Paragaea (4 page)

The pistol's hammer fell on the empty chamber, hitting only air, and Leena was out of options.

Her instructors in the Red Army had drilled into her the three basic laws of small arms care: always keep the safety on when holstered, keep the clip fully loaded whenever possible, and leave a round chambered at all times. It seemed that whatever support technician at Baikonur had provisioned the survival kit had not had the same instructors.

With her wrists bound, Leena could not position her hands to pull back the slider, was unable to rotate a cartridge into the chamber. The Makarov was useless, deadweight.

The man standing over her slid his own pistol into an ornate holster at his waist, and angled his sword away and to the ground. He seemed to smile, through the grime and sweat and splattered blood freckles across his cheeks, and chuckled slightly. Leena tightened her grip on the Makarov, hoping he might bend close enough that she could slam the barrel against his grin.

“Kestra,” he said in surprisingly tender tones, reaching his free hand to her, palm up and tentative. “Mitra,” he added after a short pause. “Kare. Caraid. Amicus.”

He kept on, slowly repeating one set of syllables after another, watching her closely in the low light. Leena narrowed her eyes, suspicious.

“Amiko. Ami. Amigo.”

Was this madness, or some sort of test?

“Freund. Friend.”

The syllables were resolving themselves into words, familiar but certainly not Russian. English, perhaps? It had been years since she'd heard it spoken, not since her days in the army at the listening post in Berlin.

“Drug,” the man said.
Friend.

Leena's eyes widened.

“Vy…” she began, uneasily. “Vy govorite po-russkij?”

Do you speak Russian?

The man nodded slowly, and smiled sheepishly.

“No, I'm afraid not,” he said, and Leena struggled to bring her rusty English up to speed. “Not very well, at least.”

Leena relaxed her grip on the pistol, her arms lowering. Was he American? Where precisely was she?

“Kto?” she began, and then shook her head violently as though to loosen long-dormant skills. “Wh-who?” she finally managed, snaring the appropriate pronoun as it raced through her thoughts. “And where this?” she added uncertainly. She inclined her head to one side in the dome of the helmet, indicating the mysterious surroundings.

“So you're a new one, as I'd assumed,” the man answered, cleaning his sword's blade on the fur of one of the fallen foes, then slipping it with a steel whisper into a hanging scabbard opposite the holstered pistol. “Did you hear that, Balam?” he shouted to one side, out of Leena's line of sight. “She is new after all. You owe me a drink at my earliest convenience.”

There came only a growl in response, but from her awkward position,
pinned beneath the insensate form of the fallen jaguar man, she could not make out the source. She was able to follow the man's English better and better with each passing moment, the ancient engines of her forgotten training slowly revving to life.

“I'm sorry we don't have time for formal introductions,” the man said, leaning down and grabbing the unconscious jaguar man by his harness and hauling him bodily off of Leena's legs. “But more of the Sinaa will be on us in numbers shortly, if we're not quickly away.”

Leena's lower body unencumbered, the man stepped forward and, reaching down, slipped his hands under the pits of her arms and drew Leena to her feet.

“We'll have enough time for questions and answers soon enough,” the man said, gingerly pulling the Makarov from her grip and snugging it into his belt, “but for now, it's enough for you to know that this is Paragaea, and that you are far, far from home.”

Leena looked on, still dazed, as the man untied her wrists and then ankles with a few deft movements.

“Are who…?” she began, struggling with the syntax. “Who…” She paused, moving her arms in glorious freedom, shifting painfully from leg to leg. “Who are you?” she managed.

“My apologies,” the man answered with a slight smile, giving her a shadow of a bow. “My name is Hieronymus. Hieronymus Bonaventure.”

He stepped to her side, taking her elbow, and steered her towards the far side of the clearing.

“And this is my friend, Prince Balam.”

Leena looked up, and before her towered the hulking, shadowy figure she'd glimpsed tussling with the leader of the jaguar men before. It was another of the jaguar men, but with black fur instead of golden. His clawed hands and the lower half of his broad jaws were spattered with shining red blood, shimmering like strings of rubies in the faint moonlight. He wore a leather harness with gold fittings, a loincloth of deep forest green draped between muscular thighs, and
one of his ears was deeply notched, an emerald dangling from the other.

The black-furred jaguar man smiled, teeth like sabers glinting wickedly in the low light, and Leena was not sure whether she'd been rescued, or had fallen into the hands of an even darker threat.

They traveled through the darkened jungle tracks not making a sound, the English-speaking man in front of Leena and the black-furred jaguar man following behind. The going was difficult, with Leena still swaddled in her pressure suit with its helmet and heavy boots and gloves, but they pressed on without pause. Only when they had gone several kilometers did the man and his jaguar companion seem to lower their guards, and they drew finally to a halt.

Minutes later, Leena sat near a fresh-kindled campfire, soaking up its warmth, her eyes fixed on the two figures sitting on the far side of the flickering flames. Neither she nor they spoke, though a strange smile peeked from the corners of the man's mouth.

Her shoulders and neck ached from the long hours spent wearing the heavy visored helmet, but to rid herself of the weight she had no choice but to remove the whole suit. The helmet on the SK-1 pressure suit could not be removed, another safeguard on the part of the chief designer, out of fears his cosmonauts would panic in their capsules and remove them while still in flight.

Leena removed the heavy gloves, awkwardly loosening the clasps holding them connected to the oversuit and then shaking them to the ground, her bare hands luxuriating in the free air for the first time in hours, if not days. With her hands free, she began working at the fasteners and fixtures holding the oversuit in place. In theory, the suit was designed for a cosmonaut to remove without aid, since the Vostok capsules were intended to land across a broad and sometimes unpredictable range of terrain. Even so, Leena had never removed a suit on her own before, always able to call on the Star City technicians when necessary.

Now, as she bent and twisted into uncomfortable contortions to reach inaccessible fasteners, she wished she had a few of those technicians on hand now.

“Do you need any assistance?” asked the man from across the fire.

It took Leena a moment to sift through her long-disused English vocabulary and parse out the man's meaning.

“Net,” she answered, and then quickly translated, “No.”

The man replied with a shrug, and sat back to watch. The black-furred jaguar man at his side made a noise back in his throat that might have been a growl, or a chuckle, Leena could not say which.

Finally, Leena managed to strip off the orange nylon oversuit and attached helmet, and the heavy leather boots, and was left standing in the grey-checked pressure liner. It was form-fitting and warm, too warm for the humid night air, but it was lightweight, and that at least was some small comfort.

Suddenly, the black-furred jaguar man was on his feet, bounding to Leena's side. She shrank back, raising her arms defensively, wishing her Makarov was in her hands and not still snugged at the waist of the other man. The jaguar man's attention was not on Leena, though, but on her discarded oversuit. He grabbed it up in one claw-tipped hand, removed a wicked-looking knife from a sheath at his hip, and with three sure moves cut loose the helmet from the material of the suit.

The jaguar man tossed the helmet to the ground by the fire, and proffered the orange nylon oversuit to Leena.

“It is warm,” the large figure said in his baritone grumble, his English laced with an indefinable accent. “Wear this instead; it will be cooler.”

Warily, Leena reached out and accepted the oversuit.

“Spasibo,” she said, thanking him. The jaguar man nodded, solemnly, and then padded back to the far side of the fire.

All modesty forgotten, she stripped out of the pressure liner, naked for the briefest moment, shivering even in the humid air, and then put back on the orange nylon oversuit and the heavy leather boots. When she had done, she sat back cross-legged on the ground, and opened up the case of her survival kit.

As she inventoried the contents, working out what was useful, what was damaged and what wasn't, the English-speaking man on the far side of the fire kept watching her, that strange half-smile peaking the corner of his mouth. He wore a loose-fitting white shirt, a pair of dark trousers, and high boots that came almost to his knees. Across his lap lay his scabbarded sword, while at his side rested a satchel.

And still he didn't speak.

Finally, Leena could stand it no longer.

“Kto…?” she began, then stopped herself, dredging up the necessary vocabulary. “Who are, and…how you here come?”

“I already told you,” the man said with a smile, his teeth flashing white in the firelight. “My name is Hieronymus Bonaventure.”

“Hyr-ronn-eye-mush,” Leena repeated, taking each syllable in turn, with some difficulty.

“Call him Hero,” growled the jaguar man. “Trust me, it's just easier.”

“Hero,” Leena said, trying out the sound. Much better. “But why? Come you here how, to what place is this?”

The man called Hieronymus tilted his head to one side, trying to work out the meat of her question. Then he nodded, and crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes on the middle distance.

“I was an officer in His Britannic Majesty's Navy during the recent troubles, the war against the French and later against their Emperor Napoleon, and through misadventure I was thrown overboard in a squall on the South Pacific Seas. I thought myself dead for certain, my sins caught up with me at last, but in the midst of a surging wave I found myself falling through a mirrored hole. It was a hole in the midst of the air itself, and through it I fell into other waters. I found myself in the Inner Sea of Paragaea, and was taken onboard one of the cities of Drift.” He paused, and smiled wistfully. “I was lucky to be taken in as a member of their community, as among the people of Drift, everything found floating on the waves is either Food, Fuel, Furniture, or Family. Nothing escapes categorization into one of those four classes.”

Leena looked at him, her eyes narrowed. She'd been able to absorb only parts of the man's narrative, but those small parts had made little sense.

“Chto? The year, it is 1964,” Leena said sharply. “You are madman, think you battle Napoleon, buried last century?”

The man shook his head.

“No, I am not mad, or if I am, it is on other grounds entirely. Time moves differently between the two worlds, Earth and Paragaea, and not all doors open onto the same era.”

Leena kept her gaze steady, considering what he'd said.

“And he?” she said, pointing to the jaguar man. “How is such thing possible? Such man?”

“What? Balam?” the man answered. “He's a native to this land, one of the nation of the Sinaa, the jaguar people of the Western Jungle. Once coregent of the nation, he was cruelly…” The man stopped, and looked to his companion apologetically. “I'm sorry, Balam, perhaps you'd prefer to tell your own tale?”

The jaguar man shrugged.

“No, you go ahead,” he said, through a saber-toothed smile. “I'm not the one in love with the sound of my own voice.”

The man seemed not to notice the jibe, but continued on, unabated.

“Balam, as I said, was once one of the rulers of the jaguar nation of the Western Jungle. His sisters, his former coregents over the nation of the Sinaa, ousted Balam and replaced him with his cousin, Gerjis, who had poisoned their minds against their brother with his twisted religiosity. The coregents of the Sinaa now argue for an alliance of some kind with the wizard-kings of the Black Sun Empire. Balam's cousin is a follower of Per, the leader of the Black Sun Genesis, a religion among the metamen that preaches that the wizard-kings in their Diamond Citadel of Atla, with their science and ancient machines, are not just mortal men, but are in fact the creators and gods of metamankind.”