How Dark the World Becomes (35 page)

The next day I showered, ate, and felt a little better. I used a razor to scrape away the beard that was coming in pretty thick, and while I did I got a good long look at myself in the mirror. I was a little shocked at how much weight I’d lost, how gaunt my face looked. I looked
old
, especially around the eyes. I wasn’t used to that.

By now we were all in clean jungle camouflage fatigues provided by the commander. They were pretty long in the waist for us, and Marfoglia’s were absurdly large, but with the sleeves rolled up almost to the shoulders, the waist belted tight, and the enormous baggy trousers tucked into the tops of tall boots and bloused out, she managed to pull it off as a look—sort of
Rebel Gaucho Chic.
 

Humans might not be able to win a revolution, but by God we could dress for one.

So later that day, Marfoglia and I were asked to meet with Mr. Katchaan, and things started getting weird.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Katchaan was young and lonely, and he had a need to talk to someone. Marfoglia and I were excellent listeners—once we’d each gotten some rest. We were also both very sympathetic, and in her case, the sentiment was genuine. I, on the other hand, am a heartless bastard, but I can fake a lot of things if the situation requires it, and in this instance it clearly did. I could be Nobody’s best pal if it served my purpose—and believe me, the irony of that linguistic
double entendre
did not escape me. 

Since Marfolglia and I were
Saviors of the Heirs
, and the two little squirts confirmed it by calling us
Boti
, Mr. Nobody was probably more forthcoming with us than he would normally have been with Humans—or even Varoki. Maybe especially Varoki. 

One of the things Katchaan spilled to us—in private—over the course of the next two days was that he was a member of a Shadow Brotherhood, called
Tahk Pashaada-ak
, which Marfoglia later told me was old aGavoosh for
End of Empty Dreams.
Over the next couple days I’d find out that this Shadow Brotherhood stuff was a lot more important to the Varoki than most people ever realized. Katchaan was partly here on orders from AZ Crescent, and partly on orders from his brotherhood, and he wasn’t really sure to what extent the one was influenced by the other, but they were entangled, no doubt. 

What he was sure of was that AZ Crescent wanted the Unionists to succeed, so uBakaa would come out on top.
Tahk Pashaada-ak
wanted the forced eco-forming ended immediately. Why? That was about the only thing he was reluctant to tell us. I started thinking maybe he didn’t know.

Turns out, the “Twin Diamonds, Heirs of our Future” business had been a bad slip on his part, and he was a little nervous about it. Those phrases were
Tahk Pashaada-ak
lingo, not the company line, and it let anyone else in the commander’s room that day know which brotherhood he was with—provided they were high enough up to know something about another brotherhood. The good news was that
Tahk Pashaada-ak
wanted the kids alive—practically seemed to worship them, for reasons I never figured out. The bad news was Katchaan had no clue who was trying to kill them or why, no idea what other brotherhoods were active in the insurgency headquarters, or what their motives might be.

I’d known Varoki all my life, grew up next to them, worked with them, stole from them, palled around with a few of them, and not one of them ever even
hinted
at the existence of the brotherhoods. And now I know that almost all of them belonged to one, or were aligned with one, or were under the protection of one, the whole time. And here’s the really creepy part—they
all
know about them, but they
never
talk about them—at least the working-class folks don’t.

Marfoglia had mixed more with the rich and powerful and had heard rumors of the Shadow Brotherhoods. Very rich people feel more secure—nothing really bad has ever happened to them, and they believe that nothing really bad ever can—so they are less careful about things like that. It was still a secret, of course, but what is a secret? 

Something you tell to only one person at a time. 

You see two-and-a-quarter-meter-tall Varoki, long torsos, smooth, hairless, iridescent skin, great big ears, and you think, “Oooo! Look!
Aliens!”
 

Then you get to know them, watch them wear silk robes with embroidered Chinese characters, see them hang Rembrandt and Chagall prints in their dens, and listen to classic rock with the audio cranked up high . . . see their government structure so much like ours, their economy, their approach to science and technology, and you figure, “Hey, these guys are just Humans in lizard suits.”

But then you find out about the Shadow Brotherhoods, and you start to wonder again. 

That guy Henry lined up for the e-snap data mine back on Peezgtaan—what had he said? That he was in the wrong “club” and so wasn’t getting promoted? I was willing to bet now he wasn’t in it for the payoff
or
the payback; he was acting under orders from his brotherhood to mess up AZK, for whatever reason. And I’d thought
revenge
was a bad motive!

Peeling back this layer of the onion was like looking at a small town someplace, studying it for years, thinking you knew all about it and the people in it, and then one day discovering that everyone in the town was actually a giant cockroach disguised as a Human. 

Another thing I picked up on was why Katchaan trusted us more than he trusted any Varoki—more than he
could
trust any Varoki. 

To Katchaan, Marfoglia and I were like Henry’s great-great-grandfather back in that Nazi POW camp. The Americans back then had a word for those Black flyers, maybe the ugliest word in the English language by the time they got done with it—
nigger
. Say it to yourself. Go ahead. Let the word roll around in your mouth. What does it taste like? It’s not enough to say it tastes like hate; hate is where it ends up, but it starts with contempt, and then drifts into fear—the fear taste is really strong. Only after those two—contempt and fear—cook together for a while do you get genuine hate.

Katchaan had no idea which of the other Varoki in the insurgency belonged to a rival brotherhood, but he damned well knew we didn’t, because to the Varoki, we were niggers. We had jazz and blues and disco and
gangsta’
rap—cubism and impressionism, existentialism and nihilism,
auturism
and post-modernism and the little black dress, and they ate that shit up with a spoon—but come closing time, as far as they were concerned we were still just niggers, and all the money in the galaxy wouldn’t have made us anything more than
rich
niggers. 

He actually believed we would be flattered by this gift of his special trust.

*   *   *

About a third of the trucks had been lost—that was actually fewer than I’d expected. They straggled in over the next couple of days, and Wataski’s truck was the second one in. 

Her truck was shot up, the composite flexi-cover in back all shredded and with a couple flechette holes in the cab. Wataski swung down from the shotgun door on the left, her face swollen, discolored, and showing stitches, but it didn’t keep her from talking. 

“Well, you look like shit!” she said. I guess I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. 

“I call that big talk from some broad with twenty stitches in her face.” 

She made a sound, like gravel rattling around in a metal bucket, it took me a second or two to identify as laughter. 

“This little party your doing?” she asked, the sweep of her arm taking in the Varoki insurgents hustling to unload her truck and get IR damper shrouds over it.

“Yeah, pretty much.”

She nodded slowly, looking around.

“Come on, help me unload.”

“The Sammies can handle it,” I answered, but she shook her head.

“Not this. Aguillar took a flechette in the shoulder, so he can’t help.” She walked around the back of the truck and I followed, not sure what I’d find. 

A body bag.

“Who’s this?”

“Swanson, Corporal Francis X. We ran into a contractor convoy about three nights back. Things got pretty hot, and he went down, but we managed to recover his body and get away. They got some place we can keep him until we can get him back up to the
Fitz
?”

I nodded. 

“The Sammie doc’s got a cooler.”

*   *   *

I carried one end and Wataski carried the other. Swanson had been a big guy, and I was still feeling a little weak, so by the time we got to the infirmary my knees were wobbly. The Sammie medical orderly on duty knew me by sight and waved us into the morgue holding area, and we hoisted Swanson’s bag up onto a polished metal table. Wataski took off her forage cap—she called it a “cover”—and scratched her pale straw-like hair that looked as if it had been barbered by a goat missing half its teeth. She looked at me from under heavy brow ridges. The deep cut she took to her cheek back on the trail looked like it was going to make a puckered scar that would go really well with her broken nose and lantern jaw. In a lot of ways, she did remind me of a Zack, and her expression was particularly sour and Zack-like right then. 

“I need to open the bag and pull his ID tag.”

“Want me to?” I asked. 

She looked at me as if I was an idiot, put her cap back on, and unzipped the bag.

“SON OF A BITCH!” she yelled and jumped back, and I saw a flash of movement as something scrabbled out of the bag and dropped to the floor. It was one of the local crustaceans, about twice the size of my fist, and it scrabbled a meter or two across the floor before Wataski’s heel came down on it hard, crushed its shell, and sent green and red guts and fluid squirting out. 

“Goddamned thing scared me half to death,” she said. “We must have scooped the sonuvabitch up in the dark when we bagged Swanson.”

I looked at the open body bag, and half of Swanson’s face had been eaten away. 

It took about one second to sink in, and then the adrenaline rush made my hair stand up. I just stood there with my mouth half open. 

So
that’s
why the Varoki back at that ag research station had been so hostile to Humans: guilt often manifests itself as rage. A lot of other things started to come together, too many to sort out all at once, but the first thing that popped to the surface was Survival 101. I scooped up the dead crustacean, threw it back in the bag, and zipped it up.

“What the hell?” Wataski hadn’t put the pieces together.

“Look . . . just let me think for a minute.” I took a deep breath and rubbed my forehead, momentarily overwhelmed. “Okay . . . I’m gonna get word to Gasiri, but until I do, don’t mention this to anybody.”

“How come?”

“Because all the time the Sammies were chasing us, they weren’t trying to kill
TheHon
. They were trying to kill us.” 

“You and the kids?” she asked.

“No, not the children.
Us.
Humans.
”

*   *   *

I found
TheHon
sitting by himself, watching Tweezaa play with three of the other children from the convoy, and I lowered myself down to sit by him. We watched the children play in silence for a while before I spoke.

“You people are really sick,” I said. 

He didn’t react at first, didn’t turn to look at me, but after a few seconds he sighed.

“I gathered from Dr. Marfoglia that you have learned about the . . . fraternal associations which form a part of . . . our social lives.”

“
Social
lives? Kiss my ass.”

He turned and looked at me, ears flared out, anger in his eyes.

“I’ll get back to that in a minute,” I said before he could reply, “but there’s something more pressing. Your
other
little secret.”

He frowned and looked at me, confused.

“What, do you have that many secrets that you don’t know which one I’m talking about? Well, I already passed the word on to Gasiri in orbit, so the cat’s out of the bag, and no way to get it back in. I did it so casual that the duty commspec didn’t even realize what I was saying—just mentioned the body of one of the Marines being half eaten by a local crab—and I’m not sure the commspec even understood what it meant. Guess he’s not high enough up the pecking order to be in on the secret.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked, frowning in irritation, but his ears began to flutter nervously. Since he was a politician—some would say a guy who lied for a living—that reaction let me know this was as big and ugly as I’d been afraid of. 

“What am I talking about? Let me ask you a question,
TheHon
. How come there’s no permanent Human enclave here? Most worlds with this many air-breathers living on them have Humans, even if it’s just some dirty little ghetto. What’s the deal here?”

“Perhaps the locals are xenophobic—people on colonial backwaters . . .”

“Bullshit. Answer me this: How’d you react to those shots you had to take before you hit dirtside here? Pretty rough, was it? Funny, didn’t bother me at all. None of the other Humans, either. The local bugs sting the shit out of us but don’t seem to bother you. Why is that? Well, maybe the bugs are xenophobic, too.

“So here’s the real question:
Why didn’t the fucking crab die?”

I waited, but he just looked away, ears sagging in surrender. What could he say?

“I’ll tell you what I think. I think that if Humans lived here, or even visited here on a regular basis, they’d figure out the truth. The indigenous protein chains on K’Tok are Human-compatible. That’s why the scavengers don’t touch Varoki dead. That’s why the shots don’t bother us—we don’t need them. And that’s why the local government types, even in the middle of this giant shit-storm of a war, were so desperate to wax all us Humans before we ate something—or something ate us—and we put the pieces together.”

I waited for him to deny it, but he didn’t. 

“You lousy, no-good bastards! Every so-called habitable world in the stinking galaxy we’ve found so far has protein that kills us. You’ve got Akaampta and a couple other places that are Varoki-friendly. That’s not
enough
? Other people find worlds with protein chains compatible with a different race, you broker the exchange. But when you find a world that could actually be a garden for
us
, what do you do? Keep it a secret and start force eco-forming it so someday it’ll kill us, too.”