Eric Flint's Blog, page 285

Castaway Planet – Chapter 17

Castaway Planet – Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Whips jolted awake as a loud, strident beep! beep! beep! sounded from somewhere above him. That was the camp alarm! Something was coming through the perimeter!

The night of Lincoln was, by Earthly standards, pitch-black; even if one of Lincoln’s two moons had been up, they were too small to shed very much light.

But Whips’ ancestors were from the utterly lightless sea of Europa, orbiting Jupiter in the farther reaches of the solar system, living beneath kilometers of solid ice cold enough to freeze air. There, the only light came from other creatures or strange natural processes, and any creature that could see at all had eyes that could wring every possible bit of data from every photon they could catch. To Whips, the blazing stars above made the black night nearly as bright as day.

Plowing its way up the gouged scar of LS-5‘s crash was something huge — ten, maybe fifteen meters long. Its hide glistened wetly in the starlight and air hissed from it as it breathed, a round, wormlike thing with rings of serrated white at intervals along the body, crowned with a writhing mass of tentacles surrounding a mouth like a grinder.

It was also headed straight for the shelter, and Whips knew it would be a matter of seconds only before someone came out to see what the alarm was — emerging right into that tentacled mass.

Whips heaved himself up out of his land-nest and simultaneously bellowed loudly, even as he sought around desperately for something to throw or swing with.

The movement and bellow did, at least, accomplish what Whips hoped. The monster slewed around, facing directly towards him, and started flowing in his direction. Whips humped backwards as fast as he could, grabbing with tail grippers, curling his body back and shoving back with the elbow pads on his lower two arms. The tentacles lashed towards him but he wasn’t — quite — in reach yet.

Laura shoved her way out of the tent flap and said something shocked and probably rude, but at that moment the thing gave vent to a howling roar which drowned her out. Despite the insulated walls of the shelter, Whips could hear responding startled screams from inside.

The thing gathered itself and lunged. One thick, velvet-looking tendril brushed Whips and he heard himself let out a steam-whistle shriek of pain. That stung!

With horror he realized he’d slipped in the sand; the thing was about to catch him!

Two sharp reports rang out as Laura fired the SurvivalShot twice. The creature gave a low-pitched bubbling growl and swung about towards her.

“Look out, Laura! It’s like the anemones!” Whips felt a faint numbness radiating from the sting, but his internal nanos and his own self-awareness told him the damage was actually minimal. A human getting stung, however, might be really bad.

Laura dove to the side, the deadly tendrils smacking the shelter and causing it to shudder, but missing their target.

But Whips realized that if it followed Laura, something that size could probably rip the shelter apart, or crush it if the rigidity currents keeping it up failed. He took a breath and then charged forward as fast as he could, synchronizing rear anchor-feet and arms, and threw himself on the monster, arms spread wide.

He felt dozens of his attack barbs sink deep. The creature’s pained, writhing attempt to escape caused the barbs to rip gashes in its hide. But the force of the thing’s twisting motion yanked Whips around, dragging him across the sand, slamming him down like a ball on a string. Two of the tentacles wrapped around him, and it felt like two belts of fire strapped to his body. Grimly, he hung on, dug in, tried to pull himself closer. If he could just bite the thing…

The SurvivalShot popped again, twice, and the other Kimeis were shouting, screaming, out of the shelter, but were they safe? Whips didn’t dare let go, he couldn’t bear the thought that he might let this thing go too soon and get his friends — his adoptive family — killed. At this range he let the agony focus his cry, let go with a stunshout that rippled the creature’s skin as though it were struck. Then he heard half a dozen small impacts. Rocks? Were they throwing rocks?

Another tentacle caught at him, but he pulled as hard as he could, clamped down with beak and let his tongue start ripping into the leathery, bitter-tasting flesh. The venom was starting to work its way through him, his resistance being overcome by volume, but he refused to let go, even though he found his vision becoming distant, his arms trying to become shaky…

Suddenly the monster wrenched itself around, trying to flee. The Kimei family were still pelting it with rocks and debris from the crash, more shots from the hydrogen-powered pistol slamming into it. The thing rammed into the ridge of the crash scar and Whips found he could hold on no longer, scraped from the thing’s side.

But it didn’t take the opportunity to turn on him. It just continued swiftly slithering away, back into the water from whence it had come.

The sounds now were distorted, strange, like they were if your sound membrane was half-in, half-out of the water, and everything was painful and drifting and distant at the same time. “Whips? Oh, God, look, he’s been stung all over!”

“Settle down, Sakura. I’ve got his nano telemetry.” That was Laura’s voice, but somehow Whips couldn’t tell which of the figures over him, shining bright lights, was which.

“Will he –?”

“Quiet, all of you!” Akira’s usually quiet voice was raised, worried, but filled with iron authority. The others went silent. Wow, Whips thought disjointedly, he bellows like an Old One…

“Neurotoxin,” a voice muttered, wavering in and out. “But there’s natural resistance… similar to other poisons…”

Vaguely, Whips realized he was losing consciousness, finding himself unable to understand the noises around him. He couldn’t feel more than the most distant jab of fear, though. The numbness had spread to his brain and even thought, fragmented already, was fading.

Light faded, dwindled, became gray fog.

But then the gray brightened, and sound began to come back, at first just incomprehensible murmurs, and then faint, almost random words: “… responding… hope that … killed…”

His eyes finally began to respond. He felt shaky, sick as he had ever been, but his mind was slowly clearing. He turned one eye, saw Laura kneeling next to him. Pain like fire burned across most of his skin, but it seemed to be fading now. “Everyone… okay?” he managed to ask.

“Okay?” Laura repeated, and then shook her head; a pair of tears suddenly rolled down her face. “Whips, you were the one hurt!”

“Knew… if it got any of you… probably kill you,” he managed. It still hurt a lot.

“You were right,” she said, voice and eyes back in control. “Your people have a higher resistance to some toxins, of which this was fortunately one. Even so, closing in on it and letting it sting you –”

“Didn’t have much choice,” he said. The sickness was rising inside, like something coming to a boil. Oh-oh. “Um, excuse me…”

His shaking body tried to betray him, but he somehow kept control until he reached the waste pit and voided everything he’d eaten into it. He lay there, gasping and shuddering, letting his tail hang over the edge in case another fit hit him. So much for dinner.

Sakura had suddenly reached him, and her fierce embrace made him feel a tiny bit better. “Whips, are you okay?”

“Feeling a little better, maybe.”

“It’ll take a while. I had to use what was on hand, which wasn’t ideal,” Laura said apologetically. “Your nanos and your natural resistance kept things under control long enough for me to fake up something like an antidote, but it’s not perfect.”

“As long as I’m going to recover, that’s good.”

“What was that?” Melody’s question was somewhat rhetorical — it wasn’t like anyone had any better answer than she did — but she was terrified, and Whips couldn’t blame her. “Why did it attack us?”

“That’s a good question, Melody,” Akira said, his calm voice making even Whips’ pained, sick mind feel a little steadier. “Why would it attack us? It crawled a long way out of the water to get here. How could it have sensed us?”

Something about the question nagged at Whips. “I don’t think it did sense us. Not out there, anyway,” he said slowly.

“Hm? But then why come here? Do you think this is just the way it normally hunts — comes up on land and looks for things that are sleeping?”

Whips concentrated, trying to force his brain to work. “No. Well, maybe… but it has to have some way of choosing where it comes up.”

Melody suddenly froze. “Oh. Oh, I think I know, Dad.” She pointed over to the now-tumbled tables and chairs. “The block-crab –”

Now he heard Akira Kimei swear. After a moment, he shook his head. “Baka. We gutted it and then dragged it up to camp, leaving a perfect trail of blood straight here.”

Whips waved his hands affirmatively. “That was just what I was trying to think of. Predators like that in Europa will follow scent-trail.”

“Well,” Laura said, “no real harm done. We’ve learned that lesson and won’t do it again.”

“But that’s only a temporary fix, Mom,” said Sakura. Now that she was sure that Whips wasn’t dying, she was hugging a still scared and crying Hitomi and getting her to settle down.

“I know it,” Laura said. She knelt down and hugged Whips. Even though touching the stung areas hurt, it was still comforting… and the pain was fading. “First… thank you, thank you so very much, Whips. If you hadn’t distracted it, it would have grabbed me when I stepped out. And without you fighting it, I don’t think we could have stopped it.”

“I second that,” Akira said gravely. “Our pistol — and throwing rocks — stung it and infuriated it, but I really don’t think we did enough damage by ourselves to drive it off, or that we could have without someone getting killed. You risked –”

“Nothing, sir,” Whips interrupted, feeling so embarrassed that the pain and sickness were secondary. “I’m not going to survive without you either. You’re my family now, right? And we always fight for our family. Together.”

The two Kimei parents were quiet for a moment, Akira in particular wearing an expression that looked oddly like vindication, and then they simply nodded. “You are our family, yes,” Laura said unsteadily, and he could see the tears again. “And we will fight for you. Together.”

“Always,” agreed Akira and Sakura, and the others echoed it — even little Hitomi, who reached out and patted him gently.

Then Laura looked out into the dark, where the thing had fled. “But we don’t want to do fighting we don’t have to, and now we know we are in danger here. We have to find somewhere else to live — and do it soon.”

“But that,” Akira said, “will be something for later.”

Whips nodded, and finally felt himself relaxing, the sickness starting to ebb… and exhaustion coming close behind. “Later,” he repeated, and closed his eyes.

 

Polychrome – Chapter 25

Polychrome – Chapter 25

Chapter 25.

“Chancellor, we have stormclouds ahead.”

Inkarbleu glanced up from the small dining table we were sharing. “That is… unusual, is it not?”

“Very, sir. Weather indications for this time of year are usually clear – for weeks or months at a time.” The Captain looked grim.

I rose and ran up the steps to the forward deck.

Black stormclouds loomed up in a narrow front, focused on the Pearl of Gilgad, our ship, and her escorts. I narrowed my eyes, trying to see better, as I heard the others coming up behind me. “Captain, can I borrow your spyglass?”

The tiny telescope brought the roiling clouds several times closer. Just enough for me to make out what I was afraid I’d see.

Three tiny dots moving within and about the clouds, guiding and shaping them. Three dots of a sickly black-green-yellow that I had seen once before. Tempests.

“We’re in trouble, Captain.” I handed him back the telescope, a sinking feeling in my gut. Given the situation – on a ship in mid-ocean – “sinking” was not a word I even liked using to describe my gut feelings, but it seemed all too appropriate. “That’s a Faerie storm. Tell your people to batten down the hatches and everything else. This is going to be very, very rough.”

Inkarbleu gazed up. “A storm? How odd. Why in the world would they not simply send a Torrent or three, raise a wave that would crush us like matchwood or drag us through a great whirlpool to the very bottom of the sea? This may actually afford us some small chance to survive.”

I watched as the storm moved rapidly closer, thinking. “My guess? These waters are probably the territory of the Sea Fairies, and King Ugu isn’t ready to piss them off by trying to send his own emissaries straight through their own country.” Given what I knew about Pingaree, that seemed a pretty good bet. “I dunno if that makes things much better, though. They can raise waves on the surface just fine, maybe even cause a whirlpool, certainly hit us with enough wind, rain, and lightning…”

“Lightning is not a terrible danger; we have long since forged steel and copper into our vessels to disperse much of its power,” Inkarbleu said. “Waves and wind, however, remain the boon and bane of all ships.”

The sea began to heave, waves slowly building in height, as the winds started to pick up. “Chancellor, you’d better get below. I don’t know if there’s anything I can do… but I doubt there’s anything you can, and neither I nor the Captain need to be worrying about you while we try to survive this.”

Inkarbleu had already shown he was a man of great practicality; with a simple nod, he headed back below.

I took one of the lines available and bound myself to the forward observation post; I had no intention of being stupidly swept overboard. The armor of the Rainbow Kingdom, fortunately, was ludicrously light – I suspected it was actually lighter than water by a good amount – and would probably help rather than hinder me if I ended up in the drink, but I sure wouldn’t be able to swim the rest of the way to Pingaree. We were about halfway to our destination, which made sense; if Ugu and Amanita wanted to stop us, do it at the point farthest from any possible help.

It bothered me they’d caught on this fast. I’d hoped the distraction at the border of the Nome King’s lands would actually lead them to look at Kaliko’s domains first, but it seemed that hadn’t worked too well.

Now I could make out the Tempests without the spyglass, swirling dots the color of twisters and destruction. Damn. They’re nothing but pure magic bound up in a tiny bit of matter. If I could REACH them they’d probably pop like evil little balloons, but there’s no way I can think of to manage it. Despite a couple of cheap comicbook imitations I’ve done, I can’t pull off flight, or even leaping over tall buildings. Maybe a medium-sized building, if I’m in a really high-magic area, but this ship is mostly mundane. I’m not feeling much resilience from the deck.

The Pearl of Gilgad heaved up as a twenty-five foot crest hit the hundred-fifty foot vessel, and I wavered in my balance.

The ship and its escorts, I saw, were turning into the wind, not letting the waves hit them broadside. They slid up and down smoothly, and it was clear that it would take vastly larger waves to threaten them.

I saw the Tempests spiral downward. They’ve reached the same conclusion. The rain was now sheeting down and a spark of lightning split the sky with an echoing blast, but the ships sailed on. They need to amp up the storm quite a bit, and they can’t do that way up there.

I frowned. The rain was making it harder to see. A lot harder now as it pounded down, mixed with hail, the wind screaming through the rigging, waves reaching crests of nearly fifty or sixty feet. Despite the roller-coaster rises and dips, I still felt the deck startlingly solid beneath me. They build good ships, Gilgad does.

Then I felt it. A slight roll.

“Wind’s shifted!” I heard the Captain bellow over the howl of the storm. “Seas shifting … Bring them around, ten points!”

The fleet began to turn, following the signals barely visible in the storm-gloom. But the rolling continued.

“Shifting again, Captain!” shouted one of the crewmen. “Eight… Ten more points!”

The cresting waves were clashing now, making it harder to judge the angle of attack. I tried to cover my face, get a feel for things. I noticed, oddly, that the wind and rain seemed not quite as intense near me.

Of course. The Tempests are driving this as hard as they can. Their magic drops off near me. Has to.

But then, feeling how the wind was shifting, I realized I had something a lot more important to worry about. “Captain!” I called, but by now the screaming wind was ripping away any sound. I grabbed a nearby deckpin and pulled it up, waving it back and forth to get his attention as the rolling increased.

Dammit, look at me!

The glittering of my armor moving apparently caught his eye at last; he made his way over with careful steps. “What is it, Lord Medon?” he shouted.

“Whirlwind, Captain! They’re making a tornado!”

He cursed. “Of course! That’s why the wind keeps shifting! But not a tornado, boy, they’d have to do that personal-like!

“They’re making a whirlpool, turning the winds, turning the sea!”

Now I could see it, shadowy movement around us, cresting waves higher in a sinister circle, flattening inward, turning, turning…

“Oh, crap. Now what?”

To my surprise, the Captain grinned, a savage smile that would have looked at home on Nimbus. “Now what? Now we sail right out of their trap, Lord Medon! Use the speed of the currents and the winds to whip us up and over! Thanks to you, we’ve seen it in time!”

He raised his arm and signaled his crew, who sent up lights and flags. The ships turned. Then turned again, sails belling out in the storm, and I felt the Pearl of Gilgad lunge forward as it caught the power of the storm. It slid down the forming curve of flowing might that was the developing maelstrom, gathering speed, accelerating at a tremendous rate, turning again with the whirling wind. The masts creaked, inaudible but something I could feel through the deck, bending with the centripetal force, like a car careening around a too-tight curve. Before us loomed a clashing barrier of black-green waves, nearly invisible against the green-black sky.

“HOLD ON!”

The Pearl hit the waves with a shock that stretched my mooring lines almost to the breaking point, forced me to catch the Captain as he fell. The ship was momentarily in freefall, literally having jumped the crest, and then it came down with a mighty splash, running before the wind.

“Ha!” the Captain said, still grinning “Let them try that trick again, we’ll head right back out! See, see, my lord! All of the fleet, still with us!”

I looked up.

Three miniature stormclouds were descending, trailing more storm behind them. “I think they realize that wasn’t working.”

The Captain followed my gaze. “Blast. Now you’ll have your waterspout, Lord Erik, and I’m not sure we have anything for that.”

The wind was now whirling tighter, the storm contracting, more and more intensely upon the Pearl of Gilgad. It was clear that this was their target.

The sails guttered, flapped, and the ship stalled. I saw the banners hang limp, then lift… starting to point up. Spray whipped around the ship, rising higher, more intensely.

A funnel cloud was forming above, following the descending Tempests, narrowing, dropping towards us as the spray rose to meet it.

Rose to meet it…

The Captain gaped as I suddenly released the ropes holding me. “What are –”

“Tie yourself down, Captain!” I said. “And if this doesn’t work… well, you may still get out of this alive.”

I threw myself into the rigging and began climbing as fast as I could, trying to ignore the swaying of the ship and the increasingly distant deck. Got to get as high as I can…

The Tempests were getting closer, much closer now. I could make out their spinning, roiling forms, living clouds the color of bruises and agony, glints of lightning-blue for eyes, and the howl of the growing twister was growing, the entire ship starting to turn despite the efforts of the men at the rudder. The whirling funnel was dropping with terrifying speed. A few more seconds… Got to get higher…

With a final lunge I popped out into the crow’s nest, weaving dangerously, catching the mast with one hand as I yanked my sword out. Wait… wait… judge it…

Just as the funnel cloud was about to drop upon me, I saw a deckpin go flying up. NOW!

I judged the jump through sheer gut instinct, seeing the Tempests almost to my level, spinning in a perfect triple circle around the tornado. I hit the updraft and was carried up, moving outward with the whirling winds, sword extended.

There! For a moment I thought I’d misjudged it too badly, even angling my body, turning –

–but it saw me. I don’t know if it recognized me, and thought it could finish the job on its own, or just thought it had found a new and temporary plaything. For whatever reason, the Tempest slowed, turned, and our courses were bent together. Too late it saw the sword, too late it realized there was no terror, only a grim smile, coming through the wind and mist to greet it.

“I’ve got you, my pretty – and your little fog, too!”

The sword cut through the Tempest like a hurricane through a wheatfield, causing the twisted elemental to burst into disintegrating fragments of vapor, and I continued on, sword and my mortal body ripping through the side of the mystically-controlled tornado. The whirlwind seemed to stagger and waver, coming apart at my passage, and the second Tempest was suddenly in front of me, trying to somehow regain control of the storm, realizing a fraction of a second later that it had made just the wrong move as I reached out and plunged my hand into its icy center, causing it to explode into nothingness.

The mighty upwelling winds broke apart as the last Tempest retreated, understanding that there was no longer any chance of this plan working.

I looked down. “Oh boy. Now I know how the Coyote feels.”

Five hundred feet below, the wind-tossed sea began a lunge up at me.

I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, and tried to align my body into a spike. Armored feet will hit first. Rest of the armor will brace me to some extent. Might survive if I hit just right – a wave just dropping away below me. Keep the eustachian tubes open, you’ll be going way, way down… open your damn eyes a crack, you have to know when you’re going to hit so you can hold your breath –

 

The ocean was rushing closer, reminding me of my prior fall from a great height. This time I was in better shape, I was armored, I was falling into water, not onto land… but there was no faerie princess to rescue me, either. Almost there… Hold –

IMPACT!

A drifting pattern of darkness… a spark of tormented light, far away, calling in green… I reached out…

“Lord Medon?”

I opened my eyes, becoming aware of aches in almost every part of my body. The Chancellor was looking down at me.

“…Wow,” I managed. “I’m… alive.”

“Just barely, it would seem, but you should make a full recovery by the time we reach Pingaree.” Relief was written clearly on Inkarbleu’s face. “Your armor and luck appear to have saved you.” He raised his voice. “Tell the Captain he has awakened and appears to be himself.”

“How… how long was I out?”

Inkarbleu smiled faintly. “Hard to say precisely, sir. You were floating unconscious when we found you.” So I’d been right about the buoyancy of the armor… fortunately. “But it has been about two days.”

“Two days we have waited in fear that we could not thank you.” The Captain stood in the doorway. “Lord Medon, you took a fearful risk to save my ship and crew, and we cannot easily express our gratitude.”

I tried to wave that away, but my arms were not cooperating. Any movement made me wince. “Forget it, Captain.” I said, feeling the aches in my jaw as I spoke. Even my tongue hurt. “You wouldn’t have been in any danger except for me being there, so it was the least I could do. I don’t think they’ll try that again, though.”

“I would hope not. But ah, what a song this adventure will make!” The Captain bowed to me, and then strode out on deck, presumably to tell everyone the news.

I turned my eyes towards Inkarbleu. “I… think I need some water and food. Soup. Chewing would hurt. And then real sleep.”

“It is good,” Inkarbleu said as he rose, with a thin smile, “to see that some heroes can actually be sensible… once they’ve regained their senses.”

 

Into The Maelstrom – Snippet 15

Into The Maelstrom – Snippet 15

Chapter 5 – Gathering Clouds

Syma shone.  No, that didn’t do it justice. Syma glowed with a thousand hues and colors. Once it must have been a desert, a wilderness covered in wind-blown dunes. Then a serendipitous catastrophe intervened. A vast flare of energy that fused the sands into a crystalline sheet exploded in the sky.

The learned savants from the Homeworlds still squabbled over the exact sequence, timing or even structure of events. Every few years a new expedition ventured forth to put a new hypothesis to the test. Perhaps a comet exploded in the upper atmosphere. If so, it must have been one of almost unique composition to release such a burst of heat with so little blast. The strangely focused solar flare hypothesis also had adherents although they failed to agree on the cause of such a phenomenon.

And then came the crackpots, the conspiracy theorists and the plain madmen. Syma allegedly marked the site where, to take the suggestions in no particular order of unlikeliness, an alien faster-than-light starship had crashed, aliens had tested a giant energy weapon, a Homeworld had tested a giant energy weapon, a secret society…well, fill in with your own bogie men of choice.

The catastrophe, whatever it was, changed the regional climate bringing water to the desert. It seeped into the glass cutting riverlets, caves and canyons. It washed in colored minerals and pigments. Researchers loved expeditions to Syma not just because it was unique but because it was so hauntingly beautiful.  Academia constructed a port on the edge of the glass sheet to the delight of wealthy tourists.

An autobeacon landed Allenson’s carriage on the reinforced pad. The sun was high in the reddish sky and it was hot.  He adjusted the coverage of his eye shade to keep the worst of the rays off his head and neck. Syma’s air smelt dryer than the dust on a corpse.

The pad was completely bare of buildings or fences. The carriage rested by a low rectangular box about a meter long and half a meter high. It was made of some sophisticated reflective white ceramic, featureless except for a chip slot. Allenson noted similar structures dotted around the pad.

Nothing lived on the surface in Syma, human or otherwise. No one met them: no customs officials, no hawkers, no beggars.  Allenson’s data pad chimed. A holographic arrow appeared, directing him around the back of the box where a hatch opened. A ramp spiraled down into the syncrete surface. The travelers descended and the hatch slid noiselessly closed behind them.

The air in the tunnel was noticeably cooler. Only dim illumination seeped around the spiral so Allenson turned off his eye shade. He rounded a bend in the corridor to enter a wonderland of glass and light. His body cast many soft shadows tinted in a kaleidoscope of colors. Multiple images of the sun shone through the glass ceiling, each a different color of the rainbow as every frequency of light found its own unique path through the layers of glass.

Vitrified glass lined the walls in frozen raindrops and rivulets. In some places he could see deep into the layers but elsewhere the glass was near opaque, stained with mineral streamers. Allenson found himself rubber necking like a country bumpkin on his first visit to town.

Buller pushed past him.

“Are you going to serve us or what?” Buller asked an elderly white-haired man sitting unobtrusively on a stool in the corner.

“Your pardon, sar, but I have found that most of our guests prefer to be given a period of reflection to enjoy the ambiance when they first enter Syma,” the lackey replied, quite uncrushed. “My name is…”

“I don’t give a tinker’s fart what your name is,” Buller interrupted. “I want to know where I can get a room and a decent meal.”

The receptionist waved a hand.

“If you would care to register.”

Buller looked on uncomprehendingly.

“Your datapad,” Allenson said, softly.

Buller pulled out his pad and stabbed at it viciously.

“Hmmph! You have to do everything yourself in this one-frame dump.”

Allenson used his own pad to check in. He winced at the prices. He wished to conserve the Brasilian Crowns he carried in case of unexpected demands on his purse. One of the handicaps to interworld commerce was that information could only be carried through the Continuum inside a frame field. Places more than a few days light speed apart relied on packet ships to exchange funds and other information.

“I have an arrangement with the PanStream Bank, Master…?”

“Sederer, sar,” said the receptionist.

Allenson didn’t catch what the receptionist did but he opened a holographic screen. The man touched a series of icons and Allenson’s datapad chimed to remind him that it was downloading information.

“The local branch of PanStream confirms your membership, Sar Allenson. A map to your room is on your pad.”

“And an adjacent room for my aide charged on my account,” Allenson said, gesturing to Todd.

The receptionist made the necessary arrangements.

“I’m with Colico,” Buller said.

The receptionist looked at him without moving.

“I regret that Colico have no branch on Syma, Sar.”

“Then I’ll have to send you a tab to cover the bill when I get home,” Buller said.

The receptionist made no move to accept Buller’s booking.

“We accept Brasilian or Terran coin, sar, if that is convenient.”

Buller thrust his chin forward. He looked for all the world like a guard dog straining at a chain.

“See here my man, are you questioning my honor.”

Allenson moved to defuse the confrontation.

“Charge Sar Buller’s room to my account.”

The receptionist made the necessary connections.

“Certainly, sar.”

Buller nodded complacently.

“Good man, Allenson, we’ll settle up back on Manzanita.”

Allenson mentally wrote off the money.

“As you find convenient.”

“And you need to improve your attitude when dealing with your betters,” Buller said, wagging his finger at the receptionist. “Think yourself damn lucky Sar Allenson chose to get you off the hook.”

“Oh I do, sar,” said the receptionist.

Buller looked at the man suspiciously but the receptionist stared back with a bland countenance as devoid of any hint of sarcasm as it was of concern.

“My carriage needs recharging,” Allenson said.

“Yes, sar,” The receptionist fluttered his fingertips over the display. “It will be fully charged in two hours.”

He stared closely at the screen and sighed.

“As fully charged as the system in your carriage can take at any rate.”

“I didn’t see any mechanics on the surface?” Allenson asked.

The receptionist replied without looking up, still busy with his display.

“No, sar, the surface is hardly the sort of work-environment to attract skilled employees except at exorbitant rates of pay. We find it cheaper to use automatons. You may have noticed the storage unit by your carriage.”

“I see,” Allenson replied.

Syma used astonishingly high technology. Perhaps he should have anticipated that at a Homeworld university research station. He glanced at his datapad and winced anew at the cost of the recharge. Sophistication had its downside.

#

Allenson’s room was splendid but tiny. Not something that bothered him unduly as he usually travelled light. One-man frames lacked generous luggage facilities. The glass walls and floor opaqued for privacy but the ceiling let in glass-filtered sunlight. He discovered a control that polarized the glass. Darkening the room he managed a short nap. Something he had learnt in the army was to sleep whenever you could for you never knew when the chance might come again.

When he woke up he splashed some water on his face to wake up. Then he buzzed Todd through his datapad to invite him to dine in the restaurant. Todd was only next door but Allenson did not want to wake him if he was still asleep. The receptionist had placed Buller way down in the complex below the sunlit level. Politeness may or may not be its own reward but it cost nothing and did no harm in dealing with people who could exact petty revenge. Never be rude to waiters unless one likes spit in one’s food.

Todd replied immediately with enthusiasm. After a moment’s refection Allenson also sent a note to Buller although he extended the invitation without enthusiasm. Fortunately he did not get a reply. Allenson found the restaurant using his datapad which projected a holographic arrow to show the route down through a maze of corridors.

 

Spell Blind – Snippet 15

Spell Blind – Snippet 15

Chapter 11

South central Phoenix, from the ninety-one area of the Cactus Park precinct, through the Maryvale precinct, and into Estrella Mountain includes some of the toughest beats any cop in the city has to face. This part of Phoenix comprises maybe fifteen percent of the total area of the city and is home to a similarly small percentage of the population. But its beats account for more than a third of the violent crimes committed here. Maryvale itself is tiny when compared to other precincts, but in any given year, it sees more assaults and murders than some precincts many times its size. Parts of Estrella Mountain are even worse.

I was never good at math, and I’m no expert on crime numbers, not like some of the men and women in statistics, who can quote figures and percentages off the tops of their heads. But I understand stats well enough to know that when one small area of a city sees the lion’s share of its murders and aggravated assaults, that area has a problem.

I wouldn’t want to pick the worst of Maryvale’s beats — they were all bad — but I was headed to the eight-thirteen, which was about as ugly as it got. Run-down houses broiling in the sun, storefronts that looked like they hadn’t seen business in years until you realized that they were still open, streets strewn with shattered beer bottles, kids’ playgrounds turned into havens for junkies and hangouts for gangs. I’d been down here plenty of times while I was still on the job, but I rarely drove these streets by choice.

I was hoping that Orestes Quinley would be able to tell me enough about the Blind Angel killer to make the trip worth my while.

In the last few years, after his many brushes with the law, Brother Q had made some effort to join legitimate society. He’d opened a place on Thomas Street called Brother Q’s Shop of the Occult. Not exactly a name that rolled off the tongue, but I’m not convinced that he expected the business to appeal to a large clientele. He sold stuff that any small-time sorcerer might need: used books on magic, Wicca, and shamanism; many of the same powders, herbs, and oils he’d once been accused of stealing; and various stones, jewelry, and other items that might be used for conjuring. His was the only shop in Phoenix where a person could find Tuberose and Styrax oils. His prices were outrageous, and in all my visits to his place, I had never seen another person shopping there. But Orestes didn’t seem to mind. He had his store, he lived in the apartment above it, and he was content to sit outside in his old wooden rocking chair, smoking contraband clove cigarettes and watching the world go by.

That’s what he was doing when I pulled up to his place in the Z-ster. Even in the brilliance of the Arizona sun, Orestes’s storefront glimmered faintly with the light of his magic. This was not the flat yellow gleaming of his early conjurings. It was more a golden orange, the color of the sun as it sits balanced on the desert horizon. Orestes had grown more powerful and more skilled since our first encounter. And if I could see the magic on his place now, it must have glowed like a bonfire at night. He had enough wardings in place to hold off a horde of weremystes. I had a feeling he was worried about one in particular.

Apart from developing a bit of a gut, Orestes hadn’t changed much over the years. He claimed to have been born in Haiti, and he spoke with a heavy West Indian accent. He wore his hair in thick braids, and he often had on a pair of wire-rimmed sunglasses, the lenses of which were far too small to serve any practical purpose. Today he was dressed in old khaki shorts, a pair of beat-up sandals, and a Coca Cola shirt that had been tie-dyed so many years ago that the colors had all faded to various shades of gray.

“Justis Fearsson,” he said, as I got out of the car. “Come a-callin’ over Brother Q’s way. To what does Q owe the pleasure on this fine, sunny day?”

Two things to know about Orestes. First, he was one of these people who referred to himself in the third person. Drove me up a wall. Second, on occasion, for no apparent reason, he liked to speak in verse. I used to find this annoying, too. In recent years I’d decided that it was funny, in a really weird sort of way. Still, despite his quirks, Q wasn’t a flake and I didn’t think he had started losing his mind yet, although Kona would have argued the point. He was smart enough to have survived on these streets for years, and in all the time I had been coming to him for information he had almost never steered me wrong. But he’d developed this persona, and while it might once have been a put on, at this point I wasn’t sure he could have set aside the rhymes and the way he spoke even if he’d wanted to.

“Hi there, Orestes,” I said. I walked to where he was sitting and patted his shoulder. “You staying out of trouble?”

“Always, Brother. Always.”

I smiled. “Right.”

He pulled a folding chair out from behind his own and handed it to me. I unfolded it and sat.

“You here to buy or to talk?”

“Talk.”

“Good,” he said. “Then Brother Q don’t have to get up. Heat like this make a brother wilt. Seems they had no AC when this place was built.”

“The rhymes need a little work.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. You try it sometime. Ain’t as easy as it sounds.”

“You know why I’m here?”

“Brother Q can guess. There’s only one thing people in this town are talkin’ about these days. Brother Q ain’t never seen weremystes so scared. But why would the Deegan girl bring you to Brother Q? You know that Q wouldn’t have anythin’ to do with a killin’.”

“True, but I also know that you keep your ear to the street. If there was something going on that you didn’t like — maybe a sorcerer gathering more power than anyone ought to have — you’d tell me about it. Wouldn’t you?”

“Brother Q keeps an eye out,” he admitted, avoiding my gaze. “Purely out of curiosity.”

“Sure,” I said. “I understand. You remember me coming around to ask you about the Blind Angel case when I was still a cop?”

“Of course. Brother Q remembers everythin’.”

“Then you also remember what you told me.”

“Q told you the truth,” he said pointedly, facing me at last. “Q told you that he didn’t know anythin’ about the killin’s, which was true.”

“At the time, you mean.”

“Right. At the–” He clamped his mouth shut.

“What do you know now, Q?”

He stared out at the street, his eyes tracking a low-riding roadster with a group of Latino kids in it. He still had his lips pressed thin, and I could tell that he was angry; angry with me for tricking him, and angry with himself for letting me. Luis was right, though: Q knew something.

“Thirty-one kids now,” I said, my voice low. “Those are the ones we know about. And you can be sure that Claudia Deegan won’t be the last. If you know something you’ve got to tell me.”

 

Spell Blind – Snippet 14

Spell Blind – Snippet 14

Holding the scrying stone in my hand, with the strand of her hair coiled beneath it, I cleared myself and summoned a vision of what she had seen. Three elements to the spell: Claudia, this place, and my stone. As simple as a spell could be.

The blue and white lines in my piece of agate faded, so all that remained was a reflection of the blue sky and dark leaves above me. And then the image darkened. At first I thought that I’d wasted my time, that she was already dead. I saw nothing in the stone, heard nothing in my head. Or did I?

There was sound. Shallow breathing and a low whimpering noise that made my stomach clench itself into a fist. And something else: footsteps on a hard trail of rock and sand. Shading the stone with my free hand, I realized there was an image on the surface, too, though it was murky. I could make out the ground below me as it would appear at night, illuminated by the weak light of a quarter moon.

My pulse quickened. Claudia had been here, alive and with her sight intact.

I moved into the shade of the palo verdes, still staring hard at the vision I’d summoned to my scrying stone. I couldn’t make out much. It seemed he was carrying her over his shoulder, and that she was only semi-conscious. She continued to whimper as he walked; her vision remained dim, muted, maybe because of the drugs in her body.

After several minutes of this, the footsteps stopped. An instant later, the vision in my stone heaved and spun. I heard the sharp crunch of stone, a hard grunt, and then a low moan of pain. The trail had vanished, swallowed by darkness. But after a few seconds, Claudia’s eyes fluttered open again, and I saw starlight. I saw the moon, glowing high overhead.

And I saw him — the Blind Angel killer — looming over her, blocking out the stars while the moon kept his face in shadow. I leaned closer to the stone, desperate for any details I could make out — his face, his hair, his body-type. He seemed tall, although that could have been Claudia’s perspective. His hair, if he had any at all, was short; a buzz-cut, maybe. But even with the agate only inches from my nose, I couldn’t make out his features.

He reached toward her face, his hand dark against the night sky, long-fingered, graceful. And I gasped at the sight. I knew that hand, those elegant fingers. I’d seen them in my office mirror a few days before, gliding over a burning glow, chasing wisps of gray smoke. My scrying.

In my mind I heard Claudia scream. My stone flared crimson — the color of fresh blood, so bright I had to turn away. And when I squinted down at my scrying stone again, it was just a piece of sea-green agate with twisting bands of blue and white.

“Damnit!”

I tried to summon the image again, and failed. I pulled out a second strand of Claudia’s hair and spoke the spell aloud. But the stone remained as it was. I closed my eyes, cleared myself, repeated the spell. Nothing. I didn’t know if seeing spells couldn’t be repeated, or if I was too appalled by what I’d seen to cast the spell a second time. I closed my eyes once more, this time attempting to commit to memory what I’d been able to make out of Claudia’s killer. He was lanky. His head appeared shaven. And his hands . . . I would never forget those. I knew, though, that this wasn’t much to go on. His most distinctive characteristic was the color of his magic, and I had a feeling that if I saw one of his spells coming at me, it would be too late for me to do much of anything to stop him.

I surveyed the crime scene for another moment, searching for anything that Kona might have missed, or any stray signs of magic. Nothing caught my eye. Feeling weary and frustrated, I turned around and began the long walk back to the Z-ster.

This was one of those times when I would have been willing to ignore my aversion to cell-phones. I needed to talk to Kona, but I had no signal out on the trail. I walked fast, and was sweating like a marathoner by the time I reached the parking lot. But here I had three bars on my phone. I dialed Kona’s number.

“Homicide, Shaw.”

“Hey, partner.”

“Justis, I’ve been trying to call you all morning.”

“I–”

“Have you got anything for me? Hibbard and Deegan have managed to get Gann’s arraignment moved up. He’ll be in court tomorrow. The way things are moving, they’ll have him tried and convicted by the end of the week.”

“I saw him.”

That stopped her. “Saw who?” she asked, although I could tell that she already knew.

“Our guy. I used a kind of scrying magic — a seeing spell.”

“You’re losing me, Justis.”

I grinned. All those years ago, Kona had struggled to adjust to the fact that I was a weremyste. Acceptance had come harder for her than it would have for most people. She could be stubborn, and as a detective she had been trained to trust in logic, to believe only what her eyes could see. So placing faith in my abilities had been a stretch for her. That she had done so at all spoke to the depth of our friendship. But in all the years we’d known each other, she had never gotten used to hearing me talk about magic and spells. It confused her, butted up against that rational training. Sometimes I talked about this stuff just to bug her. This time I’d been too excited to remember.

“I went out to South Mountain Park,” I told her. “And I used that stone I carry to see what Claudia saw in her last moments.” I skipped the part about the hair; she didn’t want to hear those details, and I would have felt like a ghoul telling her that I’d taken hairs from Claudia’s brush.

“You can do that?”

“I learned this magic in the past few months. Otherwise I would have done it long ago.”

“And you saw him?”

“It was dark; I only saw him in silhouette. He’s tall, lean. I think he might be bald, and . . . and he has long thin hands.” I hesitated. “I know that’s not much.”

“No,” she said. “But it’s something. Would you recognize him if you saw him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I’d know the color of his magic, and I’d know his hands.”

“What’s all this about his hands?”

“I scried them once before. They made an impression. I’m not sure why.” I took a breath, knowing what I had to say, knowing that it wouldn’t do Kona any good. “Gann’s not our guy. I’m sure of it now. For all intents and purposes, I saw the person who killed her.”

“Yeah,” she said, the word coming out as a sigh. “I hear you. But how do we prove it to Hibbard?”

“We catch the right guy, and we hope that Gann manages to get himself a decent lawyer.”

“Right. Where are you going next?”

“Q’s place. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

We hung up and I pulled out my weapon to make sure that it was fully loaded. I didn’t know if bullets would work against this weremyste or not, but I’d seen him now; he felt more real to me than he ever had before. And I’m not above admitting that I was scared of the guy.

 

Castaway Planet – Chapter 16

Castaway Planet – Chapter 16

Chapter 16

“Barkcloth,” Laura repeated wonderingly, looking at the green sheet which was slowly coming apart under repeated handling.

“A beginning to it, I think, yes,” Caroline said. “The Polynesians made something like this, called tapa. We’ll have to do some experiments, but… I think Hitomi might have found us something really important.”

Hitomi looked very proud.

Laura bent down. “But you also could have gotten yourself hurt.”

The youngest Kimei looked down. And she looks so tragic it makes me want to hug her and tell her it’s all right. But I can’t. Not here.

“Your sister told you to stay near her, she explained why, and you still didn’t listen.”

“I’m sorry!”

“Sorry is good, honey, but it’s not good enough. We can’t trust you to listen yet, I guess. You’re still young. But that means you have to stay with someone all the time from now on. That could slow down everything we’re trying to do, because whoever that is won’t be able to concentrate on something else. They’ll have to be watching you.”

Hitomi looked up, tears running down her face. “I’m sorry, Mommy!”

“So are we, Hitomi. We’re very glad you’re safe, and this cloth-stuff you’ve accidentally invented might really be important, but you could have been killed. If you behave very well the next week or three, maybe we’ll change the rules.”

Hitomi sniffled, but nodded. “Okay.”

Now I can give her that hug. With Hitomi still clinging to her neck, she glanced at Sakura. “You aren’t –”

“– I know, Mom, don’t you think I know it was my fault? You left her with me and I lost her.”

The tears and shakiness in her second-oldest child’s voice told her the lesson had been taken to heart. “All right. Don’t forget this. You know what could have happened.”

“Yes.” The reply was almost a whisper. “I didn’t think of anything else all the time I was looking for her.”

“Then I’ll let it go.” She turned to Akira, putting down Hitomi. “Now what is that thing you’ve brought with you?”

“Not thing, things,” her husband corrected. “What we carried with us is a sort of crustacean — a general observation, not a biological classification, let me note — and two of those hole dwelling ambush predators. ‘Minimaws,’ Whips wants to call them.”

Now Laura could see that what she’d taken for a creature with two long tentacles around a huge blocky body was a blocky, cuboid creature bracketed by two things like the one Whips had killed. “Why minimaw?”

“They look and act something like miremaws,” Whips answered, “but they’re so much smaller.”

“Good enough. Minimaw it is, then.”

“I’m going to have to come up with proper Lincolnian taxonomy and nomenclature,” Akira said.

“I suppose we’re going to try that crustacean thing?”

“Tests show it should be edible — well, the main meat. I think the internal organs are questionable. Whips and I dragged it down to the water’s edge and gutted it first. I should note that was not easy; the shell is extremely tough.”

“Awfully large to drag. I’m surprised you got it all the way here, Whips.”

She could tell by the way the colors rippled and his arms curled that he was a bit embarrassed by the praise. “Well, we didn’t want to waste it, and it had sort of forced us to shoot it.”

“Came after Melody when she was between a couple of rocks and couldn’t get away easily,” explained Akira. “Took three or four shots — I’m not sure if it was dead when I fired the fourth time or not, but I wasn’t taking chances. That armor is tough.”

Laura looked at the shell; like many creatures, it shaded to light beneath, but the top of the shell, both on the body and on the legs, was a beautiful mottled green. “That could be useful. Plates, big bowls, and such. Did you test the shell itself?”

“You wouldn’t want to cook with it. It’s got enough metallic content that would probably leach out if you put the wrong kinds of things in it and applied heat. But we could use it for just putting things on, and certainly for wearing, carrying, making things out of, it should be fine.” Akira poked at two ridges on the upper portion of the shell; things that looked like jointed spines projected from the ridges. “I think this does share some lineage, somewhere, with the minimaws and other creatures. You’ll notice these spinelike things are actually degenerate legs — I think for defense, possibly venomous — which means that it had that effectively fourfold symmetry of the minimaw and those flying things we’ve seen.”

He looked up and grinned apologetically. “Sorry, getting into my professional habits. How were your days, barring the last-minute panic?”

“Tiring,” Caroline said honestly, “but we got the disposal pit dug. It goes down a couple of meters and about that long. Until we figure out a better method we can just dump stuff in, bury it, and extend the pit a little each week or so.”

Sakura held up a somewhat mangled piece of metal. “I thought I could make a spearhead at first…”

Whips gave a whooping snort accompanied by diamondlike color patterns they all recognized as laughter. “You thought you could just… what, pound it into being a blade?” He laughed again.

“Oh, shut up, Whips!” Sakura’s face went red with embarrassment. “Yes, I know, it was stupid. I guess we’ll have to figure out some way to make them, though.”

Whips settled down. “Grinding works on just about anything. With the right metal, forging can work well, but we’d need to be able to maintain high heat for quite a while.” The adolescent Bemmie’s engineering training was showing clearly. “Right now we’re able to keep the superconductor loop batteries charged with the sun, but if we try rigging up a forge I’ll bet we’ll be using it way faster than we can recharge.”

“Still might be worth a try if we can figure out how to make the furnace — a few hours forging, a couple days off, try again?”

“Mmmmph. Maybe. I’ll have to do some calculations. It’d be better if we could actually build a fire, but I’m not sure anything here is going to be burnable — or safe to burn, even if it will.”

Laura stood up. “Let’s start getting dinner together, everyone. There’s going to be plenty to talk about, but we can’t leave these things sitting here.”

Dressing the minimaws wasn’t terribly difficult. The way they were built it was something like gutting and cleaning a long, skinny fish, though you’d get narrower steaks or fillets out of it because of the four-sided design. The blockcrab — as Melody named the large, squarish creature — was more of a challenge. Laura eventually figured out a workable method to get the legs open and get at the meat: score it deeply along the sides with her Shapetool, then lay it across a rock and let Whips pound on it with another rock until it split along the carved seams.

“What do you mean about it being safe to burn, Whips?” asked Caroline.

“Well,” Melody answered almost instantly, making Whips twitch slightly, “We know that the plant-like things are –”

“Melody,” Laura said sternly.

Melody blinked. “What… oh.”

“‘Oh’ indeed. The question was asked of Whips. I know you like to show off what you know, but let the people asked answer. Don’t be rude.”

Melody bit her lip. “Yes, Mom.”

“See that you remember it.”

Whips himself had an apologetic pattern rippling on his skin. “Dr. Kimei –”

“Whips — Harratrer — I know what you’re going to say, but it’s necessary. We may be the only people around for ten light years, but we still need to be reasonably polite to each other.”

“Sorry, Whips,” Melody said. There was in fact a note of genuine regret, even if part of her posture still said But I knew the answer!!

“It’s okay, Mel,” Whips said. “To answer the question, Caroline, it’s because we don’t know what this stuff is made of. In Europa, of course, we didn’t have fires — we used vents for cooking — but even there, some vents were safe to cook with, some weren’t. Here, well, we don’t know yet if there’s anything like wood. Wood’s just cellulose, mostly, and burns pretty well, but if I remember right there were still some plants you didn’t want to burn even on Earth.”

“Quite a few, actually,” Laura said. “I remember a neighbor of ours who got exposed to oleander smoke and got pretty sick. There’s quite a few others in different parts of the world.”

“So,” Whips went on,” we don’t even know if any of the stuff that looks like trees and plants will burn — well, I mean, will burn well enough to make fires with — and if it will, we haven’t got any idea if any of it will be safe.”

“We’d better see if we can find out,” Akira said slowly, even as he started up the stove. “If anything happens to our stove, we’ll need some way to cook our food — maybe even to heat wherever we end up living, if our continent drifts into a less comfortable region. And fire has, historically, been one of the best defenses against any dangerous animal.”

“Might be less effective on things which have never encountered fire — if things don’t naturally burn here,” Sakura pointed out.

“Ha! A definite point, Sakura. They’d have to learn what it feels like to get burned, rather than just avoid fire in general.”

“I was wondering about fire anyway,” Sakura said. “After my complete failure at making a spearhead, I thought we might be able to make a bow with that flexible support rod, but needing arrows with points put me back to the problem of spearheads, but then I remembered reading something about — ”

“– fire-hardened arrows!” Melody burst out, then immediately looked contrite.

“‘Sokay, Mel,” Sakura said with a grin. “I was going to say I don’t know much about it, so if you do…?”

“I was reading… well, some survival stories and things, so I looked up a lot of stuff on that,” Melody said, “and it’s still in my omni. Basically you put the tip into a bed of coals and rotate it, pull it out and rub it with a coarse stone to get char off, and repeat until you’ve got the point you want. According to my references doing the repeated rubbing with a good stone often helps by embedding bits of stone in the wood, but the real effect is caused by driving out the moisture in the wood and polymerizing other parts of the plant into a harder form.” She got a thoughtful expression. “But we don’t know if there’s real wood here so that technique might not work.”

“Couldn’t we cut out arrowheads from the block-crab’s shell?” Hitomi asked. Akira put some fried minimaw in front of her. “Yum!”

Conversation was temporarily interrupted as the food was served. Laura thought the block-crab meat was very tasty, though a bit chewy, but both Hitomi and Sakura spat it out. “Ugh!” Sakura said, with Hitomi concurring. “Bitter, nasty bitter.”

“That’s strange,” Caroline said. “I don’t taste hardly any bitterness. It tastes sort of … like lemony duck with a lobster texture.”

“Well, I taste bitter. It’s almost like wine — that alcohol taste.”

“Ah,” Akira said with a nod. “Specific sensitivities to tastes, like cilantro. Many people think cilantro tastes like soap, while most other people don’t taste a hint of that flavor. Well, then, everyone else can have some more block-crab, and I’ll serve you and Hitomi more minimaw. Hopefully we can find some vegetables or fruits that are edible, and perhaps there are ways of eliminating the taste you don’t like.” He continued, muttering about different ways of marinating or preparing meat.

Whips wasn’t saying anything; based on the way he was shoveling the block-crab into his mouth, Laura figured he liked it far too much to waste time talking.

After dinner, Hitomi wanted to go back up and look for more of the possible barkcloth plants with someone, but Laura shook her head. “Hitomi, it’s time for bed.”

“But Mommy, the sun is still up!”

“I know, honey, but that’s because the day’s much longer on this planet. Little girls still need their sleep on time.”

Hitomi kept protesting as she was dragged inside, but by the time Laura had made sure her littlest girl was all clean and given her bedtime story, Hitomi’s eyes were sagging shut all on her own, inside the cool dimness of the shelter. That wasn’t surprising, Laura thought. By her omni, it was actually the equivalent of nine in the evening — well past Hitomi’s usual bedtime. Sakura was already getting herself ready for bed, with Melody having just got out of the minimum-water bath.

They’d have to find more water soon. Put the main shell of the block-crab out to catch water in case it rains? That might work.

She went out to join Akira; he gave a gesture, closing a file he must be viewing in his omni, as she approached. “Sun’s finally starting to go down.”

“Yes; I’m afraid it’ll be full nighttime by the time we hit our next day cycle.”

She shook her head and smiled. “It’ll take some getting used to.” Laura looked back at the shelter, and then over to Whips digging in for his vigil and torpor. “Whips can extract water from the ocean, right?”

“Yes, he’s not in any danger of dehydration now.” He slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “You’re worried about our supply.”

“Well, of course.”

“I think we’ll be all right. It looked to me like there might be a stream a couple of kilometers up from where we stopped our exploration. We’ll check that out soon enough.”

“And if there isn’t?”

Caroline answered from behind them. “Then we can probably dig a well.”

“A well?” Laura was puzzled. “Caroline, we’re surrounded by the sea here, and most of the rock looks … awfully porous. Won’t we just end up with salt water?”

Caroline looked up — at only 165 centimeters she hadn’t much choice when talking to her mother who topped her by nearly twenty centimeters — and shook her head. “I don’t think so. You see, salt water is denser than fresh, and in many island settings that means that if you get a reasonable frequency of rainfall, a ‘lens’ of freshwater forms on top of the saltwater trapped underground. Since the pores in the ground don’t let the water move fast, waves and such aren’t going to mix it up. So you get a pretty thick layer of fresh water if you’re fairly far inland.”

“Planetography studies are coming in handy,” Akira said.

“Well, the geology parts,” Caroline said modestly.

“And your knowledge of suns and planets,” he reminded her.

“We are very lucky,” Laura said bluntly. “Just seven of us and we have an expert biologist, a doctor, someone who’s almost a planetographer, and people who know something about other fields.” She looked across the water. “Imagine getting wrecked here without any of that.”

The three were silent for a few moments. “Well, we aren’t without that,” Caroline finally said, “and we’ll be all right, I hope.” She glanced back at the shelter and up at her omni, perched above as high as Akira had been able to mount it. “I’m exhausted, Mom. I’m going to bed now.”

“Go ahead, hon. We’ll go to bed after you,” Laura said. Honestly, she was tired — and she could see Akira was, too — and it was just about time to turn in, no matter what the confusing sun said. But while waiting, she could just lean against her husband, and he against her, and relax, looking at their new home, which — just maybe — wasn’t going to succeed in killing them.

 

Into The Maelstrom – Snippet 14

Into The Maelstrom – Snippet 14

#

Allenson glanced surreptitiously at the power gauge on his datapad. They were moving against an unexpected Continuum current. That shouldn’t have been a problem. His carriage had been fully charged before leaving Manzanita. It theoretically had power to spare to reach their first port of call, Syma. Now he was beginning to become concerned.

His personal carriage was entirely self-powered and designed for longer hops through the Continuum than Trina’s conveyance. It did away with the need for a chauffeur and was navigated entirely by automatics controlled from the passenger compartment. He bought the machine from Synclare of Brasilia. Its specs were impressive but the workmanship was shoddy and it never seemed to hold a charge properly. Perhaps the energy converters were malfunctioning. Whatever the reason it never achieved the advertised speed or range.

He checked their route in case he had to displace to another closer colony. There were one or two possibilities but they were all backwaters. It was doubtful that they would have the technology to refuel the batteries. He would have been content to dump the carriage and continue on by one man frame but he was carrying passengers. There was also the matter of his gravitas. Important delegates arrived by carriage. They did not peddle in on a frame.

The method of arrival shouldn’t matter to his way of thinking but he accepted that he was out of step with his contemporaries on this. It was one of those inexplicable facts of life – like why the man had to apologize after a row with his wife irrespective of fault or the relative merits of their arguments.

Todd noticed his concern and turned to engage the other passenger in conversation to distract him from what Allenson was doing. Such matters were an important part of an aide’s duties. In this case Allenson thought Todd’s intervention superfluous. Renald Buller was not the sort of man who noticed anything except that which was immediately important to Renald Buller.

“I understand you have had a fair amount of military experience, Colonel Buller?” Todd asked, encouragingly.

Buller puffed up like an amphibious tetrapod trying to attract a mate.

“Not a fair amount, young man – considerable, considerable military experience.”

Buller jabbed a finger aggressively in Todd’s direction to punctuate his word, looking like a child poking holes in a pudding.

“And not marching around in pretty uniforms either like you young fops from the so-called better families. I mean real combat experience – up at the sharp end.”

Todd smiled. “I heard you were attached to the 12th, sir, but were fortunate to miss the Chernokovsky disaster in the Hinterland.”

Brigadier Chernokovsky had led two battalions of light infantry, the 12th and the 51st, on an expedition to eject the Terrans from Larissa. The expedition was ambushed and cut to pieces with all the senior officers killed. Allenson had managed to extract the survivors of the 51st and get them home but the 12th were wiped out to a man.

Allenson glared at Todd. It was not politic to raise the Larissa debacle with members of the Brasilian military, not even ex-members like Buller. Fortunately, the man was too thick skinned to notice the implied slight.

“Had I been there we would have seen a very different outcome young man I can tell you. A professional soldier to provide leadership instead of a ragbag of chinless wonders and colonial amateurs makes all the difference,” Buller said complacently.

He then seemed to recollect Allenson’s involvement and held a hand palm up.

“No insult to you, Allenson. Sure you did your best. Not your fault you were out of your depth.”

“One tried,” Allenson replied, dryly.

“What engagements have you seen, colonel,” Todd asked quickly, changing the subject.

“Stormed the Terran colony at Genran with the 103rd. Lost a leg and was out of it for the remainder of the Colonial Wars while it regrew. Then fought with the 103rd when we put some backbone into the Piwis in their revolt against Frankistan. Got a field promotion to Lieutenant Colonel.”

The state of Frankistan occupied the primary continent of Hiwa, one of the less important Homeworlds which had always enjoyed a close relationship with Terra. Piwi was a collection of islands in the Hiwa world ocean that at various times was part of Frankistan or independent. Mostly it occupied some confused political status of semi-dependence. Brasilia found it useful to aid the Piwi’s revolt as a tangential way of eroding Terra’s authority in the Homeworlds without actually declaring war. It was a kind of colonial war at home.

Terra responded by sending aid to Frankistan. The war devastated both Frankistan and Piwi before the business wound down to the point where a politically face saving compromise was possible. It was not clear who had won. Probably, nobody – nobody often did.

“You know what reward they gave me when the 103rd returned home?” Buller asked, rhetorically.

Todd opened his mouth but never got the chance to speak.

“Nothing that’s what,” Buller said. “They disbanded the regiment to save money and put me on the beach. They kept Guard popinjays who’d never fired a shot in anger and who’d probably shit themselves in fear if they ever saw a body but the Fighting 103rd was disbanded to save money. We weren’t fashionable you see.”

Buller made the word fashionable sound like it described a particularly virulent strain of anti-social disease.

“So I went east as a soldier of fortune and became General and aide to the King-Emperor of Quorn in his war against the Syracusian Confederacy. Gave up on Brasilia and emigrated out here when the King-Emperor was poisoned by his wife.”

Buller appeared to think that the King-Emperor had deliberately died to spite him.

“Bought a plantation on Prato Rio. I’m damned if I’ll pay taxes to support an army led by popinjays who couldn’t protect the Stream from a bunch of society ladies armed with cream puffs.”

“Quite,” Todd said, faintly, when Buller finally wound down.

Allenson convinced himself that he had enough power to reach Syma but took the precaution of running a continuous analysis of fuel with a warning set if the situation deteriorated.

“That’s why you emigrated,” Allenson said, joining the conversation to Todd’s palpable relief. “Because you felt your abilities were being unfairly overlooked in Brasilia.”

Buller snorted, “Too right, Allenson. Brasilia’s run as an old boy network for the dim-witted sons of the well connected.  There’s a complete block on real talent to cut out the competition.”

Allenson found himself sucked into the conversation.

“But is it better here? Brasilian trans-Bight colonies reflect the Homeworld’s social structure, do they not?”

Buller nodded.

“Damn right which is why we have to cut ourselves off from Brasilia and get full independence.”

“I am not sure we could sell that to the Brasilian establishment,” Allenson said.

“Hardly,” Buller said. “We’ll have to fight for independence.”

“You mean war,” Allenson said.

Buller thrust his chin forward.

“Of course I mean war. You think the ruling families will just sign away their privileges?”

It had always been Allenson’s contention that those who had actually seen combat would be less keen on repeating the experience. He began to wonder whether that opinion was optimistic. The smell of war wafted around the ‘Stream like an odor from something that had recently died under the floorboards. Not yet a stench, but unchecked it soon would be.

“And we’ll need an army. Need men who’ll stand their ground against Brasilian regulars. A disciplined force commanded by a professional,” Buller said, striking a fist into the palm of his other hand for emphasis.

“Such as yourself?” Allenson asked, already knowing the answer.

 

Into The Maelstrom – Snippet 13

Into The Maelstrom – Snippet 13

A peeling section of bark on the plant stem waved gently in the breeze near the caterpillar. An oddity as the air was as still as a cat watching a mouse hole. Not that the caterpillar cared, incapable of noting anomalies in cause and effect. The caterpillar had the excuse of a tiny brain consisting of a sliver of nervous tissue. Human beings could claim no such excuse but many still shared the caterpillar’s issues with cause and effect.

A pincer on an extending arm like an angle-poise lamp shot out from under the bark peel. The sharp tip impaled the caterpillar. The insect wriggled and twisted in a fruitless attempt to escape but was lifted off the stem. The bark peel raised itself on four stubby legs. It retreated backwards deeper into the vegetation dragging its lunch after it.

Allenson’s estate manager clapped his hands together excitedly.

“See, I told you it was working.”

“It seems you were right, Frederick,” Allenson said.

“I thought the heavy armor on mealy bugs gave them an even chance of surviving even gunja plant stings.”

“Yes, my only concern now is that we have imported an exotic species. We need to keep a close eye on developments in case something unexpected unravels.”

“Like at Frempton?” the manager asked.

“Exactly like at Frempton,” Allenson replied.

“The Frempton disaster was something of a one off,” the manager said, frowning. “But I take the point.”

Frempton was a colony further up the stream. Its economy had depended heavily on a cash crop of a popular recreational narcotic exported back to Brasilia. Some local entrepreneur imported a goat strain and released it into the wild to provide sport as Frempton lacked anything worth hunting. Unfortunately the goats ignored the bushes provided for their sustenance and took a liking to the cash crop instead. The goats weren’t even good sport for hunters as they tended to lie around stoned most of the time after feeding.

By the time Fremptoners grasped the scale of the problem the goats were past culling. The genius involved then imported an exotic predator to control the goats. The predator was so-so about dining on stoned goats but developed a voracious appetite for a native predator that fed on the rat infestations. Wherever humans colonize you sooner or later get rats.

The resulting overpopulation of starving rats broke into the fleek enclosures to steal their eggs, spreading a variety of diseases. The bird populations, ever susceptible to disease, were decimated. The narcotic crop duly rotted in the fields because they were no fleeks for the harvest.

All of which goes to show that biological control might be elegant in theory but had a propensity to spin out of control in practice.

Frederick Elberg, the Pentire estate manager, was one of Trina’s second cousins who had fallen on hard time. When the bank foreclosed on his plantation, Trina put his name forward to Allenson.

Allenson had not considered employing an estate manager. When he did consider it he found the idea distinctly unwelcome. But although Pentire was a legacy from his brother Allenson had inherited little in the way of capital. His development and expansion of the estate was funded by Trina’s family money as so he felt obligated to fall in with her wishes. He rather hoped that her cousin would stay out of his way and drink himself quietly to death somewhere. Incompetence coupled with indolence was generally harmless compared to energetic bungling.

Elberg tuned out to be both energetic and competent, which was something of a shock. In Allenson’s experience such paragons were rare as fleek’s teeth. Dynamic proficiency took some getting used to. He had come to increasingly rely on Elberg to oversee his ideas for improving the estate. Indeed, he would be a lot less happy about travelling to Nortania without knowing Elberg would be there to watch over the demesne.

Nevertheless, he needed to reassure himself with one last tour of his small empire in the estate manager’s company just to make sure that Elberg was on top of matters. They rode on a four wheel drive electric scooter. Currently the transmission powered only three wheels which made steering challenging especially on slopes.

Allenson stopped outside the fleek enclosures to examine the beasts through the windows. Fleeks were bird-like organisms about the size and bulk of an ape.  They came from a world that had never evolved mammals so birds filled all the mammalian ecological niches. Colored feathers covered their bodies forming patterns of metallic blue and green. Non-flyers, they possessed only vestigial wings and ran on long sturdy legs with a backward-facing knee joint.

A heavy beak mounted on a flexible muscular neck had evolved to probe the ground. Buried eggs made up their natural diet in the wild. This life style required good forward vision and a high degree of dexterity so the beaks made excellent manipulatory appendages.  Fleeks were not sentient. Their mental development more or less equaled a chimp but their bird-type brains memorized and repeated complex behavioral patterns much more proficiently than any mammal of similar intellect.

In short they made acceptable agricultural workers for routine repetitive tasks like weeding or harvesting. Specialized agricultural automatons were more efficient. However, they were expensive and in short supply in the colonies. The ones that washed up on the far shores of the Bight tended to be reconditioned models with appalling break down rates. Royman Destry experimented with importing equipment to assemble robots on his demesne. It had not been a success. The reliability rate of the manufacturing system proved as bad as the imported automatons.

Human labor for such tasks was wasteful. The sort of indentured servants that ended up as agricultural workers had to be constantly supervised to get any work out of them at all. Fleeks filled the gap. Their one big advantage over automatons was that could be bred to make more fleeks.

But what blessings the good fairy gave with one hand the bad fairy buggered up with the other. Fleeks were inbred to the point of dangerous biological fragility so highly infectious and lethal diseases raged through their flocks. Death rates of ninety per cent plus were not uncommon.

“You have the Fleeks siloed behind tight firewalls?” Allenson asked.

“Each flock is kept within an air-filtered enclosure. No two flocks are ever used on the same land. Each flock has its own gangmaster and feeders who do not share equipment. No one gets in or out without going through the antibiotic sprays.”

Elberg listed the points on the fingers of his hand as he reassured Allenson.

“I can’t guarantee an infectious agent won’t be windblown from another demesne onto a flock working in the fields, you understand Allenson, but everything possible is in place to limit an outbreak to a single flock.”

“I know it is, Elberg.” Allenson patted the man’s shoulder. “But fleek plague gives me nightmares. I have seen crops rotting in the fields because of it.”

The tour ended at a small field where Allenson was trying a new cultivar of rosehip berries grafted onto the roots of a wild bramble-like plant from the Hinterlands. He cupped a small cluster of flowers gently in one hand and noted that berries were already forming.

“These will be ripe for harvesting in a week or two,” Allenson said, wistfully. “I shall probably still be on Nortania listening to endless prevarication.”

“Not to worry, I shall keep an eye on them for you,” Elberg said reassuringly.

Allenson nodded assent.

“Of course, it’s just that I would have liked observe the process.”

 

Castaway Planet – Chapter 15

Castaway Planet – Chapter 15

Chapter 15

“Can’t I please come with –”

“No.” Her mother’s answer was firm. “You seem recovered, mostly, but you were in very bad shape for a while yesterday. I don’t expect to see any more trouble, but for today you’re staying near camp. You’ll have plenty more chances to explore, I promise.”

“Sorry, Saki,” her father said, and gave her a consoling hug. That didn’t exactly make up for it, but it was a hug, anyway.

Akira straightened and beckoned to Melody. “Come on, Mel. You were hoping for an adventure a while back, now’s your chance.”

Sakura saw the momentary excited jump up, and turned away to hide a smile. Melody was normally lazy, and she cultivated the bored appearance at times — why, Sakura didn’t know, it wasn’t like she was old enough to be acting like that — but that was right now clearly fighting a battle with Melody’s curiosity and desire to be one of the people who found something new on this planet.

Of course, she suspected that Mel had another reason for volunteering to be the third member of the expedition.

Whips waved to all of them, and the three disappeared over the edge of the landing scar, heading for the shoreline, which they planned on following for a considerable distance to observe what the local sea and shore life was like.

“All right, Caroline,” Laura said briskly. “It’s up to you and me. Sakura, you’re in charge of continuing camp setup and keeping an eye on Hitomi.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“And you call me if you feel anything wrong, you understand?”

“I will, don’t worry.” She meant that. She wasn’t going to forget the terror she’d felt as the poison worked its way through her, not any time soon. If there was a slower-acting component to the thing’s venom, she had to admit there was no better place to be than in shouting range of her mother.

And it did, at least, give her an excuse to not be digging the deep disposal pit, which was where they’d put the, well, crap that would eventually have to be emptied from the shelter’s toilet facility.

“C’mon, Hitomi. We’ve got chores to do before we get to play.”

Hitomi made a face, but stopped her run towards the edge of the landing scar and came back.

Sakura first had Hitomi help scrub out the shells she’d brought back with sand, multiple times. Her mother’s tests had shown that the tough little shells were a mix of carbon-based material and silicate, but didn’t have any toxic components of note. The same couldn’t be said for the remnants of stinging land-anemone or whatever that was inside, so they had to get every little trace of the animals out.

This was, fortunately, exactly the kind of thing Hitomi was good at. Get her focused on one task that she could keep doing and that needed a lot of attention to detail, and she could keep doing it for a long time. Sakura didn’t find this task quite as engrossing, but it was nice to see the things cleaning up so well, becoming smooth, shiny white-green bowls. They’d have to rinse them out with water too, but if they got all the hard part done with the sand it’d go a lot easier.

After that was done, she and Hitomi carefully swept out the shelter, using a bundle of frayed wiry fibers from the crash tied to a broken support rod. She glanced at the sun, noting how far it had risen, and checked her omni. “Hey, Mom, it’s been a while — I think it’s lunchtime.”

“Really?” There was a pause, then, “You’re right, Saki. I was thrown off by the sun. Makes it look more like, oh, ten thirty in the morning.”

“Thirty-two hour rotation instead of twenty-four,” Caroline confirmed. “That’s going to be a little confusing.”

“Yes, we’ll be out of synch with the light cycle,” Akira’s voice came over the omnis. “Our natural cycle will still stay around twenty-four hours, so our “morning” will migrate from actual morning to afternoon to late night and back to morning again over three of Lincoln’s day-cycles.”

“You’re still in range, hon? It’s been several hours, I’d have thought –”

“– I’d have gotten farther, eh? Well, love, first of all we are quite a ways away. But we have Melody’s omni, which does have better range, and I moved Caroline’s up to the highest point near the camp so it could be a relay. Also, we’re following the coast. We’re probably about a kilometer and a half from you as the four-winged whoosiwhatsis flies.”

Sakura and Hitomi were getting out some of the rations as her mother and Caroline came trudging up the slope. “So how is the expedition going, Akira?” her mother asked.

“Oh, very well. Unlike the broken area near the ex-lagoon, which got rather well cleaned-out by the fall of that mass of rock, most of the shoreline does, in fact, have an extensive mass stretching out underwater — a beach and shore or surf zone. Whips has done some quick survey work and says in places he can scan it can go out two kilometers or more.”

“That should be a good thing for us, yes?”

“Very good, yes. Shallow-water ecosystems like that will be easy for us to harvest from, and will tend to keep the worst predators from getting too close in to shore.”

“How’s Melody doing?”

“Occasional minor complaints, but she’s been taking pictures with her omni and making muttered notes to herself. Whips didn’t encounter anything too large in his quick dips, but he thinks he’s found underwater burrows of creatures similar to the one he caught before. We’ll try to catch a couple and bring them back for dinner when we’re returning.”

“And what have you been up to?”

“Sampling everything I find, of course. There are a couple of tentative observations I have, but I’m going to need a bit more data before I draw conclusions from it.” He paused. “Melody’s calling me; I had better go see what she’s found. Talk later, Laura; love you!”

“Love you too.” Her mother smiled as she put the omni back on her belt. “Oh, thank you, Sakura, Hitomi. That was lovely of you.”

“We’ll need to find water pretty soon, Mom,” Sakura said hesitantly.

“I know, hon. I’m sure your father has an eye out for that, and we’ll keep looking until we find it.”

After lunch, Hitomi and Sakura cleaned everything up. Sakura stopped her little sister before she crammed the plastic wrappings into the disposal at the side of the shelter. “Wait on that, Hitomi.”

“Why? It’s trash. Mommy says to always put the trash in the trash as soon as you’re done.”

“Because stuff that’s trash back home might not be something we want to throw away here,” Sakura said slowly. “Mom?”

She heard her mother give a pained grunt, obviously lifting something heavy. “Yes?”

“Should I be keeping the wrappings from the rations? I mean, I don’t know if there’s a use for them –”

“Oh. Keep them for now. We’ll talk that over when everyone else is together. Now, honey, don’t interrupt me again unless you absolutely have to, Caroline and I are working hard on this together.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Saki? Can we go up there?” Hitomi pointed up to the land above the landing scar. “I haven’t seen where we are yet.”

I should be doing something useful… Sakura’s gaze lit on the pile of salvaged material that Caroline had brought back yesterday. There’s an idea. “Okay, we can, Hitomi. Just let me get a couple of things.”

The route the family was using to climb up to the higher ground was already starting to look like a path. That made it easier to climb, too, Sakura thought as she led Hitomi up, carrying a bundle of stuff with her.

“Wow, it’s so pretty!” Hitomi exclaimed, and started to run.

Sakura dropped everything she was carrying and snagged her sister. “Slow down, Hitomi! You listen to me. Are you listening?”

Hitomi looked slightly hurt, and shocked by the sudden yank. “What?”

Sakura knelt down and looked seriously into her little sister’s eyes. “Hitomi, we’ve just gotten here. We don’t know everything that’s safe, and everything that’s dangerous. You have to stay near me. You can’t go running off by yourself somewhere. Be careful. Watch what you’re touching. We know that most of this stuff doesn’t seem to cause any problem just by walking on it or sitting on it, but,” she held up her arm, where the sting marks still showed, mottled red-brown, “we’ve already seen something else that will kill us if it can.”

Hitomi’s eyes were wide, and Sakura could tell she now had her sister’s full attention. “I’m not saying to be terrified of everything, either. Just be careful, and if anything nips you, stings you, pricks you, you let me know right away. And stay near me.”

“Yes, Saki.”

“Okay.”

Hitomi watched as Sakura took the jumble of wreck materials over to a nearby flat-topped boulder and spread them out. Sakura sat down, and picked through the pieces. She’d chosen a bunch of reinforcement fibers which had been ripped free, a chunk of metal about the size of her fist whose origin was uncertain, and some smaller shards of metal, along with a rod of composite about a meter long and some composite pieces.

Okay, let’s see. We already talked about needing weapons, and if we’re going to protect ourselves and hunt, it’s time to start on that.

The smaller shards of metal were of generally triangular shape — ideal, Sakura thought, for spearheads. But she’d need to get them to a pretty symmetric shape and get them sharp on the point and edges, plus have something — a haft? she wasn’t sure of the right name — which she could use to connect it to a shaft, like the rod she had brought up.

Her Shapetool could of course configure to exactly what she wanted, but if it was strapped onto a spear shaft she couldn’t use it for anything else — and if it got used and the spearhead came off, they’d have lost one of their most versatile tools. Mom’d kill me. And that would be taking the really easy way out, anyway.

The three pieces she had to choose from were roughly the same size, but one of them actually had a bit sticking out which might be good for the… Sakura paused and checked her omni’s database. Tang, that’s the word! That should be good for the tang.

The rest of it came to a nearly-symmetrical point. One side had a thick edge, the other a ragged but much thinner edge. If she could hammer the one flatter and smooth out the other, it might make a good spearhead.

The hand-sized chunk of steel would make a good hammer. It fit nicely into the palm of her hand. She took a good grip, steadied the putative spearhead on the flat rock, and brought the hammer-chunk down.

There was a sharp, buzzing whack, and she could see the impact had left a significant ding in the other metal. Ha! It’s softer than the hammer! Encouraged, she hit the thick side several times. It does seem to be flattening!

“What are you doing?” Hitomi asked.

Sakura explained her idea. Hitomi immediately wanted to try, but it was pretty obvious that she didn’t have the strength to hit hard enough; it wasn’t easy for Sakura, truth be told. “So what can I do?” she asked.

She’s in a helping mood. That’s good, if I can figure out something… An idea struck her. “You know what? I think there is something you could do that would help everyone, especially Mommy and Daddy.” Sakura fiddled with her Shapetool and handed it to Hitomi, now configured into a two-sided tool that was a pair of gripping tongs on one side and a cutting shear on the other. “Go over the local plants and things and get a sample of each one. Pile them in order on that other rock, there? That way Daddy and Mommy can go over them and see what kinds of things we have. The shear will let you cut pieces out and the tongs let you pick them up safely, just in case.”

“I can do that!” Hitomi said proudly. She took the Shapetool carefully and walked to the waving grasslike stuff nearby. Studying the stalks intently, the little blonde-haired girl very methodically selected one, clipped off a stalk, picked it up with the tongs, and carried it to the other rock; without being told, she took another loose rock and put it down on top of her sample, to keep it from blowing away in the light breeze. Hitomi went back, studied the grass, and cut another stalk.

“Isn’t that the same stuff? We want samples of different –”

“This isn’t the same!” Hitomi said defensively. She brought the newly-cut stalk over, gripped in the tongs. “See these bumps? They’re not the same on the other one.”

Sakura put down her hammer-chunk and went over to the first sample with Hitomi. Sure enough, the “bumps” — which looked to Sakura sort of like the joints seen on things like horsetails — had a different pattern that really did argue for them being different species.

“Sorry, Hitomi. I should know better than to argue with you.” Hitomi’s attention to detail, when you got her attention at all, was legendary. “You keep doing that and Mommy and Daddy will be very excited.”

Hitomi smiled brightly and skipped back to the surrounding greenery.

Sakura turned her attention back to the piece of metal. I’ve seen stuff kinda like this on some of the immersives I’ve played, but never really did any of it. Still, how hard can it be? Just pound the metal into the right shape, then sharpen it by grinding it down. I’ll bet I could use this coral-rock as a good grindstone kinda thing.

She started pounding methodically, working her way up and down the thick edge so that she hopefully wouldn’t flatten one area much more than another. It took a while to figure out the right angle and force to use to not jolt the heck out of her arm and hand and still get the metal to move a bit on every impact. Sakura paused and checked on Hitomi; her little sister had moved somewhat around the perimeter but was now carrying, very carefully, what looked like a dark green puffball in the tongs and placing it on what was already a fairly impressive array of pieces of plants and, probably, plant-like things. She’s focused now; she’ll do that for hours, probably, unless something distracts her.

Reassured, Sakura went back to her work. Now that I’ve figured this out…

But as time went on, Sakura found, to her chagrin, that what looked really easy in an immersive sim … wasn’t nearly so easy. The side she was pounding on was thinning, yes, but it was also mushrooming out, and parts of the metal were splitting slowly. There was no sign of a nice, clean edge appearing. She thought her Shapetool might be able to trim off some of the edge, but she had to, grudgingly, admit that her cavalier assessment of how easy this should be had been badly wrong. They make it look easy in the games — smith heats metal, pounds it, grinds it, got a blade. Sometimes just pounds on the metal.

She studied the mass of junk again. Making a blade wasn’t easy. Whips would probably be laughing at her for trying it that way. But maybe there was something else.

The long reinforcement fibers were like braided cord — and very strong. But they wouldn’t do as a whip; she’d intended them just for tying things together. The meter-long rod wouldn’t make a very good club; it was too light on its own. The hammer-chunk of steel wasn’t shaped in a way that would make it easy to attach it to something. She thought about various types of weapons. Well, tough cord could be used for a, whatchacallit, garrotte, but that’s not a hunting weapon. I’ve seen something people throw to tangle up prey… a bola? Her omni had a little information on those, including how to determine the right weights and lengths of cord.

But learning to use them would take a lot of time, and they’d be pretty useless as a defensive weapon up close. Sakura wanted something they could use for hunting or for protection.

She looked at the rod, then a thought occurred to her. She took it and tried to bend it. The rod bent, then sprang back to its original shape as soon as she let go.

Bow and arrow?

The problem then would be arrows. They’d need something pretty straight, the right thickness, and a way to put heads on them — and making the heads would go right back to the problem she was having with making spearheads. Or maybe you could just take the stuff you used for the shafts and sharpen it? Fire-hardening, that’s what I’m thinking of. There’s some kind of trick to that.

“Well, Saki, what are you up to here?”

She jolted to her feet, startled. “Dad? I thought you were out exploring!”

“We were, but it’s been a long day.” Akira Kimei showed traces of sunburn, a lot of sweat, and his hair was disarranged and filled with sand and salt, but he was grinning widely. Behind him, Melody was trudging up, carrying a bag of samples, and the scraping sound and movement behind her showed Whips was also approaching. “But a very good day overall.”

She saw a potential disaster in the making as Whips emerged from the surrounding vegetation. “Watch it, everyone — Hitomi’s samples are on that rock. Don’t walk over it.”

“Hitomi’s samples?” Akira smiled. “Well, that should be interested. Where is Hitomi?”

With a shock, Sakura realized that she’d lost track of time — and she didn’t remember, now, seeing that movement out of the corner of her eye that told her Hitomi had brought in a new sample. “I… I don’t know!”

“Don’t panic,” her father said quickly. “Hitomi! Hitomi!” he called.

There was no answer.

“HITOMI!” she called as loud as she could.

There was still no answer. “Dad…”

“If she was making this collection, she can’t have gone too far. Let’s all look around.” Her father’s tone did not quite conceal his worry, and Sakura’s gut tightened. How could she have been so stupid?

She hesitated, took a deep breath. Got to think. Part of me must have heard her, must have seen her, last time she went by. Which direction?

She turned slowly, until a part of her said yes. She couldn’t put her finger on exactly what told her that was the right direction, whether she’d heard some faint noise, seen some shadow, or what, but she was pretty sure this was the direction Hitomi had gone.

Please be okay, please be okay…

“Hitomi! Come on, answer me, Hitomi!”

Her omni pinged. “What’s wrong, Sakura?”

“Mom…” she heard her voice quiver. “Mom, I… I lost Hitomi.”

There was a sharp intake of breath. “How could you — ” her mother began to snap, then stopped. “You’re looking for her now?”

“Me, Dad, Mel, and Whips. They just got back. Oh, God, Mom, I’m so –”

“Don’t, Saki. Find her.”

She filled her lungs again and shouted, “HITOMI!!”

She heard the others calling too, in different directions, pushed on. There were so many things they didn’t know; so many things that could have hurt her. She had a grisly vision of one of those hole-dwelling things striking, dragging her little sister down… She shuddered, felt nausea rising. Or something could have stung her… poisoned her… God, I’m so stupid, stupid, I should’ve watched her…

“HITOMI!”

Nothing.

She drew another breath, then stopped. What…?

Ahead, and a little to the right, she heard a rapping sound.

She waited.

There it was again. It sounded like rocks banging together.

If she gets absorbed in a project…

She ran towards the sound. Sparkling, darting things flew in panic from the plants. Something else scuttled away, making a faint wheezing noise as fled.

Sakura burst through a group of jointed-stalked plants into a tiny clearing.

Hitomi was sitting there, a rock in her hand, carefully banging on another rock that was covered with plants. In that momentary glance, Sakura had the impression the unpounded ones looked something like very skinny celery.

Sakura felt her knees wobble, realized that the combination of yesterday’s poisoning and this new panic was catching up with her. “Everyone, I’ve found her!”

Hitomi didn’t even seem to notice immediately. She took another handful of plants, placed them carefully on the rock, and started pounding on these new additions. Sakura walked shakily closer, then laid a hand on Hitomi’s shoulder.

Her little sister jumped, then looked up with a suddenly guilty expression. “I’m sorry!”

Sakura dropped down on her knees and hugged Hitomi fiercely. “It’s okay, I just… just should have kept a better eye on you.” She looked at the green-spattered rock. “What in the world were you doing?”

“Oh! I was cutting a plant, and one of them … squished funny. And I saw it had these, like, strings? In it. And the way it squished was funny, and I wanted to see what happened if I squished more, but there were only a couple, so I kept looking until I found a lot of them in a big clump…”

Sakura shook her head. It was so very Hitomi. She got an idea in her head and it literally took over. “Well, look, Dad’s back. Let’s get back to camp.”

Hitomi looked back at the rock reluctantly. “But I want to bring it with me.”

“A bunch of squished plants? Hitomi, how could we carry it? It’s stuck to the rock! Even if it wasn’t, it’d just be a big squashy mess!” To prove her point she grabbed a mass of the fibers at the edge and pulled.

Most of the mass of pounded plants peeled off the rock in a single sheet, translucently green in the sun.

 

Spell Blind – Snippet 13

Spell Blind – Snippet 13

“This is a nice place, Miss Skiles.”

“Thanks. And it’s Maddie, all right?” She walked into the kitchen. “I’m going to have some coffee. You want anything?” She turned to me, and I could see that she was holding a jar of instant.

Coffee sounded good, but not that coffee. I admit it: I’m a coffee snob.

“I’m fine thanks.” I peered down a corridor. “Which room was–?” I stopped, seeing the yellow crime-scene tape stretched in a large “X” across the doorway on the left side of the hall.

“Yeah,” she said from behind me. “That’s Claud’s room. I wish they’d finish up already, you know? That tape creeps me out.”

“Have they searched in there a lot?”

“A couple of times. But they haven’t taken much away.”

No doubt they were hoping to uncover something that would link her to the other victims. If my experience working on the case with Kona was any guide, they’d find nothing.

I started down the corridor.

“You’re not allowed in there!” Maddie called after me. “They told me that it was against the law even to open the door.”

“I know,” I said, smiling back at her. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

I could tell she was unconvinced, but I didn’t wait for her okay. I had enough experience with crime scenes to know what I could get away with and what I couldn’t. I even went so far as to untuck my shirt and put it over the knob so that I wouldn’t leave prints on it when I opened the door. Then I slipped through the lower part of the “X” and shut the door behind me.

I wasn’t stupid. I had no intention of touching anything, at least not anything important. But I needed something small of Claudia’s for the scrying I planned to do at the crime scene.

Her bedroom had a lot in common with every other college kid’s bedroom I’d ever seen. There was a futon in the far corner on a simple pine frame that must have cost three hundred dollars at the Futon Shoppe in Tempe. The walls were covered with posters, some of them political, others showing various alternative rock groups — Psychic Currency, Stealth Hype, TorShun. Her stereo sat on a peach crate near the bed, and a set of cinder block and pine bookshelves lined the wall beside an old desk. There were a few framed photos of her and Tilo on a dresser opposite the door, but none of them could have been too recent; in all of them her hair was blonde, and his was to his shoulders.

Some of the drawers in both the desk and bureau were half open, and her closet door stood ajar. Several pairs of shoes lay scattered on the floor. Most of them were high-top sneakers and combat-style boots, but a few might have been dressier. I wasn’t really an expert.

I found what I needed on her bureau. A hair brush sat next to one of the photos, a tangle of black hair caught in the plastic bristles. I pulled out several strands, all of them blonde near the root, wound them around my finger, and placed them in one of the small plastic evidence bags that I still carried in my bomber pocket. Old habits die hard. I scanned the room one last time, then let myself out, again taking care not to disturb the police tape.

Maddie was waiting for me in the hallway outside the door, her forehead creased. “I shouldn’t have let you in there,” she said, as soon as she saw me. “You’re going to get me in, like, so much trouble.”

I shook my head. “No, I’m not. I promise.”

Her frown deepened.

“I used to be a cop. I know how to treat a crime scene. I didn’t touch anything. No one will ever know I was in there.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“You find anything?”

“Not really. But I didn’t search as thoroughly as I would have liked.” I smiled. “Because I didn’t want to get you in trouble.”

That coaxed a reluctant grin from her. “Thanks.”

“You said that you knew who had sold Claudia her drugs. Can you tell me now?”

Her smile disappeared and she seemed to shrink back from me.

“Was it Robby Sommer?”

She gaped. “You know him?”

“I busted him once. Did Claudia buy drugs from him?”

“All the time,” she said. “He’s a creep. I told her to stay away from him, but she couldn’t, you know?”

“Did she buy from anyone else, or just from Robby?”

“I think just from Robby. But I don’t know for sure. We didn’t talk about it, because she knew I didn’t approve.”

“All right. Thanks.” I pulled a card from my wallet and handed it to her. “If you think of anything else that might help me out, give me a call, all right?”

“Yeah, sure,” she said. She glanced at the card. “Justis?”

“Yup,” I said, walking to the door.

“Weird name.”

“I know. Bye, Maddie.”

“You going to bust Robby again?” She asked, stopping me.

“I’m not a cop anymore. But Robby isn’t the smartest guy on the planet. He’ll get himself busted before long.”

She grinned, and I left.

I drove to the south end of South Mountain Park and hiked into the center of the preserve, where Claudia had been found. It was a warm, clear morning, and usually I would have enjoyed being out. Rock wrens scolded me from atop boulders by the trail, bobbing up and down and flitting into the brush whenever I stopped to rest or take a drink of water. Tiny blue butterflies fluttered around the brittlebush and rattleweed.

But this wasn’t a walk to be savored. Too soon I reached the ravine where, two and one half years ago, the Blind Angel killer left the body of Maria Santana, his fourth victim.

 

About two hundred yards farther up the trail, I saw the crime scene tape marking the spot where Claudia had been found a few days ago. It shone in the desert sun, shockingly yellow, strung among the palo verde trees. No one else was around, though the trail was lined with fresh bike tracks. I pulled out my scrying stone and the evidence bag that held those strands of Claudia’s hair.

The magic I’d come all this way to try was called a seeing spell. Like scrying, it was a kind of divination magic; if it worked it would allow me to see what Claudia had seen the night she died. As always with magic, though, there were a couple of catches. To cast the spell correctly, I needed something that belonged to Claudia. That was why I had taken those strands of hair. Clothing would work, too, but hair was better, and body parts probably would have been ideal. Don’t laugh. Over the years, sorcerers had resorted to all sorts of stuff.

The other catch was that the spell only worked if Claudia had been in this place, alive. I couldn’t do a seeing spell for Claudia from my house, because she’d never been there, and standing here in South Mountain Park, I couldn’t scry what Claudia had seen, say, at her parents’ home. Seeing spells were specific to a given place.

I knew that Claudia had been here, on this trail. I didn’t know for certain if she’d been alive at the time, or if the weremyste had killed her before bringing her here. All the forensics from the other killings pointed to her being alive up until the moment that the sick bastard burned the eyes out of her skull. But I couldn’t be sure until I tried the spell.