FORTY-TWO: Be Safe

The news that the System was down hit the Artonans hard. The man, in particular, kept asking Alden questions like he thought maybe Alden had misunderstood the first half dozen.

Alden plumbed the depths of his vocabulary to find new ways to express the System’s complete absence. “It’s not here,” he said insistently. “Goodbye, Contract. No Contract on the moon. I can’t see words in my eyes.”

His toddler talk would have been funny if the situation wasn’t so dire. Thenn-ar finally said something snippy to the guy when he wouldn’t leave Alden alone, and he made a surprisingly alien-sounding cry of rage. The only time Alden had ever heard an Artonan make such a noise was when Joe had introduced himself to Sophie in something approximating actual griveckcry.

The man stomped off into one of the offices and slammed the door behind him. A moment later, the crash and clatter of things smashing into the walls could be heard.

Thenn-ar sighed and walked over to look at the map. Alden followed her like a duckling.

He had so many questions. He hated to bother her, but he couldn’t stand the lack of information. He sorted through his numerous urgent queries, trying to pick ones he could ask that would have simple enough answers.

Well, the map page was up. He’d start with questions that involved location.

“Where are we?”

Thenn-ar gave him a nod and zoomed in the map with a circular motion of her fingers. Alden watched closely. Probably it was pointless to memorize Artonan touchscreen gestures, but he would try to collect every scrap of information he could.

“Elepta is here,” she said, pointing at a dot on the center of the map, right where Alden had expected her to. It was in the middle of the glowing red circle of evil, as he’d feared.

He really wished he knew the words for “chaos” or “demon.” It would make all the things he’d guessed up until now easier to confirm.

Instead, he asked, “Where is Worli Ro-den’s house?”

He was hoping to get a sense of the problem’s scale.

“Here,” Thenn-ar said, tapping on another dot in the direction Alden decided to think of as East. It was about a third the distance from the center to the edge of the red zone. “This is the ——.”

That last word must have been laboratory.

“Is the laboratory safe?” He did his best to get the new term right.

Thenn-ar answered at length, then paused when she saw the blank expression on his face. “More safe,” she said slowly. “But it isn’t safe.”

“Can we go there?”

More words Alden didn’t understand. Her tone sounded like a shrug, for whatever that was worth.

“We are not safe here and we are not safe there?” he suggested. “Both same bad?”

Yes, that was right. He could tell from her expression.

“Where is safe?”

“Nowhere,” she said.

“Where?” Alden insisted. He at least wanted something, just for his own sanity.

She zoomed the map out again by making the opposite circular motion and stared at it for a while. She went through the forecast screens that showed the problem growing. For too many days.

Finally, she pointed at a mark far, far to the west. “Here,” she said. “It’s safe for you — ——— ——. Maybe.”

It was too far to walk. And those missing words were pretty important. “For me?”

“Not now,” she said. “When ————- ——- —-. Then it will be safe for Avowed. If ——— ——.”

Alden fully understood the urge to go hide in an office and break things.

“Please,” he said. “How do we be safe? Again?”

Please don’t give up on me. Please keep repeating it until I get it. I know it must be annoying, but it’s important. And I’m trying. I swear.

To his surprise and utter gratitude, she kept trying. Slowly, slowly he pieced together an answer and an understanding of what was happening.

“Is it better to write the words?” she asked at one point.

Alden shook his head. The written language was harder than the spoken. “Talking is better.”

She went on. He watched avidly as she swiped through the screen, using pictures when words wouldn’t do. They moved out of the way of demon bugs a couple of times. Alden was almost willing to try his luck at soaking the damage from one of them with his preserved putty ball when it floated near the television.

He wasn’t sure if it was worth the risk. It would be bad if he just collapsed into a placid heap from overusing his skill like he had that time he tried to carry the shrieky bowl. But he really wanted the screen to keep working. Because what Thenn-ar was trying to get across to him would have been hard for him to understand even if she’d been explaining it in English.

The red zone would grow and grow for many days. The number was so uncertain, that Thenn-ar would not give it to him. But at some point beyond the scope of the forecast, it would begin to shrink again.

“Big then small?”

Thenn-ar nodded.

It would start getting smaller when ships came. Thenn-ar conveyed this with lots of pictures of spaceships.

“Ships from the other side of the moon?” Alden asked. The half that was supposedly less chaos-stricken would send aid, wouldn’t they?

But she shook her head. “From the Mother.”

All the way from Artona I? Yes, they were in the same solar system. Or so he’d been told. But why wait for help from another planet? Joe had said spaceships were in short supply out here, but surely…oh, maybe I’m not thinking about it right.

“The red place is too bad for the other side of the moon to help here?” he guessed.

She nodded.

“Wizards come to help?”

A pause, as if she had to think about it for a while, then another nod. Maybe Alden didn’t have the story exactly right, but he was in the right general ballpark.

Their reaction to the news that the System had vanished was so dramatic compared to their reaction when he’d first told them it was malfunctioning. A buggy System must have been within the realm of their expectations, but a missing one was far, far outside it.

And…no System meant no teleporting. For almost everyone, as far as he understood it. The Artonans could do it, but it seemed to be something of a rarity. Even Joe had said non-System transport was hard to come by, so maybe it was only the truly elite who were capable of it. And if regular people couldn’t even use System teleportation on Moon Thegund, then it must be a hard place to get to.

So. The people who were qualified to fix a problem of this magnitude were probably big badass wizards who did not live on a backwater like Moon Thegund. And if they couldn’t teleport in, they’d have to come by ship.

“The red place is big, then the wizards come help, then the red place is more small, then here is safe?”

He was sort of right, judging by her expression. But not totally.

Stolen story; please report.

She kept explaining. She’d been snappy and all business nearly every time Alden had seen her. Always the leader, totally on top of things. But she was so patient with him now, he wanted to hug her for it.

For many days the chaos zone would grow because there was nobody on Moon Thegund capable of stopping it. Eventually, the ships would come, and it would start to shrink. Thenn-ar thought the ships would arrive at the location to the west she had pointed out on the map.

Then after many, many, many days the red zone would finally go away. There would be no true safety until then.

This was hard for Alden to comprehend. Not literally but in every other way.

He kept asking broken questions, and she never once refused to answer.

“More and more of these?” Alden asked, gesturing to the demon bugs in the break room. One of the fast ones had just punched through a wall. Frankly, Alden was surprised he, Thenn-ar and the television were all still unharmed.