Twice, the ground gave out under his feet and nearly sent him tumbling. He could see now well downhill and even make out the tiny, bright yellow dot through the trees that was his Kawaiimobile. To the west, the sky was growing gray, and he found himself realizing he was probably in a very bad place to get caught in a sudden rainstorm.
Also, it hadn’t occurred to him until this moment to wonder if his alien electrical gift would act like a lightning rod.
“Hell,” he swore, and sat down on the slope, making sure his feet were well braced and his position stable, before he closed his eyes and walked himself through the calming, breathing, and stretching mujūryokudo exercises that Dr. Minobe had taught him. It was a martial art designed largely for zero-gravity environments, but he’d come to find some of the more basic practices—really, as far as he’d gotten in the short time they’d been together—of at least some use regardless of environment.
When he felt less beset by irritation at his scraped knee or worry about the approaching storm, he tried to reach out with his Asiig sense. He was grounded, strong, calm. Tiny electrical voices leapt out at him. A nearby cat, birds, something larger moving toward him, but no sign of the fragment.
“Ooi! Soko no kimi!” someone yelled at him. “Nani yatteruno?”
Fergus opened his eyes to see a young Japanese man, wearing a kaiju T-shirt and a bright purple plaid kilt, waving at him from the woods on the other side of the rockfall, not far from where he’d been heading, hoping to find the shrine.
Groaning in frustration, Fergus pulled out his handpad. “How do I say in Japanese: ‘I do not speak Japanese. I am fine. Leave me alone’?”
“Nihongo ga hanashimasen. Daijobu desu. Hootoite kudasai,” his handpad said.
“Nihongo ga hand shimmy sen!” Fergus yelled out. “Daijobo! Something something hot toes kudasai!”
The man put his face in his palm, regarded Fergus for a moment, then stepped gingerly out onto the rockslide debris and headed toward him, arms held out to either side for balance.
“Great,” Fergus muttered to himself. “Now we’re gonna both get killed.” He stood up and worked his way transverse across the slope to meet him.
They stopped about five meters apart, regarding each other. The Japanese man was chuckling and grinning.
“What?” Fergus said. “No nihongo!”
“Nice car down there,” the man said. “Are you lost from the circus?”
Fergus let his shoulders slump. “Worst. Day. Ever,” he declared.
The man laughed so loud, Fergus was worried it would start another landslide. “Omae, get off those rocks before you die,” he called. He pointed behind him. “I have beer. You can tell me why you are up here doing this ridiculous thing. Okay?”
Wherever the fragment was, it was out of his reach. At least maybe he could get more information about what happened here. “All right,” Fergus said, and carefully trailed the man over to the far side.
Farther along the curve of the slide, he could see that the farthest edges of the tumble had settled into a V notch between two hills, sparing everything beyond it. On the untouched opposite slope there were a handful of one-story houses nestled among the trees, the curved solar tile roofs gleaming iridescent where the sunlight found its way down, and a trio of wind turbines lazily turned on the next hill behind that.
Catching up, he could see the glint of metal along one side of the man’s head—dataports, though he rarely saw anyone sporting them who wasn’t a pilot, and even then mostly pilots who operated farther away from a still-mod-squeamish Earth. He had to admit, despite the obvious and possibly catastrophic failure of the day, at least here was something interesting.
The man looked back, then pointed to one of the smaller houses, and as the ground leveled off and left behind the slide debris, it was much easier going, and they reached it within a few more minutes. Sliding panels were open along a porch, revealing a much more cluttered interior than miscellaneous cultural documentaries from when he was a kid led him to expect. “Stay here,” the man said, and Fergus set his things down and dutifully sat on the porch.
On a stand, just inside the shade of the porch overhang, was a gnarled juniper perched on top of a stone in a brown oval pot, its roots seeming to just barely reach the tiny reservoir of soil below. “Some advice,” he said to the tree. “If you try to go back to the dirt you started on, it’s just trouble.”
The man came out and handed him one of two cans of ginger beer he was carrying. “Who were you talking to?” he asked.
Fergus took the can and cracked it open; he supposed he was expected to complain about it not being actual beer beer, but honestly, this was better. “Your bonsai,” he said. “Sekijoju?” See, he thought, I do know some Japanese after all.
“Maybe?” the man said. “It’s my grandmother’s. If she catches you touching it, you’ll be sorry. You have never got your ass kicked until it has been kicked by a pissed-off elderly Japanese woman.”
Fergus laughed out loud, unable to help himself. “No shit but that’s the truth!” he said.
“So, what’s your story?” the man said. “You don’t seem like the usual suicidal types that climb up there and jump up and down, hoping they can get swept away, and not least because they’re the same couple of locals over and over again.”
“I was trying to find the Hansha-chi Shrine, and the road was blocked, so I figured I’d hike it,” Fergus said. “How long ago was the rockfall?”
“Three years ago or so? It might be four.”
“Too much rain?”
“Yes, but also some idiots trying to drive trucks around up there off the road.”
“Government idiots?”
“As it happens, yes,” the man said. “I’m Akio.”
“William Baugh,” Fergus said, and shook his hand. “Friends call me Bill.”
“Bill Baugh? You looking for a magic ring up here?”
Fergus shook his head, smiling. “A man who knows his classics! You a pilot?”
Akio touched his head, just below the port. “I wish,” he said. “Remote-driving construction vehicles. Right now, running one of a dozen ocean-floor crawlers about halfway between Tunu in the Arctic Union and Iceland, putting in posts for the new rail bridge. Day off today, waiting for the inspectors to come in.”
“Seems like a good job,” Fergus said.
“Lets me keep an eye on my grandmother,” Akio answered. “Or, as she likes to say, it lets her keep an eye on me. Someday, though, it would be neat to go to space. You ever been?”
Fergus laughed. “Yeah.”
“Where?”
“All over,” Fergus said. “Where would you go first?”
“Titan,” Akio said without hesitation.
“Yeah? If you ever do make it there and someone offers you Titan moonmilk in your coffee or cereal or whatever? It’s made out of pureed bugs,” Fergus said. “It’s not the worst-tasting stuff out there by a long shot, but if you’re expecting real milk, you will regret the experience.”
Akio leaned back and finished off his ginger beer. “I’ll remember that,” he said. “So, really, why you here?”
“The shrine . . .” Fergus started to say, but Akio shook his head.
“The shrine’s not famous or old or even slightly interesting,” the man said. “We get very strange people here claiming to be looking for it, who then just wander around in the woods for days and days, looking disappointed even after they’ve walked around it a dozen times. You don’t seem like one of those people, either.”
“Give me a couple of days lost in the woods and I could be,” Fergus said.
“Well, give me a few minutes to check on my grandmother and then I can show you to the shrine. We rebuilt it, after the fall. And then I can show you the path back down the hill that’ll eventually get you back to your car, though it’s a long w
alk around. At least it’s mostly down from here.”
“Thanks,” Fergus said.
He sat on the porch as Akio went inside, sipping the last of his ginger beer and enjoying both the shade of the porch and the sound of birds. The sky had grown a deeper gray to the west, but if the storm was coming, it didn’t seem to be in a hurry. He might get back to his car without getting soaked after all.
Relaxing, he took deep breaths and let his senses reach out around him. He could feel Akio and his grandmother somewhere in the house behind him, the network of wiring in the house walls, the duller feel of the other houses nearby. And somewhere, faintly, something familiar stirring.
The fragment was somewhere behind him, in Akio’s house.
“Aw, shit,” he said. Was he going to have to rob the man who was helping him? Did he dare not to? Why couldn’t the piece just be sitting out there on the rocks, waiting for him, free of complications?
Akio stepped back onto the porch, startling him. “You ready to go?” he asked.
Fergus set down his can. “Can we talk a few minutes longer, first?” he asked.
“If you want to miss the rain, we should start walking soon,” Akio said, but sat down again.
“Other people have been up here, you said? Not the suicidal ones but government people? And men with guns. And probably some people in linen clothes acting even stranger than most,” Fergus said.
“Yes,” Akio said. “So, you do know something about this?”
“Yeah. Everyone’s looking for something that fell up on the hill there,” Fergus said. “Me too, to be honest with you. Here, let me show you something.”
He pulled out his handpad and pulled up the information about the man murdered in the Alaskan Federation, and handed it over to Akio without a word. The man tapped to change the language over to Japanese and then read it through before handing it back. “Is this someone you knew?”
“No,” Fergus said. “But he found one of the things that everyone is looking for. It got him killed.”
“There was nothing in there about any thing,” Akio said.
“No, but that’s what it was about. Eventually, someone will come for you, too.”
“Me? It is a very big mountain,” Akio said, opening his arms wide to encompass the view before them from the porch. “Why would anything happen to me?”
“Because you have it, don’t you?” Fergus said.
“Why would you think that?”
Fergus shrugged. “Because I can hear it. Keeping it is dangerous, more than you can know.”
Akio stood up again. “So, you have come to threaten me and my grandmother, for this fictional thing, then?”
“No,” Fergus said. “I didn’t know it was here until I got here, and anyway, I’m the good guy. Bad guys don’t have to drive podcars shaped like giant neon cats with cartoon anuses.”
“And if I say no? Maybe I will call the police,” Akio said.
“You could,” Fergus said. “And maybe you should. The other searchers put hidden surveillance out in other places, and they might be watching us right now. If so, it’d be better for you if they believe you weren’t helping me.”
“You mean little cameras and stuff?” Akio laughed. “The villagers find and destroy them. My grandmother has a basket full. Kamera wa nandai arunndai, Obaachan?”
An elderly woman strode onto the porch and stood in the doorway. “Juuikko,” she said.
“Eleven,” Akio translated.
Fergus thought back to his stash in the Perth apartment. “I’ve only smashed three,” he said. “Your grandmother wins.”
Akio translated that back, and the old woman laughed and replied, then wandered back into the house. “She says you are young and have time to catch up,” he said. “So, what do you do now? I say I do not have this thing.”
Fergus could tell him it was about five meters behind them, maybe a meter off the floor. In a drawer in the kitchen, maybe? But he didn’t think that would help. Instead, he said, “It’s dangerous. Dangerous for you to keep, dangerous in the wrong hands, dangerous for everyone if it’s not dealt with. Please? Kudasai?”
“Did you just say please?” Akio asked, astonished.
“Yeah,” Fergus said. “I did. At least I think.”
“For that, anyway, I will bring an umbrella for our walk,” Akio said. He disappeared inside and returned a few moments later with a bright rainbow umbrella, just as the first few, fat drops of rain hit the edge of the porch.
Akio led him around the house to a small dirt road, and they walked down it toward the bottom of the valley. They didn’t speak much; Fergus decided it was probably that Akio was trying to decide something, and he didn’t want to disrupt that process. He could hear the fragment now in the man’s pocket.
They walked up out of the woods and scrub onto the road, right at the edge of where the rockfall had passed through. With a glance upward, Akio followed Fergus across the last few meters of jumbled rocks to where the Kawaiimobile still sat, waiting for him. Its eyes were closed, like it was napping, but they sprang open as the two men approached.
They walked around the back, where Akio laughed, nearly dropping his umbrella, and pointed to the asterisk decal under the tail. “It really does have an anus! I never noticed those before!”
Fergus sighed, set down his stuff, and opened the back hatch.
Akio picked up Fergus’s pack in his free hand. “Let me help,” he said, and put it inside.
“Thank you,” Fergus said.
“Thank you,” Akio said in return. “For the tip about Titan moonmilk. If I ever get there, I will remember.”
“I hope you do,” Fergus said. “Until then, take care, and don’t trust strangers.”
“I never do,” Akio said. He stood back as Fergus got into the Kawaiimobile, which started up with a literal roar. Fergus waved as he drove away, watching the man watching him from the side of the road as the rain turned to full downpour, beating on the pod windows and road ahead, and Akio became just a blur of color in the fading distance.
In the back of the car, from his pack, the fragment began to quietly sing.
* * *
—
“Why the hell are you here again?” Zacker asked, glancing over from where he was sitting surrounded by feed monitors from the street below and the apartment next door. “And you know you have messages? Your handpad is blinking like it’s gonna have a stroke.”
Fergus was slumped on the couch. He reached over to where he’d tossed his handpad on the table and flipped it over. “I know,” he said. “I’m an asshole and a coward.”
“Well, asshole, for sure,” Zacker said. “What are you being a coward about? Your damn messages?”
“Yes,” Fergus said. “As much as I mostly don’t mind pissing people off, and sometimes even enjoy it, I’m finding that I have newly developed the ability to feel bad about it in certain circumstances, and I don’t like that at all.”
Zacker snorted. “So, you were a jerk to someone, and now you’re avoiding their calls? Welcome to the human race.”
Fergus made a rude gesture at the retired detective, who laughed and went back to his monitors. “There’s beer in the fridge,” Zacker said over his shoulder. “You can have one. One. I’m running low.”
Grumbling, Fergus got up from the couch and pulled one of at least two dozen bottles out of the fridge. Either Zacker was being funny, or he had a serious problem. What makes you think it’s not both? he asked himself.
Several hours back to Niigata, and a quick hop to Luzon to change up shuttles in case he was being watched, before landing in Perth about an hour later, and his legs still ached from the hike. He should be drinking water, and he would next, but the beer sounded far better than it had any right to.
“Zacker—” he started to say, coming back out of the living room, only t
o find the detective standing there holding Fergus’s handpad, listening to the low drone of his messages. “—Hey!” he shouted. “How did you unlock that?”
Zacker shrugged, and when the messages finished, tossed the handpad back to Fergus. “Grabbed your fingerprint, retina, and base chem sig way back in Glasgow. And yeah, you’re right, someone’s pretty pissed at you. Who’s Isla?”
Fergus took a long pull from the bottle of beer and made a face. “My kid sister I didn’t know about until a few months ago,” he said.
“Ha! That must have been one hell of a kick in the pants,” Zacker said. “And you’ve dragged her into your shit?”
“Kept her out of it, which is why she’s pissed,” Fergus said. “I don’t know how to talk to her and get her to understand the danger. How did you get through to Deliah?”
“You are asking me for advice on people skills?” Zacker exclaimed. “You must be fucking desperate.”
“I am. I should have gone right back up to orbit where she’s waiting, but . . .” He waved at the handpad and, by extension, the messages it held. “As I said, a coward.”
He thumbed off the bottle seal and took a deep swig before holding the bottle at arm’s length and peering with a mix of curiosity and horror at the label with a sheep in a spacesuit on it. “Jumbuckjoose?” he said. “You spent money on this?”
“I spent your money on it, wise guy,” Zacker said. “The label is holographic. You put the bottles together you get a cute little story that seems less dumb, the more you drink.”
“Have to drink a lot,” Fergus said.
“And that’s the point right there,” Zacker said.
“You worry me,” Fergus said.
“Whatever you need. But about this sister thing, think of yourself as a crime scene,” Zacker said. “Detectives—and we are all detectives, trying to solve other people—come in and look at your big splattery mess, and we make a story in our heads from the clues we see and what we know of you and your life. Those clues are the stories you choose to tell and the actions you choose to show. What we don’t get is the stories you don’t tell, the hidden actions, the secrets we haven’t dug out yet and maybe won’t. So, we never have the full picture, the right picture. No one ever does. The question is whether the picture is close enough to work the case, in this case to understand each other. Do you get that?”
The Scavenger Door Page 19
