All the Different Shades of Blue: A City Between novelette

by W. R. Gingell

  “No,” she said, covering one ear with a grimace and opening and closing her mouth as if she was trying to pop that ear. “I’m not kidding. What did you do?”

  “What do you mean?” She couldn’t be talking about my test hack, but I looked down at the laptop screen instinctively, anyway.

  Much to my surprise, it was running perfectly, load-bearing magic and protective spell in perfect harmony. I frowned at it. I’d have to go through and see exactly what I’d written into the script that had finally gotten it past the threads of protection that had stalled every previous attempt. In my business, it pays to learn as you go.

  Pet stood, still covering that one ear. “Rats,” she said. “I was hoping I was wrong. Hey, is your laptop connected to the internet, or is it only for Between magic?”

  “What are you doing?”

  She took a few steps away from the booth and tugged on the door handle. Much to my surprise, it didn’t move.

  Pet jerked a thumb at it. “Checking this. It’s not locked.”

  “If it’s not locked, why can’t you open it?”

  “Yeah, well; that’s the point, isn’t it? That’s why I want to know what you just did.”

  More defensively, I said, “I didn’t do anything.”

  Her face was ridiculously clear to read. I saw her lips twist downward, the faintest suggestion of movement that brought a distinct tinge of sorrow to her face. Reproachfully, she said, “You’re still lying to me.”

  “It’s just a test hack,” I said, before I knew what I was doing. “I didn’t expect it to work.”

  Pet looked suspicious. “It wasn’t a computer thing,” she said. “It was—well, I don’t actually know what it was, but I know it’s not a computer thing.”

  “It’s…” I paused, trying to come up with a way to explain it to a human, before I remembered that she already knew about the city Behind. “I’m a hacker. But I don’t just hack computers and networks.”

  Her eyes narrowed over her coffee cup. “You hack magic? How does that work?”

  “If I told everyone that, I wouldn’t be able to make a living,” I said.

  Pet grinned. “Don’t have magic,” she said. “I’m human.”

  “Then how would you know if there’s something going on or not?”

  “Three things,” said Pet. “One, the counter boy was new today, and he’s nicked off while I’ve been talking to you. Two, I saw the bits of magic you’ve been trying—”

  “What?”

  “Said I didn’t have magic,” she said. “Didn’t say I can’t see it.”

  I looked at her sideways, shaken but unwilling to be completely thrown off. “Magic isn’t visible to humans.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Athelas says, but I can see it all right.” She thought about that, and admitted, “Well, not exactly the magic. More like the mess it makes Between when it isn’t done right. And I heard the thing that started up when you did something with your computer just now.”

  “What thing?” I demanded. I layered my voice with just a touch of magic, and, more devastatingly, a combination of amusement and slight condescension. Older brother looking at a silly younger sister with a too-big imagination. “I haven’t even begun the proper program yet—just a test one.”

  “Yeah?” said Pet again, and she sounded annoyed. “Well, what’s wrong with everyone here, then?”

  “Nothing is wrong with them,” I said, flicking a look around the room. “They might want to buy a few more cups of coffee, but only when I feed the real thing through the hack.”

  Pet took a sip of coffee and exhaled another variegated breath of steam. Her face wasn’t unreadable—there were myriad emotions and thoughts passing across that glass-like surface—but there were so many thoughts, passing so swiftly, that it might as well have been unreadable. Impossible to tell what she was thinking—what she might do. At least, I found myself thinking, in rather guilty relief, the door was shut, and she couldn’t get out.

  She couldn’t do anything, either. A human couldn’t—a human couldn’t—

  And then Pet reached out.

  She reached out in the human world, and reached right through into Between. One finger touched the top of my laptop, pushing gently, and it began to emerge from Between space into the human world.

  The laptop flickered, grew; expanded.

  “Stop it!” I said, and shoved the laptop back Between. “It’s not—”

  “I know,” Pet said, agreeably. “It’s not really a laptop. It just looks like one in this part of reality. What is it when it’s Behind? I can’t see all of it; it’s too big.”

  “You can’t do things like that in public!” I said, too startled to sound anything else but angry. “Don’t you know better than make trouble in front of humans?”

  Pet looked questioningly at me. “What d’you mean, public?”

  “There’s a whole café full of—”

  “Humans,” Pet finished for me. “Yeah, but d’you notice anything about them?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I looked around at the humans. They were talking relaxedly to each other, smiling and gesturing and sipping their coffee. As if they hadn’t seen my laptop grow, or change; or the space around us expand. It was lucky, I thought, that no one had been looking. The café looked perfectly normal; nothing was out of the ordinary.

  Then I looked around again, a slight frown sinking between my brows. Nothing out of the ordinary, if it wasn’t for the fact that they were just a little bit muffled, or slow, or maybe just less sharp than usual.

  “Try to talk to one of ’em,” advised Pet. “Bet they won’t hear you. That one’s eating the same bite of muffin every time he takes a bite, and the one over there has leant forward three times in a row while we’ve been talking, and done the exact same square with her fingers.”

  I looked around again, and this time I saw what she meant. The humans, each and every one of them, were repeating the same cycle of a minute or two, over and over again.

  A feeling of annoyance, edged with fear, welled up within me. Had the goblins been up to their old tricks? A long time ago, there had been a problem with humans slipping Between and eating goblin food, thus trapping themselves Behind for as long as the goblins chose to keep them. Goblins, the avaricious peddlers of the Behind world, had been luring humans through twilit Between markets, and selling them on to anyone who cared to have a thralled human. The scheme hadn’t ended well for the humans, but it had been a true disaster for the goblins—and anyone who had traded in human lives.

  In those days, there had been a rumour of a lone revenger of human wrongs, and many injustices that wouldn’t have been taken up by the Behind courts had been dealt with in a quiet, savage way.

  These days, there was a newer rumour. Even Behindkind like myself, living on the human side of Between, knew about the human trader offices that had been ripped apart and sunk into bloody oblivion a few months ago by a mysterious group of three known as the Troika. We all knew about it; we all knew we could be next if we allowed ourselves to be too free with the humans around us.

  And I—I had just allowed myself to be used in a scheme to entrap humans, whether or not I’d known it at the time.

  “This,” I said, with a dry throat, “this wasn’t meant to happen. It’s just a test run of a new program to encourage humans to spend a bit more while they’re here.”

  “Reckon?” Pet gazed up at me. “What about the music, then? What’s that for?”

  I was about to tell her that there wasn’t any music—even the track they’d given me was only ambient sound—when I heard it. It must have been working away in the background for so long that I couldn’t even remember when it started.

  “Isn’t that the café’s music?”

  “Nope.” Pet tipped up her coffee cup to catch the last drops of liquid and put it down on the tabletop with a small, precise tap. She was smiling; a glad, relieved thing that told me she hadn’t been sure I wasn’t the one doin
g whatever it was that was happening around the café.

  She said, “Reckon it’s been going since I got here, but when you did that thing on your magic computer, it got really loud. Like it properly activated, or something. I reckon whatever was in your hack was half of whatever other half they were already playing. Think you can stop it?”

  Stop it? I could barely hear it. Every time I thought I had an idea of what the melody was, it slipped away—or maybe just slipped through my consciousness—and I forgot what I was listening for.

  “I don’t even know what it is,” I said. “All I was supposed to do was make sure it was woven into the trailing edges of Between. They didn’t say anything about it being half of a whole. It’s not even music.”

  “Yeah?” Pet said. “You didn’t know it was gonna have an edge to it?”

  “Of course I knew,” I said. “As I said before, it’s supposed to be a subtle buy more vibe, not a thrall!”

  Pet snorted softly. “It’s subtle, all right. ’F’it makes you feel better, I don’t reckon the thrall is in what you did. All the humans were already pretty well lulled when I got in here. That was the third thing I was gonna mention.”

  I may have breathed easier. “So, technically, I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Had I noticed how clear and stern those grey eyes were? Pet said, “It’s still illegal, you know.”

  “I’m a hacker,” I said. “I might only be half-blood, but I’ve got enough of my own power to avoid the human authorities.” I wasn’t sure whether I was offended and showing off, or arrogant and showing off. Either way, I wanted her to know that I wasn’t someone who could be caught by a human.

  “That’s the problem,” Pet said. There was a flare of annoyance to her nostrils, and it stung a bit more than I would have expected. “People like you—Behindkind—they don’t obey our laws because they don’t have to, and because there’s no one to make them obey. If you’re stronger than everyone else, you shouldn’t use it as an excuse. That’s when you need to make sure you obey the laws—when you don’t have to.”

  I sank very slightly into my wheelchair. “I don’t disobey human laws simply for the fun of it. There’s a good deal of money in it for me, and no other work to be had for someone in my position. Besides, who in the human law is going to know what I do?”

  “Yeah,” said Pet. “And I didn’t mean just human law, either.”

  My eyes flicked up to meet hers. I didn’t swallow, but I wanted to. “What do you know about Behind law?”

  Carefully unsaid, was the question What do you know about the Troika?

  “Mostly what Athelas tells me,” she said. “And I know that most forms of human coercion are still illegal by Behind laws, even if it’s just to get a bit more money out of ’em.”

  “If they catch you,” I told her. “And if they can bring you back. And if the courts don’t sympathise with them. Humans can’t represent themselves in Behind court, you know.”

  “That’s if it gets to court,” Pet said, and I was hoping that she didn’t mean what I would have meant if I had said it.

  I had another brief, unpleasant recollection of those human trader offices that had met with savage justice, and asked, “How do you know all of this?”

  “I pay attention,” said Pet. “You’ve heard about the Troika, haven’t you?”

  This time, I really did clear my throat. “They’re just a rumour.”

  Pet grinned. “Is that what people say? Well, no wonder there’s still some Behindkind willing to take advantage of humans. Still, you shouldn’t do stuff like that.”

  “I really—” I stopped, and finished somewhat lamely, “I really did think it was just an inducement to buy more; something to keep the business profitable and keep a constant stream of humans in and out the door.”

  “Can you tell what else it’s doing?”

  I flipped my laptop lid up again and signed in.

  “Hey,” said Pet, in surprise. “How do you do that? Your computer just connected to the protection spell in here. Like it was wifi or something.”

  “The same way you access Between and Behind,” I said. There was a lot more to it than that, of course—just like there was a lot more to bringing things that were Between into the human world. It was possible, but you needed to know how to do it, and not everyone could do it.

  “What, so you use the computer as a kind of interface and just plug magic into the spell from there?”

  I said, “Something like that.” I had already been surprised by this little human so often that I couldn’t bring myself to give into my curiosity and ask her how she knew the principles of Between magic.

  “Cool!” Pet said, looking from myself to my computer with fascinated eyes. “You are actually hacking the magic! I wonder if Zero knows about this?”

  “I certainly hope not,” I muttered to myself. I didn’t have the faintest idea who Zero was, but it was bad enough Pet knowing yet another thing a defenceless little human ought not to know. I had no desire to share my particular skills with another human—or any Behindkind, as far as that went. Not too many Behindkind knew about my particular skill set, and I preferred to keep it that way. I had enough work to keep me comfortable, and just enough anonymity to keep me safe.

  “You can stop it, right?”

  “It’s my script and my program,” I said. “I should hope so.”

  “Yeah,” mumbled Pet, but her thin face was dissatisfied. “But I wanna know how you got through the protection spell, and I reckon Zero is gonna want to know how, too.”

  Whoever Zero was, I thought as I double-clicked into my program, he wasn’t going to know if I had anything to say in the matter. The password screen flashed up at me and I typed a dash of symbols into the box.

  An error box blinked at me.

  “What?” Those clear, grey eyes were on me, uncomfortably shrewd. “Something wrong?”

  “I must have typed my password incorrectly,” I said, typing it again, more slowly.

  “Ye-eah,” said Pet slowly. “Bet you didn’t, though.”

  The error box blinked at me again.

  I typed the password a third time, this time a separate, distinct keystroke for each symbol, my jaw tight.

  “Bet you,” said Pet, far too cheerfully, “bet you it’s not gonna work.”

  For the third time, an error box overspread the welcome screen of my program.

  “It’s not letting me in,” I said. I sat back, nonplussed, and stared at my screen. We were as trapped as any of the humans in the café, and that made no sense, because I was Behindkind.

  My stomach dropped. I was Behindkind, but I was Behindkind who hadn’t yet been paid in full…

  Pet, her eyes still sharp and on my face, asked, “They pay you yet?”

  I laughed, and it sounded bitter. “Half. If they think I’m going to let them get away with this—”

  Not that I could really stop it, unless I could hack back into my own program, which had so suddenly and mysteriously turned against me. I should really have had a closer look at that track they gave me before patching it in with my program…

  And there was the issue of time, too—even if I could hack into the program, I would still have to do it before the music got to me, too. There was no one to miss me, no one to come looking for me—no one, unlike the humans with the Troika, to avenge me.

  “I’ve heard music like this before,” said Pet, musingly. “It sounds strange but familiar.”

  “So have I,” I said. There was still a pit of dread in my stomach, but with it was another emotion I didn’t readily recognise. A certain dryness to my mouth, or perhaps a lingering, unpleasant taste that shouldn’t be left behind when I had coffee to drink.

  It took a moment, but it came to me that it was disgust I was feeling. A faint but certain edge of disgust.

  Across the table, Pet’s wrinkled nose displayed the same sort of disgust. “Goblins,” she said, wrinkling that nose even more. “Why do they always wanna
mickey finn everyone?”

  “I suppose you know all about goblins, too,” I said. My voice sounded as resigned as I felt.

  “Not much,” Pet remarked. “Just every time I meet one, it’s trying to drug me or knock me out.”

  “Goblins are like that,” I agreed. Perhaps that was why, I thought, looking around at the Thralled humans, I felt so suddenly disgusted with Behindkind. It couldn’t be any other reason: Behindkind were meant to prey on humankind, after all. There was nothing unusual or even exactly wrong with that—unless you fell into the hands of the Troika.

  “What can we do about it? I’m a bit inoculated against stuff like this, but it’ll get through to me if I’m trapped in here for long enough.”

  I filed away for later the question of how exactly a human was inoculated against Behindkind music, and said, “Glasses.”

  “What, like—” Pet nudged her chin at the waterglass stacks on the coffee counter. “—like those?”

  “Yes. With water in them.”

  “Okay,” said Pet, rising to her feet with a readiness that was pleasing, “but why?”

  I savoured that feeling for a little while; that oddly surprising feeling of knowing something that she didn’t. “We can dampen the effect of the music with the water.”

  “Cool,” said Pet again, with even more enthusiasm than last time. She called back across the café, “Is that because of the fae thing with water, or is it ’cos of the vibrations and stuff?”

  I couldn’t help laughing, and that made her laugh, too; a bright, cheerful sound.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I know weird stuff. Can’t help it; I just keep picking it up here and there.”

  “Here and there as in here and there?” I called, with an amused look in her direction. If she said yes, I would almost believe her. Even though no Behindkind in their right mind would traipse through Between and Behind with a human in tow; even though no human could travel through Between and into Behind without help. I would still almost believe it, because she wasn’t boasting, or teasing—she simply knew things she shouldn’t know.

  “This enough?” asked Pet, interrupting my thoughts. She had loaded a tray with half-full glasses of water, and now she staggered across the café toward me.