by Anthology
He clearly wanted her to ask where “elsewhere” might be, and so Sal declined to do so. It would only bring back the insufferable smirk. Also, she didn’t really care. Her job was finding the weird stuff. How it worked was Liam and Asanti’s department. Assuming they all lived that long.
“What do I do?”
Opie handed Sal a slip of paper and pointed to a small table in the corner where a stack of paper, quill, and inkwell sat waiting. “Write your question on the paper. Hold the paper in your fist, and put your hand in the box.” He paused, then added, smirk back in place, “Don't be afraid. Fear is the mind-killer.”
Sal raised an eyebrow. “O…kay?”
Opie made a disgusted sound and muttered something under his breath before gesturing to the table. “Just write it down.”
Sal hesitated. “Does the Index read intent?”
“Huh?”
“How literal-minded is it? Can the Index figure out what I mean, or do I need to be careful not to make one of my wishes ‘Genie, make me a sandwich’?”
Opie shrugged. “The more specific your question, the more specific the answer.”
Well, that was helpful. With a sigh, Sal picked up the paper and quill. “This might take a minute.”
The smirk was back. “No hurry. No hurry at all.”
Ten minutes and a lot of blotting later, Sal clutched a folded piece of paper tightly in her clenched fist. Opie opened the box with a brass key that hung around his neck, and held it out for her. “Ready when you are.”
Sal hesitated. The wood looked old, but she wasn’t enough of an expert to tell whether it meant that the box itself was ancient, or that it had been made from repurposed boards. Repurposed from what? Charon’s rowboat? The Ark of the Covenant? Lumber planed from a section of the True Cross? Perry had been into woodworking for a while in Boy Scouts. Maybe he would have been able to tell by looking at the joinery.
Yes, think about Perry. And hope you’re still able to think about him after this is over.
Opie, for all his professed patience as she’d crafted her question, made a small “get on with it” gesture. There was a notch cut into one of the short sides of the box for her wrist. Once Sal put her hand in and Opie locked the lid, she’d be stuck until he decided to let her out. Or until she wrenched the box from him, ripped out the connection that tied it to the packing case, and went running through the Black Market with a magical wooden box permanently grafted to her arm. Sal eyed Opie, sizing him up. She could take him. Even one-handed.
Sal placed her hand in the box.
Opie slammed the lid shut. Sal’s hand felt cold, then hot, then like it was being stuck with a hundred needles. She flinched. Opie locked one hand around her wrist. His grip was surprisingly strong. “Don't. Move.”
The pain faded, leaving Sal’s skin cool, but not as intensely cold as before. She felt a soft brush of fur across her knuckles. Then something wet and sticky slid across the base of her palm. Not a tongue. It can’t possibly be a tongue. Was not-a-tongue any better? No, definitely not. Sal shuddered, and suddenly the bones of her hand were on fire. She tried to open her hand, but her muscles weren’t listening to her commands, nerves too busy transmitting a constant stream of Pain! Pain! Pain! to carry any other instructions. Sal gritted her teeth, closed her eyes, and concentrated.
***
Sal was back in her past, in a self-storage facility in New Jersey. Perry, or Perry plus a demon, floated in midair, surrounded by a pile of books, pages flipping madly. But it wasn’t the same. Because the Index was there too. Breathing down the back of her neck, breath hot and moist, like a wolf ready to snap its jaws through her spine. And when it did, it would take this moment from her forever. This was what the Index wanted. And it was hungry.
Trapped in her own memory, Sal reached for the Book of the Hand. Bare fingers inches from the cover. A hair’s-breadth away. She could feel the jaws closing, teeth piercing the skin of her neck, and with every force of her will that remained, Sal wrenched her mind to another memory. One much more recent.
***
She was in her room at the B&B with Menchú, on the phone with Liam. “They’re hacking the Archive,” he said. “Not the computers. The books. I’m sending a file to your phone. You need to memorize it.”
As the wolf’s teeth sank into her neck, Sal called up the file to her mind. It was a complex mathematical function represented as a single abstract image. Sal hadn’t slept at all, committing every twist and overlap to memory. It was amazing what you could do, if the incentive for success was strong enough.
According to Liam, the Index shouldn’t read the image as a threat. Because to Sal, it was only an image. She didn’t understand the math behind it, or the program behind the math. She was just carrying the candy coating, to trick the Index into swallowing the whole thing down.
Because even if Sal didn’t understand the meaning, it was there. Hidden and coded in every twist and turn and recursive loop. A tiny seed, planted in fertile ground.
***
Sal could hear shouting. Opie and others. She felt a pain like someone tearing the flesh from her hand, and then a sharper one as something hit her in the head. She inhaled to shout and choked on a lungful of smoke.
Sal coughed for moments, hours, years, until she managed to open her eyes. Apparently the thing that had hit her head was the floor, and she took in the room from her new low and cockeyed angle. Smoke poured from the crate that housed the Index. Her phone, tucked in her pocket, buzzed frantically. Sal crawled to a corner, completely ignored by the frantic techno-cultists who had flooded into the room since she’d closed her eyes.
Sal finally got her hands—hey, she had both hands again—around her buzzing phone. “It worked?”
Liam’s voice sounded more tired than she had ever heard it, but also relieved. “It worked.”
“Good.” Sal hung up. The Guardians were pouring in along with the Maitresse. And there was Mr. Norse, followed by Father Menchú, whose errand in town had been to keep the billionaire distracted until it was too late for him to stop Sal’s plan. A fact that Mr. Norse had realized too late. Sal decided that Menchú could handle him. And the Maitresse. And the Guardians. He was good with people. It was his job.
***
The Market Arcanum concluded without further incident. When dawn broke over the Alps, Sal watched the men in wolf-cloaks walk out of the castle and right back into the woods. The women in evening gowns pulled on cloaks and veils to hide their tattoos before alighting into their limousines. The techno-cultists had packed their computers into a white panel van and left as soon as it became clear that the Maitresse did not view the destruction of the Index as sufficient cause to evict Menchú and Sal from the Market. Mr. Norse departed rather more gracefully, although his last words were not exactly a comfort.
“Until next time, Bookburners.”
A shadow fell across Sal’s path as she and Menchú carried their bags to the rental car, and Sal looked up to see the Maitresse herself waiting for them. Even in daylight, and without her flanking Guardians, she radiated authority.
“It’s been quite an eventful few days for you.” Her eyes flicked to Sal. “I hope you’re able to get your house back in order after this unfortunate…disruption.”
“Repairs to the Archives are already underway,” said Menchú.
The Maitresse smiled. “That too.”
And without waiting for a reply, she turned and walked away, back up the road to the castle. Sal and Menchú stood together in silence, watching her go, until her steps carried her around a bend and out of sight.
Menchú broke their tableau first, heaving his case into the trunk of the car. “Come on, let’s go home.” Sal followed suit and slid into the front passenger seat beside him. For the hundredth time, she slid her hand into her pocket, fingers seeking the reassurance of the folded piece of paper she had put there, the only physical evidence that remained of her encounter with the techno-cultists.
It was
the paper where she had written her question for the Index: What is Mr. Norse looking for?
It now bore only two words: Codex Umbra.
***
Hours later, when Sal and Menchú reached Rome, the Archives still looked like a bomb had hit them. A non-fiery, book-oriented bomb, sure, but a bomb nonetheless.
Asanti took a break from picking up the pieces of her library to hug them both. Sal felt a surge of relief as her arms went around the archivist. Sometimes you just had to touch someone to prove to yourself that they were still alive.
“Liam is glued to his computer,” Asanti told Sal when she asked about the others. “Grace went home to sleep.”
It had been a long three days for everyone, Sal supposed. Between being up all night for the Market, plus staying up for most of the days between, Sal felt like she hadn’t slept in a week. She’d dozed for a few hours on the train, but her sleep had been filled with dreams of wandering the corridors between compartments, looking for something. She certainly didn’t feel rested. Then again, she never had slept well away from her own bed.
Bed.
Liam.
Sal excused herself and went in search of their beleaguered tech expert. Time to prove to herself that he was still alive too.
***
She found him, as promised, hunched over his laptop, and lingered in the doorway, waiting for him to notice her. When he didn’t, she cleared her throat. Liam looked up.
“You saved the day,” said Sal. “Nice work.”
Liam shrugged off the compliment. “Not quick enough. Who knows what those techno-bastards found while they were flipping through the Archives? Or what they left behind.”
“Did you find any reference to the Codex Umbra?”
“Not even a description of what it might be. Which is what worries me.”
Sal sighed. “Take the win, then. We’ve got a hell of a mess to clean up, but at least we’re all okay, right?” She slid up behind him, letting her thumbs dig into the tense muscles of his shoulders. “Thanks to you.”
He shrugged her off. “Unless Mr. Norse managed to find and erase the information he was looking for. With all of the books the hack disturbed, it could take us centuries to find out what damage he did.”
Liam turned back to his computer. Sal blocked him by plopping down in his lap. “If it will take centuries anyway, it can wait until morning.”
“Sal, I’m too tired—” he began.
“And so am I. But I’ve spent the last three days afraid you were going to die, and I don’t want to be alone tonight. Besides, you look like hell. You’re going to have to sleep sometime; it might as well be with me.”
Liam gently put his hands on her waist and lifted her to her feet. “Okay,” he said. “But go ahead. I’ll let myself in later.”
Sal wanted to protest, but she was too tired. “Fine. Whatever you want.”
That night, Sal dreamed of wandering the streets of Rome, looking for that same thing she could not name. When she finally woke, hours past dawn, the other side of the bed was undisturbed.
Coda.
Menchú stayed in the Archives late into the night. The niche he had previously designated as his office had been completely destroyed by Mr. Norse’s hacking. His poor, long-suffering chair had lost a leg at some point, snapped off just below the seat. Menchú located the missing piece and was contemplating repairs when he felt Asanti staring at him.
“Did you tell her?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“Now she knows. But I don’t know that it’s made her a more cautious swimmer.”
Asanti made a noncommittal “hmm” noise.
Menchú quirked an eyebrow at her. “What?”
“Did you ever consider that you learned the wrong lesson from your experience with the angel in Guatemala?”
“It tortured and murdered an entire village. It wasn’t an angel.”
Asanti shrugged. “You’ve read the Bible. God kills people all the time. Violence, disease, apocalyptic flood. Even Jesus had a temper.”
Menchú felt his own temper rising and made an effort to keep it in check. Asanti continued.
“You’d dealt with demons before. If you’d realized what the boy was immediately and banished him, or refused to make a deal, would the massacre still have happened?”
“If you’re trying to say that what I did didn’t make a difference, I assure you—”
“I’m saying that you knew demons were evil before that night. If that was the lesson you were supposed to learn, someone was being very redundant with your education.”
Menchú let out a long breath. He was too tired to have this discussion now. Possibly ever. “What’s your point, Asanti?”
“Demon, angel, or something else, from what you’ve told me, making a deal with that thing was the only possible way you could have prevented a massacre that night.”
Menchú gritted his teeth. “But I did, and it didn’t.”
“But what if that was the lesson?” Asanti gripped his sleeve, begging him with her eyes to listen and understand. “Next time, make a better deal.”
Menchú turned away. Asanti let go of his arm, and he heard her footsteps fading away, quickly muffled by the destruction around them. Her words lingered long after she had disappeared among the stacks.
Next time.
S. K. Dunstall
http://www.skdunstall.com
LINESMAN(Novel excerpt)
by S. K. Dunstall
Originally published by Ace Books (editor Anne Sowards)
For promotion purposes only
Chapter One
Ean Lambert
The ship was in bad shape. It was a miracle it had come through the void at all, let alone come through in one piece. Ean patted the chassis that housed the lines. “You did good, girl,” he whispered. “I know that, even if no one else does.”
It seemed to him that the ship responded to his touch, or maybe the feel of his brain syncing with hers.
The crewman who showed him the lines was nervous but polite. “We’ve waited two months for this work,” he said. “Glad they’ve finally brought someone back.” He hesitated, then asked the inevitable question in a rush. “So what’s it like? The confluence?”
Ean considered lying but decided on the truth. “Don’t know. I haven’t been out there.”
“Oh. But I thought—”
So did everyone else. “Someone has to service the higher lines,” Ean said.
“Oh. Of course,” but the crewman wasn’t as awed of him after that and left abruptly once he had shown him the lines.
Ean supposed he should be used to it by now. But everyone knew the “real” tens—and the nines—were out at the confluence, trying to work out what the immense circle of power was and how it worked. Not that anyone seemed to have come up with an answer yet—and they’d had six months to investigate it.
When the confluence had first been discovered, the media had been full of speculation about what it was. Some said it was a ball of matter that exuded energy on the same wavelength as that of the lines, while others said it was a piece of void space intruding into real space. Some even said it was the original source of the lines.
Six months later, with the Alliance and Gate Union/Redmond on the brink of war, media speculation had changed. It was a weapon designed by the Alliance to destroy all linesmen. It was a weapon designed by Gate Union, in conjunction with the linesmen, to destroy the Alliance. New speculation said it was an experiment of Redmond’s gone wrong. They were known to experiment with the lines.
Ean had no idea what it was, but he was sure he could find out—if only Rigel would send him out to the confluence to work, like the other nines and tens.
He was a ten, Ean reminded himself. Certified by the Grand Master himself. As good as any other ten. He sighed and turned to his job.
He worked forty hours straight, stopping only for the meals the crew brought him at four-hour intervals, immersed i
n the fields, straightening the tangled lines. Creating his own line of the same frequency, calling the fragments into his line, much like a weak magnet might draw iron filings. It was delicate work, and he had to concentrate. He was glad of that. He had no time to think about how he was the only ten left in the cartels available to do work like this because all the other cartel masters had sent their nines and tens out to the confluence.
He sang as he worked. The deep, sonorous songs of the void—line nine. The chatter of the mechanics—lines two and three. The fast, rhythmic, on-off state of the gravity controller—line four. And the heavy strength of the Bose engines that powered it through the void—line six. He didn’t sing line one. That was the crew line, and this wasn’t a happy ship.
“I’ve never heard of a linesman who sang before,” said the crewman who brought him his third meal.
Neither had Ean. But then, most linesmen would never have described the lines as song either. He’d tried to explain it once, to his trainers.
“It’s like the lines are out of tune but they don’t know how to fix themselves. Sometimes they don’t even realize they are out of tune. To fix them I sing the right note, and they try to match it, and we keep trying until we match.”
His trainers had looked at each other as if wondering what they had gotten themselves into. Or maybe wondering if Ean was sane.
“It’s because you taught yourself for so long,” one particularly antagonistic trainer had told him. “Lines are energy, pure and simple. You manipulate that energy with your mind. You need to get that music nonsense out of your head,” and he’d muttered to another trainer about how desperate the cartel master was to be bringing slum dogs into the system.
Ean had never mentioned the music again. Or the fact that lines had to be more than just energy. As for the thought that lines might have emotions, he’d never mentioned that idea at all. He’d known instinctively that idea wouldn’t go down well. The trainers would probably have refused to train him.
His throat was raw. He drank the tea provided in one grateful gulp. “Do you think I could get some more tea?”