Thursday, April 29, 2021

In Dust And Dreams

For your contemplation this evening, dear reader, a tale of what you might stumble across on those moments when you wander...

In Dust And Dreams by M. K. Dreysen

Van chattered at me like a three year old while we walked the red dust. "And Herana, when the inspectors came, you should have heard her. She called me every fifteen minutes, 'That bastard, he brought a student with him, she's writing citations as fast as she can get the keyboard working'. I told her, I says, 'Herana, relax, fix what they tell you to fix and we'll get through it.' She and Gene both, they were hot as steam for a week after."

"Even though you resolved everything before they left?"

"Even then. Like they took it personally."

I grinned, behind my helmet's sun tinting. "It's Herana's baby, Van." Their unit, air and water handling for the habitat. A double fistful of thousands of souls, grubbing beneath the surface and dependent in every way on the kilos of water, the meters of air, that Herana and Gene kept moving.

The inspectors liked Van's little corner of the world. For the trainees they brought, to learn at a plant that didn't produce anything more complex than air and water.

And for the view we walked through. Sure, a lot of reds and dust above and below. But the canyon before us and the mountain beyond that...

I concentrated on the dirt in front of me, and the shack that I'd dragged Van out to visit.

"How much time are you spending on this, Doc?"

I shook my head side to side in the helmet, automatic. "Eh, not all that much. You don't want to know, do you?"

"Of course not. Once you find out, we have to do something about it."

Old argument; new facility manager. Old-guard Fen had passed a few pointers along to his apprentice. Fortunately, I hadn't found Van's bad habits too ingrained to work away.

"I don't like leaving trouble for you to deal with when I'm gone, Van."

He grunted his grudging agreement. Besides, he knew that I'd asked him to come along out of courtesy.

One way or another, I was getting my samples today. I'd let the shack and its contents sit too long unanalyzed as it was. Fen had retired last year, I'd spent a fair few hours on video with Van since. Talking him through what I could help with, more lending an ear of sympathy than anything else.

I'm good at that, I guess. What our bosses get up to in the corporate towers at the pole doesn't much interest me. And I've been here so long, surfed their waves of "Transformation!" so often, that I can let Van's new responsibilities and aggravations and the venting that goes with them just skate off me. And I do sometimes have a few ideas for how he can handle them.

Thus, the sample bag he was carrying, looped over his shoulders. We'd pulled those first. That's what pays my freight, after all.

Cleaning up whatever residues lay beneath the sun and windtorn shack? That was pure cost. Fortunately, Veronica, mine and Van's boss, felt the same way I did. And she was ten years closer to retirement than me. She didn't want to leave us with it.

Plus, we had budget to spend, for once. Yay! Thus the trudge.

Van got quiet as we reached the shack. I say shack, really I guess it was bigger than that. Big enough for someone to have parked a car in, and then surrounded it with some kind of lake.

Ok that sounds odd. The car's one of the older style surface rovers, sitting there for close to a century on some kind of platform in the middle of this little pond. And then the shell built over both of them. From the shallow end of the pond, you can just walk to the car's platform.

I didn't do that. I walked around to the other end, the deep end of the pond. Thirty meters or so of deep, at that end. I'd measured that one early in my time here, handlining it down and that I had to do twice because the fluid lies to you from the surface.

Water, at least that's what most of it had to be. Clear, but definitely not clean.

Water where it should have either vaporized away, leached away, or frozen solid in the shack's shadows.

And spanning the placid surface hiding a drop you'd never want to fall into? A ramp to the car's platform.

"Looks like they drove it in over the deep end, doesn't it?"

Van shrugged.

I ignored the cynicism. But I didn't walk across. Too many decades for this little scientist, thank you. No, I just knelt down to fill my sample bottle. "We know it's a high mineral content."

"Because it's not frozen solid, right. That's not what worries me."

The original pit that we'd repurposed had belonged to a mining company. Our company had resurfaced the dome, and rebuilt the surface equipment, heat and air exchangers, wind and solar power units, three times in the century since.

And they'd also spent the decades ignoring what public history the government made available for the place. What the mining company had done with their wastes, for starters.

The monitors in my surface working suit hadn't beeped, not any more than normal, when I'd dipped my sample. Which told me the first thing I needed to know. "It's not hot, Van."

"Small favors."

I shook my head, then pondered the car. But that could wait. It wasn't hot, either, not from the outside at least. First let's see what the liquid held.

I wonder if any of us notice the decon shower anymore. Alternating air and water sheets, not much more than a walk through a shower really. When I was a kid, my mom had made me pace it out. "Here, just say this poem to yourself, 'All at once a midnight...'" and that slowed me down so the water and air currents did their job.

The verses still do that job now, but the rhythm's so far built into my pace I just listen to the sound and timbre of my mother's voice, rather than the words.

Just like when we pulled them, I run Van's samples first. Air samples from the exchangers take a different method, but the various liquids and solids I run through the sintering platform. Three lasers and a flash and then it's all gas to be fed to the chromatographs and the spectrometers.

Van's lab tech has the gear, but mostly I need the bench space for my traveling units. Lou's equipment's for their daily samples, me I'm confirming and digging into separate paths, so using my road portable lab helps me with the paying portion of the proceedings.

When the computer spits out the first pass results, I and my tablet wander down the hall to Van's office. "Lou's setup is pretty well dialed in, Van."

"Cool. Anything showing up you're worried about?"

Lou does the work, Van keeps track of the numbers they send him. I do the worrying and the trends. "Nothing out of the ordinary. Dust season, but you knew that."

"Boy howdy."

Sure and it's always dust season, but there are worse periods than others.

"Get any results from the shack yet?" Van asked.

At least I heard only interest, and maybe a little dread. Not boredom, and thank the absent gods for that. "Not yet, they're cooking now while your samples go through quantification checks."

"Let me know if you see anything..."

"If I start running for the outside, just try and keep up."

His laughter followed me back down the hall to Lou's place.

Same basic story with my samples.

And same basic lack of results. Oh, the elemental symbols poured by on the screen, that old familiar periodical, in new balance. Mostly a handful of minerals that we always had to deal with when we dug beneath the surface. Dissolved there and in their combination preventing the cold cold surface nights from freezing the saturated solution.

And there in the oh so smallest of proportions lay the fun ones, of course, your leads and your coppers and a whiff or three of uranium. Not enough of that to ping even a brand new monitoring system, but all together a little bit of a devil's brew. Enough to be toxic if we made the mistake of using the water for anything important.

"Miner's leavings, just like we'd expected."

"You're certain? No surprises, Doc?"

"Not even a little bit. Just all the fun happy stuff that comes along for the ride. And prevents you from recycling the water for anything useful, not 'til you concentrate it up, anyway." Pull off steam under the right conditions and we'd just cycle it clean into Van's system. Which was nice, and he was happy not to have to do anything more than...

"Figure out where to put the goo yet?"

Figure out the goo. The sludge that we'd reduce the fluid too, and then pump somewhere. There are no real solutions to that, other than the right kind of concrete, now that we knew what the fluid held. "Wanna check out the car?"

"No." But he did go with me.

Same basic walk back, and I didn't worry now about wading through the shallow water to get to the car. Hood and trunk, and maybe the batteries beneath the former had done their bit to add to the water's hidden troubles beneath.

The cab was open to the world. They'd needed surface gear a century ago just like we did, so no point in providing the riders with anything more than a roll cage.

And thus, the trunk.

I stumbled back from the mummy, desiccated and almost absorbed now into the mat layering the trunk's bottom, as soon as my eyes found it waiting for me underneath the trunk's lid. "Oh damn."

My foot met the ramp as I stumbled back a step; the material sagged under my weight. A century and time had done work. I windmilled my hands, desperate for balance, until I found the edge of the car's trunk and stopped the unrolling catastrophe before I ended up in the drink.

"Don't want to try and swim in a suit, do you?"

"Not even a little bit, Van. I do not recommend it." Once you get going, especially with the mineral content of the saturated water, you're ok, but the first few moments while your mind screams at you... no thank you.

Van made his way over from the car's front end. "Oh damn," he echoed.

"Yeah. At least it's an adult." And that was a small favor my mind didn't appreciate. I made sure my helmet recorded everything while I poked my head and light into the trunk. "And however they got here, we won't be doing any detective work."

Innocent explanation or not, the mummy's story had disappeared from our ken long ago. I almost touched their forehead, in auto-sympathy like I'd done when we'd put Mom to rest. Just a soft touch to let me and them both know I appreciated that they'd lived and breathed and done... well they'd lived, and that was something all by itself.

Where I was and what I'd found tried to intrude on that moment, long enough to keep my from my self-appointed duty for a minute, two. And then I shrugged it all off.

I touched their forehead, just enough. The skin didn't break nor bend, and their eyes didn't open, no more than had my mother's. "Ok, Van, call the rabbi."

"Right." Both our resident all-souls-in-whatever-flavor therapist and chaplain, and our local anthropologist, Vicky wore many hats. I'd even promised to bring her some, with labels and everything, so she could keep track.

She'd flipped me the finger and a smile to go with it.

"Ok, she's coming. With Lou."

Van and I wandered outside the shack and waited. For what, other than the pair of surface walkers, Vicky's helmet a green a couple shades more neon than that decorating mine, and Lou's a riot pattern of yellow over metal?

Not much, really, other than maybe a little time to talk of other things than work.

Thursday, April 22, 2021

From The River To The Sea - An Excerpt From The Old Empire, Book 2 (forthcoming) by M. K. Dreysen

Have you, dear reader, had your moments? The little triumphs, I mean. Exertion and striving and the grasping within your hands...

And then always someone to take that moment away from you? For some of us, anyway. You and me, dear reader, and our poor brethren. Forever at the mercy of the tragedy of little wins, and the tiny inevitable losses.

Peon and Rudolphus and Aeneas are our brethren, dear reader. They carry many scars, almost all of them well earned. Most of them bone deep, carved there by those always ready to take. Yes, indeed, these three are, as you might know, travelers of the road of tears.

Which... which also means that Rudy and Aeneas and Peon have their little preparations. Their little defenses. Against those that might waylay them when they journey...

From The River To The Sea - An Excerpt From The Old Empire Book 2 (forthcoming), by M. K. Dreysen

The guest left her hosts and returned to the villa. The evening might well have been young by some standards. But when traveling, she preferred to let the night owls remain safely unobserved.

She did not work through protective rituals upon entering her rooms. Nor did she make a practice of the more mundane rituals of spycraft. Some of this, she told herself, was simply lack of necessity.

The scholastic community she'd begun her career in was possessed of many failings. Physical skulduggery not being one of the more prevalent of those. She knew intellectually that the work she now pursued lay in a slightly different world.

One much more likely to attract the sort of person who'd make it their business to inspect a traveler's rooms when the traveler was otherwise occupied. But, to date, this concern remained purely theoretical.

And so she entered her rooms without looking for disturbance. Raising and testing wards. Assessing her security. For this trip, Vioncala told herself, and a few more, she could set aside as unnecessary the paranoia that should come naturally to the new job.

Across town, she knew, Gregory, her employer's chief representative here, settled himself into bed. Trinian, Gregory's second, allowed himself another beer, but otherwise pursued a similar route. Their day's work began early.

Vioncala let the links to their minds fade to bare whispers. She had promised Gregory and Trinian that she would meet them tomorrow at the factory. But only around mid-morning.

She had work yet to do this evening.

Vioncala prepared for this work by first filling the kettle, then setting that kettle over the fire. She set tea in a cup, and a chair before the fire. Not too close, enough to feel the flicker of heat.

Not so close she'd pitch herself into the fire if something went wrong.

Only then, preparations in place, did Vioncala remove her cloak and outer garments and lay them across the table. This done, she pulled the steaming kettle and set it aside for a moment while she stretched and settled her mind and body.

The moment was coming. So Vioncala poured hot water into the cup. Set the kettle close enough to the fire so that it would remain warm but not boil, and sat in the chair. Where she let her mind drift.

Through the villa. The streets. Past Trinian's home. A few blocks more and her spirit passed the villa of the governor; splendid, large enough to host multiple visitors of high status in the Empire. Or those with money enough to pretend to it.

Her path roughly paralleled the river. East, opposite direction of that she'd travel in the morning to get to Gregory's factory. East, away from the Empire.

Toward the ghosts.

She'd known of the temple long before she'd heard of the family who now employed her. Or their factory. When Marcio had first approached her, and mentioned this town and Gregory's factory as one of his family's, she'd thrilled slightly in recognition.

Here, so very close to the Bosporus, the temple's location hinted of Homer. Of Troy. Naturally enough, the Empire's scholars alternated between fevered dreams of their city's founding and the apostate's mistrust of the nature of miracles.

The ghosts insured that few of them attempted the expeditions necessary to make the choice between the two poles. The ghosts, and whatever else the temple might use to guard its secrets.

Vioncala let her spirit drift close enough so that the temple filled her mind's view. And no further. In this form, she could listen to the traitor and the general discuss their responsibilities. She could feel the breath of the adulterer's mistress. Capture the gleam in the burglar's eye.

Ghosts couldn't have cared less. In this form she was just as mortal, just as subject to their predations. If not more so. No, she remained here, just shy of the temple steps. And waited.

For the three tomb robbers to step between the shadows.

Rudolphus. Almost wider than he was tall. Aeneas. "Named for the hero, of course." And Peon. "Because it makes people giggle."

She'd shared passage with the three, ahem, "heroes". Smiled at their stories; ignored Aeneas's clumsy attempts at seduction.

All three had discipline enough so that Vioncala had needed to infer their purpose and their destination. They'd given no hints; slipped not at all.

They'd spoken only of their past adventures together. Peon it had been, according to Rudolphus, that had liberated the Old Dowager's ransom from the kidnappers after her release. "I held him by the ankles while he did it. Yanked him up like a mullet on feast day."

"Yeah, and my feet still ache when a storm comes on, you big oaf."

Aeneas blushed in his turn, when Peon spoke of his friend's sword work. "He faced twenty, no, thirty guards in Mennola's palace, the day we recovered the General's plans. By himself, he did, while Rudy and I searched Mennola's office."

"More like three," Aeneas admitted when Peon was done.

Peon shook his head at his friend's modesty. "Bloody hell, Aeneas, don't you ever want to get paid what we're worth?"

The friends told of Rudy's strength; Peon's cunning. Aeneas's knack for being in just the right place at the right time.

Vioncala applauded each story. When necessary, she called "Bullshit!"

She admired their heroic ability to tell all of these stories without once referencing the town that lay at the end of the boat ride. Vioncala knew stories, legends. Whether the adventures Peon and his friends related were true or not, their self-control testified to their professionalism.

Vioncala had been impressed.

Here, standing in spirit outside of the tomb's entrance while the three adventurers traversed moonshadow to join her, she was even more impressed. The three might well be fools, but they came to the work honestly enough.

She gauged the tomb robbers, and their gear. Ropes. Cunningly wrought lamps. Hammers and other hand tools. Satisfied that they'd thought it through, she turned her gaze back to the temple.

It had begun life as a cave. Over time, patiently, its devotees had carved stone and shifted dirt for their purposes. Somewhere along that path, marble and sandstone had entered the picture, and the outer portico took shape in graceful pillars and polished steps.

Vioncala didn't will her spirit forward to examine the faint traces of carving. Nor to follow the tomb robbers as they crept into the cave's opening, yawning from the center of the portico.

She waited. After the whispers between the three faded to silence. After the ghosts shifted from weighing her own presence to following the tomb robbers into the cave complex.

Time passed; shouts came from within the bowels of the earth. The cave shaped the calls into a percussive mumble. Finally, Rudoplphus stumbled out of the cave mouth and down the steps. The ghosts rushed from the cave in his wake.

When Rudolphus stumbled and fell to the grass, just a few faint yards from the stone steps of the portico, the ghosts drifted back, away from the boundary.

Vioncala waited a moment or two more before moving her spirit to Rudolphus. She paused to gauge the response from the tomb's guardians. When the ghosts remained within the boundary of carved and polished stonework, Vioncala knelt her spirit form next to Rudolphus's still body.

The big man's skin was covered in wounds. Raw and torn; she traced them. Most began to close of their own accord. The ghosts could, did, wound the living. Temporarily, as Vioncala witnessed.

A few tears remained, though, the blood slowly welling. Vioncala examined Rudy's fingers, noted the blood beneath his fingers. The big man had torn at his own face and throat. She wondered, briefly, what exactly the ghosts had shown the man.

He still breathed. Vioncala gauged the wounds remaining; Rudy would live, and pick up a few scars. She'd best be quick, given what she'd heard of the man's constitution. Here, away from the ghosts and the tomb, he would recover well and soon.

None yet, so far as Vioncala had been able to discover, had returned with ought but small treasure from the tomb. Coins, a goblet, and a plate. These few objects had been sufficient to set Rome's scholars ablaze, but starved for more. Had Rudy returned something more substantial?

Vioncala ran her fingers over his pouches and vest. A few more coins, here and there. Two of silver, five of bronze or copper. More images of heroes and kings long forgotten. Their images, when brought to the world, would once again send her former colleagues to their Homeric scrolls, desparate to be the first to connect the coinwork to the names found there.

"Ah," she told herself. "Now what have we here?" Vioncala focused, and pushed Rudy's hand. When it opened, she whistled.

There, resting on the big man's open palm, lay two very much more substantial additions to the tomb's revealed treasures. A gold coin, or perhaps a medallion, since the gleaming circle of metal was almost three times the diameter of the Roman penny. And rather than a hero's visage, in the uncertain moonlight Vioncala could just make out two indistinct figures, holding something between them.

The other treasure lying across Rudy's palm was a darkly tarnished silver wand, almost six inches in length. She traced this with her finger, unsure of details given the poor light, but her spirit's senses tuned enough to feel the carved reliefs decorating the wand's facets.

"Which one?" she wondered.

Rudy stirred, shifted.

"Shit," Vioncala muttered. Time had run out. She didn't fear that the man would see her and know her; the three tomb robbers had no sensitivity to the world Vioncala used to move her spirit. She'd made sure to check that on the boat.

But if he closed his hand around his treasures, she'd lose the chance. The more aware he became, the less her present form could influence... "Now or never, girl, decide."

In another life... but no. The wand told a story; the gold told a story. Vioncala concentrated, and then did something a colleague had once spent years arguing could not be done.

She reached down with her spirit's hand and picked up the coin. Focused, drawing strength across the distance, she held the coin in her own palm. Closed her fingers over it.

Felt it disappear from her spirit's grasp. And then reappear in her physical hand some three miles away. Vioncala smiled, her lips curling on both aspects of her self. "Leonius, if you only knew."

Satisfied, Vioncala turned from Rudy, stirring himself awake now, and the tomb, and whatever else it might conceal.

And then she dissolved her spirit projection, awakening to a complete smile, a full laugh, and a fistul of new wealth.

The fate of Rudy and his friends left her mind immediately.

Rudy, on the other hand, had a harder time letting go. He rolled over, tasted the all too familiar blood on his lips, and tucked the wand away with the rest of his finds.

He remembered the coin; wished he'd managed to bring it, but gave no thought beyond that to the medallion. "Moment's over, bucko, time to move on."

Time to find the rope. Rudy stood up, shuddered and almost fell over at the pain. It began at his temples and broadcast to everything between head and feet. "Fuck."

When the pain passed, he paced, slowly, in front of the portico, careful not to touch the steps. "There you are," he muttered to the rope. "Come to papa."

The big man knelt, grasped the rope, and began to pull. One slow, steady, heavy yank at a time. "One of you bastards had better have grabbed that statue, you hear me?" he called into the portico and the cave's yawning mouth it concealed.

At the other end of the line, the one tied first to Aeneas, shuddering and incoherent, and then passing on to Peon, giggling and holding onto his sanity by the barest grip, Peon heard his friend's words echoing in the dark. Then he felt the tug of the rope. When he started sliding across the polished stone floor, Peon let his laughter loose to return to Rudy.

To let him know they were still alive.

And that Peon did indeed cradle the bronze, gold, and ivory statue against his chest.

Thursday, April 15, 2021

New And Bitter

This week's story, dear reader, concerns a phone call on your off day. You know the ones, right?

"There's something wrong. And you need to get here quick."

We've all been there. I know I have, all too often. The kind of call where you spend the drive in half wondering what they've managed to screw up now.

And the other half... that half of the drive you just hope that nobody got hurt.

Which is precisely where Lora finds herself on this Saturday morning, dear reader. Wondering, worrying, and tasting something...

New And Bitter by M. K. Dreysen

I should have been down at the beach. I could have been out on one of the nature trails, chasing birds and avoiding mosquitoes.

I wanted to be anywhere but staring down the maw of something from another world.

Let me back up, to a little before the hot drool burning its way through my pants leg, and the claws and the teeth that went with it.

"Lora, hey, it's Yuri, can you come in? As soon as possible?"

I'd answered the phone more by accident than anything. I couldn't see the phone well enough to know who it was, other than that it was someone in my contacts list. No glasses yet.

I dumped the complaining tomcat off my chest. "Yeah, Yuri, I guess I can get there. What's up?"

"Just hurry. I'm in the lab." And then the twinkle of the broken connection.

If he was in that kind of hurry, on my day off Yuri could put up with my unwashed stink. I did brush my teeth while the coffee pot did its thing, though. I have some standards, even at five on a Saturday morning.

No other to say goodbye to, not once I fed the squalling beast who sheds on my pillow all day while I'm gone. But that's a different story.

And at least the traffic headed into the center was nonexistent. Small favors, with only me and the boating types headed down Nasa 1. The gate guards shook their heads at me but at least they smiled doing it.

"Ok, Yuri, what's up?" The walk from the parking lot had had its charms, but the YMCA style hallways and the lab called stronger. Same as they always do.

Short and rounding toward retirement waved me in to his bench.

Or, more properly, toward the Ring. "It, well, look promise me you won't call the IG?"

"Yuri..."

"Promise, please?"

"Promise? Sonofabitch, you promised you wouldn't turn the damned thing on!"

He had. He'd sat there in front of me and the director and God and everybody and said that he would only test the circuitry. "And that I will follow the protocols and not power the Ring up."

I like "Ring" better than "Wormhole". But either way, the math said we shouldn't have been able to power it up. Not all the way, anyway.

Yuri's not a mathematical type. He is, however, the type who'd signed acceptance on a pony nuke one of the in-town university's had wanted to move along. Some barely less than usable old core they'd accepted back in the Cold War days and now didn't want to acknowledge existence of. Yay, us.

"Lora, you've gotta see it."

Well, since I was here and all. I mean, I could take a few hours, before pulling the switch I mean. Stability readings, power loads.

The color of the other side of the universe. That's what I'd aimed for, anyway. Not expecting in a million years to ever physically open it. Just, you know, cycle it enough to measure something.

Not that I knew where it went, mind. Still. I grabbed goggles and a couple of home-built meters and almost ran for the Ring's little room at the back of the lab.

Yuri giggled at me. He knew, the sonofabitch, but he'd been there just as long as I had, sketched and wrote out parts lists while I worked numbers.

The first couple hours went just as I'd have hoped. The Ring, all the other days of existence until this one a one meter ring of titanium and nickel alloys, shimmered with a sheet of purple... distance, I thought. But I didn't linger over the view.

Too many other readings to take. It wasn't until I'd wrapped that up, and made sure the computers had recorded everything in their connections properly, that I turned back to the Ring opening for one last look.

The colors had gotten a little more active. "Yuri, it's time to shut it down."

"I know I know," he muttered, one hand on the big switch.

Yeah, I'd made it big and naughty, like I expected the Doctor and Igor to have in their lab. It's not all that often you get to be twelve again.

That's when the claw appeared. I watched it. Well, it's more like I noticed it, just off center of the top of the Ring. "Yuri, turn it off. Now!"

More of whatever the claw was attached to started coming through. Dark, deep browns and blacks and a shimmering green, the claw tips themselves almost the same hard purple as the Ring had been.

I reached out, waving slapping at Yuri. Only he wasn't there.

I wanted to turn and start screaming at him. Except I needed to keep my eyes on the new addition making its way from wherever to here.

While I eased my way over to the switch.

Its head came through when I'd made my way about halfway there. Close enough for that demon in the back of my brain, the little idiot that always suggests the best worst ideas, to giggle in anticipation that I'd make it before the critter did.

Only its arm came for me. It blurred, the swirl of colors decorating it blurring with it, masking its movement somehow. The creature grabbed my ankle and yanked.

"Oh fuck." I didn't have time for anything other than the harsh wonderful poetry of the good words. And then I got busy kicking and punching and scratching.

And that's where the drool that burned through my pants came from. "Yuri, goddamnit, where the hell are you?"

Not expecting a response, I went back to whatever violence I could manage.

The creature was still only head and one arm and shoulder through. At least it was, so far, too big and too busy trying to drag me away for teatime to try and squeeze all the way past the Ring itself.

The Ring's colors mingled with it, somehow, the flashes of powered colors dragging along on its skin, or maybe birthing it. It was pure and muscled and hard. I scraped my fingers across something like familiar skin, maybe elephant or rhino hide thick.

It lived and it sweated and its sweat burned almost as painfully as the drool. I aimed my kicks, from the other leg, for the forehead I finally distinguished, above the drool and the teeth and framed between some kind of horns.

It hissed and grunted, a low rumble of noise, then tried to jerk its head away but the Ring and its greed for me kept it locked in. So I hammered away.

Neither of us relented. Whatever the creature's hunger, I wasn't going without a fight. Apparently it wasn't giving up without one. So there we were.

Until Yuri finally called up his courage and threw the switch back open.

The colored wall of lightning rose back up, a screen of space-time unwinding to the vacuum, leaving once again a clean look at the back wall through the Ring.

And the creature's arm. Well, hand at least, just above the elbow. It had, somehow faster than thought, let go of me and tried to make it back through.

It had almost made it. Almost.

"I don't think it's going to like you very much," Yuri muttered.

"Mutual."

****

I didn't report it. I did, however, move Yuri's baby nuke somewhere else, nice and distant and where he doesn't know of.

Just like he did with the switch. Gaudy and Universal Pictures as the switch looks, underneath is a circuit. A very carefully built and expensive circuit that I can't reproduce without a serious amount of work and money I don't currently have available.

So we've got ourselves protected from ourselves, Yuri and I.

And we've got a claw buried under salt in the back cabinet.

Thursday, April 8, 2021

Examination Day

And for sure this one's a bit of whimsy, reader.

Professional obligations. Some of us have to keep up with those sorts of things. Continuing education. How did we spend our time? Ethics training.

This story came tumbling out when I wondered, how would wizards do such things?

For this week's free story, dear reader, join me and Marilois Friend as she shows us what it's like for a wizard to tackle...

Examination Day by M. K. Dreysen

Normally, Marilois Friend began her day with tea. Nice, warm, soothing tea. Drop of milk, a little lemon. Feet up with the sun and a newspaper.

The New York Times, a habit she'd picked up in school and never quite put down. Those years on Long Island, Marilois had kept the Times as her daily paper, giggling every day because it was really the local.

She'd picked up the Post, too, but that one for the gossip and the comics the Times never deigned to carry.

These days, Marilois read her comics online. When she had time.

Yesterday morning, she didn't have time, for the tea or the comics. What she had, when she woke up to it blaring in her head, was a realization.

"Test day. Damn." And then the race was on.

Shower. And while the warm water started, the coffee pot and the thermos out on the counter in preparation for what dripped down to the carafe.

No time for anything with her hair, so just cap it, towel off brush teeth then shake out the cap and tie the whole of it at the back of her head.

Test Day meant dress for speed and maneuverability. So good walking shorts and a sturdy button-down cotton shirt, both with plenty of pockets, and hiking boots.

Fill the thermos, grab an apple and head out the door.

"Wait for it," Georgina, Marilois's parrot and longest serving familiar, said.

Theo, the mixed mutt, panted his smile. Osiris, the cat and youngest of the trio, had never seen Test Day before. "Wait for what?"

For Marilois to run back through the door for keys and wallet and phone, that's what. "Right, bye gang, don't pull down the rafters or get the cops called on me while I'm gone."

Georgina and Theo laughed, in their own way, while Osiris did a quick sprint around the house. "Where's she going where's she going?" he asked.

"It's Test Day," Theo answered, once the cat had slowed down long enough to listen.

"I hope she does well. Tests are important."

"She'll be fine," the parrot answered. "The only real question is how many times she gets lost getting there."

****

Marilois didn't get lost getting to the airport. Airports were too big to hide, and had far too many people going through them to do it.

Finding her airplane, on the other hand, was the first opportunity for her examiners to step into the game.

That's why Marilois's preferred airport only had three terminals, all within walking distance. She may have had to change gates twice before the universe let her board her plane, but at least she made it before they closed the doors.

"At least this time, I don't have to exit through the toilet," Marilois muttered to herself as she made her way to her seat.

"Pardon?" the man who had the window seat asked.

"Nothing, just settling in for the ride," she responded.

Her row mate nodded the all-accepting answer of the air-weary and turned back to his phone.

No, for this Test Day, unlike a couple years back, Marilois just had to take the bumpy ride all the way to landing at the smallest jet-capable airport in the Ozarks.

Instead of sneaking to the bathroom halfway through, closing the door but not latching it, focusing her inner self in just the right way, and dropping through the hole in the toilet to the great blue yonder.

Marilois would take a bumpy ride, even with the sleep interruptions, over that free floating moment of terror. The forever depths of nothing that ended when the weightlessness of her flying spell took over.

She didn't even worry about the next step.

Finding her rental car. "Go past the baggage carousel, the door to the lot's on the wall on the other side. We've got the first three rows."

"Just hit the button," Marilois reminded herself. The one that would tell the little Hyundai to beep its alarm at her. Only, she walked the agency's rows three or four times, pushing the button every few steps, and heard nothing.

The car had found its way over to one of the other agency's rows, she realized. Eventually. Once her mind clued in to the fact that the alarm horn echoing from all the way across the parking lot came from her little rental Hyundai trying to help out.

Any other day, Marilois would have asked her phone for directions. But not on Examination Day.

Test Day meant that, once she'd adjusted the mirrors and the airflow and patted the dashboard in just the right way to let the Hyundai know it was appreciated, Marilois sat back in the seat.

Closed her eyes. Opened her mind. Listened. Drifted. Waited.

For the barest hint. "Right. That way."

"That way" meant pull out of the parking lot, turn left and feed down the hill to the interstate. Sure, a nice easy start.

Until the snow flurries started.

The Hyundai's radio chimed in with a helpful reminder. "Don't forget folks, we're in the mountains. June snow, now isn't that a treat for the kids!"

"Thank you," Marilois said. "I guess it's Weather this year."

At least it wasn't Time. Or, and Marilois shuddered in remembrance, Chaos.

No, she just had to concentrate and fend off the snow flurries at the top of the mountain. And the flash flood at the bottom.

Wind her way between the pair of tornado funnels, until she could safely point the Hyundai up the gravel road that appeared just when she needed it.

The fog that came on when the gravel road let out at a tiny little open parking lot, that she couldn't really do anything about. Fog had its way of sticking around.

So Marilois locked and beeped the car, then stood in the slow-moving cloud that roiled its way around her.

The path lay just over there. Marilois kept her eyes focused on her boots until they found that path. Somewhere off in the distance, the tornadoes howled themselves into another go-round.

She ignored the sound of their fury. And the drip of the fog as it caressed her face and neck.

She even ignored when the touch of the fog turned to ice. She had only to put one foot in front of the other, and trust the path. Until it came at last to a gate.

A simple gate, this. No fence, even, just a pole resting on its stops. Blocking her path. She could walk around, if she wanted to.

Marilois didn't walk around. Instead, she reached out with her mind. Until she found her destination. There, just a few more hundred yards' travel up the mountain.

Marilois let the here and the there rest in her mind, until they balanced properly. And then she took a step.

Into the Examination Room.

Where Uriah Stoop waited for her. "Marilois Friend, Wizard in good standing, it is your Examination Day."

Every so often, a Wizard required recertification. Unlike most other professions with similar recertification requirements, the Order gave no set time interval.

Just a feeling in your mind, the kind Marilois had felt this morning, that the time had come. "Yes," Marilois answered.

"You swear that you've kept to the Ethics of our Order?"

"Yes." The Promise, the one that she and her brethren had all sworn to on first gaining their titles.

"You have maintained and broadened your Learning?" Education, of the world and how it moved. Of people, and how they lived.

Of herself, and how she belonged, or didn't, to this world. "I have."

"And I'll happily swear to your passage of the Trials," Uriah said. "How'd you like the snowfall? I thought it turned out rather well for June."

Marilois smiled. "You did well, old friend."

"Go ahead and sign."

She did that, thrilling at the scratch of the quill on the parchment. Online classes and cell phones were as much a part of their Order's lives as they were for the sleeping world.

But the Trials, and the feel of the quill on the parchment as Marilois attested to her dedication to the Order and their craft... Some things couldn't be replaced by digital tools.

"Do you have time for a drink?" she asked Uriah.

"Oh, I think I can slip away," he answered. "Paul's due next, but not for another couple of hours. There just aren't that many flights this way from Hawaii."

The two wizards headed for the bar and the companionship of their fellows.

****

Back home, Georgina woke from her evening nap with a Realization. When she fully understood the idea in her mind, Georgina flapped around the house in excitement.

Her friends gathered at her roost, once Georgina's excitement woke them from their own sleep. "Tell us, tell us," Osiris begged.

"She passed," Georgina cried, flapping her wings.

"Well, of course she did," Osiris answered. He started grooming himself to show how unnervous he had been.

Theo snorted, and then shared a knowing look with the parrot before trotting off to find his warm bed again. "She'll be back tomorrow then?"

"Yes," the parrot answered. "But don't expect an early arrival. She and Uriah have opened a bottle." The parrot, and then the dog and the cat as their connection to their human partner caught up with the parrot's longer experience, shared the warm taste of well-aged whisky.

"Oh that's nice," Theo said. "Yeah, it'll be a late night."

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Changed My Mind A Little...

Changed my mind a little...

regarding this, specifically where I talk about the difficulties of pumping desalinated water from the coasts to interior states in the western U.S..

What I realized, on stewing over it, is that I conflated a few issues into a single statement, and went on to then say that it would be something on the order of a century (so, really, anywhere between 20 and 100 years) to solve those issues if someone really wanted the population in both California and the rest of the western U.S. states to grow while maintaining proper water security.

First, the tech problems wouldn't, I think, be the stumbling point. If you have sufficient cheap electrical power availability (if solar continues improving at the rates it has over the past 10 years, as one example) to desalinate the amount of water you'd need for millions of people per day, then you certainly then have the power needed to pump that water uphill.

And, I'd add that the pipeline industry would happily switch to building and operating freshwater pipelines. It makes life a lot simpler, in that business, if a midnight phone call of "We sprung a leak" only means that you've got clean potable water as a pollutant. Yes, mudslides and floods, but at least the EPA's emergency response doesn't much involve the toxicity end of things.

No, the real tangle that will make these sorts of pipelines a mess to build is the infrastructure siting and permitting and competing authorities...

Everyone will immediately commence to screaming at each other, right?

But. There is actually a huge saving grace here. And that's that there are already water systems in place. Reservoirs and municipal water systems. And each reservoir and municipal storage system would likely jump at the chance to, in effect, guarantee full storage.

So, if the route to be used takes advantage of the existing systems, and just adds storage (municipal) or simple pumps into existing (reservoirs) then all the overhead squabbling might actually be kept to a minimum.

Further, following existing flow routes uphill in this way means that the uphill pipeline would mostly follow existing waterways. That doesn't necessarily mean you'd be home free, but since leaks are only potable fresh water, the hazards here are greatly reduced.

You could probably even come up with underwater piping, if you wanted to do it that way. Not for the whole of it, considering what maintenance would look like when someone hits the pipe with a ski boat prop.

But here I think you'd just run through existing canal systems, farm and municipal pipelines, and work with the existing system and stakeholders wherever possible. A takeoff for the local co-op of farms at each stage will gain you a lot of support, I promise you.

This would, importantly, if done correctly (which, sigh, means it won't likely happen) also insure that two significant stakeholders are least disrupted: Tribal landholders and the Federal Parks and Wildlife/BLM lands. If such pipelines follow existing routes to the greatest extent possible, and if the total supply insures that, just like the farmers and municipalities and reservoirs all benefit from takeoffs, then so too the Tribal lands and BLM lands?

I'm not saying you will make the desert bloom any time soon. But on reflection, the problems aren't all that difficult, if those involved take some time up front to understand all the possibilities that can benefit everyone involved.

But that's just the pipeline? What about the fact that Californians, and the rest of the western states, are already pretty comfortable with the density of the population and won't likely change their viewpoint anytime soon?

That one, well, that one's the uncrackable nut of the problem, isn't it?

So, upon review, at this point I now think I'd put a most likely path as this: tech and energy availability will keep improving. And the dry states will use it to insure that the existing population can take nice long showers, grow all the fruits and vegetables they want, maybe even build the occasional apartment building, grow the population a little more.

A little more? How much more will depend both on the water availability, and on what happens when most or all of the cars on the freeways are zero emissions. L.A. without smog, with all the water you can pump on your grass, and plenty of electricity that doesn't much depend on the grid? They'll fight like hell to build and protect that idealization, I think. Stay off the 405 folks, it's gonna be busy.

Monday, April 5, 2021

Things I Think I Know

Things I Think I Know...

about the apparent stabilization of California's population over the past decade.

First, I'm a child of the environmental movement who turned ten in the early '80s. I remember distinctly the profound cynicism of the environmental scientists regarding the population of California at that time.

They were concerned primarily with two big considerations: water and air. That the air pollution in southern California has improved significantly, poor as it still is, since that time is already an epic win.

To have the population stabilize in California generally, even if it is much higher than water capacity projections would have had it in the early 80s, is a second epic win.

Now, I stipulate that California did not reach population stability in anything like an equitable manner.

That said, if you go back and look, you'll find that most folks who were paying attention threw up their hands in resignation precisely because no one believed that population stability could occur without truly draconian restrictions, far worse than the Brownian motion effect that appears to be in play here.

That California has, willy-nilly, stumbled into a locally stable population number by, in essence, an accident of high real estate prices is unexpected, to say the least. I can't recall anyone who predicted that this would occur (economists with training in this area may be able to point to someone, but if so, their opinions/projections were, I don't think, either popularly known or used as a road map to this point.)

Again, I'm well aware that there are a lot of factors that are incomplete and poorly balanced in getting here. Race, class, these things and all the others.

But we're here, and this, I feel, is a moment to be cautiously optimistic.

So, you can see where I am then wary of Noah Smith and Matt Yglesias, as the tip of an iceberg of thought leading, pushing for California in particular, and the U.S. in general, to increase total population.

Not because I don't agree with their stance on population growth in the abstract. New growth, new people, these are, in the absence of other considerations, good things.

However. As a general rule, no state west of I-35 in the continental U.S. can be said to be water secure against a large population growth. The current hydrology is already over-subscribed, over-burdened. My own state of Texas went through this in the last major drought period around 2010-2013, and Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio in particular were very close to the edge of massive water supply collapse then.

To the point that the major reservoirs, such as Lake Travis in Austin, were completely bone dry. Every western U.S. state is one bad three year period from seeing some truly horrific water deprivation problems, the kind where we have to at least contemplate relocating the populations of multiple million+ person cities simultaneously.

This doesn't mean that, especially as water desalination techniques are coupled with the increasing availability of residential scale solar tech, water won't become available in broader quantity, in principle.

But realize that, for the immediate future, these processes will be scalable only for the coastal cities. Pumping water into the interior (and here I mean from the Gulf to Colorado, or the Pacific to Nevada, the head pressures combined with distance of travel are significant) will likely remain far out of reach for decades, if not a century, even with the broad availability of cheap renewable power. *** Updated my thoughts a bit on this particular topic here. 4/7/2021, mkd ***

So what do I think I know, in summary? Somehow or another, in the usual American manner of stumbling backwards in the fog, California has stabilized their population over the past decade or so.

There are a lot of problems, both in the way it's occurred, and in where this might go. Under the current environmental limits, this stable population is likely to remain the upper limit of the west coast for some time to come.

Further, pressures to increase the population in the face of these practical environmental limits, and without also getting general buy-in from folks who already feel like they're too crowded, will likely be both counter-productive and fruitless for something on the order of a century, simply due to the pure physical requirements of providing water not just to California, but to the rest of the western U.S., since it's a dead-cinch certainty that, if California's population does start growing again, so to will Nevada, Colorado, etc.

Saturday, April 3, 2021

On Empire

On Empire

From the comments, I'm not the only one whose eyebrows raised at a statement L.E. Modesitt, Jr. makes here: "any empire that is devoting a significant percentage of its resources to continual warfare isn’t going to endure that long."

Modesitt's essay here is On War, and I broadly understand the arguments he makes in the piece, quibble though I might. However, I have to scratch my head over the work that "significant" is doing in this statement.

In most cases we know of to date, all things flow to the Emperor. All things flow from the Emperor. This is the nature of Empire. China, Egypt, Rome, Imperial Russia, the Angevin Empire... the Empire belongs to the Emperor.

Cross him? Where does your property now go?

Conquer for him? Who decides for whom the conquered now toil?

Further, the bread and circuses must be paid for. And I do not use that phrase lightly: the Emperor must provide for the masses when famine and disaster stalk the land.

Otherwise, we need a new Emperor (or dynasty in the cases where the populace do not otherwise resort to the individual recourse).

"Continual" also does some work in Modesitt's statement. Look at England from William the Bastard through Henry Tudor. Was there a moment in that period where the English throne wasn't trying to hold onto its continental possessions, or take them back? And from Tudor's granddaughter through WW2 and Auntie Liz, was there a moment when the British Empire wasn't embroiled in some bullet tossing threat to its demesne?

To reverse the view, consider Imperial China, the Incans, and the Venetian Republic. Here then are empires for whom an inward focus is legendary, right?

Only, inward reflection in the case of China and the Incans seems mostly to have meant brutal suppression (or consolidation, depending) of their own people. War internally, rather than externally. China's turns to contemplation were not all meditation, the Tao, and pottery. Someone had to pay the piper, and the folks who raise the maize or the rice and tug their forelock when their betters ride by don't generally end up in the written record, except when they rebel because they can't take it anymore.

And the Venetian Republic survived past its confrontation with the Ottomans only to fade beneath Napoleon's boots.

But again, when you take the view over their whole history, both the Incans and the Venetians spent pretty much their whole time embroiled in conquest and consolidation.

One might then distinguish between expansion (U.S. Manifest Destiny, European Colonialism, Roman and Chinese Expansion) as a process of conquering with as few resources as possible, versus confrontation with peer states, ie. how the European Empires fought with each other, over and over again until WW2 and the current tenuous peace.

Only, it wasn't until the European states devoted essentially 100 percent of their resources to fighting each other in the WW1/WW2 period that they hit their limits. Before that, few of even their peer conflicts really threatened their imperial status, not in any real way.

After all: France didn't trade Empire for democracy. They simply changed what the structure at the top looked like. Algiers and Saigon came quite a bit later.

I could probably go on. One way to read post-WW2 history, for example (meaning this is both true and not true at the same time), is that Russia, China, and the U.S. all adopted command and control systems suitable to Empire (and fighting Empires) without the last step of complete devotion to Empire itself. Will that remain? Ask me again in a couple centuries, my crystal ball is fuzzy on the question.

What's my point? From this speculative fiction writer's point of view, it's ultimately this question: what's an Empire, when it's at home with its feet up?

In the future, will technology and social adaption allow for something resembling Empire that can devote itself to only peaceful expansion?

In the past, where does someone fit who does not devote themselves to Empire's purpose, that all-encompassing need for more worlds to conquer?

And in all cases, does it matter to anyone involved that an Empire devours without putting all its weight behind its teeth?

Thursday, April 1, 2021

Rodo's Regrets

Sometimes, dear reader, your daydreams come out and demand that they have their time in the spotlight.

This one actually came from a just-before-sleep vision of an apprentice with a kindly master, one who taught her of all the magic the old man knew before then giving the young lady a proper introduction to the world and society...

You say this week's story isn't that kind of dream? Oh?

Keep reading, friend, and all the way to the end, so that we may find out what things are not numbered among...

Rodo's Regrets by M. K. Dreysen

A few months before he turned twenty, Rodo Guerra killed the man who called himself Rodo's adoptive father. It was self-defense, as far as Rodo was concerned.

It was also payback for thirteen years of the old man calling himself Rodo's father, and then treating him as the least of his possessions. And not just the way the old man didn't teach that which he'd promised to.

But the knife, when it entered where Rodo aimed it, took back some of the pain. Rodo hadn't expected it to. He'd expected killing his "mentor" to be a relief, sure.

He didn't expect that, as he filled his backpack with the little bit of cash and the couple of books he'd managed to steal, Rodo didn't expect to weigh his costs and his benefits and see it good. Not for the years and the scars and the lacks.

The promises, those he carried along with him as he left the building he'd scraped something like a life from. Promises, and then the letdown. "Looks like real engineering and science are beyond you, boy. But maybe I can teach you to be a proper dishwasher. That way you'll at least make a useful lackey for your betters."

The books didn't promise anything. They just laid out what you had to do if you wanted to learn. No promises, just work.

Rodo preferred that to the old man's promise-refusal routine. He could do the reading, while he worked nights at the bar. He read during the daylight hours, when the light came free with the open window. He worked problems in the dust until they made sense and he believed his answers.

He ignored people asking him why. Just shrug and sweep, or mop.

Or break in. "Rodo Guerra? I've heard that name."

Rodo had spent thirteen years in the building. Most nights, at least. He'd never strayed far from the streets. Not when the old man got out the bottle. Better to disappear for a couple nights.

Roam the rooftops. Poke his head in, here and there, to remember he could do it. And pick up the occasional loose item.

Treya, as she called herself, wanted a way into a rich man's bedroom. And not the other route. "What are you after?"

"Just get me to the safe, kid. I'll split whatever cash is there."

More than enough to keep Rodo's interests focused on his own subjects, as it turned out. Similar with Booka. He needed access to the town's records.

The town needed guards to watch the taverns and the docks and the other places of the night. The town hall, not so much. And the cabinets with the paperwork needed to stand up to casual abuse, not Rodo's picks. Booka had paid up front, half, which meant Rodo could doodle on the window sill dust, a pressure gradient problem, while Booka swapped papers and did his own doodling.

Rodo didn't chase the little jobs, he let them come. In that odd way that they did, right when Rodo needed a new old book.

Few wrote of science, these days. Whether from what Rodo thought was indifference, like his step-father, or the need to stay out of the eye of the public. "You're not still reading that stuff, are you?" his landlady asked.

"Came from my parents," Rodo said. It was, more or less, the truth. "Why, think they're worth anything?"

"A hanging," she sniffed. "If you're lucky. A kid, that's just learning enough to be useful. An adult, and you're asking for the rope."

Right. Rodo's books found their way to locations his landlady didn't have access to at that point.

And when he broke into the library at night, to search the basement where they kept the books they didn't want good honest adults reading, or when Rodo made discrete inquiries of the quiet network of working engineers and scientists, he made sure to keep names and such out of it.

He'd set his eyes on a particular find, one fine afternoon, when Ulis and Shil came calling.

A truly old geology book, one of the last ones written that anyone knew of. But four hundred years or more meant the owner needed serious cash to part with it. Rodo had turned his few extra funds into an almost as old, but much less sought after, quantum physics book when Ulis turned up wanting a roper.

"Where? And what kind of building?"

"Out of town. You'll want to see it first. We've got all the gear you could imagine, you'll need it."

The building turned out to be a tower, three stories or maybe a little more. White-clad, limestone or something, the kind that glowed in the sunset.

A camp on a hill, the tower stood on the other side of a little valley. Leoma had kept the camp and the watch over the tower while Ulis and Shil acquired gear and Rodo. "What is it? Anyone know?"

Leoma shrugged. "It's been there for longer than anyone can remember, even in their family stories. I used to hunt here, when I was a kid." He pointed at the tower. "Good deer over there, there's a stream behind it where they head to drink in the evening. Ducks in the fall, too."

Rodo nodded. Deer, ducks, and a tower empty for more generations than anyone had bothered to keep track of. Which meant no one around to complain when they started their work. "Why the rope gear?"

"Only entrance is at the top."

"Figures."

Leoma wasn't lying, either. When they got to the tower's base, Rodo noted the pitting, first. Cement, limestone, whatever the material, centuries of exposure and the surface held cracks and pits. Rodo pried at pieces of it with his fingers, then his knife.

Testing whether it crumbled. But it held good, at least down here. Rodo walked around the entire base of the tower, just in case.

But the only entrance was the shadowed nook, a window maybe, just below the pyramid shaped cap of the tower. Forty feet up, give or take.

Rodo spent that night going through the gear.

It took him a day to drill and set the anchor points. A long hard day, Ulis at the next one down the rope and Leoma on the ground below, passing up tools. Rodo roped down, Ulis behind him, when he'd set the anchors they'd need for the window.

"Tomorrow?" Shil asked.

"Yep." Rodo spent the night thinking through an angular momentum problem that he'd been having trouble with.

Whatever the tower held, it would hold for a night or two longer without Rodo's having to mind it.

Rodo pulled the panes of glass free of the frame the next morning, when the sunlight came enough to rope up and climb with a little surety.

He and Uliss waited until the air from the window lost its stale taste before they went in. "One room, huh? Lot of damn work for a room you can't get into," Ulis summed up.

Rodo nodded. All the rope work, slide in through the window, and the tower had greeted them with one big room for the effort. On the inside of it, Rodo admitted the room gave great view. The window framed the valley perfectly.

But it didn't make much sense otherwise. He focused on the floor until he found it.

A seam, outlining a block in the floor. "We'll need pry bars."

"And wedges," Ulis added. Ulis went to the window and tossed a message line down to Leoma.

Rodo used his belt knife to scrape what little dust had drifted into the seam while Ulis managed Leoma and Shil's appearance. "Got anything new?" Ulis asked when they'd finished hauling up the gear.

"What you see is what you get."

Two on the pry bars, one on the wedges, and Rodo to push the wood poles through when the block of stone had been lifted high enough for that.

It was only about six inches deep, fortunately. Heavy and more than heavy, but not so much the four of them couldn't pry and lift and roll it out of the way. Of the staircase lying beneath it.

"Well, would you look at that?" Shil asked. "Tower's got a few more secrets for us, don't it?"

Rodo smiled, then lifted the lantern he'd readied. "No time like the present."

However well the outside of the tower had stood up to ice and wind and rain and sun, the inside, the dark shaft, might have done better. But for the wet.

Rodo felt it as soon as he climbed below the floor of the tower room. Humid air and a slick feel beneath his feet. He stopped and tested the stair treads.

Unlike the outside, the concrete here shifted under the knife's pressure. The surface, anyway, if only a little. Rodo tested his footing to make sure of it, then turned to the others. "Watch your feet on the stairs."

"Got it," Ulis said, before passing word back. "You ok to keep going?"

"Yep." It was just a stairway, after all, winding its way down the dark open shaft of the tower.

To another room at the bottom, essentially a copy of the empty room at the top. Except for the stone sarcophagus.

And the rats. They came in right after Leoma and Shil did, when Shil made his way straight to the box. The rats poured out of a hole in the wall behind it.

Ulis and Leom and Shil stomped and cussed while Rodo dug through one of the packs for the kerosene. The four of them ran back up the stairs until the smoke had cleared.

While the other three dug into the sarcophagus, Rodo used one of the poles to shift the rats out of the way and look at the hole. Like the stairs, only more so, the concrete over the hole had deteriorated, crumbled away.

Rodo didn't stick his head through the hole, but he did look for the seam. Where whoever had filled the box had then covered up their last exit on their way out. "What kind of king is he then?"

"King? Yeah, I guess he is wearing a crown," Ulis laughed. "Look at that."

Crown and scepter and a book that crumbled to dust faster than they could lift it free. Rodo let the frustration at that drift away with the dust while he pondered the tower's story. "Guy builds himself a tower to look out at the world, then his people bury him and seal the place up when he's gone."

"And leave us a nice payment for the privilege of discovery," Shil added. "Don't forget that part."

The scepter was made of silver with gold tracing. The crown reversed these, and added a handful of jewels to go along with the difference.

All told, the metals and jewels, Rodo's share at least, gave him cash enough to buy his geology book. Rodo spent a few months pondering what a handful of centuries had done to the names of things.

Until the tower's story brought him, and Ulis, back to the hole in its base. "Rats, right?"

"Bats too," Rodo answered. A couple of them had taken refuge in the tower's upper room in the months since the pair's last visit. "They'll have another entrance, somewhere close."

"We find that first."

Rodo agreed. It meant less rope work, if nothing else.

Rats and bats and crumbly limestone greeted them in the world beneath.

And the remnants of somebody's, somebodies', lives. Worked stone, enough for safe passage between small homes, stone walls with wood framing and roofs dusted away by time. "So this was his kingdom?"

"Looks like it," Ulis agreed. "Wonder why they lived down here, instead of out in the valley?"

Rodo shook his head. None of the small city, for city it was, held information, only remnants. The king, if that's who he was, was the only body they found. "They must have left right after they buried him."

"Last message to the past."

Rodo and Ulis used the rats' exit cave half a dozen times, exploring the underground city, before they decided they'd seen the extent of its story. "You're a book type guy, Rodo. Think you'll write anything about this?"

Rodo stopped in his tracks, Ulis's question hanging there in front of him along with the weight of memory.

But people paid for fiction, still. And some history. Those books, so long as the history didn't go too far in the past, hundreds was ok but thousands didn't fly, not really...

It wasn't science, engineering. "I'd never really thought about what to do, you know?"

"You are now."

Rodo laughed. "See you around."

"Yeah."

****

A few months before he turned sixty, Rodo Guerra, reasonably respected writer of trashy novels about an underground kingdom some fair few centuries in the past, looked out his window and watched the spaceships return.

"Geer, quick. You have to warn them," Rodo told his apprentice.

Geer smiled at the old man, imagining her beloved old friend trying to rush out and catch the captain of the 'ship before they got themselves in trouble. "I'll catch them, don't worry."

"Go, and stay safe."

Stay hidden, he meant, but Geer knew.

So far as any of the locals knew, Geer had taken the old man's job offer for an assistant. Someone to keep up with all the things arthritis and a failing memory had robbed him of.

They'd both been thrilled as hell to discover in the other a passion for equations and tinkering and joyful laughter when a flask smoked, turned green, and exploded unexpectedly.

Four years of putting books and notes and stories in front of Geer...

Rodo didn't have to hide the joy, or the pain, the tears of both when Geer told him, a week later, of the captain's offer. "She's got space for a tech-apprentice, Rodo."

He smiled, and shrugged. "Go. And take the good wishes of an old man with you."

She kissed him on his bald spot before she left. "And a little love?"

"Some of that, too."