Qimmiq Port

Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge

4453.2.29 Interstellar

Three hours later, Janus, Mick, and Ryler sat at a table nursing beers while Koni and Lira continued to interview witnesses and review evidence. Janus tapped his foot, and Fury chomped on his boot playfully.

“This is nice, right?” Ryler said. “Guy time.”

“Right,” Mick said sarcastically. “No offense, mate, but my idea of guy time is shooting things, doing pharmaceuticals, and getting to know the locals. We’re doing none of those things.”

“Beer is medicinal,” Ryler said over his mug with a gleam in his eye.

Mick barked a laugh, and Janus shook his head.

It all would have felt like a massive waste of time if their score weren’t continuously rising while they sat there. “We can’t get too drunk. Lira and Koni could be done any minute.”

“Right,” Ryler said. “You know, Janus, you could just say, ‘I don’t know how to have fun.’ Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery.”

“What’s that from?” Mick asked. “It has a ring to it.”

Ryler winced and took another pull from his beer. “An organization that probably wouldn’t have suited you. Let’s go to one of the sweat shacks!”

“Won’t that mess with your implants?” Janus asked.

Ryler shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

They asked for directions from a lesser official who was more than happy to put one of the small sweat tents—called a banya in the local language—at their disposal.

The four of them—three humans and one jungle dragon—headed toward the hut designated in Janus’s retinal implant.

“Hey, Janus,” Mick said, his breath fogging in front of him in the frozen air.

“What?” Janus said, the cold air chilling his throat and lungs.

“Fury’s gotten bigger, hasn’t she?”

Janus looked at the jungle dragon, whose head now reached his mid-thigh and whose shoulder was higher than his knee, and said, “Yeah, actually. Abnormally so.”

“Maybe we found her as a puppy,” Ryler said.

Janus wasn’t so sure. The tests he’d had run by the Cofan labs all showed she was two or three years old. Not fully grown by any means, but at least an adolescent. “It might be something about the food we’re feeding her or some other stimulus we haven’t thought of.”

Mick ignored all of that. “Maybe she’ll get really big—like the size of a buggy.”

“That seems unlikely,” Janus said.

“Mick just wants to fight a full-sized dragon,” Ryler said.

Janus was about to laugh, but then he saw the guilty look on Mick’s face. “Mick…”

“What?” the Hunter said defensively. “Ancient Earth knights used to do it all the time!”

“I think those were fables,” Ryler said, glancing at Janus.

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“The same fables from several different cultures?” Mick asked. “And I read an Old Earth historical document that said six percent of men in the countries that became the Northern Stars thought they could fight something called a ‘grizzly bear,’ and that these grizzly things could weigh up to eight hundred kilos. That has to prove something.”

“You’re right,” Ryler said with an easygoing smile. “It proves that even a species that will one day travel between the stars has a statistically predictable share of idiots.”

Mick thought about that, then said, “Maybe I could just wrestle her a bit, get some pictures. You know who liked dragon-fighting knights?”

“Farmers with livestock?” Janus guessed.

“Farmers’ daughters,” Mick said, wagging his eyebrows. “And princesses, apparently. I’m less sure why that was a good thing. From the portraits I saw, they had really bad chins.”

They reached the sweat shack, which was rectangular and made of sealed wood except for the door, which featured the same hide covering as the yurts. It had a small vestibule with modern lockers for gear, towels, and freshwater, all unlockable with their wrist comms. Once they’d stripped and wrapped their waists, Janus and the others went into the second room.

It was oven-hot. Fury froze in the doorframe, sniffing the air, then let out a delighted bark and promptly curled her body around the small stove.

Janus laughed. “I guess she likes the cold as much as I do.”

“Nothing wrong with a little chill to keep you awake and alive, boss,” Mick said, settling on the top wooden bench. “Throw some water on that stove, will ya?”

It was already plenty warm in the shack, but it was supposed to be an experience after all, so Janus ladled more water onto the stove, which hissed and sizzled as he took a seat.

Ryler sat on the other end of the lower bench, massaging the skin around the data ports in his chest.

“Did that hurt?” Janus asked.

“No,” Ryler said. “I was out for the whole procedure. The implants ache or the tissues around them get inflamed from time to time, but I have meds I can take if my body starts rejecting them.”

“Why would you do that to yourself, mate?” Mick asked, propping himself up on one elbow.

“What if I offered you a mechanical arm?” Ryler asked instead of answering. “One so strong you could fistfight a dragon, or a grizzly bear for that matter?”

“Where do I sign?” Mick said jokingly. “But seriously, can I get one of those?”

Janus shook his head. “By your own admission, Mick might be an idiot.”

“Love you too, boss,” Mick said.

Janus knocked on the wooden bench twice, like he was acknowledging a comm signal, then continued, “What was so important you let them do that to you?”

“I don’t think you understand,” Ryler said. “I earned these. They don’t just give them to anyone. And as for what was so important, aren’t you the one who always says a lack of knowledge is how the downtrodden masses get manipulated by those in power?”

“I may have voiced something like that,” Janus said.

Ryler shrugged. “These let me not just get an impression of information like most humans do. I can store it, analyze it, and manipulate it. No approximations or false memories—actual data at my neuron tips.”

“So you’re a walking computer,” Janus said.

“We’re all walking computers,” Ryler responded. “I’m just better at it.”

“Speaking of computers, mate,” Mick said, “How come the Cult can compute a score that predicts the outcome of the Trials, but they got blindsided by Janus’s stunt with the memory cards?”

“I can’t talk about the Cult’s operational capabilities,” Ryler said, “But Janus has probably guessed a good share of it.”

Mick looked at Janus.

Janus closed his eyes and sat back against the bench. “Even the best prediction engine can’t guess the future without data, not unless the Cult has figured out how to influence luck.”

“There’s no such thing,” Ryler said. “Although some of our scientists think there might be such a thing as probability grooves.”

“You mean fate?” Mick asked with surprising sharpness.

Ryler bobbed his head. “Just… sequences of things that are fractionally more likely to occur than not occur.”

Janus stared at Ryler. It didn’t happen often, or at least Ryler hid it well, but sometimes Janus caught glimpses of the technological gap between the Cult and the other inhabitants of Survivor’s Refuge, and it made the techno-priests seem almost magical.

“What about what you were saying about data?” Mick asked.

“There isn’t a lot of it here,” Janus said. “Ryler already told us they have to use the data cubes to keep track of us. Since they have more data about the aspirant teams, they can make better calculations, although it must be an incredible computer to be able to do this in near-real-time.”

“The illusion of synchrony is partially because the Oracle is anticipating your decisions,” Ryler said. Before Janus could ask a hundred questions, Ryler raised his hand and said, “That’s all I can tell you about it.”

Janus nodded. It was already more than he’d known to begin with. He was about to tell Mick his theory about why it took the compartmentalists so long to catch on to what he and Syn did on Irkalla, where they did have good data, but his wrist comm chimed.

It was a message from Lira.

“Time to head back,” Janus said, standing up. “Looks like they need a few knights to come to the rescue.”

“And a dragon,” Mick said.

Janus looked fondly at Fury, wrapped around the stove. “And a jungle dragon. Anyone want to try prying her away from that thing?”

“Nope,” Mick said, heading for the changing area.

“Sorry, Janus,” Ryler said with a grin. “Looks like you get to be the dragon wrestler today.”