Ragamuffin

by Tobias S. Buckell

  John opened his eyes, the ghostly question mark fading from the air, and turned back around. Lithe Teotl closed in around him and herded him out of the gardens toward the street.

  He walked on for several minutes.

  Pepper hopped to his feet. “Well?”

  “You were right.” John fell into step behind him. They were free to go, but still being escorted out of range of the shuttle by Azteca. “Their interfaces are standard, I’m allowed access to them.”

  “Good.” Pepper clenched a fist and smiled.

  John could communicate with the shuttle. Still, it was a far cry from being able to fly it. Or even take it over. He hoped Pepper realized that.

  But they were in and negotiating with the enemy.

  Pepper led him randomly throughout the streets to lose anyone or anything following them.

  “What do you think we’re going to find up there?” John asked.

  Pepper shrugged. “We’re going to need something. Something other than a hostage to keep our edge.”

  John tapped the tiny flask in his coat. Pepper was the kind of man who wouldn’t think twice about releasing something like that against his enemies, while John tried to forget he even had it as he let the dilemma simmer in the back of his mind.

  Of course, the Loa could be manipulating him as well.

  “I may have something,” John said, and pulled it out.

  But after he explained what it was, even Pepper turned it over carefully, then handed it back.

  John refused. “You keep it.”

  “Why?”

  “If we need to use it, you will be in a better position to trigger it.”

  Pepper kept turning it over in his hands. Then he looked up at the sky and pocketed it. “It shouldn’t come to that.”

  John nodded. He hoped to hell not.

  “You’re slowing me down,” Pepper said, “and we’re still being followed. I’m going to go fetch Jerome and the Teotl. I’ll met you back here in an hour.”

  Pepper disappeared off into an alley, and John kept walking, wondering what was following him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Metztli hiccuped, and after the long stretches of silence, Jerome finally broke and asked, “Why you all running?”

  “Ah, ah.” Metztli scraped around and looked at Jerome in the dim green light. It coughed, a tiny hacking, and spit. “Our overlords have decided we are a threat for investigating advanced technologies. They destroy our nests, our ships, our supporters. It is genocide.”

  Genocide. That was something, Jerome thought, that Metztli and its ilk knew well.

  “Old things,” Metztli continued. “Very old. They control much: communications, and technologies. Very powerful, we are all their subjects.” Metztli wrapped its tentacles around itself. “You are too, even in this place that your kind tried to hide itself in.”

  “Never heard of them.”

  “But they are out there, and coming for all of us. Coming here is our last chance for survival, we have been forced away elsewhere. We tried to take this world so long ago in anticipation of the coming wars, but we failed. Now we come again, with differing strategies.”

  “So you fighting them?”

  “No. We run, now. Run and look to hide. We need your help.”

  “Help? Help you?” Jerome shook his head. “We know about the kind of help you bring, we don’t want no part of it.”

  “Well,” the Teotl said. “You really don’t have a choice.”

  The door scraped open.

  “We have no choice. Really?” Pepper slipped through. “People always have choices,” he said.

  “A wormhole never truly closes,” Metztli said. “The expensive exotic matter is merely mostly removed, leaving a passageway impossibly small and therefore closed.”

  “Or you use really large nuclear weapons to blow the exotic matter out and destabilize the hole,” Pepper said.

  Metztli blinked and looked over. “Crude, and effective. But even after that with replacement matter, and enough energy, it can be forced back into shape.”

  “We saw.” Pepper walked over to the Teotl and stood over it. “Detritus from the replacement matter and waste energy pouring out of it. An incredible project.”

  “The Spindle,” Jerome said. “You talking about the Spindle, right?”

  Pepper nodded. “Do you have the resources to open the next one, the one leading back towards our systems?”

  “Barely. We exhausted much to reclose the wormhole.”

  “We don’t have such tools at our disposal,” Pepper said.

  “We will teach you. We need to teach you.”

  “Because the bad guys are coming through after you, right?” Pepper smiled.

  “Yes, yes,” the Teotl hissed. “With your help, with resources we do not have now, we can keep the wormhole closed. Together.”

  “Toss me the remote,” Pepper ordered Jerome. Jerome did so, and Pepper pocketed it. “How many ships and warriors do you have?”

  “One ship. Fifteen warriors. Seventeen specialized units, five masters of the gene, seven masters of the metals and chemistries. Some shuttles. I do not know how many. Four hundred reproductive units. A thousand eggs incubating.”

  The thought of a thousand Teotl waiting to be born made Jerome shiver.

  “We wish to bargain for any world, any world that no one wishes, and we will shape our eggs to thrive in it. We will sign any nonaggression pact. We will accept most terms. We will share any technology.”

  Jerome had imagined clouds of Teotl hanging over their world, ready to darken the skies. Instead, they had a desperate few dirty refugees, vulnerable and begging for their lives.

  Pepper spread his arms. “Well, friend, you’re well and truly up that creek, aren’t you? And you are bringing down a great danger onto us. There are few reasons we should help you.”

  “What creek?” the Teotl asked, a concerned note in its voice.

  “The same one humanity’s been in for the last few hundred years. The same one you tried to send us up. Shit creek.” Pepper snapped his fingers. “One ship, that’s it?”

  “That is it. We are the last of our kind. Many millions died after you shut the wormhole down that led to us. They died to protect us, to get us through and this far.”

  Millions.

  “One ship to get me back out on the other side of the wormhole to civilization. One freaking ship,” Pepper repeated. “I like those odds.”

  “They are not good odds,” Metztli said.

  Pepper smiled. “Not for you they aren’t, no.” He turned around and pushed the door open. “Time to leave.” He pushed the Teotl into the wicker basket.

  As Pepper dragged the alien out, Jerome waited until they passed, then picked up his pocketknife and followed them.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The wind kicked at them, stirring Pepper’s locks slightly as the odd trio waited before the Teotl shuttle. Pepper tasted salt, and a myriad of other things on the wind. He ignored it all and remained still as a pair of Teotl opened his coat.

  One by one they removed items. The two shotguns first. Pepper kept the small flask John had given him in his hands, slightly obscured by the remote to the collar.

  The irony of the creatures’ own devices being used on them like this was Pepper’s kind of irony.

  “They’re actually taking us up,” John said. Pepper nodded. Jerome stood between them.

  The disarming continued. Next came the brace of pistols by unbuckling a belt. The Teotl snorted as the smooth-handled hunting knife came out of its case, and the machete with the oak handle tugged out along with it. They found the two pistols by his ankles, stiletto strapped to his calf, and finally the handmade sword on his back.

  Pepper stepped over the pile they’d made. “You’re staring,” he said to Jerome.

  Jerome looked down at the ground. John grabbed his son’s shoulder. “You sure you don’t want to stay? You don’t have to get involved in all this.”

&n
bsp; “I already in.” Jerome shook free. “Far enough in it don’t matter where I go now.” Pepper agreed silently. The boy had as much a right to get off the planet as John or he.

  They grouped up and stood at the shuttle’s side. A split appeared in the shiny skin, a man-sized entrance growing to accept them. Pepper walked through.

  Across the grass, from the edge of the city, Pepper heard a scream. The Teotl had what they wanted now. Someone was being sacrificed somewhere on the edge of the city.

  John looked back at him. “You okay?”

  “Keep moving, let’s get this over with.”

  The shuttle’s inhabitants swung from cocoons as it gained altitude, while the humans remained warily at the back, shuffled into a corner.

  The Teotl were insane to let them into their lair. What new minds were controlling them? They’d lost a certain edge Pepper expected. Maybe the Teotl who had managed to land on Nanagada in the old days had been a particularly nasty sort.

  He sighed to himself. Too much gray, not enough black and white for his taste.

  They hadn’t tried to kill him yet, though. That was a plus. He began to let the right hemisphere of his brain slip into sleep while he watched the bundles of Teotl inside the craft bounce around, dangling from the current top of the shuttle.

  Then he noticed something, like the aftertaste of orange rind on the back of his tongue. Jerome and John leaned against each other, asleep. Peaceful. Out. Something in the air, targeted at them.

  Pepper smiled. That was more like it. He closed his opened eye, slowed his breathing, and slipped into an apparent sleep.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Pepper shook John awake. He looked around and gagged on the taste of orange rind.

  “Jerome?” John staggered up and looked at Pepper. “What the hell happened? Where’s Jerome?” They weren’t aboard a shuttle.

  “Easy, man, we’re okay.” Pepper steadied him. John swayed for a second, unfocused his eyes, and checked the time. It glowed fuzzily in his field of view, laid overtop everything he could see. He’d lost five hours. “Jerome is outside keeping an eye on our hostage.”

  “I’ve lost five hours?”

  Pepper sighed. “I know.” He wiped his hands off. “They gassed us on the way up and tried to separate us. Would have made for some nice negotiating on their part, having Jerome.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “Grabbed the first warrior’s arm when he came in to pick us up. I don’t think they’ll try again. Spooked them.” Pepper’s lips quirked, a grin, gone before John even realized it.

  “Okay.” John took a deep breath. A whole world trickled in through the edges of his vision. The walls, a polished gray rock of some sort, faded into swirls of bright, gaudy orange and blue. A clear patch glowed hot white, with squiggles of wavy lines through it.

  Alien text.

  John squinted, then held up a hand and cleared a section of his viewpoint, a window into the real. The drab wall returned. “The data overlays. They’re the same that the Gahe and Maatan use. Standard.” Everywhere John looked he could see and access data tied into the real physical location. It was a breath of fresh air. He hadn’t been in an environment like this for a long time. It felt like coming home.

  “Standard?” Pepper asked.

  “Very.”

  Pepper nodded. “You start querying all this crap and learning it. I want you to be able to fly one of their shuttles.”

  “You think we’ll be able to steal one?”

  “The moment we get close enough to something we recognize we can run to, a ship, habitat, or a planet, yes.”

  Pepper walked out, and Jerome handed him the necklace remote for their hostage. John uncleared his vision and began looking around the room. Did it speak Anglic? It should, the Teotl had encountered them enough. He pinged it. The colors shifted and the wiggles turned into text.

  Utility room B50. He could translate their text and access their public information. And why not? They were standard public data overlays, available to all.

  Jerome walked in. “You okay?”

  John nodded. “You?”

  “Tired. Mouth tasting funny.”

  “Orange peels?” John asked.

  Jerome frowned and looked at him. “Orange?”

  Nanagada didn’t have oranges. John had forgotten. He put a finger to his lips. He hadn’t had an orange in so long he wondered if he even really remembered what oranges tasted like. “A fruit, can’t find it on Nanagada.”

  Jerome shifted a bit, indecisive. “You scared, being here in the middle of the Teotl?”

  “Of course.” John summoned up a map of the Teotl starship from the public data overlay. It looked like giant, rocky potato. The thing was barely small enough to fit through a wormhole.

  Right now it rotated for gravity.

  John looked over and smiled. “I’d be insane not to be.”

  “I feel sorry for the Teotl, a little bit,” Jerome said. “They ain’t no more. They the last of they kind.”

  John looked at his son. As a boy he’d been told bogeyman tales of the Teotl descending from space in the great wars at the start of Nanagadan history. And told that some still stalked around Aztlan, causing trouble for Nanagadans. And particularly, little boys who didn’t behave.

  And yet he was still willing to try to wrap his mind around the various facets of the situation.

  “You have sympathy for them?” John asked.

  “No. But I think I coming to understand them,” Jerome snapped. He looked directly at John, then grinned. “They running from something dangerous too. They scared. They ain’t no gods, they just like all of we.”

  A pair of Teotl appeared at the door and pointed at John.

  “Jerome . . .” John stopped at the doorjamb. Bit his lip. “Don’t believe all that just yet. This wouldn’t be the first time we played into their hands.”

  He turned around and Jerome shrugged.

  “Listen . . .” Two Teotl flanked John.

  “Need move,” they grated at him in simplified Anglic. They smelled of rotting meat, and John grimaced when he noticed the glisten of pus on their joints.

  “I want my son to come with us.”

  “Now. Move.”

  John looked back. “We’ll talk later, Jerome.”

  The Teotl led him out into the corridor, and the door slid shut, sealing them off from each other.

  They descended deeper into the ship, John’s eyes getting accustomed to the faint dripping, the slippery floors, until they abruptly stepped out into a vast cavern.

  Like standing on the inside of a giant world. But no grass or forests like a human habitat. Every available inch of the space dotted with glistening cocoons. Eggs. Teotl. Massive polyps sprung from a ground saturated with a nutrient web. John dug at this with a foot. Faint white wires that broke in a gush of fluid.

  This was a colony ship festooned with the creatures waiting to molt into their various forms. An invasion force. John swallowed. Each of those things was capable of turning into a creature adapted for competing with humans for any environment they happened to be in. Or just shoving them aside.

  The stump of Metztli’s missing tentacle had been covered in an amoebalike substance. Metztli inched toward John in a sedan festooned with spiny bones. The foot part of the sedan picked up speed, slipping down a smooth track toward them. Pepper followed close behind.

  They both stopped in front of John.

  The Teotl twisted and regarded John with lidded eyes. “We are the last of our kind, aboard this ship. We are in desperate need of your help. This is the truth. Can you convince your friend to take the collar off me?”

  “You have lied before. I’d rather see it on,” John said. “You talk as if reformed, but you let the Azteca take Capitol City, you rule it with fear.”

  “I know.” The Teotl waved one of its healthy metal-tipped tentacles. “It was dirty, and quick, and uncivilized. But imagine that any moment now our devices holding the worm
hole closed will be overcome. When our masters pour out from it to destroy us, they will destroy you too. It is in your interest to assist us.”

  John leaned toward the sedan and grabbed one of the spikes. He bent it under his hand. “You are designed to understand us and talk to us. I’ve met your type before. You’re dangerous.”

  “We both are.” It held up the stub of the tentacle John and Pepper had cut off. Then it tapped the collar. “As Pepper noted, if I try to remove this, I’ll die. An effective device, we made. And on a bigger scale, no one won the mess we were orbiting. But despite all that hostility, even we are capable of learning from mistakes.”

  “Learning to put that behind us isn’t easy.”

  “We did not pretend it to be. But we have a higher goal now. Survival. We do not want your world, it is yours to do with what you will. It’s in too dangerous a position for us. We want to follow the other wormhole out to the human worlds. We want to find a place to hide there, and allies to help us keep the wormhole back where we came from closed. It will require a lot of energy.” The Teotl’s sedan began to ooze down the shallow trough, and John walked with it.

  John looked around at the soft, wet corners of the world he walked inside. Suppose this was it for humanity and he had the remains of his entire race in this craft. What would he do with the weight of an entire species on his shoulders?

  And what if this was just one big snow job?

  “Where are we going now?” he asked.

  “We will show you the reopening of the wormhole back to the human worlds. We are about to break orbit.”

  John paused. “Bring my son with us.” He folded his arms and stared at the Teotl as it slowly slid past him. “I demand he stand with me. There is no reason to separate us.”

  “It will be done.” The sedan lurched to a halt. The Teotl turned to John. “You are possessive.”

  “I want him to see this.” Wanted him to see their return to the rest of the worlds, something John had dreamed of for far too many years. And he didn’t want to be pulled apart. They’d been through enough. And if Pepper had something up his sleeve, better Jerome stayed close to John.