Tales of the Dissolutionverse Box Set

by William C. Tracy

  Will we get high enough to see the Imperium? Probably not. It was half the length of the Nether away, though the Nether was flat, instead of a ball like Etan. I looked up instead. The clouds were high and thin, but I still couldn’t see the top of the walls. It was like they fuzzed out in the distance, farther than I could see.

  * * *

  I watched the ground for a long time while the balloon rose. Then, when I couldn’t make out fine details, I watched the great crystal wall. The balloon was rising so close to the expanse of crystal that the orange fabric was in danger of brushing against it. I hoped Mom knew what she was doing. If we poked a hole in the fabric, the balloon would deflate and plunge us all to our deaths.

  Mom tended to rush into things, but Partino didn’t seem concerned, so maybe we would be fine. The wall was pretty smooth. In some places it swelled like a wave caught mid-break, the light it cast broken into all the colors of the rainbow as it reflected through the facets buried under the surface. Back on the ground, I’d tried to mark it with a rock, but I couldn’t even make a scratch. I guess that’s the beetle’s job. The metal hulk was steady in its harness beneath us.

  I moved to the other side of the basket to pick out the giant crystal columns rising in the distance. At least they didn’t get farther away, like the ground. I could see lots of them if I squinted, but there were four close enough to see clearly. We’d passed a lot of columns on the way to our launch site—they grew out of the ground in the Nether, in no real pattern I could see, and went straight up, disappearing like the wall did into the distance above. They were big enough that it took a few minutes to walk around one, and Mom said they held up the roof. Though if no one’s ever seen the top of the Nether, how does she know? Like the walls, the columns gave off light, but not as much.

  “How’s your first time out on an expedition?”

  I hadn’t heard Mom approach, and turned around quickly, ready for more chores, or to be told I was doing something wrong. Instead, she held a little book folded in her hands. A peace offering?

  “I didn’t know there would be this many hours for relaxing,” I said.

  “Lightenings, not hours,” Mom corrected. “And it’s only been two. It’s not even time for lunch yet.” Then she scowled, watching my face. “I’m sorry. That was patronizing. If you’re old enough to come with me, you’re old enough for me to treat you like a young lady.” She smiled. “Even if there is a lot of complaining involved.”

  “I don’t need to be out here like you do,” I said. “I like study the artifacts you bring home, with Alondri and Kayla. Why can’t I just do that?”

  “It’s not the same—believe me,” Mom said. “You’ve got the same spark of adventure I do. Alondri and Kayla are…theoretical, like Jonduri was.”

  I never got to meet my other father.

  “And anyway, I won’t be doing this forever,” Mom continued. “Etanela live longer than most of the other species, but we still have limits. This life isn’t easy on the body.” She shook her head, her large green eyes fixing me in place. “But that’s not what I came over for.” She held out the book. “Here. This is for you.”

  I took it from her, and flipped through the pages, then brought it up to catch the scent of new pages. The paper was thick and white, but there was nothing written on them. As I ruffled through the pages, a pencil fell out, tied to the book by a ribbon.

  “It’s empty.” What does she want me to do?

  “It’s for you to fill,” Mom said, “with the observations you make. Sketch things you see. Find out what it means to be a naturalist, like me, instead of a researcher, like your other parents. See if you like it.”

  I stared back at her for a moment. That’s actually kind of cool. This was why I had a special connection with Mom. Every once in a while, she knew how to reach me.

  “Thanks. I will.” I clutched the book, and turned back to the window so Mom couldn’t see my slow grin forming. I wasn’t so quick that I missed her smile.

  * * *

  “That’s certified salvage,” Mom said. “I have the receipts to prove it, just like my other artifacts.” Her voice rose in volume, making me look up from where I was trying to draw one of the columns in my new book. Sketching halfway transparent crystal was hard.

  I watched Partino look over the side of the basket, his big arms behind his head. He turned, as if he could feel me looking at him, and gave me a shrug.

  “—one signed to say we’re officially sanctioned by the Effature,” Majus E’Flyr was saying. The Lobath’s voice rose too. She pointed to the bottom of the page she held. “The Council is very interested in your expedition as well, which is why they were willing to partially fund it, and to let you keep the drill. For now.”

  What are they talking about?

  “It’s still mine, no matter who funds the expedition,” Mom told her.

  “Yes, but your other artifacts can’t bore into Nether crystal. You’re lucky the Council—or what’s left of it—didn’t confiscate it after you found the drill.” The majus’ head-tentacles twitched as she spoke.

  Is the majus excited, or angry, or what? I got to my feet. Our whole family treated artifacts with the respect they deserved. We made sure the pots and bottles and skeletons Mom found were all properly dated and stored. We even returned a portion to the species they originally belonged to. Mom’s discoveries were in museums all over the ten homeworlds.

  “I’d be surprised if they managed to take it from me,” Mom said, her hands waving toward the majus. “The Council isn’t even close to operating properly. Half its members are dead, missing, or traitors!”

  “They at least filled one seat,” Majus E’Flyr grumbled, but then she looked back up to Mom, her silvery eyes catching the light from the wall. It was near midday and the wall was bright. It made me squint to look straight at it.

  Mom opened her mouth, holding up another paper, but there was a sizzle and a thump from the center of the balloon. We all looked up. The flame that had burned since we started, keeping the bright orange balloon above our heads filled with hot air, was gone. I wrinkled my nose at the smell of gas.

  “Partino,” Mom called. “We need a new canister of kerosene.” I could already feel the balloon falter and slow.

  Changing out the canister took several minutes, with Mom popping levers on the rack of controls in the middle of the basket. I helped Partino lug a cylinder almost as tall as me from one section of the basket. There were twenty canisters altogether, tied into the spaces between the windows. Were they this heavy when I helped lift these things into the basket?

  “Quickly now,” Mom said, gesturing with both hands. By this time, the balloon had stopped its ascent and was beginning to fall under the weight of the metal beneath us.

  “We’re dropping! Do you usually fly the balloon like this?” I shouted as I wrestled the canister forward with Partino. I didn’t know if the jolt traveling up my spine was from the work, or from feeling the balloon descend. Come on, push!

  “It’s the weight of the drill,” Mom said. She wrestled the empty canister from the station in the middle of the balloon and traded with Partino, hooking the full canister to a tube made of shiny golden metal. She flipped a few switches and with a foosh the flame re-ignited. The whole balloon gave a little jerk and we stopped falling.

  “You knew about the weight before you started.” I put a hand to my chest to feel my heart slowing. Will it be like this every time?

  Mom dusted off her hands and looked at me. “We can’t always cover every possibility,” she said. “This is the difference between theory and the real world. Things act differently than we think.”

  “I think I like theory better.” I coughed as smelly fumes came from the new canister, and we began rising again.

  “Toss this one?” Partino asked, holding up the empty canister. We both stared at him as if he’d just popped into existence.

  “Yes—over the side,” Mom said, and ges
tured toward the edge of the basket. “The weight will slow us down.”

  Partino shrugged and lugged the cylinder to the side of the basket, then tossed it overboard. I followed him and watched it fall, tumbling end over end. When it faded from sight, I turned back.

  “What if it hits someone?” First the balloon dropping, now heavy canisters tossed over the side. Mom was usually more careful than this.

  “Low chance of that,” Majus E’Flyr said. “We specifically chose this area because of the low population density. It’s all farmland, out here by the wall. It’s the best light to grow crops, and it’s not harvest time. There will be very few, if any, people underneath us. We can drop anything we want.”

  Anything? I looked out one of the openings again, several new games to pass the time running through my head.

  Then I looked back to the canisters. It had taken two lightenings for the first one to empty. Ten lightenings and ten darkenings in one day. I frowned, calculating.

  “Only two days in the balloon?” I asked Mom.

  “I did some calculations,” she said. “This is the most weight the balloon could carry with the drill, and still rise fast enough to be worthwhile.” Her eyes were bright. “After that, the fun begins.”

  I hoped she did those calculations correctly.

  * * *

  Time passed, with Mom and the majus talking about things in low voices. Partino and I played about twenty rounds of Take-My-Ship with a deck of cards, and I made more sketches of the balloon, the clouds, and the beetle, hanging beneath us. We all watched the walls and columns out the windows. Mom made sketches too, of the different swells and ridges we could see in the walls. About every two lightenings, by my watch, the gas in the canister would fizzle out and the balloon would lurch to a stop. Mom and Partino and I rushed to change it out each time before we lost too much height. The majus was too old to help, obviously. If Mom had taken a little more time figuring out how much the balloon could carry, my heart wouldn’t jump out of my chest every time the fuel ran out.

  Every time, I watched the cylinder tumble end over end, falling back toward the ground. Is there a pile of canisters stuck in a farmer’s field?

  We didn’t open the supplies for lunch—those were for the days to come. This morning, I’d helped Mom pack a bag with fried fish, and kelp soup in little glass containers. We warmed them up by putting them near the flame in the middle of the basket. Majus E’Flyr had brought food of her own—a container of the mushroom paste Lobath liked to eat.

  By the time the third canister of fuel fizzled out, I couldn’t hold it any longer. My bladder was really full, but I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do. Mom hadn’t explained that part of riding in a balloon.

  “You look like you’re about to start a dance,” Partino told me. He was sitting on a locked chest, long, strong legs stretched out.

  I rolled my eyes. How hard was this to get?

  “What is wrong, little one—”

  I interrupted before his stupid name could make me angrier. “I have to pee!” I yelled.

  Mom looked up, a sketch under her hand. “Time to try out the facilities.”

  Partino stood. “I’ll show you how, Natina.”

  Finally, no name-calling.

  Even the Majus looked on with interest as Partino moved a case of equipment to one side, revealing a covered bucket built into the floor of the basket.

  “Behold the wondrous commode!” he said with a sweeping gesture, and removed the lid.

  I looked down through the bucket. That’s more empty air than I want to see right now.

  “We even have a special barrier,” Mom said, and pulled a section of basket out. It unfolded section by section until it surrounded the bucket.

  “Thank the Sea Mother,” I said. They still stood there. “Well, go on!” I flapped my hands at them. This will be embarrassing enough as it is. I didn’t relish what I knew had to happen while we were climbing the wall.

  “Good luck!” Partino chuckled, as he and Mom retreated. I threw a dark look at him, but he only grinned back.

  Thanks.

  I really hoped Majus E’Flyr was right that there was no one below us.

  * * *

  Sometime in the afternoon, I moved Partino’s discarded coat out of the way to get to my books, and a piece of paper fluttered out of the pocket. It landed open on the sack of supplies and my eyes widened as I read. I snatched it up and stepped across the basket to where Partino lounged against the wicker barrier that kept us from falling.

  “When were you planning to tell us about this?” I asked.

  The porter looked confused for a moment, then I opened the note. He popped to his feet, put one hand to his mouth, then let it fall back down.

  “Tell us about what?” Mom said. She was by our side in an instant, and took the note from me. “When did you get this?” she snapped.

  Partino paled, and clasped his big hands together. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I received it right before we left Gloomlight, ma’am. Very sorry. In all the rush, packing and making sure we had calculated the rations correctly, it plain left my mind until just this minute when Natina found it.”

  The heat in my chest cooled a little. He only calls Mom ‘ma’am’ when he knows he’s done something really bad. Like when he forgot to check the traps for a whole ten-day one time, and he and I had to clean up stinking fish guts.

  “That was days ago, Partino,” Mom said. “Who knows what else they’ve done since then?”

  “What’s happened?” the majus asked. She’d finally gotten up from where she’d been sitting.

  “According to this note from the dig site, there was a break-in,” I said, pointing to the flap of paper Mom held. “It was the site where Mom found the crystal beetle thing. They might have stolen something!”

  “I got the note before we left,” Partino said with a grimace. “If you read it carefully, nothing was stolen, technically. They had a license for that area.”

  “It’s stealing to me,” Mom grumbled. “I had a license good for the whole area around Broken Column. Those Kirians only swooped in for the last month, after word leaked when that layabout Dusty Dunderdink got drunk in town and blabbed about it. Made up a song about the drill and everything, as if talking wasn’t enough. By rights all discoveries should be mine, no matter what competing license the Kirians have.”

  “And what might have been discovered?” Majus E’Flyr asked. The last time someone tried to interfere with the relics Mom found, they’d ended up in jail in the Imperium. She didn’t mess around with archeology. I didn’t envy that other team, when she caught up to them.

  “We think there’s another drill buried, right at the boundary between the two licensed areas,” Mom said, “but there’s no way to be sure without another letter from the workers at the site, and we’re not liable to get that, this high up.” she had one hand on her hip, the other waving back and forth with the paper.

  “Right before we left, the team discovered the tip of another metal case, like the drill below us.” Partino pointed down. “They’d only excavated a little, but we thought it wasn’t in as good shape as the one we found.”

  “That’s why I went ahead with this expedition,” Mom said. “Using the drill first makes it my discovery. But without me there, I’m certain those Kirians have found a way to claim the other.” Mom crumpled the letter in one fist.

  “They can’t have claimed it so quickly,” Partino said, though he took a step back from Mom. “Surigran Wailimani and his team are sloppy.”

  Even I had heard of Wailimani. Mom talked about him every time she came home, how the Kirian had desecrated this holy site, or sold those artifacts off to the highest bidder rather than giving them to a museum.

  “Partino’s right,” I said. “That Kirian doesn’t have the experience you do. He’s no match for you.” Mom and I had our differences, but on the subject of preserving the sites she studied, we agreed.
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  “He’s competent enough to get around our security,” Mom said, then took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. She was calming down, which was good because we couldn’t do anything about it up here, and I didn’t want Mom trying to drag the rest of us under the rudder just because she was angry.

  “We can’t confront Wailimani about it now.” Mom echoed my thoughts. “We’re a quarter of the way through our fuel, who knows how far up, and I’m not turning around. I’ll deal with it when we get back, though by that time, they can most likely claim ownership of the whole site!”

  Majus E’Flyr leaned forward, and I saw the ends of her head-tentacles twitching. “If there is another drill, then the Council will be very interested in it. Maybe I can pull some strings when we return.”

  “That would be much appreciated, Majus,” Mom said.

  * * *

  Seeing the Nether in the dark from this height was something new. The air was crisp and cool, a wind playing with my bushy hair. There was a soft glow from the walls and columns, though the rest of the land was plunged into darkness. I thought I could see a faint glow of lights directly behind us, and a long way off. I pointed it out to Mom.

  “That’s Gloomlight,” she said.

  “Traveling in the balloon really puts the distances in perspective,” I said. It had taken several days of constant travel to reach this edge of the Nether, and that was using fast, expensive, System Beasts pulling our carriage day and night. If we had used regular pullbeasts, it would have taken a couple ten-days, but Mom wouldn’t wait that long.

  “It’s very clear tonight,” Mom told me. “It looks like just a little ball of light because we’re seeing as far as from our home to the Yulati Harrowan archipelago on Etan.”