by Alex Wells
“I think you’ve been inside too long,” she said.
“I assure you, no. If you don’t believe me, feel free to send another agent – so long as they don’t disturb my cover.” Of course, they both knew that was an empty taunt. The Bureau of Citizens’ Rights Enforcement was understaffed and shrinking, thanks to concerted efforts by TransRift and a few other large corporations. Ayana didn’t really have anyone but him.
The smile she gave him made him question that assumption. “I’ve managed to stir up just enough trouble to force Montejo’s agreement that we should send an inspector to the last uncharted frontier. She even thinks it’s her idea, to prove there’s no malfeasance and therefore no problem with TransRift basically taking over Trade.”
Shige considered this. “Which inspector are you putting on it?”
“Liu.”
Not a bad play, since Liu Fei Xing was one of the strictest inspectors the BCRE had, but everyone in the government seemed to forget that because she hid her fire under soft words. “They’re going to just wine and dine her in Newcastle, though. The nearest mining town is hours away by train, and it will be easy to polish up as a model.” Primero wasn’t quite miniature Newcastle – it was still off the limited grid that allowed the use of basic technology – but it was very conscious of its position as the main rail depot and recipient of all the newest supplies.
“It’s your job to counter that, then,” Ayana said. “Make certain that there’s enough smoke and fire by the time Liu arrives that they can’t possibly hide it all.”
Shige sat back, exhaling like he might deflate. The look Ayana shot him wasn’t complimentary, but he didn’t particularly care right now. “This could compromise my cover.”
“If Liu sees enough, you won’t need the cover anymore. I’m not above leaking information to the press. Give them a few bodies in the street and they’ll eat it up. There are plenty of reporters angry that none of them can get onto TransRift’s pet planet.”
“Can you provide me with a resupply?” While his most valuable asset was always his mind, the little gadgets that came out of the top clearance laboratories, wedding high biotech and simple mechanical tech, did help.
“Expect a secure package soon.”
That was a relief. “How much time do I have?”
“Ten weeks. I let them think they were scoring a victory by having her come in with the next supply ship.”
“How magnanimous of you.” That didn’t give him much time to act, and he was still going to be on Earth for a while longer, waiting for the laboratory to release the replacement Weatherman for transport.
Ayana stood. “I have confidence in your training.”
And so that meant the method was up to him. Shige felt a bit weak in the knees, but he hastened to stand as well. There was one more piece of information he hadn’t wanted to include in his official report. “Mother.”
She turned to look at him, one eyebrow arching up slightly. Ayana hadn’t been mother to him except on a handful of occasions after he’d begun his training in earnest at the tender age of eight.
He licked his lips. “I saw Kazuhiro. On Tanegawa’s World.”
Ayana’s face might have been made of marble, for all her expression changed. “Has he finally seen the error of his ways?”
Shige thought of Kazu – he couldn’t think of him as Coyote no matter how he tried – as he’d last seen him, feverish and oozing pus from a wound in his shoulder in a root cellar in Harmony, but still grinning and defiant. The part of him that had never forgiven his older brother for running away wanted to trumpet that sign of abject failure to their mother, as if to confirm that she’d been right to make herself a better son. And yet the memories of Kazu sneaking him from the house to go to the nearby park and play in the fountain at midnight were still keen. That thrill of the forbidden and the terror at the inevitability of being punished were like the tart-sweet of pomegranate. Because of course Shige told their minder what they’d done the next morning; Kazu must have known he would have after the first time. He’d kept doing it anyway, laughing with his teeth white in the street lights until he got Shige to laugh as well.
Just as Kazu had known Shige would abandon him, he supposed. Yet why did he keep coming back to that moment, that pained smile, that flash of teeth in the dark of a stinking cellar? They’d both been inculcated with duty along with their mother’s milk. It had gone into Shige’s bones, while Kazu had spit it out and endlessly fussed.
“I was told he died shortly after I saw him. Lost in the desert.” He still refused to lie a heroic death into reality for Kazu, and didn’t want to make his assumed name a point of argument.
“I’ll pass the news on to your father. I think he’ll be… relieved. It is the not knowing that is difficult, after all. Thank you.” She turned to go. “You have our full confidence.”
Shige bowed his head, feeling the weight of those words. “I won’t disappoint you.”
Chapter Three
71 Days
They felt the blast a bare second before they heard it: first the roll and boom like too-near thunder, then the rumble that came up through their bellies, pressed flat against the sandy top of the bluff.
Anabi clutched at Mag’s shoulder. Mag didn’t look away from the small billows of orange sand and dust in the distance, but she still felt that warm pressure down to her toes. She rested her hand over Anabi’s, but she didn’t think the other woman was looking for comfort. Anabi was so much stronger than she seemed, a quiet and deep sort of strength. “Must not’ve found what they were looking for at the last one,” she commented. This was the fourth blasting survey that they’d tracked out into the desert in so many weeks. Explosives and basic seismographs were simple enough technology to still be used out in the wilds of Tanegawa’s World.
No verbal answer from Anabi, just a brief squeeze of her fingers, but the woman was mute. She communicated via scribbled messages or an organically developed sort of sign language. Mag also knew from what Anabi had told her in written conversation before that it wasn’t a condition she’d been born with. She didn’t ever want to tell the story, and Mag wasn’t one to press her on it. The topic smelled of witchiness, and that was a very personal thing.
“Still don’t know what they’re lookin’ for so hard.” All of the mine shafts at Ludlow were operating at full capacity, though the crew leaders Odalia and Clarence Vigil – no relation despite having the same last name – had been doing their best to put the brakes on the work speed before another major accident could happen. The ore veins showed no sign of thinning out, and two of the three in operation were fairly new discoveries. It didn’t make sense for the company to be doing exploration here.
“And it ain’t been that long since the last worker ship, has it?” Mag asked. She rolled to her side and looked at Anabi, who shook her head. Anabi had red-brown skin, and her wavy black hair had finally grown out from the depredations of escaping her home town and then almost being executed as a witch in the next she got to. Her skittishness had calmed over the months until, at least around Mag, she was willing to hold her head high and let the light fall on her face, showing full lips, broad cheekbones, and wide brown eyes. She was a beautiful woman, something Mag found herself thinking about with increasing frequency. Mag didn’t think of her own looks overmuch; she was plain, and she’d looked too like her adopted sort-of-sister Hob for anyone’s comfort when they were growing up, except she mercifully had a smaller nose. Though where Hob was long and lean Mag had stayed compact, big-boned, and was as plump as anyone could get on the amount of food they had. She’d kind of liked the resemblance, but she’d had to cut her own braids off and dye her hair black when she started hiding from TransRift.
Anabi took a small bit of slate from the pocket of her skirt and scribbled: Eight months?
“Sounds about right,” Mag agreed. While supply ships came in regularly every few months – they had to, Anabi had told her, since more and more of what the farmers grew
were medicinal plants that got shipped off, and they got their food in cans, boxes, and ration packs the same as the miners – the massive ships that brought in workers were a much rarer occurrence. “So at the least, it’s gonna be another six, maybe ten months before they have anyone that could work it if they open up some new shafts.”
Anabi indicated her doubt of that with a movement of her hand. They were short enough on workers for what they already had, thanks to the attrition of accidents, injuries, and people pissing off the company so bad they got disappeared off into the desert.
“Vendra from Walsen said they been getting surveys like this too.” She worried at her lower lip with her teeth as she thought. At the last meeting of shift leaders from the various towns, all secret-like in the back corner of a warehouse, they’d all wondered over and over what in the hell TransRift was looking for. Two ideas had taken root in the back of Mag’s brain, then. Least likely: maybe they were looking for Hob’s strange friend the Bone Collector, whom she’d left buried out in the sand months ago and still seemed tore up about. The man could turn himself into stone at will, so maybe that was the sort of thing a seismic survey could find – and considering that the Bone Collector had been instrumental in killing the last Weatherman, TransRift had a mighty hate-on for him.
The other possibility seemed far more likely. Mag remembered, right before she and her papa had departed for Newcastle and their lives had changed irreparably, he’d brought something odd up out of the mine in Rouse. A shaft had collapsed, and a dying company man buried under the debris in it had given Papa a sample bag, with some kind of mineral in it that he’d never seen before. Mag still couldn’t be certain of anything to do with it, but there’d been some reason TransRift had detained her, had let the Weatherman have her. She still had nightmares about him, his voice, his black eyes that had swallowed her up.
There were plenty of things on the planet that no one knew about yet, and plenty more that some people knew about and were keeping tight behind their teeth. Mag had thought about mentioning that during the meeting and discarded the idea just as quick. She wasn’t interested in telling anyone here about being stuck in that laboratory. She’d talked the coalition of miners into not turning their backs on the witchy ones during TransRift’s witch hunt, but that had been without any of them knowing she was something past witchy herself.
“Anyone knows the answer, it’ll be the pit boss,” she said. Anabi shrugged in response. It wasn’t like they could just ask Bill Weld out straight. He was an OK sort for a company man, in that he wasn’t cruel for the sake of making himself feel like a big man, but Mag was under no illusions that he was a friend to the workers. Just a softer boot heel than most.
But they also didn’t have to ask Bill. TransRift liked its paperwork, and the papers were papers, since nothing electronic survived long on the surface of Tanegawa’s World. There had to be documents, just waiting to be read. “Bet he’s got it stowed in his office.”
Anabi gave her a look of concern, then shook her head. I’ll look out for you.
Mag smiled, pretending she felt more certain about it than she did. This had always been Hob’s kind of trouble, but Hob wasn’t here, and Mag needed to get used to doing her own work, her own way. Mag had always been a lot better at quiet anyway. “And I got my own tricks, too. We find something, we’ll take it to Clarence.” She pretended to be Clarence’s niece, which made a decent cover story. A few people did know that she was the daughter of murdered, well-respected crew leader Phil Kushtrim. It gave her a certain power as a symbol, something that made her deeply uncomfortable at times, for all she was willing to use it.
They wormed their way back from the edge of the bluff, then took turns helping each other straighten skirts and brush off the worst of the dust. “There, don’t look any more dirty than normal,” Mag remarked.
Anabi smiled and poked her lightly on the end of the nose.
Mag thought, then, about kissing that smile. But she’d never been an impulsive person – that had always been Hob’s lookout. She smiled the warmth she felt instead. “Come on, we got some crime to do.”
They’d “borrowed” a small, solar-powered cargo from one of the warehouses to get out here. Not as fast or stylish as Hob’s beloved motorcycles, but also guaranteed to not scare Mag half to death. The hauler was technically also a one-seater, so they had to squeeze in together tight to both fit inside. Anabi was the one who drove the thing, since she’d claimed it was similar to the farming equipment she’d once known. Mag kept a firm hold around Anabi’s waist, the fabric beneath her arm going damp with sweat that couldn’t be dried away in the hot wind that flowed over them.
When she leaned forward a little, she saw Anabi smiling, so that seemed all right too. Mag let the wind carry her worries away until they got back to town.
Once upon a time, Mag reflected sourly, the security men in Ludlow had been too damn lazy to want to spend their time watching the on-site company office. They’d always been drunk on duty, or off gambling, or sleeping in a corner of the food warehouse, the only one that had any kind of cooling system. Or hell, wandering through the town and looking to pick fights with whatever miner crossed their path, because they were all damn bullies. Even that option was at this point preferable to two of them lounging around in the shade of an awning, rifles across their laps and not an ounce of sleepiness to them.
This was the sort of thing that happened when a special company train got derailed and all but one man aboard killed. And Mag couldn’t even complain too much about that, since she was the one who’d paid Hob to do it. But damn, it was an inconvenience now.
She and Anabi had tried every hour of the day, hoping to find one when the Mariposa men would be inattentive enough to let her slide by. She was fresh out of hours, and fresh out of patience now, and she hadn’t tried everything.
There was the power sitting in the back of her head that had been growing since her capture by TransRift. The power itself felt tentative and nebulous because she was more than a little afraid of it. She felt other people out there like pressure on her skin, like their thoughts were within her grasp if she was bold enough to reach for them. Murmurs just under the range of her hearing, maybe, if hearing was a sensation of physical pressure instead of sound. She hadn’t trusted herself to learn the power’s boundaries, because she couldn’t think of a way to do it without the risk of hurting someone.
During the witch hunt, she’d used it because she hadn’t had any other choice. A security guard had come into Clarence’s house, intent on dragging Mag and Anabi off to the platform to stand in front of the Weatherman. Mag had vowed to never let that happen again, and Anabi said she’d rather die than be captured. So Mag had used her power to lean onto the man like she was leaning on a stone wall, like she was a giant with the weight to crack mortar. She’d felt him give under her, and had told him that he’d seen nothing and should leave – and he’d obeyed.
Was it evil to bend other people like that? It didn’t feel right, after what the Weatherman had done to her. But on the other hand, she doubted any of the Mariposa men would concern themselves a hair over mercy for her. It was a calculation, and she’d always been a lot better with figures and sums than Hob. The difference was, mathematics had never made her skin crawl. Being able to do a square root in her head had never forced her to lie to Clarence out of fear of what he or the other miners might think. But something needed to be done, and she had to weigh her own worries against what they didn’t know. Knowledge was power, and the miners needed all the power they could get.
Besides, she thought grimly as she stepped out from behind the boxes she’d been using for cover, TransRift had never hesitated an instant in using the Weatherman against one of them. And she wasn’t like that monster. She just wasn’t. She waved at Anabi to stay and keep watch.
“Where do you think you’re going?” one of the guards called in a bored tone as she walked up.
“Appointment,” Mag said, on the offchance
a direct lie would work.
“You must have the wrong time,” the other guard said. She sounded more alert than her friend. “Your boss isn’t in.”
“I could wait for him,” Mag offered.
The female guard laughed. “Nice try. Move along.” She waved a hand like Mag was a sand flea that needed to be brushed off.
It would have been easier to muster the power if they’d been nasty to her, or threatened her. But both of them plainly didn’t care. She considered trying again later, because maybe then the guards would be nastier and she could feel better about what she was going to do. But then these ones still would have seen her, and they’d remember.
Mag closed her eyes briefly, tuning out the sound of the words as the male guard started to speak again. She felt the pressure of their thoughts against her like a gentle press of fingers through fabric, closest out of everyone. She remembered how she’d leaned back into the guard months ago, a mental rather than physical movement. This wasn’t any different, just because it was two of them. She opened her eyes, still aware of them, and leaned her will against theirs with all her might.
It was like pushing against two walls at slightly different angles. She had to find her balance, even harder when the walls were pushing back. But she was stronger than them, she already felt it. Something sang in her blood, turned it to hard diamond in her veins, but the kind of diamond that lived at the heart of a super massive star. She was greater than them. She–
For an instant, she almost lost her mental grasp on them because she felt something far bigger, like singing on the horizon, like lightning dancing across her skin. She felt like she might tip into it and fall forever. Mag kept her eyes open and focused with all her might on the guards. It was just them and her in this dusty street, and the seconds ticking away meant slices of danger falling onto her. All that greatness that threatened to drown her needed to wait.
