Cipher Hill

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “Can’t risk more than a day. We’ll head out first thing in the morning, so long as Nita’s done her job proper.” He stepped outside and shut the door behind him.

  “Why do I get the feeling we’ll be seeing the captain’s ill temper getting worse before it gets better?” Nita asked.

  “It’s just Cap’n Mack’s way,” Coop said. “He ain’t too fond of gettin’ wrangled into a position where he ain’t got no choice but to fight. I reckon the fact that he’s the one who decided the fight’s got to happen has got him all ornery.”

  “Are you certain about that?” Prist said. “As much respect as I may have for the results he has achieved, I cannot say Captain West has struck me as the sort to be overly concerned with safety. His would not appear to be the proper profession for the risk averse.”

  “You just think that because you and us’ve got different ideas of what’s dangerous and what ain’t,” Lil said. “You ask me, crossin’ paths with a couple of the meaner fuggers out there or maybe a raider or three ain’t half as risky as dumpin’ any two of these beakers together. And I reckon you feel just the same, only switched.”

  “Hmm… Wisely put, Ms. Cooper. Expertise is an element in every equation. You have your experience and know-how, I have mine,” Prist said.

  Coop scratched his head for a moment. “I ain’t so sure I ain’t gonna regret askin’… but… what sort of doodads did you and Gunner cook up to try lobbin’ at Tusk once we track him down?”

  “I am so terribly pleased you’ve asked. You see, my studies have unearthed a veritable plethora of novel effects that careful chemical coaxing can extract from ichor when combined with precisely measured co-agents. I have been able to produce aggressive galvanic responses, potent caustic action, vapors with the capacity to sedate, as well as highly intensified volatility and inflammability.”

  Coop nodded. “I reckon that all sounds real good. But… uh… what’s a plethora?”

  “Coop, entertaining though it would be to watch Samantha attempt to shoehorn a dozen new words into your vocabulary, it is simply easier to render it in your own language. We’ve got new guns that blow things up real good.”

  Coop nodded again. “That’s about what I reckoned. Give me a holler if you need any help with ’em.” He stepped outside.

  “Ms. Cooper, I hope you will take this in the spirit in which it is intended, but your brother’s intellect seems to afford him an enviable clarity of thought.”

  “Yeah. He’s real good at drawin’ a short, straight line between an idea and where it’s headed,” Lil said.

  “In a mind that empty, there’s little risk of distraction,” Gunner said. “But enough about that. Do you have any of the new items ready to test?”

  “A few,” Prist said. “They’re crated up in the munitions shed, marked ‘Unproven.’”

  “Well I’ll do my very best to persuade the captain to allow me to cross off that label.”

  “Splendid! Oh, and Guy…” She opened a drawer and fetched a thick envelope. “My latest correspondence.”

  “I shall read it with relish.”

  He took his leave. Only Lil, Nita, and Prist remained in the lab.

  “Boy, oh boy, Dr. Prist,” Lil said. “Between you, Gunner, and Coop, I’m startin’ to wonder when courtin’ wound up with so much writin’ involved.”

  “Courting? Ms. Cooper, I assure you, you misunderstand the purpose of my correspondences. The simple matter is there are certain notions that can only be properly assembled when a good deal of thought has been put into how precisely to word them.”

  “If you say so, Doctor,” she said. “Still leaves Coop, though.”

  “Have I been missing something?” Nita said.

  “You ain’t noticed? Seems like there ain’t a day goes by that Coop ain’t scratchin’ away at that book of his. Poetry and suchlike.”

  “I thought he’d simply taken a liking to the art form.”

  “Heh. It ain’t the art form he’s takin’ a likin’ to…”

  #

  “Gunner!” Coop called, hurrying to catch up with the munitions officer.

  “Yes…” Gunner said.

  Something in Coop’s tone of voice suggested this was going to be a tired subject. “You got a minute?”

  “I do not. I have ammunition to load, and I have a correspondence to write,” Gunner said. “This is a quick turnaround, assuming Nita works with her typical efficiency.”

  “Right, right… But you got any rhymes for ‘nostril’?” Coop said.

  Gunner shut his eyes and stopped. “Coop… I have some questions for you, and I doubt I shall get a satisfying answer to any of them.”

  “What’ve you got?”

  “Are you asking me this because you are writing yet another poem?”

  “Yeah.”

  “As I suspected. And this poem is for Lita?”

  “Like the last three, yep.”

  “Have the first three been well received?”

  “She ain’t said she don’t like ’em.”

  “Hardly a rousing endorsement. We’ll set aside for a moment why you think that a fourth poem would achieve what the first three failed to do. What possible reason could you have to include the word ‘nostril’ in a poem?”

  “I’m runnin’ out of face parts to say fancy things about.”

  Gunner sighed. “Coop, first Nita, now her sister. Don’t you think you are setting your sights a bit outside of your reach?”

  “You jealous?”

  “I’m practical. Calderans are elegant, intelligent, and refined. You are coarse, uneducated, and oafish.”

  “Yeah, I reckon so.” He tugged a much-abused bit of paper from his coat. “The line is, ‘I ain’t never seen nothin’ as nice as your nostril…’ See, I got that thing goin’ where lots of words have the same letter.”

  “Alliteration.”

  He glanced at the page. “That don’t even nearly rhyme.”

  Gunner marched onward. Coop matched his pace.

  “You got any other face parts to rhyme about maybe? I’d talk about other parts, but classy ladies don’t like when you talk about certain parts.”

  “Maybe poetry isn’t your forte.”

  “Now when you say ‘forte’…”

  “Maybe it isn’t your area of strength,” Gunner said through clenched teeth. “If you must woo women outside of your station, perhaps you should try a different art form.”

  “I tried playin’ the spoons, but I think she wasn’t as impressed as she let on. And we ain’t really set up for paintin’. Not that I’m any good at it.”

  “You aren’t any good at poetry either.”

  “Yeah, but it’s hard to tell with poetry. You try to paint an apple and it don’t look like an apple, that ain’t a good job. But you write a poem that don’t make no sense, seems like half the time, them’s the best poems.”

  Gunner glared at him. “With every conversation we have I can feel my intelligence withering like a candle in an oven.”

  “That’s a good one! ‘When I think of you dressed up, with yer gown and your glovin’, I feel my heart melt like a candle in an oven.’” Coop scribbled it down.

  “Honestly,” Gunner said. “If you are genuinely attempting to win the heart of Analita Graus with your poetry, may I suggest that you write about something aside from her appearance?”

  “… Could you give me a for instance?”

  “Perhaps how she makes you feel. About the content of her character. About your own inner self.”

  “That ain’t liable to be easy, on account of we ain’t had too many chats, so I don’t know her too good, except to know that she’s real nice, and kind, and she seems like she might be sweet on me.”

  “Then perhaps you’d be better served learning a bit more about her. ‘I think she might be sweet on me’ isn’t the strongest basis for a lasting relationship.”

  “It’s always worked fine for me.”

  “Until recently, most of your
‘relationships’ have begun in establishments where the women are literally paid to appear interested in you, and a ‘lasting’ relationship has been one where you remember each other’s names the next time you see each other.”

  “That what you’re doin’ with Dr. Prist with them letters?”

  “These are professional correspondences, not personal ones.”

  Coop snatched the thick envelope from him and deftly tore it open. “No harm in me havin’ a peek then.” He unfolded the packet of pages. “‘Dearest Guy, Your in-tu-ition regarding’… er…”

  Gunner took the note back angrily. “It says, ‘Your intuition regarding the relative combustibility of the two mixtures is once again flawless.’ Because, as I have suggested, it is a professional correspondence.”

  “That starts with ‘Dearest’?” Coop said, adding with a grin, “And has hearts and Xs and Os on the back?”

  Gunner flipped the bundle of pages over, then hastily stuffed it into his pocket. “Brow. A part of the face, easy to rhyme, that you’ve likely not used, is brow.”

  “Was that so hard?” Coop said, scribbling down a note. “Hey, the cap’n talked to you about where we’re headed to next?”

  “The Ruby Club. I forget the name of the town.”

  “Alabaster’s old hangout?”

  “Indeed. The implication was that Tusk spent a great deal of time there as well. In the captain’s continuing goal of getting a rise out of him, we shall be paying a potentially very destructive visit.”

  Coop nodded. “Suits me just fine. Maybe this time we can get inside and grab some booze. Seems like there’d be some good stuff in a place that highbrow. … Say, highbrow.” He started scribbling a fresh note. “You reckon I can work that in? That count as wordplay maybe?”

  Chapter 5

  Lil leaned on the railing of the Wind Breaker, gazing into the dim forest below her. It was technically midday, but here in the fug, it may as well have been twilight. Nita was able to get the lightly damaged turbine running properly, but the nature of its damage had convinced Captain Mack that his requirements of two people on watch at all times wasn’t enough to keep the ship safe. Now that count had to be four. With their typical crew, that would have been impossible, but Mack had recruited Donald and Kent to come along and act as diplomats to the people of Club Ruby, since even Mack was not completely comfortable assaulting a social club without some sense of what went on behind its doors.

  In addition to Lil, the captain, and Wink, Donald was presently on lookout. He’d taken the opportunity to close the deal they’d been discussing. Lil was now the proud owner of two pounds of exquisite chocolates in exchange for a Calderan bonnet with a hand-tied bow from Nita.

  “I tell you, I ain’t always one for sweets, but I’m about ready to hold my nose, slip off this mask, and stuff my face full right now,” she said.

  “What do you eat if it isn’t sweets? With a ship like yours, able to go anywhere you please, I’d expect you’d be eating your fill of sweets from all across Rim,” Donald said.

  “Nah. These’re different, but if I had my say so, breakfast, lunch, and supper’d be stew, right out of Butch’s pot.”

  “Wouldn’t you get tired of it?”

  “How could I get tired of it? Stew ain’t never the same thing twice! Not the way she makes it. Sometimes it’s real heavy on the greens and soupy-like. Other times it’s pert near eatin’ a bowl of gravy. But it’s always heaven in a bowl. You oughta—”

  She flinched midsentence as a low, screeching whistle split the air. “What was that?” she asked, twisting her pinky in one ear. “Ain’t never heard a sound like that before.”

  “Bah. Unless I missed my guess, it’s just some of them savages.”

  “Savages?” Lil said.

  “Yeah. You come up by this corner of the forest and you’ll bump into ’em from time to time. Always eager to trade.”

  “Come to think of it, I’m seein’ a light down there I didn’t see before.” Lil raised her voice. “Cap’n? You hearin’ this?”

  “Savages. Lookin’ to trade,” Mack said. “I imagine you’re thinkin’ they might be worth askin’ about Tusk, seein’ as how we’re gettin’ up near where we were headed and they’re from around here.”

  “Ain’t the worst idea, is it? The way I figure it, there’s two ways this could go. Either they know Tusk and we’ve got a lead, or they don’t and maybe we can get another bunch of allies out of ’em. Either way, could make for some good tradin’. That is still what we’ll be doin’, after we’re through with this little war of ours.”

  “No sense stopping. They won’t have anyfing we need,” Donald said.

  “Shows you ain’t a trader for a livin’. It ain’t about what you need. It’s about what other folks might need. And besides, I been back and forth through The Thicket a few times, and that’s a few times more than I wanted to. If there’s folks livin’ in The Thicket, I reckon they’re worth talkin’ to, if only for the stories.”

  “We’ll drop down long enough for me to get something in my stomach,” Mack said. “If you’re gonna make a trade, make it good, and make it quick.”

  #

  A few minutes later, Mack brought the Wind Breaker down into a clearing barely larger than the gondola. Lil leaped from the side of the ship, mooring rope in hand, and affixed the ship to the sturdiest tree she could reach. Once she was sure the airship wasn’t at the mercy of the wind, she climbed carefully to the ground, one hand on the grip of the pistol on her belt.

  “Keep your eyes peeled. Just in case they ain’t friendly,” she called up to Donald.

  “They aren’t friendly.”

  “Then keep an eye out in case they’re more unfriendly than usual.”

  She dropped to the ground. Donald lingered at the railing above.

  “Anybody?” she called, looking about in the near blackness of the surrounding forest.

  The Wind Breaker had been bobbing back and forth on the topic of wanting to be found. Their last trip had been all about smoking out Tusk’s people. This time, however, they were more interested in reaching the Ruby Club unnoticed. This meant the phlo-lights of the ship were kept dark. Even two steps beyond the edge of the small clearing, Lil couldn’t see her hand in front of her face.

  “Fella up there said that whistle meant you wanted to do some trade. I reckon I’m willing to listen to an offer or two. … Hello?”

  She did her best to imitate the whistle she heard. It was still echoing through the trees when she heard what sounded like the jingle of a dozen or so belt buckles. Forms slowly resolved from the darkness.

  Lil hadn’t bothered to conjure to mind just who she thought she was going to be dealing with, but if she had, she would have been far off.

  They were fug folk, a mixture of the scrawny sort and the towering grunts. But rather than the gentlemanly attire of Digger and his like, or the sturdier workman’s uniforms favored by the grunts, these men wore cobbled-together assortments of animal skins and varied uniforms. The skins had the unmistakable, tainted nature of the creatures of The Thicket—nature’s most rugged beasts twisted by the fug into monstrous parodies of their former selves. The uniforms were a mismatched sampling of everything from a letter-carrier’s clothes to a badly burned and heavily patched airship captain’s garb similar to Captain Mack’s dress uniform. No one had managed to assemble a complete outfit of the same sort. Fur leggings paired with a blazer here, a rawhide cloak matched with khaki slacks there.

  The one thing they all had in common was weaponry. Six individuals approached, and between them they probably had eighteen weapons that Lil could see. The arsenal was mostly in the form of heavily modified and repaired rifles and pistols, with the occasional makeshift club or blade. One thing missing was any light source whatsoever.

  “Hey, folks,” Lil said, holding out one hand for a shake and keeping the other on the grip of the pistol. “If you’re all willin’ to act like gentlemen, I’m always keen to see what a fella
might have to trade.”

  “Oi!” remarked the man with the greatest proportion of captain’s clothes. “’Bout bloody time. You greasy lot come traipsing through the place and don’t give us so much as a tip of the hat!”

  The man’s accent was like a sharper, angrier version of the usually sullen Donald. When he didn’t shake her hand, Lil instead scratched her head.

  “If you’re talkin’ about the fellas who’ve been ridin’ carts through here, them folks ain’t had much of a reason to trust folks. Come to think of it, I ain’t either,” Lil said. “They said you were savages.”

  “Savages…” The rag-tag captain turned to the others. “Can you believe those blokes? You tell them I know more high-society types than they’ve had warm suppers.”

  She looked him up and down. “You don’t look like highfalutin types. And you don’t talk like folks who’d live off the land. What’s your deal?”

  “The highborn with too much money are always after stuff they can’t get their hands on. We get our hands on things like squarrels. Breed some fug hounds. Act as guides for safaris. Get our hands on pelts and such.”

  “You say ‘squarrels’?”

  “You’ve seen ’em. Like squirrels. Only bigger, and more quarrelsome. Squarrels.”

  “I seen ’em. I didn’t know they had a name.”

  “They don’t,” Donald called down from above. “They’re just fug squirrels.”

  “You kill and skin one and then you can decide what to call ’em!” the “savage” called back.

  Lil tried to get a better look at the strange group. “You been livin’ here in the forest?”

  “Not here in the forest. Farther west, close to the northwest fringe. You get much closer to the center of The Thicket than here and there isn’t much but nasty thorns and the meaner sort of animals. The west’s much better hunting and the like. We only came this far because Deek back there saw a ship comin’ and thought we could flag you down.”

  “Good thinkin’. I reckon we got stuff you ain’t never dreamed of, if you’re willin’ to trade.”

  “Oi,” he called back. “This lot thinks they’ve got something valuable in there.”