Worldwielder, page 13
She could scarcely believe she was arguing with a robotic stoat about the imperatives of violence, let alone understand why he was defending such a nonsensical position, but here she was. “You can take away the gun or the knife,” she said. “But this… it's what I am.”
“Taking away the weapon might not be the answer. Weapons are necessary sometimes. Better to learn how to use them.”
“How do I learn to use it? Can you teach me?”
“I'm afraid not. I'm a bionic stoat. I know nothing of the pull on minds. Haven't even got one.”
“Of course.” It wasn't so simple. Even if there were someone who could teach her, they'd surely refuse, and she couldn't blame them.
She'd just descended back into a sea of discouraging thoughts when Fink spoke again. “I'll happily help you look for your friend, though.”
A mirthless chuckle escaped her. There was something darkly comical about it. Now someone was willing to help her, and he wasn't even a proper someone, because he wasn't even alive. Seeing what she thought was a sincere look on the stoat's face, she masked her scorn. “Thanks, but there's no point. Everyone wants me dead. Not to mention I'd fail and they'd have two wielders instead of one to destroy the world… worlds. Besides which, I can't even get out of the city.”
Fink, in a tone whose sagacity made an amusing compliment to the innocent nature of his appearance, said, “I see you're a positive thinker.”
She didn't bother to respond. In a universe this obese with horrors, she couldn't see any point in positive thinking.
The stoat sighed. “Melissa, don't you think it's even more important you find Kyle now?”
“I…”
“And haven't people been trying to hurt you since the moment you started off on this quest?”
“Well…”
“And haven't the odds of failure always been high?”
She paused before replying. He was right… he was right… and boy, was he right. But he was still wrong, because there was still her last complaint, and it was a real humdinger of a hindrance. “But the city,” she said, distraught.
Until his next words. “What if you could get out?”
It wasn't merely a hypothetical question, that much she could tell. It was an intimation. An intimation that delivered the killing blow to every last one of her excuses for giving up, because that's all they were. Excuses. “Then… yes,” she said.
He looked pleased. “Excellent. Follow me.”
They descended the water tower, Melissa's fear of heights returning in force this time, then made their way through mazes of grimy streets and stacks of shanties, arriving in a narrow alley between two patched-together apartment complexes extending a dozen floors above them.
At the alley's far end, a figure reclined against a wall in shadow. Melissa's stomach knotted as she realized who it was. Stony gray cloak, unkempt gray-black hair and beard, a cloud of blue smoke hovering around his head… there was no doubt about it.
Upon seeing them, Ringo stepped away from the wall and approached.
Melissa wasn't sure what to think of him, perhaps because she wasn't sure what he thought of her. He hadn't put a hasty stop to Psu-Tem's rampage, but he hadn't joined in it, either. Or said much of anything. It was anyone's guess if he too wanted her dead.
“Ringo here has something to tell you,” Fink said, like a parent mediating a dispute between two children.
Melissa waited. As far as she was concerned, if Ringo didn't start apologizing, and profusely, she was out of here.
“Sorry about that,” he said when nearer. “Psu can be a little… unwieldy when going off about wielders. Didn't figure she'd…”
“Try to kill me?”
“Yeah, that.” He looked at the ground, the ghost of guilt crossing his face. Not exactly profuse, but he did seem like a man of few words and even fewer emotions. Maybe this was his version of a profuse apology.
She nodded in acceptance.
After an awkward silence, Ringo went on. “Listen, kid. I've been thinking, and, well, I'll help you look for your friend.”
Melissa didn't believe it at first, squinting at him like he'd told a bad joke. But when he averted his gaze to the ground, she knew it was no joke. “Uh… why?” she blurted.
He stared into the distance. For a while, it looked as though he wouldn't reply. When he did, his voice was distant and thick with feeling. “When you've made as many mistakes as I have, you know when doing nothing would be another one.”
Melissa knew better than to ask him more. It didn't really matter why he was helping her, anyway. His reasons were his. She knew he was sincere in his offer, and that was enough.
“Okay,” she said. “But how are you gonna get me out of the city?”
Ringo lifted up the golf ball around his neck so she could see it. “Comes in handy having an off-the-books volume-condensing domicile.”
“You want me to… ride in that?”
“It's perfectly harmless, I assure you,” Fink offered.
She looked at each of them in turn. They were serious.
“Unless you'd rather stay here?” Ringo asked, raising an eyebrow.
With that, the last slivers of her doubt at this too-good-to-be-true development vanished, and she shook her head, smiling in relief. It was real. She was going to look for Kyle, and neither knife-wielding maniacs nor memory-wiping sentries nor wielder-hating shrews were going to stop her.
Fink hopped up and down. “Excellent! Now, where are we going again?”
“A world called Melton,” Melissa replied. “Have you heard of it?”
“Heard of it? I've been there!”
A dizzying wave of relief flooded Melissa, and she found herself falling against the nearby wall, laughing uncontrollably.
“You all right, kid?” Ringo asked.
She nodded. The truth was, for the first time in two years, she was all right. She was with two of the only three people she'd ever met who didn't despise or fear her for what she was, and together they were searching for the third. She could ask for nothing more.
She righted herself and set out from the alley with her companions, a rainbow-rare spring in her step.
***
Some twelve hours later, Melissa, together with Ringo and Fink, stood on a ledge before a painting whose plaque read Melton. It was surreal having come this far, like visiting a distant place you'd only read about in a book. Well, in point of fact, it was exactly that. She removed Luud's book from her backpack and compared Kyle's message to the plaque, her neurosis wishing to make sure the names were identical, down to the letter. They were. Melton. Not an Indian restaurant. Not a town in California. A world.
The canvas, true to the pattern of every other painting in the Gallery, depicted the world's pull in metaphorical terms. In this case, a motley of grass blades, each surrounded by a high wall of dirt to separate it from its fellows, checkered an otherwise barren landscape.
Melissa remembered Fink's words as they journeyed here: “The pull makes people mind their own business and keep to themselves. They each live on their own private island. You could live your whole life there and never see another person.”
“What about families?” she'd asked.
“There are no families, you see. They're hermaphrodites.”
She wondered if that's what Luud was, but without being near him again, not to mention the examination she'd sooner eat a live spider than carry out, there was no telling. She hoped, at least, that the Meltonites weren't all so fond of knives.
She now stood and pocketed the book, turning to Ringo and nodding. He took her arm, raised his locutor to the canvas, and touched it. The Gallery vanished.
They alighted on a grassy mountaintop whose view spanned dozens of miles in every direction. Seeing the vastness of the place, a sudden burst of lightheadedness hit Melissa. Before now, she hadn't truly contemplated the fact that Kyle had directed her to find him on a whole entire world. He may as well have said find me on Earth. His clue was so vague as to be practically useless, unless she had years to search. But for all she knew, she had only days.
“It's huge,” she moaned.
“Guess it is,” Ringo replied, smoking.
“We're gonna have to search the whole thing.”
“Guess we are.”
“It could take weeks… months.”
“Guess it might.”
His unruffled brushing aside of her gripes took her aback. When he'd agreed to help, surely he hadn't expected to mount an endeavor this sweeping. Yet there was no surprise in his mind, no regret, no worry.
“You-you're still gonna help me?” she asked, turning to him.
“Guess I am.”
It didn't make sense, but she knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth, least of all one this indispensable. So she nodded, and off they trekked down the hill. She cast her eyes into the distance, and a gnawing unease began to build in her. It wasn't due to the size of the world. It had more to do with what she couldn't see than what she could.
The mountain they'd alighted on was in the center of a large island, and beyond its shores stretched an azure ocean speckled with islets the size of supermarket parking lots. Some were craggy. Some were lush. And all were bordered by a wall of some kind, a tall hedge, or a thick ring of trees, blocking even a glimpse of what lay within.
Melton was a place made for hiding something.
Like a wielder.
Part Three
Pin
SIXTEEN
The cold woke Melissa at sunrise, as it always did. Ringo's house, despite its impressive ability to shrink and enlarge itself, had no electricity, and its insulation was no match for the biting winter of Melton, whose knives of cold seeped through walls, blankets, clothes, and skin. It was inhumanely cold, comparable only to the chill of locuting.
Winter. Sometimes she couldn't believe so much time had passed already. It had been late spring when they'd arrived here. How many more seasons would pass before they found some sign of Kyle? If we ever do, she thought glumly.
The first thing she saw when she sat up in bed, shivering, were the rows and rows of marks she'd put on the floor beside her mattress. One hundred and seventy-nine of them in all. One hundred and seventy-nine days they'd been searching for Kyle and found nothing. Today would be the same, she was sure.
With a sigh, she contained her unruly hair in a fist, all traces of green long ago washed out to reveal its natural brown, then threw aside her covers. They were the only thing saving her from imminent frostbite, so she sprang to her feet in an instant and wasted no time in hopping across the spherical chamber to the fire pit, where she set to work enkindling some sticks. She'd become quite adept at this of late.
She was the first one up, as usual. Ringo seemed immune to the cold, sleeping with only a light blanket, and Fink, well, he had an unfair advantage as a bionic. He was presently deactivated to save power, stashed inside an extra pillow to keep from freezing solid.
Melissa shivered beside the nascent fire until it had consumed enough paper to give off a noticeable amount of heat. Then she shivered some more and contemplated how bizarre a contrast these last six months had been with the first few days of her arrival in the Gallery. She never would have guessed, after the nonstop life-or-death crises that had marked her initial ventures away from home, that the actual searching for Kyle part would be boring.
In a way, it was a welcome change, but boredom meant not finding Kyle, and not finding Kyle meant anything could be happening to him… or through him. She had no way of knowing if the grayings were still happening on Earth—Prota, as it was called in the Gallery—or if whatever event they were leading up to had already occurred.
But there was no sense worrying about such things. She'd discovered early on in their search that the best way to remain in good spirits was to foster a blind hope regarding Kyle's condition and what his captors were using him for. The only problem was, with each passing day, this hope grew less stable, a rubber band being stretched further and further. Eventually, it would break.
To distract herself from these musings, she walked away from the fire, picked up the water bucket, and threw open the golf ball's hatch, not giving herself even a moment to brace for the cold. A glacial wind whacked her, the bucket nearly slipping from her fingers as she dipped it into the churning ocean waters just outside the domicile. Bits of ice, broken loose from nearby islands, swirled within the saltwater.
The golf ball floated in the ocean between a pair of islands, a small canoe they'd procured tethered to its side. According to Ringo, such a station would keep them warmest, since the water was a good deal warmer than the air. Melissa knew this was true, but found it hard to believe as a slosh of liquid hit her hand, turning the skin red on contact. She jerked the bucket back inside and slammed the hatch.
After pouring the water into the filter, she pulled up a chair beside the fire and wrapped a blanket around herself. It wasn't enough. She still felt like a block of ice. It was too cold here. Things shouldn't live in places like this. She'd always hated winter back home, but this made that look like a balmy spring day. Not that she could even think of the place she'd come from as home anymore. It was just that: the place she'd come from. Nothing more. Despite a lifetime of memories there, she had little reason to go back. When she'd contemplated what to do after finding Kyle, she'd ceased assuming they would return to Prota. There were millions of worlds. Why not find a better place? A place where wielders weren't hated, if such a thing existed.
At the moment, however, it seemed foolish to count on the day when she found Kyle. It was too distant a prospect to contemplate without making her depressed.
Moments later, a muffled series of beeps and a rustling sound announced the activation of Fink, who then made his way out of the pillow. He was, as usual, in a perversely good mood.
“Good morning, Melissa!” he exclaimed, jumping on a chair opposite her. “I say, it's another day! How exciting!”
“Mmhmm,” she mumbled.
“Suppose today will be the one?”
“No.” They'd visited eight thousand, six hundred, and forty-two islands so far, an average of forty-eight per day, and found nothing even slightly suspicious. Fink knew this as well as she did, but apparently chose to ignore it.
Noting her less than joyous temper, he waved a paw at her. “Cheer up. It's not all that bad. We'll find some sign of Kyle one of these days.”
She wished she could agree with him wholeheartedly, but no. Maybe if she were a machine. “Are you programmed to ever feel negative emotions, Fink?” she asked.
“Hmm. I can't say I'm prone to them, but I do get a spot dejected every now and then.”
“Oh?” For some reason, she perked up hearing that.
“Yes, it usually happens when I contemplate the plight of the stoat population throughout the Gallery. Did you know they're endangered on over fifteen hundred worlds?”
She rolled her eyes. This again. Fink had a great affinity for, and protective sensibility towards, real stoats, and claimed he was one in spirit despite his obvious… differences.
“So you don't ever get depressed about the fact that we haven't found anything in six months?” she asked.
“No. Should I? We're looking, aren't we? What's there to get depressed about?”
It made sense, she had to admit, but on liquid nitrogen mornings such as this, she wasn't much in the mood for sense. “What about Ringo?” she asked to change the subject. “Do you think he gets depressed?”
The question was an unnecessary one, since she knew better than anyone Ringo's emotional state at all times, and never once had he displayed any colors consistent with the mopes she dealt with daily. However, she had to admit there were some odd facets to his behavior now and then. Once, when a leak in the canoe had sent her flailing into the ocean, his reaction had been rather extreme. She'd been in no imminent danger of drowning, but he'd freaked out, diving in after her without a moment's hesitation. He'd asked her no less than ten times in the next hour if she was okay. She'd been thankful for the aid, but couldn't help wondering just what was bouncing around in that head of his. Ordinarily, he was so detached.
“I suppose Ringo has a few things to be depressed about,” Fink said.
Melissa's eyes widened. “You know about Ringo?”
“Of course I do. Everyone does.” He shrugged. “Oh, I forget you're a neophyte in these matters. Ringo's a bit of a someone among rezeurs, you see.”
“Why?”
“He's one of the only people to have survived a halok world. They're… well, Psu told you about them. Their pull causes damage to the mind, typically fatal within moments, so it's a wonder Ringo managed to get out at all.”
“Wasn't he wearing an aegis?”
“Of course, but an aegis is nothing more than a shield. And shields aren't impervious. The pull of some worlds is stronger than others. Halok worlds have the strongest of all. I wouldn't doubt Ringo suffered some… damage from it.”
Melissa shivered at the thought. Worlds whose pulls are acid to the mind—those had been Psu-Tem's words. Just what had that acid done to Ringo's mind?
Fink went on. “And then there was the incident with his daughter.”
“He has a daughter?”
“Had. A wife, too.”
“What happened?”
“The story is, after his escape from the halok world, he was out of sorts in the head, didn't know friends from foes, and when he saw his family again, he, well, attacked them. The Gs were quick to intervene, but in the ensuing conflict, a stray shot hit his daughter. He then killed several of them before escaping. He's been on the run ever since.”
The tale froze Melissa in shock. She remembered Ringo's answer when she'd asked him if what the Gs' wanted poster said was true—he'd said he was sick. Fink's story provided some explanation, but another question lingered in her mind. “Fink, he's not sick anymore, right? He's okay now?”
The stoat frowned before replying. “By all indications, yes. Though it makes one wonder. As far as anyone knows, the damage from a halok world is permanent.”
