Those That Seek

For this week's story, I'm pulling an excerpt from an upcoming novel. The novel is one I call Katerina's Loss, it is Book 2 of the Boyar's Curse series. This excerpt is the first chapter.

To recall, the Boyar's Curse told us the opening of a tale of centuries; Rikard has been marooned in time. The gods, having left the world behind, cursed Rikard with an extended life.

Rik's spent his time learning. Wandering. Fighting where he must, and far more often than he would prefer. At the time this story opens, Rik finds himself in Paris. But he's been here far too long, from the first Napoleon to now the last. Too many people have seen his face far too often.

Rik's ready to move on and leave his current life behind. But on his way out of Paris, he'll first need to stop and discuss a little business with...

Those That Seek by M. K. Dreysen

At a small table in the cafe, three men sipped wine. Two of them discussed the just-announced end of the civil war in the United States.

The third man wondered at his reasons for being there. The sun had left the darkness to its business. Richard wondered what the two men assuring themselves of the profits they'd earned in the Americans' war had to discuss that was worth listening to their blather.

"Colonel Belanger," the younger man finally said. "We understand that you're considering a trip to Prague. My uncle and I wondered if you might have time to take on a bit of side business while you're there?"

Richard's time in Paris had, so far as he was concerned, drawn to a close. He'd come to the place in response to Napoleon's gravitational field. Time had more than passed, the emperor's loyalists were all dead. None left would recognize Richard's face.

Yet now the emperor's nephew ruled. Enough so that the city was quiet. If Rik stayed too long, eventually the next generation would notice the lack of wear and tear on his face. He'd arranged the trip to Prague, and the rumors of it through the court and military apparatus, so that some at least would weep when word of his death returned to Paris.

He rather hoped that a few of the tears would even be real. Paris had been enjoyable. He swirled the wine around the bottom of the glass. Should he? What matter, he thought, a little extra gold up front wouldn't hurt. And the uncle and nephew Caillou might perhaps join the mourners to be. "I do have some small flexibility in my schedule, Pierre. I need only information regarding your cause. And, perhaps, funds appropriate to it."

The older man snorted into his wine at that, tried to cover it up as a connoisseur's hearty sniff of the aroma.

His nephew shook his head, as if to laugh off his older relative's reticence over the crude discussion of finance. "Colonel, do you recall the late General Renaud?"

"You mean Alain?" Richard suggested. Knowing that the answer would be...

"No, Guy, of the first emperor's corps. My father worked in the late General's service, as an aide de camp. After the General passed, in memory of my father's service, a small piece of his estate came into my possession. My father having passed just a few months before the General, you understand."

Richard did indeed remember the General Guy Renaud. For which reason he had purposely misnamed the man. Renaud had survived the original Napoleon's ignominious end, and the inevitable political repercussions of it. Through main political guile, from Richard's obervations.

Richard himself had passed the gantlet via the simple means of disappearing to Berlin, then Zurich, and returning under a different name. The last time just after the nephew consolidated his hold on the empire. Throughout, the General Guy Renaud was there.

Richard had blessed the man's passing, if nothing else for the fact that this meant Richard himself would have less work to trick the old bastard's eye.

The younger Caillou was still going on. Apparently, the Renaud estate had included a small home, and the assorted paraphernalia, just outside of Prague proper. "None here at court know the why of this, Colonel. I would ask you to recover this story for me, if at all possible, as you catalogue the house, the grounds, and all the chattels therein."

"Your documentation?"

The older man came into the conversation here. "Impeccable, of course." Roger Caillou opened the first few of the letters. "As you see, Franz Josef's court issued the original determination. And our own emperor has ruled the bequest legitimate. Our claim to the property is then..."

Our claim? Richard wondered to himself as the older Caillou giggled over his newfound position. Richard had fought beside Armand Caillou, Pierre's father. Rik remembered much of the then-young soldier's story. Of the farms and fields he'd grown up exploring. Of the maids he'd pursued as a teenager, the crafts and trades his parents had implored him to entertain.

Of the minor poverty, and complete lack of name or family prospects to relieve it. Armand's commission had broken the back of that problem, if the appearance and mannerisms of the two men Rik found himself shackled to were any indication. "I assume there is some title associated with the property?" Richard asked.

The nephew and uncle exchanged glances. The uncle Caillou shook his head, murmuring "Non, Non," but the nephew grimaced. "I would be Freiherr Caillou, or whatever the Czech styling is."

"Congratulations, Baron Pecka, on your advancement. I'm sure our young Napoleon will be overjoyed at the growing ties between Vienna and Paris."

Pierre smiled, his uncle harrumphed at the teasing insult. "The emperor did express his interest in the doings. Especially in the matter of the history, how General Renaud came to be entitled to the name and the property in the first place."

Richard had his guesses. After all, Guy Renaud had likely been an artilleryman at Austerlitz. But neither of the two before him would appreciate the reminder. And the uncle especially had, if Armand Caillou's description of his brother was any guide, reason to avoid being directly compared to military bravura. Or any bravery, for that matter.

In the end, Caillou the younger parted with gold, papers, and suitable introductory letters. "Prague is rumored to be shifting, the national revival has controlled the city for some few years now."

"They've shown no interest in disputing their place in the empire, young baron. I suspect that you'll have more shoals and reefs in the days after your inheritance than those leading to it. I will of course keep you informed." And Richard left the two men, arguing now over the likelihood of Palmerston holding his parliament through the end of the year.

"At least this time," Richard reminded himself as he boarded the train east, "I won't need an army to take the place."

Richard spent his travel time reading newspapers in half a dozen languages. Remarking to himself on the sheer speed of the transport; years now and his mind still insisted that the steadily galloping mountains passing by the windows were only a dream. That this traverse required months of weary treading. Sweat and blood and battle; hemorrhoids, if you were damned to the iron-hard contrivance of the carriageways.

And yet here he was, in Vienna in a mere three days. And Prague only another day or so more, once he'd gone through the niceties of the emperor's court.

Richard bought yet more papers, piles of them he procured from the stand at the front of the hotel he'd chosen. English, French, German, Russian, he piled them into a case by the fistful. Along with a handful of the penny dreadfuls from the rack hiding tastefully behind the news purveyor's elbow.

"You must have a hunger for world news, my friend," the newspaper hack suggested.

"My next few days are spoken for by the court, my friend. I just want to be prepared."

The newsstand operator's laughter floated behind Rik, all the way to the imperial district.

By the standards of the mature empire, Rik's three-day excursion through the bowels of paperwork was a sprint of near record-breaking pace. Some of this was due to Rik's patience, honed by the centuries of life. The rest appeared due to the fact that the paperwork had been generated from within the imperial court itself.

"If your Napoleon had begun this process, you would need to set aside months," the last clerk but two informed him.

Rik shrugged. "I retired just recently, Herr Thielen. I am entirely at your disposal."

Herr Thielen winked at him, signed another form for Rik's stack, and passed him on to the next in line. Finally, on what would be the last day, the last clerk sent Rik to a man who turned out to be secretary to a titled minor power of the court. "Edler Fink holds the responsibility for the Kingdom of Bohemia, Colonel. I believe that I in fact wrote the letter you carry."

"Does the Edler require me to meet with him directly?" Rik wasn't impatient; he knew better than to push. The niceties must still be observed.

That, and the coins in his pocket should be sufficient...

In fact, they were. Secretary Graf ostentatiously checked Rik's paperwork for any errors, nodded, recorded obscure marks in his copybook, and then disappeared behind the door he'd been placed to guard. There was a bare murmur of conversation, a few shuffles of paper, a scratch of a pen, and then Secretary Graf appeared again. "Colonel, if you would be so kind as to sign my book in acknowledgment of receipt?"

"Of course." Following the tradition, Rik left the eight florins beneath the sheet he signed.

And that was the extent of the imperial involvement in Baron Pecka's inheritance. On the other hand, the Kingdom of Bohemia was another matter entirely.

The mountains let Rik know he was close. The rails and the city at their end sang to his blood. He ignored these signs. He'd practice, after all.

The men waiting at the station were more difficult to ignore. Or, the things wearing the faces of men, Rik corrected himself.

He'd taken a first-class passage, half surprised that he had the room to himself. Rik sat in the seat as the train's speed bled away. The city lights wound past the glass. He left the window cracked at the top. To smell the city.

To smell the hidden beings waiting on the platform. Rik hadn't anticipated them, but he was happy to enjoy the pleasant accident. Whatever the human faces the two creatures wore, they smelled of wolf and rancid meat. Rik chewed a cigar, to alleviate the smell, and to give himself time to think.

The doors were sliding open in the hall. His neighbors were impatient. When the train finally stopped rolling, Rik allowed the rush to settle. He could afford the time, having already arranged for his luggage to be delivered to the hotel.

When the train porter began his discrete knocks, Rik shrugged himself into the greatcoat, tipped the man, and headed for the exit.

He did ensure his pistols were loaded, first. That the sabre hung properly, and the dagger behind his back was ready if needed. When he stepped out onto the platform, he fought the urge to take a big sniff of the air. The coal stench of the engine would have forced him to cough. If, whoever they were, they were foolish enough to attack him on the platform... but no. He stepped aside, to give room to any who might step down from the train, but it appeared to Rik as though he were the last passenger to leave.

He rolled the cigar in his mouth. Appear indecisive, he told himself. Perhaps lost. But no, that didn't do it either. "Shit," he muttered around the cigar. He took time to pull it from his mouth, spit down onto the rails, then he set himself to walk for the exits.

The hack drivers waited, two of them, with empty spaces aplenty to testify to the fact that Rik's fellow passengers had left. Rik gave the two hopefuls credit for remaining. He stepped to the closest. "Hotel Barataria?" he asked.

"Batavia?" the man returned.

"Da," Rik replied. He figured that Russian at least avoided the German-Czech divide.

"Three pfennigs, Colonel."

Rik's greatcoat had given him away. He handed over the coins, and cursed himself for the most elementary of errors while he climbed into the carriage. "How far, do you think?" he asked, this time in German.

"Twenty minutes or so, it's faster this time of night," the man said. "Get up, you," he said to the horse. And that was the last the man said, until Rik handed him another penny as tip. "Thank you, Colonel. Take care."

"I will," Rik replied.

The desk clerk may not have recognized the insignia, but he guessed well enough. "Colonel Belanger?"

Rik cursed under his breath. "Indeed, sir. Did my bags make it safely?"

"Absolutely, Colonel. Your room is prepared, as requested." The clerk waited for Rik to sign his book, then waved a young boy over to the desk. "Jens will show you to you room, Colonel. Please enjoy your stay."

Rik had wired the money for the reservation, and instructions for his luggage, from the hotel in Vienna. He'd trusted the hotel clerk there; his last visit to Prague, Napoleon had been feted in the palaces, but Rik had not yet been among those lesser officers who'd joined the emperor in his more polished moments. And prior to that visit, Rik had visited the city when the inns were considerably rougher.

He appreciated the change over rushes on the floor, or army cots. Rik handed the child a penny, thanked him, and closed the door.

The two creatures were making their way along his trail. Rik had spent the ride waiting for the presence, in his mind and nose, but the two minds had made no moves to follow the carriage. Apparently, they hadn't needed to.

"Hopefully, they're just following my scent," the old soldier grumbled as he familiarized himself with the room.

The window was actually a door onto a balcony overlooking a small courtyard. Rik opened the door, stepped onto the balcony. Long enough to sniff at the faint hint of flowers in the garden, and likely kitchen herbs. He bounced on the balls of his feet, testing the strength of the balcony.

It held, gave nothing to him. The thing was real, no ornament. "Good," he muttered. Hoping he wouldn't need it. Then he returned to the room, closing the door behind him.

His luggage, two trunks, had been set, one on each side, next to a wardrobe. The bed was on the opposite wall, and between, on the wall as the room's door to the rest of the hotel, were two seats and a small table. Enough for breakfast, late evening drinks, or correspondence.

The floor, tiled, was decorated with a Persian rug, a simple design but well made. Expensive yet tasteful. Rik had had occasion to know of such, but not with enough detail to do anything other than fool himself if he'd have tried to assign it more detail than that.

And there was a bathroom, the door standing discretely open just on the other side of the left hand trunk. Rik checked this; as with the room itself, a small gas light flickered and guttered its illumination sufficient to his needs.

They were taking their time, the creatures. Perhaps half way from the station to the hotel, and it had been well more than the twenty minutes the trotting carriage horse had made the trip in. Rik turned the bathroom gas lamp down, off. Then he returned to the main room.

Sat himself in the chair, the room's gas light within reach, and checked the weapons. Pistols first, he unloaded the revolvers completely. Then he examined each, barrel and wheel, checking their function. Satisfied, he loaded them and returned the pistols to their holsters.

The dagger next. An old, old friend, a wide-bladed knife, the steel unpolished, but well kept, faint spots here and there indicating it had gone a time or two with long stretches between oil and rag and stone. Rik checked its edge, wiped the blade on his pants, and returned it to its place at his back.

The sword last. This one was fairly knew, the leather grip worn enough to not slip, but the blade yet knicked only by practice work. He'd had no reason to use it in anger; he'd purchased it perhaps three years ago. A good weapon, a working cavalry sabre that he'd bought at the recommendation of a sergeant, rather than the showier weapons of his fellow officers.

Rik chuckled, wiped the blade on his pants, and sheathed the sabre in its turn. A difference between Napoleon uncle and nephew was that the first emperor had been as likely to appreciate such a decision as to tease an officer for not living up to his new station.

Napoleon III was unimpressed with what he'd suggested was Colonel Belanger's effort to make himself more familiar to his troops. "Soldiers will not appreciate your efforts, Colonel Belanger. They look always for a leader."

Rik shrugged, sitting in his room in Prague, just as he had then. In this, he was not interested in the opinion of emperors. "The point is to have a good sword, no more no less." And this one would do.

Rik unbuckled the sabre from his waist. Then the dagger, and finally the pistols. One by one, he set the weapons onto the table in front of him.

Within reach. Close enough to be used.

Far enough so that he wasn't touching them. Then he turned, blew out the gas light.

And sat in the dark. Thinking of nothing and everything, and least of all the weapons sitting ready for the violent use he might need to turn them to.

By the time the shadow moved within shadows, climbed up to the balcony from the courtyard below, the room was empty of all thought, all mind. Only the night in empty shadow greeted the snuffling inquiry from the balcony.

The shadow moved to the door. It reached, tested the handle. It paused, waiting for some, any response. When came there none, it twisted the handle and slipped into the room.

Nothing there greeted it. Only the quiet and the no-smell and the no-presence of the empty room.

It drifted to the trunks, the only visible sign that someone had rented the place. The man's scent was there; it stooped over to catch and confirm the traces. Then it moved to the other one, confirmed that the trunks were both of the same origin. They carried the same signs, of the man the creature had followed from the train station.

It paused in place. Not confused, but not satisfied. The man was beyond its ken. No simple being, even the soldier's greatcoat and insignia told only part of the story. His presence was not large, in the creature's mind it viewed the man as... solid.

Lasting. Perhaps... no. He was human, and no human was eternal. That was reserved for more, greater stuff than clay and spit and blood.

This man could be beyond ken, but he was no master. The creature spun, stopped. Listened. And, hearing nothing, it vanished into the night.

The empty room paused in its turn, as though space and time itself waited for a response. And then the room relaxed back to its empty, waiting state. All was as before, save perhaps a shadow or two.

And an empty space on the table, where now two revolvers, a sword, and nothing else, sat. Waiting in their turn.

****

He drifted behind the two creatures as they made their way through the city. When they turned corners, he paused just shy of those turns. And when they returned to their progress, he slipped around the corner and continued following.

To the creatures, his passage was one of empty space. Quiet in the midst of the street noises, of gas guttering in the lamps, of conversations from behind the windows above. The shadows that fluttered hid him, and the quiet mind too.

To the passers by, the city at night, he was just another traveler, making his way perhaps to some bar where soldiers far from home found companionship. There were a few of these. The creatures themselves they also passed, but these elicited shivers, gooseflesh on the back of the neck. An extra step or two of pace, and the urge to get inside that drove it.

Rik noted these reactions. And continued on. Until the creatures paused, to look around, and their point was obvious.

When they slipped into the darkened alley, Rik moved to the wall closest to the alley. They'd led him to an older section of the city, where the second stories of the buildings stood over the sidewalk, silent testimony to snow and rain and, perhaps, a chamber pot if he wasn't careful. Rik stopped a pace or so away from the alley to listen.

The conversations here, from above, and across the way, where apparently some Rene had made himself trouble with his wife... Rik let these sounds drift into noise, along with the fog coming on.

There. He isolated the creatures' voices in his mind, and the whisper of that which they had come to meet with. The voices were too indistinct to make out words, but they were there. He closed the space to the corner. Stopped, to let his anticipation drift, and the quiet mind return. When all was still and he had no more expectation, no more self, he joined the shadows in the alley.

"Name this man for me, then."

The creatures murmured to each other, indecision and nerves. "We have no name for you, master."

The figure they cringed and wrung their hands for didn't move. "You waste my time with trivia," he responded, after a time. "You found some soldier, perhaps a diplomat, if we're lucky. You followed him to a hotel and discovered... nothing. Other than a traveler's acoutrement."

The creatures whined. "Yes, but..." one of them began. "Master, he is different, no simple soldier this one," the other continued.

The other man chuckled. "All are different. All men claim they are unique. Powerful." He raised his hands to the buildings, the fog. The darkness. "We move through this world, command it, laugh at the foibles of those not us. This is what it means to be alive. Even you two, my wonderful allies, you are most delightful manifestations of spirit and will and the dark reaches of the void. You are alive and you are beautiful. And you are mine."

The creatures panted now.

"And if you come back tomorrow night with no more information... lie to me. Dream up a story of... anything if you must. Make of this soldier a mighty tale, if it serves your imagination." He chuckled again. "Or, better yet, find a new trail, a new hint of trouble, and bring me some true telling from that new direction. Go, and be my eyes and my ears as you are called."

And the creatures ran out into the night, whooping with delight at their master's words.

Silence descended, along with the fog. The man stood there yet, perhaps appreciating both. Or perhaps just waiting for someone else to appear. When none did, the man turned.

Then turned again, fast and deadly, a pistol appearing as if from nowhere.

When he admitted at last that no one shared the space with him, the pistol disappeared. To wherever it had come from. The man called, "You... you are there. My senses deny it. Your actions deny it." He waited again. "I understand deception. I surmise that so to do you, watcher in the night." He stopped, and again the pistol appeared from no place certain. "We will face each other, I think, and soon. The fates conspire against us both. Do you not feel it? Or are you too wary of confrontation, Sir Hides-His-Face?"

When no response came, the man made the pistol vanish yet again, and then walked from the alley.

The rats who used the alley for their passage weren't impressed. Neither was the owl who'd built her nest in the crevice above.

If the shadows had enjoyed the performance, none there could have discerned it; except, possibly, for a brief play of darkness overlapping in the man's exit. And then the shadows returned to their normal distribution.

Rik held his mind and judgements clear, and quiet, until he'd returned to his room. He deposited the dagger on the table, a beer beside it, an ashtray, matches, and a cigar to go with them all. When he'd set boot heels in place of the cigar and the beer, and puffed the former to a satisfying life, only then did he allow himself to let ritual go and contemplation of the night's cast take its place on the stage of his mind.

A Rough Analogy

A Rough Analogy

For me, one little irony of the past year plus is that I had set myself the task of digging into system engineering, especially reliability. I knew going in that systems behave in counterintuitive ways; jumping from the unit level to the system level can surprise you.

There's an awful lot of work to absorb in system engineering. One reference I've found very useful is Nancy Leveson's book called Engineering A Safer World. Leveson has several books in this area. A Safer World delves into specific examples of system level analysis, and so gives a set of reminders of the challenges involved.

After Safer World and other work, and yeah the events of the past 12+ months, I've had time to rough out an analogy for a system failure and analysis. I thought I'd write it out as a memory exercise. Forgive me if this is boring or otherwise not interesting.

Ok, suppose that Alice is a day-shift operator for a cogen unit. In particular, Alice runs a gas turbine generator; some fraction of her turbine's daily output goes to her plant, the other fraction is sold to a utility company for supply to the grid.

Now, suppose further that Alice's turbine has the following running profile, learned through years of work and effort: at 8000 rpm, the turbine runs optimally and indefinitely. But, Alice's turbine can run up to approximately 10000 rpm for periods of no more than 2 hours in a 26 hour period.

Basically, over the years, Alice and the engineers have learned that the turbine can operate safely for 2 hours at 10000 rpm, if and only if the turbine is then returned to 8000 rpm for a full 24 hour re-stabilization period.

Anything beyond that 2 hour period means stress fractures in the blades can start to appear. Let's say that up to 4 hours running at 10000 rpm typically means that Alice has to then return to 4000 rpm, run at 24 hours at that level to insure no cracks have appeared, and only then return to 8000 rpm. And if the turbine hits 10000 rpm for more than 4 hours, the turbine must then be spun down completely for a tedious 3-day inspection process.

Again: this running profile has been determined through the school of hard knocks. Alice's company lost a few turbines in the early days, before they fully worked out the unit level reliability curve.

And Alice has been trained thoroughly in this reliability curve. Written on the day board in her office is this: any request for power greater than 8000 rpm must be less than 2 hours in duration, followed by a 24 hours cooldown period! Call the supervisor on duty if necessary!

That's Alice's end of the stick. Now supposed that Bob is in sales for Alice's company. Bob gets the daily power requests; Bob has also been trained so that any power request greater than normal can only be fulfilled by Alice's turbine if and only if it's shorter than 2 hours.

Yesterday, as happens occasionally, Bob got the power demand request that asked for 120% of the turbine's power throughput. Bob checked everything before calling Alice; unfortunately, for undocumented reasons, Bob didn't let Alice know that the time of 120% demand was undetermined.

And so Alice threw the switch on the turbine to spin up to 10000 rpm. So far, so good. Only, Alice went about her daily operating routine from there; she caught up to the 10000 rpm runtime some 3.5 hours after spinning the turbine up.

Following protocol, Alice spun her turbine down to 4000 rpm, locked in the controls with a note for the night shift, and started making her calls.

Ok, that's the basic setup, here's the question: Who's at fault? One could well blame Alice. She's been trained not to run up to 10000 rpm without a specific, known timeframe.

One could also blame Bob. He too has been trained to not answer requests for power above that 2 hour limit.

Actually, from Leveson and the other research in systems engineering, fault and blame turn out to be trick questions. Assigning fault or blame to either Bob or Alice would likely be counterproductive.

To see why, let's blame Bob and then ask what happens. Assuming Bob didn't leave the company, if he got blamed, what's going to happen the next time there's a call for 120% power for 2 hours or less, a perfectly reasonably and fulfillable request?

Bob's never going to sell that available power again. Why should he, after catching the blame for last time the turbine failed?

Or, similarly, let's blame Alice. I think we can guess what'll happen here: for the rest of her operating career, if the call comes in for More Power! even at a less than 2 hours interval, at least while Alice is in the control house there won't be any power to give.

We can go further: add Caryn the engineer, who's been pushing to get automatic overrides put in place that would spin the turbine down safely from 10000 rpm and lock out at 8000 rpm without manual intervention. And Deon, everyone's boss, who has had to push those overrides below other priorities due to the yearly budget process. Then there's Evena, QA/QC, who's trained everyone but got told to ease up on sales because they didn't appreciate Evena's yearly reminders of the turbine operating curve.

Obviously, I could go on. The point being, once you get into a system, especially one complicated by human or other outside factors, failures are almost always over-determined. Meaning, there's almost always more than one cause to a failure.

And trying to insure that that failure or similar ones cannot occur must take into account that blame and fault, i.e. assigning outsized weight to a single cause where multiple causes and interactions were at work, can and often does result in further faults, often hidden, once the system is back up and operating again.

In this simple case, I'd imagine two fixes coming down the pike: Caryn's automatic override system on the turbine, AND for IT to build a dashboard system for the salesforce that would automate some of the request/response processes. Then the salesforce training could shift to simply explaining why they have the restrictions, while both sales and operations now have a hard-coded safety net insuring that the turbine's reliability curve (in this particular dimension, at least) is protected at multiple independent levels.

Thus ends the analogy. Is it complete? Enough to illustrate the issues, I think. This one's human factors heavy; I'll have to think more to come up with one that's more hardware/software dependent. The human social dynamics here seem fairly obvious, but I know there are much more complicated possibilities, so I'll have to see if I can come with stories along those lines.

Why not just point to Leveson's real life examples? Because if I've learned a little of Leveson's research, then building a model that captures a little of that work is a useful way of examining whether I actually did learn something other than "go look in Nancy's book and pull out a canned example". So, a longwinded way of saying thanks to Nancy Leveson for wonderful work that I greatly enjoy learning from.

And, if you dear reader find it useful, maybe that means I also learned something well enough to possibly illuminate it for you. Assuming of course that I didn't just stub my toe on my own ignorance...

We've Got A Kanocker In The Walls

We've had a few hiccups around here this week. Seems someone up in the Arctic regions left the freezer door open...

I didn't have much hope I'd even get a chance to write anything this week. But then the pipes started rattling this morning...

We've Got A Kanocker in the Walls

He moved in sometime last night. I cornered him at the upstairs toilet, first thing this morning.

He'd started rattling the pipes. "I blew in on the north wind, figured this looked like a good place to hang out for a while."

"Uh-huh. And break a few lines while you're at it?"

"Nope, I'm not a Breaker. Just a Rattler."

Rattles lead to breaks if you let them run long enough. But, ok, I figured he'd move on.

Well, hoped, more like it. But then the downstairs toilet started rattling. I took the cover off the supply manifold.

"Your plumber did good work," the kanocker said. He grabbed hold of the pipe, his pipe, and gave it a good shake. "Yep, that's good stuff. That's why the Breakers passed you by."

"Unless I'd not been home?"

He shrugged. "They like old houses, and abandoned ones. Just be glad you weren't traveling this week."

I shuddered at that one. The news, when we've had power long enough to catch it, have been showing the damage porn. "So, if you're moved in upstairs, who's this then?" I pointed at the pipe that feeds our downstairs toilet.

He leaned over to get a good look, then whistled. "Hey, Gary?"

"Yeah?"

"Ok, just checking." The kanocker turned to me. "That's my cousin."

"Breaker?"

"Nope, he's a Rattler, by marriage. He took up with Sherry, oh, a couple centuries back."

I gave him half an ear while I fiddled with valves. I think we'd made it back to when he'd had to start learning French and English when Sarah caught up to us. "You're not headed to the hardware store, are you?"

"Well, it's an easy fix. All I have to do is..."

"No!" "Oh hell no!"

I looked from the kanocker to my wife. "What?"

"Remember the ice machine? And don't even get me started on the garbage disposal."

I carefully didn't look toward the kitchen. I kind of liked the way it turned out. Really. "Well, look. There's no way we're getting a plumber right now, they're too busy."

"Too busy to make some money?"

I started to remind her of what the little bit of news we caught last night. Thousands of calls, broken pipes, another hard freeze tonight.

"Ahem."

I shut my lips and turned back to the kanocker.

"I like Molson. If you're headed out, I mean."

"Not Labatt's?"

He shook his head.

"What about Gary?"

The kanocker looked at his cousin's pipe, then leaned toward me. "Gary's not real selective, if you know what I mean? Free beer is always his speed."

Right. "I think I've got you covered. Anything else, while I'm out I mean?"

His grin gave me all the answer I needed to that one.

****

Molsons, pizza from the place nearest to Montreal style I could find. And conversation with a couple of recent immigrants. All of it from the floor of the utility room.

"We like it cozy," the upstairs kanocker told me. "Your living room ceiling's awfully high."

And we don't even have a vault, it's just a ten foot ceiling. Compared to some of our neighbors, we're hobbits. "I get that."

Sarah left us sometime around the start of the second six pack. "Just see if you can find out when they're planning on leaving?"

I'm not really sure if I asked them or not. When I woke up the next morning, they'd left. With a note. "Thanks for the stay, take care of the place for us. You wouldn't want any Breakers coming in, you know how they are!"

I showed the note to Sarah.

"I guess that means we're hiring a handyman service?" she asked. Innocently.

I looked at the manifold, cover still off. "Just make sure they know to ask before they start doing anything with the plumbing."

****

We got a postcard from Cancun today. One of those ones where they take your picture and print it out on cardstock. Two kid sized tourista sombreros were parked on the sand beneath a palm tree.

"Really enjoying the break from the weather," the kanocker wrote. "And it turns out I was wrong about Gary. Seems he's really fallen in love with Modelo. See you next winter!"

I showed it to Sarah. "Looks like I need to lay in some supplies."

Doors Don't Open Just Because You Want Them To

I've wandered a few back roads in my time, and perhaps you have as well, dear reader. The kind that summon up pleasant smells of hay in summer, or good fresh dirt underfoot.

A few, and I'm guessing you have seen them too, showed me little places. Nooks, crannies.

Cracks and dark hidden places. Doors, perhaps, into somewhere else. Good or bad, either way, pass such a hidden doorway and the hackles raise on the back of your neck. From that which might be concealed.

And, from those who guard them? Perhaps, perhaps. The world is jealous of secrets, and so too are those who've sought them out.

How, then, reader, those who've discovered that, somehow or another, the place they've grown up on, the little bit of land their family has held through trials and tribulations, conceals such a passage?

How does someone like Tre Brown react when someone, a friend even, comes knocking at the family door?

Doors Don't Open Just Because You Want Them To by M. K. Dreysen

"Tre."

Ever woken up with a knife to your throat?

"Tre, wake up."

I did. I can't recommend it.

"Tre, I know you're awake."

"Gonna put the knife away, Denny?"

He didn't put it away. But he did stop pushing the point against my temple.

I sat up, little by little, watching him the whole time.

"What's this about, Dennis?"

"The door to the infinite, Tre. Shangri-la. The Elflands, whatever the hell you want to call it. I know it's here, Tre. And you're going to open it for me."

****

It started with a trip to Intergalactic.

Intercontinental Airport, I mean. Buddy of ours, Oren Young, needed a ride to the airport. And us being the other two aligned fools of the trio, we volunteered to throw Oren and his bags in the back of Denny's old Blazer and dare the traffic.

Back before Uber and high security and all the rest of it. Not that we walked Oren to the gate. Two guys seeing a third one off? On a work trip?

Oren's lucky we dropped him at the right gate. Given the way Intergalactic's laid out, I mean. Anyway, we got out, shook hands and all that, trying not to be awkward about it, and then once Oren walked through the doors, Denny had his idea.

"Why don't we go to your Dad's place? We're halfway there already?"

Of course, he'd already had that idea, when he found out Oren needed the ride in the first place. Me, I figured he'd had something like a brainstorm, realized Highway 90 lay just a couple stoplights and a stretch of road away and decided that made it an easy trip.

Compared to heading back south of Houston in the middle of rush hour? Well, if you're gonna spend the hours in the car anyway, might as well put 'em to better use than whatever trouble we found to get into on a Friday night in the city.

"Ok, let's do it."

"You need to call?"

No, I didn't need to call. If Daddy had anything going that weekend, we'd be just another pair of welcome faces in the family crowd. And if he didn't, even better.

We'd have the place to ourselves.

I tried not to pay attention to how heavy Denny's foot got. The way he'd jump when the needle crept up to the limit, let it ride back down to sanity and Not Getting Pulled Over land.

And then five minutes later do it all over again.

"Tell me about your Dad's land, Tre."

"Not much to tell, Denny. Just our fourty acres. No mule, unless you count Daddy's four-wheeler. But we've got a pond." And a little notch that went down to the Calcasieu. A woodlot, a couple little pastures going back to timberland as fast as the scrub oak and pines could work their magic.

Daddy had sold off the cows and the chickens when Granddaddy passed. He'd quit hunting years before that. I'm not sure when the last time he'd even put a line in the pond was. Same thing. So far as anybody knew, Daddy'd let it all go, except for mowing around the old house and keeping it in good shape.

A place to put his feet up on the porch rail, drink one of his little Miller beers, and enjoy a little peace before he went back to the world. That's the face he, and our little bit of heaven, presented to the world these days.

Growing up, we'd been louder. The pond, catfish and perch if you wanted that. Wood duck and teal when they whistled their way down.

Summer, if you showed up with an inner tube, you could throw it in the pond and lay out there until you couldn't anymore. Or if you had enough interest, you talked someone into leaving a pickup truck at the bridge a couple miles down the river.

And everyone who wanted to threw their inner tubes into the river and floated down a couple hours worth of the slow life.

Granddaddy's grandfather had worked for it. Put aside his pennies; found a mutual-aid group when, inevitably, the banks refused to loan him anything. Bought the place from a white family that turned deaf and mute when the question came around of "Who sold land to that black man?", and a handful of other families similarly situated.

If there were tracks through that old plantation, we'd all be on the other side of them, I'd guess. Granddaddy had never let the pastures, or the barn or house, look like much. "Enough for what we need, but not so much we attract attention, Tre."

Denny's old Blazer fit right in. Granddaddy's Chevy truck, a rolling rust monster, had retired to the barn along with his tiny little Kubota tractor. Daddy used that to mow the grass around the house; both of them welcomed the Blazer as another survivor, I thought.

"Huh," Denny grunted when we pulled through the thicket that had grown close over the dirt lane. He was looking around at all the scrub and tall grass that walled off everything but the house and rickety old barn. "I thought the Blazer would be our beach-mobile this weekend."

I laughed at that. Once upon a time, sure, we'd have driven to the back, and then down to the water. Now? "We'd spend all weekend just brush-hogging our way back there. Don't worry, it's not that far a walk."

And besides, being at the old place on the weekend, for me at least, meant cold beer and relaxation, not work.

Which was a lot easier to say to myself when I'd seen that Daddy had already cut the grass, probably last weekend. Sure, it had grown up some, but we'd hit August, and there'd been little enough July rain this year, so that the grass hadn't returned to mid-thigh and rising.

Yet. Short enough I wasn't guilty at all about not fooling with it.

****

Thinking about it, I tell myself that I should have noticed Denny's wandering eyes. Like, if I'd been paying attention that Friday night, when we dropped everything at the house and walked to the river, I would have seen just how interested he was in the place.

Sure, and if I had a Maserati I'd be one happy go lucky individual. I didn't notice. First, it was getting on dark. And second, when you're treading your way through knee-high grass in the gathering gloom, you're be a little interested in your surroundings.

"Snakes?" Denny asked.

"Yeah, just keep an eye out." Given we wandered through in hiking sandals, we'd have needed a lot more than an eye out, if we had run across a snake. Fortunately for fools like us, they'd found something more useful to do, I guess. But we did stick to the track.

Overgrown, sure, but not eye height. Daddy usually made a pass or two a year to keep it knocked down enough to do what Denny and I were after.

The track down the bluff looked about like it always did. Once you get back among the trees, close to the river the sand and the clay and the shade take over. The notch we used to get to the beach is a washout carved through tree roots.

Wide enough for a tractor or truck, slick when the rain's been good. It had dried out that summer, though, and we walked down to the white sand as easy as you could imagine. "Wow," Denny murmured when we got there.

The sun hung around somewhere on the other side of the river, down below the trees that way. Enough to light the sky in reds and golds.

And give us the river and the pure white sand of our little beach. "Yep."

And Denny was gone. He took off running for the water, throwing sand around him until he hit the wet line, and then laid out in a clean straight dive.

The water had that kind of call. The heat had followed us from Texas; we'd hit a hundred and a bit this early August day. No wind. Humidity somewhere around the point where I felt slick from the sweat. I followed Denny into the river.

It's like hitting a wall, a cold, clear shock between the eyes and then down your back. She holds you tight, that first agonizing second. And then the shock clears and you paddle up again.

The bank's a long shallow one, no depth to speak of until you get out of the flat and into the river's main channel. I flatten out after a few yards under water, push from the bottom and leap out of. Come down on my feet, standing where the river's just below my waist.

"Hot damn." Yeah, it felt good. Rebirth from the walk. Clear head and no worries of the job. Junior engineer that's me, too many projects and not enough titles to do more than chip away at the designs and hope.

None of it mattered here. I sheered the water out of my face, stretched, and dove for the far side while we still had light to see by. Denny followed me across, once he realized; the other side's a sheer clay bluff, with a chin bank underneath that's good for catching the spring floaters, stumps coming downriver with the storms.

The stumps, when they catch there, make a great place to sit. Assuming none of the locals had a catfish line tied there, which is why I took the chance while we could see. Tangling myself in a trotline is not my idea of a good way to spend an evening.

I didn't anticipate what I got; another one of those moments, I guess, where I should have known something was up with Denny.

He was quiet. And Denny was rarely, almost never, quiet.

In that moment, I lay back against the clay bank, feet up on the stump beneath me, and enjoyed the sounds of the river. Locusts winding up and down. A fox squirrel somewhere overhead, barking his indignation now that he figured we weren't coming after him.

No motors. No other human sounds at all.

It was the grumble of my belly that dragged me away from there. Most times, out in the river, I tell myself that I'd love to go river rat. Take myself down to the waterline someday, and the only reason I'd come back out would be for... a clean place to shit, to be honest. Take a piss under water, no problem, but I've just never been able to do the other business.

Just can't stand the idea.

But that one, or dinner on my mind, they call me. Make me lean out into the water, current takes me, I angle with it and kick and pull my way back to the clean sand. Stumble up to my feet and drip dry while the hunger, or other needs, call me back to the house.

Denny followed me, once he saw I meant to walk back.

I didn't clue to the fact that he kept his quiet the whole way, either.

Market Basket had chicken wings and thighs on sale when we'd stopped to fill up for the weekend. So a pile of charcoal went into the barrel pit, and we sat back to await the sizzle and the waft.

"You ever get lost out here, Tre?"

Me? How could I get lost, here? Where I'd mowed the grass, and before Momma and Granddaddy left us I'd cut hay twice a year? Walked to the pond twice a day, morning and evening, to pull two or three perch from?

Promised myself a deer, when I was a teenager, and then done nothing but watch as the beautiful ladies and their snorting, rack-wearing escorts ignored me.

Oh, I could get lost, I guess, but only in myself and the sounds of the place. "I've been here just a little too long to get lost, Denny."

"That's not what I mean." He leaned out of his chair, elbows on his knees and beer condensation dripping over his fingers. "What I mean is, doesn't it feel like the land's calling you, telling you to come in, and never leave?"

The dude's been here five hot minutes, and he's telling me how I should feel about our own land?

****

Friday evening went by with chicken crisped by fire and eased down with cold clean beer. Saturday went on, too, pressed on by the sun on the sand and the lazy water carving its way south. I didn't have much to say, and neither did Denny.

Until the knife came out. And then, the walk under the moon, halfway to her new phase with plenty of light for the grass and the track and the pair of us walking through both. "What are you looking for?"

"You'll show me. I'm following my... my nose."

Nose? But he still carried the knife, five dollars of ugly cheap stainless wrapped in fifty of marketing budget. So I kept my mouth shut, wonder as I did at what he'd smelled, and from how far away.

He'd talked his way this far. So I figured, with the knife and the gleam in his eye, I guessed I was in it until the end.

We'd walked most of the way to the river bank before he turned us back; toward the pond. He walked us back and forth a couple times before he turned that way. "We used to keep it fenced off here," I said.

He grunted an acknowledgment. Daddy and I had pulled the wires, used the Kubota to push over most of the posts, the ones in the field at least. Denny settled onto what had been the track to the pond.

The grass had done a much more thorough job of it on that track. Trees had even started breaking their way through the growth. I tried to remember just how long it had been since I'd walked this path. Especially at night.

Denny cast back and forth, like a hound after a rabbit. Something had him. "Here, it's here. I know it, and so do you."

"What is, Denny? What's here?" I really wanted to know.

He waved the knife around like a pointer. "The... the opening. The door."

"To Neverland."

He turned on me, fast and close. Then he dropped away, hands down, shoulder slumped. When he saw I wasn't making fun of him. "It's been in my head..."

"How long?"

"Forever. But then, when I met you and you described what your dad's place was like, I knew, I just knew this was where I needed to come."

I moved my hands now, slow and easy in the moonlight. Casual. "Denny, what do you see? What do you smell?"

"Freedom..." he whispered.

"I see moonlight over the water." The pond glistened with the moon's reflection. Oak and willow decorated the top of the picture, inverted in frame. "I see what I do whenever I come to this place. My home."

"You don't smell anything, then?"

Grass. Water. The heat lightning on the horizon, breaking ahead of a rare early August front. Fear, I think, from Denny. "It smells like that place where I always know I'm welcome."

"Home, right. But nothing else?"

Narnia? Middle Earth? I didn't say these words or the others.

I just waited for Denny to drop the knife. He left it there as I turned him back for the house.

****

Years later, I met Denny's parents. They called it bi-polar disorder. The dream that had taken their son from them.

I'd come with his ashes. Denny had taken to driving the back road to our place. Once he'd lost his job and family ties and everything else, I mean. I never did find out where he'd parked the trailer. The state didn't care.

Denny found the side rail of a bridge late one night in the fog. A bad set of roads there, and old concrete railing the bridges. The coroner found my number in Denny's cell phone, just about the only personal contact left there.

His parents refused the little box. "No. We can't. He... he..."

"He did us too much damage, son," Denny's father said. "I can't do it. We cut him off, we can't take him back."

Even now? I didn't ask.

I remembered the damage Denny had threatened me with.

And the hell of it is, I knew why.

His parents called it bi-polar.

The place beyond doesn't call itself anything. When it calls to you, it's just a whisper in the dark.

Daddy named our little piece of it Marrakesh. Not because he'd ever been. But because he'd come back from Vietnam with a wife, a baby, and a love of Crosby, Stills, and Nash.

Shangri-la you take a boat to, these days. Daddy went to Thailand on leave, before he met Momma. Found the entrance to the Valley, hiding where the ex-pats will walk by it forever and never know.

Marrakesh, our Marrakesh, our door to it hides just a step in front of the pond. Where the moon hangs in the water and the inverted trees frame her between the sound of breath and the quiet of the empty mind. "I don't want folks stumbling into it," he'd told me, the day we buried Granddaddy there, next to Momma.

I'd agreed. It's not greed, so much as a healthy respect for the broken and the lost, and the damage they can do.

I wondered, in the moments before and after I walk there, when I can wonder again, whether I should have offered. But away from the place, Denny never mentioned it again. Not to me, anyway. He threw off contact and made his way to places I nor any other could follow.

I'd have told Denny more, done more if I could. But a half-moon won't open the door for you, nor me. So tonight under her now-full embrace I walked the little cardboard box into the space between, and I laid him down next to our little family. "Here you are brother, home at last. I'm sorry it took so long."

Coincidence Miners

You might suspect, once you've read this one, a handful of different influences. And of course you'd be right.

One of them in particular... ok, dear reader, suppose that the Universe is a clockwork maker's dream.

Clockworks need maintenance. Someone to go around and clean the dust off the gears.

And, perhaps, someone to go around and put that dust right back on those gears. On occasion. But in either case, if we did happen to live in such a delicately balanced universe, I wonder how and when you and I might be able to peak around the edges and observe the work of these dedicated souls I name here...

Coincidence Miners by M. K. Dreysen

In her own small, cozy but very much still imprisoned thank you very much corner of Hell, Georgina Deskul turned her mind, as she often did, to the nature of escape plans. "Imp, would you mind terribly...?"

"Of course, madam. What's on your mind?"

"About the Whispering campaign? After the last escapade, if I remember it correctly, that thing with the actor..."

The Imp shuddered. Ever so slightly. And with just the barest hint of delight. "He did have a very beautiful ass, madam."

"Curved strong ass, warm soft hands. And denser than a neutron star. That poor boy was made to be a pool toy. In retrospect, I should probably have simply left it with the noodling."

The Imp nodded his emphatic agreement to that. "Right, so after..."

"My recovery period..."

"I went about my experiments with yeast."

"Tell me again why you started with yeast?"

The Imp shrugged. "Generations pass in the time you're warming up your coffee in the microwave. You can get a lot of basics done in a hurry."

"It's been more than thirty years, Imp," Georgina pointed out.

He coughed. "Yes, well, we have moved on to more complicated beasts, madam. We've recently, in fact yesterday I received the final report..."

Georgina raised a carefully drawn eyebrow.

"Slugs, ma'am. Not yet the full vocalization required, you understand..."

"Imp..."

"They've learned to write your name in chemicals, ma'am. Their scent trails, well, it's more of a persistent marker since they're sea slugs. But forget that, have you seen how they eat?" The Imp pulled up a video of a sea slug gulping down a fish.

Georgina nodded, behind a small, pursed smile. "That is interesting. First question, how long?"

"Until?"

"Until you've moved up to something that can talk, Imp."

"Ahem, right. Ah, perhaps another three, maybe four decades? With a bit of luck?"

Georgina sighed, heavily, then turned and gazed to the burning beyond.

The Imp shifted from foot to foot, but didn't say anything. Decades, in the grand scheme, passed like seconds if you were busy, in the Imp's experience. Which partially explained why he'd started at the unicellular level.

He waited, very much aware that he might lose a year or two if Georgina had become impatient. And predatory.

"Tell me about this... venomous proboscis, was it?"

The Imp held back his sigh of relief. "Yes ma'am, of course. The slugs manufacture quite a variety of different toxins..."

****

Meanwhile, by, almost, pure happenstance, on the other side of the universe, which was surprisingly enough not actually very far from where Georgina contemplated the ticklish possibilities of proboscis and siphon and the toxins that went with them, two angels discussed their own modest endeavors.

"I wonder if the Boss is bored?" Murray asked his friend, Lexis.

"How do you figure?"

"Well, it's... it's my current job. I'm supposed to grant human voice to a colony of sea slugs. For precisely one hour."

"Showbiz?"

"No." And the angels lifted a glass at that particular world; when dealing with Hollywood, one could never be sure of which side of the fence one played against. "No, this time, I actually need to go to... the Flower Gardens, Gulf of Mexico. Find one of several hundred sea slug colonies, the Boss was very specific on this point, and grant them a nice little bubble of air and the power of human speech."

"When?" Which often happened. One never knew when one might be asked to, for example, hang out on a particular street corner at 1:39 a.m. on the third Tuesday of April.

"No specific time for kickoff, only the solid hour of duration and a good strong air bubble. Oh, and I'm not allowed to hang around for whatever it is that happens after."

Another often imposed detail. Sometimes, the purpose was to set the ball in motion; other times, to catch it before it rolled into the pins.

"Reminds me of... what, thirty years ago?" Lexis tried to remember the details. "The Boss set me up to teach a parrot to say this one particular name. Backwards. I spent six weeks, snuck into his room every day when his buddy, some actor, was out of the house, and trained the poor thing to say this name backwards. And then, when he had it cold, I had to leave."

"No idea..."

"None whatsoever. The thing I remember most is that parrot. Until I got there, I'm not sure he even knew that he could talk. His owner," and Lexis shook her head. "Pretty as a picture, dumb as a box of rocks."

The angels shared another glass. Then, on the way out, Murray asked, "Not that it matters, but I'm struck that you remember how the parrot had never known he could speak, but not the name you spent all that time teaching him to say?"

"I think a lot of that parrot." Lexis furrowed her brow, trying to remember. "Georgette? Georgette... Deschuul. I think. It has been a while."

"You're keeping an eye on the parrot, aren't you?" Murray asked as they left the heavenly cafe.

"He's a guest of the San Diego Zoo, they took him in after his owner passed away a couple years back. I've already put a word in with Peter, for when Yellow Jack wings his way up the path."

And with that, the angels waved their good-byes.