The young woman’s eyes sparkled. “You’re from the Old Planets, aren’t you? I could tell by your accent. Your Gaelactic doesn’t have the lilt of High Tara, and you are much too direct.”
“Um… I’m from Dangchao Waypoint.”
“I would have guessed Die Bold. My, you are a long way from home.” Her eyes dropped to Méarana’s fingers, noted the nails. “And are ye after leaving yer harp behind ye?”
This last line was delivered with such a pitch-perfect impression of High Taran Gaelactic that Méarana laughed. “I’m afraid so. Is there a song out there on the plains?”
A half-smile. “There may be, but you’d best not sing it. Not until you’ve put parsex between yourself and Algebra Street.”
“Umm, parsex?”
“A local term meaning ‘a long distance.’ This is sacred ground to the’ Loons. The spot where their ancestors touched down. They claim the ‘Iron Cones’ are the landers they came down in. And they do look like landers of a sort, though precious large ones if they are. They’d be the only boats from Diaspora Days to have lasted. Historians have always been twitchy to study them, but the’ Loons will not allow it. They’d not like you mocking them, either. No, my name’s Enwelumokwu Tottenheim. Call me Enwii.”
Méarana was grateful for the contraction as well as for the pause. “I’d not mock a sacred spot. Do you expect Chinwemma back today?”
“Oh, no, no, no, Chinwemma is the name of the shop. It was my mother’s name. She told me it means ‘God owns all things beautiful’ in some ancient language. And I thought it would make a marvelous name for a jewelry shop.”
Méarana heard nothing from her earwig and was forced to agree. There were languages so long forgotten that the translators knew not even their names. Scraps of family traditions were all that remained—personal names, place names, a few phrases embedded in the tongues of others. “And what of Enwel… Enwela… Your name. Does it mean something, too?”
“I have something to say.”
Méarana waited, and then she realized that Enwii had answered her question, and she laughed again. “Don’t we all. Now if we could only get someone to listen…”
“Mehwíí. Is there something… Excuse me. Thank you, sir. That will be five punts, four dinners… Gladiola Bills? Of course, we take them.” Enwii checked the rate of exchange and made change for the man. She ran the little statuette through the packager, and handed it back to him. “Come again some day.”
When he was gone, Enwii laughed. “A set of three featureless steel cones. But it’s a replica of the Famous Iron Cones of Harpaloon. It says so on the base. The Cone of Momad, the Cone of Fìnmakuhl, and the Cone of Homer ben. Sells for just under five-and-a-half punts. I’ll leave you to guess how much it costs Wimbley and Chatterji to make them.”
“You’re not trying very hard to sell me anything.”
“Well, you didn’t come here to buy anything, now did you?”
Méarana pulled the medallion from under her blouse. “Do ye recognize this? I mean the sort of work, not this particular piece.”
Enwii took it and put it under the magnifying light. “Hmm. No, I can’t say I do… Of course, I’m not a real jawharry; but I suppose you know that by now. Sadd!” She called to a young man standing by. “The sun is coming through the windows. Be a good boy and turn the shades?” As the lad shuffled off, Enwii whispered, “His father’s a small-time’ harry in the Algebra Street Kasper. He prenticed him out here to give him a taste of the business—and maybe to keep an eye on the holy ground. I’ve lived on Harpaloon most my life, but to him I’m just a mover. My mother was Jugurthan and my father was a’ Cocker—if you can imagine so unlikely a couple!—so what does that make me? Sadd’s a conscientious lad, but he’s a’ Loon and you have to keep on him all the time or he’ll… Oho! What’s this! There’s writing on the back side. Micro-relief Sadd! Wait a minute before you roll down the shades. The light catches it… See here, ah…” Enwii straightened and blinked. “What is your name?”
“Lucy. Lucy Thompson.”
“Funny name. No offense. Die Bold, right. What do they say there? ‘Die Bold, Live Bolder!’ There, do you see the lettering? Let me put it on the screen. The light has to catch it at just the right angle. There.”
The back side of the medallion, which had hitherto seemed smooth and featureless gold, now sported the shadows of lettering.
“What does it say?” asked Méarana.
“I’ve no idea. I’ve never seen that script before.”
“Can you capture an image of it? My partner knows some of the old languages.”
Enwii touched the rim of the magnifier and a sheet slid out of the printer. “Thompson,” she said, this time with a slight frown. “Rings a bell.”
“Rings a…? I’m sorry. I don’t know the idiom.”
“I mean, I’ve heard the name before…” The shopkeeper cocked her head. “About five years ago.”
Méarana’s heart leapt. “Did she have red hair, too?”
“Don’t know. Never laid eyes on her.”
“Never laid…?”
“Never saw her. What was it, now… Excuse me. Oh, here they come. The tour must be over. Let me just…” She whispered into her throat mike, called something onto the touch board, and brushed it with her hand. “But no. It was a package left for a Franane Thompson. Five years ago. But you say your name is Lucy? I wonder if we still have it. Be right with you, mistress; I’m helping another customer right now.”
“Five years? But Mother was on Thistlewaite then. She didn’t reach Harpaloon until… Oh, local years! That would be more like two years, metric time, right? That fits. You can give it to me. I’m on my way to meet her.”
“Francine Thompson was your mother? I suppose you can prove that. Maybe I threw the package out long ago. Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
Wait here? As if she were not welded to this very spot! Oh, Donovan! We will find her! I know we will. Méarana dug in her pouch, looking for identification. What if Enwii refused to hand it over? What if she had discarded it already?
The shopkeeper returned from the back room with a small parcel in her hand. It was wrapped in plain brown paper, the cheapest sort and was about a palm in length and width. A printed label affixed to it read:
FRANCINE THOMPSON. HOLD UNTIL CALLED FOR.
“I recalled the name only because it was so odd,” Enwii said, “May I see your identification? I suppose if I’ve held it so long, I really should make sure it goes to the right person.”
Méarana handed her a photograph. “Will this do? It’s from the Dangchao City Elucidator. That’s me on the left after a concert; and that’s Mother. Francine.”
“I told you I never saw the woman; so this…” She stumbled to a halt. The holograph had been taken at a formal dinner at the Comchal Odeon on Dangchao Waypoint following one of Méarana’s concerts. Bridget ban stood beside her daughter, wearing the beribboned mess jacket and slacks that the Hounds of the Service called “dress greens.”
Enwii looked up from the holograph a bit more pale than when she had looked down. Méarana displayed the chit that Zorba had given her, holding it so that none other could see what was in her hand. It glowed a muted gold, which such sigils could do only in the hand of their rightful bearer.
“Take it,” said Enwii, shoving the package across the counter. “I don’t want it here.”
“You’re doing the right thing.”
“It doesn’t matter. Hound’s business? That’s a magnet for trouble. I don’t want to be involved.”
“I’ll tell her you kept it faithfully for her.”
“Tell her nothing. Here.” She took a set of steel cones and sent them through the wrapper. “My gift to you. Just get that… package out of here. The air bus leaves in…” A glance at the wall clock. “In ten metric minutes.”
Méarana thanked her again and turned to go. Enwii did not tell her to come back some time.
Ten metric minutes was a littl
e under seven grossbeats in the dodeka time used in the Old Planets, or a little less than a “quarter hour” in Donovan’s Terran time. That gave her time to stride over to the viewing platform, and a quick blick at the famous Iron Cones.
The sunset threw long, ruddy shadows across the prairie, casting the Cones into high relief. The lowest reaches were overgrown with grass and shrubbery, but the higher parts were clear so that the broken and corroded metallocene of the half-buried structures was revealed. They were gargantuan, towering as tall as the hills behind them. Enwii had been right. If those had once been landers, they were the largest landers she had ever heard of. Most of the worlds of the Periphery had stories about their First Ships, but she’d never heard them described as so enormous.
Landers or not, the Cones were undoubtedly the largest artifacts to have survived from ancient times; but they were more likely apartment buildings, or factories, or even the tombs of the first rulers. An ancient land on Old Earth, called Meesar, had buried its kings under great pyramids of stone. Likely, that is how each cone had gotten its name. Momad and Finmakuhl and Homer ben might be the names of ancient, now-forgotten kings. A line of fences surrounded the cones and a sign in Gaelactic warned touristas against closer approach. She supposed that the interior ruin and decay made entry hazardous. The ancients had built for the ages, but the ages had passed and only wreckage remained.
“Seen enough, gull?”
Méarana started at the sudden voice at her elbow. It was one of the’ Loons from the bus: a pleasant-faced young man with the swarthy complexion and blue eyes common to his breed. The hair was so darkly red as to be almost chocolate-brown. His manner of asking the question implied that she had certainly seen enough.
Méarana pulled her head back. “Is it any of your business?”
The man shrugged. “It could be.” Casually, he pulled a spring-knife from his pocket and used it to pare his nails. Méarana stared at the blade.
“I could help you with that,” she said, and the’ Loon looked up with a puzzled squint.
“Help? How?”
Méarana shrugged and the quillion dagger she carried up her sleeve dropped into her hand. She held it horizontally in underfist position, a little to the side so that she could use it in a backhand slash or an overhand stab as opportunity presented itself. The blade was lively in her grip, almost alive. “I’ve manicured a few fingers here and there,” she said.
The’ Loon studied the quillion and his own spring-knife, shrugged, and made the blade disappear into his handle. “Take your farkin picture, then, brasser. May the cat eat you and the shayten eat the cat.” He stepped away with ill grace.
“Thank you,” she said sweetly, and tucked the quillion back into its cache. Raising her imager, she hoped her hand would not shake too much. Half the advantage was projecting a mien of confidence. She wondered if she could have followed through on her implied threat. It was one thing to practice on dummies in Mother’s gymnasium; another thing entirely to face a living man.
The sun was low, illuminating the west side of the Cones. One of the holes in the side of the largest cone—the one they called Momad—received the light directly, revealing a tangled mess of broken decking. Supposedly, there was a chamber deep inside called the gáván gofthayin, where the ruler was buried. A bird flew toward the hole, probably to a nest inside, and impulsively Méarana captured that image.
The backdrop was impressive, too. The irregular cluster of hills behind the Cones was also deeply shadowed by the setting sun, and in the dim light they looked almost as if they, too, were cones arrayed in serried ranks.
That was plain silly. An entire mountain range of these things?
Behind her, Méarana heard the warning hoot from the air bus platform and the hum as the magnets on the rail kicked in to receive the incoming bus. So she stuffed package and comm in the pockets of her jacket, pulled her chabb tight against the shrogo wind and hurried to the departure ramp. Glancing back, she saw the’ Loon genuflect on one knee toward the Cones and touch his breast, lips, forehead, and shoulders with the fingers of his right hand.
Despite his knife and his menace and his banty-cock threat, her heart went out to him. Did not everyone deserve something sacred?
She had agreed to meet Donovan at the Café Gwiyom, and there Méarana discovered the scarred man already worrying two fingers of uiscebaugh. He was not drunk, but he was immersed in that morose frame of mind that soured his every word. Drunks at least were sometimes cheerful. Méarana hesitated at the threshold, for she had not seen him in such a state since leaving Jehovah.
She considered the possibility of going on without him. If she left him here, he would barely notice. He would sink into the Terran demimonde and into the prison of his past. But she had invested too much effort in the finding of him and could not bring herself to forgo the return on that investment. And if the Fudir had the prison of his past, did she not have the prison of her future? Growing up, she had learned the art of patience.
She had forgotten that the scarred man was a man of parts, and one part, keeping vigil through his right eye, saw her standing irresolute in the entry, and his arm waved her inside. So she gathered herself, her thoughts, and her excitement and hurried to the table.
It was a bright and open café, unlike the Bar on Jehovah: spacious where the Bar was dense, well-lit where the Bar was dark, its clientele careless where the Bar’s were more carefree. And yet the scarred man had contrived, like a tea ball steeping in hot water, to lend the facility some of the hue of his former estate.
As always, the table he had chosen nestled near the rear wall of the café with himself facing the room. Never sit with you back to the room, he had told her once. You have to see them coming. Fine advice, she had thought, from one already occupying the recommended seat. And to “see them coming” didn’t you have to lift your gaze from the fascination of the whiskey?
She took the siege perilous opposite him, with her back defiantly to the room, and placed the package on the table. The scarred man did not lift his head, but she thought those restless eyes of his sought it out and found the name to which it had been addressed, for the grip of his hand on the tumbler tightened and his knuckles grew white.
“It’s been waiting for her at Côndefer Park for two years metric,” she told him. “It was all I could do on the air bus to keep from ripping it open; but… You know what it means? Whoever left the package would have notified her through the Circuit and… If we simply wait at the Park, eventually she will come to pick it up, or send a message to forward it…”
“We’d wait as long as the Cones, and the birds of the air would make their nests in our beards. And,” this he said more forcefully, “if she hasn’t come for it in two years, you will, sooner or later, have to face what that really means.”
“It could be that she changed her itinerary and the message went to the wrong world; or it reached her hotel after she had left and the hotel didn’t know where to forward it. Or she went to a world outside the Circuit. Or…”
The scarred man looked up from the table. “Or she’s dead! Whatever she had been looking for, she found it. Or it found her.”
Méarana stuck her chin out. “Or the package meant less to her than it did to its sender.”
“You think she left it behind on purpose?”
The harper hesitated, then looked away. “She leaves a great many things behind.”
They fell silent, each with their own thoughts, and one with a multitude of them. “No one I spoke with knew anything about the medallion,” she said finally. “Of course, this is a town with a high turnover, save for the’ Loons and the Terrans, and jawharries have come and gone since she passed through.”
“Moosers,” said the scarred man, staring into his whiskey. “They call us moosers here.”
“I thought it was ‘coffers.’”
“Everyone is a coffer—or a gull, they use the two terms interchangeably—but they have a special term just for Terrans. Bec
ause their holy books say we once abandoned them. A mooser is ‘one who submits.’ Submits to whom, and how that constitutes abandonment, no one will say.”
“Their holy books…”
“…are forbidden to others to read. The Birakid Shee’us Nakopthayiní and the Asejáhn Robábinah.”
“The first one sounds almost like Gaelactic. The ‘specklings down of the headmen.’”
“That’s what most headmen do. Speckle down on the rest of us.”
“The burial chamber of the king, out in the Cones, is called the gáván gofthayin. Sounds like it might be related.”
“‘Loonie headmen. Kopthayini. Gofthayin. Capitàn. Who cares? Shaddap, Pedant.” The Fudir gripped his head in both hands. “All these years, he’s silent. Now he won’t be quiet. Jabber, jabber, jabber. Yes, you!”
If Méarana understood the linguistic shifts that had taken place, then gáván must have once been kábán, meaning a “hut.” So, the burial chamber of the king was the “hut of the headman.” But when she mentioned this pleasant deduction to the Fudir, he shook his head.
“Please, missy. This ples nogut by Terries. Very budmash. We go from here jildy.” Then, dropping the patois, he added, “But I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on a copy of their sacred books. Find out what drives these’ Loons crazy against my people.”
“And yet they produce decent harpers,” said the harper. “The’ Loons do. And they’ve learned the Auld Stuff. The aislings and the airs. I’ve heard them when I’ve gone by’ Loontown. No geantraí, though. I’ve heard no geantraí.” She glanced at the placard above the servers bar—the harp and crescent moon—and wondered what it meant. “Have you ever seen the Cones?” she asked. “There was something in their appearance against the western sky, something ancient and forlorn.”
“They were the ships of exile. Did you expect joy?”
“Donovan, I think… Look.” She flipped open her comm into a holostage and showed him the image she had captured in the late afternoon sun. “Look at the Cones. Awesome enough to think they were tombs. But if they really were landers… Look at the hills. They have that same conical shape. Maybe…”
Up Jim River Page 12