—From the Interregnum Exhibit at the Bureau of
Historical Sciences
Kargil Linmax was a big-boned man who hefted Kikaju
Jama’s galactarium in a six-fingered hand while he gave it a
quick eyeball scrutiny in the doorway of his spacious workshop. “Looks like a gaudy fake to me!” he roared in the general direction of the Hyperlord with a voice that might have been calling up all five-fingered hands on a warship.
Jama moved his ears back a head-width. “I know an ancestral Faraway Trader who would be miffed at your lack of faith in his judgment ,” he said in defense of his property, slightly miffed himself. “I myself watched it project stars. I can guarantee that it was once owned by a Trader. The friend who procured it for me is very reliable.”
“And it kifizzled right after you bought it? The best fakes do that. They kifizzle before you find out that they can’t really do what they are supposed to do.” He flipped his bug-eyed power-spectacles down over his nose and stared. “It doesn’t look like any Faraway design I’ve ever seen, not remotely. Pretty little tiling, though. Who knows? It’s possible that it’s authentic. By the fourth century”—he was implying Founder’s Era, not Galactic Era—“there were some very rich traders and they contracted some of the damnedest of intricate art pieces. I’ve seen stranger. The artist wouldn’t have been local to the Periphery, though. That’s not a count against it. The oddest people hypered out of nowhere down onto the shores of Faraway in that era. Let’s bounce your toy off the deck.”
At the shocked look on Kikaju’s face, Kargil’s laughter boomed. “Just an expression. At the scholarium I was trained as a nanomechanic. We learned a very gentle touch, which I’m afraid we’ve always called ‘bouncing’—in case you once again hear those dreaded words from my mouth.” “You are by profession a nanomechanic?” The Hyperlord was impressed and unconsciously took his mopcap in hand, looking for a rack upon which to hang it.
“The scholarium was eons ago; I never practiced. The navy took my contract and I spent my working life uselessly involved in the maintenance and perfection of secret naval ultrawave combat protocols. Faraway antiques are just a hobby of mine to keep me out of trouble in my old age. I’ve a nice shop, mostly naval surplus that I kidnapped from storage graveyards.”
“An impressive set of equipment,” the Hyperlord commented wryly as he stepped into the warehouse-spacious workshop. Some of the resident machines were so small that they hid themselves inside their own armored cleanboxes and could be visited only by electronic microscope. Some were mobile roboassistants of alien design and mobility. Some of the machines were enormous. “It looks like you raided a hidden First Empire cache.”
Linmax laughed. “The fill-your-eyes bulk is mostly cut-rate earthquake mountings—an exchange of mass for finesse. You noticed on your way from the station, down those cockamamie stairs, that I live inside a canyon face and am staring into the homes of my neighbors across fifty meters of natural air shaft. A hundred years ago a fault line slipped right beneath your feet. Glad I wasn’t bom then.” He grinned. “The sheared apartments were scrapped rather than rebuilt. Left a gap that makes for friendly yodeling contests. We still get our teeth rattled sporadically—nothing serious, mind you, but I take my little precautions.”
“Great stars!” exclaimed an appalled Jama, fidgeting with the velvet scales of his cap. “Why would anyone live here!”
“Cheap rent.” The big man grinned again and ran his six-fingered hand through white hair. “You don’t think the pension of a retired naval officer is enough to keep a man alive, do you?”
He had extracted the dead atomo-unit from the galactar-ium ovoid and was clamping the tiny power supply inside a cleanbox for analysis. “And what is your interest in Faraway antiques?” But before Jama could reply, Kargil Linmax grimaced. “Bad news and good news. The atomo is a Farliquar, compact shape but shoddy design. A very small outfit that was in production less than three years before it failed: 374 to 377 FE. They made exorbitant promises and couldn’t deliver. Some good stuff, but poor quality control. Screwed up on their war contracts. First Farliquar I’ve ever seen. So it’s authentic—but you won’t find a replacement.” He read more numbers off his instruments. “Looks like an intermittent failure—the worst kind.
Maybe jiggling it or banging it against your head would make it work. Except the repair might not last more than a few jiffs. Might melt your doodad. I wouldn’t bet that your piece isn’t a cheap knockoff cobbled out of war surplus and sold to a gullible Trader by some non-Faraway shyster. Where did your reliable friend find it—in some Trader’s buried discard heap?”
“Then it’s junk?” queried a stricken Hyperlord.
“Means nothing. The atomo might have been used because all the good ones were being sucked up by the war effort. But don’t get your hopes up.”
“I should tell you that it’s been in space for a couple of millennia.”
“Salvage? That could be good or bad. I’ll look for cosmic ray damage. The really bad news is that I don’t have any mating atomos in stock—and neither will anyone else. If you can spare the credit, I’ll build you some. An octad is as cheap as one. The worst that can happen is that we blow up the workshop.” He demonstrated with a wide fling of his hands. “When the zoning flunkies come after us, we’ll blame it on the fault line. Us local types have learned how to blame everything on the quakes.”
Jama had not found a place to hang his hat so he readjusted it to his head. Anxiously he watched a cheerful Kargil open up a larger cleanbox and insert the powerless jade artifact into its vicious-looking interior.
“We leave it there. I’m doing an outrageously slow analysis, but that way I get to use very soft fingers.” He made some adjustments. “We now have time on our hands. We can chat on my balcony and yodel.”
From across the shop floor, they were approached by a six-year-old girl with a breadroll stuffed with slaw and cheese, her attention on the wavering surface that brimmed atop the glass of juice she was bringing to Kargil. “Papa, you have to eat!” She turned to Jama. “And what would you like, sir?” The “sir” was added because of the elaborately important way their visitor was dressed.
“He starves, Sweet Toes,” said Kargil, already munching on his roll. “If I can turn him into a paying customer, we’ll keep him for dinner.”
She saluted crisply and ran off. The military salute so startled the Hyperlord that he just stared at her retreating figure.
“Well, after all,” explained Linmax gruffly, “I’m her commanding officer.”
“You’re her grandfather?”
“Space, no!”
Metal clanged under two pairs of feet. Jama turned and glanced back in the direction of the ruckus and saw a five-year-old boy being chased by a loudly protesting two-year-old along a second-floor gallery at the front of the workshop. A family! “My apologies.” The Hyperlord bowed as he tried diplomacy to correct his gaff. “You must be the father of these youths, of course!”
“Not likely! The father of Sweet Toes,” said Linmax sternly, “murdered her mother and then jumped to his death while trying to take with him both his daughter and the railing she was clenching for dear life. I happened to be there when she most needed kind attention—I know how to unweld fingers from metal. A home for her came as a bonus. No use burdening the social services with the shards of such a case. They are efficient but lack... well, you know what I mean.” He sighed before continuing with his story.