“I’m not failing, Kolli! Get the bus. I’ll find my own way out.”
There was no time for an argument. Nal’ai took off left, towards the East Barracks Dome, praying to the Web in the Sky that against all odds that her rucksack was still there. After a few seconds she heard footsteps catching up with her. It was Kolli.
“I’m not paying the student rent for the whole damn room on my own,” she panted as she drew alongside her. Despite herself, Nal’ai laughed.
A wailing sound broke out across the open space. Someone somewhere had tripped an alarm. Nal’ai pushed herself on, panting, past another dome to the deserted structure they’d slept in the night before. Nal’ai briefly thought her keys weren’t working on the hatch, before realizing it was already open.
“This way,” she said breathlessly, leading Kolli back to their bunk. Her rucksack was still there, though it had been turned upside down – its contents scattered across the floor and bottom bed. Nal’ai cursed, and they both bent to retrieving the notes spread across the aisle.
“Where’s my uplink?” Nal’ai asked as she jammed several digi-pads back in alongside their charging cable.
“I don’t know,” Kolli said distractedly, scrambling to get as many loose sheaves of paper into her hands as possible. “Who still uses physical notes, Nal? This is what mem-space is for!”
“Not much use if I can’t find the recorder,” Nal’ai pointed out. “I need that uplink!”
A realization hit her, and she trailed off. The hatch to the closet space at the far end of the barrack vault – the room where they’d interviewed Klixx – was open. She put down her rucksack and began to walk towards it.
“Stay here,” she called back to Kolli. “And finish packing.”
Kolli protested, but Nal’ai wasn’t listening. She could hear a sound coming from within the storage room. The squeak of a rubberized vacc-suit.
“Do not move,” Klixx said, pointing a ray pistol at her face. They were bent over next to one of the stools beside a stack of crates at the rear of the room. On the stool itself was Nal’ai’s uplink, active and unlocked. It had been physically hardwired to a head-sized, metallic orb covered in blinking red and green lights and node-switches. Slowly, Nal’ai raised her hands.
“It was you,” she said. “You stole the enclave’s defense overrides. And you knew the elders would blame us.”
“I did,” Klixx admitted, sneering at her. “Ever since arriving here I have been trying to conceive of a way to return to Nova Hellas. And what better means to prove my loyalty and annul my exile than by providing the loyalist elders with the key to destroying this pathetic rogue enclave? Once this upload has been completed, Borreal will be defenseless!”
“You honestly think they’ll take you back?” Nal’ai said. “Whatever you did must’ve been pretty serious if they exiled you in the first place. And your race isn’t the forgiving type.”
“Well we shall have to find out, won’t we?” the martian traitor snapped, indicating for her to step inside the room and keep her hands up. “A few moments more, and I can leave this miserable city and its pathetic infestation of lesser species behind forever.”
“Nal’ai, they’re coming,” came Kolli’s voice from beyond the hatch, just before she appeared in the room, both rucksacks on her back. “Nal, I– oh…”
“And there’s the other one,” Klixx said, switching his aim. “The gullible krxix and the spare-brained elf. You are both perfect. No one will believe you, especially not that Mars-traitor Eyxyx. And while they are throwing you to the hounds, I will be going home. To Nova Hellas.”
They raised their voice, calling through the hatch.
“In here! I’ve captured them both! They’ve just finished uploading the enclave defense data!”
Nal’ai and Kolli exchanged a despairing glance as they heard the sound of more running feet. Martian soldiery crowded the hatch, weapons bristling. Once again Eyxyx was among them, their gaunt face contorted with rage.
“It’s all lies,” Nal’ai shouted, pointing at Klixx. “They’ve set us up!”
She knew it was useless. If there was one thing she had learned from the past day it was that they didn’t trust outsiders.
Eyxyx never got around to cursing Nal’ai though, at least not there and then. A rumble became audible over the whining of the charged ray guns, followed by a tremor in the structure of the dome itself. It grew rapidly more violent. Klixx slowly lowered their sidearm and turned, just in time for the wall at the back of the storage room to come crashing in.
A cascade of shattered rockform and twisted girders came right down on top of Klixx and the stolen data core. Nal’ai and Kolli threw themselves back, almost into the midst of the martians crowding the hatchway. A wall of dust and debris crashed against them, making everyone cringe and cough.
Something had just slammed straight in through the side of the dome, wreathed in dust. It was an armored chassis, a little smaller than a standard hovercar, with an angled, ram-like prow and a little turret bristling with charged laser guns. In the top of the turret, still clad in tw’ee, was Nal’ai’s academic supervisor.
“Longaard,” Eyxyx snarled, an arm raised as he peered through the dust cloud. “We meet again.”
“Hopefully for the last time, Eyxyx,” Longaard blurted from a speaker grille in the turret’s base. His robotic form had been hardwired into the personal armored assault unit, his eyes glowing in the gloom like target-identifiers as they zeroed in on the mass of martians just past Nal’ai and Kolli. “Put down the blasters, gentlemartians, or I vaporize you all.”
After what looked like a fierce internal struggle, Eyxyx waved for their minions to comply. Grudgingly, the martians lowered their weapons.
“Professor,” Nal’ai stammered. “How did you find us?”
“Your uplink contains a tracker,” Longaard droned. “Or do you think I would allow my students to go on a field trip entirely unsupervised?”
Nal’ai shook her head hastily, trying to nudge Kolli out of the firing line.
“Did you really think I would spend so long with you and not note every weakness in your defenses, Eyxyx?” Longaard demanded of the assembled martians. “I knew the day would come when you would supplant Orix Veyy and turn on all of the work we did together. If I’d known sooner, I would never have sent my students here.”
“Students,” Eyxyx hissed. “More like your spies, you treacherous robot. No good ever came of your dealings with Veyy! No martian elder should ever submit for… interviews! Look where it leads to – your little minions have your prize, but no one will be leaving here alive if the defense core isn’t returned!”
“We didn’t take the core,” Nal’ai interjected. “It was Klixx! They were trying to send it to Nova Hellas.”
“Klixx,” Eyxyx said, as though hearing the name for the first time. They glared at Nal’ai. “If this is true, they will pay for their treachery, right after the three of you!”
“I think they might have already,” Nal’ai said, glancing at the mound of rubble Longaard’s entry had created.
“My students are coming with me,” Longaard declared. “You can dig your data core out from underneath my treads. On behalf of Hub University, I thank Borreal for your time. We will show ourselves out.”
Longaard’s personal tank reversed, churning up rubble, leaving daylight streaming in through the fearsome hole smashed in the dome’s shell. Nal’ai and Kolli both looked at Eyxyx – the elder was physically shaking with wrath, but neither they nor their underlings made any move for the weaponry scattered at their feet. Longaard’s blasters were still trained on them.
Nal’ai and Kolli followed the professor out, both trying not to run.
“They’re up,” said Kolli excitedly. She was already sitting at the data hub in their bedroom, logging into her HubU account. Nal’ai had just gotten back from a wall-crawl and was still kicking off her footpads by the door.
“What is?” she asked.
&
nbsp; It had been half a semester since Longaard has saved them from the Borreal enclave. The academic meeting Nal’ai had attended immediately after had been the longest and most stressful of her life. There had been a lot of forms to fill out, most of them involving the two students putting into writing the fact that they didn’t want to press any sort of compensation charge against Hub University.
“He can be a very hands-on supervisor when he wants to be,” Nal’ai had explained to Kolli after the meeting.
“Hands-on? He drove a tank through a wall, Nal! He threatened an entire martian enclave!”
“Very hands-on,” Nal’ai had repeated.
Thanks to Kolli salvaging their rucksacks, both of them had been able to resubmit their papers on time. And now, apparently, the results were in.
“I got a B minus,” Kolli said, staring at the screen. “That’s… that’s the best grade I’ve ever had! Nal!”
She leapt up and hugged her roommate hard.
“H- how,” Nal’ai managed to grunt, all four arms pinned around the slender elf. “I saw the notes you took with Klixx. I mean, no offense but–”
“Did you bother to read them though?” Kolli asked, beaming.
“–mean no, it was just a quarter-page of–”
“Elf hyper-script,” Kolli said, finally releasing Nal’ai and patting her on the head. “A thousand permutations per symbol. And you thought I just never took notes in class.”
Nal’ai laughed despite herself and reached past her roommate to scroll down the hub to her own grades. “I think our excellent fieldwork made it almost impossible to fail us. Ah, there we go. I got a C-plus. That’s a pass!”
Kolli looked from the screen to her roommate, her dark eyes wide.
“Nal, I’m… I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Nal’ai said, still smiling, her eyes a serene, pale blue. “I think there might be some better news inside this anyway.”
She ripped the top off a form packet she’d picked up from the door on the way in.
“But I scored higher than you,” Kolli said, still staring at the offending C. “That’s not possible. You never score lower than an A minus… Hey, what’s in the pack?”
“Success,” Nal’ai exclaimed, waving it triumphantly. “My request has been approved!”
“What request?” Kolli asked, taking the packet and scanning it.
“After everything that happened at Borreal I decided Martian Studies can’t be done just through grades and papers,” Nal’ai said slowly, still smiling. “So I put in for a year as a research assistant with Longaard. And now it’s been approved, there are plenty more martian enclaves in Hub City that need visiting.”
She hugged Kolli again, as the elf began to laugh.
“Well I’m not coming with you this time! Unless you let me copy your notes…”
The Librarian’s Duel
M K Hutchins
Arash’s library was not haunted. Ghosts were the remnants of dead things. Her daughter’s soul, trapped in the walls of the library, was alive, thank-you-very-much. Given that two Sanctum priests, a witch, and one professor of spectral analysis had all barged or snuck into the library and then failed to exorcise little Marya, that really should have settled the matter.
Marya’s phase state was just a little shifted from the rest of the world.
“Will you be back soon, Mama? Will you bring new books?” Marya asked. Her face had the same shape as before the accident – that small nose, those huge eyes, those long swirls of wild hair. But she looked like a moving bas-relief now, like brick brought to life. Today she was only strong enough to lean out a few inches.
Arash brushed Marya’s cheek, the round stone gritty and cold against her fingers. It had been six months since Marya last asked if she could come along too. Arash had thought it would be easier when she stopped wanting the impossible, but somehow, it was worse. “Of course. I’ll be back soon, my chickadee.”
“And you’ll come home with new books?”
New books in the library always revitalized Marya. Three months ago, when they got in The Adventures of Quixo: Into the Everfire, Marya had actually been able to lean out from the wall far enough to hold the book with her own hands instead of just sending her soul into the stack and reading it from the inside.
The more books they could store in this library, the stronger and more present Marya would be. Arash’s annual budget was small – barely enough for upkeep. But the Central Hub City Library would pay her a small fee to deliver any of their books that had been returned to her branch.
“Maybe we’ll be able to get a new dictionary. Or even a thesaurus.”
Marya wrinkled her nose. “Let’s not.”
“What if it’s A Visual Dictionary of Flowers from the Base of the World Tree?” Arash asked slyly.
Marya’s hands squeezed into tight, hopeful fists. “Oh, I miss flowers, Mama. I’d love that.”
Arash bit the inside of her lip. The library grounds used to have red æmberflowers and snow-in-summer that you could see from the windows. But she’d let that all go to weeds, spending all her time and æmbits on buying more books. When was the last time Marya had seen flowers? She could buy a potted plant instead of the dictionary… but what if Marya slipped entirely into the walls and never came back?
Books. Books were the most important thing.
Arash loaded the wagon that Marya had once used to pull around her rock collection. The Central Branch was only three miles away. Better to walk and save the price of a train ticket or hovercab fare.
There was the usual assortment of oddities to return: two clay tablets, four scrolls, one hologram book that was only solid when you squinted at it, three dozen cheap paperbacks with the covers falling off, a book with a rabbit fur cover that might actually be a shapeshifting rabbit (or, she supposed, a shapeshifting book, depending on your perspective), and a fat tome wrapped in oilcloth with a neat card pinned to it that read: Only Open With Gloves. Read the Cautionary Preface Before Continuing. Arash always heeded warnings like that, so she made sure the oilcloth was properly covering whatever was inside before stowing it alongside its fellows.
All fit neatly in the wagon. The sky was slate-gray out the window, so Arash covered her cargo with a tarp, in case it rained. Then she hauled the wagon to the front door and flipped the sign to Closed. With the door open and herself halfway outside, Arash turned back to look one last time at her daughter. Marya had moved up to the second story ceiling over the entryway, her texture changing from brick to white shiplap.
“And what do you do if any ghost hunters show up?” Arash asked.
“Hide in the stacks where we keep last year’s tax laws.”
“That’s my girl.”
Her daughter wasn’t a ghost. But it didn’t hurt to be on the safe side.
Halfway to the main branch in Hubcentral, Arash cursed her decision to walk. Of course, the spokes on a child’s wagon weren’t meant to haul this kind of weight. Or maybe it was the were-rabbit/were-book causing trouble again. Either way, one of the wheels had splayed to the side, making steering nigh impossible.
And, of course, it started to rain. For the first block, puddles collected in the sidewalk cracks, only to be thrown up by her wonky wheels. She turned into the Polytree district, which thankfully had slightly lower gravity and smooth streets of woven kevlar palm fronds. But Polytree was a tiny district, and she couldn’t follow it all the way to Central. She had to enter the Cobblestone district, a place that mostly seemed to act as a buffer between Hubcentral and the Brobnar Clashzones. In Cobblestone, all the buildings were cheaply made and thus cheap to repair. Her own district, New Archton, had been developed as a low-cost place for humanoids to live, but even compared to Archton, Cobblestone had a slapped-together, temporary look – like the occupants expected that their homes and shops would get knocked down in a brawl or an especially enthusiastic celebration.
Arash yanked her load over the uneven street. The wagon was going to rus
t and fall apart any day now. All right, it was already falling apart. But she couldn’t afford a new one. She’d sold her house and moved into the library – and that had only covered fixing the library’s roof after the accident.
Arash was too busy tugging and swearing to pay much attention to what was happening at the roughly built wooden shops and pubs around her. She didn’t even notice the pack of drunk Brobnar careening across the street until she ran right into one of them, knocking her shoulder into his knee.
She fumbled a few steps back and stared up and up and up at the giant in front of her. His gold hair and beard were tied up with gems that strobed red and yellow and orange. His brawny chest was bare except for an amulet and a bright blue tattoo of a niffle ape. Fur and leather clothed the rest of him.
“I… beg your pardon,” she said.
Only then did his compatriots – six giants, two humans, a goblin, and a robot – turn and spot her. They laughed or sneered and talked raucously among themselves.
The giant she’d run into scowled and bent a little closer. “Your voice is so weak, little human, that I can’t hear you over my own footsteps.”
The reek of alcohol and fried food wafted off his breath. Arash tried to step back again, but her wheel had jammed. “I said,” she called a little louder, “that I’m sorry. Excuse me.”
She turned to go around him. He planted his foot in front of her. The man wasn’t armed, but he could pummel her to a pulp with his bare hands, to say nothing of his companions.
“What a pathetic thing you are,” he sneered. “Going to apologize and prance around me like a pansy?”
His niffle ape tattoo shifted from blue to burnt orange and silently roared, pounding its chest.
Despite the situation, Arash stared. She’d thought her daughter was the only one. “Is… is that ape trapped in your skin?”
“The what?” The tattoo shifted red and ran in agitated loops around the giant’s chest.
She swallowed, and tried to keep her voice from quavering as she asked again, louder this time, “Is that ape trapped in your skin? Is it phase-shifted?”
Tales From the Crucible Page 10