Scene 18: Reviewing More Data
I was again sitting in the dingy Green Street Tea Room. Mrs. Farnesworth had made some cutting remarks about my absence to the effect that alley cats stayed out all night, but I ignored her. Decent food, a comfortable bed, long hot showers and intimate time with Captain Star Runner had done wonders for my morale and disposition. Neither Teddy nor Gwennore questioned my absence. I do not know what anyone at the Royal Precincts told them. Perhaps time off with pay was sufficient. By the time I received answers to my questions, I had only nine days left to solve the mystery of who killed the swan. Star and Gyllian planned to use the time to check out insertion and extraction points very close to the star system we were in. Human spaceship operators would never have a jump gate so close to the star, but Star was of the opinion that competent star runners could manage a transition that close in. She might not like doing it, but she had no doubt she would manage it with no ill side effects. “Especially,” she commented, “if I had no Terry passengers aboard. Military members of The Race were designed to withstand higher of G forces than Terries.” That Pantheran arrogance was never far from the surface. I always wanted to ask what members of The Race thought they were not as good as human beings at, but I suspected Star would say she did not understand the question. I would have to ask Christabel about that some day. Right now I needed to focus on these filmy sheets.
If I could have reviewed the sheets in private, Gyllian could have provided me with a scanner and a database, but we were uncomfortable with the idea that my position might be compromised. We explained my absence as interrogation by Hollis and others. Teddy and Gwennore accepted this lie.
The first shocking thing I discovered was that information varied on the whereabouts of the Democracy of Rock and Roll. There was no such thing as a definitive map of Marathon. When I asked why, Emma explained that there was no way to make such a map. Different groups which had originally come to Marathon during the Second Expansion Wars had just picked territory and settled there. Over time, one group made contact with another and so forth until they thought everyone who was on the planet had made their presence known. This was not true of the Democracy of Rock and Roll. There were always rumors, but nothing definitive.
“So,” I said, “the Democracy of Rock and Roll might exist and it might not.”
“That is true,” Emma admitted. “Mostly we use it to scare children.”
So, I thought, it was a land of the boogeyman. Oh well, it might exist. I would have to read through the references and see if there was anything to go on. I had had a nice theory, but it looked like it was evaporating.
As for references to The Rebel Horde, Emma came up with nothing at all. I put in a request for either Lord Stern or Prince Hollis to check to see if any information on this line of investigation existed, but I was not hopeful they would get back to me on this. It was a shot in the dark. I thought that perhaps there was a classified area even the Information Keepers could not access. Emma denied there was such a classification, but I was not sure if I believed her.
I spread the version of the map of the planet Emma considered the most reliable out on the table I had already wiped down. Gwennore and Teddy grudgingly moved their plates and cups.
“We are here,” I said, pointing to The Afternoon of the Faun River. Here is the ocean simply labeled La Mer. A mountain range lay to the west of The Faun while rolling hills lay to the east. If I followed the river northwards, I came to the Royal Province of Bach, Brahms and Beethoven. I saw names like Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky and Schubert. Mozart was way to the east while Verdi and Telemann were close to the pole. Barbara of Portugal was in the center of the continent. There were many blank spaces. Some of these were marked “mountainous” or “dessert”, but some were simply blank.
I turned to a map especially made for me according to Emma. It listed the possible sites for the Democracy of Rock and Roll. Most of these placed it on the other continent of Marathon. One suggested an archipelago to the west while a third sketched it in one of the larger deserts of this continent.
I was surprised when Teddy spoke. “My old man said the Democracy of Rock and Roll was here.” He pointed.
Before I could say anything, Gwennore said, “There be dragons.”
“Dragons?” I asked. “You mean fire-breathing dragons?”
I thought of the children’s books I had watched with princesses and caves and terrifying creatures with great wings.
“Thinking about going there, are you? You’ll be eaten alive if you do.” she said.
“You’re a crazy one,” Teddy shot back. “My dad said nothing about dragons. He got it from this prospector.”
“Prospector?” I said.
“Yeah. This friend of my old man worked there when he was young looking for treasure.”
“Did he find any?” I asked.
“I don’t know. He was dead when the old man told me about him. My dad did not say if he was rich or not, just that he went there and came back. Just going there was a big deal.”
I looked at the place Teddy had indicated. It had no label on it. It was south of The Royal Province of Debussy-On-La-Mer along the coast.
“Does this area have a name?” I asked. “there is nothing on this map.”
“Dragon country,” Gwennore said.
“No,” Teddy scoffed. “These mountains here,” he indicated them with his finger, “they’re called the Stairway to Heaven Hills, but there aren’t hills. They’re big with snow on the top.”
“And this river,” again he pointed, “this is the Rock and Roll Ruby River.”
I looked again where he was pointing. The river started and stopped and seemed very twisted with many loops. It looked like it crossed and re crossed the Stairway to Heaven Hills.
“And is this whole area the Democracy of Rock and Roll?” I asked.
It sounded more like a legend of pirates or the place where the League of Hypatian Pirates would set up if they came ashore on Marathon.
Teddy shrugged. “Could be,” he said. “I don’t know about any cities.”
I started paging through my maps, looking to see if there were other
maps with different ideas of what lay to our south. As I laid each map
down on top of the one before it, I saw the same mountain range but in
different places. I saw a river but it went different places. The only
thing I could be confident about at all was that to the south of The
Royal Province of Debussy-On-Lamer was a mountain range and a river.
I decided I had to take the time to revisit Emma.
She frowned when I asked for more information about this region.
“Your query is too general,” she said. “It will be rejected.”
“OK,” I said. “Help me craft a better query.”
She stared at me.
“that is the information I require,” I said. “I need a better query to get more information about this area. I need to know if there are maps, information on who lives there, memoirs or journals of people who traveled there, that sort of thing.”
Emma smiled. “These are all good questions,” she said and soon I held a small number of filmy sheets in my hand.
I still had no information that definitely said this was the Democracy of Rock and Roll nor did I have any more information about The Rebel Horde, whether they came from this area or not. What I did have were two journals and within both of them, crudely drawn maps. I sat down in the Green Street Tea Room to skim them.
Scene 19: Tales of a Fabulous City in the Stairway to Heaven Hills
Separator lines is the only way I can think of to separate, get it, my thought process from the novel itself. I have unearthed two problems so far:
- The time line. With only nine days left and nineteenth century Old Earth technology, it will be impossible for Ronnie to mount an exploration in the area south of The Royal Province of Debussy-On-La-Mer, have the adventure and then return.
- From a narrative perspective, all the characters do is trek back and forth from the Green Street Tea Room, dare I say the dingy Green Street Tea Room, to the Information Keepers booth. Ronnie asks questions, receives filmy sheets and back she goes to read them. The reader hears summaries. Although this is reasonable when considering the process, it must be quite boring to read. Even the bits of information Teddy has are from dead people who cannot be interviewed. Should they be alive?
The work around is to extend the time a little, shorten the time it take for the spaceship to get back and forth from their insertion and extraction point investigation or, what I’m going to do, have the gear readily available from Lord Stern. It’s a novel. Anything is possible.
Rumors. Hearsay. Tall tales. Everything was included in the packet of information Emma gave me. As I read each page, the stories became more improbable. There were very few points of agreement either. Some said this area was the Democracy of Rock and Roll. Others indignantly insisted it was not. Some said it was a region that failed to become a province. Others said it had been a free zone from the first. I drew several conclusions:
- This area of Marathon had no organized government that interacted with the rest of the provinces of Marathon.
- Anyone who ventured into this area was definitely on their own.
Rumors persisted about a fabulously wealthy city in the Stairway to Heaven Hills.
To names kept popping up as I read. One was El Dorado and the other was the White City. I sighed. Not another trek to the Information Keepers! Then I remembered that I had my own personal database. I had not used in on Marathon because there was no network to tap into, but because Captain Star Runner had paid for me to have the latest wet wiring installed, I did have a database. Christabel updated it when I was on board Star’s ship most recently. I wondered if it would have these two terms.
Happily it did.
El Dorado was a mythical city on Old Earth. Spanish explorers believed it was a South American city which contained much gold and jewels. They had explored the continent and found many other interesting things like the Amazon River. They had died in large numbers and harassed the native peoples, but they never did find such a city. In turn, the so-called White City was in Central America somewhere in the jungles. It, too, was supposed to be fabulously wealthy. Archaeologists had found white stones, a wall here and a foundation there. There was no one White City and if it had been wealthy, no evidence of that remained. The jungle overtook everything.
The database went on to show me many more instances of mythical fabulous cities. Shangri-la on Old Earth and many more with these three names across human inhabited space. There were no less than seventeen instances where the last message from a spaceship or an exploration party indicated they were hot on the trail of a supposed wealthy city, region or planet. The ones sending the messages disappeared without a trace or returned empty-handed. Further, This myth was not restricted to human beings. Other races had these stories, too. The Featherote had several. Even the Fungusian Network had one which surprised me. I always think of the Fungusians as ever practical. The Featherote could be fanciful though they built the finest engines in the western spiral galactic arm. And, the greatest surprise of all, the Pantherans had them, too, though their mythical cities always contained valiant warriors. Whether the warriors triumphed or were defeated depended largely on who was telling the story. Knowing Star as I did, I knew she would delight in these stories of valor and sacrifice for the warrior unit as a whole.
It would be good to review Star’s account of Pink in this matter.
My database did not have enough space for such tales from the People of the Rainbow Way though a note indicated there were entries.
“You okay?” Teddy asked. “You’ve been staring into space for a long while.”
“Lost in the Stairway to Heaven ills,” are you? Gwennore added.
“I’m oh,” I said. “Just thinking.”
“About what?” Teddy asked, showing some interest for the first time.
“The stories about treasure or a wealthy city,” I said. “They’re not unique to Marathon.”
“But they’re real,” Teddy insisted with the first sign of a definite opinion he had ever offered. “My old man told me.”
I could have argued with him. Perhaps I should have argued with him, but I knew I would not win any arguments with Teddy. His father had said something was true and he was confident it was true. I had serious reservations. Of course, I was not out to find treasure of any kind. I was in search of The Rebel Horde and nothing I read so far convinced me they were there until Gwennore said, “Dragons don’t like the royals.”
“What?” Both Teddy and I responded to her remark.
Gwennore repeated herself. “Dragons don’t like royals.”
“What dragons, crazy lady?” Teddy asked. His questions always sounded confrontational.
“The dragons that live there.” Gwennore pointed to the Stairway to Heaven Hills. “I’ve heard stories about them Haven’t you?”
“I’ve never heard any true stories about dragons,” Teddy said.
“Then you haven’t been listening,” Gwennore said. “I’ve heard lots of stories about dragons.” She pointed to me. “She wants to find the dragons. She will not die if she finds the dragons.”
“Are you saying the dragons are the same as The Rebel Horde?” I asked.
Gwennore shook her head. “You need to find the dragons so you will not die,” she repeated.
Teddy smirked.
I was definitely in a bad way. Gwennore thought there were dragons in the Stairway to Heaven Hills and Teddy was certain there was treasure. Whether The Rebel Horde could be found there I did not know. I was running out of places to look.
An Area Boy burst into the Green Street Tea Room.
“You Ronnie?” he asked Teddy.
“No way,” Teddy said. He pointed at me. “She’s Ronnie.”
“What kind of name is that for a girl?” the Area Boy asked no one in particular.
No one answered.
“Anyway,” he said, “Ronnie gets this,” and he pushed a flimsy sheet into my hand. Then I saw the Clad pin on his coat. Another official document.
My hands shook as I unfolded it. This paper was not a royal summons. It was a brief report of another message from The Rebel Horde.
The dragon has roared. We will be heard. You cannot quench our fire. Tremble at those who will come from the South. You have been warned. The Rebel Horde
I put the flimsy sheet down on the table. In turn, Teddy and Gwennore picked it up and read it.
“You have an in with the Area Boys?” Teddy asked Gwennore.
“There be dragons in the hills,” Gwennore said.
This was down right spooky.
I sighed. One more trip to the Information Keepers about dragons.
Scene 20: About Dragons
What I did not know about dragons was how much the people on Marathon liked dragons. Emma explained that the Information Keepers had lots of information about dragons, too much to give me all at once. Could I be more specific.
“I want to know about The Rebel Horde and dragons,” I said. “I want to know about dragons and the region south of here. I want to know about dragons and The Stairway to Heaven Hills and the Ruby Rock and Roll River.”
To my astonishment, Emma handed me more filmy sheets. This was getting stranger and stranger.
The Information Keepers are a good idea but a lousy way of telling a story. I need to get good at writing up what they say so that there are stories within this major story. Good for a rewrite. Good for adding words to this file, but I really need to get on with the story if there is enough story to tell. There’s always enough story to tell. Stream of consciousness writing to keep writing I guess.
OK. Tomorrow is he halfway point and I’m only a bit more than a third of the way there. I have to pick up the pace somehow. Ideas. I have to figure out how to connect dragons more tightly with The Rebel Horde. What convinces Ronnie to go.
Hollis comes along because his sister thinks he should die because Albert died and this would make Hollin sad so wearing Victoria’s widow weeds would be real. I don’t like making Hollin the crazy person but she is definitely unlikeable. Hollis needs to get out of there. OK. Start with that scene and fill the rest of this in some time unless something comes soon.
As crazy as it was sounding, I was becoming convinced I needed to get to the Stairway to Heaven Hills. How I would find The Rebel Horde I did not know. Perhaps they would find me. Gwennore’s constant talk of dragons made me very uneasy but maybe I just had dragons on the brain. I gathered everything up and went off to find Hollis or Lord Stern. I needed to go south and I suspected they could get me there quickly.