Universe Vol1Num2

by Jim Baen's Universe

  "That is what we were worried about," said Miss Arnoux, sighing. "There is reciprocity in the spell. Tell me, Major Jameson, are you sleeping with her yet."

  Miss Arnoux was a dried up prune of a woman. In Jameson's view, having a man would vastly improve the blasted woman. "I don't think my bedroom habits are any of your damn business," Jameson said

  "Yes, I thought you might be. It's the spell, Jameson. Once she is eliminated, we will reverse the spell and you will feel quite differently," Miss Arnoux said.

  The woman was so damned smug and sure of herself. Lord Harwood looked puzzled, then he looked at Jameson's secretary and his eyes narrowed. His hand slipped below the table. Jameson casually unclipped the flap on his soft leather briefcase and put his hand inside.

  The door opened in response to the silent alarm and Gaston walked in wearing full combat gear followed by three troopers. "Hello Karla," Gaston said to Miss Sonnet and pointed his rail gun at her. The troopers followed his example.

  Miss Arnoux gaped like a fish then looked at Karla and paled. Jameson slowly pulled his briefcase off his hand to reveal an automatic pistol pointed at Lord Harwood. "It seems that we have a situation," he said.

  Lord Harwood took his glasses off and polished them. "Gaston's men will gun her down whether you kill me or no, Major. I was very impressed by your stage magician's skills. 'Most of you know my secretary'– neatly done. Actually, none of us in the room knew her but we all assumed that someone else must. Masterful misdirection, my boy, it took me some little while to work it out. How did you disguise her eyes?"

  "Dark contact lenses, a policeman gave me the idea," said Jameson.

  "Indeed," said Lord Harwood

  "Why not hear me out, My Lord? Then Gaston can kill me and Karla right after I kill you," said Jameson. "This is not about a spell or reciprocity. This is about integrity. We either have it or we don't. We can't have a little bit of honour, an integrity constrained only to people we approve of. Once we draw a line and impose limits on our integrity—why, then we have none at all."

  "We are not talking about how we treat people. She's a monster. Think, Jameson," said Lord Harwood. "She will be tied to you all your life if we let her survive. You will never have a girlfriend, a wife or children. It won't be you she would kill when she got jealous."

  "Yes, she is a monster. But we used to think that we did not have to treat some people fairly either, people who were the wrong class, or the wrong nationality, or the wrong colour skin. She may be as black as hell, My Lord, but once my ancestors despised yours for much the same reason."

  Lord Harwood froze. He resumed polishing his glasses with long dark brown fingers. Lord Harwood's ancestor had sailed with Hawkins to the Americas all right, but not on the deck. Harwood's ancestor had been chained in the hold.

  "He has a point, My Lord," said Gaston. "And she did save our lives." Gaston had joined the Paras because that regiment was already commissioning black officers when the fashionable Guards Regiments still had a colour bar against even black private soldiers. When your mother came from Cameroon, as Gaston's had, then these things mattered.

  Harwood sighed, "I know that I am going to regret this but . . . Benson."

  "Yes, My Lord?" said The Commission's administrator.

  "Add Miss Sonnet to the payroll as a secretary."

  Jameson relaxed and carefully clicked the pistol's safety back on. "Thank you, My Lord."

  "A trial period, mark you Jameson. She's as black as hell."

  Jameson looked across at Karla who gazed back at him with an utter lack of expression. He wished he knew how this was going to turn out. The risks were immense but he just couldn't kill her out of hand so he was stuck with the situation. His lips curled; at least it wouldn't be boring. He looked around the meeting. Gaston grinned at him, gun muzzle pointed at the ground. Miss Arnoux looked as if she had been goosed by a Royal Marine. Jameson made an observation so softly that the others had to strain to hear it. "Let's not kid ourselves, people. She may be as black as hell but all of us in this room, we are as dark as night."

  ****

  For Blue Sky

  Author: Wen Spencer

  Illustrated by Jeremey Mohler, Colourist Tom Scholes

  Two weeks after Pittsburgh became permanently stranded on Elfhome, the war between the elves and the oni reached John Montana's gas station. John had been greasing the CV joint of a Honda he had up on the rack when the bell on the pumps chimed, announcing someone had pulled up for gas. He listened for the sound of his little brother's feet moving across the ceiling above him, but could only hear the rumble of rock music. He ducked out from under the Honda, walked to the old fireman pole that dropped down from their apartment, and yelled, "Hey! We've got a customer down here!"

  The bell chimed again and again, like someone was jumping on the air hose, making it trigger. Just kids messing with the air hose, John thought, and headed outside, still carrying the grease gun.

  He hadn't been expecting trouble. It had been a summer of hell since war had broken out between the elves and the oni, with humans like John caught in the middle. But with the recent dramatic events, he thought that the elves had won, and the war was over.

  Looking at the sea of elves in Fire Clan red massed outside his gas station, John realized that he was mistaken. Most of them were common garden variety laedin-caste soldiers, but sprinkled among them were the holy sekasha-caste warriors, with spells tattooed down their arms. The elves had been distracted by the chime, playing with the novelty of the air hose like kids. When they noticed him at the garage's third bay door, though, all play died from their faces, and the eyes they turned toward him were hard and suspicious.

  "Oooohhhh, shit." John felt his stomach tighten into a cold knot. The evening news had covered what had happened in Chinatown just days before, showing the blood washed sidewalks and the headless dead of the oni flushed out of their hiding spaces. The elves weren't taking prisoners.

  They saw the grease gun in his hands and they drew their swords.

  "It's not a weapon!" John cried in low Elvish, dropped the tool, and stepped backwards. "It's not a weapon!"

  "Get on your knees!" One of the sekasha shouted in high tongue.

  John raised his hands, holding them out to show they were empty and got down on his knees. This can't be happening. "It's not a weapon." He continued in low Elvish because he was more fluent in it. "I fix automobiles. It's only a tool for applying oil to the automobiles."

  The sekasha nudged the grease gun with his toe and watched it leak. Satisfied it was harmless, he signaled to the laedin-caste elves to search the garage. "Is there anyone else in the building?"

  "My little brother. He's just a child. Please don't hurt him."

  "If you're both human, you have nothing to fear."

  That was the problem—they weren't.

  One of the other sekashas produced a sheet of fine handmade paper, a spell inked onto its surface. John knew what this was. The oni used spells to disguise themselves as humans. The paper held a counter-spell to break the illusion. The elves pressed it to John's forearm, spoke the verb component and a static charge ran over him like low voltage electricity. The hairs on his arms and back lifted and stayed standing.

  "John, who was playing with the . . .?" His half-brother, Blue Sky, came sliding down the old fireman pole, landing in the center of the chaos. He stood only chest-high among the armored elves, thankfully looking younger than he was. He glanced around at the strangers, unafraid, until he saw John on his knees in front of the sword-wielding sekasha. "John!"

  "I'm not hurt!" John cried. "Everything is—no, no, no, no!"

  Blue had launched himself at the sekasha, shouting, "Get away from him!"

  John surged up, reaching for Blue, but an elf caught him by the back of the head, jerked him back to his knees, and pressed a sword blade against his windpipe.

  "Don't move!" The elf behind him snapped.

  The sekasha dodged Blue and tried to sweep out t
he boy's legs. His brother back-flipped over the sweeping foot. Without even turning, or looking, the sekasha slashed backwards with his sword.

  "No!" John screamed and fought the hold on him. "He's a child! A child!"

  The sword hit Blue Sky in the head, smashing him to the ground. John shouted out in wordless dismay.

  "Hush!" The sekasha commanded, sheathing his sword. "I used the back of my blade. He's only stunned."

  The sekasha held out his hand for another spell paper and placed it against Blue's arm. He activated it and a distortion of air flowed over Blue and vanished. The boy groaned as the sekasha turned him, carefully, gently, to examine him.

  His gaze was suspicious when he looked back at John, but he signaled to the others to free him. John didn't bother to stand, just scrambled on his hands and knees to Blue and made sure that his little brother wasn't hurt. As a testament to the sekasha's skill with his sword, there was only a slight bruise on Blue's forehead, and his eyes weren't dilated. The boy glared at the sekasha, so John locked him in a hold.

  The Fire Clan sekasha grunted. It was hard to tell if he was amused by Blue's glare or annoyed by it. "What are you doing with this child? Where are his parents?"

  "We share a mother." John said. "She is sick. She went back to Earth. His father is dead."

  "Who was his father?" The sekaska asked.

  The one thing you didn't do was lie to elves. As much as John wanted to say that he didn't know, it would be worse to be caught in a lie. "Lightning Strikes Wind."

  Unfortunately, the warrior recognized the name. "He was one of the Wind Clan sekasha?"

  John nodded.

  "He is—fourteen?" The sekasha tried to guess Blue's age.

  "I'm seventeen." Blue answered for himself. It was a sore spot for him, because he'd been mistaken for as young as ten.

  "Shhhh." John hushed him.

  "You don't feed him right; he's too small." The sekasha stood and walked about the bay, studying the old fire hall that John used as a garage, from the fire pole that Blue had slid down to the gas pumps outside. He stomped on the air hose, making it chime again.

  Blue was shaking with fury in his hold. John, however, was terrified that the worst could just be starting.

  "Wolf Who Rules," The sekasha named the head of the Wind Clan. "Does he know about the child?"

  "No." John had lived in terror of this day. He didn't know how the sekasha would react to their holy bloodline being mixed with human. Even if they didn't kill Blue Sky outright, there remained the chance they would take him from John.

  The laedin-caste warrior appeared to sketch a slight bow to the sekasha. "The building seems clear, holy one."

  "Clear!" The sekasha shouted.

  Profound silence filled the garage as the elves went still, waiting. John had heard that the Stone Clan, newly arrived to Pittsburgh, was using spells to find oni hidden within the walls of buildings and secret tunnels underground.

  "Clear," someone outside shouted. The elves relaxed.

  The sekasha signaled for the others to move to the next building down. "If he was not sekasha-caste, I would not care what you do with him. My duty here is clear. He is of the holy blood. His clan must be told. This is no way for one such as he should live."

  Blue jerked in John's hold.

  "I'll take the child to Wolf Who Rules." John struggled to keep his brother checked. "I swear I will."

  The sekasha looked down the street to where his people searched for oni. As John hoped, he deemed it easier to let John handle the problem than to abandon his duties. "I will know if you break your vow. I will not be kind."

  "John always keeps his promises." Blue snapped.

  The sekasha smiled. "He has his father's reactions."

  "What do you mean?" John asked.

  "We sekasha—we protect those we love."

  ****

  "You shouldn't have promised." Blue swung up onto the counter of the old fireman's kitchen as John opened the fridge and dug through it, looking for a beer. "It means you have to do it."

  "I didn't want him taking you with him."

  "He couldn't have done that!" Blue cried.

  "He's a sekasha." John found an Iron City beer, opened it and drank deeply. He was still shaking from the encounter. In the stainless steel surface of the fridge, he could see the line where the sword blade had pressed against his throat. "They're allowed to do anything they want. They're considered too holy to be bound by law made by mortals."

  All his life, John had watched the Wind Clan sekasha prowl the city like lions among lambs. Even other elves watched them with fear. Thus, he'd been terrified when his mother brought a drunk sekasha home. At thirteen, he was just beginning to realize that she wasn't fully sane and that he couldn't trust her to keep them safe. John spent the night sure that the warrior would kill her when he sobered.

  After Blue Sky was born, their mother grew more and more erratic. The treaty with the elves banned criminals, the insane, and orphans; the elves didn't want the dredges of humanity littering their world. The same treaty, however, meant Blue Sky couldn't travel to Earth. Caught between the two rules, John struggled to keep his mother's insanity hidden until he was eighteen. At that point, John sent his mother to Earth and stayed behind to become Blue's guardian.

  Until today, his greatest fear was that the elves would kill Blue out of hand, deeming his human genetics a stain on their holy blood line.

  Now, he was afraid that even a half-blood like Blue was too holy to be raised by a mere human.

  "So, what do we do?" Blue asked.

  John sighed and put down his beer. He'd put this off for years. There was one glimmer of hope. "Come on, let's go."

  "Where are we going?"

  "I'm going to see if Tinker can do anything about this."

  Tinker and her cousin, Oilcan, could be called good friends. They had the same interests, traded business, knew the same people, and went to the same parties. Like John and Blue, the cousins were orphans and only had each other. John would like to think it created a bond between them—but he'd learned in the past that when things went horribly wrong in your life, the people you thought could trust sometimes turned their back on you.

  Luck, courage and a good bit of ingenuity had landed Tinker in a position of power as the wife of the clan head, Wolf Who Rules. If anyone in Pittsburgh could help them, she could.

  But the question was—would she?

  ****

  The elfin enclaves lined where the Rim used to cut through Oakland. Each a block wide and half a mile deep, the high walled residences acted as both hotels and restaurants. Since everything about the clan head was tabloid fodder, everyone in Pittsburgh knew that Tinker and her new husband were living at the Poppymeadow enclave.

  John and Blue Sky passed through three checkpoints on their way to Oakland. Each time they were questioned in depth, searched for weapons, and checked by spell to see if they were oni. It took them two hours to work their way to the enclaves. John parked his pickup and they walked to the tall garden gate that normally stood open, but found it shut and locked. He tried knocking.

  A slot gate opened and an elf peered out at them.

  "Forgiveness," the elf said. "The dining room is not open."

  "I need to see—" John realized that saying Tinker's name without her proper title would be considered rude. Elves set store on that kind of thing. He frowned a moment, trying to remember her new title. "Domi. I beg you. May I speak with Tinker domi?"

  "Who asks?"

  "John Montana," And then quickly, he added. "It's clan business! I'm here to see her as the clan's domi."

  "Wait here."

  Blue had been kicking pebbles. When the slot shut, he scoffed. "Clan business."

  John smacked him on the back of the head. "Behave."

  "I don't like you groveling to them."

  "It's not groveling, it's fitting in. At the race track, you fit in by acting tough and saying you've got the best team. Different place�
��different set of rules."

  "At the races, we're all equal. Elves are all about keeping people under your thumb."

  "You sound like half the rednecks of Pittsburgh."

  "I am one, that's why. My father never cared enough to see how I was doing. I don't see why we have to do this."

  "Your father didn't know about you—"

  "Because he was a murdering psychopath of a sekasha and our mother was a nutcase."

  John ignored that little rant. "At the races, you know that if anyone on the pit crew didn't do what I told them, they'd be off the team. Every place has rules—and none of them are better or wrong—they just are."

  There was a rattle of metal on wood—the bar on the gate was being drawn. They were being let in.

  "Now be polite and don't screw this up—or you might be staying here when I go home."

  Blue gave him a terrified look, but was polite as they were frisked for weapons and once again, checked to see if they were disguised oni.

  ****

  Tinker was just a year older than Blue—thus John had known her all her life—and yet, when they were escorted into an orchard courtyard, he barely recognized her. Oilcan had told him about the physical transformation. John had guessed that power would probably also change her—but he hadn't been ready for this.

  He had known a coltish girl dressed in dirty hand-me-downs. She enjoyed her solitary junkyard existence because it allowed her to play mad inventor. Famous for her virginity, she unknowingly blew away all would-be suitors with aggressive intelligence, fierce independence, and stunning naivety.

  This stranger wore a dress of fairy silk green that shimmered against her dusky skin. With magic, her eyes and ears—along with her underlying DNA—had been changed from human to elfin. She lay on a blanket in the dappled shade, her head resting on the lap of a young male sekasha. Four more sekasha watched John intently, while pretending polite disinterest. It was difficult to judge the ages of elves, but John thought that all five seemed young, as if Wolf Who Rules tried to match up his wife up with guards who were just "teenagers" themselves. Despite the tranquil setting, the three males and two females bristled with weapons. Whereas the Fire Clan sekasha had been red-heads, the Wind Clan sekasha were dark-haired and blue-eyed like Blue Sky. Their spell tattoos and scaled chest armor were in the deep blue which identified their clan.