Ian McDonald - Desolation Road

“But…”

“But who’s going to look after the Ladywood while I’m away saving it? Shouldn’t be telling you this, but a whole new order of angels is being constructed right now, right under your feet in the hatcheries: the Mark Six, the Amschastrias, specially designed for environmental maintenance. The old place’ll be all right for a while without me. Old Father Tree’ll keep an eye on them. Well, come on. Get up, wash up, eat up! We’ve a long way to go before we get to the forest wall and I’ve to pack and say good-bye to the chickens. Don’t look so surprised! Where do you think those eggs came from? Air?”

One of Arnie Tenebrae’s Jaguar patrols captured the four men on the inside of Passive Defence Zone 6. Standing orders called for all prisoners to be terminated immediately but Sub-lieutenant Sergio Estramadura’s curiosity had been piqued by their ability to traverse ten kilometres of booby traps, pitfalls, noose wires, and shit-tipped pungi stakes without injury. Despite Parliamentarian air patrols he broke radio silence to ask advice of his commander.

“Who are they?” Arnie Tenebrae asked.

“Four men. One of them’s the Old Man of the Woods guy, the sarcastic one, the others look normal. No identity, but some B.A.C. gear on them.”

“Interesting. Gastineau’s never formally aligned himself before. He must have brought them through the defence zone. I’d quite like to see them.”

She watched her guerrillas bring the captives in. The soldiers had them bound and blindfolded and led them on leashes. Three of them stumbled and faltered over the rough ground at the end of the valley; the fourth walked straight and tall, leading, not lead, as if he were seeing with senses other than sight. That would be Gastineau. Though Arnie Tenebrae had met him only twice previously, his name was legend among the veterans of the Chryse campaign, both Whole Earth Army and Parliamentarian.

—What a guerrilla he’d make. He is part of the forest, animally aware. She looked at her guerrillas, boy-soldiers clumsy in chameleon suits and heavy battle packs, faces scrolled with tattoos or painted like tigers or demons or insects; spotted, striped, paisley-patterned. Silly boys pretending silly boys’ games. Runaways tearaways castaways blowaways tomboys schizoids, homosexuals and visionaries. Actors in the theatre of war. Give her a thousand men like Gastineau and she’d grind Quinsana fine as sand.

The faces of two of the prisoners looked familiar. She kept trying to place them in her memory as Sub-lieutenant Estramadura stripped them of their packs, clothes and dignity and tied them to the bamboo holding pen. Estramadura’s debriefing was farcical. Had the boy no eyes, no ears? His information amounted to “all of a sudden, there they were.” A man without eyes and ears will not live long in forest fighting. She searched the prisoners’ clothing. Gastineau’s worn whites produced nothing, the others were Company stuff, tough, well made. The pockets were empty of anything save paper tissues, fluff and a small ball of silver paper.

Before she examined the packs she asked Sub-lieutenant Estramadura, “Their names.”

“Ah. I forgot to ask.”

“Go and ask them.”

He bounded down the hill to the holding pens, face red and humiliated beneath the bold blue and yellow tiger-stripes.

—He will not live long. He has no intelligence…

He returned one minute later.

“Ma’am, their names are…”

“Mandella.” She pointed to the leather-bound book on the ground beside her. “The youngest is the son of Limaal Mandella.”

“Rael Jr., ma’am.”

“So.”

“The other two are . .

“Gallacelli. Sevriano and Batisto. I knew their faces were familiar. The last time I saw them they were two years old.”

“Ma’am.”

“I’d like to speak with the prisoners. Have them brought here. And give them back their clothes. Naked men are pathetic.”

When Sub-lieutenant Estramadura had left, Arnie Tenebrae stroked her fingers over her short, fur-fine hair; stroke stroke stroke, manic, compulsive stroking. Mandella. Gallacelli. Quinsana. Hidden behind the cover of the book, Alimantando. Was it divinely ordained that she could never-ever never get away from them? Did the whole town of Desolation Road sail around the world like a cloud of pursuit, seeking to drag her back into stagnation and stultification? What crime had she committed that the past must visit its punishment generation upon generation; was it so vile a thing to desire a name written in the sky? She toyed with the idea of having them quickly, quietly, anonymously killed. She dismissed it. It would be impossible to do so. This meeting was Cosmically Ordained. It had happened before, was happening now, would happen again. She studied them as they knelt across the fire from her; blinking and smarting in the smoky hut. So this was her grandnephew. She saw them peering through the smoke for her but she was invisible to them, backlit by strong sunlight streaming through the bamboo. Jean-Michel Gastineau opened his mouth to speak.

“Peace, venerable one. I know you too well. I know the name Mandella, and I know the name Gallacelli.”

“Who are you?” asked Rael Jr. He was bold. That was good.

“You know me. I’m the demon that eats up little babies, the bogeyman that scares children to bed, I’m evil incarnate, so it would seem. I an Arnie Tenebrae. I’m your great-aunt, Rael Jr.” And because it pleased her to do so, she told the tale of stolen babies, the tale that her phantom father had told her and that had brought her to this precise place and moment. The expressions of horror on her grand-nephew’s face pleased her greatly. “But why so horrified, Rael? From what I hear, you’re as great a criminal as I.”

“That’s not so. I’m fighting for justice for the oppressed against tyrannical regime of Bethlehem Ares Steel.”

“Easily said, but do me the favour of sparing me your zealous cant. I understand completely. I have been that way before you. You may go now.”

When Sub-lieutenant Estramadura returned after locking the prisoners in their cage, once more Arnie Tenebrae was washing her hands and staring at them with rapt fascination.

“Shall I have them shot, ma’am? It is common practice.”

“Common indeed. No. Return their packs to them, unmolested, and escort them to the north forest wall by New Hallsbeck. They are free to go. There are forces at work here greater than common practice.”

Sub-lieutenant Estramadura did not leave.

“Do it.” She visualised him stripped and spread-eagled between two trees and left for sun, rain and starvation. When he returned, she thought. He really was too stupid to be allowed to live. She watched the Jaguar patrol escort the exiles out of the valley into the woods. A Parliamentarian reconaissance aircraft droned over toward the Tethys Hills in the east. Camouflage squads scurried about in a frenzy of nets, bushes and tarpaulins.

—Pretty pretty airbirds, Quinsana. Call them down, call down fire from heaven, call down the world-cracking ROTECH space weapons, call heaven to fall on me, call the Panarch Himself to annihilate me, but I can go one better. I have the key to the Ultimate Weapon! The melodrama pleased her. She remembered Rael Mandella Jr.’s leather-bound books. She remembered the walls of Dr. Alimantando’s home, all covered in the arcana of chronodynamics. Had she but paid more heed to it then. She smiled a thin smile to herself.

—I can have mastery of time.

She called her general staff to her. They squatted in a semicircle on the dirt floor of her hut.