05: The Answer to the Question

Losing Sid hurt. A lot. He’d been with us through a lot of expeditions, into regions of the ice-shell so dangerous I almost expected death to come for some, or all of us at any given second. But up until that day at Rico’s End, we had gotten lucky. Aberrants are dangerous on their own – God knows that – but suddenly they were getting smart, too. That was bad. Bad for everyone. And now I had discovered who to blame, and a renewed determination to hunt the son-of-a-bitch down and end his life, for the good of all of us.

Not that I had forgotten him in those years since Core, don’t get me wrong. He had been there, in the back of my mind and in my nightmares, never forgotten. He had been in Naomy’s nightmares, also. She didn’t talk about it, but sometimes back in the Codex she would wake me up in the middle of the night, eyes wide with fright from the nightmare that had woken her, and jump into bed with me. There was nothing untoward about it, you understand; she just needed someone to be there. I can’t deny that I loved her, fiercely, like the sister in pain that she was, but also something more than that. Something always held me back, though. Memories.

We weren’t the only ones who had heard of the hunter; in fact it turned out I had only been half-right in naming him that. To most he was a legend, known as Hunterwraith. ‘Hunter’ was obvious – he hunted people, for a price, some said, though who would pay him I could never figure out. “Wraith” was due to his purported ability to appear and disappear without anyone knowing how, when or where he might be; he was a figure out of the ether, like smoke. He came to you, not the other way around.

So how did one get Hunterwraith’s attention? Ah, now there was the question of the century, and much as I hated to leave a site as ripe as Winnipeg alone, it was a mystery that needed solving. Yesterday. My only regret was that yesterday never comes again; Sid would stay dead, and Hunterwraith was going to join him, sooner or later. But the question still remained: how?

I had been trying to answer that one looming question for the past five years, and as far as I could tell, the bastard had all but disappeared from the face of the Earth. Now I had other questions that I needed to answer in order to get closer to the answer I sought. Why did Hugo have a picture of Hunterwraith in his hands? Why had he said “I’m sorry” before he died? And the thought came to me that perhaps it was Hugo who had called in our little friend. Apparently he had lived to regret it, but I still wasn’t any closer to an answer.

That was when I noticed that our dear assistant Hugo had left me a clue…

* * *

Noal stared at the paper in his hands, just as he had been staring at it for the past hour, willing it to speak to him – to show him some hidden piece of the puzzle, or at least give him the start of a pattern he could follow. For what must have been the hundredth time, he traces the shakily scribbled lines of Hugo’s drawing, analyzing, searching for something. But it had yielded no answers. It was poorly drawn, for a start, and not helped by the fact that it had been done in terror and pain. There was just, simply, nothing to read into about it; no codes, no patterns, no ciphers, just a crappy drawing, vaguely resembling Hunterwraith’s heartless mask. It was only on account of Noal’s vivid memories of the man that he even knew what it was at all.

It was becoming quickly apparent that he wasn’t going to get anywhere like this; he needed help. He needed a miracle. As his eyes burned a mental hole in that picture, his thoughts began to drift, to call on something bigger than himself for a direction. It was something he had picked up in Core; prayer they had called it. He supposed it qualified. If there is really someone, or something up there, I need your help right now. A clue, a beam of light, anything! Come on, already!

Frustrated, he threw the paper down on the dashboard with a growl, tearing of a stream of curses, which was rare for him. While he was in the middle of his tirade, the almost ever-present cloud cover overheard opened up, ever so slightly, to let a solitary beam of sunlight shine through, into the Gravedigger, shining directly onto the paper. The cloud-break lasted mere moments, but it was long enough for Noal to see something in the back-lighting.

“Naomy, grab a pencil for me,” said Noal, hunching forward to examine the paper. Naomy gave him the pencil and Noal laid the drawing flat on the dashboard, scribbling thick lines over a small section of it. “Now what have we here?” Within the darkened section, white indentations, probably from something written on a preceding page in a pad, were now visible:

km4kl4 mv011h
8puml7cu5 rlc4un3 7cuu
iiivc ivc

“It's just a bunch of garbage,” said Sal, swearing. “How are we supposed to use that?”

Noal held up his hand for silence, “Not quite; there is a message here, it just needs to be decoded.” Studying the scrawl intently, Noal began writing his own decoded version of the note. “There, you see? It's a simple alpha-numeric scramble; kindergarten stuff, really. Replace the numbers with their letter counter-parts, and convert these roman numerals into actual numbers, then unscramble the anagram. This was scrambled after it was written, so you can tell which order the letters should be placed by the way they were written in connection to the characters around them.”

A minute later, he had the complete, decoded message:

Mikhail Kamov
Steampunk Culture Club
24:00 04:00

“So apparently we need to go to the Steampunk Culture Club. I wonder where that is,” said Naomy.

“The Steampunk!” Sal exclaimed, “I used to go there all the time, before Core recruited me. Just about the seediest, dirtiest, loudest social club in the eastern hemi; I used to love that joint!” Noal and Naomy's quizzical expressions said more than words ever could. Sal laughed it off, “Well, what are you waiting for boss? Set a course for New Babylon, and let's get this show on the road!”

Naomy did a quick check over her map charts, “You boy’s ready for a long ride? I’d guess about ten days to New Babylon, and that’s barring any aberrant encounters. It’s pretty desolate from here to our first fuel stop in Monktown, but we should be able to make it there on the fuel we took from Rico’s. That way we can swing around Queby territory and avoid the tolls.”

“Ten days, huh?” said Noal, punching up the throttle control. “So who’s driving next?”

* * *

The crew arrived in Johnstown four days later; they had made good time, running fast and straight over nothing but open shell. They had taken turns driving, navigating and sleeping in order to run as fast as possible, and without stopping. Noal came to treasure his shifts alone with Naomy. They hadn’t had a chance to talk to each for far too long, and suddenly it was like a floodgate had opened. She had talked about her home in Core, and how much she missed her father and uncle – she had only seen them once in the past fiveyears, when they had come to the Codex to deliver some new data cores. She had also shared her grief about Sid with Noal, latching onto their shared experienced. And then she had held his hand, and cried on his shoulder.

He wished he could think about her the way he wanted to think; but he knew that until he had put his past behind him, he could never really have a future with her. All the more reason to get to their destination more quickly. He had nudged up the accelerator just a tad, then.

Johnstown was the easternmost port of call in what had once been called Canada, and a major gateway to the eastern hemisphere due to it's being the last hydro-fuel supplier from there to the western European continent. And in-between was one of the most treacherous stretches of the ice-shell anywhere in the world. One-hundred and fifty years ago it had been known as the Atlantic ocean and had not been covered in ice-shell as it now was. It was now possible to drive straight across the expanse, however only the most daring adventurers dared make the trip. The ice-shell over the ocean was not the same as it was over land; over water, the ice-shell moving slowly, creating a regularly shifting landscape of sink-holes, ridges, and shelves, impossible to plan for in advance. Mapping a route across was equally unpredictable, and one was forced to adapt as one went, and pray that the route one chose would be passable.

Johnstown itself was a dour and dirty place whose transient population was in a state of constant flux, while those in charge of the facilities had long-since bothered taking any sort of pride or care of their colony to attract new visitors. The result of this was a slowly-decaying shanty-town grown bloated beyond the capabilities or care of it's administrators. Not that it mattered; as long as there were people willing to brave the Atlantic expanse, they would need fuel and a place to rest up before making the three-day trek, or to recuperate after finishing it.

Noal and his crew took a room at a lodging-house called the Snowmobile Savage, a dank, seedy place, largely consisting of a darkly hazy cantina-bar, filled with a surly crowd of rough and rowdy travelers with attitudes as caustic as the odors coming off of them. Thanks to Noal's position as one of the Codex's department chiefs, they had currency enough to pay for a private room in a relatively secure sector, as opposed to the unsecured barracks-like rooms shared by most of Johnstown's passers-through. Once Noal and company had stashed their sleeping gear, they each headed in seperate directions to gather as much current information about the expanse as they could find. Sal would talk to the wrench-heads in the vehicle bay and fueling station, while Naomy was to do some covert window shopping of the local rip-off market, while flirting and sweet-talking her way into whatever information the merchants might know. Noal, meanwhile, headed for the cantina.

“A boiler-maker to start with, and an ice-hammer to chase it with!” called Noal, sidling up the cantina's grungy booze-bar and interrupting a raucous conversation the bar-keep was having with a sinister-looking, dreadlocked navigator and his crew of ten, or so, equally sinister-looking drivers, whose occupation was better left secret.

The navigator gave Noal a sharp look, “I believe were in the middle of talking to the good bar-keep, mate,” he said, with a throaty brogue.

“And I believe I need a drink,” Noal replied, “two, in fact! If that's alright with you.”

“You'd best watch your back, mate,” growled the navigator, glowering as he and his men stepped away from the bar.

“Don't pay Cinder and his boys any mind,” said the bar-keep, after they had left, “they're the meanest pack of arseholes you ever met, true enough, but they're also my best customers! One boiler-maker and an ice-hammer, coming up!”

“Thank you sir,” said Noal, “I hear the ice-hammers here are the best in the western hemi; I've been looking forward to this for a good long time!”

“Is that what you've heard?” the bar-keep chuckled, “You must be after more than a drink, friend.”

Noal smiled innocently, “It may be that my crew and I are heading into the expanse tomorrow. I may have also heard that you talk to all the navigators passing through here on their way in.”

“A man in my position talks to a lot of people,” said the bar-keep, placing a glass of steaming, orange and yellow on the bar in front of Noal, alongside a frosted glass, filled with blue. “Of course, like any memory worth recalling, the ones you're looking for aren't free.”

Noal tossed a stack of cred-notes onto the counter and took a swallow of the boiler-maker. “You're a busy man, and deserve compensation to match, of course.”

The bar-keep took the money and put a folded map down in their place with one smooth motion. “As it happens, I've just updated my charts. Safe travels.”

“Cheers,” said Noal, downing the ice-keeper with a whistle of satisfaction.

The barstool next to his creaked as an impressive weight settled down onto it. “Find out anything useful, boss?” said Sal, sitting down beside him.

Noal handed him the map, “In fact I did, here have a look. How did you fare?”

“Not well, I'm afraid,” Sal replied, “the wrench-heads are too busy with a big rash of repairs coming in to hear much, from the looks of it.”

“Heard anything from Naomy?” asked Noal.

“She's back in the room; doesn't sound like she's had much better luck than me. Never was very good at the whole flirting tart act, if you ask me. Too stuck on someone in particular for that.” Sal smiled, adding “You may want to check up on her, though; I think she's feeling a bit of a failure. Could use some cheering up.”

Noal nodded, “I think I'll do that. You going to hang around for awhile?”

“Yeah, don't worry about me. I'll be back in a bit.”

Noal returned to the shabbily decorated room they had rented for the night to find Naomy sitting quietly on the bed, staring morosely at her bandaged hand, where the aberrant had bitten her. “Are you alright, Nae?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, I'm fine Noal. Just thinking,” she replied.

“About your hand?”

“Sort of,” Naomy said, “Just having one of those days when I don't feel quite human, I guess. Ever since what happened, a day hasn't gone by when I haven't imagined what it would be like to pay back the one who did this to me – to us.”

“We'll get the son-of-a-bitch, Nae. No one will ever have to be afraid of him again,” Noal exclaimed.

“I know, but some days I get to thinking that if it hadn't happened, we might not have met, and if I'm being honest, it feels like a small price to pay,”

“Nae...” Noal sighed, slipping his arms around her, “You know I—“

“And now we're potentially six days away from finally ending this chapter of our lives, and I can't help but wonder what is going to happen when we do.”

Noal cupped Naomy's face and turned it towards his own, “Nae, what do you want to happen?”

Naomy came slowly closer, “I just...” And pressed her lips against his, lingering there for just a moment. In all the years they had known each other, they had never before kissed. At first Noal didn't know what to do; he was filled with equal parts elation and guilt; the same elation and guilt he felt every time he looked at her. He wished the guilt would go away.

“Noal, I'm sorry... I don't know why I did that,” Naomy apologized, pulling away, regretfully.

“No – Nae, it's okay. I didn't... “ Noal stammered, “I mean... it was nice. It was really nice.”

“Do you mean it, Noal?” Naomy smiled at Noal's affirmative nod and moved in closer again. “Maybe it wouldn't hurt to know for sure—“

There was a fumbling at the door, and Sal burst in, grinning from ear to ear as Noal and Naomy separated with conspicuous haste. “Interrupted something?”

“Uh, no. Nothing,” said Noal, sparing a rueful grin for Naomy.

“Good, good,” chuckled Sal, arranging his bedding on his place on the floor. “You kids better get some sleep; big day tomorrow. And the next day. And the next.”

“Right you are, Sal,” said Naomy, dousing the light, “Sweet dreams, you two.”