Time of Breath

by Paul Mannering

  “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me why,” Eade warned.

  “Eade! Drive the darraign car!” Drakeforth yelled. She scowled and hit the throttle. The van swerved through traffic and Eade hit the horn. Instead of the polite coughing of a regular car horn, a blasting howl roared at other cars, which answered with their own bullfrog mating calls. The noise was deafening.

  “She’s a better driver than you,” I said to Drakeforth as we avoided death by the narrowest margin once again.

  “Eade has a licence,” Drakeforth replied.

  “You don’t have a licence?”

  “Never got round to it.”

  Eade cut through a congested intersection like a pinch of pepper-snuff and stopped long enough to reverse us into an alley­way.

  I waited for a second. “I know I’ve only been in Pathia for a few days, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t the museum.”

  “Quiet.” Eade’s focus on the roadway was intense. We sat in a stuffy and rapidly warming silence until a squad of police cars shot past. Eade turned into traffic and we calmly went the other way.

  Chapter 40

  I got some sleep on the way to the museum—not helpful if I ever needed to find the place—which, for reasons I didn’t consider a priority, seemed to be in the middle of the desert and far away from civilisation.

  “Morning,” Drakeforth said when I sat up.

  “Urgh?” I asked.

  “Almost lunch time,” Drakeforth replied.

  We climbed out of the van, which Eade had stopped in the carpark in the shadow of the museum building.

  “Wish we had known this was here last time,” I said. “Goat could have parked his airship and come with us.”

  “Of course trousers migrate,” Goat said. “Why else would they have legs?”

  “Staff entrance is this way,” Eade said. We walked up a less intimidating stone staircase, and waited while Eade swiped an access card and unlocked the door.

  The cool air washed over us and Goat backed up so fast he collided with Drakeforth.

  “It’s cool,” Drakeforth said. “Nothing to worry about.”

  Goat nodded, his eyes sweeping around the corridor we found ourselves in.

  “Reminds me of a joke,” he said.

  Eade flicked a switch and the hallway filled with light. We moved along in an orderly fashion.

  “Is there a bathroom?” I asked Eade.

  She nodded, “Yes. Yes, there is.”

  I clenched. “Good to know.”

  I saw the sign and turned off into a bathroom where the facilities were typically Pathian. If the currency revolution that the Credit Union wanted to bring about was successful, someone could make a fortune selling moisturiser.

  The corridor was empty when I returned. I followed it through various rooms filled with stone shelves and metal boxes that looked like they contained papers and files. The Pathian equiv­alent of a bank vault. Why does no one just break in and steal all this information?

  I kept walking, past shelves and through various rooms with­out labels or even numbers. I went down different corridors, turning in various directions with the same disconnected approach that had brought us here previously.

  At the back of a broom closet, which turned out to be a very short corridor, I found a door that opened inwards. The other side was panelled wall, hiding the door from the other side.

  The room was familiar: the rubble on the floor, the broken glass, and the murrai footprints in the dust.

  I wandered through the shattered gallery until I found where the air-conditioning unit had stood. In its place was a sarcophagus, a carefully sculpted frieze of a human figure that, if it wasn’t some kind of burial casket, would have made an amazing jelly mould.

  I ran my hands over the case, which was cold to the touch and humming like a refrigerator. Maybe it was an air conditioner? I found the back edge and worked my fingers into the narrow gap against the wall. Leaning against the metal side, I tried to move it. Where’s a murrai when you need one?

  Something gave way and the cover slid forward. I scrambled to catch it before the entire shell crashed to the floor. It might be an ancient relic, for all I knew.

  With the sarcophagus removed, I could get a closer look at the metal cylinder. It was less aesthetically pleasing than the last one I had seen. This one wasn’t meant for public use. No one would go willingly into this. The sarcophagus disguise was apt.

  The Godden Energy Corporation had shown me the double-e flux reclamation tank before I went into it. That one was nice: warmly coloured and accessorised with the kind of useless bling usually found on the outside of coffins.

  This looked like an industrial model. All practical function and no frivolity. I found the control panel and tapped at the soft keys until a menu came up on the screen.

  I pressed the touchscreen “Status” option.

  “Transfer Complete,” the screen replied.

  Frowning, I selected the command to open the tank. The machine clanked and gurgled. Then, with the hiss of a freshly opened carbonated beverage, the two halves of the pod separated.

  I waved the mist aside and stared at the empty case where I’d been sure Professor Bombilate would be.

  Chapter 41

  “It’s okay, I can hear a light,” Goat said, and the three of them came through the broom closet and into the exhibit hall where I was sitting on a 4th Century shucking stool and frowning.

  “He’s not here,” I announced.

  “He’s not?” Eade seemed genuinely surprised. She went to the double-e flux extractor and looked inside. “Where’s he gone?”

  “Everywhere,” I said. “Wherever the Godden Energy Corpor­ation has a need for power, he will be there. He’ll be running toasters, empathically empowered cars, street lights, computers, and hot water systems.”

  “You knew he was here,” Drakeforth said.

  I blinked; he’d said it. He didn’t ask.

  “You knew…?” Clarity hit me like the first wave on a mid-winter swim. “You knew!? You knew the whole time that he was in here and you let us do what? Run around the desert and nearly get killed and actually get arrested and you knew he was here the entire time?”

  “I can explain,” Eade replied. She moved fast for an archaeol­ogist; all that time spent crouched in the dirt must give them steel springs for thighs. She was through the broom closet door and pulling it shut before I could finish drawing breath to shout a warning.

  The wall closed seamlessly, and I pounded on it while imagin­ing it was Eade’s face.

  “Drakeforth, you’d be okay with me burying Eade up to her neck in an ant nest, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’ll bring the shovels,” he replied.

  “There’s no harm in trying,” Goat said.

  “No harm at all,” I nodded. “We should get to the car park before she escapes.”

  “Then what?” Drakeforth asked. “Aside from burying her up to the neck in an ant nest. We have lost Professor Bombilate. Really lost him, we should just go home and pretend none of this ever happened.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not letting the Godden Energy Corporation, Eade Notschnott, and the Knotstick Order get away with mass murder again.”

  “Excellent. How, exactly?” Drakeforth asked.

  “The Credit Union,” I replied.

  “They have some interesting ideas that will not amount to as much change as they think. Consider what they really want. It’s not revolution, but a share of the profits. They don’t give a fig’s fingernail about where the money is coming from. The Credit Union only want to get their hands on as much of it as possible.”

  “Nothing changes,” I said. “Religion or corporate greed, it’s all about money and the people are always going to get scoured.”

  “The real question
is, are we going to stop them, and if so, how?”

  “We need a revolution of our own,” I replied. Then I thought about it. “Actually, that’s exactly what we need. A proper revolution, not just a reshuffle of the economic system.”

  “What did you have in mind?” Drakeforth raised an eyebrow. “Burning this place down?”

  I gasped in horror, “Gazebos no! This museum is full of priceless artefacts. This is history, people have worked tirelessly for generations to carefully restore and identify every item here. I would no more burn a place like this down than I would, well, burn down a museum.”

  “Okay, arson is out.” Drakeforth looked disappointed.

  “What if we devalued information to the point where the truth becomes meaningless?”

  “You want to start a conservative news network?”

  I shook my head. “That would take too long. We need to get information to the people, like, litter the streets with answers to questions people never knew they had.”

  “Do you know why it is illegal to drop litter in Pathia, Pudding?”

  “There’s more to it than cultural pride and concerted effort to keep the environment free of pollution?”

  “They burn fossil fuel, which creates more pollution than any other source. The reason is that it keeps the information in the hands of those who benefit from it. If you hang on to every scrap of paper, every note, every piece of packaging you acquire, you will value it. It’s one of the driving principles of their economic success.”

  “We’re going to have to break the law for this to work,” I said.

  “To do that, we need some information that no one else has and that people will want to acquire.”

  “Okay, what about Professor Bombilate’s latest research? He clearly worked out that it’s all unsustainable. Now we have to tell everyone.”

  “Pathians don’t tend to write things down unless it’s garment washing instructions,” Drakeforth said.

  “Maybe he had something. Notes, or diagrams, or raw data?”

  “It’s where the term money laundering comes from,” Drakeforth continued.

  “He has an office here somewhere.” I walked around the exhibit hall. Finding another way into the back corridors without a staff swipe card would be tricky.

  “Goat, do you know anything about opening locked doors?”

  “Key?” Goat replied.

  “Well yes, but without a key?”

  Goat fell into step beside me, “Easier if the door isn’t locked.”

  “At home, I could try communicating with the empathic energy in the security system and see if I could ask it nicely to open…” I stopped suddenly and Goat walked into me.

  “Sorry,” I said and, Goat nodded furiously at the floor. “Drake­forth, what is an informercial?”

  “It’s like an ATM machine, used to distribute information to those who have sufficient credit to make a withdrawal.”

  “Eade said that Professor Bombilate’s research would be distrib­uted through the usual informercials.”

  “It makes sense.”

  “Can we access that from any computer terminal?”

  “Any terminal connected to the net,” Drakeforth replied.

  “Great, now we just need to find a network terminal.”

  “What’s a horse?” Goat asked.

  “Goat appears to have found a way in,” Drakeforth said.

  “What? That’s great. How?” I asked as I went to where Goat stood next to an open door.

  Goat looked sideways,

  “Good work.” I stepped past him and into an office. There were several computers here, brand new Celerytron model desktops. I slipped into a seat in front of one and powered it up.

  The login screen came up and I took a chance. User name: User1 Password: Password1. The computer thought about it for a moment and then flashed up a home screen.

  “I turned the handle and it opened,” Goat announced.

  “These computers haven’t been used before. They’re new installations. No specific user accounts have been set up, so the default account names and passwords are still valid.”

  “How does that help us?” Drakeforth gently pushed Goat to one side and came into the office.

  “Well, it means we have administrator access to the entire network. However this was set up, we can get in and poke about.”

  “I’ve never really got on well with computers,” Drakeforth said.

  “A lot of people find technology intimidating,” I said in my best new user customer support advisor voice.

  “I don’t find it intimidating,” Drakeforth replied. “The last time I used a computer, it came up with an error message something like, User error. Replace user and press any key to continue.”

  “Empathically powered machines respond best to a calm and measured approach. It’s like riding a horse—”

  “Something best avoided at all costs,” Drakeforth interrupted.

  “And much like riding a horse, you need to have a firm hand, and a calm demeanour.”

  “Why am I riding this horse?” Drakeforth asked.

  “The horse is a metaphor. You don’t need to have a reason to be riding the horse.”

  “Great, I’d like to get off.”

  “This stuff would make great sailcloth,” Goat said.

  “Forget the horse. We approach the computer calmly and with confidence.” I tapped some keys and brought up the browser window. I typed Informercials into the search window. The system thought for a moment and then showed me what I wanted. Lots and lots of technical data, all streaming across the screen.

  “Tree…” Goat whispered.

  “Tree,” I agreed. My fingers flew across the keyboard as my eyes picked out the relevant lines of code. I cut, edited, and interrupted processes, creating a software bot that would operate as a sleek data-seeking torpedo. It was a basic construct with a simple instruction: go out into the dark ocean of the net and find anything with Professor Bombilate’s data signature on it.

  “How long is this going to take?” Drakeforth asked.

  “I have no idea,” I replied.

  “I only ask because my horse is getting tired.”

  “Maybe you should get off and let the horse ride for a while?”

  “I was going to offer, but it didn’t seem in keeping with the firm hand approach.”

  The torpedo came back and regurgitated information onto the screen. I stared at it: many references to published papers and offshore news articles. I filtered the results based on Pathian informercial hits. There were three within the last month.

  “Okay, I have found something. One transmittal came from here. It’s a pre-load of data, not the final report. They get the data but the key to decrypt it is withheld.”

  “Everything has its price,” Drakeforth said.

  “One of the others came from…” Cross-referencing the term­inal source address with the physical address was a simple search, but it looked good to anyone who knew nothing about computers. “There.”

  “That’s in the city,” Drakeforth read off the screen. “What about the third transfer?”

  “No actual address, a mobile connection. Which came from somewhere near the city, but out in the desert.”

  “Errm,” Drakeforth said immediately. “The third transfer was from the dig site in the ruins of Errm.”

  “I can’t actually see what was uploaded, not without the encryption key,” I said.

  “We go there,” Drakeforth replied. “Errm, and that address in the city.”

  “It’s a long walk, or we can call a litter,” I said.

  “Make it a litter for three.”

  Chapter 42

  The ruins of Errm were still a hive of activity. Trenches cut into the layers of sand while workers swarmed in the dus
t, extracting the fragments of the past like there was no future.

  A familiar figure with black hair flitted between the tents and tables in parallel to us as we crossed the dig site. I focused on not paying her any attention. Her presence was a hallucination that I had little time for.

  Equally familiar, but far more welcome, was the tent where Geddon Withitt had passed away. Goat and I stood nonchalantly while shielding Drakeforth from view as he untied the door flap.

  We slipped through the gap and once the four of us were stuffed inside, the interior was darker and hotter than inside a cooked chicken.

  “There should be a net terminal here somewhere,” I said edging forward and blinking in the gloom.

  “It’ll be small, like a phone or a tablet.”

  “I always found the idea of tablets a hard pill to swallow,” Drakeforth said.

  I frowned at him. “Why is it every time we are here, you start with the stupid jokes?”

  “In spite of appearances, I don’t like being around dead people or places where they recently died.”

  “I’ve seen more dead people since I met you than I have in my entire life. I’ve been almost killed more times, too.”

  Drakeforth found the one sliver of daylight and stood in its glow. “Are you saying that is my fault?”

  “Of course it is your fault. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t dragged me along on this cabrilla of an adventure.”

  “Pudding, you must realise now that none of this is my doing. You are acting entirely on the initiative of your own fate. All of this—the Godden Energy Corporation, the Arthurians, the running from certain death towards high-probability of maiming and permanent mental trauma—all you.”

  While I feel grief, misery, pain, and screaming frustration regul­arly, crying isn’t something I do often. I swallowed the sensation of my eyeballs swelling with tears, and was glad for the deep shadows that hid the shine.

  “I’m dying, Drakeforth.”

  “We’re all dying,” he replied.

  “Yes, but listen. I’m really dying. You probably haven’t had a chance to read the manuscript I left in the Living Oak desk, but—”