Complete Short Fiction, page 144
Alarms. I remembered Anikee mentioning the alarms, at Ferrulin. I hadn’t let her finish that story.
I couldn’t see how they were planning to clean the garments, though, or why they had hauled them all the way up here. The gusts had increased, now strong enough to stir even the heavy clothing. The clouds had thickened to a dark mass, and now pushed close. A few spatters of rain beaded on the various garments.
A growing buzz, and my hair floated upward. What . . .? The biggest mantle flared. The bolt of lightning blinded me, and the thunder of inrushing air knocked me off my feet. I rolled about ten feet, and finally managed to stop myself in a small hollow.
As I poked my head up, I saw coronas streaming from what I could now see were lighting rods. I was in trouble.
A series of bolts hit various frames. The cleaners stood still and watched the lightning vaporize the toxics in the clothes. This was the most dangerous laundromat I’d ever been in. Whether or not I had learned what I needed to, I had to get out of here.
There was a moment of calm. I knew better than to think it would last. The sky was black all over, flickering with internal discharge. The lead cleaner stood aside from the rest and split its attention between the sky and me.
I ran for their path down. Maybe I could wait there, in a safe spot, and interrogate them as they came down. I should have thought of that in the first place. I dodged past a rock outcrop . . . and skidded to a halt.
A cliff dropped away at my feet. The trail down was at least ten feet away across the chasm. There was no way across. How—?
Then I saw it: a collapsible bridge, now neatly stacked right at the edge. They had made their own passage across the gap I had seen in Siboo’s office, then pulled it in so that no one would be tempted to follow . . . and end up in the kind of shit I was now in.
There wasn’t going to be enough time to crank it back out again.
I needed help. I ran back up.
“We are Remediators,” the leader said, presumably because he didn’t want me to die with that question unanswered. Then he turned his head. A flicker of laser, and a lightning bolt struck the ground next to him. He changed angles slightly. Another flicker, another bolt.
“I have to get out of here!” I screamed.
He flashed, and two bolts hit at once, so bright everything was now covered with a vast purple spot. I had dropped to my knees.
“Be done soon,” he said. “But they come too quick for control. We are Remediators. Yes? You asked.”
I had. He was doing his best, using what had to be an ionizing laser to guide bolts where he wanted them. But it was a dangerous game, and one he would eventually lose. The cloud could generate a lot more lightning than he could control.
That is, I would lose. They didn’t seem to mind thousands of volts shooting through their bodies. Maybe it was something you had to get used to gradually.
Imminent death inspired me. I scuttled toward where I had come from, barely able to see, until I found the largest and most complete of the Sosh gliders. It had held a big meal, though I doubt it had been as big as me. There weren’t a lot of choices, and the only one I had left was to fly.
The glider was clumsy, but surprisingly light. I held it up, angled it into the wind, getting a feel for how to maneuver it. It twisted in my hands like something alive, and I sensed it had some decent processing power. I couldn’t fit inside it, so I would have to hang underneath, without a harness or any other support—a wind gust almost knocked me off my feet, and the butte itself, while I was figuring things out.
That was followed by three quick bolts, the last of which I felt in my teeth. The head Remediator made a buzzing noise, and I sensed even he was reaching his limits.
No point in waiting around to get fried. I took a breath, lifted the glider over my head, and ran. The wings caught the air, and I was airborne, hanging under it.
It responded smoothly to my movements. A slight tug and it tilted. I dropped down over the vastness of Drur Reef, seeing its various layers, the structures on it, the elevator, the Prirt village—had they finished mating or were there still free elevator rides for all?—then realized I was getting too near to the Reefs cliffs. One touch of my wing tip and I would tumble down. I pulled just slightly to my right, already feeling my shoulders burning, and skimmed past the rocky outcrops.
Then I was in sunlight, Mesklitch rooftops below me. My ears rang, purple spots still obscured most of what I should have been seeing. That storm was only over the high buttes.
Suddenly, there was shrieking all around me. The entire flock of delighted Sosh had decided to join me in my maiden voyage across the city’s debatable sky. They were careful not to come too close, though they did jostle each other, partly friendly, partly competitive. “Go, go, go!” they yelled.
“Brachiating!”
At least my evolutionarily obsessed friend had gotten what he wanted.
The Sosh were still yelling all around me when the wings automatically tucked to give whoever was in pursuit some sport, and I fell out of the sky.
My fall was broken by an abandoned Mesklitch brood shelter. The thing was just layers of foam, after all. I was out for a couple of minutes, and a couple of minutes later a brisk Mirquell appeared and directed a mixed group of Oms and Mesklitch in carrying me down and out. Not to her house, but to Jaenl’s, who seemed to have become resigned to taking care of things for Mirquell.
They laid me out in front of the house, like some kind of display. I was quite the tourist attraction for a few minutes, but I didn’t move much, so people quickly lost interest.
“Remediators,” Mirquell said, after I made my report. “Excellent. They keep themselves private, so not so easy. But, just so you know, I’m not paying you anything extra for the drama of your entrance.”
“Knowledge delivered with grace,” Jaenl said. “That should be worth something.”
“It isn’t,” Mirquell grated.
When I turned my head the world spun. I groaned and decided against sitting up just yet.
“Do you need anything else, you poor thing?” Jaenl said.
“If you have some spare sense, bring it on out,” Mirquell said.
“If we had that, would we be living here?”
“Oh,” Mirquell said. “How about a chair?”
“I don’t think she’s ready to sit up.”
“It’s for me.”
Jaenl sniffed, but did as she was bid.
“Lightning.” Mirquell turned in her seat and looked up at the highest butte. “Nice way to get serious energy to vaporize some toxic waste.” The clouds were still thick up there, but the lightning seemed to have stopped. “Looks like these Remediators follow a recurrent storm through the city to do their business.”
Pieces of my mind were coming back online. For a few minutes I hadn’t even known what had happened to me.
Now I was wondering at how far I’d gone just to ID some laundry workers for this woman. I half hoped my brains were totally scrambled, and I was just remembering that wrong.
“A couple of questions,” Mirquell said. “Ready?”
“I—”
“The specific Brune whose clothes are getting cleaned are from Shrivis.”
“Yes.”
“They need to come out of their covert because someone threatens the integrity of their underground structure, there in Shrivis, and the only way to prevent it is to come out, in person, for a zoning meeting.”
“Yes.”
“Only they can’t, because their entire wardrobe is toxic, lousy with organometallics—arsenic, mercury, cadmium, the works, and they’d kill pretty much everyone else at the meeting if they attended.”
“Really? I know I felt—”
“Really. You should have a real doc look at you, and soon. You escaped most of it, but you do have some blistering, and you probably inhaled some. Now, I’m just guessing about the specific compounds. Maybe there’s no cadmium. But whatever it is, it’ll kill anyone in an enclosed space.”
“Good thing I was . . .” I stopped. “Say that again.”
“I don’t say things twice. You heard me.”
“If I’d run into them in the tunnel . . .”
“Their original route, right? The route they leased.”
“Yes.”
“But which they didn’t use. Why not?”
“They didn’t use it,” I said. “So instead of running into them down there, I had to chase them up to the butte.”
“You already told me that. I don’t like hearing things twice either.”
Maybe I had, but I hadn’t really thought about what that might mean. Of course, the pods were sealed. The pods were sealed. Maybe that made a difference.
Maybe that would have protected me if I’d run into the Remediators down in the tunnel, as I originally intended. They had clearly gone through a lot of trouble to ensure they did not run into anyone during their journey up. Those kinds of toxins were never safe.
Could Anikee have intended that? Given me a chance to get poisoned underground? That hamper had sometimes been quite smelly. But, instead, I’d almost gotten killed by lightning! I should drop her a note, let her know how it all worked out.
And say I was sorry. She wouldn’t hear it, now, but at least I would have said it.
Mirquell wasn’t interested in any thoughts aside from those relevant to her goals. “Please answer the question.”
She’d be irritated if I asked her to repeat it, so I ran the conversation back in my head. “I don’t know why they didn’t use the original, leased route, but I presume it was because Zinter blew part of the tunnel up, trying to kill bugs.”
“That was his story. But we know who he was really working for, don’t we? The Case.” She smiled at me. I was already growing to dislike that expression. “Well, Sere, dear, you could have come to me with this conclusion and earned a nice payout, but, instead, you came to me with a box of pieces, which I had to assemble myself.”
I stopped myself from saying anything. Who Zinter was really working for . . . “You think the Case hired Zinter specifically to alter the route the Remediators were taking with the Brune garments? What for?”
“Not alter it. Block it. He screwed up. They were supposed to be completely blocked. They made it anyway.”
“You think the Case have a reason to prevent the Brune from attending the zoning meeting?”
“I’m certain of it. It’s the only conclusion that fits the available facts. You had all the facts, but the conclusion . . .”
“Is yours,” I said.
“Right.”
There was something about it that bugged me, but maybe what really bugged me was that she would be so eager to get out ahead of me, and even more eager to prove she was smarter than me, and even more eager not to pay me extra. I’d just fallen out of the sky, dammit. I deserved at least some kind of break.
“So what are you going to do now?” I said. “Take over Zinter’s job? Block the route completely so that the Remediators can’t do their final load?”
“Never mind what I’m going to do,” Mirquell said. “You did a fine job. Not as good as you might have, but totally adequate.” She levered herself out of her seat. “I can always use someone . . . adequate.”
And with that, she was off, presumably to score some explosives so that she could completely demolish that tunnel, and drop the path above it as well, so that no one could get through. Just in hopes that the Case would like her for it.
I wanted to tell her the Case didn’t even know she was alive.
I sat up. I was in pain, but I was hungry. Eating would distract me from the pain. I reached into my backpack for a bar . . . and felt something gross. I grabbed it and pulled out a dead bug, legs hanging limp.
“Hey!” Jaenl said. “You killed one. That’s more than poor Zinter managed.”
I looked at it. I remembered flicking away one that had fallen into my hair. It must have landed in the bag. I had been too busy to look in it since. But how had I managed to kill it?
Maybe that Saristifian had seen it, clinging somewhere behind me, and had thought it was just a personal affectation. What had he said? “He learned to track them, these things. As a sign of prey.” At that point the bug had been alive.
And that called to mind that Mirquell had told me, right off, that Zinter had originally trained as an Extirpator, one of those romantic hunters after escaped predators and other dangerous creatures. She had presumed his explosives knowledge had come from that time. And that the inadequacy of that knowledge probably accounted for why he had come to such a bad end.
“Either of you talk to Zinter much?” I asked.
“Oh,” Jaenl said. “That would be Kiff.”
“What?” Kiff said from the window. I wondered if the two of them had anything to say when they were in the same room.
“Zinter was formerly an Extirpator?” I said.
“That’s what he told me,” Kiff said. “He apprenticed with someone famous, or Zinter said he was famous. Guy name of Proffur.”
“Why didn’t he finish out his apprenticeship?”
“He said it was because Proffur was a has-been. He was down in a hole out in Kremmid . . . and if you know Kremmid, you know that’s pretty low.”
“The neighborhood has its charms,” I said. “Though they can be hard to find. Yeah, I know Kremmid.” I knew the neighborhoods of Tempest mostly by what was buried in them. Time I figured out what was alive in them.
“But I think it was because Proffur had some standards. Don’t get me wrong, Zinter was kind of a charming guy. But he was the victim of his own bad decisions. Fought with Proffur, didn’t learn everything he should have. I mean, Proffur’s expertise was spoor, the traces beasts leave. You know, droppings, parasites, bits of hair, that kind of thing. So what does Zinter do when he’s on his own? He gets a job dealing with spoor itself.”
“You certainly spent a lot of time jabbering with him.” Jaenl was unexpectedly waspish. “With a loser.”
“He could be interesting to talk to.”
Suddenly that stupid dead man seemed like the most intimate person in this whole business. Someone who thought he was smarter than he actually was, refused to take advice, and didn’t pay quite enough attention to all the important details, a neglect that ultimately killed him.
Yeah, I knew him. Or someone a lot like him.
I also knew, I thought, that he had had much bigger ambitions than killing bugs. And that the Case had no way hired him for some elaborate scheme to prevent Remediators from doing their toxic laundry.
He’d been trying to be an Extirpator, without really knowing how.
It took me a couple of days to locate Proffur, odd for an Extirpator. After all, whatever his current target was, it was part of his advertising. He should have wanted to be found.
Proffur’s current project was in the worst part of Kremmid, the part even natives of the district disdain: the Slump, where old mine works had collapsed, leaving a rumpled, dangerous, and unattractive area.
But he didn’t respond to a message, so I finally headed out to see him in person. Mirquell had been prompt in her payment, and for a wonder, instead of blowing the cash, I used most of it to get caught up on my rent. Almost, anyway.
He was not only in the Slump, but underground in the Slump, in the old workings. I wandered around for a bit before finding the sleeping tent, cooking shelter, and dehydrating toilet that was his camp.
Just past that was the old adit leading into a ridge, lit by dim bacterial glow bulbs long overdue for a shot of sugar. As I went, it just got darker and quieter. Was I going to have a career of dark tunnels?
I was just about to give up when I saw the flicker of brighter light ahead. I slid my feet forward carefully, cautious of some unseen pit. Not too much further on, the adit opened out into a much larger space, so dark its extent was unknowable. A set of spidery metal stairs led downward—to where white light showed a motionless shape lying with its face against a black rock wall.
I clattered down the stairs as loud and present as I could. Proffur looked like an Om, but a bit bigger and heavier: a Hanten, wearing a thick jacket and headphones. I waited. It was quiet for a long while, until he said: “Stop staring at me.”
Unless this Extirpator had no enemies, he was too confident.
“Oh, for—” He pulled off his headphones and sat up to face me. He was immensely tall, seven feet or so, and his knees jutted up like towers. His face loomed over me. Hanten faces were large to an Om, with craggy forehead, massive jaws, and large, disconcerting eyes set wide apart. “Who are you?”
“My name is Sere Glagolit. I want to ask you a couple of questions.”
“Why should I answer them?”
“I hear you’re an expert on spoor.”
He bared large teeth. “And what spoor brought you to this place, Sere?”
I pulled out the bug I’d found in my backpack and handed it to him. He looked down at it as it rested on his palm.
“There is something deep underneath here,” he said. “It only moves once a day, if that. Maybe something forgotten in storage at the spaceport has hatched out and is now worming its way through. There can be layers of loose and soft rock, even far underneath a seemingly stable city. Where did you get this?”
“These have been infesting a neighborhood. Drur.”
“When I kill that thing down there—and believe me, I will—no one will ever know. Maybe someone will dig out its remains thousands of years from now and wonder how it died. Is that the purest kind of kill, do you think?”
“Sounds absurd, actually.”
“It might keep climbing up if I don’t take care of it. It may be half a mile long. It doesn’t have any reason to care about any of us on the surface. It might just . . . splash around. Annihilate everything you know.”
I couldn’t tell if he was serious, crazy, or just trying to distract me with an irrelevant truth. Hanten were hard for Oms to read, and they knew it. But how easy were we for them? They never let on. “Maybe it’s just the distraction we need. Something to focus on.”
