Ragamuffin (26 page)

“Gentlemen,” Pepper said in a calm voice.

“Hello,” said the man in the car, standing up to look at them. He wore a feathered cape. His pronunciation sounded odd, not like Xippilli’s but more
halting and unused to the language. “My name is Ahexotl. Xippilli said you were here.”

Jerome bit his lip. Xippilli. That traitor. They might have had a chance if he had kept their location secret just a little bit longer.

Pepper looked behind them as more Azteca moved into the streets, surrounding them. “What do you want?”

“Originally the boy, but now, just you will do. Drop your weapons. You can’t get out of this.”

Jerome felt Pepper twist, tense, then stop. “You’ve seen how many I can kill if I choose back there?”

Ahexotl nodded. “Maybe you could escape. But then the boy will die, and I think you don’t want that. But to the reason I’m here: You are one of the Nanagadan immortals? Like this boy’s father?”

“Maybe.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Ahexotl said. “I’ll let the boy live if you come with us and talk to the gods.”

“The Teotl wish to speak to me? Why?”

Ahexotl made a face. “They have not deigned tell me yet. But they are most insistent that they talk to someone of your kind.”

The two men stared at each other, two predators sizing each other up.

“I’ll come,” Pepper finally said. He dropped the pair of shotguns. “The boy comes with. Harm him and, Ahexotl, I will not just kill you, but kill you very, very slowly.”

Ahexotl smiled. “May I offer you a ride?”

“You may.” Pepper walked forward and pulled Jerome with him. He muttered, “Stay fresh, stay sharp.”

“I’ve got a pistol,” Jerome muttered.

Pepper laughed, and the two clambered into the steam car with their new enemy.

M
other Elene waited for John in the basement of an unassuming three-story house. From there she took over, leaving Sister Agathy behind and opening a door in the wall into a tiny, cramped room.

It was an elavator, which hissed and slowly sank down through the earth once Mother Elene shut the door.

She said nothing until the elevator finally shuddered to a halt. “This way.”

John followed her into a large rocky chamber. They were deep beneath the city now. The walls dripped strips of bioluminescent slime that lit the chamber in a faint green glow, helped along by large flaming torches planted every few feet.

Large eggs sat at the far end.

“You welcome to a privileged sight,” Mother Elene said. “The Metamorphosis.”

John walked toward the eggs.

“Stay back,” Mother Elene snapped. “Show some respect, man. Them the Loa.”

“They are turning themselves into something different, a different physical form?” John asked.

Mother Elene nodded. “Yes, but it ain’t for fighting, like you thinking.”

“For what then?”

A hissing set of syllables from behind John startled him.

“The escaping,” the Vodun priestess said, translating for him. She sat down in a wicker chair by the doors they’d just come in. On the other side of her lay a Loa, its body looking like a pearly seashell. Halfway to becoming an egg like the others. The head had become absorbed into the shell-like area, but the face remained. Large eyes, beaked nose, and a slit mouth etched onto the shell’s surface.

In the last war the Loa had disappeared into the bowels of the city to ride out the invasion. They were not repeating that, but doing something else now. They also knew how dangerous things had become this time around.

“You know the Teotl are coming from orbit?” John asked it.

It wheezed back. “Yes. We hear them calling for all of we. But we don’t respond,” Mother Elene translated.

“So you’re running from the fight,” John said. “What do you want with me?”

The Loa spoke for itself. “Information, assistance.”

“Your ulterior motives disturb me.” John folded his arms. “You’ve caused us so much grief, and death, the Teotl and you.”

For a few seconds the Loa hissed furiously, while Mother Elene looked down at the ground. Then it gathered itself. “You of all people know the damages your kind did as well. You yourself destroyed an entire lineage of my sisters in a nuclear attack. Do not presume yourself innocent of such vile things.”

John blinked and then nodded. The creature was truthful, though he’d only had ten years to readjust to those memories and figure out who they meant he was.

Not always someone he liked.

“What am I here for?” he repeated.

“Well, once, a long time ago, I would have liked to have killed you,” it said. “When you destroyed my sisters in a ship attack, I begged to come all the way out here and fight to wipe your kind out. We could not share a planet. Your DNA, right-handed, ours left. Our terraforming plans clashed, only one of us could live on a planet created by the other.”

John looked over at Mother Helene. Had he been lured here to be killed? She gave no sign of what was about to come.

“I was sent away to study where your kind came from,” the Loa continued, as if unaware of John’s nervousness. “We were a young race, so proud and sure of ourselves. I have shared memories from this time, and, oh, how we sing with determination.”

“Your DNA is left-handed?” John asked, trying to move the alien’s attention well past memories of its dead siblings. “How have you survived all this time?”

“We were wrong to think only one of us could hold the planet. We both could, if we drastically changed ourselves physically, just as we are doing now. In the beginning this was to be a base, a new beginning, and the start of an exodus for us. Unfortunately, in the end, all of our assumptions were wrong. We found we could share a planet, if we suffered deep changes to ourselves. We also found out that we could not run from our problems.”

“Why not?”

“We were supremely disappointed to find that the area beyond this planet was also infected. There was nowhere to really run to.”

“Infected?” By what? John knew of no infections.

The Loa shifted painfully, rocking the shell of its lower body. “When we strode into space, there were . . . things waiting for us. Creatures that grew up in the dark of interstellar space. We were not the top of the natural order, there were predators and ecologies out in the greater expanse of space. Within a generation of spreading out beyond our world, we were found by creatures that took control of our bodies and used our minds as a resource. In short time we were their limbs, minds, and eyes.

“We fought back. We stored our memories chemically in backups, reshaped ourselves, and tried to escape. That was why we came here and fought you so desperately. Only your kind was under the same yoke.”

“I’ve never heard of any such thing,” John said. “The Maatan and the Gahe occupied Earth, but they are their own races.”

“Behind them lie another force,” the Loa said. “But it does not matter now. We have come to believe that the truth is, intelligence puts us in competition directly with these, and other species. Our new metamorphosis will take us to the sea here in a new, safe form. Just as we adapted ourselves when we realized occupation of this world was pointless, that there were no clean stretches of space for us to live in. When we decided to try and help your kind against those of ours who dreamt in vain that holding this world, so far from ours, would be the right thing.”

“What will you become?”

“Giant deep-sea fish,” the Loa said. “Deep in the dark of the ocean.”

“And if we can’t keep this world from freezing, and the environment changes?” John asked.

“There are triggers programmed into us for such a thing. Listen, John, we have a gift for you.”

Mother Elene leaned forward and handed John a small wooden flask. John made to open it, but she shook her head. “What is it?” he asked.

“We are masters of the biological,” the Loa said. Its words were getting more strained, as if its mouth was hardening. “Now that we will be changed beyond recognition, we can leave you a dangerous gift. A plague. An infection that will destroy the Teotl. We have no need of this, we can move on. You are the ones stuck with this now, you are the young race. Do with it what you will, John, and we wish the city the best of luck.”

And that was it. The Loa’s eyes glazed over and it settled back into waiting to change into something different.

“Come.” Mother Elene led John back toward the elevator.

As it headed up, John looked over. “How will they reach the sea?”

“We go help them.”

“Even though it means they are leaving you,” John said.

Mother Elene did not respond. When the elevator jerked to a stop, she pointed him at the basement. “Be safe with that thing and don’t get kill. Is a powerful weapon.”

John tucked it into a pocket, gingerly. “Good day, Mother Elene, and good luck.”

She shut the door.

Outside, John blinked several times. Lines of Azteca soldiers marched down the street at the end of the block, making their way toward the walls of the city.

In the distance the sound of rifle fire popped and cracked, while several explosive booms echoed all across the city.

The occupation had begun. A large-bellied aircraft flew in over the walls and paused over the center of the city, then lowered itself into the large garden clearing by the Ministerial Mansion.

Fires burned, smoke columns reaching high into the sky.

“Hey, hey!” A woman peered through a crack in a nearby door and waved at John.

“What do you want?”

“Ain’t no one allowed out on the street. You go get shot. Get in here before any of them notice you.”

John ducked in, and they slammed the door shut behind him. Two women in long, gray dresses stood inside the small room, lit by a single candle. Chairs and tables lay scattered around; it had once been a restaurant. The smell of fried fish dripped out of the clammy inside air.

The woman who’d called John over wore a handkerchief over her mouth. “I’m Pam. This my sister, Violet. You know it dangerous out there. You John deBrun, right? I seen you once at the waterfront.”

John nodded. “Thanks. Yes.” So many in the city knew him it was useless to pretend otherwise.

“They looking for you, as well as any of the other councilmen who trying to hide.”

“Any idea why?” John walked over to the window. They all shrank back
from it as a pair of men in bright red capes and rifles at the ready walked down the street.

“Here. They had rain these down on the city not too long ago.” Violet thrust a piece of paper in his hands.

It was a letter to anyone who had settled this planet several hundred years ago and still lived. The new Teotl needed their help and would pay well for it and guaranteed their safety.

John crumpled it and threw it on the concrete floor.

“You don’t believe them?” Pam asked.

“Never had any reason to trust the Teotl yet,” John said. “I’d rather not walk myself into my own death.”

“What you go do next?”

“I don’t know. What happened to the minister, was there any fighting back?”

“Not sure, but mongoose and ragamuffin fighting some. Mainly looking to get organize, it all happen so quick. Ship coming from the sky, Azteca pouring out,” Pam said.

“Most of the shooting you hear is people like we shooting from the window at them,” Violet said.

John patted his coat. Hide, or put himself in a position to strike back? Could he release a biological weapon against the Teotl? Would it be enough to turn the tide? “Can I get close to the Ministerial Mansion? That way I can watch who goes in, and maybe figure out what is happening in there?”

If they were really looking for people like him, they must need something. There were ways into the Mansion as well, and if he hooked up with mongoose-men, he could gain some help.

“We’ll help you,” Pam promised. “But for right now, we have to sit tight. Curfew is on for the next day, no one in the street. More feather-clot coming.”

“Door by door,” Violet said from the window. “They coming door by door to search we street.”

“They’re looking for us door by door?” John walked toward the window, but Pam grabbed his shirt.

“They looking for guns,” she said.

“And?”

“That go be a problem if they look a bit too close in here.” Pam pulled him toward the back of the room toward the kitchen. “Stacking plenty of rifle.”

They turned the corner and she opened a heavy iron lid of a massive coal stove with a grunt. Rows of rifles gleamed underneath.

Pam pulled a pair out. “Head out through the kitchen to the back closet. That go take you to the basement, and from there you can get out through the window to the back street.” She let the top of the stove drop. She took the lid off a large pot, pulled out a pistol, and handed it to John. “Get under the street using the grate, head north until you bump into someone. Let them know what happen. They’ll help you get where you need.”

Azteca started knocking at the door. “Just a minute,” Violet shouted. Pam raised her dress to reveal a holster fashioned out of leather for the rifle. Another for the pistol on the left thigh.

She dropped the dress back down. “Hopefully they go be real polite.”

“You think you can fight back against all this?” John asked. “They’re dropping from the sky, better technology, better weapons, more people.”

“This house been in my family since my granddad. I ain’t go be running around in no sewer and giving all this over to them,” Pam said.

“They looking like they go break the door in now,” Voilet said.

“Chances is they won’t spot nothing.” Pam pushed back. “Now go quick.”

John turned and followed her directions down into the basement. He barely fit out the window, looking around for the Azteca. Knowing there was no back door, they hadn’t posted any guards.

As he scrabbled out, he heard pans and pots thrown to the floor and feet thudding around. Pam or Violet shouted angrily back at someone.

John tensed, waiting for the shooting. It didn’t come.

Letting out a relieved breath, he moved toward the nearest grate and pulled it free. With one last breath of fresh air he dropped down under the streets, pulling the grate back over him.