The Night Below And Beyond
“Mommy, my teeth hurt…”
The blond haired woman turned back and took her daughter’s hand.
“Sweetie, don’t poke them.”
“I don’t WANT braces…” she whined, scuffing her trainers against the decking and fiddling with the draw cord on her brightly coloured shorts. Her mother readjusted the light blue sun hat with the ribbons that matched her blue dress.
“Everyone has them, sweetie, just stick in there. Now c’mon, we’re at Yellowstone, you’ve been waiting for this for ages…”
“I know… but my TEETH HURT!”
“Just ignore them, sweetie.” She pulled her handbag up her shoulder and led her to where her husband and son were waiting.
“What’s the matter?”
“Her teeth hurt. It’s just the braces.”
The tall man reached down and picked his daughter up. “Hey, sport, you want to go see the geysers?”
“My teeth hurt.”
“Aw, c’mon, you’ll like the geysers. Do you know where they come from?”
“Underground.”
“Ah hah… from the volcano.”
“Yellowstone’s a volcano?”
“A big volcano.”
“Is it gonna explode?”
“Nah… Yellowstone’s not gonna explode this side of the year 3000.”
“My teeth hurt.”
He sighed. “I know sport, I know.”
She smiled, turning to take her son’s hand. He’d stopped throwing stone into the pools and was staring at something. She leaned down to peer over his shoulder.
“What’re you looking at?”
He pointed. “That’s a funny looking plane, Mommy.”
“Where?” She squinted, and then pointed. “Oh, you mean that silver one?”
“Yeah. What kind of plane is that, Mommy?”
“I don’t know. you’d have to ask your father.”
He turned around and started to run. “Pa! What kind of plane is that?”
“What plane?” He turned around as his son pointed.
“That plane! The long silver one. Is it Concord?”
“No, Concord doesn’t fly anymore…” his sentence trailed off as he spotted the ‘plane’. It wasn’t exactly hard to miss.
“Oh… my… God.”
And the world ended.
* * * * *
Amelia peered into the hole she’d excavated in the cave wall, brown hair trickling out of its bun to fall in her face. She idly swept a strand away with the back of her gloved hand and dug a little more of the soft rock away. Tugging the object free, she turned the skull over with little interest. There were so many of them that there was little they could learn from them anymore. This one looked pre-adolescent, with some kind of weird and battered metallic structure fused to its teeth. She fiddled with the corroded wire for a moment, then flung it over her shoulder in exasperation. It landed on the pile and bounced upwards, dislodging the odd loose tooth or finger bone, and tumbled down to land on the path.
Jonathon kicked it out of the way with barely a thought.
“Amelia!”
“What?” She continued digging, too intent on her work to even glance over her shoulder. He chuckled, putting his hands on his waist.
“It’s time you had something to eat! You can get back to this tomorrow.”
“Not now.”
“Hey, I’m your supervisor and I say, you come have something to eat now.”
“I come have something to eat?” She turned slightly so she could see the young man. “Are you inviting me to have dinner with you?”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
She smiled slowly, and then turned to go down. The spider bustle disentangled its legs from the cave wall, creaking and hissing as the hydraulics powering the eight jointed limbs jumped into action. Like some kind of giant arachnid, they kept Amelia’s body vertical as they felt their way down the sheer thirty-foot drop of the cave wall and onto the winding stone path below.
Amelia patted the metal casing of the bustle as the spider legs lowered her to normal level.
“Hop on. We’ll go the quick way.”
A little apprehensive, Jonathon climbed up to sit behind her, and clung to her waist as the legs moved into action again, considerably faster this time, to carry them both on a slender walkway over the smouldering pit of Llowston Culdera Foundry, where faceless masses toiled in the unspeakable heat of the lava reservoirs.
* * * * *
“I understand, of course, if you would prefer I take my business elsewhere…” Fae ran her long fingernails gently over the skull of the red setter sprawled across her lap. James Kemiste eyed the creature nervously. Despite it’s lazy appearance and silky-soft hair, not long after he’d sat down at this strangest of business meetings it had yawned and shown off a mouthful of rather sharp looking teeth.
“Oh no, Mistress Chreechair, I apologise, I didn’t meant to imply that…” He started, fawningly, but she waved him silent with a single gesture of a heavily decorated hand.
“I know that dealing with the rebels is dangerous for you. That is why I am giving you so much money. It is not as though, Mister Kemiste, I have ordered you to take on this opportunity. I am perfectly open to you deciding that it is not a deal you wish to take advantage of.”
“Well, yes, but…” But you’re also not mentioning the fact that you’ll kill me if I refuse, James thought glumly. The dog yawned again and for a moment he was hit with the terrifying idea that maybe it could read minds.
“I’m sure under normal circumstances we could accommodate you, Mistress Chreechair…” He stalled quickly, glancing at the portfolio in front of him and comparing it quickly with the best attempt at a stock list his clerks could run up for him. “But you must understand that we cannot control our antique stock…”
“What a pity.” Fae wound one corkscrew curl around the embellished fingernail protector on her forefinger with an expression of boredom. “What you are, in fact, saying, Mister Kemiste, is that you cannot get me what I want.”
“Well, obviously if you are interested in any of my more current supply lines…” Spotting the transparent threat in Fae’s words, the businessman was backtracking furiously. The woman merely raised an eyebrow heavy with kohl and jewels.
“But you trade in weapons, Mister Kemiste. Selling weapons to the rebels would get you into a lot of trouble, you know.”
“Yes, well, technically, you see, technically someone may consider some of the objects you have specifically requested…” James turned over a leaf of the portfolio and stared, in vague horror, at a rather accurate diagram of something he didn’t quite understand but, given the annotated notes reading things like ‘firing mechanism’ and ‘9mm loading chamber’ and ‘tips cross-hatched for shatter apon impact’, he was pretty sure wasn’t very nice.
“They are antiques, Mister Kemiste.” The stress Fae placed on the word, despite her normally slightly bored tone, twigged something in the businessman’s brain. “No one would even think of using them. That would be… improper.”
James stared at the portfolio again, very carefully. Selling weapons to the rebels was strictly forbidden, along with various other things including food, water, and transport vehicles. You got into a lot of trouble for doing that. Some goods, however, were allowed, mainly because the rebels were a big market for certain things… things like jewellery, clothing and antiques. Antiques were fine. Just fine.
And then there was the way she’d said antiques. It was a slight emphasis of feeling that the businessman knew well. It said ‘Collector’. And as far as he was concerned, collector = cash.
“But at any rate, it seems you can’t help me…”
“I only wished to admit, Mistress Chreechair, that obtaining such objects is harder than would be first apparent.” James replied smoothly, trying not to appear like he was about to wet himself. “Admittedly, if we do not have some of these… artefacts in our stock we could technically source them from other dealers, however, this is a long and difficult process incurring many costs…”
“Money is no object.”
Oh, those golden, golden words… “I only wish to avoid the risk of disappointing you in future transactions, Mistress Chreechair.” He smiled weakly, diving headfirst into shark-infested waters. At least it was better than standing on the deck of a burning boat. “And of course, for some of these items, if it is principally the… the look of the thing you are after, rather than the dates, we could always have them… specially commissioned. I have certain contacts that are expert in… working replicas. Some of these diagrams certainly look detailed enough…”
Fae’s hand paused over her canine’s head, and for a moment James thought he’d gone too far. Then her painted lips twitched in what could possibly have been a smile.
“Working replicas?”
“Oh yes.” He almost heard Fae’s mind turning the words over in her head and turning them into the word ‘fakes’.
“Well, I do suppose if they were supremely accurate working replicas… although some of these artefacts, particularly the Nihonese ka-ta-na, are exceptionally difficult to copy…”
“Ah yes, those are somewhat of a speciality.” He coughed modestly. “I know of a craftswoman who makes superb embossed hilt caps, period correct mimicries of which I have heard are exceptionally difficult. Of course, if you were interested in something more… unique, she can make almost any design. And although normally for display pieces a false temper line is requested, although is it rather more expensive I can of course contact a craftsman who can duplicate the folding techniques of the edged blades in a simply superb fashion. Legend has it that they can cut a man in two, ha ha, although of course the antique or merely period correct pieces also make much finer focal points…”
“After all, not all of my guests will be experts in history.” Fae replied with the silky tone of voice that indicated she was satisfied. “It appears I have come to the right man, Mister Kemiste. Ka-ta-na are so very hard to find, and I’m sure you’ll do an admirable job with the rest of my… desired acquisitions.”
James made a quick note to tell the craftsmen not to put their signatures on anything. Just in case, oh, one of the wickedly sharp Nihonese artefacts capable of slicing a man in two he handed over to this embellished woman ended up in the wrong hands and Entapol had reason to try and track down the maker.
Not that that would happen, of course. They were antiques. Who in their right mind would go around using antiques?