War World X: Takeover

by John F. Carr

  “Is that a wisdom?” Wilgar asked, peppermint stick sticking out of his mouth as if it were a cigar. A wagon rumbled by, its muskylope hitched by means of frayed hemp rope. Three women, stark naked, danced in a window, beckoning lewdly to passersby.

  Unable to tell if the question mocked him or not, Kev merely said, “Don’t step in dung on the way back.”

  For once, the boy didn’t ask how it was possible to avoid it.

  They walked in a humble posture, heads slightly bowed. They never made eye-contact. Weapons, most makeshift but some impressively illegal in the CoDominium’s eyes, were much in evidence. Most buildings showed bare planks above ground and people walked along the sides of the dirt roads on boards useless for much else, when such boards weren’t stolen for firewood. A pallor of smoke captured smells of sweat, shit, and alcohol and kept them near the ground, on which lay the dead-drunk, the dying, and the just-plain dead.

  Castell City needed a squinty-eyed, hard-jawed sheriff with a quick mind and a quicker gun-hand, at least, when its condition was expressed in Old Earth Hollywood Western idiom. Comparisons practically jumped one’s bones, Kev thought. He’d long since stopped viewing such mental embraces as romantic or attractive in any way. Boomtown meant explosion to Kev now, and he couldn’t think of much to recommend being in an explosion of any kind.

  “I still think helping that spy is risky. What’s in it for them?”

  “Our help is passive, peaceful. We may gain a voice in a larger chorus, a part of the grand symphony of worlds.”

  “And the Alderson drives might stop functioning this very minute, but I doubt it.”

  Kev rolled his eyes. He walked on, and missed seeing Wilgar’s look of quick disappointment as the boy gazed at the First Deacon’s back for an instant, before scampering along with his usual overflow of energy.

  Cole handed over Kennicott scrip and grinned. “You’re sure you know where this spot is?” he asked the river rat whose skiff he was hiring.

  The man shrugged beneath the muskylope cloak he wore. His skin matched the river mud with which his hands and feet were coated. “It’s along the river, huh? We go upriver, we find, huh?”

  Cole stepped into the small boat, pointed at the front and square at the back. He regretted the loss of the much faster zodiac/raft, Black Bitch. This one had no name, at least none he could see. He sat on the middle seat, while the river rat sat at the back, to work engine and skeg-rudder. “Snipers, you know,” the river rat said.

  “What’s your name?” Cole asked, ignoring the comment but glancing warily at the bank as the skiff puttered away from shore.

  “Names, huh?” The man spat astern.

  “I’ll call you Ishmael,” Cole said. “Fishing good?”

  Ishmael laughed again, this time coughing up blood, or dark bile. He spat some more, scratched his crotch loudly, then said, “Fish okay.”

  “Okay,” Cole said. He twisted around to look back, past the river rat. He watched Castell City recede, then touched a couple of his weapons. The map flapped in the wind under a rock on the seat beside him. It showed a simplistic schematic of the river, with a large, crude X marked on the eastward shore of the Xanadu.

  The trip took several hours, and they passed every sort of floating vessel, from skiffs and rafts to complete floating houses. Several barges piled high with ore moved by, each sporting metal turrets at the corners from which armed guards kept watch. Most boardings were prompted by the food and survival gear each barge carried; the ore was of use to almost no one on Haven, with no factories yet delivered, or even promised. Most boardings failed, ended in rout or slaughter. Cole hoped to change all that, if his plan fell into place all along the line.

  Haven’s water offered better chances at survival than its land, it seemed. Although no one really tried to keep track, it was possible that more people lived on and along the rivers, lakes and seas of Haven’s great Shangri-La Valley than on the vast plains of grassland or the higher steppes. The mountains were as sparsely populated as lunar peaks, give or take a lunar colony or two.

  Fresh cold air in his face soon had Cole’s muscles aching. He used one of his extra sweaters as a scarf. His hood did well when he kept his head turned to one side. Chunks of ice occasionally thunked the skiff, and once Ishmael bounced it over what looked to be a log. “Gator, maybe,” was all Ishmael said.

  Cole sniffed. He smelled clear water, chill air, and greenery near the shore. Grasses, stalks of reed-trees, and clumps of tanglebush and thorn-bushes lined the river. Higher trees stood a few meters back in many places, while in others grassy dunes lazed.

  Shivering, Cole tried to match the map to the shoreline, but the map was entirely too crude. He folded the map, then burned it by tossing it into the tin can of coals Ishmael kept as a make-shift hibachi between his feet. It not only kept him warm, but cooked his meals and served as a potential weapon when coals were tossed at the gas-tanks of passing opponents.

  They came around a bend in the river and Ishmael grunted. He raised a scarred hand and pointed to the far shore. “Barge,” he grunted. “Wrecked, huh?”

  The letter “K” had been scrawled on the rusted flank of the half-sunken barge. “This is the place,” Cole said. “I won’t be long.”

  “I won’t wait long, huh?” Ishmael said, maneuvering the skiff so it came alongside the exposed hulk and barely kissed against it.

  Cole stood, reaching up to grasp the top of the barge. Rust flaked into his eyes as he pulled himself up. Dark red to begin with, the rusted barge looked virtually black in the orange light of Haven. “Dignity,” Cole yelled, the code-word.

  “Honor,” came the reply. A man’s head appeared from behind the canted, twisted remnants of a wheelhouse. “Welcome aboard,” the man said, waving Cole toward him.

  Inside he found that the man had a pair of thermal beanbag chairs. He sank into one gratefully. “Cole,” Cole said.

  “Franks,” the man said, extending his hand for a manly shake. “You’ve been active already, I understand.”

  “Catching heat already?” Cole smiled. It was good to know one’s efforts were not in vain.

  “My superiors got a couple paranoid memos, yeah,” Franks said. His square face, slit of a mouth, and wide, blue eyes gave him a look of conflicting glee and grimness. He waved big hands a lot as he spoke. He wore the standard Kennicott coverall, thermal and quilted, except no tool belt weighed him down and pockets appeared to be stuffed. This marked him as a ground exec, foreman or higher.

  “Well, I planted a few false flags with some innocents,” Cole said. “So as of a few days ago, some of your people think that the Harmonies want to start buying and stockpiling ore, while other elements think the Harmonies are being paid by Kennicott to hide ore that might be pirated.”

  “And the walls came tumblin’ down,” Franks said, hands flapping happily. He belched, then reached around, hauled on a fisherman’s gill-chain, and brought up a couple tins of beer, which had been dangling through a hole in the tilted floor, into water. He offered Cole one, and when the agent declined, shrugged and tossed them back into the water, to keep them chilled. “So all I know is I got orders to cooperate with you best I can,” Franks said.

  “Good. I’ve set up a couple surprises, explosions. When they happen, spread the word that Harmonies might be behind it. Property damage and delayed explosives might be considered passive, see?”

  “You’re saying Beadles might’a done it?”

  “Exactly.” Cole leaned back and snuggled deeper into the warmth of the thermal beanbag. “They ought to issue these things,” he said.

  “They do. Kennicott’s a good comp’ny, you do yer job right for ’em. So hey, here’s this.” And Franks pulled a thick wad of Kennicott scrip from a pocket. “Funds, they call it in the memo. I call it a wad could choke a horse, only they got more muskylopes than horses here. Choke a muskylope I guess, how about it?” And Franks laughed, appreciative of his own special kind of humor.

  Cole took
the money and separated it into different pockets of his parka, then said, “I’m going to need some barge crews from you. They’ve got to deliver ore to various Harmony locations and keep quiet about it, at least long enough for this thing to work.”

  “No shore leave, then,” Franks said, as if making a mental note.

  “And we’ll need to start spreading a whisper campaign about river pirates, that kind of thing,” Cole added.

  “Ain’t no rumor, no sirree.” Franks waved at the river. “There’s pirates all over, and rogues, scoundrels, all sorts ah water-scum. Crap floats, Mister Cole.”

  “I’ll remind Thomas Erhenfeld Bronson of that,” Cole remarked. “But the pirates I need us to define with our whisper campaign are specifically interested in hijacking ore-barges, cheating Kennicott, and interrupting Haven’s trade, such as it is. Remember the food boycott, Docktown’s takeover, Janesfort, all that? Well, this is going to be worse.

  “Our story is that a black marketeer is getting greedier than usual, and wants a major cut of the legitimate trade. And remember, the Harmonies are in on it, providing sanctuary, hiding places, that kind of thing. Aid and comfort. In short, all legal, valid settlement and trade rights are being abrogated, violated, trashed. And the only way to restore order will be to call in CoDo Marines from Tanith, hell, maybe even from Earth.”

  “Sounds revolutionary,” Franks quipped, smiling broadly.

  “It’s at least revolting,” Cole said. “Meanwhile I’ll work on the Harmonies. It seems they may have a rift in their ranks, as well. There’s a First Deacon Malcolm who seems somewhat ambitious, in a naive way. If I’m right, then I’ve got him hooked, and now it’s just a matter of playing him into our net. A strong CoDo garrison is just what Haven needs, and it’s our job to make sure everyone realizes it.”

  “You confidential fellas do nice work,” Franks said. “I always wanted to be a part of this kind of operation. Seen it done from afar, but always wanted to play a part, you know?”

  “Welcome aboard, then,” Cole said. He very deliberately took some money from one of his pockets, counted out a few thousands creds worth, and handed it to the other man. “Buy your wife some kids.”

  “Just might at that.”

  “Oh, and be thinking of some names. We’ll need a half-dozen or so patsies, fall guys. Ostensible revolt leaders. You can either inspire them to do some actual dirt, or just smear them when the time comes, but set them up so they’ll satisfy a provisional governor and his field court.”

  Cole pulled up the left sleeve of his parka and looked at his wrist, where several times, from Haven to Tanith to Earth, glowed when he scratched. Subcutaneous chrono-computers kept a timetable only he understood. “Meet me here in, what, three Eyes? I’m not really used to Haven cycles yet.”

  “Make it one, Mister Cole. This is Haven. Days and nights get mighty long, and we’ll be wanting more talk once things start poppin’.”

  “And you’ll be wanting more kick-back,” Cole muttered as he climbed over the side of the barge a few minutes later, back into Ishmael’s skiff. Louder, he said, “Home, James.”

  Ishmael grunted a particularly long fart in reply, then pushed the skiff away from the wrecked barge. “Most ah the ore salvaged way back,” Ishmael volunteered as they motored swiftly away, back towards Havenhold Lake and Castell City. “I oughta know, helped wreck the damn thing.”

  Cole said, “In that case, I might have another job for you.” He looked back at the hulk, and there stood Franks, guzzling from a skin. Rolling his eyes, Cole asked Ishmael, “Know any good villains?”

  “Thugs, huh? Sure, sure. Dirty deeds done dirt cheap.” And for the rest of the trip, the river rat dubbed Ishmael regaled Cole with a raucous, ancient song from another, much older frontier.

  “If his friends are as lethal as his singing,” Cole told himself in an undertone as he jumped up onto a Docktown wharf, “the CoDo Marines might have a problem after all.”

  “Be sure to let me know, though,” Wilgar said to the naked woman as he waved to the others, smiled, and stepped outside the place called Cambiston Doxies. He scampered across the mud street and knocked on yet another door, but no one answered, and a man stomping by on the planks called out, “Forget that one, boy, she an’ her gals been sent to the miners.”

  Wilgar nodded. “Last one, then,” he muttered. He splashed toward the Harmony compound, careless of the mud. His robes held so much mud already that it doubled their weight. Even his hair was smeared, and he kept tossing clumped locks out of his eyes.

  Veering north, he walked past some of the better merchants houses, and raised a hand to several children who appeared in several windows. He called their names, and they called his, and invited him in to play in their walled, guarded homes and gardens. He shook his head, though, and told each one, “Maybe later.”

  He moved nearer the palisade, and when he came to the juncture of two sewage sluices, he glanced behind himself, then all around. Quick as thought he ducked under the sagging, seeping mess. He ignored what dripped on him as he made his way toward the Harmony compound.

  Harmonies used treated human waste as fertilizer, “an old German recipe” as the Reverend Castell called it, but Castell City and Docktown and Cambiston and all the other settlements tended to sluice or pump raw sewage into Havenhold Lake and the rivers, without regard to Harmony of any kind. Civilization brings its own ambiguities and oxymorons, always; Wilgar studied Earth’s many moribund cultures for just such lessons, and he often asked aloud how they could be so willfully stupid. Neither his teachers nor even First Deacon Kev Malcolm had any answer. All of them fell back on Harmony platitudes, emphasizing how truly important a genuine search was for Harmony—for cultures as well as individuals.

  It was a hollow only big enough for a small man, or a boy of thirteen. It had been created by water erosion, rare on Haven except where leaky sewers met. And the erosion had exposed the buried ends of seven of the palisade’s posts. A ragged square of cloth some might recognize as a Harmony robe, albeit a stained and tattered one, covered a crude hole through the palisade.

  Wilgar lifted the cloth and slipped under it, into the Harmony compound. He scrambled on all fours along the small tunnel, touching places his own hands had carved. The tunnel ended about three man-lengths past the palisade, and turned up.

  Standing, Wilgar carefully lifted the wood hatch, really just a chunk of board with no hinges: Dirt slid from the board. Wilgar saw nothing but chickens, so he scrambled up into the south-east corner of the coop, where the grain was stored in a locked shed.

  Replacing the board so it covered the tunnel hole, the boy used his feet to scrape a layer of dirt back over it. He snatched a handful of grain and scattered it onto the dirt. He studied it for a second, nodded, then turned and moved from behind the shed.

  Chickens pecked and clucked around him, and roosters challenged his shins. Wilgar walked through droppings, ungathered down-feathers and swirls of agitated, near-mindless chickens. Haven’s orange light had clouded some of the chickens’ eyes. Other chickens had developed bigger pupils. Most did nothing unearthly except produce more eggs and more rooster-crowing during Eyerise.

  Dashing now, Wilgar crossed an empty space, then came to roost atop the south corral fence. It was split-rail in design, but the fence was altered to fit Haven standards, being made of much shorter, stouter planks, due to the trees available and zigzagging much more than any earthly counterpart, to accommodate bundles of thorn-bush set in each wedge.

  Wilgar balanced for a moment, one foot on a post-top, then hopped down, catching his balance by touching a white-faced, mottled Long Angus hybrid. Its stubby horns and husky shoulders gave it a baleful look, but Wilgar simply slapped the beast’s rump and moved past it, crossing the corral half-crouched while the Long Angus wandered off chewing cud.

  Boosting the fence on the far side, the boy ran hard across another open space, leaping over a dip-trench and vaulting a water-trough. He fell flat and rolled
under a wagon, and then for a few minutes simply panted, forcing Haven’s thin air to give up more oxygen than it seemed willing to give. As he lay on his back, he gazed up at the underside of the wagon and touched the fingertips of his right hand to those of his left. Snatches of a Harmony prayer-song came from him and as his breathing settled, more of the soft, simple melody escaped him.

  “Lazing,” came a gruff male voice.

  Wilgar rolled out from under the wagon and gazed up at First Deacon Kev Malcolm. “I was seeking Harmony with the horizontal,” the boy said.

  Kev’s face showed pain. “You mock our precepts,” he said, but his voice carried fatigue more than exasperation.

  Wilgar hung his head and said, “Peace is mine to offer. I’m sorry, First Deacon. My humor has no sense, as you often tell me.”

  Kev smiled down at the boy’s bowed head, but the smile vanished quickly as Wilgar looked up at him. Kev said, “We must prepare for a trek. We must visit some farms.”

  “It’s that deal we made with the spy, isn’t it? He’s not what he seems, I asked around and he hasn’t even visited one bordello. What kind of off-worlder fails to do that? Except Harmonies, and he’s not one of us, that’s for sure.” As soon as Wilgar saw the look of horror on Kev’s face, he stopped jabbering and bowed his head again and said, “I’m sorry.”

  “You’ll be coming with me,” Kev said. “And as of this minute, it’s not a suggestion, but a damned good idea.” And he strode away from the boy, back straight and arms swinging stiffly; it was almost the way the Reverend Castell walked when in the grip of a vision.

  Wilgar, still gaping from the rare profanity, hurried to catch up. As he walked at Kev’s heels, he gazed around at the compound as if to memorize it, or perhaps seeing it for the first time in a new way.

  “Tell you what,” Cole said, shivering despite the hood, three sweaters and makeshift scarf. “Keep east, and drop me on Splashdown Island.”

  Ishmael grunted and belched, but passed the buoy and kept the skiff aimed at the island, visible only as a bulk of silhouette in the distance. To their left Castell City and Docktown glittered with a thousand points of light, like some shipwrecked dream. Without neon, streetlights, or anything but private electricity, Haven’s first and largest city flickered with frontier fire as gloom gathered. Clotted darkness revealed Hecate and Brynhild, riding low as yet, but still catching Byerlight as Cat’s Eye slid into ecliptic.