How Dark the World Becomes

by Frank Chadwick

  “Do you believe that this plan of yours will work?” Borro asked.

  “You gave me the idea.”

  “No, not this business with the transponders; the other part. How can you be sure the Unionists have an effective air-defense network?”

  “So you figured that out, huh? Well, I guess it’s pretty obvious what I had in mind. As to their ADA umbrella, I’m not sure what they’ve got, if anything. All I know is they’ve survived under Sammie-controlled skies for months, so whatever they’re doing, it’s working.”

  “How will we contact them?” he asked. “You know, you cannot simply drive into the jungle and say, ‘Take me to the rebels.’ Were it that simple, the government forces would have done it long ago.”

  “Yeah, but they didn’t have the Cottohazz Executive Council’s Special Envoy Plenipotentiary for Emergency Abatement on K’Tok as a bargaining chip.”

  I watched him carefully then. A lot of this depended on how he reacted to the idea. If he had any reaction, I couldn’t pick up on it. His skin color and ear movement remained just about the same as before. Borro was good.

  After a few seconds, he simply nodded.

  “Yes, that will probably work.”

  “You’re okay with it?”

  “Yes, within some parameters as to the envoy’s physical safety.”

  “No guarantees,” I said.

  “There are no guarantees anywhere,” he answered. “It is a matter of comparative risks and likely outcomes. Not all decisions are easy, but they must be made. I believe that this is the safest course.”

  “You gonna get in trouble from your boss?”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “If it will help, I’ll talk to him,” I volunteered.

  Borro smiled at that and then shook his head.

  “The Honorable e-Lotonna is my assignment, not my employer.”

  “Oh yeah? Then who—”

  But just as the conversation was getting interesting, pain flashed through my left upper body as a fist-sized rock bounced off my shoulder.

  I looked over at the locals who had been following us, watching our little act, and they were buying it, maybe better than we’d figured on. Four or five spectators had grown to over a dozen, and they were getting uglier as they got stronger, iridescent skin flashing the dark red-orange of rage and danger-buzz, ears splaying out like Chinese fans and then snapping back tight against the head.

  “Borro . . .”

  “I see them,” he said.

  “Well, you better do something. I’d say you’re about thirty seconds from either having to shoot people or feed me to them.”

  “Which would you suggest?”

  That probably sounded a lot funnier to him, he being the guy with the gun and me being the one with my hands tied. He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead he turned and started talking to them in Sammie. He didn’t yell, and he didn’t point the gauss pistol at them. He just talked, softly and quietly. I picked up most of it. Do not do anything foolish, I am responsible for this prisoner, that sort of thing. Blah blah blah. The words didn’t really matter as much as how they were said. Borro said them without bluster, without trying to intimidate or frighten. He said them the way someone tells you something just for due diligence, not really caring what you do with the warning, because once the warning was given, his hands were clean, and he was going to do whatever the hell he wanted to next.

  Later I figured out that these little settlements had seen their share of hard people lately, between rebels, government soldiers, and mercenary strikers. If not, things might have gotten uglier, but these folks knew the signs and what they meant. That particular moment on that particular street, the signs meant go home and live. So they did.

  “I owe you one, pal,” I said as they dispersed.

  “I doubt it will be the last one,” Borro answered. “I will be sure to keep track.”

  * * *

  “So what did we learn? Anything?” I asked.

  Borro translated into aGavoosh as I looked at the little circle of faces—the five Varoki adults who had done our “shopping.” They talked to each other a bit, ears expanding and contracting in agitation, comparing notes I guess, trying to figure out what was important and what was just meaningless background noise. Then one of the two females spoke to Borro for a while, gesturing out at the jungle as she did so, her ears very large and gracefully expressive.

  “Kavaani-la says the town is an agricultural research station. They are force-changing the jungle flora. That is why it looks so wilted here; microorganisms in the soil attacking the local plant life, trying to replace it with Varoki-compatible protein forms.”

  “Yeah? How’s that working out?”

  Borro repeated the question to her, the group compared notes again, and Borro turned to me.

  “Not well, Sasha. They are managing to kill a great deal of local plant life, but they have not been successful in getting the replacement stock to take root. Mr. Hoozhu,” he said, gesturing to an elderly male Varoki, “believes that is why there is so much hostility. They are afraid for their future.”

  “Is that the way you see it, Borro?”

  “I see no reason to doubt it. But I was interested in the extreme hostility they showed you, a Human.”

  “Yeah, I was interested in that, too. So interested I almost wet myself.”

  It was weird. Humans were not real popular anywhere, but the mob scene was over the top, especially with no Human enclave on-planet to cause background friction. Very weird.

  Well, nothing else seemed to make much sense on K’Tok so far, so why should this be an exception?

  I thanked the five civilians, excused myself, and walked over to where TheHon, Marfoglia, and the three children were eating.

  “How’s the chow?” I asked, and swatted a bug on my cheek.

  Barraki translated the question for Tweezaa and she looked at me and said, “It sucks!” She beamed with pleasure, ears spread wide and then twitching up and down at the tips. Then she went back to eating. While the adults looked at each other, momentarily speechless, Barraki started laughing.

  “You been giving your sister English lessons, Weasel Boy?” I demanded.

  He just cocked his head to the side, but his grin told the story.

  “Just out of curiosity,” I asked, “what does Tweezaa think it sucks actually means?”

  “I do not know. Well . . . she may think it means quite good.” Then he looked down at his ration pack to keep from giggling, but it didn’t do any good.

  “Barraki!” Marfoglia exclaimed, but the rest of us started laughing, and then Marfoglia did, too.

  “Be advised, though, Weasel Boy,” I said, and pointed at him for emphasis, “if the word fuck, or anything like it, comes out of her mouth, you’re going to start riding standing up, and it won’t be because anyone makes you—it’s just going to be the only comfortable position. You read me?”

  “You are going to kick my ass,” he translated.

  “In a cold-blooded fashion.”

  Marfoglia said something to Tweezaa, who gave Barraki a look of irritation followed by a punch in the shoulder.

  “Ow!” he said, and then Tweezaa went back to eating, the ledger apparently balanced to her satisfaction.

  “You should probably eat something, too, Mr. Naradnyo,” Marfoglia said, but frowning and not looking at me. “Have you had anything today but energy water? It’s stupid not to eat.”

  Hard to turn down such a gracious invitation.

  “Yeah, maybe later. I need to report to Gasiri.”

  I pulled on the uplink helmet and opened the comm channel.

  “This is Jungle Bird Seven . . . or Eight, I forget which. But it’s Naradnyo and company, okay? We got clear of the town without much trouble, and it looks as if Operation Chameleon was a success. How does it look from up there?”

  “Jungle Bird Seven, this is Orbital One. Acknowledge your transmission. Our telemetry shows 100 percent success with Chameleon
. Hold for Orbital Six.”

  Orbital Six was Gasiri. Commanders are always “six.” There was probably a good reason for it once, but damned if I knew what it was. In a few seconds she came on the circuit.

  “Good job, Seven. We have matched all other transponder codes to yours and the decoys. We are also sending word for the other ground parties to locate settlements and duplicate the operation if feasible.”

  “Swell. So now we’ll try my other little plan, and if we’re still alive to chat tomorrow, you can tell the other ground parties to follow us there, too.”

  “Negative, Seven. You are categorically forbidden to contact the Unionist resistance. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah, I understand. I just don’t care.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  About twelve hours later, I stood quietly in the middle of the road, looking down a sewer pipe. Well, actually, it was the barrel of a medium-gauge shotgun, but it looked big as a sewer pipe from where I was standing.

  There were three Varoki in front of us, all of them armed, no more than three or four meters away, and since the shotgun was cut down short, it would be pretty hard for the guy in the middle to miss, no matter how much his hand was shaking—and it was shaking a lot. It must have been from buck fever, because Marfoglia and I were both unarmed.

  The undergrowth to our left parted and four more Varoki with rifles showed themselves, all in civilian hunting clothes but wearing the same yellow armband on their left sleeve. Then one more guy with a submachine gun showed himself on our right and kind of behind us.

  “Well, this is working out better than I thought,” I subvocalized to Marfoglia on our dedicated comm link. “Now that we’re surrounded, if they open fire they’ll shoot the hell out of each other.”

  She looked at me with a look of mixed terror and anger. No wonder—I’d gotten her into this mess, and now I was making wise about it. Served her right for being a jerk.

  “To hungding!” she transmitted back, her eyes desperate. Her subvocalization technique left a lot to be desired, but I was pretty sure she was trying to say “do something.”

  Yeah. Good idea.

  “Any of you guys speak English?” I asked out loud as an icebreaker, and I threw in a big grin so the natives would know I was harmless.

  They looked at each other for a few seconds, and then one of them lowered his assault rifle and answered.

  “I speak English. You are a long way from home, Earthman.”

  “I’m from Peezgtaan, actually, but that’s still far enough,” I said, smiling as politely as I knew how. I’m not all that good at either smiling or polite, but extraordinary circumstances demand extraordinary efforts.

  “You are the ones who have the Special Envoy prisoner?” he asked.

  “Not prisoner. Guest.”

  “You will turn him over to us and leave.”

  “Nope. He stays with us. We all go with you or nobody does.”

  “We can take him,” the spokesman said.

  “His dead body, maybe.”

  The guy that spoke English looked at me for a few seconds and then withdrew a few steps to talk things over with the others, but he left the guy with a giant shotgun to cover us. Actually, now that the shotgun wasn’t pointed directly at my face, it had shrunk down to real-world size.

  While they talked, I looked them over. They had an interesting mix of gear. They were wearing civilian outfits, but they were very well-made outdoor clothes in jungle green with a broad dark tone camo shatter pattern diagonally across them. I figure they were hunting smocks of some sort, but they were similar enough they could almost be uniforms—or at least all from the same supplier. The weapons were a mishmash of civilian hunting rifles and shotguns along with a few civilian low-end copies of military small arms, and—I was pretty sure—one genuine uZmataanki Milspec RAG. The webbing was all the same sort of hunting stuff, and again all the same pattern, as if somebody made a mass buy. Headgear was varied and soft, and what body armor they had was all light civilian grade. And they were clean. It just wasn’t how I’d envisioned a hard-core guerrilla insurgency.

  The huddle broke up, and the mouthpiece walked back to face me.

  “Why should we let you camp with us? The puppet council forces will follow you here. That will mean trouble for us, perhaps deaths. Why should we?”

  “That’s a yes,” I transmitted to Marfoglia, because she needed some good news, but also because it was true.

  “Because it’s too big an opportunity to pass up.”

  “Nell me gen why uh hell I’m here.” she transmitted back. Was that supposed to be “Tell me again why the hell I’m here”? I decided to take that as a compliment and hid an honest smile under my phony one.

  “I will have to consult with my commander,” he said.

  Sure, go ahead, pal. Talk to your commander. Get a witch board and talk to Che Guevara if you want. We’re in!

  * * *

  Marfoglia almost fainted once things settled down, and that surprised me. I mean, I knew she was scared by all those guns, but she was really scared—teeth-chattering, knee-wobbly, sweat-soaked scared. She’d held up under a lot the last few days, but it’s really different when you can look in people’s eyes and see the guns pointed at you. I had to hold her up for a minute or so, and I thought she was going to start crying on me, except almost every drop of spare water she had in her had gone out her sweat glands in about two minutes. Then I thought she might take a swing at me, but she didn’t, she just pushed me away. She almost fell again then.

  “Marrissa, you’re dehydrated.”

  She glared at me through wet, tangled hair plastered to her face, her expression a mixture of anger and fear. Then she slowly sank down to sit in the road cross-legged. As she did, I realized that I was feeling dizzy myself. I hadn’t eaten much in the last few days and had built up a pretty impressive sleep deficit. Well, pretty soon I could catch up.

  I pulled the water bladder out of the back of my load harness, squatted down, and handed it to her.

  “Dehydration makes you physically weak, but it also triggers anxiety, even panic attacks. It’s not real fear you’re feeling—it’s just your brain chemistry out of whack. So drink—sip if you want, but drink, keep drinking, and just sit here and rest for a while.”

  She took the bladder with trembling hands and started drinking. I sat down at arm’s length and waved to Borro back in the truck cab and gave him a thumbs-up.

  “Feeling any better?” I asked her.

  She shook her head.

  “Look, I wouldn’t have put you through that if I didn’t think it was necessary,” I said.

  “You call that an apology?” she demanded, her voice weak and trembling, but angry.

  “Nope.”

  I think she almost hit me then, but she thought better of it—probably lacked the strength. Instead she just turned away and looked at the jungle, still taking regular sips of water. I stood up, waited for another spell of dizziness to pass, and walked back to the truck to give her some space. I told Lance Corporal Tuvaani to go hang out with her until she felt better—and keep his sidearm handy. I didn’t think the insurgents would give us any trouble, but this was untamed wilderness either side of the narrow ribbon of the road, and the jungle started about five meters from where Marfoglia was sitting. No telling how hungry the big toothy things lurking in there might be, and if they weren’t any smarter than the little bugs, they might eat her first and get sick later.

  But if some giant crab-thing didn’t eat her, she’d be okay. She’d almost packed it in, but not during the crisis, only afterwards. That was important. She might be a spoiled, rich pain in the ass, but she wasn’t worthless.

  They kept us waiting on the road for a couple hours in the mid-afternoon heat—either so they wouldn’t look too anxious, or to give them time to clean up their HQ compound. After all, they probably didn’t get a lot of guests way out here in the mountains.

  On the surface, I figured this insurgency was
about what they were all about—gross government mismanagement, crooked elections, corrupt judges, and a growing sense that whoever the hell was running things didn’t give a damn about the common folks anymore—didn’t even think that giving a damn ought to be part of their job descriptions. Underneath it all, it was about the arrogance of power, and how after a while that really pisses people off, on a very basic gut level. Once that ember starts smoldering, it doesn’t take much to fan it into a roaring blaze.

  And I figured that somewhere in all that mess, there was probably an uBakai spoon stirring the pot. The whole Union thing meant uniting the two colonies under a single government, and I bet uBakaa figured to come out ahead in that, since their people weren’t in open revolt.

  That’s who I really wanted to talk to, the uBakai. I’m not crazy about governments, but there are times when there’s just no substitute for them. Or so I thought.

  * * *

  Once things started moving, they moved fairly quickly. An hour driving behind a hard-gun car got us to the cliff base that was the staging area to their base. Was it their main base? An alternate base? A satellite base? I had no way of knowing. It was just a base.

  The entrance to the compound was a nearly sheer cliff side, and it opened into some very impressive underground chambers. Some of them looked natural, but there had been a lot of additional work done—some excavation, some reinforcement, and in places it was hard to tell what was original and what was new. The artificial lighting was good, and it was cooler than outside—probably naturally cool. Ventilation was just okay—the air wasn’t heavy with CO2, but it didn’t smell very good, either: mold, rotten garbage, feces, and body odor all mixed up together. Of course Varoki shit, urine, and BO smell different than ours, because of the different protein groups, but they are still unmistakable odors.

  I carried Tweezaa, who was sleeping, and Marfoglia held Barraki’s hand. A fair number of Varoki watched us—all of them in fatigues except for one guy in a suit who stayed in the shadows. Groggy as I was from fatigue, I still noticed things like that, maybe on some subconscious level.