Second Round: A Return to the Ur-Bar

by Garth Nix

  Oh great, Barasa notes mentally, the ‘customer’ is fondling a snuff box, looking at it. The hits just keep on coming, don’t they?

  That’s a good item. He took this snuff box about a year ago from an Antonio Suarez, and—“Oh SHIT,” he murmurs as the realization hits him.

  “I used to have an antique snuff box just like this,” Antonio is saying, looking up at them, “but it was stolen.” Barasa puts on a poker face.

  “Oh? That’s interesting. My friend here,” says Gil, gesturing at Barasa, “has actually recovered quite a few stolen antiques.”

  “This …” Antonio says, head near the base, “this is the very inscription that was on mine. This is the very one that was stolen from me!”

  “Oh, excellent,” Gil says, looking at Barasa now, “it’s always a pleasure to know when a valuable object is reunited with its owner.”

  Antonio seems a bit shocked. He glances from one to the other, seemingly unable to settle between gratitude and suspicion. Barasa remains stony-faced, weighing the chances of taking Antonio out right now. He decides to cut his losses and elects to give a nod. With the seeming unreliability of his security measures, Barasa doesn’t know if he could prevail without one of them stopping him. Better to face Gil, the bigger threat, without complications.

  “We’re closed now. You’ll have to leave. Take your snuff box,” Barasa says, and it pains him to say it, but he doesn’t need this guy hanging around. As they say, he tells himself, blessings are better than possessions. Antonio unsteadily stands, clutching his snuff box, and exits.

  Gil and Barasa remain unmoving until the door closes behind the customer.

  Barasa scrutinizes Gil. Then it hits him. Where he’s seen this one before.

  “You own that tavern in Perth. Across the ocean.” Barasa says slowly.

  “I used to,” grants Gil, “until yesterday. I remember you there. You were admiring my tablet. The one that’s sitting in that suitcase over there now.”

  Barasa resists the urge to turn.

  “I don’t often get to choose where I go, so when I overheard your conversation, I thought I’d take advantage of this opportunity.” Gil continued. “I thought Mombasa might be fun. Why else do you think I let you take the tablet?”

  “Oh?” says Barasa, calculating how much to acknowledge and how much to dissemble. “I saw it, yes, but the tablet in my possession over there is just a fabrication I made myself, inspired by what was hanging in your tavern.”

  “Well, you have certainly produced quite the fabrication,” says Gil, chuckling. “The truth is, wherever that tablet goes, a bar goes with it. And I go with the bar.”

  Gil folds the rag on the counter, and all the humor is lost from his voice when he speaks next.

  “All the same, you stole my tablet. I didn’t even know if such a thing was actually possible. But here it is. You’ve taken it, and so, you have brought me here. What is strange, though, is that for some reason it doesn’t seem possible for me to take it back from you in turn. Perhaps because I let it be taken willingly. I’m not sure. But now I must have it back. I am still bound to it, and I am not done serving drinks to those who are in need.”

  Barasa doesn’t quite follow every reference Gil is making, but about one thing Barasa is certain. He is not about to just give up the tablet, even if Gil suspects the truth. This will be the crown jewel of his collection. It is undoubtedly the finest piece he has encountered in his life. But with the frenzy of the past couple of days, he hasn’t even had a chance yet to sit with it, admire it, and enjoy its company. Even putting aside the threat Gil poses to him personally, no way is he going to give it up, not even if Gil begs for it. Not even if he pays for it. Certainly not through demands.

  “I am sorry for whatever you think happened, but this tablet is mine,” Barasa responds, “I am keeping it, and you need to leave.” In his head Barasa mentally reviews all the weaponry he has at his disposal. Clearly, he reasons, the home system has been tampered with so as to prevent its use in attacking Gil. Given that, he doesn’t think there is much he can use, but he still has options.

  “One possibility I see, given that the bar is to be located here,” said Gil, whose mouth was smiling but whose eyes were not, “is for you to help me run this bar. You are not doing good things with your life. But you can change. You would not be the first on whom I showed favor in this way. You can make an honest living. I can offer you protection, and a way out, and all you have to do is relinquish the tablet to me.”

  “Ah, how generous. Thank you,” Barasa says, as if considering the proposal, all the while moving forward and into position. “But this is my home. This is NOT—” Barasa brings up the wooden sign “—A BAR!” And he brings it down atop Gil’s head.

  Or at least, that was the plan. Instead, Gil swats at the heavy wood and Barasa is forced to shield his eyes as it shatters into sharp stakes.

  Barasa tries to swing the axe at Gil before he can recover, but Gil grabs it just above the blade and, wresting it from Barasa’s grip, flings it to the opposite side of the room.

  Barasa takes a few steps back, out of Gil’s reach, and pulls out a pistol, pointing it at Gil. A good old-fashioned mechanical weapon. Not something that can be hacked. No way for Gil to defend against this.

  Gil moves before Barasa can react and he feels a pain in his hand as he drops the gun. Gil had flung a broken shot glass right at his hand! Barasa steps over to pick up the gun again but Gil is there first, picking it up and pocketing it.

  “You cannot hurt me in my own bar,” Gil says, “and I don’t think you’re really listening to me either.” Another step and Gil is upon him. Barasa picks up a piece of the splintered wood in each hand and as Gil bends down Barasa lunges, one stake aimed for Gil’s eye, the other for his neck. Before they make contact each wrist is gripped in a hand like a vise and Gil twists Barasa around, bringing his hands together behind his back.

  Gil lifts Barasa full into the air and presses him face down onto the countertop. Barasa feels his hands being bound behind him. By the texture, it must be the cleaning rag, twisted up.

  Barasa feels himself being turned, and now he is staring into Gil’s eyes. He struggles a bit but the binding on his hands is strong. A large, firm arm presses down atop him.

  “I am going to have to rescind my job offer, I’m afraid,” Gil says. “It’s not that I think you’d be bad at mixing drinks, you understand. I just don’t think we’d get along so well. I’m not feeling like this would be a great location anymore, either.”

  Barasa lays there, unable to see a way out of this. Whatever he does, he cannot seem to overpower or outwit this intruder. Neither physically nor technologically. Is this the end?

  “You have two choices now. One, return the tablet. I’ll take it and leave. While I’m not worried about my own safety, I don’t want to endanger my customers, nor have you scare them all away. Perhaps this was a mistake and I should have just let myself go where the tablet takes me, as always. All the same,” Gil says, his voice turning colder, “you do have another choice, should you decide to keep the tablet. And that is that I continue to operate this bar as planned. I’ll continue to bring in customers, some of whom you may know, like our friend just now. It makes no difference to me.

  “But there’s more, too, if you force me to stay. For what you have done to me and the reception I have been given, I will make sure that in addition to losing what you have, you will never gain another antique treasure. Not by theft and not by honest purchase. You will never come into contact with anything that’s not printed out of cheap plastic.”

  Barasa shudders. He can see his life unfolding before him now, all the work he’s done unraveled, all his joy taken from him. “Nothing old …” Barasa mutters.

  “Nothing old,” Gil agrees. “Nothing but me!” Gil laughs a hollow laugh, as if his deep voice were echoing within a great underground cavern. “I can leave with my tablet, or I can stay here and run the bar.” Gil’s words, despite the
ir menace, feel to Barasa more like a statement of some natural law than a threat.

  Barasa recalls the unnerving train ride, the surreal transformation of his own home, the superhuman strength of Gil, and the horror of his threats. The tablet started this mess. Is it worth keeping, for the sake of his personal ruin? Barasa is convinced now that Gil could make good on what he said. They are not empty words.

  “Fine,” Barasa spits out, bitter and dejected in defeat. “Untie me and take the damned tablet. You can have it.”

  Gil turns Barasa upright into a sitting position, facing the wall. Barasa hears Gil drag the suitcase over and then feels his bonds being loosened. Barasa rubs his wrists and turns around.

  When he sees Gil, he stares, dumbfounded.

  Gil holds the tablet, familiar with it like Barasa will never be. And all around them swirl colored dust. Yet there is no wind, nor do these colors seem to interact with the physical world, aside from Gil and the tablet, who are disappearing.

  It all happens in a second. It’s over before Barasa grasps what he is looking at.

  The showroom is a disheveled mess. Splintered wood and broken furniture lay all about, punctuated by shattered bottles, their former contents ruining the floor and some upholstery. Still, as much as he rues losing out on the bounty he hoped for, he finds himself relieved. In his heart, he knows that he really doesn’t need the strangeness of Gilgamesh in his life.

  Julen Baz is still an issue, along with all his usual problems. Compared to this Sumerian craziness, however, it all seems very manageable. Barasa hopes to still be able to find some nice antiques, using his more usual methods. He hopes that he can rustle up some nice non-magical artifacts soon.

  Ones that do not come with bars attached.

  Wanderlust

  Juliet E. McKenna

  The summer sunlight was shining full on the windows and the climate control wasn’t quite keeping up with having so many people in a seminar room this size. The comfortable warmth was making Adie drowsy. That and not having had nearly enough sleep last night, or the night before. But there were so many parties celebrating graduation and it wouldn’t do to be rude by turning invitations down. Good manners were prized on Mars, and with good reason.

  She shifted in her seat and made an effort to look interested as Doctor Reynolds continued talking.

  “The more renewable power we can generate for ourselves, through solar panels, wind turbines and our geothermal resources, the better it will be for our economy. Obviously, we have all the deuterium we might need for our own reactors, but it’s our most valuable export. Earth, Luna, the Belt, and the Saturn and Jupiter stations have no real alternatives to fusion. The more fuel we can sell to them, the more investment we can fund here at home. Of course, that means we’re buying plenty of raw materials from the Belt and the Outer Stations, as well as the Earth hi-tech we’re not ready to make for ourselves yet, so everyone’s a winner.”

  Doctor Reynolds grinned as he snapped his fingers and the holographic display switched to a detailed engineering schematic. “Now, this is the next generation of solar panels that we’re currently working on.”

  It was no good. Adie couldn’t concentrate. It wasn’t as if she’d ever wanted to become an electrical engineer. It wasn’t as if any of the career track speakers were offering the future she wanted as an option.

  Fortunately, from where she was sitting, she could gaze out of the window without it being too obvious. Better yet, this teaching block was in one of the outer domes of the UofMars campus. Best of all, the seminar room looked outwards rather than inwards towards the rest of the complex.

  The dome’s spiderweb of polyhedral latticework was barely ten meters away and the panels had recently been replaced with the latest glass-composites that shrugged off even the worst Martian dust storms. Adie could see all the way to the horizon, where the rich ochre mountains met the luminous beauty of the silvery-pink sky.

  Closer to the dome, geometric patches of gray-green still looked bizarrely out of place against the familiar russet ground. Adie wondered how long it would take her to get used to seeing these new, experimental plants growing outside the university’s greenhouse complex. Would she be working with projects like that if she opted for a future in Botany? Doctor Elliot’s presentation this morning had certainly been intriguing. Still, Adie wondered how long anyone could stay enthusiastic about atmosphere enrichment when progress there would be measured in decades, with the botanical contribution measured in centuries. That wasn’t her main problem though. Botany just wasn’t what she wanted to do with her life. Not here, anyway.

  “Any questions?” Doctor Reynolds was looking around the seminar room for hands. Adie hastily focused on the holographic display before he noticed her. He couldn’t slap her with a demerit for lack of attention now that they’d finished classes, but he’d still be offended and he didn’t deserve that. Add to that, if she was ever going to persuade her parents to give her plans their blessing, she’d need to convince them that she’d given each and every alternative a thorough assessment before rejecting it.

  Two rows over, Jona had his hand up, leaning forward in his seat. “What are the resistances in these new alloys?”

  Several other students had similar technical questions and Adie found herself smiling at Doctor Reynold’s enthusiasm as he answered them. The veteran engineer was clearly going to enjoy working with these keen newcomers.

  The hour chime interrupted him and he gave a rueful shrug. “Well, thanks for your attention. You know where to find me if you want to follow up on anything. Now go and enjoy your break.”

  His last words were all but lost in an enthusiastic round of applause. Adie wasn’t surprised to see Jona join the cluster of students at the front of the room, eager to learn more. Everyone else was switching their dataslates from group to solo mode and filing out through the door, just as happy to be released.

  Lex fell into step beside her. They were barely a meter down the corridor when he heaved a sigh that turned into a jaw-cracking yawn. He scrubbed his face with his hands. “Tell me I didn’t start snoring in there?”

  Misha was walking a few paces ahead of them. She looked back and laughed, not unkindly. “No, but it was close. What were you doing last night?”

  Lex looked a little embarrassed. “Bar crawl. Me and Naz bet Pat and Vida that we could tag more domes that they did before powerdown. But I really will turn in early tonight,” he assured them both.

  “Shall we get some coffee?” Adie suggested.

  “Maybe later?” Misha moved to the side of the corridor to avoid getting in anyone’s way. “I want to check in with the Habitation Executive.”

  “You’re thinking of applying there?” Adie was surprised. Misha was the last person she would expect to opt for Bureau Track.

  Misha shook her head. “There’s a new dome cluster just been announced.” She couldn’t hide her eagerness. “With plenty of single-residence units.”

  “Let’s all put our names down.” Lex shook off his lethargy and lengthened his stride.

  Adie slowed instead. “I’ll do that later. I said I’d check in at home before Mum starts her shift.”

  Lex nodded his understanding. “You don’t know how lucky you are, to have such great parents.”

  Adie managed a cheery grin. “Oh, believe me, I know it.”

  They reached the block’s outer door and the crowd of students scattered. Some headed for other campus domes while the rest followed the colored paths to the different shuttle locks.

  “Will we see you later?” Misha asked. “At Tavu’s, to see the new vid he’s got?”

  “Absolutely,” Adie assured her.

  “It sounds amazing.” Misha grinned.

  Lex laughed. “That’s one word for it.”

  Adie turned right while the other two went straight on. It wasn’t far to the shuttle lock she needed and her luck was in. The outer doors were closed and the fat-wheeled roly-poly vehicle was waiting with its doors ho
spitably open. About half the seats were taken and it was filling up fast. Adie slid across to the window so that a burly tech following her aboard could enjoy the leg room on the aisle.

  The shuttle doors closed with their reassuring clunk and hiss and then the dome’s double-layered doors sealed themselves. Adie noticed a man a few seats away craning his neck to be quite certain the safety lights had cycled all the way through before the outer doors slid apart. Still, he wasn’t clutching an emergency breather bag so he couldn’t be too newly arrived from Earth.

  She exchanged a discreet smile with the tech who sat beside her. Everyone grew up here learning it wasn’t polite to make fun of Greenies but true-born Rusties could always share an unspoken joke.

  The pre-programmed shuttle trundled along its tunnel, with the walls so gossamer-thin they were barely noticeable. Adie could see the newcomer still eyeing the struts and panels closely. Was he expecting the shuttle to spring a leak, triggering the tunnel to wrap itself around the vehicle as an emergency seal? Or was that very idea what was making him so nervous? But claustrophobia was one of the first things Earth emigrants were screened for. They couldn’t even buy a ticket for the Red Card Lottery without passing such basic tests.

  Still, Adie allowed, she’d never walked anywhere without a layer of protection between herself and the atmosphere. Dome-and-tunnel life must take a bit of getting used to. She watched a dust devil whirl across the gravel, stirred up by the warming sun. What would feeling weather on her skin instead of seeing it through glass-composite be like? Probably weird enough to freak her out, at least the first few times.

  Not on Mars though. These days Adie just nodded and changed the subject whenever Ma said the Polar Thawing Project would unlock enough carbon dioxide to thicken the atmosphere to human tolerances inside ten years. For one thing, Ma had been saying that for at least five years, ever since she’d taken charge of the orbital mirror monitoring office. For another, that would only mean that Martians could go outside without full environment suits. They’d still need breathing apparatus for Adie’s lifetime and beyond.