"Ok." The Mapper looks at Life, Whinder, and Mouse. "You're all welcome to come, you know."
"Listen. This portal won't stay as open as it is forever. Sajat, Grondonl, you both need to come with me. You two can do whatever you like," she says briskly, looking at the dragon-woman and the girl. "But it's now or never."
Sajat nods and, grabbing Grondonl's hand, quickly leads him into the portal. Before he's through, however, Wihnder (whose trademark five-minute attention span just ran up) zips up behind them and grabs onto the back of Sajat's armor, between his two draconic wings.
"Not so fast!" Wihnder exclaims, mock-accusingly. "You're not going *anywhere* here without me!"
Jano looks only slightly bemused. /There are some species of sentients that would almost have been better off left undiscovered./
Sajat, well-used to the fay's habits, rolls his eyes and smiles (which was not as pretty a sight as he would have liked, seeing as how he was still in a draconic Cordar body). "Of course not, Wihnder," he replies dryly.
"Are we all ready, then?" Jano glances at Life and Mouse. "I guess you're not coming. Just don't try to go through the door if you change your mind. Coyote knows where you'd end up."
Grondonl, even as he's being led to the portal, turns around and looks at Life. If she were leaving, then--then he needed to say goodbye. He needed to say 'thank you'.
"I will come, " Life quietly amends. Draconic visage now gone, her blue skin seems much more pale, almost white in comparison.
Grondonl closes his mouth before he can say anything. He looks somewhat relieved. For some reason, what with everything that's happened to him, he really didn't want to say 'goodbye' so soon.
One hand runs through her silver dreds, then returns to a pocket. Her balance adjustment is nearly unnoticable. But still, she reminds herself, she neesd to sit down. Now.
"Eh." Mouse shrugs good naturedly. "What the hell else am I going to do?" She flicks a button, and from a ways away, 'Trap whirrs and vanishes.
Before Sajat has a chance to say, "Don't answer that, Wihnder", Wihnder, well, answered that. "You could conceivably take up swing dancing. I hear it's quite fun--!" The fay is cut off when Sajat's hand abruptly covers his mouth. "Just ignore him, Mouse," Sajat mutters, as the fay twists in Sajat's grip like some hyperactive puppy.
Jano looks at Wihnder. "In some universes, that gets you killed."
Wihnder blinks, and looks at Jano for a second. "Not if I can avoid the blow," he replies, grinning and winking at her.
Jano shrugs.
She makes sure that Sajat's hand is firmly attached to her own, and opens up the very plain looking-door to the brownstone. Dim bits of a plain-looking interior - mailboxes, a sun-faded Monet print - can be seen. Then they step inside, and disappear. The door clicks closed behind them.
When the door shuts, Grondonl sighs. He glances out of the corner of his eye at Life. She has returned to her normal self, but still... "Life? he says quietly, turning to look at her in the small foyer. "I wanted... to thank you for your help. For everything."
~Folri? Five others, besides me.~
And then they are standing outside a familiar door. Jano knocks.
"Jano? That be you?"
"Yes."
They can hear a chuckle muffled by the door, and then Folri unbolts the door and ushers them all inside. "Come in, in. So good to see you all back, yes." He beams to Wihnder, Sajat, and Grondonl, and stands up to quickly embrace Jano.
Jano turns and closes the door behind her before flopping into a battered old green chair, then watches as the three others are stationed around the room into similar chairs.
Grondonl practically sags into his own chair, still worn out by his experiences. He sees out of the corner of his eye as the fay alights on the back of Sajat's chair while Sajat fumbles with his short tail in the attempt to sit down. He eventually manages to get it out of the way.
"So," Folri says, perching on a stool like an old inqusitive toucan, "you have come back to see me once again for the same reason, yes?" His blind eyes turn a little to the left of Grondonl's chair. "The chip has then been removed? Strange. Tell Folri, please, please, how that happened."
Jano begins to speak, but Folri holds up his hand. "No no, let him talk himself."
Jano shrugs. /Well, I don't see why he wants to let him speak, but it's his right. I'll let him have it./
Grondonl can feel the others turn to look at him. He regards them each in turn, then stares at his wounded wrist. "It's," he began, "mostly gone."
Folri closes his eyes, and listens.
"After I escaped from Tiburon--those were the people who kidnapped Sajat and myself earlier--I met Life," and he nods to the blue-skinned woman, "and we made contact with the chip's creators, who worked for a company called Raven."
He pauses, and shudders as he begins to remember the most recent parts. "The people at Raven activated the chip's program. It--did *something* to me, something to my mind. I'm still not quite sure what, but I can still 'hear' things I've never heard before." He almost breaks off, but then forces himself to straighten in his chair and be strong. "When I broke free, I smashed the chip against a console. It's deactivated now, although there are probably a few pieces still left in my wrist."
At this, the man's eyes flash open, and narrow. "You can still hear such things?" he asks. "This is bad."
Grondonl slowly nods. He can't quite explain it--when the chip had been active, it felt as if his mind had been expanded, encompassing *everything*. Now that the program had ceased, some things were gone--the computer codes running through his head, for one thing--but he wasn't back to normal yet. As of something stretched out of shape that, once let go, can never quite reassume its original form.
"But... it is fixable. The main part of the chip has been gotten out, yes? We can remove the rest."
He avoids giving a lot of the details of what he and the others had gone through with Tiburon and Raven. Because of him. Because of his stupidity. He will let them add what they will. However, there is one fact that he feels he must admit to. "Jynx," he says, his voice barely above a whisper as he remembers that moment when the shadows had engulfed Dr. Brown, "Jynx is gone."
/The Shadow Woman?/ Folri frowns. /They are very hard to kill. This is a great power we are up against. Greater, perhaps, than even the Masters./ He does not want to even think of it, and waits until the waves of electrical impulses coming from the depressed saurian have calmed somewhat before speaking again.
"You do yet want the chip to be finished removing, yes? I will do it. This time it will work." His tone is absolutely certain.
Grondonl nods.
Jano says, "Do you want the others in the room?"
"It does not matter. Do they then want to stay?"
Jano looks about the room and shrugs. "You can all go into the kitchen, if you like. It might not be a pretty scene."
"Wihnder will be going to the kitchen, thanks," Sajat says, standing up.
"But I didn't say I was going to th--mmph mmph!" Wihnder begins, but is cut off as Sajat picks him up bodily from the back of the chair where the fay had been perched.
Jano grins at Wihnder and waves as he is hauled off to the kitchen. "So nice of you to volunteer."
"Wihnder," Sajat says more firmly, "will be going into the kitchen and he will *behave*. I'll stay here with Grondonl."
Wihnder pouts, but one look from Sajat sends him zipping to the kitchen, with only one final look back over his shoulder (which was pretty good, considering).
Wihnder mumbles something back, but it goes unheeded as Sajat shoves him into the kitchen, before coming back to the living room and reseating himself.
She turns to Folri. "You don't need help, do you?" /I've heard about this before, from Enterion and some of the others, but never seen it. It should be interesting./
Folri shakes his head. "No, no. He gestures to Sajat. "Please sit. I cannot do this with interruption, no, not at all."
He gets down off of his chair and walks over to Grondonl. "Try to not move when I do this," he says, and smiles, all wrinkles and white hair, up at Grondonl. "Even though, yes, maybe a bit startling or scary. It will not hurt."
At the implication that he could be 'scared', Grondonl's half-buried sense of honor flares up again, and he stiffens himself in the chair. He meets Folri's gaze and says decisively, "I will not move."
Folri nods.
He crouches down by Grondonl's chair and takes the saurian's arm in his own. "You are ready, yes?"
Grondonl nods.
In the intervening moment, Folri takes a moment to alter his brainwave patterns, and just before the connection shuts off, he feels the assent of the others in the 'Basement.'
Grondonl blinks, feeling some slight alteration in the electromagnetic waves somewhere in the room. But it is so subtle that he cannot pinpoint it, so he ignores it.
-- "'Ey, Oron! Gotta live 'un 'ere. Looks 'ta be Folri."
~I have not heard from him in a long while. Perhaps he has found work again?~
"Strange, looks like 'e wants us 'ta turn 'is 'ardware off. Wonder why?"
~Ah. Let me handle this. It is a delicate operation. You do not yet have the necessary training.~
"We're not suppose 'ta do this, are we?"
~If it is requested, it is done. They come to us when they need it turned back on.~
The gleaming green blob mentally touched two onscreen buttons.
~Apparently, Jano is nearby. He also wants her comminication systems shut down. Are you watching this procedure?~
"Yea. What ya think they want 'em off for?"
~You have never seen Folri work, have you? You would know. They scramble if you do not turn them off.~
"Ah. Sounds like'a interesting guv."
~That he is. Jano? We, at Folri's request, are turning off both of your communication systems. On my mark.~
And they are off.
--
Jano looks to Folri. /If they had to turn that off, this really must be something./ She feels mentally naked without the reassurance of her communicatior.
"Whenever you are ready, yes, friend," Folri reminds Grondonl. "Let me know."
Grondonl nods. "I am ready."
Sajat just watches pensively from the armchair.
Folri nods.
Jano sits forward in her chair.
Folri thinks for a moment, remembering the details, connecting the patterns.
Suddenely, the room is filled with light. The electromagnetic fields surrounding the crystal radio in the corner, the line of identical black boxes lined up on the desk, the microwave in the kitchen, are all amplified and visible, and shining with a bright blue. All give off distinct patterns that intermingle in complex grids and interference ripples.
Only Grondonl's focus on being still keeps him from jumping to his feet in alarm. The humming in his brain becomes more intense, causing him to wince.
"There," he says. "Let us get to work."
He bends forward over the chip on Grondonl's wrist that is broadcasting an intricate pattern of sine waves interlaced like ivy vines. Every so often, the pattern stops and fitfully sputters out, then begins anew in a random fit of electrical pulses that scatter like blue fireflies about the room. A loud hum fills the room.
Almost fascinated by this electromagnetic language, Grondonl mentally sorts through the layers of pulses and whines, like someone picking up random snatches of conversation. Most of them are system damage diagnostics, but some are signals reaching out for the main Raven computer, attempting to connect, attempting to connect--
He shakes his thoughts out of that rut, ignoring those futile cries.
Folri examines this pattern for a moment, and hums a tuneless song. He is not actually looking at the chip, it is noted, but somewhere off to the left of Grondonl's arm. Rather, his fingers gently poke at the chip, while other senses - it seems - are interrupting the sine curves. One of the curves turns red for a moment, then flares back into blue.
"Ah. I see, yes."
He waits for the pattern to cycle through once more, then stops it just as it begins to die out. The electrical drone hangs in the air at the same frequency, instead of continuing on, like a rung bell.
Grondonl blinks at the sudden halt. For a split second, his mind freezes along with the chip. Then, slowly, he pulls away.
I am not the chip. I am not the chip.
"This is where it needs gets taken from you."
Grondonl allows himself to nod.
He gets up and goes over to the desk. He fumbles around in one of the numerous cubbyholes before producing a pair of tweezers and a pair of forceps. Both tools are coated in what appears to be plastic wire insulation.
He clamps the forceps down on top of the chip's remains, and slowly pulls it straight out of Grondonl's arm. He tosses it expertly over his shoulder into a plastic bin on his desk. He tilts his head and squints his sightless eyes for a moment, clicking the tweezers indecisively like a metal cricket.
Mouse's attention throught the whoel thing is somewhat diverted. She fiddles absently with her braid, then pretends to adjust her fingerless gloves. Without cause, she grimaces, pales, then pops a small tablet into her mouth. Her color returns momentarily.
Sajat glances over in Mouse's direction, catching the movement. He does not comment, but he stores the information away for future reference. His attention immediately returns to the operation.
Life, on the other hand, shifts nervously, barely able to hold still. Her emotions are torn between desperately wanting to help and a strong desire to not see what's happening before her.
Folri blinks, and turns to Life. "You are sure you do not want to go into the kitchen?"
Grondonl ignores the pain. Or tries to.
The blue skinned woman-once-dragon twitches.
He lets the electromagnetic pattern go forward again, slowly, at half the speed it was at before. The hum dies, then cycles through, like a record run at the wrong speed. When it again reaches the place where the pattern died, a single yellow sine wave, with a short frequency, appears. He sucks in a breath through his teeth and immediately stops the pattern again.
"Hm," Folri says, "wondered if that sort happened. Very advanced, yes. Dangerous."
Grondonl winces at the yellow sine wave. It crawls like acid across his brain.
He reaches in with the tweezers and begins to pull out the pins of the chip which are imbedded within Grondon's arm. "This is not necessary with each chip," he says as he works. "If they are left the healing is speeded, and sometimes does not cause as much pain." He frowns up to Grondonl's shoulder, then goes back to his business with a mumbled, "but here it is necessary, yes."
Grondonl's lips pull tight at the thought of those needles.
The pins are nearly invisible to the naked eye, only about an eighth of an inch in height and made of a nearly transparent metal. It takes Folri nearly an hour to extract all of the pins, even though he is working very quickly.
When the man finishes, Grondonl suddenly realizes that he is almost halfway through the Litany of Heroes. He hadn't even realized he'd started muttering it mentally, to counteract the discomfort.
Finally, he sets the tweezers and forceps down on the carpet near him, and cups Grondonl's arm in his left hand while probing around in the chip area with his right. "Yes," he finally decides. "They are gone. Nearly 200, there were. Moment." He shuffles off to another room, and comes back five minutes later with an antiseptic ointment that he smears on Grondonl's arm, and covers with a piece of gauze faced in thin leather. "Move not yet," he says, then takes the medicinal supplies back and returns the tools to the cubbyhole.
Grondonl stares down at the bandaged hand and nods.
He sits down in an overstuffed chair, blinks, then lets the pattern go again. There is nothing from the chip in the bin on the desk, and nothing from Grondonl's arm. He smiles, satisfied. The electromagnetic fields die instantly, like the flipping of a light switch, and the hum lowers to its more familiar background whine.
When the whine dies down, Grondonl is momentarily taken aback by the utter silence of the room. As everything had been humming, he hadn't noticed the exact moment when the chip stopped muttering in his brain. From everywhere, silence. No electrical thrums, no beating pulse, nothing.
He lets his breath escape him. And, overcome by mental exhaustion, he rests his head on his good arm and falls asleep.
"Hm," Folri says. "He is asleep, no?"
"Yeah," says Jano. "That happen often?"
"Usually." Folri shrugs.
Life sits on her hands.
"That is all. Elf-man, you may return from the kitchen," he calls. He turns to Grondonl and says, "do not take the wrapper off for seven days. But you are free to go."
No response comes from the kitchen. Sajat, curious and not completely unalarmed, stands up and peeks into the next room.
Wihnder hovers in the center of the room, reading the sports section of the Nexan Herald. Every cupboard, draw and cabinet in the kitchen is wide open. Sajat raises his scaley eyebrows. The fay, unable to stem his curiousity, had looked inside everything. But what was more remarkable was that nothing inside the cabinets or drawers seemed out of place. Wihnder hadn't touched a thing.
//For crying out loud,// Sajat thought, //he actually did it _quietly!_//
Wihnder folds up the sports section neatly and places it back on the table. He looks at Sajat expectantly.
"Um," Sajat begins, momentarily taken aback, "you can come out now--"
At that moment, every word that Wihnder had held back for the past hour comes bursting forth. The fay practically jumps onto Sajat, saying "Do you know this Nexus place has a sport called Fromball?! Bittersweet! It's played with Trillerian Wobbles, which are these furry little creatures that you have to chase into the goals--and there's a bazaar going on in the Southern End, right near the pyramids--it's only on for 7 more standard krekmid hours, so we don't have much time! Can we go please pleasepleaseplease??"
Mouse blinks and nearly goes crosseyed. She'd almost forgotten the weird guy was still here.
"Um, Wihnder," Jano says politely. "This is a bit more important, maybe, than that Wobblefrom stuff, ya think? To let Grondonl - and Folri - rest. Rest. As in no loud noises."
Folri is taken aback by this outburst. /Such loud creatures,/ he thinks. "Friend Wihnder," he says, "do you perhaps think that you could be quiet?"
~Neee-ope.~ Mouse thinks.
Wihnder blinks at the request. Then he looks again at Sajat and continues talking, at the same speed... but much more quietly.
Sajat merely rolls his eyes and shrugs in silent apology to Folri and the others.
As Sajat staggers back into the living room with a fay clinging to his arm, he doesn't notice the interchange between Folri and Jano, nor the fact that Grondonl is now snoring quietly.
"Later remember what I am needing from the basement," he says to Jano.
"Uh-huh."
/Oh Jeez,/ Jano thinks. /That's going to take quite a while./
She looks over at Grondonl. "Do you think we should let him sleep?" she asks Sajat and Wihnder.
Sajat nods. "I think that would be for the best. He's been through a lot."
"Hmm. How long will it take Grondonl to wake, Folri?"
The man stirs, nearly half-asleep himself, and murmurs, "five or six hours, friend Jano."
Sajat nods.
She thinks for a moment, then rises from her chair with a cat-decisive movement. /Allright then. That'll give me more than enough time to make it to the Basement if I don't dawdle./ "No one is going to be doing any good sitting around here waiting for him to wake up. I'm going to head out and run some errands. If any of you have got anything that you want to do," she motions to the rest of the room, "then I'd suggest you do it. If you want to continue to be in on this little adventure, meet back here at seven or so Standard Nexus Time. See you later." She waves as she heads out the door, and smiles as she feels Folri's security system kick in.
There is a pause, where Sajat, Wihnder and Folri look at each other. Grondonl snores quietly. Then, Wihnder grins evilly. "Well, then, seeing as we have so much free time on our hands," he says casually, "I think I'll head out for a stroll." With that, he moves towards the apartment exit.
"Hold it," Sajat says, grabbing the back of the fay's shirt with one scaley hand as he zips by. He gives Wihnder an admonishing smile. "I'm not going to have you running off here by yourself and causing trouble. I'll go with you."
Wihnder complies, and waits hovering as Sajat gets up and moves towards the door first. The former human pauses on the threshold, and turns his head to face Folri. "Thank you for all your help. You have been more than generous," he says, polite and respectful. "We'll be back later for him," and he nods in the direciton of the sleeping Grondonl, "but if you ever need a favor, I will come." With that, he leaves the apartment. Wihnder follows, pausing only to spare a glance in Folri's direction before the door shuts behind them.
Folri, already half-asleep, raises his eyebrows, then breaks into a wide grin, showing coffee-stained teeth. "Thank you, friend Sajat. I will remember that, and your kindness."
/To market, to market, to buy a Miran taco.../
She ducks around traffic - a fleet of double-decker hoverbuses chasing each other, a pair of peasants carrying a giant rutabaga on a sledge, a yeti with a rickshaw - and weaves through interfaces with the practiced ease of someone who knows not only what to expect, but also what to do if they run into the unexpected.
Wihnder hovers above the crowd and scans the sidewalks for a familiar figure. When he spots the mapper, he makes a beeline for her--though keeping a discreet distance. Behind him, Sajat meerly rolls his eyes. He'd figured that the over-curious fay would try something like this. The only decision left to Sajat was when exactly to step in.
However, this becomes unnecessary as a hovercab swerves, narrowly missing Wihnder and air-skidding to a halt between the Mapper and the fay. A gruff, bearded head popps out of the window and waves a fist at the hovering fay. "Hey, watch where yer' goin!"
Wihnder moves back a few feet, and pouts. "But I *was* watching where I was going!" he insists, pointing in the direction of where Jano had been a moment ago. "I was going there!"
"Ah-ha," Jano says as her eye is caught by a logo, blue circle on green diamond - on what appears to be a mom-and-pop candy store from the early 1950's. She ducks into the store.
The cabby's face turns red with anger. But before he can step out of the car and teach Wihnder a lesson, Sajat grabs his companion by the foot and, dragging him down, claps a hand across his mouth (a position which has become far too frequent of late.)
"I apologize for my friend, here!" Sajat explains. Then, lowering his voice, he tells the cabby, "He's a bit slow."
The cabby, at least partially placated for now, sticks his head back in the hovercab and drives off, muttering "Losers," to himself.
Of course, by the time the exhaust clears, Jano is nowhere in sight. Wihnder, obviously disappointed, sags a bit, and morphs into a puddle of mud at Sajat's feet.
Sajat puts his hands on his hips. "Oh, come on, Wihnder," he says in a patriarchal tone. "I'm sure there are plenty of interesting things to do around here."
The mud puddle sprouts eyes and a mouth. "But I'm sure wherever she went would be extra interesting!" he pouts.
"Well, she didn't invite us along, so she probably didn't want anyone going with her, anyway," Sajat reasons.
"But that makes it *really* interesting! She could be a commie spy! And her headquarters can be full of neat buttons to push!"
Sajat rolls his eyes, not even bothering to wonder what a commie spy was. "Be polite, Wihnder," is all he can say, but even as the words leave his mouth, he realizes how cheesy they sound. Geez, he was turning into Wihnder's parent, here!
Wihnder sniffles and looks like he wants to cry.
Sajat rolls his eyes again, familiar with this tactic. "Oh, fine," he says. "Where was that bazaar you mentioned again?"
Instantly the mud puddle re-forms as Wihnder and zips upward until he is level with Sajat's nose. "Yay! We can go to the bazaar! It's *this* way!" and he points down the street, where a large group of humanoids and other creatures are making their way.
"Well, let's go, then!" Sajat says, more enthusiastic than he'd expected himself to be.
*****
"Hello, miss, how can I help you?" The owner, in crisp white shirt and black bow tie, sets his broom against the counter and smiles at Jano.
/Ooh boy. I can smell the starch from here./ She looks around the cluttered store. "I'm just looking for the Central," she says.
"Oh, allright," he says, and smiles. "It's over there." He points to a small screen door, which apparently leads into a storeroom. "The portal fee is a dollar fifty."
Jano opens her backpack and digs some money out of the bottom - the old, old terran dollar bill and two coins.
"Thank you," she says, and gives him the money. She goes to the door and pulls open the handle. The portal is activated. /They got this one real well shielded to the normals of this guy's home reality. Damn good work,/ she thinks, and steps through.
"Thank you..." the shopkeeper's voice wavers behind her.
"...thank you for shopping at Central Market," a voice warbles directly into her left ear, speaking in an amazing polyglot of several different languages. She frowns as she lands on the ground in the new-arrivals area, spat out from a portal tube. She immediately vaults the rope cordoning off the area, and heads into the market proper.
/Won't they get these fixed so that if someone can speak more than 10 different languages fluently they don't have to hear all of them? Cheapskates. I can only imagine what it must be like for the Kis people./
"...and welcome to the Nexus' biggest market, here or on any other plane! For a computer search of the item you are looking for, please..."
Jano frowns, and ignores the voice. She knows what she wants, and she knows well enough how to get there.
All around is chaos. Panthers dragging whole deer to the checkout. A hive-mind creature hired to do quick-shopping zipping its component parts around the store as fast as thought to bring back items. A little terran boy, obviously dreaming, staring up at a shelf of 'ideal parents for sale', murmuring, "no way." A cleopatra wanna-be ordering her slaves about the fruit isle that really was a tropical isle, and a selkie diving for fish in the ocean waters that surrounded it, surmounted by a blinking sign that said "u-catch."
A jotun child began to cry, threatening to lift the roof of the building if it could not get its very own magical pony. Thankfully, the staff converged on the scene and managed to calm it down.
/If their universal translators have some bugs,/ she thought, /at least the staff knows how to take care of their sectors of the market./
She makes her way to the 'quick-food' section of the market, and orders two Miran tacos and - indulgently - a carafe of chocolate frosty-freeze to go. "That will be twelve credits," says the robot manning the station, and Jano hands it her credicard. "Thank you. Here is your food and remaining credits."
Jano munches absentmindedly on the taco and heads to the northeast sector of the market.
"You've got to be kidding," an annoyed voice sounds from up ahead. "I was assured when I came here last time that my reality was only seven standard minutes' drive away. Now it's five light-years?"
"I'm sorry, sir," a wavering voice answers. "If it's been a while since you last came to the Market, things may have changed. We don't make the changes, we just keep track of them."
"Well, let me tell you something, lady. You'd better *find* a way to change it back. I came here to get my child some diapers. And I don't want her entire generation to be *dead* by the time I make it back to my reality!"
"Sir..."
" - and it's *ma'am,* dammit!" The click of something - a modified credicard, a gun, an axe being taken out of its harness.
"Ah, shit," Jano mutters, and breaks into a run as she comes around the corner.
There is a twelve-foot tiger in a spangled cape and costume holding the worker at the desk five feet off of the ground, and the only other customer is a telepathic slug, too small to do anything. Jano realizes that the click was probably the tiger's claws extending. /Fewmets,/ she thinks as she notices that the dangling person wears no bracelets, /Uron went away on lunch break and left his apprentice at the desk. What the hell was he thinking?/
"Put her down," Jano says, drawing a small multitool with her right hand. "I can help you find your way back to wherever you came from. Ma'am."
"Humans." The tiger spins and growls. "Such idiots!"
Jano raises her armed hand. Her bracelets clank together. The apprentice's eyes widen. /Of course, she has no way of knowing these are turned off right now... and it doesn't seem to be intimidating him - her - any. Great. I'm going to be Purina./ "I am not an idiot," she says evenly as the tiger-creature creeps closer and closer. /Where's the Market staff when you need them?/
Suddenly, the tiger springs.
Jano squirts the remaining taco in her left hand out of its tube into the tiger's eye.
"Eeeya!" It shrieks, drops the apprentice, and runs off to the nearest medical station.
Jano smiles and picks up the dazed apprentice.
"What the hell was that?" the apprentice asks groggily in Latin as Jano leads her back to the station. "What..."
"A mercurian tiger. They have very sensitive eyes." She tosses the taco remains and the half-melted drink into the incinerator under the counter, and puts the knife back in her pocket. "And I like lots of salsa on my tacos." She presses the apprentice into a chair.
"But the slug..."
"Don't worry. I'll take care of it." It turns out the slug only wants directions on how to stay away from the salt isle, and she pulls them up on the holomap in a little under a minute. The slug squinches off, and Jano bends over the apprentice, turning her back to the counter. /Looks like except for that, it was a slow day./ "You ok?"
The apprentice coughs and turns pale. "I could have died. I don't know if I want to do this anymore." She starts to cry.
/Aw crap./ "What's your name, hon? I'm Jano."
"Lutinia. Uron's gonna kill me... he told me to take care of the cust-"
"Hey, who are you? Get out of that control center!" Jano hears running feet.
Jano turns and stares at the man who comes running through the swinging door. "Uron."
The red-bearded man steps back and almost trips over the door. "Um, uh, Jano. So nice to see you again. It's been a long time."
"Not nearly long enough. Do you know why you were assigned to this station?" she hisses. "Because you took too many risks. Did too many stupid things. The rules are there for a reason, Uron. And you just broke them. Again. And almost got your apprentice killed."
"Er, Jano, I can explain."
Jano looks at the man for a moment. /Well, it's what I wanted to find out anyway. Now it'll just have a better effect./ "Where's the Basement at?"
She is very satisfied to see Uron's white face go suddenely very pale, the red hair standing out starker than ever.
"Um, the seventieth sector."
"Thanks. You've been a real big help." She snorts and turns to the kid. "Don't let him boss you around, hm, Lutinia?" She turns and walks out the door. It creaks shut behind her, and eventually falls silent.
"...Thank you for shopping at Central Market," the auto-voices buzz in her ear for the last time as the exits the market.
/...to the Basement and back again, jiggety-jig./
*****
Jano walks halfway to the seventieth sector, then flags down a passing mahout and rides the rest of the way. /I'd forgotten quite how far it was./
She stops at a non-descript building on a regular Nexus street, if there was such a thing. It is in a queen-anne style, with cheerful reddish-orange and brown brickwork set off by antique windows with green trim. The paint is peeling, but only very slightly, and this is offset by the bright red and blue flowers that lead up the sidewalk to the entrance. She walks up to the door, accented with brass, and enters.
A pleasant-looking receptionist lifts her head from the auto-dictation machine. "Hello, Miss. How can I help you?"
"Hello. I'm looking for Kieka's nail salon." She comes over to the desk and puts her elbow on the desk, her head in her hand. The bracelet is in plain view.
"Oh, all right. The stairs are behind here, and to your left." The receptionist smiles, genuinely this time, and Jano hears the clink of bracelets sliding together as the receptionist presses a button.
The door-panel to the side of the desk unlocks, and slides open. Jano steps through, and walks briskly to the unmarked door behind the desk. The panel slides closed as Jano makes her way down the stairs.
The stairwell itself is non-descript, with gray cinderblock walls and functional steel tubing for a railing. The floors are marked with large, black numbers to the left of each door. /Three. Two. One. Ah, here we are./ She opens the door marked only with a large 'B' and enters.
"Hey." A young recruit with blue hair comes over to her. "How are you today?"
"Good." She smiles.
"Would you take a seat over here, please?"
She nods, and follows the teenager to a chair. He sits behind it.
"You're Jano, right?"
She nods.
"Uh-huh. Please fill this out. And this."
As she reaches out to take the papers, she can feel a small change in the bracelet on her wrist. Something heavier, perhaps, something in the way the light shines off of it. /Well. They've really stepped up security since I was here last./
She fills out the required report files, and is cross-checked with the database. The whole process takes about 10 minutes. The teenager jacks himself out of the holovid display and smiles, and the bracelet on Jano's wrist once again returns to its more familiar state a few minutes later. "Yeah. You're who you say you are. Or if you aren't, you deserve to have gotten yourself in here." He chuckles. "So, you're riding around with a fay, a body-switched saurian and human, and two relative unknowns for Companions? LT or ST?"
"Oh. They're long-terms, I guess. Been at least a few weeks since I've met them."
"That's great." There is a hint of wistfulness in his voice as he types some information into a keypad. "I'd do anything to do field work."
"Hey, keep at the desk job for a few more years," Jano says as she gets up from the chair. "They'll put you on assignment soon enough. Gods know we've got enough work to do."
The kid smiles.
"You requested to see Kieka? Normally that's pretty tough, but your record says you've got some seniority."
Jano only chuckles.
"I'll try and pull some strings to get her for you."
"Thanks. I appreciate it."
A moment later, the click of shoes is heard. A woman dressed in an exuberant pink and cream sundress with a beaded hem comes around the corner. "Jano, dear!" she halloos down the corridor, and waves.
The kid rolls his eyes-good naturedly. Jano nods her thanks, gets up, and walks down the hall. "Hi, Kieka."
"It's been so *long*! We simply *must* schedule some chat-time later on. How's next year?" She breaks into helpless giggles. "It's simply that my schedule is so *full.*"
Jano nods. "Pencil me in for whenever you can," she says. "Just make sure I'm not on assignment."
Kieka nods, her curly hair bobbing up and down energetically. "So *what* little tidbit of information did you want to pass on to me, Jano?"
"Not really that kind of information, sadly. It's about Uron."
"Oh, gaaaawd." Kieka sighs. "Not that utter *lout* again! He's brilliant, but so *stupid*. And his apprentice, that girl from Rome, she's a sharp one. I don't know *who* assigned them to each other; she could run that booth by herself."
For a few moments, Jano speaks in hushed tones with Kieka, who periodically interrupts. Although not all of Kieka's expressions are in languages that Jano knows, they all hold disgust. She ends with a brisk "Well, that's enough of that. We'll take care of it," and waves to Jano. "Oh, dear. I've got a call in sector 15, and you *know* what's happening there. I must dash. So very marvelous to see you, Jano. Tootles!" She waves and disappears into a mass of people, all of whom appear to be demanding her immediate attention.
The blue-haired teenager had finished with his other duties during the conversation, and turns to Jano with a grin. "That's the most I've seen her stay still yet."
"That's about the most *I've* seen her stay still." Jano smiles, and holds up her braceleted arm. "There *is* somewhere I can go in here to get this repaired, right?" She chuckles, already knowing the answer, already turning down the correct corridor. "Thanks. Good luck on assignment."
"You're welcome," he calls after her.
She walks halfway down a hallway, and waits in a line for a few moments before being ushered into a darkened room. "It was deactivated on purpose?" the tech asks her, reading from a pre-printed sheet.
"Yup."
"Why?"
"Electrical charge interference."
"That much? Are you kidding?"
Jano sighs. /I remember this guy. He's trying to get me to give him a good reason for the deactivation so he can justify it to the credmanagers in the Attic. And, from what I've heard, pocket some of the change. Idiot./ "Listen. I was with *Folri*."
"Half of the people who come in here say that. I've heard all those rumors, and I can't believe that - "
"Look, you pencil-pusher. He's a damned good Mapper, and a friend. If you'd heard all the rumors, you'd know that more than likely, they're true. Rumors, around here, are like that." She looked pointedly at the man, and held up her bracelet. "Reactivate it. Now." She grinned in the darkness when he took the bracelet and heard the soft hiss of the biocalibration. /Was it my imagination, or did he turn a shade paler? I'll let his own mistakes bite him in the butt. It's more fun that way. And I've been whistleblower enough for today./
He returned the bracelet to her when the biocalibration was done, holding it out gingerly, as if it were a tiffany necklace or dish of radioactive rice. She took it and slipped it on. /Good as new./ "Thank *you*," she said, not disguising the smirk in her voice, and left.
/And back to Folri's I go,/ she thought. She grabbed a cup of water and was standing by the elevator, waiting for the next available one, when a woman in a white blazer set skidded to a stop next to her and asked, "You're Jano?"
She nodded, and kept an eye on the elevator doors. "Yes."
"You're traveling with a fay?"
Jano turned around and nodded. "I am. How can I help you, and who might you be?"
The woman blushed. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm Quelm. I'm just wondering if I can take a few seconds of your time, for help with an assignment?"
"Sure." Jano smiled and stepped away from the elevator.
"I was looking through the records and noticed that you'd just come back from to get your locator reactivated. I'm so glad to have caught you before you left. I'm doing an assignment involving the fay in a certain locale, you see, and I wonder if you would describe this 'Windher' for me?"
Jano bit her lip a moment, then described the fay. /As best as anyone can describe someone like *that*,/ she thought.
Quelm's face lit up. "Ah, wonderful! He's from Cha'lek!"
"And so are two of my other LTC's," Jano said, confusedly.
The woman's face clouded in thought. She muttered "interesting", and then turned to Jano again. "Do you think I could meet him?"
"Hey, why not? It'll be a little ST Mapper convention," Jano grinned. "Come on." She dashed to hold the elevator.
*****
Wihnder was happy. No, no, he was *ecstatic!* This bazaar, this bizarre bazaar (try saying that 27 times fast with both hands behind your back!), was perfectly geared towards the entertain-me crowd, the five-minute attention span. He darted from booth to booth, throwing baseballs at bottles of Querexian-15, buying sacks of iridescent candy that seemed to change color in the light, and shifting forms so fluidly that Sajat, no doubt, would have been having severe trouble following him. Were it not for the fact that Sajat's 7-foot-tall, big-boned saurian body helped him find a path through the crowd better.
"Wihnder! Slow up!" Sajat called, growling deep in his chest. It was hard to pick out the distinctive mental buzz of the fay's presence; there was simply too much magic in this crowded place, all of it causing that weird sensation at the back of his neck. He sighed. It would be nice to get back to Cha'lek, where magic wasn't so prevalent.
"Up?" Wihnder cried, then did just that. He zipped up into the sky, above (most of) the crowd, and pulled off a backwards flip, arcing in the sky until he came down again, immediately behind Sajat.
"Hey, look!" Wihnder pointed. "Look at the size of that stuffed bear thing!" He pointed at a very large stuffed animal with a pink bow-tie and black buttons for eyes. Partially slouched against a booth, it was about 5 feet tall. "Gee, I wonder what you have to do to win *that*!" He thought about this, then peered over Sajat's armor-clad shoulder into his face. "Win it for me, Sajat?"
Before Sajat could protest, the teddy bear shifted and stiffened where it stood. "I'm not a prize, mac!" it growled, glaring at them, then shuffling off in the general direction of a craft booth.
Sajat stared. "....well, I guess that answers that."
"Awww...." Wihnder pouted.
"Don't pout, Wihnder; the ladies don't like that," Sajat teased, then stopped at a booth selling jewelry and other trinkets. He paused, his eyes caught by a barrette, inlaid with iridescent shell pieces. Linka would love that...
Linka. She was still back in Cha'lek, wondering where he was. She was probably worried. She had no idea what had happened to him, to his body... she didn't even know that he wasn't even in Cha'lek. He visibly sagged. He'd promised to give her everything, to make her happy, and that was what he wanted to do. But where was he? In a Cordar body, in the Nexus! The desire to go home again, lost briefly in the hurry-scurry caused by Grondonl's chip implant, flared up in his gut, as strong as ever.
"I'll take this," he said carefully to the shopkeeper, trying to check the lump in his throat.
Wihnder hovered quietly beside him. "You okay?" he asked.
"Yeah..." Sajat muttered as the barrette was wrapped in white tissue paper and handed to him.
"Bittersweet! Let's do some more games!"
Sajat looked up at the sun's position, then at one of the numerous time booths which, for the guests' convenience, displayed the time of over a hundred different worlds.
"Wihnder, come on!" Sajat exclaimed abruptly, grabbing the fay by the ankle. "We have to get back to Folri's! We're going to be late!" With that, the seven-foot saurian bolted out of the bazaar, paper package in one hand, fay in the other, holding the hapless Wihnder as others were holding baloons.
Seventeen minor realities and a living room window later, they were standing in front of Folri's department building, only one minute late. They stopped. They stared.
"Sooo... how do we get in?"
*****
One uneventful trip later, [Jano and Quelm] stood in Folri's apartment.
"Folri? Mouse? Grondonl?" she nodded to the still-half-asleep saurian. "This is Quelm. Is Whinder around?" /I don't think he is... the room is too quiet./
Grondonl shifted, and blinked away the afterimage... it had been warriors, he thinks... doing some sort of ritual, perhaps? Then the dream faded altogether. He groaned, blinked again, and very slowly sat up. "Jano?" he asked, the traces of sleepiness remarkably tentative.
"Yup." Jano moves over to Grondonl's chair. "And this is a friend of mine, Quelm. How are you?"
"Hello," Quelm says quietly, staying back a bit from Grondonl's chair, out of uncertainty.
Grondonl blinks, then his eyes register on the smartly-dressed woman before him. He immediately stands up to introduce himself, but this reveals itself to be a bad idea. His head spins, and he sinks back into the chair.
Quelm cringes as Grondonl makes a controlled fall back into the chair.
He puts one hand on his aching forehead, and extends another to shake. "Hello. I am... am Grondonl."
"Hello." She steps quietly forward, takes the saurian-turned-human's hand, and shakes it briskly.
Quelm started as a soft chiming noise began to sound.
Folri woke up, and grinned at her. "Hello again, Jano and friend. It be just the doorbell." He palms a button on the top of the desk, and a tiny video-screen projection flickers to life. "Who is that there, Jano?"
"Oh, it's Whinder and Sajat." Jano grins. "Can you let Sajat in, and keep that fay out, Folri - no, no! I'm just kidding," she laughs as Folri goes to press another button.
Grondonl sighs.
Folri looks slightly annoyed, and presses a nearby button instead. He speaks into the air. "Hold to each other, then step through."
These instructions crackle out of a speaker set into the door-frame of the apartment building a moment later.
Outside, Sajat and Wihnder look at each other, then shrug. Wihnder perches on Sajat's shoulder, and the human-turned-saurian steps through the doorway.
Quelm laughs with a marked tension. "I thought you were going to have my research subject lasered before I could talk to him, Jano."
"Research?" Folri turns to Quelm. "I am named Folri. You?"
"Oh, sorry. I'm Quelm. Jano met me in the basement. I'm doing Cha'lek based research - specifically, research focusing on the elves - and when I heard that Jano was LTing with one, I jumped at the chance to meet him. And it's really nice to finally meet you," she says, a bit more shyly. "I've heard a lot about you."
"Yeah," Jano chimes in. "You're a regular living legend in the accounting department." She grins, sits in a chair, and waits for Sajat and Whinder to come inside.
Grondonl tilts his head. "Research? On Cha'lek?" He looks surprised. Then something clicks into place. "You know how to get back to Cha'lek??"
"Well, I - "
Just then, Sajat and Wihdner come in. Sajat stops in his tracks, and takes in Quelm with a startled glance. "You know how to get to Cha'lek??"
"We - "
And Wihnder jumps ahead of Sajat to hover in front of Quelm. "You know how to pick up the check??"
And instantly he is sitting at a small candlelit table, and peering at Quelm over the top of a fancy menu. "Because *I* certainly can't afford these prices!"
Quelm blinks and looks at the fay. A grin spreads over her face as she replies, "No, sorry, I have no credits on me at the moment." She turns to Sajat and Grondonl. "You're all three from Cha'lek, then?" /This could get interesting./
Sajat nods, and lightly moves Wihnder aside. It would probably be best that he assume leadership among the Cha'lek natives, because Grondonl is certainly in no condition, and Wihnder... well, he's Wihnder. Enough said. "We are. We came through a portal rather by mistake, and have been trying to get home. Any help you could give us would be appreciated."
Quelm smiles widely. "Likewise. I've been doing some research on the fay of Cha'lek, you see... they seem to know about times and places they shouldn't, given what we've heard of that world itself." She nods to Whinder. "We've long suspected there's a portal. We just couldn't figure out where it was."
She pauses, and plays with a twist of hair. "I think it might be mutually beneficial if we could use your expertise to help us locate the portal. With our - um, equipment, we would be able to find it faster and get you three back to where you belong."
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