Michael Flynn - Up Jim River

“You’re not trying very hard to sell me anything.”

“Well, you didn’t come here to buy anything, now did you?”

Méarana pulled the medallion from under her blouse. “Do ye recognize this? I mean the sort of work, not this particular piece.”

Enwii took it and put it under the magnifying light. “Hmm. No, I can’t say I do… Of course, I’m not a real jawharry; but I suppose you know that by now. Sadd!” She called to a young man standing by. “The sun is coming through the windows. Be a good boy and turn the shades?” As the lad shuffled off, Enwii whispered, “His father’s a small-time’ harry in the Algebra Street Kasper. He prenticed him out here to give him a taste of the business—and maybe to keep an eye on the holy ground. I’ve lived on Harpaloon most my life, but to him I’m just a mover. My mother was Jugurthan and my father was a’ Cocker—if you can imagine so unlikely a couple!—so what does that make me? Sadd’s a conscientious lad, but he’s a’ Loon and you have to keep on him all the time or he’ll… Oho! What’s this! There’s writing on the back side. Micro-relief Sadd! Wait a minute before you roll down the shades. The light catches it… See here, ah…” Enwii straightened and blinked. “What is your name?”

“Lucy. Lucy Thompson.”

“Funny name. No offense. Die Bold, right. What do they say there? ‘Die Bold, Live Bolder!’ There, do you see the lettering? Let me put it on the screen. The light has to catch it at just the right angle. There.”

The back side of the medallion, which had hitherto seemed smooth and featureless gold, now sported the shadows of lettering.

“What does it say?” asked Méarana.

“I’ve no idea. I’ve never seen that script before.”

“Can you capture an image of it? My partner knows some of the old languages.”

Enwii touched the rim of the magnifier and a sheet slid out of the printer. “Thompson,” she said, this time with a slight frown. “Rings a bell.”

“Rings a…? I’m sorry. I don’t know the idiom.”

“I mean, I’ve heard the name before…” The shopkeeper cocked her head. “About five years ago.”

Méarana’s heart leapt. “Did she have red hair, too?”

“Don’t know. Never laid eyes on her.”

“Never laid…?”

“Never saw her. What was it, now… Excuse me. Oh, here they come. The tour must be over. Let me just…” She whispered into her throat mike, called something onto the touch board, and brushed it with her hand. “But no. It was a package left for a Franane Thompson. Five years ago. But you say your name is Lucy? I wonder if we still have it. Be right with you, mistress; I’m helping another customer right now.”

“Five years? But Mother was on Thistlewaite then. She didn’t reach Harpaloon until… Oh, local years! That would be more like two years, metric time, right? That fits. You can give it to me. I’m on my way to meet her.”

“Francine Thompson was your mother? I suppose you can prove that. Maybe I threw the package out long ago. Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

Wait here? As if she were not welded to this very spot! Oh, Donovan! We will find her! I know we will . Méarana dug in her pouch, looking for identification. What if Enwii refused to hand it over? What if she had discarded it already?

The shopkeeper returned from the back room with a small parcel in her hand. It was wrapped in plain brown paper, the cheapest sort and was about a palm in length and width. A printed label affixed to it read:

FRANCINE THOMPSON. HOLD UNTIL CALLED FOR.

“I recalled the name only because it was so odd,” Enwii said, “May I see your identification? I suppose if I’ve held it so long, I really should make sure it goes to the right person.”

Méarana handed her a photograph. “Will this do? It’s from the Dangchao City Elucidator . That’s me on the left after a concert; and that’s Mother. Francine.”

“I told you I never saw the woman; so this…” She stumbled to a halt. The holograph had been taken at a formal dinner at the Comchal Odeon on Dangchao Waypoint following one of Méarana’s concerts. Bridget ban stood beside her daughter, wearing the beribboned mess jacket and slacks that the Hounds of the Service called “dress greens.”

Enwii looked up from the holograph a bit more pale than when she had looked down. Méarana displayed the chit that Zorba had given her, holding it so that none other could see what was in her hand. It glowed a muted gold, which such sigils could do only in the hand of their rightful bearer.

“Take it,” said Enwii, shoving the package across the counter. “I don’t want it here.”

“You’re doing the right thing.”

“It doesn’t matter. Hound’s business? That’s a magnet for trouble. I don’t want to be involved.”

“I’ll tell her you kept it faithfully for her.”

“Tell her nothing. Here.” She took a set of steel cones and sent them through the wrapper. “My gift to you. Just get that… package out of here. The air bus leaves in…” A glance at the wall clock. “In ten metric minutes.”

Méarana thanked her again and turned to go. Enwii did not tell her to come back some time.

Ten metric minutes was a little under seven grossbeats in the dodeka time used in the Old Planets, or a little less than a “quarter hour” in Donovan’s Terran time. That gave her time to stride over to the viewing platform, and a quick blick at the famous Iron Cones.

The sunset threw long, ruddy shadows across the prairie, casting the Cones into high relief. The lowest reaches were overgrown with grass and shrubbery, but the higher parts were clear so that the broken and corroded metallocene of the half-buried structures was revealed. They were gargantuan, towering as tall as the hills behind them. Enwii had been right. If those had once been landers, they were the largest landers she had ever heard of. Most of the worlds of the Periphery had stories about their First Ships, but she’d never heard them described as so enormous.

Landers or not, the Cones were undoubtedly the largest artifacts to have survived from ancient times; but they were more likely apartment buildings, or factories, or even the tombs of the first rulers. An ancient land on Old Earth, called Meesar, had buried its kings under great pyramids of stone. Likely, that is how each cone had gotten its name. Momad and Finmakuhl and Homer ben might be the names of ancient, now-forgotten kings. A line of fences surrounded the cones and a sign in Gaelactic warned touristas against closer approach. She supposed that the interior ruin and decay made entry hazardous. The ancients had built for the ages, but the ages had passed and only wreckage remained.

“Seen enough, gull?”

Méarana started at the sudden voice at her elbow. It was one of the’ Loons from the bus: a pleasant-faced young man with the swarthy complexion and blue eyes common to his breed. The hair was so darkly red as to be almost chocolate-brown. His manner of asking the question implied that she had certainly seen enough.

Méarana pulled her head back. “Is it any of your business?”

The man shrugged. “It could be.” Casually, he pulled a spring-knife from his pocket and used it to pare his nails. Méarana stared at the blade.

“I could help you with that,” she said, and the’ Loon looked up with a puzzled squint.

“Help? How?”

Méarana shrugged and the quillion dagger she carried up her sleeve dropped into her hand. She held it horizontally in underfist position, a little to the side so that she could use it in a backhand slash or an overhand stab as opportunity presented itself. The blade was lively in her grip, almost alive. “I’ve manicured a few fingers here and there,” she said.