Thru the Badger Hole

by Taki Drake

  Alastair and Wynn came back into the room in the same order that they had left it. Wynn bouncing along in the front and Alastair bringing up his watchful strength behind her.

  Seeing them, Madrik shot to his feet, and he heard Brechal burst into simultaneous speech. “What in the frozen Hells of Theracur happened to you guys? Both of you are decorated with some substance and you, Alastair, look like a pack mule!”

  Madrik was unable to think of a single coherent comment. Even trying to focus through the flickering lights and snapping fire, there was simply no useful thing he could think of saying. He simply stared.

  Ignoring the smattering of what looked like a sticky jam or sauce that spattered her face and arms, Wynn came bouncing over to Madrik, exclaiming, “That was so much fun! We walked, and it looked sort of regular, but then we found that it was much bigger than it was before. In fact, I think it’s like four times bigger!”

  Madrik wanted to ask for more accurate figures, but a headshake from Alastair let him relax and allow Wynn to dump her thoughts in front of him like a sweet-natured retriever puppy.

  “We now have a storeroom, and it’s got tons of interesting things in it. There are some places that open, some places that don’t. The ones that don’t open if you try to get into them spit at you. I have a feeling this is going to ruin my shoes, but it’s not a barfing bad smell really. Okay, it is bad, but it startled me. For a while, I thought I was going to die or something, but Alastair said that he didn’t think it was poison.”

  Poison? Do we have poison traps? The BHB responded with an emphatic negation, which relieved Madrik’s mind but didn’t answer a whole slew of questions that popped to the forefront of his brain. Realizing Wynn had continued on, the bar manager marked those for later exploration and gathered the loose reins of his focus back, turning his attention toward the chattering waitress.

  Wynn was still nattering at high speed. “After we looked to the rooms we could get into, we then went down and saw a whole row of different kinds of cellars. Some of them are cold, and some of them are sort of medium but what’s really, really cool is that they’re all wine cellars. Alastair thinks they are very old. He said that because of the dust but I’m not sure. It gets pretty confusing, but it seemed like a nice arrangement.”

  Alastair finally interjected, saying, “The net of it is that there are now storage cellars and wine cellars on the level underneath this. You reach that level by the staircases that are behind the doors in this hallway.”

  Brechal had come over to the table bearing a tray of drinks and a variety of cut meats and cheeses. He put it down on the table and sat down in one of the chairs. Obviously, this was important to all of them.

  Smiling a brief, shy smile at Brechal, Alastair picked up the glass of water closest to him and drained it. Setting that glass down, he immediately picked up the beer bottle and drank half of that. Apparently, scouting was thirsty work.

  Wynn was still talking at high speed and wasn’t paying attention to the food and drink in front of her. Before Madrik could do anything, Brechal picked up the glass of water and set it in front of the chattering waitress, saying in a firm voice, “Drink it!”

  Without taking a detectable breath or even stopping her talking for very long, the waitress gulped down a glass of water.

  Wynn continued to happily prattle about the cool things that were in the storage cellars. Rather than attempt to interrupt her, Madrik turned his head toward Alastair and asked quietly, “Anything that we should be concerned about?”

  “Nothing particular, at least on the dangerous side. There were a lot of old to ancient-looking items, some of which I could tell came from Earth, and others that I think came from other planets. At some point, I think it would be good to go down there and explore those other technologies,” was Alastair’s reply.

  Madrik gave the bouncer a short nod of acknowledgment and understanding. Turning his attention back to the waitress, he heard the young woman explaining the bottles of wine that they had brought back to Brechal.

  “I thought we should pull something out of each one of the wine rooms. Maybe there’s a reason that they are in the different groups and I didn’t know enough about wine to be able to tell you. So I brought them back, and you can taste them or do whatever bartenders do with wine. Then you will know what to do with the different rooms. Does that make sense?”

  Brechal made an enthusiastic response, and half rose from the table as if he was ready to go grab wine glasses to start a tasting immediately. Madrik forestalled him with a gesture, saying, “That will have to wait till after the bar patrons leave today. I don’t want all of us drunk or sick when rush time happens.”

  Reluctantly, Brechal agreed. However, he insisted on taking all of the wine bottles that the scouting mission had foraged with him behind the bar. Madrik noticed that the bartender handled the bottles very gingerly as if they were fragile. His body language was possessive, and that little bit of unguarded behavior became an important part of Madrik’s understanding of Brechal’s personal dynamics.

  There was no more time for introspection because the first of their lunchtime patrons came through the door with a cheerful greeting of, “Hello! I hope you guys have plenty to eat and drink because I’m starving!” It was showtime at the bar, and he and his team moved smoothly into action.

  Chapter 24 – Puzzle Tale

  There had been a solid stream of people coming in and out of the bar for hours around lunchtime. Madrik was quite pleased with the success of his team and their handling of the increased flow but remained worried about their ability to handle more rapid changes or even a larger group.

  Wynn had been a cheerful and effective waitress. She was handling more than twice as many tables as Madrik would have expected in any restaurant he had run. However, even she looked tired as most of the bar cleared out and the tempo slowed.

  Brechal joined Madrik and Wynn at a table in the back. All three of them sat in companionable silence until the smell of food aroused them. Juggling a large tray carefully, Alastair came out of the kitchen and plunked the platter piled high with grilled cheese sandwiches in front of them. At Wynn’s astonished expression, Alastair colored slightly and said, “Even I can make grilled cheese.” Murmuring appreciatively, Madrik grabbed a couple of the sandwiches and started to eat. Brechal grabbed one, munching on it on his way to the bar for a tray of drinks. After his return to the table, and distribution of the drinks around, Brechal reseated himself and grabbed another couple of sandwiches. The four of them set in repletion for a few minutes until a voice interrupted their peaceful meal, saying, “Excuse me? Dorf and I were wondering if maybe we could have one of those bread things.”

  It was one of the remaining drinkers that still remained in the bar. This man, along with another equally muscled fighter type had stayed over in the corner with open books intensely discussing something and taking notes.

  Seeing that Alastair had made far too many sandwiches for them to eat by themselves, Madrik responded, “Of course. Help yourself.”

  “Thanks!” responded the man as he grabbed four of the sandwiches and scuttled off back to his friend. Wynn reached over and patted Alastair’s hand, saying, “Thank you for making those. They were very good.”

  Alastair reddened a bit but almost desperately looked at Brechal asking, “Did you like them? I didn’t know if they would appeal to you, but I couldn’t think of anything better to make.”

  Gruffly, Brechal responded, “They were actually pretty good. And after that craziness with me trying to serve out of a bar that I had reorganized, I was pretty tired.”

  Madrik had no idea where the conversation would’ve gone, but it was thoroughly derailed when the old storyteller wandered through the open doorway. The old man stopped partway across the floor and raised his face to sniff loudly before making a beeline to the table where Madrik was seated.

  “AAHHH, grilled cheese! It has been decades since I last had a grilled cheese sandwich. What a bri
lliant idea for bar food! Obviously, we need to add that to the menu. We could even do some variations in the cheese because it’s something that can be done quickly. But boy does it taste and smell good. It still means we need a cook, though.

  “Good afternoon, storyteller. What brings you to the BHB today? Other than the grilled cheese sandwiches, of course,” asked Madrik.

  “Why the pleasure of your company, Madrik. For a man with a large bump of curiosity such as I, the goings on here is a constant nagging in the back my mind. How are they doing, what new challenges have they met?”

  Madrik laughed, and said, “I thank you for that touch of humor. We were just taking a break, and you are welcome to join us.”

  The storyteller seated himself at the table and glanced around at the weary crew that was sitting there. His eyes crinkled at the corners in amusement and there was a lilt in his voice as he asked, “It would seem that you have survived some other sort of adventure. What has been happening around here? I see some faces that I do not recognize so they must have joined you since the last time I was here. That is a lot of change in just a few days.”

  Aware that he was being mined for information, Madrik did not believe that it was mean-spirited or malicious. Reassured once more by the obvious affection that the BHB held for the storyteller, Madrik answered truthfully. “We were just surprised by a reconfiguration of the bar. It seems like the Badger Hole Bar decided that it needed to be bigger and so it added a bunch more rooms and another floor. It even acquired an assortment of rooms full of interesting items.”

  The old man sat up a little straighter and leaned forward eagerly as he asked, “What sort of things? And was there a special type of room? Could possibly you tell the origin of the room?”

  “It sounds like you know more than you’ve told any of us, old man. If you really think that you are Madrik’s friend, at least you should tell him what’s going on.,” stated Brechal with growling overtones.

  Seeing at a glance that he wasn’t going to get any information for free, the storyteller ruefully shrugged his shoulders and said to Madrik, “I can tell you a short tale of how the other buildings would act. It is forbidden to explain to you how your building interacts with you. Every time that has happened in the past it has had bad consequences.”

  Madrik thought in his mind, At last! Now maybe I’ll get some straight answers! What he said out loud was, “Any information that you can provide would be appreciated. I do like to be able to plan rather than just react.”

  As the bar manager looked at the old storyteller and took in the man’s manner and the glimpses of the mischievous personality that lurked underneath the genial exterior, Madrik was reminded of a book he once had. It was a thick book and covered an intricate subject. It was one topic about which he had been passionately interested but found that he just could not read the book. It was not because it was in a foreign language. Instead, it was because there was no frame of reference for the material within the book. There is no table of contents, no chapter headings. There wasn’t even the differentiation of page numbers. Only a single page number appeared on one page in the entire book. This man reminded him of that book.

  Jolted out of his daydream of floating without a tether, Madrik snapped back to attention as the storyteller started his tale.

  The cadence of the man’s voice and the way he presented were designed to draw his listeners into dazed receptivity. Madrik was aware of this and didn’t fall into that trap even though he could appreciate the skill with which the old man started his story. Glancing around at his group, he saw that neither Brechal nor Alastair appeared to be receptive. For a minute he was worried about Wynn falling for this ploy, but when she caught his eye and gave him a wink, he was reassured and happily turned his attention back once more to the storyteller.

  The old man told a story about another sentient building in a different domain. This building was a house of healing and drew patients from many planes and universes. The anchor for the building had worked with it for many decades. They had grown together and managed to communicate using the building responses for the entity’s voice. However, as is very common with anchored sentients, there was no broader range of communication available. The companions had to rely on an imperfect communication system, but it was one with which they had become accustomed. Unfortunately, this would cause significant problems later on in their relationship.

  In the story, the healing house had been slowly growing in power, but the anchor didn’t realize that the building still was evolving because of the slowness of that process. When the power bank that is internal to all sentient buildings was full, the survival mechanism of the building looked for a safe outlet and expanded the dimensions of itself by a considerable amount. That change happened overnight, and the responding hysteria from the healers in the house and patients who had found their rooms relocated produced a tremendous uproar.

  The anchor, being ignorant of the exact nature of his companion was reduced to screaming along the companion bond at the building for what it had done. In a faithful attempt to placate its anchor, the building foolishly tried to reabsorb its expansion. It’s power reservoir overloaded, and the entire dimension was destroyed in a storm of molten fire and acrid gas that killed not only the anchor and all of the inhabitants of the healing house but the building itself.

  When the storyteller finished his tale, his audience was silent. Each of them was thinking of the ramifications of the story and wondering how real it was. Madrik was the first to recover enough to speak. “If I understand what you are saying correctly, it is both important to grow a building with whatever it needs to be fed on. But it is equally important that you don’t give it indigestion by feeding it too much without using excess energy to make something useful. Is that correct?”

  The storyteller bowed his head, and said, “That is exactly right. The fact that the bar here has already had a single expansion cycle is incredible. I have heard of seeds of this type where the building has taken 500 years to get to that point. Nodding his head somberly, Madrik didn’t say anything as the storyteller got up tugging his clothes around his body and walking to the front door. Madrik watched the old man leave, sobered by the knowledge of what could go wrong. Storyteller had assumed that the BHB had gone through one evolution. Remembering the growth in the rooms upstairs and the expansion into the garden in the back, Madrik knew that the power funneling to the BHB was much higher than that which had destroyed the other building.

  Chapter 25 – Speed Dating BHB-Style

  Finally, Madrik felt like he was starting to put together some of the pieces. He understood that the bar itself was there to help facilitate solutions for problems. This would be a truly creative environment that mixed a barroom of patrons with problems to solve. Important to the success were original approaches and creative strategies. It might be the last resort, a point of desperation for someone who could not find a solution elsewhere. The bar manager thought that this was a great concept and one that would keep people coming back to participate, eat, and drink.

  Madrik knew that successfully solving problems always made him feel good and he was hoping that the atmosphere would continue to affect the bar patrons, especially the regulars. It wouldn’t hurt anything if it cheered up the staff too. Everybody needed a purpose in life.

  << <> >>

  The late afternoon crowd was relaxed and thirsty, always a good mix for a bar. Madrik was chatting with a table of mercenaries when an alert from the BHB caused him to turn and stare at the right-hand door. It was an understandable mistake because he hadn’t seen anybody comes in from the left-hand door before so when it opened he was caught by surprise and had to spin around to look. Dimly through the door, he could see what looked like a spaceship bridge, full of four-legged beings. Reminding the bar manager somewhat of centaurs with extra arms, Madrik was stunned for just a second when one of those beings stepped through the doorway.

  The four-legged, four-armed creature that steppe
d through into the bar was built on muscular lines. His back half looked like a dappled horse, colored brown and gold and his front half looked like a bodybuilder from Earth’s Middle East. The transition between his spaceship and the bar was abrupt, and he stumbled a little bit as he came across the threshold.

  “Camillus’ hairy knees! That I did not expect,” he said in a resonant voice. Looking around with great curiosity, the large male examined the varied inhabitants of the room. His eyes widened a bit as he took in the different modes of dress and the different skin tones and body configurations, but he made no comment.

  Now for something totally different, we have the left-hand door. Entering the stage is contestant number one looking for a solution! Madrik thought sarcastically to himself, before walking over to greet the newest bar patron. “Welcome to the Badger Hole Bar. My name is Madrik, and I’m the bar manager. How can we help you?”

  The stranger’s eyes widened either further, and his tail flicked nervously. He responded, keeping a wary eye on the surrounding tables, saying somewhat nervously, “My name is Jarrow. How do you come to speak my language?”

  At the table next to where Madrik was standing, a female wearing double pulsar weapons and blood-red space armor answered, “That’s the beauty of this place. Everybody who comes here speaks the same language. Although sometimes, I think the translation spell needs some tuneup. Either that or some languages have developed very interesting curses.”

  A general laugh rippled around the bar room as the patrons proved that they had been all eavesdropping. Jarrow was so startled that he actually backed up a couple of steps. Madrik said, “Come on over and rest yourself on one of the benches if you can. Then you can tell us about your problem.”