by F P Adriani
“Thank you for your kindness in feeding us,” I said to Cici during the meal.
Her eyes considered me a bit skeptically. “Whatever I do,” she said now, “I do for Diamond.”
I had no idea what she meant by that and I wasn’t about to ask.
I continued eating and the meal didn’t last long—at least for me and Tan. In our sharp hunger, we’d both eaten really fast.
We left the table, and Tan asked me to take a walk with him outside.
“Don’t go far,” Damian warned, coming up to us. “Keep within the red poles.”
We both just looked at him as he let us out the back glass door.
*
“Who on Diamond are those people?” Tan asked me. “I don’t know of any Councilmembers named Damian and Cici, ever.”
I shrugged, at a loss for words finally. The night had been wearing on me badly. I wanted it to be over with. Shit, the whole damn day had gone pretty badly. I hoped tomorrow would be a better day, but why did I have a feeling it would be worse?
Tan’s voice softened. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking…of so many people and their parents—the bad things that happen inside families, and all this loss, especially here on Diamond. What short crazy lives we lead.”
“Not all of us,” he said. “At least I very much hope ours aren’t short.”
“Tan, why did you ask me out here?”
“Because. I don’t like it in there. It makes me uncomfortable.”
I wondered if he meant “Hu” for “it.”
“I’m always walking the straight and narrow,” he continued. “I don’t know why others can’t walk it with me.”
I knew he was referring to the people inside the house, but his words could also apply to me. “Well,” I said, “to survive the next few days, we need A Tan With Curvature.”
He laughed explosively then, shaking his head at me. “All right. I’m slowly curving as we speak.”
He was still laughing when we heard The Joker’s voice calling to us from the house: “Arlene wants to see Pia.”
*
When Tan and I walked back in, The Joker led only me farther into the house, into a gray and brown study area. Hu and Cici were seated on a small couch inside; they were looking at something in Hu’s lap.
Hu raised her head, said to The Joker, “Close the door when you leave.”
Then she called me over and handed the thing in her lap to me: it was another notebook. Just like the ones Amy Castano used.
My eyes widened; then I glared down at Hu. “All this time—you had this?”
“No, I had it,” Cici said. “Arlene thought it would be safer here.”
“It’s not what you think,” said Hu. “Not much specific information in there, just a general outline of her various studies over the past several years, like an adjunct to other notebooks. For all I know, this one might word-for-word repeat some info you have.”
When I just stood there staring at the cover of the book, she waved a careless hand at me and said, “Go ahead—look at it. You’ll see it’s what I said. I want you to trust me on all this. I made a special stop here primarily for that. I need you to show Chuck the notebooks soon. I showed you ours; now you show us yours. I’m asking you with a ‘please’ on top. And that’s a rare occurrence from me.”
I sighed, both outwardly and inwardly. “I told you I’d give you the numbers. And I did with one. But…all right. When we get back to the transport, you can see the other notebooks.”
“Good.” Hu stood up. “Cici, I’d love to stay longer, but we’ve got to get going.”
Cici rose from the couch too. “But won’t you tell me exactly what’s going on?”
Hu took both of Cici’s hands in hers. “After. I don’t have the time now. And there’s nothing you can do to help—you’ve already done that anyway.”
*
We left the house only minutes later, with Damian and Cici saying quite a tear-filled “Goodbye!” not only to Hu but to all of us, it seemed. I got the feeling that the couple didn’t get much company out here in their lonely glass house on the hill.
When the seven of us reached the transport, I remained alone outside and took the notebooks from my case; then I walked inside to Hu’s room and finally handed the books to her.
“Very good. Thank you.” She pushed a wall intercom button and told Chuck to come get the notebooks. “My leg,” she said in my direction now. “The hill didn’t help.” Earlier I had noticed her struggling more going down the hill than up. And, right now, her face looked even more pale than normal.
I began walking out of the room, but her voice stopped me. “No. Don’t leave yet. I want to see what Chuck says. Stay and you might learn something from him too.”
Sighing now, I plopped onto one of the cushioned metal chairs. When Chuck walked in, he held a portable computer. He took the notebooks, sat on one of the chairs himself, and began reading and typing into his computer.
Except for the hum of the transport’s engine, the room was silent. Hu had closed her eyes and was leaning back with her legs elevated onto another chair. I had nothing to say, at least nothing I wanted to say. I watched Chuck’s head move slightly as he read and typed, his long brown braid shifting over his blue-robed back….
He worked for about half an hour, then he said to Hu, “We were correct in our prediction: the location’s inside the larger Astrals. We can’t make it to this spot by transport. We’ll have to hike.”
Hu’s eyes opened. “How far?”
“About ten to twelve miles. Including resting, maybe a day’s hike, maybe a little more.”
A sigh came from Hu’s direction now. I knew how she felt. I did not like the idea of hiking over The Astrals. It wasn’t something a person did for fun.
“We’ll be more vulnerable then,” Hu said.
And then I asked, “I don’t understand: why can’t we land this somewhere closer?”
Hu looked at me. “It’s a no-fly area. It’s too environmentally sensitive. There’s always been speculation that if Diamond-based animal life started, it would start there.”
“I know about the mountains—I know about them. I grew up near there.”
“Well, that’s good to know, that could be useful….”
“But about life starting there—what a joke! It seems like we humans have ruined that possibility. I’ve been on the small Astrals. They’re built up now. There are hotels and restaurants—campgrounds!”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Pia. It’s a new law….”
“Look, don’t get me wrong: I’m glad it exists, but I think it’s a moot law now. Diamond could have used it ages ago.” My head turned to Chuck. “Did you notice the part in the notebook about Sander strength? Amy’s calculations there?”
“Yes. But I only glanced through it. I don’t know how accurate all that is.”
“Well, look at me,” I said. And they both did. I could feel color rise in my cheeks.
Then Hu turned to Chuck. “This is what Amy told me about. But do the notebooks have anymore details?”
“It’s just speculation in here—some numbers to back it up. She noticed a pattern, a correlation in certain areas with Sanders having increased strength above Sanders elsewhere.”
“And?” Hu asked.
“Well,” I jumped in now, “people have looked before while trying to find an explanation for the strength here in general, but they never came up with anything like Amy did. She doesn’t say who she told; she does say nobody would listen to her. Or seemed to listen. But those areas are around the three locations.”
Hu’s eyes were on me. “I’ve always felt like you—and Amy for that matter—were holding back some information.”
We hadn’t been the only ones: I now remembered Julianne’s saying something about Supersanders. Apparently, she’d known a lot more than she’d let on all along. “Did you expect me to tell you everything?” I asked Hu now. “And Amy too? Maybe yo
u—or whoever—could use this to give yourselves a physical advantage over others—”
“And that may be precisely why people have been after Amy and her research. This was important for you, in particular, to reveal to me. I’m not after anything. I wasn’t even born here, so I’ll never be a truly strong Sander anyway.”
“You don’t have to be,” Chuck cut in, his eyes on her now. “No one’s more Sander than you, Ar.”
Her brown eyes suddenly grew softer as she looked at him. But then she kept talking to me in a hard voice, “You still don’t understand what’s going on, do you, Pia? The mining’s dangerous here, but Hera’s even worse. Talk about explosions—highly compressed gases there. It’s bad. People kidnapped off Diamond especially, and forced to work there. The Council’s known about this for a long time. Some of us stayed to see if we could fix all this. There are more robots used now—at the insistence of those of us in The Diamond Council to The Heran Council. A form of blackmail, shall we say.”
“So you’re saying Hera’s even more cold and corrupt than here? I’m shocked,” I said, making a sarcastic face. Then, more seriously: “I actually saw some of that about the people mining…but, well, so what happened with the blackmailing?”
“What happened is: between the UPG and the Heran government and the people getting increasingly rich there calling all the shots, the rest of us didn’t stand a chance.”
“But we’re supposed to stand a chance against the same people while chasing Amy Castano’s locations?”
An instant after I’d said that—punctuation-like—a siren went off somewhere; it was loud and long, and I catapulted off my seat so hard, I nearly hit the low-ish ceiling.
“What the fuck is that?” I screeched. Both Hu and Chuck were off their chairs in an equally hard and fast shot.
“That’s the engine gas-line siren!” Chuck yelled. “If there’s a breach, we’ve got to evacuate!”
We all ran into the hall, where Tan was nervously charging in my direction while shouting over the siren, “I was in the fucking bathroom! What the hell—”
“We’ve got to get off the transport!” I shouted back.
Chuck and Hu ran to the bridge—but the transport was still moving, so Tan and I had no choice but to follow them.
On the bridge Hu was shouting to Shayla and Van, that navigator from before: “How bad’s the breach!”
“Bad enough!” said Shayla in a grim voice. “I’ve got to set us down—we’re not far outside The Grasslands.” Apparently, we’d backtracked.
“Should we strap in?” Hu asked Shayla.
“No, the auxiliary engine’s taken over. The landing should be smooth. But we’ll be delayed now.”
I groaned on the inside. Tan groaned on the outside. He looked like he wanted to punch the wall beside him.
“Well, we’ve got no choice then,” Hu said. “We’ll need to make repairs. And buy more gas. Good thing we stopped at Cici’s and got more money,” she finished, her eyes pointedly looking at me. Apparently, her look meant that had I not resisted her in giving up the info, she wouldn’t have stopped there so now wouldn’t have had enough money for the repairs. This was some seat-of-your-pants operation….
“We can’t stay on the transport while they’re working on it,” Hu continued. “The gas is too volatile. I’m not crazy about this, but we’ll need to kill some hours elsewhere.”
*
Moments later we landed close to a city-like area. Shayla’s co-pilot Gerry and The Joker stayed on the transport; the rest of us headed for the city.
“I’ve got friends here,” Hu said as we walked along a road. “I know just the place to go. Some good liquor there.”
Well, that sounded promising and like just what we needed….
We finally walked into a very large half-club half-bar space. It was nice inside; soft music played, smiling people were drinking and dancing. It wasn’t the kind of place I expected Hu’s “friends” to be at.
I looked at her. Her gray robe’s hood almost completely covered her head, and now she motioned for me to come with her. “In the bathroom,” she said.
I kind of rolled my eyes at Tan, but I followed her anyway. When we got there, she locked the door. Before we’d evacuated, she’d grabbed a bag from her room, and now she pulled a get-up from inside: a black wig and face make-up, kind of like the stuff I used. Though mine was better quality; I said so to her.
“Well, unless you want to lend me something, this is all I have at the moment,” she replied in an annoyed voice. I didn’t want to lend her anything, especially because my make-up was in my special case, which was strapped to my back now.
“Help me put this on,” Hu said finally, and so I did.
We spent some time giving her a new look, and when I stepped outside again, Tan was waiting there, bouncing around on the soles of his booted feet. “Where the hell have you been?”
Hu suddenly came out behind me, and when he saw her new face, he visibly struggled to not laugh.
Hu seemed to ignore him. And then she said, “Let’s move.”
*
When we got back into the bar, the navigator and the doctor were no longer around; they’d gone to get the gas delivery set up and to get some supplies to make repairs.
Tan, Hu, Chuck, Shayla and I all sat down at a big booth table set into one of the bar’s corners. The owner or someone, a large jolly sort of person—he came over to our table and made a very big deal over pleasing Hu. But he called her Perry. He winked at her a couple of times: clearly, this was Hu’s friend, and they had a prior understanding. How strange that she effectively had a celebrity status on Diamond….
Another strange thing: we got along quite well that night at the table. Even Tan relaxed. Apparently, the fine booze worked some mood-magic on the five of us. Looking around at all their good-mood faces, I could almost believe we were, of all things, friends.
We sat there for hours. We listened to music, we drank, we even talked—not about much. Just about the people in the room, just people-watching. Then we discussed the wall posters depicting various things in the popular Diamond culture. I started forgetting why we were there.
Then, two things happened: the table conversation grew darker, and someone new showed up in the place. Or he had been there for a while but I hadn’t noticed him at first.
So far I’d only seen him in profile for a brief moment. Now I stared at him as he stood near the crowded bar trying to order a drink. His blond hair fell to his shoulders, a new-looking thin scar horizontally bisected the side of his face. He had a tall, muscular build….
Hu’s back was facing the guy, but she must have spotted my staring. She glanced over her shoulder now. “Who’s got your attention, Pia?”
Tilting my head a bit, I said, “That guy there—he looks familiar to me…. But I can’t remember where I saw him. I’ve only seen his profile tonight. Black shirt, long blond hair, muscles.”
“I see him. That looks like Ronin,” Chuck said.
Now Hu nodded. “Yeah, Ronin Greg—er, how do you say it?” Her head shot over to Chuck.
“Gregorievina,” he said then. “He’s got terrible teeth. I’d know him anywhere because of them. He thinks they look good. He’s pretty notorious in the underground. He freelances for the HRA on Hera and other scum.”
I looked at him. “I don’t know any HRA.”
“Pia, he probably means the Heran Resources Alliance,” Tan put in. “They control the gas production and distribution.”
Hu’s fake dark head turned to him. “Yeah, you think so, Tan? Ask yourself: who controls them?” She continued talking—or more correctly, she and Tan began debating.
Then, suddenly, his face looking annoyed, Tan shot off his seat, said he had to use the bathroom, and stormed away.
But I barely paid attention to him: my mind had wandered because the first object of our discussion had finally turned his head in our direction more. And now I stilled—except for my hands, which grip
ped the table’s edge.
The man wasn’t looking at us seated there; he was looking to our left. But his face was unmistakable now: The Festival bomber.
“Goddammit. It’s him,” I growled, almost shooting up from my seat.
But Chuck said, “Hold it,” as his right hand shot out and grabbed my wrist hard, preventing me from bolting.
“Chuck’s right, Pia,” Hu said. “Don’t mess with Ronin. He’d kill his own kids, if he had any. But—who is he to you?” She looked up at my face.
I shook my arm free from Chuck’s fingers. “Like you don’t know? He bombed The Diamond Sand Festival last year.”
Hu’s eyes narrowed very sharply at me. “Oh not that again…” she said. And she added some more words, but I didn’t hear them. I was counting—in my head. One, two, three….
I cut off Hu in mid-sentence of whatever the hell she’d been saying. “You got a pen and paper? I need something to write on—fast!”
Why the fuck hadn’t I added up all of this sooner? Now I remembered that Festival report from Tan’s box, the bit about the liquid-fuel explosive in the bombs. Then there was that other report….
Hu slipped a hand into her bag; then she shoved a pen and paper toward me along the tabletop as I yanked my case pack-straps back onto my shoulders.
“Spell his name for me,” I said fast to Chuck. So he did, shrugging at Hu as he started saying the letters.
I wrote them down. R-o-n-i-n G-r-e-g-o-r-i-e-v-i-n-a. Five letters in the first name, twelve in the last. Blank Gblank—it had to be. My parents, the bomb, the bomber.
Just as this knowledge hit me, Ronin’s head turned again, right to me. We both stilled, our eyes on each other’s eyes, and we remained stunned like that for a long tense moment.
…Then, slowly, his lips slid into his evil and brown-toothed grin; then he raised his right hand above his eyes, sarcastically saluting me.
This time, Chuck couldn’t stop me. I jumped onto the bench seat then onto the table, rushing off the table’s front in Ronin’s direction, my eyes on his back as he bolted out the front door.
