Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  Omar blinked into the crushed grass. I did it. The blade was only visible for half a second. I did it! Thank you, little brother. That was truly inspired. I’ve never been so graceful before in all my life.

  The dead samurai appeared for a moment on the field beside him to bow his head, and then he vanished again into the netherworld of the seireiken.

  As he pushed himself up, Omar saw one of the crew men kneeling beside his dazed comrade and the other two were wrestling the Halcyon to a full stop and lashing it to a pair of iron rings buried in the earth.

  “You all right, old timer?” Morayo jogged up beside him. “That was a hell of a thing you did. The captain never mentioned you were a fighter, too. If I’d known that, it would have been even easier to convince the others to let you come along on the Finch.”

  Omar brushed the grass from his clothes as he turned to her. “Ah, so you were my advocate in there? But we’ve never even met. Did you think the expedition really needed a translator or a doctor that badly?”

  “Not really.” The young engineer grinned. “But we sure as hell could use a good cook.”

  The two of them headed back to the hangar once again and passed close by the Halcyon’s cabin. Morayo slapped her hand on the window, startling a young woman inside. “Hey Taziri!” Morayo yelled. “Have you figured out where everything goes yet?” And she laughed as they walked on, leaving the other woman glaring out through the glass.

  “Who was that?” Omar asked.

  “That’s Isoke’s flight engineer. She’s not even a real engineer, she’s an electrician. Can you believe that?”

  “Ah. And she’s having trouble finding her way around the Halcyon?”

  “No. I just like giving her a hard time that she hasn’t had a baby yet. They’re waiting, she says.”

  Omar frowned. “Why give her a hard time about that?”

  “I don’t know. Why not?”

  Back inside the hangar they found Captain Ngozi and two men standing beside a long wooden table and speaking in low voices. When Omar and Morayo walked up, the captain asked, “What was all that noise out there?”

  “Just Isoke and Taziri trying to crash that new boat of theirs and kill all the ground crew at the same time,” Morayo said dully. “But our new cook saved the day.”

  “Our new cook?” Riuza asked. “You told him?”

  “It may have slipped out,” Morayo said. “But I promised him you would do the whole lecture about protocol and command and everything anyway.”

  The captain sighed. “Never mind.” She shook Omar’s hand. “We’ve all discussed the matter and decided that we’re willing to trade you a seat on the Finch for a copy of your map. Welcome aboard, Mister Bakhoum. You have one day to buy a very warm coat and to notify your next of kin that you’re probably not coming back. You’re going to Europa.”

  Chapter 3

  Captain Ngozi motioned for the tall man beside her to step forward. “Mister Bakhoum, I’d like you to meet Mister Kosoko Abassi, our resident cartographer and geologist from Timbuktu. He’s been with the team for three years now.”

  The men shook hands briefly. Omar guessed from the traces of gray in the taller man’s hair and the deep lines around his eyes that they were of the same age. Or, more precisely, that Abassi was the same age that Omar had been when he stopped aging.

  “And this is Professor Garai Dumaka of Gao University, our naturalist and anthropologist. Technically he’s been on the team for five years, since before the Finch was rigged for northern flying,” Riuza said. “He helped get the entire exploration program off the ground, so to speak.”

  The professor was shorter and younger than the cartographer, and he wore a pair of circular spectacles on his small nose. The rest of him wore an over-tailored green suit of many pockets full of pens and small tools. Omar shook his hand politely.

  “All right, well, that’s all the time we have for standing around,” Riuza said. She handed Omar a slip of paper. “Here’s a list of everything you’ll need. Clothes, mostly. We’re adding extra food for you. The weight shouldn’t be a problem, but there’s absolutely no room for any personal gear. No trunks full of special equipment or a secret companion you conveniently forgot to mention.”

  Omar smiled. “I take it you’ve had trouble with such things before.”

  “Let’s just say there used to be a fifth member of this team, and she had trouble listening to directions. So now she’s no longer a part of the team.”

  Omar nodded. “I understand completely, dear lady. No surprises. Just myself and the clothes on my back, as soon as I can buy them. Thank you all very much. You won’t regret it, I promise you.”

  “We leave tomorrow morning at six thirty,” Riuza said. “Be on time.”

  “Don’t worry. We won’t leave without that map of yours,” Morayo said with a wink.

  The captain glared at her lieutenant and sent her back to work on the Finch.

  The rest of the team went back to work as well, and Omar strode out of the hangar with a bounce in his step that he hadn’t felt in decades. He crossed the field, left the gates, and hurried back down the hill to grab the first person he found to ask for directions to a tailor’s shop.

  It took three people to give him directions because none of the three could agree on which shop had the best prices, but Omar took all of their advice with a good-natured smile and set out for the closest clothier’s establishment. But he soon found it would take all three of the recommended stores to find everything on his list. Still, with every shop eager to accept his Eranian darics, he stepped out into the streets of Tingis fully attired shortly before noon. The canvas trousers were stiff and rough, the tall leather boots with the steel toes squeaked when he walked, and his several layers of shirts and sweaters made him feel like a hippopotamus wallowing in the mud. But he rather liked the full-length wool coat with the fox fur trim, even with its pockets crammed full of spare leather gloves and wool hats. And his favorite purchase of all wasn’t even on the list, but the blue-tinted Mazigh sunglasses were simply too pretty to pass up. And besides, he reasoned to himself, they would shield his eyes from the glare of the sun on the vast Europan ice.

  Probably. And if not, then at least the ladies should find me dashing and mysterious in them.

  Eager to break in his uncomfortable trousers and noisy boots, Omar set off down the road with his old clothes bundled over his shoulder and his sword hooked on his new belt. After a few minutes of sweltering in his new clothes, he decided it was time to sit down for a long lunch and he ducked into the first eatery he came to, not bothering to look for a menu outside. Inside he found long rectangular tables, not the small round ones from the cafes near his hotel, and he sat down near a group of roughly dressed men in the middle of their midday meal.

  A young man appeared at Omar’s elbow a moment later carrying an unexpected but welcome fish sandwich and bowl of vegetable soup, so Omar took the offered food and paid his coin and settled in to his working class lunch. He had just discovered exactly how spicy a Mazigh sandwich could be when the shouting started.

  Looking up from the peppery cod in his flatbread, Omar saw several men surrounding a woman in a conservative blue dress. The garment covered her from throat to wrists to ankles in the Espani fashion, but her complexion and voluminous hair style were clearly Mazigh. She was speaking just as loudly and twice as quickly as the men confronting her, but from across the cavernous cafeteria Omar couldn’t understand a word of it.

  At first the angry men were all focused on the woman in blue, but then a sudden division split their ranks and several of the men seemed to switch sides, now pointing fingers and shouting at the other men. Omar heaved a weary sigh, spooned as much warm soup into his mouth as he could, and then stood up with his sandwich in hand. He stepped away from the table and started shuffling through the crowd toward the door.

  The argument grew louder, and more men stood up to take sides, and the woman in blue was all but hidden by the wall of bo
dies.

  Omar had nearly reached the door when it flew open and in rushed half a dozen young men in matching brown uniforms with long black rifles slung over their shoulders and beaming smiles on their faces. The foremost of the soldiers, a squinting fellow with a pair of scars down the left side of his face threw out his arms to the cafeteria and shouted, “Who wants to buy lunch for the hero of the Atlas Mountains?”

  A handful of men waved their glasses and sandwiches at the soldiers and made some half-hearted cheers, but the shouting match in the center of the room drowned them out.

  “Hey now!” The scarred soldier pushed farther into the room and gestured to the man behind him. “Three cheers for the bane of the Songhai, Lieutenant Zidane!”

  The other soldiers cheered the man so loudly that Omar stepped back with a wince and one hand to his ear. The celebrated man towered over his comrades, a giant of a soldier with a shaved head and a thick neck who took in the room with half-lidded eyes and a bored frown. But this time several tables’ worth of men perked up to join in the cheer, to shout unkind words about the Songhai raiders, and to chant Zidane’s name.

  In the center of the room, a fist flew and a woman cried out.

  Instantly the giant called Zidane charged into the room, climbing over men and tables like a wolf racing toward his prey. He crashed into the knot of brawlers in the center of the room, roaring like a mad bull and throwing frenzied punches in every direction. The rest of the brown-clad soldiers clambered after him, but by the time they crossed the room through the crowd, the fight was already over. Half a dozen men lay sprawled on the floor and half a dozen others sat bloody and dazed on the seats nearby. The woman in blue stood untouched in the center of the space, though her expression was quite wide-eyed and she stood very, very still. Lieutenant Zidane cranked his arm around in a vicious circle to unwind his shoulder and he grunted something into his chest. Slowly, the hungry patrons put the room back together, and then the men went back to eating and talking, and Omar let go the breath he’d been holding.

  Then he noticed his sandwich in his hand, and he smiled, and he shuffled out the door into the street where the air was a bit cooler and his heavy new clothes didn’t feel so oppressive. An elderly little man followed him out and exchanged an amused look with him.

  “Is it always so exciting around here?” Omar asked.

  The man shrugged. “Not more than once a week. But when the soldiers come around, it does tend to get colorful. That Zidane is a beast of a fellow, though. Good man, I suppose. Still, the more he’s out on the frontier, the better, eh?”

  “You mean the Songhai border?”

  “Where else? Songhai raiders crossed the border last summer and burned a hundred homesteads just south of Arafez. People are in a panic down that way. But the queen refuses to declare open war with the Songhai Empire, so the fighting goes nowhere, and everyone gets a bit angrier as the bodies pile up year after year.”

  Omar nodded as he took another bite of his peppery fish. “Any idea what that argument was about back there? The one with the woman?”

  “I don’t know. Wages, probably.” The man stretched. “Times are tough, and getting tougher. But that’s always been true, hasn’t it? Hm. Well, have a good day.” The little fellow limped away with a high, squeaking sound on every other step. Omar saw that the man’s right leg was gone just below the hip, replaced with a padded wooden cup mounted on a brass peg with a thick spring joint where his knee used to be. The stiff coil rocked and squealed with each step the man took.

  It was still early in the afternoon, but Omar headed back to his hotel to shed his extra woolly layers and sit with his old Rus map. With a bit of hotel stationery and a cheap blue pen, he began his translation. After supper in the bar downstairs he considered another smoke in the alley behind the hotel, but then he thought better of it and returned to his room for an early night.

  After all, tomorrow is a big day.

  Chapter 4

  Omar arrived in the hangar entrance just as the morning sun was about to break above the eastern ridges of the Atlas Mountains. Dressed in all of his heavy new clothes and his blue-tinted glasses, he strode toward the Frost Finch prepared to offer whatever assistance the crew required. But Captain Ngozi merely waved him into the cabin, directed him to sit in the back, and told him not to touch anything. And so he sat and waited.

  From his seat, he could see the outline of the steam engine housed behind him and the shape of the flight controls in the cockpit in front of him. Along the walls to either side and lashed to the bars and shelves overhead he saw countless packages wrapped in leather and canvas, bound in twine, or covered in wooden panels. The equipment and provisions crowded in the space in teetering piles and bulbous lumps, making it more like a wildman’s cave than a civilized room.

  Over the next half hour, the engineer Morayo and the two southern scholars arrived, inspected the trunks and sacks carefully stowed inside the Finch’s cabin, and the two men sat down beside Omar with only the briefest of greetings between yawns. The cartographer Kosoko regarded him with an unpleasant frown, but kept whatever he was thinking to himself.

  Morayo came back and held out a folded brown paper in her hand, on which rested a small pile of gnarled brown and white roots. She grinned at Omar. “All right landlubber, time for your medicine.”

  Garai grabbed a root and popped it into his mouth. Kosoko selected one carefully and sat back with the morsel still in his hand. Omar peered at the offering. “What is it?”

  “Ginger. It helps with motion sickness.”

  “Oh. Thank you.” He took one of the roots and glanced at Garai, who nodded confidently between chews, so Omar put the ginger in his mouth and began chewing.

  Suddenly there was a flurry of activity outside as the ground crew cranked the huge doors of the hangar open. Riuza settled into the pilot’s seat and the engine rumbled to life. Morayo sealed the cabin hatch and took her seat beside the captain. Through the small armored windows, Omar could see the Finch’s propellers whirling just outside the gondola, their monotonous droning echoing inside the hangar.

  The airship shuddered and glided forward, slowly moving out into the morning light. Omar sat patiently with his hands on his lap. He turned to Kosoko and said, “So how many times exactly have you done this?”

  The cartographer pressed his lips tightly together, narrowed his eyes in a pained expression, and shook his head.

  Garai, the naturalist, leaned forward and raised his voice above the noise of the engine to say, “You’ll have to excuse him. He gets more than a little motion sick, every time. It’s so bad he won’t even be able to put the ginger in his mouth for a while. But he’ll be able to talk in half an hour or so.”

  “I see. And what should we do in the mean time while we’re en route?”

  “Do?” The professor leaned back in his seat wedged between a small water reservoir and a cargo net full of salted fish wrapped in brown paper. “Take a nap. There’s nothing to do until we reach the glacier.”

  “And how long will that take?” Omar asked.

  “About two days, depending on the weather.”

  The Frost Finch rose gently into the cool morning air and Omar gripped his seat as the floor vibrated and shuddered beneath him. Through the small window on his right, he saw the edge of the hangar shrinking until it fell out of sight, and then the entire city contracted into a collection of toy houses and toy shops and even toy boats on a brightly painted sea. In a matter of seconds the entire world had fallen out from under him and all he could see were surreal replicas in miniature. Roofs, walls, roads, and trees lost all meaning to him from the sky, and people vanished entirely.

  I wonder if this is how God sees us. As ants. Or not at all.

  Omar glanced at the professor.

  Two days to the glacier. In two days, I’ll be beyond the northern edge of all civilization. At last!

  From the port city of Tingis they crossed the Strait of Tarifa in half an hour and began the
first leg of their journey across the Espani sky to the Pyrenees Mountains. The engines droned, the little professor snored, and the tall cartographer breathed through his open mouth looking somewhat greener than he had on the ground. The ginger root remained tightly gripped in his white-knuckled hand, but eventually he managed to place a small sliver of it in the corner of his mouth.

  For two days, Omar sat in the back of the cabin. He made small talk with his fellow passengers, and occasionally he stood up to pace the narrow floor and to look out the other windows, and even to peer into the cockpit at the arcane assortment of levers and dials and gauges around the pilot and the engineer’s console. But there was never more than two minutes’ diversion anywhere in the cramped and crowded cabin. So he sat in his seat and closed his eyes and rested his hand on the pommel of his seireiken, and for hour after hour he listened to the sweet voices of Numidian songstresses, Hellan poets, and Persian courtesans who had all lived and died centuries ago.

  When the cartographer was looking less likely to vomit, Omar offered him a look at the old Rus map. Kosoko took it grudgingly and then passed the rest of the afternoon comparing it to his own hand-drawn maps from their earlier expeditions. Omar watched the man’s face for some reaction, some sign to confirm that the Rus map was accurate, but the cartographer merely looked grave and thoughtful and returned the leather map without comment when he was finished.

  Omar offered to cook when he guessed the lunch hour to be upon them, but he was casually dismissed by Morayo, who said they wouldn’t be cooking in the air and he would have to wait for their first landing for a warm meal. So they ate dried meat and fruit and seeds, and drank lukewarm water that tasted of copper from an overhead reservoir.