Spun light

 Podcaster’s World wasn’t a world; it was an artificial satellite that orbited a black hole from a barely-safe distance.  It had been discovered by the Culture-level entity that called itself No more distance to travel and its location messaged to a less-remote outpost on Urahuaga, an icy planetoid at one of the edges of the human Federation of Worlds.

There was little on Urahuaga except for ice and buried minerals.  Humans had landed, discovered that the atmosphere might have been breathable except that when Urahuaga approached its sun most closely deposits of frozen Sulphur Hexafluoride boiled and choked anything within ten metres of the surface, and almost left without trace.  As an afterthought though, and in part to mark this as part of the Federation of Worlds, they’d set up a single station that received and relayed messages elsewhere, and two satellites in orbit that looked outwards in case anything should approach from intergalactic space.  It was like a tiny, cataracted eye peering into the depths of gloomy night.

Urahuaga dutifully relayed the information deeper into the Federation of Worlds where it was eventually picked up by an Expert System that highlighted the source of the information and fed it over to one of the more populous worlds in the Federation.  This was then picked up by a Minister for Information Dissemination who had an interest in Culture-level entities and their activities, and so Podcaster’s World hit the headlines.

It might have ended there except that the No more distance to travel had thoughtfully provided pictures of the satellite and astronomical data.  It was icosahedral with no obvious entrance, rotating quickly, and somehow managing to orbit the black hole along a trajectory that seemed as though it should be sucked in and destroyed.  As a scientific curiosity it was exceptional, and conversations shortly began about visiting the world and seeing it for humanity’s selves.  A series of plans were drawn up, each for a step in the chain of getting a manned spaceship out to Podcaster’s World, and funds were slowly, sometimes grudgingly, found for each step.  The second-to-last step involved putting a manned base on Urahuaga, which had happened four earth-years ago.  Now, at last a spaceship crewed by three people, two women and one ungender, was approaching Podcaster’s World.  As they reached a point 700,000 kilometres from the world a sensor on the surface of the satellite picked up their approach and automated systems that had been waiting for millenia autochecked their functionality and began to work.

Deep within the satellite complex machinery began to turn; finely milled gears meshed together, and dormant fuel supplies were sourced and burned, though ‘burn’ as a verb did not do justice to the processes of obtaining energy from them.   Light was produced in elaborately designed chambers and directed through lossless fibre-optic cables into areas where gravity was twisted and distorted and the need for the presence of the black-hole became obvious.  Emergent light was spun together into a delicate braid of frequencies; something more wave than particle and held unnaturally in that form by the same exotic matter arrays that allowed Podcaster’s World to dance constantly on the precipice of extinction that the black hole represented.  The spun light, a crystalline confection of almost-matter, was released from the satellite and lanced across the event horizon of the black hole as though it didn’t exist.

The black hole received the light beam and shuddered.  The spaceship bounced like an apple on storm-tossed waters as gravity rippled and shook.  The crew, unprepared for an onslaught of violence, took emergency action, halted the ship and attempted to hold firm despite being thrown around like a fragment in a shaking snow-globe.  They stared, helpless, at their instrumentation, trying to understand what it was showing.  A blaze of radiation hammered past them, the only thing protecting them being Podcaster’s World, and when that tsunami-like wave had passed, they peered out around the World.

And found that the black hole had inexplicably opened up like a jack-in-the-box and there was a faintly glowing portal sitting where the black hole had been. Podcaster’s World continued in its orbit, despite there no longer being enough mass for that to happen, and they sat there, a little over half a million kilometres from something that physics insisted could not exist in the universe.

Planet of Babel

 “We called it Babel, obviously,” said Johann.  He stretched and nearly fell out of the ergonomic chair in the library of the Cheeky Monkey.  “Oops!”

“Why’s that then?”  Captain Rascal, wearing his shiniest uniform and glittering like an iceberg in strong sunlight, looked genuinely puzzled.  Vizile, his first officer, didn’t facepalm as that would have been rude, but his hand did gently, surreptitiously, make its way to his face and massage his cheekbones.

“What?” Johann looked at Captain Rascal as though expecting a punchline.  Rascal just kept smiling at him; grinning almost, and looked like he was waiting for an answer.

“He’s serious,” said Vizile after a moment’s more silence.  “You need to explain why it was obvious to call the planet Babel.”

“He doesn’t kno—“

“He is the captain,” said Vizile.  “And it’s taken the crew threatening a mutiny to stop him using the Butcher on the planet, so please humour him and quickly.”

Rascal’s smile never wavered.  Vizile and Mercanty, the first and second officers, had had to physically block access to the Technology suite, where the controls to the Butcher were located, and keep Rascal out.  Mercanty was now in sick-bay getting her scorch marks tended to, though Rascal had apologised sincerely for hitting her with the hot end of the laser pistol  Vizile was shadowing his boss, acting as an aide but in fact making sure that Rascal wasn’t going to try and turn the Butcher on.

The Butcher, short for Butcher’s Hook, was the ship’s primary observation device and worked by firing various wavelengths of radiation at a target and interpreting the reflections from it.  Rascal’s Butcher had been upgraded in some unspecified past by some unknown engineer and used longer wavelengths and more energetic waves, and seemed to have some kind of anti-cut-off switch that meant that Rascal’s Butcher seemed to take the top sixteen centimetres off whatever it was looking at.

“Well, it’s a library planet,” said Johann. He sounded slightly out of his depth having to explain what he thought that everyone should know.  “The entire planet is just one big library.  Everything down there is part of a hexagonal column, and each column has fourteen stories, and each story is split into hexagonal cells and they contain books.  It’s like the aliens read Borges.”

Rascal’s blank look and never-wavering smile struck Johann’s heart like a dagger.

“You have to know who Borges was,” he said feebly.  The colour steadily seeped from his face and he looked ten years old.  “You must know who Borges was.”

“Babel was a library then?” asked Rascal.  “Interesting.  What kind of books do they have down there then?”

Johann pulled himself together.  “Every possible one,” he said.  “That’s why it’s the whole planet, you see.  Every conceivable book you can write in the alphabet they used is there.  Imagine if you will, that Earth did this.  You would have, oh I don’t know, the library of Babel, for example in there.  In English, French, Spanish… Catalan even!”

“Russian?” said Rascal brightly.

“No,” said Johann.  “Well, maybe yes.  I mean… there would be a transliteration of it in Russian of course, but not in Russian cyrillic, you understand.”

“No,” said Rascal, his smile still perfect.  He stood up.  “So… you want to keep this library?  Without its Russian books?”

Johann forced a smile onto his face wondering if smiling gave Rascal some curious power over the people around him.  It just felt painful to him.  “We must keep the library,” he said.  “It is a valuable insight into the aliens and their psychology.  Plus it’s a whole planet given over to the storage and preservation of books.  The technology in there must be worth a fortune.”

Vizile did facepalm then, and the slap of his hand hitting his face caused Johann to stare at him in shock.

“Aha!” yelled Captain Rascal.  “I knew it!”

“Did you have to?” murmured Vizile to Johann.  He stood up and caught hold of the Captain’s arm.  “Do not—“

“Send down the excavators!” they said in unison.  Somewhere inside the Cheeky Monkey a klaxon started to blare.

“No, Captain, not the excavators,” said Vizile with the patience of a man who is used to having it tested to its limit.  “You want to return with the technology, not just evidence of it.  Don’t destroy it until you have it in working order.  Remember?”

Rascal grinned and bounced on the balls of his feet.  “Of course I do!  Belay the excavators!  Send down the Inquisitors instead!”

The klaxon’s blare ceased for ten seconds and everyone but Rascal looked relieved.  Then a new klaxon started up, an octave lower but somehow slightly louder.

“What does an Inquisitor do?” asked Johann.  The blood had run from his face again and he was trembling.

“Extracts things,” said Vizile in a low monotone.  “Effectively.  I do hope there are parts of this library you can afford to lose.”

“What!?”

Tooth fairy

 “This is… not what I was expecting.”  Bill, gentleman thief, ran a finger over a stainless steel surface, which squeaked.  Around him the steel ran to the walls and then up it until it reached the ceiling which was a bright, freshly painted white.  Fluorescent tubes provided light from the ceiling, flicker-free and brilliant.  When he looked down at the tiled, polished floor the lights tried to dazzle him in reflection and his shadow was nowhere to be seen.

“What were you expecting?”  Ben, also a gentleman thief and dressed like a racecourse tout in a tweed three-piece suit, a cerise shirt and a monocle on a black ribbon, was tapping on the screen on his phone and looking annoyed.

“I don’t know, exactly,” said Bill thoughtfully.  “I mean, whenever Mac talks about her he mentions a run-down market with streets filled with rubbish and human detritus and it sounds like she’s only a day away from turning to prostitution.”

Ben looked up and his startlement was profound.  He looked like someone had just tried to ask for their money back.  “Mac sees the world very differently,” he said.  “I’m pretty sure he’s got a pocket universe going on there, to be honest, though I’ve got no idea how you’d prove that.”

“Yeah?”  Bill scuffed a shoe on the floor, trying to create a dark spot.  The floor squeaked and resisted.  “So this is the real one that we’re visiting then?”

“I have no idea which is the real one,” said Ben.  “If there is even such a thing.  They might all be shadows of an archetype, cast through into our reality by a light so bright we can’t imagine it.”

Bill smiled.  “You’ve been on those mushrooms again, haven’t you?” he said.  “I’m sure I told you they were a bad idea.”

Ben smiled as well.  “No, no mushrooms,” he said.  “I think your last girlfriend took them with her when she left.  Right, according to the map, which I have to say I’m not sure we can trust, there should be a door over there.”  He pointed at a stainless steel wall.  “I just can’t figure out how we can see it to open it.”

Glad of something to do that wasn’t looking around a gigantic sterile room, Bill walked over to the wall.  His feet squeaked softly on the floor as he did and he tried not to show his irritation.  “If they ever get mice in here they’ll never be able to find them,” he said as he got close enough to the wall to press his nose up against it.  “Hmm.  There’s a hair-thin crack here, you know.  Could be a very-snugly fit door.  Or could just be a trap.”

“Probably not a trap,” said Ben.  “Wrong set up for that.  Or rather, wrong kind of trap.  I’d expect nitrous oxide filled rooms, or something amusing with a hammer.”

“Amusing with a hammer?”  Bill slowly crouched as he scrutinized the hairline crack in the wall.  “A squeaky hammer?”

“Well, amusing might depend on the perspective.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.  Right, have you got a hairpin, please, mate?”

Ben dipped a hand into a pocket.  “No,” he said, “but there’s this pin thing that came with this piece-of-shit phone.  Sim-card extractor or whatever they call it.”

“Good enough,” said Bill.  “Just need to wiggle it in… here.”  He did something, obscured by his body, and there was a tiny click.  “Right,” he said quietly, and leaned his body on the wall, stretching his hands out as though trying to read the bumps on someone’s skull.  “Just need… to….”  There was another click, a little louder, and suddenly the wall swung inwards.  Bill toppled forwards and landed on his face with another squeak.

“Was that you or the floor?” asked Ben.

“Ha.  Ha.”  Bill pushed himself back up and looked through the doorway.  A stainless steel corridor led into darkness.  “Does this remind you of a rat?” he said.

“Get up,” said Ben.  “And no.  Pretty sure that’s still under copyright too, so keep those ideas to yourself.”

They walked through the doorway, unworried about it closing behind them, and a light flickered on overhead, then stabilised into the sterile white glare of the previous room.  As they proceeded down the corridor the lights in front of them came on and the lights behind them turned off.  Bill looked round once and shrugged.

“I feel like we’re expected,” he said.

“No,” said Ben.  “It’s easier to automate these things.  There’re probably sensors in the light fittings that detect motion.  Or maybe heat.  More likely heat actually.”

“What kind of things come in here that don’t move?”

Ben thought about that for a few seconds.  “Is that a rhetorical question?”

Bill thought about that for approximately as long.  “It is now,’ he said.  Then, “Just heat?  Or lack of it too?”

“Changes in ambient heat, I should think.”

“And is it just me, or is this corridor too long?”

“I think we’re back into pocket universe territory,” said Ben.  “But that looks like a door up ahead.”  He pointed and two lights came on in front of them to illuminate a large steel door set into the wall.  There was a grille in the door at head-height but the bars were so tightly meshed that neither of them could see through it.  The door opened at a touch though, swinging inwards with a squeak.

“Now that’s just sarcastic,” said Ben, walking through.  Inside the room was a desk, a chair, and a terminal: a keyboard with a flat-screen monitor.  Otherwise the room was steel, clean, and empty.

Bill stood in the doorway, preventing the door from closing.

“Not coming in?” said Ben, sitting him at the desk and pulling the keyboard in front of him.

“I think this door might not open again if we let it close,” said Bill.  “It’s how I’d set things up anyway.  Plus, only one of us needs to ask the questions.”

“True,” said Ben.  He pressed the spacebar and the monitor lit up.  “Start with greetings, or cut to the chase?”  He poised his fingers over the keyboard like a competitive typist.

“Cut to the chase,” said Bill.  “The tooth-fairy AI probably doesn’t have much in the way of small talk anyway.  Just ask it where the teeth are.”

Rawduck VII

 The antechamber to the audience chamber had a queue of people running directly through the middle of it, from one gilded door to another, and along each side of the queue were four guards.  They stood roughly equidistant, their eyes roaming freely over the people queuing, with their weapons clearly on display and their hands at rest at their sides, but still close enough to their weapons that they had only to react to draw them.  The floor of the antechamber was tiled with a repeating black and white pattern that was smudged here and there with dirt, and towards one end there was a reddish smear that might have clay or might, perhaps, have been something else.

Yannish, the King’s advisor, was wearing an uncomfortable uniform of heavy cotton that made him sweat anytime there wasn’t a cooling breeze around him.  It wrapped around him in blue and gold with lines of green here and there separating bands of the other colours. It looked smart but it made him feel like he was being roasted alive.  He leaned in to the three mages who were standing in the queue; they had reached the middle of the antechamber and Yannish had decided that it was time to brief them.

“The King is King Rawduck the seventh,” he said, watching their faces.  Inevitably he saw the youngest mage, a boy barely out of his teens with a cocky grin, a single sparkling green eye and a eye-patch, and a shock of blonde hair, start to open his mouth.  “The seventh,” said Yannish with careful emphasis.

“I heard you,” said the boy, who had given his name as ‘Vorrai’.  Before he could continue the only woman of the trio elbowed him in the stomach.  He oof-ed a little.

“Then you heard him say ‘the seventh’,” she said.  “So I imagine that the King, and all the forebears of that name, have all heard everything you might be thinking of saying right now.”  She was called Meridion, recalled Yannish.  She was svelte and delicate-featured but denied any and all elven heritage.  She was rumoured to have had several children but, looking at her, Yannish found it hard to believe.  She didn’t look old enough to have borne two children, let alone the purported dozen.

“Quite,” said Yannish, rather glad he hadn’t had to explain himself.  Vorrai rubbed his stomach, but it appeared to be pro forma rather than from any injury.  “The Kings Linguists have determined that there is a small island off the coast of the Yugan Continent where the language has a word Rohrpug, which means ‘fighter of seven animals’.  They believe that the King’s name probably stems from there.”

Vorrai’s face, which Yannish thought was shallowly pretty but might become handsome in twenty years’s time, screwed up in thought.  “The Yugan Continent was only discovered forty years ago,” he said.

“Vorrai!”  Meridion looked exasperated and brushed long dark hair away from her face.  It fell back, occluding an eye.  “If the King has decided that that is the origin of his name, who are we to question that?”

Vorrai frowned, but before he could answer the third of the trio lifted a hand.  He was, like Yannish, wrapped in heavy cotton clothes but, unlike Yannish, appeared to find them a suitable temperature for the inside of the palace.  He had refused to give a name and Yannish, normally adept in politicking these things out of people, had failed repeatedly to convince him otherwise.  “There are many truths,” he said.  “This is one of those truths that will, with time and repetition, become self-evident.  Leave it, boy.”

Yannish nodded, while wondering about the deep resonance that the nameless mage had achieved.  The floor had almost vibrated under his feet.  And with that thought, the queue shuffled forward and the three mages were at the door to the audience chamber and were ushered inside by the attendants there.

“Mages?” King Rawduck VII looked over them as though he were reviewing soldiers.  They all had the uncomfortable feeling that they had failed to polish their boots sufficiently for a moment.

“Hengist’s charm of disapproval,” said Vorrai after a moment.  He made a cutting motion with his hand and the sensation disappeared.  Around the room all the guards drew their weapons and pointed them at the mages.

“Don’t do that without obtaining permission first,” said the King.  He gestured something surprisingly complex and the guards returned to their at-ease stance.  “You have lived this time; next time you may not be so fortunate.”

Meridion rolled her eyes.  “We get it,” she said, “you’re the King.  We should show respect.”

Vorrai rolled his eyes now, but he nodded and looked at the floor.  “I could kneel,” he said.  “But it looks like it hasn’t been cleaned recently.”

“Shut up,” said the King.  “There are balances of power, yes, and right now the balance is tipped in my favour.  Not by a great deal, I grant you, but I’m not here to threaten you or play word games.  I want to hire you.  So I only need as much advantage as it takes to get you to listen to my proposition.”

“Fair,” said the third of the trio, his voice rumbling like an earth elemental’s.  “Speak, then, your Majesty.”

“Four days travel from here is the river Clem,” said Rawduck VII.  He gestured casually towards the north-east.  “Across the river are some disputed lands.  I wish to resolve the dispute, and to do that I need a bridge.  As quickly as possible, in fact.  Or quicker, even.”

“Quicker than possible?” Vorrai smiled.  “I like a challenge!”

“There are few bridge-building spells,” said Meridion, who seemed to be ignoring Vorrai now.  “It’s just not something you often need magic for.  Expensive, hard to do, and you need a good mage.”

The King let his gaze drift from Vorrai to Meridion and back, taking in all three of them.

“Yes, of course,” she said.  “I didn’t think it was a coincidence that the three of us ended up together in the queue.  Well, I suppose there’s always Athelred’s Graceful Span.  It will take 24 hours though.”

“The spell needs 24 hours to cast?”  Rawduck VII looked appalled.  “I thought magic was quick!”

“It takes about 7 minutes to cast,” said Vorrai.  “And nearly 24 hours to anneal to the point where it can support the weight of a small army crossing it.  And it’s unnecessarily froufrou.  We can just cast Gormund’s Extensible Log fifteen or sixteen times and get a—“

“Pontoon that will be swept away in the first storm,” said the third of the trio.  “Hardly a strategic choice.”

“Athelred’s Span will allow shipping below it,” said Meridion.  “I did pick it for a reason, you know.”

“No shipping on the Clem,” said the third of the trio.  “At least, not that way.  Depth of the river is very variable.”

“Well,” said Vorrai, who looked annoyed now, “how about Mimi’s Catapult?  Doesn’t interfere with river traffic whether or not there is any, can be left there indefinitely, and gets the army across in less than an hour.”

“Possible,” said Meridion, tapping a tooth with a fingernail.  “We could set three up and do it even faster.”

Vorrai grinned but the King interrupted them.  “A bridge,” he said.  “Not a magical transport system.  No teleporting either.”

“Summon Elemental,” said the third of the trio resonantly.  “Have an earth elemental raise the river bed at the desired point, and then tunnel through the rise.  Will take less than an hour, and—“

“Minor flooding of the surrounding land while the bridge is being formed,” said Vorrai.

“Unacceptable,” said Rawduck VII immediately.

“Ice Elemental,” said the third of the trio implacably.  “Freeze the surface of the river and have the army skate across.”

“Two elementals,” said Vorrai.  “One on each side.  Have them triggered by something so that they only freeze the surface when the bridge is needed.”

“I like it,” said Meridion slowly.  “Bridge on demand, and we can key it to the King’s troops.  Maybe to the sergeants or something, so that he has control of who can cross.”

“I like the sound of this,” said the King.  “This is fast?”

“Mostly,” said Vorrai.  “We will need a few human sacrifices though.”

Personal shopper

 “Personal shoppers,” said the woman.  She was wearing a suit by Vivienne Westwood, something she wouldn’t have been seen dead in before the designer had died, and was struggling to carry it off well.  Her age, though well disguised by regular plastic surgeries, discrete supports, and the benefits of owning the majority share in several expensive cosmetics companies, contrasted with the heavy punk ethic that the suit conveyed: the large print over the jacket, the newspaper effect on the trousers, the brash colours that proclaimed that here was someone you couldn’t ignore.  She looked like a walking contradiction and Margoyle was having trouble deciding if she should be entertaining this relic’s proposal or throwing her out on the street.

The deciding vote in this case was that she had arrived at Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations offices and been allowed in.  Getting the address to the office required a serious effort and, after a recent cyberattack, a good cryptanalyst and access to the more stable cryptocurrencies; being allowed in through the front doors was almost surely by invitation only.  So Margoyle listened, wondering where in her portfolio personal shopping was supposed to fit.

“We have about thirty-five thousand of them,” said the woman.  Margoyle controlled herself with well-practiced reflex and only a faint smile appeared on her lips; something that she’d learned from studying the Mona Lisa.  “They are effective enough, but we are, naturally, intending to automate the task entirely.”

Cogs turned in Margoyle’s head.  Personal shoppers twenty years ago were people who greeted you in expensive stores and then lead you around, commented on your personal style and taste and then improved it for you.  You left with a lighter wallet but your bags were heavy with the promise of societal approval and the respect of your peer group.  Now… well, euphemisms were the kind of thing that DAMN manipulated like puppets on strings.  A personal shopper must be a warehouse worker, surely.  And with that thought Margoyle’s smile stretched a little more across her face, though not so much as to indicate approval, and she understood the implicit reason for this elderly woman’s visit.

“We are looking for advice from your consultants,” said the woman, sounding a tiny bit lost for a moment.  Margoyle appreciated that: up until DAMN agreed to work with a client the whole office and set-up was designed to be confusing and nightmarish.  “Ideally, we’d like to retain some of the autonomy that the current personal shoppers have, without the issues that arise from having egos.”

Margoyle relaxed a fraction.  This was firmly in the remit of Soft Power and Furnishings which she had run with a titanium fist in an iron glove for nearly five years.

“I see,” she said, her voice smooth and low, almost like a cat purring.  “You have a number of, let’s call them human, workers, and you’d like to take advantage of their lower-level brain functions without the interference of higher-level, more evolved, effects?”

The woman stiffened a little and a faint dust of powder fell from her face onto her collar.  Margoyle felt it added to the punk effect and said nothing.

“Human is a very strong word,” she said, her voice sounding strained, perhaps as though she were holding her stomach in to impress a potential lover.  “Our lawyers have advised we avoid such terminology.  In their contracts they agree to be reclassified as nematodes.”

Margoyle nodded and leaned forward.  A recessed keyboard and screen in her desk, angled so that she could see them but her clients couldn’t, flickered dimly to life and she tapped a note out in proprietary shorthand that her interns should identify the firm of lawyers that had proposed this and research them.

“Nematodes,” she said thoughtfully.  “I imagine that the benefits package you offer is tailored specifically to that?  And thus a cost-saving rather than a cost-centre?”

The woman smiled beatifically and Margoyle considered immediately that that smile would look very good on the front of glossy magazines on newstands. Another note flickered from her fingers to the keyboard.

“Indeed,” she said.  “Last year we reduced emissions from our toilet facilites so much that we were able to obtain green funds for it!”

“A laudable achievement,” said Margoyle.  “So, am I right in assuming that the proposition that we are considering here is how to leverage current sentiments in specific law-focussed lobby groups to enable the transfer of consciousness from lower-level creatures such as nematodes into non-human bodies, perhaps primarily metallic, to facilitate the automation of personal shopping?”

There was a pause while the elderly woman eliminated paraphrases and circumlocutions and determined that what Margoyle was proposing was, in fact, what was being asked for.”

“Yes,” said the woman matter-of-factly.  “How much will it cost?”

Ghostwritten

 The meeting room where the Cabinet traditionally met was quiet except for the Minister’s breathing, which rose and fell like the tides of the sea.  He was sitting in the central chair of the long table on the side that looked across the room to the windows, which in turn looked out onto the remains of St James’s Palace, and turning the pages of a thick book that looked, at first glance, like a novel.  Every now and then he would murmur ‘hmm’ gently and at one point he sighed and carefully tore a page from the book, discarding it into the waste-paper bin.

The silence was broken by a knock at the door; a steady rat-a-tat-tat that gave no indication of how nervous the knocker might be.  The Minister, whose favour was mercurial and ephemeral, was certain that the visitor would be nervous, however.

“Come,” he called, aiming for imperious. His voice was stentorian and resounded off the walls and a picture trembled in its frame.  The door creaked open slowly, and his Aide came in followed by the Private Secretary.  He smiled at the Aide, who name he couldn’t remember, and frowned slightly at the Private Secretary as though he couldn’t remember who this woman was either.

“Minister,” said the Aide, smiling back.  She looked moderately uncomfortable, which the Minister felt was appropriate for her station and replaceability.

“Indeed,” he said, since he really couldn’t remember her name.  He was sure he’d known it at one point.  It wasn’t terribly important, just a nuisance that he couldn’t use it to let her know her place.  “I am thinking of a biography.”

The Aide looked at the book in front of him.  “Kissinger’s?” she asked.  “Although I thought that was a two-volume affair.”

“I can have two volumes?  Or… maybe more?”

“Usually it depends on how much of one’s life one has to write about,” said the Aide.  “Though there are so-called celebrities out there who seem to manage multiple volumes based on the same three sad stories.  Do I understand you to want to write your own biography?”

“I hardly think the Minister has time for that,” said the Private Secretary.  The Minister felt she sounded a touch indignant.  The woman was in her late fifties, a career civil servant, and was dressed like his memories of the Queen.

“I don’t,” he said.  “I’m not even sure I’d know how to go about writing a book.  There are people to do that already though, aren’t there?”

The Aide and the Private Secretary exchanged a look and the Minister wondered what was contained in it.  From where he was sat they both looked confused; but he’d been pretty clear with what he’d said.  Perhaps… perhaps it was time for them both to have a mandatory mental-health checkup.

“Do you mean authors?” asked the Private Secretary after a longer pause than the Minister liked.

“Or ghostwriters?” asked the Aide.  “They do similar, but slightly different jobs.  Like… doctors and nurses, say.”

“The one that writes it for me,” said the Minister.  “Are you always both this tiresome?”  He noticed with secret joy that they both straightened up just a little at this indication that his mood might be slipping.

“Ghostwriters then,” said the Private Secretary.  Was it the Minister’s imagination or did she sound disapproving?  “Do you have anyone specific in mind, Minister?”  Before he could answer she spoke again: “You can, of course, tender to the lower bidder, but if you particularly like someone’s writing style, or feel that a particular author would reflect your world-view in their own, you might prefer to approach them directly.”

“Stephen King, perhaps,” said the Aide, who was leafing through the torn pages from the bin.  The Private Secretary coughed.

“Who?” said the Minister.  “No, actually I… well, maybe.  Maybe.  You mentioned Kissinger, before, right?”

The Aide and the Private Secretary exchanged another look and the Minister decided to add a mandatory hearing test to their mental-health checkup.

“He’s nearly dead, Minister,” said the Aide.  She said it slowly as though she were choosing her words carefully.

“And perhaps his reputation might be considered?” asked the Private Secretary.  She sounded as though that were an order.  The Minister bristled slightly.

“He is a diplomat and a statesman,” he said.  “What else is there to consider?”

“Vietnam?” murmured the Aide, but the Private Secretary was already speaking.

“His age makes him quite likely to die before completing your biography, Minister, and even if he doesn’t he has made some derogatory statements concerning policies of yours.  Would it really be a good idea to let him have free reign to criticise you in your own book?”

“I get to edit it before it gets published!”

“Yes Minister, but will you?  Or will you delegate that to someone else as well?”

The Minister started to snarl a reply, but halted, resulting in just a growl.  He didn’t want to read his biography, he just wanted it written.  And who could he trust to get it right?

“I see,” he said.  “Who was that other guy you mentioned?  King?  Isn’t he a fiction writer?”

The Aide looked modestly surprised and the Private Secretary looked despondent.  The Minister decided that was a victory on both counts.

“Well Minister,” said the Aide, “were you intending to tell the truth throughout the whole book?  Or would it be useful if the… aha, real truth were brought to the fore?  The truth that is always there but is sometimes occluded by messy reality, as it were?  The aims behind the policies so that people’s failure to implement, aha, those policies can be emphasized?  The vision for the future that cannot be seen from the valley of the present?”

“Well,” said the Minister feeling rather pleased that the Aide was so understanding.  “That would be rather good, wouldn’t it?  A book that helps people in the here and now understand why we’re doing what we’re doing for them!  Capital idea!  Get me this King person and write me an autobiography!”

The Way of the Owl

 The cave had proven larger than Samara had expected and they’d spent much of a third day tramping over wet rock, slipping on green-blue lichen and crawling through narrow tunnels from one room to the next.  Samara had been constantly checking her maps and grumbling about the cartographer; Garrett had tried very hard, and mostly successfully, to refrain from commenting about bad workmen and their tools, and Efimov had been largely silent.  They had finally reached the mouth of the cave and looked out across green countryside below them.  To their left was a large forest that stretched northwards and to their right there were fields and the bright line of a river.

“Blinton near river,” said Efimov, pointing.  There were tiny houses and a smudge of smoke where he was pointing, which Garrett realised meant they were much higher up the mountain than he’d expected.

“Does your map say how high up we are?” he asked Samara.  She snarled, once again reminding him of the cats that his full-ogre father used to keep for food.

“No!”  She edged towards the edge of the path outside the cave and leaned carefully forwards, looking down and over.  There were several seconds of silence.

“Air is cold and thin up here,” said Efimov casually, as though he were commenting on the weather.

Garrett noticed Samara’s hands clench into pale yellow fists and he was sure that her natural claws were trying to unsheathe.  She took a deep breath.

“It’s late afternoon,” she said, trying to match Efimov’s casualness.  “I think we’ll stay here, since we know there’s nothing in the cave behind us, and descend in the morning.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Garrett, swinging his pack from his lumpy, grey shoulders.  They were irregular heights and he’d had to have the backpack made especially to fit him.  “Got any wood out there for a fire, Sam?”

“Don’t call me that!  And no, it’s all rock and stone and sno— and more stone out here.  Get Efimov to make another fire; that seems to be all he’s good for.”

Efimov shrugged and started to move stones around into a circle.  “She seems angry,” he said to Garrett.  Unfortunately he didn’t keep his voice quiet enough.

“Of course I’m bloody angry!  This has taken days longer than I expected and we’re running short of food.  Not that you care, since you seem to just live off the moisture in the air, and Garrett thinks it’s just great that there’s more room to carry the looted possessions of the dead instead of food, but I care!  I bloody well care!  Why can’t you be a better mage?”

“What is better mage?” asked Efimov.  Garrett watched him closely, but he seemed genuinely curious.  He finished arranging the stones as he waited for an answer, which didn’t come until after Garrett glanced at Samara and realised she was embarrassed by what she’d said.

“She means one who went to the Bogbones Academy,” he said, knowing she was grimacing behind his back.  “She’s from Fellheim, remember?”

“That’s got nothing to do with it!”

Efimov murmured some words and waved his hands over the stones.  They cracked, glowing red, and gas hissed out.  Then they started to melt into a pool of lava and a heat haze formed above them.  Garrett backed off slightly; the heat was intense but he’d also learned the hard way that the fumes weren’t safe to breathe.

“There are three kinds of mage in this world,” said Efimov.  He crouched back on his heels, squatting in front the ‘fire’ and warming his hands.  “Those who go to Bogbones.  They are not all of mages, nor even most of them.  And they produce only about 2% of powerful mages in world.  Then there are mages who go to one of Atul Schools, which are found here and there, mostly in populations centres, across the Empire.  They produce about 80% of powerful mages in world.  And then there are those who attended the, hah, schools of hard knocks.”

“Bogbones produces lots of mages,” said Samara, drawn to the fire by the warmth.  She shivered. “Lots and lots.  Powerful ones too.”

“About 2%, globally,” said Efimov.  “Is matter of philosophy.”

“What philosophy?” asked Garrett.  He knew that Efimov has not attended any school, though any other information on his upbringing and learning had been difficult to come by.  He suspected that Efimov was from a school of hard knocks, whatever than meant.

“Bogbones believe that all children are born with inherent magic,” said Efimov staring in the fire.  Tiny spots of reflected red seemed to glow in his eyes.  “They encourage and nurture all children they find.  Everyone is praised for any little magical act, and much support is provided.”

“That’s a good thing,” said Samara.  “Before you start criticising it.”

“Maybe,” said Efimov.  “Bogbones has community sports, sociable atmosphere and social clubs.  Is way of learning.  There are four paths in Bogbones too; all children are assigned a path by hat.  There is: Path of the Dragon, Path of the Spider, Path of the Owl and Path of the Gelatinous Cube.  Children specialise early.”

“Wait, did you say hat?” asked Garrett.  “They’re assigned a course of study by a hat?  Or someone called Hat?”

“Actual hat,” said Efimov.  He shrugged and his third eye stared off out of the mouth of the cave where the sun was setting.  “Is strange idea but is hundreds of years old.  In Atul Schools they have mind-flayer instead.  Reads minds, reveals truths.”

“Mind-flayers eat minds!” Samara’s eyes were wide and Garrett noticed that they seemed to take up nearly half of her triangular face.  He couldn’t decide if it was attractive or not.  “You can’t put a mind-flayer in a school!”

“Is effective way of punishing lying,” said Efimov.  “False positive rate is acceptably low.”

Samara looked ready to argue so Garrett quickly intervened.  “Right, that’s a question of pedagogy,” he said, “which none of us is skilled enough to answer.  What was this path thing though?”

“Courses of study, ways of learning,” said Efimov.  “In Atul schools children are yelled at and punished for anything they do wrong.  In Bogbones, children study what they are already strong in; path names reflect that.”

“Atul schools sound horrible,” said Samara.  She sounded combative still and Garrett was waiting to jump in if she returned to the mind-flayers.  “Playing to your strengths is how you get strong mages.”

“2% globally,” said Efimov again.  He seemed to like the statistic.  “Problem is that mage strong in one area is often weak in another, and strong mages need be strong everywhere.”

“So kids who take the path of the dragon study dragons?” asked Garrett.  “And spiders, owls and… gelatinous cubes?”

“Hah!  No, Path of the Dragon is about courage,” said Efimov.  “Spider is subtlety, Owl is wisdom, and Gelatinous Cube is janitors.”

“Janitors?” Samara’s face twisted into a snarl and she sounded thunderous.  Garrett felt like he was standing before the onset of a sandstorm.

“Someone has to clean up after everyone else.”  Efimov shrugged again.  “Path of Owl produces strongest Bogbones mages.  They see the wisdom in studying what they do not know.”

“Who produces the most evil mages?” said Samara with a tight little smile that suggested she thought she knew the answer.

“Good question,” said Efimov closing all three eyes at once, which was unusual.  He opened them all again.  “Curiously statistic is very balance.  All three schools produce roughly 33%.”

The badlands

 “If we die, we die together….”  Lady Believer’s voice was a resonant contralto that echoed around the stone-and-ash walls of the gulley.  She strode on ahead of the cart pulled by Dead Love which squeaked, creaked and groaned as it crushed cinders to more ash beneath its wooden wheels.  “You and I, we live and die; we die together.”  She kicked aside a head-sized mound with a crimson boot and a sooty skull, freed from the clinging ash and dirt, rolled and bounced across the path.

“Oi!”

Lady Believer halted, one foot still in mid-air, and looked around.  She set her foot gently down, adjusting her stance so that she was ready to fight, and scanned the walls of the canyon.  Ash had rained down from the sky for so long that it formed a distinct layer above where the natural stone ended, but that was hard to make out from the dusty, flaky ash petals that clung to the stone everywhere she looked.  The path was coated with cinders, most cold now, that offered no place to hide.  She stared into the shadows, hunting for signs of a cave, or at least an outcropping behind which someone could hide.

“Down here!”

She didn’t look down.  Skulls did not talk and anyone stupid enough to try lying down in the canyon would either suffocate under ashfall or be crushed by a cart like the one Dead Love was pulling.  Instead she thought carefully about where the voice had seemed most likely to come from and selected a point on the canyon wall a little her left.

“Boot,” she said quietly, not looking away from the spot.  She held her hand out and Dead Love, obedient and faithful, turned around in the traces and dug into the contents of the cart.  The contents were all similar in a sense: corpses were stacked with the more complete ones at the back and the ones broken apart into limbs, torsos and heads at the front, near Dead Love.  A cloud of black flies hovered over the cart and even more were disturbed and launched, buzzing, into the air as Dead Love tossed ragged-fleshed arms and legs aside, hunting for a boot.  Her white fingers closed on a heavy, metal-reinforced calf-high boot and she pulled it out.  Toe bones spilled from it as she emptied it into the cart, and then she tossed the boot with a low underarm throw to Lady Believer.

Lady Believer caught it, using her peripheral vision to watch the throw so that nothing could slither away from the point of the cliff she thought the voice had come from, and adjusted her grip on it.  It was, she thought, a good boot.

“No, really, down here,” said the voice again.  It sounded uncertain, she thought.  She drew her arm back and hurled the boot so that it thudded, sole first, against the cliff a little way above head height.  The cliff shuddered, if you were watching for it, as the packed ash was shifted and rocked.

“Waste of a boot,” said the voice, followed a couple of seconds later by a shocked cry that was neither scream nor expletive but some distorted combination of both.  Ash showered down, bringing with it small stones and a tiny rockfall.  Lady Believer relaxed a little, smirking.

“What did you have to go and do that for?” said the voice, coming now from a kneeling, ash-covered figure that had staggered out from the canyon wall and tripped over.

“Why were you hiding in ambush?” asked Lady Believer.  She waved a hand and Dead Love unbound herself from the traces of the cart and shambled over to the canyon wall to look for the boot.

“Hitch-hiking,” said the figure.  It coughed and sent up a cloud of ash around its head that prolonged the coughing fit.

“Here?”  Lady Believer didn’t need to say more; the badlands of Finerock started just outside the city of Maldice and finished at the shores of the East Sea.  No-one travelled across them because there was nowhere to go.

“Clearly,” said the figure as though they didn’t know that.  “Wouldn’t be much use me trying to hitch-hike in Maldice and standing out here, would it?”

Dead Love pulled the boot free from a pile of rocks and a faint smile appeared on her deathly pale face.  She lumbered back to the cart with it and the figure, now wiping ash from itself, watched her.

“Doesn’t she talk?” it said.  As it patted its clothes down more ash rose and the coughing started again.

“Dead Love?  They are voiceless,” said Lady Believer.  “What would they want to talk about?  But you’re trying to change the subject, aren’t you?  Why were you waiting to ambush us?”

“I told you, I was hitch-hiking,” said the figure.  Enough of a face had emerged now, though it was streaked still with ash and dirt, that Lady Believer decided that they were male, and very much alive.  This was unusual for the badlands.  “I got dropped off at the coast and I’ve been trying to reach Maldice.  But the roads here are something awful.”

Lady Believer tapped a fingernail against her yellow teeth making a sharp clicking sound.  She narrowed her eyes, watching the figure try to get cleaner, and listened to them cough, and thought about the implications.  She didn’t like what they entailed.  Looking behind her, she saw that Dead Love had harnessed herself back to the cart and was ready to move on.

“Are you even listening to me?”

Lady Believer looked back.  “Proof,” she said.  “No-one sails the East Sea.  So if you were dropped off at the coast… I want to see proof.”

The figure spread its arms.  It looked thin but wiry and Lady Believer could see a holster that seemed to have a gun in it.  Another strange choice for visiting the badlands; there was little out here that could be stopped by simple force.

“What kind of proof?” said the figure when Lady Believer didn’t say anything else.  “It’s not like I’ve got a bloody ticket to show you.  And the ship’s sailed off, not that you’d agree to walk all the way to the coast just to see it.”

“I might,” said Lady Believer.  Seeing a ship on the East Sea would be interesting enough to justify the diversion.

“Well it’s sailed!  You’ll just have to take my word for it.”

“No.”

There was a silence.  Then, “So what would be proof then?”

“Show me something from the coast,” said Lady Believer.  “Or the East Sea.  Something that could only have come from there.”

“The coast,” said the man, “is rocky and ashy and barren.  It is slightly more pleasant than here, but only because the sea is there and that is marginally cleaner.  That’s it.  I can’t show you anything from there because there’s nothing there to pick up.  And it’s not like I was looking for souvenirs!”

“Food,” said Lady Believer.  “You must have had food with you.  Nothing grows in the badlands and any sea journey must have been longer than a day.  Or you would never have been dropped off on the coast.”

“Ah,” said the man.  “Well.”

He didn’t seem inclined to say anymore so Lady Believer gestured to Dead Love, who put one foot in front of the other and heaved, starting the cart slowly creaking and groaning along the path.  Then she moved forward herself, lifting her voice once more in song.

“This is where the truth is,” she sang.  “Where lies have come to die.  This is where—“

“You can’t leave me here!”

She didn’t slow down.  “Then find some proof.”

The man moved aside rather than be run down by Dead Love and the cart but before they were out of sight he started following them.  After an hour he’d sped up and was walking alongside Lady Believer.

“Proof?” she glared at him.

“I haven’t got any food,” he said.  “I wasn’t exactly dropped off on the coast.”

“Aha.”

“I was put there to die,” he said.

“Aha.”

“Aha?  Is that it?  I tell you people are trying to kill me and you just say ‘aha’?”

Lady Believer smirked at him.  “People are going to a lot of trouble to kill you,” she said.  “You sound like a political prisoner.  So if I decide to kill you and add your body to the cart… who will care?”