PRINCE OF BLOOD AND SPIT -- PERIHELION MAGAZINE, September 2015

PRINCE OF BLOOD AND SPIT

by Guy Stewart 

Igaluk Abumayaleh-Jawai was on his feet, heading for the airlock as some idiot banged a wrench on the hull.

Wiping drool from his chin, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and creases off of his face, he sighed. The narrow corridor to the back of the shop was stacked to the ceiling and two meters deep with parts for zeppelins, antigrav boats, yachts, blimps, and tritium harvesting platforms.

The bangs were frantic by the time he opened the heavy inner hatch of the tiny Minimum Service Airlock, slamming it behind him. Sliding into his patched EVA suit, he hit the evacuation pad, shouldering the recessed exterior hatch open, and stepped out on the meter-wide platform. Another patched EVA suit faced him, wrench raised to bang again. Lowering the tool and offering its hand, Iggie touched the glove, completing a direct link. A woman’s voice groused, “Took you long enough! You fall asleep at the bench again?”

Behind her, golden clouds of hydrogen, helium, methane, and a wealth of organics tinged scarlet by First Sunrise, spun past them. “Yeah. So?”

“You so busy with some new useless invention, you were gonna leave me standing here all day? I’ll be complaining to your uncle, boy!”

He winced and even though he knew it would do no good, he began, “I’m applying to the University of Cairo In The Nile Band so I’m…”

She snorted, “What’re you expecting, the Purist pukes up in the University of Cairo In The Nile will welcome you with open arms? You’re a rust bucket rat!” She swung her arm to include not only the Ferris TIANJIN’S EYE, but her run down zeppelin as well. “We all are!” Her old-Russian accent, of blended w and v, and slow, rolled r’s, meant she was really, actually, angry instead of bothered like usual. “You’re wasting your time! You’re not going to go to University with the rich...”

He grabbed the bag from her, broke contact and leaned forward as if to open the airlock again, forcing her to swing back to her gondola. She landed in the doorway but didn’t go in, turning to face him instead. He stepped backward into his lock. Derision he could handle, but she was one who would feel sorry for him instead. Impulsively, he flipped her off. A moment later, she went inside, cast off from the shop deck and latched on to one of TIANJIN’S EYE’s four-kilometer-long flexible tunnels.

Mooring lines anchored her to a trolley that pulled the zep along to its place in a queue of other zeps, living balloon cloudwhales, small antigrav ships, yachts, blimps, pharm machinery, and tritium harvester platforms. The Ferris straddled the calm Band between an east-flowing Belt and a west-flowing Zone and spun to accelerate or decelerate whatever rode the launch platform into or out of the stream of gasses.

His outer lock didn’t seal, no surprise. Iggie shoved it open angrily then slammed it three more times before he could begin to cycle back. The timestamp inside his helmet  let him know that if Uncle Rub happened to show up on time, the old man would threaten to toss him out on his ear again. Iggie considered it. If Wubbo Fugelstang officially followed through, the authorities would find out they weren’t really related and Iggie could run away to the University with a clear conscience.

Then he sighed as the cycle ended and he went back into the shop. The decrepit TIANJIN’S EYE – a hot hydrogen, doughnut-shaped balloon spinning like a pinwheel for stability with refurbished antigravity units under the floor of a central carbon fiber habitation disk holding up its heaviest sections as well as three flexible tunnels – was the only place he’d ever called home.

Trudging back to his workbench, he threw the bag on the floor under his stool.

 “Where you been?” said a voice overhead.

Iggie started, squinting up into the bright lights. The voice on the answering machine of JAWAI FAMILY NEW, REFURBISHED & USED ZEPPELIN, ANTIGRAVITY & PHARM MACHINERY PARTS didn’t belong to a standard Human. Looking full into two of four stalked eyes, Iggie said, “I just want to go to the University of Cairo In The Nile. Why is that such a bad thing?”

Spiro U. Angus hung upside down by four hands from the web of cables crisscrossing the ceiling. He said, “Didn’t answer my question, so I’ll assume yours is rhetorical. Or do you want an answer?”

Iggie already knew the answer. He couldn’t get in because his DNA wasn’t sixty-five percent pure Standard Human. The Empire of Man, which controlled the widest, richest Belts and Zones of the gas giant River, made the rules there. He growled and said, “Don’t you have to get to your other job?”

Spiro, an environmentally adapted Human shrugged two of his four shoulders. “I thought I’d wait around until your uncle opened the shop.”

Iggie cussed, “Go-say!”

“What’s wrong?”

He lurched to his feet, rapidly explaining his all-night workbench binge and not hearing the parts delivery until someone had to knock. With a wrench. For a long time.

Spiro said, “Oooo. You’re gonna get it!” They heard the bellow from the front of the shop before the door chimed that someone had arrived, “Iggie! Get your mutant butt out here!”

Spiro echoed Iggie’s vulgarity and said, “Right on time, too.” Iggie tossed a bench rag over the homemade binocular microscope and rack of purity chips. Spiro added, “You think that’s gonna hide them from your Wubbo the Nosy?”

“I’m not trying to hide them! ‘sides, he’s the one that wants them!”

The cables grated and squeaked through their bulkhead rings as Spiro scurried and swung along them through the door to the showroom, swooping like Tarzan over the lintel. Iggie heard him say, “Good morning, Uncle Rub. Anything I can get for you?”

“What can you get for me, freak? You can get that no-good nephew of mine up here to do the work I hired him to do!” Iggie stepped out of the back room just as Uncle Rub turned his fierce gaze on them. It was no different than any other day he cursed the two of them. But today had to be different, Iggie decided. He was ready to set off on his own. He was done with the purity chips – except for the one impossible-to-get-around glitch. Then he’d go. Ducking the cables, he eased around the door jamb and stood as far as he could from Uncle Rub. The old man would be irritated only as long as he felt like he was in control. If he felt like he was losing control, then he’d blow his neural jack and get nasty.

He was in control and with a pained grunt, leaned heavily on the gray plastic counter with its deep scratches and ground-in grease. Iggie winced. His uncle was going to lecture. Fluorescent light fell harshly white on him, identical to the star their gas giant homeworld orbited. Irregular patches of oil-stained decking under his feet flickered in rainbow flashes skewed blue. Unlike its counterpart in every cloud band on River, the shop’s gray walls were bare of nudie, trick zeppelin, or kite and antigravity racer holograms. A shop sign, letters in mucus green, hovered over Wubbo’s head, blinking neon orange letters proclaiming that PURE HUMAN CREDIT would be GLADLY ACCEPTED, ALL OTHERS PAY CASH.

He batted at it as he whipped a tablet computer from a pocket of his overalls. The sign floated off into the corridor programmed to lead customers to JAWAI PARTS, fondly – or disparagingly – also known as JP’s. Uncle Rub said softly, “Nephew and freaky friend, for what purpose did I hire you?”

Iggie pressed his back to the wall, eying his uncle warily. Turning his head, he whispered to Spiro’s bulgy eye dome and antennae dangling below the lintel of the door, “If I’m not free in five, I’ll probably be on my way down to the Deaths.”

“It’s the ‘Depths’ and I don’t think your uncle’s going to kill you just because you were late opening the shop this morning. There wasn’t anyone here except me.”

Rub tapped his t-comp and said, “Didn’t I teach you to never leave the counter unattended? There is never telling what kind of vermin might slither in here and rob us blind.” He glared at Spiro, who was hiding behind the door lintel, peeking under it with just two eyes.

Iggie stared wide-eyed. “You just opened the door, Uncle Rub. There’s no one here but you.”

Passing a greasy hand over his polished, age-spotted pate, the old man looked mollified but said, “This time, that’s true. But what if I’d been killed and someone chopped my hand off?” On the other side of the lintel, Spiro gagged. Uncle Rub shook his head and said, “You never trust anyone. Not even me.” He sighed then added, “If you get in the habit of trusting your family, you might slip up and trust someone who has no relation to you.” He managed a harsher glare and growled, “Like the frankenstein back there.”

“My name’s Spiro U. Angus, Mr. Fugelstang...”

“I don’t care! I’m here for my nephew and you need to be gone.”

“I was just leaving, Mr. Fugelstang,” Spiro said as he leaped out from the door, grabbed a cable hanging from the roof and swung away into the corridor of TIANJIN’S EYE.

They spent the rest of the day on the steady stream of customers. Parts both old and looks-like-old passed over the counter, Iggie spending most of the four hours of First Day crawling around the floor searching neatly arranged shelves. When Spiro came back for second breakfast, customers showed who need parts higher off the floor. Dangling from the ceiling cables with one pair of hands, he’d pass parts down to Iggie.

Finally Spiro said, “I was told to return now. Later, Ig.”

Iggie grunted and headed back up to the front. Uncle Rub would be taking his leave now. Instead, his uncle faced him over the counter and slapped his hand flat next to the t-comp. “You’ll be eighteen in twelve days, boy and I’m not waiting in this godsforsaken, frozen rust bucket one more minute! Thumb it and you own this worthless dump – spar, plastic, generators and all.” He shoved the t-comp at Iggie. “Then you can hire, indenture or buy any dead, frank, Arty, Mod, Imp or Pure you want to.” He leaned across the counter, “But mark my words, boy, not one of ‘em will be half the friend I’ve been to you.” He leaned back, looked around and shook his head. “I don’t care anymore. I’m leaving this Celtic hell and going to the equator. Thumb that and I’m outta here.”

 “You want me to be stuck with the shop so you can go tan on some cloudwhale?” Iggie snarled.

Uncle Rub only gave a bit, glaring as he said, “I was on my way off this rust bucket of a pinwheel ten years ago the day your folks died and left you to me.” His face went flat and his jaw trembled for an instant. He took a breath and said, “I’ve hung around ten years longer than I wanted. This rust bucket’s just waiting for the right hard cyclone to tear it to tinsel. Five years, fifty days, or five minutes from now – it’s only a matter of time until it flings its last cloudwhale into the Salween River or picks up its last platform from the Syr Darya River. Then it’ll be over.”

“So you want me to die a rust bucket boy? Why not just shoot me now and be done with it?”

“That’s not what I meant!” Uncle Rub bellowed.

Iggie shouted, “What do you mean? You’re not my real uncle, you’re not anything to me!” He knew exactly how childish that sounded, but he crossed his arms over his chest.

“Of course I’m your uncle! Your parents were only kids...”

“Tell me what happened.”

“You don’t want to...”

He fixed his uncle with a long gaze, took a deep breath, and finally said, “Yes. I do.”

Uncle Rub flushed red. “No, you don’t.”

“Now.”

The other man was panting when he finally said, “I don’t have to do anything except get you to thumb the contract. Then we’re free of each other.”

“What if I have other plans? What if I want to leave, too?”

“Where would you go? That stupid university thing? You’ll never get in! That kind of education’s for Pure Humans! You’ve got a life here!”

Iggie spun around, vaulted the counter, stumbled into the door jamb, cursed then sprinted down the aisle to the airlock. Uncle Rub bellowed after him, “Get back here!”

Iggie opened the heavy door and skinned into the airlock, slamming the lock behind him. Grabbing a spar, he jammed it into the seal, wedging the door shut so his uncle couldn’t follow. Iggie stuffed himself into his suit, hit the evacuation pad and stepped out onto the platform. The roaring maelstrom of hydrogen and helium wind made by the Ferris’ spin plucked at him. He grabbed his racing kite pack from the storage clamp and slipped it on, pausing. If he jumped now, facing north, he’d hit the worst eddies of the flowing atmospheric gasses that made up the “rivers” of River. The eddies might tear the kite apart. He waited impatiently, finally jumping as the late First Afternoon sun hove into view. Falling twice as fast as he would have on Jupiter, he spread-eagled, using  finger and shoulder twitches to search for a hot updraft. The Deaths – Depths – of River’s blazing hot hydrogen, helium, and water depths with their crushing pressures, boiled up from half a million kilometers below.

 When a blistering hot wind slammed into him, he made a fist and the kite blossomed, golden flecks rippling over the silver surface. He climbed on the supersonic wind until his vision grew red at the edges. “I hate Uncle Rub!” he screamed.

He didn’t notice the damaged zeppelin swinging in to dock with TIANJIN’S EYE’s flexible corridor until it was almost too late. The midnight black torpedo-shaped gas bag looked to be an old-fashioned hot-hydrogen cell rather than a newer vacuum-force field cell. The laminate sheath was cracked, scratched and dented in a dozen places, revealing the yellow paint of a taxi zep underneath. Through the gondola’s window, he saw two young, bald, tattooed guys arguing, arms waving wildly as he swept around. They didn’t have a proximity alarm inside, because when they saw him, they both screamed as he dove under the belly.

The zep’s good engine gunned and the flight control elevators tilted up as far as they could go. A cloud of billowing black smoke abruptly poured from one of the propeller engines and when he flew through it, it left a film on his faceplate breaking the light into rainbow coronas. Master multitaskers would have had trouble both controlling the kite and wiping a faceplate clean of oil. He was not and as a flock of ten thousand omiimii exploded from a dirty brown, ammonium hydrosulfide ice cloud under his feet he spun in his harness, banking violently back into the path of the dented black zep. Most of the stubby winged fliers were permeated with flattened hydrogen bubbles and parted like a school of mackerel around him. Others slapped into him and rained across the zep.

One of them was watching and the zep’s rudder and control vanes fluttered, followed by a deafening shriek of metal on metal. The hydrogen and helium atmosphere made the sound sharp and brittle as the undamaged engine broke free of a strut and bent away from the gondola, slamming into a gas bag . The zep swung out of control, nose diving into the path of TIANJIN’S EYE’s di sān flexible tunnel – arm number three.

There was nothing Iggie could do but watch in horror.

One of the boys must have been a great pilot. Even with a single sputtering engine, the zep lumbered up and out of the way. Zigzagging, they snagged a semi-sentient transfer hose that fluttered like an elephant’s nose, trailing behind the arm. The zep stabilized, the nose retracted, and the trolley at its base started the long trip to the central habitat.

Gasping, and drained, Iggie barely had the strength to fly home as River’s sun, Fundament reached First Sunset. Darkness spread like ink over moveable cloud valleys below and leaped like shadow mountain goats until night fell with Jovian swiftness. Thumping down on the platform, he stumbled then cycled the lock. Once he was back inside, leaning against the airlock, he listened until his breathing steadied and his pulse quit hammering in his ears. There were no sounds from overhead, either, so Spiro was still at work.

He had work to do before Second Sunrise. He was out of time. He had to figure out how to trick the stupid purity chip. Without it, he wouldn’t last an hour in one of the Belts or Zones controlled by the Empire of Man. He’d even have trouble moving around the ones that the Confluence of Humanity administered. River was banded like the legendary coral snake with blacks, reds, and yellows that warned predators away – the bands of this place were deadly as well and only one key opened them all.

Sitting down at his workbench, he uncovered the DNA reader he’d put together from scavenged parts. He’d tried everything he could to fool it, but he was almost ready to admit to Spiro that the only way to make his plan work was to get Pure DNA for the chip. There had to be a way to synthesize it from his own DNA – he was 59.8 percent original Human stock. What was 5.2 percent? Everything apparently because nothing he tried worked. The magnifier lamp glowed to life and he studied the Purity chip where it hung suspended, wrapped in a tiny bubble of energy. The size of his thumbnail, it was micro etched and seeded with quantum data bubbles, electrostatic adhesion keeping them in place. If it were authentic and legal, one of the million bubbles would contain a strand of Pure DNA. More than sixty-five percent original Human would make it legal anywhere on River. The strand verified identity, allowed the bearer to draw on Imperial credit from his Imperial Majesty’s accounts in the skies of River or on one of its three-hundred and seven moons. It also restricted anyone who wasn’t Pure.

The Empire of Man’s advanced technology, was countered by the anthrogenetic manipulated diversity of the Confluence of Humanity. Imperial banks might set the credit standard of Confluence and Empire, but the Empire could rarely feed all of its trillions and relied on Confluence biointervention to stave off mass starvation and plague.

Iggie hated it all, but he was a broke Confluan. He couldn’t change the system from a rusty Ferris floating in the frigid northern cloud banks.

He was sure he could do something with an Imperial education. He shook out his arms, sat on his stool and slid his fingers into the micromanipulator he’d built.

He needed credit to go to school and needed to be Pure to get the credit and to be Pure, he had to create a purity chip that could fool an Imperial TrueScan on the frontier and at the University.

Before that though, he had to report the omiimii flock. Their saliva ate holes in TIANJIN’S EYE when they grazed on spot lichen – also attracting predators like cloudjellies, stinging haze, shockerrays, mist sharks, and flocculent mosses. It was his duty even though someone else probably had already, but he couldn’t use his personal t-comp. He turned off the lamp and covered the reader and went forward to use the shop-com. Peeking around the corner he breathed a sigh of relief. Uncle Rub had closed up. The sign, which wandered through the Ferris advertising JAWAI’s to travelers, was bobbing gently inside the snapping, crackling, intermittent force screen that served as the shop’s door. Spiro wouldn’t be back until his mandatory residency shift was done in the mechanical bay of TIANJIN’S EYE.

Iggie went to the computer and sat down on the stool to call Administration, his back to the entryway. He didn’t notice the force screen jitter the first time. He never did because it usually meant someone under the influence bumping it on their way home.

He turned when he heard voices, expecting either Uncle Rub come to apologize or Spiro back from work. Instead, the two boys from the zep were staring at him. They wore baggy pants with multiple pockets, sleeveless filthy white shirts, tattooed rank scars on their forearms, and beat up military boots on their feet. One had dark stubble showing the outline of his hair on dark skin, with thick bushy black eyebrows. His friend had pale skin and no shadow of hair or eyebrows at all, but a faint dusting of freckles across his cheeks. He was the one who looked right at Iggie and said, “Looks like no one’s here, Spike. We’ll have to break in.” The leer was ugly and angry, out of character with the rest of his appearance.

The one who had a five o’clock shadow head said, “We don’t have to break in.” He leaned close to his friend and muttered something.

Lance shoved him away, snarling, “I don’t see nothin’ Spike, except somebody’s pet.”

Glad that Spiro was out, Iggie said, “I may not be Human, but at least I’m housebroken.”

Spike grabbed the smaller boy’s arm, but Lance shrugged it off and reached out to touch the force field. Jerking his hand back, he muttered, “Unstable, fluctuating between two-six and four-oh malcolms.” Going down on one knee, he pulled something from the back of his boot. Extending it into a twenty-five-centimeter long wand, he stood and passed it through the force screen. It collapsed.

“You didn’t need to do that, Lance. We can come back,” Spike said. “We don’t have to rob the poor...”

Gesturing at Iggie, Lance growled, “He’s probably a half-brained drone who still uses an LCD calculator. We need parts and there’s no way I’ll buy ‘em while we’re in this rust bucket.”

Iggie said, “Lights!” and floods lit the store. The other two each threw up an arm, stepping backwards. Iggie added, “I use a PureScan Twelve-ninety-three to check the credit of my Imperial customers and a Tangmarten Forty-four Three Ten to track my school studies. Screen, one-hundred percent.”

The floods cut off, leaving regular lights as the screen ramped to full force, translucent now. It shoved Lance into the shop, keeping Spike outside in the Ferris’ circular hab ring corridor. Lance scrambled to his feet and shouted, “How dare you! I’m...”

Spike’s shadow scooped up the wand, passed it through the screen, which abruptly shorted out. Iggie’s jaw dropped. Lance’s eyes bulged as Spike covered Lance’s mouth, saying, “...about to tell them that your real name isn’t as stupid as ‘Lance’ but you can’t say your real name. It’s a rule.”

Lance tried to roundhouse punch his friend. Spike blocked it grabbed Lance’s hand and said intently, “Remember Johnny Ferocious?”

Lance stopped struggling then angrily pulled free, glaring first at Spike, then at Iggie. Then he hawked and spit on Spike’s boot and said, “Shut up.” He turned to Iggie, middle finger pointing at him from a tight fist, and said, “This isn’t over, freak.”

Suddenly, the screen leaped back up, translucent and trapping all three boys.

Lance screamed, looked at Iggie and crouched to spring, “Let me out! You have no right!”

Iggie saw Uncle Rub’s distinct shadow appear backlit along with a much shorter, compact second. The screen dropped again and Lance and Spike turned to run.

TIANJIN’S EYE’s sheriff, Veronica Thao said, “Unless you like how cloudjellies sting and pricklesnot clings, I wouldn’t move if I were you, boys.” Brandishing a tangle pistol, aimed at Spike and Lance she smiled when they froze and said, “Good boys.”

Lance cried, “We’re Imperial citizens and I...” Spike kicked him in the back of the leg. The hairless boy yelped.

Uncle Rub scowled, took a step back, spat on the ground and said, “Rumspringa.”

Iggie and the Sheriff spoke at the same time, “What?”

Uncle Rub waved dismissal at the boys and said, “Some of the Pure let their git roam free so they can sow their irresponsibility before they settle down to do business they feel is the god’s gift to a free planet. Usually wreak all sorts of havoc. Lots of ‘em die of stupidity...”

Lance took a step at Uncle Rub. The sheriff’s gun twitched up and the boy stopped, blurting, “Lies! Your kind murders us out of jealousy!”

Uncle Rub shook his head, saying, “If you want parts boys, you can pay with Imperial credit. Otherwise you can take a hike.” He swung his fist with a thumb stuck out over his shoulder.

“There’s nowhere else to get parts for a zep,” said Spike.

Uncle Rub grinned and said, “You could order them from an Imperial supplier down in the Syr Darya River Belt – after you pay the fee to jump over and  if they happen to be nearby. If they’re on the far side of the planet, then you’ll have a bit of a wait – two years or so until it comes around again.”

Lance squeaked. Spike managed a hoarse, “What?”

Uncle Rub guffawed then said, “You can always get back into your zep, pay the Ferris fee and hitch a ride down there.”

Both boys glared at Uncle Rub, who stood grinning. They stalked past him. He turned to watch them go as did the Sheriff, though she wasn’t smiling. Once they’d disappeared down the corridor, she shook her head. “Why do you insist on irritating people like that, Fugelstang? It only gets you trouble in the long run.”

“No more long run for me, Sheriff. I’m leaving tomorrow morning on a one-way trip to the equator. I’m retiring.”

She looked at Iggie, then at Uncle Rub and said, “You tell him yet?”

The old man pulled out his t-comp, strode across the shop and slapped it down on the counter again. “I told him last night and like some kinda child, he run away from me and went flying.” Iggie flushed crimson, ears burning. Uncle Rub leaned forward. For a moment, Iggie thought the old man was going to hit him like he’d done since – well, since forever if Iggie got out of line. Instead, Uncle Rub’s eyes grew large, his voice lowered, quavering as he said, “Please, please let me go. I was never cut out to be no one’s old man. I done the best I could with the worst hand ever dealt a man.” From the look on his uncle’s face, he realized exactly how bad a hand  Iggie had been dealt.

Iggie couldn’t breathe as he reached for the t-comp and thumbed it. It bleated then went blank. Uncle Rub reached out, took Iggie’s hand in both of his and whispered, “Thank you, Igaluk Abumayaleh-Jawai .” He released him, turned and moved away like an old, old man.

The sheriff looked at Iggie, looked after Wubbo Fugelstang, then said to Iggie, “Good luck, son.” She paused, “You’ll need it.” She followed Uncle Rub.

Iggie stood by himself, staring at the empty corridor for a long time. Finally he slapped the force screen back to life and dimmed the lights, completely aware of the uselessness of his security system. He made his way back to the work bench and sat down, flicking the bench rag away and leaning over the magnifier again, this time keeping an ear open for the screen.

 

An hour before Second Sunrise, Iggie’s communicator tweeted and Spiro said, “I’m home. Lemme in.”

Without looking up, Iggie aimed and clicked his remote then clicked it again, letting Spiro in and reinstating the field a moment later. It was a routine they’d followed for years.  He picked up the chip with a tweezers – old-fashioned mechanical ones – and after he turned on the shop’s credit chip scanner, passed it under. It blatted and winked a baleful red eye at him. He cursed the thing.

“Profanity is the crutch of a conversational cripple,” said Spiro from directly overhead.

Without looking up, Iggie said, “That was spoken by a Pure Human comedian two hundred years ago.”

“It was funny because it made people so profoundly uncomfortable they had no recourse but to laugh.”

Iggie grunted then said, “You need to work the counter today.”

“Ooo – I’ll need to fight to clear the crowd with a repulsion field.”

“Can’t. I haven’t built one yet.”

“As soon as you get it done, bring it up front.” Spiro jumped to grab his cable and scurried into some cubbyhole in the dim reaches of the back room’s ceiling and to his nest.

“Night,” said Iggie.

Spiro called, “Night, honey.”

“Shut up.”

The force screen jittered. Iggie looked up, back to Spiro’s nest then stood up. He went to the door and peeked around the corner into the shop front. Whatever they hit him with, he never saw it coming and went down like a dropped satchel of aluminum parts.

When Iggie woke, he was on the floor next to Spiro.

His face hurt as he rolled over and crawled to his knees in a puddle of puke. Wiping his face, he knew it was his own. Using  the wall to stand up, he looked over  Spiro. As a genetically modified Human in the hands of an Imperial, it was a certainty that he was in worse shape.  His nearly-life-long friend was an affront to everything it mean to be in the Empire of Man. Designed to maintain pipes – water, plasma, fuel, air, and sewage – by Confluence geneticists, he wasn’t Human by Imperial standards. Even Iggie, for all he looked Human was too modified – he could change the focal length of his eyes voluntarily, his eardrums shed every five years, his bones were lighter and stronger than an Imperial’s bones, he could breathe underwater if he had to, and his parents had made sure he’d never be able to get drunk on alcohol. By contrast, besides the four arms and chimpanzee hands, Spiro had skin only a heavy knife could cut that was riddled with olfactory pores that could detect smells a million times better than a Human nose, he sweat through a band around his waist, and had eyes at both ends of his body and just above his sweat band. He’d been built tough and even though he was bloody and covered in puke; it was easy to see that it was mostly Iggie’s. Spiro’s eyes fluttered open. He said, “I must be having a nightmare because you’re so close I can smell your puke breath.”

“Thanks a lot,” said Iggie. He grabbed his t-comp and Sheriff Thao. She answered with, “You’d better get over here, Iggie.”

“I just got beat up! I was calling...”

“Our rumspringa Imperials, Spike and Lance are on the loose.”

“What?”

“They’re going to try and crash the Belt.”

“They’ll both die then. Good ri...”

“They have your uncle as a hostage.” Iggie  stared at the link, unable to breathe. The sheriff said, “Are you coming?”

 “No,” Iggie said. She said something under her breath and cut him off. Spiro moaned.

He knew there was nothing he could do for Spiro, so he said, “You’re gonna be better off than me...”

Spiro sniffed, “Yeah, but not all of the blood in here is yours. You were in your berserker fight mode and you were giving almost as good as you got.” His pores twitched, “Smells like they spent a lot of time spitting on us, too after they hit me with the steel spar.”

“I can help Uncle Rub, but it’s not gonna be legal.”

Spiro laughed and said, “Neither is forging a Purity Chip, but that hasn’t stopped you yet.”

 Iggie patted his friend’s shoulder, and said, “Gotta go.” He ran, got an idea, and shouted over his shoulder, “Don’t clean up!”

“Wouldn’t think of it,” Spiro shouted back.

Iggie entered, locked, suited up and evacuated the lock as fast as he could. When he’d cycled out, he pulled on his kite and jumped. Falling, he let hard-learned habit search for an  updraft while he rolled, searching for the zep.

Second Sunset let him easily snag a roaring updraft and release the kite. It yanked him up, banging his chin on the neck ring making him nip the end of his tongue. He cussed.

“Profanity is the crutch of a conversational cripple,” said Spiro into his helmet headphones suddenly.

“I’m not having a conversation.”

 “You are now.”

Iggie sniffed, grinned and winced.  “Listen careful, Sausage Butt.”

“Hey!”

“Listen! I got something to say!” There was a long pause and Iggie continued, “If Spike and Lance kill me...”

“Spike won’t kill you. He looked like he was gonna puke just holding the spar he dented your forehead with. He threw up when his psycho buddy...”

“Shut up, Sausage Butt! If Lance kills me this time around, you need to know something.”

“What?”

“I own the shop. Uncle Rub made me take it so he could go vacation for the rest of his sorry life away in the tropics.”

“You’re my Boss?” the word sounded alien coming from Spiro.

“No! We’re still friends! Nothing...”

“You own me now,” Spiro said, his voice dead, no snark, no banter attitude, especially no familiarity. Legally, androids and robot intelligences were dead. Told to work by a Pure or Improved Human they couldn’t refuse. Modifieds, artificials, and environmentally adapted frankensteins like Spiro, could be purchased outright and had no legal rights except reasonable refusal to work without acceptable compensation.

“I don’t own you!” Iggie kept talking to block Spiro’s train of thought, knew that it sounded bossy but continued anyway. “I want you to be my employee when I go away to college. I want you to run the shop.”

There was a long pause, then Spiro said faintly, “You want me to run the shop?”

“I’ll pay you!” Iggie shouted just as he caught sight of the running lights of Lance and Spike’s zep. “They’re gonna try and punch though the wall and they have Uncle Rub!” He banked out of the updraft and dove at the ship. Even though it only held the two of them, the bag was a hundred and fifty meters long and under one and a half gravities, it had plenty of inertia. Iggie squinted hard until he could see the infrared shimmer of the zep’s propellers. That part of his vision was entirely illegal in his level of modification. Grinning, he said, “Thank you Mom and Dad.” He swooped in front of the gondola hoping to startle them into turning away.

They ignored him, aiming directly at face where the relatively calm air of the Band TIANJIN’S EYE worked, grated along the fast-moving Belt of gases of the Syr Darya creating monstrous flashes of static discharge. They were going to try and speed up enough to slip into the eastward flow without paying the toll for the huge acceleration typically imparted by spinning Ferris. That acceleration allowed ships in the skies of River to reliably cross from Zone to Band to Belt.

Combining the state of their zep and the insanity of trying to cross unassisted...Iggie’s  thought was cut off by an avalanche of omiimii rolling over him from behind. Making  the air boil with wild eddies, he and the kite spun almost out of control, dipping and jerking as if they were epileptic.

By the time Iggie caught up with the zep half an hour later, he was panting, the kite cables were vibrating like guitar strings and he was struggling for control. He was far below TIANJIN’S EYE. The avalanche of omiimii was a distant dark cloud lit by lightning flashes all along the face sometimes above the flock, sometimes below. He flew in the dark for several minutes until another titanic flash from the Band and Belt interface revealed what he first thought was the zep, rapidly growing, flying straight at him.

Lightning flickered along the nearly transparent predator’s skin, ionizing the gases around it, Iggie screamed, “Shockerray!” The immense delta wing  glowed with a ghostly light as it dove after its prey before reaching Iggie. As if responding, it gave off an audible, eerie whistle, as it searched the skies with sonar. It had no interest in Humans and every intent of catching the avalanche of omiimii. The wake of its four kilometers of wing could easily crush Iggie and his tiny kite. He struggled until he found another updraft and let it lift him into the night sky. The clouds cleared overhead and the light of six silver and one emerald moon in a half-dozen phases spilled over them.

He saw the zep and said, “There you are,” he said and dropped out of the draft, diving after Lance, Spike, and his uncle. The Band and Belt face was less than a hundred kilometers away and already whoever was flying the thing – he figured Spike was the brains and Lance the comic relief – was doing it wrong.

Uncle Rub wouldn’t be any help, even if he was conscious – or even alive. He’d always left flying to the pros. Spike had the zep head-on into the roiling wall of wind and lightning. Even if they survived the passage through the lightning storms, they’d be torn apart by hurricane winds.

The shockerray lit up again almost directly below him, his helmet read it as twenty kilometers, above the zep and ahead. The omiimii avalanche wove a serpentine path through the atmosphere, lit more and more often by the lightning at the face of band and zone as they got closer to it. Passing through the interface wouldn’t stop either the shockerray or the omiimii. The one was big enough to survive in the clouds of River already and enough of the other would survive to repopulate the flock in a new feeding ground. He slapped his helmet, shouting, “Spiro! Spiro! You still there?”

The muzzy voice replied, “What are you waking me up for? I just got to sleep.”

“Listen, can you get Sheriff Thao to fire a couple of safety flares toward the face?”

“What are you talking about? I couldn’t get her to listen to a weather report from me...”

Iggie thought furiously then said, “Can you go outside and fire some safety flares above the ‘ray, drive it…”

“I don’t even have a space suit...”

“You could use an escape pod,” Iggie began.

“Are you insane on out there? What’s going...”

He sketched in the details as fast as he could talk then said, “Never mind. It’s too late. But if you can get TIANJIN’S EYE to do it, that would be great!” Iggie angled the kite into a steeper dive. There was only one thing he could do: startle the shockerray into the path of Spike and Lance’s zep to give him time to think of some other way to stop them. ‘rays hated loud noises and bright flashes. They usually stayed in the calmer depths and bands. This one must be hungry enough to follow the omiimii this close to the face. His dive grew steeper and he accelerated until he started to see red at the corners of his vision. He held the angle, tweaking the cables and moving fingers and shoulders and feet to zero in on the dark gill slits of the ‘ray. If he landed on it just right, stomping where it was most vulnerable, it might startle and dive into the path of the Imperial’s zep and make them turn.

He hoped Spike was flying.

He hoped the ‘ray noticed him.

He hoped Uncle Rub was still alive.

He dropped faster and faster. He was suddenly above the vast expanse of living, orange, rippling flesh, folded his arms and deflated the kite spearing into the soft flesh, of the gill slit. The ‘ray shuddered and dove straight down, his boots stuck in the wet gills. Fighting against thick, glue-like slime, the acceleration threatening to tear his legs from his torso. Twisting and turning, his left knee popped. Pain burned from thigh to toes and he was abruptly free, the kite frame and cables squealing from stress. He slaed the emergency inflation on his chest. The wind clawed the wing’s fabric as he tumbled into the ‘ray’s wake.

With a thuttering roar, the zep appeared, clipping him with an engine spar, barely missing the jet intake for the prop.

The Imperials had to have been running the gondola on internal and external equal pressure, because the airlock ahead of him recessed and slid back and a platform extruded. A figure stepped out, fired a glue grapple at him and reeled him into the gondola, shoving him against the opposite side. He screamed as his femur ground against the epiphysis of the tibia and he collapsed. Breathable rushed to fill the gondola. The figure tore its helmet off and with a shriek, Lance lunged at Iggie.

Spike, helmet in hand swung it, catching Lance alongside the head. Lance staggered back, slammed into the wall of the gondola and rolled to the floor. Spike knelt down and tore off Iggie’s helmet, shouting, “Get on the radio and tell your rust bucket Ferris to grab us and throw us into the Syr Darya! Now!”

“Like hell...” Iggie shouted back.

Spike stomped on Iggie’s knee. He screamed and passed out.

Too soon, Spike had him by the neck ring and was shaking him, shouting, “Tell TIANJIN’S EYE to grab us or I’ll kill your uncle in front of you!” Uncle Rub leaned against a heavy door at the far end of the gondola. His uncle’s environmental suit was slashed and laying at his feet, the neck ring crushed into a lens shape.

“I can’t...” Iggie said through a haze of agony.

“Do it!” Spike screamed. He hawked and spit in Iggie’s face. Then he stood up, grabbed a comm link and shoved it into Iggie’s hand. “Call them!”

Iggie lifted the comm to his face and said, “TIANJIN’S EYE, Sheriff Thao, this is Igaluk Kitô giáo-Zhu-Abumayaleh-Jawai. I authorize the payment of passage for the Imperial zep owned by the member of the Imperial Family, Arthur Zulu Mahatma Wang.”

Spike looked startled, hawked and spit in his face again then snarled, “I hope you can figure out what a gift this is!”

Iggie managed a grimace – he’d already known what Lance who was also known as Arthur Wang – had left him back on the Ferris. But Spike’s gift...

A voice from the zep’s comm responded, “Confirmed authorized transfer of Ferris fee. Prepare for pick up.”

Spike shouted at Uncle Rub, “Get into the bathroom old man!”. The zep rolled wildly, Uncle Rub’s suit sliding forward between Iggie and the door. Spike slammed the helmet over Iggie’s head, twisting it so hard and fast that the microphone caught the corner of his eye and scraped across it. Iggie screamed again. Spike shoved him and along with Uncle Rub’s suit, flew into the early morning light.

An elephant nose from TIANJIN’S EYE’s arm grabbed the zep and accelerated it away from Iggie.

Iggie fumbled with the kite controls and while the delta wing unfolded, some of the tangle-proof cables tangled, catching on what was left of Uncle Rub’s suit.

He tumbled down, falling faster and faster into the Deaths until he began to swing, pulling on the cables and flipping his feet up despite the screaming pain of his dislocated knee. At first he only wanted to shake the debris free, but when it was clear that wouldn’t happen, he swung harder, pushing the way he had on a child’s swing, higher and higher until he lunged to the suit and missed. He pumped his good leg again, built up momentum and lunged a second time, snagging the suit. He gathered it into his arms, unwrapping the cable and yanking it free of the kinked neck ring. He threw it and let himself fall. An updraft caught the kite, surging upward. As he rose on the elevator of boiling hydrogen and helium, he could feel the blood oozing from the eye, spreading down his cheek and neck.

He could just see Spike and Lance as the TIANGING’S EYE accelerated it along the interface. There was another flash of lightning and it was gone. Tension drained from him and tears flooded his good eye. “Goodbye Uncle Rub.”

He let the updraft carry him. Then he pulled the control, slipped out of the scorching column and began the long decent to the Ferris, thankful for the gift Spike had given him. It made him smile through the blood and spit. Spike must have seen chip scanner, guessing why Iggie wanted it. Just as obviously, Spike would have figured out what it lacked – Pure DNA. Saliva contained DNA and blood as well. But the blood and spit of a Prince of the Empire of Man turning up on a chip presented by a kid from some rural platform? They would have to notice that. Spiro was pretty clear that the only one who’d done the spitting and bleeding was Lance.

Spike on the other hand? Probably nobody special.

Iggie had always been nobody special. He could easily continue to be nobody special. He had lots of Spike’s spit in his helmet now.

His dislocated knee, after the screaming agony of Spike stomping on it, was numb. But he was starting to feel it. As he tweaked his approach vector, he wondered what life would be like at the University of Cairo In The Nile. He’d waited eighteen years to find out, he could probably wait one more to get everything settled before he applied and made the long trip to the Equator. First thing though, was to land. He tipped his head and said, “Spiro?”

“Here, Boss.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Sure thing, Boss.”

Gritting his teeth, he explained that his old friend and new employee needed to make sure the Boss didn’t kill himself landing because he only had one leg to stand on. Another voice came over the circuit. Sheriff Thao said, “We have a net for you, son. Just don’t miss it.”

“Sure thing, Sheriff.” He sighed. “Sure thing.”

 Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9d/a8/99/9da899c6a768f940a7862c9fad472b39.jpg