“Double hey!” Pieter redirects his scowl at Aline.
Aline embraces him and puts her cheek on his broad chest. “You know how much I love my tools, don’t you, pretty boy?”
Pieter’s expression softens, and a sidelong smile distends his lips. “Actually, I’m happy Elder Rew came for me. I was having a nightmare, anyway.” He squats down on his knees and pushes Elder Aaij face up. Then he stands, places both his feet firmly behind the guard’s head, and takes both his arms by the wrists. “Why am I doing this again?”
Edda clears her throat. “Uh, well, the thing is—”
“Just pull, Piet,” Aline says. “We’ll explain later.”
Pieter flexes his legs, stretches his back and begins to pull vigorously, stepping slowly back. Elder Aaij’s body jerks along, a few inches at a time.
“Where do you want this?” Pieter asks, effort in his voice, as inches turn into yards.
Edda and Pieter lean forward to stare at Aline as she expertly glides the thin, blue flame of the blowtorch over the exposed circuits of the device. Rew is standing in the corner of the cabin, separated from the rest, observing in silence.
The cabin looks like a technical maintenance room of sorts to Ximena. Electricity—or rather, the attempt to control it with technological means—is the obvious theme of the place. Thick, plastic-coated cables run into the room from a hole in the roof and join a large metallic body covered with translucent disc-shaped protuberances. Smaller cables run amok over racks attached to the ceiling, only to disappear inside a set of large lockers that stand against a wall.
Aline shuts the device’s metallic box, connects a cable and turns a protruding knob all the way to the right. “Okay.” She sighs, visibly satisfied, and turns towards Edda and Pieter. “I just hacked the generator to discharge all the batteries’ juice at once for the few seconds we need. That should make it work now. Ready?”
“Sure,” Edda says, and walks towards a connected device on a stool nearby, small and rectangular, covered in dials and knobs. “Say the word.”
Aline flicks a switch on the device she was working on, which begins to emit a faint but constant hum. “Do it.”
Edda pushes a mechanical button repeatedly. “Yeah, I see a needle jumping on the large dial now,” she says, as she keeps clicking the button. “It jumps up every time I—”
“Yes!” Aline claps, takes Pieter’s face in her hands and plants a kiss on his lips. “It’s working!”
“Oookay.” Edda turns around, face as confounded as Pieter’s. “If you say so.”
“Of course I’m assuming that all this,” Aline gestures with a hand across the room, “dream machinery works exactly as their real-world counterparts.”
“It better!” Edda says. “This contraption of yours is crucial, sister. It’s the most important part of the plan. The fire in the Joyousday House will be for nothing if your machine doesn’t go off at precisely midnight.”
“I know,” Aline sighs. “But it’s looking good, sister. So far everything—the tools, the machines, even the physics—appears to work exactly like they would in my real-world workshop.”
“A permascape does indeed provide a high-fidelity simulation of the wake,” Rew says from her corner, “as long as the Walker masters all involved mechanics, and there are no conflicting wills to disrupt their natural functioning. Woman Speese does seem to display a deep understanding of the concerned technologies.”
“I sure as Dem do,” Aline gives Edda and Pieter a reassuring smile. “It will work.”
“Where is this place?” Pieter asks, looking at the shut door. “In the real world, I mean?”
“Ah,” Aline says, extending her arms, “welcome to electric maintenance cabin four, at the south end of Colony Street. It’s the perfect place: plenty of discretion and energy, and close to the colonial repeater. Nobody ever comes here unless a big storm breaks something. So a couple of days after the Century Festival I’ll just come here on my shift, clean everything up, and nobody will ever know what hit them.”
Pieter looks around at the mesh of electric devices merged in a confusion of cables. “And how in Goah’s Name are you going to get all this stuff in the real world, love? It looks very expensive.”
“Yes,” Aline sighs, and nods slowly. “That’s a problem. Edda, I need all your savings.”
“You got them.”
“Good, but that is far from enough. I have some extra savings myself since Gotthard Kraker began his own project for the Trial.”
“What is he doing?” Edda asks. Ximena feels the intensity of her curiosity, but she is not worried by the competition. Edda knows that, unless something goes horribly wrong, the trial is theirs for the taking.
“I don’t know,” Aline replies, “but it involves lots of expensive electrical equipment as well, which I’m helping him procure,” she smiles wickedly, “for a hefty fee.”
“That’s my girl,” Pieter says. “Squeeze that asshole dry!”
“So we have enough karma for all our expenses, yeah?” Edda asks.
“Yes, I guess… If I borrow some pieces from the Siever’s construction site, hmm, and tools, and cables too. But,” she frowns lightly, “the problem is time.”
“Time?” Edda exchanges a puzzled look with Pieter. “We still have a week until the thirty-first.”
“Hmm.” Aline rubs her neck. “My providers of choice for this sort of thing are the Jansens. Very professional. And discreet. They have a warehouse in Oosterbeek, close to the harbor, in an alley off the Pietersberg Way.”
“Sounds good,” Edda says. “Especially the discreet part.”
“Their usual delivery time, door to door, is seven days.”
“Seven…?! Pure Sin! That is cutting it way too short. Especially with the extra pressure on regional logistics that can be expected this year. Can’t you get the stuff from somebody else?”
“Not discreetly.”
Edda laughs bitterly. “I hate to risk it all on a courier’s time plan.”
“I’ll take you,” Pieter says, eyes on Aline. “On my boat. We’ll be back in two days, three max with bad sea. But you’ll have to cover my costs for losing those days of catch.”
“That is a sweet, sweet offer,” Edda says. “Thanks, Piet!”
Aline takes his face between
