Trapped

by size; the housemaids kept them free of dust, but no one bothered to polish the tarnished little plaques that told what tunes the boxes played. Another table held an assortment of plaster figurines, all of them kittens or puppies or chubby-cheeked children in dirndls and lederhosen. These trinkets were 'the artistic heritage of the academy' passed from one chancellor to the next, like some pox nobody could cure. Opal sometimes talked about throwing everything out… but she never did. It seemed inevitable the next chancellor would inherit the same regrettable collection, plus whatever new 'riches' would arrive during Opal's administration.

Annah and I sat ourselves on a 'genuine-Inuit' couch upholstered in scratchy caribou hide. Our Esteemed Chancellor took a seat opposite us on a faux- Chippendale chair painted white with green vines twining up its legs and around its frame. She said nothing — Opal seldom wasted words — but she cocked her head to show she was ready to listen. Since Annah showed no sign of speaking, I took the lead. 'Rosalind Tzekich is dead. In her room. Almost certainly murdered.'

Opal's expression didn't change, but she shifted her gaze and murmured, 'That's what 'expendable' means.' When I stared at her in surprise, she focused back on me. 'Sorry. Where I come from, that's a type of prayer for the dead.'

She fell silent again. I waited a few seconds, then said, 'There's more bad news. I think the killer used an OldTech bioweapon — the kind we should report to Spark Royal.'

Opal looked up sharply. 'Are you sure?'

I described what I'd seen: the white curds clogging the girl's airways. I also told about the Caryatid's sort of a prophecy kind of thing, and the ghostly harp music that led me to Rosalind in the first place. Annah verified that Rosalind had been in perfect health at dinner, and that none of the other girls on the floor showed any signs of sickness… which argued against a natural disease, if any such argument was necessary.

Opal nodded as she listened, asking no questions, taking it all in. When I finished, she remained silent for several more heartbeats; then she settled back into her chair, lifting her gaze to a window that looked out on darkness. 'So,' she said, 'here it is.'

'Here what is?' I asked.

She didn't answer. Instead she rose and walked to the window, as if expecting to see something outside… but instead of looking down at the campus four floors below, her eyes were turned to the sky. 'I'd hoped they were wrong,' she said, facing the stars, 'but of course they weren't. It sure is a bitch living in a universe where so many species are smarter than you.'

I wanted to ask, 'What are you talking about?'… but some inner voice said I didn't want to know. Despite all the horrors I'd experienced, I hadn't reached the true edge of the precipice until this moment: half-drunk, surrounded by ugly knickknacks, with our chancellor speaking in riddles. I'd been thinking my responsibilities would soon be over — that Opal would take charge of everything and absolve me from further decisions — but I suddenly realized with icy dread that Opal would offer no salvation.

In the end, it was Annah who spoke the words: 'Opal… what do you know?'

'Can you keep a secret?' Opal asked.

I knew I should leave, but I didn't. I just nodded. Annah did too.

Opal turned back to look at us. 'Promise?'

We nodded again.

'All right,' Opal said. 'All right.' She paused, then muttered, 'Where the fuck do I start?'

I'd never heard her use such strong language… and her accent had grown more pronounced, as if she were slipping back into habits from some unladylike former life. 'Oh, what the hell,' she said. 'Once upon a time…'

Once upon a time, a baby girl was born far, far away. She grew up clever and strong, but not pretty; she was as far from pretty as you could get. So the people who decided such things told her she would be trained for special work in out-of-the-way places where her appearance wouldn't bother 'decent folk.'

[Annah shivered and drew a bit closer to me. I tried to guess which country Opal might come from… but my guesses were so utterly wrong, there's no point writing them down.]

In time, the little girl became an Explorer: a person sent to unknown places to see what was there. Sometimes the work she did was important; sometimes it was pointless; often it was hard to tell the difference. But she took great personal pride in her accomplishments, even on missions that achieved nothing useful… and her greatest pride was always coming back alive.

One day, her superiors assigned her to the service of a man named Chee: an aged and aging admiral full of whims. Some of his whims were inspired — his unconventional attitudes made Chee valuable on occasions when orthodoxy couldn't cope. Other Chee whims were just harmless or quaint, but occasionally… occasionally it was unlucky to be the subordinate of a man who was famed for caprice.

There came a time when Chee wanted pipe tobacco; and no tobacco would do except the very best leaf, fresh from the finest farms on Earth. So Chee commanded his flagship to set sail for an isle where tobacco grew most sweet and rich… but alas, due to old political enmities, Chee and his people were hated on that island. They couldn't land openly and purchase leaf in the market. Therefore Chee directed his ship to lie off at a distance, while the young woman Explorer landed under cover of darkness and stole as much as she could carry.

['Stole?' Annah asked. 'You robbed some poor farmer?'

['Oh,' said Opal, 'each year, Chee had his Explorers leave a generous amount of gold as payment; but I don't know how many farmers dared to pocket it. There was a treaty in place that forbade all interaction between my people and the islanders. If the farmer kept the gold and was found out later… well, being robbed isn't half as bad as getting caught trading with the enemy.']

So in the deepest hour of night, the Explorer found herself in a field full of half-picked tobacco. At the edge of that field stood six tarpaper shacks — the curing kilns or 'kills' where harvested leaves were baked until they were golden brown and ready for market. The plan was to check each kill to find one whose leaves were nearly finished curing. Those were the leaves Chee wanted, the ones the Explorer would steal.

But as the Explorer approached the kills, a man stepped out from the shadows between two of them. He was quite possibly the most handsome man she'd ever seen: young, virile, shirtless, barefoot, smiling as if he was about to greet a lover. The Explorer thought perhaps that's why he'd been waiting in the darkness; perhaps this man had planned a midnight rendezvous with another man's wife, or some sly-footed girl sneaking away from overprotective parents. He might have heard a noise and came out expecting to see his paramour… so what would he make of a stranger in odd foreign clothes?

The man smiled. 'Good evening.' Which the Explorer found surprising — on this island, the greeting should have been 'Buenas tardes.' But she didn't let herself dwell on that oddity. Instead, she reached (regretfully) toward a holster on her belt.

The Explorer carried a weapon, a pistol of sorts, which fired hypersonic waves on a range of frequencies that disrupted neural functioning. Her orders from Chee were explicit: shoot any witnesses immediately. One shot was sufficient to render an adult unconscious for six hours, but the effect left no permanent damage.

[That caught my attention; I'd never heard of such a weapon. The Spark Lords occasionally produced big bulky rifles with a 'hypersonic stun' setting, but never anything as small and convenient as a pistol. The OldTechs had never used hypersonics either. If Opal's people had the technical expertise to create such weapons, it was something they'd learned on their own. Which suggested a flabbergasting degree of scientific sophistication.

[I've already said Opal knew more science than me; where could she have come from that was so much more advanced than the rest of the world? My alma mater, the Collegium Ismaili, was the finest university on Earth.

[On Earth.

[Another chill went through me. Opal had started with, 'Once upon a time, a baby girl was born far, far away.' How far was far?]

The Explorer raised her pistol. The man's smile never wavered; he made no move to duck or dodge, though in the darkness he couldn't possibly tell what kind of gun was aiming at his face. For all he knew, it was a normal flintlock, or even an OldTech weapon with enough power to stop an elephant. Yet the man continued to smile.

How odd.

The Explorer pulled the trigger. The pistol made a soft whir — an extra sound added to the gun's mechanism so the shooter would know it was working. (The hypersonics themselves were beyond the range of human hearing.)

Yet the man did not fall down. He whispered, 'Surprise, Explorer. Your toy doesn't work on me.'

Without conscious thought, the Explorer dived to one side, like a woman throwing herself from the path of a runaway horse. It was an automatic action, instilled by her training — whenever something caught her completely by surprise, combat reflexes took over. Dive, roll. As she landed, she crushed a dozen tobacco plants beneath her weight; but that barely registered on her consciousness. Her mind was occupied with more pressing concerns. How did the man know she was an Explorer? And how could he have been waiting for her?

She knew Chee had come to this place before — every year at this time, he sent one of his Explorers on a tobacco raid — but it was a big island, and Chee never targeted the same farm twice. How could this man be in exactly the right place at the right time to meet her? How could he resist the hypersonics? How could he know to call her 'Explorer'?

From a few steps away, the man laughed. He was coming toward her through the tobacco, intentionally trampling plants as he passed. It wasn't easy — tobacco grows tall, with a tough thick stalk — but the man stamped hard, apparently from sheer spite. He seemed to relish the destruction.

The Explorer had rolled to her feet and was trying to put some distance between herself and the man; but the clothes she wore were bulky, and would slow her excessively if she tried to run…

[I had the vision of Opal in some kind of cumbersome spacesuit. Did that make sense? Yes. If she came from a world beyond our own, she might want to avoid exposure to our local microorganisms… and to prevent her own microbes from infecting Earth. Therefore she'd wear some airtight outfit like a perfectly sealed cocoon. It would be heavy and need its own oxygen supply — an unfortunate weight to bear if you wanted to flee from a threat.]

Meanwhile, the man just laughed and slashed through the tobacco after her. She tried to shoot him again, but the gun had no effect. Then he grabbed her and knocked the pistol out of her hand.

'What do you want?' she asked.

'Everything,' he said. 'Your weapon. Your equipment. You.'

She tried to break free, but her clothes impeded her movement. The man held on. She stopped her struggles and asked, 'How did you know I'd be coming here?'