Trident's Forge (26 page)

“Good. I respect your strength and dedication, Kuul. If we survive this, maybe we can be friends.”

“Perhaps.” Kuul wandered back to sit with zer surviving guard, some of the color dimmed from zer flesh. Mei snorted. “You have a way with people,” she said in her accented English.

Benson shrugged. “It's a gift.”

“Would you really shoot zer?”

“Ze makes another play for my gun? Count on it. But I'd just as soon win zer over, or at least make zer stop seeing us as potential enemies.”

“That'll be easier now that Dluz returned.” Benson tilted his head at the name. “The dead guard. Kuul feels vulnerable.”

“It does seem to have taken some wind out of zer sails, hasn't it?”

Mei nodded agreement. Kexx appeared and sat down next to them by the fire. “Detective,” ze said in Atlantian.

“How's your shoulder?” Benson waved a hand over the half-moon of tiny puncture wounds in the truth-digger's flesh. They already looked inflamed and angry.

“It will be very sore by tomorrow. I fear it will weep.”

“Weep?” Benson asked.

“Ze means infected,” Mei translated.

“Oh, here,” Benson handed his tube of salve over to Kexx. “Rub this into them.”

Kexx took the tube and touched the head of it with a fingertip. Ze recoiled and flashed blue. “It tastes rancid.”

“You don't have to eat it.”

Mei sighed and took the tube. “Ze needs zer hands to rub it on, stupid.”

“Oh, right,” Benson said.

Mei shook her head as she started to apply the salve to Kexx's wounds.

“What is it?” Kexx asked.

“You're not going to have a word for it,” Benson said. “We call it an
antiseptic
. It kills all of the, um… tiny bugs that cause infections.”

“Tiny bugs?”

“Bacteria,” Mei said, not bothering to dumb it down for the Atlantian. “Animals so small, your eyes can't see them.”

Kexx looked unconvinced. Benson had to admit, if he'd lived in an age before microscopes, he'd have probably thought it sounded like a load of bullshit too.

“Ann-tee-sep-tick,” Kexx experimented with the new word. “Back-tear-e-ah.”

Kexx winced as Mei moved around and rubbed the salve into a particularly deep wound on zer back. Once she'd finished, Kexx seemed to relax. “You seem to have made an impression on Kuul.”

“Sure looks that way. What kind of impression is harder to guess.”

“We'll know soon enough. I have news to share.”

“Let's hear it,” Benson said.

“The calebs that attacked us were not wild.”

Benson leaned forward. “What makes you say that?”

“Several reasons.” Kexx began to count off points on zer fingers. “One, they were far too organized, even for an old pack. Two, wild uliks tend to avoid tough fights. They prefer to attack weak, old, or injured animals, and only then once they have a clear advantage in numbers. Even then, they will retreat once they've lost more than a couple members. Their packs rely on numbers for strength, they can't afford to lose more than a few members. This pack continued to fight until they were almost completely wiped out.”

Benson nodded along. The limited footage of uliks in the wild Pathfinder's rovers and drones had captured reminded him of wolves, or maybe hyenas from Earth. “OK, I follow you so far. Anything else?”

“Yes, something I noticed while I was trapped under the one that attacked first. They were warm. Much too warm for this late at night.”

Ze was right about that. The temperature swing from day to night around here felt like thirty degrees. Benson could see his breath if he turned away from the fire. “Someone was keeping them near a fire,” he said. “But the land is flat as a table out here. We'd see another fire from many stones away.”

“Not necessarily. There are ravines and valleys some stones ahead where a fire could be hidden. Or they kept the calebs under blankets, or underground,” Kexx continued. “These animals were… I hesitate to call them domesticated, but they were certainly trained and held.”

“You think it's the Dwellers?”

“Not the Dwellers proper. We're still too far from their caves for the calebs to reach us in time and still be so hot. But an outpost or a scouting party? Perhaps.”

“Sounds like a lead to me,” Benson said.

“Indeed.”

“So, what do we do?”

“Right now? We sleep and recover.” Kexx worked zer stiff shoulder. “But at first light, I track them back to their camp and we ask them some very uncomfortable questions.”

Benson smiled. “I'd be delighted to.”

T
heresa's feet
fell quietly on the marble tilework of the museum's main exhibition hall, yet they still echoed. It was another two hours before the hall opened to the public. It was quiet as a tomb, which it was, in a way. The building, the largest in Shambhala, larger even than the Beehive, held the mortal remains of Earth, Luna, and scraps of Mars. The artifacts, books, and art were keepsakes of a civilization now more than two centuries dead.

The new museum had over three times the floor space of its predecessor on board the Ark, which meant three times as much display space for pieces that had been patiently waiting in the vault to see the light of day. Looking around, Theresa felt the weight of millennia as if it was a physical presence. The building itself was virtually brand new, only completed eighteen months ago, and opened to the public six months after that. Yet the place felt, even
smelled
old, as if the age of the artifacts it housed had already seeped into the walls and columns.

It made Theresa uneasy. She'd never felt any particular connection to Earth. She'd never known it, no one had. Everyone dealt with that separation differently. Some threw themselves wholeheartedly into genealogical studies, digging through the lives of ancestors long dead as if it would help define who they were today. Others studied Earth history, binged on old TV shows and movies, or embraced the culture and traditions of their ethnic group or their dominant nationality. Theresa secretly harbored a suspicion that anyone actually from Earth would openly laugh at their efforts, but whatever made them happy was fine with her so long as she didn't have to break up fights or get thrown up on. Saint Patrick's Day was not her favorite holiday.

For her husband, it was his strange love of nature documentaries about plants and animals that were now long extinct, many never to exist again. She'd lost count of how many nights she'd fallen asleep on the couch with her head resting on Bryan's shoulder while he watched some dead guy named Attenborough drone on about penguins and how shitty living in the Antarctic was.

Theresa lived in the now. She was distantly aware through her mother that she was of Mediterranean ancestry, primarily Portuguese and Sicilian with a smattering of basically everything else on three continents to go with it. But the knowledge didn't tell her anything about herself. Maybe some things were better left in the past.

One person who most decidedly did not share that opinion was the museum's curator Devorah Feynman, whom Theresa was there to see. If only she could find the woman.

“Devorah?” she called out into the stillness, but there was no answer. The grimacing face of a red suit of samurai armor, bristling with teeth and a horsehair mustache, seemed to leer at her as she passed. It had given her the creeps as a kid. Now, with the museum darkened and empty of life, it positively made her skin crawl.

“Devorah?” she called again with a renewed urgency.

“Keep your voice down, young lady,” came a raspy voice from directly behind her. Theresa nearly jumped out of her shoes.

“Jesus Christ, Devorah!” She whirled around to face the curator. “You scared the shit out of me!”

“Sorry, dear. An old lady has to entertain herself somehow.”

“It's dead quiet in here. How did you sneak up on me?”

“I'm actually a ghost.” Devorah held up her hands and wiggled her knobby fingers. “Whooooooh.”

“You're not the first person to say that,” Theresa said.

“Really?”

“No. Some of your former interns believe you're undead.”

“Zombie, or vampire?” Devorah asked.

“Debate rages. But they all agree that you don't sleep.”

“I sleep, just not as much as a hormone-drenched teenager.”

“But you're always here. Day and night.”

“I take naps.”

“At work?” Theresa said with mild surprise.

“What the hell do you think an office is for?”

“Ah, I assumed working.”

“No work has ever gotten done in an office. Offices are for people who slow down the actual workers with meetings and performance reviews and training seminars. I use mine for cat naps. I figure it boosts productivity around here by twenty percent. People assume I'm doing paperwork, I get the three hours of sleep I need a day, everyone's happy.”

Theresa's eyes went wide. “Three hours? How are you conscious?”

“Tea,” Devorah said. “Sleep's overrated. Benjamin Franklin slept three hours a day, and he had enough time left over to be an inventor, businessman, founder of America, ambassador, and bed half of the women he encountered.”

“Who?” Theresa asked, embarrassed.

Devorah tisked and shook her head. “I must speak with your old teachers.”

“Oh no, don't blame them for how I turned out. They did their best.”

“Well, I suppose you could've been worse. You could've gone into politics.”

Theresa chuffed. “Seems like half my job is politics these days.”

Devorah shrugged and changed the subject. “I noticed you looking at this piece.” She gestured to the red armor with a hand.

“Oh, I just remembered seeing it as a kid.”

“That's not surprising. It was down in the vault for many years. But we've been trying to display more Asian artifacts since…” She trailed off uncomfortably.

“Since Shangri-La,” Theresa finished for her. The attack that had wiped out two fifths of humanity, the attack her husband had tried but failed to stop, and indeed barely survived himself, had come within seconds of snuffing out Devorah as well. By unguided self-selection, Shangri-La module had been primarily home to descendants of populations from Earth's eastern hemisphere. Only five thousand people from Shangri-La had survived, and only because they'd been in the stadium watching the Zero Championship.

Devorah cleared her throat. “Yes. Since then. This piece was the personal armor of Yamagata Masakage.”

“It's tiny,” Theresa observed. “I don't think I would fit in it.”

“It's a little loose on me.”

“You've
worn
it?”

“Purely for research purposes, I assure you,” Devorah said with a twinkle in her eye.

“Still, I assume it was cut for a man, yes?”

“He lived in Japan during the sixteenth century. People were much smaller back then.”

“Who was he?”

“A famous samurai. He took over for his brother after he committed seppuku in service of their lord.”

“Seppuku?”

Devorah stuck out her thumb and drew it across her stomach, making a ripping sound as she did.

“He gutted himself? Why on Earth would he do that?”

Devorah shrugged. “No idea. You'd have to ask him. Seems like a mighty silly thing to me.”

Theresa stuck her chin at the lacquered breastplate. “And him? Did he fare better than his brother?”

“Depends on how you look at it. He was shot off his horse in battle. As deaths go, I'm sure a samurai would be thrilled with it.” Devorah reached out and very gently touched the spot of the armor that would cover the heart. “Just between you and me, I'm pretty sure this is a reproduction, probably a movie costume, no matter what the provenance docs say. It was ‘rediscovered' at an awfully convenient time.”

“Then why keep it?”

“I don't know. I've just… always liked it. And if it's a repro, it's a simply brilliant example of the craft. Maybe that's an art form that deserves recognition, too.”

“Is that a trace of sentimentality I hear in the ‘Machine of the Museum'?”

Devorah smirked. “Is that what they're calling me out there? I thought I was a zombie, not a cyborg.”

“Debate rages,” Theresa smiled warmly. “It wouldn't hurt to make an appearance outside now and then.”

“I know. I just… there's so much I have to do yet. This place is a mess.”

“It's immaculate,” Theresa objected.

“Well sure, it's
clean
, but that just hides the chaos downstairs, not to mention everything we still have to bring down the beanstalk. There's just so little time.”

Theresa almost objected. Against all the odds, mankind had made it. The city was growing. The future stretched out before them with endless possibilities. But then she realized whose time the prickly old woman was talking about. She glanced down and saw tears threatening to form at the corners of Devorah's eyes. How old was she now? Seventy? Seventy-one? In all likelihood, she still had another ten, maybe fifteen years of life left ahead of her, and everyone was too scared of her to seriously try to force her to retire one second before she was ready. But then Devorah had always seen things on a longer timescale than the average person.

Not knowing what to say, Theresa reached down and embraced her tightly. She held the withered woman for several seconds, consoling her.

“Ack, enough.” Devorah pushed back and brushed away tears with her wrist. “You didn't come here before breakfast for a pity party. Which begs the question: what are you here for, constable?”

The moment had passed, and Devorah had fallen back into her comfortable role as curator. “I have a few questions,” Theresa said.

“About the administrator's assassination?” Devorah asked. “Don't know what good I can be to you there. I was a few thousand kilometers away from where it happened.”

“Not the assassination, at least not directly,” Theresa said. “I'm curious about gold. Silver, precious metals.”

“They're shiny and people like them, especially women.”

Theresa ignored her reflexive sarcasm. “Have any pieces made of gold or other rare metals gone missing from the museum's collection since we landed?”

Devorah bristled. “Things don't go missing on my watch. Besides, you would've been the first to know. Well, the second after me. Actually, the third after me and whoever stole them.”

“Has anyone shown an unusual amount of interest in them? Asking a lot of questions? I'm only asking because I've already done a review of search queries on the net and found nothing unusual.”

“Not that I can… Well, then again.”

“Yeah?”

Devorah rubbed her chin as if trying to remember something. “A couple years ago, while we were still under construction, some business types came in here and tried to lean on me to strip the gold leaf off of the frames of our classical paintings and replace it with paint in exchange for a ‘generous donation.'”

“What did you tell them?”

“What do you think I told them? I said you can't add to the museum by subtracting from it.” Devorah shook her head in disgust.

“What did they want it for?”

Devorah shrugged. “They were not forthcoming about their intentions for it, only that they wanted any gold that wasn't ‘an intrinsic part of the artifact,' as if the goddamned frame isn't part of the painting. I swear, the shortsighted arrogance of some people. They'd burn the Library of Alexandria to get through a single chilly night in comfort.”

Theresa was carefully recording the conversation with her plant, adding notes and follow-up questions as she went. “What came of it, in the end?”

“They didn't lay off, I can tell you that. At first, it was donations, then bigger donations. When the carrot didn't work, they started threatening to mess with my funding. It even made it to a couple of closed-door council sessions, but they went nowhere. Then one day, they just quit. Never heard another peep out of them.”

“Why'd they lay off?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. But, they were
very
insistent. I'd say they found another source.”

“You may be right about that,” Theresa said. “Last question, Devorah. Who were these ‘business types'?”

“They were stooges, mostly, and I don't know who all they represented. Except Alexander. His fingerprints were all over it, that slimy bastard.”

“But didn't his company design and build this place?”

“Not because of an abundance of options, constable,” Devorah said. “I never liked that entitled, corner-cutting jerk. Wrestling with him for two years to make sure this place was actually built right and didn't start leaking during the first hurricane season only reinforced my opinions of his business ethics.”

Theresa smirked at the feeling of tugging at threads and watching the tapestry unravel. It was a surprisingly addictive sensation. “Thank you, Devorah. That's all I have for now. And if you could keep this confidential, I would greatly appreciate it.”

“I assumed that already. Nothing else would bring you here.”

“I'm sorry. It's just that I've been so busy lately.”

Devorah reached out and lightly touched Theresa's wrist. “Can I show you something?”

“OK,” Theresa said hesitantly, but Devorah's grip had already tightened as she pulled her forward through the halls until they'd reached the central atrium. Devorah brought up the lights. Sitting among the museum's permanent exhibits, nestled in a place of honor between Ramses the Great's sarcophagus and Neil Armstrong's boots, sat a brand new display case. Through the thick glass, with red velvet shaped around its lines, sat a very special handgun. Once used by a madman to plunge all of humanity into war, and then, centuries later, used by a completely different madman to save it. That lunatic was Theresa's husband, and she was standing next to the woman who'd broken all the rules and risked everything she'd achieved to smuggle it into his hands.

“It's a beautiful presentation,” Theresa said at last, not knowing what else to say.

“Thank you.”

“I'm amazed they let you put it on display.”

“Are you kidding? It's an icon. The whole city has been demanding to see it. But you're the first. Well, the second. Well…”

“Yes, yes. The usual caveats apply.” Theresa smiled down at the curator. “I'm honored. Thrilled.”