Second Round: A Return to the Ur-Bar

by Garth Nix

  After tipping the redcap, Barasa closes the door to the luggage bin, ensures the door to his cabin is locked, and flops down in the seat.

  He smiles, lets out a laugh that in his drained state comes out as soft guttural noises. Too early to celebrate, he reminds himself … but still, it should be smooth sailing from here.

  It will take full-nine hours on the high speed intercontinental to reach Mombasa from Perth, travelling under the Indian Ocean in a straight shot through the vacuum tube.

  Too physically tired to move, too hopped up on adrenaline to rest, Barasa sits, ponders, and plans.

  After an hour, the food and beverage trolley rolls by. Barasa downloads the menu in his head, opens the door to his cabin, and asks the robot for water, no ice, the chicken biryani, and two packs of cookies. At a mental command, a table folds down from the wall. The attendant-bot hands him the two cookie packs, pulls out a hot covered foil tray from the interior of the cart, and sets it on the table in his cabin. Then the attendant takes a cup and places it under a spigot, pulling down the handle. Barasa grimaces as he sees brown liquid fall into the cup before the bot sets it on his table. Barasa grunts. He hopes it’s a technical malfunction, some syrup getting squirted in, and not some kid pissing in the water container as a practical joke.

  Barasa pushes the “beverage” to the other side of the table and focuses on his food. He opens the top of the biryani container to find that in reality it is fish and chips. He raises his eyebrows and shakes his head. Clearly the food trolley is malfunctioning on multiple levels (probably a software bug, he thinks, all they would have had to do was change the menu for this one), but maybe he’s in the mood for fish and chips anyway. He digs in.

  What a heist, Barasa thinks as he chews. What a find! Once safe back at the shop, I’ll give it a more thorough inspection. It should be in a museum, really. Good thing it’s not. Barasa doesn’t test museum security.

  “Don’t steal jewelry from a jeweler, nor the artifacts from a museum. Steal them from people who don’t know enough to protect them sufficiently,” Barasa will often confide to an artifact gained in such a manner. “That’s the way to go.”

  “A good find indeed.” he says aloud, grinning wide.

  And, even though he had not intended to order it, the fish and chips is good enough for a train ride, if a bit bland, and leaves him full and satisfied.

  Opening a pack of cookies Barasa reaches in and pulls out a pretzel. So, it is a mislabeled bag of pretzels. Ha, he thinks, factory really messing up. Still, he wants a cookie.

  He opens the other pack of cookies and pours them onto his plate. Beer nuts roll out. He has beer nuts and pretzels. Following a meal of fish and chips.

  Barasa squeezes the back of his neck. Then he looks around the tiny cabin, not focusing on anything in particular. He assumes what he is feeling is nothing more than on-the-job nerves. Wouldn’t be the first time. He tells himself that there is nothing threatening about mislabeled bags and wrong menus.

  He eats a beer nut.

  Beer nut. Pretzel. Fish and chips.

  The dark beverage across the table stares at him. He glares back. He pulls it towards himself. Sniffs it.

  Beer.

  He asked for water and the damn malfunctioning bot gave him beer. He pushes it away again. That’s some malfunction, he thinks.

  He suddenly has an unsettling vision of his train compartment as a trap, like a prison floating in the vacuum.

  “No,” he whispers. He is travelling home. “Everything will be fine. The size of the catch is just bringing on the jitters, right?”

  He leans back.

  At the very least, he is tired. Been awake for a whole day and half by now.

  Eventually, he falls asleep.

  * * *

  He wakes up gently. Still lying on his seat in the cabin. The cushion is soft on his face.

  The rhythmic sounds of machinery soothe his ears. He hears muffled voices and a laugh from a neighboring cabin. He hears the barely perceptible hum produced by the systems on the train. He hears the clink of glasses hitting together—

  “What?”

  Barasa sits bolt upright. He stares.

  Across from him, above the facing seat and hanging from underneath the luggage compartment, are rows of hanging glasses. They hang upside down and hit each other gently.

  “So. Ok,” his mind groggily tries to sort this out. “Someone came in while I was napping and put up these glass racks. That is some effed up shit right there. That’s a bit frightening just on account of how weird it is. This cannot be blamed on a software malfunction.

  “Unless … did I just not notice them initially? As high strung as I was? No. Train cabins do not have rows of glasses hanging upside down. You don’t find that in a train cabin, you expect that at a restaurant maybe, or a bar—”

  Barasa looks down at the remnants of his meal, trembling a bit.

  Despite the dryness of his throat, he does not even look at the beer. He prefers to forget that it is there.

  “This train ride needs to end,” Barasa pleads. “It needs to end. That is all.” He checks how much time is left. Forty minutes.

  It would be impossible for him to fall back asleep now. He considers calling an attendant to ask about the rack or to request changing compartments, but he doesn’t want to draw attention to himself. He sits and stresses. He puts everything on the table in the trash and puts the table up. It doesn’t make any sense. What’s happening doesn’t make sense. Someone is pulling some prank on me maybe? But, in the middle of a job, when no one should know where I am? In a train? He is not sure if it’s a message from someone, or what kind of message that would be, or what would motivate a person to do this. A less rational part of his mind screams juju!, but he hasn’t really believed in that since he was a child. “Who did this?” he wants to know. “And why?”

  He pokes his head out of the cabin. The passageway is empty. He pulls back inside.

  The clinking of the glasses unnerves him more and more. It seems to only increase.

  Finally, after an excruciating wait, the train arrives.

  Opening the luggage compartment, Barasa sees his suitcase—surrounded by bottles and bottles of liquor and spirits. Barasa throws them to the floor and pulls the suitcase down. It crashes into and smashes some of the bottles. Barasa does not care. Let them be smashed. He wonders where they came from. Maybe he didn’t notice them when he put the luggage in at the beginning? Yet, at the beginning of the ride, the luggage had seemed to barely fit.

  He has to get out of here. He can’t wait for the redcap. He needs to get off this train now.

  Barasa looks down the passageway, spying a brawny fellow walking closer.

  “Hey you!” Barasa says. “Can you help me carry my luggage off the train?”

  The person protests that it’s not their job. Barasa ducks back into his cabin, finds the most expensive-looking bottles that are unbroken and brandishes them as an offer.

  “Take this,” Barasa pleads, “or any of the other bottles you want!”

  In return for these scotch whiskies, stuffed into the person’s backpack, Barasa receives assistance with his suitcase.

  Though still out of sorts, Barasa is pleased. Mombasa. Familiar turf. It’s still the afternoon here, due to the time change. Emerging into the city air, he first smells the mingling of ocean, palm oil, and cement dust. As he walks another step the scents from the sweat of the crowds and the exhaust of off-grid machines flouting the green laws make themselves known, along with that classic mix of spices he didn’t know was especially Kenyan until he first traveled abroad. Looking up, he sees the heights of buildings rise almost in a slope from the squat ones here, not far from the water, to the reaching towers in the distance in the heart of the city. Public transportation slowly grows in capacity, but so too does the population of people who seek to use it, and so everything is always crowded.

  The tuk-tuk ride home is wonderfully uneventful. He watches the scenery
of the different neighborhoods: the vehicles and drones that bustle about the industrial zone; the streets filled with cars, buses, tuk-tuks, bicycles and other manner of contraptions. All over, people of so many different kinds. Some hurry about their business. Others retain a carefree, slow-paced nature even in this busy place. Some neighborhoods will be full of music and dancing all afternoon and evening. When the tuk-tuk is forced to slow, he hears snippets of conversation in the many languages native to his hometown. Foreign languages are not out of place either. Now they ride on to a neighborhood where residents and businesses are interspersed, neither too quiet nor too loud. Busy enough that he and anyone he meets can come and go and be lost in a crowd, but still such that there exists a low-traffic alley where Barasa now tells the driver to enter and let him off. It’s only slightly quieter here, but even that modicum is noticeable. The sounds of the city are still present, but dampened and hidden by the surrounding buildings.

  The entrance to Barasa’s own abode slash workshop slash showroom is, for the uninvited, impossible to enter. (Nor would you even notice it was there unless you were looking specifically for it.) Physical and digital locks and security systems on the entryways and internal spaces abound. Barasa does not take any chances nor spare any expense in this regard.

  At the threshold, he takes a moment to enter the proper codes and authorizations, and then hauls his suitcase inside.

  He opens the suitcase. The artifact is still there. (Of course, he reprimands himself gently, what did he expect?) Nothing has crept into his luggage that shouldn’t be there.

  His place is as he left it. Sometimes he has a qualified customer who wants to “browse,” so he has a bit of a showroom for that purpose. Not his top pieces, but a good-looking array. A few furniture pieces strewn about. Several wooden cabinets. All the furniture is empty. He doesn’t use any of the merchandise functionally. Glass display cases hold jewelry and other small artifacts.

  Now he can relax. The train ride feels like a bad dream. The increasing anxiety he felt during the trip seems unwarranted and shameful now that he is secure. The tavern that sourced his new treasure is literally an ocean away.

  Barasa does a thorough check of his security measures, making sure that everything is fully armed. Then he goes downstairs to his private residence beneath the showroom and takes a shower.

  The job is done. The artifact is in his possession, secure in his home. Whatever was happening on the train, assuming there was even anything at all outside of his imagination, cannot get to him now. And indeed, there is no fortress like the home of Barasa.

  He is safe.

  * * *

  Ravenous, he cooks himself up a batch of karanga. While waiting for it to cook, he opens a pack of cassava crisps to munch on and is happy to find cassava crisps inside. When the stew is ready, he eats it with chipatis.

  When Barasa finishes his meal, an irrational fear seizes him. He rushes from his kitchen up to the front room.

  All seems well. The tablet lays in the open suitcase. The room is the same as always. But then, he admonishes himself once again, what did he expect?

  Still, he heaves a sigh of relief and ensconces himself in a comfortable chair. Not an antique, the chair was a repro, meant for actual sitting.

  Barasa sits and surveys his domain.

  Suddenly the door to his storeroom opens and a giant of a man casually walks out. Well-built and handsome. Dressed in the Western fashion, but not of the West. Barasa can usually tell someone’s background, having grown up in the multicultural mix that contemporary Mombasa has become, but he cannot place this man’s ethnicity. He can’t shake the feeling that he’s seen this man somewhere before.

  Without moving a muscle, via neural implant, Barasa instructs the house security system to subdue the intruder. The system tells him there are no intruders. “What?” He queries the system regarding persons on the premises.

  Barasa Komen, resident

  Gilgamesh, resident

  So, he thinks, that’s who he is dealing with: some sort of expert hacker calling himself Gilgamesh. It would not be the first time Barasa was outclassed in some capacity—but he still always came out ahead. The intruder hasn’t tried to kill him, which must mean this “Gilgamesh” wants something—or else didn’t know he was here.

  The man is standing in the middle of the room, surveying it appraisingly. Not like a buyer, Barasa notes in his mental assessment. Like an owner. Like a sonko. What an arrogant shit. Eventually, the man’s gaze reaches Barasa.

  “Gilgamesh,” says Barasa.

  “Please,” says the man, “call me Gil.”

  Gil begins to take some of the tables and place them in a row a few feet from the cabinets. He lifts them with impressive ease.

  “You are in my showroom,” says Barasa. He wants to punch this Gil in the face and upbraid him for touching his tables, but that can wait. Barasa knows that he needs to keep his cool and figure out what he’s dealing with here. He clenches his teeth and, with some effort, does no more than stand up.

  After Gil does not respond, Barasa decides to cut short the waiting game and ask the obvious.

  “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

  Gil pauses.

  “You seemed to already know my name. If you don’t know who I am, that’s more your fault than mine. But come, have a drink with me.”

  Gil opens a wooden cabinet that should be empty and pulls out a bottle of gin. Barasa notices that the glass cases along that wall now have various liquor bottles disturbing the jewelry and other items on display there. Just like on the train, Barasa realizes. Were they already here when I got back?

  Barasa says only, “No,” in reply. Barasa is walking in an arc, slowly approaching the table where Gil stands. Only one of us is leaving here alive, Barasa thinks. I don’t care what your game is, ‘Gil,’ I will not forgive this trespass. Barasa smells each distinctive piece of furniture as he passes it. Gil turns as Barasa circles, and Barasa’s every muscle is tensed as he tries to determine what is going on and when to strike. But what can I do? he wonders. Barasa curses technology, knowing that if the security system were functioning properly this Gil would be riddled with holes by now.

  “As for what I’m doing,” Gil continues, unfazed, “right now I’m setting up, and soon I expect I’ll serve some customers.”

  “Customers?”

  “Yes,” Gil explains, “you see, this is a bar.”

  At that Barasa erupts, voice aflame.

  “It’ll be a bar when the donkeys have grown horns!”

  This. Barasa thinks in silent rage, this one. This one right here has been playing some sort of psychological game with me for the past two days.

  Gil shrugs.

  Barasa has been threatened with death and mutilation. He’s been beaten up more than once. He’s grown accustomed to that sort of risk, accepting it as a hazard of his business. This new perversion is, to Barasa, somehow even more intolerable.

  The front door opens and a new person enters, then stands and looks around uncertainly. What the hell? Barasa thinks. Has all security just been disabled? Barasa wonders if this is some accomplice of Gil’s.

  “Can I help you?” Gil and Barasa say in accidental unison.

  “This … is a bar, right?”

  No, Barasa thinks to himself, staring incredulously, No, it is not.

  “I’m sorry,” says Barasa. “You must be mistaken. This is simply my personal residence and you are a trespasser.”

  “But … there is a sign? I just thought …” the newcomer trails off.

  “Sign?” says Barasa, alarmed. He knows the entrance here should be nondescript, almost hidden.

  Sidestepping to the door so that he can keep the conspirators in sight, Barasa pokes his head outside to find that the entire façade of his building has been changed. No longer anonymous, it has an attractive wall, and a noticeable doorway, and above it—“Oh, no,” Barasa groans—there is a sign. Wooden in appearance, attached to the wa
ll. Altogether the impression is such that Barasa half-fears he’ll soon be hearing chakacha and benga spilling out of the premises. The sign reads, “Mahali Ya Barasa.” Barasa’s Place. His mind fills with horror, “No no no no no NO NO NO—”

  Barasa dives back inside.

  The newest threat is sitting at the bar and Gil is pouring him a drink. “At the bar”? Barasa catches himself but realizes it is the natural thing to call it. No longer does it look simply like priceless antiques pushed into a line, but like a place that is meant to be stood or sat at. No longer are the bottles behind the “bar” haphazardly arranged as if dropped into the display cases at random, but rather neat and in a row, the jewelry and other small goods pushed to the side and seeming out of place.

  Barasa rushes past them into his storeroom.

  “What in the name—”

  His storeroom has been transformed. There is a bed. There are all manner of strange artifacts strewn about—and Barasa has seen strange artifacts, but not like these—and the room seems larger somehow.

  After a frenzied search, Barasa finds his axe with the long handle and grabs it. On his way back outside, a part of his mind registers the fact that there seem to be additional stools and chairs that he’s never seen before now in his showroom. Returning to the sign, he hacks it down.

  He carries the sign inside. As riled as Barasa is, he still appreciates the material. Good quality repro, feels nice. It’d feel nicer slamming against both these invaders’ heads though.

  Back inside, Barasa approaches the bar, mind screaming. He knows he’s got to do something soon before things get more out of hand. Gil gives him an innocent smile. Barasa thinks that Gil deserves to lose all of those teeth.

  “Here,” Gil says, pouring a drink. “For you.” Barasa uses the wooden sign to push the drink away.