City of Golden Shadow (45 page)

". . . Rising before her from the sand, three times her height. She climbed this stone, holding her child close against her breasts. She could hear Hyena's breathing, louder and louder, and when she looked back, she could see his great yellow eyes in the darkness, growing larger and larger. She sang again, 'Grandfather Mantis, help me now, Grandmother Star, help me now, send me strength to climb.' She climbed until she was out of Hyena's reach, and then huddled in a crack in the rock as he walked back and forth below.

" 'Soon you will be hungry, soon you will be thirsty,' Hyena called up to her. 'Soon your child will be hungry and thirsty, too, and will cry for sweet milk and water. Soon the hot sun will rise. The rock is bare and nothing grows upon it. What will you do when your stomach begins to ache? When your tongue cracks like the mud cracks?'

"N!uka felt a great fear then, for everything that Old Hyena said was true. She began to weep, crying, 'Here is where I have come to the ending, here where no one is my friend and my family is far away.' She heard Old Hyena singing to himself below, settled in to wait.

"Then a voice said to her, 'What are you doing here on our rock?' A person came down from the top of the rock and it was one of the people who sit on their heels. In old times my family's people had been at war with the baboons, so N!uka was afraid.

" 'Do not hurt me,' she said. 'Old Hyena has driven me here. He has killed my husband, and he waits below to kill me and my child.'

"This person looked at her, and when he spoke he was angry. 'Why do you say this to us? Why do you ask us not to hurt you? Have we ever offered you harm?'

"N!uka bowed her head. 'Your people and my people were enemies once. You fought a war with Grandfather Mantis. And I have never offered you friendship.'

" 'Because you are not a friend does not make you an enemy,' said the baboon, 'and Hyena down below is an enemy to both of us. Come up to the top of the rock where the rest of my people are.'

"N!uka climbed up behind him. When she got to the top of the rock, she saw that all the baboons were wearing headdresses of badger hair and ostrich plumes, for they were having a celebration feast. They gave food to her and her child, and when everyone was full, one of the oldest and wisest of the people who sit on their heels spoke to her, saying, 'Now we must talk together, thinking of what we may do about Old Hyena, for just as you are trapped upon this rock, so are we, and now we have eaten all the food and drunk all the water.'

"They talked and talked for a long time, and the Hyena down below became impatient, and shouted up to them: 'I smell the people who sit on their heels and them, too, I will bite, and crack their bones in my jaws. Come down and give me the smallest, tenderest one, and I will let the rest of you go.' The old baboon turned to N!uka and said: "There is a red flame that your people can summon. Summon it now, for if you can, there may be something we can do.' N!uka took out her fire-starter and bent down low so the wind would not blow away the spark, and when she had made the red flames come, she and the baboons took a piece of stone from the great rock and put it in the fire. When it was hot, N!uka wrapped it in a piece of hide that the old baboon gave her, then she went to the edge of the rock and called down to Old Hyena.

" 'I am going to throw you down my child, because I am hungry and thirsty and the rock is bare.'

" 'Good, throw him down,' Hyena said. 'I am hungry, too.'

"N!uka leaned out and threw down the hot stone. Old Hyena leaped on it and swallowed it, hide and all. When it was inside his belly, it began to burn him, and he called out to the clouds, begging them to send rain, but no rain came. He rolled on the ground, trying to make himself vomit it up again, but while he was doing this, N!uka and the baboons came down from the rock and picked up more stones and killed Hyena with them.

"N!uka thanked the people who sit on their heels, and the oldest of those people said to her 'Remember that when the greater enemy was before us both, we were your friends.' She swore that she would, and from that day, when danger or confusion is upon my family, we say: 'I wish baboons were on this rock.' "

Renie left !Xabbu in the Pinetown Bus Station with scarcely time to say good-bye, since her local was about to pull out. As the bus rolled down the ramp onto the busy rush-hour street, she watched the small young man standing beneath the overhang, scanning the schedule board, and again felt a rush of guilt.

He believes that baboons are going to come and help him. Jesus Mercy, what have I dragged him into?

For that matter, what had she gotten herself into? She seemed to have made some very powerful enemies, and for all that she had almost died, she had very little idea of what might be going on, and even less proof.

Make that no proof. Well, a blurry snapshot of a city, one copy on my pad, one on Susan's system. Try that with UNComm. "Yes, we think these people are murdering the minds of children. Our evidence? This picture of a lot of tall buildings."

There were quite a lot of people out on the streets around her neighborhood in the lowlands of Pinetown. She was a little surprised since it was a weeknight, but the people on the sidewalk definitely exhibited something of a carnival air, standing in knots in the center of the road, calling out to acquaintances, passing cans of beer around. When she dismounted the bus at the bottom of the hill, she could even smell smoke hanging sharp in the air, as though someone had been letting off fireworks. It was only when she had made her way halfway up Ubusika Street and saw the lights of emergency vehicles flaring and dying against the side of the flatblock tower, the cloud of camera-drones hovering like flies in front of the flames, that she finally understood.

She was breathless and sweating when she reached the police cordon. A thick pall of smoke was funneling upward from the flatblock roof, a dark finger against the evening sky. Several of the windows on her floor were smashed and blackened as if by intense heat exploding outward; Renie's stomach contracted in fear when she saw that one of them was hers. She counted again, hoping she had been wrong but knowing she hadn't. A young black trooper in a visor held her back as she pressed against the temporary barrier, begging to be let through. When she told him she was a resident, he directed her to a mobile trailer at the far side of the parking lot. At least a hundred people from the flatblock, and two or three times that number of people from the surrounding area, were milling around in the street, but Renie didn't see her father among them. Suddenly, she was trying desperately to remember what he'd said he was going to do that day. Usually he was home by late afternoon.

There was too much of a crush around the trailer to talk to anyone official-dozens of voices were baying for attention, most desperate for news of loved ones, some just wanting to know what had happened or whether there would be insurance compensation. Renie was pushed and jostled until she thought she would scream from frustration and fear. When she realized that no one would notice if she did scream, she fought her way back out of the crowd. Her eyes blurred with tears.

"Ms. Sulaweyo?" Mr. Prahkesh, the small round Asian man who lived down the hall, took his hand from her arm as if surprised at himself. He was wearing pajamas and a bathrobe, but had pulled a pair of unlaced takkies onto his feet "This is terrible, is it not?"

"Have you seen my father?"

He shook his head. "No, I have not seen him. It is too confusing here. My wife and daughter are somewhere here, because they came out with me, but I have not seen them since."

"What happened?"

"An explosion, I think. We were eating our meal, then fooom." He clapped his hands together. "Before we knew what had occurred, there were people in the hallway shouting. I do not know what has caused it" He shrugged nervously, as though he might somehow be held responsible. "Did you see the helicopters? Many of them came, dumping foam on the roof and spraying it on the outside walls. I am sure it will make us all very sick."

Renie pulled away from him. She could not share in his alarmed but somehow excited mood. His family was safe, doubtless gossiping with other neighbors. Had everyone survived? Surely not, with damage of the sort she could see. Where was her father? She felt cold all over. So many times she had wanted him gone, wished him and his bad temper out of her life, but she had never thought it might come to this: seven-thirty in the evening, the street full of chattering voyeurs and shell-shocked casualties. Things didn't happen this suddenly, did they?

She stopped short, staring at the blackened row of windows. Could it have been her? Had something she'd done inspired a reprisal from the people at Mister J's?

Renie shook her head, feeling dizzy. Surely that was paranoia. An old heater, faulty wiring, someone using a cheap stove-there were any number of things that could cause this, and all of them far more likely than the murderous vengeance of the owners of a VR club.

A murmur of thrilled horror went through the crowd. The firefighters were bringing stretchers out of the front door. Renie was terrified, but could not simply wait for news. She tried to push back through the knot of onlookers, but passage was impossible. Squirming, applying an elbow when necessary, she worked her way out to the edge of the crowd, meaning to circle around and try to get near the front door from the other side of the cordon.

He was sitting on a curb beside an unoccupied police van, his head in his hands.

"Papa? Papa!"

She dropped to her knees and threw her arms around him. He looked up slowly, as though not sure what was happening. He smelled pungently of beer, but at the moment she didn't care.

"Renie? Girl, that you?" He stared at her for a moment, his reddened eyes so intent that she thought he might hit her. Instead, he burst into tears and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, pushing his face against her neck, hugging her so close she was almost throttled. "Oh, girl, I feel so bad. I shouldn't have done it. I thought you were inside there. Ah, God, Renie, I feel so bad, I'm so ashamed."

"Papa, what are you talking about? What did you do?"

"You were going out for the day. See your teacher-friend." He shook his head but would not meet her eyes. "Walter come by. He said, 'Let's just go out and have a little time.' But I drank too much. I came back, this whole placed burned up here, and I thought you were back and got burned up, too." He swallowed air, struggling. "I am so ashamed."

"Oh, Papa. I'm okay. I just got back. I was worried about you."

He took a deep, shuddering breath. "I saw the fire, burning the place up. Jesus save me, girl, I thought about your poor mother. I thought I lost you, too."

Renie was crying now, as well. It was a while until she could bear to let him go. They sat side by side on the curb, watching the last of the flames slowly wink out as the firefighters finished their job.

"Everything," said Long Joseph. "All Stephen's toys, the wallscreen, everything. I don't know what we gonna do, girl."

"Right now I think we need to go find some coffee." She stood up, then stretched out her hand. Her father took it and got to his feet, shaky and unstable.

"Coffee?" He stared at what had been their home. The flat-block looked like the site of a fierce battle that nobody had won. "I guess so," he said. "Why not?"

CHAPTER 16

NETFEED/NEWS: Death of Child Called "Nanotech Murder"

(visual: school picture of Garza)

VO: Lawyers representing the family of fire victim Desdemona Garza called the lack of government oversight of chemical companies "a license to commit nanotech murder."

(visual: children in clothing store)

Garza, age seven, died when her Activex(tm) jacket caught fire. Her family maintains that the fatal fire was caused by the fabric's faulty nanoengineering. . . .

The lanterns of the Thieves' Quarter were dim and widely separated, as though a few glowing fish swam in the vast pool of night that drowned the criminal district of ancient Madrikhor. The city heralds, who never descended into the quarter, called the hour from the safety of the curtain wall. Hearing their cry, Thargor the swordsman stared sullenly at his cup of mead.

He did not look up at the sound of quiet footsteps, but his muscles tensed. His runesword Lifereaper's oiled length rested lightly in the scabbard, ready to leap forth at an instant's notice to deal death to anyone so foolish as to try a treacherous attack on the scourge of the Middle Country.

"Thargor? Is that you?" It was his sometime companion Pithlit, shrouded in a gray traveling robe to keep out the evening chill-and to hide his identity as well: the little bandit had dabbled too many times in the complicated politics of the Thieves' Guild, and currently was not entirely welcome in the quarter.

"Yes, it's me. Damn! What took you so long?"

"I was detained by other business-a dangerous commission." Pithlit did not sound very convincing. "But now I have come. Pray tell me our destination."

"Another ten minutes and I'd have left without you." Thargor snorted, then rose to his feet. "Let's go. And for God's sake, quit talking like that. This isn't a game any more."