The spotted people are powerful as spirits only because they have fixed memories and other arts. Now that we have copied their arts, will we not become as powerful as spirits?
– Attributed to Algonquian philosopher Amiwa
(Baktun 10 Katun 12 Tun 13)
Officer Weentamawaaci Inoka knew he had made a mistake as soon as he entered the alley.
His drone's cameras were sensitive enough to pick up the trash on the ground, the cracks and stains on the plaster-smeared walls of the Waapils' houses, garbage glowing in the moonlight. The prostitute with the bruises, however, was gone. She'd led Wentama's drone into this alley and vanished.
"Vengeful ghosts," Wentama swore. He had flown his valuable municipal machine into a trap.
Wentama pushed out one hand and rotated the other. Away in the slum of Waapilookinki, his drone reversed direction, panning with its camera eyes. There was still no sign of people, but Wentama knew they were closing in. Even from his control cradle in the District 18 police station, he could feel it. But the woman's bruises had been real.
"Miss?" Wentama's amplified voice echoed between the wooden boxes that the Waapils called houses. Was that movement among the trash? An animal? A twitchy ambusher? Wentama imagined skinny forms huddled under IR-opaque blankets, pale, spiderlike hands clutching their smoking weapons. Wentama forced his jaw to relax. His hands remained steady in the air, directing his drone.
Outside, the night air would be cool and close, full of moisture—and no doubt stink—from the lake. In his cradle, Wentama felt none of it. He was safe. He couldn't pull out. Not yet.
"Miss, you need medical attention." His drone's articulated plastic fingers reached into the darkness. "I know you lured me in here, but if you let me—"
They hit him from behind.
Wentama's point of view skewed as something slammed into the lower tip of his drone. Red warnings crackled in his opticals and his earbuds shrieked with the sound of expensive equipment being violated by savages.
The emergency rescue beacon went off, shamefully loud in the crowded control room. Wentama hunched in his cradle, trying to pretend nobody was looking at him.
Gritting his teeth, Wentama forced his fingers to form the signs that would right the drone, turn it. The attackers slid into view, hunched silhouettes against the cloud-glow. One of them was still holding the metal pipe he had used to smash the drone's lower casing.
"Freeze!" Wentama's voice blared out of speakers in the drone's chest. "Stop and surrender your weapons, or—"
The one with the pipe grunted something and Wentama's point of view shuddered again. Another crop of warning pop-ups. Another attacker. Or group of attackers. How had they gotten behind him?
Wentama pushed out his hand, twitched his fingers, and his drone's anti-personnel arsenal self-armed. A crackle and hiss, and a storm of metal motes flew from their canisters, carried by a wall of force that smashed the attackers back. Wentama didn't speak English, but he recognized the cursing of his attackers.
"Fire on East Peoria." That was the voice of Wentama's sergeant, not in the slum alley but here in the control room. "Drones to the pin I've dropped. All drones to the pin. Except Wentama."
Wentama opened his mouth to protest. He would be there. He'd fight off these Waapils and help.
The drone's suspension field failed. His point of view dropped. To his attackers' chest-level. Okay, but feed from the Grid was still good. He could bring the right arm back up, and activate the lightning rod.
Wentama pointed his weapon at the Waapil with the pipe in his hand. He had wondered what it would feel like to taze someone in a fight. "This is your last warning. You have one more chance to get out of here."
The thug said something. His upper face was concealed under a knitted mask, but Wentama could see his thin lips pull back from crooked, oversized teeth. The attackers drew in.
Wentama squeezed his fist, but his rod didn't fire. The video window fragmented and his point of view lurched sideways. Wentama had time to recognize the blurred silver rings as they swung past his drone's cameras. Heavy-gauge, electrically conductive, metal chain. His earbuds burst into static.
"Spirits and impaling ghosts!"
In the control room of District 18 police station, two and a half miles from the edge of Waapilookinki, Wentama surged up from his control cradle. He peeled the computer equipment off, cursing.
Every other police officer smiled up from their work.
"Welcome to Waapilookinki," said the nearest.
***
"You lost a drone," said Kwihsitawiko Inoka.
Wentama blinked. He had just settled into the cradle in his boss's office, and he hadn't said a word yet.
"Don't look so shocked." Kwisit's eyes were mild over the carmine sergeant's stripes on his cheeks. "There was an office pool going to see how long you'd last before screwing up. I lost money on it."
"I'm sorry, sir," Wentama resisted the desire to rub at his own face paint. The inverted triangle of paint was still fresh and uncomfortable on his forehead, cheeks, and nose. "But that woman's injuries looked real."
"They probably were."
Wentama tried to remember the next step in procedure. He hadn't spent enough time memorizing what to do after a screw-up. "I'll forward the drone logs to you?"
"You think they'll tell me anything I don't already know?" Kwisit reared up in his cradle, stretching. He was shorter than average for an Ilinwa man, but almost as powerfully-built as a Gondwanan. "All we can hope is they use the money they get fencing the parts of your drone to pay for the girl's stitches. Not that one of those people would ever willingly visit a hospital."
Wentama kept his expression neutral. He respected Kwisit enormously. The man was a hero for what he'd done during and after the Transition, but sometimes the generation gap loomed large. One of those people?
"I'm sorry, sir," was all Wentama could think to say.
Kwisit looked at him impassively. Eventually, finally, Wentama's superior broke the silence. "You want me to tell you did the right thing, but I can't do that because you didn't. You fell for a trick, officer. You got played." Kwisit spread his rough, brown hands. "So, think of what happened as an object lesson. Which is not to say that your carelessness will go unpunished." The cradle rocked forward again, and Kwisit's forearms came down on his knees. "You get more work in Waapilookinki."
Wentama controlled his expression. Watching Waapils was supposed to be temporary, part of the hazing that every new District 18 officer went through, before transfer to somewhere useful. And now Wentama had impaled the job and extended his stay. What was he going to tell his mother?
"Also," continued Kwisit, "in light of the cultural sensitivity you've demonstrated tonight, I'm adding you to our task force investigating the latest dust-up: the arson/manslaughter."
Arson/manslaughter? "You're talking about the fire up on East Peoria? Who was killed?"
"The owner." The captain signed commands and Wentama's opticals flickered. "Here're the photos."
The window opened in Wentama's lower vision: a death certificate on top of a column of photographs. The cracked-eggshell roof of the burned house. Pieces of broken bottle, with appended notes from forensics about hydrocarbon residues. No fingerprints. And at the bottom of the stack, as if buried, the blackened body.
"Mr. Kiiyaahkweepiici Kaskaskia," said Kwisit.
"'He is drunk'? That's a pretty terrible received name."
The sergeant chuckled. "An accurate one. It seems Mr. Kiyahk was a user of ethanol."
This whole conversation, Wentama had been trying to keep his expression blank. Now, he tried harder.
"Kiyahk was apparently in a stupor in his bed at the time of the crime," Kwisit continued. "According to the preliminary report from the spiritualist, he asphyxiated on the smoke before the fire reached him. Never even woke up."
Wentama memorized the dead man's features, then banished the photo into his com's memory. "You think it was someone in Waapilookinki who did this?"
"Of course I do. And of course they did it. Kiyahk's registered tribe was Kaskaskia, but the little bastard was obviously a Moundbuilder."
Wentama nodded. The Moundbuilders ran ethanol down the Mihsisiipiiwi river to Bayou City and the Gulf of Meshika, a business so lucrative that the crime syndicate had practically grown into a tribe in its own right.
"And that points to the Waapils, who make the stuff for the gangsters. My guess is this was some sort of scare tactic from small time moonshiners who want to cut in on distribution. It would be nice, Wentama," he said, "if you could prove that for us."
"Us?" Maybe this assignment wasn't just a punishment. If Wentama could work alongside a municipal Council to untangle this mess, it might mean good things for his career.
"In this case," said Kwisit, "'us' means 'me.' Because I'm here to shield you from the Kaskaskia tribe, most specifically the boss of the late Mr. Kiyahk, who is also his aunt."
A new picture appeared, one Wentama knew.
"Petkina Moundbuilder."
"And her entire network of, ahem, legitimate businesspeople and friendly Council-members. So, you go into the slum, Officer Wentama, and you find us a nice, criminally-inclined Waapil." Kwisit's teeth showed, broad and white. "Then you nail him to a tree."
***
George put down his knife.
The figure outside paced back and forth, casting shadows under the door. Black bars chased each other across the slanting, sunset light. Why didn't she knock?
Aunt Agatha surged to her feet. "That'll be the Gondwanan. The Gondwanan." She looked around, as if seeing the laden table and the people seated at it for the first time. "And we're eating without her! What will she think of us?"
"She might think to apologize to us for interrupting our meal," George said.
Aunt Agatha leveled a finger at him. "If your mother, God rest her soul, was with us, I'd tell her what you said to me."
"And what," asked George, "have I said to you?"
Aunt Agatha tsked. "Bullying might work on your thug friends, but I'm not afraid of spanking your disrespectful bottom, John George Boatman."
Out with his men, George would have held his stare, but a sound distracted him.
It was a sniff. Joan had sniffed at him. George's sister said nothing, but her eyes glittered with ill-repressed glee. Their little brother Tommy started giggling. Even the baby in its high chair gurgled in a derisory sort of way.
George rose from his seat. He didn't need this. More money passed through his hands than anyone in this family would see in a year. He burned down houses.
"Will we let her in, or hold her outside, there, as punishment?"
"Oh, George!"
"Sit down," said Grandpa John. "I won't have this arguing at my table. Never argue at a table. Who raised you?"
"Go see who's at the door, George."
All eyes turned to Grandma Mary. Curly gray hair rustled as she jerked her chin at her oldest surviving grandson. "Go see the Gondwanan, if that's who it is. The rest of you, quiet now. Agatha, fetch another plate. John, feed the baby. It's hungry."
George pushed his chair back, turning away from the sounds of grumbling, giggling, and "What will she think of us? No. Put that spoon down, Tommy. Oh, you made a hole in your potatoes. Here, Joan will put some more on top so she doesn't think we were eating. We were just sitting down when she came in."
Lord Almighty. George did not curse, so that was a prayer. May the Lord grant me the dominance over my own table that I can exercise on surly teamsters at the docks.
Couldn't he beat Latin conjugation into the head of even the stupidest seminary student? Forge scared boys into the most respected and feared gang in southeast Shikaakwa? If he had the respect and obedience of his family, George would not find himself opening his home to dangerous strangers.
Strangers who might teach him a lesson on pride, perhaps?
Tommy's voice rose from the kitchen. "Stop putting mashed potatoes on my plate! I don't want that much."
What had possessed his grandmother to agree to host this interloper? It was all Father Barnabas's idea, the old fool. Hadn't that fiasco with the fat spotted man from the university been bad enough?
"Stop shouting. The Gondwanan will hear you. Your brother is opening the door to her right now."
Actually, George was looking through the keyhole.
He saw no flashing lights, no police. His bike had a gas-powered field projector, so there was no draw on the Grid to lead them back here, but there was always the Ilinwa police might choose his house at random for their retaliation. If God were testing him anyway, why not expect the worst?
It was not too late to make a stand. There was no good reason to allow one of those slothful, greasy, nothing-worshipping—
"George?" He jerked upright at the sound of his grandmother's voice from the kitchen. "Open the door, George."
George straightened. He would open the door, and then he would tell the spotted atheist on the other side to get the hell away from his home. He expanded his chest in preparation for a properly commanding voice and opened the door.
"How dare—"
She wasn't wearing any clothes.
George's mouth went slack. There was a thing like a bright orange porcupine wrapped around her wide hips. A belt at her waist bulged with pockets, and above that, a layer of glistening grease hid nothing whatsoever. The grease shone slickly on her round arms and shoulders, her soft, heavy breasts, pale skin dappled with mahogany blots like a jaguar's spots – George snapped his eyes away.
"Um. Aya?" the invader said in Ilinwa.
Hello, she meant, and wasn't that typical? Her first word to her hosts was in Ilinwa, the language of the pagan oppressors. George tried to regain his menacing glare.
"Tell her to come in," Grandma Mary shouted from the kitchen. The instruction was followed by frantic shushing from Aunt Agatha, complaining from Tommy, and Grandpa John's voice, demanding to know who had raised them. "Joan, you go see what's wrong."
His little sister rushed up behind him. "Piintikiilo." Joan said in Ilinwa, welcoming the shameless creature inside before George could object.
It was one thing to see Gondwanan clothes in videos and the occasional Ilinwa fashion victim, but the physical reality was just unacceptable. The way the light slid off her grease. The strange, mineral smell of the stuff, more like industrial lubricant than a woman, or even an animal. There was dried mud in her hair, pressed into patterns as if by a mold. The long groove down her spine, divided mirrored swirls of dark skin. They were irregular but perfectly symmetrical.
"Neewe," she thanked them and continued in Ilinwa. "Is this the Miil-ar household?"
"The what? Oh, 'Miller,' I see," said Joan. "Yes, our grandfather and father once ground corn."
"Huh?"
The girls blinked at each other in utter incomprehension.
God give him strength. "Yes," said George, then, sighing, in Ilinwa, "Iihia, this is the Miller household."
"Thank goodness," the Gondwanan smiled at him over her shoulder.
Her features were wide and heavy-boned; pink as a Christian's, but for the blots that stretched across the bridge of her tiny nose and over her deep-set gray eyes. Strange. Ugly. This intruder would be no sort of carnal temptation, even with breasts exposed.
She turned more fully toward him and George shut his eyes, "You cannot—you are not—dressed."
"John George Boatman," said Grandma Mary shouted from the big room, "behave yourself!"
"Please come in," Joan repeated, "and sit down."
"Sit how?" Her voice receded as the foreigner walked further into the house, greased breasts jiggling. No, George didn't know what they were doing. He wasn't looking.
***
Bounce nearly broke down and cried when she saw they didn't have cradles.
The Native Eurasians were perched on rickety wooden gantries, legs dangling to the floor, gathered around a raised platform set in front of a fire. Sullen flames licked crusted cookpot and blackened bricks, their black residue fading into the shadows that gripped the tiny room. It was like an Enlightenment etching: "Cultic Savages of the Extreme North at Repast."
There were six of them, a child, five adults, and an infant in its own special scaffolding. All except the baby were skinny and sharp-faced. The old man and women had normal hair, if un-clayed, but the boys and the girl sported the naked, sand-colored hair of only the most inbred Eurasian indigenes. At least none of them were as threatening as the hulk who had greeted her—failed to greet her—at the door. But all of them were staring at her breasts.
Bounce tried to psych herself up. This was a cultural experience. Dinner with Eurasians! She signed respectful greetings, and tried to remember the English phrases she'd scanned in the taxi. "Um, Hey-loh."
Everyone started yelling at once. The woman bounded to her feet, hands in the air, shrieking like a monkey at the adolescents behind Bounce. The male, the hulk, barked back at them, then at the patriarch, who pounded his hand on the platform, repeating the same question over and over. The little boy howled. Even the baby cried at her. Bounce had to fight to stop herself from running away.
Only the cloth-wrapped old woman did not join the frenzy. She turned her wrinkled, blot-less face to Bounce and touched the little boy on his arm.
As the rest of the kin group bellowed and cavorted, the boy unwrapped one of the cloth sheets from the old woman's upper body, scampered across the tiny room, and held the cloth out to Bounce, face averted.
It was a blanket of stinking, scratchy, animal hair. Bounce wrapped it around herself with gratitude.
The furor subsided, the Native Eurasian people, no longer driven mad by the sight of her chest, settled back into their seats. And now on to that next challenge.
The wooden sitting gantry felt as uncomfortable as it looked. Why didn't these people crouch in cradles like everyone else in the world? The bustle of Bounce's quill skirt dug into her lower thighs and the blanket itched horribly. And everyone at the table was talking at her.
"You're pretty," said the little boy in oddly-accented Ilinwa. "You have a pretty spotty face. It's like in videos."
Bounce stared at him blankly for a moment before she figured out what he was saying.
"You mean my blots? All Gondwanans have them. Just like you Native Eurasians have…" What? Enormous noses? Crazy-colored eyes? Bad skin? Bad teeth? "…sand-colored hair," Bounce finished.
"The word is blond."
That grumble came from the young man, whose own nose was covered in irregular freckles. His eyes were pale, but weirdly blue. It was like his biology was trying to make a Gondwanan, but hadn't gotten the details right.
The hulk looked back at her, lips curved down. That was probably a frown, though it was hard to tell on his blank, blotless face. He had nice lips, though, and Bounce decided she liked the eyes, too. They were exotic and intense, like the electric arc from a powerful Grid node.
The girl cleared her throat. "And your hair is…is it gray?"
Bounce ran a self-conscious hand over her hair clay. "Most southern Gondwanans have dove-colored hair, yes."
The boy still aimed his inscrutable north-hemisphere expression at her. "And why is there mud in yours?"
"Oh! You had such a long journey," the woman on the other end of the platform leaped in as if to stop Bounce from revealing a shameful confession. "All the way from Gondwana."
Bounce signed agreement, trying to remember the words in Ilinwa to explain that her hair clay was made of molded ochre and plastic. It was hygienic, not that she thought the naked hair of her hosts was disgusting in any way.
"Such a long way," the middle-aged woman said. She made a disgusting noise with her tongue on the roof of her mouth roof of her mouth like a monkey splitting open a coconut. Tsk tsk. The Eurasian reached across the cluttered surface of the platform and poured a yellow-brown liquid into the cup in front of Bounce.
"Thank—" Bounce began, but again the woman interrupted her. Holding her own cup above her head, the Native Eurasian intoned something in English, then in bad Ilinwa, "Minooko! Drink! To our Gondwanan guest."
"Thank—" Bounce tried again, but the other people seated around the platform erupted in noise.
"Chiirs!" they said, or something like it.
They all reached across the platform and smashed their cups together. Bounce tried to imitate them, and splashed the front of her shawl, which fell open. Their eyes all widened.
The meal did not get easier.
***
Joan felt strangely disappointed.
She wasn't sure what she had expected from her first Gondwanan. Someone alien yes, but arrogant and powerful, too. Instead, the atheist girl just seemed confused and uncomfortable. She squirmed in her chair, poking ineffectually at her mashed potatoes with her knife and, for some reason, the handle of her spoon.
The baby whooped and Aunt Agatha turned to fuss with it. The Gondwanan winced. Her gray eyes narrowed and she leaned forward, still holding Grandma Mary's shawl closed with one pudgy hand.
"Is that why your chairs are constructed that way? So you can nurse infants while you eat? Or is it the other way around?"
"Excuse me?" Aunt Agatha asked, but the Gondwanan was looking at Joan.
Joan blinked, feeling like a bug under a magnifying glass. "Aunt Agatha isn't nursing the baby. She's taking care of it because its mother was transported."
"Transported? Aha, you mean to the North American penal colonies in the Yukon." The girl spoke aloud the family's recurring nightmare as if discussing the behavior of fish. "Is the infant's mother a relative of yours? Sister or cousin?"
"No, she's a neighbor."
Dark spots drew together as the pagan wrinkled her brow. "So no kin selection is involved?"
"I don't know what that means."
"What are you people saying?" Grandpa John struck the arms of his chair, "Speak English! Show some respect! Who raised you?"
"She's talking about the baby, grandpa. She says it's lovely," Joan invented.
"What baby?" Grandpa John stared at her. He was getting confused again.
"Never mind, John." Grandma Mary reached out and stroked her husband's hand.
He smiled at her. "You've gotten fat."
Grandma Mary gave Grandpa John's hand a pat and nodded at Joan. "See to it that we all introduce ourselves."
So, Joan undertook the task of teaching the Gondwanan all the names of everyone at the table. Names the girl insisted on mispronouncing. Grandma Mary and Grandpa John became "Kramma Mari" and "Kramba Chon." Aunt Agatha and Tommy became "And Akatha" and "Tami." George became "Chorch" and Joan herself was "Chone."
"Joan," Joan corrected, "juh juh juh Joan."
"Chone," the Gondwanan said, "chuh chuh chuh Chone."
"The sound is vocalized." George was still staring at their guest, and frowning furiously. No wonder he was still a bachelor.
The Gondwanan girl smiled, perfect teeth bright in a wide, expressive mouth. "Aha!" She grabbed her throat and hummed, "mmmm, Jmum, mmmGeorge."
Aunt Agatha clapped, which seemed to scare the girl. "Now," she said, in English, enunciating every word, "what, is, your, name?"
Joan translated, and gave the Gondwanan the English answer.
"Muh," their guest stammered, "mai…neim iis…" then an incomprehensible clutch of syllables that must be a word in Gondwanan. "In Ilinwa, that would be Aapweepihseewa."
"She ricochets?" George translated. "What the devil is that supposed to mean?"
"What did she say?" asked Grandma Mary.
"Bounce," said Joan in English, "she says her name is Bounce."
"Bounce," the girl repeated, hands up, stubby fingers wriggling, "That's my received name. My nickname. Bounce Nakmara Oh-Three-Five-Four."
"Why?" said little Tommy. Joan wondered the same thing. Nakmara was prettier than "bounce," in whatever language.
"Why what? Nakmara is my skin name and the other is my Band Identification Number." The Gondwanan made another odd movement with her fingers. "A skin name tells people my moiety. My received name tells them my personal identity. Don't you do that? Isn't it the same system everywhere?"
The Ilinwa did the same thing, Joan knew, and for that matter, so did Christians. George Boatman. Grandpa John Miller. And Joan Stay-at-home.
"Where did you get the nickname Bounce?"
Tommy giggled and George growled.
"Because I hit the ground, then come back up again." The Gondwanan bounced in her chair, to demonstrate.
"Oh. Bounce. Cute."
"Also 'cause of my boobs," she pointed, "I'm big on top for a Gondwanan, but I guess these aren't so unusual with your people, huh?" She smiled at Joan.
The sound of George's grinding teeth was audible from across the table. "We will call you Miss Nakmara," he pronounced.
Joan couldn't help but agree.
***
"Well, that was educational."
It was later, long after sunset, and George lay on his bed, smoking a cheap cigarette.
"Be kind, George," came Joan's voice from the other side of the curtain that separated them.
George softened the harsh retort that came first to his lips. Anger was ever his temptation, but Joan deserved guidance. She had been younger when the pagans took their father away. Their mother too, come to think of it. "I would be happier if you didn't speak to me so disrespectfully."
A sigh from his sister. "Don't you have reading to go to?"
"We don't have the money for candles." He paused, listening to little Tommy snore in the trundle bed. "And my reading days are over. My days are over for everything but the Cause."
"You sound like your life is over. What about your family? What about a wife?"
A wife needed a husband, alive and un-exiled. But what George said was, "Who would want his granddaughter to marry a boatman with three quarters of a priest's education? With no savings and no prospects of getting any? His family so poor they have to rent out their bedroom to a greased-up, spotted harlot." George kept his voice low with effort.
"Nakmara traveled here from the other side of the world. Of course she'll be…well. At least we got some decent clothes on her."
The Gondwanan's speckled hourglass figure bloomed in his mind like a succubus. "I wouldn't go so far as 'decent.'"
"So is that why you were staring at her all during dinner?"
George had to stifle his cough in his mattress. He'd sucked in too deep a breath.
"I was not," he finally managed, "staring."
"Why wouldn't you? She is very," Joan snickered, "bouncy."
George glared at the curtain, "What sort of conversation is this for us to be having? You need a husband more urgently than I need a wife, clearly, if this is the sort of thing you're thinking about."
"In other words, I win."
"I do not recognize that we were competing." George sucked murky air through his cigarette. "All right. For the sake of your dowry, if not my advancement, I will treat our cuckoo's egg with all the respect due to a Christian woman."
Joan yawned. "Maybe you'll convert her. Haven't you studied missionizing?"
George rolled over and stubbed out his cigarette against the plate on the floor. "Only as history." The last Christian missions had probably been to far-eastern Khitania, before that great civilization fell as well to the Gondwanan conquerors. The days of an expanding Christendom were long over.
And yet if George could convert Miss Nakmara, what a coup that would be. How fine, to return to his original calling, to make Father Barnabas proud of him again, to walk in the footsteps of Augustine of Canterbury, Wulfia the Arian.
Knock knock.
George started up from his half-sleep, heart pounding.
Knock knock.
Someone outside was rapping on the wall. Not another visitor, this one. Not a guest, but work. The Cause.
"Oh no," Joan groaned. "Oh, George, not again."
But George had already swung his legs out of bed. "Go to sleep, Joan, I'll be back before dawn."
"Ugh." Joan's bed creaked. "You really need a wife."
George had something better, or at least more necessary. He left his family and the interloper to their sleep.
This was a sample of my new alternate-history novel
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