While it may be all piracy and mayhem out in the black, it is mystery and murder that lurks the brothels and back alleys of Brimstone. The search to figure out what was in somebody’s head can take you to some pretty bizarre places. Even by Brimstone’s standards, few places in the ‘verse promise to fulfill more bizarre needs than Roxy’s.

EDWARD ISN’T HERE

Roxy’s

Brimstone

——————————————————————

“I need to see him.”

Roxy didn’t flinch when I leaned in close to whisper in her ear. Her eyes, like those of the pudgy Quartermaster seated across the table, were fixed on the manifests spread between them. Her response was so hushed it might have been telepathy. “Not a good time, Doc.”

I was in a hurry and pushed closer to repeat myself with emphasis, my cheek brushing faintly against the jet-black cascade of hair.

That was pushing my luck; I knew it and everybody else knew it. Nobody crowded Roxy, shoved themselves into her space when she was conducting business. Had I done so with a hand instead of a cheek I’d probably be short a few fingers already. Nug and Thorvald detatched from opposite walls, two thick slabs of meat who took just a step before she froze them with a glance, a near-imperceptible shake of the head.

“I’m sorry Rox,” my apology was sincere. It wasn’t that she really gave a shit, but in a city of predators and thieves, control was a matter of perception. If she intended to survive in this hellhole, there had to be no question who was boss under her roof. She and I had a very real friendship, one that traced back long before she became Roxanne Devereaux. Long enough for me to know I’d just cashed in a little credit on that account.

Roxy took a pronounced pause, then adjusted a price on one of the manifests. She pushed it across the table with a firm “Final offer.” The Quartermaster, business front for some doubtlessly scurvvy ship, tried to keep up his game face, but wasn’t kidding anybody. Pawing stubby fingers down a forked scar on his cheek he nodded, then pressed his thumb to the tablet. The deal was done.

Only then did Roxy turn to face me, her demeanor softening just a bit despite the raised eyebrow that told me I’d hear about it later. But she glanced towards the stairs and said “Second floor, near the back; you’ll hear it.” Then she added, “I’d knock first.”

I nodded, a bit dramatically, the public gesture of deference noted by everyone around the room. Turning away, I imagined the faint smile that tugged at her lips. Roxy did love being queen.

There was a whole lot of noise at the top of the staircase, the kind of sounds that have filled bordello hallways for years. Bedframes bouncing on floors, faked moans, the slap of wet skin.

Halfway down the hall I stepped over Benny, one of a hundred burnout tweakers that crawled the gutters of Brimstone looking for their next hit. I’d jump-started his heart at least once, though truth be told I don’t know why. Based on the glaze over his bloodshot eyes, the little shit had doubtlessly committed whatever deplorable acts were needed to pay for his demons one more time. That mental image would leave scars.

I reached the end of the hall; the sounds behind door number six were, in fact, different. The crunch of footsteps across broken glass. Tearing fabric. A whimper, the kind no actress pulls off in the heat of feigned passion. I thumped my fist on the door. “Edward, I need to talk to you.”

The sounds behind the door ceased, then I heard the groan of floorboards draw closer. The door cracked open and a single eye glared at me through the gap. The pit-bull voice growled “Edward isn’t here.”

I held the eye’s stare with my own. “Then get him. This is important.”

The eye took me in for a long moment, a bloodshot, storm-grey orb that ticked up and down as if sizing me up; for a fight perhaps, maybe for dinner. Then the door slammed shut and the commotion renewed, barked words and the rustle of cloth.

The door burst open and Sasha scurried out, half-wrapped in a bedsheet and nothing else. She was thirty that I knew of, probably older, but the senesence inhibitors had stunted her development somewhere around twelve or thirteen. Another case of industrial science adapting to meet a market demand no matter how sordid, a seemingly odd necessity that was driven by Roxy’s ‘no kids’ rule. You could pursue debauchery in infinite variety under her roof, but lay a hand on a kid, a real kid, and Roxy would have you put out an airlock.

Sasha rounded the door and scampered off down the hall, a glaring red handprint fanned across the curve of her bare ass. I turned back into the room where a buck-naked Edward stood at the dresser, cigarette clenched between his teeth as he fumbled with a near-empty bottle of scotch.

“This had better be fuckin’ good.” he growled, spitting the cig to the floor to throw back a slug of liquid amber.

I crossed the room towards the only chair, stepping over a crumpled white knee-high sock. Handcuffs dangled from the arm of the chair, much like the ones that hung from the headboard. I plucked what looked like a pleated belt of plaid fabric off the seat cushion, realized it was a skirt, and tossed it aside before settling in.

“How’s your Ancient Philology?” I asked.

Edward turned. Despite the lingering scowl I knew it was Edward now, the color of his eyes had softened back to a more conventional blue. He pointed at the bed. “You interrupted THAT for some sort of language lesson?”

“Hey, you’re the fucking priest.”

Edward bristled at the word, flipping me the bird along with the glare he served up when he knew I was trying to get his goat.

‘Priest’ was a misnomer, something that got fucked-up in translation between the Xi’An and English. For us a priest was, well, a priest. Some holy guy who had god on speed-dial. Didn’t matter what faith, if a group had a belief, you could be sure someone had carved an exclusive on correspondence with the Top Dog. When they weren’t fondling altar boys or dipping into the till, humans priests were ostensibly keepers of traditions, interpreters of the signs, shit like that.

The Xi’An saw things a little different. Stories weren’t passed down from one generation to the next through oral tellings, writings or holovids. The Xi’An kept history alive by downloading the memories of an old priest into the brain of a new one. It didn’t over-write the recipient, just added a Search Engine full of data that became part of their combined consciousness. With each generation, the download got larger, the lives of each priest blending into the whole.

Ed, more formally Edward VII, had stuff from six prior Eds running around in his brain. The first two were Xi’An, followed by four humans. Thats a hell of a lot of knowledge, insight and firsthand experience sloshing together in one brainpan.

What they don’t tell most folks is that when you mix memory pools, you can’t exactly distill factual knowledge from the rest of life. So along with six Eds worth of study and learning, he inherited slices of obsession, addiction, of kinks and fetishes, angers and fears. The shit we all have but nobody admits.

Priests train for it, they are taught how to vent steam to maintain equillibrium and such. The Xi’An brains seem much better suited to sorting shit into its proper stacks. They started the whole cultural exchange thing centuries ago, to promote better understanding across the races. That notion came off the rails pretty early. The second Banu priest went apeshit on a scale that would make Hannibal Lecter queasy. Banu don’t participate in the program any more.

Ed flopped down on the bed, grimacing as he fished one of Sasha’s props — a tan teddy bear with a pink bow-tie — out from under his ass. He used it to scratch his balls, then tossed it aside and looked at me while lighting another smoke.

I’d seen Ed do far worse, but I still shook my head. “I gotta tell you Ed; collectively you are one sick motherfucker.”

Ed blinked for a moment, then glanced at the smudged bear and gave a dour laugh. He tapped a finger against the side of his skull. “You got a problem with how things run in here, take it up with former management.” Then he leaned forward, resting elbows on his knees. “So, what do you know, or think you know?”

I toggled on my MobiGlas and tried to pronounce the cypher as best I could. What came out sounded like a strained “ermahgerd…”

Ed winced, waving me to silence as if in pain. “Lemme see it.”

I pulled out my wallet and flipped it onto the near end of the bed. The ID projector tossed an image of me into the air, along with my vital stats. Most if it was bullshit, but an ID was something you needed if you planned to travel outside of Leir space. I pushed a neural command and the Mobistream data fed out to the projector. A series of glyphs assembled in the air.

Ed’s eyes narrowed and he took another long drag on the cig. “Where’d you find this?”

“Came out of somebody’s head,” I replied, the statement not entirely untrue.

Ed raised one eyebrow at me. “I don’t suppose I could talk to this guy…”

“Yeah,” I stammered, thinking about the severed noggin. “That’s not gonna work.”

Ed nodded, chewing on the smoke. “Figured as much.” He paced around the cloud of symbols. “This all of it?”

“No, just the tip of the iceberg. Most of it is machine language, engineering diagrams, bluerints. We just can’t figure out what for.” I pointed at the shimmering codex. “This was at the top.”

Hm, Ed paced, oblivious to the bits of broken glass under his bare feet. “Looks Futhark.”

“If you mean FUBAR, I’m in agreement.”

Ed’s gaze broke from the image, centering on me for a moment before he scowled and shook his head with an unspoken “idiot…” Then he took a breath and pointed at the top row of figures.

“Futhark. Old norse alphabet, tracks back centuries. I’ll spare you all the Unification Theory bullshit but there are similarities between written languages, even theologies, that cross racial barriers between humans. Christ was cruficied on a wooden cross, Odin was hung on a tree. Completely different religious systems that shared odd similarities.“

I nodded blankly.

“So zoom forward a few centuries and spread that net a hundred million light years. The old Xi’An kanaform script shares about fifty percent of its primary glyph structure with, guess what? Futhark runes. You got fourth century Vikings and sci-fi space lizards using the same damn alphabet. Sure, stylized as hell, but tied together. Writing leads to words, words lead to ideas. You go back far enough and you find very similar stories in cultures separated by galaxies.”

“So what’s it say?”

Ed rubbed the scruff on his chin. “It’s sort of amalgam…”

“Best guess Ed.”

He looked at me, clarity in his eyes now. Seven Eds worth of brain were cranking in high gear. He reached up, fingers tracing a loop around a central grouping of symbols.

“Mòrì, at least it’s pretty close. That’s a big event in Xi’An mythology.” Then he widened the loop. “You add back these two symbols on the left and one on the right and you have the same basic thing in futhark runes, only the vikings called it Ragnarok. “

Ed scratched his head, voice somber. “ Götterdämmerung, Armageddon, Shiva, hell Frodo versus Sauron; every race on every world has some sort of eschatology, some view of how it ends.”

“How what ends?”

Ed gave me a cold stare. “Everything.”

###