King of Swords (The Starfolk)

by Dave Duncan

  He was angry to hear himself sounding so bitter. “Would you rather hear the angels story? Or the one about the Virgin bringing me down the chimney? How about the flying saucers? She didn’t know! By the time I was old enough to question her properly, her mind was so screwed up by drink and horse and shit that she didn’t remember squat all.”

  A blue SUV went sailing past them, and the lady detective frowned after it as it disappeared into the distance.

  “Yes, it did pass us earlier,” Rigel said.

  “I thought so too. What else has?”

  “Two silver sedans, three pickups, a bus, and two guys on motorbikes.”

  “You’re observant.”

  “Just careful.”

  For the next five kilometers or so, neither of them said a word. Rigel was wondering about her predatory husband, if he really existed. Perhaps Mira was doing the same, or maybe her concerns were about something else entirely.

  “Do you know where were you born?”

  Rigel laughed. “In Canada somewhere. You do know that Canada is bigger than the United States?”

  “It certainly doesn’t lack for scenery. That view’s stupendous.”

  They were driving along the side of Sproat Lake, all blue and silver beneath them, the sun glowing off it. Rigel could see eagles soaring, but he didn’t mention them in case Mira drove off the road. City folk got excited about eagles.

  “How old are you?”

  “Guess.”

  “Twenty.”

  “Reasonable. I may be a year older or younger. Once in a while I run into people I met during one of Gert’s brief attempts to school me, and they’re about that age now. I haven’t the slightest trace of fuzz on my lip. Seems that males of my species don’t grow facial hair.”

  “Well, that’s not so unusual, some Indians don’t. So you have no birth certificate. That must be a problem?”

  His laugh was quite genuine. “Lady, that is the worst problem of the bunch. I can’t get a driver’s license, a passport, nothing. No health care or social security. I’m a nobody. I don’t exist. I tell you, it’s creepy! If they catch me, they’ll extradite me to Mars.”

  “There are procedures for applying for a birth certificate, but I suppose you don’t even have witnesses who’ve known you for any length of time, and what jurisdiction is going to accept your application when you don’t know where you were born? Yikes! No family physician? No documents or photographs?”

  “Zilch. In good times we lived out of two suitcases; otherwise out of a shopping cart.”

  “So how do you make a living?”

  “I busk mostly—sing, play the guitar. I do gigs in bars if they let me in.” Everything from flamenco to Joan Baez stuff to the Mad Wriggles, whatever the customers wanted. He was good too, although he wasn’t about to brag. For the last few years he’d lived with Gert, he’d been the breadwinner. Times were going to be tough for a while now, because last night he’d lost almost everything he owned in the world: bike, guitar, half his clothes.

  “You must want to know who you are and where you came from?” Mira said, shaking him from his thoughts.

  “More than anything. Where do I start?”

  She said, “That’s the problem, of course. If I dared to go on the web… but I won’t, not now. Let me think about it.”

  Chapter 4

  At Port Alberni they stopped at the Best Western hotel for breakfast.

  “These places usually say, ‘No shirt, no shoes, no service,’” Rigel said, turning his half-eaten boot over in his hands. “One boot doesn’t count as no shoes, though, does it? Or will they claim that I’m bear-footed?”

  Mira laughed, then slammed the cab door. “More puns like that and I withdraw my offer to buy your breakfast.”

  He had a thick sock that would serve, although at any time he preferred to stay barefoot. His soles were so tough he could win bets by running over sharp gravel; he might have hustled a living at it, had he dared to draw attention to his oddities. There weren’t many people in the restaurant, and none of them looked at his feet—they were too busy studying his hair, probably wondering why he bleached it and how he’d managed to get his brows and eyelashes to match. Mira led the way to a booth. A waitress flashed an automatic smile at them and dropped two menus on the table, which made him salivate harder than ever. This would be the third time in his life he had eaten in a restaurant.

  “I ought to be treating you, for saving my life.” How wonderful it would be if he could afford to do that.

  “No. My treat. All you can eat.”

  Gods, that was tempting! “Well, thanks, but I have money.”

  “Not much.”

  “I don’t want your charity.”

  She flashed him a look more exasperated than pitying. “Rigel, you are the most interesting thing that has ever happened in my life or ever will. You lost a lot of blood last night, and you need protein to make it up. I should have reacted more quickly last night. If I’d fired my gun sooner, I would have scared that bear away before it pulled you down. So your problems are partly my fault. I was the one who wrecked your guitar and I’m going to pay for that too. In the meantime, I’m going to get you breakfast, and that’s final!”

  “I do not beg. I do not accept charity.” Why couldn’t she understand that a man had to have some pride?

  Her sigh definitely expressed exasperation. “Let’s do it this way, then. I’ll make a bet with you. I’ll pick up the tab, and for every dollar’s worth of food you can put away, I’ll pay you two dollars. But if you get sick to your stomach, you have to pay for my granola. How’s that?”

  He wanted to argue, but hunger won out, and he returned her smile. “I’ll eat for free. Thanks.” He opened the menu.

  When the waitress came by, he ordered, but Mira told the waitress to bring him double.

  While he was wondering how to start questioning her on how he should be tackling his identity problem, Mira said, “May I see your bracelet?”

  “You didn’t look at it last night?”

  “I did, but I didn’t have enough time or enough light to examine it properly.”

  He stretched his right arm across the table so she could peer at the wide silver band on his wrist. To his embarrassment, she pulled a portable magnifying glass out of her purse but fortunately the restaurant was almost empty and no one was watching. She turned the bracelet slowly, examining the inlaid markings with a furrowed brow.

  “How long have you had this?”

  “As long as I can remember. Since I was born, according to Gert.”

  “There’s no join in it that I can see.”

  “No,” he said. “I’ve never had it off. Some of my earliest memories are of being hassled for wearing it. Sometimes other boys would try to take it from me, but it would never pass over my hand.”

  Mira gave him a hard look. “A one-size-fits-always name band put on by the Central Galactic Maternity Ward?”

  He thought of it as more of a personal security service from the Cosmic Life Assurance Corporation, but he wasn’t ready to tell her about that yet.

  “It’s as much of a mystery as I am.”

  “So we must assume that the two mysteries are related.” Mira went back to examining the bracelet. “It isn’t silver. Silver would have scratched and tarnished by now. Maybe platinum or tungsten? I don’t know what sort of material they used to inlay the writing. Red, blue, green… The surface of the symbols is perfectly level with the metal, as if all the materials are exactly the same hardness. How many letters?”

  “Forty-one, or nine times that many if color makes a difference—six colors plus black, gray, and white.”

  “How many words?”

  “At least a hundred. They change all the time, like a used-car lot marquee. See these three blues together? Now turn it once around my wrist. They’re gone, see? The words change. They come back, but never in the same order. Nobody knows what language or script it is, or if it’s writing at all. Is a red fish the
same as a green one? It could all be decorative for all I know.”

  “Or instructions on how ET can call home?”

  Rigel retrieved his arm, and Mira slipped her magnifying glass back into her purse. The waitress arrived, bringing them their drinks. Rigel drained his glass of orange juice. Then the food arrived, and he had to talk between gulps.

  “What do you think?” he said. “About the bracelet.”

  “It does look like writing. You should try to get a complete text; see if the order ever does repeat. If it’s as long as you think it is, it may yield to cryptography. You can write a whole book using less than a hundred words. Who have you asked about it?”

  He shrugged. “Anyone I thought I could trust. I’ve spent hours in libraries reading up on alphabets. Back in Toronto I saw a plaque in an art store window that looked somewhat similar. They told me it was seventeenth-century First Nations work from the west coast of Vancouver Island, so I went out to Tofino, where they stock stuff like that to sell to tourists. What I found there wasn’t historical, but they directed me to an artist in Ahousaht, on Flores Island. Interesting guy. He didn’t want to talk at first, but he loved the bracelet and when we got to know each other, he admitted he’d invented his own script, basing it on Rongo-rongo, but I already knew about that.”

  “Where’s Rongo-rongo?”

  “Nowhere. Rongo-rongo is a form of writing found only on Easter Island in the middle of the Pacific. It’s not the same as this—it’s just the most similar I’ve ever found. Since no one can read Rongo-rongo, it doesn’t put me much further ahead, except that whoever made the bracelet may have pirated it, like that guy in Ahousaht.”

  Mira said, “Mm. And does it do anything else, this bangle, other than advertising best buys in secondhand flying saucers?”

  “Everything all right?” asked the waitress.

  “My friend isn’t slowing down yet,” Mira said. “Bring back the menu.” When they were alone, she said, “Well, does your little gadget do other tricks?”

  That was a creepily perceptive question, and she was a spooky person all around. Even her apparent willingness to believe in him and his bracelet was hard to swallow, but he was fairly sure that she wasn’t about to turn him in to the authorities, and if she was working on the shady side of the law, she might be just as vulnerable as he was. He was in over his head already, so he might as well tell her the rest. Besides, he owed her for the best meal of his life.

  “Yes, it does. When I was about seven or so, I was hanging out with a gang of kids playing by a river somewhere in northern Ontario. I forget the name of the river, but they were using a fallen tree as a raft. They said I could join them that day, but something kept pulling me back. I got scared, because there was nobody there, just this tug on my wrist. The harder I pulled, the harder it pulled. So I wasn’t on the tree with the others when it broke loose and drifted away. It rolled, of course, and two of them drowned.”

  Mira shook her head. “Seven’s not very old. I don’t mean to be insulting, but I’m not sure that’s proof of anything.”

  He smiled to show her that he didn’t take offense. “I have more.”

  “I want to hear more, but my reaction so far is that a seven-year-old might have dreamt the memory in afterwards. If the gang didn’t let him play on their raft, he could have invented the story of the magical warning. A psychologist might suspect that he felt guilty because the others drowned and he didn’t. But keep going.”

  “The next two are even weaker,” he said, although he didn’t believe that his younger self had invented the first warning. “There were a couple of times after that when I felt the bracelet sort of tingle, which made me turn around and walk another way. Once I found out later that there was a pedophile molesting boys in the area that the bracelet had steered me away from. Doesn’t prove a thing, I know.

  “The fourth case is a lot less fuzzy. About a month ago I was cutting through East Hastings in Vancouver, which is about as rough a locale as anywhere in Canada, and the bracelet began to tingle. I started to turn around, and… This is hard to explain. The turn became a pivot, if you know what I mean. I just spun around on the ball of my foot and threw a punch. I never knew I had it in me—I swear it lifted the guy right off his feet, and he must have outweighed me by ten kilos. There was no warning shout, the sun wasn’t casting any shadows, and there were no store windows to show me his reflection. It was a completely inexplicable thing for me to do.”

  “He had a gun, I hope? He wasn’t trying to hand you a copy of the Watchtower?”

  “A piece of lead pipe. A nasty looking thing, about this long, and he had it raised to bash my head in.”

  “Any witnesses?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t stick around to take names.” He hesitated, but then said it. “And if you want to know more, I hit him full on the mouth. I know that’s the stupidest place to hit anyone.”

  She nodded. “A good way to get a fistful of broken teeth.”

  Rigel held out his hand for her to see. “There were teeth and blood splattered all over the sidewalk, but I didn’t have a mark on me, not even a bruise.”

  “And last night, when the bear tried to make you its dinner?”

  “I didn’t feel a thing. The bracelet didn’t quiver at all. Nothing. But when Bruin pulled me down, I had this weird sensation of stabbing it. I had no knife, but your gun sure didn’t make that hole over its heart.”

  She nodded. “OK. Add it all together and it does make sense. I can’t explain you, and I can’t explain your bracelet. Micah’s team keeps up with all the latest in weapons technology, and I’m damned sure that anything that high-tech is at least twenty years away… on this planet.”

  Two sixteen-ounce steaks, six eggs over easy, two hash browns, four hotcakes with maple syrup, a ham and cheese sandwich, three helpings of pie and ice cream, and about a liter of orange juice later, he said, “No thanks,” when the waitress brought back the menu yet again.

  Mira held out five fifty-dollar bills and told him to keep the change.

  He managed to refuse. It wasn’t easy.

  “You can pay me back later.”

  “Not unless you give me your permanent address.” And her real name. He knew she’d refuse.

  Her smile told him that she knew exactly what he was thinking. “Let’s do it this way, then. Honor system. You have no boots, sonny. You need this money now. Don’t pay it back, pay it forward: when you don’t need it anymore, pass it along to someone who does.”

  To his shame, he thanked her and stuffed the bills in his pocket.

  Chapter 5

  By the time they reached Nanaimo’s urban sprawl, rain was pelting down.

  Rigel said, “Noah’s Flood, the remake.”

  “With an all-new cast.”

  “We have lots of time for the ferry. There’s a Walmart on Aulds Road,” he suggested hopefully. “I need new jeans and boots. And sunglasses.”

  “Won’t be much of a run on those today. Does the light bother you?”

  “No, the stares do.”

  “Oh, Rigel! People just think you’re an albino.”

  “Albinos have red eyes.”

  “But how many people know that? Very pale gray eyes aren’t that rare. Keep a shirt on and you’re a high-octane stud with the cutest buns this side of the Mississippi. If I were in the mood for cradle robbing I’d have had your diapers off long ago.”

  “Ahem! You did, last night.”

  “And you went to sleep on me. How do you think that makes a girl feel?” She smiled at him, and then after a couple moments of silence, she said, “Are you sure you’re okay with going back to Vancouver?”

  “Vancouver is great.” Joey Lotbiniere would lend him a guitar, and he earned as much busking in Granville Island Market as he ever did anywhere. He would go back to public lamentation for lost loves he had never known and sins he had never been able to afford.

  The Walmart parking lot was surprisingly crowded for this early in the mor
ning. Mira parked as close to the door as she could and sprinted across the tarmac. He followed more slowly out of respect for his still-tender wounds. He needed new boots, jeans, and if the money would stretch, a spare shirt. He preferred to buy at thrift shops when he could, but a guy over 195 centimeters and under seventy kilos had trouble finding new clothes that fit, let alone castoffs. He joined Mira inside the mercury-lit blimp hangar.

  “I need another suitcase,” she said. “See you back here in fifteen?”

  He said fine and strode off in the direction of Men’s Footwear, weaving in and out of clusters of strollers, chattering women, bawling toddlers, and elders on walkers. The store wasn’t crowded, but it still held more people than he’d seen in one place in the last three weeks. A small lady asked him if he could lift down one of those for her, and he happily obliged. That happened at least once every time he entered a big-box store like this one.

  Coffeemakers: hundreds of coffeemakers! Scores of different sizes and brands. Who needed all of them? Who bought them? Did they need one in every room? Did coffeemakers go out of style after a month or so? Or just fall apart?

  He was cruising along a Kitchenware canyon between columns of plastic containers towering up on his right and cliffs of stratified china and glassware on his left when he felt a sudden tingle from his bracelet. He spun around but saw nothing untoward behind him. Imagination! With paranoia you are never alone… He decided to go back, though, moving cautiously. The bracelet kept tingling without getting stronger or weaker. Should he head for Gardening, say, and arm himself with a pitchfork or whatever else looked lethal? Or should he just trust the bracelet, which seemed to have an appropriate response for every possible danger? Or should he just shift his butt the hell out of the store and wait for Mira at the Winnebago?

  He reached a cross-aisle. Looking both ways like a child crossing the road, he made eye contact with a burly, unshaven, dirty-looking man about five meters away. The man snarled at him, ripped open the package he was holding, and pulled out a carving knife. He bawled out an obscenity and charged.