「The Secret Life of Gardenias」
「December, 181: The Pathos of Time and Mortal Things – Selenicereus」
…
Lucrezia crouched behind an unattended tool cart. No-one looking at her would suspect her of being a lady. She'd found some thick pants by raiding the Prince's closet and made hobo gloves for herself by snipping the tips off a pair of old woolly ones; her father would be horrified. To complete the outfit, she wore two of the plainest, least girlish blouses she had under her favourite canary yellow sweater and a Lotus laser blue coat that she just could not bear to leave behind, even though its distinctive colour was liable to get her identified.
The cart was too heavy to move, so she couldn't use it for mobile cover. She'd thought about hiding under a tarp in the bottom tray and waiting for someone to unwittingly take her to whatever shuttle they were next working on, but then it occurred to her that one, she had no idea when that would happen, and two, any guest vehicle undergoing maintenance at the castle was likely not to be leaving any time soon. That leaves the crude option of finding anything with wings and an open door and dashing on board before anyone notices— and there it was!
The trick was not to think about how exposed she was. She sucked in a deep breath and scampered across the concrete. Past the tool cart, past the forklift, past the two mechanics pouring over a tablet with their backs turned to her, creep up the gangway and into... hn.
She stopped in front of the sloping hull in the tail end of the cabin and looked around. It looked a lot bigger from afar. There were no seats. Two planks bolted to either sides served as benches and an open hatch in the middle of the floor led to the cargo. The front of the cabin opened directly into the cockpit which was a lot more modern, but didn't give her any room to hide.
She'd expected there to be a bathroom, she's never known a place without one. It would have been the perfect hiding spot, easy to defend and hold as hostage over the rest of the crew, should it come to that, and easy to make excuses with if she needs. There's no good reason to doubt why someone was in a bathroom. In case anyone asked, she'd already scripted an excellent story of how she desperately had to use one in the midst of a hostile game of hide-and-seek and accidentally fell asleep waiting for the seeker to leave the hanger.
Well, beggars can't be choosers. Who knows when her next opportunity would be? The cargo hold will do, so long as no-one thought to look in there until they land.
.
No-one paid any attention to the old pot-bellied seaplane leaving the castle, mostly because it really wasn't anything worth worrying about. Everyone knows it's Ken Tsubarov sneaking off to Romefeller Foundation's old archaeological dig again, just as he did last year, and the year before, and every year since the Foundation lost interest in his research and shut down the project. Of course, no-one told him so. Ken Tsubarov paid well for discretion, or, in his case, the illusion thereof.
The conflicts of the pre-Colony age spawned some truly amazing things that flashed across the landscape with incredible ingenuity and just as quickly burnt themselves out when history proved too fragile to handle its reality, leaving behind the odd fragment for the future to puzzle over. The space elevator, the Augmented Rail Cannon, the heuristically programmed algorithmic computer... and what the Dominions found eight years ago, under the castellated sea cliffs of Vestmanna Island, on the outskirts of Sanq.
Tucked in amongst the fjords and accessible only by foot during the lowest tides, was a cavern Tsubarov could only think to describe as a mass grave for what appeared to be an early attempt at Mobile Suits, far ahead the level of technological ingenuity and sophistication anyone'd expected from something buried more than two hundred years ago.
A stern inscription molten deep into the ceiling arched crudely across the stone:
Lag hier Talgeister
Nicht mehr unser Himmel verdunkeln
— Lay here, valley-spirits, darken our skies no more.
None of the units were intact; it would be unusual to find them that way. Human nature would not allow perfectly good weapons to go undisturbed for long and these broken, battle-scarred machines lying in crumbling blackened heaps of dying metal were definitely built for war.
Armed with its discovery, the Romefeller Foundation launched into the Mobile Suits business. Insights gleaned from the relics pointed the way to faster, lighter designs that were cheaper and easier to produce than anything else on the market, prompting a new era in Mobile Suit architecture that quickly made them the undisputed leader of the industry. But there was only so much that they could learn from scraps and the head of the Foundation, Orri Romefeller, was neither a patient nor sentimental man. As soon as it became clear that the project had reached its limit, his interest waned and the Foundation moved on to other things.
Tsubarov couldn't. He was on the wrong side of fifty and had nothing else to show for it. Vestmanna was his one chance at going down in history. His pride, his reputation, his legacy, everything depended on it. It was he who boasted publicly that he would produce a fully functioning replica of the ancient war machines within eighteen months. He had been making that promise for three years by the time the Foundation pulled the plug— it has been four more since then. Although he has seen some success in the 06-LEO and 09-PISCES units, there have been many more dead ends and none of the viable models were true to the Vestmanna design. His credibility was in tatters and his spirits were not far behind. He must not fail. He cannot. It consumed him.
He became convinced that what they had found was not of earthly origins, and of a secret society operating in the shadows of the Foundation and Skagen Castle to sabotage his attempts at proving it. He was not entirely wrong.
The Foundation had an understanding with Skagen Castle: every year, when Tsubarov inevitably took his annual vacation in Sanq, it fell to the castle and its denizens to contain his exploits and keep him from causing public embarrassment to the Foundation, who in turn provided their kingdom with secret concessions on fuel and energy, which small countries like Sanq depended almost entirely on the Foundation for; because Ken Tsubarov was truly gifted in the science of robotics engineering despite his inconvenient delusions and it was easier and ultimately more profitable to run a continuous cover-up for his madness than admit that the lead architect on their flagship product was a raving alien conspiracy theorist nut.
The old man watching her from the opposite side of the cabin did not seem mad or crazy at all, to Lucrezia. He looked like he didn't like to fly.
It also seemed like he didn't know how to talk to children, although he was very kind about letting her out and giving her blankets and warm tea as soon as he discovered her choking on fumes in his cargo compartment. The tea was gritty and tasteless and came in a handle-less cup made entirely of metal, the kind she'd only ever seen in adventuring books. He must be a real explorer from really far away, she thought to herself. Maybe he'll take her as his apprentice in trade for her passage to Luxemburg. Maybe Alex and her can both be his apprentices and wander the universe, never having to worry about things like where they would call 'home'.
"Are you a spy?" He asked finally.
The little girl blinked, confused. "No."
"Do you know who I am?"
She shook her head.
He might have scowled, though it could have been a trick of the light. Tsubarov stood up and went back into the cockpit. The plane started to dive. Curious, Lucrezia gulped down the last of her tea and plastered her face to the nearest window.
There wasn't much to see besides rocks and sky and sea. The sky was a tired, lumpy grey, not the kind of sky that goes with a grand, life-changing adventure. The ground was mostly an arid olive-yellow broken up in places by piles of speckled rock, rising out of the dirty, foamy waves of the Norwegian Sea. A stout, grey building stood alone in the grass, dormant and nondescript. The little craft dipped and wobbled, then tried to land in a disturbing series of rattles, skids and thumps that sent Lucrezia tumbling so hard she promised herself she would never fly without a safety belt again.
Tsubarov re-emerged struggling with a large silver briefcase, his face even more pinched and pale than before.
"Stay here," he said gruffly to his stowaway. "I'm leaving the door open for you for air. If you're not here when I get back, I'll leave without you."
He didn't know what else to do with her. He should have turned back and gotten rid of her as soon as he'd found her squirrelled away in the cargo compartment under the cabin floor, but the attention that would have attracted would surely have ruined his plans for the rest of the day, if not the entire trip, and he was too close to his goals to let a little thing like that get in his way.
He had barely taken ten paces when something small and nosy jumped noisily off the plane.
Tsubarov kept walking. "There's nothing on this island," he shouted crossly over his shoulder. "If you don't get back in the plane I'm leaving you behind!"
It was a humid day on the cliffs and the forty-foot trek from his landing spot to the old research building left him breathless and sticky. The front door screeched painfully on neglected hinges, announcing his arrival to a flock of black-and-white seabirds roosting on the roof that scattered in a flurry of furious whistles and shrieks. He left it open, for the air, and headed off in search of the generator room with a keychain flashlight the size of his thumb. A moment later, the facility flickered to life, filling its walls with artificial light and musty air conditioning, and a laborious rumbling underfoot.
She was standing in the doorway when he returned, hanging shyly on to the frame.
"You didn't ask my name," she announced nervously in a stubborn little voice determined not to waver, "it's Lucrezia. I'm seeking my fortune."
"Have you found it yet?"
"No," she admitted, but the light in her eyes when they caught his was calm and steady. "But no-one ever found anything by staying still."
A smile twitched on Tsubarov's thin lips for reasons he did not quite understand himself. It was not an attractive thing; he had the sort of face that made every other expression look like a grimace or an evil smirk. Lucrezia didn't seem to mind.
"Well, stay close then. I won't help you if you get lost."
She nodded solemnly and picked her way carefully after him through the abandoned reception and mundane office hallways, to a concrete room with retractable ceilings and a huge elevator with only two buttons.
The noise resonating throughout the empty building was the elevator hauling itself up to ground level. The black button sent them down, so the red must take them back up. A tiny metal plaque bolted to the floor next to her feet read 'Property of Romefeller Archaeology Inc.'. Lucrezia fidgeted, craning her neck every which way to take in everything she can. It was a long way down and the old man was not a very forth-coming tour guide.
"Are you a Tomb-raider?" She asked finally, when there ran out of things to look at.
Tsubarov tensed. "No," he snapped.
"I think you are," she persisted, the way children do. They were heading underground in an abandoned archaeology facility, most probably without anyone knowing. What else would he be? "Have you seen a mummy? Or a god? Are we looking for treasure?"
"No, I haven't," he answered, all starch and bristles. "I'm a scientist. We look for answers, not treasure."
"Answers are a kind of treasure,"
He glared, but his disdain was no match for her belligerent childish logic. "Fine, I'm a scientist looking for treasure in the form of answers."
"What kind of answers?"
"Answers are answers, they don't have 'kinds'."
"Sure they do," she shrugged, helpfully started counting them out on her fingers. "There's the kind for making people worry and the kind for keeping them happy, then there's the kind that makes everything make sense and the kind that doesn't explain anything even though it's true, the kind that makes you right and the kind that makes everyone wrong... lots of kinds."
Fortunately the elevator stopped and Lucrezia bounded out onto a metal walkway, the conversation aborted in favour of new things to discover.
Tsubarov followed her into a natural cavern lined with a network of tarnished metal scaffolds. Open mechanised baskets ferried people between levels in place of stairs. Below them, another set of elevator doors provided easy access upwards from the cavern floor, although anyone arriving from above would have to alight on the walkway level and check in at the guards' desk before descending any further. Yellow emergency bulbs lit the immediate area. To get any more light he would have to turn on the power generators down here, which seems a waste for the sake of a man and a child.
Tsubarov leaned into the closest railing and peered into the dimness, searching for the shadow of the largest wreck. Lucrezia's footsteps clanged and echoed sharply in his ears as she darted eagerly around, conjuring memories of when this place was lit bright as day around the clock and bustled with interns and researchers on every platform. This was his kingdom, once.
A pair of little hands appeared next to his on the railing, then a little face trying to fit between the bars.
"What's down there?"
He groped for a moment, looking for an answer, and finally settled on a quiet, almost regretful, "The question."
...
A/N:
Selenicereus, Queen of the Night, or "Beauty By Moonlight Gekka Bijin" in Japanese is a gigantic head-sized white flower that blooms once in a lifetime for one night and fades by the morning. Its message in Japanese is "transient beauty", "transient love", like an empty dream or faint hope, "joy", "dainty" or "subtle", "a strong will", and most beautifully, "to meet you, even just once".
I wanted a longer chapter, but this felt right. I'm glad this is moving back along at last, the last couple of years have been really quite rough. The funny thing about time is how it all stretches out as you get older. Three weeks was an eternity, back in the day, now it's nothing.
I don't remember how I thought to put Tsubarov and Noin together, but I hope you give it a chance. There is a certain dramatic potential in Noin being his prodigy that I want to explore.
And lest we forgot, the "heuristically programmed algorithmic computer", aka HAL 9000, is really named Carl.