Andrew R. Clark
I’d heard about a new shop in the Lacaille pod, but an hour in that cluttered maze hadn’t turned up a thing. My Lacaillean is fair, but I didn’t ask directions because those bugs will talk your ear off if you make the mistake of showing the least interest. It’s “What’s your hive family?” and “Are you hungry?”—the answer to that should always be no—and “Who do you think has a deep enough bench to win the Cup this year?”
Finding myself at the same lock I’d come in by, I decided the principled thing to do was give up. I could always try again tomorrow to locate this shop where odd tech had surfaced, even though all I’d seen today was worn‑out fuel valves, frozen gauges, and outmoded control panels. Besides, salvage isn’t my usual line.
Ten years ago, a boy was sent up the Elevator on an errand. Being too young and stupid to know better, he got stranded with no money and no way back down. Nobody on‑planet showed much concern, and contacting the authorities would’ve brought up awkward questions, so his world shrunk to making it to the next day. He fended off hunger and capitulations sometimes chosen by the starving. He fended off indentureship and criminal crews scouting for vulnerable recruits. He fended for himself because nobody really wants to help you when you can’t help them back. Not an inspirational story, but there you are.
Maybe that’s why helping people, the unfortunate and the unsophisticated, became my occupation. I help them devise solutions to their problems. I make connections for them mysterious to the uninitiated. And if in the end one or two are unburdened from excess credits, they probably had it coming.
After exiting the Lacaille pod, I went home to freshen up before meeting Raina. I couldn’t wait to take a long look into her blue eyes, the color of the sky—sky as I remember it anyway. I first saw her standing outside a hubtram depot, with the wobbly legs of a new arrival, dressed in standard business attire favored by station administration. She surveyed passersby as if expecting to be met by someone, and when I approached she smiled as though I might be her escort.
I said, “Excuse me, do you know where the Cancri Embassy is?” The hopeful expression on her face slumped. “I know it’s near the admin offices, but when I went by them a couple minutes ago, I couldn’t remember if it was up‑spin or down and got confused.”
Her smile returned, and she replied, “Let’s go to Administration, and we can look for the embassy from there.”
As we walked I asked, “Are you here long or just visiting?” She was soon telling me all about herself.
She’d grown up in a small outpost. After graduation she hadn’t been sure what to do next and had bummed around awhile. Sitting at a bonfire with friends one night, watching the bright thread of the Elevator shorten and disappear in the night sky, she made up her mind. She applied for a position, landed the job, and took the ride up.
We crossed a bridge between rings, and as we came to the government complex I admitted my subterfuge and told her another truth, she was the most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen. As I left I tabbed my wrist key for basic exchange and said, “Call me if you’d like to go for another walk.” A few days later she did.
#
Discovery of a habitable planet is rare, finding one unoccupied is rarer still. But although this new world was open for business, progress at first was slow. Most interstellar ships aren’t built for atmosphere, and only the best funded operations could afford to bring the mass of landers and fuel with them. So at the end of a long journey a barrier remained. Lift and descent capacity was being built out, but this limitation remained a brake on development.
Construction of the space elevator sparked a bonanza. Land drew settlers and opportunity brought the ambitious and the unscrupulous alike. There were fortunes to be made, and humans and other aliens from all the near reaches came. Some had sizable resources to draw upon. Others simply cobbled together what they could and showed up. Some could afford the ride down and sought their future on the planet’s surface, while others, either from natural disposition or financial necessity, remained above. They traveled in style or as freight or barely made it in vessels long past service. I expect some perished along the way.
So what to do with this tide washing up on your shore? Cheap labor is always wanted on a frontier, and the purveyors of this world knew how to exploit it, but what do you do with all this stuff, all the ships the people came in? Most were of little use after they’d arrived, and many were abandoned before authorities could make anyone responsible for them, crews deserting their posts and melting into the stream of immigrants. A few were suitable for asteroid mining. A number were converted to local transport. But not many would ever see their home port again, and it wouldn’t have been wise to let them become an armada of orbital debris.
This is where the pod toolkit came in. The authorities provided adaptable locks, impeller packages, solar units, and environmental scrubbers—all free of charge and integrated with station systems. It wasn’t long until people were hitching together wrecks and making communities inside them. Discarded vessels conglomerated like corals on a tropical reef. There was even ferry service.
The arrangement wasn’t without catches, though. If a section encroached too far on the center, where ships came and went from the docks, no additional attachments would function in that area. If things broke, there was no one standing by to fix it for you. Like on‑station, if a segment lost pressure the locks sealed it off until things could be sorted out. Unlike the station, there were no public emergency shelters, so unless you were prepared for it that was that.
Admin uses a light hand when extending its authority to the pods. If no one’s building bombs or eating people (important people), they’re left to their own devices. Growth has slowed somewhat since the early days, but they’re always changing and expanding. The ends of the irregular arc will likely meet one day and fully encircle the spinning torus at the elevator’s terminus, home to those who haven’t adapted themselves wholly to weightlessness.
#
Things had been slow, and looking prosperous and smart in front of Raina was taking a toll on my credit reserves. But she was the best thing that had ever happened to me, and I wasn’t going to let a minor detail like my precarious livelihood get in the way of having it continue.
An associate of mine had something unusual with him the last time we met, muttering and poking at it in frustration. It seemed to be a commlink, but it wasn’t quite like any I’d seen before. Most people use a wrist key, but others prefer a pad. And for those who don’t have the most convenient appendages for holding such things, there are any number of workarounds. This resembled a flat, smooth pebble you might find in a stream or at the beach, and it stuck to his arm without a strap. It held there as if it had suction though I could see a thin gap.
“If I had one of those, I might help you figure it out.”
“It’s not worth what I paid for it,” he responded, “but I found it in Bugtown.”
I try to steer clear of magic beans and pirates selling treasure maps, but everyone’s heard a story where an ancient artifact has miraculous powers or a fragment of alien tech changes everything. Do you believe it? Probably not, but it gets into your head all the same and won’t come out.
After another fruitless hour in the Lacaille pod, I broke down and struck up a conversation with a vendor who sold small pouches of a cinnamony, peppery, solventy liqueur paired with a spicy satay of … toes and onions? its own larva? I asked in my passable Lacaillean, “Any new shops around here?”
The vendor—roughly my size, grayish green carapace with purple at the edges, novelty t‑shirt—replied, “I’m seeing a female, but she acts one way when she’s with me and another way when she’s with her friends. It can be discouraging, but I’ve decided I can only be the best bug I can be. It’s her problem if she’s embarrassed being seen with a food stall owner, an entrepreneur with his many eyes on the top of the skewered gnackack game.”
So that’s what I was eating, whatever gnackack is. “Shops? Places that sell things? Any new ones?”
“She, too, enjoys shopping and is not ashamed to spend the earnings of a humble businessman, one who is always innovating in both product and process.”
“Are there any nearby—” I took a deep breath, knowing the risk I was taking, “that she likes to go to?”
After thorough discourse on the vagaries of the Lacaillean dating scene and a detailed explanation of the really right way to clean the gnackack from its voglpog, he slipped and mentioned a reseller on the other side of a lock two levels out. No wonder I’d been having trouble finding the place, it wasn’t in this pod.
I didn’t have any more time to dig for buried treasure; Raina and I were going dancing. Although a touch cool and proper in how she presents herself—you do have to play the game when you’re a company man—Raina is warm and funny when she’s relaxed. Making the rounds of the clubs, we floated along together no matter that rotational gravity pressed us steadily to the floor. We bumped into some of her friends from work and became a group, but thankfully Raina whispered in my ear, and we ducked out unnoticed.
I have a place in the Gliese pod, but I wouldn’t want Raina traveling back and forth to the station on her own. She’s in the admin dorms, which are off limits to all but authorized personnel. So I rented a room at a little albergo on‑station. The proprietor’s a friend of mine and discounted the rate, but again, this brought up the matter of my dwindling credits. Raina likes to be independent and pitches in whenever we go out, but you don’t get rich running the place, at least not at her level. And perhaps I’d been showing off, not wanting money to prevent us from having a good time.
On my third try, I found a shop I hadn’t seen before. It was larger than the average retail unit, but this interior volume only emphasized its relative emptiness. A couple racks of containers, covered with mesh to keep their contents from floating away, were fixed to one bulkhead.
A Struven was behind the counter, if that’s what the clerk was. Its configuration was especially confusing, with eyes interspersed randomly over its body instead of the typical node near the center. Picture a giant sea urchin and you’re pretty close to a Struven. You don’t see them often, and I don’t seem to have the bump for echinoid speech, but fortunately, the few I’ve met have been polyglots.
“What’s in the bins?”
“What does the gentleman seek?” it replied in good Terran, if slightly hard to track in its sliding pitch.
“I need many things, my friend, but today I’m just browsing.” I glanced at the closest tub. “Shuttle scrap?”
“Scrap is not the right word at all,” it effused. “There are Sommerman relays and platinum in the navigation loops. The value is substantial, and the burning is hardly worth mentioning.”
I examined the junk skeptically but began picking through it. There had been fire, but most of the parts were in decent enough condition. There was nothing similar to the device my associate had been fiddling with. “Have you gleaned anything more interesting, perhaps ship’s contents?”
If a clump of chitinous spikes could beam it did, undulating with pleasure. “The gentleman is discriminating. There are indeed a few items for the connoisseur.” With surprising dexterity for a creature using only chopsticks to manipulate with, it drew a bundle from under the counter, unrolling it like a jeweler presenting his finest pieces. It contained a dozen objects, held to the surface of the roll with a slight static charge, several resembling what I’d been hunting for. One was more‑or‑less identical, a small, rounded display panel. Others appeared to be tools, but not ones that would fit any hand I could imagine.
“Is that a commkey?” I asked, pointing at the smooth oval.
“Its purpose is not yet revealed. There are many familiar functions and many that are unfamiliar. Not linked to station systems, but the gentleman will surely accomplish this.”
Along with the seeming tools and obscure readouts, one other thing lay on the counter. A translucent bowl rested on the last fold of cloth, a handspan in diameter, patterned with fine veins of pink and flecks of mica. I don’t usually deal in art or fine housewares or looted relics … usually.
“This is pretty, but what would I do with it?”
“If you tell your friends about the fine selection of merchandise in this customer‑friendly establishment, you may have it with two additional purchases of equal value.”
I bought all five of the peculiar tools and took the bowl in the bargain. I know an equipment dealer who also sells antique and exotic tools as a sideline, and I was confident he could dispose of them at a good profit for both of us. And the bowl, what would I do with it?
When I got back to the albergo, I contacted my buyer. While figuring out how to sell the bowl, I thought I might as well put it on a shelf. Setting my key in it, I went to take a shower before meeting Raina.
The blower was loud as I dried off, but I thought I heard a notice tone above the noise. I walked over to the shelf, but my key wasn’t there. I could still hear the tone, and I saw the bowl was tilted to one side, so I picked it up. My wrist key was resting beneath it. The message was from Raina saying she would be a little late but to order her a drink. I stood there for a moment in puzzlement before returning the bowl to the shelf.
At dinner that night, my key kept giving me trouble. A message blinked saying the link to Systems had been broken and the interface might be corrupted. The next day I heard my associate had been found partially stuffed into a recycling shoot.
#
Some people suffer an inability to let go of financial setbacks or perceived wrongs to their pride or the notion, once arrived at, that their life won’t be complete until mine has ended. But commerce requires activity, so it’s not always easy to know when best to be scarce.
My associate and I had, in the past, facilitated exchanges between a variety of parties with various needs. The last time we met, we discussed an arrangement that might allow certain Eridanians to pursue a culturally specific practice involving the addition of an ingredient to foods and beverages. Many Eridanians believe this substance promotes improved mood and well‑being, but Administration has a somewhat divergent opinion on the advisability of Eridanians ingesting it in any form.
Admin’s position is defensible in that this substance, while linked to the sensation of well‑being, also promotes accelerated molting that includes an increase in the natural irritability attendant Eridani molting. It’s been claimed some individuals who ingest it become so irritated as to cause unfortunate encounters with other patrons at entertainment venues, with members of the public reportedly “minding their own business,” and even with representatives of station policing. Admin contends this justifies prohibiting the substance anywhere within its purview.
It could’ve been in furtherance of this undertaking that my associate unexpectedly bought the ride down, but it was more likely he met his fate for reasons wholly unrelated to me. I decided to take precautions, but my apprehension was of an everyday sort and only in the moderate range. It wasn’t until I returned to the Struven shop that I became concerned in a less abstract way. The place had a police seal on the door, and a few discrete questions at a nearby bodega produced rumors of damaged echinoderms and a man with a pulse pistol and a range of uncivilized behaviors.
I went away perplexed. Was my associate’s death and the attack on this shop a coincidence, or had I stepped in something? I decided to call my tool guy. He said he’d already sold the tools, or whatever they were, and asked if I could find more.
“The buyer wanted to know where I got them. He quizzed me and quizzed me. It was almost comical. In the end I had to admit I had no idea where my contact found them, just to get him to go away.”
I tried not to sound worried. “What did he look like?”
“Oh no you don’t,” he laughed. “You won’t cut me out and sell directly.”
Was this buyer the man with bad manners and a gun? Would he try to track down his seller’s contact? In that it was me, I hoped not. The next couple days were normal enough, but then information came to my attention I wish hadn’t been necessary to share. A stranger with dark hair and dark eyes was asking around for me by name. What was my situation? I’d already unloaded the odd tools. The shop where I purchased them had doubtlessly been searched. All I had left was the pretty bowl.
The rented room was probably as safe as anywhere, and I went there to think. The only certainty that came to mind was it might be a while before my next shower, so I undressed and again set my wrist key into the bowl. I stared at it with newfound suspicion, as though it were the bowl’s fault I was in trouble. Had the man broken in before and put my key under it? Was he trying to tell me he could strike whenever he chose to? Why not just put the drop on me and cram my body down a disposal shaft?
My key’s display lit up, and the chronometer in the corner of the screen began flickering. When I picked it back out of the bowl, it resumed its normal count, but compared to the clock on the room’s commscreen my key was off by almost an hour. It started running the same alert I’d seen before, the link to Systems had failed.
I didn’t have time for this. There was too much coming at me right now to have a tech test my key to see why it was malfunctioning. I’d done my best to check it for interference code when it had acted up earlier, but I’m no expert. After resetting it manually, the link had reconnected. Anyway, no time for it.
I showered and collected a few things before leaving. Wrapping the bowl in a shirt, I stuffed it into my bag figuring that if the dark‑haired man was willing to kill for things from the Struven shop, the bowl might provide some leverage in dealing with him. As it was, though, I barely made it out the door.
A pulse gun emits a focused wave of energy that can knock you out. At close enough range, it can kill. With my bag on my shoulder, I exited the hotel, hearing the latch click shut behind me. Then I was on the deck. Stunned but still aware, I rolled, pushed myself to my feet, and stumbled toward foot traffic on the plaza. Approaching a food court, I once more felt a shock and slammed the floor. Crawling under a table and continuing to crawl, a number of customers surprised by my chosen route, I reached a side hall.
Hazarding a look back, I saw him scanning the crowd as people shouted and pushed away. Others had their keys to their mouths reporting alarm or were holding them up to record. He was taking a big chance acting openly with the weapon, so he was either desperate or simply unconcerned. Short and stylishly dressed, he had straight, brown hair longer than was practical in low‑G. This must be the man I’d been hearing about. I turned and hurried on to the next hubtram depot and a ferry out to the pods, where hiding is a regular pastime for a significant percentage of the inhabitants.
Located at the center of the torus, the port is both gateway to the stars and hopping off point for the pods. I boarded an inbound tram and when the car stopped, exited grouped with other passengers. But he’d anticipated me somehow. Lurking behind a partition, he stared out at the concourse. What were my choices? He’d already traced me in the station, so I couldn’t very well turn around. The labyrinth of refitted vehicles and my contacts there seemed the only refuge.
Ducking into an alcove leading to the commercial docks, I headed for the customs office and a cargo inspector who owed me a favor. When I found him, he was glad to be rid of it. We made our way to an airlock where he helped me don a pressure suit, activated a maintenance sled, and began cycling the lock. Given time to prepare the excursion, I’d have made an appointment at a secluded smuggler’s hatch. As it was, I aimed for one of the shuttle bays, exiting in a puff of crystallized vapor.
I’ve seen the view from a porthole so often I hardly notice anymore, but I’d never been on an exposed sled before. Nearing our brief night, we would soon pass behind the planet. Only a thin crescent of its surface remained illuminated, a few dots of light marking settlements on the darkening globe, the Elevator appearing untethered, its lower part engulfed by advancing shadow. Not yet eclipsed, the pods hung suspended, bright paper cutouts pasted to a black wall.
Luckily, the service landing proved empty. I gained access to an employee passageway but stopped inside the threshold of the exit. It was a lull between departures and arrivals, not many people waiting. I didn’t see the man.
The terminal lets onto a converted Lalandeite freighter, the lock at its far end connecting to the interior of a massive, three‑forked Aquarii lightsail spar. If the man caught me in the pods, he’d have no need to be tidy, and he’d already shown motivation. I hoped I had an advantage here, but I couldn’t be sure of it. He’d cut me off; was he tracking me? Had he infiltrated my key? Admin gear has always been difficult to tamper with, but that didn’t guaranty he hadn’t done it. Had he been in my room at the albergo?
I kicked off the wall and glided inward. Nearing the end of the long, curving spar, I recognized a shape receding into the vestibule. How had he gotten ahead of me again? Easing over to the wall, where its bend obstructed the sightline, I retreated the way I’d come. I’d make an easy target waiting for the next ferry, and I could no longer access the maintenance bay. I’d passed some storage lockers a couple minutes earlier and returned to them.
Making certain I wasn’t observed, I paid with a throw‑away strip and climbed inside the closet‑sized compartment. The man couldn’t block the lock forever. He’d either have to continue on into the pods, or he’d pass by me coming back. Neither prospect was of much comfort. Wedged inside the unlit box, my mind stubbornly blank, I tried to come up with a scenario where I wasn’t trapped.
Something hard was poking me in the ribs. Shifting my bag I removed the bundled shirt and unwrapped the bowl, no more than an outline in the gloom, its fine details hidden. The chronometer on my key had gone nuts when it had been in the bowl. The first time I put it there, I’d just set the bowl on the shelf. If my key had somehow been on the shelf before I got to the room, I’d have set the bowl on top of it, leaving the bowl tipped to one side. But that’s crazy.
Squinting through a thin slot in the door, I saw him keeping to the wall, slowly drawing closer. This was crazy, but I raised the bowl, flipped it over, and placed its circular opening on my head.
#
I’ve tried to work it out logically. If an object moved backwards in time, would it stay in the same location? If it was an hour ago, I wouldn’t be where I am now, I’d be where I was an hour ago, right? Forget that I’ve been running around, what about the spin of the planet and the progress of its orbit? What about the rotation of the galaxy or the expansion of space itself? Even standing still we’re never where we were a moment ago. Would you have to rewind the entire universe to arrive at the same coordinate?
Squatting in a storage locker and wearing a piece of tableware for a hat, a wave of dizziness replaced embarrassment and dread, and I blacked out flat. Coming to and pulling myself to the slot in the door, I scanned the hallway. Was he out there hiding? Slipping the bowl into my pack—it wasn’t really a bowl in that sense, I suppose—I glanced at my wrist chronometer, but in all the confusion I couldn’t say what it should read.
Off the main entrance, a store sells canisters of pressurized gas, and I found what I was looking for. Taking position in an intersecting hallway, watching a few late commuters rush by, I waited. A figure moved into view, clinging to the opposite wall, pistol in one hand. He cautiously retracted the locker door, peering inside as I bent my knees and launched.
He turned just as I struck, but the impact knocked him inside the locker. I caught the handle and swung the door shut, feeling the magnetic latch engage as his body rebounded with a thump. Sticking the end of the hose through the slot, I cranked the valve, expansion foam blasting in until it squeezed back out of every crack.
No movement, no charge from the pulse gun, just a muffled, panicky gibberish emanating somewhere within. Casting aside the empty cylinder, I unlocked the door and pried it open, tufts of hair protruding from near the center of the yellow mass. The man sputtered and screamed as my fingers neared his face, but I managed to unclog the hardening foam from his nose, clearing his airway.
From my rooms in the Gliese pod, I monitored news feeds and municipal channels. It wasn’t long before a call came in regarding a person of interest encased in a block of insulation. I felt myself relax for the first time in days. My brain was blurry, but my stomach started growling, and I decided I deserved a reward for still being alive. I’d been staying away to keep her safe, but now I wanted to see Raina.
My broken key wouldn’t connect, so I took the ferry over to the rings, figuring I’d try our favorite café. One of her friends was there, and I asked if he’d seen Raina, but he acted like he didn’t know me. When I asked again, he got mad and told me to go sleep it off. I couldn’t explain it. After being thrown out of the admin dorms, I accessed station personnel rolls: no Raina Oliver in the register.
In the following days, my search turned up no trace of her, not in records and not in the memories of anyone but me. She said she came from the Nivalis region on‑planet, but I didn’t get very far in the archives and couldn’t find her there. And if I did, what then? Would she know me? Would she remember something that apparently didn’t happen? It seems she never lived here, and the one place this information remains is in my own head, an isolated effect in a very small region of space.
Years ago when I came up the Elevator, I was too occupied with staying ahead of my downfall to pursue formal education. There are many things I don’t understand. Do we inhabit a multiverse, our courses deflected in a bubbling infinity? Are things solid to touch only shadows cast by potential outcomes? If someone went back in time, if only for an hour, could he ever return to where he started?