by Simon Archer
“Well, we’ll just have to find him first, then,” Cindra said, furrowing her brows together. “Besides, I’ll tell my family to be careful. And Kira and Kinley will tell their families. And word will spread that way, which is good. Word travels fast down here, and people trust my folks. And me.”
“As well they should,” I said, smiling at her.
Cindra was a bit of a legend among the foxgirl community, even more so than Kira and Kinley. She was the only person to have ever actually escaped a binding. It was her that started all this, after all. She broke out of my binding chair and told me the truth about TelCorp. The truth that all the foxgirls had known for years, but no one had ever listened to them before I came along. No one important, anyway.
Here, Kinley made a sharp turn and began walking out across one of the long wooden docks leading out to the shipyard. We followed her, and the spray from the drizzling rain intermixed with the spray from the ocean itself, with salt tinging the air pleasantly.
Kinley approached a man who was working on the ship right to the left of the dock. He appeared to be working alone. He didn’t notice us, far too absorbed in his work fixing some kind of plank on the side of the ship, but Kinley stopped when we were under where he was hanging against the ship’s side and called up to him.
“Iggy,” she yelled, her hands on her hips as she craned her neck to look up at him. “You haven’t forgotten me have you.”
The man nearly jumped out of his skin, but he looked down to see her, and a wide grin spread across his faintly wrinkled face. He looked to be late middle-aged, with graying hair and a tattered old shirt and jeans. A leather tool belt hung around his thin waist, matching the color of the ship itself, which was medium-sized and made of wood like the docks.
“Kinley, and there’s little Kira, too,” he cried, waving down to us. “I could never forget you girls, but I was beginning to think you’d forgotten all of us down here, what with all your new fancy digs and jobs and all.”
“Oh, we’ll always be south siders,” Kinley assured him, grinning back up at him. “Right down to our bones.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “What can I do for you this fine morning? You down here lookin’ for that big bad guy on the news?”
“Something like that,” Kinley said. “We were wondering if we could ask you a few questions.”
“Uh oh,” he said, making a fake scared face. “Am I in trouble?”
“No, Iggy, we just think you can help us,” Kinley said, giving him a pointed look.
“Well, alright, then,” Iggy said, hopping down from where he was perched on the side of the ship. “Anything I can do to be of service to you girls, just name it.” Kinley looked at me, asking me with her eyes and in our bind to take the lead on this questioning now.
“Now, we were wondering…” I started to say, but the old man cut me off.
“Now listen here, you’re this Nic Joch character, ain’t ya?” Iggy asked, wiping off his dirty hands on an even dirtier rag and giving me a piercing look.
“Um, yes, Sir, it is good to meet you,” I said, holding out my hand for him to shake. He just stared down at it. Somehow, I felt like I was going through the pains of meeting the foxgirls’ reluctant and, at times, belligerent family members all over again.
“Right,” Iggy said, still not taking my outstretched hand. “So you’re gonna need to promise me that you’re takin’ good care of these girls.”
“Oh, of course, Sir,” I said, finally moving to withdraw my hand. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. You have my word on that.” He gave me another long stare before looking back at the foxgirls to get their assurances.
All three of them nodded, and then he cracked a smile again and held his own hand out for me to shake.
“Alrighty then, boy,” he said, laughing at my bewildered expression as I took his hand and shook it. “I’m gonna hold you to that, ya hear?”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” I said again.
“Good boy,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder and laughing again before releasing my hand. “Now, what can I do for ya?”
“Well, we were wondering about your shipments,” I explained, choosing my words carefully. “We’d like to know… well, we’d like to know what you do with them.”
“How do you mean?” Iggy asked, furrowing his bushy eyebrows together in confusion. “I’m not followin’, boy. We take ‘em where they go. Nothin’ more, nothin’ less.”
“Right,” I said, realizing that I clearly wasn’t getting through to this guy. “But I guess what I mean is, what’s it like where you go?”
“What do you mean?” Iggy asked with a hearty laugh.
“Okay, so where are you taking this shipment here?” I asked, pointing at the ship laden with crates.
“Continent down that away,” he said, pointing out at the ocean. This was getting frustrating. Sensing, this Kira stepped in.
“I think what Nic wants to know, Iggy,” she said kindly, taking a step toward the man, “is what it’s like there. Where do you deliver the shipment? What are the people like?”
“Oh no, I wouldn’t know a thing about that,” he said, shaking his head.
“You wouldn’t?” I asked, even more confused than Iggy was now. “Aren’t you the one that delivers them?”
“Oh, we just put ‘em on another ship close to the shore, and they take ‘em into the land,” Iggy said, as if this should be perfectly obvious and made all the sense in the world.
“What?” I asked. “Why would you do that?”
Iggy took a moment to think about this. I didn’t sense any deception from him, just confusion at this odd line of questioning.
“Why, I can’t say I know, sir,” he said, addressing me formally for the first time. “It’s just the way it is and the way it’s always been. I never thought to question it.”
“But if you were to question it, what do you think the answer would be?” I asked, pressing him further.
“Now, I don’t know how you think I would know that?” he asked me with another laugh. “I’m not in charge of any o’ that stuff.”
“Then who is?” I asked.
“Now, that’d be Jami,” he said. “She’s back in that building down there. I can take you to her if you like.”
“Sure, that’d be great,” I said, nodding to him. “But just a couple more questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure thing, boy,” Iggy said good-naturedly. “Shoot.” At least he didn’t seem all that bright, or suspicious, or like he was going to go squawking about this to the media or anything. Kinley had chosen well.
“Did you ever talk to the guys on the other ship? What were they like?” I asked.
“Not very talkative,” Iggy said, shrugging. “They don’t say much, not that we want to talk to ‘em. You know what they say about the outside world. They’re just not like us. We don’t see any point in talkin’ to ‘em. Tried to joke around with one of ‘em once, but he looked almost scared of me.”
“Scared of you?” I repeated. “What makes you say that?”
“Oh, I dunno,” Iggy said, scratching the back of his head. “Just somethin’ about the way he looked at me. Like I freaked him out or something.” I exchanged a look with Cindra. This was all… very odd, to say the least.
“And that didn’t ever strike you as unusual?” I asked him.
“I’m tellin’ you about it, aren’t I,” he said, laughing good naturedly again. “I dunno, this is just the way it is like I told ya. The way it’s always been, too.”
“Right,” I said. “So… has anyone else ever been on the shore, or talked to any of the people on the other ship, that you know of?”
“I don’t think so,” Iggy said, considering this, too. “Like I said, we don’t talk to ‘em. We love the sea, but we just wanna get home, or back out to sea. No reason to waste time on these people, for all I know.”
“I understand,” I said, nodding to him. “Thank you, Iggy. Now just one more question
. Have you noticed anything unusual down here lately? Anything at all?” He scratched his head again as he considered this.
“Well, no, I don’t think so, other than the breakout, I mean,” he said, “though Jami would know better about the goings-on down here. I just keep after myself and my good old ship.” He slapped the side of the ship with the palm of his hand in what I took to be an affectionate gesture.
“Alright, thanks, Iggy,” I said. “Can you take us to see this Jami person now?”
“Sure thing,” Iggy said cheerfully, wiping his hands off on the rag one last time and walking back in the direction of the shore. “Just follow me.”
He led us back to the shore and to a small wooden building tucked in the far corner of the docks. There was a woman inside, probably in her early to mid-forties, her tangled, dirty blonde hair tucked back in a ponytail. She wore a tattered shirt and jeans just like Iggy.
“Hey, Jami, we’ve got some important folk wantin’ to talk to ya,” Iggy said, wrapping the palm of his hand on the door which was hanging open. The woman was absorbed reading some kind of paper.
“Huh?” she asked, whipping her head around, and then she saw us. “Well, what are they doin’ here?”
“They want to ask you some questions,” Iggy explained.
Jami’s eyes widened, and she held up her hands. “Hey, hey, I don’t have anything to do with any of this mess.” She shook her head vigorously. “I don’t want anything to do with your north side problems. I just stay down here and mind my own business, so why can’t you do the same?”
“Whoa, Whoa,” I said, holding up my own hands to show her that we came in peace. “We’re not here to accuse you or anything. We’re here because we think you could have some information that could be helpful to us.”
“Like hell, you’re not accusing me, then,” she scoffed. “If you think I have some kind of intel that I’m hiding, you must be!” I could tell that she was genuinely shocked and upset. She didn’t really know anything. Or at least she didn’t think she did.
“We’re not accusing you, though,” I said, trying to keep my voice kind. “We think you might know something that you don’t realize you know, something you may have seen or heard that you didn’t realize was connected to what happened at the Void.”
“Oh,” she said, settling back into her chair and looking like she wasn’t quite sure what to do if she didn’t have to fight me about it anymore like that was the only way she knew how to communicate with people. It probably was.
“So, can we ask you a few questions?” I asked her. “It shouldn’t take long, and you won’t get in any trouble either way, no matter how you answer.”
“Shoot,” she said with a shrug, obviously more relaxed now.
“Okay,” I said. “So Iggy told us that when you guys drop cargo off other places, you just hand it off to another ship near the shore, instead of docking yourselves. Is that the case all the time?”
“Yeah,” Jami said, clearly surprised by this question since it wasn’t about Achilles. “That’s the way it’s always been. I don’t know why.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding. “So why is it that this is news to us? Why doesn’t anyone else know about it? Why keep it under wraps like this?”
“Under wraps?” she repeated, blinking at me in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Why is it a secret?” I rephrased my question.
“It’s not,” she said flatly, seeming even more surprised by this question. “It’s just, no one ever really asks us anything about it, so it doesn’t surprise me not many people know. I’ve never thought twice about it, to be honest.”
“Okay….” I said, my voice trailing off as I tried to process this. “So basically, you’re saying that you never thought to tell anyone about it? That it never struck you as an odd practice?”
“An odd practice?” Jami repeated, shaking her head in confusion and clearly not following my meaning.
“Right, so basically, did it never seem weird to you that you don’t dock in the shores anywhere else?” I asked.
“Why would it be weird?” Jami asked, exchanging another confused look with Iggy. He just shrugged, as if to say we asked him the same thing, and he had no idea why.
“I mean, it seems like a waste of time and resources, doesn’t it?” I asked. “To send a whole other ship and crew out for the same set of cargo, when one ship could just dock and do all the work themselves?”
“I never thought of it like that,” Jami said, though her face told me that she was thinking about it like that now.
“Me neither,” Iggy said, and he still didn’t seem to be following any of this at all.
“Okay, so why not?” I asked.
“I don’t know, though it makes sense now you say it like that,” Jami said. “That’s just how it’s always been.” She dropped her hands to her sides, at a loss.
“Who sets that up?” I asked. “Who’s in charge of all that, who makes these decisions?”
“The directions just come through here, along with the payment plans for the cargo,” Jami said, gesturing in the direction of the papers she had been reading when we walked in the building. And then I noticed that right behind the papers on the desk was some kind of old machine.
“What is that?” I asked, pointing at it.
“I dunno, some kind of old technology,” Jami said with another shrug. “They’re not so up to date on all the tech stuff like we are here in Termina, so they have to do it this way.”
“Do you have any idea what that is?” I asked, turning to Malthe.
“Let me take a look at it,” he said, taking a step in Jami’s direction. “If I may, that is?”
“Knock yourself out,” she said, pushing herself away from her desk and giving him room to inspect the machine. He did so, turning it over and pulling out the back.
“What does this do?” he asked her. “Can you describe to me how it works.”
“Well, I don’t know exactly how it works,” she said. “All I know is that when an order comes in, papers come out telling me what, where, when, and how. And then we do it. Like I said, it’s always been that way.”
“These papers?” Malthe asked, pointing to what she’d been reading. She nodded, and he continued. “May I?”
“Like I said, knock yourself out,” she said noncommittally, and Malthe eagerly picked up the papers and began to read through them.
“Hey, Nic,” he said after a few moments. “Come and look at this. Does this look familiar to you at all?”
I crossed over to him and looked over his shoulder at the papers. The writing was in the same font and general style as the documents we’d read before, the ones with the messages Achilles wrote to who knows who about the goings-on in Termina.
“Wow,” I said, meeting his eyes. I didn’t want to voice what we were both thinking out loud with Iggy and Jami in the room. I thought they were probably trustworthy, but who knew what they would blab about if they weren’t thinking.
“What does it say?” Kira asked, craning her neck fruitlessly in an attempt to see what we were looking at.
“It’s just a list of orders, like she said,” Malthe said before turning back to Jami, “Can I keep these?”
“No siree, those are current orders,” she said, shaking her head vigorously. “But you can keep as much as you like of the old ones. They’re all over there.” She jerked her thumb back at several stacks of haphazardly filed papers stretching all the way to the ceiling.
“Thanks,” Malthe said, rushing over to the piles, seemingly unfazed by how much of a mess it all was.
“Okay, so do you ever send anything back?” I asked Jami, continuing my line of questioning. “Does the paper just magically appear?”
“Well, I have to put more paper in when it runs out,” she said. “But no, I don’t send anything back.”
“So, how do they know you’re coming?” I asked her, bewildered.
She shrugged. “We just always come, I guess
.” She straightened up proudly. “Never missed a shipment in my time running things. Been late a couple times, sure, but you can’t control the ocean weather. But never once missed a shipment.”
“So, how do they know when you’ll be late?” I asked, pressing further. She shrugged again.
“I dunno, they just always show up at the right time and place,” she said.
“And that never struck you as odd?” I asked.
“I’m not one to question consistency,” she said simply.
“Fair enough,” I relented. “So have you ever talked to any of the guys on the other ships?”
“No, not really,” Jami said, shaking her head. “I don’t get out in the sea myself as much as I used to, now that I’m in charge. Just once every month or two, to keep me fresh. One of the guys runs things while I’m gone. But no, I’ve never really talked to them. They’re kinda strange. I never liked ‘em.”
“Why?” I asked, almost a little too eagerly. “What was it about them that turned you off?”
“I dunno,” she said again with another shrug. “They’re just kinda weird, somethin’ kinda off about them. I don’t know what it is, don’t ask me. They’re just outta towners. And we don’t talk to outta towners, and outta towners don’t talk to us.” She said that like it settled the matter, and Iggy nodded his approval as if it did.
“Fair enough,” I said again, though I still couldn’t make heads or tails of any of this. “So what about down here recently? Has there been anything strange or out of the ordinary? Anything in the Void’s region?”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” she said. “Nothin’ unusual, per se. We did lose a ship a couple of days back. Now that you mention it, that was the night of the prison break or whatever it is they’re callin’ it on the holovision. But that happens sometimes. Didn’t think much of it.”
“A ship?” I asked, getting excited now. “What ship?”
“Just a small vessel,” she said. “Headed out to the Void. But we’ve lost tons of ships goin’ that way before.” I exchanged a look with Malthe.
“A lot of ships have been lost out that way before, right?” he asked her. “Yachts and stuff?”