by J. N. Chaney
He wanted to be sure, though. “Can you do that again?” he asked Ondric.
The Imbrogul paused, then once more Sang. This time, Thorn let his awareness embrace the effect as it unfolded. He could see how Ondric’s Song had apparently functioned as a means of focusing his thoughts, using their structure to imprint the effect he wanted on power drawn from the ether. It was essentially the same thing a Starcaster did, but it was done a different way.
“I get it. You’re what we would call a Starcaster,” Thorn said.
“Is this a common thing among your people? Or are only certain Imbrogul able to—um, Sing?” Bertilak asked.
“All Imbrogul have their part in the Song of Creation. It’s—” Ondric paused, smelling of cedar uncertainty. He finally went on. “It’s fundamental to how the universe works.”
“So all Imbrogul are able to use magic? To Sing?” Thorn asked. If true, if every Imbrogul was what amounted to a Starcaster, it made them extremely powerful potential allies.
Or enemies.
But a bright, citrusy note tinged the air. That was disagreement, and if it became more intense, and took on an acrid, almost chemical edge, it was suspicion.
“Yes, but only a small number of Imbrogul are able to do more than cause a small, ephemeral breeze. Perhaps, with great effort, they could cause a cloud to disperse, or a very brief and localized rain shower. Those Imbrogul whose Songs are more truly reflective of that great Song of Creation are Adepts, such as myself.”
Ondric gestured to the benches, inviting everyone present to sit. “Now then, Thorn—or is your name Stellers? Or do you use different names for different purposes? I don’t wish to offend you,” he said.
Thorn made to answer, but hesitated. In a way, he did use different names for different purposes, didn’t he? Identifying himself as Lieutenant Stellers carried a very different connotation from saying he was Thorn. And Tanner variously called him Lieutenant, or Stellers, or in a few rare and special instances Thorn, each of which communicated a different message.
He decided to keep it simple, though. “I’m Thorn. That’s the name I prefer to use with most people, because it’s the friendliest, I guess.”
“Very well, Thorn. Yinzut has provided us with a summary of your reasons for wishing to meet with us. I’ll be blunt, it normally takes a long time for any party to establish a trading relationship with us. We’re a very cautious people.”
“I respect that. We’re hoping, however, that we might, I don’t know, hurry things along a little. And now I’ll be blunt. We’re at war with the Nyctus. It’s a costly war, one that’s causing the deaths of many on both sides. We’d like to end it as soon as possible, and end the bloodshed with it.”
“Yes. We’re well aware of the Nyctus. They’ve made numerous attempts to normalize relations with us. Unfortunately, they’ve also attempted to use subterfuge and deception to get what they want from us, so that makes us deeply suspicious of them.” Ondric smelled once more of cedar. “You, however, are just silence to us, which gives you an opportunity to fill that silence with your own Song.”
Thorn nodded. He sensed he had a very narrow, very briefly open window in front of him. What he did and said in these next moments could be pivotal in turning human and Imbrogul affairs one way, or the other.
He decided to follow his instincts. He and Ondric had something in common, so start with that.
“Tell me, did the Nyctus attempt to subvert or corrupt any of your people with their magic?” he asked.
He felt Bertilak stiffen beside him, probably surprised by the bluntness of Thorn’s question. Yinzut gave him a hard glance. And the Imbrogul smelled of uncertainty, with a hint of suspicion creeping on the edges.
“They did, yes. They sought to overwrite the Songs of some of our people with those of their own manufacture. It was a major affront to us, and is the reason we have maintained our distance from them. Why do you ask this?”
“Because they’ve done the same to us. They’ve captured humans, then used torture and brainwashing and magic to turn them into what we call Skins. Those are basically humans that are entirely, but secretly, under squid control.”
“Squid?”
“Sorry, that’s our nickname for the Nyctus. They kind of resemble creatures called squids, that live in the oceans of the human home planet, Earth.”
“Ah. Yes, well, the Nyctus are clearly duplicitous and untrustworthy. That’s why we have refused to have business with them.”
One of the other Imbrogul spoke, a bitter smell like hot metal fuming the air. Even if he hadn’t been briefed on it by the Astarti, he’d have known that was anger. “And they, in turn, have threatened us overtly. They seem to believe that, if they can’t manipulate us into cooperating with them, they'll try to browbeat us, instead."
"That sounds like the squids, yeah,” Thorn replied.
“So now we only need to establish that you aren’t like them,” Ondric said.
“So far, you’re proving promising,” another Imbrogul said.
“But, as I said, we’re a cautious people,” Ondric added.
Thorn nodded. “Believe me, we’re nothing like the squids, the Nyctus.” He pursed his lips, then had an idea.
“I want to be completely honest and up-front about who and what we are, so please bear with me for a moment,” Thorn said. The Imbrogul responded with a mixed scent of mint, cedar, and an edge of citrus. Agreement, uncertainty, and suspicion. That was fair enough, although Thorn was starting to realize that he’d probably soon be heartily sick of the myriad scents these Imbrogul used to enhance their communications. If they did establish diplomatic relations, he hoped whoever was assigned to the mission didn’t have an overly keen sense of smell.
He pushed the thought aside, extracted his talisman from his pocket, and focused his attention into, and then through it. Thorn lifted his thoughts up, into the sky, to the edge of the planet’s atmosphere. He kept going, sweeping his perception through low orbit, seeking—
There. A chunk of rock and raw metal, about a meter across. A remnant of some ancient collision, trapped by the planet’s gravitation. He shifted his focus, recrafting some of the magic he’d summoned into a Hammer effect, and a blunt one at that. In essence, he grabbed the rock and yanked it down into the atmosphere. Friction immediately began to heat the air ahead of it. Thorn let it fall, only nudging it, to keep it on the path he’d chosen. He felt the planet’s surface rushing up to meet it, so he began to brake, applying more and more Hammer force to slow the chunk of rock.
A bright light flashed through the trees overhead. It was followed by a brief, rushing roar, then a sharp boom as the supersonic shock wave of the rock’s initial passage through the atmosphere caught up to it. It all finally ended with a dull thud that they felt through their feet, as much as they heard.
The air around Thorn thickened with the smell of citrus and hints of hot metal. Bertilak gaped at him.
“What did you do?”
“I pulled a meteor out of the sky and brought it in for a soft landing not far from here, in an empty field,” Thorn replied.
Bertilak kept gaping, but a clean scent, like the smell after rain, embraced Thorn. It was humor, and it emanated from Ondric.
“You are a bold one, Thorn. We could have taken that as an attack, or at least a threat. And yet, you did it anyway.”
“I wanted to show that there’s nothing deceitful about us, Ondric. We’re up-front about who and what we are. Yes, we can use magic. Or, at least, some humans can. We call them Starcasters. You’re obviously looking at one,” Thorn said.
“Indeed. Your magic sounds formidable.”
“It can be. But again, we don’t use it to try to corrupt and enslave others, the way the Nyctus do. We use it to protect ourselves.”
Thorn noticed that the air was softening to a minty scent of agreement, and even a few more fresh flickers of rain. One of the other Imbrogul pointed at Thorn’s talisman, still sitting in his lap.
&
nbsp; “And what is that?”
“This? Oh, my talisman. It’s a book I had, as a kid. It’s all that’s left of my childhood, after the Nyctus destroyed my home planet. It helps remind me of who I am and where I came from.”
Ondric gave Thorn a keen look. “That being all that remains of your childhood has terribly sad implications, Thorn. The way you say it makes it sound literal, as though you no longer even possess memories of it.”
Thorn looked at the old book. There were memories associated with it, certainly. But, as a whole, his childhood had vanished behind the searing flash and colossal blasts of the KEW strikes on Cotswold. That was, he realized, a sort of event horizon, past which he could no longer see.
So Ondric was right.
The Imbrogul Adept stood. “You said that your people have a custom whereby they grasp hands in greeting.” As he said it, he extended a slender hand toward Thorn.
Thorn stood, took Ondric’s hand in his, and shook it. The Imbrogul’s touch was surprisingly warm, and also much firmer and stronger than he’d expected from the spindly-looking fingers.
“I am sorry for the loss of your childhood. It leaves your Song incomplete, and that’s a terrible thing. And the Nyctus are responsible for that. They have changed you, Thorn, into something else, as surely as they have done to your people, and have tried to do to ours.”
Thorn just stared. He’d never thought about it that way before.
He released Ondric’s hand and looked at his talisman again.
“Yeah. I guess they have, haven’t they?”
Ondric’s words hung heavy on Thorn. He stood on the balcony of the apartment he’d been offered as quarters, a pleasant suite of well-appointed rooms on the seventh or eighth story of a soaring tower. A city sprawled before him, marked only by more towers, and a few smaller but no less elegant buildings, rising from a sea of trees. Further away, near the horizon, a bigger built-up area loomed, a more city-like area than this one.
So this must be the suburbs, he thought, leaning on the railing and looking down at the ground, into a courtyard a good twenty meters or so below.
“Thorn?”
Thorn glanced back over his shoulder. “I’m out here, Bertilak.”
The big alien joined him on the balcony. “I bring word from our hosts. Ondric has requested that we meet with him at our convenience, in the entry lobby on the ground floor.”
“Okay.”
Bertilak knelt, and leaned on the railing beside Thorn. “Something troubles you, my friend?”
“Oh, yeah. Lots of things trouble me. Do you want the list chronologically, or alphabetically?”
Bertilak smiled. “This is something new.”
Thorn stared out at the horizon, past the distant city core, and into the sky beyond. “It’s what Ondric said. That the Nyctus changed who I am, when they erased my childhood.”
“You disagree with that?”
“No, and that’s the problem. I think he’s right.”
“Of course he’s right,” Bertilak said, and Thorn glanced at him, bemused at the blunt reply.
“Every instant of our lives changes us, Thorn. I am literally only a couple of years old, and I’m no longer the person I was when Morgan created me. The only real difference is if those changes are small and incremental, or vast and dramatic.” Bertilak sniffed. “After all, this conversation has already made both of us slightly different than we were a moment ago.”
Thorn gave a wry smile. “Point taken. But this feels different. The squid attack on Cotswold changed me in a—” Thorn stopped, not even sure how to proceed with the thought.
He didn’t have to, though. “I understand, my friend. In a way, it makes you and I very alike. We both came to be who we are suddenly, and have no memory of what might have come before that.”
“This is a deep dive into our respective psyches,” Thorn said, grinning easily.
“It is. And we’re having it while our Imbrogul hosts are waiting for us.”
Thorn straightened. “Another good point. Let’s not keep them waiting any longer, shall we?”
He left the sumptuous quarters, Bertilak in tow. An Imbrogul Thorn didn’t recognize waited in the small lobby outside. He immediately offered his hand to Thorn, who took it and shook it, bemused.
“Ondric informed us that this is how your species greets others,” the Imbrogul said.
“We do. Generally only the first time we meet, though.”
“I will pass that along.”
The elevator fell smoothly, and in utter silence. Thorn barely noticed the deceleration at the bottom. It must be some sort of mag-lev tech, he thought, and wondered what would happen if the power failed. Were there even cables or brakes?
He survived the trip, though, and exited into the building’s lobby. Ondric, Yinzut, and another Imbrogul, wearing a sash woven from some fine, silver thread, waited there for them. This second Imbrogul held a small wooden box.
“Thorn, I would introduce Telesa. She leads the local chapter of our Engineer’s Guild,” Ondric said.
Telesa tucked the box under one arm and offered the other for Thorn to shake. The gravity with which she did it forced Thorn to not smile. Apparently, the Imbrogul took the whole handshake thing very seriously.
Telesa returned the box to both hands and opened it. “I thought you might wish to see this. We retrieved it a short time ago.”
Thorn stared at a dull, bulbous lump of something metallic, then he glanced at Bertilak, who seemed just as mystified as Thorn was.
A scent of rain, of humor. “This is a piece of the meteorite that you pulled down from orbit yesterday. It’s now part of your Song,” Ondric said.
Thorn looked at the Imbrogul, but his face was impassively unreadable. Fortunately, he smelled of mint and rain, so his motives weren’t based in anger or fear. Under other circumstances, Thorn might have thought it to be a warning for having crashed a meteorite into what amounted to a populated area, even if it had been under absolute control. But the Imbrogul smell-thing was actually proving pretty handy.
Which led to an epiphany. He knew he’d been taking a terrible chance with the meteorite, but he wanted to, as he’d told Imbrogul, be entirely up-front about Starcasting. By extension, he had been trying to be honest about their motives in general, as being benign. In retrospect, it could have gone terribly wrong, but it seemed Thorn had inadvertently stumbled into a way to ingratiate himself with the elfin aliens.
They couldn’t lie, at least about their feelings, their emotions. Or they couldn’t do so easily, anyway. Not when those feelings were accompanied by a distinctive smell. Sure, they might be able to work around it, but it meant that, in general, the Imbrogul tended to be completely transparent about their feelings. It was all in the smell.
And that explained why they hated dissembling and subterfuge so much. The Nyctus had proven themselves untrustworthy, Ondric had said. That wasn’t just an observation. That was, to the Imbrogul, pretty much a curse. Thorn, in the meantime, had been completely forthcoming. And that had turned out to be the absolutely correct way of dealing with these people.
Thorn accepted the box from Telesa with a show of overt gratitude. “I appreciate this very much. Thank you.” He meant it. This was the Imbrogul way of saying that he wasn’t untrustworthy. Quite the contrary, in fact.
Ondric inclined his head in acknowledgement. “There’s more. However, you will have to accompany us to see the rest,” he said.
Thorn and Bertilak followed the Imbrogul and Yinzut out of the lobby to where a vehicle that seemed like a mostly transparent bubble waited. Thorn noticed that it apparently floated a few centimeters off the ground, but there was no exhaust, no sound at all, and nothing at all to indicate what held it in place.
They entered the vehicle, the third Imbrogul, the one who’d greeted them just outside their rooms, seating himself in the most forward seat. He slowly advanced a small lever, like a throttle, and the bubble-car, as Thorn now thought of it, rose smoothl
y into the air.
“Must be gravity-polarizing tech in action,” Thorn said quietly to Bertilak, who’d hunched himself into the seat beside him.
Bertilak nodded, but it was Ondric who answered.
“Indeed it is. Yinzut tells us that that area is your main interest, so we thought we would show it off,” he said, a rain-smell of good humor rolling off of him.
“It’s really something. We can’t do anything like this. At least, not without using magic,” Thorn said.
The pilot advanced another lever, and the bubble-car sped forward. He seemed to steer it with foot-pedals, leaving his hands free to operate the two levers. Aside from a small display on a panel in front of him, that seemed to be the extent of its controls. Elegant simplicity, Thorn thought. Hell, he’d been in the bubble-car for maybe two or three minutes, and he was pretty sure he could drive it, if he needed to.
They flashed over trees and domed buildings, and zoomed past towers. Other bubble-cars flashed and flickered through the sky around them. Thorn found himself enjoying the ride—the speed, the smooth quiet, the sudden maneuvers that seemed to ignore momentum, the expansive view. All too soon, though, the bubble-car descended toward another domed building. The pilot grounded it, and they disembarked.
Telesa took the lead, ushering them inside. They passed a long corridor and rooms containing tech that meant nothing to Thorn. She finally led them into a room where a machine sat against the wall. About three meters long, it contained another, larger lump of heat-scarred metal in one transparent compartment. Periodically, harsh laser-light flared across its surface, puffing up clouds of vapor that were drawn away, into the machine. In a second compartment, also misty with vapor, a small device floated, flitting quickly about in a way that was reminiscent of the bubble-car. Another Imbrogul watched over the machine with a critical eye.
Thorn peered into the machine. The flitting bit of machinery seemed to be quickly creating something as it moved, a tiny bit at a time.
