Michael Flynn - On the Razor’s Edge

“What you want?” was his friendly greeting.

“I seek that for which thou art justly famed,” the scarred man answered in the Tongue.

That did not elicit the response the Fudir had looked for. The wizened old black man scowled. “You accent funny. Where you from?”

“I hight a Terran, seeking help of Terra. By the Taj and the Wall and the Mount of—”

“Ayii! Thou art a Peripheral Terran! Go ’way! You bring trouble.” He made fending motions with his hands but continued in the Tongue. “This be Holy Terra. Profane her not!”

“What I seek is simplicity itself: the removal of niplips —locators—from my body.”

“Ayii. That be against the fiqh of the Northern Mark. Shall I place my head on the block merely because thine ancestors once lived here?”

“No,” said the Fudir. “Because I have coin to give.” He handed over the sigil he had been given.

Foo-lin laughed. “If thou comest from The Severed Arm, few are the coins remaining thee.”

“Yet fewer still are the patrons remaining to The Arm.”

The foo-doctor paused and looked at the scarred man, as if for the first time. “Where are these coins of which thou braggest?”

He handed Foo-lin a leather bag the size of his palm. The other glanced within and hefted its weight. “And the brothers of these few lonely orphans?”

“Safely concealed. But when thou hast finished thy work, the remainder shallt be thine.”

“Thou art a man of care. Remove thy clothing, then, down unto thy skivvies. And please to be lying on this table where I will perform the ritual called ‘the scanning of the cat.’”

Donovan stripped, and the scars on his body gave the doctor pause. Then the old man shrugged. “I must cut thee open to remove any niplips my cat may find. But what would mean another scar among so many? I see that thou art not a man of such care as to avoid injury.”

“I fought a Shadow.”

The foo-doctor scoffed. “Who can walk away from such a fight, save only a…”

He fell silent as answers suggested themselves. “There are rumors,” he ventured, not looking directly at the scarred man.

“Believe them all. They may not be true, but they make thy life more interesting.”

Donovan expected the ritual to involve the sacrifice of a cat, but there was no more involved than his passage through the white ring. The foo-doctor uttered certain prayers and incantations while he did so. “Step one,” he recited in the ancient Murkanglais. “Turn the red power switch to ready…”

Foo-lin located two niplips . They had been implanted, Donovan was certain, during his long sleep in the autoclinic aboard White Comet . Once they were found, it was the work of a few moments to remove them, requiring little beside a local anesthetic and some deep cuts. So far as pain went, it was the sort that the Silky Voice could easily handle.

“Those who would track thee,” Foo-lin said, handing over the niplips, “will know when and where they are destroyed.”

“I know this thing, and for thy sake and the sake of all our common ancestors I will not destroy them here. But those who would track me will know the path these traveled and will follow their spoor to this place. Thou needst not know who they be.”

“Though one may hazard guesses.” He spat on the floor. “This place…” The foo-doctor looked about the dilapidated basement. “I spread my tents where I wist. This keller will be empty when they come.”

“Thou hast no love for the Names.”

“It is Terra of Old that I love alone. To the Names, I am indifferent. They are now; one day they are not. But Earth alone abideth.”

“And yet thou scornest the Terrans of the Diaspora.”

“They have fallen from the Faith, even as they have fled from the Earth. They would erect a secular Terra on the soil of the holy Commonwealth. ‘What’s done is done and what’s gone is gone, and what’s lost is lost and gone forever.’ What might they hope to revive but a corpse—a zombie Commonwealth, with Men of Brass aping the deeds of the Men of Gold. Beside which, it would arouse my neighbors against all Terrans and bring the boots upon our faces.”

The Fudir made a sign with his right hand. “Dream thy dreams of old, O venerable one. No such ill shall come of my visit. I am but a lonely fugitive.”

“May thy heels be swift, thy breaths drawn sweet, and thine end swift and painless. Now, about my fee…”

The Fudir laughed. “Know that there is ever a place for you in the Corner of Jehovah. Mention to the Seven the name of the Fudir, and if they do not slit thy throat from mere exasperation at the reminder they will welcome thee. The remainder of thy fee sits ‘on deposit.’ There is a loose brick on the face of this very building, in the cavity behind which I placed the coins. I will touch the brick casually—so—as I depart. Thou mayest then, at thy leisure, collect the remainder of thy fee.”

“Few are the men I would trust on such a promise.”

The Fudir wondered how much was trust and how much prudence in the face of a man who had beaten the thugs of The Severed Arm and (putatively) a Shadow. “I crave one further boon of thee. It is on me to make the hajj. I am given to understand that the Mount of Many Faces is close by this place.”

The foo-doctor laughed. “Aye, if by ‘close’ thou meanest ‘on the selfsame continent’! What drollery! Thou wishest coordinates for your flier? It is but the labor of a moment.” The old man busied himself at his console and shortly returned with a small disk. “Insert this in thy navigation system and straightaway thou shallt be taken to the legendary Mount.” He smiled as if at some secret joke.

Donovan understood the foo-doctor’s wit early the next morning when the flier he had rented under the name Tjoslina Tuk went into a tight circle above the specified coordinates.

The land below him was capped under milk-white ice a mile thick.

The wind howled unobstructed across the northern ice-plains, buffeting the small craft and challenging its autopilot to impressive feats of stability. Tiny ice particles rattled off the windshield.

The Fudir sighed. So much for the legendary heads: for Washington and Abe; for Jeff and Teddy; for Miwel II and Kgonzdan the Oppressed. They were not even buried, he thought—or the Sleuth thought. They were ground to powder by unimaginable pressure against the mortar of the earth.

It comes on suddenly, the Fudir remembered. A century or two from grassy plains to ice desert. But it wants thousands of years to melt.

It’s the albedo. Once the land whitens, it reflects more sunlight.

Donovan sighed. He had planned to tuck the two niplips up the nostril of Miwel II, whose copious nasal passages were said to have led into vast and secret chambers, full of pre-Commonwealth treasure. A suitable place for Donovan to search out; a reasonable place to have become trapped.

Instead, he tossed the two devices from his flier and let them fall to the ice, to be buried by the drifting powder. Then he turned his vehicle to the west and sought the fabled city of Prizga.