll take you there to join up with these others, and there we will discuss terms and needs. Eventually we’ll take you to our home.”

  “A whole other planet?”

  “Our home orbits here right now.”

  Pepper looked around at the Azteca. The original Teotl had manipulated humanity enough. This new set of lies would probably mean even more danger. But a quick ride back to Capitol City to get Jerome reunited with his father, that was worth a quick flirt.

  “Okay,” Pepper said. “I’ll take the shuttle ride to Capitol City.”

  The aliens hissed their satisfaction, and Pepper looked up at the giant wing overhead. Complex plots were not his thing, he preferred direct approaches.

  But he would remain checked for now.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Xippilli followed Ahexotl toward the giant flying machine, looking at the Teotl with trepidation. He might know they were just creatures, as Ahexotl said, but somewhere deep inside he still retained the belief that these were gods.

  He watched as a second flying machine climbed up into the air over the city. More than one had landed, and they had all filled their holds with Azteca warriors bound for Capitol City.

  The strange creatures in their divans didn’t so much as glance his way as he walked toward the machine and the crowd of twenty warriors standing around Jerome and Pepper.

  “Pepper is what they seek,” Ahexotl told him. “Eventually you can do what you want with the boy, but for now, I want him chained and guarded. Encouragement for Pepper. He’s dangerous. I don’t want him causing trouble.”

  Xippilli looked over. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “He needs controlled.” Ahexotl looked over at the man. “He’s dangerous. We know there are other immortal Nanagadans that have been here from the beginning, but these people are always hard to ferret out, and we already have what we need to please the gods. My thanks to you. Our task is already over, and we are in the gods’ favor.”

  Xippilli nodded and continued to stare at the machine. Ahexotl waved at the warriors and they circled Jerome, cutting him off from Pepper.

  “Hey,” Pepper snapped. Xippilli flinched. “What are you doing?”

  “We need to make sure you fulfill your end of the bargain.” Ahexotl waved again, and the warriors clapped a collar on the boy’s neck. “It is a prong collar. He’ll be fine, as long as he doesn’t struggle.”

  Nasty tips dug into Jerome’s neck. Xippilli avoided both their eyes. No doubt they viewed him as the worst kind of traitor right now.

  Maybe they were right.

  “Please,” Xippilli said. “Don’t struggle against this.”

  He wanted to crawl into a hole and not come out as the warriors pulled Jerome with them, and they followed a spiked, gleaming Teotl into the great machine.

  Ahexotl waited until Pepper followed, then spoke to Xippilli. “The attack will be over by the time you arrive to take control. You make sure to give the gods what they need and send me what I need, and all will be well.”

  “And the outlying areas?” Xippilli asked.

  “We’ll start with the city. I will decide what to do with the rest of Nanagada.”

  Xippilli nodded, then followed the warriors into the heart of the machine. Faint light gl
immered and Xippilli waited for his eyes to adjust as the hull behind him sealed itself shut. The machine started to shake as it rose into the sky.

  Xippilli swallowed.

  The thundering pitched higher, and inside everything shook. Xippilli grabbed the wall.

  Pepper balanced easily enough while crouched on the floor, staring at him. He was also poking at the wall, using a fingernail to probe at it.

  Xippilli stared at the tiny crenellations all along the domelike chamber whose smooth floor they sat on. At the front, a tiny niche hooked off from the chamber. Fibrous strands draped from the walls of it to swaddle the yellowed, fat Teotl as he leaned back with eyes closed to control the ship.

  A glass of some sort separated the niche from them, and on their side of it an inky black and spiked Teotl stared back at them. Xippilli had no doubt it would kill them if they tried anything. That and the packed crowd of warriors in here made this a very, very secure space.

  Yet still he felt like frayed rope about to snap. Pepper did things, he did not sit around waiting unless it ended in something. But the Teotl didn’t really know what Pepper was truly capable of or they wouldn’t have let him aboard. Would they?

  Pepper versus the spiked Teotl. Xippilli wasn’t sure who would win.

  “Relax,” Pepper told Jerome, folding his arms and leaning back against the wall. He closed his eyes. “Now’s the time you need to take a nap. Even in this thing it’s going to take another hour.”

  Xippilli stared at the man, then at Jerome. Jerome leaned closer. “I will kill you one day, traitor,” the young man hissed.

  Xippilli turned his back and moved toward the warriors, who reverently whispered among each other in awe about being so close to the Teotl.

  Pepper shifted just as Xippilli felt his ears start to hurt. The ship settled down, thudded, and the vibrating slowly wound down.

  “And here we come,” Pepper said, and stretched slowly, while keeping an eye on the twenty warriors packed in with them. “Xippilli, do me a favor? Step to your left two paces, and remain calm.”

  “Calm?” Xippilli frowned. But he stepped over. Teotl or not, he would not trifle with the man.