Numenera

by Monte Cook

  “Thorme said you didn’t need compensation…” In fact, she’d something about an old debt, unpaid, but he wasn’t going to go there. “But if you need something, we can work out some kind of deal.”

  “No, no,” the man said. He bent his head to the hand he’d pulled in, tugged something long and wiggling out of his pocket. So many legs. Kyre found his feet tucking under him and he was standing and taking a step back before he thought about it. “I’m just making sure I’ve got everything.”

  He tucked the creature back in his pocket, dusted off his hands, held one out to Kyre, realized he was already standing, and gave a nod.

  “Well, then,” he said. “I’m ready.”

  Kyre was still focused on the legs of the pocket creature. Each one a different color, he thought, and all of them slightly different. He wouldn’t consider himself squeamish, not by a long shot – at least not about bugs – but that was something else.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Ready to trade?”

  “Ready to go.”

  One of them was confused, and Kyre didn’t think it was him, this time. “I’m sorry, but I just need the lure,” he said. “I mean…” He was starting to calculate ways to get the man, whose name he still didn’t know, back to the base. If he wanted to come, Kyre wasn’t going to leave him out here in this desolate expanse. Maybe he could take the lure first and then send someone back to get him.

  “Thorme’s boy,” the man said, putting his gnarled and thankfully bugless hand on Kyre’s shoulder. “I am the lure.”

  The man reached down, grabbed a bag so much the same color of the dirt that Kyre hadn’t even noticed it, and began to move toward the skiff. He was fast. Kyre shook his head, turned, and started after him.

  “I don’t…” he said. “I don’t understand what’s happening right now.”

  Just as Kyre caught up with him, the man stopped and held his hand out. The man had a handshake that felt like holding a fist of wadded fabric. It was the weirdest sensation, but not bad.

  “I already told you,” he said. “I’m the psychic lure. Well, the Psychic Lure, capitals, if you want to get technical. Which isn’t something I care about. Most people – Thorme aside, course – call me Sil. Short for Psy-L. Get it? Exhausting carting around a three-word name now that I don’t need it anymore.”

  Kyre got it now. He thought Thorme had sent him for a device, a cypher, something small and portable, and Thorme had instead sent him for a man. A fairly small and portable man, but still. He wondered how much of that Thorme had done on purpose, and just how much he might owe her for this little surprise.

  “You can psychically lure creatures. Like the…” He’d forgotten the name. “Stool. Or the… with the legs.”

  “Everyone has a skill,” Sil said. “It’s all about what you make of it.” He canted his head, and in one of the folds along his neck, Kyre caught the glint of a beetle back, iridescent in greens and golds.

  “Let me guess,” Kyre said. “You used to be part of something called Ossam’s Traveling Menagerie and Soaring Circus?”

  “However did you guess?” Sil said, laughing. “Thorme told me you were a smart boy.”

  Time is ticking down, faster than they want it to. Every day, Aviend fights against the need to do something now. It’s the knowledge, the hope, burning a hole in her brain as hot as the sun. Its heat urging her to do something do something do something.

  But they don’t have a complete plan yet. Not quite. Not yet.

  She and Kyre and Quenn are working on the plans for getting them into the kubrics and back out again. The first part is fairly easy; Quenn knows the kubrics better than they could have even hoped.

  It’s the getting out that is proving to be problematic. Not for her and Quenn, but for the others. All of the people Rillent’s trapped inside. Which was about what they expected. Still, after all of this time, their best plan is still something that basically amounts to “run like hell.”

  Except run like hell isn’t going to work. Their runners are telling them that not only is Rillent getting stronger, the destriatch are getting faster. More aggressive and deadly. Rillent is sucking energy from the kubrics as fast as he can and using it to his advantage. He won’t hesitate to kill if he thinks he’s losing.

  Their only advantage right now? Rillent doesn’t know they are coming for him again. She hopes.

  “Let’s go through the exit options one more time,” Kyre says. “Maybe there’s something we missed.”

  Quenn rises from where he’s sitting in front of his map and stretches. He’s less gaunt now, but still lean and lanky. When he stretches and uncurves his back, he could almost touch the ceiling. Moving through the kubric’s passageways is going to be hell on him. But he hasn’t once complained about the prospect of being cramped inside tiny tunnels for hours on end. With some people, Aviend might think they hadn’t actually thought about the consequences of that. But Quenn, she’s pretty sure, has, and has accepted it as just part of the job. It’s one of the things she likes about him.

  Aviend runs her finger over Quenn’s map. It is meticulous in its detail, right down to the location of the switch Kyre and Aviend will each need to flip.

  “Why don’t I remember any of this?” Kyre asks. “Like that room there?” He pointed to a large, circular room.

  “That’s Rillent’s room,” Quenn says.

  “I must have been in it…”

  “Very purple. Ornate curtains.”

  “It’s the kubric,” Aviend says. “Remember? It makes you forget.”

  It didn’t just make him forget. It makes him forget that he forgets. It’s part of why he’s the one they’ve chosen to go to the other world.

  “Is that Rillent? Or the kubrics themselves that do that?” Quenn asks. He’d dropped Arch long ago, but Rillent is still Rillnt. The sound of his name like that makes him seem less dangerous somehow.

  “It’s the light,” Kyre says. “It’s something Rillent does with the light.”

  “What color are the kubrics, Quenn? Their light?” Aviend’s finger traces the map as she speaks. Hits a dead end. Backtracks.

  “Kind of, I don’t know… greyish-black? Whatever color you’d call a stone.”

  “It’s blue to Kyre,” Aviend says.

  “Blue… I can see that,” Quenn says. “It’s got a bit of a blue–”

  “No,” Kyre says. “It’s blue.” How to describe the color that he sees to someone who can’t see it? She supposes it doesn’t matter. What matters is understanding there’s a difference.

  Quenn’s head knocks back a little as he takes that in. “Oh,” he says. Aviend wonders if he ever swears. She’s never heard him do so. “How?”

  How indeed?

  “Rillent has this device…” Kyre’s throat jags, like his swallow caught on glass. He makes his hands wide. “Long, silver…”

  “Of course,” Quenn says. “He carries it all the time.”

  Kyre nods. “It was broken, when I met him. He gave me a whole story about how it was his father’s or something, and how he’d love to have it back working someday. I couldn’t have built the thing, but I knew how to fix it. It was just one of the many things I fixed for him.”

  “I always wondered what that did,” Quenn says. “I mean, he carried it around like he didn’t need it, but he never let it out of his sight.”

  “Several things, I think, all related to control. He used it on me to…” Kyre swallows, and the pause feels longer than it is. “…make it so the kubric pulled at me. Made it harder to leave, or think about leaving.”

  “And that’s what makes you see the kubric as blue?” Quenn says.

  “I think so. I think it uses the kubric’s power. And it’s fickle. I had to fix it practically every other time he used it.”

  “I wonder if that means it no longer works?” Aviend muses. She’s still tracing the map with her fingers, finding nothing that would answer the question: how do we get everyone out without Rillent noticing?<
br />
  “I’d like to say no,” Kyre says. “But my skills aren’t that unique. He surely found someone to take my place long ago.”

  “Is it imprinted to him, do you think, Kyre?” Aviend asks.

  “No,” he says. “Anyone could use it but you’d have to get it away from him. And I’ve never seen anyone do that.”

  “Yeah,” she says, not ready to dismiss the idea yet, but wanting to solve the problem at hand first. “I think we’re going to need a distraction. To buy Quenn enough time to get the others out.”

  “We can’t afford more people,” Kyre says.

  She knows he’s right. “What about some destriatch?”

  Kyre seems to catch her meaning right away, although she can tell from Quenn’s face that he doesn’t. “That could work,” he says.

  “We’d have to have Delgha make a portable device,” she says. “Something that I can carry with me.”

  Quenn’s face shows he’s still attempting to figure out this plan. She’s about to let him off the hook and explain it when they hear a low knock against the doorframe. Nitar is standing there, holding up a slew of fabric on one arm.

  “Just me,” she says. “Not to worry. I have disguises for trying on.”

  She passes out the pieces she’s been working on. Full trencher suits for Quenn and Aviend. Nitar checks the fit, murmurs, adjusts.

  Then a hood for Kyre. Aviend watches as he slides it over his head and becomes… someone else. Everything but his eyes. His eyes are still his, brilliant green and warm. But the rest of him, she doesn’t even recognize.

  “Ghostfell,” says Quenn. So he does swear. Sort of.

  “Agreed,” Aviend says. “I can’t believe how much you don’t look like you anymore.”

  “You can look too,” Nitar says to him. She has a reflecting plate that she holds up in front of Kyre’s face. It’s weird to see Kyre’s shock reaction on someone else’s features.

  “That is… good, Nitar,” he says. “I wouldn’t even recognize me.”

  “That’s the plan,” Aviend says. It is. There’s a chance he’ll meet himself in the other world. And who knows what the Kyre there is like? He could be everything Rillent wanted him to be. Aviend too. It’s a hard thing to think about, themselves as Rillent-horrors, but better to be safe than sorry.

  “Contingencies for contingencies,” Kyre says. And his voice coming out of his not-face is weirder still.

  Kyre pulls the hood down and goes back to himself. Aviend breathes a sign of relief. More disconcerting than she likes to admit, that.

  Nitar holds out her hands to gather everything back. “They’re perfect, Nitar. Really,” Aviend says.

  “Not yet,” she says. “No. They will be.”

  For the past two weeks, the base felt full of life. More so than Kyre could remember it in a long time. Quenn and Vesi and even the tiny woolen one – Ollie – they were only three, but they talked enough for ten. Or, well, the humans did. The yol mostly ran around in little leaps and jumps, bleating. He was a pickpocket, a beggar, and a consummate eater. He was also welcome relief from the focused planning and preparations, and Kyre didn’t think anyone at the base minded having him around.

  Sil was… well, Sil. He went out every day to splash around in the swamp, “getting my bearings,” as he put it. He’d come back in at night, exhausted, damp, and smelling bad enough that Thorme had finally kicked him out of the kitchen until he could come back at half his stench rate. Watching the two of them together was an interesting experience; neither talked about their past – even though he’d tried to get Sil to talk to him about what, possibly, Thorme could have done in a Menagerie, but Sil had held Thorme’s confidence easily – but you could still see the shared experience in their language, their in-jokes, their easy banter. He wondered if he and Aviend looked like that from the outside after all of this time. He hoped so.

  They’d been planning and preparing steadily for nearly two weeks, but between those moments of focus and detail, there was a sense of excitement. Joy. Hope, even. So much tentative hope. It scared him a little and buoyed him too.

  Last night, Delgha had sent the message to the other side. Would they get it? Would it work? Would they come and help? There was no way to know. Not until tomorrow, when they went to the kubric. The ghosts would either be there or they wouldn’t. All they could do was hope that someone on the other side – someone not Rillent or Faleineir – had heard their plea for help.

  Tomorrow was the day everything would begin. The day that would change all of their lives, one way or another. Kyre looked around the pennon at all the people gathered there. All of them believing. In the plan. In the clave. In each other. He reached for Aviend’s hand, found her already reaching back.

  “Last chance to go through this,” Delgha said from the front of the room. “If you’re not ready. If you want out. If you see a hole, speak now.”

  No one spoke. They might, before this was all over. The plan was good, but it was not easy.

  “All right, first up. Aviend, Kyre, and Quenn.”

  Kyre rose, aware of the eyes on him, his hand still bound to Aviend’s. “We head out to the kubric midday,” he said. “From there, I go to the other world’s kubric and Quinn and Aviend go to this one. Aviend and I flip the switches at the same time, Aviend gets the key, and Quenn gets everyone out. Then Aviend takes the key to the star and seals the barrier forever.”

  “You make it sound so easy,” Aviend said, laughing. “You forgot Rillent, Faleineir, the destriatch, the traps, the tunnels, not running into your evil counterpart, and the whole ‘going to another world’ while timing everything perfectly part.”

  “I’ve decided to skip all of the bad parts,” he said, “and let you and Quenn handle them for me.”

  “You’re a horrible person,” she said.

  “I know,” he said.

  The mood in the room was teasing excitement, but Delgha was all business. She steadfastly ignored their banter as she went through the list in front of her. “Time trackers?”

  Aviend and Kyre both held theirs up. The symbols that showed on the little panels didn’t actually make sense to him – they were from some language of a prior world – but they had synchronized countdown cycles. If all went according to plan, when the cycles ended, they would both throw their switches. Same time, different worlds.

  “Disguises?” Check. “Cyphers?” Check. “Monoblade?” To Kyre, who nodded. “Sword nodule?” To Aviend, who also nodded.

  “Good,” Delgha said. “Who’s up next? Rescue team?”

  Toev stood, bending himself up into his full, willowy height. “We’ll have runners stationed from the kubric to the clearing, to help those that Quenn frees. We’ve got a waystation mostly finished…” Delgha’s face squinted at that, and he held up a hand reassuringly. “It will be done by tomorrow, not to worry. We’ll hold everyone in there until… well, until it’s either safe or it isn’t, I guess.”

  Delgha nodded, made a note. “Base team?” she said.

  Here, Thorme took the lead. Kyre was delighted to see her put on some of the showmanship he’d seen from her before. Next to him, Aviend, who clearly hadn’t seen this side of her before, was cocking her head as Thorme talked.

  What is this? Aviend mouthed, as Thorme stood before them and outlined a plan in far more than her usual three or four words.

  He moved his hand past his mouth. I told you.

  “We’re the defense crew,” Thorme was saying. “If Rillent figures out what’s going on, and sends out his glaives or the destriatch, or both, to attack the base, our goal is to protect it and each other without killing anyone. Now, as the chiurgeon, I understand that may not be possible. But that’s our goal.”

  “Vesi and Sil will be your leaders here.” Thorme cast a long look at Sil. Something passed between them that Kyre couldn’t read, but Sil must have been able to, because he gave her a short, sharp nod. “Listen, the slistoviles are going to scare the ghost out of you. But don’t
run. And don’t scream. Not if you can help it.

  “The destriatch are going to scare you too, and well they should,” she continued. She pointed at Delgha, who picked up a device off the table next to her and held it up with both hands. “But we have your backs there, too. You know what not to do.”

  As if prompted, the whole room said, “Don’t run. Don’t scream.”

  “Not if you can help it,” Thorme finished.

  Delgha scrolled through her notes. “That’s all I’ve got,” she said. “Anyone have questions? Concerns? Reasons why this won’t work?”

  “Only eleven million,” Aviend said. She gave Kyre that impossible wink. It got him every time. “But that’s how we know we’re on the right side.”

  When Aviend enters the temple the night before they’re supposed to leave for the kubric, she finds Kyre dragging a thick mattress across the floor. She’s pretty sure it’s the one from their sleeping room. Not that she’s looked at the mattress much lately – sleep hasn’t exactly been a priority for either of them the last few days – but theirs is the largest. And this one is pretty large, even though it looks tiny in the vast expanse of this giant room.

  “I’m afraid to ask,” she says. “First, how you got that through the tunnel. Second, what you’re doing exactly.”

  He gives the mattress a few shoves until it’s lined up perfectly in the middle of the room. “Well you’re leaving tomorrow, and I thought we should spend a night under the stars.”

  Kyre’s not really one for sentiment. She always knows exactly how he feels about her; it’s never in doubt. His love is solid and real, so much so that she feels like if she just leans back at any time, he will be there. Catching her. Or shoving her. Depending on what the situation calls for.

  But dragging the mattress out under the stars isn’t something she’d have expected, not in a million lifetimes.

  “If I’d known this was what you were doing, I’d have worn something different,” she says.

  She lifts her arms to show off her newly finished outfit, having been returned to her from Nitar complete with pulls and hidden pockets and various sheaths.