Carnifex

night.

Interlude

Yasukuni-Jinja , Tokyo, Japan, 14 August 2080

At night, the scene would have been lit well enough to read a book by the garish neon of the city. In the day things were better. One might even imagine oneself back in a purer, truer time. One could, that is, if not for the large groups on immigrants, many of them recent and few of them much assimilated, who came to the shrine to, in all too many cases, gawk and sneer.

The immigrants were not the only ones capable of sneering. Watanabe Ishihara, for example, sneered at two groups in alternation. The first was Chinese, immigrants from the mainland. The second was Korean, and conversed in Korean, by the simple and elegant torii, or Shinto gate, that led to the shrine.

His companion, Shintaro Soichi, caught the sneers and corrected, 'Despise the Chinese if you want, Ish. After all, they despise us as much as we despise them, and perhaps more. But the Koreans are a different story. There are almost twenty-two thousand of them here, our illustrious fallen eirei, our heroic spirits, as much as theirs. They have an arguable right to be here. Maybe they have an inarguable right to be here.'

Watanabe looked down, shamefacedly. Of course Soichi was right. It was just that, 'I resent that we have lost, that we are dying out, that everything for which our ancestors strove will belong to those who come to replace us. But, the Koreans, at least, are welcome. Mostly.'

'And the Taiwanese?'

'Oh, all right. Them, too.'

* * *

Like the rest of the industrialized world, and, to a lesser degree, even much of the non-industrialized world, Japan had seen a precipitous drop in population coupled with a frightening increase in the age of that population and a terrifying decrease in the percentage of that population still working.

Things were never as bad as the doom mongers had predicted, of course. Things never could become as bad as they predicted. Even so, they were bad enough. What helped Japan out more than anything was that their old folks were, generally speaking, willing to work until they were carried feet first out of their offices and factories.

This, however, only delayed the inevitable. There came a time when, despite the best will in the world, the older ones simply couldn't work anymore and had to be supported. And with so few young being born, the burden became too great. Japan, like Europe, had had no choice but to permit large-scale immigration. Too, like Europe, Japan couldn't assimilate them.

* * *

'We must take it all with us, when we leave,' Soichi said, his gaze sweeping across the expanse of the shrine. 'There will be none left behind to pray to the spirits of our eirei.'

'In principle, I agree, Watanabe shrugged. 'But we can fit five thousand colonists? Ten thousand? Maybe twenty thousand, for all this weight of wood and stone and bronze.'

'We must take . . . '

'All,' Watanabe supplied. 'I suppose you're right there, too. And the sakura?'

'Cuttings, and perhaps a few trees. And then there are the living national treasures . . . '

'A fair sampling will come,' Watanabe said, 'As will a prospective Son of Heaven.'

'Who?' Soichi asked,

'Higashikuni . . . '

'Oh, damn. Not that branch.'

'Best I could do. Besides, what difference that his multi-great grandfather was screwing some French whore?'

Chapter Five

'Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.'

—Emperor Manual II Palaiologos

6/3/467 AC, Village of Jameer, Pashtia

The bodies, or what was left of the bodies, were still there when the Tauran, specifically the Tuscan, column arrived, about midday. Flies clustered on those of the women and girls in thick, black, buzzing clouds. Even the nine-year-old, legs splayed, appeared to have grown pubes, so thick were the blood-lapping flies.

Tuscan Brigadier General Claudio Marciano stepped from his vehicle, took one look, and promptly threw up.

'Animals,' he muttered as he wiped traces of vomit from his lips and face. 'Only animals could do something like this.'

Marciano's aide de camp, Capitano Stefano del Collea, didn't answer. Instead, standing next to the vehicle, he simply went pale and shook with hate.

The two were mountain troopers, Ligurini, members of an elite corps. They were the best infantry Tuscany on Terra Nova produced and some of the best in the world. Other mountain troopers from Marciano's command, the Brigada Julio Caesare, worked their way cautiously through the town.

There was no firing as the Ligurini swept through, only sullen glares from the villagers. You promised what you could not deliver. You failed us. So the villager's eyes seemed to accuse.

'What the fuck can we do, Stefano? With three battalions of infantry here in our sector I don't have enough to put even half a squad in every little village. I don't have enough even to put in a single man.'

'We could go hunting,' del Collea suggested. 'We're better men than they are. They may know these mountains but we know mountains.'

'It's the only way,' Marciano agreed, 'The only way and I am forbidden to do it.' The general smashed a fist into his palm in sheer frustration. 'Forbidden to so much as fire a shot except in point self-defense. 'No offensive operations,' the government says, Stefano. 'Don't risk casualties.' Tell me, Stefano, what the fuck is the purpose of even having soldiers if it isn't to risk casualties?'

The captain just shrugged. He was as helplessly frustrated in this as his commander.

Marciano took off his green, feathered hat and wiped his brow. This was just a demonstration of frightfulness. But the word will get out. By this time tomorrow, day after at the latest, every school and clinic we've built, every well my sappers have dug, will be torn down or filled in. No one will risk this kind of obscenity just to have a nicer building to be sick in or a western style school desk. All the good we've thought we'd accomplished will be undone.

'If I could transfer my commission,' del Collea said, 'I'd join the FS Army. They, at least, are allowed to fight.'

'If I could transfer my commission,' Marciano rejoined, 'I might join the Balboan mercenaries and take the entire brigade with me. They go out of their way to fight.'

'They do have mountain troops, you know, General.'

'I know . . . but they're not our mountain troops. I would miss the Ligurini, Stefano.'

To that the captain had nothing to add. He left his general to his own thoughts for some minutes. When Marciano spoke again it was to say, 'Fuck 'em.'

'General?'

'Fuck the politicians. Tell the commander of the company—Romano, isn't it?—to follow those sons of bitches and kill them.'

* * *

The device Noorzad carried, the same one brought by the messenger from Mustafa, beeped low. He answered it.

'Noorzad? Mustafa. Some friends inform me that there is a company of infantry on your tail.'

The device was surprisingly static-free. Though unmarked, Noorzad was pretty certain it had come from off world; that, or was an offworld technology perhaps manufactured on Terra Nova.

'I can handle a company of infantry,' the guerilla chief