Tales of the Dissolutionverse Box Set

by William C. Tracy

  “Vish preserve us, I hope not,” Rilan said quietly. “Let this be an isolated event. Are you sure it was the urn that created the void?”

  “Ah…no,” Origon admitted. “It could have been a natural event, or perhaps it was to be a reaction to what was in the urn.” No way to tell now, with the sole person who might have been connected lying dead at his feet.

  “There will be a second capsule built, now it’s proven possible.” Rilan gestured vaguely with one hand, encompassing all of Methiem. “We will discover more evidence the next time we get to Ksupara.”

  “Then I am supposing we must include a majus on the flight,” Origon told her. “Though it will not be me.” He looked out the room’s lone tall window. He could not see Ksupara in the day, but it was out there, waiting to be explored, as were the moons and solar systems of the other homeworlds. Even if the maji did not help, the ten species would go there eventually. And he would learn more about the Drain, one day.

  “Then we must leave the mystery of your void for now, and hope there’s no need to explore it further.” Rilan grunted as she began to heave the corpulent mayor to a sitting position. “For now, we have to deal with him. Help me out. We’ll bring him to the Council before he wakes and runs to his solicitors.”

  “Can you do that?” Origon tried to remember the councilor’s powers in an emergency situation.

  “I have some privileges, even if the other councilors ignore me as often as not. Come with me back to the Nether, Ori,” Rilan told him. “We’ll take the mayor and his plot to the Council now, today. And you could stay with me while you recuperate. It’s been a long time since we had a real chance to talk, and your apartment is probably full of cobwebs and spiders.”

  “Too long,” Origon agreed. “And what of the Drain? Shall we be discussing it with the Council as well?”

  Rilan hesitated, holding the unconscious mayor’s form up. “They’ll learn of it,” she said. “But maybe best not to press the issue for now. We have to hope this is an isolated incident.”

  Of course she was correct. Rilan’s position with the Council was tenuous enough without wild stories about voids that lacked the Symphony. She had been busy on the Council while he had been traveling the homeworlds. He could aid her out now he was back. Origon helped her lift the mayor. They would alert others to the mess in the room, make sure none of Nandara’s associates arranged the evidence against them. Origon would let his song regrow, and with that new music, discover what, or who, was behind the Drain.

  The Symphony Eater

  1003 A.A.W.

  Nara Reyhorer, known to his friends as Rey, trudged through the House of Potential. It was his second ten-day here, but Majus Kheena had set him manual labor every day he had been in the Nether, in addition to his studies as an apprentice. First it was moving boxes out of his room, then painting and cleaning the apartment until it nearly shone. Not what I was expectin’ to learn. I want to change the Symphony, not cart gadgets around and do housework. If I wanted more chores, I could have stayed home pullin’ the spines out of the garden for the parents. The Sureriaj people didn’t often leave home without a good reason, and he wished he was back with his mother and fathers. Again.

  Majus Kheena was in his living room, poring over a set of papers filled with calculations. As far as Rey could tell, most of what Majus Kheena did was calculate. His Sathssn mentor had his hood back, as usual, displaying the tufts of fine dark hair poking between his scales. The Majus was muttering to himself, something about energy nets and flow coordinates. Rey cleared his throat.

  “We’re supposed to be havin’ a lesson shortly?” He had discovered it was best to interrupt Majus Kheena at his work if he wanted to learn anything.

  “Three measures more than the last iteration.” Majus Kheena pointed a gloved finger toward the other seat at the table without looking up. “In a moment, we shall begin.”

  The Majus bent back over his papers, scribbling something with a fine pen. Every few moments, his disturbing slitted eyes would flick to one side or the other, staring at nothing. He tapped the dark green scales around his mouth with the other end of the pen, then his eyes flicked to Rey.

  “Today, I will get nothing else done on this proposal. We may as well begin,” Majus Kheena sat back. “Energy transfer is the basis of the Symphony of Potential, but our house, it is different from the other houses of the maji. It can even manipulate the other Symphonies to some extent. We hear how energy moves from place to place. This, it is not as limiting as hearing the music defining the realm of communication or strength. I think only the House of Healing comes close to our, ah, potential, if the phrase will be pardoned.” Majus Kheena hissed laughter.

  Rey just kept from rolling his eyes. He was used to the majus going on about how brilliant the House of Potential’s aspect of the Grand Symphony was. “Yer’ve said as much before. We take the music from one place and transfer it elseways,” he gestured from side to side with his hands. “I’ve had this lesson before.”

  The majus was already shaking his head. At least Majus Kheena was one of the Southern Coalition Sathssn, which meant he was a bit freer with his clothing. He often wore his hood down, and sometimes went without gloves. It meant Rey could make eye contact with his mentor, and see the Snakey’s expressions.

  “This, it is not so simple as you make it.” He picked up his pen, rolling it back and forth between his hands. “I see as much from the calculations you have performed for me. You do not think of complexities.”

  Rey grimaced. He could do his sums, but Majus Kheena manipulated equations with a finesse that made everything seem so simple. “It’s the Systems. I don’t yet ken ‘em. We canna hear the music of the other houses, but yer say we can still move along their melodies, whether it be the House of Power, or Strength, or Grace. Then we somehow bodge together a System out of ‘em, holdin’ things in place.”

  The majus waved one of his papers in the air. “Exactly. There are even ways to change the music of the other houses—no, do not sigh, the correct calculations define such processes…”

  “If I could just see what the blasted things mean,” Rey interrupted. He hadn’t meant to speak out of turn, but scribbles and equations had little relation to the beautiful symphonies in his mind. Ever since he was young, listening to the classical operastanzas of Grand-Dame Moreya, he knew he could manipulate the Grand Symphony that underlay the universe. Instead he was writing out numbers and symbols.

  Majus Kheena hissed to himself for a moment. “So. Maybe in this, I have catered to my skills rather than yours. To learn energy transfer properly...” He trailed off, looking upward. Rey leaned toward his mentor. “This task, I was saving it for myself, merely for nostalgia, but I believe you need a practical application to further your training.”

  Rey blinked. “Practical?”

  “Would you rather more equation work, then?”

  “’Course not.” Something practical was exactly what he needed.

  “Good,” Majus Kheena dropped the pen and thumped the table with a gloved thumb. “This moment, we can go down to the cellar.”

  “The…cellar?” Rey had envisioned somewhere further afield.

  “Yes. We have a rodent problem.”

  * * *

  Rey hadn’t even known the House of Potential had a cellar. They left the apartment, and traveled farther into the maze of corridors between maji residences. The low, sprawling house was connected by a series of backdoors and corridors to Imperium University, which was built on the back of the house like a shell on the back of a desert crawler. But rather than going to the university, Majus Kheena led Rey down a set of passages he had never seen before. The normally austere corridors turned even more utilitarian; numerous pipes and cables crawled up the walls, many softly glowing with the rust brown of the House of Potential. Rey examined the cables disappearing through the ceiling. Many supplied the Systems that ran through the houses of the maji and even out into the I
mperium, supplying things like water, light, and stored motion—used to power geared devices. The transfer of phrases of the Symphony was integral to his house.

  “The cellar, it is down here,” Majus Kheena said. His all-black garb made his form hard to follow in the sputtering light from the overhead tubes, but at least it reflected off his scaled head. The Southern Coalition—a small free nation—eschewed the most rigid traditions of the Sathssn theocracy and the Cult of Form. Even so, Rey would never understand why the Snakeys all wore the same thing. It was blasted hard to tell them apart when they kept their cowls up—and most of them did.

  “I didnae know this was here. What do yer keep in yer cellar?” Rey peered down a shaky set of wooden stairs.

  “Down there, we have the large energy transfer System. It funnels many of the notes contributed by the maji to those Systems the notes power. The musical phrases play in contrast to the harmonic filter the House of Potential installed to break the phrases into component diatonic scales. They intersperse with the chromatic measures that keep the music from—”

  “And that’s where yer little trouble is,” Rey broke in. The majus would go on all day about scales and musical efficiency if Rey didn’t butt in.

  Kheena humpfed, but changed topics. “Some of the notes, they are not making the transition to the new melody they are to integrate with. We have had complaints from the other houses about interruptions of power and water.” He paused. “And supposedly, the voice amplification system cut out during one of Speaker Humbano’s speeches about her new arts funding proposal.”

  At least I know the reason this is suddenly a problem. “So yer need a plumber, is the basics of what yer sayin’,” Rey said. First a handyman…

  “I have a proposal that needs finishing,” Majus Kheena corrected. “Lots of tricky phase transformations to do. These, they could also be good practice for you instead.”

  Rey waved one hand in the air, eager to avoid more sums. “No offence meant to yer. Plumbin’ is a noble occupation.”

  “Good. Then your job, it is to find out why the transfer of forces is being interrupted and fix it.”

  “Yer think rodents are stealin’ yer notes?” Rey asked. “Majus rats?”

  Kheena wobbled a gloved hand at him. “Yes. Not exactly. This, it is something a bit rarer, if I am correct. As I mentioned, I was planning to take care of the problem myself, though last time…” He broke off, and Rey narrowed his eyes at his mentor. “This task, it requires one who prefers solutions of a physical nature. You will see. Go on now, and me, I will get back to my calculations. Let me know when you finish.” He gestured down. Rey sighed and entered the dim staircase.

  * * *

  Rey wasn’t sure what he expected to see, but it wasn’t the mechanical construct down the stairs. It was taller than him, covered in a mass of interconnected gears and spindles. Rey had heard of computing machines, of course, though they were rare. This one looked old—older than him—and was buzzing and clanking to itself in the glow from an overhead light.

  Rey reached a hand out, hesitantly. Contrary to what he expected, there was no shock from the machine, though it was warm to the touch. It glowed with the rust brown of the House of Potential—something only folks who could hear the Symphony could see. Pipes ran off in all directions, smelling faintly of ozone.

  He listened to the chords of the Symphony. The music was intricate, with scales layered in ascending complexity until the result was an incomprehensible block of notes. They carried the music he couldn’t hear—that of the other houses. Like many Systems, the melody was thrumming, regulated and mechanical; an artificial piece of music rather than the naturally occurring rhythms that made up everyday objects.

  Then the glow, and the volume of the music, dipped. Rey jerked his hand back. Had he bodged something up? But he hadn’t changed anything. If it wasn’t him, then…Rey looked around the machine.

  There was something organic in back, a mass of multicolored fur and scales hanging from one of the pipes that left the machine. There were legs, dangling in the air. The head was fastened to the pipe in some way. Rey poked at the thing with one finger and it dropped off, screeched, and scurried away.

  Well, that was flippin’ easy. Rey was slightly insulted, not that he hoped the critter would try to bite him or some such. “Solutions of a physical nature” indeed. As soon call an exterminator. He peered in the direction the thing had run off. The creature must sense the dense layers of the Symphony—Majus Kheena said they were rare—and the notes passing through the machine conduit acted as what? Bait? A tasty treat for the critter?

  He picked his way around the clanking machine, but the thing was no longer in the room, as far as he could tell. If he failed to stop it from returning, and one of Speaker Humbano’s speeches got cut off again, she might come down personally to the House of Potential, and then everything would simply slide downhill to him. Even he had heard of the respected Etanela Speaker. She had been around forever, and some folks said she could get an audience with the Effature in seconds flat. Could he get drummed out of the maji? He had heard of maji leaving, but that was a rarity. Best tie this little knotty problem up tight.

  He’d not yet caught the method to create a System—that arrangement that held musical phrases in place even when a maji wasn’t messing with them. His calculations always equaled out on paper, but that was nothing like changing the chaotic fractals of the Symphony.

  If I want to keep that furry blighter away, it’s got to be a System. Nothing else would last long enough. Rey rubbed suddenly damp hands along his pants, trying to dry out the little hairs that covered his fingers.

  He listened to the melody passing through the chamber, then waved an arm across a wall. Sterile. He looked around. The machine’s gears created kinetic energy, reflected in the buzzing chords of the Symphony. Cannae take so much from the machine, though. From what the old Snakey says, it supplies half of High Imperium’s Systems.

  There was nothing to fall, or create a source of energy where he could transfer the notes from that musical phrase to another. The House of Potential had to have a pool of notes from which to transfer, especially for creation of a System. He was practically at the base of the Nether. If the cellar was any lower, the machine would have rested on crystal instead of the wood planking under his feet. He stamped one boot, listening to the short echo.

  Rey shook his head. He supposed he could jump up and down for a time, and build up heat in his body. Technically, he could use that chaos of notes as a source, but that might be a permanent change, and he had no wish to lose his notes, if he could help it.

  He looked around the room again, including behind the clanking machine. There was a hole in the wall, presumably where the critter was getting in, and in front of it was a small wood crate, as if someone had tried to block the hole. It was pushed out at an angle. Not doin’ any good here.

  It would have to do. There was one source of potential energy in the room—the stairs. If he lugged the crate up the shaky steps leading back up to the world of the living, he could at least throw it back down and steal some of its notes as it fell.

  Rey humphed the bulky crate along behind him, hearing the sparks and trills of the friction between the crate and the floor. Not enough notes yet. He climbed the stairs, and the song of the crate’s potential gained notes with every step. At the top of the stairs, he paused, and dove into the Symphony.

  It was a riot of music, as usual. The clanking machine was the major player of course, dominating any and all melodies nearby. Rey dug down, ignoring the main theme until he found the source of high velocity eighth notes that was in the crate. Then he threw it across the room.

  As the crate tumbled through the air, Rey took notes from its song, using a few of his own to guide the transition of the energy. Grace notes and trills dissolved, and the pounding beat slowed to a steady thrum. The crate fell in an abbreviated arc. His throw should have carried it across the room, bu
t it tumbled to the floor less than halfway across. Those extra notes buzzed in Rey until he thought he would burst. Multiple keys played in his head at once, measures overlapping each other.

  Now came the hard part—converting that chaos of notes to a System. He attempted to arrange the extra notes from the crate into a new pattern, transferring the energy to a new form—in this case a barrier of force that would cover the hole and wall—and keep anything from getting through.

  The equations were not so hard, but they didn’t take into account reality. Rey fought the tide of music, using a few of his notes to translate measures into linked musical phrases. Each System took one of the majus’ notes to anchor, a permanent investment from a member of the House of Potential. Rey tied the buzzing energy from the crate into a sloppy package and ran down the stairs, thrusting one hand toward the wall before the thing could collapse into dissonant notes. He didn’t make it.

  With a bright flash, his anchor, the notes used to guide the melodies, and the melodies themselves dissipated into energy in its most primal form—heat and light.

  “Bah.” Rey covered his eyes against the tiny explosion, clenching teeth against the unpleasant pulling and tearing as his notes were lost. They’d take a few days to grow back, fueled by his experiences.

  Rey leaned against the wall, breathing heavily. “This is what I get for days of calculatin’ rather than practicin’.” The old Snakey did love his equations.

  Nothing for it but to try again. The critter’s hole wasn’t going anywhere and now he wanted to make this System work.

  Rey retrieved the crate, lugged it up the stairs, and tried again. This time he wove his notes through the music defining the kinetic energy leeched from the crate. The resulting music was tighter, more even, but as he reached out to tie the anchor note to the wall a measure slipped and slid sideways, making a hash of dissonant scales.