Archive for the ‘Rudi Dornemann’ Category
Fragments of a Distant Future
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
The Coelacanth Coat
A coat of coelacanth skin, royal blue with milky patches. Vat-grown to order and seamless. Lost tech out of the lost time. The fit always reminded Aurelia the coat was tailored for someone centuries dead: shoulders loose, waist tight, arms a little long.
When she got it, she emptied the pockets, kept the contents in a box in a desk drawer.
Powerhouses
Take things there to recharge. Leave them overnight. Come back.
Lingering’s said to be unhealthy. There’s a shivering you feel in the air, and you can tell it’s coming from outside you, not inside.
They’re big, multitiered platforms like circular parking garages.
Drive your car in on the pad of the lowest level or climb the stairs in the central column to charge smaller objects on the upper levels. Set them on the concrete, or on the wooden shelves that seem to decay too quickly. No metal shelves, and you’ll want to leave coins and belt buckles outside.
What Was in the Coat Pockets
Coins with geometric designs, a scrap of scarlet paper. A metal cylinder, the segments of which could be twisted so that the lines etched on it connected in different ways. It didn’t do anything else.
The Powerhouse at the Foot of the Mountain
Powerhouses nearer to the reinhabited cities had managers and waiting lists; this one had nothing but a few pilgrims and the occasional curious visitor. So the Walking City stopped there twice a year to unload its powercells and recharge.
The first years after she came to the future, Aurelia travelled with the Walking City. One time they stopped there, she climbed the spiral stair to the top floor and left that metal cylinder on a shelf between a straylight mirror and a couple of moon keys.
Powerhouse By Night
She reconsidered, went back just after sunset.
Her fillings tingled. The ring she’d forgotten to remove ached. The night spooky with all the charging objects glowing. A sound like rushing wind, but the air utterly still.
After
Her coat’s scales were dull dead brown.
The metal tube was now a telescope that showed a world that didn’t exist anymore, a world of crystal towers and floating bubblecars. The future that had come and gone while she’d been in suspension. Looking through, she felt a sort of sunset sadness.
She gave it to a friend, someone future-born. He loved it.
Visiting a House Below
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
Although Freya had grown up in one of the deep cities, she hadn’t been inside a dwarf’s house since she was little. She hoped she remembered the etiquette.
Always refuse food or drink twice, but then take more than you want, because that compliments your host’s generosity. It’s OK to stare, but then you have to stare at everything equally. Always answer a question with a question, and never be surprised by the answer.
The green-cake was excellent, loaded with raisins, the way she liked it, so piling a second and third piece on her plate was no trouble.
“Is it good?” said her host, who had said his name was Hjelmer.
“What could be better?” she said.
He’d offered her a chair in the corner, and she couldn’t remember if that meant anything. On the wall was a flat chip of gray stone, about the length and width of her thumb, set in a gilt frame. A cross-hatching of fine lines covered the stone.
“That’s a fragment of the Khozoghoaqil,” said Hjelmer, “an epic rune-poem. Very famous.”
“One of the nine sagas?” Freya blushed, realizing she’d preempted his host’s right to ask questions.
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” said Hjelmer, which didn’t sound any more like a proper half-riddle than her question-answering question had.
“The runes are all packed together like that?” She tried to phrase it as a statement, but couldn’t quite keep the question from her voice.
“It’s actually part of a cave floor that’s about a few standard leagues square,” said Hjelmer. “Couple thousand years ago, scribes untangled and deciphered thousands of lines written in a style that was already ancient back then.”
“Supposed?”
“Recent research suggests the marks are tracks left by a certain species of sightless cave centipede scuttling around in the silt at the bottom of a shallow pool that dried up millennia ago.”
Freya wasn’t sure if she should laugh. Hjelmer seemed unlike what she expected dwarves to be, but still, her grandmother had always said how sensitive they were about anything historical. Seeing the glint in his eye, she risked another question.
“So what’s it about — supposedly?” she said.
“The origin of the sun, the fate of the moon,” he said. “The usual. But there’s one ironic thing.”
Freya stayed silent, but thought her expression was probably question enough.
“Ghoaqil, the hero, is described as armored, many-armed, and blind.”