The Scavenger Door

by Suzanne Palmer

  Fergus sighed. “In active jump, you enter at a point that’s sort of a gravitational eddy, and you move through a conduit toward a similar exit point on the other end. You have to travel through it in the center, because if you drift to one side or the other, you begin to leak—by random atoms—back into real space. The theory is that anything that got caught up in the Drift was essentially rendered down to its component atoms and scattered, effectively vaporized. You haven’t had to do the math on conduit trajectory in any of your astrophysical engineering classes?”

  “Oh, enough to make you bleed out your eyes,” Isla said. “They just never explained why you had to stay in the center, other than it was the only way it worked. So, how did this . . . doorkey thingy? . . . survive it?”

  “I do not know,” Ignatio said. “It should not be possible, but it did, so my knowledge is inadequate. I will speculate and arrive now at a guess that it is held together by the portion of it that exists in other dimensions, and by its innate function as a bridge.”

  “So, how does a jumpspace conduit actually work, then?” Isla asked.

  “Is a complex matter requiring mathematic,” Ignatio said. “But in simpler words, it is a tunnel—”

  “No, give me the math,” Isla said. “I want to understand the actual physics of it.”

  The outer pair of Ignatio’s eyes blinked. “It is a happiness to tell you,” ey said. “It has been the experience of mine in the past that humans do not have interest in the details.”

  Fergus groaned. “And I’m one of them,” he said. “I just spent two days hiking up and down a mountain. I’m going to go to bed, and we can talk again in the morning.”

  “Not yet! I have one more really important question—” Isla started to say, her eyes narrowing as she stared at him.

  Fergus was afraid he knew what the question was, and didn’t want to answer it, certainly not now. “That can wait until morning too,” he said. Or forever, if he could get away with it.

  “But danger—” Ignatio said.

  “Also can wait till morning. I can’t do a bloody thing if I don’t get some sleep first,” he said. Also in the morning, he could talk Isla out of getting involved in this and pack her off safely back to his aunt and uncle. “Ignatio, can you find somewhere out of the way to sleep? And try not to startle Gavin when he comes up for the night? He’s not used to aliens.”

  “Especially ones that look like bloody big tiptoeing cartoon spiders,” Isla said. “Because if he expects me to find a cup big enough to carry you outside with, he is shit out of luck this time, the big coward.”

  Fergus chuckled. “My da was the same way. Once—” He fell silent for a long moment. Isla’s eyes got big, then she dropped her gaze down at the floor, her shoulders slumping. “Our da,” he corrected himself. How much did it hurt, that he got to know their father and she never did? There was another thing of broken pieces that he didn’t have the first clue how to deal with: their past.

  “I’m sorry. It’s late and I should go to bed before I become even stupider than I am already,” Fergus finished. “You two, try not to stay up all night talking physics. I expect tomorrow will be busy.”

  “Goodnight, Ferg,” Isla said quietly.

  He didn’t dare meet her eyes as he slunk off in desperate escape to his makeshift cot and sleeping bag in the pantry.

  * * *

  —

  Morning came far too soon. Fergus groaned as he sat up, legs and back aching, and rubbed at his face. “Gravity to fifty percent, please,” he asked, but both the apartment and the planet beneath it failed to oblige.

  In one corner of the tiny, cluttered pantry, atop a half-filled burlap sack of rice, Ignatio had rolled all eir limbs around emself as if ey were nothing more than a giant ball of yarn, and from the faint, rhythmic rocking, Fergus guessed ey were still asleep.

  Fergus considered waking em but decided coffee came first. With luck, Isla would sleep until noon, as she was wont to do on weekends, and he and Ignatio could be on their way before she or Gavin realized they were gone. He was a disruption to the status quo, whether they’d tell him that or not; Gavin had his bar to run, and Isla had university, and the space he took up in their lives only took away from those. They’re better off without me and probably won’t even miss me, he told himself, testing the lie to see if it would hold long enough for him to get out of there before guilt hit.

  If he left now, would he ever come back? He had no answer to that.

  He made his way as quietly as he could out to the kitchen, checking first that the couch was, indeed, unoccupied. Then he started the coffee and leaned against the island, only half-watching it slowly steam and bubble, mulling over the information he had so far. He was still sleepy enough that it took him several minutes to become conscious of a stronger sense of electricity around him than was normal for Gavin’s flat.

  He closed his eyes for a moment and let himself sink into the sensation until he could identify a direction. Then he walked quickly over to the front window and peered out from between the curtains. There was a spotless white, windowless autovan parked directly across the street, near the post depot. It fit in with the neighborhood about as well as a cow would at a dog show.

  Barefoot, still in the rumpled Drowned Lad T-shirt and shorts he’d thrown on after his shower the night before, Fergus left the apartment door wide open as he took the stairs down three at a time. Gavin’s rain boots were just inside the entrance, and he crammed his feet into them and snagged the old-fashioned key to the bar’s postbox off its hook before he stepped out onto the street, his breath a cloud around him in the still-chill morning air.

  He walked with purpose past the van to the postboxes and made a show of checking Gavin’s mail before heading back toward the bar past the van a second time, noting the registration plate. The electrical signal was definitely coming from inside.

  Well, now what? he thought. He hadn’t really thought this through when he ran down there.

  Standing on the slush-covered sidewalk, he made a show of patting his pockets, then turning them out. Then he walked over to the autovan and knocked on the door. “Och! Anyain in thaur? Hae a smoke? Help a guid fellaw oot!” he called, channeling Duff’s accent as best he could.

  As he expected, there was no response. “Aww, nobody home?” he said, and slapped the van as he turned to walk away. In that brief contact, he let the alien works deep in his gut funnel some electricity up and out through his fingers, shorting the van’s systems out. They’d reboot soon enough, but it would definitely get the attention of anyone inside in the meantime.

  He walked away, still patting his pockets as he heard the door of the van open behind him.

  “Hey!” someone shouted.

  Fergus turned around. A tanned, white-skinned man in his early to mid thirties wearing a nondescript brown coverall, his blond hair cropped military-style close to his head, had gotten out of the back of the van, and he did not look at all friendly.

  Fergus grinned. “There ye are! Ye hae some smokes fer me?”

  “Did you touch my van?” the man asked.

  It wasn’t enough words to place the accent yet other than not local. “Mighta bumped it a wee bit,” Fergus said. He drew himself up in his best offended Scots pose. “Thought ye were the deliv’ry guy. Ah dinnae scuff it, if yer askin’.”

  “Who the hell are you?” the man demanded.

  “Willy from Dunkirk,” Fergus answered, as if that was obvious to anyone but an idiot. “An’ who th’ bloody hell are ye, then? Yer not the regular driver.”

  The man stepped forward, matching him in belligerence, and appraised him head to toe. His gaze lingered briefly on Fergus’s leg where, not nearly as long as ago as he’d like to remember, he’d been shot with a harpoon gun. “Nice scar,” the man said.

  “Tha’ wee scrape?” Fergus said. “Arm-wrestling accident.”
>
  Behind him, there was a tiny buzz and hum as the van’s systems came back to life, way more signal than any normal autovan should be making. The man glanced at it, then back at Fergus. “I’m not your damned delivery guy,” he said. “I’m just doing a building assessment for the city. Contractor. Now don’t touch my van again, or else.”

  “Oh, aye?” Fergus put his hands up and waved them around. “Ye puir van might get dirty, eh? If ye nae got any smokes, ah don’t care fer yer useless van anyway, nor yoo.”

  They glared at each other a few more moments, then Fergus shrugged, stepped back, and walked away with a chuckle. The man watched him cross the street, then climbed back into his van, and a few moments later, it sped off.

  Fergus waited until it had turned out of sight at the end of the street before heading back into the bar and up the stairs.

  In the kitchen, Isla and Ignatio were waiting for him. So was a fresh pot of hot coffee. “What was that all about?” Isla asked.

  “Unmarked van out front putting out a lot of signal; made me suspicious,” Fergus said. “Occupant’s accent was post-American, definitely not Sovereign City of New York or Atlantic States. Maybe Pacifica? Getting him to talk any longer probably would’ve involved us hitting each other.”

  “Signal?” Ignatio asked. “What did it feel like?”

  “I don’t know,” Fergus said, unsure of how to describe the new sense that he seemed to be developing. “It was . . . sharp? Like tiny needles. Like pressing your hand against hairbrush bristles. Intrusive-feeling. Scanners, maybe?”

  “The fragment, does it feel the same?”

  “No, it’s quieter. Like someone humming under their breath. Like a light rain.”

  “You two are making no sense at all,” Isla said. “What do ye mean, how did it feel?”

  Ignatio bounded off the stool and brought back the fragment from Fergus’s pack and set it carefully down on the counter. “Feel the same now?”

  Fergus picked it up and cupped it in his hands, then closed his eyes. “Yeah, it’s the same as when I found it.”

  Ignatio blinked eir large emerald-colored eyes, then eir smaller, outer pair. “You said you heard each other? I think maybe it established resonance with you when you woke it up.”

  “What does that mean?” Fergus asked.

  “It means the fragment likes you,” Ignatio said. “It is a great mystery.”

  “That an inanimate object could like someone, or that it could like me?” Fergus asked.

  “Both two,” Ignatio said. Ey grinned wide. “The . . . door? Doorkey? It is a thinking thing. Not smart, but thinking, and it perceives. It needs to understand the being it moves, yes? Each tiny piece will want to be whole, and so it will look for energy it can speak to. You were the virst—first, shgeh, your picky language sounds!—complex-enough energy source to be near enough to it, so it has imprinted on you.”

  “Like a duckling?” Isla asked.

  “Yes! Like a bird baby, yes,” Ignatio said. “Vergus is a big electric bird momma!”

  “I am still really lost,” Isla said. “And why Fergus in particular? Everybody has their own internal electrical signals, including the sheep who were there before him, and without being insulting, I can’t imagine there’s much difference in complexity between them and him.”

  Fergus coughed. “Mine’s a bit stronger than average,” he said. “What does this have to do with the van?”

  “Some person else is also looking, yes? Duff said a reward. Perhaps this is them? Though I do not know how they found you.”

  “When I was hiking up the backside of Doune Hill, I heard a drone,” Fergus said. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time, and it’s still probably nothing, but if someone was watching the hill, they’d know I was there. With the sheep, not hard to figure out where I came from and where I went.”

  “Back up here a sec. You’re saying Fergus and this fragment are somehow in tune with each other?” Isla said. She put her hand on the fragment on the counter and pointed at Fergus. “You. Close yer eyes.”

  He did, and a few seconds later, she said, “Ye can open them again. Now, where’s the fragment?”

  He glanced around the room, realized how useless that was, and closed his eyes again. He could hear Isla and Ignatio breathing, then the muffled sound of Gavin snoring off in his room, and he tried to tune that out and just feel for the fragment, as he’d sensed it up on the mountain.

  It was like listening to determine the direction someone was whispering from, or trying to follow a scent back to its source, but neither of those. And yet, there it was.

  He opened his eyes. “In the couch,” he said.

  “Aw,” she said, “that was an easy guess. Close yer eyes again.”

  “This is good,” Ignatio said as Fergus complied. “Find the parameters of your range, yes?”

  He could hear Isla moving around the small apartment, opening and closing several of the cabinets behind him before she took her seat and said, “Okay.”

  This time, he didn’t bother opening his eyes. He’d sensed the fragment moving around the room with her, until it stopped and she didn’t. “Fridge,” he said, and opened his eyes again.

  “Okay, I don’t understand how ye can do that,” she said.

  Ignatio retrieved the fragment. “Try again, yes?” ey said.

  Fergus closed his eyes, trying not to listen for the sounds of movement, but also surprised he couldn’t hear any. He was beginning to suspect Ignatio hadn’t moved at all when a loud bellow broke his concentration and nearly made him fall of his stool.

  “AAAAAAAAAH SPIDER!” Gavin was shouting, and Fergus opened his eyes to see Ignatio come bounding out of Gavin’s bedroom.

  “Oooops,” Ignatio said. “I did not recall there was another human here.”

  “Sorry!” Isla and Fergus called out in unison, as Gavin’s door slammed shut from inside to the distinct sound of cursing.

  “We try outside instead, yes?” Ignatio suggested.

  “Good idea,” Isla said. “I’ll get my coat. Fergus, give us a ten-minute heard start.”

  “Okay, but be careful, especially if you see any white autovans in the neighborhood. That bloke looked mean.”

  Isla shrugged her coat and boots on. “There ye go, bringing the riffraff into th’ neighborhood already, Ferg. Come find us in ten minutes, if ye can.”

  They left, and Fergus poured himself another cup of coffee, trying to ignore the fragment as it was carried down the stairs and out. It was funny to think about how, right now, if he tried, he could also sense the fridge, the flash recycler, the wiring in the walls of the apartment like a transparent 3-D map all around him, but he had to pay attention to each in turn and concentrate. With the fragment, it was almost the opposite: he had to concentrate on not paying attention to it. Attuned, Ignatio had said, and that seemed apt.

  Still, as it got farther away—Stop cheating, Fergus, he chided himself—the sense of connection got thinner too. If the connection broke, would his obligation end too?

  Eleven minutes later, after draining the last sip of his coffee, he headed out after his sister and friend, locking the door behind him to the sound of renewed snoring within.

  It was still chilly outside, but the sun was strong, promising a pleasant day ahead. The florist shop next to the bar was closed, and the Tudor-style row houses on the other side of the street were a brick, wood, and white stucco wall of quiet contentment. He drew a deep breath, savoring the fresh air, and reached out for the particular energy sensation of the fragment. Is it more a feel, or a sound, or a taste? he wondered as he looked up and down the street, then headed off to the east. Also, how much of it was he going to have to explain to Isla and Gavin, and how much would he be able to comfortably leave out? All of it, I hope.

  Turning a corner, he paused in front of a small playground, th
en glanced down the street to where there seemed to be several people outside a small coffee shop, staring in the windows and talking.

  Fergus walked over, slipped through the crowd and the front door, and took a seat at the booth next to Ignatio. “Hey,” he said.

  Ignatio was using three of eir legs as a small tripod to hold eir body up, and the other two to hold the menu. “What is ‘black pudding’?” ey asked.

  “Anyone else, I’d say probably not something you’d like, but you? Given the stuff I’ve seen you eat, you’ll probably love it,” Fergus said.

  A very anxious waiter set a mug in front of him, his hands shaking as he poured the coffee. If there were other live waitstaff there, they were all hiding in the back, and the few other patrons were sitting frozen and wide-eyed in their seats.

  Fergus caught the waiter’s eye. “It’s okay,” he told him as calmly as he could. “I’ve known em eight years now. Ey’re completely harmless.”

  “I am not armless,” Ignatio said. “I have the many arms!” And ey wiggled them all at once, bouncing up and down like a spider having convulsions, and the waiter fled with Fergus’s mug only holding about a third of the coffee he’d poured.

  “You think you’re pretty funny,” Fergus said, as he mopped the underside of his mug and counter with a pair of napkins.

  “And ye think you’re pretty clever,” Isla said.

  “I do,” Fergus answered, and picked up his mug again to blow steam from it. “You left the fragment back at the playground, somewhere near the slide. Why don’t we stop terrifying the people here, pay up, leave a very, very large tip, and go get it before someone else finds it?”

  Of course, no one had any cred to pay except him. Ignatio and Isla followed him back to the park, a few brave kids now out and watching them intently as Fergus scuffed up the sand under the slide with his boot until he could reach down and pick up the fragment and return it to his pocket.

  Isla was shaking her head. “I don’t understand this,” she said, as they walked back to the bar. “I don’t believe in any bloody magic, but I can’t think of how scientifically this is possible. Which means there’s information you’re not telling me.”