They left the palace in the company of Ferman and Milton. The sun, now high over the eastern wall, provided more light by which to see the sights of the city. It did not improve them, and the heat did even less for the smell. Residents, clad in attire ranging from tailored velvet to patched and greasy rags, raised their knees high as they walked the crowded streets between the buildings and market stalls, making squishy, sucking noises with each step. To Lisa, they resembled a flock of shabbily plumaged shore birds on a badly polluted beach.
Townsfolk gaped and sometimes even pointed as their small group passed. A few ragged children followed, keeping up by weaving between the legs of their elders. Lisa saw one boy fall and slide a respectable distance along the well-lubricated street before coming to a stop against an old woman sitting on a crate. The crone glanced down at the boy and coughed up a wad of green phlegm.
The boy managed to dodge both it and the kick she aimed at him.
"Well done, Commander Chang," the older of the two magic-users walking with them said, holding the hem of his robe just above the muck. "I've never seen protection from magic as strong as yours. An innate ability, I presume. Rennart detected no magical devices, and I know he's quite good at that kind of thing."
Lisa continued to stare at her feet in a futile attempt to avoid as much damage to her clothing as possible.
"I take it most of the people there expected something to happen other than me laughing at him. Sorry about that, by the way. I meant no disrespect." The recent events at the palace still confused her.
"No apology necessary, I assure you. It was a fair contest, and gloating at the defeat of a strong opponent is perfectly acceptable."
"It is?"
"Medieval value system," Doc told her. "Empathy is not one of its strong points."
"I'm still not sure what he was trying to do," she said. "It hardly seemed like much of a contest. I didn't do anything except stand there."
"That is what is so impressive," Ferman said. "I don't think anyone I know of could have done as well."
"Swagger a bit," Brax whispered to her. "This is a good opportunity to build up your street cred here."
"My what?" she asked, but she tried to comply, walking—carefully—with her chin up and her back straight as if she owned the place.
She still did not understand what she had done that so impressed the magician. What was so hard about doing nothing? Something—anything—was more difficult than nothing. A rock could do nothing. The only logical conclusion, as illogical as it might be, was that Rennart sincerely believed he could turn her into a frog, which, in her eyes, marked him as clearly insane, but almost everyone else there seemed to share his delusion. Was the entire city crazy?
She took in the filthy and chaotic street scene around her and hazarded that it might very well be, which meant she was effectively in the middle of an unsupervised mental asylum. She would need to be tactful, although she suspected that not all of the inmates were dangerous. Milton and Ferman seemed relatively harmless.
The city gates were already open when they reached them, and people filed in both directions, some pushing wheelbarrows—empty going out, full coming in.
"Ah, I see the commoners are already hard at work," Ferman said.
"What are they doing?" Lisa asked.
"Salvaging what they can before the next attack, I imagine."
"Next attack?"
"Yes, unless you can stop it, of course. After your performance today, I wouldn’t put it past you. But, enough of that. I'm sure you have much planning to do, and I need to discuss a few things with my apprentice here. I'll send him to see you again later today."
He grabbed Milton by the shoulder. "Come on, lad, I have a job for you."
Ferman and Milton turned back the way they had come, and Lisa, Doc, and Brax went the other. The people coming and going through the gate circled well around the Brane Child, giving it a wide berth and casting it wary glances, which left the direct way clear for the returning crew.
Sandra, or maybe Sims, must have been watching for their return because the boarding ramp locked in place just as they got there, ready for them to board.
Doc stopped them at the end of the ramp.
"I think we should go through minimal decontamination before we go in," he said, pointing at their caked shoes and the soiled hems of their jumpsuits.
It seemed a wise precaution. Lisa removed her communicator from a pocket in her uniform.
"Sims, we're going to need to go through level one decontamination before we enter."
"Acknowledged, Commander. Proceed to the airlock. Surface decontamination protocols are engaged."
The UV light and antibacterial mist would not eliminate all of the dirt they had collected, but it should keep it from causing illness. It would also cut down on the smell. Lisa's nostrils had been overwhelmed and had pretty much shut down in surrender to the stench some time ago, but the ripe smell of decay was too heavy to filter out entirely. Under normal circumstances, they would strip down for a more thorough procedure, and their clothing would be wrapped and incinerated, but they had not brought enough spare garments to do this every time they went outside. The ship's onboard fabricators could make new ones, but she felt it would be wiser to conserve the time and materials needed to do so for repairing the ship and other higher priorities.
"We're going to need to find a way of doing laundry," she said as they waited in the airlock, which was currently filled with purple light and a fine mist that smelled of disinfectant.
"It shouldn't be hard to get a big tub of water," Brax said.
"Clean water," Doc amended.
"We could have the drones dig a well, I suppose," the pilot suggested.
"I don't plan on being here that long," Lisa said as the procedure ended and the inner door opened.
Sandra greeted them on the other side. "So how did it go?"
"Well, the good news is that they say they can get us some palladium," Brax said.
"And the bad news?"
"The bad news is they'll only give it to us if we stop the orc attacks," Lisa said.
"I thought we did that already."
"They think they'll return, and our job is to see they don't."
"How are we supposed to do that?"
"I haven't a clue, and I need some coffee," Lisa said, turning down the corridor toward the galley.
Sandra made the coffee while the others sat at the table barely large enough for all of them. When the ship was not under gravity, it and the chairs folded into the wall.
Lisa felt much better with the warm cup in her hand, and the familiar and welcome aroma helped overpower the residual stench in her nostrils.
"So, we have—what do they call it in stories? A quest?" Sandra said, taking a seat.
"In this case, maybe just a job," Brax replied. "A quest implies more of a lengthy search."
"Well, whatever, but we have to do it to get the stuff we need to fix the BS device. Now, call me cynical, but what if they're lying?"
"What do you mean?"
"How can we be sure they have any palladium?"
Lisa shrugged. "I don't see that we have much choice but to trust them. The king seemed honest enough to me, so I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. The trouble is, I don't see how we can fulfill our end of the agreement."
"Maybe we don't have to. Couldn't we find a source and mine some ourselves?" Sandra said.
"Possibly," Lisa said, although the idea of reneging on contract, even one as strange as this one, bothered her. She did not make promises lightly, and when she did, she did her best to keep them.
"Sims, where might we find a source of naturally occurring palladium?"
"On Earth, it is most often found with other minerals. The largest commercial sources are in Canada and Siberia," the AI responded.
Sandra seemed to take this as good news. "So let's put on some parkas and go there as soon as the ship is flightworthy again. Spares for most of the things we need to fix sho
uld be ready later today, and then it's just a matter of installation. The drones can probably finish it all in less than a day."
Lisa was not sure how viable a solution this was. Even if they could find a vein, or a deposit, or whatever, she knew next to nothing about mining. As far as she knew, none of them did.
"Sims, speculate on the difficulties we might have attempting to mine palladium at the sites on this planet corresponding to known sources on Earth."
"A direct correspondence of locations here to those on Earth cannot be assumed. This planet appears to be an Earth analogue, possibly in a state of flux, rather than an Earth parallel. Places corresponding to Siberia or Canada, or any other specific geographical location, may not exist here. Reliable sensor readings are limited to the area roughly one hundred kilometers from the ship. Beyond that, the geography is indeterminate."
"Indeterminate geography? Explain."
"The closest correlation available is the behavior of subatomic particles. The wave function does not collapse to a specific state unless the object in question is observed. Until that time, its characteristics are not fixed. "
"But that’s not possible."
"Correct. Macroscopic objects do not behave in this fashion due to quantum decoherence, but no other description presents itself. Your request for an explanation required use of an analogy. No accurate explanation is available."
She crossed her arms and glared at an unfortunate patch of air. "This place is really starting to get on my nerves. It can't be real, but it doesn't seem to know that."
"Maybe the Brane Skip sent us into some kind of fantasy reality," Brax said.
"Fantasy reality? What the hell is that, other than an oxymoron?"
"Don't mind him," Sandra said. "He's probably back in game mode again."
"Well, it doesn't make sense. Any other ideas? What about you, Doc?"
"I have no explanation that makes sense either," he said.
"Do you have one that doesn't make sense?" Sandra asked teasingly.
He smiled. "A few, but other than that we are very far away from the world we know, or in a different universe entirely, I think I'll keep them to myself for now. Speculations about such fundamental questions are unlikely to help us in our present circumstances."
"True," Lisa said. "Our first priority is to get the ship flightworthy, and we seem to have that in hand. The second is getting palladium for the damn BS thing. Mining probably isn't much of an option, although it was a good idea, Sandra. We just don't have a way to find a source, and even if we did, we're not well equipped for digging it out, at least not quickly. It looks like we'll have to find a way to stop the orcs. Unfortunately, we're not well equipped for that either."
"How hard can it be to outsmart a bunch of pig-faced troglodytes?" Sandra said.
Lisa shook her head. "I don't know, and although I'm sure I'm going to regret this, let's ask our resident expert."
She turned her attention to the pilot. "Brax, what can you tell us about orcs? Where do they come from? What is their social structure, dietary preferences, mating customs, religion? Anything that might help us figure out a way to convince them to go away."
Brax paused in reflective consideration for a moment before answering. "Well, in stories and games, orcs are kind of just there, like part of the landscape. They're monsters for the heroes to overcome and hone their skills before they get to the final challenge. You don't get a lot of backstory with monsters like that. There's some, of course, but it usually doesn't play into the central plot."
"Tell us what you remember."
He leaned back in his chair, cocking his head at the ceiling in thought. "Physically they're comparable to humans, but they're not especially bright, and, like I said before, they normally don't work well together. Their clans tend to be small, and they fight with one another, although I have no idea why. They're just supposed to be aggressive and competitive like that, I guess. When they do cooperate, it's probably because some more powerful kind of monster or something has somehow gotten control of them."
"Anything else?"
"I'm not sure it matters, but in some stories, they're supposed to have been magically created from either goblins or men."
"You mean like genetically engineered?"
"I guess."
"From what I've seen here so far, these people would have a tough time selectively breeding peas. I can't believe they could genetically engineer anything."
Brax shrugged. "It kind of makes sense in the context of the stories, but it's just one of those things you have to suspend disbelief for, I suppose."
Suspension of disbelief was not a skill Lisa possessed in much abundance, and not one she wished to cultivate.
"Okay," she said. "Let's assume for now that the orcs aren't bright but they have a leader who is. That kind of goes along with what the locals have told us. So how do we overcome the leader?"
"That depends on what it is."
"What are the possibilities?"
"Unfortunately, they're fairly extensive. Common things would be some kind of human, like an evil warlord, priest, or necromancer. But it could be a vampire, lich, some kind of demon, or a number of other things."
"So, first we need to find out who or what their leader is, where he, she, or it is, and then figure out a way to overcome it, right?"
"And get past the orcs that are probably guarding it, yeah."
She tried to think of it as an engineering problem and came up empty. Nothing in her experience had prepared her for a situation like this. In fact, everything in her experience told her a situation like this couldn't happen. Brax, however, had been in fantasy worlds before, at least in his head, so he remained her best source of information. She was not pleased about this.
"How would you do that in one of your games?" she asked him.
"With orcs, we just hit them with some magic first, then maybe a round of missile weapons if it's possible, and then we just wade in and hack at them until we get to the main part of the dungeon."
"And that works?"
"Usually. Eventually. In the computer games, sometimes you die a few times first if there are a lot of them."
Sandra rolled her eyes. "I think the dying a few times part is a nonstarter. We need a better plan."
"We don't even know what we're facing, yet," Lisa said. "We need better information."
A musical ping sounded, politely indicating that Sims sought permission to intrude on the conversation.
"Go ahead," Lisa said.
"Be advised that the native who was here before is returning."
"Maybe he can get us some," Sandra said.