Entromancy (6 page)

Out of reflex, I grabbed the hand with my own, standing suddenly and pushing my chair into the offender’s kneecaps.  I twisted under his elbow, grabbing his wrist with one hand and using it to bend his arm in a Z shape.  He grunted in pain, and I continued the motion, flipping him over the chair and onto the floor but keeping my grip on the wrist lock.

As if on cue, the bar’s country music skipped, Tribe accomplishing whatever he was trying to do with the jukebox.  A dancehall hit, all beats and bass, began to play.

They all attacked at once.  The table of aurics and humans had surrounded our little corner, murder in their eyes.  I let go of the one on the ground, kicking him in the face as I stepped over him and under the wild swing of the auric on my left, grabbing the back of his shirt and driving my knee into his midsection.  He let out a harsh breath as I threw him into the group of attackers, tripping a human woman brandishing an electric club.

A tall half-auric to my right hooked a beer bottle towards my head, and I moved with the motion, punching him in the jaw with my fist as I caught the inside of his wrist with my free hand.  I continued my punch over his bicep, folding his arm behind his shoulder and grabbing my own wrist in a two-way lock.  Turning my hips, I sent him crashing into a nearby table, using my spin to connect my boot with the chest of another advancing human.

I heard the giveaway hum of ceridium weapons being readied, and came out of my turn to see several of the revolutionaries pulling pistols out of their coats.  Most of the bar had cleared away from the immediate vicinity, and Alina was just getting out of her chair and to her feet.  The wolf had woken from his nap and was poised to jump into the fray.

My hands leapt to my pistol and nightblade, drawing them smoothly.  I trained them on the two closest attackers, but noticed motion in my peripheral vision.

I saw Doubleshot move, and it was unlike anything I had witnessed.  She swung a boot off of the table and onto a chair, using it to propel her on top of the table.  Impossibly fast, her long-barreled revolvers appeared in her hands, pointing threateningly at the auric on the floor and another next to the table.  She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, but she was thick, imposing from her perch on the table.

“Call them off, Largo,” the dwarf said quietly.

One of the revolutionaries, a man-sized fellow with greenish skin and a handlebar mustache, squinted at her and spat.  “Auric king’s looking for this bunch.”

“Auric king can wait,” Doubleshot replied placidly, with no hint of threat in her voice.  Her stance in the dim light gave her the appearance of an executioner, her pistols glowing blue and deadly.  “They’re under my protection.”

The man shifted from one foot to the other, deliberating.  There was a tension-filled silence, punctuated ludicrously by Tribe’s music emanating from the jukebox. The other bar patrons watched on coolly, and I could see the huge bartender wiping the same glass over and over again, doing his best to ignore us.  Tribe unobtrusively made his way through the crowd, smoothly stepping in between tables and chairs.

“Auric king won’t like you getting in his way,” the man said at last.

“You have five seconds,” the dwarf raised her voice slightly, cocking her revolvers.

The auric looked at me, and I recognized him as one of the assassins from
They Might Be Giant
.  I must have started, as his eyes twitched.

He let out a breath through his snout, turning back towards Doubleshot and putting away his gun.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said to the room, taking one last glance at me as he left.

I stashed my weapons as the group cleared out, watching them leave the bar.  Alina and Gloric helped put back furniture as Buster looked on, growling softly.  Seeing that the danger had passed, Tribe diverted his path and made his way over to the bar.

I turned back to the table, finding Doubleshot back in her seat with her pistols safely stowed and her hat in her hand.  Her hair sparkled brilliantly in an orange bun crowned at the top of her head, and her skin was ruddy in the bar light.  She had a kind face, with wrinkles at the corner of green eyes and a strong jaw that supported chubby cheeks.  Her long auric ears pressed against the side of her head, half a shade lighter than two small horns protruding from her forehead.

The dwarf put her feet up and pulled her hat back on, grabbing her cigar from the ashtray with one hand and a couple of shots with the other.  I righted my chair and sat down, reaching for one of the extra glasses.

“Well, um…so!” Gloric said, passing a shot over to me.  “What do you think?  Can you take us?”

The dwarf looked at me, and I raised my glass in salute.  She lifted hers and we drank.  It tasted like bourbon, neat and impure, little better than brown moonshine.  It burned like fire but I managed to swallow it without coughing.

We slammed the glasses on the table at the same time, and she took a puff from her still-lit cigar.

“If I do this, we’re square,” she said to Gloric.

The technomancer took a long look at Alina, who inclined her head in assent.

Doubleshot took another moment, crossing her arms again and blowing smoke.

“Alright,” she said at length, then looked at me piercingly.  “But I want four names wiped from the records when you get access to the database.”

“No problem,” I croaked, trying to keep the bourbon down.  “You have my word.”

The dwarf nodded.  “I’ll take the job.”

SIX

The Sigil is a charlatan, a minor player who conflates gambling on information with divination.

-William D. Karthax, NIGHT Inquisitor General

A
fter some initial skepticism on my part, we ate some of
Lucky Snake
’s surprisingly edible tavern food and returned to collect our truck, which sat alone in the empty parking lot.  The evening had deepened into another warm night, a light breeze drifting from the Bay to ruffle my short hair and overcoat. 

I felt a pang of jealousy when Doubleshot rode up on her modded hog.  Of a classic design, it had all of the bells and whistles of a modern motorcycle with the same deafening sound that had been popular at the turn of the century.  It made me miss my cruiser.

“It’s a straight shot on the 80 once we get out of Oakland,” she explained, pulling up to Alina’s driver side window.  The dwarf had replaced her large hat for a simple reinforced helmet and kerchief that covered most of her face.  “We’ll stop in Mystic before crossing the border.”

Alina nodded, clarifying with Tribe some ground rules about whose music was allowed to be played while driving, and then followed Vasshka through the harbor district and onto the freeway.

I settled in for the drive, looking to my left towards San Francisco.  The city was lit up brilliantly in a multitude of colors across the Bay, which was a deeper shade of black than the sky at this time of night.  A crescent of fog had coalesced around the far side of the peninsula, creeping around the northern end to block my view of the Golden Gate.  Only the unlit towers of the old bridge peeked through the haze, ominous shadows threatening to pierce the heavens.

As the underrace population began to grow in the thirties and forties, so too did public demand and government funding inflate to support NIGHT involvement at the city, state, and national stages.  The U.S. society at large had become used to surveillance at every level, and it was effortless, cathartic even, to turn that scrutiny on what was perceived to be a new set of species.

Pockets of resistance formed to combat the human rights violations that came with the ghettoization and profiling of the growing racial populations in the already impacted urban centers.  Some of the demonstrations were peaceful, others less so, but most were uncoordinated on a national scale until Thog’run II, a first-generationer and renowned warrior and revolutionary, claimed his throne in 2063.

The self-professed auric king united the scattered underrace resistance movements under one banner that promised equal rights and protection for all of the new races.  Equally important, it provided the physical and philosophical space for an important identity that the disenfranchised underrace communities craved dearly: that of nationhood.  It took a few bloody years and a number of uprisings, but Thog’run was able to establish the capital of his empire in the caves beneath the Marin headlands, mockingly close to San Francisco and the seat of NIGHT power in the United States.  Just months later, he put out the word that all underraces, from every corner of the Earth, would be welcome and provided for within the new nation of Aurichome.

The auric king called, and the revolutionaries answered.  Uprisings cropped up around the world in support of Thog’run’s decree, and the underraces flocked to the North Bay, gradually taking over the coast from Sausalito to Fort Bragg.  Even humans moved to join the new nation and underground pockets of resistance, buoyed by the sense of freedom afforded by the dictatorship and away from military-controlled democracy.  Aurichome provided a release from a world run by armies and corporations, a return to a simpler way of life where all were welcome.  The auric king would take anyone, provided that they recognized him as the sole and rightful ruler of Aurichome.

The NIGHTs responded in the way they knew best, but found that even their technologically advanced weaponry and instruments were no match for the aurics’ guerilla tactics.  Having made a motion to nuke the entire underside of Northern California, their hand was stayed by an uneasy majority in Congress.  The government realized it couldn’t beat Thog’run in his own territory, so it did the next best thing: made everyone else the enemy.

You wouldn’t be able to catch any of the powers that be confessing on holovid, but there was a common understanding that the general underrace populace that remained outside of Aurichome was paying for the perceived sins of Thog’run II.  Aurics were stopped at every checkpoint, forced to produce identification upon demand, and denied most basic rights when it came to the law.  An auric that had a second cousin living in Aurichome would be called a revolutionary, thrown in the Virtual Penitentiary and most likely forgotten about.  The media already had a blueprint for paranoia from the Red and Green Scares of previous decades, and acted accordingly, changing the colors to the blue and white of Thog’run’s banner.

The Oxidium epidemic, known colloquially as the rage plague, made matters only worse.  The first generation of underraces had been taking the drug experimentally in an attempt to reverse the phenotypic effects of ceridium, which had been shown to work in some clinical trials.  It didn’t do much outside of giving them a nasty habit and another reason to hate themselves and the way they looked, reinforcing the widely held misconception that they were a different species altogether from
homo sapiens
.  When the rage plague began appearing among second-generationers, the underraces suddenly started to need Oxidium to prevent themselves from becoming bloodthirsty monsters, oblivious to everything but their blinding fury.  The drug proved to have some usefulness after all, but it was a hollow comfort.

We stopped briefly in Sacramento, a sprawling metropolis that dwarfed San Francisco in space if not population, to grab a few more supplies, and continued east, keeping to the upper traffic whenever possible.

The journey was mercifully uneventful, factories and strip malls zooming past the truck’s windows and eventually giving way to the thick evergreen forests of the Sierra foothills.  My companions and I kept our own counsel, lulled into silence by the quiet hum of the SUV’s antigravity boosters.  Even Buster sat morosely in between the two front seats, chin propped up gloomily on the dashboard.

Alina slowed as she pulled the SUV through Truckee, following Vasshka off the stretch of the freeway that rode through the town.  What was once the gateway to the mountain range from the California side was now a government-regulated checkpoint that sat uneasily up against the underrace territory, itself aligned with Aurichome.  The dwarf guided us through a series of backroads and back onto the 80 without incident, taking us into the mountains.

The traffic this far east was nonexistent, and after a short time on the freeway, Doubleshot slowed her bike to a crawl, then stopped completely.  At her signal, Alina cut the SUV’s engine and we all prepared to get out.

“Just a minute, Alina,” Gloric said, rummaging through his backpack in the seat next to me.

The gnome produced a small cloth satchel about the size of a grapefruit and embroidered in orange and black.

“In case there’s trouble,” he offered, handing it to her.

The Pitcher took the bag quizzically, furrowing her delicate brow.  Buster and Tribe crowded the front cab as she untied its leather knot, reaching inside to pull out a blue crystal globe about the size of her hand.  A molded seam traversed the sphere in a figure eight pattern.

“Is this?” she said slowly.

“In case there’s trouble!” the gnome repeated, helping her to press a recessed button on the globe’s exterior.  At his touch, the mock stitching glowed a brighter blue, revealing a computer chip suspended within the ball like a fly in amber.

“And I?” Alina stammered.

“Throw it like you normally would!” the Technomancer explained, beaming over his invention.  “It doesn’t have the appropriate coloration, but the weighting is correct.  And the best part about it...”

He pressed the button again, and the globe began to hum.

“...Ceridium-veined CPU, with a reinforced microcrystal outer core and spell of returning.  It’ll be very hard to break, and is programmed to reappear at the point of release on impact.”

The Pitcher looked up at Gloric, blue eyes wide.

“Unlimited ammo!” the gnome finished, clapping his hands.

Tribe let out a low whistle into the stunned silence.  The wolf sniffed at the globe a couple of times, uninterested.

“Thank you, Glory,” Alina said finally, putting a hand on his little shoulder.

“Yes, yes of course,” he fussed, blushing a little.  “One button to start, two to engage, and another to return to idle.”

“Got it,” she said confidently, pressing the button again and returning it to the satchel.  I was a little jealous.

I gathered my things and we exited the SUV, joining Doubleshot next to her motorcycle.  The air was crisp and stars visible above the road, providing a small amount of illumination next to a pale moon.

“Where do we find them?” I asked as we walked up.

“They’ll find us,” she said, planting her feet firmly and staring towards the east.

We didn’t have long to wait.  After a few minutes, I could pick out several figures melting out of the shadowed boulders and evergreens at either side of the freeway.

They were rugged, and they were armed.  Twenty or more dwarf-sized aurics paced deliberately out into the roadway to encircle us, all manner of axes, picks, rifles, and shotguns brandished openly.  They stopped within five paces of us, ceridium weapons glowing at the ready.

As instructed by our guide, we kept our hands empty and visible, which was not easy.  Every bone in my body screamed for me to draw my pistol and nightblade and fight my way back to the coast, but I managed to keep myself in check.

“Rodder,” Doubleshot acknowledged the dwarf in front of her, a squat fellow with a greying blond beard braided into his bushy hair and curling yellow horns jutting from his forehead.

“Vasshka,” he said.  “Back already?”

“You know how it is.”

“Running to, or from?”

“Neither,” our guide said smoothly.  “These folks need to speak with the Sigil.”

The grizzled dwarf peered at us each in turn, his black eyes unreadable.  “Humans?”

“Not really,” Doubleshot replied.

Rodder looked us up and down again, then left his post to briskly march over to me.

“What’s a fed-loving scab want in dwarf land?” he asked in a low voice, looking up at me.  I could smell coriander on his breath.

I held his stare, feeling the eyes of my party and the ring of aurics on me.  “Sanctuary,” I said.

His bulbous nose twitched as though he was sniffing the truth out of me.  “Vasshka?” he barked without turning.

“He’s good,” Doubleshot said from over his shoulder.  “Confused, but good.”

Rodder measured me again, then relented, stepping towards our guide.  The ring of dwarfs stood placidly, squat sentinels in the road.

“You know the way,” he said curtly.  Some unspoken message passed between them that I couldn’t decipher.

“That I do,” Doubleshot agreed.  They bowed slightly to each other and Rodder turned on his heel, signaling to his patrol.  The dwarves sifted back into the wilderness as quickly as they had arrived.

We got back in the SUV and followed Vasshka through the mountains, seeing the remnants of human civilization as we drove.  Here and there, road signs had been cut down or boarded over, and a few abandoned cars littered the shoulder.  If there were auric settlements this far west, their entrances were invisible from the freeway.  Unlike most of the underrace population, dwarves actually preferred living underground, and made excellent basement renters.

It took a few minutes after crossing the border for us to see the drones.  Flitting like fireflies, they zipped across the roadway in the distance, flying unerringly from the left to the right.  There were only a few at first, but as we neared the exit to the city center, they grew in number, gliding overhead in a swarm of lights.

The city itself stood like a bright beacon in the inky desert.  The abandoned region was dark as far as the eye could see, save the central casino district, which was lit with a kaleidoscope of colors.  The drones, almost invisible against the light, were indeed flying in the same direction, but turned in their course when they reached the outer limit of the city.

“They’re going in circles,” Gloric breathed next to me, pressing his bearded face against the window.

“Have we got a game plan?” Tribe asked as Alina followed Doubleshot off the freeway and into the city center.

“I sure hope so,” I said, out of my depth.

We drove in between the towering buildings, skyscraping casinos plastered with AR digads amid brightly lit parking structures and rows of empty restaurants.  Fountains spewed forth colorful cascades for no one, and the deserted streets were only more eerie for their brilliance.  We drove past a sign that would have once read
Reno - The Biggest Little City in the World
, but its augmented reality wiring now made it display simply,
Reno - The Best City
.

“The marquis,” Alina said, pointing as she drove.

I looked outside my window at the moving signs abutting the casinos, each pulsing in my lenses with AR filters.  They all creepily read the same message.