Thresholder

Perry decided to wait five days at the most. Given the speed of communication, that wasn’t nearly enough time for a consultation with any kind of Command Authority, but it meant some time for Perry to work on making a mask for himself, for Mette to figure out if she could make something usable, and for Nima to calm down a bit. The ticking clock was Thirlwell, whether they were going to make moves in Berus or whether the mystery assassin was going to go after the Last King, and Perry didn’t want to stay away from the action for too long. Maybe it was because Esperide had lasted for two whole years, leaving him stir crazy and with no sense of progression or purpose, but he wasn’t going to let that happen again.

Making masks was supposed to be slow and difficult, but it interfaced with the second sphere. People talked about finding the ‘catch’, the intersection of perception and intent, and channeling themselves into it. The designs were largely decided by convention, but they were an important convention, because a creator’s idea of the powers ended up influencing the powers themselves. Masks that got used a lot had a reinforcing effect and became easier to make, especially if you put yourself around them as much as possible to have a concrete idea in your mind.

Perry could skip a few steps and literally just see the energy flowing from him into the mask he was making. There was a wealth of knowledge to be learned, and he could feel his academic tether growing thick and happy, especially because the interaction of systems was a new frontier that literally only he had any potential insights into. It seemed to him to not be all that different from translation, one of the core second sphere abilities and the one that he’d used second most often behind repair and healing. Perry could feel the strand of intent that happened in a conversation, and the masks used something similar. Besides that, he had his connection with Marchand, and the mask connection wasn’t so different, even if the medium and method were.

His first mask was as strong as most people’s fifth mask, though it was also possible that his acute perception was powering it up. He had gone for distant manipulation as a starter, which was mediated by fingers and therefore a bit easier, since you had tactile feedback. There were some standard reference tests, and Perry had apparently skipped ahead of where he was supposed to be. He couldn’t imagine actually having to use it in combat, and in any serious combat he would be inside of Marchand and unable to use the masks.

Perry was feeling pretty proud of himself, but when he showed off for Mette in her workshop, there was a troubled look on her face.

“It’s not you, it’s me,” said Mette when he pressed her.

“Too much progress, too fast?” asked Perry. “Interoperability is where it’s at.”

“No, I mean I’m troubled because of what I’ve been doing, not because of what you’ve been doing,” said Mette. She turned to her workspace, where a single lantern was sitting. It was the size of the ones that they’d used on the airship for meals, and when Perry looked closer, he realized that it literally was from the airship.

“Did you steal that?” asked Perry.

“No, Moss said I could have it,” said Mette. “The hijackers had made some changes to it, so it needed to be serviced anyway, and this is one of the models that has effluence collection, which makes it better for monkeying around with.”

“And it’s tough?” asked Perry.

“No,” said Mette. “It’s really really not. I had that waste lantern before this, but I didn’t have the tools to really work with it. I had read the books, but I thought that there must be some sort of catch. Perry, the lanterns are for dumb babies.”

“Dumb … babies?” asked Perry.

“It’s not like a toy you’d give to a baby, it’s like a toy you’d give to a particularly stupid baby you didn’t expect to be able to figure out the more complicated baby toys,” said Mette.

“There’s that maternal instinct shining through,” said Perry.

Mette’s face fell, and for as much as children were raised communally on the Natrix, it was clear that Perry should probably not have mentioned motherhood, even if Mette was the one who’d brought up children.

“Not what I meant,” said Perry. “Sorry.”

“Anyway,” said Mette, turning away from him. “Anyway, they treat this like it’s complicated, and it’s just … not. Some of the math is complicated, and they don’t have computers, but surely they should be able to do some of this with pencil and paper if they can’t do it in their heads?”

Perry looked over and saw that she’d filled a few pages with diagrams and notes.

“Sorry, you’re mad that … it was easy?” he asked.

“There’s a build process,” said Mette. “That’s trivial. Then there’s the theoretical stuff, the build order for materials. That is modified by fuel and lens, but the lens is doing most of the work, at least if you know what you’re doing, and — do you know how they figured out how to make the egg loaf?”

“You know I don’t have a clue,” said Perry.

“They just tried a bunch of things,” said Mette. “Can you believe that?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess, though I wouldn’t want to be the guy who was sampling it,” said Perry. “That’s how a lot of things got discovered or invented on Earth. People just tried a whole bunch of things and studied the properties.” Perry’s go-to was Edison and the lightbulb. The lab had tested 3,000 filaments before finding the right solution, which Perry only knew because of a Trivial Pursuit question he’d gotten wrong.

“Right,” said Mette. “I mean, we had to do that too. But there wasn’t a reason to do that here.”

“Okay,” said Perry. He shrugged. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

Mette pointed to what Perry had identified as ‘lens’ for the lantern. “That one is a special mix of gunpowder.” Her finger moved to the next one. “That one is high grade fuel.” She pointed to another. “That one is untested, but it should be the isotope of uranium for nuclear weapons.” Her finger moved to the next one. “That one is neurotoxin.”

“What the fuck,” said Perry.

“Right?” asked Mette.

“You’re saying that you definitely could make a nuclear weapon with a — a breakfast buffet tool?” asked Perry.

“Well, no,” said Mette. “I mean, I would need a pretty significant amount of fuel, and a lot of metal, and machines to handle the metal, and then I would also need Marchand’s help with some of the math if I wanted to make sure that I was getting the most explosive power for the cost. But yes, in theory I could make another nuclear weapon for you, if you gave me the resources and a month of time. I wouldn’t actually want you to use one on a planet like this, but Perry, the point I’m making is that they’re criminally underutilizing the lanterns.”

“Should you be making neurotoxin?” asked Perry.

“I haven’t made any yet,” said Mette. “I don’t have procedures for storing it or getting it safely out of the lantern. I don’t want to be killed because a light breeze lifted some of it into the air.”

“Well, probably don’t make any,” said Perry.

“It wouldn’t be difficult to make a little gun that shoots aerosolized particles at your enemies,” said Mette. “Beating the other guys, that’s the point, right?”

“I was hoping that you would be focusing more on, ah, mundane matters,” said Perry.

“Why?” asked Mette. She gave him a quizzical look.

“What do you mean why?” asked Perry. “It would be helpful for them.”

“If you want things to give to these people, then Perry, you have to understand that they already have what they want,” said Mette. “They’re missing electronics and telecommunications and robotics and computing, but a lot of that is because they want to be missing it. It’s not like on the Natrix, where we soaked up everything you had to offer the moment you revealed it to us. What’s the point in trying to improve things they don’t want improved? And Perry, these are lanterns. It would be possible to duplicate it in principle with one of the domes, I guess, but I’m technically not supposed to be using these lanterns, because the effluence that gets captured and gunks up the filter — it’s not actually a filter, more like a sponge — does eventually get released back into the environment, just in a more controlled way. It’s really much less of an issue, but from everything they’ve said, the target is no effluence, not reduced or controlled effluence. Which seems dumb to me.”

“It’s part of their history,” said Perry. “Possibly an overcorrection, though I guess you didn’t see the beasts that dwell in the seas.”

“So anyway,” said Mette. “I have tools and weapons for you, if you need them. I’m just dumbfounded by how everyone seems to think that the things I’ve been doing here are difficult technical problems.”

“Your people had something special,” said Perry. “An ability to hold more in your head, maybe a lot more.”

“I keep looking at things and thinking ‘surely I must be wrong, if this were possible they would have done it’, and I don’t know if it’s everything that I’ve learned from my world and yours that makes it so I see things that they don’t, or … maybe I’m just special, relative to them.” She let out a breath. There was some nervous energy in her that didn’t seem like it had anywhere to go. “I’m a middling engineer. If Brigitta were here, she would be twice as far along. I don’t even really have a project, I’m just … trying stuff and being surprised by how much is working.”

“Do you need a project?” asked Perry.

“No,” said Mette. “I’m enjoying this, I’m just irritated and baffled.” She looked at the desk, surveying the work she’d done, some of which had started back in Kerry Coast. “Oh, and if you’d like, I’m pretty sure that I can get one of these lanterns to kill a lot more efficiently than the ones they were using to execute people.” Mette hadn’t been at the public execution, so perhaps it was easier for her to abstract it and think of it as something that had happened faraway. “A lot of the focusing techniques they use are pretty crude, and with the right math and access to a shop that makes lenses — proper glassware — I think I can do something better.”

“That would be good,” Perry nodded. “The more weapons, the better. Any chance that we could make one into a laser?”

Mette gave him a pitying look. “Do you know how a laser works?” she asked.

“Kind of,” said Perry. “Light amplified through the select emission of radiation, right?”

“No, it doesn’t stand for anything,” said Mette after a second. “Anyway, the principle is based on photon cloning and dumping energy in. They don’t really have names for the fundamental particles, if there are fundamental particles, and unless we had a gain medium that could emit them, they’re just totally different ways of going about things.”

“Worth asking, I guess,” said Perry.

“Not really,” said Mette.

So Perry returned to his masks, and left Mette to her mad science, hoping that she wasn’t going to irradiate or poison herself or anyone else. He wanted a collection of them, and ideally he would have them hanging from a rack just inside the shelf space, which would let him slap one on his face at a moment’s notice as the circumstances demanded.

~~~~

Five days came and went. Dirk was ‘around’ a lot, and asked a few more questions, which Perry answered to the best of his ability. There wasn’t that much that he was hiding from them anymore, aside from the werewolf stuff, and everything he told Dirk felt like it brought him one step closer to having a clone — or better, a machine that made clones from a person’s blood.

On the final night, Perry had intended to press Dirk on the matter, since the invisible deadline felt like it had come and gone, but Dirk had taken off from the town without notice, heading back to the city on horseback. Moss had said that it was probably for a ‘consultation’ with people in Calamus, which Perry took to mean a consultation with a clone, but that didn’t make him feel all that much better.

Once the lights were mostly out around town, Perry slipped into the armor and went out the window, rising high into the air and getting a good view of his surroundings. He had half a mind to travel into the city himself, which would take about an hour using the sword or twenty minutes if he ran along the road and burned some of his energy. Once there, he could probably find Dirk pretty easily given the nanite network he’d left behind, and it might do well to remind the man of exactly what power level he was dealing with.

Perry thought better of it, and instead laid on the roof of the tallest building, looking up at the unfamiliar stars and a few passing clouds that gave a faint effluent glow. There was something romantic about looking at the stars, and it became only slightly less romantic when you had on military-grade power armor.

“Sir, there’s a man approaching,” said Marchand.

“Coming up the stairwell?” asked Perry. “Does this building even have roof access?”

“No, sir, he appears to be flying,” said Marchand.

“Airship?” asked Perry, looking around. The HUD updated with a directional arrow, and Perry turned to look at what Marchand had seen. It was a humanoid figure, coated in silvery blue metal but with long white hair flowing down to its waist and a long spear held in one hand.

“I believe it’s magic, sir,” said Marchand.

Perry was immediately in combat mode. The armor wasn’t the same copper as Third Fervor’s, and the weapon was different, but this wasn’t any sort of power that they had on this planet. They had flight only by way of airships, or much more rarely, planes. The answer had to be that it was a thresholder. Perry wasn’t sure how he’d been tracked, but he hadn’t exactly kept a low profile in the city, and it wouldn’t have taken too competent of a spy network to find out where he and Moss had been heading.

The laser rifle was in the shelf space, but it needed to be plugged in, and that would take some time. The shoulder gun had been test fired the day before and was in proper working order, with the best ammunition that the Natrix had been able to produce for him. He had his sword, which was by his side, and his vessels were practically brimming with energy. The moon was half full, but it was a large moon, if it came to that.

Perry stood on the roof and waited. If it was a thresholder, it was better that they talk before they fight. It was possible that this was Third Fervor’s teammate, and if it was, then Perry preferred to fight the two of them separately. He was pretty sure that he’d have known if she had come within a mile of the town, but she had portals, so maybe he’d only know she was near him when she was five feet away.

Perry bent his knees slightly, then pushed off from the roof, letting the sword carry him up to meet the floating man, who had slowed down once he was spotted.

They drifted toward each other, lit only by the moon and the soft glow of a few scattered clouds. Perry was better at fighting when on the ground, where he could move faster and had leverage, but there were people down there.

“Shall I wake Mette and Nima?” asked Marchand.

“Not yet,” said Perry. There wasn’t much that either of them could do if it was an aerial battle, and if it was a battle on the ground, Perry worried for their safety.

“So,” said the man when they were a hundred feet apart. Up close, the armor was a masterwork, and magnification showed every small detail of it. The chestplate depicted battle scenes with dragons and lions, surely some heraldic symbolism, and the shimmer of the metal spoke to either high magic or tender care. It was armor that looked like it had never seen a day of a battle, delicate ceremonial armor that was pampered and fussed over. The hair was like that too. The way it flowed in the gentle wind said to Perry that it was brushed every day and treated with ointments. Mostly it made him think about the second sphere and the way that magic would take care of all those things for him.

The hair was the same color as the hair that Perry had pulled from the king’s throne room.

“You killed the king of Berus,” said Perry, which was really more of a guess than anything else.

“I did,” the man replied. He was floating as though pinned in place, immobile. Perry was trying to match that, but couldn’t quite do it, since he had to leverage his entire body to not sway in the breeze like a piece of laundry that had been put out to dry.

The man was actually an elf, Perry was pretty sure. The elves had a way of talking, and their builds were all of a type. The ears were inside a helmet, so Perry couldn’t say for certain, since the armor didn’t have the ridiculous metal casings that Nima’s armor had.

“What are you doing here?” the man asked. “You’re a man of great power, yet you’re here, at this construction project that does not need your help, guarding a man who is in no imminent danger.”

“I’m preparing,” said Perry.

The elf seemed to find that answer satisfactory. “I intend to kill the king of Thirlwell. Will you stand in my way?”

“No,” said Perry. “But I need to know who you are, where you come from.”

“You’re asking if I’m from another world, like you are?” asked the elf. There was no trace of good humor in his voice. Perry waited. “I am. I was. Long ago.”

“You haven’t been active long,” said Perry.

“I haven’t been killing long,” said the elf. “I have been active for a very, very long time.”

Perry gripped his sword. “Why?” asked Perry.

“I wanted to make this world into a paradise,” said the elf. “And as you can see, that work is mostly done. This might be the last cycle.”

“Cycle of what?” asked Perry. He was watching the spear. If it was a normal spear, the armor would deflect it without issue, possibly even break it if enough force was put behind it. He was pretty sure that it was no normal spear though. There was wispy red fluff below the spearhead, and the shaft was made of bone white wood.

“Do you not know?” asked the elf, tilting his head to the side. “I see your armor and your sword, and the energies that stick to you. Have you not seen the cycles?”

Perry shook his head. “I’ve been to many worlds. Like you.”

“But you leave when the foe is slain?” asked the elf.

“I do,” said Perry. “You don’t?”

“I have,” said the elf. “And I will again.” They were still in a standoff, and Perry thought there was a good chance it would explode into violence at any moment. “Will you attack me regardless of my plans for Thirlwell’s king?”

“It depends on what your other plans are,” said Perry. “So far as I’ve seen, the kings of this world have nothing to laud. But Berus … it wasn’t ready for a revolution. And you killed the king publically. It would have been easy enough for you to murder him in his sleep and leave some deniability.”

“Monarchies are not about a man, as much as they sometimes pretend to be,” said the elf. “They are a culture, a tradition. A monarch dying in his sleep will be replaced by another monarch, and those who have struggled and organized will hold back out of respect, hoping not to be seen as crassly capitalizing on a tragedy. They do this because the culture of kings infects their minds until it has been burned out.”

Perry was waiting for the strike. If he absolutely had to, he could retreat into the shelfspace, but he would only do that if he was completely outclassed.

“I’m not going to stand in your way,” said Perry. “We don’t have to be enemies. I have quarrels with what you’re doing, but they’re not the kind we would need to come to blows over. I should warn you that Thirlwell has a woman, someone who’s gone between worlds like we have, —”

“Third Fervor,” said the elf. “I’m aware.”

“She’s with you?” asked Perry.

“No,” said the elf. “She’s cast her lot with the kings. But she’s weak, and so can be left to live, so the cycle can continue for as long as possible. Every new cycle is a roll of the dice.”

Perry frowned. “You fight, you win, the portals close, and you stay?” asked Perry. “What happens, more opponents come through for you?”

“Ah, so your knowledge of the cycles is incomplete,” said the elf. “Does it change your decision to fight?”

“No,” said Perry. He’d answered on instinct, but after answering, took a moment to think. “The portal will open once Third Fervor is dead or dying?”

“The rules are different, with more than two of us,” said the elf. “It becomes complicated, a question of sides. How many worlds have you been to?”

Perry didn’t immediately answer. It was an important question, and he was fairly sure that his answer would reveal something. There was something like matchmaking to the system, and the simplest pattern that fit was that both sides had a roughly equal number of wins. One of the reasons he hadn’t gone for Nima’s throat right from the start was that she’d only had a single win to her name, making her weaker and more likely to be an ally. It was better to say a higher number than the elf, because that would be a sign of strength, but if the elf had been here for some time … Perry didn’t know how it worked, not really. Did a win on the same world count as a win on different worlds? Could you just camp out and take on all comers? Xiyan had said something about a man doing that, but she couldn’t be trusted in the slightest.

“This is my sixth world,” said Perry. “All wins so far.”

The elf nodded slowly and deliberately, almost a bow of respect.

“How many for you?” asked Perry.

“Two, before I came here,” said the elf, who might actually not have been an elf at all if he originally came from another world.

“And when was that?” asked Perry.

The elf reached up with the hand that wasn’t holding the spear. His fingers dug into the metal, and it lifted up like it was a cheap spandex Halloween mask, the fine metal becoming fabric as he held it out to the side. The face beneath was elven, pale with smooth skin. Perry had half suspected the long shiny white hair to be a part of the armor, a bit of costuming, but it was the elf’s own hair, and his thick eyebrows matched it.

“I am Fenilor the Gilded,” he said.

Perry wondered for a moment whether that was supposed to mean anything to him, then he realized that he had heard it before — or rather, read it. He’d seen a statue of the man at the museum in Kerry Coast, not too long ago.

“You were one of the people who founded the movement,” said Perry.

“I am,” said Fenilor.

“You’ve been here for decades?” asked Perry.

“Longer,” said Fenilor. “It was the first place that felt like home.”

“But the thresholders keep coming?” asked Perry. “How many have you fought?”

“Thresholder,” he said. “It’s a term I’ve heard often, but only from our kind.”

“How many?” asked Perry.

“One every five years, more or less,” replied Fenilor. “There was one stretch that lasted for twenty years, an anomaly. I am a master of the cycles. I have learned to live with them. It’s only now, as the final chapter of this world comes to a close, that I worry about the outcomes.”

“One every five years,” said Perry. “So — what, about a dozen fights?”

“I said that I had been here long,” said Fenilor. “The movement and its culture were not the first thing I did on coming to this world, it was the culmination of a large amount of work. Do you see now that it would be pointless to fight me?”

Perry frowned at him. “You haven’t demonstrated any great power. If I thought you needed to be stopped, I would try to stop you.”

“I have seen many thresholders over the years,” said Fenilor. “It was necessary that I approach you so I could understand which sort you were.”

“And?” asked Perry.

To be honest, he was sort of starting to worry about the ‘great power’ thing. Even an amateur could have found Perry out in the country, but flying with fancy armor and a spear meant that Fenilor needed to be at least a rank below him, as an absolute floor. Being Fenilor the Gilded, one of the thought leaders of a revolution, significantly raised Perry’s estimation of the elf’s power. But living through a dozen encounters was something else entirely. How many tools had Fenilor picked up during that time? How had he kept the battles silent, the stuff of rumor and legend? There was nothing to say that Fenilor had won every fight, but even surviving that many matches against opponents from other worlds with similar records — well, Perry didn’t know how the matchmaking went, how predictive it was, what it thought was a fair fight, but whatever ‘spell’ was making thresholders had proven shockingly prescient, and he had heard of very few matchups that were total curbstomps.

“You’re a pragmatist,” said Fenilor. “You’ve revealed nothing about your goals here, but I believe you when you say that you don’t care one whit if I lop off the head of the Last King. I have little doubt that we’ll come to blows at some point, but I now believe it will only happen after my work is concluded — at which point I’ll have a fair and honorable battle with you, the first I’ve been able to have in a long time.” He gave Perry a low bow, which looked faintly ridiculous given that he was floating.

Perry was watching him, trying to decide whether now was the time to strike. There was a lot that Perry liked about the expression ‘fair and honorable battle’, and it wasn’t that he was looking forward to being fair or honorable. Still, it felt like if it was going to come down to a fight — if Fenilor felt it was inevitable — then perhaps Perry would be better off with an ambush, striking when the time was right.

Fenilor hadn’t mentioned Nima, but Nima hadn’t been in the news. Fenilor also hadn’t mentioned the technological advancements of Thirlwell, but there wouldn’t be a reason to mention them. Perry didn’t see the need to either. If Fenilor wasn’t an ally — and he really didn’t seem to be — then it was better to let him run right into a trap. Perry could only hope that Third Fervor was on top of her game, though their first encounter had left him more impressed with her armor than her planning.

“I have questions,” said Perry.

“I’m sure you do,” said Fenilor. “You’re human, I know. Your lifespans are so short. There’s been little opportunity for you to learn.”

“So tell me,” said Perry.

“No,” said Fenilor. “I’ve learned the hard lessons that come with saying too much.”

“So when you’re done here, no one will know what you did, what you went through?” asked Perry.

“There are trusted allies,” said Fenilor. “They will tell the stories that need to be told, to protect the world against people like us. They’ll understand the cycles, the patterns. But those stories aren’t for your ears. And now, I must bid you farewell.” He gave another floating bow again, and Perry very nearly followed his instinct to strike. They were a hundred feet away, which was a long distance to cover with the sword’s flying speed.

Perry was certain that he could shoot the man, but … how many thresholders had he beaten over the decades? He’d never have made it if he didn’t have a way to deal with bullets. Even with the metal mask peeled off, a straight shot to the dome, there had to be something. There was no way it could actually kill the man, and it wasn’t worth trying.

Perry very nearly gave the order, but Fenilor straightened up and put his helmet back on one-handed. Again, it looked like slipping on a cheap printed stretchy fabric right until the moment it was actually on, when it looked harder than steel.

Fenilor turned and flew off, faster than he’d come.

“Track him as far as you can,” said Perry. “Any chance that we managed to land some nanites on him?”

“No, sir,” said Marchand. “Tracking will be difficult once he’s more than two miles away.”

“I figured,” said Perry. “What’s his speed?”

“Not fast by the standards we’re used to,” said Marchand. “He’s moving at approximately fifty miles an hour. We would be able to keep up with him from the ground, though of course I can’t guarantee that he’s moving as fast as he can.”

Perry watched until Fenilor was just a marker on the HUD, then until the marker disappeared.

“Fuck,” said Perry.

“Indeed, sir,” said Marchand.