“What?” asked Eddientis.
“How you’re doin’,” said Pheno.
Eddientis’s tentacles knotted into an impossibly small ball. “I’m floating in void. Nothing below, above, or around. No current. No drift. No swim. Nothing. All left is now, is me.”
“You have friends.”
“Friends. Yes, still . . . I . . .”
Pheno rubbed his jaw. “Yeah, I feel the same way . . . I wonder what hurts worse—being orphaned or being abandoned?”
“Does it mattering?” asked Eddientis.
Three more pathetic figures passed through the door.
“Today my pod would renewing,” said Eddientis.
“What’s that?”
“Gathering all spawn generations for the feasting of Shpel and of Serria frond and of Occludin. We joyous of pod formation and independence.” Eddientis’s tentacles move over the interior of its containment sphere tentatively as if it might reveal something missed.
“History and tradition remember someone else’s choices.” Pheno looked into Eddientis’s large, glassy eye. “I decide and be who I want now.”
“Then you being truly free,” said Eddientis.
“Not quite.”
Someone with a confident stride and a clean cloak approached the door.
“Gallia,” hissed Pheno.
The figure hesitated before the door.
“Gallia, over here. By the pod.” Pheno showed his head briefly.
“Pheno? Is that you?” a girl asked. She removed the hood of her cloak to reveal well-tended caramel hair.
“Yes, I need to talk to you,” said Pheno.
“I shouldn’t; my game . . .”
“I can help you.”
Gallia stepped toward them and stopped. “Weren’t you banned?”
Pheno glanced sideways at Eddientis who had once again frozen. “I’m evaluating alternatives.”
She smirked. Her skin was clean and free of sores. Her cloak, enhanced with nanotech, shimmered. “So . . . what?”
“I’ve got information you might wanna know before playin’ level three,” said Pheno.
“Wonderful!” Gallia clapped her hands and stepped closer. “What is it?”
“I want something in return,” said Pheno.
She looked at Pheno and Eddientis then frowned.
“Not like that, nothin’ icky—information, that’s all,” said Pheno.
Her frown deepened, and she stepped back, wrapping the cloak tightly around herself. “What sort of information?”
“I need to know what’s goin’ on.”
Gallia shook her head. “Where? With what?”
“Everywhere. The whole planet appears on lock down. Weird stuff too—like berserk nagbots. What gives?” asked Pheno.
“You first,” said Gallia.
Pheno described his deprivation trial and its trap. “Don’t know if you’ll have that, but better informed than dead.”
Gallia nodded.
Pheno nodded. What else can you say to someone about to die?
“Oh, right, yes, what’s happening.” She shifted from foot to foot, looked him over. “What’s your home world?”
“Hauken. Why?” asked Pheno.
“That’s in the Selwa system, right?”
“Yep.”
She looked at Eddientis then back at Pheno. “You’ll be alright if you keep away from that Ertryd. Also Trelians and possibly Noolak.” Gallia lifted her hood and turned toward the door.
“C’mon, you gotta give me more than that!” said Pheno.
She waved as she walked away. “Sorry, Pheno. Just follow my advice and you’ll be fine. Gotta go.”
“Why’re you even playing? A Prefect’s servile—”
“Is still a servile.” She scanned in and slipped through the door without looking back.
Eddientis bubbled forcefully. “You player.”
They said nothing as they walked back to the academy. Pheno’s thoughts jumped between possible scenarios for Gallia’s warning and checking for . . . what? Something about the city seemed off tonight, more than the nagbots or Gallia’s warning. He sensed it, somehow. Shook it off. She spooked me is all. Still he lingered in the shadows longer before crossing exposed sections.
They approached the city square along a service road lined with stacked shipping crates and garbage containers. Pheno stopped at the edge of the square. A large crowd had gathered before the civic dais. A middle-aged woman hurried turned the corner where they hid and nearly walked into Pheno.
She yelped and halted. “Mind your place, servile,” she said drawing a shawl across her bosom uncertainly.
“Please forgiving my servile, madam. Many people surprising him.” Eddientis gestured to the crowd.
The woman had started at the sound of Eddientis’s translator but now composed herself. “Well, I suppose everyone deserves at least one pardon; I do move quickly.”
“I taste truth in your words; thanking your kindness.”
Pheno stepped behind Eddientis to allow the woman to pass.
“Madam, what meaning these people?” Eddientis pointed to the growing crowd in the square.
“I waste no time on such things as draw fools together. I’ve much too important things to tend: the roof wants mending, that ungrateful cur has runoff again after the children left the gate open, and the larder’s near empty what with me having to fill five bottomless pits before nadir.” She hurried past and disappeared down the side street.
“Thanks, Eddientis. She looked on the verge of yelling for help.”
“This tastes true.”
Pheno stepped forward again and surveyed the crowd. “I’m going to speak with that group of serviles over there; you stay here. I want you to keep hidden—at least until we understand Gallia’s warning.”
He crossed the cobblestones at an idle pace to avoid attention. Shortly before Pheno reached the three serviles he had spotted, the Prefect stepped onto the dais. From a body conditioned to perform anything she required to a demeanor that claimed her due, this prefect radiated an aura of dominion. Pheno noted the shimmer of a force field surrounding her person. Her face betrayed no emotion. Her nickname, Iril the Indomitable, seemed apt. When she lifted her gloved hand to silence the crowd’s murmur, her sleeve slipped, exposing the telltale scales of body armor. A slight bulge on her left thigh hinted at a weapon. The crowd moved back, and Pheno noted the helmets of a security detail clearing space around the dais.
Powerful Gressans frequently deployed protective measures. In the economics of skullduggery, such measures signaled high prices for bribes. A person too expensive to bribe risked a more economical assassination. Counter measures both raised the cost of killing and, thereby, increased the willingness to bribe while deterring the ignorant from making insultingly low overtures. Adversaries counterbalanced these security investments with carefully cultivated reputations for ruthlessness that secured private discounts from market rates. Thus, vanishingly few people died on Gressa from political causes. The Prefect’s multilayered defenses, however, struck Pheno as excessive—the kind of protection employed by professionals in mortal combat . . . or by someone fearing for their life.
He reached the group of serviles. A cube-shaped man wearing a gold-trimmed, bright red robe standing next to them turned to a goose-necked, eroded man and said, “Bet she’s going to give some line about security protocols for our safety; meanwhile, Ertryd’s refugees have landed and want to flood the planet.”
The stump of a man raised a hand to his ear. “Eh, what’s that now?”
The cubed man snorted. “I said she’ll probably give us some line instead of telling us the real problem like leftover Ertryds wanting to flood the planet.”
“Fellow citizens of Gressa,” Iril the Indomitable paused.
A softly rounded woman on the other side of the eroded man bent her head toward an even doughier woman. “I heard the Ertryds are coming to flood our planet.”
“No!” gaspe
d the second. “Mirabylis, did you hear what Josea just told me?”
“Many of you have noticed changes in our world,” said Iril the Indomitable.
A man in crudely patched clothes cocked an ear toward the three women wringing their hands next to him. His eyes widened, and a similarly clad youth tugged on his sleeve. Pheno couldn’t hear their conversation, but three people next to them did.
“We’ve taken steps to ensure your safety during these unprecedented times,” said the Prefect.
Murmuring in the crowd rose steadily.
“We have restricted off-world communication to traffic essential for planetary security in order to preserve bandwidth. This necessary step has created many secondary effects from absent or delayed data.”
“What about the invasion?” someone shouted from the crowd. The murmuring grew louder and more malevolent as the crowd found its voice.
“There is no invasion,” said Iril the Indomitable. “I assure you we’ve taken these steps merely as precautions following the destruction of Ertryd.”
“They’ve poisoned our water!” yelled someone in the crowd. “I hear they’re flooding the southern continent,” said another.
“Our water supply is safe. No flooding has occurred,” said the Prefect.
A woman cried out, “How can we know? Comms is down!”
“The Ertryds destroyed our gateways! They’re attacking us!”
“Wow, the invasion is happening faster than I thought,” said the cube-shaped man in the red robe.
“Look! There’s one over there spying on us!”
The crowd turned to the corner around which Eddientis peeked. Seized in a moment on the cusp of fate, the crowd and Eddientis stared at each other, neither daring to bring the future.
“Run!” yelled Pheno.
The moment lurched forward, sending most of the crowd fleeing the square, the Prefect’s security detail be damned. A much smaller group, enraged by the assault on their homeland, charged.
Pheno ran ahead of them. “Run!”
“He’s with them! The servile’s a traitor!”
“Get him!”
“Kill them both!”
Eddientis disappeared behind the corner. Pheno rounded the building three paces ahead of the pack. Eddientis was halfway to the next intersection and moving fast but not fast enough. Pheno could hear the heavy breathing of the first person bearing down on him, a fast one. He pulled down a stack of shipping crates as he passed and heard his pursuer crash into the boxes and curse. Pheno smiled and toppled three more stacks as he passed. Eddientis cut left onto a side street; Pheno followed.
“Right,” Pheno whispered as quietly as someone fleeing an angry mob at a hard run can. They turned right onto a busier street crammed with semi-permanent, makeshift stalls selling food, fake jewelry, and secrets sure to favor the odds for any gambler willing to pay ten credits. Pheno spotted an upscale dry goods store near the end of the block. Unlike street vendors, the merchants of fine fabrics for the wealthy would exercise more discretion about identifying their customers to a mob. “In there, act casual,” said Pheno.
The transparent door slid open exposing them to a rush of warm, floral-scented air that almost masked an acrid chemical odor from the off gassing synthetic fabrics within. They pressed forward. Large rolls of cloth lined the walls with hues ranging from dark near the floor to light at the ceiling that drowned customers in color. Pheno remembered . . . drowning in darkness; his throat tightened around a swallow. Mounds of cloth filled the middle, leaving only narrow walkways for browsers.
“Well, who do we have here? An exotic water sprite and his rakishly stunning servile. My how innnteresting.” An offputtingly burly creature chirping falsetto notes bore down on them. “Come in. Come in. Due come innn, darlings!”
“Maybe I should wait outside, Eddientis.”
“Nonsense, darling, I only prey on your type every third rotation—too much gristle. I’m Jaspa.” Jaspa smiled flatly, and perhaps a tad hungrily, exposing double rows of serrated fangs. Come inn.” The creature placed two of its four arms on Pheno’s shoulder and back. He braced for a brutish grasp, but the touch was soft, insistent, but soft.
The deepening colors descending to the black-tiled floor created the sensation of stepping into the bottom of a deep tank. A tank with a hatch ring that slipped through his grasp, refused to turn. Pheno clenched his hands as if force alone could open an escape, but released them with a start when he realized what he was doing. Then the tremors started. What’s wrong with me?
“Goodness, you’re shaking like a leaf, darling. It’s OK; I’ve had my fill. Here—” Jaspa embraced Pheno, burying his face in its chest. The creature smelled . . . odd . . . sort of . . . minty, maybe . . . Pheno tried to push away, but Jaspa held him firmly for a moment stretching into awkwardness that faded to . . . to . . . I feel . . . strange . . . warm and . . . tired. Pheno’s body slumped into Jaspa.
“Good, let yourself go. Jaspa’s here. You’re safe with me.” Jaspa released Pheno. “Come in, now,” it commanded Pheno.
A distant and faint part of Pheno warned him to resist, but yielding to Jaspa felt good. The creature’s powerful voice moved through Pheno, seized control, made everything easy. Pheno shuffled forward with a vacant look. The deep colors, the hatch, nothing mattered anymore—nothing except Jaspa. He wouldn’t, couldn’t, refuse the creature anything, even a demand to feed on his body.
“How can we satisfy your desire for luxury, today? Hmmm,” said the creature.
Eddientis looked quizzically at Pheno then rolled forward. “I’m being interested in the luxury at back of store, away from street viewing.”
Jaspa clapped all four hands at once. “Wonderful, darling!” It lowered its voice and leaned into Eddientis. “The discrete enjoy the finest luxuries.”
Jaspa led them to the back of the store. With distance from the creature, Pheno’s head began to clear. He felt groggy and the onset of a massive, throbbing, headbanger headache, but Pheno’s faculties returned. He now knew how Jaspa trapped its prey. With clarity came the inability to get enough air. Panic rose in Pheno, and he swallowed rapidly as all those colors surrounding him poured down. Fight this. It’s not real. But it was real, had been real, he had drowned. It could happen again. Pheno imagined the mounds of fabric toppling onto him, bolts unrolling to pile on, the weight of layer upon layer pressing him into the floor, squeezing out the air pocket around his head, smothering him in color.
“This one’s perspiring on the merchandise.”
Pheno started at the disembodied voice so close to him. He searched the store but saw no one but Jaspa, Eddientis, and himself. Then, in front of a stack of green bolts in continuous hues, a body emerged closing in on Pheno. Tall and gaunt, this chromomorph shifted to a contrasting camouflage. It appeared to have two small arms projecting from its chest; but as the color pattern changed, Pheno realized it folded quite long arms back into itself. Serrations ran the length of each forearm. Composite eye orbs stared without expression. He frowned. I’d hate to hug that person.
“Behave Looj.” Jaspa gestured behind its back to Looj. Pheno and Eddientis saw no part of the signal. Nevertheless, Looj stopped advancing, and Jaspa moved Eddientis and Pheno away from its partner. “He gets grumpy before molting.” As if this excused all manner of bad behavior.
Looj clicked at Jaspa.
Jaspa rolled Eddientis to a pile of shimmering cloth. “Now, darling, I’m imagining something flowy for you—”
When they left the shop, Eddientis had spent three hundred credits to look like an eight-tentacled mummy unraveling in the current. Eddientis seemed pleased, even a little bouncy. Pheno overheard Looj complaining about Jaspa putting on airs to which Jaspa retorted that flamboyance validates one’s sense of style, that Looj ought to add some snap to its presentation for sale’s sake, and could it stop looking so creepy.
Pheno had seen no sign of the mob during their shop visit. Either they had given up, their anger having
dissipated in the struggle through the boxes that Pheno had knocked over, or the hard run had caused them to rethink chasing someone running back to the supposed invading army.
“What did you find out?” asked Ti.
Pheno waited for Ti to close her door then sat on a cube. “Hello, I’m glad to see you to.”
Ti smirked and stared but said nothing.
Pheno rolled his eyes then remembered himself and quickly glanced at Ti to see if she had taken exception to his attitude. Nothing. Which, paradoxically, made him feel worse.
He shrugged. “We went to see this . . . er, contact—”
“We meeting fellow player. He playing Sigma,” said Eddientis.
Ti quirked an eyebrow, but it was her otherwise muted reaction that knocked Pheno off balance. “Uh . . . so . . .”
Ti crossed her arms. “What did you learn, Pheno?”
“A swarm of nagbots mobbed us. They were kinda hysterical—for robots anyway. Then my contact, one of the Prefect’s serviles, warned me to stay away from Ertryds, Trelians, and Noolak. I asked for more details; but whatever, she went all cryptic.”
Ti opened a holoslate and raised information on all three species. She scowled at the information scrolling rapidly by. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, the Prefect gave a speech in the square trying to calm people. She said they’ve done stuff to maintain safety or something like that. Anyway, the crowd freaked when a rumor went around that the Ertryd’s are invading.”
Ti shook her head. “That’s stupid.”
“Why?” asked Pheno.
“The Etryds can’t invade.”
“Why not?” asked Pheno. “There’s got to be a bunch living off world and a great many must’ve fled the planet. They had plenty of warning before the exoplanet hit.”
“Serious? Teachers and scientists and politicians and aid workers, not soldiers, were off world before the impact,” said Ti. “As soon as M3326’s trajectory became known, the Galactic Fleet blockaded Ertryd to prevent a refugee crisis. Standard protocol. You ought to know that, Mr. Maven of History and Other Useless Info. I need you to use your brain, Pheno.”
Dense Space Page 5