Warrior cultures were interesting to Anda. Not only because he grew up in one, but also because he had always felt like an outsider from his people. Well, not his people entire. He got along very well with women of all ages, and the older men who had turned away from testosterone, by nature or by choice.

The Maasai clan at its core was proud. Pride, he thought, was like water in the desert. In the right amounts, it was life itself. You always needed reserves kept with you. Run out of it and you become weak. Share it to keep the tribe strong, find a new source and become acclaimed. But when it flows everywhere, when there is too much, people drown, and the desert changes and becomes else.

When the Maasai were a nomadic people, living off the plains, their pride was like a river, sustaining and nourishing them in a harsh environment, an abundant resource that gave strength, but stayed within its banks. As the world changed, the pride of the Maasai flowed through their culture, nurturing and maintaining. From pride came tradition.

But now things were done a certain way not through necessity or inevitability, but only because it was their way. Nothing wrong with that, he thought. But the changes mounted; as the grass on the plains hardened, the traditions hardened as well. Pride flooded the land it had sustained and changed it.

Today, the Maasai were a mighty clan, insular and proud. They were warriors surrounded by enemies of their own creation, shepherding resources for the act of shepherding, not for the resources themselves. On the Outside, they lived in the plains of central Africa as they always had, skin toughened against the cutting grass, raising generations of warriors in the traditional way, protecting herds of toughened cattle with thick skin and guts like furnaces against ferocious predators constantly designed and improved by the elders to shape the young of the clan.

On the Inside, they were terrors, conquering lands that had once belonged to vast hordes of orcs and ogres.

The times of tribulation, before the rise of Guardian, had been a near thing for Maasai culture, already in the slow process of dissolving into modernity. However, their casual relationship with the technology and culture of the twenty first century worked in their favor. As that world collapsed into fire and anarchy, they had the proven traditions of old to buoy them. By the time the displaced people from the north began arriving, both as refugees and armies, the Maasai were ready for them.

While all around their lands war raged and cataclysmic weapons changed the landscape, the Maasai were united and withdrawn from the fray. When Guardian began sweeping vast swaths of the globe with space-based microwave lasers, destroying a variety of uncontrollably self-replicating devices and other world ending plagues, the Maasai were spared. When the loose alliance of clans that would become the Corp took power, shaping and controlling the society of the sundered Earth, the Maasai rejected their attempts to influence and control their traditional society.

The Maasai had no need for bugs in their heads at the time. They would not accept food and comforts. When attacked by the bandit proxies of the clans, they repelled them with traditional weapons and rifles. Over time, the “bandits” became stronger. The enemy would grab arrows from the air, shrug off throwing clubs, operate at night with total comfort.

That got the Maasai’s attention.

Captured enemies could withstand pain as well as the strongest Maasai warrior. That was unheard of. The Maasai coming of age ritual involved public circumcision, during which the initiate showed no discomfort. They knew a thing or two about withstanding pain.

Now their interest became urgent. The eldest and wisest of the Maasai drew upon their traditions once again, turning to raids of enemy settlements, only now for technology instead of cattle. Scientists were captured, blood was drained, and in less than a generation the Maasai people were as they always were. Only better.

Their new systems let them join the world of the Inside, brushing aside the western fantasy setting and any lingering gaming conventions they encountered. Here, the Maasai were once again the legendary warriors of the plains, their culture and traditions in many ways a better fit for the fantasy world than the medieval guilds and clans unthinkingly adopted by most others. Their society authentically integrated into the mechanics of the world with no frictions, as if it was meant for them, and they for it.

That got the Corp’s attention.

Within a decade, the Maasai became a force within the Corp, on par with the mightiest Asian clans. The power of tradition. The mighty torrent of pride, sweeping all before it.

All this history weighed upon Anda’s spirit. The world had no shortage of arrogant, powerful men (or women for that matter, though their flaws often took other directions in Anda’s view). Relying on pride and tradition was self-evidently a successful strategy. Many of the clans originated from groups with long traditions of self-reliance. Groups that stood apart from the societies of the past and forged their own way, based on tradition and codes of honor. Groups with names like Yakuza, Kkangpae, The Triads, Sinaloa, Mafia, and Bratva. Strong hierarchies and lack of geo-political shackles let such groups survive into the new age, like the cockroaches and rats. The scavengers, the bottom feeders, come into their own.

The Maasai were nothing like these groups, except the traits that led to their success overlapped to an uncomfortable extent in Anda’s mind. But at least the bottom feeders were not responsible for the Earth’s near destruction. That distinction fell to the militaries, multi-nationals, intelligence bureaus and governments of the former nations, many reincarnated into the new order in tradition if not in name.

All the worst of humanity, all the pride and tradition promoting the group over all others. The arrogance of identity crushing the outsiders, the environment, the planet itself. Anda could see no way forward in those traditions, only an endless vortex of suffering, some groups swirling to the surface, others forced to the crushing depths, but all carried around and around, confusing the movement with direction, momentum with progress.

The enemy was the vortex itself, and what powered it was pride, pride and tradition.

Which brings us to our current happy situation, he thought. Driving a stinking hovercraft with a broken, dirty canopy out of New Manaus with three knock-off med bugs I’m supposed to deliver to someone who I strongly suspect doesn’t exist, but who, if he does exist, is planning to beat me senseless at best. While Boggs, the two-faced asshole, is happily following me so he can slurp up whatever goodies drop from the whole ordeal. Great.

Anda was feeling very put out. In fact, his inner Maasai warrior was a seething with rage and humiliation. If he were to give voice to the suppressed warrior, it would say something along the lines of

Who does that dung beetle scavenger think he is messing with? I am a hunter descended from a thousand generations of hunters, and he thinks I will be his baby calf to set out before the lion? He will feel my arrows in his belly and my spear upon his throat. I will leave him strung out upon a termite mound to be feasted upon by carrion birds while the insects gnaw upon his spine!

Of course, Anda could not allow himself such indulgent revenge fantasies. He settled upon

Boggs is really out on a limb with this one. He’s screwed up his relationship with Renaissance; we will never trust him in the future. He has no idea I can smell whatever tracking agent his man sprayed on the Hovercraft. He probably thinks I will lead him to Lilijoy like an idiot. I think instead, I will lead him to Lilijoy on my own terms.

With all that thinking out of the way, Anda turned his attention to the tablet. The presence of the tablet was an interesting wrinkle in the whole endeavor. Boggs had given it to him with a show of concern, showing him the message from Lilijoy’s captor. As soon as Anda saw the ‘Bye’ at the end, he was ninety-nine percent sure that this was a scheme of Lilijoy’s.

Honestly, he was impressed by how cleverly she had played the canny gangster. She had clearly picked up how most people thought little of her kind when she assumed that Boggs could never conceive of her authorship. Only that last word almost ruined the whole thing. He also suspected that she had no real plan beyond giving Boggs the message and seeing what happened.

Since the tablet was his one link to the girl, he had little choice but to drive around and hope that he would get into the range of however she was communicating with the tablet. If, that is, she was able to communicate with it at all. He thought it equally likely that she was holed up somewhere in the vicinity of the bomb shelter with no way to contact anyone.

The last time he had seen her, she was burning hot and convulsing. He had immediately thought of infection from her injured arm, and took off from the shelter at high speed, hoping to get a cheap bug ‘on loan’ from Boggs. All his other contacts in the area were either away, or not in possession of med bugs.

Unfortunately, it seemed that Mo had made his way into Boggs’ sphere of influence, probably through his former vampire friend, and spilled the whole story. When Anda arrived to get the offered med bug, he had been comfortably detained, though he was given no doubt that the ‘comfortably’ part was contingent on his cooperation. He had played dumb, saying that the bug was for his leg, and had even managed to slip a message through to the tablet when he suggested that Boggs allow him to communicate, lest his former clan get anxious.

His eventual release was confounding at first, as the tablet message had confirmed Mo’s story, and made it clear that Anda was hiding Lilijoy. It was only Boggs’ arrogance that could explain why Anda was now on his way into Old Manaus. There must be at least one other tracker hidden on the Hovercraft or on his person, even in his person, though with Anda’s top-of-the-line system, he highly doubted anyone could get something in him without being discovered. He also assumed that the tablet was tracked, and forwarding all communications. He was less worried about that – his bugs could set up a local jamming field with a two foot radius around his head and a very fine degree of control of which signals went in or out. He would just need to hold the tablet carefully!

He decided to start back at the shelter.

***

Lilijoy had already decided what to do if the tablet came back. She sent “This sentence is false.” After a moment the reply came back:

“Taijitu.”

A warm glow of happiness filled her. This could only be from Anda!

She sent “?”

His response was disappointing, though fit the recent theme of her life.

“Wait.”

She used the time to pull up her status.

STATUS: UNRATED

Nanobody count 10,135 [Urgent Action Needed] Power Ratio 82% Stage One Integration 5% Stage Two Integration .02% Secondary/Support 2 detected, 0 identified Communications Stealth Mode Sensors Passive Active Interventions 2 Personal Quantification None Options | Logs | Data | Reference | Menu

That last cultivation had been really productive!

She thought back to the previous results. Six hundred or so the first cultivation, about twice that for the next. She had been hoping for twenty-four hundred, but this wildly exceeded that. Then she remember Jiannu mentioning each ‘Little Lotus’ took about one third the resources. She could make three times as many, so seventy-two hundred instead.

She doubted the progress would continue doubling, because the ‘Little Lotuses’ weren’t that good at gathering and transporting resources. She wondered if she would run out of the rare earth elements that they needed, and if she did, where she could possibly get more. She almost focused on Power Ratio just to see what that was all about, but decided yet another new set of numbers would be more than she could handle at the moment.

What to do next?

She wanted to check on her arm, but the cramped confines of her current tube home didn’t lend itself to that. She decided that connecting to the local network anonymously wouldn’t pose too big a risk. After poking around for a while, she found she could access vast quantities of knowledge at something called the World Wide Web Archive.

She spent hours learning about the things of concern to the twenty-first century, including many things she dearly wished she could unsee.

She had fun when she ran a search on ‘goblins’ and pulled up hundreds of images of ugly, primarily green, humanoids. Some were ferocious and evil looking, while others looked dumb. Some were even cute. She decided that if she was going to be called a goblin, she should know a bit more about them, and spent quite a while learning about their history in folklore and fiction. As a nice bonus, she also learned what fiction was. It was amazing to her that throughout human history, there were people who lived by creating elaborate stories for other people to read and watch.

She learned that goblins were a mainstay of a kind of fiction called ‘fantasy’ and that led her to reading about fantasy role playing. People would pretend to be goblins for fun! (Other creatures too, but Lilijoy was less interested in that at the moment.) She learned that most role playing games, RPG’s, had their root in a fantasy book written back in the twentieth century, more than a hundred years before Guardian, which was called “The Lord of the Rings”.

That could kill some time, she thought to herself, and soon she was reading about hobbits and elves. Wizards too. She pictured Marcus every time Gandalf appeared in a scene (despite his notable lack of a majestic flowing beard), and Anda became Strider, tall, dark and wise. She found herself identifying with Pippen, young, foolish and always getting into trouble. And of course, small.

It was a revelation to find out that the smallest people could be the heroes.

By the time the hobbits reached Rivendell and the Council of Elrond, all had become clear. She was Frodo! Cursed to carry an ancient power, coveted by all but the purest, hounded by sniffing, snuffling monsters. She only hoped she wouldn’t have to throw her legacy into the fires of Mount Doom or its local equivalent!

She thought her flowers were altogether better than some stupid ring anyway.

She would have kept reading until sleep ripped the book from her mind with cold grasping fingers (now she was even thinking like the book!), but just as the Fellowship set off through the Marshes (aha!) she was interrupted by Anda on the tablet.

Jeez, couldn’t he have waited a while longer? she pouted.

Then reality and its priorities intruded, and she focused on what the message said.

“The garage door will open in a few minutes. Three hovercraft will enter. Stay where you are. After a minute they will leave. After five more minutes, another three hovercraft will enter. When the lights drop, go to the one closest to the charger. The person in it will be a woman named Maria. She will be wearing a green shirt. Get in and lie down on the floor. Any questions? Hope to see you soon! Anda.”

Lilijoy had many questions, but none about Anda’s directions. She sent back a simple “Got it,” and began to make her way through the ventilation ducts to a vent in the ceiling of the junk room next to the garage. She had noted earlier that one of the piles of broken furniture came up close to the ceiling, and she was confident she could get down from there.

By the time she reached the duct above the junk room, she thought she could hear the garage door rolling up. She waited until she heard the hovercraft leave. Seconds later, she heard loud cracking and popping sounds receding into the distance.

She eased the vent grating open. Or rather, she tried to ease it open, but it was firmly fixed in place. Heedless of the noise, she kicked it with both feet awkwardly. It gave out a squeal, so she kicked it some more, each kick dislodging swathes of loosely linked dust-filled fuzz and particles that bounced and tinkled on the metal around her. The grate didn’t seem to be moving, but with a final cataclysmic squeal she felt the whole duct begin to slide downward, almost trapping her leg as her section detached just beyond the grating.

She fell out of the conduit as it fell onto the pile, tumbling down over and through stacked chairs and desks, hitting her head and knees and elbows before plowing into some mixture of floor and papers, flat on her back with the wind knocked out of her.

Wheezing, she looked up at a tall figure in a black jacket looming over her, making a hissing sound.

Weathertop, she thought distantly.

Where’s Strider when you need him?