Trapped lop-6

by James Alan Gardner

Pelinor sucked his mustache. "So this Mind-Lord runs afoul of Jode… and eventually Dreamsinger comes to check her brother's last known location."

  "But what was Jode?" Gretchen asked. "I've never heard of a demon who could look human."

  "I have," I said.

  I told them our chancellor's tale of stealing tobacco… and of the creature the Sparks called a Lucifer, waiting there in ambush. Annah helped with parts of the story, for which I was grateful; if Annah hadn't been there, Impervia might have thrown me over the side to keep Zunctweed company. As it was, she simply glowered like a thunderhead. When I finished, Impervia said, "You couldn't have mentioned this sooner?"

  "Opal wanted it kept secret," I answered. "She made Annah and me promise we wouldn't tell anyone else unless it became absolutely necessary."

  Impervia glared… but she couldn't very well say we should have broken our promise. Meanwhile, the Caryatid (ever a peacemaker) said, "What's past is past. The point is, now we know what's happening."

  "Do we?" Pelinor asked. "Oh good. What's happening?"

  Myoko growled in exasperation. "There's a shapeshifter thing called a Lucifer. It pretended to be a man named Josh Jode. It killed a Spark Lord, leaving behind little white nuggets. Rosalind died the same way… so she must have been killed by a Lucifer too."

  I remembered Dreamsinger grabbing me in Nanticook House, calling me a fool for thinking the curds had been a bioweapon. All along, it had been the Lucifer. Probably the same Lucifer. But Dreamsinger said it had mutated. Somehow it changed itself so its metabolism no longer matched its former profile.

  Did that explain what happened to Mind-Lord Priest? He must have had some kind of detection equipment that registered Josh Jode as alien… but thanks to the Lucifer's mutation, the equipment couldn't identify what kind of alien Jode was. The Mind-Lord hadn't suspected he was dealing with a Lucifer; therefore, he'd been taken by surprise.

  But why did Priest come after Jode in the first place? Had Jode done something to attract attention? Or had…

  Wait. Opal told us she was stationed in Feliss because the Sparks believed something bad would happen in the neighborhood. Given that kind of advance information, the Sparks would take the precaution of sweeping the area now and then for anything unusual. Priest had shown up a few days ago; he'd set his detection gear to search for alien life-forms; and he'd got a reading on a species his equipment didn't recognize.

  The Mind-Lord had confronted Jode. But Priest hadn't been careful enough.

  "And now," Myoko said, finishing her summary for Pelinor's benefit, "the shapeshifting Mr. Jode is pretending to be Rosalind Tzekich. Heading for Niagara Falls with Sebastian."

  "Oh," said Pelinor. "And Sebastian doesn't know? I thought he was a top-notch psychic."

  "He is. But his powers don't usually activate unless he tells them to. What are the odds he's explicitly going to check if his girlfriend is an alien in disguise?"

  "I've wanted to check that with some of my boyfriends," Gretchen said.

  Everyone ignored her.

  "Zunctweed," the Caryatid called. "How long has Jode been in Dover?"

  "Five years," came a voice from just above the waterline. "A long, long time. When one compares five years to the short period I've been suspended above this lake, I know I shouldn't complain. Still, there you are. They say one's experience of time is relative to one's mental suffering… and I discover it to be true. Isn't that interesting? Perhaps Dr. Dhubhai would like to write a scientific paper."

  Myoko, who'd been holding Zunctweed all this while (and who'd been so distracted by my tale of Opal and the Lucifer that she'd let her hair fall back to normal), made a disgusted face and flipped the Patata captain back onto the deck. Meanwhile, the Caryatid said, "If Jode was here five full years, you have to wonder why."

  "Sebastian," Impervia answered immediately. "Jode was watching Sebastian."

  "You think so?"

  Impervia nodded. "You saw how Dreamsinger reacted when she realized a Lucifer was taking the boy to Niagara Falls. She squealed like a stuck pig. Obviously, Dreamsinger had a suspicion Jode would use Sebastian for something horrible."

  "Like what?" Pelinor asked.

  "Damned near anything," Myoko told him. "From Opal's story, these Lucifers hate Spark Royal. There must be something Sebastian can do in Niagara Falls that will drive the Sparks wild."

  "Like what?" Pelinor asked again.

  "We don't know," Myoko said. "But Jode's been watching Sebastian for five years. Perhaps waiting for the boy's powers to mature. Sebastian has always been gifted, but it's taken him time to gain control."

  "Also," Impervia said with disgust, "Jode may have been waiting for Sebastian to discover the opposite sex. This Lucifer is clearly a vile creature; from the first, it must have intended to control Sebastian through seduction, so it had to wait until the boy was old enough to be seduced. It could easily check on Sebastian from time to time — a shapeshifter would have no problem disguising itself as someone else and spying to its heart's content. When it got back from the winter anchorage, it learned Sebastian had finally fallen in love. Jode eliminated Rosalind and took her place."

  "But how did Jode know about Sebastian's powers?" I asked. "Weren't they a secret?"

  "I'd hoped so," Myoko said. "But I told you there were incidents when Sebastian was young… like that time the horse tried to kick him. I was always afraid word might leak out. Silly me, I was only worried about slavers; I didn't even think of shapeshifting aliens."

  "So let me get this straight," Gretchen said. "There's a horrible gooey alien who's already killed several people including a Spark Lord. This alien intends to trick some hideously strong adolescent psychic into doing something awful. There's a homicidal Sorcery-Lord who's on her way to stop them… and that lecherous old Warwick Xavier is tied into this too, plus the entire Ring of Knives. All these dangerous people are racing to Niagara Falls for some unknown cataclysmic smash-up, and you want my boat so you can be at ground zero when the shit hits the fan?"

  Silence. I said, "Yes, Gretchen, that pretty well sums it up."

  She smiled radiantly. "Then what are we waiting for? Let's go."

  15: EAST WITH THE NIGHT

  According to my pocket watch, we set sail at 4:35. NikNiks yammered in the rigging; Zunctweed grumbled at the wheel. The rest of us turned in to grab as much rest as we could.

  I can't say I slept much. In a spirit of adventure, Gretchen issued us all with hammocks to be slung in the Dinghy's bunkrooms: bunkrooms stinking of NikNik, a wet furry smell that was much like any other wet furry smell, but more pungent. NikNiks practice basic hygiene and sanitation, but they still produced a junglelike stench of suffocating proportion — fierce farts and pheromones, not to mention the aromas of mating and childbirth.

  Gretchen took the captain's cabin and gave me a long lingering leer that suggested we should share the bed. I turned my eyes elsewhere, drawing on the full awesome power of my Y chromosome to feign obliviousness. (What hints? I didn't see any hints. Why don't women just come out and say what they're thinking?) Now was not the time to provoke a Gretchen/Annah furor… or even worse, Gretchen/Annah/Myoko. Let confessions wait until we'd faced whatever lurked in Niagara Falls.

  So I headed for the bunkroom with everyone else — even Impervia, who'd been loath to leave Zunctweed unsupervised. She suspected our captain would head for the hills if someone didn't watch him… though Gretchen swore the Kinnderboom family sorcerers always enchanted their slaves with spells to prevent escape or disobedience. If Zunctweed tried any tricks, his muscles would seize and he'd fall over in an epileptic fit. Most slaves made the attempt only once; after that, they resigned themselves to servitude.

  But that didn't satisfy Impervia: she would have stayed on deck all night if Oberon hadn't insisted he'd be the one to watch Zunctweed. Our holy sister gave the big red lobster an appraising look, and apparently liked what she saw. After a moment, she patted Oberon's shell and headed below.

&
nbsp; So we bedded down in the hammocks. I shan't describe the inadequacies of such sleeping contraptions — more eloquent writers than I have expounded at length on the sensation of being webbed in, the saggy discomfort of no back support, the disturbing sway as the ship rolls — nor shall I grouse about occupying such cramped quarters with so many other sleepers. Pelinor didn't snore, but one of the women did… and in the darkness, I couldn't tell which it was. I crossed my fingers it wasn't Annah.

  Or perhaps Myoko.

  Even without the snoring, I wouldn't have fallen asleep easily — too many thoughts churned in my head. Especially about Niagara Falls.

  I'd seen the Falls once while chaperoning a field trip from the academy. Despite its reputation as a wonder of the world, I wouldn't have gone to Niagara on my own free time; I didn't expect to be impressed by water obeying the law of gravity. But when I got there, the Falls were truly impressive, with their roar, their mist, and their fury… not to mention the spectacular gorge they've cut over the eons, kilometers long, slowly eaten backward by the plummeting water. One look at that gorge and I knew the world was ancient. That in itself justified the trip.

  I was also grudgingly impressed by the area immediately surrounding the Falls. Several city blocks were remarkably preserved from OldTech times. Twenty-story buildings (hotels and casinos) still scraped their fingernails against the sky, their decor hardly changed since the twenty-first century… including the electricity running the lights and elevators.

  Yes, electricity. For five centuries, a portion of the Falls' plunging water had been diverted through sluices, hurtling down millraces and directed over turbines to generate hydro power. Niagara was a major energy center in the OldTech era, and tourist guides claimed the facilities had remained in operation ever since, tended by a monastic order called the Keepers of Holy Lightning. The Keepers were typical crackpots, believing that OldTech days represented the peak of spiritual enlightenment. By contrast, the world of the present was a cesspool of Vanity and Sin, an affront to everything sacred, blah, blah, blah. Therefore, the Keepers disdained modern ways (sorcery, psionics, associating with aliens) and applied themselves to Living In The Past. They kept Niagara's turbines turning, repaired any breakdowns in the power grid within three kilometers of their generating station, and even hand-crafted lightbulbs so their electricity would have some useful function to perform.

  You can find similar orders in other parts of the world. In Sheba, a group of ultra-conservative Sufis still operated the facilities at Aswan… sponsored (said my grandmother) by the Sparks, who had no interest in Sufism or electricity but wanted technologically competent people to care for the whole facility. Spark Royal didn't want a dam break that sent a wall of water careening down the Nile valley. That was the sort of thing Sparks were sworn to prevent — disasters on the grand scale.

  Such thoughts made me wonder if the Sparks also supported the Holy Lightning in Niagara Falls. Possibly. Probably. It doesn't take sophisticated equipment to produce electricity from falling water, but it's hard to make everything you need with just a small cadre of true believers. Even simple copper wire requires ore, a refining furnace, and wirepulling equipment… all of which added up to a hefty wad of cash. Did the electricity business really produce that much income when the power was being used only to dazzle tourists?

  The more I thought about it, the more I was certain the Niagara hydro station survived through Spark backing: money, materials, and more. (If some tooled-tungsten chunk of OldTech machinery broke down, where could the Keepers get a replacement except Spark Royal?) So why did the Sparks do it? Unlike Aswan, Niagara had no dam; if the generators broke and the power went out, it would put a damper on tourist business but wouldn't endanger lives.

  Why would the Sparks care about the Falls?

  Unless they were using the electricity for something themselves.

  Unless there was some life-or-death need to keep the turbines running.

  Unless there was some secret something, a deadly threat known only to the Sparks; and all hell would break loose if the machines ever fell silent.

  In which case… in which case…

  I couldn't finish the thought. I couldn't even imagine what the threat might be.

  But Jode was taking Sebastian to Niagara. A Lucifer had gained influence over a powerful psychic who could do almost anything.

  I could see why Dreamsinger flew into a tizzy when she realized what Jode planned. The possibilities tizzied me too.

  Dawn came and went. In the bunkroom, the morning was scarcely noticeable — the Dinghy was a nice tight ship with few chinks the sunshine could penetrate. Still, light oozed in photon by photon. The night's pitch blackness yielded to something less Stygian, enough that my dark-adjusted eyes could make out the hammocks around me.

  Waves rocked the boat like a cradle. I dozed off and on, drifting into dreams and back again. At some point, I must have slipped into a deeper sleep; when I finally awoke (with a clear head and no hangover, praise God), the bunkroom was empty. Heaven knows how the others got out of their hammocks without waking me — I had a hell of a time fighting my way free, nearly dropping facefirst to the floor. Good thing my friends weren't around to laugh. I pulled myself together, straightened my clothes as much as a wrinkling night's sleep would allow, and headed up to the deck.

  Bright sun, wispy clouds, brisk breeze. The first person I saw was the Caryatid, her cheeks as red as her clothing. She huddled with her back to the wind, baking a withered apple in a flame that sprouted from her fingertips. (Trust the Caryatid to heat her apples rather than eating them raw — she leapt at any excuse to light a fire and nuzzle it like a pet mouse.) When she saw me, she smiled in her motherly way. "Good afternoon, sleepy-head. You missed breakfast. And lunch."

  "Zunctweed lied about the ship being out of provisions?"

  "Of course." She reached into a small basket beside her feet and tossed me a hunk of cheese. "Eat fast. We're almost there."

  As I munched, I looked over the railing. The Dinghy was too far out for me to see the shore clearly… but beyond the narrow sand beach, I could discern open areas (fields), low trees (orchards), and thick forests (wood-lots and windbreaks). Local farmers must be out today, checking which fences needed mending, or gazing at morasses of mud and judging how soon the soil would be dry enough to plow. Perhaps the cattle had been let out to pasture, hoof-deep in muck but glad in their bovine way to be munching on sere yellow grass rather than stale fodder.

  Even as I watched, the ship angled toward land. Up ahead, a small harbor housed fishing boats — far fewer than the fleet in Dover-on-Sea, but enough to show the presence of an active port. The Caryatid said, "That's Crystal Bay. We'll put in there. Zunctweed says there's no point going as far as the Niagara River, because it isn't navigable for a ship our size."

  "What about the canal?" The Welland Canal had been dug in OldTech times to circumvent the Falls. Back then, the canal's lift-locks were controlled electronically; but locks can function perfectly well without fancy automation, and they'd continued on pure gravity feed long after the electric pumps had become useless. As far as I knew, the canal was still a working part of the Great Lakes seaway.

  "The canal isn't open," the Caryatid told me. "They close it every winter once ice shuts down shipping."

  "But the ice has melted."

  "Doesn't matter. Zunctweed says the schedule was cast in stone years ago by government fiat. The canal won't reopen until it's supposed to."

  "But if the ice is gone, we could just sail through."

  The Caryatid shook her head. "Every lock is completely shut down. No way past. Zunctweed says Crystal Bay is the closest the Dinghy can get to the Falls."

  "And we believe Zunctweed?"

  "We believe Zunctweed when Impervia has a firm grip on his throat."

  Impervia wasn't actively engaged in strangling the captain, but she stood within arm's reach as Zunctweed chittered orders to prepare for landfall. Pelinor was also close to th
e action, not to help Impervia, but because the old knight had developed a sudden enthusiasm for seamanship. In the same way that he badgered stablehands about horses, he hung at Zunctweed's side in pursuit of nautical lore. "What does 'belay' mean?" "How do you do something 'handsomely'?" "Which is 'abaft' and 'abeam'?"

  Not far away, Oberon clung to the rail looking miserable. He wasn't actually seasick — Lake Erie's waves were minuscule compared to an ocean's, especially on such a pleasant day — but the big lobster clearly had acquired a loathing of surfaces that moved beneath him. Each time the boat dipped down a wave crest, Oberon fought not to slide in the same direction… and after hours of constant exertion, grappling the rail with his pincers, he must have been counting the seconds before we put into port.

  The rest of our group was nowhere in sight. The Caryatid told me our missing companions were all in the captain's cabin. "Looking at maps. Arguing about the fastest way to the Falls." She rolled her eyes. "As far as I'm concerned, we should just talk to people in Crystal Bay. They'll know what's best. If we let Gretchen choose our route, we'll gallop ten kilometers up some road, discover a bridge has collapsed during the winter, and have to come all the way back again."

  The Caryatid was right: no sense relying on maps when we could get more up-to-date information with a few simple questions. And from what I could see of the town, Crystal Bay looked big enough to justify a stagecoach stop… maybe even a dispatching depot. Better to hop a stage than rent horses and strike off on our own.

  Still, I felt a niggling urge to peek at a map, just to get the lay of the land — I'd feel better if I had a picture of where we were going. Accordingly, I headed to the captain's quarters with a blithe and jaunty step, nothing in my brain except cartographic curiosity… but that evaporated instantly when I bounced into the cabin and realized who was there.

  Three heads turned my way when I entered. Three pretty faces. Gretchen, Annah, and Myoko: all my complications in one cramped little room.