Magus Star Rising
Chapter Ten

The Yharria is a world unto itself,

unique and magical.

Any wonder of the imagination

can be realized there.

ALPHA-SENI TOURISM PROMOTION

The Yharria

Weller leaned against the stone dolmen that served as one of the entranceways to the Yharria, Frenati City’s infamous grand bazaar. The greatest of the ‘fringe districts’ Claudia Honin-Zay had called it.

With a sigh, he studied the steamy early evening scene that spread out before him, still impressive, even to the eyes of a jaded expatriate like him. The bazaar sprawled for dozens of city-blocks, winding its sinuous way through the middle of Frenati City. With the city’s buildings surrounding it in a gauzy and fragmented summer haze, the Yharria seemed to float within a shimmering heat mirage.

The sun of Alpha-Seni cast an orange pallor over the Yharria. Kiosks, booths, and pavilions housing bars, theaters, markets, and assorted storefronts jammed both sides of the long, crowded streets. A swirling odiferous mixture of sweat, dust, and food hung thickly in the air, drifting upward even to where Weller stood. Hover-jits and rickshaws darted like scrabbling insects among the throngs of visitors. A cacophony of almost surreal sights and sounds blasted the senses.

Just another day in the Yharria, Weller thought. The Terran lit a cigarette and watched the locals and off-world tourists swarm through the ancient, elevated archway and descend the four flights of stairs. All were intent on experiencing one of the planet’s premier ‘free-zones’.

Roughly translated in the ancient Senitte language, Yharria meant something akin to ‘jungle’. Weller figured the moniker was quite apropos. Although, bazaar, spelled just a little differently, would have sufficed just as well. Still, things had changed even in the short time he had lived on Alpha-Seni.

So much like Old Terra, he thought, flicking ash with a gloved finger. Although the new regime hasn’t done much better. Even a dung heap like this becomes gentrified in the end. It’s a wonder no one has set up guided tours. He smiled. Now that he thought about it, he would be a good candidate for a guide himself.

His tenure in the Yharria, even though ending only two years ago, had been another life, one of many Weller had lived over the years. It still surprised him he had taken this job. His memories of life in the bazaar were pleasant enough except for the ones that brought back the reasons he had eventually left. His sleep had been restless again last night, filled with a mixture of dread and anticipation. But, as the old Terrans had been fond of saying about needing money. To keep the wolf from howling at the door.

He sighed in resignation and got back to work. He’d parked his rented ground-car a few blocks away, outside the Yharria proper. No need to attract attention with such a vehicle. He wore more comfortable and cooler clothes. Thick-soled canvas shoes, a T-shirt, and loose trousers fitted his lean figure. Sun glasses covered his eyes. A wide-brimmed shade-hat would not only help shield his face from the sun but from possible witnesses. A supple pack hung over his shoulder. Weller looked like any multitude of visitors or workers that populated the bazaar at any given time. And, just to be on the safe side, a miniature buzz-pistol lay comfortably in his right pants pocket.

He looked down to the outer perimeter of the Yharria where Marcus Honin-Zay stood after being dropped off by his personal ground-car. The Senitte high-born wore his own minimal ‘disguise’ of a hooded laborer’s jacket, pants and boots. Weller detected no accompanying servants or bodyguards, which gave him more than a little cause to wonder.

Honin-Zay belonged to a pretty important and wealthy clan. Contact may not have been pulled off if not for his people. The threat of kidnapping or even murder by some anti-Rim World Conglomerate terrorist was real enough. Such incidents had happened in the past. Why no bodyguards?

Maybe that stick up his ass isn’t as big as I thought, Weller mused. Good. Makes my job that much easier though he probably has some kind of electronic warning or defense webbing concealed under his clothing.

Whatever the case, Honin-Zay seemed in no hurry, inspecting some trinkets at a ware-kiosk for all the world to see. Earth trinkets, Weller noticed as Honin-Zay bought something shiny and moved away into the crowd. Among the myriad races that coexisted on Alpha-Seni since it and the other rim worlds had been opened to trade, all things Terran proliferated. To such an extent that some indigenes, like the Honin-Zays themselves, had adopted Terran names as a sort of fashion statement. Weller shook his head at that strange fascination and stubbed out the cigarette on the wall of the dolmen. Damn chameleons, he thought.

His annoyance with the native population was quickly replaced by another emotion, one he had trouble defining. He was back in the grand bazaar, after all this time. What was the description of the sensation he felt in his stomach. ‘Butterflies?’ But as he thought of all the money he would make, he took a deep breath and stepped across the invisible border that separated Frenati City proper from the autonomous, free-zone known as the Yharria.

He might as well have stepped into another world. Immediately he caught the buzz. The excitement, the sense of wonder, the familiar smells and rush of danger. Turn back, he thought. Turn back now.

Too late he realized he had been pulled into the dreamy carnival atmosphere, much like when he had first arrived on Alpha-Seni. Even as he descended the stairs, a thousand smells filled his head; a babble of voices; a whirlwind of color and light despite the sunglasses. Emotions and memories long repressed came bubbling to the surface.

But Marcus Honin-Zay was a different story. A snob surely. Weller remembered him as one who thought himself above such attractions as the Yharria. Even more than that, he seemed content with his lot. And who wouldn’t be? Rich, successful, in control, married to a beautiful wife.

Yet here he was, a few yards ahead of Weller now, walking briskly through the crowd, pausing briefly to drop a credit disc into a beggar’s bowl (Beggars proliferated, Weller remembering there were so many mendicants in the bazaar they had their own guild!). Stopping again to watch an illusionist levitate an accomplice above the heads of admiring onlookers.

The crowds were heavy here in this part of the Yharria and quite colorful. A varied mix of high and low-born, richly-clad and poorly dressed, off-world curiosity seekers, and local characters, the wealthy and the poor, caste and guild members of all types, human and alien. All moved quickly, fanning out in every direction to get past the opening vendors to the more infamous attractions--the grappling matches, gaming stalls, mind-scanners, VR bars, morium dens, sex warrens, and, most notorious and secretive of all, the Turning Brothels. And with preparations being made for the upcoming Magus Star Festival, there seemed to be more excitement crackling in the air than usual.

Honin-Zay appeared immune to all of that. Except for a few more brief stops (a pastry stall, a rug kiosk, a street-flutist performance) he moved unerringly as if heading to a specific destination.

Weller had to keep his attention on his quarry. The flashiness of the Yharria distracted him with a cask-full of memories, not all of them good. Yet he had gotten over that period in his life, hadn’t he? Yes, he took pride in that. This trip was business only. He would be in and out and that would be the end of it. Just for a moment, he stopped and looked around, savoring the excitement.

A shoulder slammed against his, knocking him around. “Hey...!”

“So sorry, gentle sir! Pardon my clumsiness.”

Weller frowned at the Senitte male standing in front of him. He was tall and thin, dressed in a crudely woven but brightly colored striped robe, his thickly-locked hair decorated with paint and jewelry. A leather halfmask (some kind of cat-like creature) concealed the upper part of his gaunt face while a small body-painted star adorned both his left cheek and the back of his left hand. He carried a loose sheaf of papers and smelled strongly of morium. He stared at Weller, glassy, red eyes evident through the mask’s eyeholes. His features, what Weller could see of them, hardened.

“You are Terran?” the Senitte hissed with barely concealed distaste, displaying the extreme prejudice common to members of certain anti-alien cults. He took a few steps forward and circled Weller, looking him up and down with a dark, drugged eye.

“Stroke off,” Weller said, shoving by him. That settled it. He knew no cultists and as much as he hated to lower himself to clichés, a lot of the indigenes looked pretty much alike. This Senitte’s attitude screamed an “Alpha-Seni for Senittes, All Aliens Off” type. An anti-Inborn. There were many such groups and the papers he held were probably fliers filled with the usual accompanying doggerel. This one, though, now that he had recognized Weller’s racial type, was apparently looking for a fight and was a little more aggressive than most. A strong grip clamped onto Weller’s arm and whirled him painfully around.

“You Terrans have caused all this,” the Senitte whispered fiercely, his face inches from Weller’s, his Terran Standard slurred and heavily accented. “Intermarriages, Turning Brothels, Morium dens, the... the unnatural tech. Spreading out like festers from your dead, godless world, infecting all others. Vanera damn you all. Do you blame Senittes for wanting you gone?”

Weller had heard all of this before. He jerked loose but, despite the urgency of following Honin-Zay, couldn’t resist a counter-comment. “Don’t try to burn me off, friend. Your own people practically initiated First Contact. All that money in trade and tourism. Did you want to live like primitives forever? It’s the way of the world. Any world. Plus, I smell the morium on you. Wake up! It’s called progress.”

A sneer creased the Senitte’s face. “Progress? Primitives? Terran words and Inborn doctrine! Every sun more and more Senittes Turn. As you would say, we lose our best and brightest, yes? Without you, Senittes could be free! We wouldn’t lose our way, be seduced, to fall back to magic and ancient ritual to escape all this! We would walk our own path.”

Weller flipped him the bird, an ancient gesture but still effective, and turned away. What bullshit. The majority of the Senitte population had welcomed off-worlders, all off-worlders, with open arms and the society, and certainly benefited. Of course, not everyone agreed. There were always pockets of malcontents no matter where one traveled. The Inborns, with their doctrine of anti-technology, ancient magical rites, and the concept of Turning as a doorway to a better life, were one of the more radical cults, even more so than that of Vanera or the one this lunatic belonged to, whatever that was.

“I see in the path you walk a kind of Turning also, gentle sir!” the Senitte cried. “How will you handle that?”

What? Weller turned around but the cultist was gone, swallowed up by the crowd. He shook his head. What did that comment mean? He jerked, startled. A small crowd had gathered, obviously intrigued by the confrontation. Alien eyes looked Weller up and down, a smirk or two accompanied by a whispered comment and pointed finger were tossed in his direction. He turned away abruptly, his face and neck warm with embarrassment and irritation.

That type of run-in was typical in the Yharria, most would just ignore it. Then again, maybe it was a slow day today. Weller may have just provided a little diversion.

Stroke it! he chided himself after only a moment, angry he could so easily be distracted by a scut like that. He hoped he hadn’t lost Honin-Zay. There! He saw the merchant’s head and shoulders bobbing up ahead in the crowd. He must have paused again on his journey to still be in such proximity.

Lucky for Weller. If he lost Marcus, that wouldn’t say much for the supposed faith Claudia Honin-Zay had placed in him, let alone the money he would lose. He had to stay focused.

He picked up his pace, keeping Honin-Zay in sight. Suddenly Honin-Zay disappeared. Weller jogged after him, coming upon a side alleyway that zigzagged its way among a cluster of small shops. He darted into the alley where his quarry rounded a corner up ahead. Again, a moment of recklessness took Weller over. The alleyway was surprisingly deserted. He didn’t want Honin-Zay to see him but Weller had to keep him in sight. He ran around the corner of the alley.

“You followin’ me, Terran?”

Weller stopped and fell back a step. A man, hooded and dressed in the same laborer’s getup as Honin-Zay, stood in front of him. He, too, appeared to be a Senitte, his face scarred and worn, possibly by seasons of outdoor work. His accent was heavy but the gist of what he was saying was evident. A long knife glittered in one hand.

The wrong man. Weller thought, taking another step backward. He had lost Honin-Zay after all. Stupid! “No!” he said, a little too quickly. “Ah, I thought you were someone else. My apologies, friend.” Weller tried in vain to remember some of the Senitte he had picked up over the years. Oftentimes much was lost in the translation between the races. What was the word for screw-up?

It was then that Weller saw the alley wasn’t as empty as he had thought. A darkened cul-de-sac yawned at the end of the side street. From its shadows two other figures emerged. A tall Voofran, the muscular, reptilian humanoid dressed in the rag-tag, loose clothes of a street performer, and another Senitte, this one a young Outlander by the garish looks of him. He held a long, wooden staff casually at his side.

Shit. Weller licked his lips. Just run. Turn around and...

In a blur of motion, the knife pricked at Weller’s throat and the Outlander and the Voofran had flanked him. “Karda?” the man with the knife asked. “Or did Recha send ya?”

“None of the above,” Weller answered, a bead of sweat rolling down his back. “I just made a mistake.”

The Outlander said something in his native language and laughed. The Voofran hissed, his long tongue snapping in and out of his slit mouth. His cold, marble eyes stayed fixed on Weller.

Weller shuddered. He hadn’t had many dealings with Voofrans. Those that lived in the Yharria were mostly laborers and performers of one type or another and so he didn’t really have a reason for associating with them. But the old Terran aversion to reptiles still had a hold on his kind and exerted its influence when least expected.

“Yeah,” the man with the knife said with a snort. “Maybe you Ahnka. That’d be jet, huh?”

Common street thugs. Weller’s timing couldn’t have been more off. “Look,” he said reaching into his pocket and grasping the buzz-pistol. “I’ve got some credit discs, some lora in my pack. You know?”

The Outlander grinned. “Let’s see.”

Weller allowed the Outlander to take his shoulder bag, and with that slight distraction, he acted instinctively. Some forgotten training from his past took him over. There had been a time, long ago, when Weller had acquired certain skills to survive. He needed those skills now. Despite the weapons arrayed against him, some suppressed pocket of knowledge informed Weller the Voofran was the primary danger.

Leaning back away from the knife, he jerked the buzz-pistol from his pocket. He jammed it against the Voofran’s chest and pressed the firing stud.

The Voofran grunted and fell back against the wall, flailing at the sparks dancing over his chest. In that moment of surprise, Weller batted the knife away and turned to run. He got maybe five steps away when his legs went numb. A searing line of fire ran up his spine and he fell, twitching, to the ground. Shock lance, he thought, his mind fogging. The staff... Outlander weapon... Damn, damn.

He lay flat on his stomach, his head turned to the left, his hat and glasses knocked from his head. He could see the feet and shins of the two thugs standing over him. Another jolt from the lance convulsed his body. He tried to scream but his lips were frozen. Spittle dribbled from his mouth; tears coursed from his staring eyes. The older Senitte knelt and pressed his face against Weller’s. Weller smelled booze on his breath. “I think we burn you,” the man hissed. “And then we send you body to Recha so he know not to stroke us. Huh? What you think about that, strokin’ scut!”

Weller’s mind floated somewhere outside his body. Not like this, he thought. It can’t end like this. Twice before, when he had been a resident of the bazaar, he had been assaulted. Those had been minor hit-and-run jobs, take the money and bolt. He had only been roughed up a little. This was different. Though these three were small-time, it looked like they were onto something bigger, probably something out of their league. Just my luck. If he could, he’d laugh, the situation was so ludicrous to him. Instead, he did something he rarely had done. He prayed. Help me. Please...

His frozen, unblinking eyes started to burn. Through his blurred vision, the Senitte left his side for a moment. He heard both thugs retrace their steps, probably to check on the Voofran who should still be stunned. Weller had tripped the charge button to full before he fired. He heard the thugs’ whispered voices.

A blue, sandaled foot suddenly appeared in his line of sight. What looked to be another Senitte, eerily quiet, walked past him. There were more sounds, muffled shouts, a burning smell. Someone knelt beside him then and pressed something cool and sharp to his neck. Weller managed to move, to look up. The person looked familiar. He looked like...

Mercifully, his eyes fluttered as his grateful body shivered with movement. He spun into darkness

Weller jerked awake, a stab of pain coursing through his back. Where...? He lay in an alley, the alley, the one where he had been attacked, propped up against the wall of a building in deep shadow. When he moved, the pain in his back caused him to grit his teeth. Feeling sick and groggy, he rolled over on his side.

He breathed deeply, trying to still the queasiness in his stomach and organize his thoughts. As his head cleared and his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he realized he was alone. There were no signs of his attackers or his mysterious savior, for that matter, and it seemed late in the day... very late.

How long have I lain here? Slowly, gingerly, he got to his knees, noticing his shoulder pack, hat, and sun glasses lay at his side. He put his hat back on and hooked the glasses in his belt. Slowly, with pack in hand, he rose to his feet and, again, leaned back against the wall, his heart pounding. I’m getting way too old for this shit, he thought. What a stupid, stroking mistake!

His savior. He roused himself a little at that memory. Who was it who had had intervened? Did it matter? Some good citizen. A rival of his attackers was the more likely answer. The head thug had mentioned someone named... Recha. Could this Recha have been the one?

But he remembered, just before he had passed out, Weller had looked up, had seen his rescuer. The person who had saved him looked like Kazrah, the Honin-Zay bodyguard. Couldn’t have been, he thought now. By the Third God, I could have been killed!

He checked his pockets. His wallet and the gun were both there. Interesting. Someone would have had to put the buzz-pistol there, picking it up from where Weller had dropped it. The same with his pack, hat, and glasses. This is too strange, he thought. Suddenly, images from a life long ago sprang unbidden to his mind. They were always there, sniffing around his memory like a hungry tor-dog. But he usually kept those unwanted reminders of long-ago at bay.

Yet now, painful as they were, he didn’t have the will to stop them. He let them come. The pain they brought was almost sweet compared to what he felt now in this alley.

Weller had worked in a med clinic on a small, backwater planet in the Marpoos system for a combination Terran/Marpoosian research colony. He was a bio-med assistant but he thought he might go to tech school someday, get a position in the big orbital station labs, work for the Rim World Conglomerate’s Contact program.

It wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility. Many of the rim worlds still entertained a wide-open market for non-robotic, non-computerized, or non-synthetic employment. In many such environments, it was cheaper, quicker and less complicated to hire real people to do real work in almost all types of occupations.

He had been happy in the Marpoos system. He had friends, a good job, a purpose, a woman he had loved. Lani, he thought. That was so long ago.

He had made a mistake, one that cost a Marpoosian fem and her infant son their lives. There had been an outbreak, a flu-like disease which had spread rapidly. He, like the rest of the staff had been working round-the-clock to curb the infections and fevers but only he had eaten some stims to stay awake, to keep him going. It had been a fatal error-in-judgment; he thought he could handle it.

In his haste and confusion, he had programmed the injector to give too much of the wrong medication.

There hadn’t been much support. It was a wilderness mentality that existed there, after all, and the relationship between the Terrans and Marpoosians had been fragile at best in the first place. Bottom line, it had been every man for himself. Even Lani had turned away from him, shocked, outraged, embarrassed. So, he had left, run away, escaped into the night like a thief. Lani, his future, all gone and he had been running ever since.

There had been other planets, other cities, other lives he’d tried to live. Finally, he ended up in Frenati City in a sort of stability. Or so he thought.

I’m not getting mixed-up in some pissant indigene affair again, he thought, his fists clenched at his sides. Stroke this! I’m in way over my head. What do I care about some spoiled, rich high-borns? He took a few shuffling steps, made sure he could walk without too much discomfort and started for the alley entrance.

The lights of the Yharria greeted his squinting eyes, bright as the midday sun. The bazaar never slept, there were no time pieces, nothing would be closed. He’d get a drink. No, no drink. He’d drive his rental back to the Honin-Zays. He knew Claudia Honin-Zay was away, and it was much too late but he would leave a message with one of the guards, bribe him, if necessary. Yes, the husband might be there but Weller didn’t care. He would tell someone he was done. He would insist he couldn’t wait.

He would quit, convince Honin-Zay to replace someone else after she returned, even offer to return the first third of the down payment she had paid him. His life was different now. He was older, he didn’t have the balls or the patience he used to have. He wasn’t in that business anymore.

He was much too tired.

What was I doing? Did I think I could be like those Old Terran vid stars? He shook his head at the ridiculousness of it all.

Dusting himself off, Weller adjusted his shoulder pack, straightened out his hat, and walked out into the street.