by J. S. Morin
Esper shook her head.
Tanny wanted to toss hers aside, just to prove her toughness. It was a marine code. In a friendly match, never take an advantage when it’s offered. But something told her not to take the risk. Esper hadn’t been able to grow Mriy new teeth, and Tanny liked hers well enough to swallow her pride.
The two women squared off again. Tanny came on with a flurry of blows, mixing punches and kicks as Esper blocked and dodged every one of them. Now that Tanny was looking for it, she could tell just how much faster Esper’s movements had become. But that was all it was—speed, combined with the adoption of a quirky, holovid style. Tanny baited her into a punch, grabbed a wrist, and flipped Esper to the mat.
Far from accepting the loss of a bout and resetting for a new one, Esper twisted in Tanny’s grasp. From the ground, she kicked Tanny’s ankles out from under her, breaking the hold and gaining her feet before Tanny could.
Tanny backed off the mat and took out her mouthguard. “What the fuck was that? You can’t bend like that.”
The grin in Esper’s eyes begged to differ. She held out her arm and twisted until her hand had spun a complete 360 degrees.
“Don’t do that again,” Tanny said with a shudder. She’s seen limbs torn free from bodies, and bodies with missing limbs, but somehow a living, whole person shouldn’t have been able to do that.
Esper held up her hands in apology, then beckoned to Tanny.
The next encounter started much the same, but this time Esper blocked one of Tanny’s kicks with a kick of her own, then struck again with the same foot before Tanny could recover. The blow to her midsection drove the air from Tanny’s lungs and staggered her, but Esper didn’t press the advantage.
“You got bricks in those pads?” Tanny asked between gasps. But it was mere seconds before she had her lungs filled again. Her cocktail of physical-enhancement drugs kept her from being out of any fight while she was still conscious.
This time, Tanny closed quarters with Esper before the apprentice could establish a rhythm on defense. She locked her hands behind Esper’s neck and brought a knee up into her midsection. That knee met Esper’s crossed wrists instead and stopped dead. Leaving her feet, Tanny brought her other knee up into Esper’s face. They fell to the mat together, and Tanny used her momentary advantage to roll Esper facedown and lock an arm around her neck.
That should have been the end of it. Tanny had long since abandoned holding back in the bout. Her combination of arm strength and technique should have forced Esper to either signal her submission or pass out from lack of oxygen. Twin jolts of stabbing pain answered her instead where Esper’s elbows hammered into Tanny’s ribs. There was a chorus of audible cracks as several broke. As Tanny gritted her teeth against the pain, vise-like fingers pried her arms loose from Esper’s neck and shoved her aside.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Esper said, kneeling over Tanny, blood running from her own broken nose. “That got out of hand.” She laid her hands on Tanny’s abdomen, just below the fractured ribcage.
It was a bizarre and disquieting sensation as Tanny felt her ribs squirm inside her. Adrenaline alone had kept her from noticing that her ribs hadn’t just cracked, but fractured clear through. She braced herself for the ravaging hunger that would soon follow, as her own metabolism sped to supernatural levels to heal her.
But it never came. Esper clasped Tanny’s hand and hauled her to her feet. The slip of a girl was like an anchor, not sagging a millimeter under Tanny’s weight. “But… how? Shouldn’t I be starving now?”
“I’ve gotten better,” Esper said. She wiped a hand under her nose and seemed surprised to see blood. Grabbing her nose, she set it straight, gave it wiggle, and seemed satisfied.
“Mort’s some teacher for you to learn so much in a few days,” Tanny marveled.
Esper scoffed. “Days? We were gone more than a year.”
# # #
The little room with the letters on the wall was Kubu’s least favorite room in Not-Mommy’s house. Kubu knew his letters. He knew his numbers, too. Esper had little songs about both of them that made it easy to remember. Not-Mommy didn’t like Kubu singing Esper’s songs. He sat on a chair and listened while Not-Mommy pointed to pictures in a holovid.
“Apul,” Not-Mommy said. She’d taken away his through-the-ear magic for the lesson, and everything was just weird noises. But the picture was an apple. Kubu mimicked the sounds, just trying to get through the lesson.
The image shifted. This time it was a baby version of Kubu’s new friend Sumther. It was little and fuzzy, with big ears and dark eyes with no whites around them. “Bair,” Not-Mommy said slowly, repeating it several times until Kubu parroted her. It was a silly noise to make for a bear.
“Ket,” Not-Mommy said when the holovid turned into a tiny little Mriy. This one walked on all fours and was gray instead of white with patches of orange like Mriy. It was also smiling. Mriy didn’t smile like that; hers had more teeth.
It was warm and sunny on the other side of the window. It smelled nice out there. The letters-on-the-wall room smelled like old flowers and lemons—smells Not-Mommy seemed to like better than real smells. Kubu just wanted to go running, maybe eat a bunny or two. There were twenty-six letters though, and there were a lot more left before he could leave.
“Kubu!” Not-Mommy snapped. Kubu’s head turned toward the holovid, even though he strained his neck muscles to keep looking out the window. Not-Mommy said a lot of words that Kubu didn’t understand, but he understood the idea of the words anyway. There was going to be no playing until he finished his lesson. A low growl rumbled in the back of his throat, and he felt his lip curl to show his teeth. He didn’t mean to; it just happened that way.
Kubu knew right away that he’d made a mistake.
Not-Mommy stormed across the room as Kubu whined and tried to make himself smaller. He wagged his tail to show that he hadn’t meant it, but they were short, quick wags. Kubu didn’t have a big wag in him, or he’d have tried that instead. Not-Mommy grabbed him by the ear and put his through-the-ear magic back in. But she didn’t let go of his ear afterward.
“That was very naughty,” Not-Mommy told him. This time, Kubu would rather not have understood her. “You need some quiet time, then we’ll resume the lesson.”
Dragged by the ear, Kubu had no choice but to follow Not-Mommy to the quiet room. He looked frantically into the rooms they passed and down each side hallway. Not-Mommy held his ear by the through-the-ear magic, and the tugging hurt as he stumbled awkwardly down the stairs behind her. Kubu whimpered, even though he tried to hold it in.
Not-Mommy pushed him into the quiet room. When Kubu tried to dart through the door before she could close it, his whole body stopped. “You are being punished. If you try to avoid punishment, I will make it worse. You have to learn to respect your elders and to heed me because I am your mother. I have your best interests at heart, but I cannot allow your willfulness to go unchecked. I know you don’t like this, but you need to learn that misbehavior has consequences. When you’re grown up, the consequences of the real world will not be so kind.”
Kubu put his ears back and crouched low, trying to look unthreatening. He cast a baleful look up at Not-Mommy.
But Not-Mommy had a heart a like turtle shell. Nothing could get in when she didn’t want it to. She laid a finger firmly atop Kubu’s nose; he crossed his eyes to focus on it. “Stay.” The thought flashed across his mind to nip at her finger. Not that he wanted to bite it off, just give Not-Mommy a reason not to do it again. But that was just his teeth thinking for him again, and since he’d been living with Not-Mommy his teeth got him into trouble more than they solved anything.
The door closed, and Kubu was alone in the quiet room. The walls were soft, but blank. A weak light in the ceiling kept it from being totally dark; everything was just gloomy and colorless instead. No sounds came in from outside, and no window showed Kubu the outdoors. He was alone.
Kubu was hungry. He
was sad and bored and lonely already, and he missed real Mommy. And Esper. And Mort. And even Mriy, Roddy, and Carl a little bit. They were all nicer than Not-Mommy.
He briefly considered pooping in front of the door to get back at Not-Mommy, but realized that he’d probably just get punished again. Worst of all, once she let him out, Not-Mommy was going to bring him right back to his lessons.
# # #
After a pair of showers and fresh changes of clothes, Tanny and Esper reconvened in Esper’s quarters. Tanny brought two bottles of beer and was mildly surprised when Esper popped the cap off hers with a thumb. The two women sat on the bed—Esper against the wall cushioned by pillows, Tanny at the foot, cross-legged.
“So what was it like in there?” Tanny asked. It was weird to contemplate, weirder than most magic she’d heard of. To have spent a year inside Mort’s head in the span of a night… no wonder Mort woke up irritable and confused every morning.
Esper sighed and tilted her head back until it rested against the cold metal of the wall. She had aged. Tanny had only known her a few months, and she’d spent three times as long in Mort’s dream world. “Ever have one of those dreams where you realize you’re dreaming?”
“Kinda, but not really,” Tanny said. “Usually wake up as soon as I notice.”
“Same here,” Esper said. “But that was how Mort described it. He’s been practicing for years. He never said it outright, but I think it has something to do with that book he stole all those years ago.”
“But what was it like in there?” Tanny asked. “What does Mort cook up in his dreams?”
“It’s sort of like the New Camelot colony, except less wink-and-nod tourist trap and more ‘holy shit there are dragons here,’” Esper said, surprising Tanny with her casual vulgarity. “Mort made up everyone there, so the people are a little grumpy and rude. If you think about it, it’s like hundreds of Morts all in costume, running around his own head. I had to sort of put that in the back of my mind, or it got creepy.”
“Anyone we know?” Tanny asked.
“Everyone we know,” Esper said. “Or at least anyone we know that Mort does. They’re noblemen and ladies, knights and stablehands. He’s got a whole working medieval town and castle in there.”
“What am I?” Tanny asked with a smirk. She’d always wondered what Mort really thought of her. The wizard played his cards tight as a miser.
“You’re captain of the palace guard,” Esper said. “Though it seems mainly honorary. It’s Mort’s world in there, and he’s a hundred times the wizard he is out here. Anyway, you’ve got this fancy suit of armor and a sword that catches fire on command.”
“Smooth,” Tanny said. “How about the rest of the crew? Who’s Carl?”
“Carl’s some nobleman’s son,” Esper said. “I guess his father is Carl’s actual father—Duke Chuck of House Ramsey. Mriy is the game warden. Roddy’s the town drunk—please don’t tell him I said that. Kubu wasn’t around, and Mort said he wanted to keep it that way until we rescued him.”
“And you?”
“I was the only real person in there,” Esper said. “If I wasn’t, he said there was a version of me, too. I was curious to meet my Mort-me, but I’m kinda glad I didn’t.”
“Do you know what you were?”
“His apprentice already,” Esper said. “Not sure how I feel about that. Mort obviously arranged all this ahead of time, but it still feels presumptuous.”
Tanny shook her head and took a swig of her beer. “It’s all fucking presumptuous. Maybe I don’t want to be a guard captain, huh? Who’s Mort to conscript me?”
“I met his wife,” Esper said quietly, changing topics.
“That must have been a trip,” Tanny replied. “Mort hasn’t seen her in… what? Twenty years? What’s she like?”
“She doesn’t like me,” Esper said. “Mort says he doesn’t control the people in his head directly, just makes them up as best he can and turns them loose. And Nancy is jealous; thinks I’m there to replace her. She’s sweet and kind and full of laughter when it’s just her and Mort, but the second she notices me, she turns into the Ice Death Princess. And of course, she’s a wizard, so I had to watch out for her when I was by myself without Mort to protect me.”
“Could she have hurt you?” Tanny asked. The rules for living in a dream were unclear. Plenty of holovids had computer-generated worlds with mental selves running around, and they couldn’t agree on what happened to someone harmed within the simulation.
“No, but it’s hard to think that way when you’re inside,” Esper said. “Mort promised that the way he brought me in was harmless. He even incinerated me to prove it. I was awake before the flames even hurt. He said there were other ways to inhabit someone else’s mind, and not all of them were safe, but that I couldn’t be hurt for real. I’m not sure he accounted for body dysmorphism, delusions, or other psychological trauma. I had to use in-dream magic to make myself look right. Mort’s mental image of me was close but not perfect, and it was scary looking in a mirror until I fixed it.”
“Sounds like Mort’s created himself his own little land of accidental horrors,” Tanny said. “Glad it’s not me who went—no offense.”
“Well, learning magic is safe in there,” Esper said. “It all works the way Mort thinks it should, which isn’t perfect but it’s a lot safer than trial and error for real.”
Tanny chuckled. “Mort’s own personal rules for magic, huh?”
“You laugh, but I think he’s more of an expert than he lets on,” Esper said.
“Got to you, did he?” Tanny asked. “Mort’s always had this sort of low-grade delusion of grandeur, but I think it’s rubbing off on you, being in his head. Just don’t let him convince you of anything stupid. He may be a wizard, but he’s still just an old man.”
“Old?” Esper asked. “Don’t get me started on old. I aged a year overnight.”
“Not really,” Tanny said. “I mean, you’re acting a little more… I dunno, but different. But you look the same. You didn’t get wrinkles or gray hair or anything.”
“But I have a year’s memories in my head, a year’s education and training,” Esper said. “It took a month for Mort to finally nail it down that I can’t work external magic well because I believe in the real world. But ever since my mother started getting me cosmetic surgery, I’ve believed that my body is mutable. I can believe in shaping and altering myself. Imagine what I’ll learn in a month of nights like that.”
Tanny tried. Esper was twenty-four, and a good chunk of that was childhood. Mentally, she’d be in her fifties in a month if she did as she proposed. Or would she still be twenty-four mentally with more than her share of memories? Wasn’t there more to mental age than accumulated experience? Dealing with changing life goals and physical and emotional needs was a huge part of aging. Esper waited as she turned the idea over in her head. But try as she might, Tanny couldn’t predict what would happen. “Crazy,” she said at last.
“Crazy?” Esper asked. “I did some quick math. Assuming Mort started learning how to do this twenty years ago, starting from essentially zero time dilation and extending his nights arithmetically longer ever since, until he can manage a year a night now…”
“Sure,” Tanny said. It was easy at times to forget that Esper had been a math teacher at that One Church school on Bentus VIII. Tanny hadn’t quite followed the logic, but she assumed Esper was right about it, whatever it was.
“Well, that would mean that mentally, Mort is something like 3,650 years old.”
# # #
Tanny spent the evening hours in her quarters poring over her datapad, scanning news feeds and decrypted rebroadcasts of law-enforcement channels. Passive stuff. Anything that required a query to the omni was liable to be monitored. It didn’t take any personnel resources by the Phabian Intelligence Service to keep tabs on her outgoing omni use, just tech. And they had plenty of tech to throw around.
After an initial burst-dam flood of speculation
surrounding the investigation of Carl’s crash, things had gone quiet—eerily quiet. It wasn’t that the crackpots and demagogues weren’t still spouting their usual vitriol, but the respectable sources had clammed up. The official sources weren’t putting out any more updates on the investigation. For an outfit that boasted of openness and transparency, it was ominous. When an organization with a motto of “Trust, Integrity, Justice” wasn’t willing to comment on the case, it was a bad sign.
“They’ve got to have started putting it together,” Tanny muttered. But that didn’t explain everything. It was just a thread to tug on. “But if they did, why aren’t we in custody? Why was Chuckles the Interrogation Monkey going through the checklist instead of calling in backup? It’s not like they don’t have the manpower.”
She shut off the datapad and dropped it on the bed.
Why was it that stress made her thirsty? Was it even thirst? Tanny counted the empty bottles and cans on the floor. Four beers since her sparring session with Esper, not including the one she drank in Esper’s quarters and discarded in the waste processor. Was she turning into Roddy?
“No more beer tonight,” she promised herself.
But the thirst was still there, so she ventured out to the common room in search of what the fridge might have to offer. She could hear the muffled sound of shouts and blaster fire and knew that someone was out there already. Turned out that it was Roddy, watching a fists-and-blasters action holo.
“Hey-o!” he called out when Tanny stepped from her quarters. He waved her over with what appeared to be a bacon-and-pickle sandwich. With one foot he paused the holovid by remote. “I can back it up if you want. Combat Lord Jhunzin Versus the Zheen. I’m only five minutes in.” He separated a can from the six-pack next to him on the couch and lobbed it her way.