“Hard day?” Inga asked as she approached with her rolling gait, a bar towel over her shoulder. Talina’s glass mug—filled with a thick stout topped by an inch of creamy head—was in Inga’s right hand. This she deposited on the scarred wood with a thunk.
“Step Allenovich and I spent the last three days out in the bush, working the breaks leading into the Blood Mountains. Tracked Whitey that far. Storm hit. Winds were too strong for the drones. Had to wait it out. Once we could fly again, we’d lost the sign.”
“You look all in.”
“I’m eating whatever you got, sucking down a couple of glasses of stout, and then I’m off to sleep for a week.”
“You sure it was Whitey? One quetzal pretty much looks like another.”
“We managed to get a drone right on top of him. Crippled left front leg? Couple of bullet scars on his hide? Slight limp in his right leg? Gotta be him.”
Down in Talina’s gut, Demon—piece of shit that he was—hissed in approbation at the mention of Whitey’s escape. But then Whitey’s molecules where part of what made Demon such an insufferable beast.
Talina could feel Rocket shift on her shoulder—the little quetzal’s presence as illusory as Demon’s. In the words of Talina’s ancient Maya ancestors, she was Way. Pronounced “Wh-eye.” A spirit-possessed dreamer, transformed, one-out-of-many. Her quetzals were Wayob. Dream essences. Spirits who lived within.
“When it comes to Whitey, you’d know. You were the one who shot him up.” Inga wiped the bar down with her towel before slapping it over her shoulder. “Food’ll be up in a minute.”
Tal tossed out a five SDR coin.
“You’re still up two fifty on your account, Tal.”
“Put it toward my tab. Day might come, Inga, when I’m caught short.”
The big woman snatched up the coin. “Yeah, as if that would ever happen.”
“You forget, I have a habit of pissing people off in this town.” And, hero to them she might be, but Talina Perez was still a freak, infected as she was with quetzal TriNA.
“This far down the line, Tal, it would take some real doing for you to make it permanent.” Inga shot her a wink and retreated down the bar to note the amount on her big board where she kept her accounts.
Talina chuckled under her breath. Inside, she was what the Maya called pixom—of two conflicting souls. In her case, that of killer in opposition to that of protector.
Funny thing, to travel thirty light-years across space in order to discover that her ancient heritage was the only way to make psychological sense of who she had become after quetzal molecules began playing with her brain.
Down the bar, Stepan Allenovich, mud-spattered himself, was calling for whiskey. Three days in the bush hunting quetzal, and the lunatic was going to spend the rest of the night drinking and singing. Then he’d no doubt wander over to Betty Able’s brothel where he’d drink some more, pay to screw Solange Flossey, and finally make his way to The Jewel casino. The man was an animal.
Talina sipped her stout, let the rich beer run over her tongue. Damn, she’d missed beer. Three days of hardscrabble hunting on foot and by air, and that pus-sucking Whitey had put the slip on them again.
“Yes,” Demon hissed from behind her stomach.
It only felt like the quetzal lived in her gut. The Port Authority physician, Raya Turnienko, had repeatedly proven to Talina that there was no quetzal hiding out behind her liver. Rather—like the presence of Rocket on her shoulder—that was how the thing manifested. Used transferRNA to communicate with the nerve cells in her brain. Not that Demon was a single quetzal, but existed as a composite made up of the TriNA molecules from a quetzal lineage. Whitey’s lineage.
Nor was that the only quetzal TriNA that infested her. The one she called “Rocket,” the Wayob that perched on her shoulder, was made up of several different quetzals from the Mundo, Briggs, and Rork lineages. Her blood and tissues were thick with the stuff.
One and many at the same time.
Only a Maya shaman would understand.
Talina just wanted the shit out of her body.
“But I’ll get you in the end,” she promised both Whitey and Demon.
“Or we’ll get you.”
“Been trying that for the last four years, you piece of shit.” She sipped her stout.
Rocket’s spectral presence chittered quetzal laughter in her ear. She gave the little twerp a wry smile in reply.
Talina turned to take in the tavern. Inga’s was half full: miners, the local trades people, and the weekly rotation from down at Corporate Mine now came trickling in. The few local troublemakers, like Hofer, seemed to be in a convivial mood.
Good. She’d hate to have to go bust heads.
Talina saw Kalico Aguila descending the steps. Beside her, Shig Mosadek was saying something, his hands gesturing in emphasis. Kalico was dressed in her last fancy Supervisor’s uniform—the one she was saving for special occasions. That the woman would dress up like . . . Ah, yes. This must be the day she’d taken the shuttle up to Vixen to contact Ashanti.
Captain Torgussen had delayed Vixen’s departure to rendezvous with a particularly intriguing comet in order to allow Aguila to use Vixen’s photonic com. By now the survey ship was accelerating hard to catch the comet as it rounded Capella.
Shig, who had also attended, was wearing his locally milled fabric shirt with the squash-blossom flowers Yvette had embroidered on the front. To Talina’s knowledge, the comparative religions scholar didn’t have anything resembling formal attire in his wardrobe. Shig’s only concession to fashion was the quetzal-hide cape he reserved for rainy days.
Talina arched an eyebrow as Aguila turned her way, strode across the fitted stones in the floor, and hitched herself into the elevated chair beside Talina’s. Shig clambered onto the stool on Aguila’s right.
“What’s with the fancy dress? Trying to impress the new folks?” Talina asked.
“Just back from Vixen.” Aguila had a thoughtful look on her scarred face. “Ashanti’s finally close enough that we could have a conference on the photonic com. Talked to the captain, the Corporate Advisor/Observer, and the science director. Not that it’s a huge surprise, but the situation on Ashanti is a bit grimmer than we’d been led to believe on the text-only long-range com.”
“How grim?”
Aguila grinned humorlessly; it rearranged her scars. “Grim enough that I told Shig he’s buying the whiskey.”
“Couldn’t be worse than Freelander.” Memories of Talina’s last time aboard the ghost ship still sent fingers of ice slipping down her backbone. And to think she’d condemned Tamarland Benteen to that eerie and endless hell.