The public marketplace in the Ishel Corporation Tower was bustling. There was a lot more interest than usual at the combat vendors, with crowds of humanoids and near-humanoids waiting for attention at weapon stalls, but Miles wasn’t there for weapons.
The strange metal door he’d recovered from the Ymn city environ in the dungeon had worked well as a makeshift shield, but it wasn’t perfect. It was too big to carry around easily, and the connection between the levitation unit he’d repurposed and its handle was clunky to use.
A metalworker in Ishel Tower had offered to cut it down into something more suitable for sixty seln. The message that the work was done had come in twenty minutes ago, and Miles was back to collect. Unfortunately, the metalworker’s stall wasn’t where it’d been when he’d dropped the door off.
Miles stopped, suppressing the worry that the sapient had just vanished with his valuable scrap. He pulled out his comm to check the metalworker's message.
Instead of the message from the metalworker, he had something new listed on the top screen.
The sender, Spiral System Security, put a knot in his stomach when he first saw it, but as he opened the message and began to read, his body relaxed. He wasn’t in trouble. Someone else was.
> Spiral System Security (Ialis) > Miles Asher
>
> Hello M. Miles Asher.
>
> This automated system is writing to update you on a case in which you are named as a witness and co-victim, the case of Ialis Corporation vs. M. Brisk Gilarin.
>
> Following the events of 27,201.95 at the Ialis Corporation Artifact Entrance Facility, M. Gilarin has been convicted in absentia of a Violation of Integrity - Class 2, Severity 1.
>
> Following this conviction, disciplinary actions Outlaw-Systems-2 have been enacted, and as co-victim, you have been allocated 2.5% of the proceeds seized.
>
> This amounts to §169 Standard Exchange Notes, which have been credited to your account.
>
> May Justice Find You Inescapably,
>
> Spiral System Security
At least it’s something?
Miles felt like the Starlit Kipper breaking their contract and disappearing into the night was the bigger crime against him personally, worse than being forced to merely witness an assault on They-who-wearily-tread, but even on old Earth, the amount he’d been stiffed on wouldn’t have risen above the purview of small claims court.
For a business that could literally just fly off into space, he didn’t have much chance of recovering what Rhu-Orlen owed him.
The message from the metalworker was below the security alert in his stack, right where he expected it.
> Rugh Nah > Miles Asher
>
> Hey I got your thing done. Meet at my store. Lot 190.
Lot 190 was on the other side of the market floor. Rugh Nah had only relocated, not vanished off the face of the planet with his block of unique metal.
Miles made his way through the crowded aisles between stalls, trying not to get distracted by every new thing he saw.
There was plenty to interest him, and knowing he had money burning a hole in his comm made it difficult to pass some stores by.
One stall was selling ‘full body augmentation’ kits for a thousand seln — hand-sized cylinders of nanomachine suspensions whose labels were covered in dubious promises to double his strength, speed, and reaction times. Maybe they were overselling their abilities, but maybe that was the kind of thing Fran had used to get her disproportionate strength? She had to have used some kind of tech augmentation, and it wasn’t impossible he’d be able to buy something comparable here.
Another stall was selling personal automation cores. On old Earth they would have been called A.I. assistants, super-fast synthetic minds that would sit on someone’s belt and watch their back, offering advice and helping interface with other systems. Those were sixteen hundred for a utility model, and upwards of three thousand seln for versions that could help with industrial or combat solutions.
Miles felt like he could have spent an infinite amount of money just in that one provincial market, but he’d taken a different path, one that was already eating all of his disposable income.
The metalworker’s shop was almost recognizable as one. There was a spherical container the size of a washing machine sitting on a pyramid base, its front window glowing white with heat. There was a solid block of dark iron metal recognizable as an anvil, and an equipment board full of obscure tools, ranging from an item that looked like a corkscrew, to something that could have been an electrified bullwhip.
The proprietor was a man called Rugh, from a species called the Splein. Biochemistry D, humanoid body type. He was a few inches taller than Miles, with well-defined musculature and rough green skin, a wide flat face, bulging eyes, and a mouth that opened like a dropping drawbridge.
He recognized Miles as soon as he stopped in front of the shop.
“Ehhh. Here for your new shield!”
“Yeah. I almost couldn’t find you,” Miles said, stepping into the area of the store.
“Yahh. It’s like hot desking, you get the spot they give you. Hang on.”
Hot desking? Either Miles’ Eyes of the Emigre was doing a heroic job, or that was another weird synchronicity between Earth and Spiral cultures.
Rugh went to an open metal bin of parts and projects and dug around for a minute, eventually coming out with the coppery sheet of metal that had been cut down from the door.
The design they’d settled on was a kite-shaped shield, with four straight edges and a long tail that came down to Miles’ shins. At its widest, it would cover his arms if he held it straight on, but if he were carrying it on his back, it wouldn’t be any more cumbersome than a hiking backpack.
Rugh flipped it over to show Miles the rear.
“I took out that hover unit and put in a moving one like you wanted. That little strut at the base of the board will take your weight, so you can stand on it if you want.”
Miles took the shield. It was so heavy that he almost dropped it. Rugh had taken probably half its weight off with his modifications, but it would still be a burden without the levitation unit.
The new levitation unit looked like a dumbbell crossed with a remote control. It had a short handle, with two thick half-circles that attached to the back of the shield. The device had a switch for power, a release catch behind a flip-up protector to disconnect it from the metal, and six dials side by side along the handle for directional control.
The levitation unit was closer in function to the one Miles’ old captain Rhu-Orlen had used to get around than the crate-moving equipment he’d salvaged from the dungeon. It had the ability to move in any direction he wanted, and the little strut of metal at the bottom tip would take his weight if he stood tip-toe on it, but despite technically fulfilling the mechanics of a personal transport device, it still wouldn’t work as one. The controls were unintuitive and unreactive, and there was no proper seat and no safety features. What it might do was help manage a descent, like Miles had used the levitation unit for on his last dive. It might also help him win in a pushing contest against something bigger than him, like the larger cobolts they’d run into in the ravine.
“Did you get a chance to do the assay?” Miles asked.
He knew the metal was strong enough to take hits from hot striker weapons since they’d used it for cover against the cobolts. He also knew it must be pretty resistant to bending and breaking, from the speed the Ymn city giant had knocked it into the stone wall without causing it any damage. What he didn’t know was how far he could trust that. He wouldn’t want to hide behind it from something like Fran’s energy pistol, only for it to explode in his face.
“Oh yahhh. In terms of defense, it’s about level with crystal alloy, except you can’t work crystal alloy like I could work this. It’s not gonna break from anything less than anti-ship ballistics.”
“What about energy weapons?”
“Ehhh. I dunno. There’s so much of that. You’d want to get a real assessment corp to run those tests, you know? I hit a lot of energy dispersal tryin’ to trim it. I’d say it’s a sure bet against any civilian energy. Military? Who knows. I’m not testing for that.”
That didn’t mean a huge amount to Miles. He’d only had experience with a handful of energy weapons, and he hadn’t been interrogating Fran about what kind of weapon her pistol was. Maybe I should have.
“Thanks, that sounds good,” Miles said.
He grabbed the shield by the handle and flicked the power switch on the levitation unit. The device came to life completely silently, but Miles could feel from the sudden relief of his muscles that the tech was now taking all of the thing’s weight.
He swung it around, holding it vertically, then horizontally. It still had a lot of inertia, but it wouldn’t be a burden to carry.
“How long is the battery in the levitation unit good for?” he asked.
“If you’re just using the hover, recharge it every forty hourhhhs. If you’re using the directions, that’ll run the battery down quick. Don’t go flying around on it, cause the low power beeper’s only gonna give you a minute’s warning.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t going to,” Miles said.
It would be the equivalent of trying to fly on an unsecured jet engine. No computer control, no brakes, not even a seatbelt.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Miles pushed down the physical button that unlocked the direction controls, then slid the up-down ring minutely in one direction. He felt the upward pressure.
It wasn’t exerting much force at this level, no more than a handful of party balloons, though he could in theory ratchet it up enough to carry his weight. He dialed the ring back down to zero and released the safety switch.
“Yeah, sohhh, the price has gone up from what we agreed,” Rugh said while Miles was examining it.
Miles lowered the shield, looking at Rugh over the top of it.
“Oh?”
“Yehhh. Like I said. The power reqs for breaking it down went way over budget. The thing sheds energy pretty well, way harder to make the cuts you wanted.”
Miles hummed. He would have thought if there’d been any changes to what they’d agreed, Rugh would have messaged him to ask before going ahead. That was how Miles would have done it.
It should have been no more than sixty seln for the modifications, and not more than a couple of hundred for the new levitation device.
“How much over budget did it go?”
“It totaled out at five fifty.”
Miles stared at him flatly.
“I was expecting it to be closer to two hundred and eighty.”
“Yehhh. Like I said, power use was highhh.”
Miles looked back at the shield. It was pretty much exactly what he’d wanted when he’d handed the door over.
He could probably trim two hundred off the metalworker’s price if he swapped back to the old levitation unit, and selling the cut-offs would almost certainly recoup most of the cost, even if the Gilathaen’s hadn’t found anything particularly notable about the metal.
Though, looking around, Miles couldn’t see the cut-offs.
“I’ll pay the higher price,” he started, “But where are the cut-offs? And I’ll want the levitation unit I brought it in with back.”
“Ehhh. Materials lost in processing normally stay with me.”
Miles gave the metalworker a hard look.
“That’s normal for anyone in this business,” he continued. “Ask around, they’ll tell you.”
Miles put the shield down on its point, letting the levitation unit hold it in place. With his hands freed, he pulled out his comm unit and started navigating the interface.
“Uhhh. What’re you doing?”
“I’m asking my friend in the Ialis Corporation if it’s normal for a metalworker to keep the raw materials a customer provided.”
He started tapping out a message to They-who-warily-tread. He’d come up with the idea just then as a bluff, but he felt annoyed enough to go through with it. He’d probably earned enough goodwill with the Gilthaen to get away with bothering them via message a few times.
“Ehhh, you’re connected, huh. Well, look, it’s not just about what’s normal. The scrap’s not scrap anymore.”
Miles hesitated, ready to send. “What do you mean?”
“Well, ahhh.” Rugh went to the bin and pulled out a few metal objects. There were a couple of knives, a padded bracer shaped to fit a humanoid forearm longer than Miles’, a sword, and a hammer. All of their metal parts were made from the same coppery metal as the door.
“So you used them without asking me,” Miles said.
“Normal praahhhctice.”
Miles doubted it. He went back to his comm.
“No need to bring the worms in on this, ehhh?” Rugh said. “Ahhh’ve put work into these, so I can’t just give ‘em back. How about I sell them to you. Fifty seln for all. That’ll cover the labor. I was gonna sell them for a hundred each, so that’s a net profit for you.”
The merchant was asking for more than six hundred seln for a project that was supposed to cost less than three hundred.
Miles felt growing anger, and the rising urge to escalate.
He could cause a scene, get aggressive, try to pressure the metalworker. He could call They-who-warily-tread, or even city security. But he found he didn’t want to.
He saw two roads in front of him, one where he fought for every scrap, aggressively defended his pride, and railed against the world where it wronged him, and one where he was someone who could chalk up being cheated as a learning experience, where he’d rather leave seln on the table than greedily snatch at it.
He’d recently had an experience with the former. His argument with Fran. She was someone he’d once wanted to consider a friend, and saw the potential for friendship in the future. She’d turned around and repaid his suspicion with generosity.
That second path felt like where he wanted to be. He wanted to be secure enough that he didn’t have to take every loss as a slight. He wasn’t there yet, but he could take a small, reluctant step in that direction now.
“I guess I’ll take them,” he said. Rugh flapped his mouth in what Miles hoped was a Splein nod of agreement. “But I guess I’ll still check with city security about what you said on keeping the scrap, for future reference.”
“Nahhh. No need to do that. Like I said, standard practice.”
“Still. If there’s a kind of unspoken rule about that I want to make sure I’ve got it right,” Miles said. “I think I’ll still just check with them, make sure I understood you right.”
Rugh’s mouth stopped flapping. “Ahhh. I just remembered. I was gonna give you a discount on this. It was nice to work on new material.”
“Oh,” Miles said, immediately noticing the sapient’s motivated backtracking. “Is it maybe a two hundred seln discount?”
“Yehhh.”
“Okay…” Three hundred and fifty seln wasn’t a lot more than what he was expecting. “I guess, maybe I don’t need to message security.”
“Nahhh. No nehhhd.”
Miles tied the floating shield to the straps of his backpack and used his comm to tap out a three hundred and fifty seln payment to the metalworker.
Rugh handed over the bundle of things he’d made from the cut-offs. They were heavy, but Miles wasn’t up to the task of weighing them and working out if that was really every piece of cut-off scrap.
He stood there for a few seconds, feeling his arms straining at the weight.
“What about my old levitation unit?” he asked.
Rugh turned away without replying, going back to the parts bin.
Miles left a couple of minutes later, with the new shield dragging from his backpack, and the stack of cut-off items clamped in the grip of his old levitation unit.
***
“I’m looking for something to read on a flight,” Miles said.
The shopkeeper slid out from behind the counter and approached, all six of their hands laced together as they crept over the tiled floor of the store.
“I knew you could not resist the knowledge purveyed here for long,”
Miles had maintained a business relationship with Lash-ishel-suffuzus since he’d first wandered into the off-Exchange bookstore a week before. He’d made less use of the book rental policy than he’d expected, and now that he had more than two seln to rub together, the deal didn’t seem so good.
He had been reluctant to come to the shop in person. The Morchis proprietor went hard on their sales pitch, and they either had a genuinely troubling anti-establishment thing going on, or were putting one on as a marketing ploy. It made him uncomfortable either way.
“I’ll be traveling for two or three weeks, and I want to use some of the time to study. I’m looking for Spiral history, and if you have anything on magical traditions? Sky Quester and Harmonizer.”
He already had enough books on biology and medicine in the spiral to be going on with. More than he’d managed to memorize so far, anyway.
The sapient returned to the counter where he interacted with a terminal. After a minute, he turned it around so that Miles could see the screen.
He could read it thanks to his Eyes of the Emigre, but he wasn’t sure how the shopkeeper expected anyone else to know what it meant, given that it was probably all written in Morchis.
> The Lash-Ishel Store of Secret and Coveted Knowledge
>
> Spiral history / Harmonizer tradition / Sky Quester tradition
>
> Ten Thousand Histories by Lhen-Roshel [§45]
>
> A Draulean’s Guide to the Spiral by Moriel Efere [§80]
>
> A Pinprick Sky by They-who-think-in-darkness [§52]
>
> How to Be More Harmonious by Adept Furious [§25]
>
> To Pierce the Heavens With Our Soul, unattributed [§95]
“These are the most popular titles, among the more discerning readers of the spiral,” Suffuzus crooned.
“This interface looks a lot like the Exchange,” Miles said, reading down the list, “Only with a smaller catalog and less information.”
Suffuzus touched the terminal and the screen went blank. “Perhaps you’re not interested in my wares, after all.”
“No, it’s okay. I’m interested. I couldn’t find anything about the Sky Quester tradition on the Exchange.”
The shopkeeper reactivated the screen and Miles checked the list again.
“Can I get A Draulean’s Guide, How to be More Harmonious, and To Pierce the Heavens?”
“Yes. It will be my pleasure,” Sufuzus hissed. “Two hundred seln.”
Sure, I’ll just drop two hundred seln on books.
Miles paid with his comm, and waited while the Morchis shopkeeper loaded his purchases onto a tablet.
***
> Miles > Ialis Route Planning
>
> Dendril City Skyport to Unsiel Station, outside Iteration 27,200
> Ialis Route Planning > Miles
>
> Direct: none
> Chartered Direct: §6,000-§10,000
>
> Scheduled Indirect: §1,640
>
> Independent Indirect: §445
>
> Suggested Route:
> Dendril City Skyport > Consular City Skyport [Sky Shuttle]
> Consular City Skyport (26,100) >> Lanthatariel Station (27,100) [Century Express]
> Lanthatariel Station (27,100) >> Forward Fleet Waypoint (27,201) [Fleet Express]
> Forward Fleet Waypoint (27,201) >> Unsiel Station (27,200) [Fleet Express]
Four hundred and forty-five seln for a ticket that would let him hop on and off participating transports all the way to Earth wasn’t too bad, Miles thought. He felt like there were domestic flights that would have cost comparatively more, back on old Earth. He assumed it was one of the benefits brought by the cosmology of the spiral. Every world and civilization existing on a single traversable line had to simplify mass transit routes between them.
If he’d wanted to charter a direct flight, the equivalent of hiring a private plane, that would have cost real money. The ship would be able to cut directly across the empty core of the spiral, saving a lot of time and fuel, delivering him directly to Unsiel Station, but that was far outside his price range.
Even the scheduled indirect route, the closest option to booking a ticket on connected flights on old Earth, was out of his price range currently.
He didn’t even hate the idea of the Independent Indirect option. He’d still get to travel most of the thousand iterations between Ialis and Earth on a single ship, the Century Express, and after that he’d be able to take whatever transport he could find to get to the Forward Fleet, and then to Unsiel Station.
If he lost a day while he was waiting to find a transport going his way, that was an expense he could deal with, though there was so much traffic in the spiral he didn’t think it was likely.
He tapped out the request for a ticket in a message to the transit system.
> Miles > Ialis Route Planning
>
> Confirm Dendril City Skyport to Unsiel Station, outside Iteration 27,200, Independent Indirect.
> Ialis Route Planning > Miles
>
> Ticket confirmed. Account charged. Your travel document is attached.
He felt something, the moment he locked the decision in. Sadness at having to leave Ialis. He surprised himself.
He'd come here by chance, but now he knew something about the place he realized he was going to miss it. He actually liked the moss-covered landscape. He liked the Ishel tower. He liked the mage's enclave. He didn't like his apartment, but that wouldn't have to be forever.
It had taken deciding to leave for him to realize Ialis was his home, and that he was definitely coming back.