“It’s our job to know.” Durrack winked.
Briggs scoffed at this, and drifted back into the darkness.
“So what’s our little mad scientist up to now?” Durrack settled down beside Tinker’s chair where Windwolf had been a short time before. The searchlight flashed the work area with brightness as it cycled through the short message.
Tinker stuck her tongue out at him. “You know, I thought Maynard kicked you two out of Pittsburgh months ago.”
“You were only the top of our to-do list. It took 24 hours of negotiations, but we stayed in this mud hole after the last Shutdown.”
She laughed at the look of disgust on Durrack’s face. “You don’t like our fair city?”
“This isn’t our world and the elves seem determined to remind us of that every chance they get. Besides its like getting stuck in a time warp; Pittsburgh is missing a lot of the simple conveniences of home. The television sucks here. And I would kill for Starbucks.”
“Starbucks?” Tinker said. “Sounds Elvish. Who is he?”
Durrack gave her an odd look.
“What else is on your to-do list?” Tinker asked.
“Little of this, little of that.” Durrack said. “Gather intelligence.”
“In Pittsburgh?”
“You’re got five or six races stuffed under one roof, it makes for lots of secrets floating around.”
“How do you get six?”
Corg ticked them off on his fingers. “The elves, the humans, the oni, the tengu, the mixed bloods, and now a dragon — which the tengu say is a sentient being.”
The searchlight fell dark, dropping them into blackness.
Tinker wasn’t sure why, but she found it annoying that the NSA had apparently talked to the tengu about the dragon. “I didn’t know you were so friendly with the tengu.”
“Politics has nothing to do with friendship.” Durrack’s voice came out of the darkness. “It’s doing whatever you have to do to protect what’s yours. Pittsburgh might be under U.N. control, but its people are Americans and it’s our duty to protect them.”
“You realize the tengu lie.”
“Everyone lies.”
“The elves don’t. They see it as dishonorable.”
“They might not lie, but they dance around the truth. Like yesterday, during that little encounter you had with the tree. You analyze the events and it’s fairly clear that the Stone Clan tried to kill you. Forest Moss withheld his support until you were captured by the tree, and the building you should have landed in collapsed for no apparent reason.”
“I know.”
“He made elegant excuses why he was so slow, but it was all bullshit. He wanted that tree to kill you.”
“I know. You don’t have to rub it in.”
“Are they trying to keep you from building another gate? If there is a way to travel back and forth between Pittsburgh and Earth, the treaty stays intact.”
She hadn’t considered that as the reason why the Stone Clan wanted her eliminated. “Nothing I could build would transport the entire city.”
“At this point, I’d take a trapdoor back to Earth.”
Tinker laughed. “And I’m not sure I can really build a gate that works right. Look at the mess I made with this one.”
The searchlight flared on, bathing the discontinuity with brilliance.
“Is it getting bigger?” Durrack asked.
Tinker nodded. “And oni are coming through it.”
“Yeah, I saw the kappa you pulled out. The oni are sick puppies to warp their people into monsters like that. You know, the more I find out about the oni, the more I think the elves are right in wiping them out. The problem is collateral damage.”
“I don’t think the tengu are all that bad.” Tinker whispered what she hadn’t had the courage to say to Windwolf.
“The tengu aren’t oni.” Durrack said. “They were mountain tribes of humans living on Onihida, descendants of people that ended up there by mistake. The story goes that half of them were killed on a battlefield trying to resist the oni, and the true blood that defeated them merged the survivors with the carrion crows that been feeding on their fathers and brothers. Twisted little tale, isn’t it?”
“But it is true?”
“Their DNA supports the claim.”
The searchlight finished its cycle and dropped them into silent darkness.
If the story was true, then the tengu had been screwed from the very start, the moment their ancestors lost their way and fell from Earth.
“I’m going to do everything I can to protect the humans of Pittsburgh,” Tinker said. “But I don’t know what I can do for the tengu.”
“From what I’ve seen, there’s not much anyone can do for the tengu.”
“How long are we going to do this?” Durrack asked an hour later, when darkness fell over them yet again.
“Until the lightbulbs burn out, my husband loses his patience, I figure out something better — or they answer us.”
“Want to bet which happens first?”
“My bet is that they answer us, or the bulbs burns out. The lifespan of these bulbs are rated at a thousand hours, but there’s no telling how many hours they have left.”
“And there are no replacements bulbs?” Durrack guessed.
“Nope, not unless Earth can sling them through the Ghostlands.”
“Are we going to be able to tell if they’re answering us?”
“I have a collection of detecting devices aimed at the valley to catch heat, light, sound and motion.”
“Where are you aiming the spotlights?”
“At the buildings. I’m not sure if the air over the valley is part of the discontinuity, so I’m not positive if light passing through it will be visible on another dimension. The buildings though, will either reflect the light or absorb it, which in theory make them more visible on all dimensions, either way — but I could be wrong.”
“This just seems so basic. If it could work, then Earth should have —”
Blue slashed upwards, out of the darkness, pulsing in the rhythm of Morse Code.
“They’re responding!” Tinker scrambled to kill her transmission program. Her detectors were already translating the flashes.
Calling S1, this is S2, listening.
“It’s Earth!” she said.
“You don’t know that. Here.” Durrack nudged her away from the keyboard. “This is where I come in — remember?”
The searchlights flashed quickly through code and then went dark.
“What are you saying?” Tinker asked.
“I’m requesting verification. It might take them a while to dig someone up that can answer… or they might have someone standing by. Fort Meade isn’t that far from the Pittsburgh border.”
The valley went dark and then a reply blazed back.
“Someone standing by?” Tinker asked.
“No, they want to know if Pittsburgh is safe on Elfhome.”
“Depends on your definition of safe.”
Durrack laughed and typed. “I’m repeating my request. Never give info unless you’re sure of who is listening.”
“Most likely the oni on Onihida can see this.”
“Exactly.”
Wolf returned to his domi to find her looking unhappy.
“What is it?”
“We’ve verified we’re talking to Earth. The gate is gone, just like we thought. Pittsburgh is stranded.”
“You are still communicating?”
“We’re comparing notes — seeing if we can use the Ghostlands to our advantage, or close it up somehow. From the sounds of it, though, Earth is still fighting over who has jurisdiction.”
A runner from Poppymeadow threaded his way through the sekasha to hold out a piece of paper. “A distant voice came from Aum Renau, relayed from Court.”