Land of the Dead

by Thomas Harlan

  We’ve been cut in half.

  SHINEDO

  ON THE CHUMASH SOUND, NORTH AMERICA, ANÁHUAC

  A week’s tips feeling very light in his pocket, Hadeishi trudged up a long low hill through fresh snow. In summer, the hillside would be covered with neatly cropped grass and the misty forest on either side of the parkland would be a deep cool green, filled with croaking ravens and drifting butterflies. Now everything was crisp and white, the mossy pillars covered with hanging ice. Behind him, where the sea broke against a reddish slate headland, gray waves shone with pearlescent foam. Walking carefully between the ice-slicked walkway and endless rows of grave markers, Mitsuharu picked his way along a turfed horse path. Even in this weather, the springy sod beneath the frost yielded queasily with each step. Here, he thought wistfully, everything is just as I remember. So our dead sleep quietly, shielded from the restless chaos of the city.

  The other places he’d held unchanged in childhood memory were simply gone.

  Fifteen years of Fleet service—and at least a decade since he’d spent leave in the bustling commercial capital stretching east and south of this quiet peninsula—had seen his old neighborhood leveled. His parents’ single-story house with the green tin roof and white-painted walls was gone. The entire street—ancient cobblestones and crumbling asphalt and peeling advertisements on the garden gates—had vanished. No more little single-door shops, tucked in between the warehouses and old factories, selling tea and cakes and hot noodles. Even the narrow park along Deception Creek—which marked the southern edge of downtown—had been replaced. Ancient rows of cherry and mulberry trees sawn down, replaced by a modern promenade of expensive shops and brisk, gleaming cafés catering to the young and rich.

  Civilians. Merchants, he thought, dully angered by the wall of gleaming sea-green-glass apartment towers burying his boyhood memories beneath sixty stories of luxury flats and their attendant hovercar garages. Even a dirty industrial neighborhood should be allowed to putter along … without improvements, without renovations.

  But Shinedo of the Nisei had grown enormously while he’d been gone among the stars. A new high-speed maglev cargo railway now ran day and night to the far eastern coast, moving millions of tons of Asiatic goods from Shinedo’s deepwater port to the grimy coastal cities of Oswego and New Canarsie in the Iroquois Protectorate. And from there, onward to Europe and Afriqa. The sprawling spaceport in the wetlands south of the city benefited as well. Though there were larger Fleet installations planet-side, Shinedo uchumon handled a constant and lucrative passenger service. The industrial districts Mitsuharu prowled in his youth had moved south to sprawl around uchu in a thick belt of newly built factories, smokestacks, and office parks.

  But little of that ugliness was visible within the quiet solitude of the preserve. Here—and only here within greater Shinedo metro, still protected by the edict of an Emperor long dead when the first human spacecraft lumbered into orbit from the Nanchao testing range—towering groves of old coastal redwoods remained. The entire park, save for the serpentine meadows containing the cemetery, was filled with the same nearly impenetrable rain forest which had greeted the first Nisei to set foot upon Gumshan—the Golden Mountain.

  Beneath their broad eaves, heavy with snow, there was a deep sense of quiet.

  As befits the honored dead, Hadeishi thought as he turned onto a side path—this one set with wooden steps and a railing—which climbed the westernmost hill in the park. Let them rest, distant from the garish, uncaring noise of those who still live.

  His Fleet discharge pay had evaporated once he’d stepped off the shuttle. Shinedo was not cheap. Food, lodging, bus tickets … everything was expensive. Even the most wretched grade of sake was a full quill the jar. Two ceramic bottles clinked in his jacket pocket, rubbing a handful of wilted flowers to pale yellow dust. There was a dole for the indigent, but Mitsuharu had prided himself on having useful skills. His comp, waiting messages ignored, and other things reminding him of the Fleet, he sold. So his old life had been eaten away by the new.

  Solving a four-dimensional puzzle with seventy-six vectors in less than a second has no value in the civilian world. Knowing the little tricks of command, of gaining men’s loyalty, of making them work harder, faster, more accurately as a team under fire … who needs that here? There is no war in the city.

  Very near the shuttle port, in the maze of narrow alleys and bars and tea houses making up the district called Water Lantern, he had managed to secure employment. He played the samisen in a tea house on the evenings, while the off-duty Fleet and merchanter ratings wasted their money on girls and rice beer and gambling at patolli or dice or cards. His father—who had been very good with almost any stringed instrument—would have been appalled to see his so-promising son picking away at the kind of cheap lute a tea house teishu could afford.

  No vinegar left, he thought, passing beneath a wooden arch wound with heavy snow-dusted vines. All spilled out of me at Jagan with the Cornuelle burning up in the atmosphere. With all the dead.…

  Beyond the arch was a small clearing laid with fitted stones—swept clean even on such a cold day—surrounding a temple-house of red enamel and dark, polished wood. The smell of incense hung in the frigid air, tapers twining long loops of smoke through the rafters. Hadeishi’s Fleet boots made a tapping sound as he walked and his careful eye could make out ideograms cut into each of the paving stones. Ever here, in the Western Chapel, where at winter’s end the Emperor came to witness the sun of the vernal equinox settle into the distant sea, surrounded by the great nobles and the deep, throaty roll of massed drums, the dead lay close at hand.

  Mitsuharu knelt in the temple, bending his head against the floor in obeisance to the gilded idol. The altar was crowded with candle stubs, pools of melted wax, and drifts of fallen ash. Coins, gewgaws, trinkets, little toys, chicle-prizes, letters, twists of paper folded with prayers covered every flat surface in the shrine.

  “The city is expensive,” he said aloud, shaking his head in dismay. “I’ve little to leave you, mother, father.” Hadeishi dug in his pockets, found the sake, the flowers, the hard plastic shape of his Fleet comm. “But what I have, I will send to you, beyond the sea.”

  Beyond the walls of the temple-house, a late afternoon wind guttered among the stones. The first Nisei to be laid to rest in the Western Paradise had been interred within days of the Landing. The fleet had breached upon this shore out of exhaustion. The rough passage between the outer bulwark of Mowichat Island and the rocky, forest-shrouded coastline had taken the last burst of energy the refugees could muster. Thirty-six days had passed while the gray vastness of the sea hammered at their boats. Few of the Japanese vessels had been fitted for such a voyage, though in the mad panic to evacuate Edo and Osaka, no mind had been paid to their seaworthiness. More than half of those who fled dying Nippon had perished. But the Emperor himself had survived, carried forth from the wreck of his ancient realm in a massive Chinese hai-po taken in a raid off Taiwan. That enormous ship had run aground in Deception Creek, or so the children said, and the last true Emperor to be born in the Immortal Islands had splashed ashore with katana in hand and rusted armor upon his breast. Though the shore he faced was crowded with an impossibly thick forest, and his people were sick and weak, there was nowhere else to run.

  Mitsuharu made a little space among the grave goods with his fingers and set both sake bottles among the debris left by other mourners. He considered his comm for a long time. The metal surface was chipped and worn, discolored by plasma backwash, and a sixteen-glyph was blinking on the display surface. Messages of sympathy from fellow officers, he thought, entirely devoid of curiosity, I will never view.

  Hadeishi placed the flowers atop the comm and bent his head over clasped hands.

  “One leaf lets go,” he whispered, eyes squeezed tight, “and another follows on the wind.”

  I am sorry, mother, father; that I did not come home. News of your illness, your death, reached me by courier of
f Kodon, when vital repairs were already underway. I am late to bring you these things, to pray for you, to bid you a speedy journey home to the Blessed Isles. I am sorry. I am not a good son. I was not a good captain. Now I am a wretched player in a disreputable tavern. So the wheel turns.

  The foundation of the temple-house was laid upon the grave of that first man—a lesser courtier of the Imperial House; a kugyo born in Echizen—to die upon gumshan. He was not the last. Fell beasts roamed the primordial forest and the natives were quick and sly, slipping unseen through deep shadows with knives of knapped stone. The weather was far fiercer than the nobles of Nara and Kyoto expected, and the refugees accounted barely a handful of men experienced in hunting, fishing, carpentry, blacksmithing … by winter’s end, another quarter of the survivors were crudely interred around the temple-house. The great cemetery had begun its millennia-long sprawl.

  But the third spring had brought an unexpected sight—long boats with many rowers toiling up the coast from the south. The handful of Nisei ships which remained seaworthy—many had been cannibalized for nails, lumber, cordage, and other desperately needed fittings—met the Toltec pochteca on the low swell at the mouth of Deception Creek. From the front step of this very temple-house, a pillar could be seen on the farther shore where the Emperor’s representatives had first held conversation with the emissaries of the great southern kingdoms. By then the Nisei had driven the tribal peoples from their villages along the shore and were beginning to clear the forest for their new city.

  Mitsuharu finished his prayers and remained seated, feeling entirely directionless.

  I’ve done what must be done, he realized, every commission discharged. Honor to Fleet, family, and Emperor satisfied by the most meager effort. My purpose at an end. His lips twisted in dismay and thin, fine-boned hands patted at his service jacket, feeling for the hilt of a knife or blade of some kind. Ah, old fool. You traded your service tantō for new strings for that useless scrap of wood … you have already forgotten yourself, haven’t you? A samurai, an officer, without even the least weapon to hand? What would Lord Musashi think of you now?

  Hadeishi grunted, the harsh sound echoing in the silent temple, and answered himself. “Lord Musashi was never bothered by the lack of steel!”

  An old, old memory came to mind—the fuzzing screen of an ancient black-and-white two-d set showing the calm, centered face of a samurai framed by the pillars of another temple, one in Japan itself, where a ring of ruffians—not even samurai, though their nervous hands held blades aplenty, but bandits and honorless men—circled the lone sword master. A strong wind was blowing, rustling the leaves of ancient trees, bending their creaking limbs. Lord Musashi had nothing in his hands save a length of willow wood.

  They were doomed, Hadeishi remembered, the ghost of a child’s smile in his eyes. Though he had nothing but the clothes on his back. The Five Rings chambara had played on the two-d every afternoon throughout Mitsuharu’s childhood. Hundreds of episodes, rarely shown in order, depicting the long and remarkably heroic life of the sword-saint Miyamoto Musashi. An excellent reason for a youngster to run home from school and fling himself onto the floor of his parent’s house in a pile of blankets, eyes fixed on the tiny screen. Five Rings was particularly beloved for its setting—Japan itself, during the long struggle of the Restoration, when the Nisei had returned to the home islands and driven out the vile Mongol dynasty which had terrorized their homeland during five centuries of exile.

  I will have to buy a knife next week, Hadeishi thought glumly. When I’ve a little money again.

  The door of the temple-house slid closed behind him with a soft click. Mitsuharu tucked his chin into the collar of his jacket, frost biting his face. A long walk faced him—back into the upper city, across the lower bridge vaulting the estuary, a hike up over the ridge separating the well-heeled Khahtsalano district from the area around the spaceport, and finally home to his pallet.

  Hadeishi was descending the wooden stair into the cemetery proper when a long-drawn-out rumble reached him, carried up from the south in the cold, still air. A laser-boosted shuttle cut through the clouds, a bright red spark racing away to orbit.

  They look big from down here, he thought, remembering sitting on the hillside across the river from the main launch-pits at uchu with his father. Gigantic. Leaping into the heavens on wings of flame … But even the largest shuttle was dwarfed by the massive shape of the commercial liners waiting in orbit, much less the vast bulk of a Fleet carrier or dreadnaught. The cold was in his heart now, and an ache was trickling along his spine.

  He trudged across the bridge, bitter sea wind piercing his jacket and sweater, cap tugged low. There was a merchanter’s guild office, Hadeishi remembered, and I’d qualify for a senior rating’s birth. Perhaps even an officer. On a miner, or a cargoman, or a bulk carrier. It would be … something. Better than being a samisen player for drunkards.

  The wounded sound of the Cornuelle’s spaceframe groaning as she twisted into the atmosphere over Jagan was suddenly sharp in his memory. The hoarse rasp of his own breath inside the helmet, the queasy nausea of shattered ribs. Corridors clogged with floating debris, bubbles of smoke, and the drifting bodies of the dead.

  I killed my ship. Susan’s face appearing out of the darkness, her eyes blazing with worry as her helmet visor levered up. The tightening of dismay around her almond-shaped eyes as she realized what he’d done. I killed my own children. For pride. Because I was very good at what I did. But not good enough to deny fate.

  Neon washed his face as he walked, expression vacant, thoughts light-years away. Snow was falling again, dusting his hunched shoulders with white. He’d felt terribly cold then, too, strapped into his shockchair, hands numb with the effort he’d spent to get the ship’s nose up, her orbit stable.

  If I were not prideful, Mitsuharu thought, feeling his spirit sink even lower. I could be among the stars again. But what am I beyond pride, he wondered, without my uniform, without duty? Am I more than a shell of starched linen and golden ribbon? Is there any reason to be anything else?

  Without a warship to command, he realized, merely shipping out was without purpose.

  Lord Musashi, he remembered, would not compromise his honor at such a pass. He would wait patiently, living on a beggars’ charity, until someone deserving of his service called upon him. Even if he waited until death.

  But that was a very cold comfort, on this gray and frigid day.

  TENOCHTITLÁN

  THE CENTER OF THE WORLD, ANÁHUAC

  Sahâne stepped gingerly down a flight of well-worn steps formed from compressed ash, his eyesight adjusting smoothly to the abrupt separation of a hazy, hot day and the cool dimness of a restaurant. The insect-whine of his cooling system fell below audibility and the Hjogadim priest let out a relieved hiss. His long snoutlike nose twitched, assailed by the thick, greasy smell of cooking meat, the acid bite of chilli powder, and the earthy smell of red beans simmering in an iron skillet. With a conscious effort, Sahâne closed his mouth, thick gray tongue rolling back into his jaw.

  This species of indigene, young smoot, a gruff, pedantic voice spoke out of memory—one of an interminable number of teachers replaying in response to the situational prompt—grows uncomfortable, even agitated, when confronted with the sight of our superior dentition.

  “No teeth, no teeth,” the Hjogadim muttered to himself, a jaundiced eye roving around the gloomy cavern. Long wooden tables—all too small for his two-meter-plus frame—jammed against the walls, crowded by throngs of chairs. Threatening wrought-iron chandeliers hung from the domed ceiling on chains. “A torture chamber,” Sahâne observed, beginning to feel nervous. To remain demands intoxicants.

  The cool air, however, was a blessing he was loath to abandon so quickly. The superconducting threads running through his heavy fur could only dissipate so much heat when he was walking—no, more like swimming—through the thick hot air of the city. That the natives would build underground, or behind heavy
whitewashed adobe walls, or install their own refrigeration systems on a massive scale, did not trouble his mind. Sahâne was keenly aware of his own discomfort, but the theoretical trials of a planet of inconsequential toys did not move him at all.

  Circling around the wicked ornamentation of the nearest chandelier, the Hjo sat at one of the tables, back against the pleasantly cool wall, and wondered if the establishment was closed. A handful of other patrons sat at the far end of the long room, but none of them had paid his entrance the slightest attention. Sahâne’s long, tapir-like head swiveled, looking for the telltale ghosting of a human comm-panel in the air. Nothing. He frowned, the leathery skin around two deep-set eyes wrinkling up. He could smell food, but … how did you order a meal without an interface?

  “A waiter comes,” someone said, in passable Trade. “And you tell him which ingestibles you desire.”

  Sahâne’s frown deepened into puzzlement. The human settling into a chair opposite the young Hjo was familiar—Sahâne had been aware of him dozens of times—but they’d never spoken before. The fine coating of hollow hairs forming the top layer of his fur shivered, making the silver-gray gloss ripple. An Eye should not speak; it is inappropriate! Its only duty is to spy.

  “Though,” the human male continued, tucking a pair of sunglasses into a pocket of his mantle, “the menu here is limited. You’d be best to order an octli beer and perhaps a plate of nopalli, if you are hungry.”

  “I am not,” Sahâne said, after a moment of consternation. “You have never spoken to me before—is there a … a situation? A danger?”

  Every member of the Hjogadim delegation on Anáhuac, to the best of Sahâne’s knowledge, had at least three Eyes fixed upon them—not all at once, of course, but in rotating shifts throughout the swift Terran day—but always from a distance. This one—tall, as the indigenes went, with sleek dark fur on its head and regular, waxy-skinned features—had always been at least a block away for as long as the Eye had observed the Hjo. That it should come closer—or even speak to Sahâne—implied something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.