by J. S. Morin
Erefan knew of sunlight, of wind, clouds, and birds, bathe had given all that up to toil in the dank caverns and tunnels of the kuduk city, in the service of his daruu owner. He had given it up in order to build the device he now saw before him. It hadn’t run since the night he and Kezudkan had tried to test it only to find that the power draw was more than the city dynamo could supply them. The new dynamo in the workshop was only a tenth the size of a city-sized unit, but was dedicated to providing power to a single device.
The control panel of the machine sported a series of knife-blade switches, a series of dials, and several indicator gauges with needles showing zeroes at the moment. The switches controlled power to each of the coils around the frame. The dials directed every aspect of the machine’s operation. The gauges—in theory—would tell just how close they were coming to blowing up half of Eversall Deep if things went beyond control.
Now, the system was ready to test, and Kezudkan was sure to be eager to see it working, but he was nowhere to be found. One of the books from the cabinet was missing, so Erefan assumed that he was reading somewhere—or at least trying to. Erefan didn’t care. He threw the first switch.
One of the coils on the frame lit with an eerie blue radiance; the color came from xenon gas inside the glass casing. There was a reassuring hum of contented spark equipment that accompanied the glow. Erefan threw each successive switch in turn, allowing a moment for the glow and hum to stabilize before moving on to the next. Over his shoulder, he watched the dynamo for signs that it was being taxed. It had a buzz all its own, and seemed none the worse for activating a dozen coils.
When the last coil turned blue, the webwork of wires strung across the frame came alive. Sparks crackled along them; arcs leapt from one wire to the next. As the arcs spread, a black mass formed inside the frame. It was no sinister vision or dark energy emanating from the machine, but a view into a lightless place.
Erefan checked the gauges. They twitched, but all hovered right near zero. The blackness spread until the whole interior of the frame was darkened. He chuckled and shook his head.
“The wonders of science,” he muttered. “First view of another world and I see the inside of a mountain no one ever tunneled out.” Erefan fiddled with dials on the control panel. Nothing changed in the view for a moment, then sunlight burst into the workshop.
Erefan stared in wonder at what he had created, and a smile eased onto his lips.
The machine showed a landscape of glacial ice, glistening in the late evening sun. Mountain peaks towered all around, casting titanic shadows across the range. Wispy clouds spread pink across the sky as they captured the sun’s last rays.
Erefan’s eyes hadn’t seen a sunset in over a dozen years. Even at sunset, the glare from the ice was too much for his eyes. They started watering.
“Remarkable,” Kezudkan exclaimed. He manipulated the dials of the machine with a deft touch that ill-suited his thick daruu fingers. The view in the frame slid sideways and twisted about, scanning the mountain range. “This is clearly the Homespires, but there are subtle differences in the peaks. Tiny things, geologically insignificant, but this is clearly not Korr we’re looking at ... unless of course we are seeing backward in time, and not across dimensions.” Kezudkan cupped his craggy chin in his hand as he paused a moment in thought.
“Somehow time travel seems even more implausible than what we’ve already done,” Erefan said. He had been evicted from the control panel as soon as Kezudkan had arrived. The daruu had left his cane propped against the dynamo and toddled over to take command of the machine as soon as he saw it operational. It was twilight in the foreign world, but the daruu’s eye for stone was keen as ever.
“Where’s your imagination, Erefan?” Kezudkan chided. “Think of all the further implications. It means there are other worlds out there. It means that the writer of those books was a tinker the likes of which the world probably hasn’t seen since before the rise of the kuduks. It means we are going to have access to instantaneous travel anywhere we like.”
“I’m guessing it was the gods that wrote those books,” Erefan said.
“You humans and your gods.” Kezudkan did not turn from his view of the other world, but waved a dismissive hand in Erefan’s direction. “What would a god need with a toy like this? I’m sure they could have crossed by magic, or whatever divine power is magic’s equivalent. You think too much of science and technology at times, Erefan. The tinkers who wrote those books knew daruu runes; I can only assume it was my ancestors.”
“Why not mine?” Erefan said with a sneer.
Kezudkan looked over to him. “You jest, but I’ll tell you something, Erefan: those ancestors of yours were no sniveling collar-wearers. Those kuduk pests are our fault as well as yours—our peoples should never have cross-bred. Well, they outbred us and outfought you, and now look where we are.”
Erefan’s mouth gaped. “Kuduks are cross-breeds?” Erefan asked. “That’s absurd.”
“Absurd, perhaps, but true. They wiped it from their own histories, and yours. My kind remembers though. I’ve always had a muddy spot in my heart for you, Erefan; you remind me of those humans of old, who were our enemies.”
“Wait, you mean to tell me you think kuduks are lower than humans?” Erefan asked. If he could find Kezudkan to be a true ally, instead of just a...
“Of course not! You’re by far the exception. The kuduk bred your kind down to oxen. Hardly any aether-strong humans left. Hardly any thinkers left. How you slipped through their sieve I’ll never understand, but I had to have you.”
Kezudkan returned his attention to the controls. The sun had dipped fully over the horizon during their brief exchange. By starlight he wandered, exploring a world that was so like his own.
“How are we going to find the gold veins?” Kezudkan asked, still watching the landscape of Tellurak. “You said everything was dark when you first activated it.”
“There’s no light on their side,” Erefan said, “but once we open a hole for travel, the light from our side should shine against the rock.”
“Seems a bit of a spark-guzzler, nosing around with the passageway wide open. Can’t you think of another way?”
“We could get topside and triangulate from old maps, then head down from the top,” Erefan thought aloud. “Might take a while though. I could also try to trickle in just enough power for us to transmit light.”
“Well, enough play for one night,” Kezudkan stated. He pulled open the switches for the frame one by one. As the first switch disengaged, the image vanished. As the last opened, the machine went dark and silent. Only the steady buzz of the dynamo remained. “Get the system checked over and have it ready to open a hole to that other world in the morning.”
Kezudkan walked past Erefan and clapped him on the shoulder.
“Yes, sir,” Erefan agreed. He didn’t turn as he heard Kezudkan retrieve his cane. The daruu’s gait changed from an awkward waddle to an alternating clop, click.
Erefan spent the night wedged beneath the bulk of the machine. His only concession to fatigue was a teapot that was refreshed from the kitchens above each hour. There was no way he was ready for a full test of the system. He had hoped that Kezudkan would be more cautious, more circumspect. Apparently the financial troubles that plagued the daruu were worse than he let on.
Erefan’s greatest problem was that the machine was functional. There was no telling what monstrous current it would attempt to draw when activated, though all else was in perfect working order. He had plans for the machine, but they were plans that required coordination in both worlds. Kezudkan had already thrown one spanner into the works by having the same mining plan Erefan had devised—or that Cadmus had, though the difference was moot. Keeping the daruu’s mining operation from stumbling onto Madlin’s expedition would now only be the first of his worries. The other was that Cadmus’s side of the plan was not yet coordinated. Erefan had counted on weeks or even months of testing before trying a live bri
dge between worlds. He needed more time.
Erefan took a thin copper rod and perched it atop two terminals on adjacent spark circuits. It was a small modification to the schematics that ought to buy him a bit of time. He hoped it would buy enough.
Chapter 12
“Thinking is like juggling. Try to keep too many thoughts in the air at once and they’ll all crash to the ground.” -Cadmus Errol
Rynn’s workshop was quiet. The door to the apartment portion of her boiler room was shut. The overhead spark light didn’t hum like most; Rynn had installed a filter on the line to keep the spark current flowing smoothly and to reduce the noise. The only sounds in the room were from Rynn fiddling with her tools.
Her coil gun was in pieces, spread across the work bench. A magnifying lens on a swing arm hovered over the trigger mechanism, making it look ten times its normal size so that every detail was clear to the eye. Rynn worked with her goggles on, both to keep metal filings out of her eyes, and because—truth be told—most details weren’t clear to her. She had ground the lenses of her goggles until they bent the light like Madlin’s spectacles. For an “illiterate” slave, having little marks on her nose where spectacles would perch could be dangerous.
Her own hands looked massive beneath the lenses. She saw all the hangnails and scuffed calluses that she earned by both her vocation and her hobbies. She could see her own fingerprints, and the half-healed nicks and cuts; she could see the flesh bulge out where they gripped the tweezers that held the business end of the trigger mechanism.
Rynn was putting the finishing touches on a series of runes that she hoped would solve a major problem with the coil gun. The stolen copy of Runes for Stability and Achieving Motionlessness stood propped open. On the page was an example of a rune structure that would prevent the movement of the runed object. They were simple runes, and according to the text they were meant for supporting structures like bridges and locking bank vault doors.
Rynn’s plan was a clever one: she had broken up the runes and etched half each on the barrel and the trigger of her gun. She was just finishing the runes on the trigger, scratching the rivet-head-sized symbols into the steel with a sharpened awl. She took a file and cleared away the burrs, then compared it to the rune the book showed.
With ease born of practice, Rynn took the pile of disjointed components and reassembled them into a working weapon. The parts slid back together and locked into place with just a few adjustments. Rynn took the weapon under the magnifying lens and examined the new runes.
She had just reassembled the gun, so she knew it wasn’t loaded. Nevertheless, she opened the ammunition chamber to double-check, an old habit her father had hammered into her head. One of the other changes she had made was unlocking the fixed position on the dynamo; she dialed the power down to the minimum setting.
Rynn pulled the trigger.
Click.
No shot fired, but the mechanism snapped into place. Still holding the trigger, Rynn tugged at the gun. She could feel it budge, but it took most of her strength. She let go of the trigger and the return spring popped the runes apart. The gun moved freely once more.
“Well, that ought to work a bit better,” Rynn said aloud. Talking to herself was one of the hazards of spending so many hours alone.
She closed the book and swept up the debris from seven evenings’ work. It felt good to have a functioning weapon in her hand again. The whole time she was working on the modifications, she worried that someone would discover her, and she would be unarmed.
When the workshop was tidied and the lights off once more, Rynn shut the door, hiding the entrance behind damp, hanging clothes. She put her hair up in a kerchief and wrapped a scarf around her face. She grabbed her coat from a hook on the wall and stuffed the gun into an inside pocket.
When she left the boiler room, she was Chipmunk once more.
“Third layer and halfway ‘cross the Deep? That’ll take us the night, there and back,” Pick scoffed.
“That’s the point,” Chipmunk replied. “Knockers’ll never look this far for us. They’ll assume we’re a fourth layer gang. I’ll jump the spark circuit on the lifts and we’ll take it down just one layer. We’ll climb down the emergency ladders from there.”
“Dunno about this one, Chipmunk,” Hayfield said. He leaned back on his crate, crossing his arms. The cramped storeroom where they met was filled with sacks, barrels, and more crates like the one Hayfield sat on.
“I’m in,” Rascal said with a sigh. “It’s ox work, but the getaway’s sound. Knockers won’t expect humans to get the lifts runnin’ off hours.”
“I’m in, too,” No-boots said. He was kicking his dangling feet against the side of his barrel seat. “My pockets still hurt from that last job. I ... kinda owe a bit I spent before Pick got back. I bet I can snag Buckets, too, if we need him.”
Hayfield shook his head. “Naw, not this time. Tabby’s got him swaddled up good. He ain’t gonna be running with us for a while. Tabby’s a good girl, but she ain’t got the stomach for things goin’ bad.”
Chipmunk nodded to each of them in turn. She took Hayfield’s comment as consent. Pick didn’t get a say, in her book—not after losing their take from the last job. “Way I see it, Rascal’s on forward lookout, No-Boots watches the lift so we know our escape’s clear. Pick’s got the doors—as usual. Me and Hayfield provide cover and help with the haul.”
“When do we leave?” Pick asked.
“What time is it?”
Hayfield fished out his pocketclock. “Half past eleven, just about.”
“Good a time as any.”
They took a breather in the shadows of the third layer lift station. The climb up the emergency ladders in the shaft was always longer than it seemed it was. The layers weren’t all exactly the same height, but the trek up from layer five was around two hundred feet. The spark lights were in night operation, but one near the lift entrance was left glaring down at all hours.
Chipmunk handed a hammer and pry bar to No-Boots. “Wait here by the lift. Spring the door when you see us coming. Don’t do it early; the alarm will sound.”
“What’s the signal?” No-Boots asked. Buckets and Chipmunk were their regular lookouts. No-Boots usually handled crawlspaces and pickpocketing.
“This one’s not subtle,” Hayfield replied. He put his maimed hand on No-Boots’s shoulder and looked him square in the eye. “You make sure we hear you. Don’t blow the job if it’s just a patrol. Make sure we need to collapse the shaft before the mining’s done.”
“Should be quick, in and out,” Pick said. “I been by three times the past couple days. Them locks ain’t much.”
Rascal nodded. His was the only face visible. He was the only one not wearing goggles. He was the one the kuduks would see. “Time to get rich, then.”
Rascal stuck his head out and checked for bystanders. Finding none, he strolled out of the lift station, his hands stuck in his coat pockets. He walked unsteadily, an affectation that made him appear intoxicated. It was always best to look harmless when you wanted to avoid scrutiny.
There were tense moments, with nothing but each others’ breath and nervous fidgeting to be heard. Chipmunk’s fingers worked about in the pocket filled with ball bearings she used as ammunition, trying to take a count. Her gun was loaded with five of the steel spheres, and there were another eight in her pocket. Whether she could focus enough to keep count in the heat of a firefight was something she hoped to avoid learning that night.
“There’s the signal,” Pick whispered. Rascal had made a circuit of the nearby tunnels and reappeared from the opposite direction. He was holding two fingers out against his chest: he had spotted two kuduks on his patrol, neither a threat.
Hayfield led the way. Out in the open where he could stretch his legs and make use of his long strides, he was faster than either Pick or Chipmunk. They didn’t have far to go—just a few dozen paces separated the lift station from the offices of Lucky Vein Lending and Pawn.
No sooner had they arrived in the shelter of the recessed doorway than Pick had unrolled a leather bundle filled with tools. Inside, pouches held wires, pliers, a small hammer, chisels of varying sizes, screwdrivers, and of course Pick’s eponymous trademark tools: several picks.
Chipmunk and Hayfield took up spots on opposite sides of the entryway, guns drawn. Chipmunk smirked at the sight of Hayfield—who weighed as much as two of her—with his tiny revolver, while she carried a coil gun that took two hands to hold steady.
Hayfield caught her looking at the disparity. “Want to trade?” he offered.
“I’ll make you one once we have the coin to buy parts,” Chipmunk promised.
“Shut up you two, I’m working,” Pick whispered.
Chipmunk tried to keep watch, but watching Pick work fascinated her. She knew all the tools, had a good idea of what the insides of a Jurgram Mark Five lock looked like, and generally considered herself a whiz at taking things apart. But what Pick did was magic. As far as Chipmunk knew, he’d never taken a lock apart, didn’t know the relative material strengths of steel, iron, or bronze. He just felt his way around with his tools, and...
