by EE Knight
“So you act as substitutes for the Lifeweavers?” Valentine asked.
“It’s rather more complicated than that I’m afraid. Have you ever heard the term ‘symbiosis’?”
“Yes, it’s two organisms of different species who survive better by cooperation. Like a bird who picks ticks off the body of a rhino. The bird gets to eat the ticks, plus I suppose the protection of something the size of a rhino and the rhino has parasites picked off.”
Mantilla slapped an exposed brick wall and dust flew. “Verdammnt , I think you’re in the wrong profession, my friend. You should be a teacher. Most shape-shifter legends involve duality of one kind or another. The poor sukhim is cursed with this other side living within. It is like that with us, though whether it is a curse or not ... How about the reproductive cycle of the Kurian/Lifeweaver beings? Do you know anything about that?”
“I heard they budded off—like self-cloning.”
“Not quite. They shift genders, briefly, when they need to reproduce. If conditions are right, two ‘males’—though they’re not really sexed that way, they’re way beyond pricks and pussies—who have found themselves in affinity decide to reproduce. One shifts into ‘female’ mode long enough for a combination of genes. Sometimes it will be two joining with a third serving as brood-parent as well. In extreme cases they can self-fertilize, but that is more risky. In any case, a small carbuncle is fertilized and it grows into a new Lifeweaver. Or Kurian.”
“You’d think we’d have a lot more around, then,” Valentine said.
“The Kurians practice very strict population control. Centuries of being trapped on Kur forced it on them. Only the most clever and vicious survived to reproduce. As for the Lifeweavers, they’ve so successfully extended their already long life spans that they put it off more and more often than not never get around to reproducing. It takes a lot out of them and they’d rather spend their energy on art and science.”
“Or get a piece of us.”
Mantilla took a deep breath. “Sometimes, a bud doesn’t develop properly and dies. Other times, if it is taken off early, it does not develop normally, but remains in an arrested state. It can attach itself to a host and live off the host. In return, it helps the host survive, though it acts more as an agent of the host’s will than on its own.”
He talked more of the Ravens—how they sometimes just knew a truth, or had an unusually vivid dream depicting the future and the course they should take. “The trick, of course, is to shape the actions of others. You’re already accomplished at that. Perhaps your mother’s influence passed down to you.”
“No thanks,” Valentine said, after turning it over. “I feel like I’ve given enough of myself to the cause. There’s only a tablespoon or two left.”
“I’m afraid, then, David, you condemn Blake to the life of a wild Reaper. Narcisse will be gone soon, no matter how hard her symbiot tries to keep her alive, and Blake is like a young child in a supremely powerful body. Sooner or later he’ll succumb to the temptation to run down a Grog or two. Unless you choose to keep him in chains, of course, and throw him a dead chicken every other day.”
Mantilla, in some ways, was as clever as Brother Mark, finding the chinks in his emotional armor and sleeping sensibilities. Did Brother Mark have something riding in him?
“Perhaps I could try it?”
“Of course. The one on Narcisse detaches at will.”
They ate a meal of vegetables. Slave food, the Grogs called it. Valentine had been ravenous since being wounded by the Baron, and wanted something in his stomach before trying any new experiments.
When he had his nerve worked up, he allowed Mantilla to take the dwarf Lifeweaver from Narcisse and place it on him. Valentine tried not to think that it would be the work of only a second for it to drain the vital aura from his body, leaving him twitching on the floor until his heart quit.
A light-headedness seized him. It reminded him of coming out of a sound sleep and jumping to his feet. A controlled swoon.
“How do I know where you end and I begin?”
Such vitality. I feel a millennium younger, David Stuart Valentine.
“What do I call you?”
I do not know. I as this flesh am part of a larger identity. Narcisse called me “Makak”—I rode her like a monkey.
Would you like to see the world through Blake’s eyes?
“Let him be.”
I would no more control him as my others would a Reaper than I would have used one of these nerve hooks to bleed the aura from Narcisse . I correct him, calm him when he is anxious.
“When he eats a chicken?”
The aura in a chicken is more trouble than it is worth. It is like the smell of real food to you, David Stuart Valentine. Does it sustain you, or make you wish to eat your fill?
“Suppose I were linked to you, and knifed someone. Close enough to smell them.”
I cannot say; it depends on many variables. I may benefit. I may shrink in fear of the violence. You may benefit. I expect you have already. Why do you think you thrill so, when you survive a combat? That is a splash of vital aura washing across you as it is released.
Valentine flushed. He felt greasy where it was touching him. “Get off me. Now.”
He handed the double-handful of over-intelligent calamari back to Mantilla.
“Sorry, Mantilla. You’ll have to find another symbiot.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Mississippi: The mighty river south of Saint Louis to its meeting with the Ohio is practically unrecognizable to a riverman of the twentieth century.
Thanks to the great New Madrid quake in ’22, the river doesn’t even match old maps, having shifted both east and west in a few spots, closing down old loops, creating new islands, and leaving new fields and sloughs where once the river flowed. There is also very little in the way of dredging, so during the driest months it takes an experienced river-reader to navigate its twists and turns in an eighteenth-century style.
These banks are deep Grog country, owned by wild tribes who settled there shortly after the last great North American Grog-Human battle outside Indianapolis of the Old World in its death throes. The Illinois bank is owned by a tribe of Amazonian crossbreeds, another failed experiment by the Kurian Order.
The Grogs on the Missouri side are tough Gray Ones. For decades, they fought Southern Command tooth and nail, but both sides eventually exhausted themselves and discovered they could live in wary neutrality, with neither disturbing the other too much. Yes, bold young Grog warriors still prove their fighting and thieving skills by raiding down into the rough wilds of the New Madrid area, where no two bricks still stand atop each other after the massive 2022 earthquake. And yes again, Southern Command tracks, captures, and shoots the raiders, sometimes practically under the eyes of their home village, but the days of launching large counterraids to burn out Grog settlements and recover trophies of earlier raids have been over for years.
An informal demilitarized zone exists, where each side understands the other is fair game.
The river is another sort of zone, with a different set of rules. On the run between Cairo and Alton, Illinois, directly north of Saint Louis, it is understood that any craft on the water are inviolate. However, any vessel that becomes entangled with one or another bank is fair game. Crews are usually allowed to escape in a smaller boat, as long as they abandon their craft quickly enough to satisfy those onshore that cargo is not being taken off.
This has led to some Grogs acting in the manner of old wreckers on forbidding coasts, placing obstacles or faking the marker lights of another barge or boat in an effort to draw river traffic into the banks and disable it so plunder may be taken.
Now, in the critical spring of 2077, the snags and shallows are less of a hazard, as the river is at its fullest. Heavy spring rains and melting snow from farther north have turned it into a swollen, turgid beast, with many a birch- and poplar-filled spit turned into an island or chain of flooded trees. This is good s
muggling time, for it’s easy for small boats to take shelter behind the many temporary islands and short-lived lakes thrown off by the waterlogged river. But the Grogs on both shores are also ready for the increased traffic as well. On every bank there are eyes and ears watching the traffic, legitimate and illicit, sensitive as sharks detecting fish in distress.
The frustrating part was that the exodus could have been over by now, had Southern Command just cooperated. Lambert could have set up a landing at some friendly stretch of river, with a small mountain of foodstuffs and medicines. Blake and the rest would be resting in safety and comfort while they organized the final trip through Western Kentucky.
Instead, they’d have to pass the Missouri bootheel country and turn up the Ohio. All those “highways”—the Mississippi, the Ohio, the Tennessee—Lambert had mentioned could be used to attack the vulnerable transports. By now the Kurian Order would know what they were and where they were going.
Coalfield lowered his glasses. “Shit. They’ve strung a boom across the river.”
“‘They’ who?” Valentine asked.
“Grogs maybe. Or the River Patrol. Looks like junked boats, most of them,” Coalfield said, looking through his glasses.
“How do we get rid of it?”
He warned the following barges, out of sight on this twisted stretch of river, to backwater.
“Ideally, we just run up to it, board it, and blow a hole wide enough for our craft to get through.”
“Bad stretch of river for them to do it. Lots of Grogs on either side taking potshots,” Valentine said.
“Which is your bet?” Coalfield asked.
“Missouri side. Better cover, and the Grogs there are a little more amenable than the Doublebloods on the Illinois side.”
Valentine had to admit, it was a perfectly executed ambush.
It had rained off and on through the afternoon, and thunder began to rumble. Good weather for the attempt. Still, they waited for the cover of night. Cottonmouth Four, the fastest of the boats, swept down the west bank to draw fire, then ran close to the boom.
Not so much as a single Grog potshot came from the bank.
“Very odd,” Coalfield said. He’d put extra rivermen into boat One, along with the dynamite.
They moved forward cautiously, covered by the other four boats of Cottonmouth.
As the demo teams disembarked, Valentine examined the boom with a hooded light. It was simply a series of waterlogged boats filled with buoyant. The real danger came from the chains connecting them below the waterline. They would either hang up a boat or cause damage to the propeller and rudder.
A sudden flash and a thunderclap lit up the valley.
Valentine heard the engines first, coming from a loop on the river on the other side of the boom.
Every eye on Cottonmouth One looked across the sodden boom, downriver.
“Get back on board, here,” Valentine told the demolition team.
“We can do it, sir!” the senior called back, wiring his charge.
“That’ll just open it for them.”
Fast-moving River Patrol attack boats were heading for the boom. In the center of them, like a foxhunter’s horse among its dogs, a ship as big as a barge could be made out. It seemed to be moving impossibly fast, throwing up three different bow waves.
“Evasive pattern,” Coalfield ordered into his radio to Cottonmouth . “Make smoke! What the hell is that?”
Valentine finally received his chance to tell the riverman something he didn’t know.
“That’s the Delta. Chinese-built littoral craft. Triple catamaran hull. Crew of twenty, or thirty if they’re expecting ship-to-shore fighting. I knew her when I was with the Coastal Marines. She’s River Patrol, but back when I knew her she alternated between Mobile Bay and the Mississippi Delta. Before my time it was called the Delta Queen, but some Biloxi Church busybody pointed out that queens and all that were part of the Old World everyone was supposed to forget, and by naming a boat after one, they were treating royalty and aristocracy as a aspiration, rather than a blight to be wiped off the earth. So it became the Delta.”
“Get that smoke going, there,” he called to the sailors aft, securing their explosives.
“Smoke won’t help. She’s got radar-controlled guns, rapid-fire cannon—two of them, one on each side just forward of the bridge.”
Cottonmouth broke away from the boom.
The two sides exchanged tracer fire across the blockade. The Delta moved fast; either her captain was a reckless bastard or he was unusually sure of the Mississippi’s depth. Of course, the catamaran hull helped.
“Shit!” the gunner roared as brass casings fell into the canvas recovery bags. “What’s that thing made of, moon rocks?”
Valentine had never heard that moon rocks were bullet resistant, but the man was under stress.
A hot hand washed across Cottonmouth One and the gunner was gone, whisked away by bullets like a strong breeze plucking a loose piece of paper off a desk. Valentine heard distinct splashes as bits of the gunner struck river, his eyes blinded by the white streaks of tracer fire. Miraculously, he’d avoided being hit.
He jumped into the blood-splattered position, feet finding purchase on the rough platform. He checked the drums on the twin machine gun and opened fire.
The Atlanta Gunworks Type Three had more of a kick. The gun gently chattered in its mount. The hardest part was keeping aim with the boat rushing across river. As Cottonmouth One heeled he had to constantly adjust elevation.
The rain came down harder, shielding them from both visual and radar—or at least Valentine hoped for that to be the case. Cottonmouth limped upriver, leaving a single boat to watch matters at the boom.
They held a dispirited council of war at an abandoned riverside bar.
Some entrepreneur had tried to make a go of it as a rest stop for boatmen and River Patrol. It had been painted in the past ten years, and there was signage up, huge block letters advertising EATS BEERS MUSICS in block letters big enough to be read on the other side of the Mississippi.
The Delta’s flotilla had paused near the boom, ready to protect it tonight or open it in the morning—if not sooner, with the weather clearing.
In the open waters of the Gulf, the Delta would have made short work of the Cottonmouth flotilla, where its speed and accurate fire would have reduced the boats to blackened wrecks in a quarter of an hour. But on the twisting Mississippi, she couldn’t make use of her speed and even her supremely light draft only allowed her to use the relatively narrow barge channel. Cottonmouth boats could float on a heavy dew, as the rivermen phrased it.
Cottonmouth One had been so badly damaged by gunfire that Coalfield—himself with a painful splinter wound—had transferred flotilla command to Cottonmouth Four.
“We could just abandon the river, right?”
“They just saw us run and hide,” Chieftain said. He’d seen it from Cottonmouth Five. “To me, that seems like the perfect time to attack.”
“Except for those guns on the Delta,” Coalfield said. “We’ll be as waterlogged as those hulks on the boom in two minutes.”
“A lot can happen in two minutes,” Chieftain said.
“He has a point,” Valentine said. “I wonder if something could be attempted.”
“Not with our flotilla.”
“I was thinking—more like a canoe. Have to find out what kind of swimmers those ratbits are, first.”
Their watch boat reported that the River Patrol flotilla and its giant weren’t chancing the boom in the dark and storm. But God knows what they would try tomorrow. If the Delta got in among the crowded barges ...
Valentine stood, gripping the rail, looking at the beached barge, listing under its load of rusted containers.
Containers.
He’d have to swallow his pride and ask Makak for his assistance.
Valentine practiced with the ratbits on the back of Cottonmouth Four.
The hardest part was getting the
line to float in such a way that the ratbits could use it. Though small and discreet, they weren’t strong.
Valentine reconciled himself to spending the night cold and wet. The Mississippi in April would be unpleasant, especially on his still stiff wound, but it would be a vacation compared to the wild river trip raiding Adler’s headquarters, when he’d been in and out fast-moving snowmelt for three days in an insulation suit.
They found him a green-painted aluminum canoe on Cottonmouth Three. It had a couple of bullet holes in it but was otherwise sound. Valentine would have preferred a plastic composite—less sound when scraping against branches or if he accidentally banged it with his paddle, but it was not to be.
“Don’t suppose you can make me feel warm,” Valentine asked Makak as it rode clinging tight to his belly.
I can make you not mind the cold so much. It is like a stiff drink, however. It will slow your reflexes and brain activity.
“Then forget it,” Valentine said.
Pellwell rode in the front of the canoe, paddling. She’d insisted on coming along on this final mission.
They clung to the Missouri bank. A quarter mile from the boom, they portaged to the downriver side. Pellwell stumbled noisily but held up her end in more ways than one.
On the downriver side they paddled north toward the boom. There were sentries on the bank, watching the ropes fixing the boom to some sturdy tree stumps, trunks, and sunken anchors.
Pellwell slipped into the bottom of the canoe.
“I need to start playacting.”
Just imagine yourself a Reaper. Move as it does. Scan as it does. I will do the rest, Makak advised.
Valentine had seen enough Reapers to fake the exaggerated, long-limbed movements. He turned the canoe toward the bank and stared hard at the River Patrol guards there, as if he were checking them and not the reverse.