From: hutch@ibeam.intel.com (Steve Hutchison)
Subject: 'Raelf and ar'Elya :: Home a way from noplace like
Organization: Intel Corp., Hillsboro, Oregon
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 20:04:46 GMT


"I KNOW you have a property I can use, Jedderley.  Don't play the fool."

Jedderley tried to appear relaxed.  He had spent days trying to avoid this
confrontation.  But now it was here, and damage control was his only
option.  He silently cursed the day his wife had gone to that woman's den
of iniquity - the old ones weren't Fashionable enough, but he couldn't
deny her every whim.  She had that much hold on him.

"Miss Ale."  He tried to look stern yet open.  She leaned forward, lips
pursed in a scolding little frown.

"_Lady_ Ale.  Merchant Jedderley, I've been more than patient, and this is
really not an imposition on you.  If you won't offer me the property I
need, I will take your marker to the Judiciate.  Now, I would be happy
to take one of the three warehouses my emissary suggested.  But if you
insist on going to court, the quaint laws of this lovely village will
allow me to pick from your properties, whichever way I like, to the
amount of the marker."  The poison-green clad woman exhaled a gust of hot
spicy smoke and Jedderley felt momentarily giddy.  She was making it hard
for him to think about business.  He wished he were alone with his wife.

"Lady Ale.  I know your reputation, your unusual business connections.
So I know that you must understand my position.  If I give you any of
those three establishments, I'll be forced to move certain trade goods
that are not really considered in the best interests of Generica's
merchant community.  The Guard would have me in hours."

She stalked across the room, placing the bright moonlight from the
window behind her, only the green sputtering in her long handled ivory
pipe reflecting eerily off her irises.

"I am not without feeling.  I understand your position.  That is one
of the reasons why I have chosen you from the many merchants in this
charming place.  You can be trusted not to attempt any foolish tricks,
knowing what would happen to you and your very lovely, very young wife,
should your holdings be taken by the authorities.  But if you cooperate
with me, I might be able to arrange for your embarrassing and unfortunate
business dealings to remain unnoticed by the Guard.  At least, as far as
my interests are concerned."

"What do you really want from me?"

"I want that small building you got from your father-in-law."

"What?  I don't understand."

"The small stone structure on the promontory south facing onto the sea."

"Why would you want that?  It's worthless.  It's fallen down, and it's
got a lousy access, and it's far too close to the Low City."

"Dear fellow.  I never tell.  If you give me what I ask, I will return
your marker, and we will be quit of that particular debt."

"There's nothing there, the rumors of hidden treasure were something I
started myself.  I wanted to make the place more salable."

Lady Ale's laugh was menacing and beautiful at once.  "No, I'm not at
all interested in your hidden treasure.  I like the place.  I want it.
You will give it to me, we will be even."

"All right.  But I'll be breaking a promise.  I told Pere I'd never
sell the place."

"Well, be comforted.  You haven't sold it.  You've given it as payment
of a gambling debt, a sizeable one at that."

The merchant nodded, resigned to the exchange.

"Dear fellow.  Don't feel so sad.  I would have had that house, one way
or another.  Be happy - we have come to a mutually acceptable compromise."

"What will I tell Deliana?"

"She won't mind, you know.  She despises that little house.  It reminds
her of what it was like being poor."

"Oh."

"You two should really talk more."  The woman stepped from the moonlight
into the shadows.  "My agent will be by in the morning for the deed."

Jedderley nodded.  "I'll be waiting."

There was no response.  He struck a light - he was alone in the room.

---

One peculiar thing about Traveller magic is that it works better for
long distances than short.  More mundane means are required for shorter
distances.  A horse, for instance.  This horse was white, a warhorse,
with a black mane and tail.  It bore a tall, graceful amazon with red hair,
lightly armored in the cool late afternoon sun.  There was still snow on
the ground - the storm had finally broken and left Generica cold and grey.

The trail up to the old building was made up of dogleg turns.  It was cut
out of the rocky promontory, so long in the past that it should have been
eroded away by time and weather.  But it mostly survived, repaired in a
few places.  It started in the Buff' and went west, through the Low City
and up to the promontory, a cliff by the sea in a part of town where no 
shipping was done - the beach below was too small, and the water too shallow
and plagued by breakers, to admit any but the shallowest draft ship.

The horse rounded the last corner, and stared, appalled, and stopped short.
A rather ugly white and grey granite rock had been cut into oddly shaped
pieces, and piled up into something that sort of resembled - well, not
really much of anything.  There was sort of an enclosure, with overgrown
plants - olive trees, or something like - hanging down a wall that had
been broken down earlier this morning, but now showing signs of skilled
repair.  There was a boxlike house, part of the wall, and a round, ugly,
squat beehive-like tower, all made of the same dirty looking rock.
Suspended in the air next to the tower a long surfboard was loaded with
more of the rock, and a hod full of mortar.

Upside down, suspended from the top by a rope line, 'Raelf lifted the
last rock into place, then packed mortar into the crevices.  He wiped
sweat out of his eyes, then grabbed hold of the board, unfastening the
ropes and lowering to the ground.

-It looks like a dragon dropping-  The horse's deep blue eyes rolled.
"It does not.  Dragon droppings don't pile that way.  Hush."  The
rider spurred the horse on up to the wall.  The rider dismounted, and
the horse vanished.  The woman tipped her head, appraising the repairs.
"Rafe, why didn't you just fix it the easy way?  Why mess with all this
plaster, and hauling and shoving?  Why not just meld the rock?"

The blond man shrugged, letting the cool breeze wash across his body.

"I like the effort.  Feels good.  Besides it's no good using magic for
every little thing.  Ask Marcel."

"I will, if I ever meet him.  What's the tower?"

"Can't tell.  But it belongs there, it's part of the building.  The
rocks remember being in that configuration.  Some kind of lighthouse,
maybe - there's some hint that there was a firepit on the original
roof.  I sent back a probe as far as I could, but it's been here
in some form since before the Genericans settled.  And no taint of
any of the local weird critters."

He grinned at her, a slightly dopey grin, and grabbed her.  She jumped,
and flickered from the redhaired amazon to a shorter, chestnut haired
form, wearing a long travel coat.

"Rafe, you're so forward today."  He grinned even more goofily.

"Stuff came this morning!  Look what I did!"

He dragged her through the open door into the building and out into the
garden enclosure.  The interior court had been swept clean and the tile
mosaic repaired.  It glistened moistly in pastel and drab colors.
Runes and symbols sparked fitfully inside the mosaic.

"Well, Raye, what do you think?"

"You don't have enough to do."

"But it's authentic."

"It's authentically ugly."

"Yeah, so?  It fits the architecture."

"I suppose.  Will it look any better when you turn it on?"

"It should.  Want me to try it?"

"Don't we have to wait for the mortar to cure?"

"Probably should.  Want to see the workroom?"

The tower door was outlined in gleaming metal - gold, iron, and the shiny
green gleam of fixed mercury.  The inside was blindingly bright - a blaze
of unearthly light and colors reflecting off of smooth glass walls.  They
opened onto a cliffside drop down to the beach below.  A glass door showed
a view of the beach from sea level.

"This is extravagant.  Folded space access?"

"Well, there's no windows in the tower or that strange little house.
Besides, we had to put in a fold embedder anyway, for the factory.
So why not enjoy it a little?"

"I didn't notice a fold setup in the little house."

"It won't lock.  Something about the stray gravity well in there.  Won't
even accept a simple onestep shift.  It's still possible to shift modes,
but not to extend it past personal field."

"So with the full set of whole-structure wards up ... "

"No outside sorcery can manifest inside.  Very useful, na?"

"Except we won't be able to come in ourselves, right?"

"Yah, but the topside entry should work."

"Gate and key?  Right.  So how strong is it?"

"I've seen stronger, but this is a peculiar effect.  It would require
more creativity and luck than brute force to get past.  Besides, the
ward ties into our fold embedder, and that's a force six Theodyne Star."

"A Theodyne Star?  That's a pricey unit - how will it be billed?"

"Oh, I used some of my own account.  I've still got a half million
left from the Sonic module, and they're about to post my gains from
the Sonic II mods I put together.  Hope you don't mind - I know you
put a lot of your account into getting the shipping route set up."

"I suppose the guest rooms are off those doors?"  She pointed to the
left and right of the window.

"Yeah.  I've been thinking of putting the kitchen and the human
amenities off a door over here.  I wanted to map them into the
little house but like I said, can't overlay space there."

"We'll have to figure out what to do with that house then.  I don't
think we want to live in it.  So.  I want the grand tour - let's start
with the factory room."

"OK.  It's up left."  He pointed to a ramp spiralling up the inside of
the room, and they went up it.  A left turn at the landing opened onto
a cavernous, circular enclosure that wasn't there until they turned.

The factory room went on for almost a city block.  The outer wall was
lined with pallets of fiberglass and dense foam and aluminum and crates
of things that were labelled in glowing runic script.

"Loading dock's over there."  'Raelf gestured towards the far wall.
A flat area was marked out with green and yellow striped tape.  They
walked around the room, ar'Elya marking off notations on a small notepad.

"This is the normalspace boundary."  'Raelf stepped up onto a raised
platform.  A number of surfboards and other objects, in different states
of completion, were locked in vices on tables.  There was a momentary
flicker, and the area was a maelstrom of chaotic images and sounds for
a moment, then it reverted to a more coherent state.  'Raelf flickered
back into the Surfer form and tweaked a knob hanging from a cable in
the ceiling.  ar'Elya jotted another note on her pad - 'kan-normal-space
generator functional.

"So where are our rooms?"

"Right instead of left at the top of the ramp.  And the top of the tower
is reached just going forward."

"Of course.  So did my things arrive with all this?"

"Come see."

The private rooms were almost as spacious as the factory room, but rather
sparsely set up.  A sort of jungle of plants, birds, and small animals
extended in a ring around the outer edge of the room.

"Oh good, they got here intact.  Are the environment controls set?"

"Stable to Generica and Nexus, set for subtropical.  There's a rest pit
at the left cusp of your forest, over there near the window.  I set it
to match arEl Castle but you probably want to tweak it."

"Probably, but thanks for the start.  What's this business in the middle
here?  A sand floor?"

"Finest I could find.  There's some islands to the south near the
virtual equator.  They've got some good beaches - way average surf
on most of them, but good beaches.  Nice area for diving, too, if
you don't mind the sharks."

"I like the lagoon.  Interesting idea.  Did you put in the jets?"

"Well, yeah.  Simple water element-gate with kinetic offset."

"Looks pleasant.  Where's _your_ rest pit?"

"Over there on the right cusp.  Set to match raHorin - just charmwards
of the three moon atoll."

"That's a pretty place.  Your grandparent lives there now."

"I figured he would.  It was his before I came of age, and I asked him
to look in on it when I went Travelling."

"Do we plan to entertain much here?"

"Not sure.  I know I'd like to show Kadrys around, and maybe Lancos if
he's still here.  And some others.  You?"

"I know fewer folks locally than you.  Well, perhaps not.  But Ale's
creatures aren't what one wants to entertain at home.  Though I suppose
there's a few merchants who would be ... no, I don't want them making
any connection between us and that sideline."

"Do you suppose we ought to have furniture and stuff?"  'Raelf started
to pace off the dimensions of an imaginary living room.

"Why?  We can put all that in down in the base floor."

"Did you like my idea of a kitchen?"

"That would probably be a good thing I guess.  I don't really cook.
I can create or amplify food, but fancy preparations aren't my forte."

"I know.  I cook, but not real fancy.  We could have it all catered in.
When I lived in LALA land that's what a lot of folks did.  Seems crazy
to me, though.  You suppose we ought to hire a household staff?"

"Not unless you want to adopt them, Rafe.  They might get caught in the
flux, you know."

"Hey, we could set up the little house as a service house?  No, I guess
that wouldn't work.  Things would keep vanishing there."

"Probably safer to just leave it empty."

"I guess.  It's not all that big anyway.  I just feel a little strange not
using it, considering the crowding in the Buff and in Low City.  Remember,
I spent the last forty years in a civilized place."

"I don't know that I'd call it civilized.  It's just as bad in its own
way - they have their homeless and starving and wars."

"Been studying up?  They do have it better off in general."

"Sometimes.  They've given up on their own Travelling because of misplaced
economies - they used to walk on their moon.  Now they won't even spend the
pittance to send out probes."

"It's a pretty boring place, their moon.  No green cheese.  No air.  No surf."

"That reminds me - you wanted to show me how to surf."

"Right.  You want to borrow the skills or learn it the right way?"

"I'll learn it for myself.  Let's go."