The Scavenger Door

by Suzanne Palmer

  “I’m sorry,” Fergus said.

  “Yes. Much sadness to see others yield their own lives in whole that way and be lost for nothing.”

  Fergus nodded. “For my mother, it was the sea, and an idea of the past she lost herself to,” he said. “I wish . . . Well, part of me wishes I’d had a chance to talk to Isla now that she’s not busy with exams, maybe answer any questions she has about our parents, but more, I’m relieved I didn’t have to. Probably, the version she got from Gavin and his parents is a more comfortable history to carry.”

  “History makes itself for each of us,” Ignatio said. “It is good you came here, to be a part of hers, even if for the short time.”

  “Maybe,” Fergus said. His handpad chimed gently to tell him it was done collecting the data he’d asked for, and he picked it up again. “So, looks like Fajro Promeso is an apocalypse cult, mostly western hemisphere but with global adherents, that’s been around for about fifteen years. The founder, or Mastro, is a guy named Barrett Granby. Used to run a mega-church in Redemption until he suddenly disappeared, and some of his closest members with him,” Fergus said. “First mentions of his cult appear three years later, along with mention of sacred texts revealed to Granby in a secret tongue which, judging by the cult name—Promise of Fire—and our friend calling us ‘ekbruligaĵo,’ or kindling, which I’m thinking was an insult, is actually just an old, forgotten Earth constructed language from centuries back named Esperanto.”

  “What is apocalypse?” Ignatio asked.

  “End of the world, the total destruction of all life in a sudden cataclysm. Presumably fire, given their emblem.”

  “And they wish to stop this?”

  “Make it happen, actually. Or at least throw themselves a big party when it does.”

  “Not trusty people,” Ignatio said.

  “No, I’d say not,” Fergus said. “For a guy who professes to want to bring about the end of the world, this Granby guy’s got expensive tastes. Art, wine, boats . . . though it makes you wonder what he wants with the fragments or how they know about them at all.”

  “And the mean man in the van,” Ignatio said.

  “Ah, right, the belligerent Kyle that Peter was sent to tail. Hang on,” Fergus said. He connected up to the public records database and put in the van’s registration number. A few moments later, the system churned out an ID. “Needavan Global, Inc.,” he read. “It’s a long-term commercial rental. The specific contracts aren’t public record. Hey, I was going to ask earlier, but how did you get here?”

  “Whiro brought me. It is waiting in orbit,” Ignatio said. Whiro was the newest of a line of small, smart, very fast ships the Pluto Shipyard was famous for.

  “So, you have a shuttle down here?”

  “I did not fall through the sky, yes?”

  Fergus sighed. “Obviously. Anyway, hopefully, I can crack the Needavan site once we’re back on Whiro.”

  “We are returning to orbit?” Ignatio asked.

  “Well, we need to give the piece back to your unnamed, mysterious friends, right? The ‘we’ who tried to destroy it the first time, so they can try again. You said yourself it wasn’t meant for humans,” Fergus said. “Planet-devouring beings and multidimensional space tunnels are way over my head. I find sheep.”

  “That is an inaccurate ensmallening of your skills,” Ignatio said.

  “Yeah, but it’s less far off the mark than ‘save the solar system on yer own, ye huddy arse,” Fergus said. “Look, there’s no way Duff would have given the time of day to either Kyle or Peter, or anyone like either of them, so obviously, whoever is offering the reward is someone more trustworthy. Since this was an orbital event, I’d say the Alliance. Probably one of their science units. If we explain, through a trusted intermediary—”

  “No,” Ignatio said.

  “But—”

  “No,” Ignatio said even more firmly. “Did you not just rescue myself and other friends from the Alliance, who stole us and tried to explode our home?”

  “Not all the Alliance is awful,” Fergus said. He hated that he was defending a military organization, especially here and now on his childhood turf, but it was true.

  “Oh? And you know each and all of the bad ones, can point to them and say ‘not you, you cannot have this intriguing fragment of highly advanced alien technology,’ and ‘not you, because you will put it in a bin and forget it until it destroys you,’ and ‘not you, because you will want to show it to others how interesting it is, turn it over in your hand, see’?”

  “If we explain—”

  “No,” Ignatio said. “You know there are too many wrong hands, and you can only trust your own.”

  They stared at each other for several long moments, then Fergus broke from Ignatio’s unblinking gaze and looked down and away. “But what if I can’t do it? I don’t know how to find more pieces—I’m not even sure I understand how I found this one.” He unearthed the fragment from his pack and put it next to it on the bench between them. “I sure as hell don’t know how to destroy it.”

  “Not everyone who knows about the doors is a friend, to humans or any others,” Ignatio said. “Some might invade to get the pieces for themselves. Some might decide the humans getting all eaten is a great opportunity to be rid of your noisy, curious, clueless people, and a few might decide to put some of their feets on the scales to help it along.”

  “There must be someone you trust,” Fergus said.

  “Yes. I trust you,” Ignatio said.

  “Well, shit,” Fergus said.

  “Exactly so. And yet we will start the work, yes? One at a time, do our best,” Ignatio said. “It is finding things! We will drink coffee and make good ideas together! Does this not make you happy?”

  “Being safely back in my cabin on the Shipyard with my cat and a strong drink would make me happy,” he said. “I hate that Gavin and Isla are in danger, even if Gavin did throw me out. You tell me this isn’t my fault, but it feels like trouble happens just by my being here.”

  “Or trouble will be averted by you being here,” Ignatio said.

  “Yeah, well, wish that didn’t sound like asking for total disaster,” Fergus said. “Speaking of which, how’s the Shipyard? Is the new reactor core working out?”

  “Yes, it is fine. Tomboy tells us it is even nicer than the old and runs cooler. As the old one exploded, I do not know if that is humor. I asked Noura once if artificial mindsystems understood funny, but she laughed and did not answer me.”

  Fergus smiled. “She’s the expert. If she doesn’t have an answer, no one does,” he said. “Is Dr. Minobe still there?”

  Dr. Ishiko Minobe was a ship engineer that had been kidnapped by the same rogue Alliance group that had taken his friends, and after their rescue from underneath the ice of Enceladus, she had stuck around. She’d even taught him more mujūryokudo, a zero-gravity martial art, between rounds of kicking his ass.

  “She has a project with Effie and Kelsie,” Ignatio said. “She claims to miss water oceans and has stated her intention to return to the vicinity of one soon, but it is my observation that, after our time in imposed servitude under threat of our lives, the nearby presence of one another in conditions of freedom is part of healing.”

  “And you?”

  “I?” Ignatio pondered the question for a quiet minute. “Not unlike human lungs, I have membranous sacks that pump gaseous matter in and out of my body, extracting the required, ejecting the depleted or unnecessary, except that mine are smaller and I have ninety-six of them around my physical body. It is a Xhr mindfulness thing to breathe by filling rows in sequence, like a ring wave up the body, and to feel calmness when one reaches the pinnacular sacks and can then release in similar sequence. I have thought myself mostly unaffected by our captivity, but I find I can no longer smoothly coordinate my breathing in this way. Instead, I breathe like a frigh
tened spawnlette, here and there, more autonomic than deliberate. It is a small thing—a random, nothing thing—but I have distress over it. I do not know if that is comprehensible outside my species.”

  “No, I think I get it,” Fergus said. “I wish I could help.”

  “You brought us out of that place. That was the most help possible,” Ignatio said. “It is perhaps just that I need time, and this lack of smoothity is my body-spirit keeping me informed that it is still working on its recomposure. And what of you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. Is it hard to believe you are also worthy of concern?”

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  Ignatio blinked at it. “But?”

  Fergus sighed and threw his arms over the back of the bench, staring up at the branches above, just starting to bud out with leaves. “But I have worries,” he conceded. “It’s this electricity thing. It’s so easy to think of it as just some sort of neat party trick, or a part of my basic toolkit of skills, but that’s a lie. It’s not an inert, inanimate thing I can pick up and put down, and it’s dangerous, and I don’t know whether when it gets out of my control, it’s because I let it, or because deep down in some dark, poisonous little corner of my soul, I want to hurt or kill people. What if it’s got a will of its own and it’s stronger than me?”

  “There is no one out there who understands the Asiig except the Asiig,” Ignatio said, “which is itself an assumption. If I were to try to form my small knowledge of their behaviors into advice, I would say that it would be most like them to give this gift, knowing it was within your power to control but only just, and not without great effort and cost. I do not know if there is any truth in this thought, but it is the best I can make.”

  “I don’t want to exist just for entertainment,” Fergus said. “How do I know that this entire ridiculous situation isn’t somehow a setup from them to watch me dance on their strings?”

  “I do not see how dancing is of help to us,” Ignatio said. “The fragments have been here for ten Earth-standard years, so unless the Asiig can perceive the future, how could this be a setup? It is non-possible.”

  “I suppose,” Fergus said.

  “Also, the doorkey would have been just as dangerous to them,” Ignatio added.

  “Their agent said as much to me, and that’s terrifying,” Fergus said. He leaned back on the bench, putting his hands behind his head, and watched the traffic go by in the distance. All those people in their autocars, having normal lives, never being asked to do jack shit to save the planet, he thought. Why am I always the lucky one?

  A bicyclist went past, pedaling leisurely. He envied them their ease, and watched until they disappeared behind a white van that had pulled up on the edge of the grass and stopped.

  He tried to look nonchalant as he glanced around, and there was another van behind them. There were also more than a few people now standing in the park, staring their way. Probably he should have thought about how conspicuous Ignatio was when he felt the whim to take a walk in a park. “Aw, shit,” Fergus said. “We’ve got trouble.”

  “That is what I have been saying!” Ignatio said. “Have you not listened all day?”

  “Right-now trouble. I’m an idiot. The one place in the galaxy where I’m not conspicuous-looking, and I’ve got you with me,” Fergus grumbled. He stood up. “Let’s walk toward the pond, away from the road. There’s a hoverskate trail that goes behind those trees past the bandstand; maybe we can lose them. Walk like we’re just chatting while we stroll. Um.”

  “I know what you mean,” Ignatio said.

  Fergus checked his handpad as they walked, and sure enough, there were already dozens of messages on the Glasgow alien-spotter board, and a whole lot of people heading their way to try to see for themselves. He quickly added another post, saying he’d witnessed another of the aliens get in a white van. If he was going to be mobbed by the curious, the least he could do is get them to do a favor for him.

  Sure enough, a number of people broke off and headed toward the two white vans, and the crowds were growing quickly. Among them he thought he saw someone dressed all in white, but it was too short a glimpse to be certain. “Quick, go around the bandstand,” Fergus said. “Once we’re out of line of sight, we’ll need to figure out how to slip out of here without you being spotted.”

  “I am not spotted,” Ignatio said.

  Fergus broke into a run, and Ignatio bounded past him, all five legs like giant fuzzy green springs. They rounded the bandstand, and Fergus nearly ran headlong into someone standing on the far side, blocking their way.

  Someone and a motorcycle, he realized. That motorcycle, the antique Triumph he’d stolen from Gavin when he was fifteen and running away from home, except now it had a sidecar attached.

  Isla.

  Of course, Fergus thought, as she grabbed a spare helmet from behind her and threw it to him. “You two idiots get a move on,” she said. She waved toward Ignatio. “There’s a blanket to cover ye up in the sidecar.”

  “Isla . . .” Fergus started.

  “Ye have another way out?”

  “Not yet, but—”

  “So, bloody get in,” she said. Ignatio was already folding emself into the sidecar, and in moments had an old gray blanket pulled up and over eir head. “Then ye tell me where we’re going.”

  He didn’t miss the we. He knew he should argue, convince her of the stupidity and danger of it all, but she was his sister, dammit, and she was owed his time. And right now, nowhere was safe. Nowhere on Earth, anyway.

  Fergus turned to the lump that was Ignatio. “Where’s the shuttle?”

  “It is at an airfield. They said it was paisley, but it was mostly beige,” came the muffled response.

  “Great,” Fergus said, climbing up onto the seat behind Isla. The Paisley airfield wasn’t far. “If you’re coming,” he told her, “the next stop is orbit.”

  “That works for me,” she said. She grinned and put her helmet back on, and they tore out of the park into the streets of Glasgow like she meant to never look back.

  Chapter 4

  Isla had taken a couple of suborbital hops to London and knew how to buckle herself into her seat but, once settled in, kept staring around the inside of Ignatio’s flyer anxiously. The motorcycle, which he could not bear to once again relegate to a Glasgow storage facility, was thoroughly strapped down in the small cargo area at the back. There was a larger irony there he didn’t want to explore, though he and Isla immediately agreed it was something they just would and should not ever speak of to Gavin.

  They also carefully did not discuss what would happen when Gavin discovered that Isla had not returned to her aunt and uncle’s house for her semester break.

  Ignatio took the helm, and they headed down the small runway and then up into the sky. Fergus studiously did not look back at his sister as the sky shifted from the orange-blue of early sunset, through thin wispy clouds, up into the star-filled blackness of space. Everything was way too complicated to have any idea if he was doing the right thing or not.

  Ignatio guided them through the transport lanes, queueing up where it was necessary to cross paths with commercial traffic, and out to the distant long-term docking orbit where Whiro hung, waiting.

  Whiro was slightly smaller than Venetia’s Sword, another Shipyard craft that Fergus had spent a lot of time either on or chasing after, and its silhouette was sharper, more dangerous-looking. Unlike Theo’s signature silver with a blue stripe, this one was black and red. Ignatio must’ve noticed his appraisal. “LaChelle was angry about the stealing of Venetia’s Sword, when she was designing this one,” ey said.

  “It shows,” Fergus said. “But it’s still beautiful.”

  From her seat behind them, Isla cleared her throat. She was pale but much less green than the last person Fergus had hauled up on their first unplanned orbital trip. “U
h,” she said. “Can I see Earth from here?”

  “As you like,” Ignatio said, and gently nosed the flyer down. Below, Fergus could make out Australia and the thin sharp line of the Barrier Reef Restoration project for a few brief moments before clouds eclipsed it.

  “Thanks,” Isla said, her voice very small.

  Ignatio turned the flyer and slipped it gracefully through the open door of Whiro’s shuttle bay, where arms reached down and took hold of the flyer with only the faintest of bumps and guided them in the rest of the way. Red light in the bay switched over to green, and Ignatio shut down the flyer and stood. “We are here, yes! I would like many snacks. You?”

  “Sure,” Isla said. “Artificial gravity?”

  “Yes,” Ignatio said. “Whiro activated it when the bay was sealed and atmosphere restored, and set it to Earth norms. Is that okay?”

  “It’s fine,” she said, and got to her feet. “It doesn’t feel any different from the real thing.”

  “There are a few movements where you can feel a slight difference,” Fergus said, “but none of them are things I’d recommend when newly acclimating to orbit.”

  “This refers to your attempt to perform ‘summer salt,’ yes?” Ignatio said. “Did you not fracture an elbow?”

  “I did.”

  “But you were not new to space.”

  “No, but I was very, very drunk,” Fergus said. He caught a faint smile on Isla’s face and felt himself relax a bit. Good, he thought. This might work out okay, if we don’t all die. It’s already too late for me to be a decent role model, even if I don’t drink like that anymore.

  They all settled tiredly onto Whiro’s small bridge, with its sapphire-blue seats and maple accents still smelling of its newness, to watch the Earth roll past them below. The deep browns of centuries of drought tarnished the land in vast patches, while smoke hung over the fringes of the arctic and impenetrable clouds hid the flood-ravaged coastlines elsewhere. Still, it was a beautiful, broken marble.