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  As these justifications ran through Alina’s mind, she went through the rote introduction of the process, the figures of crocodile populations and species, and the various clients that bought crocodile meat from them, as well as the rigorous testing the meat went through to ensure no pathogens remained that would infect humans. She had rehearsed it for several years.

  “This makes selling the meat trickier, of course,” she found herself babbling to Fairuz afterwards, who only nodded gravely.

  “Of course, what with the awareness of pathogen theory these days,” Fairuz replied. “But then, crocodiles have always eaten rotten meat, and we have eaten them in turn with no ill effects, for hundreds of years. I have some contacts in the medical fields who might be interested, actually, in procuring some of this meat. I mean, who knows what the Old Rich might have ingested?”

  “Yes.” Alina practically sighed in relief.

  They walked up a set of stairs to a balcony overlooking the marsh. Her mother and the other guests were taking their time. From this standpoint, the sordid business was made clear. The bluebottle flies buzzed around the marsh flowers that stank like the meats they grew in between. Alina had always found it a brilliant sight. She was also delighted to see new flowers—she had sent home yellow lotus seeds in her second year. Many of the flowers in the marsh were yellow, a quirk some relative had started which she and her mother gladly continued.

  “This is usually where people start screaming and losing their minds,” she joked, gesturing to the limbs and organs strewn across the shallows or floating next to crocodile heads.

  “Is this where you’ve done that?”

  “No… I grew up here, so, I guess I can see its beauty.” She flushed a little, and was sure it was visible around her face mask.

  Fairuz’s eyes crinkled a little—a smile. “The flies really add something to the landscape. It looks like a field of sapphires and sunshine. If you’ll pardon my overly-romantic streak.”

  She returned the smile. “I’m jealous of the swamp now, for getting such a nice compliment.”

  And for a brief, blossoming moment, they stared at each other, both aware that they were on the cusp of something a bit more than a business partnership.

  ***

  Jaymee Goh is a writer, poet, reviewer, and scholar of science fiction and fantasy. Her work can be found in Lightspeed Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Science Fiction Studies. She is the editor of The SEA Is Ours: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia and The WisCon Chronicles Vol. 11: Trials by Whiteness.

  Midsummer Night’s Heist

  By Commando Jugendstil

  And

  Tales from the EV Studio

  Imagine a summer night in Milano…

  The day had been torrid, 35 degrees with 80% humidity, and every activity felt like wading through lukewarm soup, but it rained in the evening, a heavy downpour with all the trimmings of thunder, lightning, and hailstones the size of grapes. The air is fresh now, the city looks clean, freshly washed, and the mosquitos have wisely decided to take cover for the night, just in case, so on the Navigli every bar has thrown windows and doors wide open to let the night in.

  In one such bar, at a corner table, sits a gang of dreamers. At first glance they don’t look like much, just ordinary young people, of the kind that opinion-peddlers love to hate: close to thirty, too many piercings and tattoos, fixed-term contracts, not a single mortgage between the five of them, and no money or credit to get one even if they wanted to. Just garden variety millennials having a night out with friends.

  It takes a deeper look to notice the look in their eyes—a glint of defiance and determination—a keener ear to discern cryptic hints in their conversation—to perceive the barely repressed euphoria—a bit of attention to notice that they are drinking only gazzosa and fruit juice.

  It would take an extremely keen and knowledgeable observer to spot the discrete enamel pins on their clothing: ivy leaves, because like ivy they will hang on and persist, slowly spreading until they have cleaned up all hydrocarbons and other filth from the city.

  These folks are famous, notorious even, their name is on everybody’s mouth, either acclaimed as the best new thing in art, some sort of local, hippie version of Banksy, or decried as a bunch of subversives and potential threats to the public order, depending on who you ask.

  They are Commando Jugendstil.

  Well, part of Commando Jugendstil, the core of the group. Since their first action about a year prior, they have managed to pick up quite a few extra hands who occasionally collaborate with them on some heists. They’re spreading, teaching trustworthy affiliates and empowering more young folks like them, and mobilising local communities for ever larger and more impactful actions.

  Loopy is the heart of the outfit. He had the original idea of conjugating art, green technology, and bioremediation to produce energy and create communities across the city during his master thesis at the Politecnico and has been trying to make it real ever since. His dreams are what have kept the group alive through years of short-term jobs and dissatisfaction, and his are the amazing Art Nouveau-inspired artworks for which the group is famous. He is doodling on a piece of napkin now, nervous, deep lines that furrow the paper like a ploughed field.

  Sparky is an engineer from the same university. She makes lasers, coolers, and bits of spacecraft as a day job, and knows how to build almost anything from scratch and scraps, like a five-foot-tall, cherub-faced MacGyver. Most of the tech used in the heists comes from her lab via a detour through the shed of her mum and granny’s house in the outskirts of the city. They are very supportive and discreet, and are now feeding a family of refugees with the hydroponics/aquaculture integrated system their daughter has built. The keys to her van jingle between her fingers, her foot taps impatiently on the floor.

  Dotty is a chemist with a major photonics bent. Quantum dots are her speciality, hence her codename, and she knows everything about them, or at least enough to brew up enough raw materials for the Commando to work on. Her group never notices when the leftovers from an experiment disappear, only to reappear across the city as art. She’s a brilliant scientist, and confident enough to waltz into Renzo Piano’s or Norman Foster’s office with a presentation on why they should change all the windows in their next skyscraper to solar concentrators, but at the moment she’s munching nervously on a bruschetta and toying with her rainbow-hued dreadlocks, her ebony skin overlaid by a veil of pallor.

  Sprouty is a botanist who studies bioremediation and sustainable urban farming. His thumb is greener than grass and he propagates ivy and other beneficial plants with an almost religious zeal. He also had the idea of recreating the Etruscan tradition of nomadic, riverine apiculture; the first harvests of water-lily honey are something to die for. He grows the best weed in Milan, and smokes a lot, but now his dark eyes sparkle alert and sharp and his strong, loam-stained fingers drum impatiently on the table-top. He never smokes before driving or before a heist.

  Last but not least, Stabby, Loopy’s partner, is the most unlikely member of the team, a structural biologist with a couple of papers in Nature and yet another piddling two-year contract. Zie is the nerdiest of their group of nerds, with a slightly unhealthy passion for D&D, extreme sports, and martial arts, and is the unofficial strategist of the gang, scouting locations, arranging getaways and pulling off diversionary actions to allow zir friends to do their jobs. At the moment zie is treating the group to yet another hyper-caffeinated rant about politics in Star Wars, to which the rest of the group nods distractedly.

  No one is really paying attention, but not out of malice. They actually like to hear zir theories, but they are an hour away, tops, from their most risky heist yet, and nerves are strung high like violin strings.

  “Hey, Stabby, what about a round of table football?” Sprouty stands up suddenly, jerking his head towards the now-unoccupied playing table.

  Stabby closes zir mouth midway through an argument about the economic imperialism of
the Galactic Republic and nods, standing and cracking zir knuckles.

  “Ready to get trashed?” zie challenges.

  “Keep dreaming.” Sprouty laughs, propelling his lanky, stringy body towards the table with his customary lack of grace.

  Sparky shakes her head, her Shirley Temple-style golden curls bouncing around her shoulders, and stands to join their game.

  Dotty picks up her phone and starts texting her girlfriend Webby over the Commando’s encrypted chat channel.

  Loopy puts his mechanical pencil back in his bag and stands, stretching fully and yawning. He looks tired, his black curls are tousled, and his eyes are circled by deep, dark shadows.

  It’s Friday evening after a crunch week. The planning and preparation for the new heist has absorbed whatever little spare time they had, and they won’t be going home to sleep for a while longer. Even longer if the police catch them in the act.

  This time it’s not just a little bit of guerrilla gardening or some night-time redecorating in a peripheral housing estate or private property.

  This time it’s big and loud and, even though their support network is as solid as ever, things could go south pretty easily.

  Loopy tries not to think about it. They all have jobs; Sprouty even has a little kid. They have a whole lot left to lose, and yet they are there, planning to fool the entire law enforcement of Milan to make art and take a stand for the city they love and against those who, though talking of supposed past greatness, would turn it into something sclerotised, close-minded, and pitiful.

  “From great insanity comes great power…” he thinks, casting a glance at his life-partner, who is still valiantly trying to hold zir own in table football against Sparky and Sprouty all on zir lonesome.

  He yawns again and strolls to the table, taking his customary place at Stabby’s side, manning the attack.

  “Now we’re talking!” Stabby exclaims, grinning and stabbing the handle forward to make the ball ricochet against the side wall.

  ***

  When the bar closes at half past one in the morning, the gang slips out among the crowd of late-night revellers, splitting up as agreed and eventually converging to collect their gear.

  Sparky opens the passenger door of her nondescript but spacious white van and pulls out a huge, battered duffel bag with the name of a local football team printed on the side in large, faded white letters. Stuffed in it to maximum capacity are a bunch of green overalls and some dark green t-shirts.

  “Wow, Sparky! Your mum and gran really went above and beyond…” Dotty comments with a low whistle, pulling out one of the overalls from the bag. They’re printed all over with stylised, deep green ivy leaves in a sort of elegant camo.

  Loopy picks up another one, a hint of tears in his eyes.

  “We’re going to look like Ghostbusters…” he whispers, the nerd, then lets his bag fall to the floor and kicks away his shoes, shimmying into the suit as quickly as he can.

  “What are the t-shirts for?” Sprouty asks, pulling one up with the tips of his fingers, as if he fears it will bite him.

  “Ninja masks!” Stabby exclaims.

  Zie picks up another shirt and quickly demonstrates, reversing, tying and tucking the garment until the only things that show from underneath it are zir kohl-lined eyes.

  “That’s what they are meant to be, isn’t it?” zir asks in hindsight, still managing to look embarrassed.

  “Yep, got it in one,” Sparky reassures zir.

  “My mum wanted to make us some proper balaclavas, but can you imagine wearing one in this heat?” she adds, making a face and fanning herself with her hand.

  Stabby gives her a brief, tight hug. “You’re awesome, the lot of you.”

  Sparky gives zir a doubtful look. “You really are easily pleased, fam.”

  Stabby lets out a little laugh and shakes zir head.

  “Am not. I am going to glorious battle against fascism with my mates, dressed as an Art Nouveau ninja. Whatever happens next, this is going to be one of the high points of my life!” zie exclaims, raising a fist in the air with a little jump.

  “If you put it that way…” Sparky agrees.

  They kit up quickly and jump into the van. The streets of the city are nearly deserted. There are no more trams and only night buses cruise through the streets, like the sole survivors of a public transport apocalypse. Clusters of revellers walk home or to the nearest discotheque, and the Area C cameras, which control access to the city centre for congestion charge purposes, are switched off.

  Truly off, as in a member of the team has hacked into the system and made sure no data will be recorded until the following morning and the control centre will only see a rerun of the data from the previous night.

  Since her wheelchair couldn’t fit in its customary place at the back of Sparky’s van with all the extra gear they are carrying, Webby is watching over them from her remote location somewhere in the Isola, sending her feelers through streams of information, on the lookout for potential danger and more of those pesky surveillance cameras.

  In the previous weeks, Stabby has scouted diligently for the access and egress routes with the least number of them to make Webby’s life easier, pacing back and forth along the streets and alleys of the city centre in one of zir many disguises, and has eventually found one that requires minimal intervention.

  While Webby works her magic, they are functionally invisible, like ghosts in the techno-surveillance machine.

  Sparky drives like all the demons of hell are at their back, she always does, and the rest of the gang hangs on tight, grinning in exhilaration or trying not to puke, depending on who you ask. The van, loaded to the maximum with all their gear and then some, sways like a drunken camel.

  Their target is Piazza Della Scala, the small square between the Duomo and the Teatro Alla Scala, where the Town Hall is situated.

  On the morrow, one of the main leaders of the far right will stage a rally there, allegedly to protest the law on the ius soli right of citizenship and the threat of “ethnic substitution” so dear to white supremacists all over the world, hoping to boost the campaign for his election to Prime Minister with yet another bout of ignorance and hate speech.

  The ANPI and other antiracist and antifascist organisations have called for a counter-protest in the nearby, vastly larger, Piazza Duomo.

  The members of the Commando will be attending that too, if they don’t get arrested, but first they are going to leave a mark on the event, Jugendstil-style.

  “We’re getting close,” Dotty announces, peering at the screen of her tablet, on which Webby is streaming the intel.

  “What about the others?” Sprouty sticks his head out of the window to check, and the rest of his words are eaten up by the turbulence.

  “They are close behind us, on a different route.” Dotty pinches the bridge of her nose. It’s not like Sprouty wasn’t there when the plan was discussed…

  “Time to get the party started, then!” Stabby dials a number on the crappy burner phone zie has bought for the occasion.

  “Hannibal is at the gates,” is all zie says when the call connects.

  ***

  A few kilometers away, a patrol of Vigili Urbani, the local police, cruising along Viale Forlanini spots a commotion and stops to investigate. They can hear strange noises, like pots being banged against each other hard, repeatedly. There are shouts, yells, and curses.

  Drunks, or a fight between gangs, the two officers think. From the sound of it, there are a lot more of them than there are of the police, so they immediately request help and then inch out of the car to check what is happening, pepper spray and batons at the ready. The sounds become even more ominous with every passing moment.

  The Vigili cross themselves, heartily wishing that they were allowed to carry guns, and cautiously peer around the corner towards the source of the noises.

  Some people are duking it out between the trees of the park as if there was no tomorrow. Swords clang against
shields, battle-cries and curses rend the air, as the combatants charge and retreat across the field strewn with the bodies of the fallen.

  There are Romans in loricae and rectangular shields, Gauls in punk hairdos, chequered trousers and not much else, and a third group of darker-skinned people in white armour, with round shields inscribed with a palm tree.

  Carthaginians, officer Bonelli’s classical schooling supplies, and, between them and the Gauls, they are doing short work of the Romans, as they should.

  He blinks repeatedly, then rubs his eyes as if, by doing so, he could erase those images from his retinas. Part of his brain tells him that he should try to arrest the lot of them for disorderly behaviour and causing a disturbance of the peace; the rest looks at their numbers and those swords and thinks that they definitely don’t pay him enough for that.

  His colleague has already decided: he has retreated behind the corner and is clutching the St. Michael medal hanging from his neck as if his life depends on it, curled in a ball and very grey in the face. His lips move in a mute prayer.

  Bonelli sighs and rolls his eyes. These are not ghosts from the Second Punic War, he tries to convince himself. There is no such thing as ghosts. These must be some assholes intent on playing a prank on honest people, but he will show them.

  Yes he will, as soon as the reinforcements arrive, he tells himself. Any minute now, he repeats, pressing the call button on his radio handset over and over.

  ***

  Meanwhile, on the far side of Parco Sempione, close to Cimitero Monumentale, a flash mob has ensued, much to the bafflement of the law enforcement.

  Citizens have taken to the streets with streamers of cloth, plastic balls, bowling pins, and hula hoops and are now pretending, awfully for the most part, to compete in an Olympic gymnastics event.

  A trio of elderly Chinese ladies from nearby Via Paolo Sarpi, allegedly alumnae of the National Gymnastics Academy of Beijing, are sitting on a public bench and act as judges, raising numbered placards and yelling scathing comments about how even in their eighties they would be able to do much better.