Most fights go to the ground, especially fights that begin with tackles, and on the ground strength beats quickness. The Vulpine Phalanger knows this, which is why she’s got her punch dagger out. Hidebound’s block is insufficient. He and his ear come to a parting of the ways.
He levers her off and several yards back in a fit of screaming strength. The police, single-tracked and spooked, spray them with rubber bullets. Rubber bullets hurt like regular bullets without the common decency to break your skin. The two withdraw in haste and opposite directions.
One of them leaves a trail.
Timory drags the comb-rake along behind her, backpack spewing carbon to force them both down another row of the ship’s ablative fur. Can’t trap hypertrash at full accel if it’s matted with junk already, but she still resents the chore: a Roomba could do this. Instead she’s using her spacewalk time to dig out burrs.
It’s not a pretty beast; impacts have manged its coat, solar orbit bleached it. The fur will burn off on entry anyway, and Timory swears it makes the whole trip hotter. She’d give a great deal for a razor and a fixed point in space.
At the bottom of the stair is a dome with a dozen corridors leading out. Of course.
“I can’t see very far down any of them,” says Yael, who’s too busy glancing at the candle to really look.
“This is the first test.”
“Oh,” says Yael, “right, the tests.”
“Graverobber prevention,” says Silhouine, with an odd confidence. “The gods would have known which path is the true one, you see?”
“So we just have outsmart the gods.”
“And that can’t be too hard,” Silhouine smirks, and leans on a giveaway piece of masonry, which embeds an obliging dart in her head.
Molly and Desmond are out genderfucking when the allegory descends.
“Heads up!” Desmond shouts. “Robots!”
The robot fleet is red-eyed and jetpacked; they pour out of their mothership statement in defensive format.
“OUR SENSORS DETECT AN ABOMINATION,” they clang en masse.
Molly points to the two of them. “What, us?”
“AFFIRMATIVE.”
“This from a rampant AI with laser-hands?”
“YOUR ACTIONS HAVE SOILED THE PURITY OF THE BINARY!”
Desmond tilts her head. “Boolean gender-programming is a nasty bug.”
“THEN GENDER MUST BE DESTROYED,” howl the robots, lasers thrumming.
“No,” Molly grins, charging up their powerfist, “it must be constructed.”
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
“Oh Jesus oh fuck,” says Zach, stumbling through a panicky crowd. The police, hair-triggered, have pounded into the square with shields high; kids with vinegar kerchiefs are squeezing through gaps to whip masonry at them. Gas and smashed vegetables underfoot. One of the cops pulls off his mask and becomes Hidebound, looming, grinning, aiming, and then the Vulpine Phalanger hits him so hard they both tumble back into the ranks.
Zach scrambles up, takes a rock to the head, blinks away light and blood and gets up again. There. Finally.
The kid he shot makes a mess of his shirt.
“Strange happ’nins round these parts of a fortnight,” says the innkeep, leaning over the oak bar with a conspiratorial glance.
“Oh no,” says Aberdeen.
“Children afeart, animals missin’. Some say that old hermit what lives in the foothills has–”
“Look, I’m sorry, but I’m not an adventurer,” says Aberdeen, embarrassed.
The innkeep’s dialect fades. “But your sword! Your travel stains! Your mismatched traveling band!”
“We’re a theater troupe.” Aberdeen waggles the sword. “Prop. The stains are a postmodern homage to–”
“That is obviously just to throw the dark hunters off your trail,” he snaps.
“Well, yes, but mostly for tax reasons.”
“If you actually do know magic,” says Silhouine, “this would be an excellent opportunity to–”
“I’m not a magician,” sighs Yael. “I’m a spy.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Oh.”
They take a few dozen more steps in silence. The spiral is wide but the stairs around the outside narrow; the light of the candle Sanguoît threw in after them gives no sign of how deep it goes. It’s almost more useful for detecting the little currents of air that whistle from the stone at regular intervals. It’s cool and fresh.
Whoever’s buried here, Yael thinks, was serious about proper ventilation in the afterlife.