William gave the call bell another tap. It dinged brightly, echoing through the open Arcadium lobby, bouncing against the patterned tile floor, up into the cathedral ceiling. It faded away gently, leaving only a low, reverberating tone. The last time William was here, and all the times before that, the Arcadium didn’t hum.
“I don’t think anyone is coming.” Hakra stared at William’s finger, still hovering over the bell. He considered hitting it one more time for good measure, but he instead retracted his hand.
“We don’t need an escort.” William said. “I know the way.”
Hakra raised an eyebrow.
Rather than broker any disobediance, William walked off. Truth be told, if someone asked him for directions William wouldn’t be able to provide, but he’d met with Dune enough at this point he was confident the path would come to him along the way. The Arcadium was a maze of corridors and staircases within a maze of buildings, which didn’t always leave much in the way of landmarks.
The footsteps of his two companions were audible behind him. “I’ve never visited enough to wrap my head around this place.” Hakra said.
Sigfrid walked beside him, following William along. “I’ve never visited.”
“Ah. I was wondering why you’d make the trip for something like this, Will.”
This being the large cylindrical cannister Sigfrid carried. Sigfrid himself was a newer Mide-Lieutenant at the docks, a transfer from Eylouver, orchetrated by Bahlin, actually. Even since she lost and William was instated as Captain without her permission or approval, she had taken to beefing up the dock’s ranks. It was one of her less problematic behaviors. Docks got final say on any of her recommendations anyways, and they lost a fair few people with Manton Stockwell and the result chaos. There were individuals, not many, but some, who wanted nothing to do with William as Captain. It wasn’t uncommon, he tried not to be (too) insulted by it, and he got Sigfrid out of the deal.
As for the contents of the cannister, things had to be fairly dire if they were asking William to identify the unknown object pulled from that just-docked freighter. Best to head to the professionals at that point.
“I’d heard it was big, but I didn’t grasp the scale.” The three of them had to walk a kilometer into the campus just to get to the building with the offices.
“The layout doesn’t make sense. We’d be stuck waiting if Will didn’t think he knew the way.”
William did, in fact, know the way. He had them turn the corner and there was the place he was looking for - a big, blank, room. The lobby had a few chairs scattered about at least, there was nothing of the sort here. There were two white walls, completely empty, a wall with the hallway they walked from, and one more wall that held four matte black rectangles. They were dark as pitch, sucking up all the light. Each black rectange had a tinier, corresponding metal rectangle to it’s right.
“You know how to use the elevators?” Hakra asked with another raised eyebrow.
“Of course.” William walked up to the second rectangle from the right (chosen arbitrarily) with all the confidence in the world. This was the spot in the Arcadium that always hitched the non-arteficers up, but William had never been particularly nervous around unknown auctors, unlike what seemed to be the rest of society. The little metal rectangle with engraved circles and abbreviated words caused many men and women to turn tail to find the stairs, and William didn’t understand why, the auctor wasn’t even of the introdynic sort. He reached out his left hand instinctually and hovered a few inches about the metal panel. The ansitiy bit at his fingertips.
To William’s right, Sigfrid reached out and tapped the matte rectange apprehensively. Hakra looked at William’s hand, hovering just in range of the auctor. With his middle finger and thumb William tapped the ‘dest’ and ‘nine’ (‘nine’ oddly written out in letters), then ‘fon’ and ‘open’, and with a little bit of force he pulled his hand back from the auctor’s grip on his esprite system. The matte black rectange ceased being a black matte rectange near instantaneous, and instead became an open doorway to another empty lobby.
Hakra flinched, very slightly. Sigfrid looked over to the open doorway, wearing a look of suprise.
“It’s asterponics?” He asked.
“Alternative space techniques.” William replied.
It was clear from the way Sigfrid looked at the open doorway that he did not understand. To be fair to him, neither did William, he just knew the correct buttons to push.
Hakra frowned at the doorway.
William tried to remember the gist of it. Something about short range teleportation, and distance feasibility measurements? It was all in that damn dictionary, but William wasn’t really capable of comprehending specifics at his current level of understanding, and wasn’t overly keen to. Alternative space theory was deep in the asterponics weeds, but William had gathered that the Arcadium had these elevators to show off, and not for a single lick of practical purpose. William’s companions were doing nothing with the open elevator, so he took the initiative and walked through, scaling nine stories with a single step. On the other side he felt nothing, absolutely nothing, less sensation than the rush of gravity from a normal elevator or the physical exertion of nine flights of stairs. Just a lone, persistant noise permeating from some spot in the back of his head, and slightly to the left.
His companions followed behind him momentarily. Once everyone was through William tapped the auctor on the wall and the transili elevator silently and immediately collapsed back to it’s matte resting state. As soon as Sigfrid was through he turned back to the elevator and blinked at it, several times.
Hakra sighed. “I wouldn’t think to hard about it. It’s not worth it.”
Sigfrid broke eye contact with the rectangle. “I wasn’t aware Asterponics could do things like this.”
“If you’re that interested I’m sure it wouldn’t be too difficult to find a book.”
“I have a decent dictionary recommendation,” William said, “if you’re interested.”
Hakra sighed again and harder, then took a look around the empty elevator lobby. “This is the nineth floor?” He asked William. “The offices are that way?” He pointed.
“The one you’re looking for.” William said.
“In that case, I’ll be off. You two have fun with Odihae.” Hakra walked in the other direction to go hunt down the arteficer that had been ignoring his phone calls all week. When William had idly mentioned he was planning on taking a trip with Sigfrid, Hakra had asked to come along, safety in numbers. He had to handle some staffing issue, he said, nothing the Captain needed to concern himself with.
It wasn’t like William didn’t also have his own ulterior motive for this little trip, and one he would also perfer Hakra not know the specifics of. He turned to Sigfrid. “Shall we continue?”
Up on the nineth floor the halls were actually familiar. William had been here often enough, getting identifications for strange objects found in the docks, or after a call right at the end of the day, with an urgent insistance that he come by ‘right now’, something very important required a guard’s immediate attention (it was never that important). A turn here, a turn there, and there it was, the door with the shiny placard denoting it’s ownership to one ‘Tribune Dune Odihae’. She knew they were coming, Sigfrid had called ahead and Dune actually picked up the phone.
William knocked. A moment passed. “Tribune, it’s Captain Belafose. We had a meeting?”
A characteristically soft voice flung itself against the closed door, sounding as if it’s owner had to expend a decent amount of effort to get it even that far. “A moment please!”
They waited a moment, then the door swung open, to Tribune Odihae, her dark grey gloves covered in white dust, the flowing garb arteficers tended to favor tied up behind an apron. “Apologies, I lost track of time.”
“If you need a moment?”
She shook her head and waved them in. Dune’s desk exceeded the confines of the definition and veered strong into ‘workbench’ territory. A corner of it was covered in little bowls of various colors of powders, but another corner held mostly clean looking tools and other paraphenelia. William gently brushed them aside and bid Sigfrid to place the cannister down. “This is Lieutenant Sigfrid Loff. He’ll be the one handling found objects for the time being.”
Dune stripped off her gloves and dropped them in a bin behind her workbench, then she held out her hand for a shake. “A pleasure to meet you.” Sigfrid was taller than William, but even he had to really stretch to reach across the desk. William pulled up two chairs for them.
Dune’s office was large from a square meterage perspective, larger than William’s, and he managed to get a whole couch in his, but she had the place crammed so full any size advantage was lost. There were shelves floor to ceiling full of books and equipment, burners, beakers, little metal torture tools, a very respectable sized fumehood, and rocks, loads of them. Rocks on her desk and rocks on the shelves and rocks on the floor in bins. Oh, apologies, William meant ‘reagents’. Behind her desk, hanging from a hook, was a white cane.
Dune undid her apron and dropped it in the same bin as the gloves. “Would you like some tea?” Sigfrid gazed at the bowls of powders and back to William rather pointedly.
“Sounds lovely.” William said.
There was, among the other objects in the office, a small table in the back dedicated to tea. Dune, bless her, was not known for her speed at making tea.
“How much did you explain on the call?” William asked.
“Little cubes.” Dune said while she started her preparations. “That’s all I recall.”
William looked to Sigfrid bemused.
“I wasn’t sure how much information was appropriate.”
The burner hissed as Dune set it alight. “It sounded like something that would need analysis regardless.” On a metal bracket she set the pot atop the flame. “Where was it from, again?”
“Sunerbolea.” Said Sigfrid, “The resident chemist couldn’t identify it, nor the materialist on the ship we found it upon.”
Dune selected a variety of ceramics from her tea cabinet. “Would they like it back?”
“They said so when we seized it, of course.” William said. “But, I don’t believe they’ve filed for it?” He looked to Sigfrid.
“They left yesterday, with no request.”
“That’s a no, then.”
The water started to bubble in the little glass teapot. It matched, uncomfortably so, the rest of the glasswear scattered about the office, made to handle all of Dune’s substances. She dropped bags in the mismatched mugs, filled them up with water, and set them down as far into her desk towards William and Sigfrid as she could reach, which was not far at all. William took a sip. Sigfrid took a sip only after he saw William do so.
Dune sat down in her workbench chair (nicer and larger than William’s office chair, and his was pretty good) and gestured to the cannister. “Could I take a look?”
Sigfrid set down his tea and began to fiddle with it while Dune grabbed a contraption off a stand on her desk and pulled up her sleeve. Underneath the arteficer garb she revealed black, skin tight fabric covered with copper threads, weaved in straight lines and circles - a sleeve auctor, probably wrapped all the way up to her shoulders. It all led down to the metal glove she strapped to the back of her hand, clasped flush against her skin, designed to the length of her fingers and hers alone. At the base of her wrist the iunctio effect, William knew that piece of trivia, pulled the sleeve and the glove together, wrapping up the meridians in her arm nicely together ready for-
Sigfrid pulled open the cannister with a sharp and satisfying clunk. Within the newly opened space between the two ends hovered four pieces of pale white, chalky susbstance, each shaped as a cube. They caught scant beams of light from the window behind Dune’s desk, their plain surface erupting in sparks of orange. Dune adjusted a knob and five spkies instantly protruded from her aparatus-glove. She plucked one of the cubes out of it’s floating prison and examined it, gave it a tap with a metal tip from the glove, gave it a sniff.
William, without any visual, audible and otherwise indication, could pinpoint the exact moment Dune lit alive the little auctor on her hand. In the back of his brain some stack of dormant neurons fired, and he sensed it, he could almost taste it, the aparatus a metre away humming it’s discordant song, and then a blink of an eye later and it was gone and William was once again feeling nothing at all.
Dune spent the next several minutes putting the cube through the wringer. She swabbed it three times and dropped the contents each in their own test tube. She scraped it with a knife to little effect and tapped it with a tiny hammer. The only result was a dull, crackly sound. Dune made a small noise of confusion directed at the cube, then dropped it into a nearby beaker.
“I’m not sure what this is.” She said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Or rather,” she continued, “I’ve seen things like it,” she picked up the beaker and waved it in the sun’s rays from the window, “but never orange. I’ll need to run some tests.”
“Of course.”
She muttered under her breath, “some sort of compound,” then set the beaker down on the desk. “I’ll make sure to send the report to… Lieutenant Loff, now that you’ve outgrown us lowly arteficers, Captain.” Dune said with an easy smile.
“Please do. And I’m not done with you just yet.”
The smile didn’t drop from Dune’s lips, but it fell from her eyes, to no suprise from William. She was astute enough to tell that nothing good was coming, but William was wishing he didn’t lead the way he just did. Dune and her narrowed eyes across the room were giving him cold feet, he’d never caused the sort of ruckus he was about to cause. Best to just get on with it.
“I’ve submitted a complaint to the Trade Commission about the new material restrictions from last summer. They’ve already got the document so you can’t convince me to hold it back.”
He watched her as he broke the news. She kept her steady facial expression, mostly - that sort of loose, airy gaze Dune always had when the subject matter was more than a metre away, but then a flash of something. Relief, maybe? Quick in the eyes, and she immediately masked it away.
“I thought it would be polite,” William said, “to give you a heads up, since it will be your problem.”
She exhaled a huff. “Among others.”
“Sure.”
A few further moments of silence from her was about all William could stand.
“It’s been difficult to handle down at the docks. People barely know, and when they learn they disagree and try to bring the materials in anyways. We’ve seized so much imezinel and aveitium, not to mention all the others. It’s too much regulation for the demand. Isn’t this affecting industry? Has the Architecta guild said anything?”
“You’re the first complaint we’ve had.”
That was genuinely insane.
“We ran out of room at our storage facility.” William let out. “We had to rent another warehouse. Finances is upset, it’s a mess.”
Dune had the sense to at least look pensive about it. “You could surrender the materials to us early? Might ease the storage situation.”
“Absolutely not.”
“If we funded the warehouse for you would you retract the complaint?”
This was exactly the issue William had with the damn Arcadium. He might like Dune, they’d spent enough time together in her office snickering over whatever weird thing William pulled out of the bowels of the Docks, but she was one of them down to her bones.
“No. Look, you don’t have to please me. You have to please Iscan. It’s his, and the processing office’s, complaint. I just signed the paperwork.”
“You’re easier to work with.” Dune said with a little sigh.
“I only wanted to let you know so you don’t think I’m being underhanded.”
Beside William, Sigfrid watched the whole debate with rapt attention. William had not informed him ahead of time. William himself had barely been informed of this ahead of time. It was the sort of situation where Lieutenant Iscan cornered William in the office and said ‘there’s something that needs to be handled if the Captain could just sign here and here’. The Office of Processing had always excelled at running themselves.
“It’s fine,” Dune said, “and I’m not suprised. Will you step in to help the negotiations, if need be, at least?”
William had to hold back the tirade, because it wasn’t a negotiation, there was nothing to negotiate. The Arcadium might have been granted the right to set these standards but only under the explicit approval of the Asieeran government, who maintained full veto rights. The guard was government, the Arcadium was not government, but none of this was what Dune clearly wanted to hear and so William just said “yes.”
Thank god she seemed happy enough with that. William didn’t go so far as to sigh in relief, but he certainly took a moment to be pleased that they were done with the topic. His head hurt faintly from the tension, to the back and left, wait… No, it was the hum that persisted, pounding at his left ear.
“Is there anything else?” Dune knit her fingers together on the desk and looked between the two of them and also looked like she would like the answer to be no.
Sigfrid sat up from his more casual position he earlier assumed while watching the antics. “No. Thank you for your time, Tribune.”
Dune had just barely turned to him when William said, “what’s with the hum?”
She looked confused. “The hum?”
“I’ve heard it since I’ve entered the building. It’s low, and…” William pointed to his left ear and felt a little silly for doing so.
Dune went quiet and took it seriously. She rotated her head some, but no look of enlightenment or understanding was forthcoming. “No, I don’t hear anything.” She thought on it for a moment. “The eccevier engine was due for maintenance this week. It might be that you’re hearing. Apologies if it’s bothering you.”
“It’s fine.” But William was more ready to escape this place than he normally was. The three of them exchanged the last few pleasantries, William and Sigfrid dragged their chairs back to their earlier positions, and finally the two of them made it out of the office. William closed the door firmly behind them.