Fool's Paradise Snippet
Chapter 2 - Orientation
Here’s the second chapter of my stand alone novel, Fool’s Paradise. It’s the tale of an interstellar freelance operative, who is hired to retrieve something of value from a planet which has descended into chaos. Before long, he figures out the job is going to be a lot more complicated than anticipated.
If you'd like to read on: https://novusmundibooks.com/product/fools-paradise
And more of my work can be found here: www.raytabler.com
Chapter Two - Orientation
The sensor visor and the ear button were in their usual pouch, but I hesitated. Eyes and ears don’t see as well, but sometimes they see more.
There had been several dozen jungle worlds on which I’d plied my trade with similarities among them. Yet, there was subtle difference in color and smell. The hot wind towards the bay rocked me as I crouched on the tower. I eased into the environment of the city once called Xanadu, inch by inch.
All was darkness, but shades of gray spread before and below me. The jungle showed a mysterious hue, more black than green. The river reflected the wan light, a ribbon of starlight draped across the landscape. At intervals milky pearls shimmered and roared, the twelve waterfalls of Xanadu. The river dropped four hundred meters from one side of the city to the other.
This dramatic landscape was the primary reason for Xanadu’s existence. It had provided breathtaking vistas for the palaces of the Empire’s elite. I had a sweeping view of the vast amphitheater in which Xanadu sprawled.
I fitted the visor and ear button in place and transformed the scene below. The suite of available modes displayed the remains of the city in ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum – infrared, amplified visible, ultraviolet and so on. Each painted the valley in a different light.
The periphery of the visor offered helpful information such as direction, ranges, elevation, and atmospheric conditions. Nano sensors woven into the surface of the suit tasted the wind and revealed the fragrant blend of rotting vegetation, rust, and dust as nature reclaimed the city.
Gods above, it felt good to wear ops suit again!
My kit wasn’t a military issue scout model. Those are stealthy enough, but the man inside is, after all, a soldier. Camouflage is but one of a list of competing priorities. At some point he will be required to engage an enemy, coordinate supporting heavy weapons fire, probe targets with active sensors.
A Committee stealth suit, in contrast, is more shadow than substance and doesn’t officially exist. There is an AI to manage the systems, but it’s dumbed down to the point of imbecility to guard against tell-tale emissions characteristic of higher order electronic brains. Wearing a Committee stealth suit is much like becoming a ghost, silent, unseen and unsuspected.
Hemica’s pale blue rings twinkled with reflected sunlight. Hemica’s rings were quite unstable and were slowly condensing, rendering Hemica and Xanadu almost uninhabited.
There were some people in Xanadu. I could pick out the faint smudges of campfires in the sweep of the city below. For the most part, the fires clustered along the twisting river, but a few scattered throughout the flats. The high ground remained dark as the grave.
So, here they were. Being briefed about Hemica’s current residents was one thing. Seeing their campfires was something else. The people had chosen to step back several millennia. They’d run away from the first rescue ships and hid during the subsequent evacuations. No one knew why, and, as far as I could tell, no one cared.
I raised the special locator device and swept it around in wide arcs.
“This will guide you to the item.” Horatio had explained.
“What is this item?”
“You simply don’t need to know yet, old boy. Don’t worry, a resourceful chap like you should have no trouble bringing it to the pick-up point.”
The locator chirped and, pointed to the item. I ran the sweep again with the same result. The item lay in the middle of the largest clump of campfires.
“It would,” I stowed the locator away. “It just would.”
Fate seems to enjoy games with me. Fine. I learned through long and unpleasant experience when Fate plays with you, it's best to play along.
The cluster of fires was hard upon one of the waterfalls, five kilometers distant. Five kilometers over flat ground takes a couple of hours, at a leisurely pace. Five kilometers through the resurgent jungle that choked Xanadu's streets could take much longer.
There was no reason to reach the objective before local dawn. Still, I could imagine that bitter, old bitch Fate cackle and reach for the dice. I resolved to allow her as few rolls as possible.
It was a hard slog. The stars wheeled above and Xanadu's sun had just appeared over the bay when the campfires registered at close range.
I heard a faint sound, a ghost of laughter on the wind. The suit’s audio receptors didn’t detect it again. Instead, the cacophony of a jungle dawn filled my ears. A check of sensors revealed no threats nearby.
Had I heard it? Perhaps, it was a guilty memory come back to haunt me and not the high-pitched human giggle of a predator native to a planet halfway round the galaxy. I crouched, sifted the wind for the sound.
“You’re getting old and jumpy, Evan. Nobody would be stupid enough to bring one of those here.” I mumbled and moved on.
A village squatted on the bank of the river at the top of the falls. There were a few dozen huts, wall panels from abandoned mansions lashed together with vines. The fact the villagers had bothered to drag the panels here, instead of simply occupying one, or more, of the mansions spoke volumes, written in a language I didn’t yet understand.
The village clustered around the foot of a bridge to an island in the middle of the river. The rocky downstream end jutted into mid-air from the midst of the falls. In earlier days, the overlook had been the centerpiece of the park, surrounding the highest waterfall in the city. One could stand on the precipice and look straight down almost a hundred meters to the swirling mist at the foot of the falls. The thunder of the impact of the river after the free fall supplied a constant rumble I could feel through the ground.
The village stirred to life with the rising sun. I had arrived too late to find and recover the item before people awoke. No matter, time was one thing I had to spare. I circled, just inside the jungle, looking for a likely place to pass the day in concealment. A towering tree with thick foliage promised an excellent vantage point. I climbed thirty meters. A man-thick bough with a gap in the leaves offered a bird’s eye view of the village.
If I leaned against the trunk, the crude structures and smoking cook fires of the village disappeared from view and I could pretend the park was as I remembered it, all of those years and lives ago. The bridge still shone silver gray in the morning light.
The last time I crossed it I had a young woman on my arm. Celeste floated next to me in a diaphanous gown. True love made her shine brighter in my eyes than the stars above. We strolled through the blossom-scented evening from a ball where the children of the galaxy’s wealthiest citizens danced with a languid grace, knowing the universe awaited. The river rushed past, over the edge, and thundered at our feet.
“Evan.” Celeste breathed into my chest, something strange in her voice “Evan, I don’t know how to say this.”
She stepped away, placed her hands on the railing that ringed the overlook. I stepped as near as I dared. The railing chilled my palm in the muggy night air.
“Say what?” The words felt like lead.
“It’s not going to work out, Evan.”
“What do you mean?”
She closed her eyes, sighed. “We’ve had fun. That’s all it was. I know you want more. I’m not the one to give you that.” Celeste turned and her faced hardened. “It’s time to stop pretending I am.”
She left me on the island, her footsteps hollow on the bridge.
A villager broke the spell when he crossed the bridge to the island, a bundle of brush over his shoulder. He was followed by another and another. I watched as half a dozen villagers erected a stake on the island and piled brush around it.
It didn’t bode well for someone.
I wondered if that someone was me, but they would have tried to capture me before showing they intended to burn me at the stake. No one had glanced in my direction. Some other unfortunate was to be the guest of honor.
A sweep of the locator device over the village showed the item was in a rather large hut near the bank end of the bridge. I leaned back against the bole of the tree to wait and contemplated more memories.
End of Chapter 2
If you’d like to read more, Fool’s Paradise is available here: https://novusmundibooks.com/product/fools-paradise
More of my work can be found here: