Nara

by M. L. Buchman

  Jaron stopped and surveyed his domain. His breathing slowed as he looked about the jungle. No matter where he slept, this was clearly his home. Captain Conrad had done a good thing pardoning him.

  The jungle spread below and above them. They stood halfway up one of the walls midway down the length of the biome. It was hard to believe that man had built such a place. The jungle swept up to both spin and anti-spin. The rippling green washed like a tide toward the central trees that towered over everything. They’d done it. Here, they’d brought Earth alive again.

  He pulled out the two mugs and opened the flask he’d brought. When Jaron had seen his fill of the jungle, Bryce handed him a full mug. They settled together on the ledge and looked out upon the greenery.

  “This is one of the best places to watch from.” He glanced toward the simulated sun low on the horizon. “We have to wait.”

  Bryce nodded and sipped at the beer. He held the mug up to the light. The color of the ale was richer and a little less orange than it looked beneath the corridor lights.

  “I haven’t been here in over a week. They let me back in only the once to see what was left of…”

  His voice trailed off. If the reality had been even half as bad as the rumors, Bryce was damn glad he hadn’t seen it.

  “I didn’t want to remember the jungle that way.”

  “Now you don’t have to.”

  “Now I don’t have to.”

  They drank in silence for a while. An occasional bird soared high into one of the central trees, but for the most part they all stayed below the canopy. He could hear a small tribe of monkeys and what sounded like a million crickets join in the chorus.

  They were well into their third mug by the time the sun touched the horizon. A large bird launched from the trees into the fading light. A blazing white bullet of cockatoo shot into the sky. A great swirling mass of smaller birds rose from several low trees. As they swept by the terrace in unison, he could see the spangle across their wings of rich colors caught in the light. A large multi-colored parrot glistened in the last rays of the setting sun. Bryce could swear the sunset was real.

  It reminded him of something he couldn’t quite place. Clouds of birds rose above the jungle into the evening light. The designers had done a magnificent job. Even though the sun had dropped below the artificial horizon where he and Jaron sat, the birds still soared in the orange light shining above the trees. Brilliant dots of indeterminate color would swoop closer, arc into impacts of blues, reds, oranges, greens, and as suddenly disappear back into the distance.

  The ship was bursting with life. It was hard to remember that, in the metal and plas of the corridors. He fought back the urge to shout aloud, he didn’t want to disturb the moment.

  A great, glittering star of a truly large bird checked in mid-soar, and then descended toward them like a comet. As it neared, it became evident the bird’s wingspan was at least a meter. Bryce dropped to the ground. He heard the thud of impact and then, impossibly, a laugh.

  Jaron was stroking a great scarlet parrot who alternately groomed Jaron’s hair with its beak, held onto his ear, and bobbed its head up and down, all the while cackling like a maniac. And Jaron was bobbing his head back. Bryce slowly regained his composure and sat up.

  “Hello, Harold, old friend.”

  “Herro, Harron.” The bird hopped to his other shoulder and began grooming Jaron’s hair once more.

  When Bryce stood, the bird spread its blue and yellow wings wide and released an ear-shattering cry. The animal’s rimmed eyes glared at him as it continued to flap menacingly about. Jaron slowly stroked the parrot’s feathers into place.

  “Sorry, Bryce. We haven’t been apart this long since…” Once again his voice trailed off. “A long time,” was the muffled conclusion.

  The bird continued to glare at him, then, with an abrupt freezing of stance, let out a scream so much like Jaron’s that both men jolted. Bryce remembered the sound. The day they’d lifted Jaron from his jungle into space on Bryce’s shuttle, Jaron had screamed that way. And the bird had screamed with him until they’d sedated the man.

  The sound chopped off abruptly, cutting the firm jungle floor from beneath him and replacing it with the deck of his shuttle. If turned and looked just so, perhaps he’d see Cappy in his screwy cowboy hat. Or Melissa and— He chopped off the thought and stared at the bird.

  But Harold, having voiced his recognition of Bryce as Jaron’s “kidnapper” almost a year before, was done and had turned his attention to grooming some of his own feathers.

  Jaron waved the giant bird aloft to rejoin his companions. Harold swept back repeatedly to confirm Jaron’s continued presence.

  Bryce watched the enigmatic man beside him. He showed a joy and compassion in the bird’s greeting that had never crossed his face before in Bryce’s presence.

  As the last of the light faded, the parrots descended to their homes in the trees. Fewer and fewer birds floated in the dying air currents as the trees cooled below them. Harold soared in to roost on Jaron’s shoulder, clacking his mighty beak only once at Bryce to be certain he understood that he didn’t have the bird’s approval yet.

  Once more their flight patterns rubbed at some forgotten memory. He finally found it. It was an old memory indeed, old even for Bryce Sr. A battle plan from the early days of the World Economic Council.

  The East Asian Continuity was the last major holdout against the might of the WEC. Though they’d been reduced to a mere half-billion, they were still a paranoid and powerful force. What was left of China after global warming drowned the coast and the acid rain had made the land from Wuhan to the Tibetan radiation field uninhabitable, had threatened Bryce Sr.’s still unstable hold on the planet.

  The Old Man had developed a battle simulation and transmitted it complete to their military headquarters. The image of so many missiles and fighters following such completely unpredictable paths had cowed them into submission. Their finest computers had never been able to unwind the fractal on which it was based, never mind create a counterattack plan.

  The Old Man had based it upon the research of a single biologist. Stephen Wilkson had studied and mapped the patterns of parrots on the evening breeze. Bryce’s parent had classified the man’s entire body of research. With a quick substitution of jets for birds, he was able to turn their flight into a bewildering, unpredictable, indefensible attack plan.

  “Nature at its finest.”

  He turned to face Jaron, but was unable to speak. He looked out at the last birds soaring on the evening breeze. He was right. It was beautiful. He blinked hard to clear the overlay from his memory and forced out a feeble croak.

  “Why do they do that?”

  He could see the outline of Jaron’s shrug sketching against the dark sky. “I don’t know. They don’t seem to be going anywhere, they don’t approach the walls either. Or hunt bugs. I never found a study of it on Earth. Though I observed it myself, I admit I never published anything. Didn’t want to spoil it.”

  “Someone else did.”

  Jaron turned to him sharply.

  “There was only one study, heavily suppressed in 2048. Though there was much more research, you won’t find it in your archives.”

  “How do you know about it?”

  Bryce wished he’d kept his mouth shut but the memory and the beer had conspired against him.

  “I can’t remember.” The lie tasted bitter and a swallow of beer did nothing to clear the foulness of Bryce Senior’s memories.

  “I just know this isn’t the only recorded occurrence. But the birds remember, even though we’re not in a natural world here.”

  Jaron nodded cautiously. “All the greater the loss. All the more we must strive to preserve.” He finished his beer and held it out for a refill.

  “This is good. Different from your usual brews. What do you call it?”


  Bryce smiled. Finally Jaron had asked the right question to receive his welcome-back gift.

  “Parrot Feather Gold.”

  # # #

  “He sure is handsome, isn’t he?”

  Ri twisted and ducked. The adrenaline surge locked her muscles ready for blocking the blow and delivering the return. The Captain sat on the edge of a planter, hidden by the shadow of a small blooming tree. Its sweet scent scattered down the corridor like hope for a new tomorrow; one in which it wasn’t trapped in a two-meter square planter.

  “Who?” It was all she could manage as her heart still raced. She forced her knees to unlock so that she could rise from fighting stance.

  “That isn’t my father’s stance.” Captain Conrad inspected her with a trained eye.

  “You’re asking if your father was handsome?” Ri knew she was a step behind somewhere.

  “Jackson Turner and his illustrious smile. Where did you learn to fight?”

  “The streets of Nara, Japan. Yes, he’s handsome. And I’d trust his smile about as far as I could throw him.”

  That elicited a laugh. “Which I expect is fairly far.”

  Ri had to smile. “If the need arose, I’d find a way to manage.”

  “I expect you would, Ri Jeffers.” The Captain rose with a leisurely stretch as if her security officer hadn’t been ready to kick her in the face just a moment before. “Come with me.”

  Her casual expectation of obedience left Ri with no choice though she’d been looking forward to a chance to read up on Jackson and Olias. The Captain led her down a side passage from the main corridor to the park along the outer edge of R1. The wandering paths of the park made the dozen meters between the residential blocks and outside wall of the ring seem much larger than it was. Some agronomist had clearly spent an immense amount of energy planning this area of R1 North.

  Little alleyways of benches and primrose offered privacy. The grassy bank on the far side faced the stars sweeping by outside the great plas windows of the very end of their spacecraft. It might have appeared as if the stars were spinning rather than R1 were it not for the bright spots of the white-shrouded Earth and the ruby-deep of the moon-turned-to-glass anchoring the view.

  Thus, instead of a glorious vista, denizens of the park were offered a gut-wrenching loop through space every 56.1 seconds. Most didn’t mind the joy ride, the Captain chose a secluded seat facing the great clear wall.

  Ri thankfully faced her across the tiny cul-de-sac they’d discovered in a grove of dogwood with her back firmly turned toward the vertiginous spectacle. The balconies of L2 through L5 ranged above them in myriad array, many lit for the ship’s evening. Most sported small, carefully tended plantings, some with deck chairs facing the view. Some facing inward. A few sported a scattering of people clutching drinks, seeking brief refuge from some party within.

  “How do you think they’ll settle in?”

  Ri shrugged. “Why ask me? Kurt Bamker, our chief psychologist could certainly give you better feedback than I ever could.”

  “But I am asking you.” The Captain’s tone was light, but the command had been ingrained into her voice as much as it had her father’s. Commander Levan could scare the daylights out of seasoned troops while asking them to pass the bread down the table. A fact she knew from personal experience.

  Ri closed her eyes for a moment to picture the crew of the Icarus. She’d found them a suite on R3, not far from either the Ocean biome or their ship. Hank Christianson had leapt at a data terminal and disappeared into a whorl of information. His wife, Sicily, headed to the showers to rinse the sea salt out of her long graying hair, humming a Christmas carol under her breath.

  Donnie had pulled up the vid list and was scanning for gaps in her own library. Wright pulled her into his lap and they both focused on something that was actually in black and white and started out with someone in a cowboy suit singing to his horse. Jill Emers and Jane Keller disappeared into a bedroom and Rolovsky started cooking. Captain Jackson Turner had rattled about the common living room, still unable to come to a rest even as Ri was leaving.

  “It will take a while. The common room of their suite is bigger than their entire ship. They’re just space-wary.”

  “I hope that’s all it is. Jackie is quite the most unflappable boy I’ve ever met, but he is not happy is he?”

  Ri grimaced. “No. No, he’s not.” More caged animal than carefree boy.

  “We will need to find something for him to do.”

  The Captain stretched her feet across the cobblestone path and rested them on the slatted plas surface of the bench, carefully treated to look like natural wood yet last forever.

  A laugh dragged her attention upward. A short, rounded blond and a tall redhead were leaning against a balcony rail half a dozen meters above them. They were both looking back through the sliding doors at some unseen target.

  “You should grab him, Emilia. He’s cute as all hell.”

  “No thanks. You grab him, Christy.”

  The blond woman laughed again. “Like he’d bother to look at me with you in the room. I can usually charm the hungry ones, but not with you hanging about. You just go and latch onto one of ‘em and open up the shooting gallery for your buddy Christy.”

  “Okay, I’ll trip a pair and you just be ready to catch one of ‘em.”

  “Or both.”

  This time Emilia laughed. A laugh that trickled forth from her generous chest like a gentle dinner bell calling all who heard to come feed. The two women clicked glasses and wandered back into the party.

  “What was he like?” The Captain’s voice dragged Ri’s attention back down to the ground.

  “Jackson?”

  “My father.”

  Ri tried to frame a half dozen comments. How should she describe the only man she’d never beat, never outsmarted on the sparring floor, would never consider challenging in the field? Respect? Fear? Terror? Fury? All true. None accurate.

  “You should know better than I do. You were his daughter.”

  The Captain didn’t look at her, but left her gray-eyed gaze aimed high over Ri’s head, looking more at the spindle of Stellar One than out at the stars and probably seeing neither.

  “He and my mother always pushed me to be the best. Sent me off to the best schools. Fooled them. At fourteen, I stowed away on a freighter and was halfway to the asteroid belt before they found me stealing supplies from the galley. Never looked back. I’ve worked every position of every route from here to Pluto Discovery base for the dozen years that the base was active. Galley grunt to Captain in fifty easy years. Dad never forgave me.”

  Ri let the silence sit between them.

  “We didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye.”

  Ri considered Levan the man, not Levan the Commander.

  “The last time I saw him,” Ri could feel the summer heat of Vietnam forcing sweat from her every pore, “was at the One Lotus Pagoda in the heart of old Hanoi. That was when he threw me off the planet. He said many things. Some I still don’t fully understand.”

  He accused her of being too dangerous to be left alive. Her only option was to leave all that she knew and go to outer space. A place she didn’t know man still occupied as she had squatted in the squalor of Nara a few years before.

  “Your father,” the words were dust in her throat, “was a man of immense honor.”

  The Captain nodded. Several more times than were necessary to acknowledge Ri’s response.

  “I must have hurt him when I ran to the stars. I always dreamed about having a family, too. But I never thought about losing one.”

  “It is the worst pain there is.” Ri had unknowingly killed her mother with a thrown dagger, her leader dead when Ri’s sword severed Tinai’s head to free her tortured body, her best hunter left to the slavering jaws of the Zenbu, animals who had once been men.
Her entire cadre left to the hungry fire of the Diabutsu-den cadre. All her family slain.

  And now Susan Jeffers. The Angel-lady who had freed her from the horror of Japan and shown her a better life, lay dead on a burned Earth. Gone from the safety of Stellar One, because Ri could not break free of her own guilt and ask her to stay aboard. To come to the stars with them.

  “Well we need to build a new family. We are the last ten thousand. We must become the first ten thousand.”

  And how many of those would Ri kill?

  Chapter 19

  9 January 01 A.A.

  Bryce polished a glass and hung it in a rack. It was his last afternoon in the R2 Desert Pub and he wouldn’t miss the place. All the trappings that were lacking in his own pub were here. A real wood bar down one entire side of the long room. A staffed kitchen just in case someone wanted a midday snack. Delicate tables that barely supported a couple liters of beer and wouldn’t make it through even the mildest bar brawl. Delicate flutes for champagne, rounded stem glasses for the reds, and narrower for the chilled whites. He served many times more glasses of wine than beer here.

  There was no real life here. He actually missed the energy of his bar. Here everything was tempered, the fights were civil debates and the roars of joy were a calm smile. Though the party down at the far end was shifting over to pitchers and that showed some promise.

  The view from Desert Pub had thrilled him at first, but after seeing the jungle sunset last week, he was spoiled. The pub sat thirty meters up the Desert biome wall and was built out on a deck. Small shade trees and a wide red-and-white striped awning kept the patrons cool, but the desert made them thirsty. A nearly invisible sheet of plas isolated the biome from accidental contamination.

  He brought another pitcher over to the table along with some fresh glasses as the roar of their laughter rattled decently about the gentle conversation of the other patrons. A red-tailed hawk was spooked from his perch just outside the floor-to-ceiling window that separated the bar from the Desert biome. The arid valley floor lay three levels below and appeared to stretch beyond the far horizon. Low chaparral and sage offered refuge for the small rodents seeking safety from the lofty predators perched ever so high on the food chain.