by William Ray
No one was present in the showroom when he arrived, although Gus could hear voices from one of the offices along the wall, which a placard labelled as belonging to Ryerson, Secretary. One was a deep-voiced man arguing something; he sounded rather musical, and from the dramatic rising and falling of his tone, Gus took him for some sort of an actor. The actor was arguing against someone offering what sounded like nasal-toned excuses—likely some sort of wheedling bureaucrat and presumably Secretary Ryerson.
The walls were thick enough that the substance of their debate was unclear, so Gus turned his attention to the huge models laid out in the center of the room.
A table on one side depicted Khanom’s skyline as he had seen from the train. Model buildings were constructed of some beige material, set up atop a painted map of the streets and parks. At the center was a model of the park, complete with various benches and even its one-sided trees. A half-dozen oversized carts appeared to have been abandoned along the streets surrounding the park. Several of the buildings were depicted in full color, and looking at those, he realized they were the mostly complete structures that he had seen on his way in.
Most of the extravagant architectural flourishes worked out in miniature had been covered in tarpaulin and scaffolding, but judging from their depiction in miniature, they would no doubt be quite impressive once unveiled. Elaborate frontispieces featuring graceful arches covered in Modernist swirls and tiny figures that would no doubt be enormous once realized. The color models were clearly the Exposition buildings, huge display areas for the various fair exhibits. There were several blank spaces sketched around the park, presumably where more buildings would be added later.
The model on the other table was more confusing. It seemed to depict another city entirely with graceful spires that, for all their elegance, were of rather unassuming heights compared to the towers on the table just across the aisle. Rather than the beige of Khanom, all of its buildings were painted, primarily in bright reds and yellows.
As Gus studied the miniature buildings, the discussion in the next room wrapped up with a deep throated harrumph. The office door opened, and the nasally voiced bureaucrat called over, “It’s marvelous, isn’t it? It’s the most elaborate reconstruction ever done, but then, there aren’t any other cities where something so detailed would even be possible.”
“Reconstruction?” Gus looked up and saw the bureaucrat the voice owned was very much what he’d pictured—thin, thinning hair, spectacles, and a suit that was probably quite fashionable when purchased years ago but was weathered enough that now it just spoke of failed expectations, the sort of thing worn by someone who loved rules and security.
The man nodded towards the model and smiled warmly as he continued proudly, “The Elven queen’s summer palace was here, so there were many depictions of it to work from.” Ryerson gestured about, and Gus took more notice of the artwork hanging from the walls.
The paintings were all classic Elven cityscapes, which had been popular centuries ago and were enjoying a bit of resurgence as antiques now that the Elves had taken the actual cities away. Seeing familiar peaks on the horizon in several of the paintings along the wall, Gus realized they must all be depictions of the original Khanom. “Both of these will be moved to a display in the main hall, and we imagine it will be one of the highlights of the show.”
Looking back down at the models, Gus saw all the roads were laid out the same between the two cities, but the buildings were different. At the center of the city, where now there was only a park, had once stood the walled palace of the Elven queen. Although of modest height compared to modern Khanom, the palace’s graceful minarets had once loomed high over the Elven city, with the only structure of comparable size being a pale gray, stepped pyramid directly across from it.
Nothing else in the miniature Elven city looked anything like it, making the pyramid a bizarre gray anomaly in the colorful ancient landscape. Gus glanced back at the park on the other model, then to the pyramid, and realized that the park encompassed the grounds of both the palace and the pyramid.
Ryerson grinned as he saw his visitor’s attention drawn to it, clearly delighted to have a moment for pedantry, and walked over to gesture grandly at the model while pointing out the different angles as depicted in the various paintings surrounding it. “That was the Embassy Building; that’s why that section of green on the other side of 10th Avenue is called Embassy Park. It’s quite the historical curiosity, actually. Many people think it’s just another part of Palace Park, but it’s not.”
“And this ‘embassy’ doesn’t look anything like the rest of the town,” Gus remarked, peering up at its depiction in the paintings; the structure’s height made the rectangular gray peak visible in most of them. The colors had faded on many of them, but the bright paint splashed across the elegant facades of the palace and surrounding buildings made the pale stone pyramid seem stark and otherworldly in their midst.
The bureaucrat’s head bobbed enthusiastically as he said, “Precisely! It’s very mysterious. The name is translated from the Elven, and consistent across various sources, but Khanom was the home of the queen’s summer palace, you see, her retreat from courtly life. She did not meet with any ambassadors or hold court out here. The building was not used as any sort of embassy as far as we can tell, so the name remains quite mysterious.”
Gus just nodded, his interest rapidly waning; the Elves were long gone, and their naming conventions were not the mystery he was here to look into. Looking back to the model of the modern city, he saw someone else had quietly entered the room, presumably the deep-voiced theatrical, and was setting a painted building model down into one of the empty spots in the Exposition area.
Startled when he looked up at the newcomer, Gus remarked, “I didn’t know there were gobs in Aelfua.”
The goblin standing by the city model was typical of his kind, barely over four feet in height, with long arms but short legs and outsized hands and feet. His skin was deep olive, giving his broad mouth a distinct ranine aspect. The creature’s yellow eyes narrowed behind strange blue colored-glass spectacles, and in a deep, melodic voice it rumbled out, “Not many, of course, but Rakhas travel well, I assure you.”
Gus hadn’t laid eyes on an actual goblin in years. Gemmen had travelers from all over the world and probably even a gob or two brought in as a curiosity, but he had yet to spot one there. He had fought savage gobs in Rakhasin, of course, and even known a few of their more civilized brethren among the local auxiliary forces, but those either wore their native costume or were cloaked in ill-fitting human clothes. This one wore a suit that had clearly been tailored to his oddly proportioned frame, and that, combined with the glasses, made Gus count him among the strangest things he had ever seen.
The bureaucrat moved between them with an apologetic smile, apparently concerned he might need to defuse any potential panic Gus might express upon seeing the dressed-up gob. “I’m sorry, sir. This is Mister Salk … salcot ….”
That wide goblin mouth curled up in what Gus took for a smirk and then that deep voice rumbled in, “Salka’tok’tok’ton,” to the obvious relief of the bureaucrat fumbling with the staccato Rakhasin syllables. “Most of my human associates simply call me Salka. At the Council’s request, I’ve been consulting on the Rakhasin exhibit, although at the moment they’re insisting an awning is an architectural feature that may not extend across the designated walkways.” That last bit came with a bit of venom towards the bureaucrat.
They both looked at him expectantly until Gus got the point and supplied, “Gus Baston. I’m here about Phand.”
“Oh!” exclaimed the bureaucrat in sudden delight, clasping his hands together. From that failure to introduce himself in turn, Gus decided the man must be Ryerson and that secretary must be a more important position than he’d guessed. “I had heard that was on hold, what with the kidnapping and all. You brought the model?” When Gus looked confused, Ryerson gave a petulant frown and said
, “Everyone has to provide their own model for the Exhibition map. Doctor Phand was made well aware of that on his last visit.”
Something about that tugged at the corners of his memory, and suddenly Gus recalled the wire framework everyone was gushing over in Phand’s offices. Looking at the model of modern Khanom, he replied, “No, sorry, I don’t have it with me. That’s not why I came.” He tried to imagine it sitting with the others, and from his recollection, it was easily three or four times the size of the tallest of the beige towers currently on the model city. “Where will it sit, exactly?”
The bureaucrat seemed a little baffled by that bit of ignorance from one of Phand’s, but the deep voiced gob helpfully supplied, “Embassy Park. It would definitely be the centerpiece of the fair, if it can be built in time.”
Looking over that green space on the city’s landscape, Gus pictured the model from the offices in Gemmen. The base of that model would fit almost exactly to the corners of Embassy Park. It would tower over the city at a seemingly impossible scale, and Gus shook his head in disbelief. No wonder everyone had been so impressed by it.
Huffing indignantly, Ryerson said, “Oh, no. No, no, no. If that tower can’t be built, and I’ve heard several engineers argue it isn’t even possible, the Exposition hardly needs it to draw the world’s eye. We’ve already started connecting most of the city in the greatest electrical exhibit in history! All the street lamps up here are being replaced with electrics, and we’ll even have electrical trams to move people about the city.”
The Secretary grinned proudly and moved to the far side of the table, which elicited a bit of a familiar eye-rolling from Salka. Flipping a switch on the other side, little points of light erupted all along the city’s streets, and before Gus could ask what a ‘tram’ was, the tiny abandoned carts around the park whirred to life and began sliding along the model streets, following below tiny wires strung along the avenues, driven by some mechanism beneath the table. The carts toured the city in small circuits as stark electric lights provided unflickering illumination.
“Wow. Will it really have all these wires up though? I’m surprised that with all the experienced miners here to do the work, you didn’t go with an underground system, like in Gemmen.”
The bureaucrat shook his head, “No, it was considered of course, but Miss Aliyah Gale suggested that an electric tram system would be just as effective and more of a showpiece than a buried train. Others agreed that, as the city is already known as a prominent center for mineral extraction, putting ourselves forward as mere diggers of tunnels would be … inappropriate to our modern image.”
Her name perked Gus’s ears, and he asked, “I didn’t realize she was on the Exposition Council. Is she very involved on the tower too?”
The goblin snorted and rumbled, “Not much happens in this town without her involvement.”
That suggestion seemed to miff Ryerson, who shook his head and said, “Actually, she was the original dissenter to the tower project, and she abstained entirely from the budget fight.”
Salka’s wide mouth curled up, and he remarked, “Not that she needed to do much, with Thomas and Ulm suddenly turning against it.”
Ryerson shrugged and said, “And yet everything has been approved. It’s all down to Doctor Phand now.”
Gus nodded. Ryerson’s words further solidified Gus’s suspicion that this kidnapping was somehow about the Exposition’s tower, even if he wasn’t yet sure why anyone would be so invested in stopping the thing. “Who else is on the Council?”
A wary look crept into the bureaucrat’s eyes again; this was all the sort of information someone sent here by Doctor Phand would know, and Gus was sure Ryerson had begun to sense something else was afoot. “Currently the Exposition Council consists of Misters Thomas, Ulm, Sylvester, Beck, and of course Miss Aliyah Gale.”
“How did they turn against the tower later? I thought they had already voted it in?”
Salka chuckled, explaining in his melodic voice, “Oh, no, nothing is ever that easy. It was approved before the Exposition was even officially slated to move forward. It was one of the first things they considered, and then months later they had to settle the budget. Out of nowhere, Thomas announced he was now against Phand’s project and put forward a proposal slashing the budget, to try and kill it.”
Ryerson scowled over at the goblin’s gossip, but Salka ignored him and went on. “Originally Beck and Ulm argued with Thomas, but then on the day of the vote, Ulm changed his mind too and sided with Thomas. Miss Aliyah Gale abstained, and without her, there weren’t enough votes to approve the tower’s full budget.
“They ended up settling on half the city’s original contribution and making Phand put up the rest in exchange for giving him a share of ticket sales for going up in the thing. I imagine Thomas and Ulm felt that even with that concession on the tickets, it would kill the tower, given how much it must surely cost.”
For an uneducated savage, Gus felt Salka showed an amazing grasp of politics. Every time the goblin rumbled something out in perfect Verin, Gus was bemused by the bizarre disconnect with the inhuman visage from which the sound emerged. “So he had the money?”
Ryerson’s eyes widened at that question, and Gus realized that asking it had given away that he wasn’t exactly working with Doctor Phand on the tower project.
Salka grinned, shook his head, and then said, “Oh, I doubt it; the rumor was it was a sum in the millions. He and his partner came to town after that to raise funds, and the word was they had fallen short and would miss the deadline; but then he wired back that he had the money, and Misters Thomas and Sylvester went out to Gemmen to sign the final agreement.”
Secretary Ryerson drew himself up and said, “Sir, I’m not sure what this is all about, but if you’re not actually here on Exposition business, then I’m afraid you will have to leave. Do you have any actual business here, or are you just some sort of … gossip? Are you with the papers?”
Salka seemed more amused by the secretary than threatened by his ire, so Gus replied, “Well, what’s this about his awning?”
“No!” exclaimed Ryerson, waving his arms to shoo them towards the door. “The awning can’t go across the walkway. Both of you, out. Go on!”
The goblin grinned as if this sort of ejection were a common enough occurrence and paused only to pick up an umbrella leaning by the door along with an oversized black hat. Gus tipped his own hat to the nervous bureaucrat, and then followed Salka outside.
Once beyond the building’s entrance and standing beneath the steely gaze of Khanom’s stone tyrants of commerce, Salka donned his hat and then opened the umbrella, shading himself with a lacey black parasol obviously designed for widows in mourning. Chuckling at the ridiculous sight, Gus said, “For a gob, you sure seem to have a firm grasp of the politics of urban planning.”
With a wide-mouthed grin, Salka replied, “Oh not all, sir. Everything is so much more complicated with burrows, where you build above or below your neighbors instead of just to the sides. Compared to tribal politics on such things, this is easy!”
Gus laughed at the idea, finding it believable, although he had a hard time picturing it. “Well, maybe so. Seems like you do know a thing or two about the Council’s politics. Could I stand you for an early lunch? No tree rat out for you here, but maybe we can find someplace with squirrel—that’s got to be close, right?”
“It’s past my bedtime, sir,” Salka said and peered quizzically up at Gus, large yellow eyes squinting at the light, even behind tinted lenses. “What are you looking for, anyway?”
Gus weighed his options. He was sure Phand’s kidnapping had something to do with the tower he was building. With millions of peis in the balance, it was the only thing in Phand’s life where the stakes would be high enough to justify orchestrating the spectacle of his kidnapping. That also meant whomever it was probably had some interest in those millions.
Salka was like Gus, enough of an outsider t
hat he probably had to have a foot in with more unsavory elements to get ahead, but even as well dressed as he was, Gus found it impossible to imagine even Khanom’s criminal underworld taking orders from a gob. That meant Salka’s money must come from something else, although Gus couldn’t imagine what it might be.
If Salka were somehow connected, Gus would be giving away that he was looking for them here, but after a moment, he decided to lay out his cards. “Doctor Phand. I think whoever arranged his disappearance is in Khanom and probably connected to the Exposition somehow. Maybe I should chat with the Councilors.”
Salka snorted, and for a brief instant, Gus was flooded with the memories of fighting along the frontier in Rakhasin. Thousands of gobs leaping from the tall grasses, spears flying, and the primitive magic of the gob shamans sparking through the air in a weak attempt to approximate the devastation of the cannons raining grapeshot down upon them.
They would snort and growl and sing their sibilant war songs. The gobs might have been primitives, but he’d seen many men fall in their barbaric assaults. After Gedlund, all of that had seemed like a holiday, but it seemed the memory of it could still give him a brief jolt of adrenaline. Gus’s face went into a stiff smile as he pushed back the recollection, and Salka continued on.
“Well, Mister Beck’s with the rail company, and he’s always travelling; he winters in Ganbai though, so no luck there. Sylvester’s usually easy to meet with if he’s in town, but his offices are somewhere out near the mines—I’ve only ever met him here. Ulm’s on 12th and Queen’s.”
Fortunately, the gob’s voice was unlike the raspy, clumsy Verin Gus had encountered from the natives in Rakhasin, and turning his eyes to the street for a moment let Gus pull himself out of his recollections. “What about Miss Aliyah Gale?”
That wide lipless mouth curved into a deep frown as Salka rumbled out, “I wouldn’t recommend just dropping by Miss Aliyah Gale. You could leave your card, I suppose. She has a place on Queen’s and 3rd.”