On the Razor's Edge

by Michael Flynn

  It was the work of a moment, and the three were lying on the brickwork adding their vomit to the dried blood of past attacks. Donovan bent over them.

  “Tell your master that he gave you too much time with his story of Old Earth, and that you grew restless in your concealment, thus betraying your position. Tell him that those who will betime notice my absence are not mere policemen, but Shadows of the Names. They will know I passed through The Severed Arm. It may be a matter of some few days before they come, but come they will. Tell the taverner to take what measures he sees fit.”

  The moans of his three attackers increased in pitch and Donovan left them there. He did not know if any of them would return to warn The Severed Arm, nor did he care.

  He followed the sigil deeper into the warren, but at a certain shop, a late-night daga, he heard men speaking in the Tongue. He paused and dropped the name of Foo-lin in their ears and received in return flat-faced stares and, from one man, a slight nod toward the right.

  Outside the shop, armed now with a warmed peach pastry, he checked the sigil. It too directed him to the right. He shrugged. Perhaps the directions were genuine after all. Undoubtedly, the bartender received a portion of Foo-lin’s fee and, while deprived of the whole of Donovan’s purse by the failure of his cutthroats, he would at least garner his commission. Wise is the man who profits from either side of a wager.

  * * *

  Foo-lin was located in the basement of an abandoned apartment house. Perhaps it had once held supplies or boilers or comm.junctions. What it held now was the equipment that Foo-lin required to practice his trade: scalpels, anesthetics, stitchers, a white ring that was no longer quite white.

  “What you want?” was his friendly greeting.

  “I seek that for which thou art justly famed,” the scarred man answered in the Tongue.

  That did not elicit the response the Fudir had looked for. The wizened old black man scowled. “You accent funny. Where you from?”

  “I hight a Terran, seeking help of Terra. By the Taj and the Wall and the Mount of—”

  “Ayii! Thou art a Peripheral Terran! Go ’way! You bring trouble.” He made fending motions with his hands but continued in the Tongue. “This be Holy Terra. Profane her not!”

  “What I seek is simplicity itself: the removal of niplips—locators—from my body.”

  “Ayii. That be against the fiqh of the Northern Mark. Shall I place my head on the block merely because thine ancestors once lived here?”

  “No,” said the Fudir. “Because I have coin to give.” He handed over the sigil he had been given.

  Foo-lin laughed. “If thou comest from The Severed Arm, few are the coins remaining thee.”

  “Yet fewer still are the patrons remaining to The Arm.”

  The foo-doctor paused and looked at the scarred man, as if for the first time. “Where are these coins of which thou braggest?”

  He handed Foo-lin a leather bag the size of his palm. The other glanced within and hefted its weight. “And the brothers of these few lonely orphans?”

  “Safely concealed. But when thou hast finished thy work, the remainder shallt be thine.”

  “Thou art a man of care. Remove thy clothing, then, down unto thy skivvies. And please to be lying on this table where I will perform the ritual called ‘the scanning of the cat.’”

  Donovan stripped, and the scars on his body gave the doctor pause. Then the old man shrugged. “I must cut thee open to remove any niplips my cat may find. But what would mean another scar among so many? I see that thou art not a man of such care as to avoid injury.”

  “I fought a Shadow.”

  The foo-doctor scoffed. “Who can walk away from such a fight, save only a…”

  He fell silent as answers suggested themselves. “There are rumors,” he ventured, not looking directly at the scarred man.

  “Believe them all. They may not be true, but they make thy life more interesting.”

  Donovan expected the ritual to involve the sacrifice of a cat, but there was no more involved than his passage through the white ring. The foo-doctor uttered certain prayers and incantations while he did so. “Step one,” he recited in the ancient Murkanglais. “Turn the red power switch to ready…”

  Foo-lin located two niplips. They had been implanted, Donovan was certain, during his long sleep in the autoclinic aboard White Comet. Once they were found, it was the work of a few moments to remove them, requiring little beside a local anesthetic and some deep cuts. So far as pain went, it was the sort that the Silky Voice could easily handle.

  “Those who would track thee,” Foo-lin said, handing over the niplips, “will know when and where they are destroyed.”

  “I know this thing, and for thy sake and the sake of all our common ancestors I will not destroy them here. But those who would track me will know the path these traveled and will follow their spoor to this place. Thou needst not know who they be.”

  “Though one may hazard guesses.” He spat on the floor. “This place…” The foo-doctor looked about the dilapidated basement. “I spread my tents where I wist. This keller will be empty when they come.”

  “Thou hast no love for the Names.”

  “It is Terra of Old that I love alone. To the Names, I am indifferent. They are now; one day they are not. But Earth alone abideth.”

  “And yet thou scornest the Terrans of the Diaspora.”

  “They have fallen from the Faith, even as they have fled from the Earth. They would erect a secular Terra on the soil of the holy Commonwealth. ‘What’s done is done and what’s gone is gone, and what’s lost is lost and gone forever.’ What might they hope to revive but a corpse—a zombie Commonwealth, with Men of Brass aping the deeds of the Men of Gold. Beside which, it would arouse my neighbors against all Terrans and bring the boots upon our faces.”

  The Fudir made a sign with his right hand. “Dream thy dreams of old, O venerable one. No such ill shall come of my visit. I am but a lonely fugitive.”

  “May thy heels be swift, thy breaths drawn sweet, and thine end swift and painless. Now, about my fee…”

  The Fudir laughed. “Know that there is ever a place for you in the Corner of Jehovah. Mention to the Seven the name of the Fudir, and if they do not slit thy throat from mere exasperation at the reminder they will welcome thee. The remainder of thy fee sits ‘on deposit.’ There is a loose brick on the face of this very building, in the cavity behind which I placed the coins. I will touch the brick casually—so—as I depart. Thou mayest then, at thy leisure, collect the remainder of thy fee.”

  “Few are the men I would trust on such a promise.”

  The Fudir wondered how much was trust and how much prudence in the face of a man who had beaten the thugs of The Severed Arm and (putatively) a Shadow. “I crave one further boon of thee. It is on me to make the hajj. I am given to understand that the Mount of Many Faces is close by this place.”

  The foo-doctor laughed. “Aye, if by ‘close’ thou meanest ‘on the selfsame continent’! What drollery! Thou wishest coordinates for your flier? It is but the labor of a moment.” The old man busied himself at his console and shortly returned with a small disk. “Insert this in thy navigation system and straightaway thou shallt be taken to the legendary Mount.” He smiled as if at some secret joke.

  * * *

  Donovan understood the foo-doctor’s wit early the next morning when the flier he had rented under the name Tjoslina Tuk went into a tight circle above the specified coordinates.

  The land below him was capped under milk-white ice a mile thick.

  The wind howled unobstructed across the northern ice-plains, buffeting the small craft and challenging its autopilot to impressive feats of stability. Tiny ice particles rattled off the windshield.

  The Fudir sighed. So much for the legendary heads: for Washington and Abe; for Jeff and Teddy; for Miwel II and Kgonzdan the Oppressed. They were not even buried, he thought—or the Sleuth thought. They were ground to powder by unimaginable p
ressure against the mortar of the earth.

  It comes on suddenly, the Fudir remembered. A century or two from grassy plains to ice desert. But it wants thousands of years to melt.

  It’s the albedo. Once the land whitens, it reflects more sunlight.

  Donovan sighed. He had planned to tuck the two niplips up the nostril of Miwel II, whose copious nasal passages were said to have led into vast and secret chambers, full of pre-Commonwealth treasure. A suitable place for Donovan to search out; a reasonable place to have become trapped.

  Instead, he tossed the two devices from his flier and let them fall to the ice, to be buried by the drifting powder. Then he turned his vehicle to the west and sought the fabled city of Prizga.

  VII. MANY ARROWS LOOSÈD SEVERAL WAYS

  You love your comrade so in war.

  When you see your quarrel is just

  And your blood is fighting well,

  Tears engulf your eyes.

  A great sweet swell of truth and pity

  Fills your heart on seeing friends so valiant.

  And you go to die or live with them,

  And for love to ne’er abandon them.

  And from that arises such a joy

  That he who has not tasted it

  Knows nary joy at all. Think you

  That a man who does that

  Fears mere death?

  An ancient sage once wrote that all things happen by chance or by design, but that chance was only the intersection of two designs. Consider the man who is struck on the head by a hammer while walking to his lunch.

  Everything about his perambulation is designed, which is to say intended. He is hungry—it is that time of day for it—and he habitually takes his lunch at a café two blocks distant from his workplace. It is a sunny day, so he wears no cap. None of this is by chance.

  Likewise, the workman atop the roof of the building half a block along. He too ceases work for lunch and, habitually, leaves his tools unattended. Because of the geometric arrangement of his tools, his foot nudges the hammer as he arises, the which, in obedience to the inexorable laws of action and reaction, nudges back and so begins to slide. The god Newton teases it down the slanted roof tiles until it tips into his clutches and is pulled to the street below, even as the unfortunate lunch bound is passing beneath.

  “Ah, what ill luck,” say the street sweepers as they cleanse the blood and brains from the duroplast walkway. Yet everything that has happened is the consequence of the actors’ intentions or of nature’s laws—and some say those laws are but the intentions of a greater Actor.

  We call it “chance” and we marvel because our superstitions desire that concatenation be as meaningful as causality. The man was brained by a hammer! It must mean something. There must be a connection! And so poor Fate is made the scapegoat of intersecting world-lines. Having become all tangled up in the threads, we incline to blame the weaver.

  Which is to say that if two travelers intend the same destination, it is no great thing that their threads might cross along the way.

  * * *

  A third thing that Méarana’s mother had taught her was how to handle herself in free fall wearing a skinsuit. This was a fortunate skill, as Méarana’s mother well knew, for it enabled the harper to step out of a doomed ship wrapped in nothing much more than a leotard, helmet, and cloak of invisibility, and to coast until coming to rest on the side of the smuggler’s monoship.

  “We must match our mootions while still blocked from view,” Ravn Olafsdottr had warned her before closing the skinsuit seals. “It would noot do to touch the vessel with too great a delta-V.”

  “Bug on a windshield,” Méarana had agreed, a Terran phrase her father had once taught her.

  And so they had launched themselves into the void. Ravn had waited until the last possible moment, when the external sensors had detected molecular jangling and an exponential increase in surface temperatures. “Wave cannon,” she said, and they had jumped with their baggage in tow even as behind them their ship began to disintegrate. After which, their cloaks made them invisible to GEM detectors and their luggage drifted like so much debris.

  * * *

  The entry locks of ships are never sealed because no pilot wishes to face the air lock and pat her pockets wondering where she put her keys. But operating keys are another matter. No pilot wishes another to saunter on board and fly off with her ship. The former owner, the late Rigardo-ji Edelwasser, had been a bonded smuggler, and Ravn, before she had turned the vessel over to Fleet, had squirreled a duplicate set of hard keys inside one of his many hidey-holes. The soft keys she had memorized. It was a matter of minutes to retrieve them, insert them into their proper ports, enter them at apposite terminals, or speak them into appropriate pickups and thereby complete the circuits for command and control.

  The ship’s departure occasioned no comment from Space Traffic Control beyond the granting of clearance and the assignment of a departure orbit toward the New Anatole entrance of the Gong Halys. STC had been informed earlier by SVMG that the Lion’s Mouth was repossessing the Sèan Beta. Best it depart quickly before another unauthorized ship should attempt to seize it. One fewer Shadow in Henrietta system would make everyone happier.

  Including the Shadow.

  * * *

  A monoship had little room for song and dance, but Méarana and Ravn managed. Life seldom tastes so sweet as it does when stolen back at the very brink from those who would take it. Méarana finally understood, a little, a phrase favored by the Ravn: “life along the razor’s edge.” She was rushed. She was high. She was giddy. They drank toasts to themselves, each other, the dead swoswai, and the live Shadow they had manipulated into avenging him. Méarana extemporized a rollicking geantraí while her companion danced a staccato of footwork known to the high-up hills she had once called home. In the end, laughing, they fell into each other’s arms.

  “On to Terra!” Méarana declared to the grinning face above her.

  “Noot quite yet, sweet. First, we stoop at Dao Chetty.”

  Méarana pushed the Shadow off her and sat up on the couch. “Dao Chetty?” she said with sudden apprehension. The capital world of the Confederation. The center of all iniquity. A world whose very name fell leaden from the lips.

  “I moost meet soomeone there,” Ravn said.

  “Oh no, we must heigh for Terra, to rescue my father!”

  “Oh, my sweet, yes. All in good time do I bring Gidula his praysent.” The Shadow leaned forward to pat her cheek, but Méarana ducked it. “Listen to me, yngling,” the Shadow said in a voice with more iron and less play. “Your father is like a toothache. To pull him from the mouth of Gidula is more than my strength. So I must persuade Domino Tight to join us. It will not be easy to divert him from his duty, but like a frog, I will capture him with my tongue. Haha.” Then, more seriously, she added, “To rescue your father wants more than to reach Terra quickly—but impotently.”

  The harper leapt to her feet and turned away from her companion, folding her arms. “But you don’t need this Domino Tight. Mother is—”

  “Following us? You meant her to when you joined me.” Ravn nodded slowly, as if to herself. “That is why your companionship was worth the wager. But I have no assurance that the wager is won, and ‘one sure ally on hand is worth two that might lurk in the bushes.’ It is best to copper the bet. And a second Shadow may dissuade your mother from foolish decisions if she does follow.”

  “But what if Gidula should kill Father before we get there, because we delayed to fetch this Domino?”

  “A large ‘if,’ and large because it contains two,” said the Shadow. “The first if is Gidula’s. He may have already killed your father, months ago. He may kill him five minutes before we land, however fast we scurry. Or he may have melted butter on Donovan’s head, put melons under his arms, and seated him at the right hand of power. Until we know Schrödinger has cut the thread, all possibilities remain open. Ignorance is hope. Beside,” she continued, “the second i
f belongs to Donovan. Gidula will not kill him until he cracks his memory. But I spend many months with your father, and I know, a little, how his mind works. Well, some of his minds. The scarred man’s egg is not so easily cracked.”

  “You don’t think he’d cooperate with Gidula? I mean, if he thinks Gidula plans to overthrow the Names, and he knows the way into the Secret City…”

  A shrug. “That secrecy is his life insurance. Once revealed, of what use then, Donovan buigh? He think long and hard which of us he lead inside. If he does start remembering, he will … his phrase, ‘take a hike.’”

  “You sound as if you and he planned this all out ahead of time.”

  “Ooh, you grant poor Ravn too mooch foorsight. But Donovan is my brother-in-blood. I have died for him, and he put on the shenmat for me. That is…” She waved with her hand as if swatting flies. “You cannot understand such things. I will save him if I can. This I vow on the blood of the Abattoir. But never forget, young harper, this war has larger goals, and the prices for them are higher than his life—or mine.” Her voice had progressively hardened as she spoke. Then the sprightly smile returned. “Now, coome. I shoow you where your father and poor Ravn battle Froog Prince togayther.”

  Méarana followed the Shadow down the long hall from the control room. All this time, all these many weeks of travel, and she had forgotten that her companion was a Shadow and had her own objectives. Méarana remembered another thing. Ravn had said in the sitting room at Clanthompson Hall that in the Shadow War she had already killed her brother.

  * * *

  The harper did not care for being manipulated. She did not like it from her mother, she had not liked it from Donovan, and she certainly did not like it from this strange, charming coral snake of a Shadow. The Shadow had wanted the help of Bridget ban and, failing that, had taken Méarana to force her mother’s play. And the Shadow had managed all this while allowing Méarana to suggest and lead the escapade!