LIONS AND TIGERS AND BEARS
Loris lay back in bed, toying with Marjorie’s hair as the girl’s head lay on her breast. “It was years,” Loris said. “I don’t even know how long I was on the streets. Nothing mattered but getting food. I stole it from shops. I stole it from temples. I was beaten and almost raped, but I fought back. I killed people. Finally, a priest took me in and taught me how to fight properly. That’s what turned me around.”
“My parents died when I was a child,” Marjorie said. “They were scientists and were on the verge of a discovery that would have made us rich, but I was left with nothing. I ended up in an orphanage, and I was raped. I lost my interest in men after that, but eventually a teacher noticed my aptitude for mathematics and that made the difference. Fighting saved you and physics saved me.”
“How did you come to work for Mister Zhang,” Loris asked, hoping the question sounded casual, instead of one she had been hoping to ask for weeks.
“He acquired a ship and needed help with the physics of the drivers. None of his scientists could solve his problem. I was flattered. He’s one of the richest men in the High Colonies, and I saw it as an opportunity.”
“I think you’re having trouble with the math,” Loris said. “I’ve seen you staring at the figures in frustration.”
Marjorie sighed. “That happens sometimes, but I usually figure it out. But this is something else.” She sat up and looked into Loris’s eyes. “Adhira,” she said, “I’m afraid.”
Loris kissed her. “What do you mean?”
“I might not be able to do what Mister Zhang wants. I kind of lied to him when I said I was sure I could make his engines work safely. He’s becoming impatient. He scares me, Adhira, and I don’t know what he’ll do if I fail him.”
“Do you think it might be impossible?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know anything about spaceships,” Loris said with a straight face. “I’m just a fighter. But some people say antimatter containment is a contradiction.”
“I’m beginning to wonder, myself. The process was discovered by a brilliant man, but he died, and nobody really seems to know exactly what he did. I told Mister Zhang I could make it work safely, and I’m beginning to worry now that I was wrong. I’m afraid what he might do if he lost faith in me.” She lowered her voice. “He can be quite brutal, you know.”
“Don’t worry,” Loris said. “I’ll protect you.” And she thought: Well, what do you know? She’s manipulating me as much as I’m manipulating her.
“We should talk about something else,” Marjorie said, looking about as if the walls had ears, though Loris routinely checked the room for bugs. “Oh, guess who’s here. In the compound.”
“Who?”
“Ali Karil.”
Loris kept control of herself. “Ali Karil? You mean the Martian poet?”
“Yes, but they say he’s a spy.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“For Mars?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the Galilean?”
“What’s he doing here?”
“He was injured trying to spy on us. They’ve got him in the Sick Bay, chained to one of those healing-beds.”
“Is he badly wounded?”
“The nurse says he’s recovering. But it may take a while.”
“They say he’s really charming,” Loris said.
Marjorie looked up at her, surprised.
“Not that I’m attracted, of course,” Loris laughed. “But I’d still like to see if he’s as interesting as they say.”
“I’ll see if my friend can get us into the hospital.”
“Make sure,” Loris said, kissing her with as much passion as she could feign, “you’re immune to his charms.”
Loris still felt deeply sorry for Marjorie Suzuki, but she no longer trusted what she said. Nevertheless, she was certain now that the great warship was a very great danger and must not be allowed to take off. But the important thing right now was Karil.
***
The next day, they visited Marjorie’s nurse-friend Li Wan-Ji, who was hesitant to let them in to see Karil, but Loris pointed out that she was quite capable of defending Marjorie from a man in chains, no matter how dangerous his reputation. So, when it came time to read Karil’s data, the nurse let the two of them accompany her into the room. Karil brightened at the sight of them and was his usual self. Loris was dismayed at his numerous cuts and bruises but remained stone-faced as Karil turned on the charm.
“Wan-Ji, My Love,” he said. “Thank you for brightening up my long day with two such interesting and attractive visitors. And who are you, My Dear?”
“Marjorie Suzuki.”
“I know you. You’re the High Japan physicist, Mister Zhang’s expert on his top-secret project. He promised to show it to me if I live and I’m dying to see it.” He laughed. “Though that sounds a bit contradictory, doesn’t it? And who are you?”
Loris hid her joy at hearing Karil’s voice. “I’m Adhira Dhawan. My job is to protect Doctor Suzuki from dangers like you.”
He raised his hand a few centimeters and his cuffs clanked on the bed rail. “I’m not very dangerous at the moment. Your muscle definition is wonderful, Adhira. Lovely name, incidentally. I would almost consider it a pleasure for you to beat the crap out of me, just to see your gorgeous body in action.” His eyes twinkled.
“You’re barking up the wrong tree, My Friend.”
He glanced at Marjorie and glanced back at Loris. “Oh my! That’s exciting.” He looked up at Nurse Wan-Ji, who was recording his numbers. “You wouldn’t like to uncuff my right hand for a little while, would you? Oh, I’m sorry, Ladies. That was wildly inappropriate.”
Wan-Ji laughed. “No, I wouldn’t. I don’t have the key, anyway. And I will definitely not help you out, as I told you before. My care doesn’t go that far.”
“More’s the pity.” Karil looked at Loris and grinned. “I do love a woman in uniform.”
Loris stifled a laugh and had to resist the desire to hug him and tell him how much she missed his insane chatter.
He turned back to the nurse. “Wan-Ji, My Dear, could you at least open the window a bit tonight? I love the sound of the forest at night. It helps me sleep. I noticed the window has an insect forcefield. I hear them sizzle sometimes.”
“All right. That I can do. I guess there’s no danger. It’s way out of your reach.”
“Isn’t everything?”
Karil bathed Marjorie in his smile and his eyes darted to Loris. “Hope to see you later,” he said.
They left, and Marjorie was in a good mood, chuckling at Karil’s lighthearted patter. It was hard for Loris to remain stone-faced, after having seen him in such bad condition.
***
That night, Loris did her best to make sure Marjorie was exhausted. After midnight, she slipped out of bed, crept out into the garden and, once again, climbed up to the roof. Silently, she made her way over the rooftops and lowered herself down the wall of the hospital wing, then raised the window higher and slipped inside. She could feel the mild tingle of the insect field as she passed through. The only light was the from the readouts of the machine healing Karil.
“Loris,” he said.
She hugged him until he squealed in pain.
“What can I do for you?” she asked. She paused and then said, “No, let me rephrase that.”
He chuckled. “Well, you can’t get me out of here yet. I’m still not ambulatory, though Zhang says he’ll put me in a wheelchair soon and show me his ship. Inger’s dead.”
“Jesus! Those sons of bitches.”
“Yes,” Karil said darkly, “but I sent her down to Hades with a good-sized entourage.”
“I’m so sorry, Karil.”
“No time for that right now. She was an agent and knew what that meant. But I’d still like to put down Mister Fucking Zhang.”
“Good for you.” Loris said.
“Look, they hit us with an EMP. About twenty clicks southwest of the landing field, on a game-trail, Atty is locked down in a meadow a few meters off the trail. You can’t miss the spot. The place is littered with helicopter parts. Your voice should wake her up out of the lockdown. It’s up to you to decide when to do that and what to do afterwards. Zhang must be getting impatient with your sweet little toy. But I can’t tell how long before I’m ambulatory.”
“My sweet little toy is using me as much as I’m using her. She’s not just his prisoner, as we thought. She’s in deep with him, but I don’t know how far it goes. She’s afraid she can’t solve the containment problems and she knows how dangerous it could be. But she’s so afraid of him that she might just tell him to go ahead and take off, because she’s deathly afraid to admit the truth. She’s not quite right in the head, you know. She has these mood swings. She never recovered from the death of her parents as a child. I feel sorry for her, and I hope I don’t have to kill her. I have to go now. Hang in there, Baby.”
“At least you can get back to Atty now. Love you, Doll.”
“Love you, Babe.” She kissed him and swung up through the window, then crossed the rooftops to her chamber. When she slid into bed with Marjorie, the girl snuggled in her arms.
“Where did you go?” she asked.
“Walking around. This place is like a prison to me sometimes.”
“Don’t worry. You’ve got me.” And Marjorie drifted off to sleep on her breast. Loris thought about how easily she could twist her neck, and she sighed.
***
Wan-Ji, at her nurse’s station, had been listening to Loris and Karil’s conversation. It was part of her job to monitor Zhang’s bugging devices in the hospital wing and report to him anything suspicious. She erased the recording and typed a few numbers on her station.
After several minutes light-lag, words appeared on the screen: “There’s no place like home.”
Good. Auntie Em was listening. Wan-Ji typed: “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”
In a few minutes, she got her confirmation: “We’re not in Kansas anymore.” The process was in motion. Wan-Ji breathed a sigh of relief. She erased the messages and returned to her medical work.
On Ganymede, Auntie Em turned to her console and tapped out three numbers. She sent the same message to each one: “Lions and tigers and bears.” Eventually, three confirmations arrived from three locations, each one delayed by a different time-lag, because of the distance from Jupiter. Each one replied : “Fly, my pretties.”
***
On the banks of the Ohio River, Baby Snakes sat in a dockside tavern, nursing a beer. Riverboats were tied up at the dock outside and the harbor town climbed the hill behind her. Snakes was a fixture in the town as she appeared there regularly. She was hardly noticed anymore, but she would turn the head of the odd traveler passing through, up or down the river.
She was a young woman dressed in rather ragged and dirty military fatigues, like many in the district, though her high boots seemed remarkable, made of what seemed like expensive leather, and each one held a commando knife in a sheath. A machete hung at her slim waist, and there was a quiver of crossbow bolts on her back. The crossbow itself lay on the table before her, beside her drink. Those who were intrigued enough to look through the rips in her clothing to her shapely, yet powerful, small body tended to stare, because she was covered from her toes to the top of her bald head with multi-hued tattoos of coiling serpents. If she ever had a name other than Baby Snakes, it was long gone.
She sat with her back to the wall so she could observe both entrances to the room and the windows that opened onto the dock, where several boats were tied up, and a number of sailors or fishermen chatted. Ceiling fans rotated lazily above, creating just a bit of breeze in the hothouse Earth conditions. She felt something against her side and noticed that the jewel in the handle of her knife was vibrating. She put her hand on it and the vibrating stopped, then she rose from her table and crossed to the bar. The barman looked up and smiled at his long-time customer.
“Smokes,” she said, “I need to see my tab.”
The barman nodded and the hand-rolled cigarette between his lips bounced up and down. He rang up a number on the ancient, carved cash-register atop the bar and a slip of paper popped out. He handed it to her, and she read the message: “Lions and tigers and bears.”
“Oh, my,” she said. The words were followed by series of numbers that were obviously latitude and longitude co-ordinates. “Let me see my whole tab, would you, Smokes?” she said.
He handed her a payment device, nearly as old as the antique cash register, and she typed out, “Fly my pretties.”
“Thank you,” Smokes said and put the device away. No-one knew how many people from how many gangs or armies or other organizations travelling up or down the river on what mysterious business used Smokes in their communications. Snakes had memorized the numbers and wadded up her paper bill and put it in the ashtray on the bar. Smokes stubbed out his cigarette on it and it burned to ashes.
Baby Snakes grabbed her crossbow and left. She walked up the narrow waterfront streets to the boarding house which was the local stop on the Underground Railroad. No-one could say how many refugees from High Companies justice in the Americas had stopped here for a meal and a night’s sleep on the way to freedom in the Canadas, because no records were kept.
Baby Snakes entered the boarding house and found half a dozen men sitting about the table. They were dressed in decrepit military uniforms like her, like so many in the district, and quite a few sported tattoos as well, but they were all male, all powerfully built, and all at least a foot taller than Baby Snakes, but anyone could see that they treated her with the deference and attention that a soldier would pay to his superior officer. She sat down among them, and they continued cleaning their weapons, but were clearly about to listen intently to what she would say.
“The Lions have work to do,” she said, and they put down their weapons. “I got a message from Ganymede a few minutes ago. We leave immediately, headed down river, to these co-ordinates”. She wrote them down and passed them around. “We leave within the hour on the next boat. We take our bikes and a shit-load of guns.”
Snakes took a map out of a drawer in a nearby cabinet and spread it out on the table, the four corners held down by revolvers. It seemed crudely drawn and the paper looked old, but the details, taken from orbit, were dead accurate.
“We debark at this point and follow a trail into the jungle, where we will rendezvous with the Tigers and the Bears. I don’t know about our military target yet, but it’s important.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” they said.
***
Friendship Colony had just laid claim to a small asteroid and the rockhounds were busy testing and analyzing its makeup to see if they were correct in their assessment of the materials worth collecting. So far, they had found considerable nickel-iron amid the carbonaceous chondrite, and there was a hint of even more precious metals. The extraction team was already set up and their tough little digging ships were prepared to start stripping its surface. Nearly the entire population of the island colony was preparing to descend upon the unsuspecting rock.
Shadow, neither a miner, nor an analyst, nor an administrator, could not take part in this activity. She was merely the commander of a small contingent of soldiers hired to defend the colony from raiders and pirates and claim-jumpers, because the Friendship Colonists themselves were pacifists and would not carry weapons. Right now, she was exercising with weights. Born on Earth, bred and trained as a super soldier in the last Terran war, she felt it necessary to maintain her full-gravity strength in the one-sixth gravity field common to Luna, the Galilean Moons, Titan, and most of the colonies in the Asteroid Belt.
From her weight-room, she could see the other cottages of the town, the tree-lined streets nearby, the roads and farms in the distance, and the rest of the landscape curving up and around the forested sky and down again. The ironically named Shadow was tall and slim and magnificently muscled, her long fiery-red hair cascading over her alabaster-white shoulders and down her perspiring back to her small, hard buttocks.
A light blinking on her comm attracted her attention. She stepped off the treadmill, detached the weights on her wrists and ankles, towelled off, and sat down at the comm. She unclipped her hairpin, shook out her magnificent locks, then touched the jewelled pin to the comm. A message appeared: “Lions and tigers and bears.” She smiled at Auntie Em’s little joke. Shadow was the tiger, the lion was the diminutive and fearless Baby Snakes, and the bear was their huge red-haired patron, Charles Kelley.
She acknowledged the message with a typewritten: “Fly my pretties,” which then faded from view, then she rose and left the cottage. She walked down the village lane, feeling the wind in her long locks and listening to the sounds of the birds coming from the landscape nearby and overhead. A few years ago, she had dwelt in an abandoned subway tunnel beneath the crowded streets of Nueva York, arranging rescue missions for the Underground Railroad, until her beloved Loris and Karil had arranged to take her away from all that. Now, she lived in a cottage in the countryside, bathed in the light of the sun reflected from the mirrors that surrounded Friendship Colony. Of course, she had to treat her extraordinarily sensitive skin every day to prevent it from being damaged by so much light, but that was a small price to pay to come out of the darkness.
She entered the Guardsmen’s Barracks and found them at breakfast, sitting around the big dining table. A few leaped to their feet to stand as their captain entered, and then covered their embarrassment by getting her coffee and breakfast. Most had spent their young lives in the brutal and regimented Quasi-Police, and some were still not comfortable with Shadow’s Rules: There was one discipline for battle and training, and another for daily life, in which she was only a fellow soldier.
“I have received a request from Ganymede,” she said, as she buttered her toast and eyed the homemade jam, made from berries grown in an agricultural torus. “I have to respond. But Friendship must still be defended, so I propose taking only a small band of volunteers with me. I will be going to Earth.”
Glances swept through the assembly. Most of these men were believed dead by Earth Government, the Quasi-Police, and the High Companies, and if captured would surely be court-martialed and executed by firing squad as deserters and traitors. Earth was the last place they wanted to be. Nevertheless, most would be happy to strike a blow against the forces that had brutalized them, betrayed them, and sent them to terrorize and murder the innocent Friendship colonists, who had nevertheless forgiven and welcomed them into their fold. Shadow, who had been brutalized and assaulted herself in the super-soldier schools on Earth, looked at their scarred, burned, proud faces. She was bombarded with assenting voices and smiled in response.
So, she was allowed to pick and choose her team. Some had already begun relationships on the colony, and she would not send them into danger on Earth. Some had not kept up their weight-training and would find Terran gravity debilitating, especially wearing battle-armor and carrying weapons. In the end, she had half a dozen whom she could depend on without hesitation. The others she would leave with Carlos, her second-in-command.
In her first conversations with Auntie Em, when she offered to help Galilean Security if needed, the tough and matriarchal Galilean Security Chief had told her that if she was called upon to help, it would most likely be in defense of Loris and Karil, who had a habit of getting into trouble and needed friends from time to time. Shadow avidly agreed, out of love for both of them. It may have been Charles Kelley who brought her out of the darkness, but it was Karil and especially Loris who had shown her the light.
Of course, the Friendship Council readily agreed to let them go, not because they would be attacking the hated forces of Earth—no, certainly not—but because she had promises to fulfill. The Small Ship Engineering Team provided a fast runabout for them and named it Thy Fearful Symmetry, not because the tiger’s image might strike fear in the hearts of the forces of Earth—no, certainly not—but because the words came from a devotional poem by a Christian mystic.
The ship was fast and those who sailed in it would be capable of surviving full-gravity acceleration for an extended time, particularly Shadow, whose strength was considered superhuman. Some said angelic. In a matter of days, the ship was ready to go. It lifted off in the hangar, cycled through the lock, and leaped toward the sun.
***
Most of the asteroids in the Solar System have the decency to stay in the Belt between Mars and Jupiter, where the latter’s gravitational attraction had prevented them from coalescing into a planet long ago, but some of them wander far away, like Chiron between Jupiter and Saturn, and like Heracles, which is a Mercury-grazer, an Earth-crosser and a Mars-crosser. Well out of the usual Belter commercial lanes, it failed to be exploited for its mineral wealth until Professor Charles Kelley of the Titan Institute laid claim to it. The binary asteroid was not only orbited by its tiny tide-locked moon, but by a number of artificial satellites related to Kelley’s construction of the Wily Odysseus starship.
Kelley’s personal ship Celestial Intelligencer came in to dock at the Island One Torus that housed most of the workers at the site and where Kelley’s private quarters were located. He had just completed the long trip from Saturn Orbit. He kissed Rocky and made his way down the elevator and the rim-road to his rooms. His housekeeper Mrs. Pomfrey greeted him warmly. She did little more than cook and feed the cats, because the first time she took it upon herself to tidy up, he couldn’t find a book he wanted for a week. Actually, she did not have a great deal of body strength and found the light duties and low gravity of the torus quite comfortable at her age.
He sat down at his antique rolltop desk, after carefully greeting all the cats who cared. Two of them fought for the place of honor on his lap, but most were content to sleep on books and nod hello as he came in. Celeste, now fully refuelled and being examined by the harbor staff, spoke to him.
“Professor, there are a number of coded messages that need your immediate attention, but one in particular is of top priority.” A simple phrase appeared on the screen: “Lions and tigers and bears.”
“Ah!” he said. “Finally, there’s something to be done. I assume you informed Auntie Em of my discoveries in Saturn orbit.”
“Of course, Professor. She has a lengthy response. I am decoding it now.”
“Let me see.”
Auntie Em’s gray curls and the startlingly warm eyes in her no-nonsense face filled the screen.
“Professor Kelley,” she said. “I believe we have tracked down your missing ship, the Victory of Righteousness. It is now called The Great Wall and is in the possession of Zhang Shen-yi of High China. He has hidden it at his so-called mining compound on Earth, located in the Commonwealth of the Carolinas and Virginias. Loris and Karil have separately penetrated the compound. Loris is undercover, employed as a bodyguard for the physicist Marjorie Suzuki. Karil and Inger were observing from outside the walls, but they were discovered. Inger was killed, sadly, and Karil injured. He is recovering in the hospital prison-wing there. Zhang seems intrigued by Karil and anxious to show off his precious ship, which may give him access.
“Atalanta is in EMP Lockdown in the forest nearby and is safe for the moment, but Loris will have to free her. Both the Lions and the Tigers have been alerted and we ask you to engage the Bears. As you must know, we do not have many assets capable of functioning in full gravity and hope the three squads will be able to assault the compound and at least provide a distraction or seize the ship and Zhang too if possible. We have an agent inside, unknown to either Loris or Karil, who is keeping us informed.”
The Professor took a moment to think, then said, “Celeste, code this response. Start with “Fly my pretties,” and tell Auntie Em that the Bears will go down to the woods today.”
“Yes, Professor.”
“Is the hangar crew finished for now? I want to see the roustabouts and then you must be prepared for a long trip.”
“Should you not rest for a while, Professor? You have just returned from Titan.”
“I’ve done nothing but rest for weeks. I want to get this Teddy Bears’ Picnic on the road and get my damn ship back.”
“Yes, Professor. I am ready.”
Kelley took the elevator to the hangar, climbed into the Celestial Intelligencer, and sped off to the roustabouts’ quarters. It was a bit of a shock to climb through the lock into the nearly three gravities of their quarters. At least, he did not, like the roustabouts, have to put on a hundred kilos of weights and exercise every day in order to maintain the ability to work in Jupiter’s punishing gravity.
He was welcomed by the men and quickly given a seat at the table. He explained that he needed half a dozen cyborg soldiers for an assault on Earth, and he received an enthusiastic response. It was something different for them. They would wear military armor instead of pressure-suits, heft machine-guns or powerful lasers instead of sheets of steel, and in the—to them—slight gravity of Earth, the work would seem like a vacation. His men had distinguished themselves in what was called the Battle for Mars, and the Professor already knew whom to pick.
“I must warn you,” he added, “we will be in the jungle, and it will be damp. You will need to keep your armor and your limbs oiled, or they’ll rust quickly.”
“That’s not a problem,” their leader said. “Will you be coming with us?”
“Yes, of course. I consider it my fault that all this happened in the first place. I should have had better security at Titan. And more imagination. I didn’t think anyone could steal a spaceship out from under my nose.” He didn’t mention that his nose was half a solar system away at the time.
“You’ll be wearing body-armor yourself?” someone asked. They all worried about the Professor acting like a man thirty years his junior, though they had to admit that his two-meter height in body-armor would be quite a formidable sight. Most of those bred for Jovian work were short and broad of frame, and he towered over all of them.
“I have an armored exo-skeleton, made by Galilean Security. I’ve used it before. And I’ll be wearing it on the ship so we can accelerate at more than one gee. Celeste has been adapted to that for a while now and will be carrying sufficient fusion fuel. I hope to arrive about the time the Tigers and the Lions do. We will assault this so-called compound and breach their defenses.”
“What kind of defenses?” one man asked.
“Stone walls, electrified fences, steel gates, gun emplacements …”
He sniggered. “That’s it?” And they all laughed.