He is supposedly the father of all Loa and represents ancient knowledge. He also represents fertility and new life. In this way, he symbolizes new hope sprung from the old. He is pictured as a snake, and when possessing a devotee, he hisses rather than speaks, and slithers rather than walks. His symbol is a snake, his color is white, and his food is eggs.
To today, it's still a point of debate who got to Howard's door first. The old man himself calls it a tie, but he's just trying to stay out of it. But seeing as this is my story, I feel it's my sacred DUTY to set the record straight. I won by a foot. So there! Nyah! I've even got it in writing now.[1]
As I expected, Howard wasn't pleased to see me saunter in (or rather careen through the door as the case was) so late. He was back hunched over the logbooks, and hadn't looked up at my entrance. The usual supplies were strewn about the floor, packed up in two large backpacks. It takes a lot to get under Howard's skin, but it is really obvious when something does. I should know; he's put up with me in all my moods and phases for years now.
"So how was the Festival?" he asked.
"Dunno, I didn't go." I sat down on the edge of his desk, forcing eye contact. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Heero hovering back in the shadows of the doorway. I guessed I was alone on this one. "We still have time to get going right?"
"So where were you?" It was about then I figured how hard this was going to be.
"Geez, I'm an hour late!" I sighed and ran my hair through my bangs. I stole another glance at Heero. Nope, he hadn't moved an inch. Fine then. "I wandered by Heero's place, got sick, lost about a third of my day to dreamland, had to look at Dr J, went to Hilde's then went straight here. Oh and I brought help."
That got Howard's attention, I thought smugly. Given time and the right tools I can push anyone's buttons. If I had known I was going to be late, I couldn't have picked better Howard-bait than Heero. We always needed the extra help, and the best electronics' man in town was a wonderful compliment to the two best mechanics.
Howard glanced up from his logbooks at last and followed my gaze. Heero looked rather miffed at being in the middle of this, but stepped out into the light anyway.
The old man instantly regained his usual offbeat cheer. He pushed himself to his feet, pulled his shorts up over his paunchy belly, complained under his breath about his back, and then damn near bounded over to Heero. Within seconds the old man had ushered my companion over to one of his blueprints and was avidly conversing about the details of his latest toy.
Well, Howard was conversing anyway. Heero was just supplying affirmative and negative hn's with a few actual words to spice things up. One day, I swore, I was going to drag a full conversation out of that man.
While they were talking gadgets, I set about finding a third pack for Heero and redistributing the supplies for all three of us. The lighter we travel now the better, in case we actually do find anything.
"You rearranging already kid?" Howard called out, pausing in some rant about thingamabobs. Really. He has an interesting habit of substituting nonsense words when he can't remember technical names. I just nodded.
"I can't find my scythe though." As much as I'd wish it were otherwise, the possibility of running into other scavengers is a pretty dangerous one. Technology was no longer developed as actively and natural resourses are low. Anything found is incredibly valuable. Other scavengers tend to be more desperate and more violent than we are. So weapons are a necessary evil, I guess.
"You still insist on using that messy thing?" I stuck out my tongue at Howard. We've had this argument so many times it wasn't worth responding. He just gazed up at the ceiling for a moment. "You left it in the attic after the break in last week."
"Figures. Thanks." I bounded up the ladder to the second floor in search of Deathscythe. She was a relic from the war, the only hand held thermal weapon that I've ever heard of, and the damned best partner I've ever had.
She was sitting innocently in the corner by the window, looking for all the world like a simple quarterstaff. We were pretty alike when it came down to it. No one knew how deadly she was until her claw was extended and diving for someone's throat. By then, it's too late.
Heh. Hilde once, in a sour mood, told me that if Deathscythe was human, I'd have long since been following her around on my knees begging her to have my children. Probably. But I'm rambling again.
As I reached for her, the difference in landscape out the window caught my eye. The Festival, as usual, had set up fast and was declaring its decadent presence for all to bear witness to.
I could just make out the glow on the horizon, before the landscape curved up and away, of the Festival. What was a dull orange from this distance was really a mish mash of roaring bonfires, neon tubes and flood lamps all blazing out into the artificial night. I fancied that at the very edge of the Festival grounds I could see a splotch of bright blue... perhaps even a very large tent.
In my minds eye I could see Catherine, fists balled up at her side, glaring out towards town. Maybe even stalking back and forth, muttering explicatives in Spanish. I could almost pity the brother she mentioned. No doubt, by now, he had heard all about me, including bunches of delicious descriptive words.
This tickled me to no end of course. Make me pick up her groceries will she. Hmph!
Grinning like a maniac I'm sure, I checked that the safety guards were on my scythe (turning her on by accident could be rather painful for me), gave her a rather professional twirl and jumped down the steps. Howard and Heero were already waiting for me.
The underside, I've always thought, was a misnomer. To be really technical, the underside is both on top and below the main strip, just layered level by level around it, like the innertube of a big wheel. Those middle four or so levels are where everyone lives, and the rest, be it up, down, above, or below is the underside.
But then again, directions are kind of weird here. I've heard that there are things called compasses on Earth that tells you which way you are facing because that whole lump of dirt is magnetized. No such luck in space though. East is whatever happens to be to your right at the time.
Anyway, about the underside.. the scavengers, the recluses, the exiled and just the downright insane live in the underside of L2. Which means the resident population down there is about nil. Most people are too scared of the place to go down there. A century of gossip and wild tales about something that not many see first hand will do that to a population.
I will say from experience that it's not as bad at the rumors make it out to be. No albino monsters thirsting for blood and shrinking from light, great stretches of glowing radioactive wastelands or whatnot. Mind you, it is dangerous. That's why Howard needs people like me for salvage, but the dangers are more real than the things that go bump in the night.
Somehow the prospect of opening a door to hard vacuum or falling three levels because the floor is rusted out scares me more than most of the stories. The latter I've actually done. Lemmie tell you, it hurt.
There are some things you just never forget: shriek and squeal of metal tearing away, that empty feeling in your stomach just as the gravity gets it's hands on you, that split second where you desperately want it to be a dream. Sometimes it still wakes me up cold at night, and the former... well I've heard about it, and once seen the proof. These terrors are just a lot more real to me than ghouls and foul cults.
Still, they say the best way to deal with what scares you is to know it really well. I wont claim to have done that, the colony is huge and I'm just one guy, but I do know a bit more than the average guy.
According to Howard, we were heading deep, towards the central axis of the colony. Heero and I ranged out in front of the old man, checking as we went. As much as I hate to admit it, we complimented each other perfectly. We both knew different danger signs, and Heero could hack open a door electronically tons faster than I could lever open the panel and hot-wire it.
"Kinda like the old days huh?" I peered off into the darkness, checking for tell tale warping and rust. "Cept back then we were trying not to be found, not trying to find."
"I still don't know how you can remain to be so cheerful about the war." Heero never broke the pattern of his sweeps with the flashlight. "It was a massacre, not a picnic."
"Wow a whole sentence! I'm proud of you Yuy." My cheerful grin was wasted in the darkness, but I know he heard it in my tone.
He grunted at me. Subject artfully dodged, point for Maxwell. The crowd would have went wild.
"Where's the next turn." Heero shone the light down the two branching hallways. They looked pretty much the same to me.
"Oi! Old man!" I called over my shoulder. "Which way now?"
"Right thirty feet, left 45, straight for a good stretch." Howard's voice floated back up the dark passageway behind us. He wasn't far behind, I could see the glow of the edge of his light's range jumping and wavering as he ambled closer. He sounded distracted. He must have picked up a toy I missed on our first pass. If that was the case, I didn't expect him to catch up soon.
"Gotcha!" I called back, nearly in unison with Heero's "Hn." We were synchronizing. Scary huh?
The "good stretch" Howard mentioned had to be about five miles long. A really boring, nothing-to-look-at-not-even-a-bloody-bit-of-scrap-metal-on-the-floor boring.
The only upside was that we were getting rather close to the hub of the colony, which meant gravity was getting weaker.
(For those of you who aren't scavengers, there's a bit of physics involved behind this, Howard tells me that the center strip is kept in perfect Earth-level gravity because the colony is both huge and perpetually spinning around the hub really fast. So, the farther you get in, the closer you get to zero gravity, and the farther you go out from the strip, the harder it is to walk. There, Professor Duo has done his good deed of the day.)
Anyway, I was happily enjoying bounding down the corridor great leaps at a time. I've always enjoyed low gravity. Call it a fetish I guess.
"Oi, chotto matte Heero." A flash of red had caught my eye in the latest sweep of light. My curiosity has a habit of getting the better of me. "Can you shine that back over on the wall again."
He shrugged and did as I asked. A metal door with a danger symbol painted over it in bright red stood recessed into the wall. Why it was there kind of baffled me. A three mile stretch without so much as a seam in the wall and then suddenly a door.
I ran my hands along the door, looking for anything, a catch, a dent, some rust. Something to give any indication of what was behind it. There wasn't much chance of hard vacuum this deep, but radiation was another matter. I just had to trust in Heero's and my own resistance to the stuff.
Heero shifted and looked at me in irritation. "The objective is further ahead. Besides it has no panel to open the door."
I snorted. "Who needs a panel? Back off a bit."
He looked about to protest a bit until I pulled my scythe off of its resting place on my back. He shrugged and backed off. He was well acquainted with my partner.
I grinned at him, turned off the safety, and let her purr to life. Heat washed over me like warm water, and her soft green glow illuminated every detail of the area. I paused a second, just enjoying Deathscythe's presence before laying into the door with her blade.
The sheer, concentrated heat of the thermal blade soon had the door reduced to half glowing lumps of slag on the floor. With regret, I turned her off again. I'm resistant (incredibly so I've been told) to her presence, but even I can't take the heat for long.
With a grin at Heero, I held the still-glowing handle of Deathscythe aloft and leapt through the doorway. (Besides fun, low gravity is OH so useful in tricky maneuvers.) I knew Heero would follow me out of habit, and I didn't bother to yell back to Howard. He'd know well enough where I'd gone. My partner was distinctive in her work.
And behind door number one!
Was door number two. Sigh.
I fought down the urge to groan. A bit of poking and prying told me that the second was thicker but as devoid of locks and catches as the first.
Heero gave my scythe a pointed glance and asked, "Well?"
"Why am I doing all this anyway?" I mumbled, motioning him back again. "Don't you still have your saber anymore?"
"You are the one who wants to see what is in there. And no, I got rid of Wing after the war." I could have been imagining it, but there was a tone of smugness in his tone. Just enough to convey the ever infamous I-told-you-so. I chose to ignore it.
"Shame, Wing was pretty cool." My partner leapt to life under my hands and voraciously went to work. The metal wasn't as high quality as the last door, as I spent quite a bit of my time dodging bits of heated metal. Not my idea of entertainment.
Three more doors, one dead security system, one live security system (quickly disarmed and dismantled. I could use that elsewhere.) and one miffed Duo later, I began to wonder what the hell was so important. There weren't any engine rooms in this sector, I'd studied the maps, and the algae vats are never stored in low gravity areas (too messy I guess). A keypad, quickly hacked by Heero, and dismantled by me for parts later, we found out.
Sprawled out beyond the last door was the shambles of a deserted city. Buildings with shattered windows, silent factories, playgrounds and everything that would make a community stood silently, broken but a testament of what was once there.
But beyond that, was the real treasure. Wild plants, greens and browns, growing. Which meant soil, which meant life, and water; the most precious of substances.
We were standing, staring at something we couldn't dismantle or salvage. Stretched out was either the greatest hope for the colony's existence seen in the last century, or the battle ground for a new greed-driven civil war.
Standing there with my jaw hanging somewhere around the vicinity of my ankles, I hadn't yet figured out which it would be.
TBC
Nixers
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