“Yes.” She looked in the number ID window on the phone. It said Laurel. She felt a great relief. “Yes. Oh. You made it home.”
“Yes,” he said.
For a while neither of them talked. And then he said, “How did you do that? And what does it mean?”
“Do what? Oh, you mean... the painting? I think you create mini-universes, Michael. That’s why they wanted you. A lot of the creatures – fairy or demon – that trade in the sort of gold paint you bought are not very good at creating things. You can create little worlds. Each of your paintings is a world. They didn’t take your soul. They couldn’t. But they were hoping to get all of you and your creative magic.”
“What? But they never... they couldn’t detect...”
“No, of course not. They were looking for one of the identifiable talents. But, Michael, the world they kept you prisoner in was something you drew.”
“Oh, that,” he sounded embarrassed. “I realized that, but I thought they were mocking me. You see, I drew that because it was what the school made me feel like. Like a place with no outlet.”
“So you drew the perfect prison for yourself,” Maria said. “That’s why I told you to draw something with a door somewhere safe.”
“And you put me in it. How did you do that?”
“That...” she shrugged. She saw herself in the mirror – her hair a mess, her clothes all torn and worn. And she realized she would have to go back to school tomorrow. “I have more magic than it’s good for me. That’s why... well... no one talks to me.”
“They say you could turn the whole school inside out, if you wanted to,” Michael said. “Or make it disappear. They’re afraid of you. I’ve heard them talk.”
“Yeah, well. I don’t want to turn the school inside out.” She paused. “Most of the time.”
He coughed, and she could swear it had started as a laugh, and he’d disguised it.
“So I have talent,” he said... in a wondering tone.
“Just not a type that the school can measure.” She grabbed her brush and started attempting to comb her hair.
“What else is new?” he said from the other side and she had the distinct impression of a grin behind the words.
She thought he would look very attractive if he grinned instead of his usual scowl.
He was silent a long while, and at last she said, “I guess I see you at the school? Tomorrow?”
But he just said, in a tiny, tiny voice, as if he’d suddenly regressed ten years in age. “So... so... Do you want to go to the Witch Dance? Or... do you have a date... or...”
“I don’t have a date,” she said. “And yeah, I could go with you.”
“Right, then,” he said. And again she had the impression of a grin behind the words. “I’ll see you at the school tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Maria said.
She hung up and put the phone down carefully. And then she stared at herself in the mirror, in her scruffy jeans and t-shirt which looked like they’d been scoured with steel wool. She concentrated and glared at her image. She felt the softness of silk against her skin.
The mirror showed her a slim redheaded teenager wearing a silk dress that appeared to have been sewn together from the shimmering wings of a butterfly.
Let the other girls at the dance eat their hearts out.
Around the Bend
WHEN THE DOOR EXPLODED, he landed on top of me, taking me down with him, covering me with his body. He was too large, and smelled of sweat and alcohol. I had a vague impression of a muscled male, of red hair, of fast breathing, of controlled strength. Then I realized he was taking his weight on his elbows, as the heat wave shot over us, followed by a gentle rain of ceramite fragments. He whispered, “steady, steady.” I registered that he had a burner out and was pointing it in the direction of the exploding door.
It was a large burner, and he looked like he knew how to use it. And I realized that a lifetime of longing for adventure doesn’t prepare you to face it. I wiggled to get out from under the stranger and had just started to say, “Please—” the first part of a civil plea to be let go, when my mind added up what I’d just seen.
The door of The Babel had burst inward, a flowering of fire and noise and explosive force. There had been a sound with it, a boom and a roar. People around me screamed and dived for cover. And the large, muscular male body over me protected me from a shower of burning ceramite fragments and a pattering of pieces of door and wall and tables.
I took short breaths and coughed from the acrid smoke. To my right, someone sobbed. Before this, the most exciting thing that had happened at The Babel, a hangout for translators attached to the diplomatic corps in Peace III, was the time the automatic drink dispensers on the tables had shot mineral water clear to the ceiling.
There came sounds from the door, and screams from the patrons hiding under tables or crouching by the wall. Several men in black dimatough suits strode in.
I counted four of them, with maybe the shadow of a fifth one behind them, which was surely overkill. Dimatough battle suits, covering head to toe, are made of small scales of impenetrable material joined together so that they’re flexible but impregnable. You can’t kill a man in a dimatough suit unless you’re very good or very lucky. The suits are also so expensive that the only people able to afford them are potentates and millionaires, and, of course, Earth’s diplomatic guards.
None of these should have any interest in The Babel, and if they did, they should know they didn’t need armored suits to face translators, right?
I didn’t think all this very coherently. It came in a jumble of surprise and shock, and then the men were saying, “Come forward with your hands in full view. We apologize for the inconvenience. If you have done nothing, rest assured you have nothing to fear.”
The man atop of me said a word. It sounded like Valhallian, and not the sort of thing they teach in school. Then he bent down and whispered in my ear. “I’m going to get out the back,” and rolled off me.
People were starting to get up and walk towards the men in dimatough, hands held high.
The men still held weapons pointed at the customers. There were three men and two women whose most aggressive act ever had been to translate an adjective a little too strongly. And men in full armor were holding huge combat burners pointed at them. My stomach clenched. There was something wrong. I couldn’t say what, but it was seriously wrong, whatever it was. These men had made the door explode. They’d caused unwonted damage to get in here. Why should I trust them now?
The man who’d protected me with his body was crawling fast, silently, along where the shadow was deepest, right where wall and floor met.
I followed, thanking any god that might be listening for my decision to wear black that morning. Around and around, and we came to a door. He half rose, and applied the burner to it in a way that made almost no sound and no more than a flicker of light. A look over his shoulder, as if to make sure the goons were fully occupied with the now ten people surrendering to them, and he applied his shoulder to open the door.
So I followed the tall man at a fast trot around a curving dark portion of the hallway, and then through a door he first opened partially, and then down a dark corridor to—
There was a man in front of the dark door, a barely perceptible silhouette against the dark, except for his black armor suit glistening. He said “Halt,” and lifted his weapon— nothing more than a shadow — but before he could fire, my companion fired.
I’d heard that dimatough armor was impervious to all but military grade weapons, so I was surprised when the guard toppled and crashed to the floor by the time the light of the burner ray faded. My companion looked over his shoulder, as though to see if anyone had heard the crash, then stooped to grab the guard’s own weapon, in a smooth motion as he opened the door and went through it into the night.
I followed. Outside, the alley smelled of the overflowing dumpster a few paces away, and my rescuer turned halfway around and looked at
me with narrowed eyes. I kept both hands in full sight, but registered that he was wearing the blue tunic and dark blue pants of a Bender, that he had the circle on the left of the breast indicating he had piloted solo, and the star in it indicating he had done so for ten years. Also that he had the sort of blunt, square features that owed nothing to beauty and yet somehow added to a pleasing— and strong— whole, and that his eyes were some light color. His very short hair was red.
I’d guess he was Valhallian, from the misbegotten colony seeded a few centuries ago by Norse fundamentalists, which— scarcity of land and infighting and all— had never managed to progress much beyond feudalism, divided into subsistence farmers and the Lords who both protected and controlled them.
Valhalla was responsible for providing Earth with most of its Benders— which was what everyone called Schrödinger pilots, who merged with the computer to move the ships through space, and sometimes, accidentally or not, through time, instantly. A happy genetic chance. Or unhappy, for Valhalla, who routinely sold their younger sons into lethal indenture in order to keep the family fed.
When I’d come to Earth, mother had told me to stay away from Benders. And ever since I’d been on Earth, I’d learned Valhallians were the worst of Benders. If you heard a story of a brawl on the news, half of those involved would be Valhallian Benders.
Perhaps it was the fatalism that, at least to my casual acquaintance with their religion, permeated their beliefs. Perhaps it was the fact that Luf, the drug they took to allow the human brain and the navigational computer to interact, usually killed them before thirty. Or perhaps there was something wrong with Benders and Valhallian Benders most of all. But they seemed to go to hell faster than anyone else, and with more gusto, leaving behind a trail of murder, mayhem, illegitimate children, and squandered wealth.
It was trouble little Ruth Serra didn’t need. Which, of course, is why I stood rooted to the spot, blinking at him.
At first, I thought he’d growled at me, and then I realized he had said, with a strong Valhallian accent, “You should go now.”
I remained rooted, and the ugly-attractive features opened in an odd smile, which seemed to transform them into something devastatingly handsome. It was like most people smiled with their mouths only, but he smiled with his whole face, eyes sparkling and nose wrinkling slightly.
“I see,” he said. He looked around, rapidly. “If you go down that way,” he pointed behind the dumpster at a narrow, smelly alley, “I don’t think they’ll think of it, or think to follow you. I’m going to run that way. You go on. I’ll draw their attention. They’ll come after me.”
“They’ll kill you,” I said. I’d had time to process the fully armored guard defending that door. I didn’t know who they were or why they were doing this, but I knew they were prepared to kill.
He hesitated. It was just a moment. “It won’t matter much, love,” he said, very softly. The love sounded odd. Not like he meant it. Not like he was in love with me, but as though he were, suddenly, not a man my age, late twenties or thereabouts, but a much older man speaking to me as though I were a young and innocent child. “Five years more or five years less. It won’t make much difference. Luf will do me in anyway.”
“No,” I said. Mostly in reaction to his tone. “Come with me and I—”
“Will get caught for sure. I probably will, too, but there’s a chance…” He frowned suddenly, and for a moment, I was afraid he was angry, but then he shook his head. “No, tell you what. Would you do something for me? Something very small?”
I nodded. He put his hand forward. For a moment there was warmth, and something small and hard was pressed into my palm. “You have a better chance of escaping. Better chance of not being noticed. If you get out of this, take that to Lenard Kavara. He’ll know what to do. And now, I will go. You start down there at the same time. They’ll never see you or think of you once they catch sight of me.”
I started down the alley as I heard him pelt towards the main street where the entrance to The Babel was.
By the time I reached the end of the alley and turned into another alley, I could hear shouts from the street in the other direction, and the sound of burners. The Babel was isolated enough, being the only establishment facing that street and the waterfront –that I didn’t think anyone would hear.
Then there came a sound of an explosion that made the ground shake, and I ran faster, madly, blindly, until the network of alleys littered with refuse and dumpsters ended, and I found myself in a well-lit street where well-dressed couples strolled along the edge of a lush public park.
I was so tired by then that I stopped running, and leaned on the nearest building, blinking at the lights, at the couples. It took me five breaths before I recognized the park facing me as the park of Interplanetary Harmony, three blocks from my little rented apartment.
And by the time I reached my apartment, really a largish room all of four hundred square feet, equipped with a rudimentary cooker and an even more Spartan fresher, I’d started to suspect I’d dreamed it all.
The illusion lasted until I turned the lights on, and flipped on the streaming holonews. A hologram formed of Raddy Rondel, the— I suspected simulated— news star, a blond man built as well as the Valhallian Bender I’d just met. Raddy looked sad, as he described the terrible explosion at The Babel, which had killed everyone there. The station streamed the names of the supposed dead underneath, near the groin of Raddy Rondel’s tight pants. I blinked as my name appeared, and Madrasta, my world of origin.
There was only one Valhallian. His name was Glenn Braxladden. I remembered his smile in the alley, and wondered if it was true that he was dead by now. What had happened there? Had the explosion been accidental? Had it really killed everyone there? Other than Glenn, all the names appeared to be those of translators, my colleagues. Glenn was the only element that didn’t fit in, the only one who might have been there for some reason other than to unwind after work. There were no names that might have belonged to those men in black armor. Their presence was not reported.
I felt a stab of not quite fear, something I had no name for. I’d always hated the idea of conspiracies, the idea that it was somehow possible for a small group of people to control the course of history. Oh, I’d heard the normal talk about how the government of the thirty worlds, whose buildings, bureaucrats and planning machinery took up most of Earth was an evil entity. They said the other worlds were little more than slave colonies, having to do what the mother planet said or be starved of power, of the ability to travel, of everything but the barest survival. There were even rumors about Daice, and how Earth had funded the revolution there.
I didn’t buy it. I worked all day, every day, translating talk between one planet and the other, trying to get them to agree on how much to buy, what to sell, what tariffs to pay. From my vantage point, the government of the thirty worlds was not an evil entity packed with masterminds, but the governing body of a lot of worlds each trying to negotiate to its advantage, while a common deliberative body, presided, of course, by the Representative, deployed what military power was needed to keep us from space war. We’d never had one, and we’d never have one, because only Earth had Benders, only Earth had Schrödingers, and should the worlds wish to fight each other, Earth wouldn’t lend them ships.
Which was why there had always been peace in space, even if some planets had been known to send terrorists to Earth.
But now—
Now I wasn’t so sure. Of course, the men who’d invaded The Babel might very well be terrorists from another world. On the other hand—
On the other hand, why weren’t the news stations and programs, controlled by the government of Earth, reporting the attack yet?
Surely someone would have seen men in dimatough armor. And even if not, surely the way The Babel looked would not resemble the explosion caused by a malfunctioning of the server mechanism? I couldn’t even imagine a way in which the server mechanism could malfunction that would c
ause the destruction of the whole café.
And then I realized I was still holding, pressed so tightly in my hand that it was becoming a part of it, whatever Glenn Braxladden had given me. It felt like a ring.
I opened my hand and confirmed that it was a ring, small, black, made of ceramite, the kind of prize that you can get out of any machine, in any cheap food mart all through Peace III, possibly all through Earth. It will set you back ten bits, and appeal to the very young and very broke.
A token of his esteem? I remembered the name he’d told me. Lenard Kavara. Not a female name, of course, but a Valhallian name. And the only surprising thing, given the lives most Benders lived, was not that it was a male name, but that Glenn would think it necessary to send a token of his esteem to one individual and not to a group of his nearest and dearest five hundred people, and maybe the occasional plant, which should comprise all with whom he’d been intimate in the last month.
It didn’t fit. Like the feeling I’d got looking at that list of dead, the feeling of this was wrong. It was like being immersed in the ocean, off my native village, and sensing something moving and rumbling so far away that you were guessing at it, more than knowing it with any accuracy. If you were a born Madrastan and experienced enough, you got out of the way fast, because those tremors—suspected, more than felt—were the intimation of an approaching tsunami. You ran all the way to the secure tower in the middle of the village.
Now I had that same feeling of impending tsunami, but I wasn’t sure there was anywhere safe. Legally, I was dead. Which meant, since they couldn’t have pulled my corpse from the ruins, and identified my DNA, that someone had known I was in there. They’d known everyone who was in there. And they’d—
My mind shied away from the idea that everyone who had been there had been killed. But they probably had been, except for Glenn and I.
I was also, probably, running out of time. After all, any minute now, someone would notice that my account for the holonews was still active.
Here Be Dragons: A collection of short stories Page 15
