Goblinopolis, The Tol Chronicles, Book 1

by Robert G. Ferrell

  “Magic is a meta-quantum phenomenon,” Plåk continued, “it exists in a continuum that bears the same conceptual relationship to quantum space as quantum does to the classical universe. That meta-state is accessible to creatures such as us, or rather, you, only via a narrow conduit that you know as The Slice. If something disrupts that conduit, which is actually a region of multidimensional overlap, you will no longer be able to invoke magic in Tragacanth. For example, on my native planet the only gateway was destroyed millennia ago. There is no stable access to magic.”

  Finally Plåk had said something that Tol could grasp and react to. Doing away with magic would severely disrupt every aspect of Tragacanthan society. That would be a bad thing.

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Why would I lie?”

  “Plenty of reasons. You’re a criminal, for one thing.”

  “I prefer to think of it as a victim of circumstance. Either way, my ‘crime’ was not one of deception. However,” Plåk paused, picking his words carefully, “I’m merely trying to make amends for my past actions by bringing you this warning. If you choose to ignore it, that be on your head.”

  “You’re not telling me the whole truth.”

  “Perhaps not, but I’m not telling you any falsehoods, either.”

  Tol sighed. “Fine. So let’s assume that you are telling the truth, at least as you see it. What do you expect me to do about it? I’m not a mage.”

  “No, but you are an edict enforcement officer. Can’t you report it to your superiors?”

  “Report what? That a semi-corporeal fugitive from another dimension thinks that someone might be trying to sabotage the space-time continuum? Give me a break. I still have five years before I qualify for a pension.”

  “Surely someone in your organization understands issues associated with magic. Crimes must be committed using magic all the time.”

  “Yeah, but most of them get handled by regular jloks like me. We know how to secure a magical crime scene and canvass for magically-related evidence, same as for a physical crime. We leave the analysis to the Forensic Mages.”

  “Well, perhaps one of them will be interested in my report.”

  “I can relay it to the Forensic Mage in Charge at my Precinct, but I doubt ol’ Derig will be all that interested. He’s pretty much a by-the-book kind of gob. FMs are a crabby lot, too.”

  “It sounds as though you’re telling me that no one cares about this threat.”

  “Oh, I’m sure they’d care about it if they believed it. Trouble is, it’s gonna be a hard sell without any proof.”

  “I think I can supply that proof. Wait here for a few minutes and I will procure it.”

  “While you’re out and about, can you look around for those smekkin’ elves?”

  What little there was of Plåk vanished abruptly, although Tol thought he heard the echo of a chuckle. He sniffed and looked around. Snow was beginning to fall softly, covering the park in a finely stippled smattering of white. The flakes were tiny and powdery, making sharp outlines of the subtle contours in the surrounding landscape as they settled. Tol noticed that some of those outlines were in the form of regular impressions that appeared to be small footprints he hadn’t seen before. They led up to the spot where the elves’ trail stopped. He got down on his knees to examine them closely. They were too small for elves, but the wrong shape for kobolds or gnomes or any other races that would leave similarly-sized prints.

  Tol reached rather reluctantly into his overjack pocket and extracted his pen. He winced involuntarily as he twisted the cap to activate it. “Pen,” he began, clearing his throat, “provide data on any sentient species with the following pedal profile.” He traced around the outline of the footprint with the pen.

  “Your carpal extremities are cold. Would it kill you to wear gloves when it is snowing?”

  Tol tried to be patient. “Please provide the requested data.”

  “Not in my onboard database. What do I look like, a central library server? I am searching for a compatible datalink. Hold on to your jack. And speaking of jacks, you have got a whopper of a condiment stain two point three centimeters below and to the right of your EE badge.”

  Tol glanced down at his chest. “Ha ha, made you look,” chortled the pen. Its laugh was metallic and grated unpleasantly on the ear, like some ancient wheeled mechanism being operated without benefit of lubrication. He tightened his grip on the pen until something went sproink.

  “Watch what you are doing, you big simian. Now I am going to need recalibration.”

  I’d love to recalibrate you with a sledge hammer. “What a shame. Any luck with that datalink?”

  “Datalink (hic) established,” the pen replied. Whatever Tol had damaged was causing the pen to shudder audibly every few seconds. It sounded a lot like miniature hiccups, and Tol couldn’t help but snicker.

  “Glad I could be so (hic) entertaining. Maybe next I will (hic) just detonate into tiny high-velocity slivers in (hic) your pocket. That should (hic) be good for a few (hic) hearty (hic) guffaws.”

  “No need to get testy. I’ll get you adjusted next time I’m near the Precinct.”

  “A great com(hic)fort, I am sure. Your data returns (hic) are in. Footprint profile matches (hic) two species, within morphological (hic) and datametric margin for (hic) error: juvenile gnarlignome and (hic) alfar.”

  “These definitely aren’t the tracks of a gnarlignome—even a young one. They’re too shallow and the interior contours are wrong. What the smek is an ‘alfar?’”

  “An alfar,” replied a voice that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere, “Is a creature of fäerie. Distant kin to the elves, but from an entirely different, entirely magical, stock.”

  The voice startled Tol, and he dropped the pen into the snow.

  “Mmmfglrkk,” it complained.

  Tol picked it up and brushed it off.

  “Sorry about that.” He suddenly remembered why he dropped the pen. “His name is Plåk, and he’s from another planet in another dimension.”

  “Right,” replied the pen, its mechanical voice dripping with digital sarcasm, “And I am an unusually large and erudite microorganism with a slight limp.”

  “You seem to be a microorganism without the hiccups now, at least.”

  “Yes, the phase mismatch has apparently been corrected. I suppose you will claim that you dropped me intentionally with this goal in mind.”

  “Hadn’t thought about it, but now that you mention it, yeah, I probably will. So, Plåk, welcome back from the outer limits. Did you bring me something?”

  “Let us hope it is your medication,” grumbled the pen.

  “Shut up.” Tol stuffed it back into his jack.

  A wavy outline that vaguely resembled Plåk shimmered into view.

  “Yes, I brought you a little gift,” Plåk replied after a few moments. Something dark and shaped like an oversized partially-melted nine-pins ball swathed in a faint orange glow fell to the ground at Tol’s feet. He picked it up. It was much denser than he expected.

  “What is this blasted thing?” he grunted, letting it fall back to the snow with a heavy, wet plop.

  “It’s a magic marker: a benchmark created by the first master mages millennia ago to establish the boundary between magical and physical space. It holds, or rather held, open one of the conduits between The Slice and the physical plane. It had a permanent inviolability spell cast on it before it was put in place.”

  “Not so permanent, it appears,” remarked Tol, doubtfully.

  “Aye, quite permanent. Try to damage it.”

  Tol shrugged and took out his .44. He aimed it squarely at the object and set the modulator to ‘Fracture.’ The marker absorbed the full charge without so much as a shudder. Tol frowned and turned the indicator to full power. Not even a scratch.

  “That charge would cut a serving platter-sized hole hole in a ten centimeter marble gravestone,” he said.

  “Precisely. The inviolability
spell is still quite effective.”

  “OK, fine. Does that mean the marker was created in this form, then?”

  “No, it was once a perfect sphere. There were 24 of them, all told. Don’t be frustrated—a conventional weapon one thousand times as powerful as your disruptor would have had exactly the same effect.”

  Tol raised an eyebrow. “How does one go about turning a magically inviolate perfect sphere into this pathetic melted glob?”

  “One destabilizes The Slice, causing it to shrink. This was one of the outermost markers; it was caught in the metaquantum contraction. Essentially, it was melted from within, through a metaquantum anomaly rather like what engineers would call a wormhole, except that this wormhole connected two universes in entropic disequilibrium. The deformation of the marker demonstrates the considerable forces involved in such an event.”

  “But you don’t know how this destabilization is being conducted?”

  “No. I didn’t witness the contractile event, only its aftermath.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t some sort of natural phenomenon, then?”

  “There are no ‘natural phenomena’ that could cause an event like this across the physical, quantum, and magical universes simultaneously. It just doesn’t work that way. There has to be some sort of intentional outside influence that is driving the destabilization, and I’d hazard a guess those three elves were somehow involved.”

  “Yeah. How about this ‘alfar’ creature?”

  “Ah, yes. The alfar are a race of small bipeds who inhabit a sort of ‘off by one’ alternate existence where magic is the prevailing natural force. They occasionally travel to both the purely physical and physicomagical universes via The Slice. Some of them spend most of their time in The Slice itself. Not much is known about them, because they tend to be quite secretive and are only rarely encountered, even by those of us who know where to look.”

  “Why would one be involved with this episode?”

  “What makes you think one was?”

  “Footprints. Here.” Tol indicated the prints that ended abruptly a meter or so from the edge of the park. They were nearly obliterated by the snow now.

  Plåk bent down to take a close look. “Well, they certainly do look like alfar prints. This is the spot where I witnessed the elves making the jump. I didn’t see another creature with them, though. Strange.”

  “Maybe he didn’t jump with them, or at least not to the same place,”

  “Hmm. You may be right. But what was his purpose, then?”

  “Ya got me there, sport. I’m just trying to work with what I have right now.”

  “I shall do some investigation into the matter.”

  “You do that. I need to get to the Precinct and file a report on all this.”

  “Then you desperately need to take a bath,” said a small, distant voice.

  Tol spun around. “Who said that?”

  There was no one there. Tol stood for a minute trying to figure out what was going on when he heard a faint metallic giggle coming from his overjack.

  “Why the smek didn’t they make a ‘mute’ switch for these pens?”

  Chapter Four:

  Stone Deef

  The operating system for most of the network infrastructure in Tragacanth was the Data Objects Operations and Retrieval System, also known as DOORS. It had been written over a period of several years by a team of Royal software engineers consisting mostly of dwarves and goblins, both of which races were adept at the type of logical, structured reasoning necessary to construct complex computer programs. The chief of this team was a dwarf named Amyr-it, who came from a family of programmers and engineers, including a distinguished uncle who was the sole dwarven member of CoME.

  Not only was DOORS the principal operating system for the Kingdom’s networks, it was the operating system for the Arnoc. Essentially that meant that anyone who could compromise and control DOORs had the skills to become the Sovereign Head of State for Tragacanth. No one knew more about that network than Amyr-it, and that made him the single most important person in the kingdom, politically speaking. He was only sixty when the network was completed and dwarves have a 200-year life span, so Amyr-it was looking at being the center of attention for a long time to come.

  Because he was so knowledgeable of the mechanics of DOORS, Amyr-it had to be guarded at all times to prevent anyone from coercing him into helping them become King. The current monarch naturally had a strong interest in preventing this, so Amyr-it’s personal guard always had a high priority in the annual Royal budget. Officially he was free to travel anywhere he liked on a lifetime Royal stipend, but in reality the necessity for heavy guard curtailed his activities drastically. He was in effect a prisoner; his every move had to be carefully orchestrated and involved numerous vehicles. The logistics of his life resembled an ancient dwarven epic poem about the complex workings of the universe.

  Amyr-it tried to lead a normal existence. Dwarven culture dictated a large family, but he’d been too busy at first learning his trade and later executing the assignment of a lifetime to cultivate any serious relationships in his early adulthood. Now it was all but impossible to meet anyone, much less carry on anything vaguely resembling a romance. One of the reasons he’d been chosen as leader of the DOORS project was that he was a dwarf, and by Tragacanthan law only a goblin could assume the throne. Otherwise, he’d be pretty much of a shoe-in. Dark and insidious rumors had surfaced from time to time in the years since the first king had been crowned of a back door into the network secretly planted by Amyr-it or one of his team, but no proof had ever come to light. Certainly Amyr-it had never made even the slightest move that could tarnish his reputation. Considering that such an act would be high treason and punishable by death, one can understand his reluctance to be seen displaying anything but the most salutary behavior in this respect.

  Zyxyl, in contrast, was a half-ogre. Half-ogres were rare overall, but not so rare in Goblinopolis itself. Two things made Zyxyl stand out from his hybrid brethren, however: he was of above-average intelligence for the general population (which made him a veritable prodigy amongst half-ogres) and he was one of the very small number of his race in Royal Service. Not only was he in Royal Service, he was captain of Amyr-it’s guard, which was in practice the third highest military office in the land, surpassed only by Chief of the High Command and, of course, the King himself. This was the loftiest post ever held by a half-ogre, and it made Zyxyl’s most routine activities the stuff of legend for the kingdom’s half-ogre population.

  He was exceptional in other ways, as well, not least of which in that he was a confirmed pacifist. This may seem like an odd trait for a military leader, particularly one whose job involves, if necessary, hand-to-hand combat to the death using the traditional close-quarters weapon of the Tragacanthan Army, the ice tong-like sklezaxe. Zyxyl was quite prepared to do his duty, if it came to that, but he vastly preferred negotiation or even evasion to confrontation. Physical intimidation and bloodshed were the tools of absolute last resort in his repertoire, although he was quite adept at both.

  This morning, though, Zyxyl had a problem that was more biological than military. This morning there was a lesser basking rok on the pathway that wound its way up out of the secluded glen where Amyr-it’s stately home was situated. Now, ordinarily the soldiers in Amyr-it’s guard would not have disturbed Captain Zyxyl for this sort of issue. Presumably members of one of the most elite military units in existence would be able to handle the relocation of a single head of wildlife. The problem here was threefold: first, a lesser basking rok had two heads, so they were already behind the curve; second, lesser basking roks weighed upwards of three and a half tonnes; and third, they were magical creatures that possessed a natural shield of missile reflectivity. This meant that any projectiles or magical directed attacks used against one were deflected back in the attacker’s face.

  The soldiers stood around the huge bulk of the creature, which seemed totally oblivious to their pr
esence, discussing their options.

  “Well, we cants shoot it, and we cants poke it. Cans we scare it?”

  “Scare it? Wi’ what?”

  “Maybe we could shoot the big gun near one o’ its ears. No shell—jest a blank charge.”

  “I heerd tell those things was deef as a post.”

  “Who shoveled you thet load of basilisk poop?”

  “It were my brother, the one what went ta live up i’ the mountains.”

  “Yer brother wouldn’t know a rok from a rooster.”

  “Here now. What’s you gots to go speakin’ calumny ‘bout my brother fer?”

  “I ain’t speaking calumny, I’m just sayin’ he don’ know nothin’ bout roks and they habits, on accounta they ain’t many of ‘em around no mores.”

  “I oughta belt you one, and good.”

  “Cheez it you horks, here comes the Cap’n.”

  Zyxl strode purposefully towards them, annoyance evident in his gait. Something was holding up the motorcade here and whatever it was, he wasn’t happy that it hadn’t been taken care of by the foremost troops. He hadn’t gotten into position to spy the rok yet. He rounded a corner with his mouth open, prepared to bark out an order, when the full nature of the impediment to navigation hove into view. He stopped with his mouth still hanging ajar like a statue of a frog in mid-bug capture and gaped at the thing. It was pretty impressive—if you consider 3,500 kilograms of lard in a wart-encrusted slime-green leather bag impressive, that is.

  There is evidence, the rokologists say, to suggest that roks were in the distant past capable of physical flight. Little nublets about where the shoulder blades sit were once wings, they theorize. As the creatures evolved the ability to fly using magic, however, the wings slowly diminished in size and utility. Now they were little more than ridges of flesh and cartilage, the underlying bone having given up the ghost after many generations of neglect.

  Using magic for locomotion proved such a good idea from the roks’ point of view that they decided to take it even further. They gradually started relying on magic for gathering food (they were strict herbivores) and eventually even for eating it. In the process they lost all need for useable limbs, and so evolved into the bloated, inert sacks of fat they had now become. When they got hungry, they just conjured some food into their mouths, or, in the case of the laziest specimens, directly into one or more of their half-dozen stomachs. Roks didn’t possess a great many magical abilities, but the ones they did have were finely-honed.