by Baen Books
He lowered his bottle. “I studied the ruins in school.”
“School what?”
“You sit in a room and learn things.” He considered me. “I guess you don’t have that here.”
“Teach myself.” Gourd helped by stealing access for me to the city education meshes.
“What about your parents?” Orin spoke carefully. “Do they hit you?”
I scowled at him and spit out the last bit of my spice stick.
“Bhaaj—”
“Nahya.” I wished I hadn’t spit out my stick. I’d rather eat it, even if Orin did annoy me. Then I remembered. I had more sticks! I took out a second and crunched on the end. I felt guilty then. Orin and I had a bargain: he gave me food and water, and I acted as his guide, which included answering questions about the Undercity. I always honored my bargains.
I touched my bruised cheek. “From fight. I lost.” After a pause, I added, “Mother dead. I kill.”
“What?” Orin gaped at me. “I don’t believe you are capable of that act.”
“My being born,” I clarified. “Killed her.”
Now he just looked sad. “Bhaaj, I’m so sorry.”
I had no idea what he meant. He’d done nothing, and even if he had, he shouldn’t be saying sorry, showing weakness. I hunched up my shoulders and didn’t look at him.
“What about your father?” Orin asked.
“Don’t know.” I glanced up. “No one knows.”
“I’m sorry.”
Again! He was starting to make me angry. “For what?”
“That you don’t know your parents.”
“Most dusters don’t.” I couldn’t figure what he was about.
“Who takes care of you?”
“Me.”
“You used to look so young,” he said. “But you’ve changed this year. Grown. A lot. You don’t seem much like a child any more.”
Strange man. Sometimes he seemed so dense. Of course I was an adult. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I said nothing.
“How do you survive here? Are you alone?” He stopped. “No, wait, I’ve seen those other kids following us sometimes.”
He was doing it again, asking too much. I just looked at him.
“Are you in one of the cartel gangs?” he asked.
Cartel gangs? That made no sense. He hadn’t learned much in that school of his. Dust gangs had nothing to do with the cartels, and drug punkers had nothing to do with the dust gangs.
I just said, “Nahya.”
“How do you support yourself?”
I stood up. “Got to go.”
“Bhaaj, wait.” He took out another bottle of water and offered it to me. “Don’t go.”
I hesitated. Our circle could use the water. I sat down again, watching him warily. Then I took the bottle and put it in my pack.
After a moment, he said, “When I first notified the chair of the Anthropology Department that I intended to come here, he told me it wasn’t safe. Said I’d be mugged and probably murdered unless I took guards with me.
I didn’t know if he was making fun with “anthropology-department.” He didn’t look drunk, though, and he wasn’t smirking. The rest of what he said made sense. We didn’t like above-city intruders. He was a man and good-looking, so I doubted even the punkers would’ve killed him, but you never knew. For sure, someone would have beaten him up and taken his stuff. Whether they would have used his body in other ways, I didn’t know. Maybe. No matter. He had my protection now.
I said only, “Cops not come here.”
“Yes, I know.” He finished off his water. “I hired a security firm, and they sent an armed escort with me the first time I came. But I couldn’t find anything. No people we could see. The canals were empty. When I tried to investigate the ruins, people threw knives at us from hiding places. Someone shot at us, and someone else threw a flare bomb.” He shook his head. “My guards fired back, but they couldn’t see our attackers. I just hope they didn’t hurt anyone.”
So that had been Orin. We’d all heard about it in the whisper mill. Of course he couldn’t find anyone. We were experts at hiding, using hidden spaces in the walls, ceilings, and floor of the canals, and also tech-mech shrouds our cyber-riders built. It was one of the few times the gangs, punkers, and riders had worked together, all to rebuff the intruder in our world. He and his team had left fast.
“No one hurt,” I told him.
“You knew about it?”
I didn’t intend to reveal anything. So I just said, “You came back. Alone.”
He gave me a wry smile. “My colleagues told me I was insane. I hoped that if I presented a less threatening appearance, I might be more successful.”
He’d been right. I wondered why he was telling me this. He talked so much, with so many extra words, he made my head hurt, but I liked it anyway.
“Why tell this?” I asked.
“It’s just—I’ve been coming here for three years, and I’ve met almost no one except you. The police say mostly drug dealers live in the Undercity, also a few homeless.” He rubbed his chin. “That doesn’t seem right. I’m trained to understand human cultures. I may have seen only a few of your friends, but I can still tell. You have a full life here. A viable, functional community. And a lot more people live here than the government realizes.”
I froze. This was none of his business. We wanted Cries to ignore us. The less they bothered my people, the better. Whenever they came here, trying to “improve” things, they caused no end of trouble, like stealing our children for the orphanage, or “giving jobs” by forcing us to labor on water farms in the desert. They also pissed off the drug cartels, who made us all suffer when they got upset. Or they busted our cyber-riders, which meant we lost our tech wizards and mesh access.
I stood up to leave. Then I stopped. I had to respect my bargain with him. Gritting my teeth, I sat down again.
Orin spoke carefully. “All right. Let’s try something else. How about you ask me questions?”
That startled me out of my anger. “What?”
“About Cries. What would you like to know?”
What indeed. Although the images I’d seen of the City of Cries were probably fake, something was out there. Wait, I knew what I wanted to know. “Army.”
“You want to hear about the armed forces?”
“Yah. Fighters.”
“All right.” He went back to brushing dust off a pipe. “We have four branches of the armed services. Taken together, they are called Imperial Space Command, or ISC, the military of the Skolian Imperialate. The Imperial Fleet is the largest branch. The Advance Services Corps provide scouts for planetary landings and foot troops. The Jagernaut Forces are the elite star-fighter pilots. The Pharaoh's Army is the oldest branch of ISC. It’s primarily concerned with planetary warfare, but they also have deep space divisions.”
I scowled at him, wondering if he even knew what he was talking about. “Jibber.”
“Bhaaj, it’s not gibberish.
“Says nothing.”
Orin put down his brush. “Women and men serve in the military to protect their people.”
That made more sense. Like a dust gang. “Protect circle.”
“Yes, something like that.”
“Where armed forces?”
“A lot of places.” He motioned upward. “The City of Cries is a civilian government center, but the Pharaoh’s Army has a strong presence here. The House of Majda pretty much runs Cries, and they’re almost all in the army. The Matriarch of the House is one of the Joint Commanders of ISC, the General of the Pharaoh’s Army.”
Even I had heard of the Majdas. Royalty. They were so far above me, they had no impact on my life. Most of what he’d said went by me like a gust of air, but one idea stuck.
“Army protect?” I asked.
“That’s right.”
“Teach you fighting?”
“Yes. They do.” Orin watched me with obvious curiosity. “Are you thinking of enlisti
ng?”
“What enlist?” I’d seen that word on the mesh site for the army.
“Join the military. Become a protector.”
I might have considered it, but I had no wealth, and above-city people did everything with the invisible nothings they called credits. Even if they paid you to fight, which I found hard to believe, they had to let you in first and that couldn’t be free. “Cost too much.”
“It doesn’t cost anything.”
“Is true? Pay you to fight?”
“That’s right. You would earn a salary as a private. More if you advance in the ranks.”
I squinted at him. “Private?”
“New soldier.”
“Soldier mean fighter?”
“That’s right.”
I was already a soldier then, one of the best among the dust gangs. Maybe this army could make me even better. It didn’t seem likely, though. They all must be above-city slicks, because I didn’t know anyone here who had “enlisted.” Everything about the above-city cost far, far too much. I knew I should forget about it, but I couldn’t hold back my curiosity.
“How much cost to join army?” I asked. “I give them food, water?”
“Bhaaj, listen.” Orin spoke intently. “You don’t pay anything. They pay you. They feed and house you, and offer medical benefits. They can provide an education if you don’t already have one. They teach you how to fight and then deploy you.”
I clenched my fist, suddenly angry. “No charity!” Three syllables. It should have five.
“Charity?” He looked as if I’d just suggested he stand on his head and blow bubbles through his nose. “Do you understand what you would be offering them in return?”
“Nahya.” So far he had said nothing about my side of the bargain.
Orin spoke in a quiet voice. “Your life.”
Ho! Definitely not charity. But I understood. I offered the same here, protecting my circle. A thought came to me like a golden sphere of light around a lamppost. I could join the army, store up the food and water they paid me, bring it home, learn new ways to fight, and pound the bloody hell out of Jadix. Yah, that sounded good.
I nodded to Orin, pleased. “Enlist. Help circle.”
He didn’t look anywhere near as pleased. “If you enlist you can’t come back here, not for at least four years. That’s the minimum term of service.”
I squinted at him. “Eh?”
His gaze never wavered. “If you join the army, you have to go where they send you. You won’t stay on Raylicon. They’ll ship you to a base on some other world.”
I scowled at him. Was everyone from Cries this dense? “Can’t protect if not here.”
Orin pushed his hand through his hair, mussing up the dark locks. “You join the army to protect everyone in the Skolian Imperialate. Not just the Undercity.”
“Protect above-city?” Pah. What a dumb thought. They could protect themselves just fine, as long as they didn’t come here. Why would they need to? I knew nothing about them, other than bizarre views I’d seen on the mesh, those gleaming towers surrounded by sand in every direction, on and on, much too far to be possible. Rock formations stood beyond the city on one side, “mountains,” a giant wall that went up and up and up. It all looked silly, exaggerated to impossible proportions. Why would I want to protect people who made up so much stuff? I should forget this business about “enlisting.”
Shouldn’t I?
#
Gourd was sitting on his favorite rock stump in the main cavern where our circle lived. He had strewn his tech-mech stuff over several other stumps, including the big one he used as a worktable. He was tinkering with his water filtration system. His girlfriend sat on the ground, leaning against his leg, her head resting on his thigh, her eyes closed. She had a bottle of whiskey in one hand, her fingers clasped around its neck. The green glass reflected the lights Gourd had set up so he could see his work.
All of the little dusters were over by the far wall with Top Deck, Ketris, and Byte, feasting on the stores we’d taken from Jadix. Dig was pacing back and forth, on guard duty. Top Deck had finished his new tapestries and hung them on the walls. They glowed in rich colors, dark gold, blue, and green, far more beautiful than the pale imitations of Undercity work sold by vendors on the Concourse. As I walked inside, I dumped my pack with the water bottles onto the pile of other packs by the entrance.
Dig stalked over to me. “Jak where?”
I shrugged. “Screwing around.”
“No show for practice.”
He’d promised to spar with me, too, and he hadn’t showed up then, either. I scowled. “Dice.”
Dig smacked her right fist into her left palm. “Stupid.”
I wished he wouldn’t disappear all the time. I missed him. He couldn’t quit gambling any more than a hack user could stop smoking, Gourd’s girlfriend could stop drinking, or Gourd could stop playing the games he found on the Cries meshes. Nothing held Dig that way, but her mother wanted her to sell the shit that turned people into zombies, which was even worse. Dig told her no. She only agreed to help when the supplies Jadix gave in return helped our circle survive. Jadix Kajada was no fool. She knew Dig had a mind faster than the above-city authorities, faster than Hammer Vakaar, faster even than Jadix. Yah, Dig was smart—enough to know she didn’t want what her mother offered.
Jadix’s current project was to make me into a cartel fighter. Dig refused to help her, one of the many reasons Dig would forever have my loyalty, but I hated the way it put her in the middle. I didn’t see how to escape the future that lay ahead of us. Life was more agreeable when Jak was here, but he let the dice take him away. I almost wished he’d get his dream, that damn casino, because if he had to run it, the work might distract him enough that he stopped gambling himself.
#
“Bhaajo, wake up!”
I punched out, trying to get rid of the annoying person whispering at me.
My tormentor caught my hand and grunted. “You got muscle.”
“Jak?” I pulled away and sat up. I could just barely see him in the glow from a candle Gourd’s girlfriend had left burning across the cave. “Where go?”
“Nowhere.”
He must have had a bad night. Otherwise he’d boast about his wins. “How much lose?”
“Nothing.”
As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I realized he had a blotch on his face. Leaning closer, I saw a large bruise on his cheek. Someone had hit him. “Fight?”
He waved his hand in dismissal. “Said I cheated.”
“Did you?”
“No. Won cards fair this time.”
“This time?”
“Not important.”
“Is important! No cheating. They kill you.” It was a lot of words, but I wanted to make sure he understood their importance. I didn’t want him to die for some poker game. At least we were safe here. I looked around. I had a corner in the cave with a half wall of rock that gave me privacy. Across the main cave, Gourd stood by the entrance, taking his shift as the night guard.
Jak stretched out on the soft pile of rugs I used as a bed. “I sleep.” He smiled. “Maybe.”
I lay back down, but I didn’t want to make love. He expected me to carry on as if I hadn’t spent the entire day fearing he’d died. I lay on my back like a block of ice.
He jumped up again. “Got water?”
I swore under my breath and sat up. “Quiet. Wake people up.”
Jak paced across the cave and grabbed a bottle from our stores. He stood there, feet planted, his head tilted back as he drank, looking sexy as all hell in his black clothes, tight and torn, outlining his lean muscles. It pissed me off. He got away with stuff because people liked him. He made them laugh. He’d make me forget to be mad at him. It wasn’t right. I lay down and turned over, closing my eyes.
Footsteps rustled behind me. Familiar steps. I ignored them.
Jak lay down again and put his arms around my waist, pulling my back against his front.
“Come on, Bhaajo.”
“Not call me that,” I growled.
He ran his finger down my side, under my muscle shirt, making my skin tingle. “Hmmm?”
I turned over in his arms, onto my back. He pushed up on his elbow and regarded me. “Look like goddess, Bhaaj. Wild goddess of war.”
Goddess of war, indeed. I couldn’t help but smile. “Defeat you, eh?”
He laughed and came down for a kiss.
#
Jak was gone when I woke up, off to gamble or jog the canals or do whatever he needed to calm his hyperactive self, and he deserved that four-syllable word. I paced by the entrance to the cave, taking my guard shift while everyone else ate breakfast. I couldn’t sit, couldn’t eat, couldn’t stop burning. Damn it, he always did this.
After breakfast, Gourd went with Dig to practice the rough and tumble. The kids played, Ketris watched them, Top Deck carved figurines of ancient warriors with swords, and Byte tended the sickly plants he kept in pots by the water filtration system. The pale stalks never grew right. They were supposed to survive in the dark, but they died too easily. Gourd’s girlfriend was slouched against one wall, dozing off her hangover. I wondered if she even rode the cyber waves anymore, or just mooched off us. I continued to pace, mad as a lizard on hot coals.
I sat down on the rock stump Gourd used for a chair and squinted at a rod he’d left on his table. When I tapped the rod, it unrolled into a blotched screen, silver in some places, dark in others.
“Eh?” I said, by way of greeting. The screen didn’t answer.
I poked at the screen for a while, until suddenly it lit up, or at least the silvery parts glowed. “My greetings,” it said. “Can I help you?”
Pah. Above-city tech. “Nahya,” I told it.
“I don’t understand your word,” it said. “Are you using the dialectical form of the negative adopted by the population living under the City of Cries?”
“Jibber,” I said.
“Do you have a question?”
“Yah.” What would I ask an above-city piece of stuff? “Where go? Army enlist.”