4 – Road Trip

The passage to Earth left Conrart dizzy and nauseated, but not so much so that he did not scan his surroundings at once for possible threats. Earth was hot and bright and empty, very like the dry plains in the western part of Shin Makoku. The only signs of habitation were some tall wooden poles strung with wires and the road he'd landed next to. Perhaps other areas were more welcoming, he thought without much interest.

A plume of dust rolled toward him down the road, and he stiffened. A strange vehicle halted in front of him. It reminded him of one of Anissina's inventions, which made him wary, but the man who emerged was a double-black mazoku. Nevertheless, Conrart backed away. There were mazoku who would not hesitate to correct what they saw as the temple's folly in trusting a half-human with the soul of the next Demon King, no matter what Shinou said. But the dark-skinned double-black pulled a bottled soul from one of his pockets, and Conrart relaxed. A fellow soul-guardian was more likely to help with his mission than hinder it.

Two days later, Conrart almost wished he had run off into the desert instead of accepting the guidance of José Rodruigez. Oh, José had been very helpful, even if he had messed up the identification cards – he didn't really mind being Conrad instead of Conrart for the brief time he would be on Earth. It was just that José talked all the time, mainly about strange Earth customs that meant nothing to Conrart. NASA? Manga? Tacos? Soccer scores? Star Trek? And if all that wasn't confusing enough, some of the things he claimed about Earth sounded flat-out impossible. Humans and mazoku, living peacefully side by side?

At first, Conrart simply didn't believe it. But when José took him out for a meal at a place he called "a great little Tex-Mex bar," Conrart couldn't help noticing that at least a quarter of the people there, patrons and table-servers alike, were mazoku. When he commented on the fact, José only shrugged. "Are they? I hadn't noticed."

Conrart stared. The division between humans and mazoku was a basic fact of life. How could anyone just not notice? But over and over, on the long drive from Texas to New York City, Conrart saw the same thing happening: Mazoku and humans living together and working together as if the differences between them didn't matter. As if they didn't even realize there was a difference.

And then on the last day of the journey, in a small town surrounded by green hills, the two men stopped at a convenience store. As they walked in, the mazoku woman behind the counter looked up. Her eyes narrowed and her lips thinned, and Conrart stiffened. He knew that look. He'd been on the receiving end often enough before. Halfbreed. Filthy human. So much for José's claims. Conrart hadn't realized until that moment just how much he'd hoped the things José had said were true.

But it was José whose every move the woman watched, and José whom she treated with barely-concealed dislike. To Conrart, she was civil enough, if not precisely warm. As they left the store, he could not keep from shaking his head in puzzlement.

"Something bothering you?" José asked as they climbed back into the truck.

"That woman – " Conrart said, and paused, trying to find words. "She's mazoku," he said finally. "But she treated me as if I were the mazoku and you as if you were the halfbreed."

"Oh." José shook his head. "You certainly are stubborn when you have an idea about something. Is it really that bad for humans in Shin Makoku? Never mind; I don't think I really want to know. Look, whatever you are there, here you are Conrad Weller, who's just as good as anyone else. And that's how people will treat you."

"Then why did she act that way toward you?"

"She doesn't like Latinos, that's all." José pulled out of the parking lot and started back toward the highway.

"Latinos?"

"Mexicans, South Americans, Cubans, people of Spanish origin," José said, as if that explained everything. "Like me."

"Like you," Conrart echoed, still puzzled. "But you're both mazoku."

José sighed. "Just because mazoku and humans get along here, it doesn't mean there isn't any prejudice. It's just based on different things. Nationality, skin color, things like that."

"So it's still the same," Conrart said, half to himself.

"Oh, it's not the same at all," José contradicted him. "Things are much better than they used to be. Forty years ago, a lot of discrimination was legal here and most people just accepted it. Now, it's not and most people don't. This is the first time we've run into anything this trip, isn't it?"

"Forty years?"

José misunderstood. "It's a long time, sure, but it wasn't easy. Real change takes a while."

Conrart nodded and fell silent. José respected his change of mood and let him think.

Real change takes a while.

Forty years was no time at all, to a mazoku. Forty years ago, he'd been working his way up through the ranks of the army, determined not to use his mother's influence to ease his way. The taunts and sneers of his "comrades" had taken every bit of his formidable self-control to ignore. But then, he'd heard those same taunts and sneers all his life; that was why and how he'd learned the formidable self-control in the first place.

And in a mere forty years, these people had gone from hatred and intolerance to something remarkably like acceptance. It obviously wasn't perfect yet, but still...

It doesn't matter how things are here. It could never happen in Shin Makoku. Conrart knew that as well as he knew his own name. Here on Earth, he might be Conrad Weller, the equal of any human or mazoku, but when he returned home he would be Captain Lord Conrart Weller once more, the man whose half-human, half-mazoku heritage made both sides class him as deceitful, dishonest, and untrustworthy by his very nature. Nothing he could do would change that.

He touched the breast pocket where the little soul-bottle lay. He would do best, he decided, to focus on his mission and ignore these tantalizing glimpses of another way to live.

Next: 5 - Invitation