Outbreak Company: Volume 14

by Ichiro Sakaki

  Man’ya looked at each of the babies clamped onto me and repeated the instruction. It took a few tries, but she must have gotten through to them, because the tiny fangs let me go.

  “Wow...”

  All we could do was watch in amazement. I had heard of the same sort of thing happening with human children—infants communicating with each other in ways adults couldn’t seem to understand. Some people even claimed that if you asked a slightly older child to “interpret”—say, a two-year-old, someone who had started to talk a little—that they would tell you the infant could remember being in its mother’s womb, or even recall things from his past life.

  Well, I didn’t know how true any of that was. But in any case, Man’ya certainly seemed to be able to connect with her siblings somehow. She huffed in satisfaction as the other babies dropped away from me. I still didn’t know much about lizardman expressions—even on infants—but I took her current look to be one of joy.

  “Aw, who’s the best big sister?” Minori-san cooed.

  Ahh, so that was it: she was scolding her little brothers and sisters on my behalf.

  “I’ve got to admit, Shinichi-san, you’re a force to be reckoned with,” Hikaru-san said, sounding impressed. “To bring even Man’ya into your fold... You’ve got no boundaries when it comes to girls, do you?”

  “I’m sorry, what?!” How did he get to that conclusion?! And why were Myusel, Elvia, and Minori-san all nodding?! Okay, so maybe when it came to Myusel and the others I had no excuse, but that hadn’t been on purpose! And I want to be completely clear: I have never, ever, in my whole life, ever had any of those kinds of feelings for a little kid! Anyway, she was a lizardman, for crying out loud! I guess dragons had become a fetish in America, but I was Japanese! And did we have to have this conversation right in front of the kid’s parents?!

  “Hrrm...” Brooke let out a breath, as if he were making his peace with something. “W-Well, you, Master, I might allow...”

  “Stop right there, Brooke!” I didn’t need that kind of loyalty! Not to be rude to Brooke and his kind or anything, but lizardmen were 100%, completely, totally outside the scope of my interests!

  “Gyuuu!” While the rest of us had this completely ridiculous conversation, Man’ya was running and playing with her brothers and sisters, keeping an eye on them for us. She seemed to be giving them occasional pointers about what was okay and what wasn’t. It was weirdly wonderful to see this kid, who had been just an infant herself hardly a few days ago, act like a responsible older sibling. We watched Man’ya and the others all the way until it was time to leave for school, enjoying the sweetness and savoring the peace.

  Chapter 3: Toransusekusharu?

  The Guld Workshop: I doubt there’s an inhabitant of the Holy Eldant Empire who doesn’t know that name. Adults would be familiar with them, obviously, but even young children have probably been playing with toys bearing the brand of the Guld Workshop since before they could remember. There are a few other workshops in the capital, Marinos, but none as big as Guld. There are probably none bigger in the whole Empire—maybe not even in the surrounding countries.

  “Workshop” may sound like a simple enough word, but this place got its start among the ore mines of northern Marinos, connecting the various dig sites with pathways until they formed a vast underground space. It’s not just a mine or a fabrication project, either; the place includes everything its workers (most of whom are dwarves) might need in their day-to-day lives. Intensely aware—and intensely proud—of all the work that went into creating this place, we dwarves quietly refer to it as “Under-Marinos.” More than five thousand people staff the Guld Workshop. The majority of the twenty thousand dwarves who live in the imperial city are either employees of the workshop, or at least friends or family members.

  All of this, obviously, gives the Guld Workshop production capacity of a different magnitude from other facilities. Toys; eating utensils and other daily necessities; artwork; swords, shields, and even more advanced weaponry: if it’s fashioned with clay, hammered from metal, shaped from wood, or created with anything else that springs from the earth, Guld can make it. We grudgingly recognize the superiority of other craftsmen in just one respect: elves are more nimble workers of wood than we are. But even they use chisels and hammers produced by us.

  And then there’s the man who oversees the Guld Workshop and all that goes on within it, the one ultimately responsible for everything that happens there: me, Rydell Guld.

  The Guld family were major movers behind the construction of the royal castle, and so we’re accorded noble treatment despite being demi-humans. The workshop has been able to reach the extent it has thanks to the myriad rights and privileges granted to it by the Empire. It’s worth knowing, though, that despite being treated like nobles, we have never been given a grant of land over which to rule by the imperial family, as a human noble would be—because no matter how well they may be treated, no demi-human family, even the Gulds, can possess a demesne.

  Nonetheless, the Guld family has, in effect, been given complete control over the Guld Workshop—that is to say, virtually the entire northern stretch of the capital city and much of the nearby outskirts. An underground domain to do with as we see fit. Sometimes our continual expansion of the tunnels and pathways leads us to discover underground waterways or hot springs, giving the family a nice secondary source of income. Hence, the expansion of the underground reaches is another of our important responsibilities, quite apart from the everyday running of the workshop. Wider, deeper: we are always working to expand our holdings.

  And thus:

  “Boss!”

  I turned, frowning at the figure who came jogging down the tunnel. “I told you to stop calling me that.”

  “Right! Very sorry, boss.” My subordinate was sincerely contrite, but the old form of address was too thoroughly ingrained, and wouldn’t seem to go away. In my mind, “boss” had become outmoded; in imitation of the Amutech company, I had instructed that I was to be called “Manager.” But it wasn’t going very smoothly yet.

  In any event. “Eh, forget it. What’s the matter? What’s going on?”

  I thought I recognized the man as part of the tunneling team. If he had left the dig to seek me out, it meant they had come up against something the on-site team felt they couldn’t handle on their own. Had there been a cave-in or something?

  We dwarves mostly used specialized magic in our tunneling projects, but even magic had its limitations, and it wasn’t uncommon to have to proceed by hand. Large-scale projects involving mountains and stone were one thing, but if you simply shoved softer earth aside with magic, then the moment the spell ran out, it would come crashing back down. It could even cause subsidence in the land above, and nobody wanted that.

  All of which was to say that although tunneling work might be our bread and butter, it was more dangerous than it looked.

  “We dug up something strange during the excavation,” my subordinate told me. He looked less panicked than he did simply perplexed. Apparently the situation wasn’t urgent.

  “Did you, now?” I raised an eyebrow. A new vein of ore wouldn’t be described as being “dug up.” You would simply say you “found” it. And you certainly wouldn’t look so confused about it. I looked at the man, silently encouraging him to continue, but although his lips twitched under his mustache, he didn’t say another word. Perhaps whatever they had found was beyond the power of words to describe.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll come have a look.” I gave my subordinate a slap on the back and started down the tunnel.

  Although parts of the dig site were reinforced with wire netting and steel supports, most of it was just exposed earth and rock, the floor and ceiling rough and unrefined. It wasn’t a proper passageway yet; still more of a hole. That meant both poor footing and poor air quality. The tunnel got narrower as I went along, until it would have been challenging for two or three to walk abreast. Weaving around mini-golems that were busy carry
ing soil and detritus away from the dig, I worked my way ever deeper into the tunnel. At last I arrived at a dead end, a wall of earth in front of which stood two members of the tunneling team. “I hear you’ve come up with something strange,” I said.

  They turned to me. “Boss...”

  “I told you not to call me that!”

  “Sorry, boss—er, I mean... what was it again?”

  “Ahh... Forget it,” I groaned, instead turning my attention to the object indicated by the two team members. It was in the shape of a box, seemingly made of metal. “What have we here?” I went over and looked at the thing where it sat on the ground.

  It was long and narrow and stuck out towards us. If I had to describe it, I might say it was similar in shape to a coffin. And not one for a dwarf—more like for a human or an elf. But humans and elves usually made their coffins of wood, not metal. And then there were the perfect hexagons, each about the size of a grown-up’s palm, spaced at even intervals around the surface. Such a regular pattern rarely occurred naturally: this thing had been built.

  “We just stumbled on it while we were digging,” one of the tunneling team members explained.

  “Hmm?” As the other two looked on, I slowly, carefully rapped the surface with my fist. It was hard. And the sound—barely an echo. Whatever was in there, it was packed tight. There were streaks of dust caked on the surface, evidence of how long this thing had been buried here. Months, maybe, years. Still, the metal showed no sign of rusting. What could it be? I was starting to understand why my subordinate had found himself at a loss to describe it.

  “Is this the only thing you found?” I asked.

  “The only one here, sir. But next door, in tunnel Red 45, they came up with something else.”

  “Next door...?” I frowned.

  These tunnels, Red 37 and Red 45, were technically next to each other, but if one thought of them as city streets they would be two or three blocks apart. And yes, sometimes we found things from old ruins underground, including precious objects and even coffins. But to find them simultaneously at such a remove—was it coincidence, or was there some sort of connection? I didn’t have enough information to say.

  “What should we do, sir?” The question came from the first subordinate who had come to get me.

  “If these are relics of some kind, then we’ll have to inform Minister Cordobal.”

  In principle, everything that could be found in the empire was the property of the empress. Even a noble’s domain was, formally speaking, “on loan” from Her Majesty. But at the same time, anything discovered in the process of digging these tunnels belonged, for practical purposes, to the Guld Workshop. That included finds like this.

  Anything that was readily identifiable, like ancient eating utensils or some commoner’s ornaments, we were customarily free to do with as we pleased, to use it or sell it. The bureaucratic headache would just be too much otherwise, a fact the empire’s administrators tacitly acknowledged when they chose to look the other way in these matters. But if this was a coffin, or something like it, it would feel wrong to simply try to profit from it.

  “Get a golem and haul this thing out of here. And bring me some of the workers from the other passage.”

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  “And don’t call me—ahh, forget it, just hurry!”

  Eldant Castle. This building, which shared its name with the country as a whole, was the center of politics, economics, and culture in the Eldant Empire, not to mention a veritable symbol of the state itself. Created from a hollowed-out mountain, it redefined the word massive, and was in fact just about the biggest building we knew of here in this alternate world.

  This being an empire, the castle was the home of the empress. A thriving castle town sprawled around it, and notwithstanding the nearly five thousand people who worked at the castle, as long as there wasn’t some very special reason—like an enemy attack on the one hand, or a big festival on the other—commoners were very rarely permitted inside.

  Needless to say, the first time I showed up for a visit, I was pretty nervous. The place was crawling with soldiers and knights, all carrying swords that I knew were perfectly real. And I knew they had a license to cut down any commoner who ticked them off. This was the first alternate world I’d ever visited, and I had no idea how to speak the language or even what was polite or impolite—in short, I had no clue how to comport myself. Maybe I would unconsciously scratch my cheek in embarrassment and discover I had accidentally challenged some enraged other-worlder to a duel to the death.

  With enough visits, though, my anxiety started to get better. It helped that I was learning what was considered common sense around here, including how to behave politely. As I got more comfortable, I started to be able to enjoy just walking around this humongous castle, which was like something out of a history book or a fantasy story. It was elegant and ornate, but this was no mock-up or movie set—this was the real thing. It wouldn’t disappear just because nobody was looking at it.

  There were the huge, prominent portrait paintings. The suits of armor that lined the hallways. Stone everything: stairs and walls and floors and ceilings. The lamps that burned here and there for light. And on and on. All of it real. A real, functioning castle. And I was in it!

  I chewed over that fact as the knight of the royal guard led me down the hallway, just as usual. I wasn’t alone, of course. I was with the other employees of our alternate-world general-entertainment company, Amutech. Kanou Shinichi-san, our general manager. And Koganuma Minori-san, military officer and bodyguard to me and Shinichi-san. The three of us were headed for an audience chamber.

  “Amutech General Manager Kanou Shinichi-sama, accompanied by Ayasaki Hikaru-sama and Koganuma Minori-sama, has arrived,” announced the knight standing guard by the doorway. Again, standard procedure.

  We were in the smallest of the available audience chambers. This wasn’t for official, public audiences with ministers and VIPs in attendance; it was for quiet, comparatively private—or even secret—conversations with Her Majesty the empress, when we didn’t want too much of a, well, audience.

  “So you are here.” We all looked toward the source of the voice: the adorable, silver-haired Petralka an Eldant III (a.k.a. the empress) and her handsome, similarly silver-haired knight-attendant, Minister Garius en Cordobal. So far, everything was exactly the way it always was when we came to deliver our regular reports. We met with these two almost daily as representatives of Amutech, to let the empress know what the firm was up to. Although, to be honest, a lot of times we ended up just shooting the breeze.

  But today was different.

  “Romilda? Guld-san?” I heard Shinichi-san mumble.

  Waiting for us in the audience chamber along with the two royals were a pair of dwarves, a father and daughter. Rydell and Romilda Guld. Rydell was head of the biggest workshop in Marinos—named after his family—and Romilda was his daughter. She also attended the school Amutech ran. They both bowed to us and smiled.

  “What’s going on?” Shinichi-san asked. We didn’t normally see Romilda and her father here in the smaller audience chamber—in fact, this was the first time. I’m sure Shinichi-san assumed there was some reason for it.

  “Just listen to this, Shinichi-sensei!” Romilda exclaimed. “And you, Hikaru-sensei!” She was practically glowing. As a dwarf, she was what you might call vertically challenged, and it made her look much younger than she was. Her cherubic face and effusive behavior added to the impression of youth. “Our workshop found this weird thing and—”

  “Romilda, we are in the royal presence. Be silent,” Rydell-san admonished her. He was a dwarf, too, but as a man, he had a stupendous beard and seemed as craggy as a cliffside. He might have been smaller than us, but his entire body rippled with muscles, making him an intimidating presence nonetheless.

  “Oh, right...” Romilda, remembering herself, went quiet and glanced uneasily at the throne.

  In actuality, this was hardly he
r first time meeting the empress by way of Amutech. She’d been involved with a movie we’d made and a backyard barbecue we’d had. Maybe it had all made her a little too cavalier about how she behaved in front of Her Majesty. For her part, though, the empress didn’t seem bothered; she showed no sign of anger, and even Minister Cordobal had a wry grin on his face. Romilda was evidently going to get away with her little faux pas.

  “We suppose formal introductions are not necessary. More importantly, Shinichi, there is something which we wish you to see,” Her Majesty said. She pointed at something on a stand in the middle of the room: Romilda’s “weird thing.”

  It was a metal box, about two meters long. The other two dimensions were, I guessed, about sixty centimeters each. It was just about big enough for a person to fit inside—in fact, it looked distinctly like a coffin. But it was covered in a pattern of hexagons; the whole thing looked almost... mechanical.

  “Is it a coffin?” Shinichi-san asked, evidently thinking the same thing I was.

  “I’m afraid to say we’re not entirely sure,” Minister Cordobal replied.

  “As Romilda said, we know only that it was excavated by the Guld Workshop,” Her Majesty added. “And while it certainly has the dimensions of a coffin, we have never seen nor heard of a coffin with such a pattern on it before. And only this single one was found, all by itself.”

  Excavated. So it had been underground, apparently. It had, we were told, been discovered during tunnel excavations carried out by the workshop. Their first thought was that they had accidentally struck on a tomb of some sort, but there was no sign of any mausoleum, burial chamber, or grave goods anywhere to be found. It was always possible, of course, that the march of time had eroded the tomb and turned the grave goods to dust, or perhaps that everything had already been found and moved somewhere else. Whatever the story, it didn’t change the fact that they had this one “coffin,” and nothing else.

  “And the contents are stranger still.”

  “Huh? Petralka, you guys opened it?” Shinichi-san said. He looked shocked. If this really was a coffin, then true enough, you might open it and be confronted with a mummy. Maybe it would just be ugly, but there was always the possibility of harmful dust or particles, or some unknown pathogen that had been locked away with the corpse and would sicken anyone who opened the coffin. Remember Tutankhamun’s curse? The people who opened the tomb of the former Egyptian ruler died one by one, and it’s been proposed that ancient bacteria or viruses were the reason. Of course, some people claimed the whole thing was a hoax, that the series of deaths hadn’t really occurred at all.