Whenever i skin, I go down to one of those Yoruba tattoo parlors and get a cut on my left knee, so it heals into a crescent-shaped scar. I got the original scar from some sharp black-lichen, playing footie out beyond Dangote-dome in the boy’s body I was born with. But I wear the scar now to honor my father, my Babuji, Arjun Chaturvedey. He died for his scars.
My mother died when I was five years old, cancer, as I shot up out of my kurta and my voice dropped an octave. Dr. Goodluck pronounced me biologically adult and skin-okay two months later. Babuji and I grieved, and he meditated with me, hoping I’d forego my first skin and grow into an Old World bhai like him. I was torn, but as Mom’s shradda anniversary approached, I knew what I would do.
You see, Mom was a Yankee, full-blood, straight from Cascadia Commonwealth, straight from Earth. But she wasn’t one of the Yankees you saw in the Mollywood sims, adrenaline-fueled and whining and addicted to engines and wheels. She wasn’t a rowdy-sheeter or a minuteman. Mom was a good Yankee, who worshipped her God next to Babuji worshipping his. The bloodweaver put my old body in cryo, and I wore a woman’s skin to Mom’s shradda, where all my aunties and uncles and cousin-siblings told me “you got Abigail’s eyes.” I looked like her daughter, with the blue eyes, but I looked like Babuji’s daughter, too, with the thick black hair and the long earlobes of a Brahmin bhai.
I started pulling back that thick black hair in a simple ponytail, American-style, tying it with a white ribbon long after the shradda and long after Babuji went back to court. I threw out all my boy’s clothes and printed kurtas that looked like Yankee tees or jerseys, churidar like their narrow trousers, and, at Babuji’s insistence, white dhoti and a sari. But I printed the sari in red, white, and blue.
If Babuji hadn’t been busy with a new case as Prosecutor of Chandimakal Basic Court, or at least of Dangote-dome’s district court, he’d have kept me cooped up like a Muslima in haram. The Chief Prosecutor wanted Babuji to pick up some minutemen, some of the serious cowboys, on charges of double-skinning. He still prayed the sanyavandara with me every morning, and taught me all the rites of a Brahmin at home, but he never knew where I read my school and wrote exams. And I made sure to keep my marks up and played footie religiously, in those days when the air was cool and thin and new out there and the ball raced across iridescent black-lichen, not through all this Earth-green grass.
I was free to run when I wasn’t studying, and I ran around Little Washington. It’s a shrineless dome, gunmetal grey and dusty brown. They look washed-out, the Yankees, even the darker ones look like bleached Igbo or faded Fulfulde. Their English is almost incomprehensible, and they whisper it among themselves always. Blue eyes or green, or grey, shoot out from under pale, perspiring brows, stare without shame, then turn back to desultory games of cards or angry arguments about politics ten million miles away. Mars is a planet of a thousand colors and tongues and faiths and loves, but the Yankees are a world unto themselves. Them and their Old Western ways.
Somehow, the gunmetal grey and dusty brown and red of flesh blood seem more colorful than the brightest Holi when you’re young.
It all started in Little Washington, you see.
I was in the middle of an orbital calculus lesson, sitting in front of Starbuck’s Saloon, when Atticus’ shadow fell over me. Something in my body startled, but I hadn’t learned a woman’s caution around strange men — especially strange Yankee men. Something in my body shivered, and not in the tropical Earth-normal air. I’d been androsexual in my boy skin, nothing in my girl skin changed that. And here was a real man! He was tall, wheatish, and broad-shouldered, with rough hands from tinkering in his rover and piercing blue eyes. I grinned up at him and greeted him like one American to another:
“Howdy, dude! ’sup?”
“Howdyback,” he said, surprising me with Yankee-Martian patois. “Busy na? Gotta take leave a minute. Watch me stuff? Owe ya. Sabi?”
I did sabi. I sabied very much. I tapped the table and, as soon as the little package was on it, I covered it with my book-bag. I looked up to him again, at his piercing blue eyes.
“Goodname?” I spat in patois.
“Atticus Diggs.” He smiled back. “Ya?”
“Sami Chandurvedey,” I said. “Mom was Abigail Lee-Chandurvedey.”
“Na shit na?” Atticus said, eyes going wide. He looked up. “Later, OK?”
“OK …!” I gave him the sign, but he was already gone.
Now I sabied. Two boys in green came racing in from the tunnel to Dangote, buttonholing half the Yankees in Little Washington. When they passed Starbuck’s Saloon, they looked right past me. The pretty Brahmin girl in the kurta and churidar with her orbital mechanics notes was no suspect, even to their drone-swarm. When they slunk home to Dangote-dome, Atticus emerged from under his rock, and took his package.
“Thanks, Sammy.” He shook my hand, sending an electric thrill up my arm. Since my skinning, Babuji wouldn’t so much as pat my shoulder. I was hungry and thirsty for some kind of touch, especially off the footie field, especially from a boy. “Ya good dude.”
I grinned with all my teeth. This Real American called me ‘dude’!
“Beer na?” I offered.
“Sorry.” He shook his head. My heart broke. “Gotta take leave for real. Later, OK?”
“OK …!”
That’s how Atticus Diggs became my boyfriend.
Like red-blooded Martians, we inhaled Mollywood sims about minutemen and their underworld and Old World ways, their rough and brutal code of honor. I wore my new sari to torrid mixed-reality games about the Militia that even singing and dancing couldn’t gentle. I learned all the strange English of the Real Americans, good citizens and liberated goods and tea parties. Any Martian can tell you the Colonel of Chandimakal’s Militia and his cronies in the Fourth Constitutional Convention run crime all over the Red Planet, that they live like rajahs and ooni, bound only by the Cowboy Code, the Oath of Allegiance, and their own lust for freedom. Any Martian can tell you that a gangsta like Atticus can only become a minuteman through veteraning, or vetting, taking the life of a non-Yankee and permanently sundering themselves from the path of satyagraha.
Atticus bought me my first Yankee hamburger, swaggering in like a cowboy, the owner staring daggers at me. The rest of the restaurant stared daggers when I asked for a veg hamburger. There was only non-veg, only beef. Atticus oiled the water, mentioned my Mom’s citizenship, fronted that he was already a good citizen, and I watched the owner shrink back and stutter apologies. I had a no-patty hamburger and the best table in the house, and when another Yankee’s stare crawled my skin, Atticus hopped up and slammed his head in his soup. The owner threw him out for “causing trouble in his place” as Atticus sat back down, all cowboy cool. Part of me was horrified. Part of me … well …
I was in love, like a Mollywood lovey sim. But Atticus was in a Militia thriller. He pointed me Phoenix Kid the gambler and Big Data the blockchaindude and acting-boss Tyrone Lucas, the minuteman who ran all the illegal cargo in and out of Little Washington. Their bigman — their noncom in Militia-jargon — was in confine, so when a man in a dark and tall-collared suit with a Chinasilk cravat stepped into Atticus’ garage, he talked to Ty.
“Is that the Colonel?” I whispered, peeking behind a wheel. Atticus shushed me.
“That’s his Lieutenant, Michael Cambridge.” He hissed. “He does the Colonel’s dirty work, so the Colonel can keep his hands clean. Out of sight, out of enemy fire, sabi?”
He must have heard us, because the Lieutenant looked over. He was tall, especially for a Yankee, with harsh grey eyes that were clouded with wrinkles but never smiled. My heart jumped in my throat; Atticus stood rooted like a banyan tree. Thinking quick, I saluted, like a good Yankee. Atticus followed my lead.
Michael Cambridge nodded to us, then turned back to Ty Lucas. Atticus and I turned back to the rover, but I kept peeking out my eye-corners. We were driving as far as Sokoto-dome, a trunkful of cooking oil hiding a crate of homebrew for Sokoto’s less-observant Muslims. As long as I stayed hidden and pled the Fifth, Ty Lucas okayed it.
I glanced back one last time at the Lieutenant, Michael Cambridge, as I hopped in the cab. A real live Militia Officer …
Maybe it’s the Yankee in me, but I whooped and hollered as the triwheels crunched over red rock and the electric engine purred under our feet. It was almost as good as running on my own two legs across the black-lichen for soccer — the same thin cool Martian air in our lungs, the same adrenaline in our Mars-red blood.
I was a lot less excited when we hit a locust-net, killing our engine and scanning our rover’s trunk. Atticus grabbed my arm and tried to run.
“What kind of cowboy are you?” I demanded. “I’m sitting here ready to take what the greenboys throw at us and you’re running like a yellow-belly!”
“Easy for you to say,” Atticus spat, “your Babuji’s a bigman, my Daddy’s in confine! They’ll confine me for certain!”
“We have wine, beer, and kitchen oil on a rover,” I said, pinching my nose. One of Babuji’s habits, too. “The worst is a few hours at the court.”
“Says you! You can stay, I’mma be a free man!” He turned for the door again.
This time, I slapped my hand on his arm, heavy as a shackle. “Are you really going to leave your girlfriend alone in the middle of nowhere to take the rap, cowboy?” I demanded.
He tore his arm away, turned, screamed “FUCK!” as the green-draped police rovers crawled over the horizon.
Two hours later, I sat in Babuji’s office in the Dangote district courthouse. You never saw a more fearsome man, a purer distillation of Old World Brahmin bhai. The window framed him in the black-lichen steppes and the waters of the Grand Canal and the pink sky, in his old-fashioned biosuit and his rainbow achkan, collar pipped tight, in his oiled mustaches and red lipstick, in the matching red nails at the end of the scarred hands. They were white as his swarej-linen robe, making the red of his nails stand out even more.
He read me a statement I recognized from about a million thrillers, then dropped the Court English for our household Bihari.
“Why, Sami?” he asked, his eyes welling up with tears. “You’ve taken your sacred thread as my disciple, and your mother and I brought you up a good Brahmin bhai, a gentleman and a scholar. What in the name of a million and three gods are you doing racing around the sands with a rowdy-sheeter, my girl?”
From the office altar, Yama, Prince of Law, looked on blandly. His offerings filled the office with the scent of withered orange blossoms. I stewed. Babuji is a gentleman, he hugs his sons, kisses them on both cheeks and on the lips, tousles their hair, laughs with them. Babuji is a gentleman, and sits ramrod straight across from girls, standing when they enter and never laying the smallest finger on them, even when they chant to Saraswati together or light candles for Holi.
“Maybe I’m in love with him, Babuji,” I said, sabi that I really wasn’t.
Now he smiled a brittle smile at me. The tears still threatened.
“Oh? Should I call Nwabudike in here to solemnize a courthouse elopement?”
I scoffed, and looked over him to the Grand Canal where we’d burnt Mom on the ghats, all three of us white-swaddled like corpses.
“… don’t call,” I said. “I didn’t mean it. Just ask the matchmaker to make my beloved tall and sweet and Yankee.”
“Yes yes, you’ve been asking this since you were six.” Babuji patted the air, dismissing it. “Can you at least tell me where you were going?”
“As my father or my lawyer?”
“As your gentle, loving guru, who bailed his favored disciple out of confine.” His eyes were intent behind that vale of tears. “You’re my disciple, and my child. I am saddened you forsook your birth body for another skin, but whatever skin you wear, you are my daughter.”
“You say daughter like it’s a curse. What is wrong with a new body?”
“Do you remember that black-lichen scar you got when you were three?” Babuji asked. “How you wailed and wailed! Abigail was always prepared, though, and she had the allopathy kit all ready, and dressed your wound while I held you and kissed you and sang you Mollywood tunes. By the time Abi was done, you’d fallen asleep in my arms! It left a little crescent scar on your left knee, one I looked at every time you wore shorts, because it reminds me of that day, of how you trusted me and loved me.”
I looked down at my knee, my face impassive like a cowboy. He was going after me, trying to get a rise out of me. It wouldn’t work. I could be stoic as the red sands.
He held up his arms, unsealed the biosleeves and drew them back.
“You see these?” he said, his red nails winking in and out of sight as he showed off his scars. “Each one is another sting of nettle or slice of black-lichen from the garden, the garden where I make things grow, where I raise vegetables fit for a Brahmin and his family. Mahaguru Friday Nnede and Mahatma Gandhi before her taught us swadeshi, self-sufficiency, and satyagraha, nonviolence. Each of these scars is from upholding those ways, the traditions of a Brahmin. And each of these scars would be lost if I changed bodies like I change a suit of clothes.”
I kept staring at my knee. I knew this game, and it wouldn’t work on me. I Know-Nothinged him, fed him a story about romantic picnics. I’d burned one of the Officers of the Militia and, though I wasn’t a minuteman yet, I wasn’t about to break the Fifth Amendment Oath.
Finally, he sighed.
“Sami, I know why you’re doing all this.” For the first time, he looked away from me, toward Yama. “I miss Abi, too. But wasting your time in Little Washington saloons, hanging around rowdy-sheeters and minuteman mongrels? Your mother would be ashamed of you.”
He let it hang in the air, watching me. I tried not to let it show how much it hurt.
“From now on, my disciple, you accompany me,” he said, sliding into Hindi. “It is only proper that a disciple should follow their guru as a child follows their father. And it is time you took up an apprenticeship at any rate, though a Brahmin bhai puts his family and his gods ahead of his career.”
“What?!” I demanded. “For how long?!”
“Yama will decide.” He patted the air again, patted away my question.
I choked in my clerk’s dashiki and sweated the Grand Canal into my formal biosuit, collating data and regressing to the mean of justice next to Nwabudike and Grace under Babuji’s watchful eye. “Apprentice paralegal,” he called me! That is, when we weren’t praying the sanyavandana or reading maths at home, where I was “disciple.” No time for Atticus or Little Washington, even if I wanted to see him, and I didn’t.
I helped Nwabudike assemble caselaw on skinship infringement, double-skinning and so on, going all the way back to Earth. Splitting one’s immortal soul between two bodies is horrifying to anyone, whether Hindu or Muslim or Yoruba or Buddhist or Christian. Even atheists see the material problems of trying to keep track of body-hopping criminals who leave their nodes behind. From Grace, I heard the names they were looking for, the faces, some I even knew. Names like Phoenix Kid and Tyrone Lucas. Babuji should have known I’d work out his plan.
He wanted to catch out Ty or his noncom boss and nail them on double-skinning, with all the confine and the node-snipping it implied. This way, he thought, he could get them to break the Fifth Amendment Oath and implicate some Officers, someone like Michael Cambridge. It’s not like everyone didn’t know Michael Cambridge was one of the Colonel’s inner circle, but civil prosecutors like Babuji couldn’t assemble a case against him. If Babuji’s plan worked, though …
Which is why it was so shocking when they sat on the bench together for footie.
It wasn’t all bad, you see. I could shuck the dashiki for long kurta and short shorts when Babuji and I left the domes for the free air of Mars and five-a-side football with the other Fourth Formers. The elation I felt in Atticus’ cramped rover was a shadow of the freedom I knew chasing the ball across the endless black-lichen, the goals spinning and my chums whirling around me. Nailing the orbital ballistics of black-and-white ball and net was more to me than Phobos and Deimos and the space elevator of Chandikamal combined.
And Babuji was nothing if not respectful of one’s religion. He sat at every practice and match, the Brahmin court Prosecutor in his swarej-linen and his achkan and his oiled mustaches and his painted lips, his breather and goggles at the ready, among chattering Igbo in their rainbow head-ties and silent, observant, black-niqabed Muslimas.
During the interval, our team captain, Chuks, pointed him out.
“Who’s that next to your abba, swamiji?” he asked.
He wore a crisp suit of Tharsis linen today, white as a funeral shroud, with a red tie held in place by a blue and silver stick-pin. Michael Cambridge, president of New Boston Brewing, one of the financial success stories the Yankee newsfeeds liked to print. Everyone else’s newsfeeds printed that he was a prince of the Militia, and I knew it to be true. He reported directly to the Colonel of Chandikamal Militia himself.
He sat chatting quietly with Babuji, who looked serene as Mahaguru Friday despite sitting next to a powerful and dangerous cowboy, a man who had killed and commanded a legion of killers. My heart leapt in my throat for him. A man as honorable as Michael Cambridge wouldn’t do the job out in the open sands, with three dozen witnesses, would he? It was against the Cowboy Code, and besides, he had to set an example for his men.
I looked to Chuks, his strapping black body, his narrow black eyes.
“I know nothing, Onochukwu.” I shrugged.
Chuks hates it when anyone uses his full name. It reminds him of his old girl skin.
“By Allah, you Yanks really do stick together.” He turned to Triv, our goalie, and barked orders at her. The conversation was over.
Seeing Babuji next to Michael Cambridge threw my chakras out of alignment. I always seemed to be one step behind the thick of it. Toward the end of the match, I even tripped over my own two feet. Me, Sami Chaturvedey, fastest runner north of the Grand Canal, over lichen, steel, or sand!
“Problem na?” Chuks taunted. “Too many bouncing distractions in the new skin!”
I told him to violence himself as I climbed to my feet. From the half-dozen incisions in my exposed limbs, I knew Babuji couldn’t complain my new skin wouldn’t have scars!
We won the match, 3-1, despite my play. By that time, Michael Cambridge was gone, and Babuji seemed entirely unperturbed. I asked him about it the moment he was in earshot.
“Shush, my s– disciple,” he said. “The walls have ears.”
As we passed through Little Washington, I felt like the walls had eyes, too. I glanced at the outdoor table in front of Starbuck’s Saloon where I’d first met Atticus. Two men were sitting there, Yankees with pale faces. I didn’t like the way they looked at me.
“Don’t worry, Sami.” Babuji said, as if he were reading my mind. “They aren’t looking at you. They’re looking at me. We’re fairly certain I’ve been, how do they say, ‘burned’ to the Militia as Prosecutor.”
My head wheeled around, seeing Yankee men at every window, with gunsmoke eyes and hard, impassive faces.
“How can you be so, so … serene?” I almost cried. I strangled it as hard as I could for benefit of surrounding ears. “Why even cross through Little Washington, then? We could have gone around!”
“My disciple, I am a satyagrahi.” Babuji said. “I am a Brahmin, and I have tried to live a virtuous life. I will not escape the wheel, but I will come back in a better life. The worst they can do is kill me. And if they do, they have not killed the Way of Truth. The power of nonviolence is to prevail in the end over violence, as we saw with Gandhi and with Havel and with our own Mahaguru Friday. All the weapons on three worlds cannot kill satyagraha, and so I neither have use for them, nor fear them.”
I know, I know, it’s a Martian Civics lecture. But nobody, not even Friday Nnede herself, believed in satyagraha and ahimsa as hard as my Babuji. And I watched him walk down Friday Street, with eyes and railguns on every side, as if he were walking in our garden at home under the crystal-clear glass on a sunny day.
I thought that he should have been a Mollywood actor then, instead of a lawyer. As soon as we were back under the familiar dome of Dangote, with a riot of colors and tongues on every side and familiar shrines underfoot, he pinched his nose and opened up.
“That aam aadmi,” he said, twisting the words ‘common man’ so it sounded like ‘dalit’, “is a sponsor of Chandimakal Young Footie. He offered me a pipe of spliff, and said he was a father himself: his son was the goalie for your opponents. We praised each other’s children, as is only proper, and bragged about our own, as is only manful. He asked what kind of man would put his career ahead of his family, and I agreed. Then he suggested I should ‘go back to my potatoes and carrots’ and not work so hard.”
It took me a moment.
“He threatened you?”
“He warned me. I know how many trash Mollywood thrillers you’ve seen. Gentlemen are courteous on the battlefield, no? Right before they revert to violencing each other.” He explained. “Part of satyagraha training is confronting one’s own violence. Gandhiji insisted no one join him who would not take up arms to fight for India’s independence. The wise movements, like Mahaguru Friday’s, institutionalize this training. A man must take hold of the gun, as it were, in order to throw it away and become a true gentleman. So I must understand the warrior’s way. You will, too, when you volunteer your draft and become a satyagrahi.”
“But why, Babuji?”
“Because even for beefeaters like him, there is wisdom in refraining from violence. He would rather I choose to quit the case than risk prosecution for violent crime. Double-skinning is one thing, assault something very different, and so the Law sees it.”
“But you’re not going to quit, are you.” I stated.
“Of course not.” Babuji said. “They can only harm a body.”
Something stabbed through me; something that wanted to make me shout: “They are hard men, Babuji, minutemen! They kill like we take sacred thread to become men. They aren’t of your world of law, they are of a world of their own, a world of honor and blood! Don’t you watch sims?!” But I kept my peace.
“I know you’re upset.” Babuji’s voice was kind. “If you wish to weep, Sami, weep; it becomes a Brahmin gentleman, for tears wash clean like the Ganges. And when tears are done, do the needful, like Prince Arjuna in the Gita. I’ve done the needful by you, despite many tears I wept over you.”
He forgot himself for just a moment, and reached to hug me, there, in the middle of Biafra Avenue, before he stopped himself. He turned away, straightening up, pinching his nose, refusing to meet my eye.
I threw my eye over the familiar storefronts and dhaba stalls and chai-wallahs, and wondered how many pale faces and gunsmoke eyes looked back. I could trust I was safe, at least. “Women and children” was the Old World heart of the Cowboy Code, and I was a known Real American. Babuji had only to fear for his life, he could not be troubled by mine. At least, so I told myself.
Which is why, down in the dome of Chandimakal visiting Auntie Ladli for Holi, I didn’t expect a slender Igbo-looking gentleman in a red jersey to step in front of me.
“’Sup, Sammy. Busy na?” He asked.
“I’m sorry, have we met?” I asked, cocking my head.
“No memory na?” The Igbo-looking gentleman frowned. He brushed one eye with his finger. “Sad! Atticus Diggs. Your goodname’s Sami Chaturvedey. Your Ma’s Abigail Lee. Your Dad’s Arjun Chaturvedey, Esquire.”
That’s when I felt the so-called cold steel at my back, and my heart nearly stopped. It’s not cold, it’s very warm, from being next to a body and from the magnetic muzzle-ring brimming with threatening electrics. It burned into my left shoulder blade, straight through my red, white, and blue sari. Every other inch of my skin chilled under sudden sweat.
“Chill, girl!” Atticus brushed dust from his jersey in long sweeps, just like he did in his old skin, tall and wheatish. He switched to American English. “My word as a cowboy, you’re not gonna get hurt. I won’t let ‘em. Just wanna talk a bit.”
He glanced down to my left shoulder.
“In private.” For a moment just a moment, a glimmer of the boy I’d known in another skin: “Sorry, Sammy. For real.”
I tried to turn around and look, like I’d seen in the sims, but I’d only caught the diamond tattoo of Ty’s hand before he poked me with that red-hot railgun muzzle. There were two footsteps behind me, so they’d brought a friend. Three men to kidnap a teenage girl. Some cowboy.
The moment we were out of view, Atticus took a handkerchief from his pocket and blindfolded me with it.
“Let’s roll.” Atticus’ voice cracked. We started forward, me blind as a beggar.
Mad as Majnun, I obsessed over Ty’s gun. Colt na? Smith & Wesson? Something French? Maybe a jugaar pistol and made right here on Mars in somebody’s hacked fabber and ready to blow and fill us all with magnetic shrapnel. He could have used a knife, just as deadly at skin distance, but us Yankees, our God gave us violence as our birthright, our holiness flows out the barrel of a gun. Mad as Majnun, but method to my madness. As long as I wondered whether Ty shoved an alien 13mm or an all-American .45 under my shoulder blade, I couldn’t wonder where they were taking me and if I’d come out. Nothing in all the sims or all my girlfriending with Atticus said anything about the Militia kidnapping teenage girls and, by now, I was learning caution around dangerous men.
I had to trust Atticus. The boy who’d bailed me in the middle of the red sands like a yellow-belly. I kept thinking about railguns instead. I kept thinking about railguns as Ty slammed me down into a chair and the other minuteman tied me to it. I kept thinking about railguns until Atticus tugged my blindfold off with gentle fingers.
It didn’t look like a Chandimakal Holi at all. The room was grey, no windows, with only an old Betsy Ross flag for color, the only lights over a scuffed old terminal-table and a single light globe glowing in the tandoor-less kitchen. My heart threatened to stop again. I was in a Militia safehouse, behind a blind alley and no doubt guarded by a platoon of minutemen.
It was nothing like how I’d dreamed it would be. I’d dreamed of being one of the minutemen myself, not the one tied to the chair, but the one holding the …
… huh, Colt .45. The bluesteel matched Ty’s eyes.
“’sup, Sammy.” Ty grinned. “Long way from Dangote, ain’tcha?”
I wanted to glare defiantly into his eyes like the faces of our shared Founding Fathers in old schoolbook pictures, but I couldn’t. I was too scared. I looked away.
“Like I said, we’re not gonna hurt you,” Atticus said. “These good citizens just wanna say something to your Dad. We got us a burner fly-eye and we’re gonna give him a call. We just want you to say hello.”
The fly-eye, hovering in front of the Betsy Ross flag, flashed red out of the dim.
“Babuji?” I asked. Of course, he didn’t answer. I didn’t hear the telltale hum of buzzbuzz drones to carry his voice.
“Mr. Chaturvedey.” Ty said. “I represent the Freeborn Citizens’ Constitutional Militia of the Martian Theater. Your activities interfere with our free trade and our God-given right to the pursuit of happiness. Frankly, they reek of regulation. But we can forgive this kind of pinko behavior, as good Christian men. As you can see, we’re also men of action.”
Atticus nudged me from behind.
“Babuji, I’m sorry,” I said, trying to keep the tears out of my voice.
“She’s fine.” Ty said. “And we all want her to stay that way. And she will stay that way, if you resign from your current case. If you do, all’s forgiven and it’s quiet on Main Street. If not, just remember that we’re men of action.”
Ty charged the Colt ominously, each ring lighting blue.
“You have forty-eight hours to make your decision.” Ty finished. “An @ is flashing across your screen. Send your answer there, and we will discuss exchanges.”
Ty gave the Yankee slice across the throat, turning off the sky-eye. Letting out a long sigh like one organism, my kidnappers sank into various pieces of ratty furniture lining the little room.
“Now we wait?” Atticus asked.
“Yup.” Replied the other minuteman. Ty looked up.
“I’m starving, who wants a hotdog?” he said.
Atticus volunteered, and turned to grin at me.
“How about you, swamiji?” he asked.
It was surreal. They had a prosecutor’s daughter tied to a chair, but you’d have thought this was any cold-water flat in Little Washington. They ate hotdogs that fouled the air with a sickly savoury smell, smothered with mustard and sour chutney. They took pulls at bottles of Good Friday beer. They hummed along to the ’cast from the scuffed terminal. They played virtual games that were old when Friday Nnende was young. Atticus fed me a veg bun filled with the chutney and mustard, and kept a gun trained on me while I ate it. They had long, rambling conversations about nothing. Sometimes I joined in.
“But I mean,” Atticus said, “if we can skin, the hell is race even worth? I’m blacker than Harlem and my old skin was albino-white.”
He felt his smooth, shaved pate.
“And I had hair. This skull feels weird.”
“It’s not your skin color or the shape of your head,” retorted the other minuteman, Mason, who’d apparently been born with that skin, “it’s how you talk and how you act, it’s how you speak English, and how you make your barbeque sauce. With mustard, obviously. Even if he wore Abe Lincoln’s skin walking down the street, you’d know if some snake-charmer swamiji was trying to pass for Yankee. It’s not a skin … it’s …”
“… ethnicity.” I suggested. “Culture.”
“Yeah. Being black is an ethnicity, not a skin color.” He turned to me. “Thanks, swamiji.”
“So what’s gender worth?” I asked. “Why’s the Cowboy Code talk about women and children if they could both be cowboys tomorrow?”
“That’s different,” Ty insisted, “whether you’re a man or woman’s part of you. It’s part of your soul. Even trannies get that straight.”
“How do you know a woman walking down the street if she’s wearing a man skin?”
“The way she walks.” Atticus leered. Once, that look would have made me shiver. Now, I shuddered.
“Whole thing's bullshit,” Mason said. “A real Yankee keeps a hold of his weapon, no matter how long his bloodweaver bill gets. You ever transkinned, Ty?”
“Hell no.” Ty spat. “Man's man all the way through. Popped my cherry with a dick, hangin' onto it.”
“Atticus?”
He shook his head.
“How about you, kid?”
I gulped. “I was born a boy. This is my first skin.”
It hadn't felt alien like this in months. Not since the last time Atticus and I held each other.
Ty slapped my shoulder.
“Don't worry, kid,” he said. “You're not a woman until you pop your cherry. There's still time to go back. Unless, Atticus, I owe you a beer?”
Atticus turned red. So did I. The two minutemen just guffawed.
Like I said, it was surreal.
My arms and legs were cold and tight when they finally got the order to untie me. I flowed through a few asanas just to get prana back into my limbs when he walked into the room. Both Mason and Ty stiffened, and Atticus made a little choking sound. I was facing away from the door. I took a moment to put on my cowboy mask before I slowly turned around.
Michael Cambridge stood there, his bodyguard hanging back and feigning the casual cool that all cowboys are supposed to have. He wore a dark suit today, the neck and sleeves of his biosuit peeking from the collar and sleeves, the only color a blood-red necktie. Michael Cambridge, a Militia Lieutenant who reported directly to the Colonel himself, scanned me with that ice-cold gaze.
“Why don’t you sit down.” It wasn’t a question. Everyone sat. I sat. Michael Cambridge leaned forward, so I could smell his musk like old leather and flint.
“I’ll give your old man this, kid, he’s decisive,” Michael said. “And reasonable enough. He says long as he gets you back safe and sound, we got nothing to worry about from him. For a swamiji, he’s a man of his word, and I wouldn’t be much of a minuteman if I weren’t a man of mine. I promised you to him, safe and sound.”
My heart just about leapt into my throat, past the cloying taste of the mustard. Michael Cambridge held up a hand.
“Just a minute, kid,” he said. “I know you pled the Fifth with this gangsta here.”
He thumbed offhandedly in Atticus’ general direction. Atticus clearly wasn’t worth his attention right now. Frankly, he wasn’t worth mine, either.
“And I know your Mom’s a natural-born citizen, God rest her soul. You’ve been tailing behind your old man and I bet you’ve heard some good intel. We could use a man like you in the Militia. You don’t have to get locked into that yes yes effendi kowtowing humble-Brahmin heathen bullshit. You can be a real man, a free man, a minuteman.”
Now there was a war inside me, as big as the battle between the Pandavas and the Kauravas. This Lieutenant, with his seamed face and his smart suit and his rugged hands, was speaking to me Yankee to Yankee, dude to dude, and offering me a chance to become a cowboy. This wasn’t Atticus the wannabe, this was the real McCoy.
But …
“But …” I coughed. “… don’t I need to … get … veteraned?”
Michael Cambridge smiled. It did not reach his eyes.
“You’re sharp, kid,” he said. “Yeah, you do. And I have just the alien in mind. He’s a real General Gage on us real Americans, and you’re in a unique position to settle it.”
My eyes went wide again.
“Yup.” Michael smiled. “He agreed to pick you up in on the black-lichen field outside Little Washington, a spot I think you know pretty well. We’ve arranged it to be private; after all, government ought to stay out of good citizens’ bedrooms and private dealings. You’ll be given a gun.”
He nodded to Ty’s Colt .45.
“I know you know how to use one, judging by your kill-count in those Old West games. Do this job, and you’ll be an officer one day, maybe Colonel, who knows? If not, well, I made a promise to the Colonel that we'd get your intel. I'd rather you volunteered it as a good citizen. But we’ll do the needful, like the Hindis say. So it’s your choice to take hold of your own fate like a man, or crawl and kiss-ass like a coward all your life. Take your time. It's a big choice. Handover’s at high noon. You got thirteen hours to think it over.”
He stood, and extended a hand. I shook it on muscle memory. His hand really was as rough as it looked, calloused and strong. A man's hand. But not a gentleman's hand, like Babuji's. He nodded to his minutemen and departed.
Now I understood why they'd kidnapped a civilian. It wasn't just to get to Babuji, it was to get to me. To get me vetted into the Militia. It was tantalizing — to be a real American, a good citizen, a minuteman among minutemen, with all the perks that implied. I didn't sleep much that night. I had plenty of company; each one of those cowboys stood his watch, Colt in hand.
The next morning, we ate breakfast, and they had pork and beef and eggs with theirs, leaving me with an “English muffin” that was clearly day-old idli. They blindfolded me, and led me out of the safehouse and into a rover, where Mason took the wheel while Atticus, Ty, and I sat in the trunk.
That's when Atticus handed me the gun, the Colt .45 railgun with its five regular bluesteeled rings for extra stopping power and its twenty-six .45-inch pellets magnetically sealed inside the grip. He held it to me grip-first, the rearing mustang shining in the overhead diodes. It hovered just above my red, white, and blue lap, beckoning.
“No fear I waste you na?” I asked. He shook his head.
“You won't.”
Ty settled back against the bulwark, cleared his throat, made it clear he had another gun in easy reach.
“Take it.” Atticus suggested.
I wrapped my hand around the grip. It felt heavier than the three-and-a-half pounds of American iron I knew it to be. I'd hefted light-guns for mixed reality games and toy handcannons, and none of them weighed in my palm like that Colt.
Did they really expect me to shoot my own father? I wondered. Then I wondered: what will they do to me if I don't?
I wasn't Babuji. I wasn't ready to sacrifice this body and this life for my soul, even if it was part of Brahma. But I had a good imagination. And I'd watched a lot of thrillers.
I wondered how many scars this skin would have before I left it.
What else could I do? Spin on one heel like a Mollywood hero and squeeze off a dozen perfect shots on the cowboys and flee Mars with Babuji and my White Prince in a tight kurta? Maybe not. But …
I spent the rest of the trip staring at the gun in my hand, and feeling its weight.
We stopped, and I hid the Colt in the folds of my sari as I hopped out the trunk. Neither Atticus nor Ty bothered brushing iron on me; they already trusted me that much.
The field was iridescent black, like an oil spill. We were at the far end of the steppe, with the distant domes of Dangote and Gandharva and Sokoto and Little Washington just glass bubbles on the horizon, and even the space elevator that gives Chandimakal its name only a silver thread to a distant pink sky. It was far enough the red dust blew over the field in particles that made you squint instinctively. I wished I'd worn kohl.
There was our little party, and four others at this private out-of-station rendezvous. Michael Cambridge had flown in, his pilot doubling as his bodyguard. Already I could tell one on sight, from the peculiar folds of his kurta and the bulges in his sleeves. The other two people made me choke in my throat.
One was Babuji, looking five years older than he had when he'd folded his hands in namaste and wished me a safe trip. Even his immaculate oiled mustaches and clean white achkan and fresh, crisp lipstick couldn’t hide it. The other was a tall Dravidian woman, with a long black braid and a purple sari and very sad eyes. Babuji held her hand.
Everything else — the Militia, Michael Cambridge, the gun — fell away for an eternity as I grokked the sight of my father touching a woman. He demanded all-male medical teams out of propriety, what was he doing touching this stranger when he wouldn't even kiss his own daughter on the brow?!
“Who's the girl?” Michael Cambridge demanded. “You agreed to come alone. I thought you were a man of honor.”
Babuji threw up his hands.
“She's a civilian. Scan her, she's clean,” he insisted. Michael Cambridge cocked his head, and Mason rushed forward to scan her.
“The swamiji’s not lying,” Mason announced. “No weapons, no wire, even her node's in out-of-station mode.”
She nodded at this. But who was she?
Michael Cambridge accepted this turn of events, only calling his pilot out and having his men expose their iron to the particulate red breeze. He turned back to Babuji, adjusted his tie, and filled all Mars with a quiet whisper.
“When the Founding Fathers fought for their freedom, it was for one thing: respect.” Michael intoned. “We had to teach the British to respect us. We taught the Mexicans respect, and the Germans, and the Russians, and the Chinese. A real man is respected, so a real man can be free. That’s all we ever ask, but we’ll ask for it with guns in our hands. You have to fight for your freedom, for your respect. Sammy respects us, you raised up a good citizen. But you have disrespected us. You keep on disrespecting us. I hope you’re ready to die like a man, because we are ready to defend our freedom like men.”
He clapped a hand on my shoulder. Babuji trembled with rage that this man should touch me so.
“Time's up, kid.” Michael Cambridge whispered. “You gonna be a man, or live and die a slave?”
I took six deliberate steps toward Babuji and the strange woman, then stopped. I stood there in the black-lichen, smelling the flinty, oxide Martian air. I reached into my red, white, and blue sari, and produced the Colt .45, my mind whirling with ways to use it to defend my Babuji, make a dramatic last stand as he escaped with the strange woman.
Babuji and the woman watched me without fear. All thoughts of firing the gun fled from me like Kauravas before Prince Arjuna. I didn’t even look down; my hand flinging the Colt into the red dust like it was a cobra.
Babuji smiled, all the way to his Earth-brown eyes, painted lips parting to show pearls of milk-white teeth. Next to him, the strange woman wore an identical smile. Without saying a word, he told me I was a gentleman, a real Brahmin bhai. My feet moved faster, dress slippers tearing against the black-lichen.
Babuji was still wearing that smile when he died.
The sound of a railgun is so much deeper in real life than it is even in the best MR sims. An unsilenced, unshadowed boom from a Colt .45 railgun isn’t something you hear so much as feel, deep in your chest, a lightning whine that should not be that deep, but is. It sounds like something dying.
The strange woman threw her hands over me and dragged us to the sharp black-lichen, but in the dizzy fall I saw a snap of Michael Cambridge, standing there with the gun in his hand, muzzle still glowing with blue-hot magnetic fire. Then we were in the lichen, and I understood why old men like Babuji and Michael Cambridge wore biosuits.
“Run!” she hissed.
Ahead was pain and scarring, since the lichen would tear my slippers to ribbons. Behind was death, and my soul wasn’t prepared. I ran. I was Sami Chaturvedey, fastest runner north of the Grand Canal, over lichen, steel or sand. I ran toward the domes of home, where swarms of fly-eyes and buzzbuzz drones hovered and held back violence. I ran until I stumbled to my knees, the lower end of my beautiful sari torn to rags by time I reached the shorn lichen of the playing fields. I ran until I gulped the thin cold air and understood why old men like Babuji carried their breathers outside, stumbling to my hands and knees while my lungs burned.
When the rover rumbled up beside me, I could not run any more.
She stepped down next to me, and all I could do was stare at her lichen-boots as she knelt beside me and popped her breather in my mouth. I sucked in the damp, oxygen-rich Earth-normal air while she stroked my hair with her fingers, just the way Babuji used to.
“They didn’t follow, my daughter.” She rumbled. “They broke off at the swarm limit. But it was some chase, by Banka-Mundi! I was so afraid. But I knew you were safe, and that was more important.”
I nearly spit the breather out. I had enough presence of mind now to take it with my hand.
“B-babuji …?”
She helped me to my feet. I looked at her arms, her legs, her face. So clean! A skin straight from the bloodweaver.
Her eyes were the same color.
“But wasn’t that …”
“That was also me.” Babuji smiled sadly, weeping freely. “Yes, your Brahmin bhai Babuji double-skinned. I split my soul, but violence would have gouged it. Ahimsa is more important than the law, my disciple, remember that. I knew a man like that would not let me walk away with my mustaches and my painted lips. And I have much left to teach you.”
“To be a gentleman?” I asked, looking at my father’s shapely figure.
“A true gentleman is adaptable,” she rumbled. “I will raise you up a Brahmin bhai no matter what skin you wear. Your husband will thank me.”
I took a step forward, and cried out in my pain. With soft eyes, my Babuji lifted my bloodied bare feet from the black-lichen.
“Come come,” Babuji said. “I will take you home and dress your cuts and feed you khichari, and you will heal into a strong woman, with scars to be proud of.”