Five

 

 

 

“Are you really a sculptor?” Phran asked his albinic charge as they walked down the corridor.  His tone was one of friendly curiosity.

“Yeah, I’m sort of a hack ’n slash artist.  I probably should’ve told Dayv I was here to study your stone-cutting materials.”

Phran chuckled, albeit rather weakly.  “What did you tell him?”

Nonchalantly, “The truth.”

Phran nodded apologetically as they turned a corner.  Blade was starting to get a feel for where she was.

“You have to understand,” Phran told her, “that the gravity here’s pretty strong, and often bends the truth.”

One of the two escorts in the rear made an uncomfortable coughing noise.  Phran shuddered; his quip about truth had been overheard and misunderstood by one of the lay miners.  It might get back to Dayv, or even Throhn, and it would probably not go over too well.  He quickly changed the subject, back to his original line of thought.

“Do you know anything about architecture?”

Blade was not in the mood to be questioned further, but his tone seemed to be one of ernest curiosity.  It reminded her of Jaymz back on the freighter repeatedly asking her about art.  The association soured her to talking any further, so she smiled coyly at Phran and kept her silence the rest of the way back to her cell.

Phran found the silence, much like the person generating it, enigmatically intriguing.  He decided she’d had enough questioning for a while, so respected her silence.  And wondered.

They reached the room, and Phran flipped on the lights.  Without being told, Blade went into the storage space to the right, and Phran qeyed the force field.

“We’re getting ready for dinner,” he told her, and at the word her tummy rumbled.  “I’ll see if I can get you something when we’re done.”

“Thank you,” she said with a smile.  “If it’s not too much trouble, I’m a vegetarian.”

He regarded her curiously.  “Oh, that’s no problem.  We usually are, too.”  This was because Throhn controlled the colonies’ diet, and was a fairly strict vegan.  His motives for this extended beyond budget finances.

“Hope you like popcorn,” one of the guards chuckled.  It was true: for the past three weeks dinner had consisted of a bowl of popcorn lightly seasoned with garlic salt (Throhn said it would help keep their strength up.)

Blade’s tummy grumbled again.  “Anything’s fine,” she said.

Phran nodded, and left with the two miners.  The door shut, latched with a deep shudder, and she was alone.

She blew out a deep breath, and her stomach openly growled this time.  She wondered if Gaerry had eaten without her.  If he was really interested, he’d wait for her to get back.

This led to the thought of how to get back to the station to keep her dinner date.

“I am so screwed,” she said aloud without intending to.

The sound of her own voice startled her.  She looked around, then realized it was herself.  She laughed feebly, and paced the room.

She sat on the shelf serving as her bed.  It was bent slightly in the middle, and was loose in the wall sockets.  The boxes underneath were to prevent it from falling to the floor under her weight.  Blade smiled: they’d used this room as a holding cell before, and whoever it was for must have been pretty chunky.  Wondering at the fate of the former occupant, she got up and pulled out the two boxes.  Both were flat gray metal with MRE Carbonite Bit 13 stenciled on the side.  They both held badly pitted foam padding with concentrically smaller cutouts that looked like it would hold an over-sized toy top.  She pushed them aside and looked underneath the shelf.

In the wall was a small vent, grated over.  In the dim shadows it seemed as if something were moving in there, and after a moment she realized something was.  Eagerly she crawled up to the vent, then just as eagerly backed away when she saw what was beyond.  Two small rats lay beyond, one mounting the other.  The female seemed uninterested in the whole procedure.  Blade glanced at the grill; screwed in place and painted over.  Okay, the rats couldn’t get in.  With her stiletto she could open it, but barring the beasts beyond, it was still much too narrow for her.  It curved almost immediately anyway.

Something else caught Blade’s attention: just inside the vent were two cigarette butts.  This made her smile, which became more broad as she was able to find a small tube of ash against the wall.  Somebody had been in here with contraband.

Movement in the vent: the male was gaining momentum.  His mount was impassive.  In fact, it looked dead.  Blade began to back out, her distaste adding to her haste, so of course she bumps her head on the side.  Hard enough to smart, and hard enough to knock something loose from the side of the shelf.  Wincing, she looked over to see what had fallen.  In the shadows under the shelf, it looked like a small box.  Curiously, she reached over and picked it up.  The surface was cool and spongy, and suddenly she wondered what the hell she was touching.  Hastily she pulled it out into the light.

In the palm of her hand was a small rectangle of foam, sculpted undoubtedly from the two containers supporting her bunk.  A pocket had been dug out in the centre, inside which rested a card.  A red א and pentagram in the upper right corner was mirrored inversely in the lower left.

Blade frowned, and picked up the plaque.  On the back, a blue pattern with the logo of the gambling cartel manufacturer in each corner.  Okay, I’ve found an Ace of Pentacles.  Classical meaning was either imminent wealth or imminent poverty, depending on inversion.  This was just a card from a tournament deck, though, devoid of distracting symbols such as a hand outstretched from a cloud, holding the pentacle.  That centre star, however, was right handed, so she assumed it to be right-side up, and smiled with false optimism.  She studied the card a while, wondering at its history.  This was the hole card to have in a regulation-game of Pentacle, so if it’s missing from a deck, the owner must be pissed.

She tossed the card onto her bed, and carefully explored the rest of her room.  The shelves were all empty, each had a fine layer of grime coating them.  She soon found herself at the blue force field paneling off her room.  In the room opposite hers, she saw several large boxes stacked carefully on the floor, plus stacks of office supplies on the shelves.  In the room next to it, she saw more of the unmarked boxes.  The force screens were up on those rooms, too: whatever was in that room was either valuable, or needed a certain constant climate.

A thought suddenly struck Blade: if they were trying to maintain environments with this forcefield, they should have sealed up the air vent under her cot.  She looked at the sides of the wall, where the forcefield projectors were mounted.  Rush installation job, and fairly recent.  The parts are shiny and new, two are slightly askew; clearly the work of an amateur, just good enough to keep me prisoner.  Rats—I’m trapped.

On cue, a soft squeak came from under her cot.  If they’d done their jobs right and screened that vent off, I wouldn’t have heard that.

There seemed to be a lesson in that, she decided, or at least a typical indication of the people who had her prisoner.  At every instance since her arrival she’d found proof that these miners had no clue what they were doing.  Organization, coordination, and competence were clearly out of their league.  Very quickly, however, a second opinion about her hosts formed.  These guys are so on edge that they can’t think straight.

What the phuq was going on here?

People don’t spaz out like this unless you’ve caught them doing something they shouldn’t be doing.  Given what she’d seen so far, however, they didn’t seem capable of doing very much—at least correctly.  Still, it was shaping up to be a case of that age-old malady: wrong place at the wrong time.

After a while she went back to her cot, shoved the two boxes underneath to support her weight, and sat down.  Idilly, she picked up the card she’d found.

She wondered again at the fate of the owner.  The miners had incarcerated somebody chunky with a penchant for tobacco and cards.  Made sense; those sounded like bad taboos around this place.

This whole place was one bad taboo.

A glance at her watch, then realized she’d given it over.  She thought about her timepiece, and the rubber band holding it together.  Smiling, she placed the card against her wrist where the band had dangled to, thus fulfilling Dayv’s prophecy.  Blade quickly spent the impulse to play with her new card when her stomach openly growled.  She wondered what time it was, and made a surprisingly good guess.  She was already late for her date with Gaerry; her appointment with Jn'Tonx was about four hours away.  Jn'Tonx had clearly mistaken her for someone from the colony; if it didn’t realize its mistake, it would probably try to get her out of here.  If it did realize, than most likely it would simply let her rot in this cell.  And most likely, it had probably already realized the error, so she couldn’t rely on that end.  And who could she rely on?  No one else knew she was down there; she had already effectively disappeared, and it would take just a quick shove through an airloq to make that disappearance final.

Again she began to analyze the situation, hoping to pick up the missing pieces to the puzzle around her.  'Tonx thought she was someone associated with the colony, and had offered her money in exchange for her trinkets.  It had also offered to set up payment in a way that presumably anyone from the colony could get to the funds.  So 'Tonx would seem to be financing the colony in an underhanded way.  Hmmmm—if the colony was strapped for cash, perhaps she could trade some of her antiques for her freedom, and they in turn could sell them to the plucky Saladrin.

Actually, that just might work, she thought, and made a note to propose it the next chance she got.  She glanced at the card in her hand: perhaps this omen is true, and I will be seeing a reversal of fortune soon.  Thinking that, she tossed the card back onto the mattress.

When it landed, she instantly noticed that a thin white streak had appeared in the centre.  She frowned, and then picked it back up again.  The blotch exactly matched where she had been holding it, and she even saw a blurry reproduction of her thumbprint.  Flipping it over, the plaque was the colour of the mattress, with four white ovals from her fingertips.

No, it couldn’t be...  Quickly, she leaned forward, and placed the card against the wall, and then leaned back, pinning the plaque against the wall with her weight.  Blade began to understand why she had found the card propped in a custom foam container: someone had taken pains to ensure that the card’s surface didn’t make contact with anything, destroying the effect.  After a minute, she leaned forward and scooped up the card.  One side was the lima bean green hue of the cell, the other was a monochrome swirl from her jacket.

Cool.  I’ve got a Doppelganger card.[1]

 

               

           

Out of sight, the main entrance hissed apart, and shortly two miners hustled down the hall, making sure not to look at her.

 

 

 

 

Here is what Blade dreamed:

She was in a surreal version of Dayv’s office, strapped in to an antique electric chair from Jn'Tonx’s collection.  Phran was standing to one side, wearing a puffy bunny tail, bunny ears, and a sign around his neck reading “Good Cop” in elegant Caandelenian calligraphy.  Dayv was behind his desk, sporting a ten-gallon rancher’s hat and a sign that read “Bad Cop” in her native script.

“Who sculpted David?” he drawled in Caandelenian, the usual language of Blade’s dreams.

“David who?” she asked.  Being Caandelenian, she knew little about Earthly sculpture, except what she’d gleaned in a Comparative Primitive Sculpture class she’d taken at Peabody several years ago.  That gleaning yielded a thin harvest in terms of interest or recognizance, which, she knew, was why Dayv was grilling her on the subject.

Jn'Tonx hit a switch, and a light came down on a statue.  It appeared exactly as it did in the text photo she’d seen of it, and she recognized it.

“Who sculpted David,” Dayv drawled thickly.

“Uh, Michalangelo?” she guessed, picking one of the handful of names her memory held on to.

“No!” Screamed Dayv, standing up from his chair suddenly.  “Jesse and his wife!”

“Who was his wife?”

Smug smirk.  “You tell me.”

Phran came over, still dressed like a bunny.  “Enough about sculpture.  Let’s discuss sex and salad dressing.”

Jn'Tonx lit up in exhibits B and C.  These were her birth control pills and a tin of fish resting on a bowl of sprouts.

“Now, we caught you smuggling both of these in,” Phran said reassuringly.

“No!  The fish are in my bag on the station.”

“Still, it’s meat,” he said, guiltily.

“I just like the name,” she said.  The package bore the Hamaddi phrase, Hunkel Meet.  “Uncle Meat, get it?  It was an impulse buy.”

Reaching in, Phran sampled one of the diced red fish.

“Ewwww,” he puckered at the taste.  “Give her the chair.”

Dayv threw a switch, and Blade promptly melted into a puddle on the floor.  She began to flow towards the door.  Phran stepped on her in an attempt to hold her down, which caused her to splash into the air.  Liquid Blade arced through the air and right through the keyhole.  She landed outside on a typical Caandelenian afternoon.  It was cold enough that she froze back to her normal self, and shivering, got up out of the snow.

Layn, her brother, was under a tree making a snowbeast.  He was how she last saw him: fifteen and stoned.

“Hi, Gret.” he called out with a wave.  She returned it, goosepimples on her arm.  Quickly, she ran over to the Hotel Miramar on the next hill.

Stimpy was behind the counter, a big, roly-poly tom with his tongue dangling out.

“I’d like to leave a wake-up call for noon of next Moonday,” she announced, having every intention of going up to her bed and crashing.

Stimpy reached into a bowl and pulled out a nice, plump rat.  Legs and tail still twitching, he took a healthy nibble from its flank.  The rat took no notice, but its consumer did.  After a few thoughtful chews, he spit the mouthful into a brass spittoon brimming with passively squirming rats.

“Yuck.  Doesn’t taste right.  You just can’t get good rat around here any more.”  He tossed the rodent he held into the spittoon, and tried another as Blade went over to the elevator.  An'ton'n, in Jn'Tonx’s black atmosphere suit, sat on a stool and hummed the Saladrin Sympathy Dirge.  The elevator was the dumb-waiter, and she rode it all the way to the top.  As she approached, There were no doors, just a metal cap on the ceiling with finger holes on the sides so someone could open it from above.

Moments later, a steel ladder shot down from the ceiling, narrowly missing her.  She jerked out of its way, and almost woke herself up doing so.  But still asleep, she took hold of the rungs and climbed to the top.

Pushing up on the heavy metal lid, she saw she was in the middle of a street.  Houses and trees lined both sides, as did archaic automobiles.  The manhole she was in was surrounded by wooden barricades with flashing yellow lights.  There was a lot of activity behind her, so she pushed the lid off, stuck her head out, and turned around.

Twenty meters away, the area was chaos.  There was a huge black chasm filling up both ground and sky.  It was bordered by a vague penumbra of shifting images, some of which she recognized.  People ware everywhere, carrying tools.  A bulldozer beeped as it backed up, a white van was pulling over to three men carrying butterfly nets.  They had captured a brawny Hamaddi fem in grubby space clothes and a bandanna around her brow.  The nametag on her suit identified her as Illania, and as soon as the nets were removed she was straightjacketed and shoved rather brusquely into the van.  Blade caught a glimpse of a similarly bound passenger, an ape creature with blonde fur, before the doors slammed and the van tore off toward the gaping black chasm.

Blade looked at the activity around the rift.  A worker was preparing nouns in a cement mixer, while another was pouring colour into a trough of adjectives.  From behind her, a worker two-wheeling a pallet of italics spotted Blade peeking through the manhole and yelled “Hey Jerry!  Got one over here!”

From up the street, a heavy-set foreman turned around to look at the worker, and then at the white head peeking up from under the street.  To her surprise, Blade saw that Jerry the Foreman was talking to a Caandelenian female holding hands with a kind of cute earthling.  She didn’t recognize the guy, but the Caandelenian she’d seen in many a mirror.  However, butterfly nets approached, so she quickly dropped the lid down over her.  It had the same tone of the outer doors opening to her cell block.  Quickly, she down the ladder and into her holding cell and jumped over to her bunk.

Phran, Carrot, Dayv, and a cohort of armed miners were standing on the other side of the curtain.

“Snizz me heebbaa heebbaa Harumphanerph,” said Dayv.  This was when Blade decided she was dreaming, which was ironic because she had just awakened.

“Good news,” Phran said, smiling unctuously.  “You’re being released!”  Carrot lowered the force field, and the miners raised their rifles.  There was an audible click, and it echoed hollowly.

           

 

 

[next chapter]