Ten Sigmas & Other Unlikelihoods (29 page)

SNAIL STONES

W
ho’s that wagger?” Edeo asked. He was so distracted by the cloaked figure he missed the ball Haron had bounced off the wall of the abandoned building, and it rolled across the sewer grate, bumbling like a pachinko ball before disappearing into the foulness below.

“That’s great, Edeo! That was our only ball.”

But Edeo’s attention was on the gray-coated man who couldn’t have looked more conspicuous, head darting left and right, arms clutching a bundle of sack cloth.

Haron scooted on his belly by the grate, finger brushing slimy water, trying to find the ball.

“Who cares who he is?” Haron said. “Unless he has some more balls.”

Edeo, oblivious to Haron’s effort to extract the ball, edged between the two warehouses to get a better look at the figure. He climbed a pile of rubble.

“It’s Fruge, the jeweler,” he said. “My new dad bought my mom a ring from him. Then he hocked it for ringseed ale.”

“It’s Fruge, so what?” Haron said, certain that Edeo should be the one fishing for the ball. His fingers touched something furry. He pulled his hand out with a squeal.

Fruge, some hundred meters away, turned, searching the broken buildings for the sound. Edeo dropped down among the rubble pieces. “Shush, now. He’ll see us, you breather.”

“So? He ain’t the muni?”

Haron, angry that he had screamed like a little kid, stuck his hand back in, now searching for the rodent and the ball. Either would be fun to play with.

Fruge stared at the derelict buildings. He was clearly doing something nefarious, Edeo thought. He fumbled in his pocket with one hand while the other clutched the cloth to his chest.

“Holy Captain. He’s got a gun.”

Haron turned his head, hand still in the grate. “A gun?”

“He’s coming this way.”

Something brushed Haron’s hand and he squeezed. “Hey, I got the ball!” He tried to pull his hand out, but his fist was too thick to fit between the bars of the grate. Something chittered in the darkness.

Haron watched Fruge advance on them. He was still a long way off, and he had no doubt that they could outrun the pudgy man in the ruins near the spaceport. He and Edeo were small and knew a lot of good hiding places they shouldn’t have, given that their moms had forbidden them to come to the old abandoned firstfall zone.

Edeo was mesmerized by Fruge’s gun. He’d never seen one; they were illegal. Why was Fruge carrying one? It was obvious after a moment; Fruge was a jeweler. He had to carry a gun for protection.

Haron, having banged his fist against the bars a dozen times, was convinced he couldn’t bring the ball through the grate while holding it. He peered down into the sewer. Stupid ball. Edeo had picked the biggest one on the ball tree, of course.

“Who’s there?” Fruge cried. “I have a gun.” He waved it. “Don’t come near me.”

“What’s he squawking on about?” Haron asked.

“He’s afraid,” Edeo replied. “We’d better go. He might mistake us for robbers.”

“Not without my ball.”

“We’ll get another one.”

“Not until tonight!” The ball tree was in Mr. Hebway’s garden. Any balls that fell, he burned in his incinerator instead of giving them to the kids. No way he’d let them have one, even if they asked. They’d have to climb the fence and tree in the dark.

“Come on,” Edeo said. He scrambled down the rubble pile.

“No way!”

Haron reached in with his other hand, cupping the ball. He let go and then pushed it through the grate. “I got it.”

Edeo peered around the rubble. Fruge was running at them.

“Come on!”

The sound of thunder erupted above, and radiant heat basked them in warmth. The cargo ship sprayed orange flame as it drove into the sky. The boys paused, watching the rocket climb. They’d come to watch it anyway, but then been distracted.

“Wow,” Edeo said, forgetting Fruge for the moment. It was off to Highpoint, where the bigger spline ships docked. Edeo couldn’t imagine that the spline ships were hundreds of times bigger than the simple rockets that launched from the spaceport.

When the rocket had finally become just a blur of red, they remembered Fruge. But when they turned, he was gone, perhaps scared by the sound of the rocket.

“What’s that?” Edeo asked. Where Fruge had been standing, something twinkled in the sunlight.

Haron and Edeo ran for it, Haron edging Edeo out by a hair. He scooped the glittering thing up, then dropped it as if it were a snake.

Edeo skidded to a stop, his hand frozen. The shape and size made it obvious, but he’d never seen one so big. The boys looked at each other. Then Edeo reached down to pick it up.

“Snail stone.”

*

Haron was at Edeo’s door five minutes after dinner.

“You got it?” he whispered.

Edeo’s mom was busy on the vid with her friends, all six faces on the screen showing a similar head covered with a checked cloth. His step-father was collapsed on the couch sipping a ringseed. That left just his older brother Gremon to arch a brow and say, “Got what?”

“Nothing,” Edeo and Haron said in unison.

“I bet,” Gremon said, standing up from the table to block Edeo’s way out of the kitchen. Edeo had the snail stone in his back pocket, and he knew Gremon well enough to know he’d search him until he found the artifact in question.

He sighed, as if in resignation, then tipped Gremon’s plate of food out of his hand. While Gremon juggled the plate, Edeo slid under the table. Edeo and Haron were almost to the stairwell firedoor when gravity finally won the battle and Gremon’s plate clattered to the floor, breaking in pieces.

They shared a quick grin, though Edeo knew he’d pay later. It was worth it.

“You got it?” Haron asked again.

“Yeah,” Edeo said.

Instead of heading out into the courtyard, they kept going down, sliding between boxes in the space under the last flight of stairs. Haron switched on his flashlight as Edeo pulled out the snail stone.

It felt like a rock in Edeo’s hand, cold and heavy, but it didn’t look like a rock. It shimmered with orange light, cutting the flashlight’s beam into prisms. Edeo turned his hand, and the prisms danced on the wall.

“You sleep with it under your bed and your willy gets longer,” Haron said.

“Does not!” Edeo replied, though truth be told, he wasn’t sure. People said the snail stones did all sorts of things, that they powered rockets, caused cold fusion, cured colds. Why else did the government decide they owned them all?

“How much you think it’s worth?”

“We can’t ask Fruge, that’s for sure,” Edeo said.

“Lotta jewelers,” Haron said.

Footsteps on the stair, and Haron snapped off the flashlight. The steps stopped, as if the soft click had been enough to alert the stepper.

With extra-fraternal senses, Edeo knew it was Gremon. He held his breath, willed Haron to do the same. Haron sensed his friend’s fear and remained silent, waiting.

Finally, the steps continued and the courtyard door swung open and closed.

They waited. It wasn’t above Gremon to fool them from their hiding places with a fake door opening. Then a chatting couple came in, and that was enough for the two. They slipped up the steps and, with an eye for Gremon, headed for the Guild district.

Most of the shops were closed, the gemologists and dealers off to their homes. Fruge’s shop was closed tight. None of the shops displayed any snail stones in their barred windows.

“Tomorrow?” Edeo asked. He was thinking he’d slip the stone under his mattress for safe keeping.

“Nah,” Haron said. “Here.”

The place was a pawn shop. A few rings lined the front display windows. A neon sign flickered, revealed that the shop was open twenty-two hours.

They pushed through the revolving door into the cluttered shop. Junk lined the walls; space suits hung next to stringless violins. Two rows of trikes sat covered in dust, one of them a Keebler Three-X.

“We’ll be able to buy two of those with this,” Haron whispered.

“You think?”

“I ain’t buying anymore trikes!”

A head had popped up through a glass partition at the back of the store.

“We don’t got no trikes,” Haron said.

“Well, you don’t look like you can buy one, either of you. What you want?”

Edeo nudged Haron forward in front of him. They stepped to within two meters of the pawnbroker. He was old enough to be second generation. Wispy white hair medusaed around his head.

“Snail stones,” Haron said. “How much one of those go for?”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “You trying to trick old Kort? You working with the munis, seeing if I’m on the up and up?” His voice rose as if he were addressing someone beyond the room, listening in. “I don’t traffic in restricted items, no sir.”

Haron was annoyed. “Yeah, but how much would it be worth if you did?”

The pawnbroker peered down at Haron. His eyes had a devious look to them, as if he’d just made a decision to do a bad thing for his own good. “What you find in your granddame’s attic? Something that should have been turned in years ago? Something forgotten?”

Edeo backed away, hand deep in his pocket, cupping the snail stone.

“We didn’t find nothing!” Haron said, standing fast.

The booth the pawnbroker sat in flew up to the ceiling with a whoosh, leaving the old man standing in front of Haron. He reached out with a fist and took hold of Haron’s shirt, dragging him forward with one hand while the other dug into Haron’s pants pocket.

“What you got there, pinter? What’d you find?”

Edeo ran, abandoning Haron for the gem’s safety. But when he slammed into the revolving door, it held fast.

“Maybe
you’ve
got the stone,” the man cried.

“We don’t have nothing,” Edeo screamed. “It was all Gremon’s idea. He sent us in to ask!”

The old man’s strength seemed to flag, and Haron’s feet touched the ground. He pulled away and huddled with Edeo in the pie-shaped slot of the revolving door.

“A trick? You playing a trick on old Kort?”

The old man spat at them, then kicked a lever with his feet. The reluctant door whipped them around and spat them onto the street. They ran, then, ducking between two women window shopping in the dusk.

Edeo ran only as far as the first turn, then he sagged against a solar shield booth, rusted and left over from before the atmosphere was thick enough. The thing was covered in graffiti, but the seats were relatively clean, so they sat there under the lead shielding and took deep breaths.

“They’re on the munis restricted lists,” Haron finally said.

“Yeah.”

“We staying out?” Haron asked after awhile.

“Ain’t going home,” Edeo replied. Gremon was sure to beat the crap out of him when he got there, unless he planned it right.

They sat there until the sun was long gone.

“Look there,” Haron said. “Fruge.”

Indeed the jeweler had stepped out of his dark shop and was glancing left and right as he locked his door.

“Looking mighty suspish, ain’t he?” Edeo said.

“Mighty.”

Without a word, they left the confines of the solar shield, ambling with precise nonchalance in the same direction as Fruge, but on the other side of the street.

“He’s going back to the spaceport,” Edeo said, when he took a sudden turn.

“Sell his jewels off planet. Only place he can, I bet, if they’re on the restricted lists,” Haron said.

Edeo glanced at his friend. Sometimes he made a lot of sense.

Fruge kept throwing glances over his shoulder, and finally Edeo pulled Haron aside into a dark side street, certain Fruge’d see the duo soon.

“We know where he’s going,” Edeo said. “Come on.” They ran through the side streets for the spaceport, trying to reach the corner where they had seen Fruge earlier in the day.

Panting, they found a crumbled doorway that gave them a view of two streets.

“There he is,” Haron said.

In the dark, he was little more than a bumbling shadow, but clearly it was him, edging down the street, looking over his shoulder.

“Probably has his gun,” Edeo said.

Fruge stopped before he reached the intersection, slipping into a doorway. They heard the jiggle of keys, then the scrape of a door opening.

“I thought all these warehouses were abandoned,” Edeo said. When the new spaceport terminal went in on the far side of the landing fields, there’d been no need to keep up these old buildings. Old Firstfall had crumbled into decay.

“Not,” said Haron.

Light flickered from within the building, barely visible through blinded windows in the basement. Edeo and Haron shared a quick grin in the darkness and slipped from their hiding place.

Fruge had gone to some trouble to cover the windows, using tape to wedge a curtain across all of the glass. But at some point, the tape had dried up, and a corner of the curtain had drooped to reveal the inside of the building.

Haron was there first, kneeling and pushing his eye into the space. Edeo danced around him, tried the other two windows to no avail.

“Watcha see?”

“Shhh,” Haron said, not because he was afraid Fruge would hear them but rather because he had nothing to report. All he saw was an empty, cement-block-lined basement.

Then Fruge appeared, coming down steps on the far side of the basement. He carried a bag. He laid it on the ground and drew from it a crowbar. Then he pulled open a door and thrust the crowbar into the small dark space beyond. He wiggled it, urging something forth. He reached in and grabbed a rope and pulled.

Something moved forward in a huddle, sliding across the floor. When Haron saw what it was, he jumped back, which was enough for Edeo to take his place at the window.

Edeo gasped. He turned to his friend and said, “He has a snail.”

It was just stuff everybody knew, stuff from school, stuff from parents, stuff from older brothers. The colony ship arrived with eminent domain. There was no way the ship was going back! That would have been outrageous.

And the snails weren’t even that intelligent. No tools, no language, no cities. Not really molluscs, but they looked enough like their namesake, if two meters tall instead of two millimeters. How can a snail be sentient?