by Ginger Booth
“Rich versus poor,” Bron suggested. “Does everybody have money to buy stuff? Or only the rich?”
“Why does that matter?” Nico asked uncomfortably. His family was once the richest in Schuyler, an admittedly low-brow town. He got teased mercilessly in school about Dad’s money.
Bron shrugged. “Rich people buy luxuries for themselves, to show off how important they are. To earn money, you have to kiss their butts. But if the middle class has money, there’s a lot more variety in goods. Is there much variety, stuff to buy, things to do?”
Nico had to concede that Bron knew a lot more about social stuff than he did. “Yeah, what he said, Bloki. Just try to figure out who the Cantons are. What advantages we have with them. Maybe dangers –”
Bron hissed, “Joey coming!” He dove into his lower bunk, and worked his boots off, leaving them in mid-aisle.
“Do not power me down, Nico!” Bloki begged. “If you want these answers!”
“Fine! But don’t use the display!” Nico switched it off in a hurry.
Joey stepped in and nodded to the boys. His eyes narrowed in suspicion, and he studied them closer. Nico swallowed and attempted a wan smile.
Bron corralled his boots under the bed. “Sorry, man. How was your card game?”
“I lost. Wore my lucky red shirt and everything.” Joey stepped to the back of the cabin and his locker, closing Nico’s, whose heart quailed. He’d forgotten the locker was ajar. “After 22:00 hours, guys. Lights out. Not that I’d narc on you. Just saying.”
“Right. I’ll go…brush my teeth.” Nico fled into the bathroom. He debated how long to leave Bloki powered on to chew on the assignment. Midnight ought to be enough. But maybe he should sleep and leave an alarm. Dad said at his age he ought to aim for nine or ten hours sleep a night. Or he’d get ‘surly and squirrelly.’
Nico recalled that hood, Dad’s room-mate from juvie. Was he speaking from experience? Dad sure looked surly and squirrelly in that old picture. No wonder he was such a fan of the Schuyler Jailbirds.
In the event, Nico forgot. Bloki stayed powered on all night, an eternity in processor cycle time. In the morning, horrified at his mistake, Nico didn’t have time to debrief the AI. He simply pulled the plug and stowed the box back in his locker.
31
Sass grinned as Kassidy showed off her latest lion mask. Benelux proved strikingly different from Britain, its facades by the train station appearing more like 20th century Europe than the older and quirkier neighborhoods of faux London. This included the clothing. They emerged from the freaky pod train into a charming fountain plaza of sidewalk shops. The locals could have emerged from a World War II era movie, down to the classy knee-length skirts over bulky woolen stockings.
Clearly, Benelux wanted every tourist who passed through to buy a souvenir mask. Lions dominated, with a fair smattering of snakes, lizards, and frogs. To Sass’s delight, there was a reason for the latter. She found tadpoles in the fountain. The trio had lingered here a couple hours, slowed by the need to replace their wardrobes again.
“What, Cope?” He’d stiffened beside the captain, suddenly alert.
He turned, and pulled his backpack out of their cart to shrug onto his shoulders. “Manxter United shirt. Guy looks familiar.”
Sass stole a glance, hampered by the milling lunch crowd. She spotted him, the same build as one of her attackers on their first pre-dawn morning, same outfit, same mask, same hair.
“The fifty-pound note,” she murmured. The train conductor in London seemed scandalized when they tried to pay with one of their high denomination bills. ‘You don’t mean to spend that, do you?’ he demanded.
But in fact, they did want to break it. When a few pence covered a heavy meal with beer, Sass wanted smaller denominations. The train station was the first large enough expense to justify paying with the large note. She insisted, and changed twenty pounds of it into Benelux marks at the same time. The conductor seemed to think that was a bizarre move, as well.
“That fifty said Manxter on it,” she said slowly. “He wouldn’t have…?”
“I think he did,” Cope confirmed. He tossed Kassidy’s pack to her. Their British rags could stay behind in the abandoned handcart. “Which way?”
Sass took the lead, pushing through the thin pedestrian traffic, to the right along the pentagonal walls of Benelux. From this train station to their destination exit was two full sides, call it a dozen klicks to the train station that served Scandia and Deutschland. Along the route lay a third station to France. But Ben already ruled out the French. Unlike Britain, Benelux’s tourist traps sold maps of the full Cantons train system, highlighting attractions in each city-state and suggested local transport.
Benelux offered trolleys, like Britain. Another line offered a shortcut across the interior of the pentagon, but she’d hate to miss the sightseeing. She just wanted to lose the Manxter.
With her usual dexterity, Kassidy caught up, having hastily overpaid for her latest gilded lion mask. Cope chose the frog, figuring Sock would like it, while Sass went with a beaded lizard. The knee-length woolen straight skirt hampered her speed. “Still following?”
“He spotted us,” Cope reported. “Run!”
Sass hitched up her skirt and her heels pounded the charming cobblestones. She pointed with a discreet finger to the left to indicate their turn was coming up. Cope could have easily outpaced both shorter women, but instead he hung back to protect them. The crowd parted and people began calling out in French, the language in this sector of Benelux.
The train conductor assured her that all train stations understood English. Tourist shopkeepers understood coin. What the yelling was about, she hadn’t a clue.
They hung a left into a side street. This was broader and quieter and the cobbles were covered in…lizards? Lizards and snakes lay sunning themselves in the almost-warm bright afternoon. She slowed considerably trying to avoid stepping on them.
Besides, she was terrified of snakes.
“Are they real?” Kassidy cried. A snake answered by suddenly coiling and hurling itself at her. Dodging, she bounced into Sass and clung to her arm.
Slowed this way, the Manxter caught up with Cope and tackled him. “Thief! Voleur!” he cried, to excuse his behavior to onlookers. The trolley trundled by fifty meters ahead, but they’d missed it. Sass turned back and tried to figure an angle to peel the Manxter off Cope, or at least shut him up.
That’s when the sirens sounded.
“Really? For a pickpocket?” Kassidy wondered aloud.
“Do not deploy drones now!” Sass hissed. “Help me with this!”
The onetime starlet glanced down at the two thrashing men, wrestling on the cobblestones. Then she looked up around the citizens scurrying in every direction. Many paused to scoop up a snake or lizard along the way. Then her face curled in disgust and she started coughing.
Sass smelled it a split second later. The sulfur of outdoor air broke through. The dome must be compromised. That’s what the sirens were about. She let Cope worry about their soccer hooligan pal for the moment. He was winning, but he wouldn’t breathe well for long. She knelt to his backpack, thrown off during the festivities, and pulled out an outdoor rebreather for him as well as herself.
“Let him go, Cope!” She shoved the burly Manxter fan off with her foot, and thrust a mask in the engineer’s face. “Here, sir, we have a spare mask –”
But the Brit, coughing hard, lurched to his feet and ran for the wall like everyone else. On the street, the Mahinans were alone except for the reptiles. Though a great many people stood in windows staring down at them.
The second Cope had his mask affixed, he dove for his backpack and pulled out a shopping bag. He gave that to Sass, then collected up a basket from the ground. “Grab lizards! And snakes!”
“What? Oh.” Sass had never handled a lizard in her life. But indeed the creatures were starting to look unwell. She didn’t think they’d appreciate being plucked up and thrown in a
bag, but the first one was gasping for air like a fish out of water. He didn’t object. And picking him up wasn’t as yucky as she feared. His skin was dry. The body was no longer than her hand. His longer tail hung dejected. Kassidy caught on and ran for a handcart, abandoned by its panicked owner. Sass left her bagged critters next to Cope’s backpack in favor of helping Kassidy load the cart. Kassidy preferred catching the green snakes, maybe arm-length and vivid green.
“Bring that load!” Cope demanded, when they’d collected a few dozen creatures. “You stay out and grab more!”
Sass ran the cart over to him, and gently overturned it onto the road. He already had a Sagamore bubble kit in his hand. “You’re being a fookin wizard in public.”
“Suffrus,” he agreed with a flash of a grin. Then he expanded the bubble to encompass his collected critters, with himself inside. He whisked his hand to remind Sass to get busy. He popped an air canister for his charges while she wheeled her cart to the largest clump of reptiles she could spot. Kassidy ran past with a wriggling mass of a half dozen snakes and simply dumped them on the ground next to the two-meter diameter bubble, Cope crouched within.
By the time Sass looked up from scooping critters again, the bubble had an annex and the snakes were within. Cope gestured frantically for her to come. She pulled in with another few dozen lizards, and Kassidy with another armload of snakes. They piled them by the bubble bulge he indicated, and stepped back.
Cope mimed blowing a bubble. Oh! Sass checked her bag and found one of the emergency kits. She always carried a handful of them these days. The gizmos were so all-around useful, it was hard to believe she’d lived over a century without them. She blew a new annex onto Cope’s reptile sanctuary, Kassidy helping to toe the lizards inside. Then Cope sliced open his original bubble to let out the air into the new annex.
He knelt to check on his new charges. The snakes seemed fine. Those he shoved away into the original circle. The lizards, inclined to scamper when threatened, weren’t moving as fast, or at all. He grimaced and shot Sass a neck-slicing gesture.
She’d come to the same conclusion. The latest lizards she picked up seemed dead, and a good air mix wouldn’t save them. Poor things. She hoped the tadpoles survived in the fountain.
Then she frowned at Cope. He collected up a basket of lizards from his original collection. Then he blew a small bubble around them, less than a meter around, with him on the outside. When the emergency bubbles were that small, they came out nearly opaque, pink like bubble gun, and tough as a kickball. Then he created himself an airlock, and exited with his backpack – and his lizards.
“For my kids.” She stared at him. “Hey, I want to be a hero in my kids’ eyes. Sue me. Makes a better souvenir than a lion mask.”
“You didn’t take any snakes,” Kassidy argued. “They’re such a pretty green.”
“They weigh five times as much,” Cope argued. “Gotta feed them somehow.”
“People!” Sass cut in across this. “Cope…” Words failed her for a moment. She looked up at the surrounding residential windows, second floor and above. The citizens stared back at her. Half wore masks. The others looked spellbound.
None of them were children.
“The fountain,” Cope argued. “The tadpoles.”
“Right,” Sass agreed in sudden resolution. She set off at a jog and reached the great frog fountain first, back where they began by the train station. She had a bubble extended before Cope caught up, hampered as he was carrying his lizard balloon. Kassidy had stopped to collect more snakes along the way. When Cope slit the bubble to add the air supply, he held it open for her to tip in the slithering mass. Then he healed the bubble-stuff spanning the broad fountain basin, and added his nitrox mix.
The tadpoles were still swimming when Sass arrived, so it was hard to tell if they appreciated the efforts on their behalf. The snakes sure did. Suddenly a frog jumped, and Sass did too, backwards into Kassidy.
Who laughed out loud. In another moment, the fountain seemed full of hopping frogs. Apparently they’d been lying blotto for lack of decent air. But they recovered quickly.
“Aw, hell, I forgot to grab some.” Cope handed Kassidy his lizard ball to hold.
“No, Cope! We really ought to –” Sass attempted. But he shot her a quick grin and bubbled himself in, attached to the fountain. He let himself into the fountain proper with another slice of a knife. Then he pulled out his water bottle and gulped it down. When he’d drunk his fill, he started dipping for tadpoles.
Well, they had the street to themselves, Sass consoled herself. Though the number of eyes staring down at them was disconcerting. Then she heard a new sound under the still-trilling sirens, more of a bass tone, coming closer. Then she heard the ring of metal. “Cope! Time’s up!” she yelled.
“What?” Kassidy asked.
“Troops!” Sass yelled.
Annoyed, Cope gave up and stashed his water bottle, then bubbled his way out.
They set off running, past their Sagamore snake bubble and toward the next street with access to the trolley. But three blocks on, they reached a plastic curtain blocking the street. Beyond, locals were out and about their business.
Cope pulled out his knife again. They could easily bubble themselves through, same as he had at the fountain. But Sass stayed his hand.
A woman on the other side stopped to stare at them. Sass pointed past her shoulder to suggest, we want to go that way. The woman bent over to peer at Cope’s pink bubble. Her eyebrows rose to her hairline and she stood upright abruptly. Then she pointed to Sass’s right, toward a doorway into the city wall with an unfamiliar glyph emblazoned in yellow.
“This way,” Sass said in decision, tossing the woman a thumbs-up.
Sure enough, the specially marked doorway proved to be an airlock to bypass the plastic curtain. They exited the other side, already switched back into their ‘indoor’ costume masks, rebreathers stowed.
Sass looked pointedly at Cope’s big pink ball. He blinked back blandly. He wasn’t giving up the pets. She still had a half-dozen Sagamore bubble kits. The rego engineer probably packed dozens. She sighed. “Fine! Let us stroll. Calmly. We are gawking tourists from Britain.”
Kassidy suggested, “We are footsore tourists eager to find a trolley to somewhere new.”
“That too,” Sass agreed. They set off. Out of habit, she tried a nod and a smile at a middle-aged man. His recoil reminded her that Cantons just didn’t like it when people smiled, despite half of her face masquerading as a beaded lizard.
Not too fast, not too slow, they proceeded another three blocks to turn onto the side street access to the trolley. Suddenly a curtain of flame appeared around them. A single man stood inside with them.
His outlandish getup looked like he’d just posed for a Rembrandt painting, complete with pewter buckles on his pointy shoes and puffy velvet pantaloons. The buckle on his swept-brim conical hat matched his shoes.
“Nicholas Monami, Master of the Walloons.” He bent a knee in an exaggerated bow, and swept the cobbles with his silly hat. His eyes appeared amused above his beaky hawk mask. “Who the hell are you?”
His English was excellent, the accent closer to American than British.
Fleeing him through the surrounding sheets of fire wasn’t tempting.
32
Sass made a snap decision, as the self-styled Master of Walloons completed his courtly bow. “I am Captain Sassafras Collier, of the starship Thrive. Mahina Colony, Aloha star system. My companions are Kassidy Yang and John Copeland, also from Mahina.”
Monami blinked.
“And you, I think,” Sass continued, “are what the Brits call a suffrus fookin wizard. Am I right?”
He froze an instant, then guffawed. He waved an arm. The wall of flame sank to the ground and guttered out. His arm ended pointing back toward the ring road beneath the city walls. “This way, my lady. We must talk.”
“Must we?” Cope inquired, of her, not him.
“We
need to talk to somebody sooner or later,” Sass argued, glancing pointedly back the way they came. “At least he has a sense of humor.”
Monami strode away, beckoning them to follow. He heard that comment, and jogged an amused eyebrow. His presence seemed to scatter his fellow citizens, who fled from him much as they had from the sirens, minus pausing to save any reptilian pets. The party had the ring road to themselves in broad midday.
Kassidy quickened her steps to walk beside him. “Are we correct in thinking that wizards are unpopular here?”
“Oh, yes! No one cares to see the magician behind the curtain.”
“Do you know the word ‘engineer’?” Cope inquired.
The guy in the Renaissance costume shook his head fiercely. “Do not speak of such things on the street.”
“Why the masquerade?” Sass asked.
Monami shot her a pointed look. “Why do you, madame? My chateau lies ahead, just a few minutes more.”
Kassidy claimed his arm in hers, a gesture that astonished the wizard. “There was a great siren a little while ago. What breached the airspace?”
“We lost the battle against France.” Monami apologetically detached her arm. “Don’t do that here. Ever.”
Kassidy attempted to look meek – and failed – but clasped her hands behind her, below her backpack. “So their guns ruptured the dome?” The visitors had assumed the stylized Renaissance-Faire combat was exactly to avoid such risks.
“No, not at all!” Monami’s hands flourished a perish-the-thought gesture. “We lost and exposed one hundred meters as the penalty. Air integrity will be restored tomorrow.”
Sass asked, “So did the citizens know that the airdrop was coming?”
“Airdrop? The pressure loss? No, we don’t give advance warning. I wasn’t even aware we were doing that today. The battle was lost a week ago. A minor thing.”
“This happens all the time?” Kassidy pressed.
“We battle once a month,” Monami allowed. “Ten times a year. There are only ten other cantons. Penalties vary based on death toll, style, whatever. Our system must seem strange.”
