Come the Revolution (11 page)

Before I plunged down into the heart of Praha-Riz, I wanted to take a look around and I was tired of vid feed. I opened the clear sliding doors to the balcony and went out. Right away I caught the trace smell of smoke—not clean wood smoke, but burning garbage, plastic, and something sweet, maybe flesh. Sakkatto City stretched out before me in the late afternoon sunlight, large columns of smoke rising from a dozen or more sites out in the slums and more little smoldering fires than I could count, all adding to a low clinging haze. Maybe because of the elevation I could just see more than before, or seeing it live had more impact than vid, but it looked worse to me, not better.

The arcologies appeared untouched, rising like arcane monoliths from the clutter of the slums—untouched, unmoving, unseeing—but the slums looked unsettled. Among the flickering fires and through an irregular curtain of smoke I saw snatches of movement, flashing emergency vehicle lights, a waving banner, a sparkling reflection from a riot shield—movement devoid of clear meaning but fraught with implication.

I ran my hand along the railing, still slick with fire retardant. I looked down to the slums directly below Praha-Riz, over a kilometer below me, and I remembered the feeling of vaulting over the railing of a burglarized apartment in Crack City, fifteen years earlier, and riding the canyon thermals down on a parawing, with a rucksack full of treasure—whatever the treasure had been that night. Did I have a parawing in the apartment? I didn’t think so, but I could whip one up using the fabricator. The problem with a parawing is you have to come down sometime, and no matter where I came down, everything was still going to be…
that
.

No, my Peter Pan days were over. If I was going to fly out of here, it would be by a short-hop turbo-shuttle, and I had a couple people I needed to take with me on that flight. I owed it to them.

Chapter Fourteen

“Mr. Naradnyo, you should not have taken the chance of coming here. It is too dangerous!”

I flopped down in the chair across from Gaisaana-la and took off the viewer glasses I’d been wearing. I hadn’t seen her since ah-Quan hustled her off just as everything had started going to hell and
The’On
and I flew out a window. She didn’t look injured.

“I was already in the arc so it was just a couple express elevators and then a ten minute autopod ride. I wanted to see you but I’m half surprised to find you here at the office. Any other staff show up today?”

“A few. I sent them home at midday. Your arm is injured. I was afraid you and Executor e-Lotonaa were killed until I saw the vid of you in the water.”

“We’ve survived worse. Listen, I need you to get out one of the travel cover IDs we set up for you and book passage for us to Kootrin. We’re getting out of here and we’ll take ah-Quan if I can arrange it. I think Borro is still in the city as well but when I ping him his commlink doesn’t respond.”

“Why did you not comm me to see if I was here before coming?” she asked.

“I’d have contacted you if I didn’t catch you here, but the less we use the air the better.”

She nodded in understanding. She was executive service, not protection detail, but everyone associated with Tweezaa and Marrissa had to be somewhat savvy about security.

“Mr. ah-Quan is in Med South, the same as the others injured from the first riot. I have visited him and he is in grave condition. The medtechs are confident he will recover but the next two days are critical. He cannot be moved now.”

“He’s that bad? What happened?”

Her face colored and her ears folded back as she remembered. “He picked me up, pushed through the crowd, put me in the corner of the room, and then covered me with his own body. At first the mob tried to beat him to death, then it pushed against him. He wedged his shoulders against the two walls and he continued talking to me until he lost consciousness although I could not understand him. Perhaps he was trying to keep me from fear, or perhaps keep himself from it. Perhaps he was praying. He spoke in a Zaschaan language.”

“Szawa?” I asked.

“No, a native language, spoken with both mouths at the same time. It was very beautiful.”

She looked away for a moment, maybe remembering that voice.

“He suffered multiple traumatic joint compressions, two spinal fractures, and internal organ damage. He cannot be moved. I will not go either.”

“
You?
Look, I know you feel a debt to ah-Quan, but you can’t help him by staying here. You’re Marr’s executive assistant and she’s going to need you.”

“The Municipal Police have issued a material witness summons for me and frozen my travel privileges.”

“Right, same as me. That’s why you need the travel cover. If CSJ were manning the checkpoints it might not fly, but with the Munies we’ll be fine. Trust me, I just passed through four checkpoints getting here.”

I held up the viewer glasses with my left hand.

“These have built-in UV lights that throw off the biometrics of automatic facial recognition scans—not enough to raise a red flag, just enough to throw my eye and nose dimensions out of the program recognition window for my face. If they want a closer scan, my retinas match my travel cover, and you’d need a medtech to tell they’re skin contacts. They ran us a small fortune but they work against what the Munies have. You’ve got the same gear available with your travel cover.”

She looked into my eyes and shook her head slightly. “It does not matter. I will not violate the law.”

I sat back in the chair and looked at her. “The
law
? Have you looked out a window lately? There’s no law out there anymore, just fire and rage and blood, and it’s lapping at the foundations of the arcologies. Have you seen the vid of the outside of Praha-Riz burning? That may just be a sample of what’s coming.”

She dipped her head to the side, and her ears slowly opened up, her skin coloring in a soft hue.

“Mr. Naradnyo, you were born on the uZmatanki colony world of Peezgtaan, of Human parents who had renounced their Ukrainian citizenship. As I understand the law at that time, you were technically a stateless person until Peezgtaan received its independence, about ten years ago. This is correct?”

“Yeah. So what?”

“Believe me, I mean no offense. In the time I have known you I have gained great respect for you. My point, however, is that for most of your life—I think for all of your life really—you have been a man without a country. I do not sense that you understand how this sets you apart from so many of the rest of us.

“I am
uCotto’uBakaa
,” she continued, her voice firmer, “a citizen of the Commonwealth of Bakaa. It is my country, Mr. Naradnyo, it is my home, and it is in desperate peril. I do not know that there is anything I can do to wake it from this terrible nightmare, but I cannot abandon it.”

* * *

I didn’t try to talk Gaisaana-la out of her decision. It would have been a waste of time for both of us, and we had a lot to do. She didn’t think I understood what she was wrestling with, but in a funny way I did. I might not have a real good handle on nationalism, but I understood abandonment.

I also now understood her ambivalence about the adoption, and I felt small about questioning her loyalty the previous day, even if just to myself. One thing she had plenty of was loyalty, although it must have gotten pretty complicated for her, sorting her loyalties out and remaining true to all of them.

I hadn’t had a lot of hope of getting ah-Quan out even before I found out his condition, because we didn’t have an elaborate travel cover, or spook gear to back it up, for him. Before this all blew up he was another security guy, one of a couple dozen. Now things were different, but not in a way that was going to do him much good, at least not right away. I wanted to see him, though, say something to him before I went. Med South was not that far below our executive offices so I took another elevator down and watched the crowds of people through the clear composite wall looking out on the wide South Tower atrium shaft. I’d been just a few levels lower in the atrium yesterday morning.

Was that all it was? Just a little over a day?

The meeting had been on Ten of Eight-Month Waning—the tenth day of the second (waning) half of the eighth month in the Varoki calendar. They named their days and months with even less imagination than most of their enterprises. It was no wonder Humans were starting to do well in the arts—the competition wasn’t all that tough. I blinked up my personal calendar to be sure I hadn’t lost a day somewhere. Nope. Today was Eleven of Eight-Month Waning.

I left the elevator and walked down the broad corridor toward the main entrance to Med South but slowed as I saw a half-dozen Varoki in military uniforms out front, arguing with a couple Munies. There was a time I would have viewed this as an opportunity to slip past all of them while they were distracted, but I have learned from experience that a more likely outcome is for both Varoki parties to find common ground in working their frustrations out on the Human.

I felt as much as heard the repetitive thudding bass of a mechnod band and altered course, following the sound to a narrower passage. I stopped and glanced at the soldiers and cops, still arguing, and I decided I should kill ten or twenty minutes to give them a chance to sort things out and go about their business.

I followed the passage, which led to a cul-de-sac surrounded by a half-dozen shop fronts. Two of them were shuttered and looked like they’d been closed for a while, and none of the others looked very prosperous, but the music escaped from an opened door leading to a dark room lit only by flickering colored lights. The sign above the door in both aGavoosh and aBakaa read “Koozaan’s Beverage Store.” Under it a sign in those languages as well as English read “Human’s Welcome!”

I resisted the effort to correct the punctuation, wrapped my left hand around the neuro-wand I carried folded up in my trouser pocket, and went in.

Varoki bars aren’t like Human bars. For one thing, there’s no actual bar, just tables and chairs and a doorway to the back room. Two Varoki in suits sat at one table, already drinking some pastel pink stuff and arguing. I grabbed a table close to the door and punched up the drink options on the smart surface. They had what claimed to be scotch, a label I’d never heard of:
Klan MacKlacklahaan
, which claimed to be “the finest blended single malt scotch on Hazz’Akatu.”

Despite some doubts about the existential possibility of a blended single malt scotch, I ordered one over ice. I paid with the fund card associated with my travel cover, just to establish my identity and head off questions. This was the sort of situation where cash would have attracted unwanted attention. I added a nice tip in advance and pretty soon a middle-aged Varoki male server brought the drink, set it down politely, and then returned to the rear of the shop. No small talk but no challenging looks either.

I took a sip and was surprised that it actually resembled scotch after all, and not even the worst I’d ever had. Of course, given what drink fabricators could turn out, there wasn’t a lot of percentage in selling rotgut, which would come out of the same fabricator and cost almost as much to make.

Although I preferred jazz, the repetitive pounding of the mechnod music was strangely relaxing. Instead of distracting me, it cleared my mind. I stirred my scotch with the plastic straw and wondered what the hell I was doing here. Talk to ah-Quan before I got out of town, sure. But why?

I couldn’t take ah-Quan with me to Kootrin, so what was the point? He wasn’t counting on a visit and it would just endanger both of us. I could send him flowers.

So why was I hanging around in a bar watching the ice in my scotch melt? Why wasn’t I already on a shuttle for Kootrin? I was stalling. I was killing time, coming up with excuses
not
to get on that shuttle. I couldn’t figure out why, but it had to stop, right now. Get up, book the shuttle, and get the hell out of this mess.

I left most of my drink on the table and walked down the arched passage to the main corridor. When I got there I saw more military types at the main entrance than before. The Munies were gone and a couple high-ranking Varoki officers in the dress grays of the uBakai astro-naval service walked into the hospital like they were in a hurry. Whatever was going on in there, it was more heat than I needed, so I reluctantly turned and headed back to the elevator.

Why reluctantly? That didn’t make any more sense than me being here in the first place. I’d already decided to skip a visit to ah-Quan, so why had all that extra security suddenly made going in
more
attractive? Was it the little kid in me, curious about what all the activity was about? Or the adolescent pushing back against all those authority figures telling me what I could and couldn’t do? Or the danger junkie, hungry for an adrenaline high? Maybe.

But just maybe it was the loner, looking for any excuse to put off going back to all the responsibilities I’d accumulated over the last two years. Responsibilities I’d never had before.

Chapter Fifteen

I got in the express elevator going up and requested Level 237. I shared the compartment with a Varoki couple who moved to one side to give me some space, maybe because I was Human, maybe because of my dark expression.

I loved Marr in a way I’d never loved anyone in my life, in a way that had caught me by surprise because I’d thought it was beyond my capacity. And Tweezaa…sometimes it was hard to believe she
wasn’t
my child, my own flesh. And soon there would be a son, one more person to cherish, one more to enrich my life beyond anything I had ever imagined.

One more to let down.

I closed my eyes and just stood there for a while as the floors raced past, faster and faster, and I wondered if these things ever had brake failures, if they ever just kept accelerating until they blew right through the roof and tossed their passengers a thousand meters into the sky, to reach the top of their trajectory, pause there for a moment, and then start that long fall back.

I opened my eyes when the elevator began to decelerate. No brake failure today. It stopped at 200 and the Varoki couple left, silent and avoiding eye contact with me. As the doors closed I blinked up a search for travel services in the city. Marr always booked our travel through the office but it occurred to me someone might be watching for that. I picked the first service that came up and put in a booking for a shuttle departure to Kootrin from the Praha-Riz rooftop terminal, as soon as available.

We Are Sorry But Due To A Defense Ministry Night Aerial Travel Quarantine Over Sakkatto City All Shuttle Departures Have Been Delayed Until Hour Seven, Twelve of Eight-Month Waning. Would You Like To Make A Morning Booking?

“Yes,” I answered, confirmed the booking through my travel cover, and closed the connection.

Night? It was only coming up on Hour Fifteen, and this time of year it stayed light at least until Seventeen. Somebody was nervous, not that I could blame them, but it was getting in the way of my efforts to be a responsible adult.

I left the elevator and made my way to the apartment, went in, and paused in the anteroom to check the security monitors inside. Bela and Pablo were still strapped into their chairs, so I opened the inner doors and joined them.

“Change of plans, boys,” I said as soon as I got inside. “My shuttle doesn’t leave until tomorrow morning, so I’ll have to keep you under wraps until then.”

“I need go bathroom,” Bela said.

“Yeah, not surprising. What I’m going to do is cut you loose and lock you both up in the guest suite until I’m ready to leave. There’s a bathroom in there, and smart walls if you get bored. There’s also a comm sensor, so if you pull those jammers off your necks and try to call for help, I’m going to have to do something drastic. Understand?”

They both nodded and I traded the folding neuro-wand for a neuro-pistol from the gun safe. I moved it into my right hand, cradled in the sling, and took my old Kizlyar
desantnyk
knife from its scabbard in the safe, holding it in my left hand.

“I’m going to cut your feet free with the knife. Then I want you to get up, carrying the chairs strapped to your backs, and walk to the guest suite, down that hallway. Sit down in there with your backs to the doorway and I’ll cut your hands free. Do not stand up until I am out the door or I will stun you.

“This blade is very sharp, so try not to move while I’m cutting the tape. I’m more of a gun guy than a knife guy, so if you try something really stupid, like jumping me, and I have to cut you, I can’t guarantee it won’t kill you.”

“Understood,” Bela said. “We do as ask, not cause more trouble. Most people would kill us.
I
would kill us. Is very good of you not to. I am sorry we try hurt you, Mr. Naradnyo.”

“Well, I’ll make a deal with you, Bela. If you don’t tell anyone I went soft and let you live, I won’t tell them about getting the drop on you.”

“Is deal. Thank you, Mr. Naradnyo,” he said.

All very nice, but I still made them go through every step of the transfer procedure.

Once they were securely locked in I made my way to the living room, poured myself a real scotch, and walked out onto the balcony to think things through. I considered taking along one of the cigars Marr got me as a birthday present but I wasn’t in a good enough mood. Cigars should always be celebratory, even if only in some small way, like smoking one with a friend.

I thought for a moment and then went back in and got one, came out, and settled into a lounger. I snipped the end, got it going, and commed Marr.

Sasha? Are you all right?

“I’m fine, Babe. I’m out on a balcony, enjoying a birthday cigar and thinking about you.”

Can you get to us?

“Yeah. They shut down transportation for the night, but I have a ride lined up for tomorrow. No details, understand?”

Yes. As long as you’re safe you can tell me later. I miss you.

I watched a military shuttle bank and flare for a landing at one of Katammu-Arc’s upper bays and I swallowed to relieve the tightness in my throat.

“God, I miss you, too.”

* * *

I finished my cigar and then showered and packed so I wouldn’t have to bother with it in the morning. I warmed up some frozen leftovers, and even made Bela and Pablo dinner, used the intercom to make them move into their bathroom while I opened the door and put the plates on the table, and then gave then the all-clear after I was out and the door locked again. All that took an hour or so and by then the light was fading. It was a beautiful autumn night, though, and I took another scotch out onto the balcony. Maybe things were settling down. I set the internal alarm on my commlink, stretched out on the lounge, sipped my scotch, and eventually drifted off to sleep.

I woke up about Two Hour on the Twelfth and at first I wasn’t sure why. I still had almost four hours before I had to leave for the shuttle. Something had changed in the background pattern of noise.

I stood up and stretched, then went to the railing and looked down. The city didn’t look much different than it had before except now it was dark, lit by street and building lights, scattered fires, and little patches of twinkling light here and there. It took me a minute to realize the faint sound of automatic weapons fire had woken me, and that’s what those little twinkling lights were. The sounds were muted and got to me after the light, so they didn’t really seem associated with each other.

The firing wasn’t continuous: a smattering here, then it would stop and there would be a cluster somewhere else, going on all over the slums of Sakkatto City. I had a set of long-range vision enhancement goggles somewhere in the apartment and I went in to find them. As soon as I did I heard Bela talking on the intercom.

“Mr. Naradnyo! Are you there? Mr. Naradnyo, better look this stuff on feed. Mr. Naradnyo, where you are?”

“I’m on it,” I said into the intercom and opened a vid feed on a smart wall. I didn’t have to search for more than five seconds before the images started coming up.

I was looking at a Munie checkpoint which had stopped a military vehicle, a wheeled APC—armored personnel carrier—in uBakai Army urban camo pattern. A dismounted Army officer argued with a Munie in full riot gear.

“This was live just five minutes ago from a municipal streetcam at the intersection of Deliverance Way and the eastern maintenance trunk line,” a female Human voice said in English. She sounded short of breath, as if from fear or excitement. I recognized her face in the corner of the picture, the same woman I’d noticed earlier, the one named Aurora.

The Munie in the feed became more heated, shouting at the officer, gesturing wildly. Just watching you could tell the Munies—worn down, jumped back up on stimulants, and scared—were taut as wires stretched right to the breaking point. And then the wire broke.

It was over almost instantly. The Munie pushed the officer back and went for his sidearm, probably a neuro-stunner, but before he even got it out of the holster the remote autogun on top of the ground forces APC punched him with a four-round burst, slammed him back against the police van parked to block the street. He crumpled to the pavement, clearly dead. The other four Munies opened fire with their assault rifles, hit the dismounted officer, and then the APC’s autogun went to continuous fire mode and just shredded them, opening up the side of the police van and setting it on fire in the process.

The clip ended. I sat down on the couch and started watching more lines of feed.

At first all anyone had was that one clip, played over and over. Then other streetcam clips started showing up. An abandoned Munie checkpoint, police van still in place. A different checkpoint with a gutted van and dead Munies on the pavement. A clip of Army soldiers pushing disarmed Munies, all of them with their wrists restrained behind their backs, through the rear hatch into an APC. All across the city the Army was moving in and disarming the Munies, except where they resisted, in which case they just cut them down.

I noticed the Army wasn’t taking over the checkpoints when they were done with the Munies; they just took off with their prisoners or left the bodies where they fell and moved on. They were creating a vacuum.

I also saw a clip of Varoki troopers loading a dozen panicky Katami, their feathery cranial membranes flaring and swaying, streaked with fear color, their short arms cuffed behind their backs, into the open hatch of an armored carrier. Another feed showed forlorn-looking Buran being herded along by MPs, looking like so many shuffling tree stumps. The Army apparently wasn’t crazy about aliens. I didn’t see any feed of Human prisoners, but I saw some bodies in very bad shape. No way of telling who’d killed them, but whoever it was, they’d really gotten into it.

Within an hour the feed heads reported military units in most government complexes in Sakkatto City, and then the other cities in the Commonwealth of Bakaa. I saw some fighting in other cities between police and Army units, and even reports of fights between Army units—“rebel” and “loyalist” although I wasn’t sure which was which.

Reports started coming that elements of the military high command had taken control of the government to stem the rising disorder and had appointed a provisional government for the duration of the emergency. Back on Earth they called this sort of move a coup. The reports were garbled at first, and sometimes contradictory, but as the sun started coming up, the heads of the provisional government addressed the nation over just about every feed channel. The address coming at dawn must have been meant to be symbolic.

The new head of state, appointed by the military, spoke first. He wore the uBakai astro-naval gray uniform with the rank insignia of a rear admiral, which seemed fairly junior to be the guy in charge. Either he was a figurehead or this was a Young Turk coup.

The feed caption identified him as Provisional President Talv e-Kunin’gaatz. He talked about rampant corruption in the
Wat
and the civilian government, how they no longer reflected the will of the people, how that was why the police, as instruments of the
Wat
, had tried to crush the spirit of the people, had murdered well over a thousand of them.

“As do all members of the armed forces of Bakaa,” he said, “I swore an oath to defend the people of Bakaa in time of peril. Whatever we all may differ over, no person within the sound of my voice can dispute that the
Cotto’uBakaa
now face a graver peril than at any time since the dawn of the Stellar Age. If I and other senior officers did not feel that the leaders of the civilian government had dishonored and abandoned their similar oaths, we would never have acted. But they have. So we have taken control of the government in the name of all uBakai. Discipline and values will replace corruption. The Municipal Police, who have shown their brutality and corruption, have been replaced by the Ground Forces Military Police, whom you will find to be stern but principled.”

He didn’t go on much longer; he spoke briskly and to the point. His commanding presence and self-confidence made him sound like he knew what he was doing, but he was astro-navy, and everything looks easier from orbit. If this admiral thought a bunch of Army MPs could just step in and seamlessly take over the police functions of one of the largest cities on Hazz’Akatu, he was delusional. Whatever lid the Munies had clamped on the Sakkatto pressure cooker had just been removed.

The next guy to speak was the vice-president-designate, none other than Elaamu Gaant. So that’s what all that astro-navy brass was doing at Med South earlier: chatting up Gaant and cutting a deal.

Maybe Gaant was part of the government to give it the veneer of civilian participation, or maybe to let the rioters know whose side the military was on. His head was swathed in spray-on bandages and I thought he had sort of a wild look in his eyes I hadn’t seen before. His speech ran longer than the admiral’s and it was…something else—a rambling rant about the destiny of the
Varokiim
, and the corruption not only of the uBakai
Wat
, but of the whole
Cottohazz.

Look at all the Varoki have given the other races of the
Cottohazz
, he lectured: the orbital needle, which enables them to economically move people and material from planet surface to space, and the jump drive, which enables them to move between the stars in the blink of an eye instead of the passage of a lifetime—the same words he used to me a few days earlier. There would be no interstellar civilization without the Varoki, he said, and the idea that the other races of the
Cottohazz
even had a voice in judging a Varoki nation incensed him.

“It is not for that collection of talking animals,” he finished, his voice rising, skin flushed and ears flared, “which calls itself the
Cottohazz
Wat
to pass judgment on our destiny. If the
Cottohazz
does not have the vision to recognize and honor the special place in history of the
Varokiim
, then we say the
Cottohazz
can rot!”

In the three hundred years since the Varoki had started their journey into the galaxy, a lot had happened, but never anything like this, not that I’d ever heard of anyway. A Varoki nation taken over by a military coup and now telling the
Cottohazz
to go screw itself? This was crazy talk, deeply and disturbingly crazy.