by John Helfers
Mid-process she should be writhing in ungodly agony as her bones grew and shifted and her muscle mass doubled. I caught another whiff of the acrid beneath the little-girl-changing scent and the penny dropped. She was sweating out some expensive pain killers. Real high-end stuff if it was keeping her upright and scream free.
I could see my little ex-rich girl’s Afro-human features had once been aristocratically sharp, but now her high cheekbones were spreading, flattening as her face became broader. Her tusks were barely big enough to protrude, but her cheerfully bright jumpsuit was stretched taut across her bulking form.
A cloud of pubescent hormones and pheromones washed over me. I twitched as the scent registered. The girl caught the motion and stopped, covering her mouth—her new tusks—with one hand. I knew Dog was amused at my reaction, but I didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking in his direction.
“It’s all right,” I said, knowing how stupid that had to sound. “You surprised me is all.”
She didn’t react. She just stood with her wide eyes staring at me over her concealing hand, blank with fear. And/or expensive pain killers.
Her jumpsuit was expensive—some sort of upscale school uniform with all the identifying logos cut off. Neatly, like whoever had dumped her had cared that her clothes kept her warm. Or maybe they were just thinking about appearances. The hand not covering her mouth held the strap of a kid’s shoulder bag blazoned with advertising that declared her loyalty to a half-dozen trendy products. Among other things, she was a fan/member of Gang Life! L.A.’s most popular teen P2.0 network! I wondered if she was plugged into the network now, if anyone was seeing what her life had become. I doubted it. Beautiful people were not interested in the way real life could screw you over.
The bag was nearly empty, but had once been stuffed with what smelled like high protein soy bars, and toiletry articles—including that expensively effective body wash. The fact that she had such a carefully packed bag told me whoever’d dumped her hadn’t wanted her to suffer. Too bad they hadn’t wanted her at all. What kind of person abandoned an innocent kid who’d never been on her own to the sprawl beyond the refugee camps and packed her a lunch?
Family. Nothing but. From the gilded enclave of oh-so-human perfection I was working for.
“My name is Bastion,” I said, hoping the silence hadn’t stretched too long. “What’s yours?”
“Monica,” she said, moving her hand just enough to speak. “Monica Pem—”
Her face crumpled. The name she’d been commanded to never say again got lost in a despairing wail.
I had my arms around her before I thought about it. Pembroke. This was the “missing” daughter of Julius vanVijrk’s dear friends. Lost to the orks. For a long count I just held her, letting her sob her heart out against my still damp chest while I stared into the now natural dark of the alley and weighed options.
• • •
“What the vut?”
Monica tried to bury herself in my chest—the guttural challenge instantly transmogrifying her wracking sobs into a terrified tremble that threatened to rattle my teeth.
I shifted my weight, shielding the kid with my body before looking over my shoulder.
The broad street was still empty, but now a knot of three ork males stood dead center in the only way out of the alley. My nose belatedly warned of a distant fourth I couldn’t see. Ignoring him, I focused on the more immediate threat.
My canine nose told me two of the three were a sibling set, and all of them about Monica’s age—but full-blooded orks, which meant near-adults with twice her height and three times her mass. I caught the whiff of a pricy floral cologne that had been hip in the clubs around Lacey Park about eight months back, but there was nothing effeminate about their visage. They were dressed for the street—waterproof boots, synthleather thick enough to be body armor and improvised clubs.
I smelled machine oil, gunpowder, and brass—at least two slug throwers—and altered my assessment of the tactical situation accordingly. Screwed pretty well covered it.
“Cruising for some local exotic?” Demanded the ork who was not a brother. “Humanis get hard for a ken joytoy?”
For nearly three tenths of a second I considered explaining I’d been down here on legitimate business and the girl had found me, but common sense kicked in. A, I wasn’t all that sure my business was legit, and two, these jokers didn’t give a damn. Anything I said would be shpita.
If it came to a firefight I’d never get clear of the girl in my arms fast enough to get off a shot. Worse, ork punks habitually blended maximum firepower with minimum accuracy. From the looks of things, it was a smart money bet any rescue attempt these warrior wannabes launched would kill Monica.
Don’t let the urgent distract from the essential.
I filed that bit of philosophical flotsam where it belonged and kept my gaze level—trying for something between “not scared” and “not confrontational”—while I worked on the problem.
Conventional street wisdom has it that if you kept your mien cool and didn’t look like you’re looking for trouble, four out of five times you can avoid a fight. Standing in a blind alley facing three angry-looking orks with my arms around one of their girls, I didn’t think my odds were quite that good, but I gave it my best.
My three dance partners spread out, positioning to keep me the center of attention. The diverging smells of gunpowder told me right and left carried the guns while the fine mineral oil and steel straight ahead told me middle man favored a blade. Ork tradition would dictate a combat axe, but that would have been redundant, given his twisted steel club. From the scent of sandalwood and the cut of his long coat, I was betting katana.
Keeping all three in my gaze was a trick, but I managed without nervous head jerks.
Visually occupied, I set my canine ears and nose to sweeping the street. I still hadn’t pegged where the fourth strain of eau d’ork originated and I strongly suspected that bit of information was vital. I had a sense the real danger was watching and waiting while these picadors got the measure of the gaijin.
In my arms, Monica’s seismic shudders had subsided to a tremble. I hoped that indicated she was getting a grip, but under the circumstances exhaustion was the more likely option.
“Ujnort vut.” The third ork, the one to my left, revealed himself as a minimalist. Also not much of a curser if he thought “non-ork shit” was a cutting remark.
Dog, ever battle savvy, found a spot a few meters in front of me and sat down. He looked expectantly from one ork to the other, as if hoping for a treat, but none of them acknowledged his presence. Apparently unbothered by the lack of attention, Dog yawned hugely, then rolled his head over his shoulder to cast a sideways look back toward me.
It took me a moment feel safe taking my eyes off the ork turks. I turned my attention to the curly mass of black hair pressed against my chest.
“Monica,” I murmured. “Look at them.”
She scrunched against me tighter. In her heart I was her kind; her protector. The protection part was a given, but the her kind part was no longer true—her genetic expression was unstoppable. In another—day? two?— she’d be fully ork and this scene would not be happening. She was already ork enough that the three thugs—and by extension their distant leader—read her as one of their own. Which, from her size, meant a child of five or six. Hence the chivalrous hostility.
“It’s all right, kid.” I was getting sick of that phrase.
Monica pulled her head away from my chest and tilted her face up toward mine.
“They need to see so they can understand.”
She hunched back down. Pressing her forehead against my sternum, she rocked back and forth. I could imagine her eyes scrunched shut in denial.
Guttural growls made what the gang imagined clear.
Focus.
A new scent. A fifth ork; female. Near the fourth, wherever that was.
The breeze swirling in eddies worked against me. I might never
have gotten a fix if Dog hadn’t simply pointed his nose left to sniff the new smell. A shape—two shapes—in the dark beneath a stoop across the street. A doorway I’d walked past ten steps before getting shot at.
Now that I knew where to focus my senses, I picked up the heady tang of magic. There was a weaving back and forth between the spaces surrounding the ork woman in the shadows. She was one used to both worlds.
I tasted long enough to be certain this was not the magic that had blanked the alley, then withdrew.
“Kid,” I said, keeping my voice low and comforting.
I pulled my left arm—the one on the side away from our audience—down and got my hand between Monica and my chest. Finding her chin, I lifted gently until she was looking up at me. Her face, shielded from the others by the hunch of my shoulder, caught a few rays of sodium light. It wasn’t as wet or as blotchy as you might have expected from the amount of crying she’d been doing—which was good, because I wasn’t sure I could keep a grip on the situation if our ork audience thought I’d been hurting her.
“You got choices. There are places besides the sprawl, orks that aren’t squatters,” I explained, pitching my voice to her alone. “Don’t think facing these guys means you have to stay with them or on these streets. I got places you can go, people you can count on.”
I cocked an eye at the three ork toughs. They were about where I’d left them, shuffling their feet and growling ork-like noises. I didn’t speak or’zet well enough to track everything, but the gist of it was spurring each other on mixed with hints of disgust that no one had smashed my skull yet.
I was peripherally aware of the two shapes beyond them moving forward.
I looked back down at Monica, her chin still between my thumb and finger. She was gazing at me with something like surprise.
“You’ve got choices,” I repeated with better grammar. “And the first one is how we go about getting out of here.
“These young gentlemen,” I tilted my head in their direction, inspiring a fresh chorus of growls, “Are trying to rescue you and I do not want to hurt them. We need to show them what’s going on before things get out of hand. Okay?”
Monica licked her lips, flinching slightly when her tongue hit a new tusk. She nodded.
I let go of her chin and put the arm back around her shoulders. Lowering my right arm, I turned her slowly until our audience could see her clearly in the streetlights.
There was a moment of silence.
“Huh,” minimalist ork quipped cleverly.
The two from the stoop paused mid-street. Standing in the full glare of four sodium lamps, they were still shrouded in shadow—as though they’d brought the gloom of the hidden doorway with them. I knew the reality was I was being persuaded not to look directly at them, but I didn’t bother pressing the issue.
“She got dumped,” I explained. “She asked me for help.”
“How you plan on helping, ujnort?” middle ork demanded. “What you think you going to do with her?”
My ears pricked at his awkward phrasing. My guess was street jive was not his default argot. Which appeared to support Julius’ Sons of Sauron theory—you’d expect ork separatists to speak or’zet exclusively.
“I was thinking I’d take her home.”
“You got a nice apartment?” Second ork, ranged to my right, gestured vaguely with his club. “Maybe some pretty pictures and toys for her to play with?”
“Pasadena,” I said, keeping it simple.
“What’s that? A Humanis dumping ground for freaks?”
Second ork was clearly the humorist of the group.
“It’s a blended community,” I said to Monica. “No ghettos. And between the college and the university there’s a lot of opportunities.”
I didn’t come right out and say she could do a lot better in Pasadena than in the L.A. refugee camps, but no one in the alley misunderstood what I meant.
“She belongs with us.”
The woman’s voice was low, but it seemed to resonate off the plascrete beneath my feet. The alley walls didn’t so much echo as repeat her words.
I was not surprised to discover the middle of the boulevard was no longer shrouded in darkness.
The speaker was ancient by ork standards and wrapped in several layers of symboled robes. Her hair was gold. I mean the metal, not blonde. Most folks would have thought it was a wig, but the filaments grew from her scalp. Fine as optical fiber, they were braided into intricate patterns—an echo of the web that connected her to the astral and to the city.
Her eyes were white with cataracts but she had no trouble keeping them locked on me as she strode forward. The black staff in her hand rang softly against the plascrete; metal, no doubt crafted from whatever she considered the bones of the world around her.
Middle ork shifted, making way for the street shaman without looking at her.
“This is our child, a daughter of this city.” The resonance wasn’t illusionary. I felt the vibration through my soles. “She belongs with us.”
I felt Monica tense beneath my arm.
Another step, halfway between us and Monica’s would-be rescuers, the shaman stopped as though she’d hit a wall. Her eyebrows—silver wire, I noticed—climbed toward her hairline. She looked down at Dog, sitting with his tongue lolling from his grinning mouth, and then back up at me. It took no great leap of logic to deduce what had happened; Dog had raised the astral curtain enough to let her know what she was up against.
The shaman gathered herself, and for a moment I thought she was going to try to overcome. I braced myself as well as I could while maintaining my reason, and tried to anticipate what attack would make sense to an urban.
Instead, she relaxed visibly. “Respect.”
“Respect,” I agreed and dropped the confusion spell. If she was giving respect, the three tough guys weren’t going to give trouble.
For their parts, the bully boys blinked and muttered, looking disoriented as their minds suddenly cleared. The erstwhile comic gave me a bug-eyed stare, apparently the only one to realize why they’d been too bewildered to attack.
Monica stood straight as her own uncertainty evaporated. She didn’t pull free of my arm, but she was no longer leaning against me for support.
My own cranium took a deep, cleansing breath. Don’t try this at home, kids.
“This child is as connected to this city,” the shaman said, speaking clear and straight, with none of the drama and declaration of her earlier pronouncements. “She belongs here.”
“That’s her choice to make.”
“She has made it.”
I wasn’t surprised when Monica stepped forward, breaking her contact with me.
“Wait a sec, kid.”
She turned back to face me. She looked excited, anticipatory, maybe a little nervous. Pretty much confirming what I already knew. You can’t get complex expressions like that under compulsion.
I took her too-young hand in mine, pressing one of my old-fashioned business cards into her palm.
“If you need us, send ‘Bastion Chien’ to Pasadena.”
Monica smiled, her eyes clear despite the pain meds.
“You’re a good man,” she said.
She turned away again. The shaman half-turned her head, indicating the street behind her. Monica walked past the old woman, close enough to touch but not touching, and joined the older ork male still standing in the middle of the boulevard.
The shaman’s white eyes were on me. I thought of six clever things to say in as many heartbeats and kicked myself for each of them. Instead I kept my eyes locked on to her gaze and bowed, leaning forward about thirty degrees at the waist.
She acknowledged the respect with a deep nod to me and then a bow of her own to Dog. Without a word, she turned and made her way across the street to the shadow beneath the stoop. Monica and the ork fell in step behind the shaman as she passed.
The three toughs were still milling and bemused, looking after the shaman and back to
me a few times. Two of them knew something they didn’t understand had happened—the third wasn’t talking. I cocked an eyebrow; he flinched. No doubt when he felt they were safely out of range, he’d tell his chummers how close they’d come to death by magic. Eventually the three decided they couldn’t see me and headed off into the night on whatever mission I’d interrupted.
Leaving Dog to watch the street, I strolled over to the dustbin Monica had hidden behind.
Five minutes later I was on the street, headed back toward Fun City. The sidewalk, empty throughout the little passion play, was again busy with the foot traffic of late night. People scurrying with heads down, hoping not to be noticed; others strutting their stuff, ready to do business.
I bought a skewer of scorched and seasoned meat from a vendor with a trash can grill. Catching a troll hooker’s eye, I flashed her a grin and a wink, earning a raucous laugh in return.
Julius was not going to like my report one bit—but I was no longer interested in what he thought.
• • •
“Horizon?” Julius looked pale.
“You were right in that there are orks involved,” I said. “But they are being used as cats’ paws.”
I described the darkness spell, again, in detail.
“A spell of that size and density requires both native ability and a thorough grounding in thaumaturgy—at least a university education. Something well beyond the resources of the refugee camp.
“There are ork street shamans,” I dismissed the ilk with a wave. “They might be responsible for the concealing spells—that’s a simple matter of dissuading people to look in a given direction. But the direct assaults were carried out by a mage or mages who can command corp-sized salaries.”
“Horizon?” Julius repeated.
“If we posit there’s another corporation that wants to stop you from linking the new Horizon enclave to Fun City, Horizon is the corp that fits the bill.”
“I was providing them with a service …”
“Unasked.”
Julius couldn’t quite muster a glare.
