Chapter 23: Jak
The days on the river passed slowly, with an easy similarity that numbed them to their danger. Gliding by the man-high reeds that lined the riverbank, Jak found it hard to believe in the bloated egos and intricate manipulation that made up the power struggles of the royal house of Shadriss. The Regent Graff n’Chall and the Prime Luan n’Chall might be important to Family Mobutu, but they were less real than figures in a legend to Jak. The reality of the river was sunrises and sunsets, and water gliding by the small farming villages along the banks. The reality was Tessa standing by his side. By his side—he hoped—forever.
They were three days out of Namdrik, only started on their twelve-day journey. From here, the river took a deep loop to the south before the meander returned north, almost closing the loop as it reached Tekena.
The four of them had come out on deck for air and sunlight. The reek of the compost was still with them, but a fresh breeze blew along the water, and the sun, while bright, was not yet scorching hot. The barge stopped at a new village each morning, and the crew traded compost for crops. They’d arranged the produce the barge had taken on into a kind of arbor at the stern. It provided a shady retreat, and it hid them from the view of the many passing ships. At this point of the journey, the arbor was made mostly bags of tiff and some baskets of hard, green berries. The berries were lamnan food. They tasted awful—Toko had sampled some—but they smelled better than the compost.
Kamura reclined on the deck, using a bag of tiff as a backrest. She seemed as comfortable as if it were a well-padded lounge on a luxury liner. Her long, black hair fanned out around her as she combed it. Jak was surprised that she’d adapted so well to the simple life on the barge. She’d even stopped complaining about the stinking cargo.
Toko sat cross-legged next to her. He’d been spending much of his time talking with Kamura, trying, he told Jak, to improve his speech. Yeah, speech. From the way he watched Kamura, Jak wondered if that was all he was trying to do. Despite the enormous difference in their backgrounds, there was only a couple years difference in their ages, chronologically at least. Kamura was maybe two years the elder, but Toko already had a lifetime of fighting and winning battles behind him. In some ways, he was much older than the tall Terran girl.
Jak shifted the empty bag on his shoulder. The food he’d brought aboard was almost gone, but he meant to buy supplies at the village they’d landed at this morning.
"I’m coming with you," Tessa said.
It was clear that she was in no mood for argument, and he couldn’t blame her. They’d both had their fill of the Serena and their cramped cabin. She’d tucked her long curls into a simple leather band. Dressed in the plain shift and boots of a farmer’s wife, she still looked beautiful, maybe even more so than usual.
"Come at your own risk, then," Jak told her. "It’s not likely to be much fun."
But at least she would be with him, where he could keep her safe. And, admit it, he longed for some time alone with her.
"It can’t be any less fun than sitting on this barge."
"You two had better stay here," he told Kamura and Toko. "You’ll attract too much attention on shore." Jak expected some argument, but Kamura surprised him.
"There’s nothing I want to see in these villages," she said. "Anyway, it’s cooler here on the water."
She looked over at Toko as she spoke. It seemed the boy wasn’t the only one who found the language lessons interesting. Jak gave Toko a scowl to remind him to behave, but Toko just grinned back with his wicked, mobbie grin. Jak sighed. He couldn’t protect them both, and Tessa was the one who mattered. Besides, although hidden from river traffic, the two were in full view of the crew. Maybe that would keep the boy in line.
Jak shrugged. "Fine."
At least he wouldn’t have to keep track of Kamura and Toko while they haggled with the villagers. Kamura was learning, but she still tended to make unpredictable—and potentially disastrous—mistakes. And Toko? The boy was as wild as a moki and just as dangerous.
Together, Jak and Tessa walked down the gangplank and passed the morning’s unloaded cargo of compost baskets. The passenger boat that had stopped near them earlier had left an hour ago. All was quiet as they skirted the lamnan feeding in the clearing at the edge of the water. The lamnan were the real reason the barge had stayed put long enough for the shopping trip. The big lizards had to feed at least every two or three days, or they’d refuse to work. They were smarter than some people Jak knew. The animals looked up as the two humans passed, and Jak gave them a wide berth.
"What’s the matter?" Tessa asked.
"Nothing. I just can’t get comfortable with a lizard that’s ten times my size."
"They’re harmless."
A big bull-lizard coughed just then, and Tessa and Jak both jumped. "Okay, maybe they’re not harmless. That one sounds grouchy. Sort of like you first thing in the morning."
From the days he’d lived in the room across from her, Jak remembered her pretty face scowling at him over morning tea.
"I’m Mr. Sweetness-and light first thing in the morning. It’s you . . . ."
"I prefer to have my tea before I deal with the serious business of the day."
"Like I said, grumpy."
Jak slid a glance at her and saw that she was laughing at him. He grinned himself. It was good to see Tessa laugh again. There hadn’t been much cause for laughter lately. When she reached over and took his hand in hers, it was even better.
"So, what will we do with the ship?" he asked.
Just for a while, he wanted to pretend that they would survive this trip, that they’d claim Kamura’s payment; that they’d have a life, a life together. Just for today, just for now, he’d pretend that it was so.
"We’ll be traders," Tessa replied, her blue eyes serious. "I can read people, and you can pilot a ship. We’ll make a good team."
As they stepped onto the path through the tall reeds that led up to the village, Jak realized that he was wearing a big, foolish grin, but he didn’t care. She wasn’t serious about becoming a trader, but he didn’t care about that either. They were alone in a hiding place of living green, out of sight of the barge, not yet in sight of the village. The reeds rustled in the wind like encouraging whispers.
Stopping on the path, Jak pulled Tessa to him. When she didn’t protest, he bent to kiss her. Her lips were soft under his, and her mouth opened as he tasted her with his tongue on hers. She was silk and honey, warmth, everything he wanted. His arms closed around her slender body, and he pulled her closer to him as the kiss deepened. At last, trembling, he forced himself to step back. It was that or take her then and there among the reeds. He kissed her once more, just a light brush of lips this time, then stepped away and smiled down at her.
"I’ve wanted to do that for a long, long time," he said.
She looked down and then glanced up into his eyes. He felt himself drowning in blue sapphires.
"Next time, don’t wait so long before you act."
From behind them, the bellow of a bull lamnan brought them back to the here and now.
"I think we’re trespassing on his territory," Tessa said. "We should move on."
Glancing over the tops of the reeds, Jak saw the big lizard huffing out his sides, his jaws opening wide to reveal huge yellow teeth, and then snapping closed. Yes, it was time to continue their search for food in the village.
Soon, they found themselves tramping between small, wattle-and-daub huts that straggled out on either side of them. He knew places like these, and he was happy that, for once, the memories were entirely his own. During his stint as a guide, he and the young nobles he’d led had often stopped at such riverside villages on their way into the Waste. They were humble settlements where a few tight-knit families formed clans that supported themselves by fishing and farming. Like the others, this village was nothing much to look at, but Tes
sa was still holding his hand, and that improved the scenery no end.
"This is it?" Tessa asked.
"Hey, this is Main Street," Jak answered, realizing that Tessa’s trips into the country had usually ended at some High Lord’s estate. "Go past those fields over there, and there’s nothing but sand, sand, and more sand."
"And moki with teeth the length of my arm."
"Yeah. Those too."
With luck, they wouldn’t come anywhere near one of the desert hunters. Moki were distantly related to lamnan—very distantly. About a quarter the size of the big hauling lizards, moki were lean and quick predators. The first pair of their three pair of legs was tipped with claws as long as Jak’s hand. He’d learned to respect them for those sharp claws and their poisonous bite. But moki were smart enough to avoid the villages, even a village as small as this one.
This village could have been any of the many that Jak had visited. He saw reed-thatched roofs and more reeds woven to form mats over the doorways. The meetinghouse sported a solar array, probably the only building with power in the whole village. It looked a fragile, impermanent place. Yet it and others like it had stood on this same spot since shortly after first human settlement of Shadriss, nearly two thousand years ago. This village had been so long that it now stood on a low mound built up from the refuse of previous generations.
They strolled up the shallow hill toward the small, central plaza. A few shy children watched them from doorways and around corners, but no one was rash enough to come near the strangers. Some of the children were painted with the green and white wave designs of the river goddess. Others wore the yellow circle of the sun or even the red slashes of Nish.
"Look at the kids," Tessa whispered. "No mobbies here."
"You only get mobbies in the cities," said Jak, who’d spent more time in and near the Waste than he liked to remember. "The farmers need their kids to help them work the land. These guys can’t afford high-tech farm machinery."
But they wouldn’t take the city children into their villages, no matter how much they needed help. The clans were closed to outsiders. So, the villages survived in good times and struggled during bad. Farming on Shadriss was simple and harsh. The big lizard-like lamnan pulled plows through the silt that was left each year after the spring floods, and the farmers sowed corn, barley, and tiff. Many of the huts also had vegetable gardens behind them, gardens tended by those too old or too weak to work in the fields.
Spying one of those gardens, Jak asked, "How about over there?"
With his chin pointed to a hut more rundown than its neighbors. The door sagged off one leather hinge, and the thatched roof needed repair. Jak would have thought the place abandoned if it weren’t for the carefully tended plot in back and the pregnant lamnan cow tethered just out of reach of the crops.
"That looks like a possibility," Tessa said.
As they approached, an old, bent figure came to the doorway. Male, Jak supposed, from the flatness of the scrawny bare chest and the thin wisp of beard on the chin; but he could have been wrong. The old man was dressed in rags, but they were clean rags, and his sparse white hair hung in neatly combed strands around his wrinkled face. Leaning on his cane, he looked up at them out of bright brown eyes.
"What do you want?" he asked in a voice that rustled like the dry sands of the Waste.
"To trade," Tessa replied. She pulled out one of the many bracelets she’d earned as a Hired Companion. It was one of her plainest, but still the sunlight danced across its surface. "This bracelet for food?"
"Jewelry?" the old man laughed. "What would I do with that?"
Jak didn’t know what to answer. On his previous trips into the Waste, the hunting parties had taken everything they needed with them. But the old man was right. What could he do with a pretty jewel? He looked to Tessa.
She winked at him and tucked the bracelet back under her cloak. In doing so, she carelessly revealed the knife at her belt. She’d known, he realized; she’d known the old farmer wouldn’t want the bracelet, at least not badly enough to trade good food for it. It was just a teaser, something to get his attention. But the old man spotted the knife at once.
"Well, if we can’t trade, we’d better get back to the barge," she said to Jak.
"Wait! Just wait. You say you want to trade, you better not waste my time." The old man pulled at her sleeve.
"But you don’t want the bracelet," Jak said, doing his part by trying to look puzzled and not too bright. It wasn’t difficult.
"You’ve got other stuff."
Tessa raised one eyebrow in mock puzzlement. "What other stuff?"
"That knife, for one thing."
"This?"
She put her hand to the knife. Yes, it would be worth a lot to the villager. Sharp and well made, it was better than any other the old man was likely to come by this far from the city.
"You can’t trade your knife, woman!" Jak objected, right on cue. He tugged Tessa’s hand. "Come on, let’s go."
Tessa frowned and hung back. "But I’m hungry for some fresh food."
"I’ve got lots," the old man chimed in. "Fresh from the garden. None of that wilted market stuff. Good. Come, look."
They followed him as he hobbled around to the side of the hut. Jak avoided going too near the pregnant lamnan. The cow raised her head and looked at them out of yellow eyes as they passed. The beast, like the children, was painted with symbols of good fortune on her gray, scaled hide.
The old villager’s crop did look better than most, but Jak was suffering unexpected pangs of guilt as he thought of taking any of it. The knife was valuable, but would trading for it leave the old man with enough to eat? What would his family say when they returned and found out what he’d done? Tessa, however, had no such qualms.
"Hmmm." She hefted a plump pink rillfruit and scowled at the chutter berries.
"It’s good. Best in the village." The old man fluttered around her, growing more anxious as Tessa seemed more critical.
The dickering took a while. Jak played the part of devil’s advocate with increasing reluctance. Yet Tessa seemed ever more determined to get the best bargain possible. She had the instincts of a natural-born trader coupled with charm of a courtesan. She was impossible to resist; and when they left, Jak was carrying a full bag, and the old man was admiring his fine new knife.
"Not a bad bit of trading," Tessa said, stealing a handful of berries from the bag.
"This won’t last us long, and we’re down to only two knives."
Tessa laughed and put her arm around his waist. "Jak, we’re fighting all of the Regent’s army and Bolon’s bullies, too. Do you think the extra knife would make a difference?"
"That’s not what I mean."
She went on tiptoe to give him a quick kiss on his cheek. "I know you’re worried about the old man. But we don’t have any choice. Come what may, we have to eat."
He knew she was right, but he wasn’t like Tessa. Nevertheless, he tried to set the problem aside as they walked back to the Serena. Little puffs of dust billowed up around their boots as they walked through the village, and their path wandered as they skirted deep holes in the street.
It seemed to Jak that he had walked like this many times before, walked beside a woman who meant much to him. He could feel other lives inside him, like beads on a string. If he just closed his eyes, he could see them all, remember them all. He shook his head, trying to throw off the feeling. He didn’t want to go into one of his trances with Tessa’s sharp eyes watching.
"Jak what’s the matter?"
Her pretty face was full of concern, and he realized he’d stopped in the middle of the path, as if waiting for something. Just then, a child ran by them calling to another across the way.
. . . . return from the market, laden with grain. My wife walks just behind me. We are poor, and there are no co-wives to help her. . . . sun burns my naked shoulders
. . . youngest child sleeps in the shawl slung from her back . . . . a heavy basket of grain is on her head. I look back at her. Alone on the path, with no one else to see me do woman’s work, I take the sleeping child and carry him. She carries the grain. My wife is a good woman.
"Jak! Jak, wake up!"
Tessa shook him, her voice sharp with anxiety. He saw her face come into focus, as if he were awakening from a dream. Unnerved, he twisted free and stepped away from her. What had he done? What had she seen? He rubbed his hands across his eyes, trying to clear his vision.
"I’m all right! Don’t get so excited."
"Don’t get excited? You just turned into a zombie, and you tell me don’t get excited?"
She stood very close to him, and he saw the worry in her sapphire eyes. He looked away. "I was just thinking about something else."
"Sure you were."
"Tessa, forget about it. Okay?"
His skin was covered with sweat that had nothing to do with the heat. He couldn’t explain the strangeness to her. He couldn’t explain the memories from other lives. He hoped that she would let it pass; pretend it never happened.
"Darling, I’ve seen you do this before. Only once or twice, and not as bad as this, but I’ve seen it. It’s as if you’re not even there. What’s happening to you?"
"I can’t explain it, Tessa."
"Can’t or won’t?"
He shook his head. He wanted to tell her. It would be a relief to have someone to share the burden with him, someone to take some of the load of loneliness off his shoulders. How could he explain what he didn’t even understand? But he had to say something; he couldn’t lie to Tessa.
"I don’t know," he said, trying to find words for the strangeness. "I just have memories sometimes. Strong memories. Like they’re real and happening right now. They block out everything else."
"Your memory is coming back?" She sounded both hopeful and worried.
"No! I don’t know. Mostly, they aren’t my memories," he admitted to her. They entered the tall reeds again. Almost as tall as Jak, the green stems gave a sense of privacy that made it seem safer to talk. "They belong to other people."
"That doesn’t make sense."
"I know. It doesn’t make sense to me either. But I do remember a little more. After the fight with n’Tau, something happened to me," he said, "and I remembered being on Shadriss, and something . . . . something tried to eat me. Tried to eat my mind, my will, my soul. Whatever. But I think that I wasn’t what it was expecting. I remember shock," he paused and then went on. "My shock . . . its shock, too. It’s like we both fell into a pool of memories that neither of knew were there. And . . . and I nearly drowned."
"So, you lost your memories among all those others?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s what happened."
Which was good, in a way. It meant that his memories were still there, if only he could find them.
"But you know what happened to you? How you got here?"
"No," he said, frustrated. "It was just a flash. A client and his partner attacked me. Something tried to eat me. That’s it. Not exactly anything useful, huh?"
"And the rest of it? Your strength? Your ability to heal? Don’t think I haven’t noticed."
"I don’t know," Jak said. "I don’t see how they can be related." He gave her a helpless shrug. "Maybe I’m some kind of a mutant? Maybe I’m a freak. I just don’t know."
Tessa stepped close and embraced him in a hug that offered comfort and friendship and the promise of more.
"It doesn’t matter to me what you are," she said. "You survived when another man would have died. You remained yourself—your stubborn, loyal, all too human self—when another man would have been just an animal in the shell of a man’s body. You aren’t a freak, Jak. You’re my pilot. You’re my protector. That’s all the matters."
It wasn’t all he wanted to be for her, but it was far more than he’d ever hoped to hear her say. When she stepped away, he took her hand, and they continued the rest of the way back to the barge in silence. Now he knew that Tessa had noticed that same blankness, that same helpless trance, before this. It made him wonder; how many other people had noticed his weakness?
Omniphage Invasion Page 23
