Expatria: The Box Set (54 page)

CHAPTER 34

The beach felt reassuringly familiar beneath his feet. Kasimir Sukui took a deep breath and looked around at the chaos that was engulfing this innocent shore.

Boats dotted the surf, crunching onto the shingle, sliding back with the retreating waves. People waded waist deep in the water, trying to drag their boats ashore. Others threw ropes or caught them and pulled themselves free of the terrible sea.

Sukui shook himself. He had not enjoyed the crossing but that was no excuse for him to feel this way.

He spotted Lucilla and hurried over to join her. 'The Roman,' he said. 'RoKatya Tatin. Has she been found?' He saw instantly that she had not. He looked about again, at the people on the beach. Time would work its spell. They would know their toll of casualties before long.

Lucilla went to help haul one of the larger boats up against the beach and then carry people ashore through the surf. Sukui looked out to sea, wondering how many boats remained to come in.

He walked up the shoreline, away from the busy crowds. He felt his lack of function sorely at times such as this. He was a weak old man, still not fully recovered from his illness. He flapped his arm in its sling and winced. It was tendon damage, no more, but it made him even more of a burden on his fellows.

He came to an outcrop of rocks. Down by the water they were covered in a purple slime, but clear of the tide's line they were dry and grey. He sat, looked back at the busy crowd, pulled his tattered gown around himself, feeling the familiar chill of his native land.

It was then that he saw the body, floating approximately ten metres out. He knew who it was, instantly, from the saffron robes swirling about in the waves.

And then Idi Mondata raised his head, made a swimming movement with one of his arms, slumped back into the water.

Sukui sprang to his feet and waded out into the surf, calling for assistance as he did so. He reached Mondata in seconds, the sea slapping about his midriff, trying maliciously to pull his feet from beneath him.

He shrugged his arm free of the sling and turned the Kardinal face upwards, checking that he was still, falteringly, drawing air, and then he hauled him back towards the beach.

Voices were behind him, hands on his shoulders. A Charity reached round and took Mondata's arms from Sukui, heaving him easily onto the gravel and rocks.

Sukui staggered out of the water and fell to his knees by Mondata's side. 'Kardinal,' he gasped. 'We thought you were dead.'

Mondata opened his eyes and stared blankly up at the cluster of faces. 'I went for the one with the eyes... the one at the front. I held him down... I...'

'RoValentin,' said Sugratski. 'He was one of the death squad's leaders. I have been watching him for some time. Is he dead?'

'Like fish swim,' gasped Mondata.

'We thought you were dead!' cried a novice, pushing through the crowd.

Mondata smiled, his breath catching in his throat. 'A Death Krishna never dies, Ana... we jus' take three almighty steps 'cross the universe... an' then we come right back to where we started from.'

And then Sukui saw the dark patch on Mondata's gown, the blood spreading from a wound beneath his rib cage.

He tore at the orange material but it was a waste of time. The wound was too deep, too much blood had escaped. He looked into the eyes of Kardinal Mondata and he saw that already he was too late. 'Come, Ana,' he said, resting a hand on the crying novice's shoulder. 'We have work to do.'

He stood, painfully, and let Ana take some of his weight, helping him back along the beach.

By the time they had returned to the main landing point, RoKatya was there, sitting astride Director Roux's personal floater. She nodded at Sukui as he approached, then swung her leg over and jumped down from the vehicle. Now that she had moved, Sukui could see that the director was still clamped into his seat.

'RoKatya,' said Sukui, stopping before her.

'Sukui-san. I brought the director ashore but I don't think it was worth it.'

'You can work this vehicle?' asked Sukui, gesturing at the floater. He had thought that only a director could control an autonome.

'A trick I learnt from a couple of Ephesians,' she said.

Sukui moved to where he could see Director Roux more easily. The man looked so small in his seat, twisted forward as if the wires from his body had pulled him into this unnatural contortion of the human form. The director was staring at the ground just ahead of his floater.

Sukui squatted, breaking into his line of view. 'Director Roux,' he said. 'You are on Expatria. Your empire has fallen.'

Roux's eyes moved. He stared at Sukui. 'Don't you know that I may impart to you some economical gift to make you strong but you have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity so I say to you that you must let every... should be subject unto the higher powers of the company and the Lord above in the heavens, the munificent, wondrous heavens of the Lord at heaven's gate and beyond I say that you must, don't you hear?'

Sukui looked at Katya and shrugged.

'It's all from the bible,' she said. 'Romans in
The Second Testament
, Smith and the AntiMarx in
The Third
. It's all he'll say.'

Sukui stood. The pageant was gathering behind him on the beach. 'OK,' he said, aloud. 'We march on Alabama City. Come along.' And so they marched, leaving Director Roux on the beach, mumbling his scriptures to the wind and the waves, cackling occasionally for punctuation.

~

The track took them around the side of Ontario hill. Kasimir Sukui knew it well. They would come to a kink in the path, tall cedars and wych-firs obscuring the view, and then suddenly they would have a clear view down the slope to where the track became a paved road and plunged itself into the northern fringes of Alabama City.

The track came to a dog-leg, cedars on one side, wide-holed wych-firs jostling on the other. Sukui was at the head of the pageant, others trailed back farther than he could ever see; the injured, the frail, the young. His arm was in its sling again, throbbing from his exertions. His free hand was being clutched tightly by Ana, the small Krishna novice. Katya Tatin was walking by his side, her impatience beginning to show.

He looked at the Roman active and wondered if he was doing the right thing. Would her message trigger a flood of colonising missionaries, in ships larger and faster than the
Third Testament
? The message would take near to eighteen Expatrian years to reach Earth, so Sukui knew that he would almost certainly die before the results of this crusade would be known for sure. Sometimes the scale of the universe could be so impractical.

He smiled. He could only weigh up the probabilities, balance them against his intuition, his judgement of this Roman active, beside him. He did not know what she was going to broadcast, but he knew that
she
would think it was the right choice. She would have her say—that was the way of the Pageant, it was the only real option.

The trees drew back on either side and Sukui looked out over his home city. It had not changed. The huge blocks of the Capitol stood, distinct from the mass, Alcazar Square to one side, Merchant's Chapel nearby; the rest of the city had been constructed to a more modest scale, a blurred mosaic from this distance.

Sukui smiled just to see it all again.

He looked down to where the track became the road that fed into the city's grid-like street plan.

And that was where he saw the changes. A line of defences had been built around the city. A wall of wooden stakes, set amongst rubble and boulders, snaked along the northern perimeter of the city; as far as Sukui could see, this barricade continued around to the eastern and southern flanks, too, becoming more substantial at all the main roads into the city.

RoKatya was twitching from foot to foot, ahead of him on the track. Sukui realised that he must have stopped upon seeing the new defences. He nodded to the Roman and began to walk again, his mind trying to snap itself back into its old self-discipline, struggling to achieve a degree of control over the chaos of his thoughts.

~

The wall was some five metres high, where it ran across the fields by the road. Guards were spread along its top, armed with hunting guns and sling-shots. The road was blocked by a series of staggered barriers, sharpened wood poles set into the cobbles, raffia fencing strung across the gaps, guards lined up behind all of this, waiting for some imaginary army.

As the pageant approached, a cacophony of whistles rose from behind the wall. The guards were raising the alarm, calling for reinforcements. Within minutes their numbers were multiplying along the top of the wall and on the road behind the barricades.

Sukui halted about five hundred metres short of the city. 'It appears,' he said to his followers, 'that the Prime will not be hospitable. Perhaps it is our numbers. RoKatya and I will proceed alone.' He nodded at Katya, and then gestured for the others to seat themselves and be patient.

He looked down at the novice, still hanging on to his hand. 'Ana,' he said, gently. 'I will not be gone for long. Here, play with Lucilla.' He managed to work his hand free and smiled gratefully at Lucilla.

Then he turned to Katya, nodded, began to walk.

~

They stopped, fifty metres short of the first barricade. They were not tired, they did not want to pause to discuss their tactics. The reason they had stopped was that an officer had snapped an order along the top of the wall and the guards had raised their weapons in unison, safety catches of their guns clicking off, shot being loaded into slings.

Just as Sukui was wondering how best to tackle this predicament the Prime appeared at the top of the wall. Guards made way for him and he strode along his battlements to stand in the little tower that had been erected by the road.

Sukui began to walk again, and Katya followed him, more cautiously.

'Stop now!' The Prime's voice pierced Sukui as if he had been shot.

He stopped.

'They said it was you, Kasimir. You and a Terran. I didn't believe them.
Sukui with a Terran?
I asked them. Impossible. Sukui would not do such a thing—he is not
that
disloyal. Yet what do I see, on one of my very favourite roads? Sukui with a Terran.' He was shaking his head melodramatically.

'You were my best adviser,' he continued. 'What should I do, Kasimir? If you were anyone else you would have been shot already. Should I have you shot, Kasimir? Should I? Hmm?'

Sukui took another step forward, then stopped at a glare from his Prime. 'My lord,' he said, raising his voice to cover the distance. 'I am only doing what I think is right. I am as loyal to you, my lord, as I ever was.

'This—' he gestured at Katya '—is RoKatya Tatin. She is a friend. She has come to request the Lord Salvo's favour.' He raised his arms, pulling the left one from its sling. 'We are unarmed, my lord. Please let us enter the city.'

Salvo Andric was shaking his head. 'You always advised me that way: you didn't answer my question.' He leaned out over the wall, his red beard flying. 'So I answer it myself: go, Kasimir Sukui. Turn around with your GenGen friends and leave and I will not have you shot. I can be no fairer than that. There is a limit even to
my
generosity. Go!'

Sukui stared at his Prime, tears fogging his vision. He had given all of the years of his adult life in the service of the primes of Alabama City—he had been closer to Salvo Andric than to any other—yet now he was being banished.

He took a step, and then, slowly, deliberately, another. His gaze was fixed on his Prime, but he sensed that Katya was hanging back, observing with Roman caution.

He managed to smile, took another two steps.

'I am warning you, Kasimir Sukui! This is your last warning.'

He took another step, another.

'Captain Mahler!' bellowed Prime Salvo. 'When I give the command your troopers are to open fire. Do you hear me, Kasimir? I have only to give the command.'

Sukui was still staring at his Prime, weighing up his chances. Prime Salvo was an erratic leader, a man limited by his own insecurities.

Sukui decided that his chances of survival were somewhere between ten and fifteen per cent, and even that was allowing himself a five per cent chance that Captain Mahler would refuse the Prime's order.

He took a deep breath, and then, one more step.

And then a commotion arose on the road beyond the barriers. Voices shouting, yelling in confusion and surprise. A rumbling sound, shaking the very ground on which Sukui was standing.

Sukui's eye-to-eye link with his Prime was broken as Salvo Andric spun in his tower to look at the street behind him.

Sukui began to walk again, Katya matching him step by step.

And the rumbling grew louder, the shouts more excited. Prime Salvo spun again in his wooden tower, stared at Sukui, and then his head swivelled back towards the city.

It was then that Sukui identified the source of the commotion. Beyond the barriers he saw the vehicle, the beast with the huge black wheels that Lui Tsang had been renovating, the vehicle that had been painted in the chaotic kaleidoscope of the Primal colours.

It was the Primal jalopy and it was being driven by Lui Tsang.

As the Prime began to bark his commands at all around him, Tsang aligned the jalopy with the barriers, lowered its heavy scoop, wound the engine up as high as it would go. And accelerated.

It shrugged the splintering barricades aside as if they had never been there. Troops leapt clear of the flying debris whilst others cheered, then stopped, then tried to look busy. The Prime was shouting and waving his hands, down in the road now, surveying his tattered defences.

The jalopy skidded to a halt, metres from Sukui and RoKatya. Lui Tsang grinned down at them, offered Sukui his hand. 'You want a ride?' he asked.

Sukui glanced at the disarray of the city's defences. Troopers were milling about aimlessly, civilians were emerging from boarded-up buildings. Prime Salvo was chasing two of his officers down a side-street, waving a piece of wood in the air and yelling at them to wait and be beaten. 'I believe,' said Sukui, 'that a ride is most certainly in order.' He bowed his head to Tsang and then to RoKatya, then pulled himself up into the jalopy's cabin.