Ragamuffin

by Tobias S. Buckell

  And yet, unless she actually chose to sever it, it felt real enough to hold her breath and fall away from the mirrorlike surface of the water until her back hit the sand.

  Yes, this felt good, she thought. Felt right.

  She was going to stay on Nanagada. Stop moving.

  This was home.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  Someone shook Kara awake. A large man, with a top hat, and dreadlocks, and a coat that seemed to swirl on its own.

  She blinked. “Pepper?”

  “Come on,” he said. “I have someone for you to meet.”

  Kara followed him out of the medieval-feeling stone house, but before she got to the front door, Pepper grabbed her shoulder. “Do you like it here?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “John, and Nashara, they’re going to let you stay. Do you want to stay?”

  She looked around. “I just want to find out whether Jared is alive. I don’t have anywhere else to stay, so it’s a stupid question.”

  “Okay.”

  Pepper opened the door, and Jared stood there with his stupid, dirty Raggedy Andy doll.

  She almost knocked him over with her hug. “Thank you, Pepper, thank you. Are you okay, Jared?”

  Her brother nodded. “I was scared you were gone too.”

  “I know. Me too.”

  “Where’s John?” Pepper asked her. “I need to talk to him.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  Pepper stood on the pier, waiting as they pulled in. His coat flapped in the wind.

  “The Lucita,” he said, nodding at John’s boat.

  “Where were you for his funeral?” John asked.

  “Not here. And that’s all we’ll say about that.” Pepper leaned over and helped Nashara push the mobile unit out, then gave her a hand.

  He lifted her up completely, then deposited her gently on the pier.

  John tied the boat up, then jumped up himself. “I hoped you’d be there.” They’d seen so much together, and Jerome had looked up to Pepper like an uncle.

  Pepper ignored it. He walked ahead. “I have something for you, John. A present.”

  He led them to a small warehouse at the edge of town. Rows of doors ran along the palm-tree shade.

  “Stay outside, Nashara.” With a boot he nudged the door open and walked in.

  John followed him into the murk as the door closed behind them. Pepper clicked on a gaslight in the corner of the room.

  A large crate sat on a bed of straw in the corner.

  Pepper grabbed a corner and ripped it off with his bare hands and a grunt, then grabbed the top and tore it off, tossing it aside.

  The crate fell apart, revealing the Teotl Metztli, sitting in its own filth and blinking at them. It mewled and scuffled back, pushing itself until it was up against the corner of the wall.

  A fetid, rotten smell hit John.

  Pepper slapped a gun in John’s hand. “I told you there would be a reckoning later. You insinuated just now that I didn’t care for Jerome, but don’t you ever make that mistake.” He gripped his hands over John’s on the gun and squeezed. “I forget nothing. This is my gift.”

  John squeezed back, fighting back tears again. “You loved him too?”

  Pepper brushed the arm away and looked away. “Wouldn’t go that warm and mushy, John.”

  “You felt something.”

  “I protected him. I protected him for you when I first met him. Kept an eye on him later. And here I failed. I don’t like to fail. We should have left him in the bush outside Capitol City.”

  “I know.” But then there he might have died too, attacked by Azteca, or by an accident, or by something else. There were no guarantees.

  “Then there it is. That’s done. You have this, and I’ve done this for you.”

  John shook his head, not sure what to say.

  “There’s something else.” Pepper pressed something into John’s other palm. A broken vial.

  John looked up. “Pepper. That’s genocide.”

  “Maybe.” There was an expression on Pepper’s face. Anger? Or hurt. “You and I disagree about the League. So I’ll give you a question with that piece of glass. Do we choose to try and live with these aliens, or any aliens? Do we learn to adapt and grow with them, because more powerful creatures will come to us one day? Or do we go it alone, fighting to the brink and never pulling back? The Ragamuffin ships are creating a cordon near Chilo that they’re not allowing the League to pass through, because the League wants all the Teotl and their technology as well as whatever remains of the nest. They already have the Gulong, Raga won’t be giving them anything more. But that’s a big issue we need to solve.”

  “Pepper . . . the vial.” John was more worried about that.

  “Some of them will figure it out and quarantine themselves from other Teotl. It’ll just be a lonely existence for them.”

  “I can’t . . .”

  “Anyway.” Pepper walked to the door. “I did what I did. If you feel merciful, let the Teotl all know what I released, it’ll take a few weeks to make its way across the various ships and population centers, and if you tell them now, they can prevent the spread and live. But you can think about that later. First . . .”

  He tossed a hacksaw and set of pliers on the ground in front of John.

  “Good-bye.”

  They shook hands firmly, then Pepper shut the door on John.

  In the corner of the room Metztli shivered, looking with its one good eye at John.

  “I saved your lives,” it mewled again.

  “Yes.” John nodded. “But you didn’t save his, did you?”

  He squatted in front of the alien, gun in his left hand.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  Pepper walked out and smiled at Nashara. She cocked her head.

  “You look comfortable here,” Pepper said with a smile.

  “I don’t think so,” Nashara said. “But, yes, I’m staying.”

  “I should be unnerved that my cloned self wants to sell its feminist militant side out and try and have babies.”

  “Fuck you. I have no womb.” She considered sucker punching him, but it was Pepper. It would have as much effect on him as it would on her. “I’m not settling down. This is just going to be my home. John is going to be my friend. This place needs protecting, it needs people like me and you. You know that.”

  “Yes, but you should tell him you like him.”

  “He’ll find out soon enough.”

  “He’s broken goods, he might take some gentle hints.” Pepper folded his arms and regarded her.

  “I know.”

  “You’re going to settle down, help with the kids, hang out around town?” He smirked. “Cook dinners?”

  “Not my style, Grandpops. There are governments to reform, military strength to create if we don’t want the League running us over. And then, I want the Teotl to help us figure out how to get Chimson back into the fold. My real home.”

  Her stance was just as aggressive.

  Pepper nodded, he’d just been pushing her a bit. “There are wolves out there, like the League. Even humans can be dangerous to humanity, right? The League is near xenophobic, we can’t have that built in, the backlash will be too great. I’m planning on heading out with a couple of your virtual selves and Etsudo to scout out what is really going on among the forty-eight planets. See, these people, they need protection from the wolves. They need domesticated wolves, like you and me, right, Granddaughter?”

  “Sheepdogs.”

  Pepper nodded and smiled. “Sheepdogs, exactly.”

  “What are you off to do then?” Nashara asked.

  “Going to join Takara Bune, you, and Etsudo. I want the Gulong back, or at least the technology, just in case the Teotl here are . . . unable to rebuild the technology they had in their nest. And . . . a few other things I need to check up on way out there. I think we’ll be a good team. We’ll curb the League as best we can.”

  “I’m good peo
ple,” Nashara said with a smile. “I won’t let you down.”

  “I know.” The crack of a pistol shot jerked Nashara into the air.

  She spun back toward the door, but Pepper grabbed her arm.

  “He’s okay. It’s just sheepdog shit, you don’t want to know,” he said. “Just, do me a favor? Don’t ask about it.”

  “Okay.” Nashara stared at the door, and John slowly walked through.

  She grabbed his arm as he wobbled a bit. He was crying. Pepper grabbed her before she could go over and rested his forehead against hers. “Treat him well,” he said. “I’ll clean this up. Take him home.”

  “Okay.” Nashara pulled away and walked over to John. “Come on, John, let’s go.”

  She helped him along the road. After several minutes he pulled himself together.

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s no problem.”

  He stopped walking. “I need you to do something for me.”

  “What?”

  “I need you to use your connection to contact all the ships that have Teotl aboard them. There’s something we need to warn them about.”

  He looked back down the road, and Nashara followed his gaze.

  But Pepper was already gone.

  EPILOGUE

  Cayenne was three days and too many transits upstream from Chilo, where the Ragamuffin ships patrolled with a watchful eye at the League of Human Affairs. Only Ragamuffin ships were allowed past Chilo.

  The Raga high council had decided to keep calling the planet New Anegada, but call the countries of the prime continent Nanagada and Aztlan. It was where captains argued how to integrate the new Teotl and their technologies. It was the return of a whole livable planet to the human race for the first time in as long as most could remember.

  It was home.

  But this was Astragalai Cayenne orbited right now.

  Copies of Cayenne dwelled within navigational buoys and corrupted the lamina of Gahe habitats. In the confusion her selves provided, Ragamuffin and League ships transited in through the wormhole. Now men and women prepared to drop to the ground and engage Gahe hunt packs.

  Pepper belted up for battle in the holds of the Takara Bune. Etsudo bounced from wall to wall in his cockpit. Mongoose-men from New Anegada and mongoose-men from Ragamuffin ships prepared to hit the ground.

  Cayenne smiled and accepted an incoming message from the Daystar.

  “Hello, Danielle.”

  Danielle smiled. “Cayenne. It’s so odd to be calling you that. But then, one of your . . . selves that dwells in the Villach lamina calls itself Velvet. I think you ran out of Pepper-related names?”

  “The joke got old.” Cayenne watched the first wave of shuttles depart for the fringes of the upper atmosphere.

  “I wanted to warn you that after this, the League thinks it is powerful enough it doesn’t need your help to continue the revolution.” Danielle wore a blue uniform with star-shaped medals, shoulder pads, and double rows of brass buttons. “You’re to return to New Anegada. I warn you now because some of my colleagues agitate to find countermeasures to your trick, and others to destroy your ship and turn off Satrapic lamina everywhere.”

  They were out here to see what the League was doing and to help free humans where they could. The League’s methods had veered into the extreme, whole purges of anything nonhuman in systems they held. And the Ragamuffin council wanted them to keep a close eye on developments in the forty-eight worlds as they fell into war. The Takara Bune would be skulking around a while longer.

  But no need to tell Danielle that.

  “Thanks for the heads-up.”

  Danielle laughed. No doubt she suspected what Cayenne and her friends would be up to. “Pitt’s Cross, that landing will be personal for you.”

  “Of course.”

  “What will you tell them, when you land?” Danielle asked.

  Cayenne had been thinking about that.

  “We come to free you from your walls,” she whispered to Danielle. “You can take arms with the League and turn your anger on the Gahe, or you can leave the planet and find yourself welcome among any number of free human communities. These decisions are yours to make. And the consequences will be yours to receive as well. This will be a real emancipation.” And it would be the first time in centuries that so many would take that heady freedom for themselves.

  Cayenne cleared the information around her away and cut the connection to the Daystar. She watched the pinpoint flares of hundreds of nuclear explosions blossoming all over the surface of Astragalai as she descended toward Pitt’s Cross for the second time in her life.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I have an inordinate number of thanks to people who cheerled and critiqued me through the whole process of that often stubborn beast known as the sophomore novel. So, big thanks to the following:

  Nancy Proctor and Ben Rosenbaum at Blue Heaven 2004 for heavily critiquing an early start to this novel, as well as to the rest of the 2004 crew: Chris Barzak, Lisa Deguchi, Roger Eichorn, Charlie Coleman Finlay, Karin Lowachee, Paul Melko, Catherine M. Morrison, Amber Van Dyk, and Lori Ann White.

  The 2006 Blue Heaven workshop: Charlie Finlay, Paul Melko, Tim Pratt, Greg van Eekhout, Bill Shunn, Catherine M. Morrison, Sarah Prineas, and Brenda Cooper for their insight, with special shout outs to Sandra McDonald and Mary Turzillo for the in-depth reads.

  Lovely high altitude thanks to the folks at Rio Hondo for looking at a segment of the novel while in progress as well: Howard Waldrop, Carrie Vaughn, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Kelly Link, Michael Bateman, Walter Jon Williams, Maureen McHugh, Daniel Abraham, Mary Turzillo, Gavin Grant, Jerry Oltion, and Geoffrey Landis.

  Wow, I’m truly honored to have such amazing friends and acquaintances who put up with me.

  More thanks to:

  My agent, Joshua Bilmes, for all his work selling rights and talking me off the ledge during various stressful points throughout writing this book. To my editor, Paul Stevens, whose patience, friendship, and edits always guide me out of the desert. Irene Gallo and Tor’s excellent art department for making such an awesome package for these books. My copyeditor of two books now, Steve Boldt, who rocks, and the rest of the Tor book production team.

  Super big thanks to my wife, Emily, for putting up with many all-nighters, and who has learned that finding me out on the couch upside down with a pillow over my head means I’m working out a difficult issue with the novel and not trying to smother myself out of frustration (they can look similar).

  And lastly, thank you. Thank you for continuing to support me and my writing by reading my books. Thank you everyone who visits the blog at TobiasBuckell.com, and thanks to all of you who write letters and e-mails. Without you none of this is possible.