by Wesley Chu
Maybe you should consider the possibility that whoever is outside is not friendly.
“That’s why I have a shank in my hand.”
What if he is armed with a gun? Too bad you sold the gun I gave you for a bag of treats.
“I told you, no one uses guns in Crate Town.”
Famous last words.
Ella got a sense of where the asshole was standing, opened the door, and charged outside. She jabbed at where she thought the person’s neck would be, and instead nearly stabbed the very large boob of a very tall man. Fortunately, she stopped just short of breaking skin.
Melonhead looked down at the tip puncturing his shirt and poking into his flesh. He pinched the tip and moved it to the side. “Hi, Ella.”
The shank disappeared from view behind her waistband. “Hi, Melonhead. Sorry about your shirt.”
He shrugged. “What’s one more hole?” He looked her up and down. “You haven’t been to the gym. Uncle Manish is worried about you.”
She coughed. “Sorry, I’ve been sick.”
“Are you feeling better now?”
She nodded.
“Good, he told me to bring you to the gym. Let’s go.”
Ella was about to refuse when she hesitated. She had run out of food last night and hadn’t showered in days. Maybe stabbing someone at the gym would make her feel better. Besides, she could shower at Manish’s gym instead of paying Wiry Madras. Maybe get a free meal from it too.
“Fine,” she huffed. “Let me get my stuff.”
Melonhead’s ride was a post-apocalyptic dystopian tank. Actually, it was a Volkswagen cobbled together from the corpses of several other vans that he had patched with square plates wherever they didn’t fit together properly.
“This is the magic carpet right here.” He stroked the side of the van as if he were running his fingers through a woman’s hair.
“It’s very colorful,” Ella said. That was the extent of the compliment she could muster for this ugly thing.
Wait, we are not riding in this contraption. It does not look safe.
“It took me two years to put together,” he said, sliding the back door open for her.
Ella stopped. “What are you doing? I’m sitting in the front with you.”
“The doors on the right side don’t work.”
She looked inside. There were no windows on that right side either. Ella went around to the other side of the van and gaped. It wasn’t that the doors on that side wouldn’t open, there weren’t any doors at all. Instead of an actual side of a car, she found herself looking at what essentially was a steel wall welded into place. This thing was a container on wheels.
He came around next to her. “I ran out of money to buy the rest of the pieces, so I made do. Got it from Crate Town actually.”
“At least it’s bulletproof,” she said.
“Well, if you ever want to rob a bank,” he grinned, “you know who to ask to be getaway driver.”
Ella went back around to the sliding door and crawled inside. There was a bunch of junk in the back, and it took a fair amount of navigating to shimmy her way to the front passenger side seat. Melonhead got into the driver’s side, and after a few false starts, had them speeding toward the gym.
Speeding might have been a slight exaggeration. The tank’s top speed was somewhere around forty kilometers per hour, probably due to its tiny four-cylinder engine and the several tons of metal strapped to its body. Ella gripped the railing on the door as the tank bounced and wobbled on the uneven road. This thing didn’t have much of a suspension either, and she was pretty sure if it hit anything remotely like a dip in the ground, it wasn’t ever going to be able to climb its way out. A couple of times, it looked as if it were about to tip over when it made a turn, and struggled mightily when it climbed uphill. Hell, it seemed to struggle when it went on flat terrain as well. Basically, it would have been the worst getaway vehicle in the history of bank robberies.
“I would have gotten there faster in a tuk-tuk,” she grumbled.
You would have gotten there faster in a golf cart.
“What’s golf?”
Never mind. The sport of kings.
Ella looked up the sport on her phone. “Wait, it’s that boring thing where they hit that tiny ball with a skinny stick into a little hole?”
It is. One of my hosts was a professional golfer. It means he was one of the best to ever play.
“Yeah? What’s his name?”
Alfred Scalzan.
Ella looked that up too. “Says here he was the 191st ranked golfer some fifty years ago. I didn’t know they had ranks that high.”
That is for the whole world!
“I’m not saying he’s not good. It’s just that being ranked 191st is kind of like getting a modak treat just for showing up. It’s hardly the best to ever play.”
What would you know? What have you ever done to distinguish yourself?
Ella looked out the window as they pulled into Little Dharavi. “I’ve lived in one of the largest slums in India on my own since I was ten. I survived, thrived even. I bought a home, and I didn’t compromise my body or morals to do it.”
By stealing and conning innocents. That does not compromise your morals?
“I was a scrawny girl whose mother had just died and whose father had abandoned her. I did what I had to do. Let’s see your stupid golfer do that.”
There was a long pause.
I apologize, Ella. I have only looked into parts of your past, and I know it was not easy. It was not right of me to judge you.
She shrugged. “It’s all right. I’m used to being judged. It’s all people do when they eye me walking by. Am I a thief, a prostitute, or something worse? I’ve had a lot of time to think about why life isn’t fair.”
How did you come about being named Ella? It is not very Singaporean or Indian.
“Music was Amma’s first love, before she discovered flying.” As always, when the topic switched to her mother, Ella had to keep it together. “She named me after her favorite jazz singer.”
Tell me what happened with your mother. You said she was a fighter pilot for the Indian Air Force. Was she shot down?
Ella felt little stings in her eyes, but she blinked them back. She would never live it down to Melonhead if he saw her tear up for no reason. “The Chinese and Pakistani armies launched a surprise attack. Something happened where the emergency alert systems didn’t get triggered, so our base didn’t know it was coming.” She bit her lip. “In any case, by the time we found out about the attack, they were already on us. Amma’s plane was one of the few that made it off the ground. It became an evacuation instead of a battle.”
I am sorry to hear that. Did you ever find out why the alert was never sent out?
Ella shook her head. She knew she didn’t have to, because they were communicating inside her head, but it was a habit. “The government blamed human error and faulty systems, but someone at the base said it was sabotage.”
Probably the Genjix.
“Doesn’t matter anymore, I guess.”
Melonhead pulled the tank in front of Murugan’s Mitts and parked. Ella waited for him to get out first, since his side was the only door that worked. Instead, he turned to her and looked as if he had something to say. Ella waited. He said nothing. She began to fidget. He opened his mouth again. Again, no words came out.
“OK. Bye,” she stammered out.
“Wait, Ella,” Melonhead said, putting a hand on her arm. She resisted her natural reaction to pull away. “Do you want to grab coffee sometime?”
“Sure.” The words came out of her mouth before she mentally checked the meaning behind his request. She cringed a little inside, but decided to hell with it. “Are you paying?”
You are such a cheap date. You really need to stop saying yes to anything for free food.
“Quiet, alien. We’re just hanging out. Besides, coffee is a luxury I don’t get to drink often, and it’s definitely not a date.”
“Sure.” Melonhead broke into a grin. “The man always pays for a first date.”
I told you so.
“Damn it.”
“I’ll let you know when I have some free time,” she added quickly. Ella hurried out of the tank and walked briskly to the gym entrance. She should have thought things through a little more carefully before saying yes to Melonhead. Relationships around these parts were weird sometimes. For all she knew, Melonhead might come from one of those families where it was coffee date one day and an engagement the next. She shuddered.
She looked back as he did a twelve-point turn with the tank – he wasn’t a bad guy. She could do much worse. Not to mention he was going to own the gym once Manish retired. That meant she and Melonhead could double up those payments from the Prophus, one for her agreed stipend and one for Manish’s retainer as well.
I hope your aspirations in life rise above staying in the slum. Besides, an income should not be the primary reason to marry someone.
She sniffed. “Says the alien who probably never had to worry about starving to death.”
You would be surprised at the things I have had to go through on this planet.
Ella stood in front of the gym and took a deep breath, soaking in the familiar scent of sweat and piss. The hairs on her arms pricked up at the humidity, and she welcomed the familiar sounds of gloves striking leather and the coach’s growly voice barking from somewhere inside. She had to admit it, she missed this place.
Manish gave her the eye when she trotted inside. “Look who crawled back from the gutter. Back from your vacation, runt?”
“Ready to work out some aggression and draw some blood, coach.”
“Good.” He tossed her a set of boxing gloves. “Lace up.”
Twenty-One
A Hitch
The initial shock of the planet nearly consumed me. I was deep within the ocean, blind and desperate, being torn apart by the currents and the terrible pressure of the depths. With only seconds to live, I searched for the nearest eligible vessel.
I ended up joining with a sea creature that humans never discovered. It dwelt on the bottom of the ocean filtering sand and eating microorganisms. This creature became my new home. I do not know how long for because there was no sense of time in the blackness of the ocean floor.
It was eaten by a predator, who then became my new home. After that, it too was eaten by an even larger predator. And then another. It was a cruel cycle that continued for millions of years. This was my introduction to your world.
* * *
Shura put Mogg’s people to work right away. Overnight, they transformed from a union of dockworkers who racketeered on the side to a full-blown terror group whose job was to force the remaining hold-outs of Dumas to sell their properties. They intimidated the businesses and harassed shoppers at the storefronts. They loitered on the streets and clogged major intersections, and they did all this with the police looking in the other direction.
Within a few weeks, most of the businesses were forced to close. The residences soon followed. All that remained was one very influential Jain monk. This was the confrontation that concerned Shura the most.
She had visited Indu shortly after she completed their arrangements with Mogg. He had graciously invited her into his temple and offered her tea. His temple was little more than a container ziggurat, with sixteen containers on the ground level, twelve on the second, eight on the third, and so on until his little throne on the sixth floor.
At first, Surrett had tried to buy the man out, offering to relocate him to another part of the slum. When the monk refused, the minister tried to offer to build a real temple for him. When he refused again, Surrett actually offered him a position as head monk of the massive Hutcheesing Temple further north in Ahmedabad, one of the great Jain temples in India. However, the man held his ground, content just to sit in squalor with his herd. Surrett finally dropped all pretenses and tried to flat-out bribe the monk, offering a generous stipend.
Shura was impressed by the man’s faith and steadfastness. “It is too bad we did not recruit him at an early age.”
I disagree. Lack of ambition is a terrible weakness. A vessel who does not strive for standing will never reach their maximum potential.
After that, the Jain monk refused to see them at all the next two times they called. The problem with the man was the Genjix had nothing he wanted. He couldn’t be bribed, he had no need for wealth, and he was perfectly content living this simple life until his last breath.
Unfortunately, his temple was in the heart of Dumas. Construction could not proceed without the monk agreeing to give up or relocate the temple. To make matters worse, Indu’s flock numbered in the thousands. A forced removal would incite massive riots. This gave Shura few alternatives.
Shura sat at the desk in her office and grimaced. Frustrated, she pushed the piles of surveillance photos off to the side. She had spent hours searching for a solution to this problem that wouldn’t cause an avalanche of collateral damage. All indications were pointing toward one solution, and it wasn’t one she relished.
You tried the carrot. The stick will make things worse. That leaves only one other option: the Eternal Sea.
Shura grimaced. She was pretty sure a beating wouldn’t change the man’s mind, and killing clergy was a sordid business, even if it was in the name of her own religion. Their followers tended to react to it poorly and illogically, and it generally caused a much larger mess than the original problem. Still, she had given the man every chance to accept what had to be done. It was up to him to make the right choice.
Make it look like an accident.
“Ugh. That’s even worse.”
Now you are just being lazy.
That was true. Staging an accident was a lot of work. It required a tremendous amount of planning and preparation, there were always so many unknown variables to deal with, and the chances of it all going to shit were pretty high. It was rarely worth the hassle. Shura would almost rather walk up to the monk and put a bullet between his eyes, and then just deal with the fallout. She sighed. Tabs was probably right; this was the best solution.
Shura made the call to Surrett to assign an around-the-clock tail on the monk. She would need to gather as much information as possible on his routine and habits before devising a plan, and her time was far too valuable to waste following the man herself. She didn’t trust the minister’s inexperienced operatives to pull off the assassination and make it appear an accident; she would need to carry that out herself. If word ever leaked that the Genjix had tried to kill a revered Jain monk, the consequences would be severe. It wouldn’t be an overreaction for them to expel all Genjix from the country.
She was relaying final instructions when a light began to blink on her console. She saw the contact number and, at first, chose to ignore it. Let the man wait. Then she realized she was being petulant. In his shoes, she would have done the exact same thing, if not worse.
“Get to work,” she instructed, and then tapped over to the other line. A picture of a good-looking blond with a strikingly square jaw appeared. “Hello Rurik.”
“Shura, I believe you intended to acknowledge me as ‘Father’.”
Now is not the time, Shura. You are not ready to confront him yet.
The two locked eyes for several moments before she finally lowered her gaze. “Father.”
He chuckled. “Shura, always the prideful one. You never did let go of that chip you have on your shoulder. Does the ghost of your father haunt you to this day?”
“All things considered, I do not expect him to haunt any other.”
Rurik smirked. Shura wanted to reach her hand through the screen and sink her claws into his neck. However, she let it go. The memory didn’t hurt, not anymore, but it still left her feeling numb.
“I see that High Father Weston has ordered you to oversee one of my projects.”
“Someone has to,” she said.
“I thank you, daughter.
Don’t get too comfortable. I expect you to keep the lights on until someone of proper standing can take the helm.”
He is goading you. Give him nothing.
“I know what he is up to, Tabs.”
“Give me a status report,” Rurik said.
Shura was sure he had thoroughly investigated the situation here in India by way of the minister before contacting her. This was nothing more than a dog-and-pony show to humiliate her and put her in her place. Shura was obligated to report to Rurik how his program was doing. He was of higher standing than she was, at least at this moment.
As a small test to see how much Rurik actually knew about the project, she padded some of the dates. A slight raise of his eyebrow and a momentary hesitation in his movements informed her that he had received contradictory information.
At least now we know who Surrett is latching his wagon to. In truth, considering our two positions, it was probably the wisest path. Nevertheless, it is good to know where the minister stands.
Regardless, they were all here to strive to fulfill the will of the Holy Ones. All the maneuvering between them was just the Genjix way of making sure their vessels were operating at their best. Conflict bred innovation.
“Good, daughter,” Rurik said. “I will finish consolidating my holdings in Russia by the end of the year. After that, I intend to visit and inspect my holdings. I expect the Bio Comm Array to be fully operational and signaling by then. Hold down the fort for me until then.”
Shura stared at the screen long after it went blank. Rurik was five years her junior. He was also a mediocre vessel who only survived the Hatchery because of his family name and the billions that came with it. Fortunately for him, the man knew his limitations and was generous in leveraging the resources he was born with.
Unfortunately for everyone else, he overcompensated for his deficiencies with a vicious streak and a long, vindictive memory. Shura had suffered Rurik’s insecurity and cruelty firsthand at the Hatchery when he had tried to lord his family name and wealth over her. Rurik and his gang had harassed and pushed her around for days upon her return, mocking and physically threatening her, saying children of traitors did not deserve to be at the Hatchery. Shura responded by catching him without his hangers-on and dunking him underwater until he passed out. Their relationship only went downhill from there. Taking the project from under him would be a sweet victory.