by Robert Brady
“No one can fight the tide, husband,” Eveave said.
“The machinations of War already shake the face of Earth,” Adriam said. “Your instrument must stop the flood, hold back the tide.”
Eveave heard the love in the All-Father’s voice—love for his children, even the errant Power and War.
And it was War’s nature to destroy.
“My instrument fights for the balance,” Eveave told him. “The take and give. The balance is, my husband. Where the instrument of War devours, do not counter him with another who would take more.
“Whoever fights the tide will drown. Ride the tide, and then find the safety of the shore.”
“And this one can ride the tide?” Adriam asked her.
She considered. What to her was a moment was to her champion a year. Time is immaterial to a god.
“This one can keep her head up,” Eveave said, finally. “Sometimes she fights best who sees the balance, who raises not the sword but the heart of a man. My champion is my balance, my husband. My balance is.”
“Let the tide be the tide.”
Chapter One:
He Said, She Said
“Ma’am, can I have a moment of your time?”
“Sir, have you ever dreamed of making all of the money you can while working at home?”
“Are you happy with your current employment?”
“Can I interest you in a new life?”
“No,” the woman told him, with some additional instruction on what he could do with his telephone.
She clearly had no concept of anatomy.
At least the call ended at spot-on 10:45am. Break time. Man, he was dying for a cigarette!
Bill stood up from his cubicle and stretched. All around him on the telesales floor: gray and off-white cubbies, with black computers and black, ergonomic chairs that made your back feel like there were knives sticking out of it. He shuffled down the row of agents, conscientious about his belly touching anyone. Some of them rose with him, some stayed on their phones, he left for the blessed exit and fifteen minutes of time that were not spent here.
* * *
Glynn Escaroth liked to think of the royal throne room of Outpost IX as a lesson in the Uman-Chi themselves. In her 167 years of life, as the sole surviving member of the House Escaroth, whose family had protected the southern towers of Outpost IX for centuries, she had reflected on this many times. White marble covered walls and the floor, simple and unadorned, polished and without veins. Grooved marble columns rose white to the height of more than ten Men, simple rings at their bases, to an arched ceiling, plain in construction, white with no frescoes, no murals, no chandeliers. It glowed a white light that filled the place with a ghostly radiance, making the people and the things here seem unreal.
She stood in the Circle of Judgment before the dais; twenty ringed steps flush against the white wall, rising higher than a tall Man’s head, to a white marble throne, the seat of Angron Aurelias, her king.
The Circle, the only surface in the room that hadn’t been polished, a woman’s height in diameter, existed as a place for the penitent and the needy to stand. A bright red carpet ran like a rivulet of blood on a field of snow from its edge, covering more than two hundred paces from the polished oak double-doors bound with burnished brass that always stood open at the throne room’s entrance.
Normally the solid oak gallery behind her to her right would have held hundreds of courtiers sitting for court. Thirty-two paces long, it remained draped in the banners of the great houses, the Proud Falcon of the Escaroths among them
An Uman-Chi with 167 year of age could barely be considered an adolescent among her people. She felt like a child now, playing dress-up in the white robes of a Caster, a part of her feeling foolish to speak before so many, another seeing what it meant to be grand, to be truly the noblest of all people.
To be Uman-Chi meant to be unadorned; to have one’s grace and elegance be so simply stated as to be beyond question. It meant more to maintain it clean than to decorate it.
The Cheyak had built this place millennia before, and when the Cheyak had passed, it had come to the Uman-Chi to be the first among all Foveans; above Men, above Uman, above Dwarves and Slee and Swamp Devils. Uman-Chi lives spanned centuries. Uman-Chi lived supreme.
Supreme among the supreme ruled Angron Aurelias, King of Trenbon. Great, wise eyes, long white hair brushed fine over his shoulders, dressed in the white robes of a Caster with the Royal Eagle upon his breast, he steepled his long, thin fingers before him, sitting on his throne, and took on the look of a predator. Even his bushy white eyebrows seemed to bristle at her temerity.
In the Circle of Judgment, a person may beg the King’s favor. Most begged for wealth and power, some begged for advice, and many for direction.
Glynn Escaroth begged to sing.
* * *
Like a wave of pleasure washing over him, Bill exhaled two lungs full of smoke from his Lucky Strikes.
There had been a time when you could walk into any break room and just inhale to cash in on a good nicotine buzz. That era had passed. First the smokers had been given a few rooms, then fewer rooms, then a place outside by the door, then a smaller place, away from the door.
Now you went wherever you could get away from people. He leaned against the brick wall, the sun beating down on him, the sweat already running down his heavy jowls into the hair of his beard. Sweat soaked his temples, made a line down the back of his t-shirt, wet against his skin. He tilted his head back and pulled another sweet drag from the cigarette.
“Bum a butt?”
Bill looked to his left where one of the girls on his aisle stood, looking at him. He immediately classified her as one of the three types of telesales agents he’d become familiar with: young hotties who don’t want real jobs but who do have debts to pay.
“Yeah, here,” he said, pulling the pack from his shirt pocket. He deftly pushed a stick out from the pack in her direction.
She wrinkled her pert nose at him, its dusting of freckles peeking out from her make-up. Her pink top, made from the stretchy material that young girls liked, accentuated her tiny waist and over-large bosom. Her long, dark brown hair tumbled past her shoulders and framed her big, brown eyes. Legs like a fashion model were barely concealed by a short turquoise skirt.
The type of girl who did not waste her time talking to him.
“Ewww—Lucky’s?” she complained.
“What I smoke,” he said.
She looked him up and down. “No chance you’ll switch to Marlboros?” she asked, and gave the eyes a bat.
That probably worked on the second type of telesales agents: the young guy whose real job doesn’t pay too well, and who need to make a car or rent payment fast. That guy would be skipping off to the cigarette machine in a lick to get her what she wanted, in hopes of getting her to go out with him.
“Nope,” he said, and shook the pack. “Still want?”
“Sure,” she reconciled herself. They were the only two out there. She picked the cig out from the pack with long, multi-colored nails. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” he said, and popped her a light from his Zippo. She leaned forward and sucked it lit.
Just amazing how hot the girls looked here. Not that it really mattered to him. He classified himself as the third type of telesales agent: old people no one else would hire.
At fifty years of age and, coincidentally, overweight by fifty pounds, he found himself doing a job anyone could do. He had a full head of gray and brown hair, and a scruffy gray and black beard.
When he had been young he would have gone for the hottie, and he wouldn’t have had to fetch her cigarettes to get her. Back in his twenties, it had been a brave new world and he had been on top of it.
He checked his watch. Ten minutes left. He took another pull.
“Been here long?” she asked him.
That surprised him. Normally a girl like this would get what she wanted and go somewhere else
/> “A year,” he said. “Been in sales more than twenty, though.”
“Wow,” she said. “That’s a really long time. Did they do telemarketing back then?”
Oh, man! “Yes, but I sold switches.”
“Like, light switches?”
Another drag. “Phone switches. Calls coming in and out.”
That had been so sweet for so long. Every big company had to have them. They were all unique, making it easy to say, “Mine handles more trunks and more lines,” and get a giant commission.
Years and years of sales and specialization, knowing his product, knowing his clients, and then the damn phone companies had surprised the world with the exact same features at a fraction of the price. Switches all became computerized and the industry had left him behind.
He had paid to put his kids through college, but they were done with college now and had their own lives with their own kids, in other parts of the country. He had been divorced for a decade and never bought a house, because he didn’t want to have to cut his own lawn.
She nodded. He had almost forgotten her standing there. “Don’t they have that here?” she asked.
“Not the same,” he said. “They’re computers now. Totally different sales.”
“So why not sell those?”
Another drag. She took one, too. “Totally different,” he repeated. “I don’t know anything about computers.”
She nodded, then giggled. “Me, neither,” she said. “You do okay here?”
“It pays my bills. Can’t beat the hours.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, and took a drag. “One of my girls works here and got me in. She got a hundred bucks for signing me up.”
“Had a payment to make?” he asked.
She nodded. “Car needs work.”
“Hate that,” he said. “Been taking a bike here lately. Trying to drop weight.”
She giggled again. He wished she would get to whatever she wanted, because he had a hard time not looking down her blouse.
“I’m Melissa,” she said, and stuck out her hand. “Pleased ta meetcha.”
“Bill,” he said. “Bill Howard.”
Her hand felt soft as silk. He held it maybe a second too long, but he couldn’t help himself. She managed to stroke his thumb as she pulled her hand away.
“So, what do you do for fun, Bill?”
* * *
The song had come to Glynn in a dream six months before and burned itself into her memory. It had taken every fiber of her concentration and training not to burst out with it, every moment of the day, since then.
Had she been a normal Uman-Chi, if there were such a thing, she would have been unable, however Glynn had received Caster training from Chaheff Tamulin. Through her mind’s focus and discipline she could command the control necessary to suppress the imperative, to hold back the tide, the power. With Chaheff to guide her, she had come before the King that first morning and begged to sing it.
His advisor, Avek Noir, also a Caster, had suggested they try to write it down. The letters scorched the parchment when they tried. Clearly this song came from Power, or Adriam, or one of the gods who imbued their minions with magic. This made the decision more serious.
Had Chaheff Tamulin himself been the recipient of the song, then there would be no question. House Tamulin were merchants, and Chaheff looked it, standing there in the throne room behind her, the fattest of all of the Uman-Chi. But Chaheff, a gifted Caster, had discovered The Ultimate Truth of Things before his two hundredth year. He could handle any ramifications of any song he voiced. Glynn Escaroth had come to that same truth at the impossibly young age of ninety-five. While her friends had been learning etiquette and discourse, she had been diverted to spell casting and donned the White Robe.
If she couldn’t maintain control of the song then there could be no guarantee she wouldn’t loose all the power of the spell on those around her. In Uman-Chi terms, less than seventy years was to have barely begun training.
Angron had decreed then that Glynn would not sing. That had been six months before this day. Now she returned, the song still burning in her mind.
“If the song will not depart your mind,” Angron said, “then clearly you must sing. The question is where.”
“I still advise against the casting,” Avek Noir said. Glynn detested the Noirs, who had bought their way back into the King’s favor after the sack of Outpost IX. “But I defer to the throne, and then advise a fast ship, a trip into Tren Bay, and there singing.”
The King nodded. Glynn grudgingly agreed, much as she dreaded the water. She lowered her head in obeisance, her long green hair falling before her face. Eldadorian ‘Sea Wolves’ sailed in defiance of the Trenboni ‘Tech Ship’ on Tren Bay. Armed with ‘Eldadorian Fire,’ they’d become the scourge of the sea and a tremendous threat to all other ships.
“I disagree,” D’gattis the Far Traveled said from the gallery. Also in the white robes of a Caster, his were adorned with a yellow mark down the front, something resembling a hook and a dot. D’gattis came from a family which had never produced anything but gifted Casters, himself no exception. As a member of the mercenary army, the ‘Daff Kanaar,’ D’gattis as an Uman-Chi was out of favor, Glynn knew.
D’gattis as a Caster was indomitable. Chaheff himself deferred to him. Angron summoned him here to advise because no one else had his knowledge.
“This is the place of power. This is where Uman-Chi and Cheyak wards protect us, not the Bay. If it is the will of the All-Father that we should be spared, then we will be spared, and if not then there is nothing we can do to prevent that.
“Pretending we can circumvent His will is as ill-advised as was not letting her sing six months ago.”
“You speak plainly,” Angron commented. “You amaze me, D’gattis, for your association with the Conqueror.”
D’gattis inclined his head and spread his hands, palms up. “Your Majesty, if I am frank, then I am frank in deference to your time and your importance,” he said. “The Emperor does not dictate to me. He is a Man, and his entire life is a blink of an eye.”
“Perhaps he is the sliver in an Uman-Chi eye,” Chaheff said. “Because this blink has pained us.”
“I must agree with D’gattis,” Aniquen Demoran said. Glynn controlled the smile that begged to cross her lips, her head still down. Aniquen was young and handsome, his house a high one, and he merely five decades her senior.
More importantly, Aniquen had personally crossed swords with the hated Conqueror and been beaten, but survived.
Glynn’s mirth left her for melancholy. Her brother and her father had not been so lucky.
“Remain here,” Aniquen said. “Remember we that this is Adriam’s month. There is no pleasure in being on Tren Bay now.”
Angron actually smiled, an honor to them all. “It has been so long since I have been outside of the palace, that I forgot Adriam’s month was cold. Yes, let it be here, then.”
“Then allow me to summon the Casters, as many as we have,” Avek said. Glynn looked up to see Noir’s protective hand laid atop the royal throne. “If there must be a containment, let us be ready.”
“One hundred or more Uman-Chi, each acting on behalf of his Majesty?” D’gattis asked the rest. “I think we would be safer if the Conqueror returned.”
Angron held his mirth that time. The rest stayed quiet as well. Glynn looked from one set of eyes to the next, un-fooled by the silver-on-silver appearance. Uman-Chi saw eyes of green and blue and lovely violet, in a frequency other eyes could not see. Another sign that Uman-Chi were superior.
All of them shifted between D’gattis and Angron, to see if the bold one had lost more favor with the elder.
“You are right, and forthright, D’gattis,” the King said. He turned to Noir. “You are my heir, bring me four more.”
Then he turned to Chaheff, and said, “You are her mentor, prepare her for containment, if it is needed. If she must give herself to her song, see that she knows how.”
A lesser being would have shown her surprise. Glynn had the discipline of a Caster and a century in protocol training. Her first duty remained to her people. The Uman-Chi lived long and died rarely.
Rarely, and not lightly.
* * *
“For fun?” Bill repeated. “You mean, besides all of this?”
Melissa smiled. “Yeah.”
What the hell did she even care for? Bill wondered. This reeked of scam and agenda.
“Not a lot,” Bill said. “I’m not married; my kids don’t live in-state. First thing you learn in sales is that you don’t make the kind of friends you keep when you change jobs. It’s no different from here. How many people have you made friends with here?”
“Other than you?” she said. “None.”
Bill took another drag, held it, then exhaled. He hadn’t missed the ‘other than you.’ “So other than the thrill of the kill here,” he said. “Movies, football in season, I guess.”
“I’m surprised,” Melissa said. “I thought you would be hitting the clubs, some nice ride…”
“Yeah, right,” Bill said. She might be looking for a sugar daddy or just making fun of him. Either way, he wasn’t playing.
“Serious,” she said.
He checked his watch. Two minutes left. Screw it. He flicked the butt and smiled. “Back to the salt mines,” he said. “Good talking to you.”
“Thanks for the cig,” she said. “Think about those Marlboros.”
Bill smiled. “You did okay with the Lucky’s.”
He was in the door as she smiled up at him.
* * *
The rest of the morning was like the start of the morning. Provocative questions to incite interest, interest means you have an opening, push the opening to get them a package out, get a committal statement to say that (a) they would read the package and (b) they would talk to you again when you called back.
You could be a robot. In fact, it surprised Bill that he hadn’t already been replaced by one. The sorry part was he was capable of so much more. Bill knew he had a good resume as a sales person, but everyone thought a good sales person in his fifties was a manager by then. A good sales person in his fifties didn’t have to sell any more, no matter how much he loved it, because he was that good.