Training with the exoskeleton suit extended well past sunset. The HUD (Heads Up Display – like Iron Man has) inside the helmet said it was nearly ten. Raw said that my debut appearance would be in the evening — best to see what darkness is like as soon as possible. Except this place out here, in the middle of nowhere, had zero light disturbance. This night was darker than black, and that caused the stars and planets above to be clear and multi colored. Looking up at the clear heavens above, it was easy to believe in Heaven.
The suit came with many accessories, just as he promised. Once I saw the suit, and its obvious applications, I assumed that those accessories would be weapons of some type. Only two were, and they were basic as military gets. One gun and one knife. The rest of the myriad of gadgets belonged to the document and record area of life.
Twenty-four little drones — about the size of a small hummingbird, flew up on whirling propellers from my back. These were our main focus. The command system was complex, and it took some serious memory skills to get them flowing from one stage of flight to the next.
The system had AI and could do a great deal on its own, like for instance, never going more than twenty-five feet from me, or whatever I set that function at.
Pre-created patterns would allow routines and more complex usage. My best pattern was one that used three of them to watch me, circling out at different distances. Then three to watch who ever I was most engaged with. And then three that would circle the area and film just about anything that moved. Nine was as much as I could manage, however.
“Better than most,” Raw nodded.
“Sure,” I said, not feeling the compliment, if that’s what was meant.
“I hear doubt.”
“If nine is better than most, why are there twenty-four?” I asked.
“They break, get lost, shot, burned, damaged or fail to launch. This way you have replacements,”
Logical, reasonable, exactly the foresight I came to expect from him, and as penetrating as Superman wearing a Kryptonite condom.
“Uh,” I said.
“Still the doubt,” he divined.
“Yeah, but leave it. It’s warm and I’m cold.”
“Tell your suit,” he told me.
“My suit?” I asked. I had already decided to call the AI, Beth. Beth was the computer which operated much of the functionality. She needed a keyword so she would know I was talking to her. I shrugged. “Beth, I’m cold.”
“Raising suite temperature five degrees,” Beth told me, and then added, “estimating two hours loss from operational time.”
“Beth, what was the estimated time before?” I asked.
Two hours and six minutes.
“Beth, Lower temperature three degrees and report estimated time.”
Temperature lowered three degrees. Effective battery time now three hours fifteen minutes
“Beth, how long can you operate in combat conditions, with a full charge?”
Estimated eighteen hours
I looked over to Raw and took my helmet off. “Sounds like the heating system really sucks up the juice.”
He gave me an annoyed grin. “Yeah. Only real issue I can’t seem to get to work right.”
“So, you made this yourself? No help with the coding from Slate?”
“No,” he said, and looked a little confused as to why Slate would help.
I shrugged, and then told him about the sub-sonic trick he did, coding it up in a few minutes in the back of the limo.
Raw offered an appreciative nod, but no comment. In the back of my mind, Slate’s voice said, Because he doesn’t want to tell you that he wrote if for Slate, and Slate typed it up from memory.
Which rang true for both of them. If she called Slate on this, he would tell her that he only pretended to know everything, but really, he had a team of professionals who he paid close attention to — and Raw was on that list.
Raw didn’t want to tell her, because the way she told the story, made it sound like Slate took credit for it, when in fact, he didn’t and didn’t talk about it much at all. Didn’t matter, Raw wasn’t going to make him sound bad if he did take the credit. I didn’t know there were still guys like Raw walking around.
My enemy is my brother, and I love my brother.
I can’t believe this guy doesn’t have a harem.
That was the main theme of my thoughts as we rode back to our hotel. Once inside my room, I showered, changed into something mostly-there and met with him down in the bar, where several people were just getting use to the idea of his size. After I reacquainted myself, which never seemed to be easier, I sat down beside him on the stool, and ordered a triple tequila.
Taking a sip, I asked him, “So, how do I become your bond-mage? And what the fuck is a bond-mage anyway? My reason for asking is in the hopes of not getting you killed by doing it accidentally or doing something distracting.”
“Like wearing that neckline with those shorts?” he asked.
“Exactly like that, yes. Only more Inanna,” I added.
Adding her name sobered him more than I expected. “You’ve met with her, already?”
“I guess I sort of forced her to give me a talk,” I admitted, “but really that makes my point. We weren’t supposed to meet yet. It’s against some tradition or rule. It was important, but I fucked up so bad that I forced it to happen. I don’t want to do that again. So, I’m asking, please. I want to help, I want to be involved, and I get it, I could die. I really do get that…”
“And would have…” he said, understanding my thoughts.
“Yes, and would have if not for Kane, but I’m finding now that all of you were there, he was just the point man, right?”
Raw thought that statement through. “He’s in that position quite a bit, now that you mention it.”
I swallowed a long sip of my tequila, not wanting to rush through the golden elixir. I might need a good solid gulp with the answers I was about to press for; answers I had shied away from so many times now. But I had been with two of the brothers and their bruiser of a brother was going to be connecting with me soon. I knew this, but I didn’t know how or why or if it could be stopped. What I did know was each time had changed me.
Some of these changes were soft and subtle. Others were flash and exciting. Obvious changes and hidden ones.
This morning I found a small tattoo of a sword under my left breast. It was beautiful, masterful work, but until then I had never been in a tattoo shop, let alone had one on my skin. I scrubbed it hard, but it was real. There were words under the blade, that I knew were Sanskrit, I also knew how to read them, but instinctively didn’t read them, averting my eyes. The symbol and the Sanskrit comprised something called a Namshuk.
This was old stuff; way back stuff. A Namshuk was instructions, but much more. Namshuk were created for all sorts of skills; gardening, surveying land, fishing boat building, making a fire, butchering game, just about anything — everything people needed to learn at some point or another. But to read a Namshuk was to learn and do the story at the same time. You heard it or read it, and it was the same as doing and experiencing. Read it seven to ten times, and you had that skill imprinted in your mind and mastered by your body.
This was Ancient Sumeria at its full power. The power of the Namshuk — the exchange of skills and knowledge with a near perfect comprehension transference.
Then Enki inexplicably took it away.
In Sumeria, you could read a story about a merchant who traveled out to Asyeria, and there met a family, who only spoke their language. But the merchant was wise, and he listened, and he drew pictures, and he laughed and made hand gestures and humorous faces and the family laughed — and continued being patient with him — and he learned their language. And then you knew the language and the family, and the pictures and gestures just as if you were the merchant.
The idea scared the crap out of me — and I wasn’t alone. That wizard, Enki, the one who Inanna liked, and respected, put an end to the Namshuks. Destroyed all of them by implanting a flaw. After that, they were just stories.
No story tells of Enki’s reasoning for this, and there are some that are written in such a way that it confuses his deed and its purpose. I could feel that Inanna knew, but it was something she withheld, even from us, those women who became Inanna down the ages. Too dangerous to know, even for us.
And yet, there one was, under my left breast — and fuck if I didn’t know more were on the way.
Shit.
Not knowing about bond-mage, was no longer an option. I felt like I was walking around with a nuke, that ignorance could set off.
“So, what’s a bondmage?” I asked him.
He ordered two beers, and three shots of bourbon, and then told me, “It’s not complicated.”
“Good,” I prompted, hoping he would expand on that sentiment.
After popping two of the shots down his throat, he swallowed one of the beers. “We are Powers. Me, and my brothers.” He said this, however, as if there were more to the word than I would normally ascribe — but I didn’t interrupt.
“If you bond to us, you connect to the power we supply but also to the power we draw on. Just as connecting to a river would give you water, connecting to us, gives you soft drinks, juices, fizzes, beer, wine, and anything else that we might be creating with the water or using it for. From each of us, you get something unique, but not pure — it is always altered by you, and your soul. So you don’t really get Kane’s Power and Negotiation skills or his subtlety and metaphorical sense, but rather you get your concepts of those, and your shade of his style.”
“How long does that last?” I asked.
“Death. His or yours,” he shrugged.
“Oh,” I said, and took a small swallow.
I didn’t like the subject of my death much, and the topic had been coming up too often these last few days. Whether for positive or negative purposes, I would much rather the subject be off the list of things I had to worry about. The connotation of ‘until death do you part’, sounded traditionally romantic but it was still death, and still mine.
However, despite my curiosity, and the weight of my desire, under his heavy voice I began to lose ground — slipping — as if exhaustion was too much for me. I only suspected foul play at the last moment, but by then the fog of war had covered me, and I slipped into a peaceful, dreamless sleep into spaces where possibilities were endless, and the horizons were never divined.