Critical Mass, Chapter 2: The North Clan

"We have to arrange a truce with them, it's the only way for both sides to continue getting what they need without a war!" she yelled, leaning forward in her seat and glaring across the table at the arrogant man in front of her. Her long, blonde hair was sweaty and sticking to the side of her face as she scowled at him.

He backed off, if only in mannerism, and shrugged sarcastically, "If it's a war they want..."

"Kait's right." They both turned to look at Tyr as he spoke calmly from his seat at the table, leaning back with a horn of mead in his hand. "A war with Central will not benefit us... even if we emerge unscathed. We must seek a truce, Uruz."

"I guess you're right," he sighed, throwing his overgrown arms to the sides and glancing at them both. She sat back ungratuitously and stared at him calmly, unsurprised by his momentary inability to think clearly before responding with force. "But we can't let them think we're approaching them with a truce... that will make us look weak," he added, finally on the right track.

"That's exactly what Thor said." They now looked the other way as the slender man beneath the hat tilted his head up and spoke from the other side of the table, then lit a lighter and took a long pull off his pipe, smoke coming out of his mouth as he added, "Right before he geared up and strutted out of here with a shit-eating grin on his face."

"Where was he going?" Kait asked, a little concerned.

"Where do you think?" Uruz replied for him, grinning first at her, then Dagaz, who was grinning as well, already pulling another hit from his pipe.

"He mentioned a shipment that was supposed to be kept secret. How he found out about it, I don't know, but I believe his intention was to observe and not get involved," Dagaz replied, still grinning.

"Yeah, right!" Uruz blurted out, accidentally spitting a little mead across the table into Kait's face. "He doesn't think that far in advance!"

"At least he thinks!" Kait sneered, wiping the side of her face off with her sleeve.

Tyr sat up from his reclined position, laid down his empty drinking horn, burped proudly, and stated, matter-of-factly, "There is method to his madness... he is a creature of instinct, and is blessed with a serious element of luck.... Criticize him all you like for his apparent recklessness, but in the end he will out-live us all." He loomed over the table, looking into each of their eyes, hers twice. She nodded, finally grinning herself.

"What exactly is it he hoped to accomplish?" She asked to the forum, eyes lowered to a point a few degrees down, and million miles away.

"Why don't you ask him yourself?" Dagaz offered, gesturing with the brow of his hat, up and to the right at the security screen showing Krey punching in his code for the front door as he looked side to side, smiling.

The door slid open sideways, emitting a windy sound as it glided on its well maintained tracks to reveal a rain soaked figure, head down, but looking at them all, walking in through the small corridor toward them. He lifted his right arm and hit the panel, and the heavy steel door shut quickly behind him.

"Top of the mornin' to ya!" he exclaimed, exchanging glances, but returning to hers. She smiled, obviously relieved to see him in the flesh.

"We were starting to worry about you," Tyr spoke up, echoing from a point about twenty feet away where he was re-filling his horn from a tapped carboy, half full of mead, hanging inverted on a rack.

He pulled up his chair, tossing his wet leather jacket onto a hook on a stand to his right, and pulled his left hand through his drenched hair, exhaling heavily as he sat down. "That's a long, slippery slope, my brother."

Tyr laughed as he re-approached the table. "This is true... this is true." He sat back down.

"Where's mine?" Krey asked, gesturing at Tyr's horn.

"It's all yours, fucker!" joked Uruz, slapping him on the back hard enough to make his head spring back like a rag doll. "And a fine batch it was indeed!"

"Was?" Thor asked facetiously.

"Well, you were gone all day..." Uruz slurred defensively.

Krey looked at Kait and grinned maliciously, then leaped from his seat and tackled Uruz right out of his chair onto the floor. They rolled about ten feet from the table, right by Dagaz who didn't even look up, cursing each other as they fought. Though Uruz outweighed him nearly two to one, it was far from one sided, and in a couple seconds, Krey broke free as if it never happened and yelled, "Where's my horn?!" as he walked purposefully towards the brewing rack.

Uruz staggered to his feet, laughing boisterously, and returned to his seat. "Grab me another one!," he shouted back at Krey, who was already filling number three.

"So, how are things on the west end?" Thor asked, returning to the table and handing a horn to Uruz and Kait.

Kait spoke up. "We have a situation. Jerrick's generators have failed for the third time in a week, and he's blaming our computers. Their crop won't survive if it happens again, so I told him we would get him three more, even though we all know it's an operator error. I don't have to tell you how it would affect us if we lost that food source..." she added, glancing over at Tyr, who nodded. "Anyway, he agreed to double our share if we can deliver in two days."

"Nice," Thor nodded, and smiled at her. "That will give us enough trading stock to fortify all of our allies for awhile."

She bowed, smiling, with one hand at mid-section, and one outstretched toward him, playfully inviting a kiss. He couldn't resist; taking, and gently kissing the back of her hand. His relationship with her had been unorthodox, to say the least, for as long as he could remember. They grew up as neighborhood rivals, always trying to outdo each other, but friends to the end. Friendship became something resembling love, but there was always something plutonic between them. When a deal between her clan and a neighboring arms dealer went south, she was left alone, and was immediately taken in as family to the North Clan. He had learned so much more about her in the last three years, and had come to respect her immensely. She was both a warrior and a diplomat; a lady and a rogue. In this environment, it was not uncommon for women to be as strong as men, as life down here demanded it. There had long since been no use for the self-affirming rhetoric of the twentieth century to do with equal rights and Nazi-feminism. Down here there was only truth and survival. She understood this better than anyone.

"Oh, get a fuckin' room!" Uruz sneered.

"We all need to get a room," Tyr yawned, standing up, stretching, "we have a lot of work to do tomorrow...."

"I'll have control chips for three cars calibrated by morning," Dagaz added, "but I'm gonna sit this one out." He pulled one last drag from his pipe, and exhaled, capping it and sliding it into his coat pocket. "You never told us what happened in Central." he said, turning to Thor, who was picking up drinking horns.

"I stirred up a hornet's nest, and led them to Cane's neck of the woods," Thor chuckled, already buzzed from the mead. "When that war's over, they'll be begging us for help. Plus it will keep them busy while we take care of some of our business. It looked like they were trying to poach some of our electronics territory."

"You're sure nobody recognized you?" Tyr prodded.

"Let's just say they didn't see what they thought they saw."

The sound of the rain hitting the concrete and steel roof was starting to become a loud drone, drowning the city in cold darkness.

"Let's go topside!" Thor invited Kait.

"What's the matter, not wet enough?" Kait flirted.

"There's something you have to check out..." he evaded, grabbing her hand and heading for the spiral staircase in the far corner. "See you guys in the morning...."

As the hatch opened, water cascaded over both of them, and they quickly leapt out onto the concrete slab. The roof was alive with dancing drops of rain hammering the half-inch layer of accumulated water like a meteor shower, illuminated in random symphony by flashes of lightning in the near distance. The city spanned for what seemed like an eternity, fusing with everything in its path. Cities that used to be in different states were now part of the same malignant west-coast tumor. He sealed the hatch behind them, punching in his code on the keypad, and turned to her. Already completely soaked to the bone, she held her arms out to the sides. "Well...?" she asked.

"Remember what I was telling you about energy fields and electricity?"

"Yeah, I've seen you do it... the stun gun... the security camera...."

"The same level of manipulation can be done regardless of the magnitude," he stated, matter-of-factly.

"What do you mean? What kind of magnitude?" she asked, puzzled.

Just then, a large flash of lightning lit up the sky, lingering long enough to cast noticeable shadows off of the surrounding buildings, and immediately erupted into a violent thunder that shook the very surface they were standing on. Her eyes widened with excitement, and he grinned with opportunistic sophistry.

"Fuck you! You didn't do that!" she laughed.

"I know, but that would sure be a cool trick..." he joked back. "No, seriously, check this out," he invited, jumping up and taking a seat on one of the large rectangular vent hoods. "Stay right there! No matter what you see, don't get too close!"

She stood with her arms crossed in preemptive skepticism and stared with a quasi-cynical look on her face, waiting. He closed his eyes and straightened his back, hands face down on his thighs, and took a deep breath in through his nose with his tongue on the roof of his mouth, then exhaled through his mouth with an audible hiss. He did this three more times, each time appearing more relaxed and centered. His arms slowly rose out to the sides with his palms turning toward the dark clouds looming overhead. It was then that she noticed the feeling of being surrounded by a field of static.

"THOR!" she screamed, stopping herself after one step toward him to see a giant flash of light tied to the heavens engulf his whole body with a deafening crash. It was gone before she could breathe again, and through the residual flash blindness in her field of vision, she thought she saw his eyes glowing as he slowly opened them and lowered his arms back to his thighs.

"Everything vibrates at a certain pitch. Everything," he said shakily, as he slowly recovered, eyes widening and waning cyclically. "If you know what is about to happen, the pitch is easy to tune into. The rest is simply a matter of accepting it, and raising or lowering your own pitch to match it. You can't stop the force of a river through confrontation, but if you accept it's energy, you can alter or bend it's direction quite easily. It's actually amazing how similar water is to electricity," he wondered. "They will both always follow the path of least resistance...."

"Jesus Christ, Thor!" she said, both worried and relieved, as she stood in the pouring rain with her arms wrapped around him, nervously laughing and crying at the same time.

They stood near the concrete knee wall for about an hour, taking in the amazing view of the city at night. As far as the eye could see in every direction was a sea of structure; cold, wet, and unforgiving, yet somehow beautiful in its vast, random complexity. Scattered throughout the maze of synthetic terrain were small pockets of activity; lights in buildings, cars meandering down otherwise desolate streets, and occasional wanderers of the night, searching for some kind of satisfaction. Searching for a victim.

©2010 Gunnar C. Garisson, All Rights Reserved

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