Max marveled at the ancient building. The theaters in New York were the first theaters outside of Tawnee, but this stadium was older, predating the theaters, from a time when entertainment took a different form.
At the time of its creation, monster fighting was all the rage. The events varied. In some, one fighter would face scores of smaller beasts in a fast-paced battle of mobile attacks. In these the fighter danced and dodged to avoid sting, tooth, claw, and tail while managing to strike, quickly and often, or else be overwhelmed. In other events a group of fighters would face a solitary, usually large, but in any case, formidable, beast. In those events teamwork was key. There were countless variations between those two extremes. In a world filled with seemingly endless legions of death-dealing beasts, the monster fights reminded people that humans too could be fearsome. But the days of the monster fighters were over. The movies, supplied by Tawnee, slowly eroded the audience for live monster fighting and it eventually fell from fashion. There were occasional events held by a traveling troop of monster fighting entertainers, but SoChar’s ancient theater had long ago made a permanent switch to showing movies.
It was a short walk from the stadium theater to the smaller one Duncan frequented. Though the sky was clear and dark, Mega was high and full, so not even the brightest stars shone through. The streets were lit brightly enough by Mega’s light that the city’s gas lamps, which stuck up from the cobble stone road every thirty yards or so, remained extinguished. There was a festive feeling as theatergoers spilled into and out of the bars and booths, drinking fermented beverages and eating finger food between shows or before heading home. Max, focused on the path towards the meeting with Duncan, found himself being dragged, at times literally, over to vendors or into bars to sample their spiced bacteria and booze. Frustrated by the inefficiency of their zig-zag path, he had to remind himself that Snow had herself been dragged, by him, onto a boat and trapped there for days and days. She had complained very little. He did his best to follow that example.
They staggered from the last bar, waving farewell to Snow’s dozen new friends, and stumbled, giggling and laughing, the rest of the way to the smaller theater. The next show had already started. Thankfully, the rules of this theater were much laxer and more welcoming. Due to the unfavorable position of Duncan’s regular seat, Max and Snow managed to find seats in his row. But the row was completely empty. And since there was no one even Duncan-like in the theater, they decided to rest a bit, and to watch the hover train heist occurring on screen while they waited to see if Duncan would show. Max immediately fell into drunken slumber.
Chapter 22
Snow’s eyes cracked open. She’d fallen asleep and now woke to find an old man crouching over Max, who’d also drifted to sleep in the comfy chair of the theater. The man was fumbling in Max’s jacket pocket. She was surprised Max was still sleeping given the shaky hands of the would-be thief.
“That’s right. I said would-be.” Though she hadn’t. She grabbed the man by the wrist and twisted it behind his back.
The man groaned in pain and fell onto Max’s lap. “Goodness,” said the man, “that’s quite a… oww… grip.”
Max having finally been roused from sleep blinked his eyes and looked at the man that Snow was dragging off of him.
“Duncan?”
Snow paused only a moment before letting the man free of her grip and helping him to his feet.
“What were you doing, Duncan? She only hits me when I deserve it,” Max said.
“I was trying to avoid a scene…” Duncan said, now on his feet.
“Sorry,” she said and looked around. Though the sound at this theater was a lower quality than the stadium, it was loud. Loud enough to drown out the laughing and talking of the viewers and loud enough to drown out the cries of an old man in pain. They had failed to make a scene.
Duncan seemed to notice as well. He shrugged and ran fingers through his thick graying hair, straightening it out. He massaged his assaulted wrist before reaching it forward to shake hands with Snow.
“I’m Duncan,” he said, looking down at her from his full height. He was shorter than Max, but still quite tall.
She shook his hand in return. “I’m Snow White,” she said.
“Oh, a code name. Interesting. What name are you going by young one?” he asked, turning to Max.
Snow looked for Max’s reaction to being called ‘young one’. It hadn’t fazed him at all.
“Bexley” Max said.
“Terrible,” said Duncan immediately. “Sounds shifty. Never trust anyone with an ‘X’ in their name.”
“Zing!” Snow said. “Double zing!”
Max and Snow took turns explaining their story thus far. Max stuck strictly to point by point events leaving Snow with no alternative but to break in with important details like, “It was Huge!”, and “I almost peed myself.”
Though they did not mention that Snow was inside the millennium-old pod, she could tell by the way Duncan kept looking at her, he knew they were leaving something out.
“So,” still looking at Snow, “you’re a True Northerner then?”
“Oh yes,” Max said, “definitely.” He didn’t try to hide the smile from his voice.
“And you just met up north and decided to team up to fight the forces of Evil? Err… HOSaS?” asked Duncan.
Max was about to answer, but Snow cut him off pre-emptively.
“He kidnapped me.”
Duncan looked at Max questioningly and Max started to speak again, “Well—”
“He just scooped me up when I was sleeping. Next thing I know I’m on a boat in the middle of the sea! Can you imagine?” she said, acting the part of a victim.
Duncan looked at Max again, Snow laughed noiselessly.
Duncan, looking uncertain, asked, “Is that how they do it in the True North then?”
Max leaned in close to Duncan and spoke just loud enough for them to hear, “She was in the pod.” He leaned back to see Duncan’s expression.
Whatever Duncan had expected, Snow guessed this wasn’t it. He raised one eyebrow dubiously. Then, when he seemed to guess by Max’s expression that he was not joking, Duncan lifted both eyebrows in surprise. His eyebrows bounced around for a few moments as he waffled between suspicion, hope, doubt, and excitement.
“This,” Snow said, pointing to her face, “is not makeup. And this,” she said, pointing to her hair, “Is not a wig.” She waggled her eyebrows.
“That is makeup. And that is a wig,” Max said.
Snow dramatically smacked her forehead with her palm.
“But under the wig and makeup,” Max said, backpedaling, “She looks… well…” he stumbled, “she looks pretty…” then rushed to add, “much the same. Except her hair doesn’t look like it’s made of plastic.”
I guess we aren’t just good buddies after all, thought Snow and she considered how she felt about Max. He was certainly kissable, but more, he was a worthy catch. True, he was freakishly tall, but it was a handsome freakishly tall. And he was kind and brave and treated her with respect. But what if it didn’t work out? He was literally all the people she knew. If she lost him… She looked up.
Duncan was staring at her, not yet convinced.
She sat down and popped her top hat onto the seat beside her. She took another glance around to see if anyone was looking. No one was, so she pulled the wig up off her head and shook out her shoulder length straight blonde hair. As further proof she took off her blue suit jacket, rolled up the sleeve of her blouse and stretched back the white plastic suit to show her similarly pale arm.
Duncan’s eyes bulged in realization. Quickly, he pulled her sleeve down and bade her replace the wig.
“No more talking here,” Duncan said, “Go.” He patted Max’s pocket and sat down, taking a long pull from his mug.
Snow looked at Max. He was processing.
“Go,” said Duncan again, poorly feigning nonchalance, “I will see you later.”
Snow
grabbed Max by the hand and expressed her opinion by pulling his arm towards the door. He took the hint and, still holding her hand, made his way towards the exit.
On the screen, as Snow and Max made their way out of the aisle, a muscly tattooed man was standing with his arms tied behind his back and positioned by the loading ramp of some sort of spaceship. Despite his being tied up, he was making threats. “I will hunt you down, and the last thing you see will be my blade,” he said with rather a lot of menace.
“Darn,” said the brown-jacketed man at the receiving end of the threats. He kicked the tattooed man in the chest, knocking him backwards. The tattooed man bounced down the ramp only to be sucked up into the ship’s engine. There was cheering from the audience, some stood up triumphantly, arms raised above their heads.
That muscly guy was bad news. And he definitely deserved to be kicked into a spaceship engine. But Snow wasn’t sure murdering prisoners was ever the right thing to do.
Chapter 23
Max stepped onto the street from the theater and stopped. He was still holding Snow’s hand and she stopped too. He had expected to get some useful advice from Duncan. Snow tugged on his arm, to get his attention.
“Back to our room and check out that note?” she suggested.
“What note?”
“The note in your pocket.” She poked his breast.
“He didn’t mention…”
“No,” she agreed, “But he did pat your pocket. In an I-put-a-note-in-this-pocket kind of way.”
Max nodded. “Ah. I thought that was weird.”
They walked in silence most of the way back but, when they came in proximity to the market they’d visited earlier, Snow suggested they buy another wig.
The detour to the market was a short one, though it did lead them through a minefield of bars and street vendors, all of which Snow was eager to stop at. He tried mightily to keep them on track, but Snow’s enthusiasm was infectious. Soon enough he relented.
The alcohol warming his belly quickly eased his worries and before long they were both quite drunk again. A part of him continued to direct their path through the sea of booze peddlers, towards… what? The Inn. No, the market. He grabbed Snow’s hand to lead her out of the current bar. The next leg of their slow crawl to the market was across and further up the street. Something was wrong with Snow’s grip though, it was weaker, less bone crushing than normal. He looked back to see what was wrong and discovered several other changes. She was too tall, and she had changed her jacket. And her face. She still had blonde hair, and was wearing a top hat, but her nose, and eyes, and eyebrows, and chin, they were all different. Her smile said, Hello-stranger.
He abruptly let go of her hand. “I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else.”
Her smile turned immediately sour, her face blushed and seemingly on instinct, she threw the contents of her glass into his face. There was a disjointed cheer from some onlookers nearby. Max rubbed the drink from his eyes and looked around for the real Snow. She was a few steps away watching him. She was feeling some sort of emotion, he could tell that much.
She smiled a forced smile.
He walked over, grabbed her hand, and tilting his head in the direction of the door, proceeded to draw her along with him. She allowed herself to be dragged outside, but her enthusiasm was no longer there.
They were outside and halfway up the block when he broke the silence.
“Did you see that?” he said.
“Yep,” she said.
“I must be really drunk.”
“She seemed into you.”
“Huh?”
“Until she threw her drink in your face. What did you ask her to do?” Her face crinkled ever so slightly in disgust.
Max did not understand, “I just realized that she wasn’t you. I guess I wasn’t paying attention…”
But now it was Snow who wasn’t paying attention.
“I just saw the wig out of the corner of my eye…” Max continued. He wasn’t sure why, he just needed to explain.
Snow stopped in the road. Max stopped, expecting an unhappy expression on her face. She was looking towards the next bar with a question mark on her face. The bar was constructed, as many were, with a long wide opening on the street side wall, allowing the party inside to easily spill out into the street. It took only a moment for Max to see what had grabbed Snow’s attention. A woman near the edge to the bar was wearing a blonde wig and top hat just like Snow, as well as a reasonably similar blue jacket. He wondered if the drink-chucking woman from up the street had somehow preceded them to this establishment, but it wasn’t her, her jacket was different, this one had bright blue fabric, where the other had strings of blue beads on dark fabric.
Then Max saw another ‘Snow’.
Snow, the real Snow, walked forward to get a closer look, leaving Max behind on the street. He looked around to see if anyone had noticed their almost scene, but few had been paying any attention to them. He hurried to catch up.
“What is that?” she said, referring he assumed, to the other two unique Snow Whites. One was drinking, the other dancing. A band was playing at the back of the bar. The string instruments, inspired by guitars seen in movies, were accompanied by the traditional percussion instruments of the North, the rigid Prang drum.
“The first peoples were said to be very influential. I guess your superpower is fashion,” Max said.
“That is really… weird. Maybe the wigs were on sale.”
“I guess we really do need another wig now,” Max said.
Their pub crawl had already taken them further along than either of them had realized and they closed the remaining distance to the market quite quickly.
When they arrived, there was a line up at the Worldwide Wigs booth, but it was the scene playing out nearby that grabbed their attention.
A half dozen or so pseudo-Snows milled about, wearing presumably new wigs and in some cases powdering each other’s faces. Max’s mind struggled to think of some explanation, any explanation other than the obvious. When a woman, dressed convincingly like Snow, lifted a man right up above her head with both arms, Max felt he had his answer. It was not uncommon for flash fads to start in the theater, but usually they were sparked by something onscreen. The young woman smiled through her strained expression, proudly displaying the man for all to see. It was an amusing sight. Then, with a squeak of alarm, the man slipped from her grasp and fell on top of the woman knocking them both to the ground. Their grunts were met with a communal “Whoa!” followed by drunken laughter from the market’s other patrons. At that sight, Max and Snow both wordlessly abandoned the scene and walked quickly up the cobblestone street that led to the Flotsam Inn.
Only once they’d traveled nearly two blocks did Snow break the silence.
“Wow,” she said in a hushed voice despite her obvious excitement. She seemed like she wanted to say something more substantial. “Wow,” she said again instead.
They moved quickly to the Inn, somewhat sobered by the sight in the market. Doozer chittered at them with a mixture of glee at their return, and disapproval at their long absence. Max scooped him up, automatically tap-tapping his carapace.
Both Max and Snow began talking at once.
“What does this mean?”
“I’m super popular!”
“Click, click! chitter Pop? chitter pop. Beruw?”
“Yes. You are super popular. It’s unfortunate that we’ve drawn all this added attention.”
“But I don’t need a new wig.”
“No. You do not.”
“I’ll be a plain sight ninja!”
“No. You will be one of the eccentrics. Wandering the streets in the latest fad. People will pay you attention, they just won’t know to pay you special attention. And soon they won’t notice you at all. You will be a plain sight ninja.”
Snow blinked at him.
“Sorry. It took me a while to get there.”
Doozer bonked against Max’s knee. “C
lick’ pop, click’ pop.”
Max opened a cupboard under the counter, pulled out a bony armored fish and tossed it to Doozer, who caught it and noisily tore into it.
“What does the note say?” Snow said.
Max had forgotten all about the note in the excitement of discovering a covey of Snows in the market. He fished in his pocket, finally getting hold of the paper, and pulled it out. He unfolded and opened it, wide, so both of them could see.
Max read silently, until an elbow from Snow interrupted him. He let out a muffled grunt.
“What does it say?” she asked. She continued to gaze at the note with a frown of puzzlement.
Max responded with a short laugh. “Oh. I’m sorry,” he covered his mouth in an act of insincere guilt, “Ice Lady not read.” He scratched his head and crinkled his brow in his best ape impersonation. “Ooh, ooh, ahh!”
She pulled back to elbow him again.
Max flinched preemptively, which seemed to satisfy her, and she smiled instead of following through.
“Ice Lady doesn’t understand caveman chicken scratch,” she said.
Max read the note out loud, translating for Snow. He read through quickly. Though it didn’t contain any names, Max understood that they were to meet at the bottom of Cliff Falls after False Night, the beginning of second sun the following day.
Max woke the next morning to the light of first sun, and the smell of Doozer’s musky fish breath. Doozer was curled up on Max’s chest, his many long legs tucked neatly beneath himself, and exhaling into Max’s face.
The Inn’s soft, comfortable bed left Max well rested, but thanks to the early fish breath alarm, Max was up before Snow for once. He considered giving her a thorough pillow thrashing but decided not to start a battle he couldn’t finish. Instead he gently shook her awake.
While Snow joked that they should look in on hell, to see if it had frozen over, Max fitted Doozer into his new harness.
First sun was spent wandering the streets of downtown and then the market. Doozer took some time getting used to the harness. He was accustomed to pulling the sled while harnessed and he seemed to really want to either dash straight ahead or stand still.
Starship Relic (Lost Colony Uprising Book 1) Page 11