“And whatever else is living out here. I doubt they just introduced herbivorous species. After all, hunting things that aren’t hunting you back wouldn’t seem the most exciting pastime. Not that I’d know.”
Sho smiled. “You don’t consider yourself a hunter, Scheherazade?”
“Not of animals, Show-no-fang.”
We settled in to watch the planet pass beneath us; in short order we were a shadow above a desert of sandy canyons, then above a network of almost-natural-seeming rivers that formed a design when viewed from high enough up, and finally we cruised just over a breathtaking vista of snow-capped peaks—likely where Lord Levihoo’s alpine villa was located, a suspicion that was confirmed when we passed something that looked like a castle out of a fairy tale, all sweeping, lonely towers and wide, now-broken windows and other architectural features that would be absolutely horrendous if the position came under siege, otherwise known as the entire point of a castle.
“So much wealth here.” Sho sighed. “And so little on my home. If the ruling class of the Jaliad had held back the money required to build just one of these palaces, I wonder: how long would that money have fed my sect?”
“Assuming that—if they felt such a philanthropic urge—they could have even gotten it to your sect,” I reminded him. “The pulse aside—and the fact that the Jaliad rulers were all dead well before you were born aside—if some foreign sect had just showered cash over one group on your world, how would the others have reacted?”
“They would have banded together to destroy us,” he admitted sadly. “Before we used it to grow more powerful than any of them.”
“And then gone right back to destroying each other when that was done,” I nodded. “Money didn’t keep the Jaliad monarchy alive once their people started to revolt, either. I’ve always thought that cash doesn’t solve nearly as many problems as rich people seem to think it might.”
“Says someone who’s never had any,” Schaz reminded me.
“There is that. And it’s more than likely true that I only tell myself that so that I don’t get too angry at stupidly wasteful people like the Jaliad.” I nodded at the viewscreen, and the image of the fairy-tale castle, still spinning on the mountaintop. “After all, it was bad habits like that—how they used their money, their power—that led to their very bad ending, ultimately.”
“So if you had money—”
“I would build a solid-gold statue of myself and force everyone to worship it.” I grinned at him. “Power corrupts, and all that. I’m gonna die eventually, anyway; might as well die at the hands of an angry mob jealous of the stupidly awesome lifestyle I’ve lived for however long I could get away with it.”
“It wasn’t jealousy that ended the Jaliad.” Sho shook his head. “It was the broken promise. ‘Let us rule you, and we will keep you safe.’ And then the sect wars came, and they couldn’t.”
I sighed. “You’re kind of a downer, you know that, Sho?”
“I know.”
CHAPTER 4
We crossed over an ocean before we approached our destination, the turquoise waters below broken by the swells of whitecaps rushing toward the distant shore. In the distance, I could see what I thought was maybe a broadcast tower, one we could use to send our signal—but given that this world had been designed by aesthetic-mad egomaniacs, it was all whirls and spirals and may have been a purely decorative thing, serving no real purpose at all beyond shouting “We have money, and lots of it!” to anyone who might come across it.
Jane reentered the cockpit and took the stick when it was time to set us down; the “clearing” her friend had indicated as a landing zone was tricky to get to, because of course it was—underneath a rocky outcropping covered in flowing vines that would keep us from being seen from above, despite the fact that anyone looking for us from above would have had to deal with the defense network in orbit. I scanned the camera feeds, but I didn’t see anyone at the edges of the open area. “I think we beat your friend here,” I announced.
Jane took a cursory glance at the screen. “No, we didn’t,” she said, then went back to setting us down.
We both grabbed our basic gear bags, Sho already impatiently waiting for us in the airlock, his fingers beating out a drumbeat tattoo on the grips of his wheels. I could understand the impulse—it was a terribly pretty world, and unlike us, he hadn’t gotten to disembark on Valkyrie Rock, so he’d been cooped up inside Scheherazade for over a week. Granted, he also hadn’t almost been killed on Valkyrie Rock, so I figured it was a fair exchange. “Am I taking my guns?” I asked Jane.
“I don’t know, Esa,” Jane shrugged, strapping on her revolver. “We’re going to be a couple miles away from Scheherazade, for a few days at least. We’re going to be meeting somebody you don’t know at all, plus there’s always the off chance we’ll run into someone else down there, and when that happens, ‘someone else’ almost always wants to kill us. So: do you want to take your guns?”
I took my guns.
Schaz opened her airlock and lowered her ramp; immediately, the smell of the jungle beyond us entered the cargo area, thick and alive. There was a kind of iridescent glitter to the air, some sort of pollen, I think, put off by the thick blue trees that grew from the rich soil. I scanned the edge of the jungle—what little I could see through the hanging vines—but I still couldn’t place Mo. “Are you sure your friend is here?” I asked Jane again.
“Yep,” she nodded, descending the ramp. Sho and I followed, and then suddenly, there he was: a huge Mahren, standing just inside the vines. I had no idea how he’d done that—I’d just looked there, and he hadn’t been visible. And it’s not like he was small. Even for a Mahren he was a big fella, nine feet tall and nearly as broad through the shoulders as Jane and I standing next to each other would have been. His rocky skin was roughly the color of limestone, and like all older Mahren, male or female, he had a heavy “beard” of crystals extending from his jaw, pale green and translucent.
“Hello, Red,” he said to Jane, his voice a deep bass rumble somewhere in the earthquake range. As he shifted, I could see the stock of an old rifle poking up over his shoulder—this wasn’t a pulsed world, he wouldn’t need a gun that old, but I had a feeling that was only the start of the strangeness about this particular Mahren.
“How’s it going, Mo?” Jane returned his greeting, taking a step forward. “Any closer to finding what you’re looking for?”
He shook his head. “It’s not the end of the journey that defines me,” he told her. “It’s the search.”
She took another step closer—there was a strange current running between them, something almost like violence, but maybe I was reading it wrong—and then she reached out, and she hugged him.
I don’t think I’d ever seen Jane hug anybody. I’d seen her make out with Javier, and I’d seen her shake people’s hands, but she really wasn’t the hugging type.
So, yeah: not violence after all.
He hugged her back, one-handed—and very gently, so he didn’t crush her into paste—and she stepped away from him, grinning. “I’ve missed you, old man,” she said.
“And I’ve missed you,” he told her, then nodded at Sho and me. “Introduce me to your companions.”
She turned back toward us. “Mo, this is Esa, my partner, and Show-nofang, called Sho. He’s our current passenger, en route back to Sanctum.”
“It is good to meet you both,” he nodded. “My name is Mohammed ibn Abdullah ibn Ghaluk. As-salāmu ‘alaykumā.”
Thankfully, I’d taken a comparative religions course as part of my studies—usually conducted in hyperspace between jobs—and I returned the traditional greeting. “ ‘Alaykumu as-salām. I didn’t know there were that many Mahren Muslims out there.”
“There are not,” he laughed. “Long ago, I was a member of a sect that converted. Of the dozen most popular religions in the galaxy, five of them come from human culture. I’ve always found that a fascinating contribution, often overlooked when it comes to the im
pact of your race: you are very good at religion.”
“Also very good at killing each other,” Jane added sourly. “I think the two might have something in common.”
Mo arched a crystalline eyebrow. “Jane has never approved of my faith,” he told us, speaking as though in confidence, despite the fact that Jane was right there. “She has never approved of any faith, actually: a holdover from her youth. Don’t let her cloud your mind, young Esa. She approaches life in a very . . . singular manner, but it is not the only approach that is available to you.”
I grinned at him. “You knew Jane in her youth, huh? Mo, my man, I think I might have some questions for you.”
“All right,” Jane cut that one off. “We should get moving. Mo, I’d imagine you have a camp somewhere.”
“Yes; this way,” he said, leading us through the vines, into the great rising forest beyond. “If you’re wondering how I know Jane,” he said to me, holding up the canopy of vines so that Sho could wheel under them, “the easiest way to put it is that she was my you. I was her partner for many years, after she first joined the Justified.”
“Were you now?” This was fascinating enough that I barely paid attention to the breathtaking sight of the twisting blue trees of Klitek extraction, twining and knotting themselves together into the jungle canopy above. “I don’t know that she’s mentioned you before.” I paused, a vague memory coming back to me. “Well, maybe once.”
He laughed at that. “The sinking of the Ishiguro, yes? Well, I can’t blame her for telling you that story, even if she’s not supposed to mention an old exile like me to her impressionable pupil. That was an . . . impressive day.”
“So if you were her partner back then—”
“Think about it this way, Esa,” Jane interrupted me. “How much of what I know about combat do you know?”
“I guess . . . around thirty percent, maybe?”
She laughed. “That’s cute. But for argument’s sake, we’ll pretend it’s actually true. If you know thirty percent of what I know, what I know is thirty percent of what Mo knows—not counting whatever he’s picked up out here on the fringes. I trained you; he trained me. Once I joined the Justified, anyway.”
“So why are you out here?” Sho asked the large Mahren. “I mean—I don’t mean to pry, I’m not . . . I mean, why here?”
“After many years of life as a . . . soldier”—the pause before he said the last word was barely noticeable, but it was there: whatever Mohammed had been when he served the Justified, “soldier” was not the first word he would have called it—“I experienced something of a . . . crisis of faith. As I said, I was raised in an Islamic sect, far away from the wars and the chaos. Our world was . . . a backwater, perhaps, but not unlovely, in its way, and we lived in peace and contentment. Until our enemies came.” He paused for a moment after that, just kept pushing his way through the jungle, finding a rough path, making sure we couldn’t see his face. “Afterward, I joined the Justified; afterward, I no longer believed. For years, I served, many of them alongside Red. Then my second crisis of belief, and I came to question whether my service—and more crucially, how I served—was actually how I should find purpose in my life. The moment I walked away was the moment my faith returned.”
“And it’s still hanging around, I see,” Jane said, like she was talking about some form of social disease rather than a spiritual well of faith.
“It comes and goes,” he shrugged. “When I find that I believe, that I have believed, every day for a year, all the way to the deepest chamber of my heart and the very crown of my soul: on that day, my journey will be over.”
“And today?”
He grinned. “Today Allah has brought an old friend to give me relief from my isolation. Yes, Red—today I believe.”
“But why here?” Sho asked again. “I mean—I’m assuming you have a ship somewhere, that you could have gone anywhere in the galaxy. This world is . . . beautiful, but it’s also—you mentioned your isolation. Do you not get lonely?”
“I do,” he nodded, effortlessly lifting a massive fallen tree trunk out of our path so that Sho could wheel under it. “But it is also . . . easier, to listen for the true voice of God, when I am not surrounded by other clamoring distractions.”
“I don’t think I ever clamored,” Jane frowned at him.
“No, you did not,” he agreed. “But your actions spoke very loudly indeed.”
“It’s been five minutes, Mo—can we not argue about religion? At least not for a little bit?”
“I have never been the one arguing, Jane.” He paused, then, holding up a hand for silence. In a clearing before us, a half dozen creatures had gathered, grazing on a patch of violet foliage. I’d never seen their like before: strange quadrupeds with short, tawny fur, some with twisting antlers, some without. Mo quietly unshipped his rifle, but before he’d brought the scope to his eye, something spooked the creatures, and they fled deeper into the shadows of the azure jungle, bounding on spindly legs at a surprisingly fast clip. “A pity,” Mo murmured. “I should have liked to have offered you fresh meat for dinner tonight.”
“What were those?” I asked, still almost holding my breath, despite the fact that the animals were long gone.
He turned to smile at me as he stowed his rifle again. “You were not raised in a human biome, I see. They are called ‘deer,’ a herbivore from the human homeworld. That is the other reason I have chosen this particular world to continue my search for the quiet voice inside myself: plentiful game, clean water, somewhere I can support myself.”
“And an automated defense system in orbit that ensures you remain uninterrupted in your meditations,” Jane added dryly.
“And also that, yes,” he nodded. “So: now that you know why I am here, why don’t you tell me what brings you to my door?”
“Mo, old friend: that is one hell of a story, and not a short one.”
“We have some time until we reach the beach, and my abode; would you prefer to wait until we have reached what little comforts I can offer to begin telling it?”
“We’ve trapped a crazy fucker made of glowing blue fire on an asteroid where he murdered everybody, and now we need to signal the Justified to come take him away because he might have a cure for the pulse,” I said. Jane looked at me; I shrugged. “What?” I asked. “Not everything has to be a production, you know. Red.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“A glowing being of fire. Hmmm.” That “hmmm” was somewhat hopeful; he didn’t sound like he was at all thrown by the concept. Then again, I didn’t get the impression Mo was thrown by much—he hadn’t even reacted to the “cure for the pulse” bit.
“Pure energy, actually,” Jane clarified.
Mo turned to his former protégé. “And would that explain the damage you’ve done to your foot?”
Jane grinned, just a bit. “Yes, Mo—I tried to kick a being of pure energy, right between its legs. Turns out, in case you were wondering: no. That’s not where he keeps his genitals.”
Mo laughed at that. “All right. So where does a being of pure energy keep his genitals?”
“Hell if I know. Not any of the other places I kicked him either.”
“Red. Didn’t I teach you not to try a damned fool thing twice?”
“You may have taught it,” Jane shrugged, “I sure as hell never learned it. Or managed to pass it on.” She gave me a hard look as she said the last; I ignored her, and kept pushing my way through the vines that covered the path.
CHAPTER 5
Jane elaborated on our recent adventures as we made our way through the forest; Mo listened, but said little, nodding occasionally—though he did ask Schaz to transfer the video of our various encounters with our pursuer over to his network, which meant that regardless of the monastic, isolated life he had chosen to live, he still had access to a certain level of technology in his camp.
Where that was, I still had no idea, but he led us unerringly through the forest; the going
was rough with Sho’s wheelchair for a bit, until we came to an overgrown path that might once have been an actual road. I think it might have been paved in platinum once. At least the Jaliad monarchy had been consistent in their profligacy.
Finally, we could hear a sound like distant thunder, echoing through the massive trees. We were nearing the shore—the ocean. I couldn’t help it; I pushed my way past Jane and Mo, throwing a grin at Sho as I did, and then I was just running, moving as fast as I could toward the light of the beach ahead, clear of the shadows of the jungle. I’d never seen a real ocean before.
It was just as gorgeous as I’d expected.
I just stood there for a while, my boots half buried in the white sand, looking at the vastness of it. It shouldn’t have seemed so big, not after I’d spent the last three years traversing the immensity of the void, but it did. It wasn’t just the size of the endless blue horizon that spread underneath the mimosa-colored sky; it was how alive it was, an endless ecosystem of water, the liquid flowing and rolling like a living thing, waves crashing and retreating, over and over again.
When the others arrived, I turned wordlessly, and knelt so that I could embrace Sho. He was crying as well. He’d never seen a sea either; his home had been nothing but near-infinite fields of metal.
I wiped the tears off my face and grinned at Jane. “Can I go swimming?” I asked her.
She frowned. “You barely know how to swim,” she reminded me.
“I do! I do too! Criat taught me!”
“Criat’s a Wulf. He can barely dog paddle.” She actually said it with a straight face. “We don’t have any idea what the currents are like in there, Esa. You could be carried halfway to another continent in a heartbeat.”
“Actually, the currents are fairly mild,” Mo put in.
“See?” I pointed at my new best friend.
“How would you know?” Jane rounded on Mo. “You can’t swim either. Mahren don’t swim, they sink.”
“I go fishing,” he shrugged. Then he grinned at Jane. “This is new, you know: this maternal, protective instinct. I think it suits you.” She glared at him. “Shove it?” he guessed. She just nodded. I laughed.
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