The Mangrove Suite

by Tim Niederriter

  “I don’t know,” said Ryan. “Do you think I’m an expert on beasts?”

  I shook my head. The car sped across the city, rising from the ground on elevated tracks. I glanced around the car once again. “Damn it,” I muttered. “If he turns before we come to the next stop, we’ll be stuck on here with him.”

  Ryan nodded, eyes focused on the man on the floor.

  I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder, a feminine touch, followed by a woman’s low voice. “Remain calm.”

  The flicker of an image slipped through my mental barriers and evaded my antibodies. The image was of Rebecca, wearing a business suit. She turned to face my vantage point, but then the vision faded.

  The woman on the train passed me and Ryan, a long black coat flowing around her shoulders. She knelt beside the man on the floor, softly moving Ryan away from him. Her hair was shockingly pale, nearly white, and I couldn’t see her face because of its length and thickness.

  She placed one small hand on the man’s forehead, and in that moment, I glimpsed a trickle of pale gold flowing from her palm. Ichor. The strange woman, who I had somehow, impossibly, not noticed before the moment she touched my shoulder, eased the wound flowing with ichor over the man’s eyes. Her body tensed for a moment. Then she withdrew her hand.

  The man opened his eyes, seeing clearly, but I knew nothing mattered to him anymore.

  This impossible woman was an aeon. And she had just cleaned this man.

  A Rogue Star

  The woman straightened her back and raised the hood of a sweatshirt under her coat. She turned without me seeing her face and strode past me. Her long sleeves hid the aeon wounds in her palms. Normally, one cannot see into the mind of an aeon without their intent. For some reason, she had showed me an image of Rebecca. This aeon had known her. My focus fixed on the end of her sleeve.

  Each aeon has five wounds. No more. No less. From each wound flows ichor. Every child learned these things in school.

  I had never seen an aeon clean someone before, but the vacant joy on the man’s face struck me as obvious. He was clean. Ryan spoke to him, but the man shook his head. He stared adoringly after the woman who had just wiped his mind away. I gritted my teeth. She may have saved me, but I hated to see it. I hated to think of someone doing the same thing to Rebecca.

  The woman paused at my side, long coat flowing to the floor. “Why are you angry, Jethro?” I glanced up at her, still unable to see her face through the strands of white-blonde hair and the dark hood. She bowed her head slightly and full lips curved, the only visible part of her face.

  I sat hunched, paralyzed. Everything had happened so suddenly. She took another step as if to move on. I had not detected her. How could that have been?

  In defiance of good sense, my hand snaked out and I seized her forearm before she could pass me by. “Wait!”

  She did not struggle or resist my touch on her sleeve. She shook her head. “Jethro, be calm.”

  “You saved the life of every person in this car.” I raised my voice as I continued. “Please, tell us your name.”

  “My name,” she said, “Is Yashelia. Please, unhand me, human.”

  I did not relax my grip. The other people in the car stared at the two of us, locked together by my hand. She looked down at me, at last. I grimaced. “How do you know my name?”

  “You assume we aeons would require means you would understand to learn of you.”

  “I’ve never heard of an aeon called Yashelia,” I said.

  “Then you are poorly informed.”

  “Oh, am I?” I looked forward. Ryan turned toward me. He shook his head as if to tell me to stop my press on this woman. She would have appeared on the network when I had sent the warning to the aeons.

  This is the rogue star.

  “So, you figured it out?” she said.

  And she can hear my thoughts, regardless of my safeguards.

  I put all my strength into hauling her down. She struggled then, but not for long. Ichor suffuses the body of every aeon and, unlike humans, they are built for exploiting it to gain improved strength and speed. She moved herself like a whip, and I hit the ceiling with a crunch. My back screamed in protest. My mind flooded with pain. I had only a moment to hesitate before I fell to the floor of the car. Again, pain exploded through my hands and knees. Shock ran through both arms. I groaned.

  Whatever she was as a rogue star, she worked a lot like an aeon. Yashelia spun to face me. Her hood fell back, revealing a beautiful face, but one pale as death. Ryan stumbled to his feet. He backed away from Yashelia, not making even a small move to help me. I didn’t blame him.

  Her flawless nose wrinkled. “I take it you know what a rogue star would do in this situation?”

  I glared up at her from my hands and knees. “You plan to kill all of us. Monster.”

  She smirked, then turned and walked past me to the sliding door. One of my arms gave out under me, and I fell, feeling sticky blood run down my arm inside my sleeve and coating my skinned hands. Yashelia ignored me. She pried the door open with her fingers, tearing metal and breaking locks. Cold air rushed in from the autumn of the city. Yashelia glanced back at me. “Until we meet again,” she said in a booming voice that drowned the rushing of the air, “Jethro.”

  Yashelia threw herself from the train car. She caught like a mote of dust in the air and glided over the low rooftops and out of sight. I stared after her from my place on the ground, unable to move except to roll onto my side.

  Ryan ran to my side. “Jeth, are you alright?”

  I grunted and nodded, but I never too my eyes off the open door on the side of the train car. The light veins above us shimmered as the train continued to drive north. Ryan helped me sit up, and I ached all over. My back protested most movement so I sat on the floor of the car for the rest of the trip to our stop.

  My spine was intact, and both arms were swiftly repaired by the heartlink I attached to them when I arrived at the office. Ryan had helped me get there once we reached the station, before heading on to his own office at security. The aeon who managed my network, Omasoa, came down to meet me while I sat with aching, if whole, limbs in the break room on the fifteenth floor of our forty-story office complex.

  She wore her hair long like most aeons, and the dark locks framed her face. She was a typical aeon in a lot of ways, I supposed, beautiful to the eye, and careful to wear no covering on her hands so her wounds were prominent, two fine holes drilled one through each palm.

  I did my best to cover the surprise on my face as I bowed to her when she entered the room. “Ma’am.”

  She walked to the break room table, followed by her assistant. “Jethro Gall,” she said in a voice higher than Yashelia’s, familiar, more girlish. “I hear you had an interesting encounter on the train today. A rogue star is dangerous, and you are but a human. I do not want to lose your work for some foolish sense of duty you hold. Do not take that chance again.”

  I raised my head from my bow. “I understand.”

  “Good,” she said. “With that in mind, take today easy.”

  “Ma’am, I can work.”

  “And I expect you to, but do not push your tolerance for either ichor or physical action any more than you already have.”

  I nodded. “I will be as responsible as I can be.”

  “Good.” Omasoa turned and left the room. Her secretary followed behind her. I rarely spoke to any aeon as much as I had spoken to Omasoa over the past few minutes. They were usually so aloof from humans I had been surprised to even see Omasoa come to speak with me. Most of the time, when people got injured, the aeons sent a representative. Aeons almost never spoke to those affected for themselves.

  “Huh,” I said and sat back in my chair. I activated my network absently. From here, I had proximity to the storehouses of memetics that would allow me to work.

  My job had me constructing information packets to be distributed by sensotects. I rarely transmitted much of the information personally beca
use it required a lot of ichor, though all professional memeotects had to have a little understanding of sensocycles to do their jobs. I compiled the data and then sent it to a sensoetect to distribute.

  I searched through the raw data materials, as if rummaging around in drawers of infinite light and uncounted bits of information. Computer technology was too distrusted by aeons to store most of the material we used. Mostly, it was kept in the minds of people, lower journalists, who sought out new information constantly. Memeotects like me, and Elizabeth, and once Rebecca, would take the information and sort it, prepare it, and then convert it into packets understandable by the minds of other humans over sense networks. Casters like Peter Harrison would frame the information using their own voices and self-images to give things a human touch and a spin.

  I worked as hard as anyone that day, but my mind was elsewhere, even more elsewhere than usual while diving through banks of information as deep as the Grand Canyon and twice as long. The locus of my private thoughts remained on the Mangrove Suite, and on Rain. Memeotects need to practice to hold back their thoughts, but it is quite possible to network without exposing everyone to your dreams and feelings.

  Rain had looked so beautiful dancing, but her eyes were empty. Though I had rarely thought of it before, I knew there had to be some way to restore her mind. Aeons could clean humans who overdosed on ichor, and for all I knew, they would simply restore any mind they reset to a state of madness rather than its prior sanity. I went looking in the information piles on my lunch break, searching for facts related to clean restorations.

  My efforts turned up nothing I didn’t already know. And soon, I was back to work. By the time I was informed over the network that I could leave for home early, I was burning with the need to see her again, Rain, my angelic husk of a woman.

  The elevator carried me up to the Mangrove Suite. I went there straight away, not wanting to run into Elizabeth before I could see Rebecca, or Rain as she now called herself. The machinery rumbled beneath me, then stilled. I stepped out of the elevator and into the warm, mute lights of the lobby of the Mangrove Suite.

  Deep maroon carpet covered the floors. Soft laughter, that of a woman, lilted down the hallway that led to the rooms where the cleans were kept. Lived. Whatever. A wastebasket by the elevator looked as though it had never been used. I stood in front of the elevator for a moment with no other human in sight, unsure of what to do.

  My skin crawled despite knowing Thomas ran the place as above board as he could. Some places just can’t ever get all the way clean of evil. Still reluctant, I forced myself to walk down the hall toward the rooms and the woman’s laughter. A desk and a guard stood in a semicircular room between the elevator and the rest of the suite.

  The guard, another black man almost as large as me, and built a lot meaner, wearing a suit, crossed his arms. I didn’t know him, so odds were I would need to ask for Thomas to get through. His face was impassive. “Do you have a reservation?”

  “I’m not a customer,” I said. “I’m a friend of Thomas Fenstein.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You a friend of the boss.”

  “My name is Jethro Gall. He may have mentioned I’d be by today.”

  “You know, I don’t think he mentioned you.”

  Keep cool. It won’t do any good to get into a mix up with this guy. I met the man’s eyes. He grinned. “There ain’t no way I’m letting someone with such a weakass story through.”

  I clenched a fist. I may have been beaten by a rogue star earlier that day, but I wouldn’t let that stop me from getting past Thomas’ clueless flunky. “I’m telling the truth. Look!” I produced my wallet with City ID.

  He shook his head, a shit-eating grin plastered to his face. “You know, this just keeps getting funnier and funnier. Get back on that elevator, you fuckin’ bum.” He laughed.

  I glared at him. “Let me talk to Thomas.”

  “Oh, Thomas is a little busy at the moment,” he said. “I have it on good authority he’s far too busy to see anyone.”

  I tapped into the network for an instant, to check the place of Thomas’ mind. He was near the far corner of the suite, in his office behind the rooms with the cleans. He wasn’t networking but seemed to be alone because I detected no other minds in the room. I had a bad feeling at that moment, and an image of Rain flashed into my mind. I severed the connection. The guard did not take even a step toward me. But his arms uncrossed and he reached for the gun holster at his belt.

  “I’m gonna ask you one more time,” he said as his hand continued to drift. “Get back on that elevator.”

  That tore it, tore it straight in half. I accessed the network. The man could shoot me in seconds, but if he did, he would alert everyone. I reached into my mental information catalog, a vast library of irrelevant information. I packed as much as I could into the fastest sort of poison packet. Then I shot it at the guard’s unsuspecting mind.

  His mentality resonated like that of musician, visible as an outline that hummed in the mental space. His safeguards were nothing special, a simplistic maze of barriers and a few antibodies. Though I didn’t have a lot of experience cutting through defenses, I was able to guide my poison packet through the maze to the end. A pair of antibodies surged at my mentality and the packet, but I pushed my cargo past them before I shot back out of the maze.

  He folded under the weight of the information, at least for the moment. When I severed the connection he stared vacantly at me, mind overloaded with the forced download. If he had been at all prepared for a network attack I could have been shot before the packet took effect on him. But he hadn’t been. He might be under the protection of a rogue star, but she didn’t help him.

  Yashelia.

  With the guard incapacitated by the flood of information and staring vacantly into space, I charged down the hallway toward the office. I ran with a serious lack of sprinters’ muscles. Even when I’d been young, I didn’t make a fast runner. I was out of breath when I slammed my shoulder into the door of Thomas’ office and hurled it wide open.

  Within, a glimmer of white blonde hair greeted me. Damn it. Yashelia stood with one slender arm extended, pinning Thomas against the wall by the throat. She turned as I entered, and one eye of yellow with red flecks fixed on me.

  “So, you are here,” she said. “I take it my guard did not inconvenience you much?”

  “Let him go,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re after, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t Thomas.”

  “What makes you say that, Jethro?”

  “It’s because you’re looking for someone.”

  “Perhaps I am. What of it?”

  Thomas struggled, both hands working against Yashelia’s impervious grip. I gritted my teeth and stared into Yashelia’s eye.

  “I can tell you where she is.”

  “She. Who am I looking for?”

  “The one thing that connects you to me and Thomas. Rain.”

  She released her grip on Thomas’ throat, and he slumped to the floor, barely able to even slow himself. He disappeared into shadow. Yashelia turned to face me full on. A wound, patterned by angry red lines radiating out from it, was bored into her forehead just over her right eyebrow. She smiled coldly. “Well, well. You are an interesting one, are you not? How did you know?”

  “What else changed between today and yesterday,” I said. My breath caught. “And she’s here. Here in the Mangrove Suite.”

  “Take me to her,” she said.

  “Thomas knows where she is. I just know she’s here.”

  Yashelia’s arm extended. She grabbed Thomas by his suit collar and dragged him to his feet. “Thomas, lead the way.”

  He tried to push her arm away, but she did not let him go. Behind me, the guard arrived at the door, having recovered from my mental dump in his mind.

  “Matthias,” said Yashelia. “Follow us. Keep an eye on these two better than you watched the elevator, please.”

  The big man grunted but nodded, too.
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  I turned toward her as Yashelia strode past me, half-dragging, half-pushing Thomas in front of her. Matthias shoved his revolver at my face, barrel first. Then Yashelia caught his eye. He lowered the weapon and let us past. He brought up the rear of the group, following with a sickened expression.

  Thomas led the way down the hallway to a door like any other door. He opened it, muscles taut in his face. Yashelia swept inside and I followed, not knowing if she would be angry or not. But I needed to see Rebecca, Rain, what Rebecca had become.

  Rain sat on the bed, dressed in a thin button-down shirt and pair of dark pants. Both shirt and pants were far too big for her. She looked up at Yashelia with a vacant expression. The same look in her beautiful eyes as she’d had for me when I’d seen her the previous day. I clenched my fist but felt the barrel of a gun in the small of my back. Fuck, Matthias was still right there.

  “There you are, my dear.” Yashelia let out purring sound. “I missed you, Rebecca.”

  She drew close to Rain who recoiled with wide eyes.

  “They never should have taken you from me. But this time, I won’t let them clean you out. Give me your hands, deary.” Yashelia reached for Rain’s hand, but she recoiled, trying to get away.

  “What do you want with her?” I said, no longer registering the threat of Matthias behind me. He clocked me on the back of the skull for my trouble. The steel of the barrel rocked my skull, dazing me and sending pain shooting through my nerves. I stumbled into the room.

  Rain screamed. Yashelia did not turn to face me.

  “Matthias, kill the men.”

  My eyes widened as Matthias raised the revolver. His finger eased toward the trigger.

  I sent my mentality flying into his mind to delay the inevitable, if only for an instant. I darted through his maze again, no packet prepared, and dove into his poorly-tended mind. He stiffened. I looked over my shoulder just Thomas swept in from the other side.