Paragaea (8 page)

“Easy?” Hieronymus said, pushing off the stool and jumping to his feet. He mimed a martial pose, like a comic opera hero. “And where would be the fun if it were easy? If we have to storm the walls of the Diamond Citadel of Atla, if we have to scale the fire mountain of Ignis itself, well…” He tapered off, looking around the pub and realizing his drink had gone empty. “Well,” he went on, sudden inspiration striking, “isn't that better than hanging around here till death takes us in our sleep?”

“If you say so,” the jaguar man rumbled with an easy shrug, and turned his attention back to his drink.

Hieronymus dropped back onto the stool, and laid a comradely hand on Leena's shoulder.

“Little sister, tomorrow we will set off in search of safe passage back to Earth, so that you may fulfill your duty. For now though, if you please, will you stop looking so damnably depressed, and have another drink with us?”

Leena looked at the pair, one a time-lost officer from a capitalist
navy, the other an impossible animal man straight out of her childhood fairy tales, and offered a weary smile. Perhaps it was the cheap spirits, but she was beginning to feel something not unlike hope.

“Another,” Leena said, motioning for the barmaid with her empty mug. “If there is a single thing the Russian understands, besides their duty,” she explained with resigned humor, laying an arm across Hieronymus's shoulder and another across Balam's, “it is the value of a drink.”

The next morning, with Hieronymus leading the way, Leena was dragged through innumerable market stalls and upscale shops and boutiques. Her ragged orange nylon oversuit was quite the worse for wear, and her two companions had insisted that she be outfitted with clothes and supplies immediately.

Leena was less interested in fashion than in function, saying that she could make do with Hieronymus's castoffs, but Hieronymus had urged that she should be able to blend in as much as possible with the populace. Not all of the Sakrian cultures were as cosmopolitan and welcoming of outsiders as Laxaria, and it would be useful to learn now how to blend in unnoticed with a crowd.

Leena was unused to the range of choices presented to her, and even more unused to being followed around each stall and outlet by a sales clerk, eager to meet her every desire. Even in the days before she wore nothing but uniforms—and she'd worn nothing but the standard issue for the Cosmonaut Corps, the Air Defense Forces, and the Red Army
since she was in her teenage years—her clothes had been provided for her by the state orphanage, and they'd simply supplied whatever the markets had in approximately her size, usually shapeless dresses of browns and grays, and roughly made leather shoes that never quite seemed to fit. The dizzying array of styles and colors presented to her in the shops of Laxaria were almost more difficult to accept than the inhuman creatures walking the city's streets.

In the end, they found a tailor who dealt in functional items with only minor concession to the fashions of the day, and Leena was loaded up with a few pairs of sturdy trousers, a few long-sleeved shirts, a sleeveless vest outfitted with pockets and hidden pouches, a waist-length jacket of some sort of softened animal hide, a heavier lined coat reaching to midcalf, sturdy walking boots, and a pack in which to carry it all. Into the pack Leena transferred what remained of her survival kit, the heavy boots she'd cut from her SK-1 pressure suit, and her extra ammunition for the Makarov. She discarded the orange nylon oversuit, the gray-checked pressure liner, and the helmet. Connecting the Makarov's nylon holster to her new leather belt, she hung the pistol at her waist, and was ready for anything that might come her way.

Almost anything.

Hieronymus demurred initially, but at Leena's insistence he also helped her locate an apothecary, where she was relieved to discover that Laxarian society had developed sufficiently to have the equivalent of tampons on the shelf, so that she wouldn't be forced to make do with jerry-rigged sanitary napkins when next she menstruated. She bought the apothec's entire stock, and that of several other vendors they found, and loaded them in her pack.

Finally, grateful to have left matters feminine behind, Hieronymus took Leena to an armory, and with the help of the armorer selected a short sword the correct heft and length for her.

“You will wear this at all times,” Hieronymus said, sliding the blade into a sheath of leather and wood, and handing it to Leena. “And you will practice with it as often as circumstances allow.”

Leena accepted the sword reluctantly, and drew it experimentally from its sheath.

“I would sooner use Makarov,” she said distastefully, “if there is more trouble.”

Hieronymus went to pay the armorer a few coins, and then crossed the floor to stand beside Leena. “I have explained about the scarcity of ammunition,” he began, his tone cross.

“Da, da.” Leena cut him off with a wave of her hand. “Not to shoot the pistol unless in emergency.” She pointed with the tip of the short sword to a rack of long-barreled rifles hanging on the armory's wall, tagged with prices in Sakrian numerals. “But why not carry those, instead? They are rifles, net, erm, no?”

“No rifles,” Hieronymus answered, nodding. “Which is to say, yes, they are rifles, and no, we won't be carrying them. Sakrian pneumatic rifles, powered by canisters of compressed air, fire slugs of compressed carbon, which are effective at short range, but which tend to be overly burdensome to carry for long distances, and are expensive to recharge and maintain. Good for riot control, but not a campaigner's weapon.”

Leena nodded. Sheathing the short sword again, she hooked it onto her belt, opposite her nylon holster.

“Understood. But if again I face a six-meter, clawed monster, I reach for this”—she touched the holster—“and not this.” She touched the sheathed sword. “No question.”

Hieronymus held up his hands in a sign of surrender.

Balam had secured rooms for the three of them at a tavern in the shadow of the city's northern wall, and near the tavern there was a periodic street market, where Laxarians and outlanders of all shapes and sizes jostled around closely spaced market stalls. To one side, in a small
plaza, space had been set aside for street theater, and mummers and mimes plied their trade for the passersby. There were also dumb shows and puppetry for the children, to keep them entertained and not underfoot while their parents haggled with the stall vendors.

While Hieronymus and Balam shopped for supplies, looking for bargains in the market stalls, Leena joined the children in front of the puppet stall, paying careful attention to the simple stories and allegories, trying to learn more of the Sakrian dialect. She'd not had to learn a new language since Berlin, all those years ago, but Hieronymus insisted that she would find the language of the plains of Sakria surprisingly easy to learn. Simple, almost mathematical syntactical structure, the words composed of only a handful of phonemes.

After listening for endless hours to the chattering voices of the puppeteers pitched high and screeching, trying unsuccessfully to absorb the vocabulary and follow the confusing plotlines, Leena had come to the conclusion that Hieronymus was a far more skilled linguist than she. Or that he was having a joke at her expense.

She leaned towards the latter, in the absence of any other evidence.

Past sunset, Leena joined Balam and Hieronymus in the tavern, sharing a simple meal and a few rounds of cheap spirits before retiring for the night. The menu, which Hieronymus said was prepared in the style of Masjid Empor, consisted of flat breads, some sort of cracked grains cooked into a paste, and spiced strips of grilled meat. Balam and Hieronymus fell to eating with gusto, while Leena approached her servings with more trepidation, but after a few exploratory bites, she found the savory flavors to her liking. After a short while on the tongue, the spices began to sear, and if the only liquid she had on hand to wash her palate clean was the vodkalike liquor she'd had the night before, Leena hardly had cause to complain.

When the meal was done, the three of them sat around the table, sipping their mugs, feeling the warmth of the spirits slowly suffuse to the tips of their fingers and toes. Leena was reminded of other meals, and other nights whiled away in company with a bottle to hand, with her fellow soldiers in Berlin, or with the other cosmonaut candidates at the training grounds of TsPK. The only difference between now and then, Leena realized, was that in those instances, she'd known precisely with whom she was drinking, the type of men and women they were, and what she could expect of them. Sitting across from the time-lost naval officer and the jaguar man, she had no such assurances.

“Excuse me, please,” she said, leaning forward, her words slurring only slightly. “I wonder to know. When we were in pub, last night, you met with men. Some business, you said.”

Hieronymus took a sip from his mug, and nodded absently.

“What of it?” Balam asked, leaning back casually in his chair, his mug held daintily between thumb and finger.

“What business was?” she asked. “What kind work do you two do?”

Balam and Hieronymus looked at each other thoughtfully, and shrugged.

“Whatever work comes to hand, little sister,” Hieronymus answered with a sly smile.

“As for me,” the jaguar man said expansively, “I'm just keeping myself occupied, and my skills honed, until the day I can reclaim the throne of Sinaa from my cousin Gerjis, and drive the blight of Per from my home.”

“But what purpose do you serve? What goal?”

“Even when I served under the flag of His Britannic Majesty,” Hieronymus answered, “my one true master was the call to adventure. I left home to escape a studious life of boredom, and I will gladly accept any task that comes my way, so long as it means a bit of excitement.”

“So you serve nothing greater than yourself? Not objective or moral?” Leena shook her head, unable to mask her expression of disgust. “So you are mercenary, only.”

A cloud passed across Hieronymus's features.

“I have done things,” he said, his voice low and brows knitted, “in the past, of which I am not proud. But I will take no job that offends my sensibilities, as rugged and roughshod as they may be.”

Leena made to reply, but Balam held up a silencing hand, shaking his head sadly, so she stared into the bottom of her mug, instead. On reflection, perhaps those nights drinking in Berlin and Star City had not been so different than this, after all, each person carrying old wounds beneath the skin that might never heal, scars that the eye could not see but the heart could not help but feel. Leena thought back on those last days in Stalingrad, long after her parents had died in the incendiary attack, when Leena was forced to do terrible things to survive, and the child she'd once been had died forever.

Leena knew what it meant to have done shameful things. Who was she to judge another who knew the same shame?

Having failed to find any answers at the Scholarium, once Balam and Hieronymus had resupplied and concluded their outstanding business, Leena insisted that one or the other of them accompany her to other centers of learning in the city, such as might be available. There were other centers of learning in the city, surely, to be found.

Balam, stretched out full length on the floor like a cat sunning on a porch, scratched at his belly with an outstretched claw and pleaded with Hieronymus to take the first shift. The jaguar man insisted that he'd not had a good few days' rest in months, and that if he was not allowed to nap for at least a few days, he would be useless when next they were on the march.