Goblinopolis, The Tol Chronicles, Book 1 (20 page)

He was in a sort of stadium or arena, surrounded by sloping white walls and a large number of floating opalescent orbs of different diameters. Whoa. What had he been drinking or smoking? Whatever it was, he hoped there was some more of it. He hadn’t had a dream like this since he was a rowdy teenager smoking or swallowing just about anything passed to him.

He rested there on some species of rather comfortable fluffy cushion pad and stared at the orbs. They were moving lazily about, occasionally sending bluish streamers to one or more companions. He felt no urge to stir, not even to go to the bathroom. That tore it: he
never
woke up without having to go to the bathroom. This was, unequivocally and without any doubt, a dream.

After a while, as Tol slipped in and out of what he could only assume was some kind of meta-doze, one of the orbs touched down next to him and morphed into a vertical haze. Tol gawked at it dazedly and watched it resolve into a short, thin, blue-skinned creature. Obviously another product of his drug-enhanced imagination...but it
did
look a little familiar. It reached out a four-fingered hand and touched Tol on the forehead. He jerked involuntarily—it felt like he’d been suddenly encased in warm gelatin. Actually, it was a pretty pleasant sensation, once he got used to it. If he weren’t already asleep, it just might lull him into taking a little nap...

This time the walls were dirty gray. They went straight up to meet a decidedly undecorative ceiling whose little acoustic-dampening bumps were detaching here and there, giving it a scabrous appearance. The sheets smelled like disinfectant with just the merest soupçon of mildew. A real comedown after his hoity-toity dream, but at least he knew where he was. The Edict Enforcement Infirmary in Sebacea was a drab little building that all district EE cops grew to know intimately over the course of their careers.

An infirmary tech walked into the room just then. “Welcome back to land of the conscious, officer Tol-u-ol. Hope you had a pleasant outing.”

Tol grunted, “Any chance of getting something to eat in this dive?”

“Well. You seem to be recovering nicely from your ordeal. Let me see if I can rustle up some victuals for you.”

“Wait,” Tol called, shading his still-dilated pupils from the harsh infirmary lights, “How long have I been...out?”

“Let’s see,” replied the tech, looking at a clipboard, “says here you were brought in from a GRUC tunnel on the 13th. That would be three days ago. We thought you were a goner for a while—you’d lost a lot of blood. Last night, though, you took a sudden turn for the better and now here you are, rosy-cheeked and ready to party. Congratulations, officer. You’re one tough so-and-so.”

Tol grunted again, and the tech left the room. He could still see the image of the alfar in his mind’s eye as clearly as he did in the dream...or, whatever it was. He was grateful to whoever facilitated his rapid recovery, regardless of whether or not they were real. Reality wasn’t anything to drop your pants and celebrate most of the time, anyway.

He took a little survey of his parts. Everything seemed to be working. A bit of soreness here and there, but nothing he hadn’t experienced after a moderately successful night at the pub. He took a deep breath and sat up. Felt pretty good. He rolled his legs over the side of the bed. Some slight dizziness, but he could handle it. Now for the big one. He slid his butt ever so gently off the bed and stood up.

Admittedly, if the bed hadn’t been there to lean on, things might have gotten ugly, but as it was he managed to stand on his own until the surprised tech came back with his soup and crackers. It did feel really good to lie back down, though.

They kept Tol in the infirmary for another 48 hours, just to be safe. Everyone agreed his recovery from such a beating was nothing short of miraculous. “One might even be tempted to say magical,” said the surgeon who released him.

“OK, ya found me out fair and square, sawbones: I’m an archmage in disguise. For my next trick, I’m going to walk down the street and turn into a pub.”

The surgeon smiled. “Lay off the razzle for a while, Tol. No point in pressing your luck.”

“What good is luck,” Tol replied, walking away and waving, “If you can’t press it now and then?”

Truth be told, he didn’t feel nearly as fit ‘n’ chipper as he wanted the infirmary staff to believe. Things were sore; muscles and tendons throbbed here and there. He had a little difficulty walking straight, too, which he took enormous pains to hide from onlookers. The staff weren’t fooled in the least, of course. They saw cops come and go every day, and this was more or less the way all of them acted. The tough guy image was very important to EE officers, because it gave them an edge on the streets and in interactions with the criminal element. Plus, they just liked to think they were made of sterner stuff than the average jlok.

Once out of sight of the infirmary, Tol leaned against the side of a building. He was sweating from the strain of trying to look healthy. He closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and hobbled onward. The delicate aroma of deep-fried wrat fritters assailed his nostrils and reminded him that he was hungry. He sniffed around for the source of the odor and was pleasantly surprised to discover that it came from a pub—one he’d never seen before, to boot. He could have sworn there was a vacant lot here just last week. No matter. He loved exploring new pubs. Things were definitely looking up.

The pub’s decor was, um, different. The ceiling was hard to make out, but what little Tol could resolve seemed to suggest swirling multicolored gas with stars mixed in here and there for good measure. The barmaids were of some weird smooth-skinned race he didn’t recognize. Must be foreigners. As long as they had wrats and razzle, he didn’t really care if they came from another galaxy. Immigration wasn’t his beat.

He chose an empty table near the bar and plopped down in an exceptionally hard wooden chair. Glancing around, he couldn’t help but notice that
all
the other tables were empty. Well, it was obviously a new pub, after all. Perhaps the word just hadn’t gotten out yet. One of the barmaids came over to take his order. She was chewing on something—maybe a cud?—and every so often a strange thin bladder protruded from her mouth, inflated, then disappeared again with a soft ‘plop.’ It was distracting, to say the least.

“What’ll it be, Mac?”

Tol blinked in surprise, or would have if he’d possessed opaque eyelids.

“I don’t know what ‘mac’ is, but I’d love a pint of razzle and a plate of wrats.”

“Coming at ya, bud.”

Tol shook his head, but instantly regretted it because it hurt like smek. He was becoming aware of the rather disorienting tendency of the pub’s furniture and appointments to flow around the room when he wasn’t looking. Was this a residual effect of his recent injuries, or something intrinsic to the building itself? He’d never before seen this sort of behavior while sober. It was a little like finding sand in your shorts before you even get to the beach.

The barmaid brought his wrats and razzle in a commendably short time. The wrats smelled wonderful, especially after days of infirmary “food.” He started scarfing with considerable enthusiasm. Tol tended to get tunnel vision when he was scarfing. The world receded into the distance and went about its affairs entirely divorced from Tol’s comprehension while food consumption was underway. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that when at last he and the world were reunited, Tol suddenly became aware of a stranger sitting quietly at the table with him. His head flew up out of reflex, which induced a cramp that started at his occipital ridge and went all the way down to his coccygeal ganglion. Of course, Tol just called it a pain in his neck.

“Who the smek are you?” he grunted, rubbing the back of said neck vigorously.

The stranger regarded him for a moment. He was fairly tall, of indistinguishable age (at least, to Tol), and had shimmering white hair on his head and face. The rest of his visible skin was oddly smooth, like the barmaids, and pinkish in color. In his hands he held a strange stringed instrument with a curiously bent neck and a rounded back made of ingeniously fitted wooden slats. Tol found his tablemate’s appearance quite frankly repulsive. He was glad he’d already mostly finished eating.

“I am called Oloi,” replied the stranger, finally, “I’m glad you dropped in.”

“Yeah, well, I couldn’t pass up the chance to check out a new pub. How long you been here?”

Oloi seemed to be counting on his fingers, “About twenty minutes, roughly, I’d say.”

Tol sighed, almost but not quite imperceptibly, “I meant, how long has the
pub
been here?”

Oloi’s bushy eyebrows went up. “About twenty minutes, as I said. We arrived at the same moment.”

Tol sat back and folded his arms. “You’re telling me that you and this pub just... materialized in this spot twenty minutes ago?”

“Yes. We didn’t want to miss you, but for...logistical reasons we could not arrive much earlier.”

Tol didn’t quite know what to make of this. “It sounds like you’re telling me that you came here specifically for my benefit. I’m flattered, but why?” If this guy was a nutjob, it would probably be in Tol’s best interests, given his weakened condition, to play along.

“Because you are the key.”

Tol rolled his eyes. He hated cryptic mumbo-jumbo. “I am the key to what? Boosting your razzle sales?”

“No, to halting disconnection from The Slice.”

“Mother of Goblins, not that stuff again. I’m about as far removed from the theory and practice of magic as any jlok you’re gonna find in the whole smekkin’ realm. What makes you or anybody else think I can have the slightest effect on something happenin’ in The Slice? Smek, I’m not even sure just what ‘The Slice’ is.”

“Saving The Slice does not require magic, officer Tol-u-ol. It requires good, solid, detective work.”

“Izzat so? Well, as it happens, I’m not particularly solid at the moment. Someone tried to kill me with magic.”

“And you were healed by the same mechanism.”

“What makes you think that?”

“The alfar who did it told me so.”

Tol struggled with his memories for a few moments, trying to separate reality from trauma-induced fantasy. It wasn’t easy. He needed to correlate everything he could about the alfar, but he couldn’t draw a clean line between what he’d actually experienced and his dreams. Maybe he could get some information from this Oloi character, who was now strumming his instrument quietly. It was a catchy tune, and Tol found himself listening for a moment before he remembered he had unanswered questions.

“Yeah? What did he tell you, exactly?”

“Merely that you had been the victim of a concerted magical attack and that he had rescued you, then helped you to heal.”

“Not to sound ungrateful, but did he happen to mention why?”

“Because he is a creature born of The Slice, and therefore vitally interested in its welfare, of course.”

“And saving me is somehow going to contribute to that welfare? I still don’t get it.”

“As I said, you are the key to saving The Slice. There are forces at work intent on destroying it, or at least this world’s access to it, and thereby rendering magic virtually inaccessible. A side effect of this action will be to alter the ‘ecosystem’ of The Slice rather drastically. Stopping those forces is your preordained task. They are aware of that, and so they have been trying to neutralize the threat that you represent.”

“Okay, I’m gonna go for the big one now—why?”

“Why are they trying to do away with magic, or why should you stop them?”

“Either. Both.”

“The answer is the same for both questions: magic is integral to Tragacanthan society. In the millennia since access to The Slice was established, a subtle balance has been struck between technology and the arcane arts, as well as the magical equilibrium of The Slice itself. If this balance were disturbed by the destruction of N’plork’s access portals to The Slice, chaos would undoubtedly ensue. There are those who would take advantage of this social disorder, the vacuum, to seize power. Look for someone hording technology and I believe you’ll find your perpetrators.”

“Why me? Sorry to sound so inquisitive, but it’s an occupational hazard.”

“I do not know why you, specifically, were chosen for this task, Tol-u-ol. It was not my doing. You
have
been chosen, however, and you must answer this call for the good of all Tragacanth.”

“No offense, but this is getting a little messianic for my taste. I’m just your average cop, working my beat and trying not to get knocked off in the process. I’m not cut out for saving the world.”

“The fate of Tragacanth rests on your shoulders, be they worthy or no. We cannot always choose our own path in life.”

Tol sighed. It would still be several years before he could take even early retirement, so there was nothing for it. He tried to think of a way to ignore the whole thing, but failed miserably.

“Thanks for not puttin’ any pressure on me,” he said, at last.

“I do not lay this burden on you lightly,” replied Oloi, in a kinder tone, “I wish you all the best, and I will help you by whatever means I am able.”