Memento Mori

by W. R. Gingell

  She felt exactly when the shift started to go wrong; and, as soon as it happened, she knew exactly why it went wrong. They started off inside the Upsydaisy, one of Kez’s hands wrapped around Marx’s rough one, and the other around one of the cockpit passenger supports; and for just a moment too long it didn’t occur to her that she should be moving the Upsydaisy as a whole instead of the Upsydaisy, herself, and Marx as three separate things.

  Kez wasn’t sure whether the Upsydaisy passed through them, or whether they passed through the Upsydaisy. All three of them certainly passed through the hull of the Chaebol safely, but by then she couldn’t tell which part of space was Marx and which was the Upsydaisy. She said “Eggs!” crossly in First World Dialect, and tossed Marx free from the unformed miasma that was the Upsydaisy between solid space. She could see clearly enough to put him back in solid space somewhere that wasn’t solid something else, but that was all she could manage. After that it was just a matter of trying to make sure that she and the Upsydaisy weren’t too dangerously entwined in the same space when she brought them through. Since there didn’t seem to be a really certain way of making sure of that, Kez shrugged and brought herself and the Upsydaisy back in anyway.

  When the Upsydaisy settled properly into space again, Kez found herself whole and largely unattached to anything she shouldn’t have been attached to. The elbow of her knit jumper was partway through Marx’s pilot seat, but that was easily solved by wriggling out of the jumper and snipping off the wedge of knit with a pair of particularly large scissors.

  Kez stowed the scissors in the pocket of her light armoured leggings and pulled the threadbare skirt of her dress down over leggings and improvised weapon alike. Then she ventured out of the Upsydaisy to see what there was to see, wriggling back into her jumper as she went.

  Exiting via the top hatch, Kez was pleased to find that she had managed to get at least the Upsydaisy exactly where she had meant to get it. There was a small, private section of the Chaebol that had its own bay; it had seemed reasonable to Kez that this was where they would find all the best things. Small, private sections of any given building or ship usually held all the most valuable things.

  The problem, Kez thought, looking critically around her as she stood on the Upsydaisy’s hull, was that she wasn’t exactly sure where Marx was. She didn’t much like the idea of shifting too often around a ship that had time manipulation sensors, either, as much as she’d told Marx it didn’t matter.

  “Stupid ship!” she muttered under her breath. She rode the upper hawser line down to the dock in a quick, controlled descent, and hitched it with the mag-lock for good measure. It wasn’t particularly important to keep the Upsydaisy in place, but it would look out of place if she didn’t do it, and something as simple as a mag-lock wouldn’t stop them from getting away if they needed to, either.

  Kez took a quick look around the bay while she was there, sauntering along casually with her overlong jumper arms flapping by her side as she walked. In her experience, slow was better than fast if you were trying to avoid looking out of place. It wasn’t a very interesting bay, unless you counted the fact that it was right in the centre of the Chaebol, and that a bay in the centre of a deep space liner wasn’t the easiest thing to enter without a very specialised engine—or your own version of Kez. Still, thought Kez, looking sharply at the two smaller craft that were already hitched alongside the Upsydaisy, one of those craft was a slip-craft, and the other looked like it was equipped for time and space slips, too. That explained the presence of time manipulation sensors all over the Chaebol. The Chaebol’s owners were obviously of the opinion that their enemies were likely to be as rich and well-equipped as themselves.

  She hesitated for a moment at the door that led into the main ship, but since anything conceivably able to come through to this bay would either belong there or be picked up by the sensors (and presumably stopped very quickly), it seemed unlikely that the door would be alarmed. Or at least, not from this side.

  Kez slapped the sensor pad by the door with two fingers and pushed through it, very well pleased to find that she had been right; the green light beside the door didn’t change to red or violet, and neither did an alarm sound. The carpet was rich and thick beneath her feet on the other side of the door. Her boots sank into it and made her want to take them off so she could really feel it.

  “Pretty fancy, ay?” she said scoffingly, to give herself time to think. The Upsydaisy didn’t need thick carpet; it had food and warmth and Marx. “Think you’re all that?”

  If she left the Upsydaisy where it was, at least Marx could find it again. Kez could shift herself in and out without worrying too much, but she didn’t like the idea of Marx being left without a way out. He would have told her to stay with the Upsydaisy, but Kez was more interested in seeing what there was for them to steal on board the Chaebol. Was it something valuable, or something useful? Perhaps it was both.

  Kez grinned to herself. It was fun doing something you knew you’d already done but hadn’t got around to yet. She set off down the hall in which she found herself, certain that she was very close to where she wanted to be, and trotted along contentedly until she came to a small sitting area at the end of that hall. To the left and right there were openings into other hallways, but here in the middle of the room were three or four very expensive looking chairs that faced the single door the sitting area boasted.

  “Ooooh!” said Kez, looking at the door in a self-congratulatory sort of way. “’Ere we go! This is the one!”

  It was a tall, broad, expensively plain door, and if her reading of the floorplans was correct, behind it was the biggest suite on the Chaebol. If there was something she and Marx were going to steal from this offensively large and opulent liner, it would be in this suite.

  “Might as well get started,” Kez muttered to herself. Marx would be along shortly, his thoughts mirroring her own, and the funeral wouldn’t last forever, after all. She wandered past the door without stopping, all the more wary because there was no visible security, and went down the hall to the right. In her short experience, Kez had found that those areas that seemed like they should be guarded and weren’t, most likely were guarded by something that couldn’t be seen. Recording devices or mechanical security? she wondered. Perhaps both. The Chaebol, as Marx had already said, belonged to a very wealthy family, and wealthy families had a habit of having the best security possible, since they also had a habit of making powerful enemies.

  When Kez had turned out of that hall, she took the companionway down to the next level and sat on the last step but one, making a detailed map in her mind. She’d already made trouble by losing Marx; this time she would be more careful about exactly where she was going. She thought about it one last time. Then she left the stairs, and the hall, and moved herself through layers of ship and space and organic matter until she was in a big, soft space that smelled faintly of lavender.

  Kez looked around herself critically. There was the door, still rich and big from the other side. She was in the right suite. The room in which she currently found herself was a kind of living area that opened into various other rooms. It pinched in a little at the middle, where decorative trees drew in from both sides of the room and made a natural hallway into the further end of the room. This end was all fine, spindly chairs and bright patches where tiny cushions were tilted at inviting angles in the delicate seats. Kez, who wouldn’t have trusted even her own weight in those chairs, thought that the cushions had a sharp, uncomfortable look to them. There was nothing interesting to see here. Even the food dispensers had a white look to them that she didn’t care for.

  She continued into the next part of the room, ignoring the doors that opened off into other rooms before the trees, and considered her options. There were only three doors from here, one of them straight ahead and double. The other two were one on either side of the room, and although one of them had a utilitarian look to it—possibly another way into the private bay where the Upsydaisy h
ad made itself at home—the other was just as likely a candidate as the double doors. She could go through the rooms one by one, but she didn’t like to waste time. Where were the family rooms and offices in this suite?

  Straight ahead, Kez decided, and went through the double doors without further thought. She immediately found herself in a living room that was far warmer and more comfortable than the one in the previous room. Here, the chairs were fat and silky, their cushions piled high and just as fat as the chairs.

  “Oo-er,” breathed Kez. This was something more like it! She briefly considered taking a running leap into the biggest and fattest of those couches—a velvety thing with cushions in mixed blues and creams and a blue-and-white striped throw rug thrown carelessly over it—but since it seemed likely that she wouldn’t want to get up after doing so, she regretfully abandoned the idea.

  Instead, she went around the perimeter of the room once, checking walls and the backs of chairs. There was nothing odd about the walls; nothing suggesting there were any hidden compartments or safes, and the couch backs were all disappointingly hollow when she thumped them. A little while ago, Kez would have considered that hollowness to be a promising sign, but she had since been introduced to the old-fashioned and newly trending style of building furniture over a hollow frame; stretched leather, brocade, and all. The style might be a throwback to when furniture was all handmade, but Kez had visited times when that style was the only one available, and its discovery in any time had ceased to be a thing of excitement to her as a means of concealment.

  She had given up on the walls and had started in on the drawer-bearing furniture around the room when it occurred to her that the blue and white striped throw rug on the blue couch was beginning to move in a sluggish sort of fashion.

  Kez froze, made all too aware when two stripes of the throw rug began to flex, that what she had thought was a rug was in fact a thin, reclining boy in a big blue and white striped jumper.

  “Flamin’ heck!” she said crossly.

  Two almond eyes gazed at her from beneath a heavy fringe. Kez would have said the brown, jewel-like gleam to them held more interest than fear.

  The boy said, “Are you here to steal something?”

  “Yeah,” said Kez, since it was no use saying anything else. Unless she had been careful to present an innocuous appearance, people generally did suspect her of the worst motives, and she couldn’t be sure how long the boy had been watching her, despite the fact that he looked like he’d just woken. “Wot’s it to you?”

  “I live here,” the boy said. He stretched, making a long, thin patch of white stripes against the seat of the blue couch, and yawned.

  Kez looked in fascination at the long incisors and front teeth that the yawn displayed. Everything about him was long and thin, from the slender neck and long, slim arms, right down to the lanky legs that were dangling over the puffy edges of the couch. She asked, “Don’t they feed you?”

  The boy sat up, crossing his long legs beneath him, and leaned his elbows on them. “What are you here to steal?”

  “Ain’t none of your business,” Kez retorted.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I’m not going to stop you. Actually, you can steal me if you want. I don’t want to be here.”

  “Then walk out the door,” advised Kez. “Ain’t got time to be stealin’ a long-shanks wiv too much ’air.”

  A self-conscious hand stole up to that mop of hair, tugging at the patch below the ear. The boy said, “Maybe I can help you find what you’re looking for.”

  “Wot you want to do that for?”

  “I told you. I don’t want to be here.”

  “Orright,” said Kez suspiciously, “then where’s the safe?”

  “It’s in Uncle Li’s office. Are you part of the Lolly Men?”

  “Ay?”

  “Are you part of the Lolly Men?”

  “Not s’far as I know,” Kez said. Maybe that was something she and Marx still had to do. She found herself doubting it; while she and Marx were almost always on the wrong side of the WAOF and Time Corp, they stayed away from things that were likely to lead to death and dismemberment of other people. “Why? Met me before, ’ave you?”

  There was a very long silence while the boy considered that question. Kez waited for him, stirred by a faint memory that didn’t seem to want to come to the surface, and at last he said, “I’m not sure. Things are difficult to remember these days. What do you mean, not as far as you know?”

  Kez went back to her search, turning over the coffee table to inspect the tiny drawers beneath it. “Well, I might be in the future, ’oo knows?”

  “Yes, but anyone could be anything in the future.”

  “Depends on ’oo’s future it is, though, don’t it?” said Kez.

  “If you’re not part of the Lolly Men, who are you?”

  “None of your nevermind.”

  The boy tugged at his stripy cuffs and repeated his earlier question. “Then what are you here to steal?”

  “That ain’t none of your nevermind, either,” said Kez again, because it was silly to have to admit that she had no idea what it was she was supposed to be stealing.

  “I really can help,” said the boy.

  Kez looked at him again, this time more carefully, and he sat still for her inspection. Far too thin, too much hair, and was that a collar around his neck? Kez looked him over again, more slowly, and asked curiously, “Wot are you, then?”

  “Me? I’m a trophy son.”

  Kez narrowed her eyes at him. “You ’avin’ a larf?”

  He bunched his stripy fists beneath his narrow chin and blinked at her. “No. That’s why they’ve got a collar on me. They want to make sure I don’t run away.”

  “Wot you wanna run away, anyway?” demanded Kez. “Ain’t a bad life ’ere, is it? They feed you. You got a nice comfy seat to sit in. Don’t think much of your parents, but they ain’t mine, are they?”

  “They aren’t mine, either,” he said.

  “Wot?”

  “I’m pretty sure,” he said. “But then, sometimes I’m not so sure. Sometimes I’m not even sure I’m real.”

  “Oh,” Kez said, and punched him.

  The boy gasped, clutching his shoulder, and scrabbled away with his feet until he hit the couch back.

  “’Ow’s that, then? Feel that?”

  He gazed at her, wide-eyed. “Yes. I felt it.”

  “Then you’re real,” Kez said. She reached over to pat his mop of brown hair, ignoring the way he flinched, and said, “Good job. Oi. Show me where this safe is, yeah?”

  It took him as long to gather himself together as it had taken him to answer her earlier, but Kez waited patiently until his long legs dropped over the front of the couch. Where Marx was sudden, rough, and blunt, this boy was quiet, thoughtful, and soft. Kez didn’t understand them equally, but she found it as familiar to respond to one as to the other.

  When the boy finally gathered himself together, he led her to the door closest to them. “It’s locked,” he said.

  “Don’t matter none,” said Kez. With the boy crouched beside her, observing closely, she went to work on the lock with one of Marx’s ancient lockpicks. She had pinched them several days ago; Marx had his Multi Lock tool, after all, and Kez preferred the tactility of picks. It was a simple enough lock and easy to open, but when she went to twitch the knob the boy’s long fingers stopped her.

  “Oi,” Kez said in surprise. Those fingers, so long and delicate, were unexpectedly strong. “Wot you doin’?”

  “There’s an alarm on it,” the boy said. “You’ve got to turn that off first.”

  Kez flicked a look up at him. “’Ow’d you know that, then?”

  “I’ve broken in a few times,” he said.

  “Fort you wanted to break out.”

  “Sometimes you have to break in to break out,” said the boy.

  “Oi.”

  “What?”

  “You want a broken finger?”
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  The boy looked at their hands, seemed to consider her words for a few moments, then let go.

  “Orright,” said Kez, gleefully ready. “You fix the alarm, then.”

  “Me?”

  “Said you know ’ow to do it.”

  “Yes, but—” Perhaps he remembered his offer to help. “All right. But I don’t know how to unlock the safe.”

  “You just worry ’bout the alarm,” advised Kez. “I’ll worry ’bout locks an’ such.”

  “The first one is in the door panel.”

  “The first one?”

  The boy looked surprised. “There’s three. I told you, I’ve broken in a few times. You don’t think it would have taken me more than once if there was only one alarm, do you? I was expecting the first one, but not the other two.”

  Kez looked at him in surprise. “Ain’t as clueless as you look, ay? Oi. Wot’s your name?”

  It was his turn to look surprised. “You don’t know?”

  “Why would I know?”

  “Just…” he let that trail away, his lips drooping just slightly, and shrugged. “Reasons. I thought that maybe you…”

  “Maybe if I’d come to steal you I’d know your name,” Kez said, in a comforting sort of a way; though she didn’t know exactly why she was being comforting. There was something about his slumped shoulders that was oddly familiar. And something about that collar… “Ain’t gonna let that alarm go off, are you?”

  “What? No, of course not.”

  “Ain’t you gonna tell me your name?”

  “Oh.” The boy sank into one of his thoughtful silences and woke from it smiling, turning his eyes into two gleaming slits. “My name is Tuan Li. Why do you want to know?”

  “Reasons,” said Kez briefly. It was always a good idea to know the name of someone you might have met in the future.

  There was an expectant sort of silence where Tuan’s long fingers didn’t play across the surface of the panel and green lights began to blink in a slightly faster rhythm.