The Stolen Future Box Set

by Brian K. Lowe

  Skull stopped short as the conversations around us halted and the stragglers drifted to the sides of the room. His dark eyes darted all about, his brain whizzing furiously as he assessed us, his unconscious men, and the mood of the room. Facing them, I could see what he could not; that he still held the obedience, if not the loyalty, of the fifty men who had served on his shift and had not seen our earlier victory. If he called upon them to charge, our triumph was short-lived, as well.

  In an all-or-nothing toss, I made the most unexpected move I could think of.

  Chapter 35

  I Fight

  “Skull! So pleasant to make your acquaintance at last!” With my hand outstretched and an entirely lunatic grin on my face, there wasn’t a warrior in recorded history with the wit to utter the words that would bring me down. By the time I stopped, hand almost in his face, he had recovered enough to scowl. “Sorry about your men,” I babbled on, “but we had a little fracas and we didn’t know there were yours until it was all over. Some of the other fellows told us. Bad manners, I admit, but how were we to know?”

  Up close, Skull was not the overwhelming specimen I had feared—to me. To his contemporaries, at a scant two inches short of six feet he was a giant of a man. He looked up at me, and it was easy to see he didn’t like it. He bore a shock of dark, wild hair; I had expected him to be shaven bald. But I had also expected an older man—he was barely out of his teens, his eyes glaring with the hate not only of me, but at the loss of an entire world to which he believed himself entitled. He shook himself out of his stupor, his labor-hardened muscles shining with sweat. Here was a young man who did not intend to die a slave.

  In an instant my trepidation was replaced by sorrow. But if I were to live, Skull’s dream must end.

  He picked out one of the bystanders and snapped his fingers. “What happened?”

  “I told you,” I interrupted. My plan depended on keeping Skull off-balance. “We got into an argument with some of your lads, and one thing led to another, and… You know how it goes. If they’d only said they were with you, we’d have backed off straight away.”

  He turned his attention back to me. “Why? What’s so special about me? You’ve never seen me before.”

  I shrugged foolishly. “Of course not. But it didn’t take long to find out who was boss around here: Skull. So the last thing we wanted to do was get on your bad side. We were kind of hoping to get in with you, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I think I do.” He gestured contemptuously to Timash. “Is that monkey man with you?”

  Perhaps Skull wasn’t the thinking man I had given him credit for being.

  “Shh!” I waved him to keep his voice down, even though Timash had certainly heard. “I’m trying to keep him under control. If he had his way, he’d take you all on.”

  This was a challenge Skull could relate to. His chest swelled just like the ape’s whom he was insulting.

  “No, no!” I said quickly. “I’ll take care of him.” I turned around halfway, as far as I dared. “Timash, apologize to Skull.”

  “Ha!” He stood up, flexing his shoulders. “He’s not worth it.” And he sat down again. Thank you. “He’s so weak you could fight him yourself.”

  I glanced back at Skull, panic all over my face, to see how he was taking it, then at Timash.

  “Will you be quiet?” I pleaded. “This guy could tear my head off!”

  “Yeah! No problem!” Skull chimed in, right on cue. He had taken the bait.

  “Prove it,” Timash demanded. The trap snapped shut—with Skull and me inside.

  Up until now, our strategy had unfolded flawlessly. By luring Skull into a one-on-one challenge, we had neutralized his entire following. Timash could easily have crushed him, but for that very reason, had Timash challenged Skull, he would have been within his bully’s rights to call down his whole mob—and Skull would never have challenged Timash.

  At the same time, we had kept his thoughts away from the Library. Now, if I could only defeat him in single combat, the others would be forced to accept me as their leader—particularly with Timash acting as my enforcer. The only unknown factor was whether I could defeat him, and both our lives hung on the question.

  I had never been a wrestler, but I had boxed once. I bent my knees slightly, fists raised to protect my face. Given my lack of experience, I intended to stay outside Skull’s reach as much as possible, away from those hawser-like arms.

  Skull had no such intentions. He partly turned, speaking to one of his lieutenants, then spun on me with no warning, charging and taking me in the midsection. We went down hard on the floor, with me underneath. I barely kept my head from hitting the deck with enough force to end the fight at once.

  Pinning me down with his legs astraddle my body, Skull tried to seize me by the neck while I clumsily fought him off with my hands. Time after time I knocked his grasp away from me; time and time again he thrust at my throat and face. He rose on one knee, attempting to drive the other into my body, but he couldn’t find the leverage.

  Half-pinned, I couldn’t wriggle my way entirely out of his grip, but I could outlast him, and when he let up the pressure I twisted onto my stomach, gathered my legs underneath me and heaved upward just as he interlaced his fingers under my jaw and pulled—but instead of fighting against him I went along with it, using his own leverage against him. We crashed to the deck again, but this time I was on top. I heard his head smack against the deck.

  I rolled over again and crawled away, feeling the strain on my neck, back, and knees.

  Deep in my hindbrain, a thought was tugging at my mental sleeve, but I could not spare the time. Skull rose, bloodlust in his eyes, and charged into me, knocking me back, but this time I tumbled, keeping my legs in so he could find no purchase, then pushed him away hard. He backpedaled off-balance toward his own crowd, who split down the middle and made no effort to aid him.

  His next approach was slow, wary. I had been fortunate thus far; he was a brawler and I was not, but he had underestimated me. All of his earlier opponents had been specimens of modern man; I doubt he had ever faced a foe with my “primitive” physique. Formerly bright and eager, now his eyes were hooded and flat. At the start, an easy victory would have served his purposes: humiliation would have sufficed to keep me subordinate. But this had taken too long; even if he won, there would be doubters as to Skull’s supremacy, those who would eye him speculatively, wondering if it was time for new leadership. Skull had decided I was to die.

  That same old thought was back, tugging like a child who’s seen a balloon-vendor at the zoo. Awaiting Skull’s next move, I retreated a step, breathing deeply, trying to control my racing heart and mind. Into that microscopic oasis of calm the little thought raced—and then vanished, winking out like a shooting star, nothing left but a streak of enlightenment.

  Like a wind-up doll in reverse, I let my arms relax, holding them ready but flexible, as though they were hoses filled with water. Somewhere deep inside me a new facet of the Library’s teachings was sinking into place: It was as if I had just read a book on self-defense. Suddenly I knew every move required to bring Skull to his knees—hell, I knew a dozen ways to kill him.

  But I also knew that there was a vast difference between memorizing an art and mastering it. As the Librarian had warned me, “Muscle memory can only be learned over time.” It could take years of practice for my body to catch up to my mind—if I survived the next five minutes.

  And Skull was tired of waiting for me to make another move. There was no more time. I made my decision and met him head-on.

  We grappled again, he going right for the throat—and I let him. Left hand on my neck, he fought to close in with the right, but I seized it in both of mine, twisting backward and counter-clockwise simultaneously.

  Skull screamed and let go, rolling to his right. He couldn’t help it, unless he wanted his wrist broken. I kept up the pressure, forcing him backward, then down, and all the time he was howling in ago
ny that only became worse if he hindered me in the slightest. I could have led him anywhere with that grip, and I made sure they all saw it.

  Then I let him go. He had not surrendered; I had not demanded it. But the fight was over. Skull could not go on. His damaged wrist would throb for days, and ache for weeks. He could not even protest when I told him I wanted my clothes back.

  I handed Skull my rags, making a point of looking him in the eye.

  “You can wear these. And when your hand is healed, come talk to me.”

  He took them hesitantly. It wasn’t the retribution he had expected, and, I don’t doubt, better treatment than his predecessor had received. But it wasn’t in me to kill the man in cold blood, aside from the fact that I wanted to keep as low a profile as possible. It occurred to me that if he did come to see me in a few days’ time, I should have something to say. I put it aside. Our lives were not our own. It probably wouldn’t matter.

  Skull grasped my arm and muttered something puzzling under his breath. “It’s all yours now. Hope you can live with it.” Before I could seek clarification, he had retired to a far corner.

  I slipped back into my familiar, if hated, Nuum garb, and casually slipped my hand into my deep pocket.

  The Library wasn’t there. It wasn’t in any of my pockets. It was gone.

  Chapter 36

  The Dark Lady

  Even before the cold, clammy hand of fatal dread had removed itself from my shoulder, I was examining the problem from all angles. Skull I suspected and quickly discarded; I had only moments before stripped him naked. Had the Library been in his pocket then, it would be in mine now. Nor could it have fallen out; it would have made a noise and I would have seen it.

  Timash must have noticed my expression, because he came over and in a low voice asked me what was wrong. I told him.

  “Skull?”

  “No. If he had it he would have threatened me with exposure before he gave up his position. It must have been lost earlier. God,” I said fervently, “I hope it’s not on the deck somewhere.”

  “Unless Garm was to slip on it and break his neck.”

  This offhand remark might have proven sufficient to break the tension had not the door opened, revealing, with uncanny timing, the scarred visage of the hated Garm himself. I confess I jumped. What if that hideous soul harbored an exceptional telepath?

  If it did, he hid it well. “Skull! The captain wants to see you!”

  When no response followed, he took the time to look over the room. Skull huddled in a corner while I stood in center stage, my own clothes upon my back. “Oh,” he said stupidly to me. “So that’s how it is. Get your scrawny backside topside.” He grinned at his own imagined witticism. “Move!”

  I was escorted with no gentle grace up the ladders through the deck and into the aft housing where Garm and the real crewmen lived. Even here the motif of ancient times was continued, and the real machinery, as must exist somewhere for the comfort of these men, was so cunningly disguised that had these sailors been Thorans, the Nuum would have found nothing to alarm them. For my taste, the devotion to realism was taken to an extreme: I jammed a splinter into my hand on one of the ladders. Garm looked at me, but I merely pulled out the wood and kept climbing.

  We walked and climbed for several minutes, the ship being, as I have said, of surprising size. My ears strained for sounds that were not there. Missing was the rolling of the ship at sea, but also the wind of the ship of the air. Had I not known by the evidence of my own eyes that we were some thousands of feet in the air, I would have sworn that we were entombed.

  When we reached a level with no ladder leading further upward, I surmised we were nearing our destination, and so it was with little surprise that I was pulled to a halt at a wooden double door at the end of the short corridor. It was, in fact, the only door on this level. Garm rapped on it respectfully. At an unheard signal, he opened it.

  “I brought the chief rower, Cap’n, like you asked.” He must have received some further signal, for he turned to me. “Come on in. The cap’n wants to talk to you.”

  Given Timash’s description of the “iron hand” and the coincidence of this summoning with the disappearance of the Library, for a brief instant I entertained the thought of jumping Garm for his weapon and taking my chances. I felt my legs tense to leap when the overseer, perhaps clairvoyant from his years as a jailor, dropped one hand on the handle of his whip. I relaxed. My window of insanity had closed.

  Once more I had come upon a critical turning point in my life, and passed it by all unknowing, but still alive. Ignoring the crawling feeling in the flesh between my shoulder blades, I strode with a confidence I did not feel past Garm and into the captain’s cabin.

  The captain whistled. “You’re right, Garm. He’s a big one. And handsome, too.”

  Captain “Iron Hand” was Marella.

  Garm wedged past me and muttered something in Marella’s ear.

  “Already?” she murmured, then held out a hand. “You owe me.” Grumbling, he removed something from his sash and gave it to her. She placed it in a pocket of her own outfit and smiled.

  Their by-play allowed me a few precious seconds in which to assimilate my surroundings, all of which passed in a dizzy blur —a spacious cabin, sparsely furnished with heavy chairs, a bed, and a desk Timash could sleep on; in place of art, tapestries and fabrics hung and thrown in an apparently random pattern—none of which remained upon my mind for more than an instant as my eyes were irresistibly drawn back to the most arresting object in the room: Marella.

  The romantic interludes in my life have not been many; Casanova wooed more women in a week than I did in a year. But for all that, when I did fall my tastes and my affections were constant, and nothing in what my eyes beheld touched that place in my heart where only my lost Hana dwelled…but with God as my witness I had never imagined that the grease-streaked technician we rescued from an underground battlefield could metamorphose herself like this.

  I stared, I admit it. In all likelihood I stared with my mouth open like a farm boy at a coronation. I could not help it.

  Gone was the grease, the filth of the pit and the fatigue that had turned her skin papery and her eyes baggy. Now her black hair was washed through with strands of auburn that lit one by one as she swept her curls from her face. In dress, however, she had changed but little, favoring a deep red jumpsuit with a white stripe down the leg, rather than the fantastical motley that attired her crew. She tucked her suit legs inside of her thigh-high boots, rather than outside as was the style, a simple change which tightened and smoothed the fabric just enough to make her gender obvious to the most casual observer. Faint grease spots on her uniform marked long use, but I found them comforting, a reminder of the woman I had known and fought with days ago. Against her right hip lay the ever-present short staff, on her left perched a phase-pistol. I wondered—did that make her right- or left-handed?

  “Garm,” she said. “Wait outside.”

  While I stood, my mouth closed at last, she circled me like a shopper appraising a well-dressed model—or a shark her next meal. I felt a now-familiar tingle between my shoulder blades as she passed out of my sight. My questions scrambled all over each other trying to get out, but she had not yet given me a sign of her intentions.

  When she strolled into my sight again, she sighed. “Sit down, Keryl. I know you’re exhausted.” I thanked her and did as she suggested. “I also know you’ve got a lot of questions,” she blurted before I could ask, “but you have to wait. It’ll be faster if I just tell you in my own way, and I don’t want a lot of rumors starting. I have enough of that now.”

  My eye was caught by a pitcher on a side table, dewy with condensation. The mere sight made my mouth water. When Marella saw where I was looking, she flushed with embarrassment and poured me a glass of violet liquid without asking. I drained it. She smiled.

  “That should take the edge off, in any case.” Her hand began to make random circles on a tabouret next
to her chair, and she watched in fascination.

  “Perhaps you should try some, then.”

  She jerked her hand away. “I’m sorry. I’m just sitting here wondering how much I can afford to tell you. I mean—well, after what we’ve been through, I shouldn’t have to ask, but I need to know if I can trust you.”

  I rolled this over in my mind. True enough that we had been comrades-in-arms, and she owed me her life more than once, but all that seemed to me to have been tossed by the wayside since we came to this ship, and I said so.

  Suddenly she stood and stretched, her arms straight out to her sides. I had to look away quickly; it had been a long time since I had seen Hana, and Marella’s posture made the fabric of her jumpsuit stretch exceedingly tightly. If she had ever done that in front of the crew, I doubt she would still be captain.

  “All right,” she said abruptly, as though physical activity had released her worries. As she spoke she paced the cabin. “First of all, my name isn’t Marella. It’s Maire, Maire Por Foret.” She pronounced it “Marie.” Another of the Library’s deep-seeded lessons floated unbidden to the surface of my brain: “Por” was high-ranking Nuum nobility, roughly equivalent to a baroness. I blinked. What other surprises was this woman about to unveil? “This sky-barge, the Dark Lady, is mine. I own it, as well as being its captain.

  “I know what you’re thinking: Sky-barge, female captain, pleasure ship. Crewed by convicts, but its only real purpose is so that I can fly around Thora doing whatever I damn well please because I can’t find a husband. And you know something?” She stopped in front of me. “You’d be absolutely right.”

  She resumed her story along with her pacing. “Except that it’s not that I can’t find a husband, I just don’t want to. Why should I? I’ve got my ship, my crew, and a whole world that doesn’t have to conform to the Nuum way of doing things.” I blinked. “Don’t be shocked. You know as well as I do that our hold on this planet is tenuous, at best. Just look at the Vulsteen.”