STORMING SHANGRI-LA
Created by Jack Philpott
INTRODUCTION
Tropical islands, palm trees, flying boats…and the soft thump of a silenced pistol in the night. This is the World of Mañana, a place of lazy relaxation coupled with deadly intrigue. Of patient, persistent progress into A Glorious Future. Of sociopolitical and ethnic diversity emerging from the dying remains of the grand empires of old. Imagine, if you will, Bogart's Casablanca on a global scale, and with the naïve self-assuredness of the summer of 1914. Imagine the laissez-faire attitude of a cafe in Nice contrasted with the frightful panic of a deadly chase through the crowded city streets of Cairo, or a gorgeous sunny seascape with a looming shadow just at the edge of your vision. Set in the present day in a world not our own, Mañana is a world of contrasts and amalgamations. Retrofuturistic super trains share the stage with “old fashioned” flying boats and airships. Baroque-tinged Great Power politics clash with radical, futurist ideologies, emerging global corporations, and the burgeoning nationalism of a thousand composite cultures our world never saw. The old, decaying empires fight for continued hegemony and try their best to patch the growing cracks in their imperial façade, but the center cannot hold. It all gives a guy or dame a lot to think about while sipping that rum as the sun slips quietly beneath the tropical waters in a pool of warm crimson. Combining the Noir-tinged optimism of the Jazz Age with the laid back world of the islands, The World of Mañana is a new, deceptively relaxed, but sinister addition to the Retrofuturist culture. This is where Dieselpunks go on vacation to leave their troubles behind…only to find that their troubles have followed. It's Noir, on Island Time.
***
Warmth. Embracing, consuming, warmth soaks into my muscles like a gentle massage. The penetrating rays of sun from above and the bracing heat from the sand beneath make a soft bed and blanket, lulling me into an easy afternoon’s siesta. Background noises of squabbling chickens and metal clanging in the gentle wind blur into the background. Ill thoughts and distant troubles fade away with my consciousness. I pass comfortably into the infinity of gentle sleep.
A light kick to the soles of my sandals jerks me back into the realm of consciousness.
“We are soon the airplane to be fixing, yes?” says an impatient, familiar, and utterly unwelcome Scandinavian voice. His Portuguese is harsh and accented, his grammar Germanic.
I scowl under my hat. “Mañana,” I say, hoping he’ll let me return to the embrace of my siesta.
“What the hell do you mean ‘mañana’? You said ‘mañana’ yesterday!”
I sigh and push the hat back from my eyes. The afternoon sun, which has been so wonderfully warm on my chest, blinds me momentarily. I can barely make out the shape of my passenger’s head through the glare. His close-cut crop of blonde hair glows like a scary halo. He’s a Vinlander of pure Euro stock and white as a lily, but slowly burning to red as a rose in the California sun. His name is Svensen, a businessman from Nye Copenhagen, a land of towering spires and angry swarms of autocars. He’s still in a hurry even after several days in the tropics. “The plane will be ready when it’s ready,” I say. “The mechanic is working on it!”
“Damn it, Herr Lagarto!” I don’t have time for ‘when it’s ready’. I important and urgent business in San Cristóbal have and no time for some grease ball mechanic from nowhere California to poke at your rattrap plane until it is fixed!”
Now Svensen is just irritating me. No need to insult my plane, Estrella. I pull my hat back over my eyes and lay back again. “If you’re in that big of a hurry, then I’m sure there’s a coach to San Pedro. From there, you can maybe catch a train to San Cristóbal.”
He kicks the soles of my sandals again, harder. “I don’t have time for a coach, and I doubt the trains run regularly in this sand pit! I am paying you to fly me to San Cristóbal, not catch up on your suntan!”
I sit up, slowly burning from the inside now. Svensen was brusque, but polite when he chartered the flight three days earlier in Nye Malmö. He kept quietly to his notes and bank books the whole flight, ignoring every bounce and jolt, not even leaving his seat during the fuel stops in Cozumel and La Paz. It was like having an automaton for a passenger. My iguana Don was more interactive.
However, a thrown rod in the portside engine en route to San Cristóbal diverted us to San Miguel harbor and, ultimately, to Pedro’s shop near downtown. It was nothing I could fix with hand tools. Pedro would have to machine us a new piston.
Figuring there were worse places to be stranded than San Miguel, which manages a dry, breezy seventy-two pretty much year ‘round, I bought a bottle of local tequila and kicked back on the beach. Svensen started out annoyed and has gotten progressively more irate as the days slide by. Now, he is getting confrontational and my own patience is running low.
“Mr. Svensen,” I say, “Pedro’s the best machinist in San Miguel. He’s also the busiest. He’ll be done when he’s done. You try and rush a piston and you get a seized engine. While you paid me well you didn’t pay me enough to risk my plane or my life.”
“Busy?” Svensen snaps. “I went by yesterday afternoon and he was asleep!”
“You probably went by during siesta. And if you are unhappy with my services, I’ll be happy to refund you half the amount, and you can fly with one of the other planes in San Miguel.” I motion to the harbor. Besides Estrella, the only other aircraft is an old floatplane missing half of its wing fabric.
He scowls and his lips move silently, as if counting to calm himself or plotting my murder. “Look, can’t you just a word have with this Pedro or something? Light a fire under him? Bump us up in priority? I can his palm fatten if needed.”
Cursing silently, I get up and stretch. I look off into the distance at the sandy peninsula of Playa del Sol and the scrub-covered hills of the Punta Loma. I lean against a thin palmetto trunk and brush sand from my clothes. “I’ll see what I can do,” I say.
Still cursing, I walk back to Estrella, her port engine cowling open like a patient in surgery. She bobs slightly in the greenish waters of the bay. It’s a deep bay, well sheltered. San Miguel could have been quite the port city had a proper investment in infrastructure been made. Instead, with few workable docks, it remains a small, isolated outpost in central California, eclipsed by San Cristóbal to the north. Though to be honest, the former, located on the Bahía Grande near the breadbasket of the valley and the gold-laden foothills of the Sierra Nevada, has more worth shipping. Nothing much comes out of San Miguel but a trickle of silver and turquoise out of Colorado or Apacheria.
I hop up on Estrella’s nose and slip in through the hatch. Don slides up a lazy eyelid from his perch in the copilot’s seat, but otherwise ignores me as I climb the stairs into the cockpit and slip into the passenger/cargo area.
I continue back to the tail section. Rummaging through the haphazard stack of old boxes, I finally find what I’m looking for. It’s a long, flat box with Caddoan engravings, 16 by 6 inches by 2 ½ inches tall. I sigh. Svensen offered a bribe. It shows how little he understands professional pride. There’s only one way to settle this, and it lies in the box I hold.
My final negotiator. My Peacemaker.
I open the case. It sits there, nested in its L-shaped velvet cutout. Its grip is of intricately carved maple, adorned with bone beads and a single crow’s feather; form and function, wedded through the able hands of a master.
I haven’t had to resort to using it in years, and only take it out in the most desperate of times. I debate returning it, ashamed to even consider resorting to such measures, but, damn it, the customer is always right.
I remove my Peacemaker and its cleaning brushes. Carefully, I brush out the interior of any dust or old cinders, oil the wood, and wipe off the feather. I hold it to the light, sighting down it, and once certain it’s ready, I load it and prime it for use before sliding it into my belt.
It’s time.
I take a last swig of tequila to fortify myself for hard negotiations and march to Pedro’s. His small shop is noisy with the grinding of a band saw on metal and the clanging of a hammer on steel. Inside, it is dark as a sinner’s soul, save for the hellfire sparks from the band saw. The clang of the hammer stops and a large, muscular, young apprentice stares at me, hammer at his side. He taps the shoulder of Pedro at the band saw. Pedro turns his considerable bulk around. His eyes are dull, cloudy after years of using a welding torch. His beard is scraggly from being singed repeatedly over the forge. He nods.
“We need to talk,” I say.
“We are almost done with the mayor’s boat,” he says. “We get to your piston maybe tomorrow.”
“I need you to start the piston now,” I say.
“Tony,” he says, “I have other things. I get to it. You know I will.”
I remove my Peacemaker, holding it out before me. “It’s loaded and ready, Pedro. My customer insists. We have to do this.”
Pedro sighs. “How long have you known me, Tony? When have I ever cheated you? When have I ever lied to you?”
“Never, Pedro, my friend, but my client leaves us little choice. I am sorry that we must resort to this, but we have a grievance, you and I, and this is the only way to resolve it.”
Pedro’s eyes drop. “I understand, my friend. Come, we talk in the back room.”
I follow him under a hanging sheet and into a dingy back room. It houses a small bed, an ancient dresser, and a wash basin. A single paneless window gives the only light. He sits on the bed, I on a small stool. “My friend,” I begin, “my client has left little choice but to use the Peacemaker.” I hold it aloft and remove a match. I light the match and then the bowl of the Peacemaker, puffing to get it lit. Thick, oily smoke from tobacco, sage, and a few traditional herbs fills my mouth, singeing it slightly. The Peacemaker finally lit, I take three ceremonial puffs and pass it to Pedro. In Vinland and the Great Lakes, they call it a calumet, in the khanates of the plains, a chanunpa. Whatever the name, the peacemaking pipe is almost universal in North America as a symbol of settling grievances and coming to terms—but typically only the most contentious of terms. To break out the calumet is to declare that a near-war is in existence between you and your adversary. By resorting to it, I have all but declared a state of war with my old friend Pedro, and am now making peace demands.
We sit there in silence for several passes of the pipe, relaxing, contemplating the strange winds of fate that brought us to this moment. I think about Svensen’s impatience. How mad would he get seeing us now? “I don’t pay you two to take smoke breaks!” I regret taking him on as a passenger. Yet, to be honest, I had plenty of reasons to leave the islands for a while myself, namely a not-Mayan princess, whose amateur intrigues have put me on the Inquisition’s naughty list. Truth be told, those two stoic Neapolitans in suits, whom I saw in Nye Malmö, were probably just tourists, but why take chances when I may or may not be hunted by Christendom’s most far reaching shadow force? When a fidgety blonde Vinlander businessman solicited a flight to California, I figured better to be safe than sorry, and took the opportunity to skip town for a while. Maybe I could fly on from there to Chinooktla or Alyeska, fly some delivery routes in the bush for gold dust.
Shaking off the reminiscence, I get to the business at hand. “Pedro, many times we’ve worked amicably together, you and I, and always you have done me honor. I know you have important work, and I hate to ask for special treatment, but today, I need you to do my piston first, preferably this afternoon.”
He puffs for a while, thinking. He hands back the pipe and gets up, grabbing two cloudy, old glasses and a bottle of bad mescal. He pours us each three fingers worth. It burns like kerosene going down my throat. “My friend,” he says, “I understand your predicament. Your Gringo, he is in too big a hurry, even for a Gringo. God grants us so short a time on this world, yet some, they seem in such a hurry to get through it. I would ask that he wait. He needs to learn patience, yes?”
I puff and think. “Yes, yes he does,” I say. “But today, maybe not. He has a meeting, he says.”
“And I have to do the mayor’s boat. He has an important visitor, so I hear. The Governor, perhaps. Maybe even a Spaniard.”
I take another swig of the drink and pass the pipe. “I understand, but I must insist. He is crazy, even for a Vinlander. If you wish to charge us more for the inconvenience, Pedro, I will see to it that you receive all you ask.”
He thinks this over and quotes me a price three times his normal rate.
I scowl. “Pedro, please, such an amount is beneath you. You could get twice that from this Gringo. He has far more money than patience.”
“I would not feel right, taking more,” he says.
“That is why you are a true man of God, Pedro. Hmm, God…”
“Yes, my friend?”
“I hate to see money go to waste where it is needed. Surely the cathedral here needs a new roof or bell…”
Pedro smiles. I smile. We have our compromise.
***
The California sun soaks warmly into my back as I kneel atop Estrella. It still amazes me how much difference a slight change in latitude makes on the intensity of its light…were this tropical Dominica where I hale from, I’d be cooked alive by now. I take a second’s break from my work to gaze out over the small city of adobe, brick, and stone that rises up into the scrub-covered hills to the east. To the west, the flat, sandy expanse of the peninsula holds back the cool Pacific waves. The setting is peaceful, secluded, and relaxed. I could almost live here were it not for the arid brown of the landscape.
I smile and return to work, carefully installing Pedro’s new piston. As always, he’s machined it perfectly…a master craftsman even under duress. He’d worked through the night to finish both it and the mayor’s job and was rewarded handsomely by Svensen. That over-hurried Vinlander barely scowled when Pedro quoted that exorbitant amount, making me think we should have held out for more. Oh well… either way the cathedral of Santa Maria de San Miguel de las Ipais is receiving much needed restoration work.
My thoughts drift with the recollection of the cathedral. This morning I lit a candle there to Santa Maria de los Negros de Erzules, hoping that Her blessing will carry me through the trying ride ahead with Svensen. Had anyone asked, I would have said the candle was for Santa Maria the Virgin. California is staunchly Roman Catholic. Those of us who follow the “heretical” Congolese Mass can find ourselves harassed here, or worse. I wonder, not for the first time, whether I am wasting my time, not just with the deception, but with the whole religion thing. No Saint has possessed me in months. No prayers seem to be answered. Guilt and fear wash over me for entertaining such doubts. I shake them off and return to the piston.
I’m just finishing the piston installation and preparing to replace the cylinder case when Svensen reappears. He’s guiding a pair of locals, who are pushing a large steel drum on a pushcart. Svensen yells up to me, “Herr Lagarto! Good news! I have more fuel bought you! This should be more than enough to refuel your plane when we in San Cristóbal arrive. Consider it a tip for getting that lazy local in gear!”
I curse as the two local men proceed to carry the drum through the open back passenger door. Just what I need, added weight…and weight sure to stink up the whole cabin with the scent of petrol. “Couldn’t you have just bought me the fuel in San Cristóbal?”
He looks pensive for a moment. “I guess I could have, but perhaps the fuel is less here!”
It’s probably more expensive here, what with the extra shipping costs. But Saints, it’s his money, so smell-be-damned I’ll take what gratuities I can get. “Thank you then, Herr Svensen,” I say, feigning sincerity. Ignorant North Americans. For all the hassle this trip is becoming, I at least know I’ll make a nice profit.
The rest of the repairs and subsequent checkouts and test runs go like clockwork, and by evening I’m kicked back in the sand with that bottle of tequila, just in time for the sunset. Svensen is annoyed that we didn’t make it out today, but at least he wasn’t stupid enough to insist we fly at night. This close to the Sierra Nevada and in unfamiliar territory, we’d run the extreme risk of flying straight into a mountain. I light up one last cigar for the evening. By the time it’s finished, I’ll likely be almost asleep.
***
I wake up with a hole burnt in my shirt from the cigar. The tequila bottle is empty. I wonder how much I drank, before I notice the pungent stain on my shirt and the moisture-clumped sand below me. I’d fallen asleep and likely lost half the bottle and most of the cigar in the process.
Damn it.
I’m rummaging through my goods for a change of clothing, figuring a dip in the harbor will do me well, when I see Svensen staring alternately at me and at his watch. “It is almost eight o’clock. Soon flying out we should be, yes?”
I curse again. “Give me thirty minutes.”
It takes closer to an hour by the time I’ve preflighted Estrella and woken up the local harbor master to give us flight clearance. I crank up Estrella, happy to hear both her engines purring again, and once the check-flight is done, nudge her gently forward until, roaring gleefully, she screams down the near-empty harbor channel, leaving white foamy wake behind. Soon, she has once again broken free from the green waters and risen up into the air. As the Punta Loma passes astern, I smile to the rising sun over the mountains, happy that soon I’ll be in San Cristóbal and rid of this troublesome Vinlander.
A couple small nudges of turbulence are the sky’s greeting as Estrella settles into cruising altitude. The peace of the air wafts over me, and I smile, first at the clear blue sky, next at the craggy shapes of the Sierra Nevada to the north and east, her peaks still frosted with snow even into the late spring. The Pacific is a deep blue to the west. The sun is a warm yellow to the east. The Saints may have forgotten me, but up here the Divine is always near to me. I set a path between the Sierra and the Pacific and make some navigational notes and then let myself settle into that sense of freedom and oneness that always overtakes me in the air.
The minutes burn by and soon we are over the flat scrub plains around San Pedro. A winding band of green trees embraced on both sides by a patchwork of geometric green fields marks the path of the San Pedro River. I hear she is a beautiful river, but deadly in the spring thaws. Every few years she spills her banks and floods the valley. Were this over-practical, soulless Vinland, some Vinlander engineer would have probably sluiced and levied her into submission, perhaps even paved her over entirely. Some wealthy businessman, like my passenger, might have funded such an effort. Smiling to myself, I sneak a peek back at him. He’s pulled the curtain shut, but left a slight gap. I see him fiddling with something silver and shiny and immediately recognize it. I curse and pray, and sigh all at once. It’s a revolver.
Something has bugged me about this guy from the start. If he was so desperate to get to a scheduled meeting in San Cristóbal, why hadn’t he taken one of the regular airships that ply the air lanes between Nye Copenhagen, Fort Chinooktla, and San Cristóbal? He could certainly afford the tickets. Why even bother taking the long route down through the Bahamas and Mexico when a pilot could probably be chartered for a more northern route through the Lake Countries? The answer became obvious when I saw the pistol. His plans in San Cristóbal are less than honest, and he needs to enter the city quietly and unnoticed. Small cargo planes out of the somewhat friendly Latin south attract less interest than flights out of the semi-hostile Russo-Indian north.
I take a few breaths and calm myself. Hell, not my problem what this guy wants. That’s between him and the Saints. Had I found out earlier, I could have conceivably kicked him off the plane, but it’s too late now. I only have enough fuel to reach calm waters near San Cristóbal or backtrack to San Miguel now. Might as well finish my duty and leave him to his own business. Besides, if word got around I’d ditched a passenger, it might hurt my own business. I settle back into the freedom of the air and forget about my anxious Vinlander and his pistol.
I hear the sheet pulled back behind me and the tell-tale cocking of the revolver.
Shit.
“It is now time this plane north by northeast to turn,” Svensen says. I can feel the menace of the pistol behind my head, though it is not touching me. “We will proceed to coordinates thirty-nine, five, and thirty North by one-hundred-twenty, two, and thirty West. There we will in the lake land.”
I double-curse: once at my naiveté and once at his. The coordinates are for a spot somewhere in the craggy peaks of the Sierra Nevada. What, does he think Estrella is a helicopter? “It takes this plane hundreds of feet to take off, even assuming glass-calm waters and good headwinds. No mountain lake is large enough to accommodate.”
“This one is,” he says, matter-of-factly.
There’s an uncomfortable silence. “Lake Da’oe,” he says after a moment.
I laugh out loud. “Sure, Da’oe! I’ll take you right there, sir, just after a brief stop in Eldorado and a layover in Shambala! Shall we visit Elysium Fields afterwards?”
“There is no reason to be rude,” he barks. “Da’oe is very much real.” Now I know he is a loon but keep quiet, not wishing to antagonize the guy with the gun. He takes my silence as an invitation to speak. “There are several eyewitness accounts of Da’oe: Pedro Lopez de San Juan’s ill-fated expedition, reports from Californio gold prospectors, and Gulbrand Göttfriedsen’s aerial mapping of the Sierra Nevada. Göttfriedsen identified several large mountain lakes. Of them, only the one I have identified has any claim to match the descriptions from de San Juan’s few surviving compatriots; ‘waters as clear as a diamond and as deep as the abyss,’” he starts to recite from memory, “‘hills green as emeralds capped with snow as pure as innocence…seven leagues from end-to-end and ringed with trees tall as a score of men’. Only this one,” he adds, tapping a map with the pistol, “the most southerly and easterly, perched just west of the great Utan Desert, matches.”
I roll my eyes. Da’oe was a child’s story, the delusions of battle-shocked would-be Conquistadores and wilderness-maddened prospectors. A place of earthly paradise with lovely naked Indio maidens that beckon like sirens, where the fish are so numerous one can walk like Jesus across the lake upon their backs. Surrounded, of course, by trackless mountains filled with hostile cannibal Indios, more beast than man, who kill all who gaze upon Da’oe’s beauty. “Da’oe is a myth, and this is a suicide mission,” I say. “If you’re so desperate to die, then I’ll take you to San Cristóbal as agreed and you can hire a different fool.”
He pokes the gun barrel rudely into the back of my head. “Fly to the coordinates and land in the lake, or I shoot you dead right here!” he screams, loud enough to wake Don and make him hiss and rear in his seat.
I steady my nerves. “You are an experienced pilot, then? You can land a flying boat on an unfamiliar lake, I take it? Be advised, the yoke will be a bit slippery with my blood and brains, which you’ll have to clean off the gauges and windscreen as well if you want to make the landing.”
“I’l