Thresholder

Perry spent about eighteen hours straight helping with the aftermath of the attack. He was drawing attention to himself, he knew that, but at least he was doing it for a good reason. He had impeccable senses and plenty of brute strength, more than the strongest orcs, and if he flared his energy, he could move rubble that there was no other easy way to move. By the time six hours had passed, heavy equipment was being moved to the sites, huge lanterns that had to be pulled in by wagons, along with people who had special masks for the occasion, but Perry was still putting more into the effort than entire groups of people were. He was getting to know people as he worked, and they were getting to know him. He knew that he’d gone too far when someone came up to him pleading that he move to a different impact site where he could be of more use.

No one stopped him though, and there weren’t any questions, only some direction, and relatively little of that. Their disaster response was pretty atrocious by Perry’s standards, but this was something that they’d never had to deal with before. Whatever plans and strategies they had in place for emergencies, those plans didn’t adapt to the bombing very well.

He worked without pause, even when other people were eating food or resting their muscles. He didn’t think to start counting how many people he’d helped or saved until it was too late for him to have any real sense of it, though there was a chance that Marchand would be able to figure it out from audio data alone. Perry had the earpiece in, and the nanites on him, but he hadn’t used either except to check in with Mette and make sure that she was okay.

Six places in the city had been hit. None of them were strategic targets of any kind, but one of the impact sites had included a golden dome, which had been torn open and caused a surge of effluence before being shut down. Perry was pretty sure that the weapon couldn’t be accurately targeted, because there were some reports of an explosion in the water that might have been from a failure to aim, but that was cold comfort to the people.

When it seemed as though he’d done everything that could be done, Perry slipped away, past the useless metal guards that had mostly just stood around looking imposing and waiting for a conventional attack that was obviously not coming. The rest of the work would be done by doctors, clean up crews, and eventually, construction and repair crews who would need to shore up some of the damaged buildings and pull others down that were too far gone. Some of that was done with lanterns, the material-projection sort that could layer on stone like a much more powerful spray foam.

Mette was sitting on the bed when Perry came back. It was early in the morning, and she didn’t look like she’d slept. Her eyes were bleary and her hair was out of place, and she had a nugget of nanites that she was rolling around in her hands.

“Was any of that you?” she asked as soon as he came in.

“No,” said Perry. “And it’s not clear to me whether it’s a thresholder thing. The nature of the weapon is unknown right now, but I think it’s well within their level of understanding, especially if they’ve been artificially limiting their level of technology. Probably magitech. I’ve heard a lot of chatter, and so far, all anyone really knows is that Thirlwell was responsible.”

“Are you okay?” asked Mette. She was looking him over, and Perry knew that there wasn’t a trace of dust on him, not a single scratch or sign of the considerable effort he’d put in.

“Never better,” said Perry. Because of the second sphere, that was literally true — everything that he’d done made him just a tiny bit stronger. “My reserves are slightly depleted, but I wasn’t found out.” It took him a moment to realize that he should ask too. “How are you doing?”

“Not great,” said Mette. Her hands were folded in her lap. “I was worried about you, worried that bombs would come down, didn’t really know what to do, listened in on some conversations with March … the Natrix had a hard metal shell, it had weapons. I never realized how comforting that was. I could easily have died, Perry.”

Perry considered that. “You were in danger on the Natrix. There was almost constant danger, you were a single major mechanical failure away from death on most days as the city marched along. Heat on your tail, bugs coming in … but I can understand how this would be more difficult for you, more frightening, considering that there were so many unknowns. Is there anything you need from me?”

“No,” said Mette. “Maybe just … some compassion. Some care.”

Perry nodded. “I’m sorry, I thought you would be fine here on your own, after I checked in.”

“I was,” said Mette. “We’re just so alone. Even if we can fit in, we’re not really fitting in, we’re putting on masks and hiding our faces beneath them. I don’t think I want to do that for the rest of my life.”

“I announced myself to your people,” said Perry. “That’s workable. I just don’t think it’s a good idea until you know the lay of the land.”

“We found you,” said Mette. “Brigitta captured you.”

“I could have killed her,” said Perry. “If I had really thought that laying low was the way to go, and worth killing someone whose only crime was shooting at an unknown, I could have destroyed her mech with nothing but my sword and skills … and my multimillion-dollar piece of advanced military hardware.”

Some of the tension went out of Mette, and she gave him a little laugh. “I do want to meet the baby thresholder. Soon, if we’re leaving for Berus. Are we still?”

“Yes,” said Perry. “Maybe now more than ever. Letting this all shake out without our input or involvement … I guess maybe a portal could open up if the enemy thresholder dies of their own stupidity, but I don’t think I’ve heard of that happening.”

Mette swallowed. “And are we safe from those weapons, crossing the ocean?”

“I have no idea,” said Perry. “We’re going by blimp, by the way, mostly because it’s faster to go east that way, following the currents.”

“Up in the sky,” said Mette, shaking her head. A giant crawling city was apparently less awe-inspiring than a relatively simple blimp. “There’s still so much to learn here.”

“We’ll have time to learn it,” said Perry. “Better to get in on the ground floor elsewhere.” He shifted from foot to foot. “I’m sorry if I haven’t been taking care of you.”

“Not your responsibility.” said Mette, but she didn’t seem to dispute that he’d been somewhat distant. “There’s a whole world to explore out there, I just wish that we had been doing more of it together.”

“I would suggest that we go see a play and have a good dinner together,” said Perry. “But I don’t know how they’re going to react, whether everything is going to be canceled or not. I think once we’re in Berus, we might not have the same opportunities to kick back.” He thought about 9/11, and how long it had taken Broadway to open back up after that. He didn’t know, and couldn’t look it up, but he had to imagine that it had been at least a month.

“I’d like that,” said Mette. “But the shows are mostly based on wait times or lottery. It was one of the things that I checked. They’re big on the performing arts, but we’d be left with one of the smaller ones, if that was what we wanted to go with.”

“We’ll figure something out,” said Perry.

On impulse, he moved forward and hugged her. He was feeling awkward about it, about her, but she melted into him as though she’d been wanting the physical connection and just hadn’t wanted to ask for it. She rested her head against his chest and they stood there for a long time. Perry had resolved not to move until she did, but it was long enough that he was starting to feel uncomfortable. He was used to being alone, even after two years on Esperide, and had fallen right back into his old habits without really thinking about having a companion.

Eventually Mette released him. Her eyes were wet, but she hadn’t cried. He’d been hoping that she would be content or satisfied, but she mostly seemed sad. Maybe coming to another world wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

“Tell you what,” said Perry. “I think it’s time you meet Nima.”

~~~~

They came to Nima’s apartment building and Perry knocked on the door. Nima had told him where she lived, though he hadn’t actually needed her to tell him, since he’d scoped her out on the first day he’d met her.

“Hey,” he said when she opened the door. She was in a loose wrap, wearing no top, just the necklace, and seeming unconcerned about it. Perry kept his eyes up. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Was this … I mean, the explosions, was that … ?”

“No,” said Perry. “I don’t think so.”

Nima peered behind Perry, at Mette. “Is this … your friend?”

“It is,” said Perry. “Nima, this is Mette, Mette, this is Nima. We’ll all be going on a trip together, but I’m hoping that we can get to know each other first. We were going to go see a play, did you want to come with us?”

They were, surprisingly, able to get into a play at one of the major playhouses. The plays were still going, and when it started, the lead actor had come out to give a special address to the audience about the bombings and the acts of aggression, and the importance of continuing on in times like this, not allowing their spirit to be overwhelmed or defeated. The theater was only half full though, which was why they’d been able to get in so easily, and the mood was somewhat somber.

The place was large, and dated back to before the revolution. Perry wasn’t sure that it was the sort of thing their current society would ever make, given how large and well-made it was. The seating capacity had to be in the low thousands, and it was about as non-local as it got. According to the program he’d been given, it was run by its own symboulion, and it was a part of the scrip economy, but admission was free and even the better balcony seats were given away by lottery rather than to those with scrip.

They’d had their pick of shows to go to, and had decided on one that Mette had heard good things about. It was a ‘musical play’, and almost as soon as it started, Perry realized that this wasn’t the same as a musical, not as he had known them. Over the course of two hours, there were only three big musical numbers, but there was music throughout, and people often spoke as though they were going to break into song and then just … didn’t.

It took until the intermission for Perry to understand what he didn’t particularly like about the play, aside from the lack of music, the cultural references and jokes that were going over his head, and probably a few other things: the play was, for lack of a better term, very ‘woke’.

There were seven races in this world, all with their own quirks, and the more Perry watched, the more he was sure that whoever had written the play and put everything together had done it with an eye toward signaling certain things to the audience and putting up a careful front that conformed to the culture rather than actually trying to say something. Each of the seven races had their own main character, which made the cast cluttered, and there were parts of the dialog that felt too didactic, like the writer was trying to make a point, or like each person was trying to stand in for something greater than them, and not in a good way. There were parts that felt like a ‘very special episode’ where the characters learned about things along with the audience, and Perry kept wondering who in the audience would actually learn anything from this — aside from him, Mette, and the other person he’d invited, Nima.

Mette and Nima were sitting beside each other and talking in whispers throughout the entire performance, which Perry found a little irritating, and probably would have found more irritating if they had many people around them. He could hear them easily, but it was difficult for them to carry on a group conversation, so he mostly focused his attention on the show.

The intermission happened while one of the main characters played the flute, and caught Perry completely by surprise given that it felt like a lead in to some kind of musical number. Instead, the way that they handled intermissions, either in general or for this one musical play, was to have it be diegetic. The actor was still in character, and was acting as he played the flute, a jaunty little traveling song, but everyone rose from their seats almost as soon as he started playing, as though they knew that this was just to signal the passing of time.

“It was an interesting take on elven metamorphoses,” said Mette as she stood and stretched.

“Was it?” asked Perry.

“I thought it was,” she shrugged. “Was it not?”

“There’s a kind of voice that people use when they’re trying to gently explain things to you, and it was soaked with that,” said Perry. “Even if I hadn’t heard that particular line of conversation before, having an elf explain his metamorphosis process to a human like that grates on the nerves.”

“Hrm,” said Nima. “I liked it.”

Perry shrugged. “It might be because it’s an older play, but they’re not cutting close to the bone. There are hot button issues that they’re avoiding, and I can see why they would want to, but … the big thing with the elves right now is that they almost universally prefer a longer metamorphosis period, sometimes as long as a decade. That doesn’t happen naturally, it needs to be induced, and induction has a long and unpleasant history for the elves, since not only was it used by the very wealthy, it was also used against the poor, making their metamorphosis short. So the problem now is that the elves want their inductions, and are trying to position it as a fundamental right like clothing or food, but it’s everyone else who would have to metaphorically foot the bill for that.”

Mette looked somewhat amused. “And you think that should be in this play?”

“I think it’s the sort of stuff that’s interesting,” said Perry. “This was just … ‘human gets extremely basic metamorphosis explanation and is enlightened’. I don’t know who it’s for. If they wanted to have a dialog about metamorphosis, I would appreciate it coming from some other, more interesting angle.”

“Well,” said Mette. She placed her hand on Perry’s knee. “I need to use the bathroom, do you think I still have time?”

“It’s a long intermission,” said Perry. “There’s food in the lobby, which is where most people went.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Nima.

Perry watched them go, then turned back to the stage where the lead actor was still playing the flute. He would be up there the whole time, pretending to be on a journey that was taking place within the narrative. It seemed like a terrible job, playing a flute while people talked in the audience or left to go have their necessities fulfilled, but Perry made some comparison in his mind to lounge singers. That made it seem worse, and he didn’t really know why the role of intermission player wasn’t given to someone else while the lead rested. Maybe it was a prestige thing.

A short man slipped into the seat next to Perry. He was human with a short haircut that didn’t seem to be particularly in style.

“I overheard some of what you said,” he nodded.

“Seems to be a running theme in this city,” said Perry. There was nothing all that special about the man, except that he was a bit short. He had an earring in one ear and a shirt and pants that were clearly library stock. Some people went with embellishments on the things that they owned outright, and mending and remending clothes seemed to be a deliberate part of the culture. “Sorry if anything I said was, ah … offensive.”

“An opinion can’t offend,” said the man, which in Perry’s opinion was a dirty lie. “I did have a question though.”

“Go ahead,” said Perry. He was mentally reviewing the conversation, trying to see whether he’d been too loose with his language, giving himself away. He was pretty sure that most of it could be explained by him being from another country.

“What would you put in its place?” the man asked.

“Uh,” said Perry. “I’m not a writer, I just know this sort of thing when I see it. It feels like being talked down to, like I’m some imbecile that needs a basic cultural lesson rather than someone looking to be entertained and enlightened by what’s on stage.”

“That’s what I’m asking, what would enlighten you?” asked the man.

“It’s a matter of essential conflict,” said Perry. “There is none. It’s a human having some misunderstanding about the elf, and the elf explaining things, and unless they’re going to turn it around in the second act, that’s it. It doesn’t serve a narrative purpose, it serves a cultural purpose, a social purpose. Maybe some people like that, but it’s not what I think art is supposed to be for. Or at least, it’s not the art that I like.”

“Mmm,” said the man. “I can see what you mean. You would want a story where there’s some conflict over the metamorphosis that doesn’t get resolved in simple conversation and explanation.”

“Maybe,” said Perry. “Maybe a romance.”

“Oh, they’d never do a romance,” said the man. “It’s too fraught. There used to be a whole genre of cross-racial romances, but it was premised on the thrill of the forbidden, fish out of water, the exoticism of the other — and a single widely-read essay crystalized a distaste for that sort of thing, at least around these parts. Now they do the romances differently, or not at all. It’s a form of cowardice particular to our time.”

“Mmm,” said Perry. He wasn’t sure that he particularly liked this man, or the conversation. The man had a decade on him, maybe two, and there was something off about him, beyond the way he’d sat down beside a stranger. When Perry thought about it, maybe there was a problem with trying to milk human-elf relationships for drama.

The man held out his hand. “Dirk Gibbons,” he said.

“Peregrin Holzmann,” said Perry, reluctantly shaking the offered hand.

“You’re not from around here,” said Dirk.

“No,” said Perry. “I’m still learning the culture. But with what’s been going on, I’m on a blimp back to Berus in the next few days, so learning the culture will have to be put on hold.”

“Learning the culture is a lifelong struggle,” said Dirk. “That’s why we say ‘that’s the culture’. It’s not a truism, it’s a way of reinforcing, of learning, not just for the people who hear it, but those who say it.” His gaze was intense.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Perry.

Dirk’s cheek twitched slightly. “Can I cut to the chase?”

“I didn’t know there was a chase,” said Perry.

“I’m with the Inter-Cooperative Global Command Authority,” he said. “I’m local though, one of a few of us in the city. We keep an eye out for people coming in from the kingdoms.”

“I see,” said Perry. His first thought was what the fight would be like. There would be men in magical masks, and maybe some lanterns that would burn through his skin or freeze him in place, so his second thought was toward what running away would look like. The power armor had been stuffed into the shelfspace, so that wasn’t a problem, and there was nothing back at the house that they would need to go back for.

“So far as I can tell, you just showed up here one day,” said Dirk.

“And you followed me to the play?” asked Perry. “Intermission is just about over, if you wanted to take this outside.” Perry would have considerably more options outside, including reaching into shelfspace and grabbing his sword to simply fly away.

“I won’t be long,” said Dirk. He held up a hand. “You see, at first we thought that you were a spy from Berus or Thirlwell. We get them from time to time, we let them look around, poke at things, see how it’s done, and sometimes, we try soft approaches to getting them onboard with the culture. We’ve smuggled families out before. If you were from Berus, that would make you a spy without a nation, and if you were from Thirlwell, that would mean that the writing was on the wall. We weren’t too concerned.”

Perry stayed silent. If they thought he was a spy, that wasn’t great, but he didn’t know that it would be any better to be a guy that traveled between worlds. A spy would also probably keep his mouth shut, but if this was a planned out approach, Perry wanted to hear the rest of it.

“Yesterday was one of the worst days for this city in recorded history,” said Dirk. “Not worse than the effluence choking us out, not worse than the tyranny of kings, but that wasn’t the modern city, not the one we built for ourselves.” He cleared his throat. “You helped out.”

Perry gave a slow nod.

“Not just helped out,” said Dirk. “I watched you move a three thousand pound chunk of marble to rescue a boy who’d been trapped beneath it.”

“Just trying to do my part,” said Perry. “That’s the culture.”

“That kid you saved?” asked Dirk. “He was my son.”

“I saved a lot of people,” said Perry. “I don’t remember that one in particular, sorry.”

People were pouring back into the theater, and the actor was doing something with the song, bringing it to some kind of conclusion after what felt like a very long set played to a disinterested audience.

“I don’t think you had anything to do with the attack,” said Dirk. “So far as we know, it was launched from a high-altitude blimp many miles away, and you were in the city, which means that there was a real risk that you would die, assuming that the attacks weren’t directed. You haven’t broken any laws, you saved the lives of maybe a hundred people, so we’re square. But if you’re going back to Berus, or Thirlwell, then there’s still a score that this city needs to be settled.” His eyes were dark, and he wasn’t moving as people came back in.

“You’re trying to flip me,” said Perry.

“I don’t know what you are,” said Dirk. “I would take you in, if I thought that could be done cleanly. Right now, I’d be content with you getting out of the city and going back to wherever you came from. But if there’s a tiny chance that you can show the same compassion you showed today, then what we need, as a culture, is to know what the Last King has brewing, what’s waiting for us, how we can defend against it. He would welcome someone from Berus with open arms.”

“I don’t know anything,” said Perry. “I’d help you if I could.”

“You helped when you saw that people needed help,” said Dirk. “That’s the culture.” He got up and looked down at Perry. “I have an office, Northern Riverside neighborhood, you can ask around for directions if you need them.”

“I’m not under arrest?” asked Perry.

“I’m trusting my gut on this one,” said Dirk. He gave Perry a toothy smile. “You take care, and if you have an attack of conscience, come find me.”

Mette and Nima came back shortly after that. They had been waiting in the aisle for the conversation to be done, and Mette had a worried look on her face.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“My indiscretions were noticed,” said Perry. “Turns out they do have a security service of some kind, though I’ll be damned if I know how it works or where they’re getting their information from.”

“Do we need to leave?” asked Mette. She was worried, gripping her dress slightly, and her eyebrows were drawn together. “Are we … in trouble?”

“We apparently haven’t done anything illegal,” said Perry. “Aside from maybe not declaring ourselves when we crossed the border.”

“We should go,” said Mette.

“We’ll stay, I think,” said Perry. “I want to see what happens with the show.”

“I thought you weren’t enjoying it,” said Mette. Her eyes went to the exit.

“I’m enjoying it in my own way,” said Perry. “I think it reminded me too much of certain things from my own world, things that come into play when you have a huge society that cares a lot about how things appear. But if we go back home, all we’d be doing would be burying our noses in some books and killing time until our blimp leaves.”

“That doesn’t sound terrible,” said Nima. She didn’t seem terribly pleased about potentially having her cover blown, but she was less concerned than Mette was. “I think we should stay, finish out the play, then see where the night takes us.”

The play had already mostly started, with what Nima was saying overlapping the first lines of dialog, and that pretty much made their choice for them. Perry’s heart was no longer in the play though, and he found his mind going back to what Dirk had said, trying to wring some new meaning out of every word. If it was possible to track the comings and goings of people, Perry didn’t think that was common knowledge, and it was entirely possible that they couldn’t, that it was a bluff or maybe a lie. Dirk had seen him during rescue efforts, and could have just clung to him after that. Perry didn’t know how to detect a tail, nor how to shake one, though he thought if he put some effort into it he could probably do it by scent.

The play was pretty plotless, but it had slipped into drama. The first half that had been, if Perry was a judge, mostly a comedy with jokes that didn’t land for him, but the second half had introduced a firm antagonist — a former king, and if Perry was any judge, a capitalist. The king had been given special leeway to keep some of his things during the transition of power, and had been given some compensatory scrip for others, but now he was using that wealth (as much wealth as a person could have in this society) to try to rebuild.

The king was human, and that irked Perry a little bit, because whoever had written the play had been very cautious about how each of the races were portrayed. Humans were, for some reason, an acceptable target, and it hadn’t escaped Perry’s notice that all the moral lessons that the play was clearly trying to push had a human as the person doing the learning more often than not.

He was definitely making the mistake of mapping Earth culture onto these people, but the impression felt unmistakable. The Natrix had been a monoculture, more or less, and the Great Arc had been a strange and alien place, but this world felt different. They had sandwiches. Ironically, it was as close to being on modern Earth as he’d been since he’d left Richter, and that might have been what was making him give this society such a critical eye. If he could have had Earth have a culture like this, that was something he’d have done in a heartbeat, but he still wasn’t sure that they didn’t have some hidden underbelly or fatal flaw.

Certainly this play wasn’t them putting their best foot forward, but then again, it probably hadn’t been written for someone from another world who was missing ninety percent of the context.

The play finished with the evil king having been defeated by the coalition of heroes, their coordination and community values having defeated his doomsday device that he’d hoped would make him money. It wasn’t terrible. There were callbacks, payoffs to setups, and a decent enough speech at the end, but Perry was pretty sure that there was no grand lesson for him to learn from it.

When they were filing out of the theater, he watched the people smiling and talking, and wondered whether this was a kind of comfort food to them. The play presented a simple moralistic story, one where people got along just by having things explained to each other, and evil was defeated in the end by something that was sort of the power of friendship.

They had just been bombed though, with hundreds losing their lives in the process, maybe even more than a thousand. Maybe it was the last gasp of a dying model of governance, but he was pretty sure the Last King wasn’t going to be defeated by anything short of someone bashing his face in with a sword.