Philippine Speculative Fiction (27 page)

Surprised? That would be an understatement. It took me a few moments to recover from the loss. By then, most of the natives had retreated. Our men managed to drag the prisoners, along with
Roja’s body, aboard the
Fuego
. The
Machacar
was totally immobilized, so it had to be left behind. It was later recovered by another war dirigible. The
Dominador
, if
I’m not mistaken.

Of course I have. I filed a detailed report with the Ordo Mechanica as soon as we returned to base. I’ve also made my recommendations on the necessary metallurgical improvements that would
prevent this disaster from happening again.

Let me tell you, Inspector, the next time those barbarians try something like that again—the outcome will be very different.

Padre Martin de Joya (chief administrator, outer Pacific colonies)

NO NEED FOR formalities, my friend. We are here to celebrate the removal of a thorn that has plagued us for too long.

Thank you. I applaud the thoroughness of your investigation. As you know, I was there when the
Fuego
landed and I was among the first to receive a full accounting of their confrontation
with the insurgents, as well as the death of Alastor de Roja.

I do not know how the body disappeared. I personally saw to it that it was shipped off to Hispancia the very next day. He may have been guilty of many crimes against the Church and Crown, but he
was still the scion of a prominent and respected family in Madrid.

No, I am not one to indulge in political games. I fulfilled my duty and assigned Padre Gaudencio and Padre Velazquez to accompany the body back to Hispancia. I followed protocol to the letter.
When the body was reported missing, they were immediately cloistered pending the results of our investigation.

I understand that you have to ask me, though I admit to being astonished that you would insinuate that there is—

Yes, I know that this is a highly irregular incident. Bodies do not just disappear into thin air. But what does it matter? The man is dead. I was there when the representative of the Ordo Medica
examined the corpse. I stared at Alastor de Roja’s cold, dead, face.

Perhaps it was the work of sympathizers, or, unlikely as it sounds, one of the natives may have managed to board the dirigible and take the body. I am certain there is a perfectly rational
explanation. Our investigation is not yet complete. You can call for Padre Gaudencio, or Padre Velasquez, if you wish.

Certainly not, I refuse to entertain superstitious nonsense. Alastor de Roja was just an ordinary man. If you wish to explore the opinion of heathens and charlatans, you can knock on the doors
of the Ordo Arcanum.

I do not mean to make your work more difficult, but I really do not think—

Yes, we transported the indio prisoners here for further questioning. There was a woman among them, one of their leaders—or at least someone of authority. I can tell you now that she is a
follower of their pagan religion. They worship something they call Lama—no—what was it?

They call it
Lumawig
.

Amihan (captive insurgent leader, Katao native) [translated text]

HE IS A good man. He cared about us. He respected our way of life. He worked with us and showed us that there are those of you who understand that we are all children of
Lumawig
.

Why should I answer your questions? You can try to force your false god on us, but the
anito
will defy you, and show you what true power is. True power is not in your machines, it is in
the spirit of my people, the spirit of our land.

You think you have killed him? Where is his body? You will never understand, because he is not dead. He is beyond your reach for he is now one with
Lumawig
. Though he was born on your
land, he has seen the injustice of your ways.

The
Adarna
was just the beginning. Send more of your machines and we will destroy them. We will use what he taught us to defeat you and drive you from the land of our ancestors.

You can kill me now, but that will not change things. One day soon, Hinirang will be free.

Nikki Alfar has fought fire seven thousand feet in midair and killed a snake with a flip-flop. Confoundingly, she’s found it much harder to earn a
few Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, a couple of Bewildering Stories Mariner Awards, a Manila Critics’ Circle National Book Award, and selection as one of twelve
‘Filipina writers of note’ by the Ateneo Library of Women’s Writings. Nevertheless, she perseveres, somehow getting fiction published nationally and internationally (There’s
an updated bibliography on her
Facebook timeline
), including her short story
collection,
Now, Then, and Elsewhen
(UST Publishing)
.

AMI IS HAPPILY arranging newspapers when the whole ownership drama begins.

As purser, she knows she should really put a stop to it right away—well before Lin and Marisol’s currently-furtive bickering gets loud enough to bother the flight crew—but
she’s enjoying her task and, besides, continues to entertain the wavering but still somewhat optimistic hope that, one day, at least some of her colleagues will arrive at the realization that
they are grown women.

She is, after all, heading up the cabin crew on a commercial flight from Mars, so it is far from unreasonable to say that stranger things have happened in the history of the
world—worlds—possibly not less plausible things, but certainly stranger ones.

Besides—she rationalizes to herself—the newspapers are important: just the kind of old-fashioned touch pax love, even though it’s exactly that authenticity that has kept
newspapers and all other PromptPrint items off of commercial flights for the entire four years since the interplanetary runs began; the digipaper is so genuine in texture that there was concern
over transmission of potentially hazardous microbes between planets.

But in the first place, scientists have decided that the majority of microbes are more helpful than harmful—it turns out that the human body is neither so much ‘human’ nor
‘body’ as it is a host of cells, ninety percent of which are bacterial, fungal, or otherwise nonhuman.

This is a finding that horrified Ami when she initially read it—in, yes, a newspaper, the
PDI
, the last time she was back home—and she was still more horrified when she
related this tidbit to Cara and Enrique on her next flight out, only to then spend the entire trip trying in vain to explain what a microbe is, to people who didn’t actually give a toss.

Not for the first time, Ami reflects that she really ought to look into a career change, except that this is an entirely whimsical, indulgent train of thought, when she has parents, siblings,
nieces, nephews, and an apparently unending mortgage to support.

In the second place, anyway, the successful deployment of the new nanoscanners has effectively lifted the moratorium on PromptPrint, which is why Ami is pleased to be serving aboard one of the
very first flights finally offering newspapers to TransGalactic passengers, which makes a welcome change that she relishes in the otherwise unvarying routine of inflight service, which is why she
really ought to go and shut Marisol and Lin down, before they take all the fun out of being able to offer something new.

It’s not as if fixing newspapers actually takes any time at all; there’s a trick to it—she’s heard this works just as well on traditional paper as on digital—you
simply stack them in a neat pile and administer a sort of karate chop in the center to make them all fold, after which you can fan them out neatly, quickly, and professionally on a glidetray.

She does this one more time, just to be sure—admittedly, really, just to savor one more quiet moment to herself prior to showtime—before re-fluffing the scarf that discreetly hides
the Orlan safety collar around her throat, and heading off to manage the infants that she has to work with.

THERE’S AN ART to telling off self-centered young women who know for a fact that they are pretty because, after all, it was one of their primary job
qualifications—you have to be able to do it with, simultaneously, a warm smile and the type of unquestionable authority normally attributed to heads of state.

Otherwise, like anyone else who happens to annoy them while being unfortunate enough to share the same oxygenated cabin with them, it’s diarrhea-inducing eye drops in your drink,
‘accidental’ bumps and thumps against your seat when you’re trying to sleep, or soy sauce in your shoes, should you be foolish enough to take them off and leave them lying around
where sly, photon-manicured little hands can get at them.

Luckily, Ami is an expert at the gloss-and-boss dichotomy, which she has learned is not only useful for handling one’s fellow flight attendants as well as unruly pax, but extremely helpful
in pursuing an inflight career path. This is one of the reasons why she—a girl from an obscure island nation smaller than some asteroids—is one of less than sixty pursers, to date,
certified to lead cabin crews on off-world flights, a fact of which her father is never slow to remind family, friends, and acquaintances, not to mention inform utter strangers in money-transfer
outlets and on board the GraviTransit.

Of course, Filipinos have always been very hirable in the service industry—in the early 2000s, call centers formed a sizeable chunk of the Philippine economy, and, to this day, over a
third of global seafarers are Filipino. Multiple languages help as well, which is why Ami understood every single curse word being hissed in Mandarin and Spanish, by the time she glided up to Lin
and Marisol with a friendly-yet-firm smile plastered on.

Now they all have their showtime faces plastered on and their Standard English in gear, as they welcome passengers aboard, including Mr. Tawfiq, who, of course, is the entire reason her
crewmembers were squabbling. She should have known it was going to happen, from the moment she spotted his name on the passenger manifest.

Technically, areas of responsibility are assigned as soon as or even before the crew enters the vessel, well before the ground staff hands the manifest over, not that there’s all that much
actual assignment to be done on a Mars flight, since the shuttle is only large enough to carry twelve pax. With a cabin complement of three, that’s one FA for every four passengers, which is
rather indulgent, but then, the kind of person who can afford interplanetary travel is exactly the kind that expects indulgence.

The problem was that, informally, it’s understood that a senior flight attendant can always request to switch duties with a junior, the term ‘request’ being something of a
polite fiction in the rigidly-hierarchical world of inflight service. Marisol, however—off-world-certified for all of two months or so—was stubbornly sticking to the manual and refusing
to trade ownership of Mr. Tawfiq’s section with Lin, instead of meekly acquiescing and then appropriately plotting soy-sauce-footbath revenge.

The simplest solution was for Ami to commandeer Mr. Tawfiq’s section for herself—traditionally, the lead FA takes the most forward and typically most elite section, but this is a
moot point on a Mars flight, where all the sections are essentially interchangeable because it’s all Premier Class—so that’s what she has done, despite the fact that she,
apparently alone in the TransGalactic stable of flight attendants, doesn’t much like him.

It isn’t racism, she thinks—she takes pains to ignore her sister’s voice in her head, loudly claiming that Arab men are invariably dirty and stinky and rude—her dislike
is not liberally distributed among all men of Arabic descent, but confined to Mr. Tawfiq only. Frequent flier and heavy tipper he may be—Mikaela’s flirting with him finished payment on
a new hovercar last year—but he’s demanding, and handsy.

It’s not that Ami is a prude, and she recognizes that that sort of encouraging behavior can get a girl far, even in this day and age, but she prides herself on a certain standard of
professionalism, even in a job that many people still consider more of a husband-hunting pastime than an actual profession.

AMI FINDS HERSELF having to check her cheat sheet while delivering the safety demo spiel, a thing she hasn’t needed to do since training—Mr. Tawfiq’s
‘affable’ butt-pinching greeting must have annoyed her more than she thought.

Thankfully, she covers the miniscule lapse well enough that pax don’t seem to notice, although Marisol does, darting a quick glance back at her in the midst of the
demonstration—while the cheat sheet is, in fact, officially meant to be read from, no one gets certified for interplanetary service without having studied such a fundamental speech so
thoroughly that she knows it with her eyes closed.

Ami widens her own eyes ever so slightly in response, which Marisol correctly interprets as a signal to get back to the task at hand. There was a time when airlines—which really ought to
be called something else now, Ami supposes—attempted to show the demo on video instead of live, but observation quickly proved that passengers are far more likely to pay attention to a pretty
girl doing pantomime than to an easily ignorable screen.

Being the new girl, Marisol is of course stuck with having to enact the actual performance, which no one likes doing because activating the Orlan collar wreaks havoc on your hair, when the
pressure suit balloons out around you, and then you have to rush into the galley to fix yourself up faster-than-light, so as to be able to join the final safety cross-checks.

Ami’s fairly gracious when it comes to this, however—especially since she just took a minute herself, before the demo, to slap another InstaBlend concealer patch over the irritating
rash on her neck, and anyway, it isn’t as if it actually takes three people to make sure that twelve other people have their safety harnesses and collars attached, seats upright, and
belongings stowed, so she doesn’t demand that Marisol rejoin her and Lin in time to check the cabin, only to secure the doors, which is the most important thing, after all.