Ragamuffin (31 page)

“Standard?” Pepper asked.

“Very.”

Pepper nodded. “You start querying all this crap and learning it. I want you to be able to fly one of their shuttles.”

“You think we’ll be able to steal one?”

“The moment we get close enough to something we recognize we can run to, a ship, habitat, or a planet, yes.”

Pepper walked out, and Jerome handed him the necklace remote for their hostage. John uncleared his vision and began looking around the room. Did it speak Anglic? It should, the Teotl had encountered them enough. He pinged it. The colors shifted and the wiggles turned into text.

Utility room B50
. He could translate their text and access their public information. And why not? They were standard public data overlays, available to all.

Jerome walked in. “You okay?”

John nodded. “You?”

“Tired. Mouth tasting funny.”

“Orange peels?” John asked.

Jerome frowned and looked at him. “Orange?”

Nanagada didn’t have oranges. John had forgotten. He put a finger to his lips. He hadn’t had an orange in so long he wondered if he even really remembered what oranges tasted like. “A fruit, can’t find it on Nanagada.”

Jerome shifted a bit, indecisive. “You scared, being here in the middle of the Teotl?”

“Of course.” John summoned up a map of the Teotl starship from the public data overlay. It looked like giant, rocky potato. The thing was barely small enough to fit through a wormhole.

Right now it rotated for gravity.

John looked over and smiled. “I’d be insane not to be.”

“I feel sorry for the Teotl, a little bit,” Jerome said. “They ain’t no more. They the last of they kind.”

John looked at his son. As a boy he’d been told bogeyman tales of the Teotl descending from space in the great wars at the start of Nanagadan history. And told that some still stalked around Aztlan, causing trouble for Nanagadans. And particularly, little boys who didn’t behave.

And yet he was still willing to try to wrap his mind around the various facets of the situation.

“You have sympathy for them?” John asked.

“No. But I think I coming to understand them,” Jerome snapped. He looked directly at John, then grinned. “They running from something dangerous too. They scared. They ain’t no gods, they just like all of we.”

A pair of Teotl appeared at the door and pointed at John.

“Jerome . . .” John stopped at the doorjamb. Bit his lip. “Don’t believe all that just yet. This wouldn’t be the first time we played into their hands.”

He turned around and Jerome shrugged.

“Listen . . .” Two Teotl flanked John.

“Need move,” they grated at him in simplified Anglic. They smelled of rotting meat, and John grimaced when he noticed the glisten of pus on their joints.

“I want my son to come with us.”

“Now. Move.”

John looked back. “We’ll talk later, Jerome.”

The Teotl led him out into the corridor, and the door slid shut, sealing them off from each other.

They descended deeper into the ship, John’s eyes getting accustomed to the faint dripping, the slippery floors, until they abruptly stepped out into a vast cavern.

Like standing on the inside of a giant world. But no grass or forests like a human habitat. Every available inch of the space dotted with glistening cocoons. Eggs. Teotl. Massive polyps sprung from a ground saturated with a nutrient web. John dug at this with a foot. Faint white wires that broke in a gush of fluid.

This was a colony ship festooned with the creatures waiting to molt into their various forms. An invasion force. John swallowed. Each of those things was capable of turning into a creature adapted for competing with humans for any environment they happened to be in. Or just shoving them aside.

The stump of Metztli’s missing tentacle had been covered in an amoebalike substance. Metztli inched toward John in a sedan festooned with spiny bones. The foot part of the sedan picked up speed, slipping down a smooth track toward them. Pepper followed close behind.

They both stopped in front of John.

The Teotl twisted and regarded John with lidded eyes. “We are the last of our kind, aboard this ship. We are in desperate need of your help. This is the truth. Can you convince your friend to take the collar off me?”

“You have lied before. I’d rather see it on,” John said. “You talk as if reformed, but you let the Azteca take Capitol City, you rule it with fear.”

“I know.” The Teotl waved one of its healthy metal-tipped tentacles. “It was dirty, and quick, and uncivilized. But imagine that any moment now our devices holding the wormhole closed will be overcome. When our masters pour out from it to destroy us, they will destroy you too. It is in your interest to assist us.”

John leaned toward the sedan and grabbed one of the spikes. He bent it under his hand. “You are designed to understand us and talk to us. I’ve met your type before. You’re dangerous.”

“We both are.” It held up the stub of the tentacle John and Pepper had cut off. Then it tapped the collar. “As Pepper noted, if I try to remove this, I’ll die. An effective device, we made. And on a bigger scale, no one won the mess we were orbiting. But despite all that hostility, even we are capable of learning from mistakes.”

“Learning to put that behind us isn’t easy.”

“We did not pretend it to be. But we have a higher goal now. Survival. We do not want your world, it is yours to do with what you will. It’s in too dangerous a position for us. We want to follow the other wormhole out to the human worlds. We want to find a place to hide there, and allies to help us keep the wormhole back where we came from closed. It will require a lot of energy.” The Teotl’s sedan began to ooze down the shallow trough, and John walked with it.

John looked around at the soft, wet corners of the world he walked inside. Suppose this was it for humanity and he had the remains of his entire race in this craft. What would he do with the weight of an entire species on his shoulders?

And what if this was just one big snow job?

“Where are we going now?” he asked.

“We will show you the reopening of the wormhole back to the human worlds. We are about to break orbit.”

John paused. “Bring my son with us.” He folded his arms and stared at the Teotl as it slowly slid past him. “I demand he stand with me. There is no reason to separate us.”

“It will be done.” The sedan lurched to a halt. The Teotl turned to John. “You are possessive.”

“I want him to see this.” Wanted him to see their return to the rest of the worlds, something John had dreamed of for far too many years. And he didn’t want to be pulled apart. They’d been through enough. And if Pepper had something up his sleeve, better Jerome stayed close to John.

The sedan slithered its way along the track again.

“My son,” John snapped.

“Will join us in the viewing, yes. You are very protective of your offspring. We go to join him.” The Teotl wiggled a tentacle. “Come.”

John unfolded his hands and followed the alien. Pepper leisurely strolled behind them both.

A
hexotl had flown from Tenochtitlanome by one of the alien airships, and now his entire personal guard marched up the steps into the Minsterial Mansion. Xippilli watched them flow past his own warriors into the building.

He moved from the balcony, sat down at his desk, and waited.

Ahexotl walked in, his gold-threaded cape flowing behind him. He stood before the desk. The door shut behind him, and it was just the two of them.

Xippilli stared up at him.

“The gods are now leaving this world. They want another two hundred warriors to load into their machines, and then they leave.”

Xippilli frowned. “We’re no longer looking for the councilmen?” He had hunted down a handful of them for the Teotl, immortals like John and Pepper who founded Nanagada all those years ago.

“No, the Teotl are happy with the two we found them. They seem to be on a fast schedule.” Ahexotl grinned. “Your work is done.”

“I’m to step down?”

“Yes. The lenience disturbs the pipiltin back in Tenochtitlanome. And, Xippilli, I think it would be best for you to keep to the shadows for now. Your feelings are well-known, and your usefulness for finding immortals isn’t needed.”

“And you will take control of the city?” Xippilli said.

“Warriors are flowing over Mafolie Pass and into Brungstun, and from there they’ll move along the coast towards this city. We are taking the whole land again. I am the new pipiltin of Nanagada.”

Ahexotl’s dreams of business had grown into desire for an empire. Xippilli wondered if the pipiltin back in Tenochtitlanome realized just how dangerous Ahexotl could be.

“What is to become of me?” Xippilli asked.

“A small, but well-paid, position as a clerk. You will be well looked after, my friend, despite your peculiar beliefs and love of this city.” Ahexotl walked toward the window. “And as one land, trade will be ever so profitable. And don’t worry, Xippilli, the blood will be spilled to our gods carefully. I am no more interested in giving the priests the power they once had than you are.”

Xippilli looked at the new ruler of Nanagada and thought about his own future as a clerk, hiding and in fear of his life. He would see friends give their lives, no doubt, as sacrifices.

And then Xippilli listened to the sound of the warriors lining up to board the Teotl airship. The last one up.

He looked over at the pistol. Killing Ahexotl would bring another just like him and end Xippilli’s life that much sooner. There was no way he could outfight Ahexotl either, not by sword or by hand.

Xippilli looked out across the town and thought about the pens of Nanagadans awaiting their fate.

“Ahexotl, I have a better idea,” Xippilli said.

Ahexotl turned. “Yes?”

“Send me up to lead the warriors. Get rid of me and any trouble I might bring right now.”

He’d caught Ahexotl off guard. “You really want to join them, in the sky?”

“Yes.” Xippilli stepped forward and looked at the alien airship on the bright green grass lawn. “If I’m of no use down here, maybe I can make something of myself up there, with the gods.”

He refused to look over. Let Ahexotl calculate for himself how convenient it would be to get rid of Xippilli, a well-known and loved leader here.

And up there maybe Xippilli could be of more help.

Ahexotl sat down in Xippilli’s chair. “Okay. Go, go to the stars.”

Ahexotl spun the chair around, pleased with himself. Xippilli turned to leave the room, trying to get out before Ahexotl changed his mind.

“Xippilli,” Ahexotl said.

“Yes.” Xippilli paused at the door.

“Up there, you won’t be able to save your friends, or them you. The gods rule there, even if they aren’t really gods.”

“I know,” Xippilli said, and walked out before Ahexotl could call him back.

T
wo massive Teotl warriors flanked Jerome. They refused to speak to him. They looked straight ahead with silvered eyecaps glinting from the phosphorescent gleam in the walls.

He considered struggling. They were taking him into warrens, down tunnels, through what felt like miles of gloom. Jerome tried to keep track of the constant turns, but realized he couldn’t.

They could kill him here in the gloom, easily enough. But that didn’t make sense, he reassured himself. They could just as easily have done that in the room once his dad left.

A bright spot of light grew until it filled the corridor Jerome walked down. It bathed him in luminescence as a large gob of black fluid oozed down from the ceiling. Tendrils moved out to caress and sniff him. They withdrew as a large plug of rock rolled aside. The Teotl left.

John stood on the other side with his back to Jerome. What looked like a massive curtain of clear goo hung in the center of the rounded room. The wounded Teotl, Metztli, sat in its mobile chair next to John. It was still dirty, its dangerous necklace resting around its neck.

“Dad?”

John turned around. Metztli turned to look at Jerome as well. The chair with the large muscular leg underneath squirmed away from John, Metztli’s tentacles dangling over the edge. “Are you okay, Jerome?”

“Yeah.” Jerome walked forward, and the plug of rock shuddered back into place and sighed shut. “You?”

“They reopened the wormhole.” John gestured at the translucent film hanging in the air.

Jerome stepped up to it and found himself looking into a vast abyss. He stepped back, heart pounding, and looked at the giant slimy curtain again.

“It’s just an organic projection device,” John said. “Come on, step forward again.” He grabbed Jerome’s elbow.

“Worm’s holes,” Jerome muttered. “Like the story about how we all got to Nanagada.” He looked out into the black again. A faint glint at the center caught his attention.

“Waste energy,” John said. “They’re threading exotic matter back into the pinprick aperture of the original hole. It’s like finding a small hole in a wall.
They’re putting a piece of material through that’s strong, and then spinning it, so fast, so that it expands, forcing the hole open.”

Jerome looked at his dad and frowned. “And the hole leads to a place far away. To another star.”

John smiled. “Yes.”

“So how come they doing this one so quick?” It had taken hundreds of years for the other wormhole to open, as he’d understood it.

Metztli shuffled forward. “This takes enormous energies, and our home is set to provide those, but we are almost bankrupt from the effort. The other wormhole was even more damaged, tiny, and it had a throttling device installed on it that tried to rebuff our efforts. A present from our cousins, your Loa, who helped you to initially close it.”

“And this wormhole is not throttled, just destabilized and its throat unsupported,” John said.

“Correct.”

“Amazing,” John breathed. “We knew how to close them, but never knew how to reopen them.” Humans had never had the resources to even try to make exotic matter on the scale needed, let alone use it for construction like this.