by David Bowles
Over the years, their relationship had grown deeper, and they’d worked together often. Nestor always held back. Yen wasn’t a member of the Brotherhood, after all. At some point, fearing himself too compromised with the ronin, Nestor had begun investigating the old spy. His connections in the CPCC had at last discovered that Yen Bandera was a genderfluid clone, a type used heavily by Martian Intelligence a couple of centuries ago for deep undercover work. In fact, the CPCC had an outstanding warrant for the Martian operative, one that dated back to the foundation of the government some two hundred years before.
As much as Nestor liked Bandera, he planned to use this information to guarantee the ronin’s loyalty to him. The spy’s help was invaluable. As an enemy he would be deadly because of his extensive network of agents and connections, tendrils extending into most crime syndicates in human space. Better to ensure their alliance now, even if it meant luring Bandera in with something he really wanted and then blackmailing him into compliance.
After a five-minute wait during which he pondered ways to ensnare Bandera, a gentle chiming notified him the faux conference was ready. Nestor leaned back into the pink stream and logged in.
Bandera’s doppelganger sprawled lazily on a black couch, his scarred cheeks and balding pate an exact replica of the Martian’s physical appearance. Unlike most users, the ancient free-lancer chose not to rely on simulations to disguise his reactions: he was more than master of his own emotions, and revealed only what he wanted others to see. Bos, on the other hand, preferred the freedom a constant, blank expression afforded him, and felt no shame in turning his doppelganger’s stony face toward the ronin now.
“Mr. Bandera. Pleasure to see you again.”
“The pleasure is certainly mine, sir, given the credits you’ll be depositing to my account shortly.” Nestor admired the spy’s physical appearances. He’d managed to stay relatively young-looking. Men over a hundred and fifty weren’t unheard of, just very rare. Most of them owed their antiquity to relativistic time dilation from the accel and decel that bracketed a holing. For most humans, accidents usually took care of what science had gotten around. Bandera, though, was genuinely old. Nestor guessed gene treatments and clone implants had as much to do with his longevity as space travel.
“Course, Yen. Just need the info on the fourth captain.”
“There wasn’t much I could scrounge up, to tell you the truth. Ben Wu, forty-seven. Retired major in the Consortium Army. Headed up the battalion that put down the revolt out by Neptune twelve years ago. Wife died four years later, victim of a nasty genetic dysfunction. Daughter was raised by his wife’s family. She’s about sixteen now, lives on New Beijing. Bit of a troublemaker at school, but generally a smart, ambitious girl. Other than that, guy’s got a perfect record, no real vices I could dredge up. He’ll be a hard nut to crack, Nestor.”
“You say his daughter was raised by his in-laws?”
“Yeah. He was the big soldier-boy; he emigrated to New Beijing back in ’66 with his wife and her family. Two of them had a kid a year later, but around ’70 he was transferred to Neptune. Didn’t bring the wife and daughter. After the revolt, he goes back, the wife dies, and he accepts a transfer to the Helios system. Guess he couldn’t exactly be bothered to drag the kid around with him, so he left her with his in-laws. His wife’s brothers and sisters haven’t really amounted to much: drunks and farmers, basically.”
“What’s the girl’s name?”
“Ya-Ting. I already notified your boys on New Beijing to watch her extra close. The family, too.”
Nestor didn’t say anything for a space of several seconds. Yen tilted his head quizzically.
“Hard to tell with that poker face your doppel has, but I guess you’re planning on creating dirt where presently there is none, am I right?”
“Mr. Bandera, that’s more my business than yours, ain’t it? Once I confirm this info, I’ll tunnel you with a big old smiley. You check your account then, the deposit will have been made. Thanks. Thorough job, on this and on them noobs you got me. We’ll work together again, I hope.”
“I’m sure we will, Nestor. Money and sneaking are my drugs of choice, as well you know. However, I might be asking you for something different this time. I’ve got a special interest in Jitsu; it’s my hobby, you might say. Recently took it back up after a long time of letting it lay idle. There’s some things I want to know. But let it stew in my head a while, I’ll mail you soon with the request. It don’t suit you, we can always go with the money instead.”
Nestor bowed his doppelganger’s head and logged out. He ran the girl’s name through his mind a few times: Ya-Ting Wu. Sixteen. How long would it take to corrupt a girl like her, whose father wasn’t around to provide the leadership, love and protection she needed? How long to take that corruption and make it vice? And how long to take that vice and make it crime?
He thought of his sister, long dead, avenged and peaceful in the arms of Blessed Fidensio. She had taught him the value of dirt, of leverage. Despite not having her gift as a medium, he still had his methods and sources, and they served him well. Ya-Ting wouldn’t take long to destroy. Nestor had toppled great men before. A teenage girl would be ridiculously easy. Still, it seemed a waste of time and resources.
Getting up from the faux console, he was startled to see Beserra standing before the entrance, staring at him.
“Kiubole, boss. Everything alright?”
Konrau nodded, his hazel eyes glazed over as if in deep thought. “Sit down a while, Nestor. We’ve got to talk.”
Oh, shite. What I did wrong? Too insistent, I should’ve known. This the day he gets rid of me? Nestor collapsed, inwardly deflated, into the chair.
“Nestor, you and me, we’ve argued a lot about my plan, you not agreeing that going legit is the best thing. Now, I really need you behind me a hundred per on this, and since trust doesn’t seem to be enough, I’m gonna explain some things to you that you don’t yet know.
“Tell me, Nestor… what it is we want?”
Nestor blinked, bewildered. “How’s that, boss?”
“The Brotherhood. What’s our purpose?”
“To protect our own. Expand our territory. Preserve our ways. Power, honor and fidelity. L’onda.”
“And what are the two obstacles that keep us from that?”
“Other syndicates and the CPCC. In especial, the AF.”
“Very good. So a kasike’s job should be to lessen or eliminate those obstacles. Nestor, despite what you think, I have no intention of just staying with the three dead planets around a red dwarf when this deal is done. I’m gonna take it all. Let Santo pool all the power he can, subjugate the planet if possible, then I’ll step in. We get rid of him then, and with the resources of a whole binary system in our hands, with the renown that comes from having a world as legendary as this one, it’ll be a cinch to move in on the new colonies, kompa. We reach our hand out, crush the triads, the mafias, the yakuza. Couple decades, and here’s where the legit shite comes in, we’ll control a dozen brothers in the CPCC Diet. Think of what that means. Power to undermine the AF, keep it clear. Infiltrate the highest levels. Do you get what I’m saying?”
His eyes widening in respect, Nestor nodded.
“The Brotherhood,” continued Konrau, “is the oldest syndicate out there. We started back in the 21st century, a little prison gang in some backwoods province of Earth. Imagine us now, seven hundred years later, in complete control of humanity. We can do it, Nestor. I just need your help one more time. Patience while the things that have to happen first fall into place. Can I count on you?”
Nestor understood more than Konrau was saying. Into his mind popped the image of Prime Minister Konrau Beserra, one step away from despot of humanity, in another thirty-five years or so.
That’s what Konrau wanted. Tyranny.
Nestor felt the warm hands of baby Fidensio on his chest. He could almost hear his sister channeling the savior’s voice.
Help him. Giv
e him what he wants. When the Beserra reigns, my words will be heard round every star.
And besides, with Konrau in control, the benefits to Nestor would be boundless.
The kasike continued. “We aren’t gonna wait, though. We’ve got to start right now. I need to get the CPCCAF occupied on other fronts, Nestor. All the infrastructure I made you set up on colonial worlds? We start using it now.”
Nestor leaned forward, actually excited for the first time in years. His enduring faith in his young boss had not been misplaced. “How?”
“Know how you’re always chinganno la maje bout Jimi Andrade and the Aztlan Angels wanting to rip us out from the roots? Here’s what we’re gonna do: start a war against the other syndicates. Drive them off the planets they’re trying to dig into. Start with the Scarlet Chaos Triad on New Beijing and the Angels on Podgoritsa. Get the AF caught up in stopping the battles and rushing after the syndicates that we shove off. Then the real show begins.”
Konrau grinned, Nestor joined him, and soon, for the first time in years, they were sharing a raucous laugh.
CHAPTER 17
Brando set the tray of drinks down on the low table. Tenshi’s reformer friends looked up and smiled, each taking a cup of tea before continuing their heated debate.
“Thanks, love,” Tenshi mouthed. He gave her a thumbs up and walked back to the study they both shared in her suite.
Cycling shut the door, he went to his desk and pulled a little wooden case from one of the drawers. Inside were two rings of strange metal that glinted silver-blue in the light from his lamp.
It had been two weeks since his unnerving, life-changing experience at Jinja ra-Shamanga. Two weeks to come to terms with what he was about to do, the life-changing steps he was about to make.
“Listen, Brando-shi,” Hekima Umchawi had said to him in the sanctum once Tenshi had stepped outside. “My own vision came in this shrine, my hands on the Urim, sixty years ago. And I saw my spark, identical to yours: a woman very much like Tenshi-shi. She told me that one day an offworld professor would come to the shrine and that I should give him these.”
The ramatini had placed the rings in Brando’s hand.
“They came from inside the Urim, understand. An opening appeared in the sacred stone, and out they dropped, onto the sand.”
Brando still couldn’t wrap his mind around any of it.
Agnosticism had been a part of his identity for so long, faith almost felt like a betrayal. But there it was, nonetheless.
He believed.
There was something greater, something beyond the physical world.
And it had spoken to him.
Prepared a Path for him.
Brando was commenting on students’ virtual discussions about Swahili affixes in Baryogo when Tenshi walked into the office about an hour later.
“Hey, my love. Sorry the meeting went so long.”
With a gesture, Brando froze the feed from the faux-discussion room.
“Oh, psh. No worries, Tenshi. As you can see, I have many opinionated satorijin to wrangle.”
She walked over to him and kissed the top of his head. He wrapped his arms about her and his face into her stomach.
“I feel guilty,” she said, cradling his head. “Leaving you out of these conversations. I don’t want you to think I don’t respect your.”
Pulling away, Brando shook his head. “No way. I’ve been on this planet just a few months. I’m an outsider, barely learning the ropes. I don’t belong at that table with yall. Maybe I never will. Your poltical acumen is pretty freaking astonish. Me, I’m just a language nerd. Those folks will never need to confer with me. And that is fine.”
She rubbed his close-cropped hair. “I think you’ll grow into it, though. Maybe you can grow out your hair while you’re at it. It’s a little too military.”
Brando laughed. “Oh, I got my mother’s genes in that area. Very tough to control my hair when it’s even an inch long.”
Tenshi frowned and tilted her head, looking him over. “We’ll do it up in twists.”
Smiling, he hugged her close again. “Whatever you want, angel. All I ask is that you let me stay by your side, helping in any way you need.”
There was a nervous silence. Then Tenshi cleared her throat. “You’re really fine with not being in the limelight? With—not meaning to sound arrogant—loving someone much wealthier and famous than you?”
“Yup,” he muttered, his voice muffled by her linen blouse. “I’m happy on the sidelines. Being your support, emotional and otherwise. Hell, I- I would be content to live my life in your service, Tenshi Koroma.”
Her stomach starting quivering. He looked up to see she was weeping. Taking her face in his hands, she kissed him, a long and sweet kiss that subsided slowly.
Brando stood as they pulled apart.
“I love you,” he said.
Tenshi wiped her eyes with the back of a hand. “I love you, too. Hey, you’re off tomorrow, right? What if we have a little picnic in the park?”
Right then and there, Brando decided. It was time. He was going to do it.
“Ah, I totally forgot. I’ve got something I have to do tomorrow. I’ll be away all day. But let’s have the picnic the following day.”
Tenshi pursed her lips a little. “Something to do? Like what?”
“Well, it’s a bit of a secret.”
“I can’t stand secrets.”
“I know,” Brando said, putting his hand on her cheek. “But this one will be revealed soon, I promise. At the picnic. Is it a date?”
She reached up and took his hand in hers, nodding. “Yes. A date.”
After a fraught and furtive late-night call from Tenshi’s terminal after she’d fallen asleep, Brando woke up early and took the first public transport to Kinguyama. He sat among the pilgrims and tourists, understanding at last their excitement to visit the hometown of the Third Oracle. In fact, he borrowed a battered hardcopy map from one of them to figure out the best route to his first stop.
Stepping around the upright slabs, he looked at the non-descript home. So hard to believe that two of this planet’s most important women had lived the first thirteen years of their lives here.
It shaped them. The austerity did. In ways I can’t fathom.
An actual metal bell was encrusted in the wall beside the entrance. Brando rang it.
Almost immediately, the wooden door swung open. Standing there, squinting at him, as a woman in her 50s. It wasn’t age that made her shoulders and facial features sag. It was loss, Brando could tell. And loneliness.
Her long gray hair was pulled back in a braid.
Against the ebony of her skin, hazel-gold eyes stared at Brando like glowing embers.
“It’s you. The professor.”
“Yes, anshyano. Brando-shi.”
Inyoni Onamata gave a half-hearted laugh. “Pardon me, ‘shi’? Since when have you been on the Path, blind child?”
“I had the vision two weeks ago, anshyano.”
The woman looked beyond him. “And my daughter?”
“She’s not with me. She doesn’t know I’ve come. Is her father here?”
Inyoni shook her head slowly. “No. On a mission. Why?”
“May I come inside?” Brando asked. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of koro nuts. “I wish to sit in your shade, Umonim.”
Tenshi’s mother took a step back, shocked at the ritual phrase.
She has no choice now.
“Come in, child,” she recited. “I will shelter you for a time.”
There was a rug and a low table on the packed earth floor. Inyoni Onamata took an earthen kettle from the embers of her open stove and set it on a stone base in the center of the table. After she’d sat cross-legged on the rug, Brando did the same.
“Place your offering between us, child.”
Brando laid the koro nuts on the table. Inyoni picked one up, peeled away the shell, and snapped the seed in two. She dropped a half in a di
fferent bowls. She began to reach for the kettle, but Brando lifted it first, pouring hot water into each.
“What have you come to ask, Brando-shi?” Inyoni said, her voice almost a whisper.
“Umonim, may I walk the Path alongside your daughter?”
“You have no Pathwalker family. No kin on this world. Who will vouch for you?”
“Arojin Meji Pishan, Umonim.”
Her gold eyes opened wide. “Do you understand what will be expected of you. Of you both?”
Brando nodded. “Marriage, in Samaneino Teyopan. Our union an echo of the eventual reintegration of the wayward umbini. Halves united. The duality bound again to the Collective.”
Inyoni reached for her bowl and drank deeply of the narcotic tea. Brando, turning from her in a show of respect, downed his portion as well.
His senses went immediately keener. He could almost feel the beating of the old woman’s blood in her veins.
“Tenshi has been expelled from the teyopan,” she pointed out.
“The next giya will work to see her welcomed back,” Brando told her.
There was no arguing with that assertion. Pishan’s confirmation ceremony was just days away, the Office of the Archon had announced.
“Very well. Seeing that you wish to bring my daughter back to her community and join it with her, I cannot but accept this gift you bring. Rise, my son. Continue now with my blessing. Walk the Path alongside Tenshi Koroma till one of you is translated.”
Minutes later, Brando walked past Samaneino Teyopan toward the Southeastern quadrant. He found the Pishan residence behind the progressive sikoro. It had clearly been designed by Tenshi, all rounded edges and unpredictable angles, as if arising naturally through the weathering of wind and rain.
Meji Pishan was waiting for Brando on the stone veranda.
“Brando-wa,” they called. “Welcome to our home.”
The arojin gestured at a wicker chair beside them, and Brando walked up the steps to sit down. Pishan did the same. Between them was a pitcher of water. Brando didn’t hesitate, but poured the older omedeyo a cup and then one for himself.
