The Demon's Call

by Philip C Anderson

  “Sector Ceat,” Trent said, thumbing his device. “Could be one.” He looked from the screen to a southern field miles away, beyond which lied trees at the border of his land.

  “Could just be a serren.”

  “Maybe.” Trent made of note of where in Ceat proximity had alarmed. “Finish this patch.” He hurried past Sieku and added, “That’ll be all for tonight.”

  His heavy steps scuffed warmed soil. A harvester tended its assigned crop to his left and sung its song to the night-quiet as Trent turned onto the main aisle, where he stepped onto a gravi-board and shot toward the southern sector. His thoughts stretched from him with aggravating speed, urged him toward the plot of farm his comm had pointed him. He steeled his expectations for what he might find there—But, gods, if it is.

  Trent slowed a minute later within Ceat, stopped under an illuminator, and stepped off the board. He heard it before he saw it, but his eyes quickly found his ears’ charge.

  Wiry fur spread across its back. Thick antennae hung from its head in loping arcs over its face, and its stout legs ended in scaly hooves. It had started near the edge of the farmland and spiraled inward, hopping from one pumpkin to the next, cracking them open for a few bites of their still-green fruit before moving on to the next. Runes across Trent’s body itched and reminded him of the proper reaction to what he saw: Danger. But he leaned against the light post under which he stood and watched. This could be it. The demon finished with one and jumped to the next. Its jaw stretched to crush the pumpkin’s tough hull.

  Light shimmered across its back. Trent grabbed his terminal and opened a three-dimensional reconstruction program. A red circle still winked in the upper-right corner of the screen, the rest of which filled with an image of the scene in front of him. The background remained a dark mire of starry twilight and shadow, but the demon’s figure turned into an interactive model, which Trent picked off the screen and examined, searching for any sign that this one might be mastered. Probably too small. Still, he hoped.

  Trent squinted. The mark on the demon’s backside looked artificial in its specificity. As it did from far away, the imprint resembled a birth mark his wife had had on her left wrist. Dull fancy clapped against his gut and quickly faded to muted disappointment. Passing years had isolated the once constant anticipation of seeing her again, that the next day might bring them together, that she might not be dead. But this meant nothing—probably. He let go of the model, and the terminal clicked when the miniature returned to it.

  The demon turned and cackled. Saliva and green fruit hung from its chops. “Grat-tat-tat,” it said in effigy of speech. Its hackles raised from its body when its gaze locked onto Trent.

  “Easy.” Trent stepped forward. “Just need ya for a bit.” Over the next minute, the two performed a dance: Trent advanced, and the demon growled and “Grat-tat-tat”-ed, clicked its tongue and lunged in feints to the left or right; both abided in their own time. Two paces from it, Trent lowered his hand and stared at the demon’s face. “Look at me.”

  The demon snapped its jaws. Its teeth cracked against the silence. “Grut-tut-tut.”

  Trent closed his eyes and dug his heels into the dirt. The demon barked. Air whistled past them, then became still.

  They sprang, Trent toward the beast, the demon away from him. He grabbed it by its hide near its tail and spun it around in a bodily throw. It snapped at his right arm, and for a few seconds, they grappled. But Trent got a hard hold on its neck, enough to immobilize its head. The demon wriggled against his grip, gazing anywhere but into the farmer’s eyes.

  “Submit,” said Trent. Though the demon struggled for a few more seconds, it reluctantly followed the command. Trent dared, challenged what he sought to be on the other side of this demon’s eyes.

  Yet the shiny black of each reflected only the stars—as Jeom’s sacrifice had made so. Trent let it go, and the result of his mischance washed through his chest. It’s just a lost demon. Nothing had sent it, no taint could he see, no ash coated his throat. He rubbed his fingers together; no tacky soot stained them. Anger tightened his gut while he watched the creature calm and hang its head. Its throat rumbled each time it exhaled. Trent almost felt sorry for it. Almost.

  He swung and struck the demon’s face, hard enough for it to bay and crumple onto its side. It scrambled upright and cowered from him, its ears pressed flat toward its neck. “Go away,” Trent said, “and don’t come back without a master.”

  A quiet grumbling revved in the demon’s throat. “Grit-tut.” It stayed a few seconds and hacked, then turned and scampered through the bit of patch from which it had eaten. Trent looked on, as dissatisfied as he’d been countless times when he had peered into their eyes over the years, when just as often they’d not pulled him through. What had once been so easy, something he’d feared during the War, now eluded him when he wanted it—needed it.

  “Clean up the part of Ceat it ate from,” Trent said when he met with Sieku, who still tended the ripened patch. “I’m going to meditate.”

  Trent headed for the house, a two bedroom shack half a mile from sector Ilenn. Songbirds sang athwart the acreages; they’d returned to the southeastern woods as the worst of winter crept north. Crickets’ chirps reached him from the hills to the southwest, where the land rolled all the way to the Raedaeg Peninsula, and to the west, an old holdfast, from which farmlands west of the Rine had spiraled just centuries ago, served as an aging beacon for those coming off the Green Sea. On his porch, Trent looked across his fields northward, where lights winked at him from hundreds of miles away. Beyond them, obelisks rose from the horizon and pierced the sky.

  Peace didn't assuage the learned unnerve he’d cultivated during the War, which had formed within him an idea from which he couldn’t flee: everything balanced as a tower of un-mortared brick that threatened to tumble in the next moment. But ordinary had been the life he wanted, and ordinary had been the life he got, marred only by the ministrations of his own mind and the meddling of a king, who expected a delivery of pumpkins the next day.

  Trent checked his watch and wiped dirt off his tanned hands before he went inside.

  The next morning, Trent rose just after dawn. He scratched at a tattoo on the inside of his left arm while he prepared two eggs and a link of sausage in a pan over the stove. A small bowl of sliced fruit already waited for him on the table in his small dining room, along with a handful of roasted pumpkin seeds.

  Sieku came inside while he ate. “I’ve initiated hyperbarics on the trailer.”

  “Good.”

  They left when the sun had risen a hand over the eastern horizon. Grass gleamed in dewy browns and reds to the north, and on farmlands that stretched to the forests south and east, greens sprang from the dirt, fields of onions, garlic, spinach, turnips, beets, and roots. Past the small town-proper of Adjust, they turned northwest and followed the River Rine. The flint hills east of them rose higher and pulled farther away until they became a shadow beneath the sun.

  Forty-five minutes on, they came to a collection of streets called Squander, where they turned down the second vein off the main road. Sieku guided the trailer toward the curb in front of a bordello near the mid-street. Curtained windows ran up the building’s brick face.

  “Should I alert him, sir?” Sieku asked.

  “I told him when we’d be here. If he misses us, he misses us.” Trent checked his watch as he stepped off the trailer’s cabin. Five minutes, he thought as he crossed the road. A building’s wood plank exterior faced him. Signage across its front read: ‘Jearium’s Apothecarium.’ The door chimed when he entered.

  An urlan’s voice carried to him from the store’s far end, drawling in the accent of Keep’s midsouth region. “Morrow, Mr. Geno. Can I help ya find somethin today?”

  Trent waved her off and headed down the third aisle toward a stand near its other end. Next to shelves stocked with aftershave, a child’s face beamed at him in a cracked ad for toothpaste. He knocked on the kid’s front t
ooth: two quick taps, two more quick taps, and a final knock, after which he kept his knuckles against the board until it opened a few inches.

  “What do ya want,” a strained voice said from inside.

  Trent placed his index and middle fingers on the narrow counter inside the barrier, and next to them, two small boxes wrapped in brown paper tumbled like dice.

  “Five-seventy.”

  “You quoted me five-forty-five last fortnight.” Still, Trent reached for a pocket inside his coat for another twenty-five pieces, added the difference to a small cloth pouch, and tossed it inside. He pocketed the two parcels and said, “Much obliged,” to no one as the façade righted itself, then smoothed out his coat before he moved two aisles down the backside of the store, where he picked up a can of aloe and a stick of beeswax.

  “I assume you found everything all right,” said the urlan at the back counter when he checked out.

  “Fine.”

  Trent paid and checked his watch as he left. Fifty-two seconds remained while he crossed the street, and with thirteen to spare, a young man with a coif of light-brown hair exited the establishment Sieku had parked in front of. He wore a suit of Karlian armor that sheened a bright platinum in the morning sun. A half-dressed girl clung to his armored arm. Mismatched undergarments showed through her sheer camisole, and a messy mop of bed-tousled hair tucked untidily behind her ears. She stopped the younger gentleman just outside the house and pawed at his chest. Trent couldn’t overhear what they said, but the girl looked drearily hopeful when her for-a-night lover responded. They kissed, then she watched Grenn climb onto the cabin.

  “Good night?” asked Trent.

  “Good morning, too,” said Grenn. His voice came in comfortable measure from his chest. He pulled his breastplate over his head and hefted it to the floor next to him, then leaned over to adjust how it sat. “She still there?”

  Trent peered past him. The mousy girl stood just outside her place of work, her arms crossed over her chest. Her pigeon-toed feet knocked her knees together. “Yep.”

  Grenn sighed, set his face into a grin, and acted surprised to see her still there. He waved, and, while trying to not move his lips, said, “Please go.” He kept waving for a few dozen feet after Trent slotted the trailer into gear and obliged. Out of sight, Grenn’s expression fell, and he leaned back in his seat.

  “Fine lookin strumpet ya got there,” Trent said.

  “I don’t want to hear it right now.”

  “Wasn’t gonna say anything.”

  “Good. Cause this is definitely the last time with her. It’s gotta be. Not calling again.”

  Trent chuckled. “Sure.”

  Grenn shrugged. “Ah, maybe I’ll call on her”—he pushed himself up in his seat—“but girls like that, they’re—strange, ya know?”

  “Please,” said Trent, unimpressed. “I’m sure you get a discount with how often I’ve picked you up there. Maybe even a cut.”

  “Ha, ha. With the business that place does, I wouldn’t need to be a Karlian anymore.”

  Trent cast a cautionary glare toward him.

  “Don’t,” said Grenn.

  “Then let’s hear it. What’s the problem with this one?”

  Grenn sighed. “You’re gonna say it’s stupid.” He paused. “But she’s still not charging me.”

  “Well call the guard, she’s robbing you blind.”

  “Come on, she—she charges everyone else she sees”—

  “It’s her job.” Trent’s tone turned incredulous. “That’s like walkin into a deli and complaining that you get your sandwiches for free. Besides, ya know that for sure? Maybe she hands herself out, like a party favor. A girl I used to know”—

  “She won’t take my money, I know that. Says she doesn’t want anything, that it’s just fun, but then she just gets—weird—when I leave. Every gods-damned time. If I were just another client, our relationship would be a lot easier.”

  “Gods, Grenn. Would it be the end of the world to find out you like someone?”

  “Yes,” said Grenn, emphatic. “I can’t go around catching feelings for any girl who’ll”—

  “Do you?”

  “No—yes. See, you get it.”

  “Oh, the pity.”

  “And more so. I’m done with that place. And her.”

  “Right. Because she definitely won’t try to find you.”

  “Keep’s a big place,” Grenn said, staring off to the right.

  Suburbs, from collections of single-family homes to lines of multi-story apartment complexes, sprouted up instead of farmland as they zipped through the countryside. To the northwest, the pinnacles of the city’s capitol crept higher over the horizon, shadows against the northern indigo.

  “Besides,” said Grenn. He tapped his hand against the console in front of him. “I’ve just gotten word I won’t be in Keep much longer anyway.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. I report to Karhaal in three weeks, and then I think the Order is reassigning me to Tanvarn.”

  “Tanvarn,” Trent said. “That’s—an interesting place.”

  “Do you know anything about it?”

  Trent shook his head. “Not much”—

  “Figured,” said Grenn.

  —“but before the War ended, I lived a couple thousand miles west in Hemlet. Nice place, just a few hours from the coast. The hills up near the Lea Mountains are a nice place to grow apples.”

  “I bet. It’d be something to go somewhere nice instead of just hanging around here. But about Tanvarn, I’ve, uh, found out a few things.”

  “These aren’t rumors from the Tower, are they?”

  “Where else?” Grenn said, honest in his question. “So I know this girl—that’s not important. I asked someone at the Tower to send a few secrets my way.”

  Trent flicked his gaze toward Grenn. “And?”

  Grenn twiddled his right thumb to sign a lack of surety. “There were a few interesting scraps. The biggest one’s been ongoing for months. Something people call the Beast.”

  “The Beast?”

  “It’s an urban legend at this point. And it’s terrorized almost everyone in the city, even though most haven’t actually seen it. Reported sightings in the Hills-over, in the outskirts and urban areas, even in the city itself—the Upper City, the nice part. The Tower there has been lax about investigating it.”

  “Leynars are suspicious in all they do and of others. I only associate a handful with trust.”

  “Apparently they’re too busy elsewise.”

  “Uh huh,” said Trent. They stopped at a cross street just outside of Arnin’s most reaching suburb, a town called Enough.

  “They’re the lead investigative body—a neutral party, supposedly—in the doping allegations against the Tanvarn Lowdowns. The thing is, the woman leading up the investigation, a Tiana Bagby, is reportedly fooling around with one of their third-string breakers.”

  The light ahead of them switched white, and they started forward again. “So?”

  “So,” said Grenn, urgent. “How can she be impartial? Expecting truth to win out when the person who’s supposed to hold them accountable is involved”—

  “That’s tenuous. But if it were the case, she could even be facilitating it, I guess. The Leynars might be responsible for both. Why doesn’t she recuse herself?”

  “Nobody knows whether anything’s actually going on between her and the breaker. It’s just suspected—highly suspected. Besides, it’s not like the Lowdowns are competitive, even on that Sardar stuff. They’d garner a lot more attention if they were.”

  Trent ran his left hand across his cheek. “The one good thing about corruption is it mostly falls in on itself.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Grenn pointed at an upcoming sign. “Have you eaten yet?”

  “You’re hungry?”

  “There’s not much to eat where I woke up.”

  “Really? I’m surprised girls call you as much as they do, then.”

&n
bsp; Grenn scoffed.

  “What do ya want?” Trent asked, checking his watch. It showed a quarter-til-nine. They’d made all right time—not much traffic despite the circumstances.

  Grenn hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “The sign mentioned churretos. Sounds good to me.”

  “An adult might consider something healthier.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Trent looked at him. “Dumbass.”

  The next hamlet called itself Manage, a veinier hive of avenues and cross-streets than Squander that insisted on itself: for each house, a portico; for each business, a sign that hung over the road, the next more arresting than the last, done-up special for the tourists in blinking displays and saturated colors.

  “The removed streets,” Grenn said, pointing to their left. “That’s where we want.”

  Trent turned onto a cross-street that would take them to the removal, the first of Govern Avenue. They waited for a crowd to cross an intersection, then turned again onto a street that ran parallel with Govern Proper and dead-ended.

  Trent idled the trailer around jaywalkers. “Why are so many people here?”

  “It’s where they live.”

  “Figure that out by yourself?”

  “I think so,” Grenn said. “Plus, it’s the kid’s birthday.” He pointed toward a line of people waiting for a street vendor. “Here.”

  Trent pulled the trailer to the curb. “Why do ya wanna eat from a street cart?” The vendor’s signage read, ‘Manage’s Damages,’ and in text under that: ‘Damage to Your Stomach Lining, Not Your Pocketbook.’

  “Look at the line. Locals appreciate what’s good. If there were a line at a restaurant, I’d eat there. Besides, have you ever had street churretos?”

  “I’m glad to say I haven’t.”

  “The grease gets dirty and gives the food a”—Grenn waved his hand over itself a few times—“wholesome quality.”

  “It’s probably a tourist trap.”

  “Ooh, always so cynical.” Grenn stepped off the cabin and headed for the line.

  “I’ll just wait here,” said Sieku.