2 AL: IRENE

“Where are you coming from?” the guard asked.

“Just now we are coming from Londontown, but we are only twenty days out from the Speedwell,” Sophia told the guard. By Irene’s count this was their seventeenth day inside the ruins. She hoped Sophia was just rounding up for convenience. Irene's plans included going back to the Speedwell in sixty days and she didn’t want to be late.

“That is pretty nice armor for only twenty days,” the guard commented. A second guard straightened up from where he was leaning against the wall. Both guards were wearing leathers themselves. The second guard’s leathers were dyed red at the collar and cuffs.

“We got lucky scavenging around Londontown,” Sophia countered. Irene knew that wasn’t the full story. Jake purchased the leather armor he wore on their first full day at Londontown. It was only after three days of scavenging that Sophia was able to purchase the outfit made of green cloth that she wore. Irene thought of the outfit as hunter’s greens, because the first hunters they met in the greenspace outside Londontown were wearing them.

“Where did you get the bow?” the second guard asked.

“My father made it for me when I was thirteen,” Sophia countered. The bow in question was made out of carbon fiber. That made it stand out from the wooden bows that were made by crafters back in Londontown. Jake was armed with an ax that was clearly from the Speedwell.

“You are lucky to have a hunting tradition in your family,” the second guard commented. This guard was vaguely familiar to Irene. It was obvious he was in charge of this post. The first guard fell silent at this second guard's interest.

The Speedwell’s population at landing was near 50,000. It was a small number if you considered it the total population of humanity on the planet, but it was large enough that there were plenty of strangers. Irene worked in engineering. When she completed her training she would be partly responsible for designing the new colony, as an apprentice she was more a maintenance worker. The idea was to learn the ship’s current systems through doing while she learned the deeper scientific underpinnings through study.

In her role as a maintenance worker she traveled through most of the ship and colony. She didn’t have the knack of remembering names and faces. She could have met this man anywhere. Irene was hanging a little back, letting Sophia and Jake do the talking. Irene shifted a little to get a better view of the second guard as she tried to place him.

The guard saw her movement and turned his attention to her. She was still wearing work clothes from the Speedwell. Her weapon was a carbon fiber broom handle. The staff worked out well for her so far. It was a lifesaver when she was injured in the first green and could barely walk. The guard narrowed his eyes as he studied her.

“I know you,” the guard said, as he tried to place where he had seen Irene before. “Didn’t you attend the stick fighting lessons on the Speedwell?”

“Yes,” Irene confirmed. “Although I am no better at it now then I was then.”

“Aren’t you friends with Darien?” the guard asked again.

“We worked in the same department,” Irene explained.

“Let them pass,” the second guard announced. “Go see Darien and he will give you a token to get past the guard posts faster.”

The three of them were allowed to continue. Irene noted that the post was situated in an extra wide section of the hall. The three of them came upon it suddenly as they approached from a cross passage. They turned a corner and it was there. There were several piles of debris in the wide area that might once have been furniture. Irene wondered why they didn’t remove it.

The main hall continued straight with no side passages before it turned to the north. As they turned the corner Irene could hear the sound of movement and voices ahead.

“Why didn’t you mention that you knew Darien?” Jake asked Irene as they walked.

“He was just in the same department as me,” Irene explained. “He didn’t include me in the groups he set up to enter the ruins. I think that guard may have the wrong impression of how welcoming Darien will be.”

“I think we should check it out,” Sophia said. “A token to get past the guards could be useful.”

The doors on either side of the hallway were propped open. These first rooms were occupied by women and children. Some of the women were watching children while others were engaged in the crafting occupations Irene saw in Londontown.

They passed a room that was obviously a hospital. Both men and women were laying or sitting around the room, wearing blood stained bandages. Two women were circling the room offering water and dry squares of food that looked a lot like giant crackers. Irene wondered where they obtained them. She hadn’t seen any source of grain in the ruins.

At the next intersection there was a series of drawings with arrows written on the walls. Some of the sketches bore words underneath, but most of them didn’t.

“Do you think this H stands for hotel?” Jake asked.

“It is pointing back the way we just came from,” Irene observed. “I think it must stand for hospital.”

“These are all signs I saw for different craft shops in Londontown,” Sophia said, pointing out a grouping of smaller marks with an arrow pointing west. “This must be the way to the shopping district.” They all agreed that that seemed like a good place to get information and headed that way.

On their way they passed areas that were lightly populated. Closed doors along the way were marked with danger signs. Irene could tell that Jake wanted to open them to check what was inside, but he managed to contain his enthusiasm.

The shopping area was in a section of the structure that was cut up into a tight grid of hallways and cross corridors. Every door was wedged open to reveal a selection of small rooms. Near the center of this section was a room with a prize altar. This room was completely empty except for the altar. Two guards stood at the entrance. They both wore leathers with touches of red on them.

“I am going to look around and see what is available,” Irene announced. “Let’s meet up here in an hour or so.”

“That sounds good to me,” Jake responded. Sophia agreed. The pair continued forward into the shopping district. Irene thought they seemed almost eager to leave her behind. She reminded herself their agreement was about journeying to Chicago. They didn’t discuss what they would do after getting there. Traveling with the pair was much easier than trying to do it alone. Irene’s goal here in Chicago was to find out what tricks these people were using to live in the open halls of the structure away from the security of a protection crystal.

Irene found a metalworker down a side corridor. She was calling her a metalworker and not a blacksmith because she didn't have any weapons available. There was a big smoking pot in one corner of the room. Strangely the smoke didn’t fill the air, instead it just vanished about three feet away from the pot.

The pot looked like it was made of porcelain. It glowed red hot on the bottom. Irene couldn’t feel any heat from it where she stood in the center of the room. As she watched the metalworker dropped a chunk of physical debris into the pot. An ingot of copper or maybe bronze fell through the bottom of the pot to land on the floor below it. The metalworker used a pair of tongs to drag the ingot out from under the pot.

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Irene realized this ‘pot’ was a smelter. She suspected that some of the other crafting tools she saw or been told of didn’t match the earth versions, but she wasn’t certain. She had never seen an earth built hand loom or hide stretcher. She knew what a smelter looked like and it was not this.

“Can I help you?” the metal worker asked after she had set the ingot on a pile of similar ingots to cool. The pile was next to a small anvil with a rather large hammer on it.

“Do you have anything to pull a door closed?” Irene asked.

“Closed?” the metalworker asked.

“My team has found that some of the doors tend to be sticky. By the time they naturally swing closed a couple dozen rats have escaped. If the door opens toward us it is easy enough to push it closed, but most of them push in,” Irene explained.

“Hence the need to pull it closed,” the metalworker concluded. She seemed to think about it for a moment. “I don’t think any of the patterns I have open are for that intended use, but maybe I can adapt something.” She looked at the door to her own room, which was pushed all the way open against the inside wall and wedged into place. The door latch was a kind of sliding push bar mechanism that was extremely tightly fitted. Irene looked at it before and didn’t see any way to quickly affix anything to it.

“You might be able to put some kind of hook on the side and pull it closed with that. You wouldn’t be able to set the hook until the door was open. I’ve noticed before that the doors fit very tightly so you couldn’t pull the door completely closed. The hook would have to be removed before the door would fit back into the frame,” the metalworker commented. Irene liked how this woman thought.

“As long as a rat couldn’t get through I guess it wouldn’t matter if the door was completely shut. Although I don’t want to hold the door closed. I will be busy fighting the rats that have already escaped. Do you know if rats can pry a partially closed door open?” Irene asked.

“Probably,” the metalworker responded. “It is amazing what the beasts can get through. I do a big business in vent pins. When people bring them in for repair I swear I can see teeth marks on them.”

“What is your price on them?” Irene asked.

“Four for a black coin,” the metalworker replied. She picked one up off the shelves at the back of the room and showed it to Irene. Irene saw these for sale at the vendor in Londontown. At the time she thought they were some kind of fork. This one was made of a dark iron. The metalworker calling them vent pins made Irene think they could be used to hold a vent closed.

“Do you have any in bronze?” she asked. The vendor in Londontown offered her a lot more money for the bronze scrap than iron scrap. Irene got the idea that here, bronze was better than iron. She was leaning towards that bronze was better than steel. The single coin was made of black iron. The second coin was worth 36 of the first coins. Most people called them silver, but Irene knew her metals and they weren’t silver, they were steel. After seeing the metalworker with the bronze ingot she felt like she needed to ask.

“No,” the metalworker replied. “They last long enough that the rats chew through the vent cover itself and you have to relocate, so no one really wants them.”

“How long does it take for that to happen?” Irene asked.

“About three days,” the metalworker replied. That sounded perfect to Irene. Since she planned to use them while traveling she didn’t care if the vent covers failed in three days. She just wanted the pins to last until she reached the exit.

“Can you make them?” Irene asked.

“Yes,” the metal worker replied. “I want two coins each and it will take me a while.”

“Ok,” Irene responded. “I’ll take ten. How do I pay you?”

“Do you have physical coins?” the metal worker asked.

“No, I saw a prize altar down the way, but the two guards didn’t give me a good vibe,” Irene responded.

“Are they there today? Yeah that’s not good. Look there’s an altar in the back of the leather shop that is two blocks north and three east. It spawned after they settled it so the guards don’t know it’s there yet. Tell John that Elie sent you and he will let you use it,” Elie responded. Irene was surprised that the woman trusted her with the information. “If you get the payment to me today, I can have the pins made by tomorrow evening.”

“Deal,” Irene said. She shook Elie’s hand and left to find the leather shop. There was only one shop dealing in leather on the block Elie described. Irene waited until there was no one else in the short section of hallway to step inside the door. A man looked up from where he was scraping the back side of a hide. Irene was intrigued. The man’s actions looked real, not the stylized version most crafting seemed to follow.

“Are you John?” she asked. She could see now that this was a multi room suite. Irene’s team scavenged in rooms like this near Londontown and they did have a higher incidence of prize altars in them.

“Yes,” John responded. “How can I help you?”

“Elie sent me to get physical coins,” Irene responded.

“Did she now?” John countered. “What do I get?”

“That would be between you and Elie,” Irene responded. “If I have to pay for the service, I could just go to the main altar.”

“Too true,” the tanner responded. “Ted,” he called into the back room, “Come out here and watch the front.” Another man stepped out of the back. He was younger than John. Irene got the impression that they were brothers. John led Irene back through two rooms before he turned to point to an altar on an inner wall. He left her there, which seemed to Irene to be a rather foolish thing for him to do. The room was obviously a workroom. It held a large number of hides in various states.

Irene used the prize altar to pull Thirty six coins out of her inventory. Thirty five of them were dark iron, but the last was a shining steel. She slipped the steel coin into her boot and the rest into a side pouch on her backpack. Then for reasons she couldn’t really say she pulled two badger skins out of her inventory and left them on the altar. There were a bunch of them in her inventory from clearing rooms.

She retraced her steps to the front room to find John back to scraping the hide. There was no sign of the other man.

“Thank you,” She said to John. “I left you something. Consider it a tip.” John stopped in his work and looked at Irene.

“I thought you said you weren’t paying for the service,” John countered.

“I did,” Irene said. “But I don’t want to kill you either.” Irene decided that John planned to rob her on the way out. It was the only thing that really made sense to her. He wasn’t worried about her stealing from him, because he would get it all back.

“Are you going to kill me with that stick?” John casually asked. Irene noted that although he stopped working the hide, he still held the knife in his hand.

“I won’t need the stick,” she said to him. She reached out with one hand and cast dark, pulling the light out of the panel above. For a second it seemed like they were plunged into night. There was only one working light panel before Irene switched it off. She stepped to the side, just in case John lunged at her in the dark. Her eyes adjusted and she could see John in the light spilling in from the open doors.

He carefully set his knife down. He looked up at the darkened ceiling panel.

“I haven’t seen that one before,” he said.

“Rest assured, it isn’t the only one I know,” Irene informed him. She tossed light spells up. Igniting all the panels in the room. “Do we understand each other?” she asked him.

“Yes, I believe we do,” John responded. “You are welcome to use the back room anytime,” he said. “Let me walk you down to the intersection.”

“That is kind of you,” Irene responded. As they walked down the hallway to the intersection, they passed an open door with two men inside. They didn’t appear to be doing anything. John gave a subtle shake of his head as they passed the opening. The men stayed inside.

“You said that was a new one,” Irene said to John before he turned away from her. “What else have you seen?”

“Fire and ice,” John replied.

“Yes, I know those,” Irene responded. “From the way you said it I thought you had seen something... odd along the way.”

“I knew a woman who could scare animals away. She was killed when she tried it against a bear. Instead of being frightened it was enraged and charged her,” John responded. From the way he spoke Irene knew the woman was someone special to him.

“Do you know how she cast it?” she asked.

“No,” John replied. “It never worked for me. She used to just hold her hand out.” He demonstrated by holding up his own hand and kind of tapping the air. He held all his fingers tightly together with even his thumb tucked into the side.

One, Irene thought to herself. She fished the coin out of the top of her boot and put it into John’s hand, so he couldn’t see the value of it until she was gone.

“Thank you again,” she said to him. She turned and hurried down the corridor.