117: the list, part two

Ordella Kalaf’s sleep was troubled.  ordinarily, she slept very soundly, and was in fact noted for her soundness of sleep.  more than one ex-boyfriend had made jokes about her sleeping through devastatingly loud alarms that made them, her former partners, jolt upright in bed and, in a few notable cases, run streaking for the door.  there was no doubt that she was a heavy sleeper.  but tonight, she tossed, turned, and groaned.  her dreams were dreams, but they were also memories.  dreams of fantasy can be forgotten; dreams of memory can only be felt.

Ordella clutched at her midsection, cringing as she slept.  in her dream, events transpired at the speed of light.  there was a man there, a hardened daysider, a miner, a man far beneath her, socially, politically, economically, perhaps intellectually.  but he was the only man she had ever met who found her emotionally.  even the acknowledgement of that paradigm made her feel weak: she was not an emotional person.  she was a professional, a Klinian, a proud member of KlinComm, the world’s best, and only, global news network.  she was not a “woman,” she was a woman, fierce, unexpected.  again, her dream wound tangentially as she argued these points with herself, making both the affirmative and negative positions simultaneously.

then, her dream bent back onto itself, as dreams often do, and she was once again with the miner.  and, once again, the line between memory and dream faded.  she felt the stubble of his beard first around her lips.  she felt his tongue on hers, the liquor she had bought him surging from his throat to hers.  she didn’t mind.

she felt the scratch of his stubble slip past her chin onto her neck.  his tongue was there, as well.  and it went lower, as her unbuttoned shirt peeled itself off her willing arms.

there were several moments of passion.  in her dream, or in her memory, or in a combination of the two, hands went places they should not have gone.  a sudden rush of pleasure pulsated from her core, up her spine, and out her mouth as an audible gasp.

and then, moments later, something else happened.  the miner, his face large before hers, whispered two important words past trembling teeth.  two words that would define the next nine months of her life, words that would echo through her head, and appear in dreams, such as these, for years to come.  words that had made their child, now brilliant, beautiful, and somehow forgotten.

Ordella’s sleep was troubled.  her eyes opened, and she called out a name–

*

the instant vibration of Ordella’s projection disk snapped her awake.  her eyes flicked open, gauged the amount of light spilling into her room from the eastern exposure.  the amount of light was, of course, controlled by the computers in her room, high above the ring on the seventy-fifth story, that made assumptions about what a normal morning, day, evening or night was like on a planet that was not as — well, she thought — not as fucked up as Klin.

the amount of light she gauged, though, should not normally indicate a projection disk communication from her bosses — it was before standard dawn, and her automated light generators had not yet allowed any of Klin’s persistent dayside light into her window.  thus, given the facts, it must be something important.

she rolled out of bed, planted her feet on the floor, ran a hand through her long blond hair.  a trace of it swept forward onto her face as she answered the projection disk.  “it’s Ordella,” she said with as much energy as she could find.

a vague face materialized in the air in front of her.  “get to the station, now  ! okay?” the voice was caustic, but familiar.

she bowed her head at her program director.  “i’ll be right there!” she said, with more enthusiasm than she intended; that exact enthusiasm, though, had gotten her exactly where she was.  and ten minutes later she was at the office, unpolished, but perhaps the more beautiful for it.

“this fuckin’ Gorshen thing has totally blown up.  i mean, boy, it’s a real problem.  a real fuckin’ handful, y’understand?”  she was being lectured as if she had caused the explosion, but it was nothing new.  this was how the program director operated.  Gavin Hoyt was his name, and he was in pure form this morning.  he continued, “boy, this is a real problem.  these slobs, i mean, by sun, Ordella, you know?”

she started, then paused, bit her lip, sniffed.  she took her eyes off the floor and put them on Hoyt, decided to confess.  “i’m sorry, sir.  i’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

“not sure what i’m — not sure?” he was aghast.  “not sure?  have you been asleep for the last two days?”

“i had, uh,” she began sheepishly, “the company gave me three personal days — it had been a year since i’d had any.  i, um–”

“so you spent three days just getting shit faced and forgetting about KlinCom, is that it?”

she paused, winced at the thought of what her answer was going to be.  but it was the truth, and it was the only answer.  “i thought personal days were for doing what one wanted, not for keeping tabs on one’s job.  i apologize if i misunderstood company policy.”

“well, jesus, Ordella.  were you in a goddam cave?”

“that’s fairly accurate, sir.”  she did not want to tell him about the long nights of alcohol consumption with her two best girlfriends, who had also pulled a fair number of strings to get that particular weekend off.  she did not want to tell him about their attempts to make themselves as seductive as possible as they invaded the Ring’s technically illegal but generally accepted social clubs.  she did not want to tell him about the man she had brought home, a man which she found thoroughly disappointing, a man who, despite his pretty face, had been the definition of a slouch.  she did not want to tell him about the minor, sideshow cycle of depression that she had slipped into afterward that had lead to another bout of drinking and, well, worse things, worse things that had ended only a few hours before her projection disk had rattled her back into reality.  she did not want to tell him these things, and so she suggested, “i know a lot about Gorshen plant — if you can catch me up to speed, i’m totally up for the job.”

“well,” Hoyt said, exasperated, “it fuckin’ blew up.  just, you know, gone.”

Ordella was stunned.  “what…what do you mean?”

her program director responded with a flippant wave of the hand.  “a reactor breakdown, or meltdown, or whatever the right term is.  that’s your job, okay?  not mine.  my job is to make sure this story gets off Klin in an acceptable way.  we’ve done a damn good job of keeping the bleeding hearts out of our mines for the last fifty years.  you know as well as i do that there are some liberal outworlders who want nothing more than to come down on StarEx’s labor practices.  so, just — they’re going to get their headlines from local media.  just put a fuckin’ bow on it, will ya?”

“am i going there?” she asked with a bit of trepidation.

“are you going there?  by sun, Orella, you’re the fuckin’ point person on the story.  i’ve got a skycar waiting two windows down from us.  you’re favorite camera guy’s on the job, you know, Rayson, or whatever his name is.  get on the fuckin’ skycar, will ya?  and gimmie a report that’s true, mind you, but ain’t gonna get the whole galaxy on our asses.”

Ordella cleared her throat.  “so you’re asking me to lie.”

Hoyt scoffed in frustration.  “no, of course not.  just, you know, look at facts a certain way, will ya?”

she smiled wryly, and hoped that Hoyt didn’t catch it.  to distract, she ran her hand through her hair again, and noted the degree to which it drew his attention.  “i’ll take care of it, sir.”

“very good.”  the program director.

Ordella heard the hum of the skycar a few windows down and, taking a cue from Hoyt, exited the office, found the skycar, and departed toward dayside.

**

Hoyt exited the office shortly after Ordella, and much more hastily.   there was only one untapped line in the building, and it was in the basement.  the gravlift descended quickly and Hoyt stumbled to the securest of secure phones in the KlinCom building.  he picked up the receiver, punched a few keys on the control panel.  after a few buzzes, a voice answered.

“yes?” it asked loosely.

“the final stage has begun,” Hoyt said, faking much more confidence than he had.

“good, we’ll be following her,” the man said through his teeth.  “thank you for your help.”

“oh, certainly, anything to help Sta–” it was then that he realized the line was dead, and had probably been so for several seconds.  Hoyt replaced the receiver, ran his open palms over his uniform, straightened it.  he cleared his throat, and reentered the gravlift, headed back to his office.  business as usual.

**

as had become his wont, Sorensen bent over his amplitude modulation radio.  all the accumulated transistors and diodes and copper wiring were now falling into place. he shouldn’t be here, of course — Gorshen, or what was left of it, had been shut down after the explosion.  but somehow, by pure chance, Sorensen’s little radio laboratory had survived.  he had faked and small-talked and snuck his way back in, now he was only a few connections away from boosting his radio from the upper megahertz range to the lower kilohertz range.  and, by his estimation, modulations reaching into at least a hundred kilohertz might bounce off the ionosphere and –

his thoughts were temporarily derailed by a flurry of manmade noises in the hall outside his lab.  Sorensen tensed, turned an ear towards the door.  StarEx hazardous-materials teams, he supposed.  but they would surely expel any living beings they found in the ruins of Gorshen plant, and so Sorensen slipped silently to the lab’s door, latched door’s third lock — he had remembered the first two on his entry, and now took the final percussion.  the steps faded, and he returned to his radio.  he mapped the connections, the amount of gain supplied by each transistor, the tolerance and maximum voltage of each resistor — he did all this in his mind, for safe keeping.  in reality, he found his soldering gun, still tucked in a particular drawer that had, along with the rest of the lab, remained intact, and completed what he hoped would be the final connection.  after the solder faded from a molten orange to a cool and solidified grey, he still waited.  he listened, but heard no more footsteps from the wreckage of Gorshen’s halls.  then, sure that any static electrical charge had faded from the radio, he crossed his fingers and flipped the large, white on-off switch on the radio’s side.  a hissing and twirling signal came from the speakers, and Sorensen adjusted the amplitude modulation dial.  the signal came into focus, shed its static.  Sorensen spotted the microphone on the other side of his desk, realized that it was not connected to the radio.  he fumbled for the mic’s stem, but froze when he heard a voice coming from the speakers.

“…seven earthquakes measured in the last six months…” –a flush of static masked the voice for a moment, and Sorensen adjust a few controls on the radio, pulled the voice back into focus.  “…unlikely coincidence,” the voice continued, with surprising intensity.  “…received a few …-missions, a mast–…Ricks.  could it be tha–…”  the voice descended into static, and stayed that way.

but it was them!  the nightsiders.  he had heard them!  the plans were perfect — he scanned the connections of the radio one last time, made mental notes, scribbled down a few references on the back of one of Cillian’s cigarette boxes.

then, there was an authoritative knock at the door.  the hazardous-materials team had, apparently, began to wonder why there would be three locks on a door in an abandoned and destroyed dry refinery.

**

the girl led them down a long hallway.  Issac noted the style of her clothing: it would be entirely unfashionable on Dulvern — but that observation struck him strangely, as he realized that questions of local style had no particular relevance here.  in any case, she wore tight black leggings that tucked neatly into grey boots that had two off-centered claps, to the inside on her left foot and to the outside on her right.  she wore a forest green tunic that extended nearly to her knees.  her dress was, however, playing only vaguely at the back of his mind as they traveled down a hall that they presumed ended at the man named Lambrix, the goal of their visit.

Cillian had heard stories about Lambrix, though he presumed the majority of them to be either highly exaggerated or completely false. in fact, many of the tales, told by wistful old miners, drunk on sunset, dreaming about a promising future or reminiscing about a mythical past.  one of the more common tales described Lambrix as majestic war hero, two thousand years old.  he was said to be a native of Klin — a true native, the story went — a member of a long forgotten and nearly-extinct species whose evolutionary path had closely paralleled that of the humanity which now populated the galaxy.  this species, though, had achieved inhuman longevity through, supposedly, the consumption of a dry-based elixir, the other contents of which varied from storyteller to storyteller.  the practice of consuming dry had induced other mutations as well, though the details of most of these mutations varied, again, widely between retellings.  there was one detail that was always consistent, however: the uncanny ability to focus ones hearing on any conversation, through any solid objects, and avoiding all other interference, for a distance of, some said, up to a thousand miles.  the first natives who had harnessed this ability used it to great profit, and for obvious reason.  the intentions of one’s rivals were always known, and, so long as the individual knew where to listen, access to information was nearly unlimited.  however, with time, more and more Klinians — the planet was not known as Klin to its natives, of course, and there was many suggestions as to the truth of the name as there were men who told the tales — became aware of their ability and learned to master it.  eventually, it was this astonishing ability itself that lead to the virtual extinction of the native race.  again, the reasons were obvious: the natives lost the ability to trust one another, as there was no need for trust — suspicious lovers could hear every conversation that their mate had, criminals could hear every necessary detail to plan their next robbery, murder, or whatever their nefarious designs entailed.  the natives looked for ways to protect themselves from their own abilities: spoken codes, written words, and the like.  but as is always the case, those seeking to do ill found new ways to circumvent every new form of defense.  paranoia fed isolation which only increased the paranoia.  fear turned to violence, and it was said that the natives, to a person, slipped into utter insanity.  the mass insanity led to a crippling civil war, the inciting event of which was never specified in the legends.  it was a war with as many sides as there were men, women and children, a bloody battle royale that pitted every person on the world against ever other.  Lambrix, it was said, was the sole victor of the war, finally finding peace when he had slain the last of his fellow Klinians.

with no one to listen to him, with no reason to be afraid, Lambrix, now an old man, lived alone on Klin for over a millennium before humans arrived.  when humans settled Klin, he listened to them develop the world, and discover dry.  he listened to them grow wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.  he listened as they slowly reached their fingers deeper and deeper into Klin’s soul. he heard them. and, unwilling to leave entirely, he migrated further and further into dayside, where he now lived, hidden and ancient, silently mocking the miners in their ignorance and poverty; StarEx in its ostentatious wealth and ego.

another version of the Lambrix story resembled what prehistoric people would have called an explanatory myth.  according to adherents of this tale, or at least those who enjoyed telling it, Lambrix was a only partially human.  he had the mind of a man, and a body that, at its core, resembled a man’s body.  but, by some freak of nature or as a result of some scientific experimentation gone awry — as with the former story, the variations were nearly limitless — his limbs had grown long, multiplied, burrowed beneath planet’s surface.  they had become what were known to the miners as Glanthors, the massive, carnivorous plants that sprouted sporadically in the vast planes of dayside.  research had show, of course, that the Glanthors were non-intelligent and that they lived in complete isolation from one another.  though researchers had, to Cillian’s knowledge, still not discovered the precise mechanism by which the gargantuan plants synthesized dry with living tissue to fuel their unparalleled growth — few were willing to get close, he supposed — it was well known that they were not, in fact, the million fingers of an ancient mutant.

there were many other stories, many of which Cillian had nearly forgotten.  there was a common thread through most, if not all of them, however, and though he had never given it much thought, he had had plenty of time to do just that on their circuitous journey to this mysterious location. in all of them, whether Lambrix had powers of invisibility, could communicate with animals, or had the ability to see through any man’s eyes he chose, this miner’s legend had some connection with the greater world at large, a connection that gave him a preternatural insight into the thoughts, words or activities of Klinians, or, at the very least, the ability to influence events remotely.  as it now seemed that there was at least some grain of truth to the Lambrix story, Cillian wondered what, if anything, the intertwining bits of fiction had to do with reality.

as they continued down the hall, Issac got the feeling that the space was becoming tighter, the walls more enclosing.  his eyes, though, told him that the ceiling had maintained a consistent height and the walls were just as far apart as they had been at the beginning of the hall.  there were no doors, though there were, every dozen or so feet, eye-level cutouts from the wall, roughly a cubic foot, which contained eerily-lit artifacts, none of which were familiar to Issac.  they appeared to be electronic in nature, but he was not even positive about that.  slowly, a single door came into view at the end of the hall.  Issac shot Cillian a dubious glance, to which Cillian only shrugged slightly.  the girl did not seem to notice, steadily approached the unmarked, white door.  she placed her hand on the wall next to the door, though there was no indication of a palmscanner or any other device there.

the space between her fingers glowed a dull blue for a moment, accompanied by the lowest of murmurs.  it was only then that Issac realized how completely silent the space was.  with a subtle hiss, the door slid open, revealing what appeared to be a small gravlift.  the girl entered, turned to face them, gestured with her had for them to follow.  the men hesitated, exchanged a look, then entered the lift together.  they also turned, faced the door, which slid shut behind them.  like the door to the lift, the walls inside the compartment were completely without marking and dazzlingly white.  the lift was much more illuminated than the dim hall had been, though it was unclear where exactly the light was coming from.  in fact, it seemed to Issac, as he twisted his palm in search of shadows, that the light was emanating from every point on the walls themselves.

the girl did not touch a panel, nor did she speak or make any other gesture, but, as if on command, the lift began to descend in virtual silence.

“so, uh,” Cillian said, breaking the silence in a near whisper, “you mind tellin’ me your name, sweetheart?”  he forced what he hoped would be a smooth grin, feigned confidence.

“Vize,” she said simply.  she looked at him kindly, but unwaveringly.  the force in her eyes lacked malice, but not assurance.  “thank you for asking, Cillian.”

“do you…know my name, too?” Issac asked, afraid to know the answer, either way.

Vize turned at looked at him with the same piercing, gleaming look she had given Cillian.   her voice was smooth, even.  “yes, Issac, outworlder of Dulvern.  i know you.”

“how?” Issac managed, wishing she would turn away, but trapped by his own curiosity.

“i know what Lambrix knows.  or, more precisely, I know what Lambrix would like me to know.  and he wanted me to know that you are the nephew of the trader Lathan Devers, the son of the Aurorist cleric Mellor Devers.”  Issac swallowed hard.

“how did you find us?” Cillian asked, curiosity whetted by the revelation of Vize’s, and thus, Lambrix’s, knowledge.  “how did Ash know where you were?  how do you know so much about us?”

she turned back to Cillian with the same slow steady movement she had made when turning to Issac.  deliberately, she said, “Ash knew because Lambrix wanted him to know.  the rest i will leave for him to tell you as he sees fit.”  she turned away, faced the door, and it was clear that she had no more to say on the subject.

moments later, the gravlift slowed imperceptibly to a halt, and the door slid open once again.  Vize stepped out into a cavernous, dark room, and Cillian and Issac followed.  both men scanned the edges of the room, taken aback by what they saw.  the walls were lined with large display screens, some showing video feeds from unknown sources, others had lists of figures, graphs and charts.  others scrolled rapidly through long blocks of text.  thick tubing and large bundles of wire hung loosely between the displays, sometimes twisting together towards the floor and what were presumably the processing units that fed the displays.  at the far right end of the room, the cables and tubing tied together and lead back towards the center of the room, angling lazily up towards the room’s apex, which was perhaps twenty-five feet above the black metal floor.  the conduits disappeared into an enormous box on the ceiling, itself replete with flashing lights and jutting antennae. a single spotlight coursed from the bottom of the central box straight downward.  Issac and Cillian followed the beam of light, both simultaneously laying eyes on the illuminated subject.

Issac’s face involuntarily twisted into a grimace.  he caught his breath, eyes wide and gaping, trying to comprehend what he saw.

“by, sun!” Cillian breathed in disbelief. “Lambrix?”

“it is i,” croaked an ancient voice.  “please, enter.”

**

the trip through the ribbon had gone surprisingly smooth, and Leah had been impressed with Afnen’s handling of the ship.  in fact, she had begun to quietly suspect that he was a more adept pilot than he let on.  in any case, the Swallow had already begun its descent to Poridan.  as Afnen had suggested, the Poridanian authorities had been significantly more lax in their identification demands than most worlds Leah had visited.  the Swallow bore a Dulvernian radio badge, and, having claimed they were on a voyage from Dulvern to engage in petty trading, they were given, after a short wait, landing coordinates.

from their current altitude, Leah could make out the shape of the city below them.  it was large, sprawling, clustered around a small but dense grouping of tall buildings.  they appeared to be descending toward the opposite end of the city, toward a district that appeared to be less densely populated.

as if reading her thoughts, Afnen pointed out the window in the direction of their destination and said, “it’s the industrial district.  property value’s lower, so the cost of renting a landing pad and hangar is a lot less.”

in response, Leah just smiled, first at Afnen, then back at the city, growing ever larger through the window.

“what’s it called?”

“the city?  Cal.  i’m not sure what it means.”

“Cal,” she repeated softly.

“it seemed like a good choice,” Afnen said.  “lots of industrial activity, but plenty of commercial and luxury trading as well.  the computer tells me Cal’s got one of the lowest crime rates on the planet, so you should be pretty safe.”

she paused, considered him for a moment.  “thank you, Afnen,” she said softly.

in response, he simply kept his eyes on the floor and nodded somberly.

*

an hour later, payment for the landing pad had been made and Afnen’s departure time had been given.  they had spent half an hour on the ship, gazing out the windows at other small craft taking off and leaving at regular intervals.  Afnen glanced at the timestrip one of the ship’s bulkheads.  “five minutes,” he said heavily.

“well, i guess this is it,” she said.

“you’re sure you’re going to be okay?”  Afnen had grown more and more anxious as the time had drawn closer, and was now quite visibly upset.  Leah felt for him, but she had made her choice.

“i’ll be fine,” she said, touching him on the shoulder. “i know it’s been…sort of weird, how we ended up here.  but you did what you could for me with what you had.  once i find Issac, well, we’ll come back to Dulvern.  i’ll look you up.”

“check the prisons,” Afnen said ruefully.

Leah laughed, breaking the tension.  “we’ll find you.  thank you, Afnen.”

the ramp opened, and Leah caught her first whiff of Poridanian air.  it had a vaguely sweet scent to it, and an overtone of chemical fuel, no doubt due to the proximity of the industrial district.  Leah took two steps down the ramp, realized that Afnen was not following her.  she turned, looked him in the eye.  she noticed tears there, perched tremulously, welling.  one fell, ran down his left cheek.  she walked back to him, wiped his cheek with her thumb.

“i’m sorry,” he said.  “i’m so, so sorry.”

“don’t worry,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around him.  she hadn’t thought it would be this difficult to part ways with her one-time captor, turned rescuer, turned friend.

she stepped away from him, clasping him on the shoulders.  “it’ll be okay, buddy.  have a safe trip back.”

“you, too,” Afnen said, a sad smile on his lips, “once you find what you’re looking for.”

she looked in his eyes once more, turned away.

“wait!” he called after her.  she turned back towards him.  he was reaching into the pocket of his trousers.  “here,” he said, “i almost forgot.”

he handed her a small package, perhaps two inches thick and no bigger than her palm.  it was wrapped in brown paper, tied with brown string.  “what is it?” she asked.

“nothing.  well, not really anything.  just take it.  you might find it useful.”  he smiled, turned, retreated into the ship.  before he disappeared, he looked over his shoulder one last time.  “goodbye.”

“goodbye,” she responded.  then Afnen disappeared, and she was alone on a strange new world.