15:56
“Here, hold it steady.” She placed both hands on the palmscreen and held her eye up to the scanner. A small, black metal circle with a red laser dot in the center. She looked into the beam. The red glare caused her to blink.
“Try not to blink, Miss. It just needs five seconds.”
She put her eye in the beam again, counted to three, then blinked rapidly. A chime in a minor key emanated from the palmscreen.
The agent sighed. “Miss.” Firmer this time. “Just place your eye over the beam. Don’t blink. It’s over in a few seconds.”
She failed another three times, eliciting more sighs and even a curse. She smiled sweetly. The smile didn’t feel at all natural on her face, but their displeasure was satisfying nonetheless. On the sixth attempt, she allowed it to work.
16:00
He looked at the results of the scan. “Miss Vu. I see you have full citizenship.”
“I’m aware.”
“But your parents do not. They are Vietnamese–Australian.”
She sat in silence. Let the threat hang there for a few moments while she studied it. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Nothing.” He snapped down the scanner, put the palmscreen in his coat pocket. His flat stare lingered on her. “I’m just saying they fall under our jurisdiction.”
Under the table, she slowly slid her pistol from the small holster under her belt buckle. She moved it to her lap, hidden in the shadows, easing the safety off with her thumb. “My parents have nothing to do with this.”
Again, those dead eyes. “If they’ve done nothing wrong, they have nothing to worry about.”
The grandmother reappeared, placed a pot and two glasses on the table. She glanced down as she did so. From the angle she was standing, the old woman could see the pistol Lynn clutched in her hand. She leant down, whispered close to Lynn’s ear. “Bỏ thuôć độc dễ hỏn.” [“Poison would have been easier.”]
Lynn gave her a small smile in reply.
Agent Baker took one sip of his tea before turning to Nguyen. “Time to go.” He pointed down at the flexiscreen sitting on the table. “That yours?”
Nguyen puffed on his cigar. Like Lynn, he seemed to be figuring the best answer to that particular question.
“Mister Nguyen, is that your flexiscreen?”
Nguyen began to speak, but Lynn cut him off. “Yes. Yes it’s his.”
The agent started to rise from his seat. “You better bring it with you.”
16:03
A soft chime emanated from the screen. The four faces at the table turned to look at it. No one spoke. A few seconds passed and the chime sounded again, the ideograms on the flexiscreen increasing in brightness, insisting on attention.
“Mister Nguyen,” she said. He didn’t respond. He just sat staring at the screen. Her voice was firmer the second time. “Mister Nguyen.”
He started and looked up at her.
“Why don’t you answer your call while the agents here show me that warrant.”
He looked from her, to the screen, over to the agents, then back to her again. He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “Sure.” He put a finger to his c-glyph and closed his eyes.
“Gentlemen.” Lynn held out her hand. “The warrant.” She felt surprisingly calm given she was responsible for a crime occurring three feet away that could get her thirty years in prison. She focused on her breathing.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Inhale.
Agent Baker glanced over at Nguyen, who was now mumbling responses to someone only he could see. The agent sighed and reached into his coat pocket, pulled out the palmscreen, and pressed his thumb to it. “Verify: Agent Baker, immigration enforcement. Display warrant for Nguyen Van Cam, suspected people smuggler.”
He waited. Nothing happened. He pressed his thumb to it again. Still nothing. It was dead. No sound, no light, no signal. He handed it to his partner. The other man looked at the dead screen, then up at Lynn. “What’s going on here?”
She slowly slid the pistol back in the holster, eyes on the two men. “You tell me.”
The agent held the screen up. “All official communications are contained in this, including the warrant. It’s a closed system. It was working fine a few minutes ago. Now it’s dead.”
She leaned back in her chair. “Well, I’d say you boys are shit out of luck.”
“This doesn’t change anything.”
“I disagree. It changes everything.” Lynn signaled for the grandmother to come over to the table. She did so immediately. “This is private property. Unless you’re conducting government-sanctioned business, you should leave,” she turned to the old woman, addressing her in the formal Vietnamese mode, “Right, elder aunty?”
The grandmother looked at the two men, her eyes sparkling. She found a phrase for them in English. “Piss off.”
The agents rose from their seats. One reached under his jacket. The other looked around at the customers, at the faces staring back at him from within the red haze, coiled with silent anger. The agent placed a hand on his partner’s shoulder. “Let’s wait outside. Warrant and back-up will be here in fifteen minutes.”
The other man nodded, still staring straight at Lynn. He let his hand drop, looked over at Nguyen. “Don’t even think about leaving.” Then he spun and walked out, his partner right behind.
Lynn turned to the old woman. “We need some privacy.”
The old woman set about ushering the customers out the front door. No one needed much encouragement. It wasn’t worth witnessing what was going to happen next.
Soon all that remained was the smoke and the scent of anchovies. That, and two of her men. They walked over from where they had been sitting, one stood behind Mister Nguyen, one next to Lynn. They were big men.
Nguyen glanced up at them, then back at Lynn. “We should leave, now.” He started to rise from his seat, but a heavy hand fell on his shoulder and pushed him back down.
Lynn shook her head. “Not yet, Mister Nguyen, not yet.” She indicated the door with her eyes. “Your men in the car outside have been sent away.”
“What?”
She sighed and folded her hands on the tabletop. “You led two immigration agents to our first meeting.”
“I didn’t know they were following me.”
“You led two immigrations agents into our first bloody meeting.” She didn’t raise her voice, but the steel was in it this time.
Nguyen said nothing, just bowed his head and looked at the burnt-out cigar between his fingers.
Lynn pointed at the cigarette case. “Fortunately I keep a dot scrambler on hand for times such as this. The one I stuck on the agent’s palmscreen will wipe any record of my retina scan, and freeze the unit until a tech can sit down and unwind the scrambled code. And this,” she pointed to her nose ring, “is a refraction loop. You know what this does?”
He shook his head.
“To the naked eye I looked normal. But when you take the memory pin from your c-glyph and play back this scene, the area around my face is distorted. The light bent and warped. They’ll still have my voice print, but I can live with that.”
She placed the cigarette case in her pocket.
“So I’m in the clear,” she said. “You know the laws on human memory. If it doesn’t come from a memory pin playback, it is inadmissible as evidence. What with the frail psychology of natural memory and all that. Those agents won’t remember what I look like anyway. Not if I change my hair.” She reached up, touching the spikes with her palms. “Pity. I quite like this style.”
She sighed. “There is, unfortunately, one loose strand. I didn’t activate the refraction loop until after you’d walked in. Those agents,” she waved at the door, “could subpoena your memory pin.”
He stared a
t her for a few seconds, processing what she was saying. “I’ll destroy it. I’ll give it to you even. Right now.”
She shook her head. “It is more than that. You’re sloppy, and that makes you a liability. You know the names of the families I just paid for, and—”
“—I’ll wipe all my records. You can have every—”
“—Enough.” Her eyes flashed. “Enough. You endangered my parents. This isn’t business, this is personal.” She paused, watching the man squirm under the heavy hands pressed down on his shoulders. “That’s the secret, by the way, Mister Nguyen. This business we have chosen—it’s always personal.”
“What are you saying?” He struggled to rise. The man next to Lynn stepped forward and drove a fist into Nguyen’s face, rocking the gangster’s head backward. Nguyen sat there for half a minute, one hand clutching the table, the other over his eye. When he pulled his hand away blood trickled down his cheek, the eyebrow split and already swelling.
Lynn indicated the man who had struck him. “This is Mister Giang. How is your family doing, Mister Giang?”
A voice, deep and clear, answered. “Well, Miz Vu.”
She kept her eyes on Nguyen. “They been out here some time now haven’t they?”
“Nearly three years.”
She nodded. She pointed at the man behind Nguyen’s left shoulder. “This is Mister Lac. His family arrived only six months ago. Have they settled in well, Mister Lac?”
“Very well, Miz Vu.”
“Did your younger sister get into university?”
“Yes. She will be a teacher.” A note of pride in the voice.
“Good. If there are any problems with tuition, you let me know.”
It was hard to tell in the shadows, but Mister Lac appeared to nod in reply.
Nguyen watched her now out of one eye, fear blossoming behind it.
“Mister Giang?”
“Yes, Miz Vu.”
“Could you take Mister Nguyen out to the back room and put a bullet through his head?”
Giang moved to where Nguyen sat and grabbed him by the upper arm. He and Lac hefted him out of his seat. Nguyen stuttered. “Wait, What? You can’t kill me.” Spittle fresh on his lips, his good eye wet. “Do you know who I am?”
Lynn stood. “Yes I do. You’re a mercenary,” she said. “And I meet people like you every day of the week.”
She nodded at Giang. He punched Nguyen in the stomach, doubling him over as the air expelled from his lungs, his cigar butt dropping to the floor.
That was the last she saw of him—bent over, unable to speak, being dragged from the room.
She turned to Mister Lac. “Get my parents. Right now. Take them to a safe house. If they argue—when my mother argues with you—just tell her that their daughter will explain everything in a couple of days.”
Lac nodded and left.
The grandmother walked in as he was leaving, handed over a warm bamboo box. “Cỏm của con nè. Bać đoán là con muôń take away.” [“Your lunch, child. I guessed you wanted take away.”]
The scent of rice, sharp chili sauce and aromatic mushrooms rose from the container. Lynn smiled a small smile. “Smells delicious, older Aunt. Cám ỏn bać.”
Grandmother nodded. “Con baỏ trong. Con đi há.” [“You take care. You go.”]
“You too. Con đi đây.”
Lynn straightened, fixing the ends of her hair with an open palm. She faced the front door. Twilight to heat, crimson to blinding white. Lynn hated the world out there.
She reached for the door handle.
Planar Ghosts
written by
Krystal Claxton
illustrated by
AMIT DUTTA
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tragically born with a mis-calibrated sense of humor, Krystal Claxton lived in nine US states before the age of thirteen. The combination of the two has left her with an oscillating accent and a habit of laughing at things that aren’t funny. She currently lives in Georgia with her long-suffering spouse, a dog who thinks she’s a cat, and a number of children that is subject to change.
Krystal started writing her first speculative fiction novel in third grade. (It didn’t pan out. The four after weren’t too great either.) By high school it was clear she was meant to be an author so she procrastinated by earning dual Associate of Applied Science degrees in Information Systems. She now works full-time as a level-two computer support technician—when she’s not secretly writing fiction. (Please don’t tell her boss.)
She enjoys breaking Heinlein’s Rules and attending Dragon Con (and any other function she can get away with) in costumes of her favorite fictional characters.
Her short fiction has appeared in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Fireside Fiction Company, Daily Science Fiction, and Unidentified Funny Objects 3.
Keep up with her at KrystalClaxton.com or on Twitter @krystalclaxton.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Amit Dutta discovered the creative urge as a wee entity growing up in the African nation of Malawi. Science fiction and fantasy literature were the first to capture his imagination. Since nobody he asked seemed to think that art could actually be a career, he trotted off to university in Canada and focused on astrophysics. It was very sci-fi, after all.
A series of events, otherwise known as life, left Amit entangled in what might loosely be called “a career in IT.” It led to him wondering where he had misplaced twelve of his years. They weren’t in the fridge, and he dared not look under the bed. Amit moved to New Zealand where the slumbering creative phoenix finally erupted into the bleary-eyed, caffeine-fueled, solitary autodidactic artist he has become. Over three years he obsessively developed his skills and successfully destroyed his social life.
He quit his daily grazing at the cubicle farm in early 2015 to dedicate more time to his art. The automated mortgage payment glares at him in outright suspicion.
Amit currently hermits himself in a remote bush valley north of Wellington. He feeds cat food to the family of eels living under the ford across the river. The cat isn’t impressed.
Planar Ghosts
The walls around the town of Bootstrap are mostly old cars stacked one on top of the other and welded together. Outside Bootstrap, market stalls made from patchwork tarps and rusty pipes lean on either side of the wide gate. They are temporary places for the people who live inside to trade goods with the people stuck outside who need in.
People like Pup.
He looks up at the guard by the gate, who is thicker, but not much older. Probably grew up inside the walls. He looks as if he’s been well-fed, even during bad years. His skin is sun-reddened and spotted along his cheeks and the high bridge of his nose.
Pup offers his frayed duffle bag to the guard. The man kneels to comb through it with one meaty hand. Inside is Pup’s winter scavenge—a length of rope, a glass vial with lighter fluid, and three almost-full rolls of duct tape.
If this is enough to buy Pup in, he can work for water until summer is over. As the guard measures Pup’s worth, the one good pocket of his cargo pants seems heavier. Inside is something he’s not supposed to trade. He’s not sure what it is. Some Before thing. Probably the guard wouldn’t know what it is either.
Pup can just make out Ghost waiting a long way off, gazing longingly into the dying grasslands and the stark, cloudless, afternoon sky. She is a violet shade at the edge of the crowd, a soft see-through specter that no one but Pup will notice. She’s uninterested in his business, has been distant all winter. Driving him farther, faster than normal, and not at all interested in foraging. Even now, she wants him to keep moving, but he needs to find a place to hole up. Summer is coming and it will be too hot and dry to survive on the plains.
The guard stands to his full height, presses his thin lips together, meets Pup’s gaze and returns the worn
bag. “It’s not enough.”
Pup sighs. He’ll have to walk to the next town, Washing, but if they’re full, the fee will be no better. If Pup were a young woman, preferably pretty, the price would be cheaper. If his skin was lighter, the price would be cheaper. If he was heavier, more muscle and less sinew, the price would be cheaper.
But Pup is none of these things, so he shrugs into the strap and makes his way along the wall, past people swapping lentils for plastic fletchings, moonshine for unrusted screws, salt for bullets. The market is too loud for Pup. Though the crowd is small, trading is more urgent just before the season change. The air is thin and the scent of roasting peppers fights against a dry breeze coming off the plains.
He lingers at an open pit fire with a grill made from a bed’s link spring. A woman who would have already been old during the Before time is tending sticks skewered with carrots and onion slices. A few even have hunks of brown meat. He knows that he should get moving, but this may be his last chance for a hot meal. He glances toward Ghost to see if she’s tired of waiting for him, but she’s not paying him any attention.
“Have something to trade?” the old woman asks. Her fingers are thin and dry and singed at the tips like the skewers. Gray dreadlocks hang past her frayed shawl. She’s hunched, but Pup recognizes the sharp look in her eyes. There’s a reason she’s survived these many years.
Pup sits in the dirt at the edge of the fire to dig a loop of twine hanging around his neck from beneath his threadbare shirts, measures out two arm-lengths, and holds it up for her inspection. When she nods he pulls the small blade from his boot.
She passes him a skewer with a big enough chunk of meat at the same time he places the string in her palm. He should wait until it’s cool, but the scent of spiced meat fills his head and his mouth turns watery. It’s half gone, tender carrots and juicy meat—beef? lamb, maybe—settling warmly in his belly before he can stop long enough to savor the taste. He stares off to the southeast.