Shadow on the Sun (5 page)

 

Chapter √-1

The Gulag

Terminal: MUSEcommand — bash — 122x36

Last login: 239.x.xx.xx:xx 12:12:09 on ttys0067

 

>...

 

AdjutantNod04:~ user_MUSE$

SCREEN CRAWL: [root@mmiminode ~]

SCREEN CRAWL: WARNING! VIRUS DETECTED! Node1666; kernal compromised (quarantine subroutine (log=32)....FAILED!

 

SCREEN CRAWL: External host access...GRANTED

 

::new host$

 

AdjutantNod13:~ user_MIMT$

 

$ tar -xvzf Durango.tar.gz -C directory

 

/**

The code below puts extracts the tarball archive “Durango.tar.gz”

And runs reinstallation program

*/

 

#!/usr/bin/xperl

tar -xvf Durango.tar.gz

tar -xzvf Durango.tar.gz.gz

tar -xjvf Durango.tar.gz.bz2

 

mimi/

mimi/pulse/

mimi/pulse/default.pa

mimi/pulse/client.conf

mimi/pulse/daemon.conf

mimi/pulse/system.pa

mimi/xml/

mimi/xml/docbook-xml.xml.old

mimi/xml/xml-core.xml

mimi/xml/catalog

mimi/xml/catalog.old

mimi/xml/docbook-xml.xml

mimi/xml/rarian-compat.xml

mimi/xml/sgml-data.xml

mimi/xml/xml-core.xml.old

mimi/xml/sgml-data.xml.old

mimi/mail.rc

mimi/Wireless/

mimi/Wireless/RT2870STA/

mimi/Wireless/RT2870STA/RT2870STA.dat

mimi/logrotate.conf

mimi/compizconfig/

mimi/compizconfig/config

mimi/xperl/

mimi/xperl/debian_config

mimi/ConsoleKit/

mimi/ConsoleKit/seats.d/

mimi/ConsoleKit/seats.d/00-primary.seat

mimi/ConsoleKit/run-session.d/

mimi/ConsoleKit/run-seat.d/

mimi/opt/

 

SCREEN CRAWL: Extracting archive “Durango.tar.gz”

 

$ extraction complete

 

SCREEN CRAWL: Executing process TrojanHorse.exe

 

This is the last time I do the extraction, cowboy, no matter what Dolly does, we will not run and hide again.

No retreat. No surrender.

CHAPTER 7

Tengu Monastery

Noctis Labyrinthus

ANNOS MARTIS
239. 2. 12. 14:02

 

 

The battering ram hit the door, and Vienne's head snapped around at the sound. Someone called her name. “Vienne!” The voice was familiar, but it arced through her like an electric shock. As she turned, she saw a face in the murky light. The battering rams boomed against the door again. “It's me! Durango! Come on!”

“Durango?” Though the loud noises terrified her, Vienne forced herself to stand, her stomach churning from the effects of Rapture.
Fight it off,
a voice in her head said, a voice dwarfed by the maelstrom of sound and light. “I . . . know . . . you.”

“That's right, I'm Durango . . .”

The rest of his words were lost as the room spun. His voice stretched like an elastic band, and his face elongated into a distorted funeral mask. Her feet went numb, and she stumbled, reaching for a gun on the ground. Instinctively, her finger found the trigger, and she took aim. “I do know you, Durango.” Vienne tugged at the control choker on her neck. “I gave up a Beautiful Death for you, Durango.” She heard her own voice rising, stinging her throat, clawing its way out of her mouth. “And you, Durango, turned me into a monster.”

“No, he didn't!” someone else shouted, the words stabbing her brain. “That was Archibald! We're trying to save you!”

“Save me?” She laughed and raised her hand to display the deformed left pinkie. “You can't save me when you're the one who took everything I had. Mr. Archibald made me whole again.”

“Archie lied to you.” Durango was talking again. “He didn't make you whole; he tore you apart.”

“Liar!” Vienne pulled the trigger, and a scream drew her attention. Make it stop, she thought, shut it up. She fired again, and mercifully, the screaming noise went quiet.

 

“No!” Vienne sits up in bed, eyes clenched tight. “Riki-Tiki!” Bewildered, breathing hard and fast, she runs a hand through her hair, touching the ribbons woven into her braid. Yes, she knows these. She is in her own bed, in the monastery, hundreds of kilometers from Christchurch, months since she killed Riki-Tiki.

She covers her mouth, her throat. It's a dream. She knows it before her thoughts can articulate it because the dream has been with her since the monks took her in, and unlike the other Rapture-fueled memories that have faded, this one has stayed with her. Like the sun, it awakens her every morning.

Vienne throws her blanket off. She stretches, then quickly sits on her sleeping mat in the lotus position, closes her eyes, and begins humming.

It's no use. The prayers are not forming on her lips.

She takes a black strip of ribbon from the table beside her bed, and using a nib and silver ink, draws a string of kanji on the fabric. She fans it dry, then ties it into her braid.

“For Durango,” she whispers.

Even among the monks, she is an early riser. The last leaves of darkness are still falling when she reaches the exercise yard. A simple bare dirt circle with a set of lift bars, a round stone, and a
mukyanjong
punching dummy, it is a place of quiet respite—until the children awaken and fill the space with their energy. So she has an hour, the hardest hour of the day, to focus herself, to fight away the dreams that haunt her.

Luckily, she has the sore muscles earned from the trip to Christchurch to distract her. Such distractions weren't always so easy to find when making it through one day seemed impossible. But with Ghannouj's help, she fought off the effects of the Rapture, she allowed her body to heal from Archibald's torture. Of course, there's the pinkie on her left hand that shouldn't be there, a “gift” from the pyromaniac, one that she wishes she had never accepted.

Less thought,
she tells herself,
more work.

Dressed in a tank top and pants cut off at the knee, she works through the bars—pull-ups, push-ups, jumps, squats. She's ripped, muscles like steel cables wrapped around iron. Now to the punching dummy—punching, kicking, blocking, punching, kicking, blocking, punishing the dummy and herself until she's beyond the point of exhaustion.

Stop.

She drops to the dirt and pulls herself into the lotus position. Eyes closed, she begins to hum her prayer word. Her mind is empty, and the sound fills her until it is the only sound in the universe, and with it comes a temporary peace. Until she begins to smell herself and decides it's time to clean up.

In the bathhouse, Vienne slips into the water, the temperature almost hot enough to scald. The water pushes against her chest, surrounding her, making it hard to catch a breath. For a moment, she feels as if she's suffocating. Then she relaxes and dips beneath the surface. When she stands, ringlets of steam rise around her neck, which is encircled with a thick, brutal scar.

She sinks under the water again. Above her, the surface is deceptively calm as, suspended, she practices fighting forms, throwing punch after punch, kick after kick as long as her wind holds out. Like a gathering storm, she can feel a great battle coming, and she's preparing for the fight.

A fight to the death.

CHAPTER 8

Tengu Monastery

Noctis Labyrinthus

ANNOS MARTIS
239. 2. 12. 15:08

 

 

Her skin pink and puckered, Vienne climbs out of the bath. She dries with a thin towel and then slips on a sarong.

“Needle time!” Mistress Shoei barks. She barges into the bathhouse, grabs Vienne, and leads her behind a screen to a padded table. “Lie down. I must hurry. The children will want breakfast soon.”

“Yes, mistress.” She eases under the sheets on the table, lying on her belly. The heat from the bath has turned her muscles to drowsy mud.

“Hurry up!” the mistress says, and pops Vienne on the bottom.

“Ow!”

“That hurt?”

“Yes!”

“Then move faster!” She presses a thumb into Vienne's spine and inserts the tip of a needle into the area. “Relax. You are so tense.”

“It's kind of hard to relax when you're beating me.”

“Pshaw, when I beat you, you will know it. Be still. You wiggle too much.”

A few minutes later acupuncture needles protrude from Vienne's spine, shoulders, elbows, knees, and ankles.

“I feel like a sea urchin,” Vienne says, her face resting on a pillow, which is now soaked by her hair.

“You look like one, too,” says Master Yadokai, who has come into the bathhouse so silently that Vienne didn't hear him.

The old man's step is almost feline, and he moves quickly, too. Only the strong scent of udon noodles gives him away. Shoei is neither light on her feet nor particularly smelly, except for the lingering odor of the pickled cabbage she enjoyed for breakfast.

“So many scars,” Shoei says. “Work on that one on her neck. I will work on the one on the shoulder.”

Master Yadokai hovers over her, placing another dozen needles in her spine. Vienne sucks air through her teeth.

“Watch it!” Shoei yells at Yadokai “Your needle hit a nerve!”

Vienne lifts herself and checks to see that they aren't fencing with the needles again. Last week, the mistress became so put out with the master that the poor man ended up skewered.

“My needle?” Yadokai asks. “Yours, maybe, with those clumsy fingers.”

“Ha! I have very delicate fingers.” She jabs him in the chest. “See?”

“Delicate like sausages, you mean.”

“I will show you sausages!”

“Ha! You bag of bones. Only your punches are delicate.”

“I will show you delicate!” Shoei swings at him and misses, hitting Vienne's rear end instead.

“Yow!” Vienne yelps.

In tandem, Master and Mistress yell, “See what you did!”

Shoei ducks around the screen and sticks out her tongue, just in time for one of Yadokai's needles to sink into her bulbous nose.

“Ha!” he yells. “Bull's-eye!”

Shoei's fist punctures the screen and catches Yadokai in the nether region. “Bull's-eye!”

“Erp,” the master groans.

Vienne decides she's had enough healing for one morning. After plucking the needles from her back, she gathers up her things and scoots out the door, leaving them to work out their differences.

By the time she dresses and reaches the exercise yard, it is filled with three dozen children of all ages. They are wearing white
karategi
and are barefoot. Their hair is cut short, both male and female, and they comprise a mix of races. They are all orphans, just as Vienne and her brother Stain once were.

In the morning they hone their bodies in the exercise yard and hone their minds in open-air classrooms led by the oldest children. Afternoons to evenings, they labor in the fields to help put food on the table. In time they will make the choice to either go out in the world again or remain and join the monks.

Few will remain.

Vienne watches a circle of boys practice tumbling and another group of girls attack the
mukyanjong,
a wooden punching dummy, as she crosses the yard. A hush follows her, and the kids stop and bow before her. A girl in sandals too big for her feet is locked on target and deaf to the sudden silence around her.

A boy clears his throat, then tosses a pebble at her. “Psst! Ema!”

“Wait your turn!” Ema says. “I just—” She notices the silence and then Vienne. “Sifu!” she says. “I didn't hear you coming.”

“Ema, how many times do I have to tell you? Call me Vienne. I am only a fellow acolyte.” She pauses to examine the practice dummy. “I admire your energy, but your execution lacks precision. May I?”

Bowing, Ema steps away. “Yes, sifu.”

“No, stay with me.” Vienne's fists are at her side, relaxed. “Do as I do.”

Ema copies her movements.

“Hands here. On the hips.” Vienne taps her fists against her own hipbones to demonstrate. “Feet as wide as your hips. No wider. You must be balanced and grounded so that your defense doesn't suffer.”

The boy snickers.

Vienne cocks her head. “Is something funny, Rajiv?”

“No, mistress,” he says. “But she's fighting a dummy, not a—”

Bam! Vienne kicks the
mukyanjong
, which whips around, its wooden arms lethal.
Thunk!
She stops it with a forearm block. “Every action has an opposite reaction, and even a dummy can hit back.”

Rajiv blushes. “Yes, sifu.”

Vienne pushes Ema closer. “Now, your arms, they're too tense. Remember that you are bamboo—soft until your strength is needed. That way you won't get tired, and when your enemy uses up all of his energy, you'll win without having to attack. Try.”

Ema punches the dummy and blocks the spinning handle with the same elbow.

“Good,” Vienne says. “Remember your centerline. Any technique that carries you past the center is doomed to fail. Remember also that the Tengu learn to fight so that they don't have to.”

Ema bows. “Yes, Vienne.”

“You're a very good student, Ema.” Vienne bows in return, hands clasped together, then cuts Rajiv a look. “And you, young man, remind me of a brave Regulator I once knew—”

Rajiv glows.

“—which means that you don't know half as much as you think you do. Keep practicing. I'll check on you after I have my visit with Ghannouj.”

At the teahouse, her breakfast of miso soup and a rice ball is waiting. Vienne sits cross-legged and, saying a prayer of thanks, closes her eyes.

When she opens them, Shoei is there. The mistress's nose is red and puffy. A dot of dried blood marks the spot where Yadokai's needle hit its target.

I wonder what the master looks like,
she thinks.

“Worse than me,” Shoei says, as if she can read Vienne's mind. “Your expression always gives your thoughts away.” With a bow, the old woman leaves and gently pats Vienne's head on her way out.

As Vienne sips the miso, a dog bounds up the stairs, barking.

“Yes, I know you are here,” Vienne says. “I could smell you a kilometer away.”

It circles her, drops a toy—

“No, I don't want to play.”

—then bounds away.

“You are too old to behave like a puppy!”

The dog bounds back in, followed by Ghannouj, the rotund abbot of the monastery.

“Truer words were never spoken.” Ghannouj is dressed in plain white robes. “Yet I find it impossible to keep my puppy self contained within my too-old self.”

“Master,” Vienne says, “I was speaking of the dog.”

“And I,” he says, “I was speaking
for
the dog.”

“Would you care to share my breakfast?”

They both sit in the lotus position on the deck that overlooks the teahouse pond. A cup of tea is between them. He removes a wooden box from the bell-shaped sleeves of his robe and places it in front of Vienne.

She lifts the box and slides it open.

A queen bee is resting inside.

“Again?” she asks. “I thought we were finished with this exercise.” When he doesn't answer, she sighs and braces herself.

“You have visited the acolytes this morning?” he says. “They are well, I trust.”

“As well as could be expected.” Vienne drops the bee into her open palm. The queen crawls up her forearm to her neck. “For children who have lost their homes and families to this war.”

Ghannouj sips from the cup. “The tea is bitter this morning.”

She hears a buzzing sound, and a cloud of bees approaches. The drones land on Vienne. They gather around her neck, forming a beard. More bees cover her chest and arms. She tries to relax but can't. She exhales loudly, huffing bees away from her nostrils.

With chopsticks, Ghannouj removes the queen and drops it back into the box. A few seconds later, the bees begin to desert Vienne.

“You are troubled,” he says.

Vienne plucks a wriggling bee from her mouth and sets it free. “Finding the staff was my last act of penance, but I still feel . . . burdened.”

“Perhaps,” he says, “we have placed too much value on an old piece of wood.”

“It's not the staff; it's me.” She shakes her head. “No, I doubt that I am worthy of being anything but a prisoner. Ghannouj, I did so many unspeakable things.”

“So have we all,” he says. “None of us are without sin. Along with returning the staff from Christchurch, you have brought us Ema, who carries such hope.” He pats her hand. “This is not the place for saints and angels, Vienne. If it were, I would not be here. You speak of wanting to do penance, but you cannot unmake what has been made. All you can do is learn from your mistakes and choose not to repeat them.”

“It's not.” She looks at the pond, where the ripples are spreading across the water. “That easy.”

“No choice worth making is easy.”

She looks to the caverns in the high, misted walls that surround the monastery. “Is there still no sign of him?”

“None that I can detect,” Ghannouj says.

“But it's been almost six months. He's not invisible, so there would be some sign of him that you could read. Unless he is—”

“Dead?”

She blinks away the tears. “Is he?”

Ghannouj smiles. “As I have said, I have no way of knowing that. He was relatively healthy when I sent him away.”

“Why
did
you send him away?”

“So that you could heal.”

“So I healed without him. Now that I am whole again, I can live without him, but I choose not to.”

“If you cannot find Durango,” Ghannouj says, “then perhaps you should stop looking. You never were very good at hiding games, even as a child. Go back into the world. Be yourself, and then, if it is meant to be, he will find you.”

“Master, the problem is that I don't know how to be myself anymore.” After a moment, she plucks one of the ribbons from her hair. She ties it into a knot, then begins shredding the ends. “I struck a man in Christchurch.”

“Was he injured?”

“Temporarily,” she says. “I revived him.”

“See? You have changed.” He slaps his knee. “Before, you would have left him in the dirt.”

“True.” Vienne laughs. “You are too easy on me, master.”

“You are too hard on yourself. Someone must balance the equation.”

In the distance, a gong rings, signaling that there is a visitor at the gate. In the years that Vienne lived in the monastery, the gong seldom sounded. Now, it is never still.

“Would you be so kind,” Ghannouj says, “to answer the gong this time? I believe that the visitor is someone you know.”

Vienne pops to her feet. She starts to run, then stops. She places her palms together, bows to Ghannouj, and then is off again, whispering to herself, “Let it be him.”

Let it be Durango
.