Second Round: A Return to the Ur-Bar

by Garth Nix

* * *

  I wandered until I found myself heading up Washington, then noticed a crowd gathered in front of a food truck. They weren’t office workers, though. They were dressed in all different ways, from colonial garb to modern. One guy in white tie and tails even rode a horse up to the window and trotted away holding a large sack.

  As I drew closer, an elderly woman broke away and tottered in my direction, a paper boat in hand. For a moment, a shadow closed in behind her, arm raised. Then, it vanished. “I don’t usually eat in the street, but it’s so good.” She waved a plastic fork at me. “I’m Dora, dear—I saw you in the bar. We must talk later.” She stepped out into the street and continued to peck at her food as cars and trucks drove through her.

  I got in line and spotted Tasso peeling potatoes at the counter. “So this is where you work?” He looked down at me and smiled, but before he could say anything, a door at the opposite end of the truck opened and Gil stepped inside. Behind him, I caught a glimpse of the bar. It looked busier than it had been when I was there, every stool and many of the tables and booths occupied. “How did you do that?”

  Gil cocked an eyebrow. “Magic?”.

  “But a food truck?”

  “It’s New York.” Gil grabbed a ladle and scooped something steaming and fragrant out of a pot into another paper boat. “Try this. It’s a new recipe.”

  I stepped around a fire hydrant and up to the window. “Aren’t you worried about getting a ticket?”

  “I would be if anyone who wrote them could see us.”

  I took hold of the boat, sniffed a muddle of chicken and strange vegetables and spices, then took a tentative bite. “It’s good.” I leaned against the truck, felt the machinery vibration. “So.”

  Gil waited on the next customer, but kept an eye on me. “So?”

  “I’ve joined a really special club, haven’t I?”

  Gil nodded. “Jealous lovers. Greedy relatives. Friends who were not as they seemed.” Steam puffed around him as he flipped the contents of a fry pan. “You found out what you needed to know.”

  “You knew it already, didn’t you? You could’ve saved me a lot of time.”

  “Because you would’ve believed me?” Gil set down the pan, picked up a knife, then paused. “I am sorry.”

  I shrugged. “Ginny asked me if I was going to haunt her.”

  “Will you?”

  “What would be the point?”

  “Revenge. Justice. Why else would you do it?”

  “I won’t say that it didn’t cross my mind.” I stabbed a hunk of chicken with my fork. “She’s in real trouble.”

  Gil nodded. “Yes, she is.”

  I looked around. “I’ll be seeing her around here soon, won’t I?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “You’d serve her?”

  “He has to.” Tasso brushed off a bit of potato peel that had stuck to his T-shirt. “He’s the bar and the bar is him. He can never leave it. He must tend it until the end of time.” He started to say more, but Gil caught his eye and he fell silent.

  Gil sighed. “Tasso’s correct.” He wet a napkin in the sink and handed it down to a young woman holding a food-encrusted toddler. “The bar is a gateway. A first stop along a new path. Some need only a short rest before moving on.” He set his massive hands on the counter and surveyed the crowd like a proud father. “But others need more time, and for them, the bar becomes more than just a bar.”

  I studied his face and saw the shifting in and out that I had seen with Tasso, Dora, Ginny and Billy. The layers of being, of what he was now and what he had once been. Scars. Braided hair. A helmet. A sword. A crown. I realized then how long he had lived, all he had seen, the others he had known, and knew that he had decided long ago to make a place for those who needed it. And I sensed deep down that there was room for me in this place, and that for the first time in my life, I could belong somewhere.

  * * *

  I hung around the truck until it closed and introduced myself to a few of the regulars. The Twins. Sam from Hoboken, who like me had been the victim of a murderous business partner. We compared notes for a while and agreed to meet at the bar later for a drink.

  Afterwards, I walked. Strange, this new sunlight. Diffuse, as though filtered through leaves. I headed back to the garbage can with the Lou Reed poster. When the image saw me coming, it rolled its eyes and growled. “You again.”

  “Yeah, me again.” I sat on the sidewalk beside the can. “Are you really Lou?”

  “I am a Lou.” The face grinned. “One of many.”

  “Rats.”

  “Rough day?”

  “Educational.”

  “Busload of Faith, girl. That’s what it takes.” The image grumbled under its breath, then lowered the torch—lines blurred and shifted until it lengthened into a guitar neck and the flame grew and rounded into the body. I rested my head against the can, watched the overlay of street scenes. and listened to the music—“Sweet Jane” into “Sunday Morning” into “Satellite of Love.”

  Then came a pause. “How about ‘Femme Fatale?’”

  “Not that one.”

  “‘Beginning to See the Light?’”

  “That works. That works just fine.” As the song rumbled in my ear, my strange day settled into quiet night. The first setting of my new sun, different yet the same, followed by more stars than I had ever seen before, and the promise of a new day.

  Thievery Bar None

  Aaron M. Roth

  Barasa sometimes thinks of himself as a sort of Robin Hood figure. The only significant difference, he tells himself, is that instead of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, he steals from the rich and sells to other rich.

  His current customer today, sitting across from him, is slowly turning over the chalice in his hands. They have demanded that Barasa travel all the way to Perth for the transaction. Back in the days when his finances were greater and the physical threats to his person lesser, he would have scoffed. He always found traveling a real pain. But today, Barasa needs this. Needs something quickly. His debtors can extract payment in multiple ways. Barasa hopes he’ll be able to pay with money.

  The stranger is frowning at the fragile vessel, appraising it, or pretending to at least. At this initial stage, with a new person, Barasa always finds himself wondering, Will this one see how beautiful it is?

  What the curves of a beautiful woman are to some men, is what the unique bends in an antique object are to Barasa. Barasa will speak to new pieces as if to court them, telling them how their previous owners didn’t appreciate them like Barasa does. Genuine antiques from the ancient or even pre-modern past. “There is nothing like it. Nothing like you!” Barasa will say in conversation with an old desk. “Nothing!” Turning to a grandfather clock he might then admit, “Okay, to be fair, repros these days can be very much like you. But isn’t it exciting, even when you need a machine to distinguish between them?”

  Rubbing the table at which he is seated, Barasa is reminded that this tavern isn’t anything special. Which is good. He chose it for being large and low-key. The mix of patrons here was such that Barasa could blend in and his presence would not be remarkable. This table is a repro, but it’s a good one.

  Barasa liberates treasures from unworthy owners. As for the new owners—well, Barasa thinks, a person who is willing to purchase an object on the black market, such that it can never be publicly displayed? Such a person can be said to appreciate its intrinsic value.

  This stranger is now running an erometer all around the object. Barasa is a big advocate for them. “Great little inventions,” Barasa will say, openly recommending them to clients. “Better than carbon-dating.” If they hadn’t been invented in the early twenty-second century, differences between fakes and real antiques may have become so indistinguishable that Barasa’s line of work wouldn’t exist.

  The stranger is holding it wrong though. He seems to be more unsophisticated than Barasa would prefer, but that is par for the course.
Barasa reminds himself that a poseur’s currency holds the same value as anyone else’s. He is running a business.

  “It seems genuine, as you said. The condition leaves something to be desired. See …” the customer begins.

  “The condition is excellent, just as described.” Barasa interrupts, familiar with all the feints of negotiation. “I’m not giving a discount.” A bluff, today.

  “What about a bulk discount? Do you have any other artifacts from the categories on the list I sent you?” the stranger rejoins.

  Ah, if only! Barasa thinks, closing his eyes briefly and stifling a sigh of anguish.

  “I just recently had a relevant lot,” Barasa admits, “but I already committed to sell it to someone else.” Sold, but never delivered.

  A pit forms in Barasa’s stomach. A thirty-one-piece Japanese moriage dragonware tea set. The collection was ornate, well preserved, used by famous figures, and of provable provenance and origin (Noritake, Nippon-era). It would have been his biggest profit ever. (And put him in good with Julen Baz, a mover and shaker in the Mombasa underworld.) The advance alone was more than his other top five sales combined. “And yet,” he berated himself on perhaps an hourly basis since then, “like a mjinga, I had to spend it all before the transaction was complete.” The police had discovered and broken up the handoff, arrested Barasa’s proxy (and Baz’s), and confiscated the merchandise for themselves. Baz was angry and demanded a refund, which Barasa could not pay.

  The stranger is looking down, still considering.

  They are interrupted as a muscular arm delivers two giant mugs of beer. Barasa doesn’t look at the server, just continues evaluating the stranger, who smiles for the first time.

  “Ah! Thank you. Listen,” the stranger says earnestly to Barasa, “The beer here is the best. I’m sure it’s better than whatever swill you have in Africa.”

  Barasa is no fool and he smells the beer and looks at it, letting his olfactory and ocular implants check for poisons. Seems to be clean. Barasa is also a salesman, so, hiding his annoyance he lifts his mug, clinks it with the stranger’s, and drinks.

  Really though, Barasa thinks, in Kenya you can get tea from the best tea leaves in the world (to this day exported to other regions for blending with inferior local teas!) and consume a beverage that doesn’t require dulling the senses to enjoy. The beer back home is just fine, too.

  The stranger sighs, says, “I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m interested after all,” and hands Barasa back the chalice.

  Somewhat surprised, Barasa takes it back. He looks at it and by habit holds it in his left hand and rubs the surface with the thumb of his right. Then, after a few moments, with an affronted grunt, he pauses and squints.

  “Ha. What a cheeky bastard …” Barasa mutters under his breath, setting the vessel down on the table. He picks up his mug of beer and in a swift motion brings it down upon the chalice. Flecks of material and beer litter the table as well as the shocked figure of the stranger himself. The din of the bar is loud and, after a few glances at the sound, no one else seems to pay them any heed.

  “Nice repro,” Barasa says, “but if you want to keep the chalice, you have to pay for it.”

  Glaring at the stranger, Barasa projects a menacing contempt. The stranger taps a pocket on his coat absently and looks down, sullen and ashamed—and frightened, Barasa hopes—and after a moment his eyes flit up tentatively at Barasa before returning to the floor. Barasa’s neural implant indicates that the payment has been received.

  “Ok,” says Barasa. “We’re square.”

  The stranger rushes out. Barasa grins. Any sale is a successful sale. He decides that it has been worth the intercontinental trip. He leans back and stretches, taking in the room again. He has staked it out ahead of time, of course, but it doesn’t hurt to look around again, check for watchful eyes. All seems well.

  He figures he will linger for a few minutes and then leave. He stands and ambles to the wall. Hanging on it, among other junk, is a quite impressive ancient-looking stone tablet. Barasa smiles. He can appreciate this.

  You’re a piece of good work indeed, Barasa thinks, addressing the tablet. No cheap knockoff, you. What are you supposed to be, Egyptian? No, Sumerian. Good attention to detail. There are actual characters on you, not just squiggles. The wear is a bit much. Wear comes from being out in the elements, or from being used. A stone tablet, found in the ground after thousands of years, wouldn’t look like this. Now, if a tablet like you had actually been in a bar for a few thousand years—oh. Ha, that is some subtle humor. Barasa really hopes he is laughing at the fine joke of a master reproductionist and not reading too much into the shoddy craftsmanship of a rube.

  Barasa takes out his own erometer. It is fine-grained enough to be useful for recent constructions, too. Might tell him enough info to track down the artist. Barasa likes to keep abreast of the latest advances in the field so that he can stay ahead of the game himself.

  He begins to run it over the surface of the stone. Then, pulse quickening, he continues to run it over all of its parts. “No,” he whispers, “it can’t be.” The device is telling him that it is genuinely old. Really old.

  It has to be a fake, given the grungy nature of the establishment. But his erometer is state of the art. If it can be fooled, Barasa realizes, then it would be enough to fool any client. To top it all off, a quick check discovers that nothing matching its description even appears in the Worldwide Database of Artifacts and Collectibles.

  This is big, Barasa confirms as he thinks through the possibilities, Julen Baz might like it. Pay off the debt. Or even sell to someone else at a high price, pay off Julen Baz, and still come out ahead.

  Oh yes, this is going to be a profitable trip.

  He looks around. No one is taking an interest in him. He looks at the large man behind the bar, who is concentrating on cleaning a glass. Barasa’s earlier customer had noted him as the owner of the place. An imposing man physically, to be sure. Barasa sizes him up. He watches the owner interact with his space and his customers at the bar. He is secure in this space, almost a part of it. The owner looks like he belongs there, serving drinks, more than any barkeep Barasa has ever seen, somehow. Yet, probably the owner knows not much in life beyond running his bar. His security will probably be good. But Barasa wonders, does he realize the treasure that is out here, worth more than any liquor on the shelf? Barasa’s profile of the establishment (the standard one he undertakes before any meeting, even in public) seemed to indicate there is no computerized security system. A physical lock seems to be it. (Perhaps, Barasa assumes, the liquor itself is stored in a more secure inner vault each night?)

  “I don’t think he understands you,” Barasa murmurs to the tablet, “I don’t think he sees you like I do …”

  Barasa doesn’t want to underestimate things by anticipating an easy job, but there is no question it’s doable.

  In a few nights’ time, Barasa will steal the stone tablet.

  * * *

  The piece is located in a bar, so this early morning hour is when it has to be done—well after closing, but still before sunrise. Barasa stands outside the bar’s back door, next to a large suitcase, listening to the readings from sensors he has placed strategically on the outside of the building days earlier.

  There is a single occupant that his tools can detect (the owner, he supposes), seemingly asleep, as he has been each day by this time. Barasa silently approaches the back door and begins to work. An observer would see an unremarkable man nonchalantly unlocking a door and entering. His hands hide the automatic lock-picking device he uses on the keyholes. A practiced casual downward swipe with the laser-blade clips off the deadbolts.

  Barasa is on high alert as he enters, taking a cautious step inside, prepared to deploy any number of countermeasures or even flee, depending on the security he encounters within. His prep scouting has not uncovered any defensive measures, but one can’t rely on that.

  Nothing happens. No automated defens
e drones. No beeps of tripwires, fake or real. His sensors, feeding data to his implant, do not detect any silent calls to the police or private security services.

  Well then, he thinks, time to get to work, though he can’t relax his vigilance. Barasa drags in the suitcase from outside and closes the door.

  He approaches the tablet. In the darkness, it seems to have its own glow. It is valuable. Barasa can’t help but fantasize: what if it really is as genuine and as old as the erometer claims? Barasa’s heartbeat accelerates as he opens the suitcase. Inside it are swaddling materials to pack the artifact safely, along with other tools. He takes some of the bundling material out of the suitcase and leaves it open beneath the artifact. Barasa looks at how it is secured. It seems to be simply resting on a stand on the wall, not secured in any special way.

  He grips the tablet and pulls it down, causing it to fall into the suitcase with a thunk. He hopes the owner will not wake up at the sound. He pats his weapon holster, reassuring himself that he is prepared for that contingency, too. This doesn’t seem to him to be a posh part of town where a death would kick up a fuss.

  Still, he works quickly, packing in the artifact as safe as can be made and securing the suitcase.

  Then, he exits the bar, lugging the suitcase with the stolen tablet behind him.

  * * *

  Barasa is nothing if not dedicated. To avoid there being a record of his having been near the bar this night, he spends an hour lugging the suitcase across town, taking a route he has planned so as to avoid electronic surveillance. Only then does he trigger his neural implant to call for a taxi.

  At the intercontinental train station he is a passenger like any other, ticket purchased a few days earlier. His latest acquisition weighs a ton, though. It seemed to get heavier over the course of traveling here. Barasa is drenched in sweat and can barely move. Rolling it down the street was one thing, but he has a redcap carry it into his private cabin and help stow it in the luggage compartment above the seat.