FORTY: Zero In

 

The sun had just set, and the red street lamps were coming to life all over campus as Alden and Joe stepped into the summonarium. It was empty inside. It always was. Alden wasn’t sure if summonings just didn’t happen that often, or if Joe somehow booked the whole building every time.

Even though he knew he should be focused on the trip ahead, Alden’s mind was still reeling from the conversation they’d just had. He was afraid, excited, and confused in equal measures. And more than a little overwhelmed by it all.

How did Gorgon even know about the skill? Would leveling it in the way the designers had intended really be better than going for a more normal path? Or would Alden just be wasting time chasing after something different, but not necessarily better, than what he could more easily grasp?

Giving up new skill selection and spell impressions for something unknown sounded like a huge gamble.

“What about spell instruction?” he asked quietly as they walked over to the runic pattern Joe always suggested they use for the trip to Moon Thegund. “You didn’t mention that.”

It was listed by the System as a possible reward summoners might offer. And instruction would be different than an impression, wouldn’t it?

Even here, when he was fairly sure it was only the two of them, Alden found he couldn’t ask the specific question about authority he wanted to ask. It was locked tight by the contract and maybe, just a little bit, by his own feelings about the answer.

If he understood everything correctly…accumulating unbound authority meant he should be able to use it to cast spells, shouldn’t he? Just like wizards did. If someone would teach him.

He stood inside the pattern and faced Joe. The bomb was in a small black carrying case on the floor between them. The Artonan regarded Alden in silence for a surprisingly long time.

“Do you actually want to learn the sorts of spells wizards use?” he finally asked in an even voice. “Because you can’t just memorize any of the good ones by mimicking a set of actions. It’s not like using wordchains; those are an ancient and simple exchange, far more similar to contracts than to modern spellcraft. You’d have to start from the bottom. And magic is hard. You have some of the right qualifications for it, but the ones you lack would make it exponentially more difficult for you than for an Artonan.”

“But not impossible?”

“Probably not impossible. If you were very, very stubborn and had the necessary time and quite a lot of help. And it would benefit you in some ways. But I don’t recommend you pursue it. Especially if you think you might like it. In fact, let me say that more clearly—I strongly discourage you from studying wizardry. And I myself am unwilling to teach it to you.”

“I didn’t ask you to…”

Alden wished he didn’t feel a little hurt. It wasn’t like he had expected Joe to say, “Yes, of course, here’s a list of all my favorite spells!”

But such a firm denial still felt unexpectedly sharp.

“It’s not because I think you’re incapable. Or undeserving,” Joe said. “Just in case that isn’t obvious from our previous interactions.”

“It’s fine.”

“I can tell that it’s not from your tone.”

Alden glared at him. “I’m fine. I’m just dealing with a lot of new information right now.”

Joe sighed dramatically. “If you must learn a spell to satisfy your curiosity at some point, there are a few that are simple trinkets. They’re so easy that they barely even qualify, and even non-Artonans can perform them. I’m sure someone will offer you one at some point and present it as true ‘instruction.’ Learn those if you like. But pursuing anything more…it would be a cruel thing to do to yourself.”

Despite the sigh, he sounded sincere.

Well, all right then. Alden wanted to ask a lot more questions now, but this wasn’t the time or place. He had a job to do.

“What do I do if the dad freaks out, and I can’t take the kids today?”

“He shouldn’t,” said Joe. “I was in touch with Thenn this morning, and she says she’s had a thorough talk with him. They’re growing more concerned about some of the readings they’re getting on the detectors at the lab, so you look like a better option than you did a few nights ago, I imagine.”

Alden nodded.

A second later the familiar berry picking quest assignment popped up on his interface, but this time it looked a little different.

[QUEST OFFER: Assist Superior Professor Worli Ro-den.

Teleport to Elepta Agricultural Community, Moon Thegund, and collect marleck berries.]

[Accept/Refuse]

“I got a refusal!”

Joe tilted his head. “You were bound to sooner rather than later, you know. You’ve been very busy lately. It’s not quite as clear-cut when your posting is spread across several days and events and includes sub-assignments. But my evening quests count as individuals, and the university assigning you to multiple posts is taken into consideration. You also responded to a medical emergency. The System keeps track of it all and balances things out.”

“Can I just refuse to come to the lab tomorrow morning?” Alden asked.

“I’m hurt.”

“I’m not going to do it. I was just curious about how it worked.”

“I’m sure the System will tell you if you fiddle around with it. But your original quest with the university is still in progress. There are a couple of different ways for them to have issued the assignment, but it probably officially started the moment the orientation meeting finished, and it won’t end until the final exam is complete. Anything lab or medical team related is still on your plate for the next couple of days. If they decide to throw another party, you can refuse to participate in that.”

“Sweet.” Not that he would waste a refusal on something petty like that. But just having the option made him feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

He accepted Joe’s quest, and the teleport timer popped up.

“Would you pick up that case there for me?” Joe said with a smile, gesturing at his bomb.

“Got it,” Alden grabbed the case by the handle and lifted.

“Wow, it is kind of a strain,” he said, feeling a little alarmed by the sensation as he took a step back into position in the center of the teleportation pattern.

There were only a few seconds left on his timer, so it wasn’t like it would be a problem. But he was still surprised.

“Do you know the System won’t let me send it on its own?” Joe asked in a conversational tone. “You have to have permits and good reasons to teleport hazardous materials to most places.”

That made a ton of sense, Alden realized. Otherwise System teleportation would be the perfect tool for attacking your enemies.

“But when you’re preserving it with your skill, the System seems inclined to ignore the fact that it’s a separate object. Even though it must know better! Isn’t that a neat little loophole?”

“You’re saying I’m the ideal smuggler?”

“You are. Especially for a rough place like Moon Thegund. The contents of my case wouldn’t survive the trip without you even if I did have permission to deliver bombs to Elepta.”

How did I end up in this situation again? Alden wondered, hopping once to keep the preservation active. I’m sure all the steps that led me to this moment made sense individually.

But somehow he was now a person who voluntarily smuggled explosives for a criminal college professor.

An instant later, the teleportation whisked him away, and he was in that place where he could feel nothing much apart from his own authority wrapped around him. He examined it as well as he could in the brief time available to him.

I’m still miles away from understanding.

And then he was stepping out of the teleportation alcove at the farm, hitching his best confident smile onto his face to greet everyone who was anxiously awaiting his arrival.

 

---

 

There were six people left to rescue from Moon Thegund, and they’d all come today.

The woman in coveralls who always drove the armored vehicle and a soft-spoken younger man in a green lab coat that didn’t look all that different from Alden’s were sitting on one of the conveyor belts, popping marleck berries into their mouths while they chatted. Thenn-ar was walking around checking on the big metal bubble wands that would shield the teleportation alcove from whatever it was it needed shielding from in the event of an emergency. Her pink eyes kept flicking over to the table and chairs, where the father was having a last-minute conversation with his children.

It seems all right, Alden thought, watching them out of the corner of his eye while he feigned fascination with a dusty robotic arm that had once packed fruit into boxes. The younger child—the one Alden thought was around six or seven—seemed excited.

The older one less so.

Wouldn’t it be better if I just took all three of them together?

He understood that the father’s primary concern was something terrible happening during the teleportation, which was why nobody had brought anything else for Alden to deliver back to Joe tonight. He wanted Alden to carry just the kids.

But they were so little. It would be as easy to take all three of them as it was to carry two adults. The kids would be happier with their dad coming along, too. And that way, if something disastrous came up and prevented Alden from returning, the family wouldn’t be separated.

He resisted the urge to upset the balance by suggesting it. It’s not like they’re dumb. They’re all scientists. They’re smarter than I am most likely, and they know what the risks of staying are better than I do.

He’d finally gotten something of a handle on his position in the eyes of Joe’s assistants, and it was a strange one to navigate. They were all aware that he was inexperienced, but for most of them, his words carried weight despite that. Particularly when it came to teleportation.

It wasn’t reasonable since Alden did not understand teleportation at all. He just stood there and let it happen to him like every other human he’d ever met. He was hesitant to nudge them toward his own preferences because with the possible exception of Thenn-ar, who had a better read on him, they would all take him very seriously and have a debate about what he’d said.

Uh-oh. The older one was shaking his or her head now, lower lip stuck out mutinously.

Alden stuck his hands in his pockets, wondering if pulling out the gifts he’d brought would help or hurt the cause. He’d thought it was obvious to take the whistle, the putty, and the toy Ryeh-b’t from his capsule shelf this morning. They were for kids, and he was going to pick up kids.

But now that he was here, the situation felt a little too serious, and he didn’t want to be the kind of person who waved a bauble under a child’s nose like it would distract them from a difficult emotion. I always hated it so much when people did that to me.

It was okay if the family convo took a while. There was no rush. Alden had nearly three hours before his curfew back on Artona III, and the only thing he had to do here was grab a berry, grab the kids, and step into the alcove.

Still trying to look like he was minding his own business, he prodded one of the tiny, squishy round things on the end of the robotic arm. Instantly, a loud zzzapp sounded. He leaped back, startled, and turned to apologize to the group

“Sorry, I—”

For a split second, Alden had the impression that time had stopped. He took in everything at once, and it stamped itself into his mind, clear and crisp-edged. The driver and the man in the green coat were both frozen with berries halfway to their mouths. The father’s hand was resting on the older child’s, and he was smiling comfortingly. The little one was kicking their feet against the chair legs. Thenn-ar was bent double beside one of the shielding devices, and all four of them were glowing and crackling with throbbing pulses of white light.

Something happened, thought Alden.

He wasn’t afraid yet.

Then Thenn-ar looked up, her face twisted in pain, and her pale pink eyes met his. She screamed something at him that could only have been an order, and before the local System had even translated it, Alden was moving.

<<Get the girls!! GO!>>

Alden was at the table. The father was reaching for the older child. Girl. Alden grabbed the little one and lifted her. She squealed in surprise and elbowed him, and he realized his mistake. No entrustment.

But no…it wasn’t a mistake. He had to take them both. So get them to the alcove. The big one holds the little one. Target her. Get permission. Get back.

Oh right. Berry.

Suddenly, it seemed like an overwhelming number of steps.

But everyone was moving in the right direction.

The man in the lab coat was running toward Thenn-ar.

The woman in coveralls was racing toward Alden with a handful of berries.

Alden was holding the little girl and running for the alcove, only half aware of the fact that she was kicking him and screaming like he was a kidnapper.

Where’s the other girl?

He looked back and saw her staring at him wide-eyed from her father’s arms. He was only a couple of steps behind.

Something’s wrong. I don’t know what’s wrong.

Thenn-ar was hurt. The shield was on. Is it safe to run through it?

It wasn’t like there was a wall between him and the alcove. The tall bubble wand looking things were glowing but between them it looked like nothing but empty space. He stopped for a heartbeat at the edge of where an invisible barrier would be, and the father and the older daughter blazed past him.

It’s safe.

Alden was in front of the teleportation alcove. The father was ripping the little girl out of his arms and thrusting her toward her sister. The woman in coveralls slammed a handful of crushed berries into Alden’s palm. Everyone was yelling so fast that the translations were lagging and skipping.

<<Did it get—?>>

<<What?!>>

<<Didn’t see—!>>

<<—the cursing swarm!>>

<<Yaghar tethpet fki ^&!>>

That wasn’t Artonan.

The man had spoken Artonan, but the translation wasn’t in Artonan or English. And translations weren’t supposed to skip or lag.

“Something’s wrong,” Alden said. “Something’s wrong with the System.”

He didn’t understand what was happening.

You just zero in on your part of the job, and you let everything else go.

Hannah had told him that once, when he asked her if she ever got scared during a mission.

Zero in. I have to zero in.

He shoved the crushed berries into his pocket. He targeted the older girl. Her sister was in her arms now. Her father was speaking, but the words were getting translation garbled into something completely unrecognizable.

“Come here,” Alden said, bending down to smile at the older girl and holding out his arms. “We’ll be safe.”

Oh thank goodness. The Artonan words had just popped out of his mouth without him having to dredge them up from the depths for a change.

She stared at him, unblinking, for a heart-stopping second. Her little sister had a death grip on her, and she was leaning back in an effort to hold onto her. Then she stumbled a couple of steps forward into his grasp, and he lifted the two of them. They froze, and he threw himself into the alcove, heart pounding.

The notification that his quest was completed finally popped up.

At least, he knew that was what it must be. He couldn’t read the garbled text. It wasn’t even letters anymore. The symbols in front of his eyes weren’t from any language he knew, and they had gone three-dimensional and buzzy, like vibrating alien braille.

But it has to be the quest notification. It always happened as soon as he got the berries. All he had to do was accept the teleport back to campus.

The author’s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Accept!” he shouted, arms tight on his cargo. “Yes!”

There was another loud zzzapp, and this time Alden saw what made the noise. The shielding devices flared, and for an instant, the barrier Alden had expected to see appeared. A dome of white light surrounded the teleportation alcove, sealing it and a small space in front of it in. Joe’s assistants were all standing in that space. He couldn’t see much beyond them. Just their backs and the harsh flare of light.

It was gone almost as soon as it had appeared.

Alden still didn’t know what had caused the barrier to activate. He couldn’t see any threat. And Thenn-ar’s injuries offered no clues. It looked like her arms and chest had been burned. It seemed like something the barrier itself might have done instead of some attacker.

Zero in. Focus on what I’m supposed to be doing.

He hopped once to keep his skill active. The symbols were still in front of his eyes. They weren’t changing.

Oh no. This is bad.

The Moon Thegund System hadn’t heard him. Or it hadn’t understood him.

“Yes,” Alden said in Artonan. “Yes. Go.”

Nothing was happening.

“Contract,” he said. It was one of the first Artonan words he’d ever learned. “Contract, yes.”

He hopped. He shifted his grip on the girls. They were small children and they were Artonans, but they had to weigh at least sixty pounds combined. Holding them in one arm wasn’t something he wanted to try, but he needed a hand free. If the System wasn’t responding to verbal confirmation, maybe poking at it would work. The symbols it was showing did look like they might be designed to be tactile.

But I don’t know what they say.