Blue War: A Punktown Novel

by Jeffrey Thomas

  Yengun finally said, “If you must examine this place, then my men and I will escort you.”

  Keep an eye on you is more like it, Stake thought. But he wasn’t about to decline their escort, lest the officer deny him access out of caprice or spite. For want of a war, such an action might be the best a military man could do by way of flaunting his authority – particularly to an old adversary. So Stake said, “Thanks, Captain, I appreciate that. Should I follow you in my vehicle?”

  “Yes; it is not best to leave your vehicle unattended here. Refugees.”

  “I understand. All right, then, thanks. I’ll stick close.”

  Stake returned to his helicar, and the soldiers clambered up into the open top of their own car. It turned and started off down the road, with Stake gliding along after them a few feet off a blue surface so even that one would have thought the jungle floor had been graded before it had been paved over.

  He imagined that the advancing edge of the city plowed along a certain amount of large stones and other inorganic material it could not convert into its own matter or bury underneath it, but now he noted that not every feature of the jungle was willing to consent to transmutation even when the flood had washed over it. Not much farther ahead, several massive boulders broke the city’s simulating effect by stubbornly holding their ground. One of these rested almost in the center of the street, the vehicles having to curve around it. The boulder might not have been broken down or submerged but the smart matter had at least managed to encapsulate it in a shell, so that it looked like a tumor bulging from the city’s floor. A bit further along was an even larger mass of rock, half of it seeming to penetrate the flank of a building and the other half obviously on the building’s interior. Again, its blue shell made it seem fused to the building like some malignant growth, though it was really the other way around.

  They turned onto another street, then another, and so on. A few times Stake lost all sense of direction, as familiar with Punktown as he was. Punktown was simply too enormous for any one person to memorize in full, and Simulacra’s strange approximation didn’t help. At last, though, he saw the escorting vehicle pull over to the curb and park there neatly, as if to remain out of the way of traffic, should any miraculously appear. Stake floated in behind them, and his craft alighted just as neatly. The men reconvened between their two vehicles.

  “That is the place.” Captain Yengun pointed across the street. Then he started leading his party toward it.

  Again, as from the air, Stake noted that the building wasn’t all that large. Five stories, longish, with that spiky cluster of antennas atop its flat roof, looking like delicate stalagmites of blue mineral. This was one of those buildings in Bluetown which – in its original form, apparently possessing barrier fields instead of solid panes – showed rows of open black windows that granted easy access to its interior.

  When they reached the sidewalk, Yengun motioned for one of his two soldiers to go in first. As the man hoisted himself through a window, the captain unholstered his handgun and held it up ready by his face. He said something in an ominous tone. At first Stake didn’t recognize the Ha Jiin word, until he recalled that it was their name for the creature which in the old days the CF troops had called benders.

  Apparently there were none of the jellyfish-like creatures within, or refugees either, because the man inside gave a signal and Yengun went in next. The other soldier nodded that Stake should follow, and he did. This last man remained posted outside, perhaps to watch over their vehicles.

  “No weapon?” Yengun asked Stake casually once the three of them stood inside a hallway that spanned the front of the building, gloomy but with the glow of Sinan’s twin suns beaming through a row of those gaping windows.

  “No.” Stake glanced up and down the corridor with apprehension. “Should I have one?”

  “No, you should not. This way,” the officer said, leading them down the left-hand side.

  There were a number of widely spaced doors opposite the windows. The way Simulacra had fashioned them, the doors had been sealed shut, but they had all since been cut open with ray beams. Still, only one of the rooms beyond them had proved to house a mystery. Stake accompanied the other two men to this room, its door the second to last in the hallway.

  Once inside the good-sized chamber, windowless and unfurnished, Yengun’s soldier activated his assault engine’s flashlight. Right away, he swept it across the room’s floor, to better reveal the three large pits that yawned there. “Huh,” Stake murmured. The two Ha Jiin men hung back as he stepped up to the lip of the nearest of them.

  The hole didn’t look broken in the blue-colored floor so much as melted, its edges rounded and grooved. For all Stake could tell, the pit might descend for miles; a bottomless well. He looked around at the soldier, and gestured for him to shine his light down there. The man edged closer to comply. The pit was not terribly deep after all. Below the thick blue layer of the floor, the surfaces of the pit itself were comprised of bare earth.

  “The holes were filled with fluid...the fluid the smart matter sweats off as it multiplies,” Stake said.

  “Yes,” Yengun replied, behind him. “It was drained away so the clones could be detached from their roots, and the pits examined.”

  The fluid’s acidic, eye-burning stink was still in evidence, drained or not. “Smells like a bus terminal men’s room,” Stake said to himself. He knelt down and ran his fingers over the rim of the opening, where it formed a cross-section of the floor. He felt the barest nubs remaining of the roots or veins that had sprouted forth from the smart matter to connect with the bodies resting at the bottom of the three cavities.

  Stake was wagging his head. He didn’t know how to assimilate any of this.

  “This matter...it is alive,” said Yengun.

  “Yeah, sort of.”

  “And you call it smart. It has a kind of intelligence?”

  “In a way.”

  “Sentience?”

  Stake looked up at him. “I wouldn’t call it that. The process starts with a computer hook-up. The computer has sentience.” He rose to his feet again. “But they disengaged the computer. The stuff keeps growing on its own momentum.”

  “We were the first to investigate this,” the security officer said, moving his gaze to the next hole, and the next. “A team of my men and I.”

  “You were?” Stake looked at the man more closely; maybe there was something to learn from him, if not from the enigmatic voids themselves. “How did you find them in the first place? During a patrol, or did a refugee report it, or...”

  “A witch. She had visions.”

  “A witch? You mean, someone with PSI ability?”

  Yengun paused, digesting the term, then said, “Yes. She told others about her dreams, and so we had her lead us here to see what she was going on about.”

  When Yengun returned his gaze to Stake, his expression grew subtly more disturbed. Stake broke their eye contact immediately. In looking too intently at the Ha Jiin, he had probably begun the barest overture of mimicry, not enough to be obvious but enough for Yengun to sense on a subconscious level. Stake had noted something unusual on Yengun’s face, and he hoped he hadn’t started to reproduce it. It was a scar on his right cheek. He knew that during the long war, many Ha Jiin soldiers had marked their faces for every family member killed by the Jin Haa and their Earth Colonies allies. These scars took the form of horizontal raised bars. Stake had seen the leader of the Ha Jiin people, Director Zee, on VT, and even his face bore several of these markings. But the single band on Yengun’s prominent cheekbone was only half the length of what one of these scars would normally be. Could its shorter length mean that the lost loved one had been a mere child? Stake hoped not. He hoped the half-scar had been received in a wounding or accident instead.

  Staring into the pit near his feet once more, the freelance investigator resumed, “So there have already been a lot of Earth Colonies people out here to look at these holes. Military people, s
cience people, people from Simulacrum Systems.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think it might be a good idea,” Stake prodded, “for your people to have these holes excavated, to look for more clues as to whose remains these were?”

  “My commander already did have the holes excavated, after the fluid had been drained and the bodies removed. They have since been restored to the state they were found in.”

  “Really?” Stake reexamined the pits to gauge what they would have looked like before, and during, that process.

  “Yes. I watched some of the work myself.”

  “I see. And was anything else found besides the clones? Bones of the original bodies the clones were grown from, or...”

  “I saw the excavation team recover some scraps of clothing, and a few pieces of gear.”

  “You did? That’s funny; my friend didn’t tell me about that. And does your commander have these items now?”

  “No. In the spirit of cooperation between our two governments, my commander turned over the gear and bits of clothing to the Colonial Forces commander, along with the clones themselves.”

  “Huh. And so, what did the clothing look like? Standard blue camouflage, like the Colonial Forces infantry wore during the Blue War?”

  “No, actually. It did not really look like military uniforms. But I did not see it closely, and as I say, it was little more than rags.”

  “But not uniforms,” Stake echoed thoughtfully.

  “Apparently not uniforms. That I recognized, at least.”

  “You said gear. Can you describe it?”

  “Not really. It was briefly, and from a distance. I suggest you talk to your people at the Colonial Forces base.”

  “Hm. Yeah, I definitely need to see that stuff, and I need to look into military records to find out which units of infantry fought through this section of your land.”

  Yengun nodded, watching the investigator. “You said you served in the war. For how long?”

  “Four full years.”

  “A long time. And through which provinces, yourself? Vi Teng? Boa Hon? The Kae Ta Valley?”

  “Boa Hon, yes. Other provinces. They moved me around a lot, in four years.”

  Yengun kept nodding. “I can imagine.”

  “Did you fight in any of those places?” Stake asked nonchalantly, but understanding why the Ha Jiin had asked.

  “Yes. All of them. And my family lived in Vi Teng.”

  “I see. Well, that’s one area I didn’t fight in, at least.”

  “No?” Yengun ran a hand over the coarse, pumice-like texture of one of the room’s walls. “Where does your family live, Mr. Stake?”

  “We lived on the world Oasis, in the Earth colony Paxton. They call it Punktown. But my mother died when I was young, and my father – I don’t know what became of him. He lost himself after my mother died. He was addicted to drugs. We were very poor, my family. We lived in a tough ghetto.” This was all quite personal information, but Stake wanted the Ha Jiin to know that he hadn’t had a breezy life, either.

  “Do you have a wife?”

  “Me? No, never.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “Ah, I guess the standard reason. I never met the right woman.” Stake didn’t add that he’d never met a woman he could love who would also love a mutant with his unusual condition. And Thi Gonh? Had he really known her long enough to tell how they would have been if they’d met each other in a time of peace, different circumstances? “Are you married, captain?”

  “Yes. And I have two sons.”

  “Congratulations. You’re a lucky man.”

  Yengun smirked at him oddly. “Yes. Yes, I am. My sons are intelligent and strong. And my wife is very beautiful.”

  “I envy you,” Stake said. He felt there was something wrong, however, something below the surface that Yengun might want him to know but which he couldn’t decipher. Anyway, he averted his eyes from the man again, before his mimicry could engage itself. “So,” he sighed. “I don’t know what to make of what I’m seeing. At least I saw it. Like I said, my best bet now is to talk to someone at the base about the artifacts they found, and the units that came through here.”

  The three men retraced their steps into the hallway, and down to its end where they chose another window, this time, to climb through. The man they had left to cover them nodded in greeting, and they all started across the street toward their vehicles. Along the way, something Stake couldn’t contain rose to his lips, now that the subject of wives, of beautiful Sinanese women, had come up.

  “Captain Yengun, I’ve been looking for a woman named Thi Gonh, and I haven’t been able to find her. I’m afraid she may have been displaced by the growth of this city. She and her husband own a farm. You may remember her, during the war, as the Earth Killer?”

  Yengun stopped, halfway across the road, and looked again at Stake with a face almost as mysteriously blank as his own. “How do you know her? And what is it you want of that woman?”

  Stake dared to hold his gaze for the moment; to hell with his ability. “During the war, I was the man who captured her.”

  Yengun’s narrow eyes narrowed more. Just then, Stake felt certain he had earned the officer’s hatred, and ensured that no more assistance from him would be forthcoming. In his dry tone, Yengun said, “You were the soldier who protected her from your men, who would have raped and killed her.”

  “Yes. That was me.”

  “They say it was because you fell in love with her.”

  Stake didn’t tear his eyes away. “Yes.”

  “And they say you are a ‘Ga Noh.’ A...”

  “Shapeshifter. Yes.” So, the Ga Noh had become part of the legend of the celebrated Earth Killer. The disgraced Earth Lover. Stake couldn’t help but feel a thrill go ricocheting through his system like a bullet, cutting swaths through organs and lodging in the very center of him. In a way, in their legend, they had been wed these past eleven years.

  Yengun did something Stake did not expect at all. He smiled. It wasn’t much of a smile, but it was one. “And you want to find her again.”

  “I just, uh, wanted to see how she’s doing these days. And I was worried, because of this.” He waved his arm around him, at Bluetown.

  “I am sorry; I know of her, of course, but I do not know her personally. And as you say, she is married now. That much I am aware of.”

  “Well, thanks anyway, captain,” Stake said, moving toward his helicar. He had turned his eyes away once more; not out of fear of transforming, this time, but out of embarrassment. Or pain. “And thanks again for helping me have a look inside there.”

  The Ha Jiin officer said nothing more. He just stood in the middle of the empty road, pivoted his body and tilted back his head to watch as Stake lifted the Harbinger high to take the easier way back to Di Noon, in the Jin Haa nation, flying above haunted Bluetown with its teeming population of ghosts.

  SIX: MIGRATIONS

  Jeremy Stake was inside the little brown body of the CF base’s science chief, Ami Pattaya, and it had happened as simply as this: she had called on him at his room to see how his trip to Bluetown had gone, having heard that he had borrowed a helicar for that purpose. She had told him he looked exhausted, and volunteered her skills as a masseuse. Stake had gone along with this transparent game – and why not? He was a man. Then again, so was she, in part. When she’d been astride his back and he’d heard her undoing her top, he’d felt her erection pressing against him through her clothes, and he’d rolled over to look up at her. They had started out that way, and ended up now with him atop her, both her legs resting across his forearms and spread in the air, her own engorged member flopping against her belly with his thrusts. Free of her padded bra, her breasts were as tiny as an adolescent’s, but that was okay, and he felt her face was extraordinary. He couldn’t help but stare down at it, and she grinned up at him, apparently delighted by her uncanny reflection there. Even his skin tone had darkened, and his breasts had swel
led slightly, enough for her to want to squeeze them in her hands.

  “Do you want me inside you?” she panted.

  “First things first.”

  “It’s up to you. Some guys like that – girls, too – but I prefer to be the woman, if you know what I mean.”

  “That’s up to you, too.”

  “Do you ever change down there?”

  “No, I can’t pull that trick off.”

  “Good. I like that fine as it is.”

  When they were finished, Stake lay back on the bed wrung dry and watched her get up to pad naked about his room, chattering in her sunny, sweet voice and no doubt strutting her charms for him deliberately. Her hair fell down to her cute rounded bottom, and he complimented her on the hair, keeping his compliment on her bottom to himself.

  “Thanks. If you had some acceleration gel you could grow your hair as long as mine and then you’d really look like me.”

  “At least my penis is longer than yours.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him.

  “You remind me of a high school biology teacher I dated last year. You science types seem to find me an interesting specimen.”

  Near the bathroom door, she grinned at him. “Was she as beautiful as me?” she said with a charmingly innocent lack of modesty, throwing out one hip to pose. The movement made her softening member jiggle.

  “No. And she didn’t have a penis either.”

  “How boring,” Ami said, before ducking into the bathroom. From within she called, “Come shower with me!”

  “Let me get over my cardiac arrest first.”

  She poked her head out brightly to blow a kiss at him.

  “You’re terminally cute. Everybody on this base must be in love with you.”

  “I hope so! But I have to watch myself these days, because of Dom.”

  “Dom?”