Chapter Twenty-One #2
He squared his shoulders and approached the curved counter all the other strange beings here had scurried away from and avoided, hoping he wasn’t going to regret anything.
Up close, the Archivists were even more unsettling. Their features were smooth, almost featureless, their expressions unreadable.
Jack leaned one elbow casually against the counter. “Hey, there,” he said.
The nearest Archivist slowly raised its head.
Its face was almost perfectly smooth except for the pale glowing eyes beneath translucent skin.
Nothing. No reaction. No acknowledgment.
Jack nodded slowly. “All right. Tough crowd.”
Madelaine shifted behind him. “I told you—” she said in a fierce whisper.
“Hang on,” he murmured.
He straightened, tapping the counter lightly with his fingers.
“Okay, let’s try this again. Hi. My name’s Jack. I’m from Earth. Specifically, a small town you probably haven’t heard of, but it’s got a great diner called the Cosmos Café, with a surprisingly strong pie game, if you know what I mean.”
One of the Archivists moved.
Barely.
But enough.
Jack caught it.
“Ah,” he said, pointing. “There we go. I saw that. Pie is a language you must speak.”
But they didn’t say anything else to him. They looked at him like he was the odd one in this conversation. Huh.
Jack looked from the silver-skinned Archivists to Madelaine. Then back to the Archivists. Then back to Madelaine.
They stared at him. Jack stared back. Nothing happened. The silence stretched. Then stretched some more. It was becoming uncomfortable.
Finally, Jack cleared his throat. Time to try something new.
“Let’s try this again. Hello. As I said, my name is Jack. May I ask you a question?"
The Archivist blinked once.
To Jack’s surprise, a calm voice appeared directly inside his head.
“State your purpose.”
Jack nearly jumped.
“Well, that’s unsettling.”
The Archivist waited. Jack glanced at Madelaine.
She gave him an encouraging nod. Right. Press on. Fate of the universe involved. But did she know they were speaking in his head? Maybe not.
Jack tried again. “I’m here on behalf of a traveler.”
The silver alien blinked again. But no words lit up in Jack’s head. Nothing.
“I’m looking for something that was left in your care.”
The Archivist’s glowing eyes brightened.
“Many things are left in our care.”
“Okay. Fair point.”
Jack rubbed the back of his neck.
He thought about everything they’d been through.
The Secret Keeper. The packages. The wedding. Malvoraxis Veil. Verdara. Crooked Halo. The mission. Then something clicked.
Every clue they’d found so far had centered around one thing.
Not ownership. Or even stewardship. The Paladin Courier didn’t own anything.
She collected things. This was basically all some elaborate scavenger hunt to retrieve and collect a bunch of things, hopefully for a grand purpose they’d be told about in the final clue.
Jack looked directly at the Archivist.
“We seek what was long ago entrusted to your care. Now the Paladin Courier is ready to collect it.”
The glowing eyes intensified. The surrounding Archivists suddenly turned toward him. The marketplace noise seemed to fade.
Jack swallowed. Apparently, he’d said something important. The group of them seemed to be mentally discussing something.
The Archivist turned back to him.
“You are not the Paladin Courier.”
“No,” Jack said and pointed to Madelaine. “She is. However, my understanding is that I—as her husband—must speak for her in this forum. Is that accurate?”
The Archivist looked at Madelaine briefly and turned away. There was a longer silent pow-wow with his friends. After several moments, they seemed to come to a decision.
For long seconds, nobody moved.
Then the nearest Archivist—Jack thought it was the being who’d been speaking in his head—slowly reached beneath the counter.
When its hand emerged, it held a translucent crystal rod about the size of a flash drive.
A thin beam of light flickered and came to life on one flat side of the crystal flash drive. There were several colorful and shifting images—Symbols? Coordinates?—that Jack definitely did not understand.
Inside the drive, tiny threads of silver light flowed like living circuitry. The thing practically glowed.
He hoped Madelaine would understand the meaning of the colorful shifting images. Perhaps it wasn’t important. Just a lightshow for him during the retrieval process.
Jack looked at the Archivist and smiled.
“The Custodian remembers. The Paladin Courier needs to prevail.”
The crystal was placed carefully on the counter.
“Take care during retrieval at the locker.”
Jack stared. “Okay. Is that it?”
“That is sufficient. Our business is concluded.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
Jack picked up the crystal. It felt strangely warm. As if someone had been holding it moments earlier.
The Archivist’s eyes dimmed and the being took a few steps away from the counter, the conversation over.
Jack nodded politely.
“Thank you.” Something occurred to him. “Know anything about a silent moon, by any chance? Or the Red Harp Nebula?”
No response. Fine by him. He turned to Madelaine with the warm crystal flash drive circuitry thing in his hand.
The moment she saw it, her eyes widened. “Excellent. You did it. Thank you.” He gave the crystal flash drive to her. On the opposite side, where the swirling symbols were still animated, there was an oval place for her thumbprint.
“I didn’t hear them say anything,” she said.
“They put words in my head mentally. It was strange and I don’t think I want to communicate that way ever again.”
“Let’s hope you don’t have to. But, as always, no promises. What did they say? Any further instructions I need to know about?”
“They said, ‘The Custodian remembers and the Paladin Courier must prevail.’”
“Good. I don’t know who the Custodian is, but I definitely want to prevail. Whatever I’m doing.”
“He also said to take care during the retrieval at the locker. Do you know where the locker place is?”
Madelaine pressed her thumb into the clear flash drive. The light show began again and symbols formed above her thumb. She nodded. “Yes. I know where the locker is. It’s about a mile past where we parked the ship.”
“Let me guess—we still can’t use the cool four-wheeler to go collect it.”
“I’m afraid not. We must walk a winding path with the occasional copse of stickery trees on either or both sides to get there.”
He agreed with her assessment—the trees did look like tall prickly weeds, featuring a single straight trunk with thorns in a variety sizes and colors jutting out.
“Fine. I can walk,” Jack said. “If we don’t get to use the four-wheeler on this trip, I demand we take it for a ride once we get back to Alienn, Arkansas.”
“Noted.” Madelaine turned to him and grabbed his forearm lovingly. “And thank you for getting this flash drive for me.”
“Sure thing. Happy to do it. Especially since it wasn’t life-threatening this time.”
“I also appreciate that you are never belligerent, even though you certainly could have been justified many times over on this trip.”
Jack grinned. “All the important women in my life tell me you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Although I’ve never wanted to catch flies, I find that motto works in other situations as well.”
“Indeed it does.” Her sudden grin could have lit the skies of three worlds.
He held her gaze for a second. Something shifted between them. Old. Familiar. Dangerous. Then he cleared his throat, stepping away from their suddenly very close connection.
This was not a place he wanted to forget where he was or the crazy, chaotic strangeness all around them.
Best to pay attention and be alert at all times, until they were safely back in the ship.
“All right,” he said lightly. “So. Alien market, floating people, talking light-beings and a shared hard pass on the tentacle display. But on the bright side, the crystal flash drive has been collected. And we know where we’re going, right?”
Madelaine hesitated a second, as if only catching on that they were standing in a crowded alien market on a planet she’d only visited once before with a pressing errand to take care of, so sharing any newfound personal feelings would have to wait.
“Yes. We follow the coordinates listed on the flash drive to find the artifact we seek.”
“Is it dangerous? Are the stickery trees as friendly as the microbial dirt?”
“Not sure.”
“We’ll hope for the best. And I’m guessing we have to cross the microbial dirt to get there?”