Changer's Moon

by Clayton, Jo;

  “Through a fuckin army? Hunh! Well, we won a year. They took their time.” The stocky man rubbed a fist across his chin. “We can hold out.” A quick swoop of his arm included the fighters. “But the rest, the old folks and the kids.…” Hand fisted again, he jabbed at the unseen enemy, eyes narrowed, cheekbones suddenly prominent, catching what was left of the moonlight. “Shit, man, what else we fighting for?”

  The driver smiled, a nervous twitch of his lips. “All of us, we’ll have to go deeper underground or cross the border and raid from there. Tell you, Georgia, I’ve about gone my limit in town. Getting so I grovel to shadows. Had a couple blackshirts go through my store records a week ago, they came back yesterday, didn’t do anything but stand around. Still, I was sweating rivers.”

  “You suspect?”

  “I don’t think so. Not for this.” He patted the side of the van. “It’s what I sell, electronic games, the minicomputers, the rest of it, all that second-hand gear. And I was a wargamer before they got that outlawed. Devil’s work, you know.” He shrugged, swiped again at the hair falling in his eyes. “Be really ironic if they pull me in because whatever they’ve got instead of brains is twitching at shadows like that. It’s getting so it’s anybody any time, all the cops need is a funny feeling. Hunh! The Dommers, they located a collection of drop-outs a couple hundred miles south of here. What I hear, all they were doing was scratching a few patches of vegetables out of the mountainside, living on what they could catch or kill. Dommers rounded them up, the ones left alive, brought them in for trial. Was on TV last night, showing us the horrible examples. Rumor says trial’s rigged, they’re going to shoot them first of the week.” He shrugged again. “They’re starting to ration gas. Guess you’ll have to lift a few cans so I can fill up again. I damn sure don’t want them coming down on me asking questions I can’t answer. Constitution suspended till the emergency’s over. Over!” The last word was a barking snarl. He thrust his hands in the pockets of his jacket and scowled into the night. “It’ll be over when the fat cats get themselves dug in so deep we’ll never root them out; little man can wave good-bye to any rights he thinks he’s got.”

  Georgia said nothing, put his hand on the driver’s shoulder, squeezed. Still silent, he moved to the back of the van and looked inside, nodded with satisfaction, and closed the doors. He pulled at the handles to make sure the latches had caught, took the key from the lock without turning it (Hern nods, good sense not to trap the fighters inside should something happen to the van) and went to the front, climbed up beside the driver and settled back so his face and torso were lost in deep shadow. The driver busied himself with small, quick movements Serroi found puzzling until she heard the purr grow louder. The man backed and turned the van in the narrow space with a skill both Hern and Serroi approved, then started down the winding road.

  The viewpoint lifted so she could see out over the land, over the wild rugged mountains with their heavy covering of trees and many small streams, mountains much like the Earth’s Teeth on the western rim of the mijloc.

  The Mirror blinked. The van was out of the mountains and moving along a paved road through intensively cultivated farmlands, past clumps of houses and outbuildings (more vehicles in many shapes sitting in driveways or open sheds, some farms have several varieties), herds of beasts vaguely like hauhaus in some fields, in others a smaller number of beasts somewhat like the majilarni rambuts—or the mounts of the metal men, minus the horn between the eyes. The van went through many small villages, huddles of glass-fronted buildings plopped down beside the larger roads, most of these brightly lit by globes that neither smoked nor seemed to need refueling. A prosperous fertile land that apparently had never known war. There were fences but only to keep the beasts from straying. No walls about the farmhouses, no walls about the villages, no place to store food against siege or famine—yet, from what the men had said, there was much wrong here. She frowned at the tranquil night pictures before them and thought about that conversation. A good deal of it was simply incomprehensible though she understood the words; apparently the Mirror gifted them with the ability to understand all the languages spoken within its boundaries. However, she did not have the basic knowledge to comprehend things like spy satellites, electronic gear, mini-computers. They were blurs in her mind about a vague notion of communications. What she did understand was the similarity between the situation there and the one in the mijloc, folk being driven off their land and into the mountains to escape persecution by another more powerful group that had seized control of the government. And the feel she got of the usurpers was very much like that of the Followers, repression, denial of pleasure, demands for submission. And there was something else. A sense of impending doom. Not so very different from the mijloc with Floarin’s army gathering, getting ready to march.

  The Mirror blinked. A glow spread across the sky, a steady shine that turned the clouds yellow and sickened the face of the single moon. They flew above a vast city, a sleeping city. Glass everywhere, lights everywhere, those cold-fire globes that burned as brilliantly as the sun, turning night into day on the empty streets. Countless houses and communal dwellings, all sizes and shapes, from the ragged crowded slums to sprawling elegance spread on beautifully landscaped grounds. Toward the center of the city there were rows and rows of great square towers, their hundreds and hundreds of windows dark and empty, made mirrors by the perfection of the plate glass, and among the towers were shorter structures, stores heaped with goods of all kinds, some recognizable, most incomprehensible, such a heaping up and overflowing of things that Serroi felt dizzy with it all.

  Then they were back with the van, watching it turn and twist through the silent streets until it reached a blocky black building surrounded by a high fence of knitted metal wire. The van moved slowly past it then went around behind some other buildings and stopped. Georgia was at the back doors almost before the vehicle was completely stopped, turning the handles, dragging the doors open. A tall thin woman, her skin a warm rich brown with red-amber highlights, her hair a ragged bramble, was the first out, looking sharply around, then beginning a rapid series of bends and stretches. The rest of the fighters came out with equal silence and followed her example, then Georgia held up a hand. The others snapped straight, eyes on him. He pointed to the dark woman. She waved a casual salute, gave him a broad glowing smile, brought up a hand and waved it at the van, a fast gesture.

  The fighters split into two unequal parts, fifteen staying with Georgia, five climbing back into the box. Georgia closed the doors, thumped on the side. A moment later it rolled away, moving slowly, the purr kept to a minimum.

  The others followed Georgia along the street, bunched in groups of two or three spaced at varying intervals. To a casual glance they were night shift going home and not too anxious to get there—an illusion that would vanish if anyone took a long look at them, but Hern nodded and smiled his appreciation at the intelligent subtlety of the move; there was little about the band to attract such close scrutiny.

  They rounded a corner, crossed the street and went along the knitted fence until they came to a brightly lit gate flanked by thick pillars of red brick. There was a small guardhouse inside the gate but it was dark and silent, its shuttered window locked tight. The largest of the fighters took a clippers longer than his forearm from his belt, unsnapped a leather cover, set the cutting edges against the chain that held the two parts of the metal gate together. Others were busy at the pillars taking down metal plates and doing things that had no meaning to Serroi but much meaning to them if she judged by their intentness, the tension evident in workers and waiters. The wait was short; in less than a minute the gate was open and the small band was inside.

  Running on the grass, they reached the building a moment later and went round it to a small door at one side.

  More intense working, intense waiting, then the door was open and they were inside, fading into shadows along the walls of the storehouse. Piles of boxes, rows of vehicles and other
large objects angled out from the walls, the place was filled and overflowing. Silent and hard to see in the darkness, the fighters moved in and out of alcoves, a dance of shadows in shadow.

  Voices. The shadows stilled, then began converging on a door whose bottom half was solid wood, top half opaque glass.

  The watchers’ viewpoint shifted. They hovered in the room on the other side of the door, saw four armed men in sloppy gray-green shirts and trousers, heavy laced boots, broad belts each with a metal object where a sword would hang—a weapon of some sort—a small cousin of the larger weapons the raiders carried. These men were playing a card game of some sort, sucking on white cylinders that glowed on the end, breathing out streams of gray-white smoke. One man took the cylinder from his mouth, plucked a bottle filled with amber fluid from a bowl of cracked ice, twisted the top off, threw his head back and drank with noisy gulps, put the bottle down beside him, two-thirds emptied, and picked up his cards.

  The door slammed open. One of the invaders was inside. A woman. Small, wiry. Her face was hidden in a black stocking with holes for her eyes. She stood tense, balanced for quick movement, silently begging the guards to move.

  The four men had started to roll away and bring their weapons up, but froze before the threat of that eagerly quivering weapon. Only their eyes moved—shifting from the woman to the other raiders, the stocky man, masked like the woman, another, taller man, a fourth raider just visible behind him. The stocky man pointed a gloved finger at one of the guards. “Stand,” the woman said, her voice like cracking ice.

  The guard got slowly to his feet. The fourth raider came quickly and silently into the room, a stubby man with muscles on muscles, arms, neck and chest straining the thin knit shirt he wore. His hands were gloved, supple leather gloves he wore like a second skin. He pulled a coil of wire from his pocket, jerked the guards arms behind him, wound a bit of wire round his thumbs, snipped it off the coil, twisted the ends together. He came round in front of the man, pushed him in the chest with a deceptively gentle shove that sent him staggering against the wall then down onto the floor. He squatted and wired the man’s ankles together.

  One by one the others were immobilized, quickly, efficiently, with no unnecessary moves or sounds. The raiders didn’t bother with gags. Apparently they didn’t care how much noise the guards might make once they were gone. The woman who’d given all the orders was last from the room. At the door, she turned. “Yell and I’ll be back. You won’t like that.” She vanished after the others, pulling the door neatly and quietly to behind her.

  She joined two of the smaller women who were standing guard. The rest of the raiders were moving back and forth between a large vehicle—like the van but broader, bulkier, a brutal mass to it, a canvas top stretched over ribs. They were packing boxes and metal containers into it, filling it with supplies of all sorts, breaking open the larger boxes and distributing the contents in the cracks and crannies between the smaller boxes. One man was working over a number of two-wheeled vehicles, installing bits and pieces, pouring something that sloshed from a can into the small tank on each of the vehicles. The work went on and on, silent and quick and impressively efficient. No questions, no fumbling about, no hesitation over what to take.

  When they were finished loading, they pulled uniforms like those of the guards over their own clothing, took off their masks and put on shiny black helmets whose smoked visors hid almost as much of their faces. Georgia looked around, made a soft hissing sound. “Almost forgot,” he said. “Fill a couple cans for our friend. Put them up front, that’s the only space left.”

  The short, powerful fighter brought back two large metal containers painted the color of the uniforms. While he stowed these in the front, the others wheeled the small vehicles into place around the large one, six in front, six behind; they mounted them, feet on the floor holding their metal mounts erect. The guarding women swung the great double doors open, then ran back to the big brute, scrambled inside the cab, two sitting in view, one crouching behind the seats. The riders on the two-wheelers stamped down, the warehouse filled with a coughing throbbing roar much louder than the purr of the van. Moving with ponderous majesty, the procession edged out of the building. The last two riders closed the doors and after they were through the gates, closed those, replaced the sheared padlock with another lifted from the warehouse, then they rolled on, leaving the place looking much as they’d found it.

  They went unchallenged through the silent streets. A few drunks stumbling along muttered curses after them, several night-shifters looked curiously after them, but no one seemed to question their activities, no one tried to stop them; what was visible of their faces was disciplined, their bodies were alert but relaxed; they were soldiers about an everyday task, nothing to fuss about.

  The Mirror blinked.

  There was a glow of pink low down in the eastern sky and the convoy was rumbling along a broad empty highway, moving in and out of patchy fog without slackening speed. The ocean was close, a few hundred yards on the far side of a line of scraggly sandhills high enough to block the view of the water. A little later they came round a broad shallow bend and into a clear patch of road, then slowed abruptly enough to startle Serroi.

  On one of the higher and weedier sandhills a rider sat his beast like a statue carved from the darkest cantha wood, his hands crossed on the saddle in front of him, his long black hair lifting on the wind. He waited until the convoy turned onto a drifted, broken side road that slanted off from the highway a short distance past his knoll, then he brought his mount around, galloped recklessly down the slope and clattered ahead of the machines onto the main street of a desrted and half-destroyed coast village. More clatter of hooves—half a dozen others came riding down the street to meet him, short dark youths, long black hair held out of their faces by beaded leather bands or strips of bright cloth. They wore black trousers, skimpy knitted tops with no sleeves and scuffed, high-heeled boots, and rode like demons, as if they were sewed, to their mounts; they came swooping around him waving their weapons, but maintaining a disciplined silence all the more impressive when taken with their exuberantly grinning young faces. They slowed to a calmer pace and rode ahead of the convoy along the shattered street.

  Many of the houses and stores were smashed into weathered splinters, a deep layer of dried muck cracked into abstract shapes, graying every surface to a uniform dullness, drifts of sand piled against every semi-vertical wall, sand dunes creeping slowly over the wreckage, beginning to cover what was left of the town. Here and there, by accident of fate and the caprice of the storm that had wrecked the town, a building stood more or less whole. The riders dismounted in front of the open loading door of one of these, an abandoned warehouse, and lead their beasts inside.

  Georgia held up his hand, stopped the convoy, dismounted and wheeled his machine after the dismounted riders. In a few minutes the street was empty, the big machine and the little ones tucked neatly away into the empty interior of the building.

  Georgia walked over to the lounging youths, tapped the leader on the shoulder. “Angel.” He raised thick blond brows. “Run into trouble? Where’s the other half?”

  “Heading home with a new cavvy. We lifta buncha good horses from ol’ Jurgeet’s; don’ worry, boss, they scatter and go way round. Nobody going to follow ’em through the brush. Us here, we each got a spare horse; seven of us c’n haul as much stuff as the dozen, yeah.” He grinned suddenly, his pitted face lighting into a fugitive comeliness. “And boss, we leave his prizes alone; don’t want his goons on our tails, besides they too delicate, not worth shit except running.”

  Georgia chuckled, shook his head. “Long as you’re loose and considering it’s Jurgeet. Take your horse thieves and brush out the tire marks from where we turned off the highway to here. I want to get this place neated up before the sun’s out and they maybe send choppers after us.”

  “Uh. We go.” Another flashing grin. Whistling his companions to him, Angel trotted out of the large r
oom.

  Georgia wiped his smile away, turned to frown at his raiders. Several were working together to peel the canvas off the ribs, the rest were stripping off the uniforms, folding them neatly and putting them aside against future use. “Liz,” he called.

  The small intense woman who’d done all the talking at the armory ran a bony hand through her mop of coarse black hair, came over to him with short quick steps. “What is it?”

  “Pick up a pair of binoculars and head back to the highway; find a place where you can get a clear view down the road. Dettinger should be along fairly soon. If he’s got lice on his tail, I want to know it.”

  She gave a quick assenting jerk of her head, rummaged through a stack of supplies and snatched up black tubes with a neck strap (Binoculars? Serroi wonders), slung her weapon over her shoulder by its webbing strap and went quickly out of the warehouse and along the street. She climbed the sandhill and settled on her belly in the weeds, brought the binoculars to her eyes, fiddled with them a while, then settled to her tedious watch.

  Inside the building the raiders continued unloading the big vehicle, strapping packets on the back of the two-wheelers. As soon as one was ready, a raider mounted it and roared off into the foggy dawn. Before the sun was fully up, all twelve two-wheelers were gone, Angel and his band were gone, spread out on separate routes so they could be sure at least some of their captured supplies would get through to their base.

  Silence settled back over the ruins and the dunes. Liz lay quietly among her weeds, Georgia and the strongman strolled along the street, using an ancient broom and some brush to scratch out wheel and hoof marks, apparently relaxed but keeping a close eye on the sky. Dawn was fading, the fog was fading, there were few clouds in the sky, it promised to be a warm pleasant day. The two men went back inside the warehouse, muscled the sliding door along its rusted track, leaving a crack wide enough for a man to walk through.