The Blue-Spangled Blue

By David Bowles

Once the center of human expansion into distant space, Jitsu was isolated for the better part of a century. Professor Brando D’Angelo accepts a teaching position on the theocratic planet, drawn by the promise of a new life. But his relationship with architect Tenshi Kuroda, leader of a religious reform movement, will thrust him into a terrifying power struggle that will change his life forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: VAO Publishing
• Release date: Dec 20, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450706322

David Bowles

David Bowles is the award-winning Mexican American author of They Call Me Guero and other titles for young readers. Because of his family’s roots in Mexico, he’s traveled all over that country studying creepy legends, exploring ancient ruins, and avoiding monsters (so far). He lives in Donna, Texas.

Book preview

Part I:

Brando

Chapter 1

Shimmering notes gave way to rhythmic strumming, a bright flamenco pattern that spread in gypsy waves throughout the cabin, insinuating itself into every sterile, metallic nook and cranny. Soon his voice joined the syncopated sound, just for the chorus, an old lovesick refrain refracted through bitterness into a nuanced rainbow of regret and yearning. His father’s face, blurred by time and his own weak memory, hovered for a moment in his mind, its features nearly coalescing, almost coming into focus. Then the ship’s intercom went live, and the visage shuddered and was gone.

Passengers: strap yall in. We’re gun stop purling the gimmal in a couple minutes as we approach the platform, so there’s gun be no gravity. More instructions after we osculate.

Professor Brando D’Angelo stopped his wandering fingers on the fretboard of the guitar and slid its mahogany and cherry wood curves back into the suspension case. The ancient instrument was the only object his father had left behind when he’d abandoned the family ten years ago, and Brando had had to fight his mother to keep it. It was the first of a series of increasingly ugly quarrels, the core of each of which, his mother insisted, was Brando’s similarity to his pa. He lost many of them, but not that initial one. Months later, as he had been changing the gut strings, he’d found a small slip of paper adhered to the inside of the body. Quando ti senti solo, guarda al cielo e pensa a me. Guarda al blu, Brando. When you feel lonely, look up into the sky and think of me. Look up into the blue, Brando.  Sobs had wracked his body for an hour that day, and for the first time he’d felt some relief.

It was only temporary.

The soft voice repeated its instructions in Solar Standard, that offshoot of English considered the lingua franca of human space, and Brando quickly stowed the case in the closet mesh. Crossing his cabin in three strides, he sat in the g-seat and did as the swain had ordered. Momentarily the inner shell of the Velvet ceased spinning, and his backside and thighs lifted slightly from the seat at the sudden absence of gravity, pressing him against the strapmesh. He felt no nausea, unlike at the beginning of the trip. Months of gene treatments during his long voyage had slowly adapted him to the low gravity that centuries of space-faring humans had become accustomed to. His calm stomach was almost worth the pain he’d had to go through to leave Earth behind and embrace the stars. It also helped that going back to that ice-girdled world to live was now largely —at least in economic terms— out of the question, a fact that suited him just fine.

After completing a series of complex maneuvers its passengers could only guess at, the Velvet docked with the orbital platform, named Lásaro in honor of the undead messenger who’d supposedly given the revelation that had started Neo Gnosticism six and a half centuries ago. A completely religious planet. Like if my fanatic family wasn’t enough.

Brando poked his head through the irising door of his cabin. Several passengers were already making their way down the texas’ corridor to the starboard lift, a half-dozen slender portbots swerving out of their way.

Oy, the linguist called to one of the semi-sentient porters, give me a hand with my baggage, what. 

The green-gold portbot wheeled over and hefted his bags, turning with deft quickness in the direction of the lift.

Careful with the guitar case, ‘bot. Don’t be dropping it or setting it face down, what. That instrument is priceless and older than… hell, older than robots.

The portbot nodded its understanding and continued down the corridor. Brando followed close behind, casting a final glance around at the plush, broad walkway. Hugo Mann, the captain of this ship, had permitted the linguist and a few other VIPs rooms in the texas, that section of a ship where typically only officers slept. The special passengers had shared several pleasant meals with Captain Mann during fenestrations, avoiding for brief periods of time the cramped hypostasis pods in which the majority of the passengers, mainly pilgrims of little economic means, had spent the entire journey. 

Once the lift hushed to a stop on the docking deck, however, the class distinctions abruptly ended. All thirty-five travelers were herded out of the aging vessel, down the opaque white tube of the narthex that temporarily joined ship to station, through a laughable customs check, and into a quarantine ward. 

Christ Jesus, muttered one of the VIPs, a corporate field agent named Bartolomeo something-or-the-other. More naffing sitting round, bored off our arses.

Brando sighed in agreement, but didn’t take up the implied offer of conversation. Instead, as he sat waiting to be prodded and probed, Brando’s weary mind reviewed his unexpected trip, from his spur of the moment decision to reject tenure at the University of Milan in favor of this extra-solar job, to the agonizing gene therapy he’d had to endure, to the months spent in hypostasis, encased in gel during the acceleration to and deceleration from holing (as fenestration, travel through higher dimensional space, was colloquially called). The definitiveness of his choice still had not quite sunk in, not even three months after his having told his mother va fa’n culo and leaving Earth.   He wanted to feel free, liberated at last from his family’s mediocrity and meddling, but he just felt empty, with a vague sensation of guilt lurking at the periphery of consciousness. You left them behind. Just like your pa. Sailed away into the blue.

His name was called. Brando shook his head clear of its anxious fog and went to see the doctor. The procedures were less intrusive and humiliating than he’d been expecting, and his mind wandered during the procedures as he daydreamed about the people and places he’d soon become acquainted with.

Finally the medical staff cleared the young professor, and he followed glowing arrows on the floor to the shuttle lobby to await transport to the surface. In the lounge a large oval viewport afforded him a glimpse of the planet he would now call home, the semi-legendary world that had once been the stopover for humanity’s expansion, till the Conduit had been closed. Jitsu: a brown globe with swatches of yellow and gray-blue, basking in the radiation from the twin suns of the Eta Cassiopeiae system. 

Brando’s attention drifted to the northern continent, the only one not completely strip-mined a century before, and he penetrated the straggly clouds in his mind’s eye to recall the juncture of three distinct regions: a civilized crescent hugging the last native jungle, all washed-out sickly-looking flora, as though sapped of life by the despotic heat; an ominous mountain chain, unearthly tall and sporting a presumably extinct volcano; and the great desert yawning like some ancient Muslim hell to the south. Home. He’d spent hours in faux-lifes while in hypostasis, virtually skimming the surface of the strange world. Despite its ugliness, he longed to step down onto that yellow soil and inhale the thin air, letting its warmth slowly thaw his soul.

In the shuttle bay, there was some shouting and indignant posturing as a group of men in black uniforms insisted they be given the next transport. After scrutinizing a data pad their leader handed him, the pilot reluctantly announced to the Velvet’s passengers that they’d have to wait another six hours for the next transport. Brando sighed and watched through the viewport as the black vessel curved outward and then down toward Jitsu, becoming a speck and then disappearing in the yellow-streaked atmosphere. Soon I’m a loose me in that alien blue, he reassured himself, and he went off in search of a com terminal to notify the university of the delay.

A virtual purgatory at the desert’s hopeless edge, the Matawasuki district, one of fifty-three across the northern continent, moved sluggishly through its quotidian routines. In one of its apparently most unremarkable towns, Kinguyama, a suggestively black transport settled quietly down beside Samaneino Genshi, the local church, as about a dozen pilgrims, freshly arrived from their home-world Ninsianna, stepped inside, eager to meditate in the same shrine of enlightenment that had served the Oracle when she was a child. This was a very moving moment for the travelers. An epiphany.

The transport doors slid open; Chago and his crew trod dust, weapons check an automatic reflex, a glance from the cap to each kujin, each loyal foot soldier, more than enough to set up the formation.  El Chore and Pako lead four to the left; Gusano and Lalo, three to the right: all fanning out in a triangle with Tripõ, the monster of the crew, at the apex. Their cap, Chago Martin, ambled along at the center, the core, glorying in the moment; he and his boys were one organism, a fluid predator stalking, crouching, twitching.  

Striking.

Tripõ tapped the genshi’s door open. Some thirty heads twisted about, local Neo Gnostics and pilgrims crossed-legged on the floor. Chago’s crew filed in decisively, encircling the Neogs, who, in their drug-induced stupor, could only continue their slow head rotation as they stared uncomprehendingly at the mobsters. Strange by-products of meditation.

Fucking holed, remarked Pako unnecessarily.

Chago crossed the concrete floor to the robed woman he’d been told was the giya.

Where’s the place you keep your tubes?

Tubes? As if she didn’t speak Standard, the bitch.

"In nanno rau tubo da ka, puta?" In Baryogo, just in case.

Don’t know.

Yall just sucked down thirty. They appear out of fucking nowhere, or what?

She shrugged. Typical Neog. Reject reality. Chago unholstered his chrome and popped her roughly across the jaw. Meditation broken, a trickle of blood at the commissure of her mouth, the location of the drugs suddenly occurred to her.

Back there. A jerk of her head. No fear apparent in her eyes.

Show us.

She led Chago and Tripõ to the back of the genshi. A short hallway of curved ceiling ended in a small, closet-like office. The giya gestured languidly at a box next to the laminate desk. 

In there. Coded to my thumbprint.

Right. Open it.

The giya slowly shook her head.

"You heard me, bitch? Open it! Oupen asero zo!"

She simply lowered her head and said nothing. Chago felt a rush of violent anger squeeze his chest like a vice, cutting off his breathing. They always got to be defiant, he inwardly raged. Never can just bloody cooperate. Not trusting his voice for the anger that gripped him, Chago nodded, dialed up projectile: 10 cm on his chrome, and in a sudden deft movement buried its barrel in her dreadlocks, at the base of her skull, slanting upward forty-five degrees, and drove into her brain a bull that exploded right below the neo-cortex of her frontal lobe. Her dope-smoothed forehead blew violently outward, spattering the wall above the desk with gray matter, blood, bone fragments and clumps of reddish-brown hair. Her body collapsed, its limbs loosened for all eternity, its ruined head smacking resoundingly against the edge of the desk. Chago stared at the lifeless form, forcing himself to examine it coldly: a dead piece of meat. Not a human being at all. His chest slowly loosened.

Damn, Chago. Tripõ stared at the woman's crumpled form, estimating her weight. Then he shrugged, muttered fuck it and bent, hefting his trucha and activating its laser blade. With surgical precision he removed her right hand and used it to open the chest. Inside were about 500 thin metallic cylinders containing moku, Neog drug of choice for meditation. Tripõ began scooping them into a bag he’d carried with him.

They’s a lot of tubes, Chago. But, uh, why you pop her lid like that?

Chago roused himself from his trance and growled, "Kill a giya, or any Neog, by blowing out their brains, you ruin their chances of quantum enlightenment. That’s what they believe. Brain don't gots no time to release the energy, some shite like that. Puras pendehaaz. Anyways, that’s what Nestor told me I should do it to her."

So, what, now we do the rest?

Look, you fucking dumb-arse, you didn’t heard Nestor, ain’t it? Just the giya and the pilgrims. The native Neogs, they ain’t to be touched. Got it?

Yeah, yeah. Hey, lookit.

Tripõ gestured at the desktop. Chago hadn’t noticed before, but there were several small data pads spread haphazardly across it. He lifted one, wiping blood from it with feigned nonchalance.

"Bendita Mariya. We got us a bonus, kwate. Dumb-arse giya didn’t uploaded the pilgrims’ offerings. Couple of thousand credits here, we split ‘em, you and me. Give me your pad."

The upload was over in a question of seconds.

Konrau ain’t gun get mad?

Not if he don’t know about it. How he’s gun find out?

I ain’t saying shite.

Good.

They rejoined the others in the main chamber of the genshi. The Neogs had begun to shake their reverie, due in great part to the explosion of a few minutes before. Chago nodded to Pako, who started separating the locals from the rest and herding them to one corner of the room. Just like we planned, Chago reflected proudly. Kicking bluish-tinged kleinballs derisively out of the way, Gusano prodded the pilgrims to their feet with the barrel of his konk rifle, took a step back, chose one at random, and fired. The directed blast lifted the off-worlder, a lithe, blond youth, Martian from the looks of him, off his feet, throwing him upward and back. Gusano’s second blast sent him spinning like rag doll through the air, and the third ripped his head completely off his shoulders, showering the image of Domina Ditis that hung crookedly on the wall with a hail of bluish red.

"Pura Ermandá," he muttered, making a circle with the forefinger and thumb of his left hand, arm akimbo, and pressing the circle to his heart, the remaining three fingers splayed awkwardly downward and to the right. The sign of the Brotherhood. 

Chago, embarrassed, suppressed a shudder. A mademan like himself was supposed to feel nothing when chloroforming cattle like these. Years in klikas and on crews was supposed to burn all compassion for squares out of a brother completely. Chago had never been free of that twinge of humanity, however, and it shamed him beyond words. This shame soon morphed into the accustomed clamping sensation, which even now he again felt on his heart, and he always ended up directing it at his victims. 

His men, if they felt something similar, didn’t show it. El Chore stepped up to a woman whose mouth had just opened as if to scream. Ramming his lazgat all the way in against her tonsils, he blew the back of her head out. The pilgrims behind her, bathed in ichor, felt click within them the natural impulse of self-preservation, an instinct no amount of meditation or drugs could easily erase.   They turned and began running with blind abandon, but el Chore calmly aimed his gat at one and punched a hole some five centimeters in diameter through his spine and out his abdomen. The Neog twisted as he fell, sizzling intestines flapping unspeakably at his sides. The second was similarly dispatched, sprawling in the dust as darkness slammed a hand forever across his eyes.

The other pilgrims, though now quite agitated, were easier to take out: mainly head blows, make it look like a crazy Neog civil unrest problem, not allow anyone to reach gnosis. A couple of the kujin wanted to have their way with the women, but Chago told them to back off. Nestor’s instructions had been very precise: get the tubes; kill the giya and the pilgrims. No fucking around. He didn’t dare add that the very thought of such violations brought his Sandra’s face to his mind in precisely the place he hoped she’d never see him.

Pako had to knock a couple of the locals around in order to rein in their hysteria at the sight of the slaughter. When one Neog began to scream uncontrollably, the foot soldier, enraged, punched her in the mouth, destroying most of her front teeth. She was relatively quiet after that, as were the others.

The massacre was over in a matter of minutes, and Chago gave the signal to exit. Tripõ destroyed the lockpad of the door once it had closed, effectively trapping the locals inside with the carnage, as the majority of Neog buildings had only one entrance. Chago figured it would probably be close to nightfall before anyone came to the genshi. With the lousy Civil Security Jitsu’s theocratic government had, no one would ever track him and his crew.

Once back in the basement suite of a hotel near the space port, the expansive 500 square meter set of quarters and offices that served the Brotherhood as a base of operations on Jitsu, Chago linked to Nestor via faux-conferencing. The virtual room was entirely black except for the pool of light surrounding the table at which sat Chago and Nestor's doppelgangers, virtual selves designed for faux-activities.

You did it? Nestor's face appeared unreadable as always. Of course, he could have programmed his doppelganger to look that way for the con, but Chago knew from experience that this was the only expression the boss's adviser ever wore.

Yeah; it's done. Everything like you said. As always, Chago felt embarrassed by his inability to master Kaló, the Brotherhood's official language, so to speak. He'd unfortunately been taken as a child by his mom to one of the colonies where mainly Solar Standard and Baryogo were spoken, and by the time his dad, a famous Brotherhood general, had tracked the bitch down and ripped his son from her dying arms, Chago was already an adolescent. He'd never really picked the language up after that, especially since most of the little brothers he worked with also spoke Standard, so he’d basically remained pocho, unable to enter the inner circle regardless of his bloodline. Despite this impediment, his excellence as a foot soldier had gotten him quickly promoted and finally made. He'd have to learn the language soon, though; it was one of the conditions, along with his acceptance of the holiness of Baby Fidensio, of his atypical confirmation last year. Fuck. His stomach churned just thinking about all the postponing he was doing. The boss wasn't going to be pleased.

No locals hurt?

Nah, Nestor. I said I did what you told me to. I'm not to be trusted, or what?

"Kalmau, ese. We trust you. Good job. Now hang silent a couple weeks... we gun keep yall updated.   Things starting to move, understand? Be plenty jobs for yall little brothers."

We taking Jitsu, say not?

Things you don't know can't be taken out of you, got it? You don't worry about the bigger picture. Just do the jobs me and Konrau give you, the way we tell you to do them, and things gun be just fine. Right?

Right.

"Now, put those tubes to good use, Chago. Get some panocha, live it up, you and your crew. Things gun get real busy for yall real soon. Thumbing off."

Chago Martin moved his head out of the path of the thousand dancing beams of light that seconds ago had been triggering his synapses like mad. A smile stretched across his face. We're taking this bloody place. I know it. The Brotherhood, long the most powerful crime syndicate in all of human space, seemed on the precipice of something even greater. Chago wasn’t the brightest of men, but he felt certain that this spinning nightmare of a planet was only the beginning of a much grander move toward domination of all of human space. He imagined for a moment that he’d been chosen specifically for this job, been made in the most unorthodox of confirmation ceremonies, precisely because of his talents. He’d obviously caught Beserra’s eye, and now he was being prepped to take charge of this planet’s conquest. Afterward, who knew? Perhaps he’d be installed as sub-kasike, under-boss of this hellhole, answering only Konrau himself. For a few moments he gloried in his imaginary promotion.

Only in the darkest, most inaccessible recesses of his mind did an unheeded voice suggest that he had been chosen because his superiors considered him wholly and irrevocably disposable.

Chapter 2

Hungrily, Santo Kuroda slid his finger down the glass, scrolling through the inspired words of Founder Dresch, the first allogene, the Holy Prophet of the Ogdoad. His diligence had long ago burned away all feeling but this: an insatiable hunger for quantum enlightenment. A nail click halted the scroll, and Santo highlighted a section with a deft leftward sweep. He preferred manually manipulating the holy text, voice commands tending to shatter his focus and detract from meditation. Today’s passage was from General Theology. The language was archaic, the Prophet having used American English when uploading the Revised Bible to the old Earthnet from prison some six hundred and fifty years ago, but Santo had spent five decades pouring over the holy words and could glean their meaning nearly always without referring to modern translations:

The politicians and the intellectual elite believe they have spirited away the keys of gnosis and hidden them; however, they themselves have not entered, nor do they grant entrance to those who desire it. You, however, be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.

The last line echoed in Santo’s mind, first in Standard (but yall got to be so clever like snakes and so innocent like doves), then in Baryogo (utee zurui komo bibora i inosen komo paroma dero). As always, the voice he heard in his head was his mother’s. He remembered her expounding on this particular verse, urging him to keep in mind the basic tenet of Neo Gnosticism—quantum enlightenment through total self-knowledge—and to avoid the moralistic pratfalls that so many Neogs were prone to. No good, no bad, she reminded him.  Only what is and what’s gun come. And most important: you. She had instilled in him, before her own blessed translation, the skill to see what others needed in order to attain gnosis and an understanding of his own importance in ensuring the enlightenment and translation of his fellow Jitsujin. 

This, he insisted to those who questioned him, was the only motivation for his slow but steady climb up the theocratic ladder of Jitsu’s political hierarchy. Ambishon jana. Not ambition.  Never.

A beep of a distinctive timbre and Santo’s index finger popped the com icon in the right corner of his compad.

"Moshi."

Allogene Kuroda. Good after. Sorry I’m disturbing you.

Norman Bec. Secretary to the Archon himself.  Originally an off-world Neog, from Dhara in the Rigil Kentaurus system, Bec spoke Baryogo terribly, so he insisted on using Standard even when speaking with Church officials. His left eyebrow arched slightly, awaiting the standard response.

No problem. Just studying the Founder’s words.

You be enlightened.

You too. Why the undeserved attention? Your shoulders are burdened with a great amount of responsibilities to bother with an unknowing prefect like me.

Very humble, but very wise. Archon Rabeo trusts in your judgment. You’re aware of the bandit situation?

"Un. How I could not? A genshi in my district was attacked just yesterday, the sacrament stolen, some pilgrims killed. The giya, one of my former students, murdered. You think I'm insensitive to this?"

It is clear you’re not. Apologies if I implied another thing. We know you have your district security team investigating. What their conclusion is? Junkheads?

No doubt. But they downloaded many pilgrims’ credits not shunted to the bank.

Civil Security is at your disposition, if you need it. They're also investigating similar cases in several districts. Not massacres, but stealings and damages. But CS is not prepared for this kinds of cases. No training, no experience. There's no need to point out that the Archon requires a better solution than to leave it in their hands.

"Tell him to stop immigration.  Jitsujin jana."

"You sure this ones are not local? How it is you can know? Anyways, to stop immigration isn’t the solution the Archon wants to hear. We got the task of cleaning up the southern continent and Salty Sea still to be finished, a task that it’s gun take us at least a century, even if we increase immigration five percent ever year for the next decade. This world needs more backs and minds."

Make the people have more babies.

And distract them from gnosis? Allogene, you’re playing with me.

Santo sighed inwardly, displaying a neutral face to his compad. The price of power is I got to make these decisions, he reflected. If I hope to be Archon someday, I got to learn to accept that the tangled and meandering path we all got to walk to enlightenment at times seems to move away from its goal before reaching it. Long ago he’d decided he would go along with the present Archon’s policies, as detrimental to his peoples’ attainment of gnosis as he believed the influx of outsiders to be, as much as he despised the constant secularization of education (the recently expanded university) and government (the new Chamber of Deputies that supplemented the traditional theocracy). There would be time later to set things aright. For the time being, the many-tiered plan he’d set into motion more than two years ago would have to move on to the next level.

We got to create squads of range officers to guard the settlements. Recruit ex-members of the defunct Jitsu Liberation Army; hire... off-worlders with the necessary skills. Set up outposts along the edge of the Great Desert. Michiu Sosa is the perfect man to put in charge.

Bec’s excitement at the idea was immediately apparent to Santo, despite the secretary’s equally obvious attempts to hide it.

To me, it sounds exactly like what the Archon is looking for. You want me to patch you through for you could propose this direct?

Santo knew that Bec’s approval of the plan meant it would be implemented. Jitsu’s kakusha, Notika Rabeo, was decrepit and senile, and his decisions more often than not were whispered into his auditory implant by his wily secretary.

"Sure, Secretary Bec. You go ahead and patch me through. Be talking to you. You be enlightened."

You too.

Santo leaned back and awaited the face of the old fool he’d soon be replacing.

Twenty-five minutes later, he clicked off and tossed the compad away in disgust. Old fool, indeed. Rabeo had agreed with Santo that increased protection was necessary, that an anti-terrorism, anti-mob unit had to be established. But the idiot insisted that the Chamber of Deputies, full of reformists with six more years left to their seven-year terms, be the ones to decide its composition, duties and jurisdiction. No matter how many times Santo expounded on the Archon's need to exercise his emergency powers and set up the squads on his own, the decrepit liberal refused to budge. Obviously Santo had misjudged Norman Bec's influence on the man. Or perhaps this was Bec's doing. Miserable off-worlder!

Pacing about his spartan quarters, Santo weighed his options. He desperately needed to consult the Oracle, but the situation in Kinguyama was more pressing, a tale awaiting anxiously his expert management and spin. After calming himself with a thimbleful of moku, he pulled a highly illegal bouncecom from a hidden compartment at the base of a statue of the Founder, connected to his main com terminal and put a short call through. There ensued a few moments of encrypt/decrypt, and a stolid face rose from the flat surface of the terminal. With typical ambivalent blankness, Nestor Bos directed his black holographic eyes at the allogene.

Complications, ain't it? the mafioso said smugly.

Slight setback, but the timetable's gun stay aligned, don't worry you. Just get ready for movement.

Big or little, partner?

Santo wrinkled his nose as if in disgust. So clever like snakes, he reminded himself.

Not sure. Be ready for anything. You could handle that?

A sly grin. You bet, Prefect Kuroda. Anything you order up. Just remember: we get ours the time comes.

Unable to speak further with the infidel, Santo nodded and clicked off. There were moments when the deal he’d cut with L’ermandá, the Brotherhood, most powerful crime syndicate in the Consortium, twisted painfully in his mind and gut like the poison his instincts told him such agreements always turned out to be. But the Oracle assured him this unholy pact was the only way, and he faithfully obeyed. Still, weakness caused him to offer silent prayer.

Mother, Domina, Founder... give me strength to do what gots to be done.

Chapter 3

Brando was struck by three things as he stepped from the shuttle onto Jitsu’s ochre soil: the incredibly disorienting spring in his step due to the world’s lower gravity, the equally unsettling closeness of the horizon and the penetrating, relentless heat of the closer of the two red dwarfs—which glared with disgust at the usurpers of its satellite— and its more distant partner, now ducking behind the peaks of western mountains. He quickly adjusted the temperature setting on the condition suit that hugged his skin beneath his silk pants and shirt, slipping on a pair of dark shades to protect his eyes from the brutal UV light that bore down on him. 

He’d spent most of his trip in a faux-life of Jitsu, had felt the heat, seen the horizon, experienced the .4 gees. However, like many who log into a representation of a place and then spend time in keshiki, those virtual environments that seem so real to the faux-com user, Brando found that a certain something was missing from the faux-lifes, and he was not fully prepared for the reality of being there in person. Professor Calvino back in Milan would have muttered, Qualia. Whatever it was, it worked its way into D’Angelo’s brain perniciously.   Suddenly, his rash choice seemed insane. The hell I’m doing here? What a barren, blasted, miserable place to live out the rest of my life! But he knew the answer. The offer had been too tempting to pass up: a chance to teach at the first university on the first world colonized by humans outside their solar the system, the planet that had been the hub of space exploration for the nearly ninety years the old wormhole had lasted, the first human settlement begun by Soltec, that massive and ancient interstellar corporation, to win its independence. The job was an incredible opportunity, especially given the fact that Jitsu was the only place where a centuries-old dialect of Baryogo —D’Angelo’s specialty— was still spoken in virtually its original form. Now that the Consortium of Planets, Corporations and Colonies was actively advocating Jitsu's entrance into the fold, the world was once again becoming the focus of humanity's attention, and to be at the center of this historic blow to the hegemony of interstellar corporations was thrilling. Adding to these reasons his intense need to get the hell away from his family, Brando discovered he had potent motivation. The professorial position was more an excuse than anything else.

D’Angelo had done a careful study of Baryogo’s Old Chinese elements for his doctoral thesis, which was warmly received in all the right circles, but his proudest achievement was his virtual mastery of the language in conversation.

Or so he felt until reaching Jitsu.

"Danjero-kun!"

A towering, spindly man, some two and a half meters in height, waved his hands while snapping his fingers, oddly reminding Brando of a prissy schoolmarm he'd known in Milan. He recognized the figure as the head of the Modern Languages Department, a Mr. Noboru Taibo, with whom he’d conferenced (in Standard) several times. They bowed to each other in greeting, D’Angelo reflecting that despite his being pretty tall for an Earther (215 centimeters), most of the inhabitants of this planet, typically from Martian and Belter stock and therefore genetically altered for low gravity, were going to dwarf him physically.

"Muncho guto, Taibo-kun." 

The department head proffered a sketchy smile, and replied that the pleasure was all his:

"Bokuno guto da."

Brando had been expecting him to answer guto de boku da and was a little taken aback by the differences in the local dialect. As they began to walk toward the transport, Brando’s feeling of consternation grew: Taibo pointed out various landmarks and buildings around the port, explaining in Baryogo the significance of each, but the young professor realized he couldn’t understand a fourth of what was being said. It was similar to watching a Castilian seudo-novela from one of the Jupiter platforms: D’Angelo’s knowledge of Italian and Kaló allowed him to grasp much of the dialogue, but many of the details were lost on him. He was also becoming distracted by the low gravity: three months in hypostasis hadn’t weakened his muscles enough, and with every step he had to concentrate in order not to bound a meter into the air. 

You getting this? Taibo said, switching to Standard.

Well, being honest, yall’s dialect here is real different from the Baryogo they speak on Mars and thereabouts. Verbs conjugate different, lot of nouns are archaic. Reading an old text, I can go slow: here I got to keep up.

You're gun catch on real soon: just wait.

And he switched back to Baryogo as they boarded the transport and sped toward the university. Brando got a close up view of Station City, as the non-Jitsujin population called the metropolis that they had established around the port and in which off-worlders were politely but firmly urged by Neog leaders to live. A century and a half ago, the urb had housed the local headquarters of the infant CPCC Armed Forces and of Soltec and served as a springboard for Consortium expansion light years beyond Earth, but now it was neutral territory run jointly by the CPCC and Jitsu’s government. Very similar in construction and style to any number of space stations, platforms or even the newer districts of cities on ice-girdled Earth, the city sported metallic spires that glittered almost painfully in the overwhelming sunlight. Beautiful, but not nearly as breathtaking as the old quarter of his native Milan.

Soon they slipped out of Station City and into native Jitsujin territory, the university having been built at a neutral location between the capital and Station City. From the window seat he occupied, Brando contemplated with a slightly superior feeling of annoyance the squat clay buildings that characterized towns controlled by Dominian Neo Gnostics, utterly alien and primitive compared to the jealously protected and carefully preserved structures of Milan. The Dominian sect, D’Angelo’s research had told him, condemned expenditure of energy in the construction of complex architectonic designs, viewing such efforts as arrogant and shortsighted, since everything in the universe was destined for destruction save the souls created through quantum enlightenment. Adherents to this variety of Neo Gnosticism were urged to engage only in activities that turned the mind inward and promoted gnosis: meditation, drug use, church-designed faux-lifes, and a host of other ephemeral pastimes. Goals pertaining to this transitory physical world, like the erection of monuments and the attainment of material wealth, were considered nako: beneath the dignity of the eternal.

He quickly chided himself for being so petty. It was actually a relief to be surrounded by such simplicity. These sun-baked cubes, so different from the cold monuments of icy Milan, might sequester within themselves the warmth his bones ached for, here, a thousand light years away from the frigid indifference of his mother and brother. 

Nearly resigned to the mediocrity of the local architecture as the transport neared the outskirts of Jureshu, Jitsu’s capital, Brando was rather surprised to see the oddest and most compelling of buildings lifting itself up from the mire of mediocrity about it, thrusting at the sky almost defiantly, like a beaten yet beautiful woman holding her head high and spitting in her enemies’ faces.

Wow. What’s that?

"Kichigai. A work of a crazy doesn’t respect no one. Name’s Tenshi Kuroda. No one wanted it till the CPCC purchased it for offices. Good, cause Neogs don’t supposed to waste time in that kinds of activities."

"This Tenshi person built that? But they told me Jitsujin don’t earn money, they just give them credit allotments so they don’t lack nothing but can meditate, etcetera."

"En kurin shigotuta. Like off-worlder, sorry, she worked in clean-up crews for five years on the southern continent, ignoring gnosis, collecting credits, studying... architecture. The word was like an insult.   Then she moved to the city of muchino moumai, Station City, saberu ka, bought the lot and built that thing."

Incredible.

Incredible stupid.

Brando didn’t bother delving any further. There’d be sufficient time to discover the quirks and intricacies of the local personalities later on. It was obvious that Taibo was a rabid Neog, and without a doubt his version of any unsavory goings-on would be heavily tainted by that fanaticism. The fact that he had, in front of Brando, used the derogatory term for off-worlders, muchino moumai, the ignorant unenlightened ones, indicated that the department head either was oblivious to his bigotry or simply didn’t care.

The transport sidled up beside a motley collection of structures that, while definitely not run-of-the-mill clay boxes, were nowhere near as visually arresting as the CPCC office building. Instead, a pretentious confusion of styles and methods had apparently collided here at the western edge of the capital city. 

The University, Brando said to no one in particular. Being the first, it had not been given a name, though off-world the institution was referred to as the University of Jitsu.

"Un. Taibo nodded. Almost so ugly like Tenshi’s monstrosity."

They disembarked, stepping onto a slidewalk. Building after bizarre building trundled by, each making D’Angelo miss icy Milan just a bit more. The humanities building was little more than a Dominian box, with a pair of Dorian columns and a row of gargoyles in front, presumably to satiate the off-worlder faculty. Taibo showed D’Angelo his office, three by three