Sly Mongoose

by Tobias S. Buckell

  “Gods, son, everyone sees things in the mist down there. It’s the heat, the exhaustion, the loneliness. It doesn’t mean they’re real.”

  Timas fought anger. “It was real. If I can go back down I can get you proof.”

  “Don’t say these things, Timas. You know our history, what our people have done and have been through. People may think our gods are really physical and can appear to us, but that is heresy now, and people who think ancient gods or aliens hide in the mist down below, waiting for the faithful, are troublemakers. You understand me?”

  Timas swallowed and looked around. The pallet Pepper lay on creaked. The dreadlocked man stared at them both. Could he be listening from that far away?

  Ollin shook Timas by the shoulder. “Do you understand?” he repeated.

  Timas’s great-great-grandfather had been a high priest. On New Anegada he had taken out the hearts of living people, sacrificing them to serve the alien beings who claimed they were gods to the Azteca who lived there, the aliens who had birthed Timas’s ancestors to that land many centuries ago.

  But the aliens hadn’t been gods. Other families had similar stains on their histories, and some in the lower decks of the city still believed that aliens were gods and would return to save them all and raise them up to their proper place as rulers.

  “I know what I saw.” Timas didn’t believe in godly aliens, he’d seen something else. But he knew he’d seen something.

  “Yes, you and half the other jumpy xocoyotzin from lower families. Pull yourself together, Timas.” When Ollin was disappointed he called Timas by name. “There are far, far larger things at stake here than shadows that spooked you down on the surface.”

  “Send me down and I’ll come back with proof.”

  Ollin shoved Timas hard enough that Timas stumbled over the raised edge of a flagstone. “Enough!”

  People stared. Timas kept his face serious and straight as he turned and walked into the house. He gripped a doorjamb inside and hit his forehead against it. He would have struck his dad, if he’d felt he had any strength.

  Ollin would have belted him good for that.

  Itotia grabbed his arm. “What else did you expect him to say, he was out in public?”

  “I told him it was important, and private,” Timas protested.

  “In private or out loud, don’t talk about superstitions like that. Our city will not drag itself down into madness like our ancestors. You will offer something to the family altar tonight, you will honor the real gods, not the false ones that tricked us in Aztlan.”

  But he’d seen it.

  Timas pulled away from his mom. “I will be quiet. I won’t upset anyone.” But he knew what he’d seen. And he knew he’d be back down on the surface some time in the future once the situation passed. Zombies in outer space notwithstanding, what did any of that have to do with Yatapek, their poor little city circling the edge of the Great Storm, limping along as best it could?

  He’d bring back proof.

  Then they’d all listen to him.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Pepper watched Ollin lumber into the room and sit heavily on a wicker chair near the crude bed, that used ropes instead of springs. Katerina sat in the corner of the room, tired and annoyed. Pepper had demanded that she remain within two feet of him, and he kept the gun he’d taken from the Aeolian soldier pointed at her as he politely listened to Ollin.

  His skin still tingled. When he’d grabbed Katerina she’d shocked him, some sort of personal defense mechanism designed to stun a potential attacker.

  It had been annoying, at the time.

  “Is there anything you need?” the soldier asked Pepper.

  “The food I asked for.” Pepper had burned a lot of muscle and fat in the last few days, wasting even more when grabbing Katerina. He could see his bones lurking under his now sallow and gray skin.

  Nothing like Katerina’s healthy brown, or Ollin’s.

  A woman in bright floral-printed linen robes swept through the door with a large platter of grilled meats and cheeses.

  “This is my wife, Itotia.” Ollin stood up to introduce her.

  She nodded at Pepper and set the platter down. “This is as much meat as we could get.”

  The room filled with the smell of rabbit and chicken. Pepper’s mouth watered, his body seemed to vibrate in anticipation of refueling and rebuilding all the muscle mass he’d burned off for speed and strength.

  He’d found a good place to recuperate. The infected had landed mainly on the other side of the planet. He had time to plan getting out and away from here if needed. The medical facilities weren’t much, but he was alive and he had time.

  “Thanks.” Pepper set the gun down and ripped into the platter. Bones cracked as he ate quickly.

  At least, until he looked up and realized Itotia and Ollin were staring at him.

  Ollin cleared his throat and looked away. “The bathroom is just two doors down. We’ll be right back for the platter.” They left a crutch by his bed that strapped to his forearm with a pair of buckled leather strips.

  Pepper didn’t respond, but stared back at Ollin until he grew uncomfortable enough to back out of the room with Itotia.

  And Katerina was staring at him, too.

  At least that was part of her job.

  When he’d finished the last of the platter he leaned back on the pillows. That felt better. A meal in the stomach made their impending Armageddon easier to contemplate.

  “Have your constituents gotten back to you with any word about me?” Pepper smiled.

  “There is a great deal of uncertainty about you. At first popular votes ran for getting you captured and returned, but now people are wondering. We seem to be swinging to thinking that, if we can get confirmation, you are indeed what you claim to be and need to be listened to and possibly left alone.”

  “That’s a relief.” Pepper looked around the room: it was simply constructed with faux wood and thick metal beams overhead for the roof.

  “We’re waiting for the Ragamuffin Dread Council to verify your credentials, but they’re worried about verifying details about one of their agents to a larger public like the Aeolian citizenry.”

  “My Aeolian friends, pass this piece of video on to the council: Fellow Dreads, stop messing round. We know my cover is blown. Get over it and get moving.”

  Katerina cocked her head. “I’m being voted to tell you that there are two Ragamuffin ships being mobilized and on their way to Chilo.”

  Ollin returned, peering around the doorjamb. “You’re done?”

  “Yes, thanks.” Pepper pushed the platter toward the foot of the bed. “I will repay you.”

  “You will.” Ollin took the platter. “We will bring you to Cen’s funeral tomorrow morning.”

  Pepper raised an eyebrow. Ollin had crossed over from being a meddlesome player, obviously maneuvering to become a part of the city’s leadership, into a true annoyance. “I don’t like funerals.”

  “Cen died as a result of your actions. Not purposefully, but you still owe us this for all that we’re risking by dealing with you.”

  “Owe you?” Pepper shook his locks. “I owe you nothing. And when this is done, you’ll owe me everything.”

  Ollin’s eyebrows furrowed. “That makes you no better than the Aeolians, pushing us around and demanding what you want, taking what you need.”

  “Get over yourself. Go back to insinuating yourself into the circle of the pipiltin. You’ve already got me under your roof, you’ve got your leverage. Leave me be.”

  Pepper’s words hit close. Ollin spun and stalked out of the room without saying anything else.

  Pepper grinned at Katerina. He flicked the gun’s safety on and set it on the edge of the cloth. She’d been through enough, he figured. “I’m sorry about all this.”

  “You’re letting me go?”

  “It was a demonstration. If any of your soldiers tries sneaking up on me, or taking me into custody, there will be a large
price paid with lives. Understand, I am willing to work with you all, but if you get in my way I will be more than just a problem.”

  He waited for that to sink in and be relayed back to the millions of watchers.

  But Katerina didn’t move. She sighed. “We think it is in our best interests to keep a close eye on you. I’ll remain in the room.”

  Whatever. Pepper leaned back and closed his eyes while his stomach rumbled.

  Later she woke him up, returning to the room with a large, heavy chair that Itotia helped her pull in. A pillow and several blankets later, Katerina lay asleep in the corner of the room.

  The silvered eye was closed, but long slivers of metal glinted on her eyelids.

  He was still being watched.

  Katerina shook herself awake in the gloom. “Can you access lamina, Pepper? We have something a significant minority would like you to see.”

  Pepper twisted around so she could see him better, and shook his head. “No. No lamina.”

  “Okay.” She walked over and sat on the side of the bed. As she leaned in close the silver eye glistened, then lit up. Laser light played across Pepper’s eyeballs and the dim room disappeared.

  One of the Swarm lurched at Pepper. Someone stumbled around near his peripheral vision clutching a bloody arm, mouth open wide in a soundless scream. This member of the Swarm looked heavier, with thicker and bonier facial features.

  “Same as what you encountered before?” Katerina reappeared as the projection snapped off.

  “Where was that?”

  “Felucida: a small city on the other side of the planet. Opinion is scattered among us, it could be a psychotic rampage. Or any number of other things.”

  “What do the citizens there think?”

  Katerina got up off the bed. It creaked a little. “They aren’t reporting in. The city’s communications died an hour ago. The relay dropped.”

  “And you think that’s a coincidence?”

  She shook her head. “I personally don’t know what to think. Polling indicates twenty-three percent of the general population thinks you are somehow right. That’s up from nineteen percent an hour ago. . . .”

  “Polling, funerals. You’re all dicking around.” Pepper sat on the edge of the bed.

  “You don’t approve of the Consensus?”

  Pepper realized that he stood before quite a large audience now, via her silvered eye. “Voting each governmental action? Nothing will ever get done.”

  “What do you call sex without consent, Pepper?” She leaned forward like a large cat.

  “Rape,” Pepper said evenly.

  An invisible trap was sprung. She smiled, reciting a script that came easily to her. Pepper imagined it being taught in schools to Aeolians all around Chilo. “Indeed. Rape. It is the consent that is the key. What is the act of governing without consent?”

  “Getting shit done.” Pepper didn’t like getting lectured at by little girls, even if they embodied the will of millions.

  She ignored his irritated reply. “Think of government as a marriage, Pepper. You’ve entered into a bond, but it does not mean that the right to do certain things is guaranteed. A wife who doesn’t consent can still be raped, as an elected government can still run over its people. Better to make sure that permission is asked for each act, every time. Better yet to make the government vanish: run by monthly volunteers and automated frameworks. For a month you’ve been chosen to be a judge, study hard. Next year you’ll be a filing clerk for a month. We all serve. We all vote. We’re the government.”

  “That crap’s nice until you have a threat breathing down your neck,” Pepper growled. “Even the Athenians you adore so much turned quickly toward strong leaders when it came time to face invaders. Our time on Chilo is countable in days. You will need leaders, not town meetings.”

  She recoiled from the intensity with which he hissed out the last word. He noticed that she had bags under her eyes. It was late into the night, and she was just a tired, stressed-out teenager. “Well,” she whispered. “It did turn out rather well for the Athenians, throwing away freedom for a good defense, didn’t it? After centuries under the boot of the Satraps, I would have thought dying free would beat living safe.”

  Had that been the Aeolians speaking, or just her? Grabbing her as hostage might backfire: either the will of the Aeolian people had just run circles around his argument or the girl had. Either way, Pepper needed to watch out around her.

  “If your people don’t take care of the Swarm and it arrives, you’ll be a lot more interested in surviving any way you can,” Pepper said. And then, acknowledging her point, he continued, “Sometimes being alive leads to some strange personal concessions.”

  She looked up, he knew she was about to ask the question: What concessions had Pepper made?

  Something stopped her. Not Aeolian commands, but the look on Pepper’s face. Their chat had finished.

  The faint sound of someone throwing up in a nearby bathroom got his attention. Pepper grabbed his crutch, got up, and negotiated himself out of the room through the hallway to the source.

  A long slit of light from an open door illuminated a framed picture of an older man with a faint resemblance to Ollin, but standing in front of a massive pyramid. A photo taken somewhere in Tenochtitlome. Pepper thought he recognized the temple, he’d spent a lot of time in the jungles of Aztlan back on New Anegada.

  He peered inside the bathroom. Timas turned back, wiping his mouth.

  “You okay?” Pepper used the crutch to shove the door open farther, damning his injuries as he did so.

  The kid looked startled. Pepper’s eyes shifted into infrared, taking his temperature. No fever there.

  Pepper relaxed, then grabbed Timas’s chin and forced his mouth open. “You do this a lot?” Acid from frequent throwing up had worn the enamel off his teeth. He could detect a slight arrhythmia in his chest.

  The room reeked of bile.

  Timas turned back around and turned on the tap, cleaning up after himself.

  “You do this a lot?” Pepper repeated.

  “You all can take pills, technology, to force you into thinness, change your bodies. Look at Katerina in there, I bet she doesn’t even have to think anymore about what she eats, does she? But I have a duty.” Timas leaned against the basin. “I have to fit inside my groundsuit. If I can’t fit in my groundsuit, my family loses its position. I am no longer one of the xocoyotzin.”

  “Groundsuits?”

  “Our founding fathers purchased them to work on the surface. They used to be powered, and talk back to the city. Now they are failing, and patched by spare parts we are offered from Aeolian junkyards.”

  “And your ancestors, with more access to technology, used to be thin,” Pepper said, understanding. “Now you all starve yourselves or use teenage boys to fit in the suits.”

  “We are the ones who bear the city on our backs,” Timas said.

  This was useful. “How many suits are there?”

  “Three dozen.”

  A course of action, one not dependent on getting the Ragamuffins to come assist him, presented itself.

  “Get Ollin in here.”

  There would be no sleep tonight. Pepper wanted a groundsuit.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The shouting lasted all night. Timas lay up, staring at the ceiling, as pipiltin moved furtively in and out of the rooms to argue with each other and with Ollin, but mostly with Pepper.

  For a man recovering from almost mortal wounds, Pepper sounded full of fury. But the pipiltin wouldn’t relent. Pepper would not get his hands on any of the groundsuits. Their lives depended on them, even if they weren’t currently using them.

  That was that.

  Pepper argued that their lives depended on figuring out how to stop the threat he knew would eventually spill over the entire planet.

  The pipiltin replied that it was better to let the Aeolians handle their own threats and dangers. Yatapek would be the last thing on any invader
’s list.

  Nothing Pepper could say changed that reality: Yatapek was a tiny grain, a worthless outpost, a dead-end city in the scheme of things.

  That hurt almost more than anything, to hear the pipiltin making the point that they were nonentities.

  It sounded like Pepper threw his crutch at one of them. It clattered against the wall. The floor shivered, and then a deathly calm settled over the house.

  Timas wondered if everything Pepper claimed was coming soon. Would the soulless hordes land an airship and stream up from the docks?

  Death had always been hot, or full of pressure and choking. Now Timas considered a death that came from something invading his mind.

  Better, he finally decided, on the verge of sleep, to step off the edge of the city and surrender. Sometimes, he thought, his mind circling around that idea, that stepping off an edge sounded appealing. Everything depended on him, and he controlled nothing.

  A final choice was appealing.

  Three hours later, as the sun hit his window, Itotia woke him up.

  She looked as tired as anyone else in the house, her eyes reddened and puffy. She laid a set of pants and a newly cleaned shirt over the back of the chair by his bed.

  Timas sat up, blinking his scratchy eyes. “Mom?”

  “Another city fell quiet an hour ago: Chaco.” Timas felt his throat dry out as she told him this.

  They had distant cousins there. Chaco suffered more than Yatapek. A sister city far on the other side of Chilo, they kept their city even wider open and less populated to make room for fields and agriculture. And they raised large exotic animals for Aoelians to ride, or butcher for the rare taste of “authentic” meat. All their radio traffic just . . . ceased.

  “I just wanted to let you know before you came out,” Itotia murmured. “Now come. It’s time to get ready.”

  He took a deep breath and looked down at the tiled floor. “I don’t know if I can go.” Pepper’s Swarm approached, it had probably taken Chaco, and Cen had died, and now he was going to look Cen’s family in the face. It all crushed him.

  “I don’t want to ask you to do these things.” Itotia sat next to him. “You’re my one child. And every time they drop you down below the clouds I lock myself into the ancestor room and light candles until Heutzin calls and says you’ve returned.”