Free-Wrench, no. 1 (15 page)

“I might not have a degree, Gunner, but at
least I can still count to five on one hand,” Coop said, wiggling
the fingers of both complete hands.

“Which is fortunate for you, since you can’t
count to five
without
your hand.”

“Well, what about Wink?” Nita said, her voice
raised in an attempt to cut off the volley of insults.

“What
about
the little beast?” Gunner
asked.

She eyed the creature warily. He was nestled
among the rafters, staring back with the same unbroken, distrustful
gaze he had locked on her for the past few days. “Well, Lil said
Wink was the newest member of the crew.”

“It’s actually a cute story. See, that storm
wiped out most of the crew, and that included their old inspector.
Can’t run a ship without one, so the cap’n dipped us down into the
northern patch of the fug where they train those things. Something
had happened that day. I guess maybe a bunch of the things got in a
fight. One of ’em was pretty torn up. Lost an eye and had a bad
leg. They were going to kill it. The cap’n wouldn’t have any part
of it. He demanded to be sold the little guy. He says he was doing
it to save money, but believe you me, there was more to it than
that. Him and Butch nursed that thing back to health, and to this
day I’ve never seen a more devoted inspector. Until you showed up,
the darn thing used to hang around the cap’n any time he wasn’t
sleeping in the boiler room or doing his inspections. Now he seems
to have taken a liking to you. I think he’s sweet on you.”

Nita glanced at Wink again. “Somehow I don’t
think that’s the reason. What species is it?”

“Oh, heck, I don’t know. What about you,
college boy?” Coop said.

“It is just an inspector. I only studied
things that
matter
.”

Wink drummed his fingers. Butch, still
stirring a pot, spoke up, though Nita didn’t understand a word of
it. Instantly Coop and Lil burst into laughter.

“No kiddin’?!” Coop said.

“What?” Nita asked.

“He’s called an aye-aye!” Lil snickered.

“Fate does have a sense of humor, don’t she?”
Coop added. “You reckon we should just call him an
aye
now?”

The ship creaked with a turn, a motion that
drew Lil’s eyes to the nearest porthole. “Oh, we’re coming up on
Keystone! Let’s get out to the deck, Nita, you’re going to want to
see this.”

Nita and the rest of the crew made their way
to the deck, and sure enough, it was a sight she would have been
sorry to miss. The continent of Rim was so called because many of
its coastal regions were formed by a chain of steep mountains.
Along this section of the coast the mountains were narrow and
jagged, like the blade of a massive serrated knife. Straddling the
peaks of a low section of the mountainside was the city of
Keystone, almost surreal in the setting sun. Buildings were built
in tiers upon the seaward face of the mountains. Scaffolds and
stilts had been built onto the stone, and where the mountain ended,
the spindly framework continued, forming a bridge of sorts that
served as the base for a bustling community. The buildings were
tall and narrow, like the mountains themselves, and smoke and steam
belched out of chimneys along the skyline. At the edges of the town
where the mountain peaks began to rise up again, the buildings
followed. They formed towering and precarious vertical
neighborhoods, with long cables ferrying wood and brass cable-trams
high over the city, while funiculars were carved into the steepest
mountains to carry trains of similar cars down to the main
city.

The air around the city was filled with
airships. Some were not much larger than the two-man contraptions
that had attacked them, while others were practically flying
cities, multiple envelopes holding them aloft while dozens of
workers scurried across their decks. Mooring towers that were
considerably better made than the makeshift contraptions of the
Lagomoore Islands rose in regular rows along the very tops of the
mountain peaks, extending far beyond the edges of the city, and
more occupied long elevated piers that jutted out over the sea.

Perhaps the most wondrous sight of all was
what lay beyond the city. Past the taller peaks toward the sea,
lesser mountains descended into a second sea. Not more than a few
hundred feet below the lowest sections of the city was an endless
field of deep lavender haze, whipped by the wind into a swirling,
churning mass. It stretched as far as the eye could see, broken
only by the occasional island formed by a mountaintop poking
through the surface.

“What is it? That field of purple fog?”

“What do you
think
it is? It’s the
fug. That’s what we were left with after the calamity happened all
those years ago. That’s why what remains of the population of Rim
clings to the mountain peaks and plateaus,” Gunner said. “We didn’t
all have a nice, clean chain of islands to hide in when things
started to go from bad to worse.”

“How far does it go?”

“There isn’t much of the continent that
doesn’t get at least a whiff of the stuff from time to time. It’s
thickest here where the mountains funnel it up. If you keep your
eyes peeled while flying over the heart of the mainland you might
catch sight of some stretches of land from time to time, but that’s
mostly at the whim of the wind and nothing you’d want to risk
settling in.”

“Where did it all come from?”

“If anyone ever knew that, they died along with most
of the rest of us when it first showed up,” Coop said. “Alls we
know for sure is that it came sudden, rolling in like a tide and
catching most low-lying folk by surprise. There weren’t as many
airships back then. Barely any. The folks who lived were mostly the
folks at sea or already in the mountains, or the ones who could get
there in a hurry.”

“Enough history. There’ll be time enough for
that later. We’ll have to hurry if we’re going to be ready in time
for our meeting with the fug folk we’ll be trading with,” Captain
Mack said.

Nita watched the implausible urban landscape
grow larger as they approached, but slowly something at the edge of
hearing drew her attention. It was a tone, pulsing at a quick and
irregular rate.

“What
is
that?” she asked.

“What?” Lil asked.

“That sound. It is sort of a ringing
sound.”

“I don’t…
oh
. You mean Wink doing the
strut check.” She pointed to one of the rigid struts that attached
the turbine mounting ring to the deck. Wink had scurried up to the
midpoint and was tapping at it vigorously. “He always does a good
hard check of that strut when we get close to port. All inspectors
do. I reckon, since there is so much steering to do to pull into a
dock, they’ve been trained to check to make sure it’s good and
strong before we get too close. Shakes the whole envelope, and the
sound carries forever. If you listen close, you can probably hear
other inspectors doing the same thing on all these other ships. You
just start to ignore it after a while.”

“I don’t remember him doing it on the
Lagomoore Islands.”

“I reckon even Wink realizes that place ain’t
no proper port. He mostly does it at the busy spots. Up and down
Westrim and Circa, around the edge of the fug, places like
that.”

“Lil, get Nita down below and find her a mask
that fits. She paid us plenty to get her down to talk to those
folks personally. I want to make sure she’s ready if they allow
it.”

“Aye, aye, Cap’n,” she said. She snickered
and added under her breath, “Aye-aye. Don’t that beat all?”

Lil took her below decks and led the way to a
supply room on deck three. It was filled with canisters and a
handful of bizarre masks. They were made from leather and rubber,
with copper fittings and a circular vent on the front. Large enough
to fit firmly over the mouth, they had long, thin belts to keep
them in place.

“Here you go. Try that one on for size,” Lil
said. “That’s the one we keep for guests. Might want to tap it out
first. They can get dusty, and the last thing you want is a lungful
of dust on your first breath down there.”

Nita knocked it against the wall, then held
it over her mouth and took a breath. “It is a little hard to
breathe with this on,” she said. Remarkably, it was well designed
enough that it barely muffled her voice at all.

“Not half as hard as it is to breathe without
it on once you get down there. It’ll sting your eyes a bit, too,
but only at first. If that bothers you, Gunner’s goggles are good
for that. Not yours or mine, though, what with the vents and all. I
gotta tell you, I don’t envy you going down to talk to those folk.
You think Wink can give you the creeps. Every time I see one of
those fug folk I feel fit to crawl out of my skin.”

“Are they that bad?”

“Heh. You’ll see, I guess. Take that with
you, get your bag with your payment, and let’s go.”

The
Wind Breaker
drifted over the city and moored on the fugward side, facing into
an almost mystical scene. Just as was the case on the seaward side,
the mountains here were perilously steep, forming almost a sheer
drop. The dock rose at the end of a long string of lower hilltops
connected by suspension bridges. There, a tall tower with massive
iron wheels held wires that led down into the fug. Their berth was
as near as possible to the cable tower, just a short walk away from
the small building at its base. The crew gathered at the railing
beside an embossed sign that had formerly labeled the tram with
what looked to be a long and official name. At some point in the
past someone had helpfully slathered it with paint reading Fugtown
Express.

Captain Mack clicked open his stop watch. “So
long as the tram is on time, we’ll make it. Coop, the sack.”

Coop held out a small canvas bag. “Samples of
our wares, and an up-to-date manifest of all available goods.”

“We used some on repairs, don’t forget.”

“Taken into account, Cap’n.”

He nodded. “Ms. Graus, are you certain you
still want to come along? It won’t be pleasant.”

“My mother’s health depends on this. I want
to be sure that everything that can be done will be done,” she
said.

“Get your mask on then, and make sure you’ve
got everything you brought to trade. I’ll talk to the man on the
tram, but he’ll be expecting you, so the decision will have already
been made.”

“Did you send a message ahead somehow?”

“They’re the fug folk. They’ll know. The rest
of you, you’re on leave for a few hours. Decide among yourselves
who stays with the ship and meet back there in two hours. Depending
on how this goes, we’ll see what’s next for us. And if they have
any breadfruit at the market, buy a piece for Wink.”

The crew didn’t wait around to be told twice,
vanishing down the catwalk and toward the city proper.

“Now listen closely. It doesn’t matter that
you hold the purse strings. When it comes to dealing, the fuggers
have all the power. Treat these folk as royalty. Speak only when
they speak to you. Be respectful. You’re as close as your country’s
ever had to a diplomat to the fug, so you’d best act like it.”

“I’ll conduct myself properly.”

He looked up to the slowly grinding wheel,
then checked his watch again. “Sounds like it’s close. Say what you
want about these folk, they keep to their schedule.”

Far below, the purple mist parted and an
ornate tram rose out of the fug. It was a work of art, as exquisite
as anything Nita might have found in her own land. Looping
gold-plated filigree covered the outside. The brass-work was
polished to a glorious sheen, and the wood was flawless ebony.

“It’s… magnificent.”

“What did you expect?”

“Well, from the way you’ve described them, I
expected a ferryman guiding something from the gates of hell.”

“Mmm. And who’s to say this ain’t what that
looks like?”

The tram pulled level with the catwalk, and
the doors slid open. From inside poured a dense purple fog that
swirled about their legs. Even through her leather and canvas
leggings, the stuff felt strangely cold. When enough of it drained
from within the tram, a man became visible. Nita’s breath caught in
her chest. He was gaunt, almost skeletal about the face and wrists.
His hair was black with streaks of pure white. He wore it slicked
back. Every feature of his face was sharp, with a beaklike nose and
pronounced cheekbones. His clean-shaven face revealed every deep
line in his stoic expression. Every exposed patch of flesh was an
ashen-gray color. Thin eyebrows arched haughtily above the most
unsettling eyes she had ever seen. The pupils were enormous, easily
twice as large as her own, as large as a normal person’s iris.
Around them, a thin ring of gold bled quickly into orange and then
a deep red where the whites should have been. His hands were
practically talons, long and slender with bony knuckles and black
nails. His spine had a serpentine bend to it, hunching down at the
top and swooping forward again at the base. It gave his body the
vague shape of a question mark. In contrast to his ghoulish
appearance were his clothes. They were as elegant as the tram, made
from the finest silk and tailored to fit his twisted body expertly.
He wore a black suit jacket with tails. A single black button was
fastened, revealing a black silk vest and a white lace ascot. His
slacks were straight-cut and led down to black socks and pointed
black shoes polished to a glassy finish.

He looked to the two of them, turning first
to the captain. “Captain McCulloch West. Punctual as always. A
pleasure to be working with you again. Step inside, please.” His
voice was as sharp and cold as his features. He turned to Nita.
“Miss Amanita Graus. It is my great honor to be the first of my
people to address a Calderan.” He removed a set of white gloves
from his pockets and slipped them on before holding out his hand.
“Please, let me help you aboard.”