Goblinopolis, The Tol Chronicles, Book 1 (12 page)

BOOK: Goblinopolis, The Tol Chronicles, Book 1
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Way back when he first signed on with the force it had been a different story. There was little contact between edict enforcement and the Council then, and even less mutual trust. However, with the adoption of more and more technology (and even a few magical items) in criminal investigation work, the two camps drew closer out of expediency. Eventually the department began to hire CoME personnel as consultants. The crossover brought the two organizations together in a new way, and with the increased cooperation came a concomitant increase in mutual understanding that led finally to the beneficial symbiosis they enjoyed today. The holiday picnic fireworks, in particular, had vastly improved.

Tol realized he was mentally replaying the text of a departmental briefing word for word and snapped himself back to the case in annoyance. He had these periodic bouts of photographic recall, but they almost always involved stuff that he really would rather not remember. He shuddered and poured himself a shot of uberrazzle from a small flask he kept in a desk drawer.

Assuming there was a solid connection between the rift and the sightings, the salient question would seem to be, which came first? The time stamps were in close enough proximity that either event could have preceded the other, given the inexact nature of timekeeping among the general public of Tragacanth. He tried a little deductive reasoning. If the rift had been the result of whatever caused the flashes, then the reported odor was probably of a magical nature. On the other hand, if the rift occurred first, the flashes and odor were not necessarily magical in origin.

Tol was not very experienced with magic, but in his limited exposure he’d never heard of a magical process that left an electrical storm odor, although he was aware that magically-induced weather phenomena were possible. He also knew that they were extremely difficult to carry out, given the huge drain on the magical energy sump. It would take a high-level mage to perform such a ritual. One thing he did know was where to get the skinny on high-level mages: the office of the Loca Magineer. He decided to pay it a visit.

Public transportation in Goblinopolis is a haphazard affair. Some areas are serviced only by nominally licensed cabs, some by the ponderous underground system known as the GRUC (Goblinopolis Regional Underground Conveyance), and some are best reached on foot or by magical teleportation. This last means of transport is discouraged, though, because of the remote but still very real chance of materializing inside a pedestrian. Goblinopolis is a busy city, with an enormous amount of foot traffic. It simply isn’t possible to reduce the threat of unintended magical hybridization, which always has embarrassing, if not disastrous, consequences. Even the dedicated teleportation booths didn’t work, because gangs of ruffians took to hanging around them and preventing anyone who appeared in one from leaving until someone else zapped in on top of them. They got a real kick out of this. It cost too much to assign an edict enforcement officer to each booth to prevent such episodes, so the government just threw up its hands and warned anyone traveling via teleportation that they did so solely at their own risk, promising dire consequences if any bystanders were injured in the process.

Tol had his own personal pram—it had seen its best days during his father’s career on the force, though—but parking was at a premium in the crowded metropolitan area and prams had delicate engines which needed to be looked after. You couldn’t just pull up and leave one there indefinitely without any attention. There were draycare centers (drays were the larger cargo-carrying vehicles) scattered around the city that serviced prams as well, but in Tol’s experience they were never near enough his destination to make the effort worthwhile. Licensed public cabs tended to blow out his meager expense account; the unlicensed ones, besides being illegal, were prone to “accidental” wrong turns and stranding their fares in bad neighborhoods, where they were soon relieved of the burden of fiscal liquidity. He usually found it easiest to travel around Goblinopolis by GRUC (most people just called it ‘the Gruc’).

For one thing, there were GRUC terminals just about everywhere. You were never more than a hundred meters from where you wanted to be when you stepped back up into the open air. And it was cheap—free for him, in fact. The department bought all detectives and foot patrol officers annual passes for business use. So, GRUC it was, dingy cabins, unidentifiable odors, and all.

Entrances to the GRUC varied from broad, palatial affairs with gold-plated banisters and marbled floors to cramped abruptly-sloping cave-like concrete corridors barely wide enough for two abreast, depending on neighborhood and anticipated clientele. Tol usually ended up in the latter—something of an occupational hazard, it seemed. Today, however, he was going to take the No. 23 to the ‘Royal Complex: East’ stop, one of the gold and marble varieties. He wore his least damaged helmet and even polished his disruptor with an old sock. After all, one shouldn’t look
too
shabby if one is going to pay an official visit to the seat of government (unless one is there asking for more money for equipment and clothing, but that wasn’t Tol’s mission, on this occasion).

When his carriage rolled up, he was pleased to see that it was one of the newer ones. That meant fewer and less intense odors and less likelihood of mechanical failure during the ride. He had a minor case of claustrophobia that he could usually control without problem, but being trapped in a ten meter-long, two meter-wide sausage full of weird smells and weirder people in a dimly-lit tunnel twenty meters below the surface had a way of intensifying the irrational closed-in feeling rapidly. He’d found the best way to cope was to close his eyes and sing, but that degraded the quality of the experience even more for everyone else. Still, sometimes you just gotta look out for number one...

This carriage was quite clean inside, in stark contrast to most of the ones he’d ridden. There were only a couple of gnomes and another goblin already seated when he got on. Well, not many people rode the GRUC into the RC east stop. Most of the day-to-day government business offices were accessed from the south or west termini. He wondered idly where the gnomes were going. He noticed that they had matching toolboxes with
Zzingler Technologies
decals on them. Probably some sort of repairmen, most likely heading to the CoME Data Center or one of the public data cubes scattered around the East Complex.

It was a
little
odd that they were on the GRUC, since most of these companies had their own corporate drays for the sake of customer convenience, if nothing else, but it wasn’t sufficiently strange that he felt justified in registering alarm. Paranoia was part of his job, but like his claustrophobia, he had to keep it under control.

No one spoke. The gnomes looked around and fidgeted a bit, but the other goblin sat absolutely still, like a statue. It was a bit disconcerting for Tol. If the guy was asleep, he was managing it with his eyes open, not that such a thing was unheard of since goblin outer eyelids were more or less transparent, anyway. Whatever he was doing, it was creeping Tol out. He fixed his gaze out the windows at the murky kinetics of the tunnel wall as it smeared past and tried not to think about the zombie across from him.

After a minute or two he caught some nearer movement out of the corner of his eye. One of the gnomes got up with his toolbox and shuffled to the far end of the carriage. Maybe he had a (silent) spat with the other one. Gnomes were hard to figure sometimes. He continued to stare out the window. A minute later, the other gnome took his toolbox and headed off to the opposite end. Tol chuckled.

A faint but engaging noise was beginning to make itself audible. At first he couldn’t figure what it was or where it was coming from. No one else showed any indication of detecting it, although he had to admit he couldn’t read ol’ stone face at all. Bet that guy was positively deadly at poker.

The sound remained a mystery until something in his pocket began to vibrate. He realized that it was his pen, and at the same moment suddenly recognized the noise as the pen’s alert signal, conveyed to his brain and his brain only by skin surface induction. This had better not be another malfunction, he thought as he pulled out the pen and a notepad to go with it. Departmental regulations stated that he was not to make it obvious that the pen had uses beyond scribbling descriptions of alleged purse snatchers. The jury was still out on that veracity of that claim, as far as Tol was concerned.

This time the pen was not making any smart remarks, however. It was all business.

“I have detected a dangerous situation,” it stated quietly. “The ambient magical flux aboard this carriage has suddenly risen to a potentially catastrophic level. A spell with significant energy components is being cast in the immediate vicinity.”

Tol shrugged and looked around. The two gnomes, at opposite ends of the carriage, seemed supremely unconcerned with anything but staring off into space. The goblin was still semi-comatose. Tol was beginning to wonder seriously if he were even alive at all. Failure to act on that suspicion would haunt him later.

“What sort of spell?” he whispered.

“Unknown. It is drawing considerable energy from The Slice through two transient nodes that seem to be separated by a little less than ten meters.”

Tol blinked. The scales at the back of his neck started chafing the way they always did when he was getting a bad feeling about something. The “ten meters” part of the pen’s warning was gnawing furiously at him.

“Pinpoint location of nodes relative to my line of sight.”

“Approximately three and nine o’clock.”

Of course: the gnomes, or more likely, their toolboxes. Funny: gnomes weren’t usually known as mages. They generally preferred technology over magic. It was possible that they didn’t know their toolboxes were the epicenters of some powerful juju, but he didn’t think it likely. Gnomes also made for notoriously poor patsies. They were too astute and naturally suspicious of strangers.

That left two gnomes who were purposefully harboring and most probably actively participating in magical activity strong enough to slam a terminally smart-aleck pen into “just the facts” mode. That alone was pretty disturbing. The ten thousand billme question was,
why
?

“Any data on probable intent?”

“Insufficient data for statistically significant analysis, but my trick ink cartridge tells me that something dramatic is about to take place.”

“Yeah, I’d gotten that impression from you already. Any idea who or what the target might be?”

“I would suggest you find a highly reflective surface and gaze soulfully into it.”

Tol snorted. “Me? Why would two gnomes be after
me
?”

“Insufficient data to draw any meaningful conclusions about motivation. The fact that you are an edict enforcement officer with many enemies does seem somewhat germane, however.”

He tried to think of any gnomes he might have pissed off...there was that one he’d caught trying to rewire the betting machines in a South Sebacea casino. He’d been one utterly stoned gnome, though. Probably didn’t even remember the crime, much less the arresting officer. Tol doubted the gnome he was recalling had the intellectual capacity to plan his route to the chemist’s, much less hatch and execute an elaborate revenge scheme. No, if they were after him, they had to be coming from a different angle.

His introspective criminological analysis was interrupted by another, more ominous warning from the pen.

“The bifurcated magical energy stream has ceased. Shortly before it did so, I detected a unification which seemed to be focused directly at your 12 o’clock position.”

Tol looked up, surprised. All he saw at 12 o’clock was the motionless goblin, who was still looking mighty inert. Something
was
strangely amiss, however. For a few seconds he couldn’t put his finger on what it was, but then it hit him—the gnomes had disappeared, leaving their toolboxes behind. Since they had positioned themselves near the doors, it was logical to assume they had slipped out that way—but silently, and while the carriage was moving? Somewhere back there must be a couple of vaguely gnome-shaped splotches on the tunnel walls.

“The gnomes have vanished,” he told the pen.

“That explains the transient spikes before the streams rejoined. They must have teleported.”

Teleported
? Why bother to ride public transport in the first place if you have that capability? Something wasn’t making a lot of sense here.

“Forgot their tool boxes, it seems.”

“I believe they were left behind intentionally. They probably contain some sort of local magical amplifiers. I am seeing regular residual pulses in several wavelengths of the magical energy spectrum from their locations.”

“So I’ve got two pulsing toolboxes and a comatose goblin threatening me. When is the part where I’m supposed to feel intimidated coming up?”

“Judging from the energy dispersal pattern, I would say right about...now.”

On cue the suddenly animate goblin across from Tol stood up and lumbered toward him menacingly. Tol couldn’t help but notice that his assailant’s eyes were glowing red. He stood up and whipped out his badge.

“Edict enforcement officer. I’d advise you not to come any closer.”

The goblin completely ignored him. He was looking in Tol’s direction, but his disturbingly red eyes did not seem to be focused on anything in particular. He drew back one fist and smashed it into the back of the carriage seat where Tol’s head had been a second earlier. It put a hole completely through the seat and dented the metal wall behind it rather badly.

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