Beluga Fay (Dragon Bone Hill) (16 page)

Days had passed since he’d seen Glenna.

Each day he had waited for her at their place, but she had not shown up. Since they’d no phones at the warehouse, or anywhere else Pym knew of, he couldn’t get in touch with her. The reasons for her absence were simple, as far as he could tell. Either their escape from Dragon Bone Hill had been more than she could take—in the end they had three hunting parties after them—or she was having issues back in Makati. If someone had reported Chrislann’s condition, or if he needed more medical treatment than could have been passed off, this might have made its way to the Governor’s office.

There was no way to be certain of that, so every day he waited for a couple of hours at the apartment. Eventually Glenna would show—where else did she have to go; who else was capable or willing to help her? Sooner or later, the woman would return, and then they could begin to sort out the Wall. The longer he spent in this city, the weirder it got: the Sweating Sickness; the Cartel; a dictatorial governor; militia and private security—heavily armed; the White Penitents who seemed to enjoy scourging themselves and killing the sinful; Dragon Bone Hill—cannibals. It just kept getting better. What next, flying monkeys?

With that thought, Pym craned his neck out the window and up at the louring clouds. Perhaps it was only a matter of time.

 “Titus!”

Slipping from the edge of the table, Pym staggered up and turned to the door.

“Sorry,” Synon laughed, “but I’ve been looking all over for you. Simon’s got news for you.”

“Simon?”

“Aglibut—you have to keep up with the new people.”

“I do? Why is that?”

“Being leader and all...”

“I delegate—you are keeping up for me.”

“Right, well, he’s got news for you.”

“What news?”

“Will only say it’s for you.”

Simon was another of the younger members of the Beluga—there were those who were pre-pubescent, but that was because their parents had been taken by the Sweats or had been banished to the Hill and they escaped the death sentence for whatever reason. Mostly, though, the young were in their middle teens, as was Aglibut—but he’d seen enough in the time between when his life went to shit and when he’d joined the Beluga Fay, according to Synon, that his word could be counted on.

“Do these new ones keep getting younger and younger?”

“I think they do—mostly they were left behind by their parents after the Sweats. The older survivors tend to find a way to make a living or stutter along on their own for a while before succumbing to despair or hunger.” They either slipped into the bay, took a run at the Wall, or joined the White Penitents. The Whites, now that he knew of them, could be blamed for a great deal of suffering in the city, but they kept their members fed and, more importantly, gave survivors a sense of mission. That mission was generally covered in blood or licked by flame, yet there was a purpose. Purpose was a powerful drug, which explained why the ranks of the Whites continued to expand.

Most of the younger ones, however, could never bring themselves to join the Whites—the rumors were too terrifying, while those surrounding the Beluga, both Synon and Bannly made certain of this, were positive and reinforcing. This was the reason keeping track of their numbers was almost impossible and why they had expanded membership to two other warehouses and a factory—all larger than their present accommodations. Many felt this offered a serious alternative to the Cartel, and this might be true, but others were willing to match them against the Governor or even the Wall. These last two would eat them up individually, but Lander and even Bannly were not so sure. This was another reason Titus wanted out. Sooner or later, someone would think they could storm the Wall or take the government on.

Pym was not going to have anything to do with that. Synon, for the moment, remained realistic about what they could and should do, but he’d been noticing her dreams for the Beluga expanding into those of a new social utopia. Synon wanted equity for all, but especially the abused. Having been one, until recently, the woman was particularly sensitive to the needs of these. That there was no hope for equity, and never had been, Titus did not have the heart to tell her. He doubted whether or not she would have been able to listen even if he had. But she didn’t worry him so much, and her followers within the increasingly fracturing Beluga—there were at least a half dozen subcultures within the greater group—were too young, inexperienced, and idealistic to be much danger in the long term.

Lander was a different matter. He’d been gathering around him the old and angry new members. They had a penchant for violence and spent a lot of their time raiding the Cartel, security columns, and remnants of the wealthier districts. They’d even taken a run at Makati—though they failed to do more than kill a couple of guards, this didn’t turn others from them. In fact, their numbers had been expanding since the failed raid.

Lander was canny, smart, immoral, and vicious. Although there was a lot of sense in letting him live in the beginning, this sense was rapidly turning to self-destructive nonsense. This to a degree the greater Beluga was under threat from his faction, or soon would be. All Lander would require is the opportunity to bring Titus’s leadership into question. There had already been disquieting rumblings because of his frequent absences. On occasion, he’d even noticed he was being followed, and there were suggestions his rooms had been searched. When he questioned those responsible for guarding his floor—he’d been given a whole one to himself—it was denied that anyone who was not supposed to be on the floor was.

In the end, this could mean but one of two things. Either the guards had shifted their allegiances to Lander’s faction, or at least one of them was working for Lander. Whatever the case, it did not look good for him. Now, however, he, Bannly, and Synon could no longer move against Lander openly. Even those that hadn’t been drawn into his sphere of influence respected what he had accomplished and were willing, excepting those that still remembered—and there were fewer and fewer of those, to take his previous behaviors as influenced by those that had been killed or purged from the Beluga. Pym was left with few options in dealing with Lander. Whichever of these he chose would be determined by how much longer it took he and Glenna to get out of the city.

Titus was already prepared to abandon the Beluga, but he still needed their resources and the security the numbers offered—even if this security was beginning to fade. This brought him to the equally problematic area of what to do with Lander. Glenna needed to offer him up to the security forces, but their ability to raid the west end and the Beluga had been greatly diminished for the time being. As a result, he had more than some wiggle room Since Glenna was not pushing this any longer, he supposed the woman understood this. Still, he had to do something about Lander—and soon. As they wound down the stairwell—the Beluga could never scrounge enough fuel to maintain the elevators—Pym felt as exposed as the other Beluga.

Because of this, few used the stairwells when they did not have to. When they did, they had to carry either candles—most popular—or a flashlight. Pym had a headband light, which might have been used for spelunking at one time, but now kept him from falling down a flight or two of stairs and breaking a leg, his back, or his neck.

“Where is he?” Titus asked Synon.

“First floor canteen—he’d not eaten in a day.”

“Where is he coming from?”

“The docks—the fish markets.”

“And he couldn’t get anything to eat down there?”

“The government, security forces, the Cartel, and the Whites are all competing for their goods now—prices are getting beyond the reach of anyone who doesn’t have diamonds, government chits, or a force backing them up. Even our influence in the markets has weakened—considerably.”

“I see.” He did. What food sources remained in the city were being heavily taxed by competing groups—all of which had their own threat to bring to bear. For the rest of the way, they walked in silence. When they finally got to the cafeteria, Simon Aglibut was sitting near the shattered concrete wall drinking a cup of coffee and gnawing on a crust of stale French bread. The kid was in his mid-teens. He was rail thin but wrapped about the skeleton was muscle. This wasn’t much, but it looked hard and as if it had gotten a fair workout. The kid was dressed only in a pair of khaki shorts down to his knees held in place by a narrow, decaying cord of rope. On his feet, stretched out before him as he stared blankly out the window, was a shoddy and sodden pair of rope sandals. Aglibut’s skin was a bronzy-brown about the tone and texture of burnt cinnamon—made darker by days spent in the sun.

Synon called to him, and as he turned, Titus noticed a ragged weal ran down the left side of his face. It wasn’t new—that wound had occurred several weeks before, but the scar tissue looked sensitive and much lighter than the rest of the skin. That Simon was strong, or resilient, became apparent as he bounced up and ran over with a bright smile to Synon. When he joined them, the kid didn’t embrace the woman, but it was plain he wanted to. There may have been an erotic component to this, but it seemed to Titus there was more of camaraderie than Eros in the urge. As well, there was the fact of Pym himself, which appeared to be restraining the young man.

Slowly he was coming to terms with his mythic status amongst the new recruits. The notion of them being recruits was sinking in but without much joy. Taken together there was a shift occurring in the Beluga—from opportunists to armed camp. All Titus had wanted was to get enough arms to protect themselves, but this had changed. Was it the Synon/Bannly camp or was Lander inching his way into the Beluga ideologies? Titus didn’t particularly care.

“Titus, this is Simon Aglibut.” Pym held out a hand, and the young man took this. The grip was hardly worthy of the word—a weak, floppy thing. Titus put this down to a fear of him; if not this, then the child had little by way of character and this would turn out badly for Pym. “Simon, this is Titus Pym.”

“How are you, Simon?”

“Good, sir.” The voice a reedy hollow twitter, rich with a Tagolam accent. Pym had been negotiating his way around the dialects of the archipelago with only a little effort. The language was another matter. Although the language was simple enough, with only twenty-eight letters and thirty-three phonemes, the inversion of the traditional expectation of subject and object with no linking verbs had caused some trouble. Therefore, Pym’s use of Tagolam was fractured and problematic.

His problems were only increased by the fact Tagolam was not the universal language of the islands. Talota, Bula Vina, and Haloket where the other major languages, though Tagolamists argued they remained dialects of Tagolam, but these were, for most islanders, regional languages not spoken beyond the frontiers of the provinces and sometimes not much beyond the mountain region of their origin. In one case, there was a minor language, Namast, which was only used by a village of under three-hundred people. These had made up over a dozen villages dotted along a chain of mountains on the westernmost islands, but over the centuries, the area was depopulated by the development of the economy and the young seeking better opportunities in the cities of the northern islands. The story played out many times around the world over the last three hundred years.

“I hear,” Pym asked, listening carefully to filter meaning from the heavy accent, “you have some information for me.”

The young man looked to Synon, who smiled and inclined her chin. Simon’s hands moved to his neck as though attempting to coax words from this; then began.

“In the Arran Fish Market—you know the place?”

“It’s the eastern market and the smallest—best prices.” Synon answered.

“Not anymore—everything is dear down there and only the rich, government, and Cartel shop at these any longer.”

“You,” Synon’s voice surprised, “certain about that?”

“Take a look for yourself—the prices are high, very high, and they’ve hired private security to guard the place. If you are caught stealing, you’re shot on the spot.”

This should have shocked Pym, but it didn’t. Little was capable of that any longer.

Synon looked to be about to answer Simon, but Pym jumped in. “I believe you. So, you were down in Arran Market—what happened?”

“Met a man who said he was from the Cartel. They said they know of someone who is looking for you, another foreigner, and they intend to kill you.”

That someone wanted to kill Pym had not been news to Synon but that they were foreign was. “You know anything about this?” She asked Titus.

He shook his head, but she didn’t appear convinced.

“Why did they tell you this?”

“He wants to sell the information to you.”

“It’s a trap.” Synon took Titus’s arm.

“Yes, but if someone is after me...”

“They’re just saying that to get you down there.”

“But why foreign? If it had just been another islander, I would have said yes, but foreign—doesn’t seem likely.” It was a trap, but not by those she was thinking of—at least he hoped they weren’t involved.