The Changeling Game, Chapter 31

31.
Paint It White

For the next four of Tangiers Prime’s interminably long days, New Marrakesh felt like one enormous funeral.

Processions flowed, repeatedly, from both the hospital downtown and the makeshift morgue out at the spaceport to the dozens of mosques scattered through the city and up into its hillside suburbs. At least one, every hour, passed through the streets of the Rif to reach the large mosque on a hilltop behind it. The processions, for the most part, were somber and quiet. Everyone wore white.

It was the color of funerals, Takama told Jack and Kyra, the color of mourning, meant to help shepherd the way to eternity. Most brides on Tangiers Prime wore different colors for their weddings, although sometimes one of their dresses would be white.

There were no weddings that week.

The worst processions were the ones with tiny biers. Whole families, traveling together, welcoming home members or seeing members off, had died in the blast, and far too many had been children. Jack couldn’t see anything beneath the white cloth coverings being borne uphill, but the small shapes were more than enough on their own.

Transports arrived frequently, delivering food and medical supplies, and left filled with coffins. Dozens of off-worlders were traveling home in them.

The glitter of downtown, as seen from their window, was mostly intact. But most north, west, and northwest-facing windows had been shattered by the blast. Repair scaffolding had begun to go up around many of the structures. Jack and Kyra still found shards of glass in their own bedroom each evening when the light caught them.

Sebby enthusiastically chased after insects foolish enough to come through the empty panes of the bedroom’s west window. Watching him hunt was entertaining enough that they’d decided to leave it uncovered unless a rainstorm came. His antics were the only levity they had.

Other tenants in the building were already griping that it might be months before the damage to their units was fixed, and many were planning on moving out. Where, exactly, they expected to go was a mystery to Jack; many more people had been rendered homeless by the blast than had died in it, and even simple walks downtown had become overcomplicated.

On the second night, during the midnight hour when most of the sound and motion had ceased, she and Kyra had slipped down the hill to the transport station and their lockers to rescue their false IDs before anyone thought to start going through unclaimed contents. The locker that had contained Tomlin’s ID and funding cards was vacant, its key already returned. He must, Jack thought, have collected his package before he went to the spaceport.

She had planned to find a way to isomorph the package out of the locker if it had still been there, so that nobody would have ever known the alternate ID existed… and so she could have given the funding cards to his family. That money was every bit as lost as any cash people had been carrying in the blast zone.

On the way back up into the Rif, a man in military uniform demanded to see their identification for the first time since they had arrived. The cards Jack had laboriously created passed muster, but they were warned not to violate curfew again.

The curfew, which had only just gone into effect, was apparently part of the manhunt in progress for the bomber. Some survivors had seen him leaving the spaceport; new sketches with greater detail were in circulation. So far, no one had seen him since, but checkpoints were appearing throughout the city. Locals spoke in hushed tones about the concern that the checkpoints and curfews might not go away after he was caught.

The newsfeeds covered hot debates, at the local and planetary level, about whether and how much security should be tightened at the spaceports. Engineers argued about how to prevent another hydrolox-M explosion in the future. Chemical engineers spoke of switching to less volatile fuels, while structural engineers argued for radically redesigning the fueling systems that were standard at every spaceport. Everybody seemed to want to find one quick and easy thing they could do to eliminate the new threat decisively, but nobody could agree on what that one thing would be.

Even though the man shadowing Tomlin hadn’t actually been a terrorist, he had accomplished the goals of one: everyone was living in fear and in search of a sacrificial object they could burn to make things go back to normal.

Through it all, while Jack carefully sidestepped higher security protocols to secure the two of them additional funds, she and Kyra found themselves killing time in the apartment to stay out of the way of the processions, watching Sebby play, and occasionally even talking. Conversations dragged, replies coming after long, vacuous pauses. On the day of Tomlin’s memorial, the desultory talk became more serious.

“So where does all of this leave us?” Kyra asked as Jack was arranging for a money drop.

Jack shrugged. It was hard to feel urgent about anything. She knew she wouldn’t be staying much longer, but a deep malaise had crept in, not dissimilar from the one that had settled over her while she’d lived with the al-Walids. In some ways, it felt worse; Riddick had left her, yes, but Tomlin had been stolen from her and Kyra right as the bond between them had tightened into something she’d thought would be unbreakable. Now she just felt empty.

“Up to you, really.” She looked over at Kyra, trying not to seem completely uncaring. She did care. But the silence inside her had only grown. In the al-Walid house, she had tried to escape it with a razor. Now, she had other, less nihilistic ideas of what to do about it. But first she had to make sure Kyra was going to be okay.

It suddenly hit her that that was what Kyra was no longer sure about.

“Do you still want to stay here?” Jack asked, realizing that what had been a foregone conclusion just days ago might be in doubt.

“I…” Kyra started, and then paused. She looked up at the ceiling, blinking a few times before she continued. “I don’t know anymore,” she said, her voice small and wavering.

Jack felt a pang move through her. Just days ago, everything had seemed so sure. But that had been while Tomlin was alive and planning to help them. He’d known exactly who Kyra was but had come to his own conclusions about her, offering her sanctuary and the exact opportunities she needed most of all. His reputation, when he introduced her to others, would have outweighed or even erased hers. Could—would—anyone else be able to do that for her?

“You’re worried that his dad’s contacts won’t be as good as his, and that he might not be willing to use them at all if he finds out who we really are, aren’t you?”

Kyra nodded, sitting down beside her. “I just… I didn’t even tell Tomlin who I was and I don’t think I’d’ve had the guts to. He already knew. I still don’t know what he’d have thought or done if we hadn’t already done him a huge favor before he figured it out, but his family… I mean, I know he trusted them and all, but…”

Jack put her arm around Kyra’s shoulder, letting the older girl lean against her. “But family’s where people have their biggest blind spots, yeah. They seem great, but…”

“But who’s to say they won’t switch from thanking us for helping him to blaming us for his death once they find out we’re a pair of killers who escaped a loony bin?” Kyra asked with brutal frankness.

Jack winced. She didn’t really want what Kyra was saying to be true, but there it was.

“Yeah. We can’t ever testify against his killers even if we got the chance,” she mused. “Their defense team would eat us alive.”

“I just…” Kyra turned her eyes toward Jack, her expression somehow pleading as if she didn’t expect her to understand. “I don’t think… I can… I don’t think I can take that risk. They’re being so nice, and all, but would they be if they really knew everything we got up to? Tomlin told Takama that we rescued his charges, but I was with her the whole time we were bringing them back through to U1, and he never told her we killed a whole merc team to do it.”

He had, Jack remembered, been circumspect in even alluding to it later on in the shop, when he’d said what turned out to be his final good-byes to them. Takama might have imagined that the whole thing had been some clever bit of cat-burglary on their part. On some level, she had to know the truth; she’d tracked the mostly-empty shuttles out to sea and confirmed that they’d crashed into each other on schedule. But she probably didn’t realize that all the bodies inside were Kyra’s—and Jack’s—handiwork.

“Well,” Jack said after a moment, “Fortunately, Kali Montgomery is a military academy graduate, then, right?”

She couldn’t help feeling a little proud of that. She’d been even happier about the idea that Kyra might not need the identity she’d laboriously constructed, but as much as she hated to admit it, she was a little relieved that the work wouldn’t go to waste. Kyra could replace her past with a new one that had no stigma attached to it and build a whole new life upon it. Still…

“But let’s not completely rule Cedric out. Maybe he can still help. You never know. We’ll see how good his connections are and how much they ask, and maybe using the Kali ID with them will be enough anyway.” Jack grinned for the first time in days. “It’s really well made, you know.”

Kyra grinned back at her. “If you do say so yourself?”

“Hell yeah.”

Jack could see the tension leaving Kyra’s body. “Okay. We’ll see what happens at the memorial,” Kyra said, her voice hopeful. “Maybe it’ll still all work out. What about you? Are you still good?”

Jack shrugged. “I’m probably gonna have to go to either New Casablanca or New Fes to meet the transport to Furya, but it should be okay. It’s still about two weeks away. Plenty of time to get everything lined up. By then, things should be a little better here, too.”

If she had needed to leave for one of those two cities in the next few days, however, she would have had to get in the back of an interminably long line.

“What are you gonna do about the checkpoints?” Kyra suddenly asked. “Word is they’re patting everybody down and running people through scanners before letting anybody into any kind of transport hub. Even the buses.”

“Got a plan for that. You know how the clothes we brought with us existed in both worlds?” Jack suddenly felt some real enthusiasm for the first time in days, thinking about this.

“Yeah?” Kyra, picking up on her mood, looked interested.

“Okay. So… you get a belt. And you make it so it’s half in U1 and half in Elsewhere. Solid in both places… and then you put your scabbard with your knife on it… but that is one hundred percent in Elsewhere. The knife won’t register at all on scanners here in U1, but it’ll be on you the whole time.”

Kyra’s smile had been widening as she spoke. “Better make it a waterproof belt, just in case the tide’s in.”

“But once you’re on board a ship that’s, you know, gonna launch?” Jack continued. “You gotta move it all back to U1. Gotta have it one hundred percent in U1 for all launches and re-entries.”

Kyra looked like she was about to ask why, but then realization came over her face. “Fuck yeah, that’d be bad if you didn’t. Is that why Tomlin wanted the Matador to land here instead of docking at Station B?”

“Yeah. Straddling both worlds like we were, if we’d come down in a regular shuttle, that only existed in U1, the fifty percent of us in Elsewhere would have burned up on entry.” It was a gruesome thought that had come to Jack as she was figuring out how to get Kyra’s knives, or anything else they wanted to keep hidden, past security.

“Damn, no wonder he was so happy about our tricks.” Kyra abruptly gasped, her eyes going wide. “Fuuuuck, Jack, Quintessa was counting on that happening during a launch, too, weren’t they? Those shuttles were ordinary. Didn’t have any connection to Elsewhere until you pulled them in. When they hit escape velocity—” She stopped and made a retching sound, grimacing.

“Assuming the survivors didn’t know how to anchor themselves in U1, yeah,” Jack said, trying not to picture what would have happened to some of them. “Most of them would have been surprise survivors of that, but Tomlin hadn’t had a chance to tell them how to anchor their little kids and the baby.”

“Fucking bastards,” Kyra hissed. “I’d go to war with them if I had anything to fight them with.”

Jack nodded. She felt the same way, but she had no idea where they’d begin. The Corporation had casually murdered the last person who was onto them, along with several hundred people who happened to be even remotely near him at the time. You’d need an army to take them on, she found herself thinking. A really big one.

With a rattle of pincers, Sebby reared up on his back four legs and snapped at the air.

“I think someone’s volunteering to enlist,” Jack said. She had noticed, more and more, how nuanced the little crustacean’s responses to their emotions were.

That put a wan, fond smile back on Kyra’s face. “I think you’re right.” She reached out a hand, letting Sebby crawl up her arm and onto her shoulder. “Hey little guy.” She pursed her lips at him and he reached forward, touching them with his antennae. Then he climbed onto the back of her neck, nestling under her hair.

“So… lacking a whole armada of Sebbies…” Jack sighed. “The best we can do is stay off the Quintessa Corporation’s radar and hope they think the Matador issue is resolved. And just hope Karma has plans for them.”

“The New Christy Elders would’ve said all their sins were gonna come home to roost in the afterlife,” Kyra said thoughtfully. “As if that excuses making this world a living hell or something. I mean, I get that divine justice doesn’t just happen, I saw that firsthand back on Canaan Mountain, but… we need more guys like Tomlin in this ’verse, not even fewer of them. Karma needs to get off its ass already.”

Jack was still nodding when Takama knocked on their door and then entered. Safiyya and Tafrara followed her in. All three were wearing white, their faces and hands decorated with henna tattoos. Takama and Safiyya carried white bundles, while Tafrara had what appeared to be a makeup kit in her hands.

Jack and Kyra glanced at each other in wordless surprise. They had already bought white outfits to wear to the memorial, which was still a few hours away.

“There is a slight change in plans,” Safiyya told them as she walked over to Kyra with her bundle. “The envoy of the Quintessa Corporation has asked to attend Brahim’s memorial and wishes to bring guests with her. Cedric got a look at her guests and believes they are mercenaries.”

“Brahim did not tell us much about your pasts, and we will not ask,” Takama continued, bringing her bundle over to Jack, “but he wanted you concealed from the Corporation and, even more, from any mercenaries who might appear. So while we still want you to attend—and certainly more than that tagat woman—we must make you look as much like true Imazighen as possible.”

For the next hour, while Sebby hid in their bedroom, Jack and Kyra sat as still as possible while the three women decorated their faces and hands with Tamazight markings and Safiyya schooled them in the proper wording and pronunciations of different simple sentences they could use around “outsiders.” The entire community had been put on alert to close ranks against strangers… with the girls firmly inside those ranks. Safiyya spent extra time helping them master the kh and gh sounds that they had barely any experience using, until she was satisfied that they could pass as members of a tribe that rarely had contact with non-Imazighen.

“If the envoy or her mercenaries attempt to speak with you, you will say that you do not understand in Tamazight, and we will translate their words for you. Obviously you will understand everything that they are saying from the beginning, but pretend that you do not, please,” Takama said as she put the finishing touches on Jack’s hands. “You know how to say ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ and ‘thank you,’ and we will imply to them that anything that requires more involved answers from you is a rude imposition on their part. I doubt that woman has the audacity to give open, public offense to the family of the man she murdered, but you never know.”

Safiyya sniffled at those words.

“Oh, my dearest, I am sorry…”

“No, it’s all right,” Safiyya said, although her voice quavered a tiny bit. “I have done my weeping and my wailing. I am ready to face this.”

Her eldest child is dead, Jack thought, murdered by a woman who’s now insisting on crashing his funeral… and she’s spending her time working on protecting us…

But the community had made its decision: to protect the Matador survivors, and to protect themselves from any further retribution, they would all pretend that Tomlin’s assassination was nothing of the kind, and that he’d just had the misfortune to be in the wrong place when some misguided terrorist committed a heinous act. Virtually everyone in the community knew better, but none of them wanted to go to war over it. An army of a hundred million nomads, farmers, shepherds, and artisans—even ones who were also stalwart warriors—could not hope to defeat the Quintessa Corporation; it would take something far darker than they could ever be.

An army of Riddicks? Jack mused. Maybe.

She and Kyra let the women clothe them in the white woolen dresses and veils that they had brought, until Jack could barely recognize herself in the mirror. Then they made their way carefully down the stairs of the building and over to the market square, to join the procession. To the Tomlin-Meziane family’s church.

It had come as something of a surprise to Jack to learn that, in fact, many of the Imazighen weren’t Muslim, following older faiths from the North African region of their origin. Some of the tribes were Jewish, others Christian, and others followed still older polytheistic and animistic faiths that resonated with some of the most ancient works of mythology Jack had heard of. Many, fascinatingly, mixed and matched multiple belief systems to create new hybrids uniquely their own. Takama—who, it turned out, was spending a year playing at food cart vending and more seriously acting as an intermediary between the New Marrakesh government and her people while on sabbatical from Khair Eddine University—had had a wonderful time explaining the convoluted history of Amazigh religion once Jack got her talking. She was a sociology professor most of the time, when she wasn’t putting her degree to practical field use in the Rif. Her love of teaching had surged to the fore as soon as she realized she had an attentive audience.

Many of the different conquerors of North Africa had brought their religions with them, and the Imazighen had selectively adopted them to varying degrees. One of Catholicism’s most venerated saints—Saint Augustine of Hippo—had been Amazigh. When the Arabs had come in as conquerors, many tribes had violently resisted them for centuries, while others had paid lip service to their beliefs while clandestinely practicing their own. Still others had grafted the Islamic faith onto their existing Christian beliefs, recasting prophets and warriors of that faith as Catholic-style saints. “If you ever hear some misguided anthropologist talking about ‘Chrislam,’” Takama had told Jack, her smile turning a little bit scornful, “that is what they are referring to.”

But Safiyya and Takama came from a tribe that had stayed Christian, something that had probably made it a little easier for Safiyya to marry an outsider who belonged to the Church of Scotland. In deference to the inclusion of many of Tomlin’s colleagues and former comrades-in-arms, the service was non-denominational, albeit held at the church where he had been christened and married.

The family entered the church first, and Jack found herself and Kyra surrounded by its members. A day of mourning or not, they had clearly made a mission of protecting “Dihya” and “Tislilel.” Jack caught a momentary glimpse of Tomlin’s younger brother, Ewan Zdan, tall and dashing and movie star handsome like his brother and father, but with a drawn look of deep misery about his face. Takama had told her that the two brothers had been the very best of friends.

Cedric took Kyra’s hand in his, leaning close as though giving her a kiss. “I won’t be able to introduce you to the officers Gavin served with today,” he murmured, “not if we want to keep that Quintessa bitch off your scent, but I haven’t forgotten. I promise I’ll do right by you.”

“Thank you,” Kyra murmured back, saying it in perfect Tamazight instead of English.

For a moment, Cedric’s eyes twinkled before his expression turned somber again. He gave Jack a gentle hug, too, and led them to the seats reserved for the family of the deceased.

There was no coffin, no urn, nothing to represent Tomlin’s lost earthly form except a stunning portrait of him in military uniform, from the height of his combat pilot days. Other pictures abounded, and Jack took them in with fascination. Childhood pictures, adolescent pictures, wedding pictures with a beautiful woman who, Jack thought, looked a little like her own mother… lovingly chosen to showcase not just his cinematic looks but his intelligence, humor, and warmth.

Even though her departure from Tangiers Prime had been, and still was, relatively imminent, Jack found herself envying everyone who had been given the opportunity to spend years getting to know him.

Other guests had begun to fill the pews behind them when Cedric’s comm chimed. He glanced down at it and then leaned over, holding it out to Jack and Kyra. “The envoy and her entourage are arriving,” he muttered.

The comm’s screen showed the scene outside of the church, and a new group of arrivals disembarking a large vehicle. Their leader was a regal-looking woman with long white hair, clad almost properly in all white, although there was something a little too ostentatious about her clothing. Jack’s mother would have said she was dressed for a wedding where she intended to upstage the bride. The envoy reminded Jack, for a moment, of Antonia Chillingsworth. To either side of her, even less appropriately dressed for the occasion in a variety of colors, were her “assistants,” the people Cedric suspected were mercenaries—

Jack thought, for a moment, that her heart had stopped.

Alexander Toombs and Eve Logan were among them.