Stake heard two things that caused him to turn around. One was the lumbering approach of a group of yubos, silent except for the rasp of their hides against each other and the heavy muffled thump of their steps, churning up a cloud of dust. The other sound was the cry of one of the men who was driving the animals along; Stake remembered glimpsing him on his way into Vein Rhi. The man tramped forward, leaving his companions behind, gripping his hook-tipped prodding stick. At last Stake recognized his sunken-cheeked face from the call on his wrist comp.
Stake stepped off the elevated floor of the waiting room and walked fast toward the man to meet him halfway, in the center of the unpaved street.
“Oh no...no!” Stake heard Thi wail behind him.
“I fucking kill you!” the man coming at Stake snarled, drawing back his stick to swing it at the Earther’s head. “Kill both of you now!”
Stake caught the stick in his left hand. It stung badly, but he had hold of it, and jerked it downward and to his right. Thi’s husband maintained his grip, so this redirected his momentum and threw him off balance. Stake grabbed the stick in his right hand now, instantly let go with his left. With his left arm freed, Stake smashed its elbow back into the Ha Jiin’s face, impacting on one eye socket. This stunning blow caused the man to release the stick. It was Stake’s, now.
Stake swiped the rod against the left side of the man’s face. He could have hit him harder, but the sound of the wood across his cheekbone was still enough to make observers flinch. The man stumbled back, making an incoherent sound like a whimper, and Stake swung the stick lower and harder this time. It cracked the man across his left knee. He hit him on the knee again, and this time he went down.
Stake was kicking Thi’s husband in the upper arm, in the same place again and again and again, when two of the other men herding the yubos came at him with their own sticks in hand. He swung around to face them, weapon held ready, but it was more the look on his face than the hook-tipped baton that caused them to stop in their tracks. One of the men was going gray, the other barely out of his teens. Neither looked like they wanted to follow through with coming to their companion’s aid, but it was possible they still would out of a sense of obligation.
Peripherally, Stake took note of other Ha Jiin men in a half-circle behind him; mostly people who had been waiting to be seen by the clinic’s lone doctor, or loved ones accompanying would-be patients. But were they waiting for an opportunity to lunge at the Earther who was beating one of their own kind, or merely spectators? Stake knew he was a skilled enough fighter to put down a lot of them before they could get their hands on him, but as small as Vein Rhi was, there were ultimately too many men who could come and oppose him. He felt a cold, almost detached certainty that unless he fought his way back inside the Harbinger soon, Vein Rhi would be the place he would die.
Thi’s husband was curled in the dust, clutching his knee and shrieking obscenities and threats in his own tongue. He tried rolling onto all fours, but Stake planted a sharp kick in his ribs and he went onto his side again. The young yubo wrangler started forward a step, but Stake lurched at him one step in turn, and the Ha Jiin went into a crouch, holding his ground.
“Thi, get into my car! Go!” Stake bellowed.
“No, Ga Noh, please go home!” she sobbed behind him. “Please, please! It is worse now, more worse!”
“Go home,” one of the male spectators echoed in English. Was it a threat, or said in concern for his safety?
“I’m not leaving you to this cowardly son of a bitch, Thi. You’re coming with me.”
The boy who had guided Stake here moved close to the helicar. “Come on, come on!”
A hoverbike pulled up a short distance away, and Stake saw that the man who dismounted from it wore a sweat-stained militia uniform. Great. Finding the Earther poised in an attitude of attack, the man slid his handgun from its holster and held it out at waist level. As he approached, he barked something in his own language. Stake let the rod drop close to his foot where he might retrieve it if need be, and straightened up a little, returning his wary gaze to the husband’s two friends.
The militia man stopped a short distance away and demanded something or other from Stake, who shrugged and said, “English. Only English.”
One of the male spectators moved forward to converse with the policeman, pointing animatedly toward the clinic, then at Thi’s husband moaning in the road, then to Stake, and back at the clinic again. Stake had no idea whether the witness’s report was in his favor or damned him.
Another vehicle turned the corner into the street, this one a big-wheeled Ha Jiin military vehicle that had seen a lot of use and perhaps dated back to the war itself. Stake recognized it even before it stopped and one of its three occupants jumped down to the ground and came toward him and the peace officer. Captain Hin Yengun looked grim as he took in the man lying in the dirt, the tense Earther so incongruous in this obscure village, and the militia man training his pistol on him. The policeman started speaking but after a moment the military officer held up a hand to cut him off.
“Mr. Stake,” Yengun said, “what is happening here?”
“I’m glad to see you,” Stake told him.
“I saw your craft in the air, and followed you here. I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“What is that?”
“First explain to me what this is about. Why did you attack this man?”
“He’s the husband of Thi Gonh, captain. And that’s Thi Gonh over there.” He swivelled around to point at the clinic, where Thi stood shakily, her arm supported by the beautiful teenager. “Though you might not recognize her.”
Yengun stared at the woman’s battered face for several long seconds before turning to Stake again. “Now I think I made a mistake telling her that you were looking for her.”
“No, it was her husband who made the mistake, of thinking that she and I met to...to...we only got together to have something to eat and talk a little. And somehow he found out – I think I know who told him – and he did this to her.”
“And so you did that to him. Did you come to Sinan still wanting to kill Ha Jiin people, Mr. Stake?”
“I should hope you’d know that isn’t true, captain. You can see what this man did to his wife.”
“It is a matter for us to handle.” Yengun returned his attention to the militia man and gave some orders. This man in turn ordered the husband’s two friends to pick up the injured farmer and carry him into the clinic. The husband had begun raging again but his voice faded inside the building. Yengun explained to Stake, “I gave instructions that the doctor is to tend to him, and then he is to be arrested for assaulting his wife.”
“The doctor has to see her first – she might have a concussion.”
Yengun called some more orders after the militia officer. Stake turned to see the man gesture for Thi to cut ahead of all the other waiting people. She entered a back room still assisted by the young girl. Stake thought he saw Thi glance back in his direction as she disappeared behind a curtain.
“Thanks,” Stake said. “And now are you going to have me arrested, too? He came at me first, with this.” Stake poked the hooked stick with his toe. “I was acting in self defense.”
“I am not going to arrest you, though there may be questions later when the militia officer makes his report. You are lucky that the townspeople did not attack you.”
“I’m a bit surprised at that, myself.”
“I imagine they can see that this man beat his wife very badly. And they know she is Thi Gonh, the Earth Killer. Despite the disgrace that came to her later, she is still thought of as a wartime hero, an inspiration for the common folk – that even a small, young peasant woman could rise up to oppose a greater enemy. I think some of my people even love her more because she became the Earth Lover. We are a romantic people, Mr. Stake, with poetic souls. Many were touched by the story of how this hardened soldier spared the life of three Earth men she could easily have killed. This is
all why she was not sentenced as a traitor. There is even a folk song about her.”
“Really? I never knew that. I’d like to hear it sometime.” Stake wondered if he himself figured into that song in any way. He exhaled slowly and held his hands out in front of him, saw how they were shaking. Now that the confrontation had cooled and some semblance of order had descended, and Thi was being seen by a physician, he was finally experiencing the aftereffects of a potent adrenaline rush. “I can’t believe that piece of scum would do that to her – a woman.”
“Did you not kill Ha Jiin women during the war, Mr. Stake.”
That brought Stake up short. Yes, in fact, he had. He knew for certain that he’d killed two young women who could have been Thi Gonh themselves. And then there were others he suspected he’d killed in various firefights. “That was different, captain. We were trying to kill each other. I was luckier.”
“It was not appropriate for me to say that,” Yengun muttered, as if more to himself than out of apology. He gazed toward the clinic uncomfortably. “In any case, there is the matter I wanted to discuss with you.”
“What’s that?”
“You recall that I told you a witch led me to the place where the three bodies were found, in the Blue City?”
“Yes?”
“Her dreams have not ended. I have been told she is still having strange nightmares. I thought that maybe these visions of hers might be illuminating to you in your investigation, somehow.”
Before Yengun could relate what these dreams consisted of, Stake asked, “Do you think you could arrange for me to meet her in person?”
“She does not speak your language.”
“If you were with me, you could translate for her.”
Yengun grunted in assent. “Very well. Then I will arrange it. I will contact you.”
“Thanks so much for this, captain. Thanks for thinking of me.”
“For now, I think it is wise for you to leave this town immediately. These people may understand why you did what you did, but that does not mean they love Earth people, especially at this time.”
“I hate leaving Thi Gonh here in her condition. I really wish I could take her with me to Di Noon.”
“She is being seen to. Please spare the poor woman further humiliation, Mr. Stake. Leave her be, for now. Come – I will escort you safely out of Vein Rhi.”
Stake nodded reluctantly, and sighed. “Thanks again, captain. For everything.”
Yengun only grunted again, turned away, and climbed up into the wheeled vehicle with his two soldiers. Stake went back to his helicar, ruffling the bristly hair of the boy who had helped him before he slipped inside.
As he turned the craft around to follow the soldiers, Stake threw one more look at the clinic as if he expected to see Thi peeking out at him around the inner office’s curtain. He realized his hands were still shaking at the Harbinger’s controls. He hadn’t yet expended all his bottled up energies – or emotions.
TEN: BRIGHT HORIZONS
Driving back along the forest road, hovering close to the ground, Stake had to pause the car at an intersection with another road that was little more than a foot path in order to let a long string of people pass in front of him. Even before he saw what looked like a giant seed pod being carried on a litter, he knew from the incense and somber faces that this was a funeral procession on its way to one of the extensive burial tunnels that honeycombed the earth beneath the forests of both the Ha Jiin and Jin Haa lands. Customarily, the body was slathered with a bright yellow mineral solution that would crudely mummify it, then wrapped up in a single huge, blue leaf before being transported to one of these subterranean tomb systems. Down there, it would be unwrapped from its leaf coffin and slotted into one of countless cavities dug in the walls of the tunnels.
People in the procession turned their heads to look at his idling vehicle in surprise, curiosity, and disapproval, as if he had defiled their solemn rite. But in his day, Stake had done much more in the way of dishonoring the Ha Jiin dead. Then again, so had their own people. During the Blue War, both sides had taken their battle even beneath Sinan’s surface. Ha Jiin guerillas would often station themselves in these catacombs, and so Colonial Forces units would go down in the tombs after them. But there was more in those labyrinths to attract the Colonial Forces than just enemy soldiers to be flushed out. There was the matter that had caused the Earth Colonies to become interested in distant Sinan in the first place.
Sinon gas.
In the tunnels, the gas might appear as a mere blue haze, or it might curl and billow so that one couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead, an unpleasant prospect for a soldier on either side who was stealing through the grottos. The extent of the gas had a lot to do with the age of the corpses stocked in the tunnels – thin, attenuated mist if the remains were old, lusty and dense clouds if the more recently deceased were in residence – though very often, the dead were mixed together instead of segregated, families owning whole walls of niches so that they might bunk one day alongside their ancestors.
The blue gas was a byproduct of the bodies’ decomposition.
It had also been found to possess surprising properties. Earth Colonies researchers had discovered the gas could be used in excimer lasers, a wide variety of light bulbs, various medical applications such as general anesthesia, inertial confinement fusion, ion propulsion engines, and had proved particularly valuable in teleportation systems. This gas was not encountered in the decomposition of other animals or plants on Sinan, however, and it had been learned that it was the interaction of the yellow preserving agent on the interred dead bodies that provided the necessary reaction to produce the gas – which Earth Colonies research and developers had dubbed sinon.
To the Ha Jiin, though, these gases were the spirits of their ancestors, and were to be revered. So it was that they had not taken kindly to the appearance of the first Earth Colonies researchers, and reacted violently to their intrusions. The hatred had only grown when the Earth Colonies turned to the nascent Jin Haa nation, to support them in their struggle for independence. In return for their help, the Jin Haa – more forward thinking, they boasted – allowed their allies to harvest sinon gas from their own burial tunnels, many of them now adopting the view that the gas was symbolic rather than the literal lingering souls of their dead.
But the Jin Haa nation was tiny compared to the Ha Jiin lands that surrounded it, and so it hadn’t just been missions to search out and destroy the enemy that had sent Colonial Forces deep penetration operatives like Corporal Jeremy Stake into Ha Jiin territory. He had also frequently been sent down into the Ha Jiin burial catacombs, to set up small units that would siphon up the sinon gas and teleport it in measured quantities to a base that had been established in the city of Di Noon, where the gas would be refined and eventually teleported onward to Earth’s own dimension. There was a symmetry to it all. Sinon gas made interdimensional teleportation more feasible, reliable, safe. And teleportation transported the gas out of the dimension in which it was to be found.
The Jin Haa had won their independence, and a bitter peace had existed for over a decade. The terms of peace, and pressure from numerous worlds within the Earth Colonies network, now prevented Colonial Forces units from stealing into Ha Jiin tombs to appropriate their gas. But despite their best efforts at negotiation, the Earth Colonies had still not persuaded the Ha Jiin to willingly let them harvest gas as the Jin Haa did. To the Ha Jiin, the blasphemous Jin Haa had literally sold their souls to their extradimensional allies. Thus, the Earth Colonies had only limited access to sinon gas – only that which the Jin Haa could provide, and the greatly dispersed quantities that could be extracted from the general atmosphere.
Stake’s mind had stolen back in time and back down into the tunnels. He was remembering the faint odor of the gas and the stronger taint of incense that sought to cover the stench of the dead as much as pay tribute to them. He remembered the riddled and torn young Ha Jiin soldiers who had died among
st the rows of shelved mummies. He remembered the echoing screams of Colonial Forces buddies caught in booby-traps their enemies had rigged down there.
When he came back to himself he realized the procession had disappeared into the jungle like a train of ghosts. Disconcerted that he should zone out like that, he started the Harbinger forward again. As he gazed off to his right, he noticed a bluish fog in amongst the dense trees. The nearest entrance to the tunnels, and the one to which the procession was no doubt headed, was obviously close in that direction.
Stake’s wrist comp alerted him to a call. He felt a jolt inside; news about Thi’s condition? But when he saw the face of an Earth man on the screen he didn’t recognize him, at first.
“Mr. Stake? It’s David Bright. I got your number from Henderson.”
Of course. Bright, of Bright Horizons. Stake had encountered him in Gale’s meeting room briefly. “Hello, Mr. Bright. What can I do for you?”
“You can have dinner with me tonight at the hotel where I’m staying in Di Noon. Will you meet with me?”
“Yes. But can I ask what you want to talk about?”
“I’d rather not, over the net like this.”
Stake could understand that. They settled on a time, and Bright told Stake he’d meet him in the dining room of Di Noon’s most sophisticated hotel, the Cobalt Temple.
With the call finished, Stake lifted the helicar higher, higher above the jungle. He glanced at his rearview monitor. The little town of Vein Rhi was lost from view behind him.
***
The Cobalt Temple was one of the tallest structures in Di Noon, a favorite of wealthy Earth Colonies tourists looking for an exotic and unconventional vacation they could boast about back home, and of businessmen who espied the investment opportunities Sinan had to offer. The many-floored building also rented out office space to some of these ventures, including the temporary base of operations Bright had established for his work here on Sinan. Perched at the very top of the cobalt-colored structure was a small traditional temple. It was the law that any building taller than ten stories – thus, taller than a legendary tree sacred to the local beliefs – had to have a temple at its summit in order to mediate between the material and spiritual worlds.
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