Blue War: A Punktown Novel

by Jeffrey Thomas

  “What’s with the terrarium?” Stake said.

  “We’re all out of cribs and playpens at the moment,” Laloo said. “He’s safe and comfortable, Mr. – what was the name again?”

  “Stake. He’s got the mind of an infant, you say? How soon will that change if he’s left alone in a box like this?”

  “Captain,” Laloo complained to Henderson, “why do I have to put up with this right now? The clone is not being mistreated. It’s not like I’m responsible for having brought it into existence, either.”

  “No one’s accusing you of mistreating the clone, are we, Jeremy?”

  “At least he’s got VT to watch,” Stake said, indicating one large monitor swivelled to face the child. A station geared toward preschool children currently played a bright and noisy cartoon.

  “Oh, he gets interaction,” Ami said, activating the top of the tank to slide open, and leaning over its rim to reach in for the child. He raised his arms to her, and she hefted him out with a grunt. “My poor back.” The child sat on her hip like a chimp and burbled a laugh when she nuzzled her nose in his ear. “So cute.”

  “Even kids like her,” Henderson joked to Stake.

  The hired investigator stepped over to Ami, and rubbed his finger on the back of the child’s hand as it gripped the scientist’s smock. “Hey, Brian. What’s your real name, huh?”

  “See?” Ami said to him. “Definitely an Earth human.”

  Yes; a Caucasian boy with brunette hair and brown eyes, nothing to distinguish him from billions of other children – besides being grown by an organic city run rampant. Stake asked, “Is he perfectly formed? Nothing missing or defective?”

  “It seems his vision is a bit weak, and his digestive system is a little underdeveloped, too,” Laloo cut in, making sure Stake remembered who the doctor was here, “but nothing that couldn’t be treated down the road. He’s in excellent health, considering the manner in which he was formed. It’s astonishing, the process not having been accomplished through technology.”

  “A pregnancy can certainly take place without the involvement of any technology,” Stake said.

  “Yes, you know, you’re right. I’d entirely forgotten about that. If I ever need further consultation, I’ll contact you, Dr. Stake.”

  “I live to serve.”

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Laloo said, huffing off to return to his autopsy, apparently preferring the corpse’s company to Stake’s.

  “Jer,” Henderson admonished him, but he was smiling, “remember that you may need to rely on the doctor in the future. We all want to cooperate here, right?”

  Not taking his eyes off the child, Stake said, “Cooperate; right. So, Ami, as you analyze the two failed clones and Brian here, are you putting your head together with the team from Simulacrum Systems, and the Ha Jiin and Jin Haa scientists?”

  Ami seemed to fidget. “We’re all sort of conducting our own independent investigations into Bluetown and the clones.”

  “That’s surprising,” Stake remarked, sarcastic.

  “We’ll get more angles this way.”

  “And no cohesion?”

  “Oh Jesus!” Ami said.

  Stake looked up at her, startled. Had he angered her?

  “Your face...you...”

  As much as Stake had felt his eyes gravitating to the stunning science chief, even after having learned of her mutation (especially after having learned of her mutation?), Stake had tried not to let his gaze linger lest he begin to take on her features. At first, he thought he had done so despite his precautions. But then he realized it wasn’t that.

  His face was acquiring the look of the child Ami held, instead. In a way, was the result an indication of what the clone would have looked like had it developed to maturity, assuming the process would have continued successfully? But Stake guessed his features still held an infantile quality that would be a lot less cute than the clone’s, and a lot more creepy.

  Stake smiled apologetically at Ami Pattaya. “I’m a shapeshifter,” he explained. “A mutant.” Like you, he almost added.

  “You scared the hell out of me,” she scolded him, still standing away from him a few steps and unconsciously clutching the contentedly gurgling child closer to her.

  “Thanks a lot,” Stake said, giving a pretend pout that made him all the more child-like.

  “I guess we’ll have to study you next, after we’re done with the clones,” she joked back, but she was regaining her composure and her eyes seemed to have an intrigued sheen to them.

  Sideshow kink, Stake thought.

  His inadvertent mimicry of Brian reminded Stake to check his wrist comp, a few moments later when he felt the science chief wouldn’t notice. Sure enough, he had successfully captured still shots of her face, and the face of the Choom doctor Laloo, in the device’s memory. He had taken the pictures of them surreptitiously, when pretending to scratch his jaw or adjust his collar. He made it a habit to add faces to his wrist comp’s library, to keep on file. A shapeshifter could never own too many masks.

  FIVE: SIMULACRA

  Though he traveled alone this time, Stake didn’t need to rely on the helicar’s navigation system or autopilot feature to find Bluetown again, not with the way the city-in-the-making stood out upon the horizon. And once he reached it, and lowered his craft down closer to the streets, he could still find his way around with relative ease. This was because – after he had got his bearings via a few landmarks, however transfigured they might be in this blue-colored replica – all he had to do was rely on his familiarity with his own corresponding hometown of Punktown.

  He had insisted he go alone, so Henderson had arranged for him to have use of one of the base’s helicars. Before Stake had left, the captain had looked at his friend gravely and said, “Be careful there, okay?” Still, despite this show of concern, Henderson had felt it was prudent to assign Stake a modified Harbinger, unequipped with guns and rockets.

  He had plunged the helicar through effusions of mist that rose from the edge of the city, where it was alive and chewing. He switched on his external speakers and even from on high could hear the crackling static of its greedy consumption. Through gaps in the fog he saw pools that flashed back reflections of sky; the runoff of fluid from a process that spread like an apocalyptic, drowning flood advancing in slow motion.

  He had noted an especially gargantuan building thrusting through the clouds – a mammoth of perhaps fifteen-hundred feet, that stood up from a cluster of smaller buildings like a finger raised from a clenched fist – with one of its flanks still gaping open as its form solidified, so that it looked like an explosion had blown off that side. Fog steamed out like smoke from the blast, and from its interior of honeycombed floors came a waterfall of that fluid waste, which crashed down to the blue pavement below. A shorter structure next door, its levels tapering like those of a Mayan step pyramid, was forming more uniformly from the base up, and so its waste gushed down all its sides evenly like lava from a volcano.

  But now he had the helicar riding almost as low as a hovercar above the network of streets, the fog and crunching sound left behind him, and in so doing he spotted signs that the city’s staggering mimicry still had its limitations. Two examples of this were buildings that he knew were meant to be upheld on repulsor beams. One was the inverted pyramid of Synerluc Communications, which should have been floating massively above its point. Now it was like a child’s top that had stopped spinning. Not only was the building no longer hovering, but it lay upon one of its three faces. Similarly, Stake recognized the exclusive sushi and karaoke bar called Floating World, which in Punktown was constantly following a loop that encompassed several city blocks, riding navigation beams as helicars did, high above the streets. The simulacrum of Floating World lay grounded in the middle of one broad avenue like an airship that had run out of fuel and come in for an impromptu landing.

  Stake had a specific destination in mind, though, and so he tried not to be distracted by the partic
ular details of how his hometown had been so wondrously and weirdly duplicated. He sped through the shadowed city canyons in the direction of the building where the three clones had been discovered. The only thing was, he would be crossing the now effaced border between the land of the Jin Haa and that of the Ha Jiin. Once, he had stolen into their land with Henderson and other young soldiers, stealthy as camouflaged leopards. Now, he was riding boldly into that same, paved-over land like a man on a Sunday drive.

  Stake finally consulted his navigation system to determine when exactly he would be passing into Ha Jiin territory, if he hadn’t already. He knew the vehicle’s global positioning feature was programmed to mark that border more clearly than it was demarcated in its literal sense in these post-war days, as had been the case even before Bluetown had overrun the border.

  He saw from the GP screen that he was already moving through the Neutral Zone between the two nations. A needless sort of buffer these days, perhaps, but he supposed it was a concession both countries had agreed upon to make them feel a little better than they would if they were lying fully cheek to jowl.

  Just a little further to the land of his former enemies.

  When he reached the border he realized he hadn’t needed the GP screen, at least not on this street. Across its wide expanse a rope had been strung, and three evenly spaced flags hung down like laundry drying. All three were the blue flag of the Ha Jiin nation. Stake might have thought this was their government’s official demarcation, but another feature seemed to indicate otherwise. Also hanging from the cord, spaced between the three vertical banners, were two crude effigies dressed in bright orange clothing. One scarecrow had a blue head, the other a pink head, and both had been shot full of holes out of which hung some of their dried grass stuffing. They were obviously meant to represent a Jin Haa and an Earth person, partnered in death. It wouldn’t have been the most politically correct image for a government to present in this time of peace.

  Stake had slowed to take in the display, but when he started forward again and drove under the dangling effigies he soon met those responsible for them.

  He saw the black smoke of a cooking fire unfurling from a structure in which the windows yawned open, and then from the doorway two children peeked out. As Stake turned his head to look at them, something pinged off his windscreen. He glanced up to see an older boy, in his teens, in a third storey window extending a slingshot. He decided it was wise to accelerate somewhat, away from this group of Ha Jiin squatters. Stake had the irrational anxiety that they might recognize him as a soldier who a decade earlier had killed a parent, a grandparent.

  Out of an alley, two men came running and stood on the sidewalk glaring as Stake continued along. One made some kind of angry, thrusting gesture of the type he recalled villagers had occasionally made when he and his fellow soldiers passed in a vehicle or on foot. Out of another doorway, cut open somehow to give the squatters access to the building’s interior, another man appeared. He was holding a rifle in his hands. Stake accelerated again and swung around the next corner, expecting a shot to ring out. Perhaps if he’d lingered a little longer he’d have heard one. Maybe there was a shot, after all, but the weapon was silenced and he simply didn’t hear it through his external speakers.

  One family, or several from a village who had bonded together? Farmers, maybe. Sure, the city could provide them shelter, maybe even better shelter than what they were accustomed to. But what about their food? Their livelihood?

  The streets were soon desolate again. No angry faces in doorways and windows, like snapshots in some history book. No smoke, no flags. A ghost town once more.

  A fairly pristine ghost town. No rubbish in the gutters, no rubbish walking the sidewalks. No assaultive advertisements – a visual and aural cacophony – such as holographic logos and mascots that tracked you like parasites until they eventually tired or you warded them off with anti-ad spray. No fault cracks in the buildings, no miasmic stench taking root in your forehead, no clamoring noise such as the beeping of countless horns echoing off the chasm walls. It was an improvement, in a way. It was as if Bluetown preceded Punktown: the optimistic model it had failed to live up to.

  He had seen some slum areas of Punktown where weeds grew lush out of cracks in the sidewalks and trees sprouted from the rubble of collapsed houses. Despite the proximity of the jungle here, it was not the case in Bluetown with its immaculate blue floor. The mutant ghetto of Tin Town where he had been raised was more of a war zone than this city, which capped the battle-scarred Ha Jiin land like the lid of a vast sarcophagus.

  It was too impressive to be wholly deplorable, and its width and breadth made it an inexorable force like a tidal wave, or the punishment of a god. Was this why the Ha Jiin and Jin Haa weren’t stirred to outright rebellion in the streets at this catastrophe? Did it overwhelm them, render them helpless, fatalistic? After the long war, fresh in the memories of its survivors, were they too accustomed to the idea of being trampled, their lives crushed and reconfigured?

  Thoughts of the slum dubbed Tin Town made Stake wonder what it would look like once the city had spread far enough to replicate that sector, too. He almost wished it would, so he could see recreated the tenement house where he had spent most of his boyhood. It would be less squalid, but perhaps more haunting.

  These daydreams distracted him to the extent that he didn’t see the other vehicle until it pulled out directly in his path, and he swerved a little to avoid it at the same time he worked to bring the Harbinger to a halt. Even before it had stopped, he saw soldiers leaping down off the back of their car, a big-wheeled Ha Jiin military vehicle that had seen a lot of use and perhaps dated back to the war itself.

  Stake lifted his hands where they could be seen through his cockpit screen.

  “Out, please!” one soldier commanded in English. He wasn’t exactly pointing his weapon at Stake but he made a brusque motion with it.

  Stake complied, with slow movements. Once out of the vehicle he kept his hands lowered, but away from his sides. He said hello in their language, one of the few words he remembered.

  Two soldiers stood apart from him, to left and right. Stake took note of their assault engines; not Sturms like the CF men carried, but nearly as good, since they were obviously acquired from an Earth Colonies arms company. Whatever they might feel about their former enemies, that didn’t mean the Ha Jiin military didn’t want the best firearms they could get their hands on.

  A third man stood between the other two, facing Stake without a weapon except for his holstered pistol. Stake could tell this man was a captain by the marks on his belt; a subdued display of rank to keep enemies from picking off officers too easily, something that might have saved more Colonial Forces officers from Ha Jiin snipers – such as Thi Gonh.

  “Good morning, sir,” the officer said in English, his face impassive.

  “Good morning,” Stake replied in his own language this time.

  The Ha Jiin looked over Stake’s sky blue Harbinger, despite its lack of armaments clearly marked as a Colonial Forces craft. Stake himself, however, did not wear anything like a Colonial Forces uniform. A short-sleeved buttoned white shirt, untucked and a tad wrinkly, baggy tan trousers, battered sneakers, and on his head the porkpie hat he favored. Whenever he felt like his face didn’t know who he was, this little hat was like some kind of reminder, a humble chunk of identity.

  “May I ask what your business is in this area, sir? Are you aware that you have entered the Ha Jiin nation?”

  “Ah, yes, I am. My name’s Jeremy Stake, and I’m a friend of Captain Henderson of the Colonial Forces base.” Stake thought the Ha Jiin might know the officer’s name but he showed no reaction to it. “He brought me in to help with the investigation into the clones that were found here, on your side of this...this city.”

  “I am Captain Yengun. I am the commander of the security patrol along this length of the Neutral Zone.”

  Stake was impressed with the man’s English, but then the
Ha Jiin had probably polished this last line in particular. Yengun was a small man with a light frame but muscles so tight they showed in his cheeks and jaw. Stake figured him to be a little older than himself. Again, old instincts awoke and he sized the man up for hand-to-hand combat. The Ha Jiin had their own martial arts techniques, but Stake felt his extensive deep penetration training might just give him the edge in a tangle. Still, he didn’t want to underestimate the man; just because his tone was low-key didn’t mean he couldn’t make things very ugly very fast. Stake wasn’t concerned about violence, really, but about being ordered to turn himself around and leave Ha Jiin land before he had a chance to view what he had come out here for.

  “Captain, I was hoping to have a look at the building where these clones were found. I thought it might give me some insight into them – who they are and how they came to be there.”

  “You should know this is a dangerous place for someone to come looking around. There are wild animals, and refugees.” Refugees. Stake would have thought to call them something like displaced people, but then he supposed refugees wasn’t really off the mark.

  “Yeah, I know – I passed some back at the border of your land. It looked like they wanted to string me up with their scarecrows.”

  Yengun frowned off into the distance. “Ah, I know them. I have moved them many times. That is the best we can do without arresting refugees, and we prefer not to arrest them. We chase them out of one building and they move on to another building. And another.” He looked back to Stake.

  “I don’t mean to send you out looking for them. I can understand the situation they’re in.”

  “You said this captain brought you in to investigate. Are you with the Colonial Forces?”

  “No, I’m not. I’m an independent investigator. Well, I used to be a Colonial Forces man, back during the war.” Stake shrugged, and then wondered why he had offered this information, especially when the captain stared at him for several long moments without saying anything. He had to have fought in the Blue War, given his age and his occupation. So, then, they had once served in opposing armies. Maybe even fired at each other somewhere along the course of the conflict.