Beluga Fay (Dragon Bone Hill)

by Wellhauser, David S.

  “That’s a dangerous game you’d have us play.” Synon was not happy with the idea.

  “Only the three of us—more than us and there’s a good chance this would get back to the wrong people.” Both seemed to understand he meant those they would be spying on.

  “Still, to align, if only loosely,” Bannly seemed uncomfortable, “with the government—if anyone found out.”

  “They can’t,” Synon jumped in, “find out.”

  “What do we get for our efforts?” Bannly wanted to know.

  “Can’t say.”

  “Or won’t say?” Bannly was becoming upset.

  “I only let her go—Budiman’s going to take my proposal to the Governor.”

  “What of the guards we killed?”

  “We didn’t—Lander did. Seems he might serve a purpose after all. Besides, with this new deal, there is no way we could keep him about. We’ll have to find some way to make certain he gets handed over to the Governor’s people, after they have agreed to our terms.” Synon sat down across from Titus in a large, overstuffed couch, which smelled vaguely of mildew. They were in one of the few rooms in the warehouse that had doors, and this was removed from the rest of the complex. The canteen was on the first floor of the main building and the housing units were in the west-wing of the warehouse.

  “What do we tell everyone?” Synon looked to have moved on to practical matters.

  “For the moment she has been tucked away some place safe, and not far off. The three of us will have to pretend we have secured and are interrogating Ms. Budiman. We should not let it be known her father is in the government. For now I want it let out she’s the daughter of a low-level bureaucrat that works in food distribution. They are only in Makati because of this. After all, the higher up she is placed, the more trouble Lander will cause.”

  “You’ve thought this out in a very short period of time.”

  “That’s why I am leading the Beluga Fay.”

  Bannly didn’t seem to like the answer, but also appeared to have trouble arguing with it.

  “If you keep this sort of thing up you won’t be leading much longer.” Synon bit back.

  Titus turned to her, but it was not anger he saw, so much as concern. As he raised a questioning eyebrow, the woman explained.

  “Your plan has a great many—what did you call it—moving parts. All it would take is for someone to start digging and it would begin to unravel. When it does, if it does, those that helped you will be implicated in your betrayal.”

  “Betrayal? I’m not betraying the Beluga—I’m leading.”

  “Most,” Bannly joined the critique, “will not see it that way.”

  “This is why you put me in charge.”

  “No, I gave you the Beluga because I could not lead, but they do not need a dictator—especially with people like Lander still attempting to undermine every choice you make.”

  “Why I plan on giving him to the Governor.”

  “You should not wait long on that.” Synon pointed at him with a finger that was less about emphasis and more accusation.

  “Even if you hand Lander over, there are others that have been following him. What do you do with them?”

  “Followers? I’m not interested in followers—leaders are more of a problem.”

  “Still, there are some here that think of themselves as leaders.”

  “Yes, those left are onside with my command. Right?” Bannly looked at him a long moment.

  “That’s true,” he said at last. “However, if they feel betrayed, there is no telling what they might get up to. These may not form an open opposition to you, but this act could cost you a great deal of support amongst them. This would begin as discontent, but that would become muttering, and the muttering would quickly enough become dissent.”

  “There are risks, but they are necessary if we are to get out of the hole we’re in.”

  “What hole?” Bannly did not appear to understand.

  “The others have been raiding you from the beginning?”

  “Gangs?” Synon asked.

  Titus nodded.

  “Yes.”

  “This will put an end to that.”

  Synon and Bannly had been right. There was a lot of trouble keeping the woman supposedly tucked away, but when it had been learned she had escaped, Lander took another run at the leadership. Fortunately, too many had experienced abuse at his hands, yet it was still a close vote. It was because of this that Titus had Synon and Bannly to agree to keep the knowledge they were now working with the government a secret. Whether or not this could ever be made general knowledge he did not know. He doubted this would go over well—just as it would not go over if they learned this was not the truth. It was, of course, true they would be working with the government. Budiman had managed to convince her father and he the Governor, but the deeper truth was Titus and Glenna were working together to escape the city.

  If any of the Beluga Fay, even Synon and Bannly, discovered he was planning to get over the Wall and was not intending to take the Fay, this would end with him dead—or wishing he were. This was why he needed to get the plan moving along as quickly as possible. For the moment, Glenna and her cabal of spoiled indigents would be happy to move the schedule up, if they had one. The Wall guards were another matter—they appeared to be making a nice living preying upon the weaknesses and fears of the Makati, perhaps others as well. It seemed to suggest it would be difficult to put them on a timetable. Titus hoped, today, to put an end to the reluctance.

  A few weeks had passed, but Glenna eventually managed, first, to win over her cabal, none of which Titus had yet met, and then to arrange a meeting with the Wall guards. Even getting Budiman to agree to arrange the meeting had been difficult, but he made it plain he would not be providing any Intelligence to her and the government until he had met and sorted out what their chances of using the Wall guards were. Trust for now was not available—for Glenna and her crew’s secret agenda, nor for the government who knew no more than the Beluga did about the pair’s end game.

  He was playing a dangerous game. He could be killed by the Budiman cabal; he could be killed by a twitchy government; he could be killed by the Wall guards was all too plain. The death toll in the city from the Sweating Sickness was rising again. For his first weeks in the city, this had been restrained, but for some reason, now that they were entering the wet season, the death toll was skyrocketing. On top of this, they were confronting, on the East coast, luckily the opposite end of the island, the threat of a typhoon. This was not easy on the city, especially down by the docks and the low-lying west end of the city. This put the warehouse in direct threat.

  For the moment, Synon and Bannly were busy moving the canteen to the upper levels, and everyone living on the first floors was being moved up as well. Having them busy made it easier for him to disappear for hours at time, sometimes overnight, by arguing he was scouting out potential sources of food, weapons, and transportation. Partly this was true, but for the most part, he was meeting up with Glenna in the same neighborhood in which they’d snatched her. Apparently, she was able to slip out of Makati without being seen by other Makatians or the patrols guarding the districts. Unfortunately, for Pym, the woman wasn’t prepared to share how she managed this.

  Trust might have been the issue; more likely, she was setting him up, perhaps not to kill him but to use him to get out of the city and then leave him behind. Titus could think of no reason otherwise for keeping the information from him. In his clearer moments, he suspected she might worry about failing to get out of the city. In that case she and he would be trapped here—in that case Pym might think it expedient to put the security flaws of Makati to use in a raid on the district. Was she that farsighted? Was he that paranoid? With burial pits being opened around the city and mass burnings of corpses so that black, greasy pillars of smoke dotted the grey-blue of the sky, when the rains permitted the fires, paranoia did not seem such an outrageous approach to the existential te
rror.

  It was in this mood he managed to sneak from the warehouse and make his way north. For the moment, Pym skirted the Timog district, which he had raided with the Beluga that first day in the city. Once north of Timog, Titus kept to a general northerly trajectory but a little to the west of the north/south axis. There were rumors, of which few would speak—and then only elliptically, of a Dead District which surrounded a dangerous core. This was no feint to lure the unsuspecting into a trap—even Lander would have no part of the discussion. None that Titus had met, to date, would even speak of this district. For the moment, Titus was prepared to play along. If this thing with Budiman worked out, he would not have to worry about the old hate, as some called it. Many referred to it in one of the traditional languages still used in the city as Lumang Mapoot, which translated as old hate. Whatever it was, Pym gave it a wide birth. If the business with Glenna or the Beluga soured, however, he might have to investigate this.

  With Lumang Mapoot, or the ruins surrounding the mytheme, falling farther into the rearview—if he had a rearview—Pym focused on the irregularities of unplanned districts which grew to feed the constant call for cheap, unskilled labor. These neighborhoods were not exactly shantytowns, but they were populated by rudimentary architecture and fragments of DIY bursts of prefab enthusiasm, which had more inspiration than sense about them. Colors were the most notable element of these homes—and it was a series of residential districts Titus skulked through as he made for the frontier of the city. The Wall beyond this had been erected at the end of what had become a no man’s land of scrub, gullies, ditches, abandoned guard posts, concrete runoffs—for the wet season, and, it was rumored, mine fields—to stop the desperate from surrendering to their fear.

  No hard evidence had come back concerning the minefields, but anecdotes had been circulated by many. For the moment, the man was prepared to consider them apocryphal, but there was no way to be certain without testing the hypothesis. Another possible use for Lander? Glenna was adamant he would have to be either given over to the government security apparatuses or executed. The latter would be less satisfactory, but it would solve the problem of having him give up too much information about the Beluga Fay. Of course, Pym was going to leave them to sort themselves out, but this didn’t mean he did not have any sentiment concerning the Fay. The only issue that was prompting him to leave them behind was personal survival.

  The number of times Titus had gone over, alone, how he might draw the Fay into the plan, what there was of one, had not proven useful. There were too many of them, and the rank and file appeared to be expanding almost daily. Bannly and Synon had seen to that. Whenever he cautioned against over extending their membership so it did not outstrip the food supply or security issues, he was quietly ignored. If he was getting a reputation as a moral bankrupt, it was only because each new addition was making it that much more unlikely that he would be able to insert them in the plan. If it had been possible to take out Synon, Bannly, Essie, and a few others he’d raided Timog with, he would have done that. This wasn’t possible any longer. Titus attempted not to think of it; attempted to ignore the fact he would be condemning them, almost certainly, to death; attempted to rationalize away the nightmares.

  If he were being fair, the nightmares were little more than disturbing dreams which didn’t even wake him. Even now, Pym was not struggling morally, but he did recognize a moral dissonance. This he compartmentalized; he was becoming good at that. Folding these troubles into the back of his mind, the colorful blue-collar neighborhoods gave way to lower middle class districts with shops. Pulling over, he checked his directions one last time and continued on. After about twenty minutes he came across a last street of shops running east west and facing the Wall across the no man’s land of scrub, abandoned shacks, and ruins. Half way down the road was the coffee shop. The strange thing about this road was, it looked perfectly normal, other than its situation was hatter mad.

  Getting out, Titus leaned against the driver’s door facing the Wall, and took it in. This was the first time he’d been to it—close anyway—and he had not been prepared for the size. The barrier stood some ten meters high and was topped by what appeared to be razor wire and broken glass mortared into cinder blocks. The gate was made of wood and bound together with heavy metal plates that had been fastened onto the wood with ponderous bolts—the latter were already rusting, which left a long orange-brown stain running toward the brittle, crumbling tarmacked road. Weeds had sprung up amongst the decaying tarmac. Beside the road stood a small, thin animal that seemed caught somewhere between a weasel and a mongoose. It was staring directly at Titus—the man supposed the street, for all its decorum, saw little traffic.

  “We’re to wait inside.”

  “Hey, Glenna. How are you today?” Before she could answer, there was a grinding of metal hinges and Pym turned back to the gate. It swung out with the grating roar of a heavy-duty motor. “They saw me arrive?”

  “Yes. Best wait inside.” The voice was quiet, but nervous.

  “Okay.” Smiling, Titus trotted about the car and gave Glenna a kiss on the cheek as he held the door for the woman. “Don’t look so worried, I’m just here to find out what they want and what they think they can get.”

  “Don’t make them angry.”

  “That’s not what this is about.” The woman looked at him from the corner of her eye, and he could see she’d no idea what he was going to do and her anxiety over this was building. When he kissed her, he could feel the tremble in her lower back.

  As they waited, he ordered a coffee. “How do I pay?” he asked Glenna.

  “Don’t worry. This street is maintained by the Wall for business meetings and perks for favored clients.”

  “That means we don’t have to pay?”

  She nodded.

  “Like that sentiment.”

  “They take payment in other ways.”

  “Thought they might. And this is all right with you?”

  “There’s no choice.” With that, a Range Rover pulled up across the street and three guards got out. One appeared to be an officer and the others were enlisted, brought along, Pym assumed, for weight. Their uniforms were a light grey with charcoal epaulettes and pocket flaps. The buttons were mother of pearl. All carried side arms in heavy leather holsters with their flaps snapped down. Though all were very clean and pressed, the uniforms were looking well-worn and frayed about the cuffs.

  The officer appeared to be in his mid-thirties and seemed to never have known a day’s hard labor in his life. Though his complexion was swarthy, this was more from being in the sun than it was natural. He was not a southerner—that much Titus had learned to determine since arriving on the islands. The officer lacked the flat, high forehead and the broad, flaring nostrils. His small nose, which did not appear to have undergone any work, looked northeastern, and the sharp cheekbones spoke to an aristocratic heritage. The man’s eyes were elongated but not eastern. Technically the officer would have been taken to be handsome, but Titus always had trouble determining this with men—generally, he tended to look through them. When forced to look, however, he could only offer a technical interpretation.

  As they approached the table, Glenna rose. This was interesting. The woman had never offered Lander, or even him, anything close to this level of anxiety. Not anxiety—no, this was fear. To compensate for the groveling gesture, Pym slumped back in the wooden chair with one arm dangling over the back. The officer smiled a little too warmly at Budiman who returned the attention in kind. There was something there that triggered a bout of sexual jealousy. Without allowing the benign mask to slip, Titus chuckled warmly and the officer turned to him. “Titus Pym, I would like to introduce Captain John Tomás. Captain Tomás is the commander of the Wall’s day watch.” This meant he was a low ranking officer in charge of little, excepting the few enlisted men on his watch.

  “Captain Tomás, this is Titus Pym, leader of the Beluga Fay.”

  “Beluga Fay? That is an actua
l name?” Holding out a hand and leaning forward to offer this to the seated man. Pym took his hand but did not rise. Tomás’s men recorded the insult, but the Captain did not show more than a warm smile.

  “It is, Captain—named them myself.” The officer smiled and laughed gently and a little low. The act of concealment was not new to Tomás, but he’d not hidden himself away from Titus. There was something broken and angry behind the smile that would require dealing with.

  “A wonderful poetic soul you have.”

  “More low comedy, but thank-you.”

  Without being invited, the Wall guards and officer sat down at Pym’s table.

  “So, you are going to be negotiating for Ms. Budiman’s group?”

  “They don’t know how to go about this sort of thing, so I was asked to help out where I might.” There was no reason to be direct about this. Even if their holsters were snapped closed, there still were three of them.

  “How might you help?”

  “Let’s begin with what you would consider a fair trade for Ms. Budiman’s group?”

  “Through the gate?”

  Pym had not expected the officer to be so direct, especially with the enlisted men sitting just behind him and to either side. The purpose of this was very clear, but it also suggested a deep anxiety which Pym hoped he could use—if not now then soon.

  “Yes.”

  “What she is asking is very dangerous—very expensive.”

  “Of course this is true on both counts—most especially dangerous to you.”

  The man’s already narrow eyes tightened at the vague threat.

  “How for me?”

  “You are taking the risk of being found out by your senior officers.”

  “Ahhh....”

  “Unless you are here representing a senior officer?” The guards tightened at the observation, and Tomás became uncomfortable and almost angry.

  “I will ask the questions.”

  “No, I believe I will.” The coffee shop went quiet. “You are here representing the Commander of the gate—those frayed cuffs of yours tell me you have little power beyond your watch. In order for this to work, you will have to bring these people out at night and that means having the night watch in your pocket—you do not have the money for that. Your cuffs, again, tell me this.”