Ragamuffin (24 page)

Jerome glared at him. Xippilli looked a bit fuzzy in the strong electric light. “What you all about?”

“This is a place to be seen, Jerome, not to get drunk.” Xippilli pointed out a series of Azteca chiefs. “Those are very powerful, and rich, men.”

“The worse kind.” Jerome looked back at Xippilli. “You know how many of them rip through Brungstun?”

“Yes.”

Jerome grabbed Xippilli’s arm. “Which one of them over there was in Brungstun? Tell me.”

“Let it rest.” Xippilli shook his head. “You can’t kill them, they’re a part of all this.” He raised his cup and waved it all around. “They’re at least willing to help move us to moderation, they see the direction things go. Without their support we wouldn’t even have this.”

“We don’t need it.”

“You agreed to represent the town of Brungstun in these negotiations, Jerome.”

“You know I can’t say no. What they go say if I don’t? John deBrun, look, he son refuse to stand for the town. No, I know what they all expect.” Jerome grabbed another mug before Xippilli could intercept.

“If we open a road through Mafolie Pass in the Wicked Highs, trade will triple as we’re able to easily cross from Aztlan to Nanagada, both civilizations will be able to know each other. You were given a great honor by your town, a tribute to what your father did.”

“I ain’t John!”

“On that”—Xippilli pulled away from Jerome—“we both strongly agree.”

“I representing Brungstun, trust me.” Jerome watched him leave. Xippilli, despite his protests, was really no different from the people he’d run from. He’d crossed the Wicked High Mountains and trekked all the way to Capitol
City for a new life. Yet here he stood, walking over to a nearby chief, and laughing. Talking to murderers.

Brungstun, first town on the other side of the Wicked High Mountains, had been the first overrun when the Teotl launched the invasion of Nanagada. They’d poured over the mountains into his town. Why should Jerome help make it easier for the Azteca to do it again?

He’d make sure any way over the Wicked Highs remained closed.

Jerome stood up and walked over to Thomas.

Thomas turned. “Yes?”

“I’m going to leave before it get too dark.”

“Damn it Jerome, already?”

“Thomas . . .” I ain’t you friend, he wanted to say. But stopped. They were both in their twenties. Jerome here because of his father’s heroic status. Thomas because he was the oldest government man in Grammalton after the Azteca passed through. Neither of them would live up to the responsibilities put on them. John’s father was an old-father, one of the original settlers of Nanagada hundreds of years ago, near immortal due to strange, tiny machines in him from before the wars that destroyed all such things and left them stranded on this planet.

And Jerome was just Jerome.

“Don’t worry. I understand, you know. I understand.” Thomas looked out across the crowd and jerked his head. Two mongoose-men in gray uniforms walked over. They carried holstered guns at their waists, but not their famed rifles.

“Bed already?” one of them chuckled.

Jerome nodded. They took their positions at either side and walked him up the road along the flickering torches that were just being started up by runners along the many roads. The torchlight flickered by their faces, and they stared at him as they ran by.

He didn’t belong here.

Jerome tossed and turned in his bed, skimming just over the edge of a deeper sleep. He sat up finally, disturbed by some noise outside, and mopped sweat from his forehead with his sheet.

In the still air a steady thunder shook the windows.

The mongoose-man by his door came in. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah.” Jerome walked forward and opened the heavy wooden windows.

“You need leave them shut, in case,” the mongoose-man warned him.

Jerome looked out across the tiny flickering lights of lit torches at the sky, trying to see if there were any clouds.

None.

But the thundering increased. A trail of fire glowed white-hot in the sky as it crossed the far horizon and approached.

“What that?”

Jerome shook his head. “I don’t know.”

They watched it grow closer, the white-hot glow lighting up the night sky as it approached.

It couldn’t be a sign of anything good.

Jerome snagged mongoose-men khaki from one of the men his own size, his movements hurried.

“We all know what things returning from the sky go mean to the Azteca,” he said as he dressed. “Some of them go think Teotl returning to the earth from the sky.”

“But is it true?”

“Who know?” Jerome looked around the small house they all had shared for the last week. Eight mongoose-men, four of them dressed and at guard, the other four he’d woken up. “But that no meteor, coming in too slow, burning too long.”

“Clot,” someone swore.

“I know.” Jerome pointed at the dressed and armed men. “Get back to the party, bring all of everyone back, quick now. The rest of you, get ready and get you rifles ready.”

They stood still. “We think—”

“How many you all know what come out the sky just then?” Jerome asked. “None of you? Okay then, until any of we all know better, you best had move!”

“Okay, Jerome.” The four turned and took off.

“The rest of you all, get dress. Then we getting ready to board this place all up.”

“With what wood?”

Jerome looked down at the floor. “This nice hardwood plank right under we feet.”

The house was a small island in an ocean of danger. Jerome looked out of the windows into the flickering gas lamps of the Azteca city, then moved a bit
until he could see the flattened top of the massive stone pyramid at the heart of the city.

Torches leapt to fire at the pyramid’s top. An ordinary but still chilling omen. Jerome walked over to one of the chests the mongoose-men had dragged all the way from Capitol City. Several rifles lay nestled in a bed of straw.

He picked one up, checked the bolt, and grabbed a box of ammunition.

“Careful with that,” a mongoose-man with a close-shaved head said, buttoning up his shirt and coming down the stairs.

“I know how to use this.”

“You jumpy.”

“I got reason. We go need to board up the window them, and then the door. If Teotl come from the sky, we go be ready.”

The mongoose-man laughed. “That an old bush legend.”

“You saw my father land from the sky in Capitol City in he flying machine, right?” Jerome spat. “You were in the city, right?”

The mongoose-man nodded. “Yeah.”

“Then don’t be no chucklehead. When the Teotl land, it go be in machine just like my father flew.”

Footsteps outside. Jerome walked backward to the side of the door. He loaded the rifle and waved the mongoose-man to the kitchen.

A man burst in. Jerome swung the rifle up and almost shot him before recognizing Thomas.

“Clot! Man, I almost shoot you.”

“Jerome.” Thomas reached over and pushed the gun barrel away.

“What going on?” Jerome asked.

“The fire just hanging over the city. A whole lot of bright lights.” Thomas wiped his forehead on his sleeve. “I ran all the way here, people saying the chariot of the gods landing in the city.”

“The Teotl.” Jerome looked around the house.

“They saying that.” Thomas grabbed him. “Xippilli say to stay put, he go send help.”

“Maybe, but even Xippilli go be in fight to save he own skin,” Jerome said. “The old priests, they go come out the walls now.”

After some thuds and the sound of ripping, the mongoose-man in the kitchen came back out holding several planks of wood. “Board it all up?”

“What you name?” Jerome asked him.

“Bruce Passey.”

“Mr. Passey, get every way into this house nail shut.” Jerome looked back at the tiny pricks of fire dancing over the rim of the sacrificial pyramid. He’d go down fighting rather than get dragged up those bloodied steps.

X
ippilli had sat with the pipiltin and listened to the chatter of conversation flow around the table. The older pipiltin, such as the thin, scarred Ahexotl, had ignored the Nanagadans. Xippilli made a point by sitting near the man.

Since running for election in Capitol City and losing, Xippilli had turned to trade and business. His airships crossed the Wicked High Mountains to build a healthy flow of trade between Aztlan and Nanagada, but it was a trickle compared to the trade that
could
happen.

“That young
nopuluca
,” Ahexotl said, leaning over and grabbing Xippilli’s shoulder. Xippilli had mastered his distaste at the older pipiltin using derogatory terms for Nanagadans. “The one that left in such a hurry.”

“Jerome deBrun, the son of the great hero John.”

“Hero to Capitol City, not here.” Ahexotl snorted. “Is he still opposed to opening Mafolie Pass?”

“I think so.”

“He will take no bribes?” Ahexotl owned almost every chicle-producing plant in Tenochtilanome, and he kept his monopoly secret. But most knew about his wealth. And though Ahexotl did not hold a high opinion of Nanagadans, he held a much higher opinion of wealth.

“I doubt it.”

“It would be shameful if he were to have an accident.”

That was a bit much. Xippilli turned. “It would, because Capitol City would riot if the son of one of their greatest heroes died. We’d hardly make things easier.”

Ahexotl had smiled at that. “It’s a good thing that you’re keeping a close eye on the boy then. He will not come to harm.”

Exactly. That was why Jerome and the mongoose-men with him remained in a house that Xippilli owned, and few knew about. “Yes.”

Ahexotl made Xippilli feel dirty every night he returned home. But Ahexotl and his friends had reformed most of Aztlan, outlawing human sacrifice and the continuous attacks on the Nanagadans. Almost bankrupted by the last war, Ahexotl wanted no more of massive wars. And most in the city felt as he did.

But he had no true love of Nanagada, not like Xippilli, who had been taken in by them and lived in Capitol City.

Xippilli ground his teeth. Jerome alone could cause a lot of trouble. He was young, young enough to be flighty. Young enough to still hate the Azteca so much he couldn’t look beyond his past toward the great things that could be done.

Jerome might yet stop Mafolie Pass from being opened. Xippilli gritted his teeth. Jerome could stop the further liberalization of everything this side of the mountains, particularly if he traded on his father’s status to make the Nanagadans refuse to open the one place in the Wicked Highs a road could be built.

But Xippilli hadn’t wanted to think any further about that because the sky thundered and people outside the decorative tents craned their heads to stare up at the sky.

Now Xippilli got up with Ahexotl and they walked outside to look up as well.

Lights hung over the city, slowly descending to turn into a gleaming, fiery, bird-shaped machine. It dropped out of the gloom and toward one of the giant public squares near the main sacrificial pyramid.

“What is that thing?” Ahexotl asked.

“I think,” Xippilli said in horror, “the gods have returned.”

Ahexotl sniffed. “This is problematic.”

Xippilli frowned. “For you?”

“The priests will come back out from the bushes. They’ll refuse to keep using pigs and chickens. They’ll want human blood on the temple grounds. We’ll fight with the Nanagadans. My interests will suffer.”

Xippilli closed his eyes. “Not if we act first, to keep the pipiltin that exist now in power. You have warriors under your control.”

“As do you.”

Both men looked back into the tent at the rest of the powerful men inside. “Then we must meet the new gods and find out what they need. And we need to control what comes next, even if it does include human sacrifice to placate the old priests and the Teotl that will come back in from the bush to meet their kin here.”

In his life Xippilli had walked across the Wicked Highs on foot, almost dying of the cold, to reach the safety of Nanagada. There it had been free of the alien Teotl, who claimed they were gods and demanded blood on their account.

“I’ll take a delegation of the pipiltin to the square,” Ahexotl said. “You
make sure our warehouses are well protected from the priesthood. We’ll need to do a lot of bribing yet tonight.”

Xippilli nodded. He’d fought Azteca from the walls of Capitol City to remain free, knowing that if they could hold them off, Nanagada could continue being a safe place. And he had come to Tenochtitlanome in Aztlan again to help reform his people, knowing that if it didn’t work, he could return to Capitol City.

But now, there was nowhere to run. Not if the Teotl dropped in numbers from the sky.

X
ippilli sat in the small stone office building he’d rented not too far from the airship warehouses on the edge of the city.

“Do
you
believe the sun needs blood in order to rise?” he asked Ahexotl. “Particularly since human sacrifice hasn’t been fueling it for the past several years?”

“There have been ceremonies out in the bush,” Ahexotl said. “The old priests would say it is hardly conclusive.”

“But you?”

Ahexotl waved a hand. “I pay both sides gold and what they need to be satisfied. Maybe it’s true, maybe not.”

“The new gods haven’t demanded human sacrifice,” Xippilli said. “What happens if they do not approve?”

“They haven’t not demanded it,” Ahexotl said, brushing aside his bangs and straightening a gold necklace. “Our leaders fall back on old habits and tradition. They’re making an offering. You’d do well to attend.”

“It’s hard,” Xippilli said as Ahexotl pulled a formal cape around his shoulders. Outside the door a steam car waited, a driver picking his nails in the front seat.

“There is a machine that came from the sky sitting in the square, new Teotl walk the ground, and we are caught in the middle. If you would like control of your destiny, right now, Xippilli, you will come with me.”

“Okay.” Xippilli followed him out in the hot early-morning sun and shut the door behind him.