Chapter 11: Chapter 11

While the employees were busy dragging out Susan's body and examining her syringe, Jacob and Pip were allowed to stick to their own devices at the couch chairs and bookshelves.

They had begun to enjoy some lovely recorded music. Well, an outsider looking at them could believe that they were listening so intently it had put them in a meditative state, as if they had truly highbrow tastes and manners. In reality, Jacob was bored by orchestral music and Pip continued to be disturbed by the low-fidelity nature of recordings.

Still, dutifully they listened. And when the cleaners left the room (and left the floor spotless), they could get to some real business.

The music player was called a globophone. It was roughly spherical. Though electronic, this model had a wooden shell meant to evoke warm, cozy feelings in modern home decor. When opened to insert music, the device resembled a strange alien chrysalis.

Why was the device round? The few times Jacob had seen it drawn, he'd assumed it was the whim of a strange inventor. But now they had a possible answer.

(Although even now it seemed like the whim of s strange inventor, honestly.)

"Okay," Jacob said, leaning over to the side table and popping it open. "Pip, hand it over."

She gave him the globe. This was putting her in high spirits—the payoff to a mystery that had no doubt been on her mind longer than his.

The ball wasn't a perfect match for the size of the globophone, but by adjusting the inner pedestal ((in the center of the "hot plate" that never actually got hot), Jacob centered it pretty well. He had absolutely no chance of finding a good starting point—or even a single continuous line on the ball's surface—so he didn't even attempt that. Just let the needle fall where it may, then start playing.

He clamped it shut, laid his hand on the aetham activator, and turned it on. Then he took his hand away and heard...

Horrible, horrible static.

He let it keep playing. He stared at Pip, whose face puckered like the music was sour candy.

But Jacob was patient with it. Eventually he'd want to go out into the museum and quit being kind of a sitting duck, but right now, he felt useful. On to something. He felt like he had all day.

"Hear that, Pip?"

"...I think so."

"Then tell me what you're hearing."

"It's a voice. Cutting in and out."

"Right." Jacob leaned forward and cut the globophone off. He took the ball in his hand and turned it over, looking as hard as he could into the etchings that turned its surface into patchwork. "Ah...if only I had a way of seeing inside as it was playing."

Pip rose to attention. "Is that another question for me, teacher?"

"If you want it to be."

"Just crack it open mid-play...?"

Jacob sighed the thought away. "I think we'd only get one shot at that. Besides, this is the only model in the City of Tomorrow." Obviously there were others, but since the one in the sewers had been in shitty condition, possibly broken, he didn't have high hopes for their durability.

Anyway, he didn't need to try that. It would've been good to prove his hypothesis, but that wouldn't stop him from having it.

"Someone must've tried to overwrite this," he said.

Pip squinted. "...But the job is only half-finished."

A chain of intuition flashed through Jacob's head. How were these normally made? Could there be globophone artisans, wiping away the sounds of the globes the same way a potter could shape and reshape clay? Was it reusable—

Was it from the sky?

Was it seriously old, old as dead golden millipedes? Did ancient craftsman share these sounds?

But if they were ancient, wouldn't a professor, of all people, have known...?

Then it was from an undiscovered land...

Or it was new.

And in hindsight, Malcolm's shitty answers about the ball sounded like obvious tip-offs that he knew full well what this was but didn't want to give it away.

"I don't think there's any decoding this...yet," Jacob said as he turned the machine off. The "yet" was strained, only added because the people gotta dream.

But they could inch closer to the truth, perhaps, by doing some research.

Jacob tried the most obvious. "I noticed you reading, Pip. What's on that bookshelf, anyway?" Most of the books were unlabeled, decorative, could've been cardboard, probably were. But a place like this was bound to have an atlas, at least, right?

"Most of it is this series of mystery stories about a dude and his cat," Pip said. "I dug through to try and find the first book. It couldn't be done."

"Oh... But not all of it is that series...right...?"

Pip didn't reply. It was a long series.

Okay, so that left the other two obvious means of info-gathering: viewing the museum exhibits, and gathering information from people. Jacob didn't like to think of the latter as socializing. He could play social detective, but not in places like this where everybody knew his name. Here and now, he thought of himself as a hatchet awkwardly swinging into others' conversations, and if he worked, he worked.

The door buzzed. "Delivery," the employee said.

Jacob and Pip exchanged a look that verged on disgusted. They had the same response: why would anyone be sending a package here?

Carefully, Jacob walked to the door. He buzzed back, saying, "If it's a message, I can hear it." He didn't know if news could travel from earth to sky that quick, but he'd rather not have any disturbing kingdom news—for example, his eldest brother's death notice—in his hands.

"Nope. Package."

"Well, maybe it's good!" Pip called out.

In a sense, it was wonderful. From the right sender, the package would've been downright heartwarming.

Through the opened door, the deliveryman handed over a wrapped basket of packaged goods with a handwritten note. The basket contained a bouquet of scarlet-red lilies, a velvet box of bonbons, and a bottle of chocolate-tinged liquor rumored to have knockout strength.

Jacob took the basket, shut the door, tossed the basket across the floor (the bottle miraculously bounced and stayed intact) and read the note:

"Sincerest condolences from the Circle of Darkness." Signed with a splotch.

Okay, that didn't count as a real sender. He opened the door on the deliveryman's back.

"Wha?" he said, turning, bewildered.

"Who's the sender?"

"Sir, I am not at liberty to share. The sender self-identified as 'your great admirer' and gave strict orders not to share."

"I hereby Curse you and your—"

"It was Prince Oraias."

"Thanks," he said, the door in mid-fling.

He took a step back. He bumped into Pip. Pip's head was hanging over his shoulder.

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"I'm not falling-over weak, you know."

"I know I'm just here to politely ask who gave you the gifts." Also, she was holding the chocolate and spirits.

Ah, it was only Prince Oraias: a tumultuous, infamous young man who would've been a reclusive eccentric if flocks of otherwise-intelligent people didn't worship the dirt he walked on.

A prince of Zuuse not destined for kinghood and famously tormented by that fact—yes, what else was new. After overcoming sickness in his youth, he went on to become a world-renowned drunk and street brawler. Oh, but he also wrote poetry. And apparently that made him irresistible.

"He's a 'tortured soul,' I'd put it that way," Jacob said.

"Oh! Then you're probably birds of a feather. You should send him something back."

"Uh...no, Pip. Unless there's some mysterious bag of functioning dynam in the bottom of the basket, this gift basket is the equivalent of a glove in the face."

Gears were churning, almost visibly, in Pip's head. "A glove in the...?"

"A duel, but a duel between gentlemen. So-called."

"'Oh' again!" She slid a chocolate in her mouth. Jacob flinched with fear. Luckily, it was not poisoned. "It'll be nice to relax a bit after what happened last night."

"Pip, I'm not dueling him, I have enough to worry abou—wait, you weren't seriously thinking of sitting back and watching the fireworks, guiltless? After...confiding in me!?"

Realization dawned. "It's to the death? Aw..."

Inevitably it'd become a duel to the death, with the condition Jacob was in.

Just what he needed...another conflict to fall into, and one from a person who seemed like more of a pest than anything.

On the other hand, he couldn't say what the "Circle of Darkness" mentioned on the note was. Extremely literal minds would say it was the splotch “signature,” but it...it was probably a group. On the other-other hand, he had bigger fish to fry. Murder James if you come across him. Murder this other schmuck if you come across him.

"Before we go out, shall I order breakfast?"

Oh my god, Jacob thought, I forgot.

Plus, it was technically brunchtime, maybe even lunch!

"Yes, order room service, and"—oh-god-times-two, even more things to account for—"while we eat, talk shop with me: what were you doing in the fight last night, especially with your hands?"

***

Thank goodness Jacob and Pip had already been linking arms with wanton abandon. That meant cover for the times he might have to lean on her for support, literally, like she was a living cane.

And thank goodness it wasn't too big of a deal when a prince murdered someone. News was spreading that he'd slain a "poor innocent," he could hear it in the busy halls. The employees said it with fear and sorrow while the socialites said it with gleeful irony. Yes, there were a few people in this lot who saw the case as a case, speculating about who'd done what and why, the way Jacob would've as an average bystander in the same circumstances. Those people weren't very loud about it.

With the help of a brochure, the prince and his maid toured the massive museum.

Beginning with the Ancient Kingdoms exhibit. Entire palaces fit in this room, including stone castles with all their columns, richly painted onion domes, and scale recreations of magnificent statues once considered wonders of the world. They looked up at the Bronze Soldier of Walverope with his shield of gold, wandered into the castle of Old Uxhilia with its mesmerizing tiles.

As they wove their way through a hall of mirrors supposedly intended as a maze for bored palace girls, Jacob murmured, "I made sure to do the most useless exhibit first."

Pip tugged at his arm and hissed, "Is that the only thing you can talk about? Practicality? At least save it for when we're out of the maze. We're having fun here!"

But "fun" was a state of mind that Present Jacob had no business being in. He consciously avoided it.

This maze opened into a small, deliberately bizarre chamber called the Hermit's Grove. After crossing a short stream and a garden of tulips, they found this room, its walls covered in craggly, deep-gray stone. Windows in the rock showed religious items, and there seemed to be a little of everything: landscapes, icons, clothes, books, talismans.

"According to groundbreaking anthropological research," a placard read, "the concept of guardian spirits is thought to have evolved from a universal need to worship. Stunned by lightning and fire, the ancients sought an explanation by..."

"Pip, are you religious?" Jacob said.

In another era on another planet, this question would have been considered a good reason for Pip to walk out. But in Pip's world, HR did not exist.

It still struck her as a doofus question, though. "You say 'religious.' To us, it's just life."

Jacob knew that well enough, from the perspective of an outsider schooled in history. Any modern prince worth his salt knew that science and history used to be considered one and the same, which worked until religion stopped giving the right answers. Magic and systems hadn't even been problems. They had their own little tidy domains, magic living in rare animals' elemental breath and systems existing in mental worlds.

Now, though, there were sky islands, magic crystals, and real angels. Everything bleeding over. At this point in time—not just in the world's history, but in Jacob's own life story—science was struggling to answer things too.

An idea hit him from out of nowhere. Say it was the slant of light bouncing down a window in the rock, cast by a miraculously steady flame of dynam.

"Pip, would you call yourself a divine messenger?"

She honestly considered it.

"Or what about a prophet?"

"...Nah, I'm nowhere near that pretentious. That's for you when you get your system back."

"The freedom you mentioned yesterday. What's that? Are you ever gonna be prepared to tell me?"

"Um..." She rocked on her heels. The tiny exhibit was unpopular, empty except for them. Their voices echoed the least bit. "I can say something, do you want me to?"

If he could ask if the obviously worshipful person was "religious," surely she was allowed one doofus question.

"Can't quit while you're ahead."

"Well...I have dreams. And they're strange sometimes. I don't mean like plans for the future—although yes, I have, I had that too—but three times in my life, I had, um, something like a prophecy. A dream so unlike my other dreams I couldn't believe it'd come from myself."

Jacob asked a doctor's question: "What happened the night before, each time?"

"Nothing," she said, sounding mystified after all these—days, years, months? She shook her head. "They were normal days."

He asked a psychologist's question: "After trauma?"

"None."

Finally, he asked a systemless prince's question: "Let me guess, if I'm allowed to: you dreamed of strange words and monsters from a place you'd never visited?"

"No." She shook her head again. "I dreamed...I can't even describe it. I dreamed in single, compressed moments." She clasped her hands together, pulling up Jacob's arm. "Things and images that happened all at once, like this. There were no words. There were just ideas. If someone from heaven had whispered in my ear and that sparked it, I'd believe it—and the dreams told me, come to the sky, and they told me we'd all have wings."

Jacob was so, so close to saying, That's the most painfully vague message I've ever heard. Typical, for religion.

But if the dream was a message from another being—whether on high or made from flesh and blood—and if the being's goal was to get this maid airborne, it'd worked, right? It'd worked better than anything.

"If you're meant to be here," he murmured, "I can see why someone might want that—assuming you're unique."

She thought this over.

"Everyone's unique!" she said cheerily.

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