Charlie Huston - Sleepless

“Yes.”

I placed the now-empty hand into my pocket.

She approached, small gliding steps.

“I am curious.”

“Yes?”

She lowered herself to her cushion.

“When I invited you to breakfast, did it occur to you to think how you would eat with your hands in your pockets?”

I smiled.

“No, it did not.”

She pointed at the second cushion.

“I would not have made the invitation if I had not intended for you to be comfortable.”

I took the hand from my pocket and used it as I lowered myself, edging onto my bottom rather than sitting on my legs in her manner. Omaha burrowed more deeply into my armpit.

Chizu picked up a set of plain bamboo chopsticks.

“Were your legs injured in execution of my concerns?”

I was looking at the wall behind her. The typewriters were gone. In their places, filling only a handful of the cubbyholes, were a variety of objects: a lone thumb drive that seemed to have been crafted into the proximal phalanx of an actual thumb, its beaded thong draped over a framed screen grab image of a warty hag sitting astride a dragon. An iPhone running an animation of a bearded dwarf in plate armor, his long red hair wreathed in white roses. A framed and numbered piece of collage by Shadrach that I may or may not have seen at his show. And a hard drive, carefully disassembled, all the components laid out with schematic precision around a small card of linen stock on which someone had executed a beautiful copperplate script that spelled out a name with no vowels.

I looked from the displays to the lady.

“Yes. There were many unexpected turns of events.”

“That is apparent.”

One of the cheekboned men returned, placed a filled baby bottle on the table next to me, placed the diaper bag, now properly screened, at my side, bowed, and left.

Chizu’s chopsticks were poised over her bowl.

“How is this best accomplished so that we might all eat?”

I considered the technical difficulties involved in eating hot soup one-handed while feeding a baby.

“It would be easiest, I think, if the ladies eat first. And then I may ask for your help.”

She nodded, dipped her chopsticks into her bowl.

“It has been years since I held a baby. My little brothers. But I expect that one never forgets.”

I didn’t know if she was right or wrong in that. Before Park had handed me Omaha, I had never held a baby.

Chizu pinched a knot of noodles between her chopsticks.

“And perhaps you will tell me, while I eat, some of the turns of events you encountered.”

“Yes, of course.”

She bent her head and politely slurped her noodles. I picked up the bottle, shook it in the manner Park had instructed, tickled Omaha’s lower lip with the nipple, and held it for her as she began to eat while still asleep.

What Park had called a dream feeding.

By the time the bottle was empty, and Lady Chizu’s bowl as well, I had finished most of my story, and I handed the baby across the table. She woke when she felt new hands on her, and I expected she would cry, but she did not. Chizu played a game, first showing the baby her five-fingered hand and then hiding it and showing her the four-fingered hand. A game that made Omaha giggle.

“And my hard drive?”

I slurped my soup. It was slightly cold but still excellent.

“Lady Chizu, mistress of one thousand storks, I do not have it.”

She flashed the four-fingered hand at the baby girl.

“It was destroyed before you could take possession?”

I used the tips of my chopsticks to pluck a sliver of egg white from the broth.

“No. I held it in my hand. And I returned it to the man who stole it.”

She lifted Omaha from her lap and held her at eye level to herself.

“But you are here.”

I could see the tension in her neck, the effort she was making to disguise it.

“I am.”

She lowered her forehead, and Omaha reached out and ruffled her hair with both hands.

“To offer me what explanation?”

I put down my chopsticks and pointed at the diaper bag, and she nodded. From inside the bag I took Rose’s MacBook. I woke it from sleep, opened the new partition I had created while at Park’s home, placed it on the table, and turned it to face her.

She looked at the glen, the three adventurers huddled from the night’s cold around the dying fire.

“Ah.”

She said it with slight surprise and possibly a similar amount of delight. Though it could have been mild discomfort caused by Omaha yanking on her hair.

I laid a finger on the top of the screen.

“I do not have the drive, but I do have your property. I transferred the data from the travel drive, including the bill of sale and documents of provenance, and erased the partition where they had been previously stored. They are complete in every way that they were on that drive. And, to the best of my knowledge, as unique as the bill of sale states.”

She turned Omaha, facing her toward the screen.

“Teessa Delane. Founder Pale. And the Vitiated Man. Together they plumbed the Chasm to a depth of thirteen leagues. None have gone deeper. Their creators, all sleepless, have since died.”

She looked at me.

“The transference of these from one device to another impacts not only their value but their nature. I initially bid on these three in situ, as housed on the platforms from which the creators most usually played them. My broker failed to act quickly enough and could only ensure that the originals had been erased and his copies the only ones made. But he refused to renegotiate the price I had already paid. And further insulted me by insisting on a premium for the additional inconvenience he had suffered making the copies.”

I was still.

“He is dead now.”

She began her game of hands with the baby again.

“Yes, as you said. But killed in the course of his dealings with the Afronzo boy. Not for his offenses against me.”

I held an open hand over the laptop.

“This belonged to Rose Garden Haas, the mother of the baby in your lap. Sleepless herself, and a player. I transferred your property in her home, as she was in the first grips of the suffering.”

Omaha held tight to the thumb of the four-fingered hand as Chizu pulled lightly against her.

I continued.

“Does this addition to the provenance of your properties impact their nature and value in a manner that pleases you?”

She offered Omaha her five-fingered hand as well. The baby took each by a thumb and swung them together in a silent clap.

“It is a worthy addition, yes. I am pleased. Not that the woman should suffer, but it adds to the beauty of the item. Yes.”

Omaha swung the giant hands.

I turned the laptop toward myself, clicked back to the original partition, opened another application, and showed Chizu.

“And this is Cipher Blue. Elemental mage. She walked the length of the Clockwork Labyrinth alone and found its silent center. Created by Rose Haas, as surely as she created the child.”

Lady Chizu’s empire was built on engines of destruction and the men and women who wielded them. She had armed militias and insurgencies, rebels and strongmen. She had fielded mercenary armies of her own, seized governments, and held them ransom. Her guns had killed thousands.

She leaned forward, her hands encircling the baby’s torso, forgetting her discipline, letting the sickness inside twist her neck, and gazed at the young woman on the screen, sleeping in a perfectly silent catacomb.

“What do you want, Jasper?”

I pushed the laptop a few inches toward her.

“There is something I have to do.”

I stood.

“I need help.”

I bent and touched the top of Omaha’s head.