That had been too much. Minnic told her she was welcome to kill him, but he wasn’t helping any saboteurs.
“I’m not a saboteur,” she said. “I’m a smuggler. You said so yourself. Those bricks are what I’m smuggling, but they’re not going to do me any good here on the station. I need the info my friend left me, and I need it now, so I can get out of here.” She paused. “You do want me to get out of here, don’t you?”
Minnic had agreed that he did, and so he went. He took the service corridors as far as he could, not eager to walk through the crowds out in the public part of the station—especially not in the upper levels, where his coveralls would stand in stark contrast to the elegant clothing of the wealthy customers who frequented that part of the massive mobile supermarket.
In fact, he was noticed when he exited the service corridors—by a security officer who was standing, hands folded and yet alert, near one of the ramps. One of the officer’s five eyes flicked first to Minnic’s airtag—blue and the wrong color for this level—but then blinked away once it also took in his maintenance uniform.
I can go anywhere on this station, Minnic thought miserably. She’s right. So could the security guard, he supposed.
But the security guard had training and a weapon. His freedom was real, and not an illusion. All Minnic’s freedom of movement was buying him right now was guilt—that, and a growing fear that somehow this would all go wrong, and he’d never get to see his wife again.
Everyone noticed him at the trade mission, too, but again, no one stopped him. Minnic knelt beside the servo the trade mission had contracted out from the station to clean its floors, and changed its filter, even though it clearly didn’t need it. With a gulp, he also brushed against the comp console in question, opening his hand to release the tiny mechanical bug as he did. It skittered away into a crack, and was lost to his view.
He trudged back down the service corridors, feeling both hot and staticky. The fur under his coveralls seemed to twitch and writhe against the bricks strapped next to his legs. He went down to the air lock where he’d been instructed to go.
He paused a moment before pressing his palm to the lock. This was so close to the transfer point where Raphic’s ship was scheduled to arrive in just a few hours. It was the same side of the station, and only two levels up. He leaned his forehead against the cool metal wall of the corridor, just for a moment. What kind of place was he bringing his family into? What kind of father-to-be was he to think of nesting a litter of babies in such a hive of crime?
He’d thought he was bringing his family to freedom—to the chance at a better life, the kind of life they’d thought had died back in the fires on Dineaps.
Instead, he was just bringing them back into another conflagration, into a different kind of war zone, and one where he had no weapons, no training . . . and no route of escape.
He was not a father like his father. He never would be.
Minnic pressed his palm to the lock. It did not open automatically, but the vid above it glowed briefly red, and Minnic wearily turned his face toward it so that his tormenter could see that he had obediently come as he had been told.
The door slid open, and Minnic was greeted with the now-familiar sight of the wrong end of the smuggler’s blaster barrel. He stepped in through the door, and found himself in a giant shipping container that was attached, limpet-like, to the side of the station.
The smuggler was not alone this time. A male of her species stood just behind her. His blaster was also drawn, but he was staring at a handheld screen. “He did it,” the male confirmed. “I’m getting the itinerary now.”
Itinerary of what? Minnic wondered. The ship that was going to pick up their stolen goods?
“Can I go now?” Minnic asked. He shook one leg irritably. “Would you take these things off? I just want to go and get some dinner.” He thought longingly of his little tabletop greenhouse, and the beautiful plate of colorful algae appetizers he’d planned for Raphic’s arrival.
“I don’t think so,” said the female. “We can’t let you run off and tell on us.”
“He’s coming in two levels up,” said the male. “Less than an hour from now.”
“I’m not going to tell on you,” insisted Minnic. How could he get these people to understand that all he wanted was to never think of any of them ever again?
The female looked at her companion. “We can’t risk it,” she said.
The male flicked his gaze toward her, then gave a short nod.
“Sorry about this,” said the female. “Your bad luck, I guess. We’ve been looking for a way to take out the Curian commissioner for months, and this is the closest we’ve been able to get.”
“You’re not smugglers,” Minnic said, the realization coming all too late.
The female shook her head. “I’m sorry. But you have to understand: he’s a war criminal. He deserves it.”
I don’t! thought Minnic, but he couldn’t bring himself to say the words aloud. What difference would it make?
The male raised his blaster at him.
Now Minnic did shout. “Wait!” he cried.
“Why?”
Minnic licked his lips, then pressed the tip of his tongue against one of his shaved molars. Just a chance, just give me a chance . . . “I haven’t had time to make peace with the goddess,” he said.
Would they even know what that meant? The two smugglers looked at each other. Then the female said, “We can’t afford the time to wait for you to make your prayers. We have to get out of here.”
Minnic looked at the pile of “bricks”—the pile of explosives. “I can’t die unshriven,” he pleaded. “I can die—I don’t want to, but I can. But you can’t let me die damned. You have to give me time.”
“Just leave him,” said the male. “This place is going to be gone in an hour.”
Please, please, please . . . thought Minnic. Please . . .
* * *
• • •
Minnic was elated that they’d listened. He was even more elated when they tied his hands behind his back, securing him to one of the container’s giant shelves. They pulled off his tool belt and threw it on the other side of the bricks, but that was all they did before they left out the air lock door, securing it behind them.
As he rolled his shoulders in a preparatory stretch, Minnic chuckled in disbelief. Some sapients! Thinking everyone was just like them! He squatted down and easily looped his tied hands to the front of his body, where he could easily reach the hard plastic tie with his teeth. Just because your species doesn’t have level-three brachiating ability . . .
His smugness lasted long enough for him to chew through the ties around his wrists, and for him to reclaim his tool belt, cinching it back tight around his waist, but it disappeared as he reached the door.
Then he stopped, standing stock still and staring. No. And he thought he’d been so clever! But they’d not just secured the lock, they’d destroyed it—and the com panel above it.
I can’t get out. And he couldn’t call for help, either. Minnic’s hand reached automatically for the tools at his belt, but not with much hope. Plexis might allow algae to grow around internal doors, but the air locks that ships and shipping containers latched onto were serious hardware. He’d have to hack at the door frame for days to make any headway.
Minnic glanced back at the pile of explosive bricks, which the terrorist pair had activated before they left.
He was pretty sure he didn’t have days.
No com, no way out. Minnic tapped his fingers in a frantic rhythm against his belt. No com, no way out, no time. What did he have? He ran his hands up and down his coveralls, patting all of his many pockets.
He stopped over the pocket that held his kerchief.
He had part of the mess he’d cleaned up earlier in the day.
He had algae.
/> Minnic glanced away from the air lock door and down to the—much smaller—service port beside it. Too small to crawl through, even with his flexible shoulders. Just big enough for a cleaning servo to get through.
Had the bombers, in their haste, signed the boilerplate contract for full service from Plexis?
Minnic knew there was only one way to find out.
He had to make a mess.
* * *
• • •
The first servo came in quick response when Minnic wiped his collection of algae across one of the sensor points at the corner of the nearest floor plate. Usually the sensors called for the servos when a large enough layer of dust and grime built up over them, but they weren’t foolproof, and a big enough spill at the right point would trigger a servo call.
Minnic temporarily disabled the servo’s locomotive ability and levered it open. He filled the inside fluid reservoir with almost half of the explosive bricks and was about to send it on its way when he realized that if he did that, he’d be dooming all the workers in or near the recycling center to the same fate he himself was trying to escape. He quickly pulled the bricks all out again, and then smoothed down the fur on his face, which was standing up in horror at the fact that he’d almost become a mass murderer.
Mass murder . . . that was still what was going to happen, if he couldn’t come up with a better solution. It was just that he would be the one dying—along with everyone on this level, and on the next couple of levels above and below him.
Raphic. She was supposed to arrive within the hour, and only two levels up. The person the criminals were trying to kill must be coming through the same transfer point where she was scheduled to arrive. She would die if he couldn’t figure out a way to stop this explosion . . . Minnic almost put all the bricks back. Let the recycling workers die—they weren’t Raphic!
But no, no. He couldn’t. He just couldn’t. He’d be as bad as the couple who’d set this all up, as bad as the soldiers who’d burned his people in their nests back on Dineaps.
Minnic tapped the servo, the frantic rhythm of his fingers slower now.
These were tough little machines, these cleaning servos.
Tough little machines. Little machines. Small machines. Small . . .
How small could he make his problem?
Minnic began to hum as he sealed up just one brick in the little servo, and left it tipped over on its side at the far end of the container, locomotion still disabled. He knew more about the servos than he knew about the explosives, but . . . but if they needed this many bricks to make a big enough explosion to blow up the concourse two levels above . . . Minnic calculated. Maybe. Just maybe. The servos really were tough little machines: well-built, and made to stand up to a lot of abuse, and even built to handle the fairly serious chemical reactions that could happen when they were sent to clean up the kind of messes that a station swarming with every kind of life saw with some regularity.
Minnic carefully wiped up his algae from the first sensor, walked to the next one, and covered it up, too. How many servos could he prompt to come to him . . . how many were even on the station?
He counted the bricks, and compared it to the number of levels on Plexis. Enough, he thought. There were probably enough servos.
He just wasn’t sure if there was enough time.
* * *
• • •
The last brick was in the last servo. His algae hadn’t held up to being wiped and rewiped over and over, and he didn’t like to think about the various bodily fluids he’d had to produce to trigger sensor after sensor in the floor plates. Undignified. Dirty.
But it had worked. He looked at the collection of disabled servos now lining the far end of the container, piled like firewood, ridiculously spinning their cleaning pads in vain.
Minnic sank down next to the ruined air lock, chewing absently on the edge of his lip. Would it be enough? Would a hundred tiny explosions, each contained in its own little case of fluid, plastics, and tough metal, be better than the giant uncontained one the terrorists had planned? Or was he wrong? Maybe he had just added more shrapnel to an already unstoppable disaster.
As he eyed his work with misgiving from the far side of the container, another thought occurred, less horrible than imminent death, but still daunting: They’re never going to let us stay.
That pile of repurposed servos, levered open and resealed: they weren’t just a desperate solution to danger, they were property damage.
In trying to survive, he had been forced to become a vandal. Anger flooded Minnic. He hadn’t asked for this, he hadn’t asked to make this choice!
All he had wanted was a home for his family. All he had wanted was the freedom to live in a good place and make a nest that would see his beautiful Raphic a pleased and preening mistress over a brood of promising littermates.
He’d thought he’d found that. And now—one way or another—he was going to lose it all.
Minnic closed his eyes. He’d been bluffing when he’d talked about needing to make confession before he died, but now that it was coming to it . . .
He startled at a banging noise beside him, and clambered to his feet as a line started to glow in the air lock door, next to the ruined lock. Less than a minute later, the lock popped out on his side, as if pushed, and the door was jimmied open.
Minnic’s boss, a Whirtle, humped through, and waved its tentacles in dismay at the sight of him. Behind, a uniformed security guard peered past them both and frowned at the ruined pile of servos at the far end of the container.
“So this is where they were all going!” his boss said. “Minnic, what did you do to them?”
Apology, fear, and accusation all poised themselves at the end of Minnic’s tongue, but what came out was a truncated, “Get out! They’re going to—”
Behind them, in unison, all of the servos blew up.
* * *
• • •
Training for his new job had taken almost a year. But the Curian Trade Pact Commissioner, in gratitude for saving nis life, sponsored Minnic through the schooling.
Minnic’s old boss, in janitorial, had had some things to say about the property damage. When the servos blew up, tough little machines that they were, it looked more like a series of giant water bottles burping than a hundred little bombs wreaking havoc.
But the servos were still completely ruined.
However, the security officer who’d arrived with Minnic’s boss, and who’d examined the wreckage, and raised his eyebrows at the estimated weight and makeup of the explosives, had taken down Minnic’s account of the event with an increasing attitude of respect, and assured Minnic that he would put in a good word for him.
“Trust me,” he’d said, “we’d rather clean up this mess than the one we would have had if you hadn’t been so quick on your feet.”
Plexis Security caught the two responsible before they could leave the station.
Then Plexis Security offered Minnic a new job.
* * *
• • •
Minnic stood every day at his new post: a lovely little level just up past where the underbelly of Plexis ended and the expensive shops began.
Minnic wasn’t trapped and he wasn’t hunted. He looked at the shoppers passing him with genial good will. Some of them had blue airtags on their cheeks and some had gold. It didn’t matter: this was Plexis, and there was always a chance to move up.
He settled his hands more firmly around his belt, which still, with permission, hung heavy with a few of his father’s old hand tools—as well as his newly-issued service blaster.
This was a good place, and people like him were going to keep it good.
He ran his teeth over his newly-capped molars. Raphic was settled and happy in her nest, and their babies were thriving. Plexis was no trap, as he’d feared. No, it was a forest of metal and
plas, fit for tourists and families, smugglers and shop owners, but not terror, not wars. Not while he lived here and kept it safe.
I am free, he thought. I’m going to stay that way.
He smoothed down the front of his new uniform in satisfaction.
And I can still go anywhere on the station.
. . . Truffles concludes
19
MORGAN LEANED ON the railing, looking down. “So, Witchling. What do you think of Plexis now?”
I joined him, gazing at the complex massed confusion below. “I don’t know how,” I admitted, “but it works.”
“Given a chance,” he agreed.
It’d be a long time, if ever, before I thought of this place as home, the way my Chosen did. Still, there was something special here. I’d seen it for myself. Not kindness, I thought, searching for another word to describe what I saw—and what had happened—
Community.
Chosen did that, finish thoughts. Complete one another. I smiled to myself. “I’d like to come back and see more. Just not right away,” I added quickly.
He chuckled. “What, no more dancing?”
My hair slid down his arm to loop, warm and confident, around his wrist.
Oh, there’ll be dancing, I promised. And before anyone could notice, or anyone care . . . I concentrated . . .
. . . and put us back where we belonged, in our starship.
Without any truffles at all.
The Writers of Tales from Plexis (in Alphabetical Order)
B. Morris Allen, “Cinnamon Sticks”
B. Morris Allen is a biochemist turned activist turned lawyer turned foreign aid consultant, and frequently wonders whether it’s time for a new career. He’s been traveling since birth, and has lived on five of seven continents. When he can, he makes his home on the Oregon coast. In between journeys, he edits Metaphorosis magazine, and works on his own speculative stories of love and disaster. His dark fantasy novel Susurrus came out in 2017. Find more at www.bmorrisallen.com and @BMorrisAllen.
The Clan Chronicles--Tales from Plexis Page 46
