Sostenuto

By Charles Brian Orner

The ancient disciplines are ancient for good reason. They persist in the world, hidden beneath the ordinary and the mundane. Powerful and prescient, they pass beneath perception but endure in epoch time. Precious few know of them, fewer still practice in them, and those who do endure lives of solitude and struggle. The old names—Alchemy, Astrology, Divination—have fallen out of use in favor of modern approximations—chemistry, physics, astronomy, statistics—but they are not merely science, and they are not forgiving.

Alex Clarke is one such man—a quiet, elderly Brit with a sardonic wit and a devastating secret. Alex serves as caretaker and guardian of the single most sought-after myth in all of human history—the fabled fountain of youth.

By day, Alex labors as the groundskeeper and gardener at the estate of Pennsylvania socialite Martha Mattson, set high in the hills of the Appalachian plateau, and site of the once-powerful, but now defunct Mattson Anthracite Mineworks. Unbeknownst to Martha, Alex’s extreme age and experience serve more than the ironweed and topiary—he practices in the ancient arts of Alchemy and the mystical pursuit of the Great Knowledge.

Alex is troubled by the larger forces at play in the ruthless lives of ordinary men, and he wonders if others like himself still exist elsewhere in the world, steeped in the ancient disciplines, and laboring against the chaotic forces of human ignorance and greed. He yearns for a forbidden confidant; a soft heart and sharp wit for plots and plans and commiseration. He pines for an assistant with whom he might share the burdens and wisdom of thirty generations of service and self-sacrifice. But the price of his longevity is loneliness, and Alex has grown weary of the work. It is sometimes brutal, and sometimes benevolent, but it is never inconsequential, and it is never dull. Alchemy is like that—but solitude is getting to be a real pain in places where the sun don’t shine.

The world changes one hot August morning as a hand-lettered scrap of parchment arrives unceremoniously in his mailbox. Three ornate letters—S O S—lead Alex, Martha, and her butler JJ on a death-defying journey of self-discovery, awakening, and truly excellent wine that Methuselah himself could never have foreseen. Celestial mechanics, Greek mythology, and coal mining culture conspire with wine, women, and song to disrupt the morning meditation, the politics of Pennsylvania, and the fate of the entire planet.

Sostenuto is a tale of discovery, deception, betrayal, and hope. Set in the mountainous coal regions of northern Pennsylvania, but encompassing the whole of recorded history and the far reaches of the Solar System, Sostenuto is unlike anything you've encountered before.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles Brian Orner
• Release date: Sep 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781513624235

Charles Brian Orner

Charles Brian Orner spends his professional energy as an author, photographer, designer, and marketer. He lives with his wife and son in western New York, just north of the Finger Lakes, and a little down under the once-thriving metropolis of Rochester. It is a beautiful region of the world, characterized by rolling hills, soft soils, abundant farmland, and vineyards. Mr. Orner was raised in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. His father hails from the coal regions of central and northern Pennsylvania, where his fraternal grandfather labored as a collier. Mr. Orner was educated in northwest Pennsylvania, earning a Bachelor of Arts in History from Grove City College. His private passions include running, cycling, literature, and music. In addition to writing, he enjoys playing classical piano and jazz guitar.

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SOSTENUTO

Copyright © 2017 by Charles Brian Orner. All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Orner, Charles Brian, author.

Title: Sostenuto: a novel / by Charles Brian Orner

Description: First trade paperback original edition. | Fairport, NY : Attention Press,

[2017]

Identifiers: LCCN: 2017911227 (print) | ISBN 978-1-5136-2422-8 (paperback) |

ISBN 978-1-5136-2423-5 (e-book)

Subjects: BISAC : FICTION / Literary

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Editing by Linda Lindenfelser

Book design, cover design, and illustrations by Charles Brian Orner

Printed in the United States of America.

First Edition

First Printing, 2017

For Bronwen

Acknowledgments

No project of this magnitude happens in isolation, and like all of us, I stand on the shoulders of the giants of my formative years; my loving parents, my tolerant siblings, my magnificent teachers, and my civic forbears.

Special thanks are due to my editor, Linda Lindenfelser, and to early readers of the manuscript, who have given selflessly of their time and talents in helping to polish the rough-hewn edges, including John Stemen, Alan Stewart, Jessica Gogolski, Alan McReynolds, Kate Kressman-Kehoe, and Sondra Witt.

I have benefited immensely from the generosity of a number of colleagues who have assisted me in various ways during the preparation of this novel. These include Mac and Beth McCorkle, Alan Stewart, Reza Sattari and Jila Kilantari, Barb Glassman, Seth Stearns, Dave Moore, and Kevin Witt.

I am humbled by the generosity and kindness of the members of Stillwood Study Center, without whom I would be a different, lesser man; impoverished of substance, bereft of soul, and lacking friendship in this topsy-turvy world.

Finally, I am forever indebted to my wife Bronwen for her indefatigable encouragement, her love and support, her sharp eyes and sharper wit, and her ceaseless interest in plots and plans and commiseration. My children, Ariana and Charles, are the lifeblood of my creative inspiration, and the reason I greet each new day with gratitude and hope.

OO

Contents

BOOK I

Gō 5

The Swan 11

The Charge 27

The Sink 43

The Hive 53

The Assassin 65

The Dinner 69

The Study 85

The Cellar 99

The Vault 111

The Wine Glass 131

The Boomerang 157

The Pines 179

BOOK II

The Auditor 189

The Condo 217

The Scold 235

The Librarian 253

The Alchemist 275

The Valkyrie 301

The Nave 327

BOOK III

The Chimp 345

The Abbey 369

The Querent 387

The Morning 415

The French Deck 441

The Pen 451

BOOK IV

The Croupier 483

The Matrix 517

The Map 545

The Sack 583

The Waters 611

The Centaur 639

The Sostenuto 663

The Epilogues 697

BOOK I

Treat the Earth well.

It was not given to you by your parents,

it was loaned to you by your children.

We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors,

we borrow it from our Children.

- Native American Proverb

The Mattson Estate

August, 2010

I

Gō

Everybody knows there’s a minor groan in the screen door spring. It’s long and it’s lazy, like summer this year. Henry hears it a hundred times a day: raspy like old rust, squeaky like the one-armed bandit, dumb as hell like the doormat dog. The slam coming on—that’s what pisses everybody off. Two seconds...three seconds… what a moron . Regulars know better when they’re fresh; they often forget when they’re not—but it’s tradition. It’s too damned early for tradition.

Jack.

Henry.

Did it on purpose, did you?

Someone has to keep you on your toes.

What can I get you?

Single malt, if you have it; if not, whatever you’ve got. Bring three; I’m expecting someone.

Three?

Three.

A C-note materializes from his shirt pocket and settles flat on the bar. It’s fresh and crisp and newly-minted—Poor Richard’s unaccustomed to the light, and he’d probably squint if it wasn’t so dark in here. Money like this doesn’t belong in a dive; it oughta be old and rumpled and stained and torn, smelling of pencil shavings in a false-bottom drawer, and reeking of a hundred sordid transactions—burgers and sex and some extra margin on the new window unit, and likely as not some Wal-Mart pencil-neck actually circled the serial number. Cash like this can get you in trouble around here. The back room, then?

Thanks. Send the gentleman back when he arrives. Jack turns right, heading for the rear, and Ben Franklin disappears behind him long before the ink pupils dilate. Black oxfords don’t belong in here either, and the floorboards wince in protest, hit too hard under strange purpose and a ton of leather heel; it sounds like horseshoe iron or some damned fool dropped the bloody cider crate. Boots? Sure. Or sneakers or Keens with dirty soles and toenail rot tucked up under the stool. But not oxfords. Shoes like that can get you in trouble around here.

The back room is not small; steel shelving and storage and stairs, and a card table with scars and stains—but no bullet holes yet. Proof of divine intervention. Cards happen twice a week, and it’s not social. Pots run to three digits, or four. Sometimes a small caliber makes it past Henry; sometimes it’s just blood bruises and bad behavior. But the softer voices usually prevail, and there are still no hornets in the walls. So there’s that.

Tonight’s an off night, and Karla will be all over the regulars, but that’s later on. Henry will see to it that the next two hours are quiet, and poor Karla is probably still sleeping one off. It’s mid-August, and hot, and a hundred bucks buys you a couple of rounds and a couple of hours of mid-morning in the back, easy. Henry’s shaped like a question mark, but his temperament is not. Two ears, sharp eyes, one mouth, mum—good bartenders know a few things about human nature. Like when not to ask.

Jack unshoulders his leather satchel. It’s a little out of place with a collared shirt and pleated slacks, but it’s not like he meant to dress for beers and brothels. Inside is a rolled cloth and two sacks of small stones; black and white, coal and granite, yin and yang, Uranus and Gaia. He arranges the sacks on the table and rolls out the cloth, smoothing out the wrinkles that somehow up and departed his pants. You can’t pay enough for good fabric these days. Inked on the cloth is a simple square matrix, eighteen by eighteen, like draughts on steroids, sans the checkerboard. They’re too small for ordinary checkers, and he’s long since boycotted the game anyway; Tricky Dick Nixon has been six feet under since ’94, but you know what? It’s the principle of the thing.¹

Henry arrives with the shot glasses. He looks over the table and sees…nothing at all. He departs in silence, but leaves the door ajar; airflow back here works in a windstorm, maybe, but not otherwise, and last night’s cigarette smoke is still soiling the ceiling. That black belch plaster patina sure as hell isn’t coal dust, and Jack suddenly wishes he was shorter.

A Scotch arrives next to each of the stone sacks and waits patiently. Ten years in the cask and two in the bottle; six weeks in transit and two fronting the mirror, so what’s another ten minutes? He settles into the far chair with shot number three and raises it up toward the fluorescent hum, like a tawdry toast in search of imperfections. There are plenty, as expected; girdle fringing and some hairline, and an honest-to-goodness corner nick underneath—probably a bar slam way back when, and that doesn’t happen till long after just grab the man’s keys already. Good. In a joint like this, fresh glass only shows up after last night’s donnybrook. It doesn’t really belong. There’s just enough cloud in the amber glint to mask the mix-in, and he places the shot back on the table.

His hand disappears into the satchel and returns with a small dropper bottle. Twist, pinch; one—two—three drops fall into the whiskey. Back in the bag. The shot finds its way to the center of the table, just beside the cloth. That’s one board, two sacks, three shots, and zero bullet holes—so far. Two hundred fifty pounds of oxford collar and pleat reclines in his chair, folds his hands, and waits.

OO

The visitor arrives on time and enters the back room. Henry sees him in and closes the door. Jack is standing at attention; he’d heard the door spring and the bunker buster and the perfunctory exchange up front. Newbies get a pass, so might as well be polite. The man is short and thin and unremarkable. They always are. Loose clothing and drab colors and a baseball cap, which is a nice touch. Colton, Pennsylvania, has more ball caps than pickups, and more pickups than South America. No Steelers logo, though, which is smart—there’s no sense inviting a religious conversation. His face is clean-shaven and a little sallow, like he’s short on B-complex and long on stress. There’s gray hair up under the cap and a bit of a slouch; the kyphotic posture is very Caspar Milquetoast—not a bad idea, but it feels like he’s working too hard. Get some spine already .

Ballcap crosses the room and sits. No handshake, no eye contact, no long-time-no-see pretense, which is kind of a shame. The door is closed and the air is stagnant and Henry knows nothing at all, and once in a while, a nod and a wink goes a long way. Kindred spirits and what not. Not this time.

Jack sits and makes a small gesture. No words are exchanged. They each drain a Scotch; it’s perfunctory, expressionless, graceful, smooth. Drama is uncalled for; it’s protocol, not boy’s night out. Still, might as well enjoy it.

Black moves first; some say it’s a tiny advantage, but it’s not like this is tournament play, and they probably won’t finish anyway. Not this time. Jack plays his first stone in the upper right-hand corner. It doesn’t much matter—just pick an intersection and stay out the man’s way—but the upper right is a sign of respect. On the other hand, white’s first move is critical, and the visitor cases the joint and the Jack and the single stone below. His eyes are stationary and his gaze is fixed; he’s not staring at the board, he’s staring toward the board, and through it, and the card table and the oak flooring and the subterranean coal; lasing through the mantle and the magma and straight down through China, heading for open space and starlight. The Scotch sure doesn’t help, but then that’s the point. He’d better know it cold, in his sleep, hands tied behind his back, with a nine millimeter in his mouth. Hey, it could happen. It probably has.

Sometimes it’s easier; sometimes not. Concentration suggests complexity; complexity suggests importance. There are usually several options, and common sense favors the simplest one. Not this time. This time, there’s a message within the message.

A white stone appears on the board at L16, and Jack memorizes the play. Adjacent intersections are usually safe, but he’ll keep to the perimeter for now. Maybe he’ll move in after things start to take shape, but then no one is looking anyway, and it’s not like this place has web cams or closed circuit. Three turns, then six, then twelve, and the board looks like spilled buttons. Sure enough, this one is gonna be large.

Nobody who knows Gō would truck with an opening like this. The thing is, you can do it in a crowd if you have to, and sometimes, you have to. You could do chess or checkers or shōgi or even reversi instead, at least for the smaller ones—anything with a decent-sized grid—but it’s much tougher, and this is already damned difficult, and just forget about checkers. Please. Gō is best; bigger board, fewer rules, more options, fewer mistakes.

Another round of play, and still no sign that anything is amiss; no brusque body language, no overlong pause; no quick-twitch eye dart, up and back, you fucked up, now we start over. It’s counterintuitive, but the longer he goes, the easier it gets. Sixteen moves, then twenty, and he’s headed for the origin of heaven—just like everybody else.² It’s been clear now for five minutes, but let the man work. Protocols to follow.

There are eighty-eight possibilities, but only five this large; the trick is to make it through without confusion. Nobody’s gambling on the game, so play the board, not the man; poor plays early on look like something else, and doing this upside down is no picnic. You don’t want to pull the trigger too early—in a manner of speaking. A mistake like that can get you in trouble around here.

The visitor has done well; clarity, care, precision, resolve. He could do this with a nine millimeter in his mouth. Good man. Ballcap’s got some spine after all.

Twenty-two moves each; now Jack is on the hot seat. It’s Ballcap’s turn to decorate the perimeter, and Jack will move on the first ordinal. Two moves to capture H13 and verify reception, five by five.³ After that, it’s just midmorning in the back room, and they can relax and play a little Gō.

Nah—not this time.

Both men stand. Two bits of protocol remain. Ballcap places one more white stone on the board. He nudges it in between C1 and D1, right where it doesn’t belong. So that’s three days to prepare; fair enough. Only the third shot remains, and Jack waits. Ballcap‘s spine goes a little soft, and he looks up for the first time. His eyes are black and dilated, like maybe Benjamin Franklin is still out front, sizing up the man’s virtues from Henry’s pocket. He’s got two, maybe three, but all thirteen? No way. Not with those shoes. Ballcap thinks, Must I? Jack thinks, What do you think? The visitor finally throws back the third whiskey in a smooth, graceful arc; more drama than before, but at least there’s no bar slam, and the girdle fringing is grateful. The message has been passed, the messenger has been authenticated, and the whole rest of the day is shot. Like the glass.

Ballcap clears his throat. His voice is raspy like rough wood. No wonder the man doesn’t talk. He turns and departs like a waft of old cigar smoke, and Caspar Milquetoast is nowhere in sight.

Jack scrutinizes the board. Three nights hence, he’ll be scanning the starry skies for Rasalgethi. It’s an interesting choice, and he’ll have to think on the matter. To the uninitiated, it’s a jumble; black and white and spread all over, signifying nothing. To the Gō player, it’s hopeless; maybe practice your opening for a couple of years, then we’ll talk. But he’s there, upside down, like Ophiuchus strangled him with the snake. White on black, club in hand, plain as a summer night in August; kneeling on the board is the constellation Hercules.

Jack cleans up and departs. Another C-note hits the bar on the way out. Thanks for the shot glass. The third slam is on the house.

Anytime, Jack. Have a good one.

The summer sun is hot already, and Colton will suffer today. Next up, it’s groceries and gas, wash the Mercedes, and snag another deep-cycle lead-acid car battery from Sammy’s. Then it’s straight back to the shortwave, or Ballcap is a dead man.

OO

The Checkers speech or Fund speech was an address made by Richard Nixon, the Republican vice presidential candidate and junior United States Senator from California, on television and radio on September 23, 1952. Senator Nixon had been accused of improprieties relating to a fund established by his backers to reimburse him for his political expenses. With his place on the Republican ticket in doubt, he flew to Los Angeles and delivered a half-hour television address in which he defended himself, attacked his opponents, and urged the audience to contact the Republican National Committee to tell it whether he should remain on the ticket. During the speech, he stated that regardless of what anyone said, he intended to keep one gift: a black-and-white dog named Checkers by the Nixon children, thus giving the address its name.

In Gō, the origin of heaven is the center of the board, located at (10, 10).

In Gō, five by five refers to a (5, 5) point in a corner, or a go no go. These points have strategic importance.

Five by five is also the best of twenty-five possible subjective responses used to describe the quality of communications, specifically the signal-to-noise ratio. As receiving stations move away from an analog radio transmitting site, the signal strength decreases gradually, causing the relative noise level to increase. The signal becomes increasingly difficult to understand until it can no longer be heard as anything other than static. By extension, five by five has come to mean I understand you perfectly in situations other than radio communications.

II

The Swan

Late summer in Pennsylvania is hot and humid, and highly unsuited to large mammals with starched shirts and leather-soled oxfords. The air is partly liquid and partly solid, and it coats the skin with a layer of something magnetic that attracts insects and repels women. Sundown is a different matter, though; the breeze is cool, the stars dance in the jet stream, and the shiny shoes have the night off. It's just shorts and sandals and a nautical sextant; ancient mountains and silver skin; languid lightning bugs and cicadas singing on the starlit slopes. Jack may be button-down in daylight, but he’d let his hair down tonight if he had any.

Tonight’s task is to sight stars and triangulate, and for that, he’ll need to undertake the complex and unfathomable and deeply mysterious work of…looking up. At midnight. Always at midnight, that’s the rule.

The clouds are in and out, but on the whole, things look promising. This is always a hit-and-miss affair, especially in northern Pennsylvania, but so far, Zeus is coy about sources and methods, and the weather is what it is. Ballcap had been specific, and variance from the designated date and time would introduce imprecision. Jack can work with a few minutes either way, but beyond that, he’d be having another go at Gō and more amusement with the screen door at Henry’s.

Indirect methods are always available, of course; astronomical software has gotten very good, and the Nautical Almanac is indispensable. But there’s just no substitute for starry skies and the sextant, and books filled with tiny numbers in tall tables are interesting to tax accountants, maybe, but not to human beings. Plus, one day, two days hence—maybe everything is different. Maybe it’s not Hercules at all, because now he’s strangely back on his feet, strolling the celestial sphere like Mother Earth went topsy-turvy.¹ Maybe it’s the constellation Chamaeleon instead, because The Q has changed the gravitational constant of the universe, and there’s a warp field spilling all over the ecliptic; Ballcap is a biretta, Henry is a gossip, and good Scotch is just low-tack tape.² No, it’s best to bribe the gods, or beg, or bitch, and get good weather the first time.

Every star in the celestial sphere is directly above a ground point on the Earth. Triangulation requires three stars, and three stars in the heavens equal three ground points on the Earth. Identify the stars, and you get the ground points. Identify the ground points, and you get the stars. Simple. Ground points provide location; stars provide guidance. Jack needs both, and maybe another Scotch. It’s a walk in the park if you know your way around Greek mythology and celestial mechanics and garden-variety non-Euclidean geometry. Everyone knows this.

Jack already knows two of the ground points and two of the stars. His task is to finish the triangle, find the circumcenter, watch the papers, and wait. He doesn’t particularly like to wait, but that doesn’t mean he’s not good at it. Spherical trig, on the other hand—that’s hard.

Vertex number one is always Polaris; he doesn’t need a Ballcap to tell him that much. She’s the only constant in the northern hemisphere, impervious to winds and wars and the worlds of men. The clouds are dematerializing again, and the North Star is right where she’s supposed to be, straight up over the Christmas elves, shining like forget about arctic shrinkage and just let big oil drill. Jack has never been north of the Arctic circle, but it’s the center of the triangle that really matters—not the vertices—so snowshoeing an ice floe isn’t likely in the offing, and the polar bears can relax for a change.

Vertex number two can be anything in the star field, providing that it’s visible at midnight and Zeus is still dreaming about women. Tonight that point is Rasalgethi, the head of Hercules, sans one shot glass, two hundred bucks, and three shots of Laphroaig. Next time he’ll thank Henry; the cask-strength Islay malt was a nice touch. As it happens, Hercules is heading southwest tonight, and his head is tumbling toward the great plains like he’s falling off his horse. Just below him is The Northern Crown and The Herdsman, and way below them, down under the horizon, the Moon is having a nap, probably with Zeus and the oxfords. Jack could use a nap of his own, but that will have to wait.

Vertex number three will be the star at his zenith: that spot on the celestial sphere directly above his head and his hairline and his entirely sunny disposition. He already knows the ground point, because he’s standing on it—greater metropolitan Colton, Pennsylvania: harbinger of the heavens, home of the Huskies, famed of song and story and coal mining myth—but he has yet to sight the correct star. Not for another ten minutes or so.

He’d normally do this with the larger instruments up at the house, but that’s only necessary when several candidates compete for the honor. Tonight looks a bit easier; there’s only a single student bright enough to be the star pupil, and the meadow grass spilling over his toes reminds him of one in particular, draped in university robes and lost amid old memories of cool clover and hot breath and the days of wine and roses. Nowadays he’s mostly a field man, and the academic years have long since departed. But memories like that have power, and he’ll always sight off the hill if he can. Everybody knows that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

The immediate task is straightforward, if not so simple. First, sight the zenith star at midnight, identify it, maybe throw back another whiskey. Then, sight the celestial altitude of Rasalgethi; he’ll need that later for the ground point calculations. He can do the rest with a globe and a drafting compass and some mathematics back in the study, and the Nautical Almanac is always available if he’s desperate. For now, though, it’s a just a little patience and a wee dram; cool grass under the toes and a small hole in the heart—distant and bright like navigational stars and university nights and long-gone years of normalcy.

You never get used to it. Nobody ever does. Nobody with eyes to see and heavens to scan and perfect quiet in the mountains. The night moves majestically, synchronized with the stars, like a stroll home after the symphony, arm in arm with liquid silver spilling through the locusts and bouncing off the cobbles. It showers you twice from everywhere at once, and humility is suddenly there within you, pale and speechless and utterly blinding to moist vision. The throat knots and the trees genuflect and streets and stones dissolve, floating over the macadam maelstrom and beyond the brownstone chimneys in stark, silent exodus. Then Earth is gone and sky dissolves and there is nothing left but perfect space and starlit reverie and the brutal truth of profound awe.

It’s 11:59 now and she’s sliding into place—it’s not a precise hit, but they rarely are, and this is certainly close enough. Whoever passed the message will be aware of the imprecision. The third point on tonight’s celestial triangle is Sadr, the central star in the northern constellation Cygnus. Interesting. That’s a dipper handle (Polaris), a hero’s head (Hercules) and a swan’s chest (Sadr). It’s hard to figure at first blush. Maybe Hercules thought about beating his bird to death, too. Who knows? It could be anything.

OO

Gō figure." It’s a small amusement; a Scotch-induced double-meaning that Jack reserves for himself, and himself alone. It wasn’t the great plains after all. Turns out Hercules is in the drink.

He leans back and taps his temple, as if someone else might go and fetch some Scotch with an intelligence additive. The gesture is reflexive as much as corrective, but he needs an excuse to remove his reading glasses and wipe his weary eyes. The study is cool enough in the wee hours, but in August, humidity usually wins out, and tonight is no exception. He sweats and squints and those tired eyes turn red, begging for a cool wipe and a cold pillow and a soft kiss to cure the Colton curse.

Jack’s pencil is lying in a heap of graphite scribble; it looks just as tired as he does. There’s more scribble than usual this time, because Rasalgethi isn’t actually a navigational star. The proximate candidate is Rasalhague, the first ordinal in Ophiuchus, and some extra pencil lead and a finger in the wind were called for. No matter; it turns out that the ground point of Rasalgethi isn’t on terra firma at all—it’s a thousand miles off the coast of Baja in a mile of Pacific saltwater, just north of some seabed mountain range called the Clipperton Fracture Zone. Jack has never even heard of a fracture zone, Clipperton or otherwise. It sounds a little like some spooky spot in the Bermuda Triangle where marine cartographers get bounced around below decks. The closest feature of any significance appears to be the Dowd Guyot seamount, and nobody cares about that thing but the big fish and some dowser named Dowd.

He’s got the ground points now: Colton, Clipperton, and Claus (comma Santa). The next part is a little easier: form the triangle, find the center, check the math, hit the rack. His personal globe is large and detailed, but only with latitude, longitude, and major geographic surface features. Political boundaries come and go, but just like the weather, geography is what it is—save Krakatoa and global warming and wait ‘till the big one hits San Andreas. What Jack cares about is far more permanent than polyglot politics.

His rafting square has been cast to the curvature of the globe, so right angle work is a piece of cake. Jack makes busy with the geometry; three circles, three perpendicular bisectors and a couple of aspirin pills. Bingo. Water coordinates. This particular triangle is very large and slightly obtuse—that doesn’t happen too often—so the circumcenter is actually outside of the polygon, this time floating in the Hecate Strait between the Haida Gwaii archipelago and British Colombia. Jack pauses to consider the implications. The Hecate Strait. Hecate—the goddess of magic, witchcraft, necromancy, and bad things that go bump in the night. This is going to be real trouble—plus islands and totems and aboriginal Canadians with a rising inflection in a funny language. Unbelievable. You just can’t make this stuff up, eh?

Jack reaches back over his head for a stretch and a yawn and a gaudy display of armpit stain. Suddenly the stomach thinks that piece of cake isn’t such a bad idea, but at this hour, the eyes will hear none of it. So be it. He’ll take that nap now, thank you very much, and then try to figure out what the hell it all means in the morning. Like it or not, Hell looks like it’s in the mix; Hell and Hecate and Hercules and Henry’s. Every one of them goes bump in the night.

OO

Night bumps are nasty, but they’re no match for morning potholes, which spread out from the center of town like PennDOT sores asking for oily salve and rubber gauze. The car is not happy.

Jack is driving and thinking and craving some coffee. The head of Hercules? It’s kind of a contradiction in terms. Heads are always a challenge, but especially with that guy—it’s not like he used it much. The usual presumption is a brain reference—something requiring thought—a board game or a book, a problem or a puzzle, a conundrum or a question, about whatever—psychoanalysis, or shock therapy, or just hand me the orbitoclast, stat.

Other objects on the celestial sphere are often clearer. Arms are for lifting, and legs are for work; hands are for building, and canine constellations chase the fictional Felis. They’re all up there in the star field, shining down on a slumbering world; winking and blinking and nodding and hinting that things are not what they seem, and that our faults are not their fault. The Bard was certainly right about that much. There are slings and arrows and snakes and swords, and their purposes are usually not so difficult to divine. But the head is kind of a mess.

Heads have orifices; ears and mouths and a couple of eyes that can’t make out the faint stars without fat glass. Heads have receding hairlines that used to warm the prefrontal cortex with dirty blonde and shallow curl. Heads smell of nostrils and nose hair and baited bad breath, or a sweet waft of succulence following along after university locks draped over slim shoulders and a cotton print dress. It could even be a higher reference: rapt attention and sacred yearning and profound quietude; awareness of self amidst the chaos and the cacophony—and the bloody cotton print dress. Heads are hard—especially in these parts. It could be anything.

Jack pulls in and parks under the warm glow of pole-mounted mercury vapor lamp. You’d think they’d all turn off automatically at daybreak, but apparently not this one, not this morning. He sighs. It’s a crime to waste electricity.

OO

There is something deeply offensive about walking down a flight of stairs to enter a library. Sure, maybe the rare book section, or some climate-controlled hermetically-sealed subterranean floor with old papers and earth-toned artwork and heavily-redacted documents about Lee Harvey Oswald and the grassy knoll. But not the entrance. The Colton variant bears little resemblance to anything studious or impressive, and certainly not to the regal structures of ancient Greece—not in architecture, not in literature, not even in the tuale’ta . Hercules could have seen that much without his head.

On the other hand, there’s always Lillian the Librarian, who is not Greek in the slightest, but that’s just fine. Auburn hair, green eyes, and a contralto voice that weakens the knees until the legs utterly collapse into some far-off hillside of windblown Scottish heather, she is far too young to hold such sway over a balding man with a pasta paunch and pocket full of celestial coordinates. Jack reminds himself that this doesn’t really matter—it’s just one of life’s lovely little tensions. At least he wishes it didn’t matter. OK, it matters, but not too much, or maybe just not today, or forget about the orbitoclast and somebody hand me the goddam scalpel, stat. Maybe if she wore sunglasses, or a burlap smock, or a voice tone variator. Something. Anything.

Good morning, Lillian-the-Librarian. Such a lovely dress today. Cotton?

Good morning, Jack-the-Luddite. Thank you. Yes, it is; as a rule, I prefer natural fiber. It’s a sentiment you Luddites can appreciate, if I’m not mistaken.

Of course she does. Indeed. I trust you are well this fine Colton morning?

"Fine Colton morning? That’s a contradiction in terms. It’s going to be hotter than blue blazes today, and—no—you should not trust me at all." The green peepers twinkle like summer stars.

Perhaps not, and yet I do. It’s curious. Jack’s Pennsylvania patina is normally foolproof, but it just doesn’t seem to work on this one.

Silly man. Lillian smiles, and even the brass fixtures go soft for a moment, as if molding themselves to reflect more of the light in her eyes. I’m glad you’re here. I finally located that calligraphy volume you had asked about. It’s a very obscure text. I’ve had it sent over from…

Thanks, Lillian, but not today, I’m afraid. I have another matter to attend to. I’ll stop back later in the week for it, if you don’t mind.

Now Jack, you mustn’t keep a lady waiting. We cherish our little love notes.

Don’t I know it.

Lillian pauses. Right words; wrong sequence. Might even be missing a period. She sighs. Heading for the card catalog?

Not just yet; I need to do some online research first.

You’re kidding! Lillian feigns some theatrical shock. You’ve finally decided to succumb to modernity? Why am I always the last to know?

"That’s an interesting question. It reminds me of an Updike poem: Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know…"

"Respectable? I think not. This is better: The man is always the last to know when Cupid has struck him."

Who said that?

I did.

Really?

No, not really. It’s anonymous. But it works for me.

Well, I can promise you that you are not anonymous in the slightest. Jack winks and turns toward the research room. He knows all about Cupid.

"Wait a minute. How am I supposed to address you now, what with your newfound propensity for Googling and surfing and tweeting and poking and other behaviors that suggest—unintentional mouth noise? ‘Luddite’ won’t cut it."

Jack thinks for a moment. Well, you’ll agree that ‘Lillian-the-Librarian’ has some alliterative appeal, so I suppose you could go with ‘Jack-the-Jerk’ or—even better—’Jack-the-Jackass.’ That would fit. He’s ruled out a cold shower, so a little self-deprecation is absolutely called for.

‘Jackass’ is not a profession—you’re not an actor, are you?—and it doesn’t really fit at all, now does it?

Yes, well, I’m working on that. Good Lord, do those green eyes ever even blink?

"What is your profession, exactly?"

I’m working on that too.

"Hmmm. Cute and coy. She pauses to think. How about ‘Jack-the-Jack-of-All-Trades?’ That should cover it, whatever it is. And I’ll take the liberty of shortening it to ‘Jack-the-Jack,’ which is also alliterative, but with the added benefit of pejoration and innuendo, plus something terribly inconvenient having to do with spring potholes. And it’s vaguely pornographic."

Master of none. Perfect. Too perfect. Jack-the-Jack nods and turns away, but his attention stays right where it was—green with unblinking envy. Maybe not envy, exactly.

Lillian-the-Librarian decides to footnote the exchange. You know, if it weren’t for you, I’d have had that old catalog burned long ago. Someday, compensation will be due.

I blame myself. Jack knows better than to smile, but there it is. From a lesser woman, it might seem over the top; too much thrust, too little parry, and a faint sense of yearning that could easily be misread as desperation. But not Lillian; she’s got style. Still, she’s had a rough go these last couple of years—no question about it. A single mother with two children on a librarian’s salary in the coal regions; young and smart and all the natural fiber of a thoroughbred Scot in a cotton print dress. She’s strong and supple and resilient, but not stronger than the culture of colliers and lumberjacks and the odd hand-rolled carcinogen bought on the sly with bartered food stamps. Not stronger than ramshackle schools and a truculent tax base and tight jeans to assuage the struggle every now and again with a free meal and a rough tumble. She’s a sucker for strength, but she only gets the wrong kind. Jack’s got the right kind, and they both know it, and they both dance around it like it’s a problem. Frankly, it is a problem.

Jack calls back over his shoulder. Say, can you give me a hand if I run into trouble? I can run a browser, but that’s about it.

Sure. Just let me know if you need anything.

Thanks. You can count on it—just not in Gaelic.

Lillian smiles again. Too bad. Everyone else seems to like my Erse.³

Jack scurries away; he won’t touch that with a ten-foot barge pole, which is somewhat less improbable than it sounds.

OO

The Greater Colton Community Library has six computers, which is five too many on all days that do not feature an elementary school field trip. Somebody was thinking big, which is kind of nice for a change. Only four of them are currently running, and isn’t it just like a Luddite to pick the one that isn’t. Jack seats himself and presses a key. Nothing happens. It’s not like it’s a surprise, but he’s doing this for the benefit of the video cameras, not for the sake of thirty seconds of good posture and a blank countenance and an impromptu zen koan about the sound of one hand doing something at the keyboard that rhymes with clapping.

He stands and scowls, puts his hands in his pockets, and stares at the machine intently, as if some Geek-Squad repo man were booting his car instead. He rocks back and forth for a minute, waiting, and then moves around to the rear, bending over like he’s old and confused and looking for an excuse to see green again.

Quizzical brows and high-speed hands rarely find common purpose, but this time the fingers are fishing beneath the surface while the brow is up in sunlight, trying not to sweat the details. One hand smoothly removes a thumb drive from his pocket and slips it into a USB port on the rear of the machine, while ostensibly fumbling for the power button. The other hand loosens the monitor power cable; just enough to break the circuit, but not enough to give birth to another trip hazard. It’s just mid-morning August in the Colton library, and pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Jack depresses the power button and stands. The entire transaction has taken five seconds, and the closed circuit video is none the wiser—but then everybody knows that Jack-the-Jack is still a Luddite, no matter what the wizard says.

The library is quiet this morning, but it’s always quiet when there isn’t a field trip or eyelid flutter moving fragrant air all over the front desk. Turns out those green eyes can blink after all. Wooden chairs are stolid, but they’re usually uncomfortable when you take the trouble to notice. The machine is booting, and the monitor is mum, and so he takes the trouble to notice. Hard chairs are one way to minimize bad behavior on the Internet, maybe, even when it’s quiet, and even if nobody actually thought to plan it that way. All things being equal, though, he’d prefer a cushion. Or a recliner. Or a lap. Wait…forget about the lap—all play and no work makes Jack a barge pole.

Machine noises have settled down to a humdrum hum, and the thumb drive has done its work. Now he’ll have remote access to the machine from the other side of the library entrance, as long as the Internet link stays active. He’ll patch in through an anonymizing service, and browse out the same way. That’s three levels of misdirection; one physical and two virtual. Nobody is going to track the triangle solution—not on his watch. He doesn’t know how it all works; he just knows that it works, and he can follow instructions same as the next fellow. Maybe better than the next fellow. To be honest, the next fellow is in way over his head, especially if Jack catches him going green. Luddites are particular about that sort of thing.

Jack decides to rap the monitor once or twice, feign some clueless frustration, and move on. Sooner or later someone will fix the cable, but by then he’ll be fiddling with the air conditioner in his car and wishing he could just time shift straight into another cool night on his own grassy knoll, searching out the stars and lifted up on wildflowers, floating between Erse and Earth, and lost in the windblown wonder of the world. Unfortunately, he’s going to suffer the summer swelter instead, just like everybody else.

He moves to another machine and settles in for fifteen minutes of mindless nonsense. Let’s see…Wikileaks has been busy, the Swine Flu has been busy, monsoons in Pakistan—they’ve been really busy. About the only thing that hasn’t been busy is the United States Congress. No surprise there. It’s tough to keep up with the twenty-four-hour news cycle these days; Luddites don’t realize how good they have it.

He finishes with a Wikipedia article on calligraphy, just for consistency. It’s extensive, with an international flavor that doesn’t really offer what he needs; it’s the methods that interest him, not the sources, and it looks like he’ll just have to come back for the book. No one is around to see his eyes light up, but this time, the brass fixtures just don’t give a damn. Soft brown versus emerald green just isn’t much of a contest. Hercules could have seen that much without his head.

OO

Number Four has been waiting; six hours now, or seven. It’s easy to lose track underground. Waiting doesn’t come naturally to everybody, but you get good at it if you have to. And you have to. Damp dirt and humid cool; rusty pipe rot and sewer rat stench; it’s not exactly the Ritz-Carlton, but it’s quiet, mostly. There’s water drip and breath noise and far off pipe clink, but at least she can hear herself think. Most people can’t.

Turns out the psych profile on this guy was righteous. Meticulous, careful, highly attentive, but not afraid to daydream. Likes green eyes—and ham. Older than he seems; younger than he will be—for a couple of days, anyway. It would have been nice to have a decent photo—that’s a little strange—but no matter; this is definitely the right car. The sensor malfunction was a long shot, but he’d pulled in right underneath, as if more light improves insurance rates for pretty cars in Colton, even in the morning, even at the library, even with video cameras strung about the place like cheap tree lights. It’s subtle psychology, but it’s probably true enough in this shithole. Whatever. It worked.

The light sensor is of no particular interest. Nor is the library. The parking lot is perfectly mundane, and this time of day, commuter traffic is sparse. The manhole cover—that’s an entirely different story. The damned thing is really too small—they do everything on the cheap around here—but at least it’s easier to move. Up and over, rasp and roll, slip out prone, and the morning sky is nothing but fine German engineering.

Nice. This is awfully clean for upstate. He’s got a good mechanic. No…wait. It’s too clean. He is a good mechanic. Salt and snow and mountain misbehavior do more damage than this just sitting around looking pretty. You have to keep after it. Good man; he is meticulous. Kind of a shame, really; it sucks when the bad guys are the good guys.

Fifteen minutes later the undercarriage has been adorned with military tech and a proximity trigger. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. It ain’t pretty, but it’s inconspicuous, and the car sure is pretty—even underneath. For a couple of days, anyway.

The manhole cover finds its way back home like a big, bad penny, and there’s nothing to do for the rest of the day but catch forty—winks, not rats. It could go either way down here. Rodents can be amusing if the need arises, but there’s nothing funny about a slumber nibble. And somebody really oughta fix the light sensor on that pole lamp. It’s a crime to waste electricity.

OO

Another late night. That’s three in a row, and Jack’s eyelids will soon sprout brush burns if he doesn’t stop the rubbing. This always happens with the Elders; it’s built into the system. You work at night because you have to, plus everybody’s got a day job, right? Four out of five do, anyway; more like three out of five in these parts. Times are really tough.

Jack’s been at it since midnight, and progress is slow. He’s tapped in through downtown, so the link is secure, but that doesn’t make the problem any easier. It’s hard to know if this is a rush job—sometimes yes, sometimes no—but this is an interpretive art, and good art takes time. The library link won’t last forever, though, and sooner is always better than take two and call me in the morning.

Hercules, Cygnus, Ursa Minor. Something other than a triangle connects them with the Hecate Strait in a way that has to make sense to an astronomer with big hands that are quicker than emerald green eyes. He’d escaped the library this morning without the customary au revior to Lillian; she’d been otherwise engaged, and frankly the metaphor troubled him a little. It’s just as well.

Cygnus should be easy enough—a swan is a swan. Technically, it could be anything avian—the Arabs thought Cygnus was a hen, after all—but it’s more likely to be swan-specific in the west. Sometimes Cygnus is associated with self-sacrifice, and Sadr is the swan’s chest, possibly denoting emotion or feeling. They aren’t the same thing, of course—emotion and feeling—but most folks disregard the difference. Then there’s the transformation motif; apparently the goddesses Leda and Nemesis had a thing for swan flesh that Zeus was only too eager to oblige. It’s like you just can’t keep a good God down…on the farm. Let’s just hope that a swan is a swan and Zeus is still out back sawing logs.

Then there’s Ursa Minor. Sometimes it’s just used for cardinal navigation, and for now we’ll assume that cardinal points are not under Catholic hats. More often it’s a water motif, which is likely in this case; it’s not like the Hecate Strait is made of soup. Of course, it could actually be soup; a ladle is a ladle, after all, and food is never far from Greek mythology.

Once upon a time, Polaris was actually a reference to the Magi, but that was a while back when cars were camels and sorcery was science. Wise men are in short supply these days, at least according to this morning’s browser stint, and no amount of magic is going save Congress from the Tea Party—but no worries, this is a Canadian gig. Swans are water birds, two of the ground points are seaborne, and the Hecate Strait is salty siigaay.⁴ So it’s probably just water. Note to self: tea is made from water. And impurities.

Hercules is the real problem. He was a problem back then, and he’s a problem now. It’s like you just can’t keep a half-God down. Hercules’ twelve labors is a lot of mythic context to cover, but so far, the eleventh labor is the most promising; it’s the only one where he actually used his head. So maybe apples have something to do with it, unless Henry is actually Hera, and somebody really did drop the cider crate. The other possibility is the sixth; the Stymphalian birds had awfully hard heads themselves, and you know what? They’re birds, just like Cygnus. So that works. Still, this is a guy who mostly clubbed his problems into submission, which kind of misses the point, doesn’t it? We’re post-Enlightenment now, and modern man is a kinder, gentler…oh, never mind.

Jack has been working for hours, trying to connect the dots, but the Internet doesn’t do semantics, and these dots are cast pretty far afield. Apples appear to be a dead end. Soup and cider is a dead end. Tea and turkey is definitely a dead end, and in fact, let’s just lose the culinary motif altogether, shall we? There’s nary a peep about inter-species swan breeding—no surprise there—and for the record, avian bird flu hasn’t been seen in Canada for five years.

Instinct tells him to focus on Hercules, and everything else will fall into place, but so far, Hera and Hecate have the upper hand, and Hercules is still in the drink. The Haida Nation probably feels that way too; clear-cut logging and industrial fishing are ravaging the islands, and maybe fifty people still speak the native tongue. Those old birds really are an endangered species.

Jack leans back and rubs his eyes again. Ouch. If it were easy, anybody could do it—anybody with a Scotch and a sleep disorder. Exhaustion is overtaking him; his thinking is thinning, and green screen pixels are beginning to adorn his reluctant eyelids like sparkle mascara. The browser universe suddenly resembles a bolt of black fabric with an emerald aurora up north; it’s thin like the négligée, and thick like the mane. The fabric starts to flicker and flutter and fly away; a waif wisp of shimmy green over midnight that undulates and weaves like windblown natural fiber…

Suddenly, Jack snaps upright, and the Greek god of Wake-Up-And-Smell-The-Coffee pours him a steaming cup of caffeinated adrenaline. Natural fiber. Forget about the stars and look at the space. Forget about the muscle and look at the man. Ignore the bloody trees, and look at the forest. Maybe it’s not what he did, maybe it’s who he was. Jack smiles. Maybe it’s not the natural fiber at all—maybe it’s actually the entire cotton print dress. It’s an interesting idea. Lillian would love it.

OK, fine. Who is Hercules? He’s a complex kind of guy, godlike in strength, not terribly bright—got a bit of a temper—who completely loses his mind through no fault of his own. He’s a fallen hero besotted with grief and remorse who works like hell to redeem himself. He’s power and privilege and temporary insanity; he’s misplaced rage run terribly amok. Jack stops smiling; come to think of it, that sounds exactly like the Tea Party—sans the redemption myth. Wait…maybe that’s it. Maybe our Hercules is a Canadian pol, risen to power and privilege, then tripped up and fallen in the drink. Somebody important who made an epic mistake and paid dearly for it. Now that’s a productive line of inquiry. How hard can it be possibly be to link Ottawa and Haida Gwaii? It’s a walk in the park if you know your way around Greek mythology and the Canadian Bureau of Connect-The-Dots. Everyone knows this.

Thirty minutes later, he’s got it, and his green screen pixels strongly resemble a CBC piece about power and privilege and temporary insanity.

MP Svenja Skøtt Admits Theft, Takes Stress Leave

Friday, March 21, 2008, Ottawa, Canada: New Democratic Party MP Svenja Skøtt stunned supporters on Thursday by taking a medical leave of absence after admitting she stole a rare and expensive curio. Skøtt, a federal New Democrat and seven-term member of Parliament representing the British Columbia communities of Burnaby and Vancouver has been detained in connection with the March 7 theft of a rare medallion from an indigenous antiquities auction in Vancouver. She admitted the theft and returned the piece several days after the incident, and contacted the police herself. She is now under house arrest awaiting prosecution.

Skøtt had difficulty reading a prepared statement during a nationally televised news conference in her Vancouver-area riding of Burnaby-Douglas on Friday.

While attending a public auction, I pocketed a beautiful Haida silver medallion. I did this despite knowing full well that the entire area was under electronic surveillance, and that I had been recognized by many of the employees of the auction. I wish I could offer you an explanation for this behavior. I cannot. Something just snapped in a moment of total, utter irrationality. I deeply regret this action, and I stand before you humbled and humiliated by my own behavior. I await the decision of Crown counsel and will not seek to avoid full responsibility for my actions should charges be laid in these circumstances, Skøtt said.

At a separate news conference later in the day, NDP Leader Jack Layton said that Skøtt will remain a member of the federal caucus while she’s on leave. Layton indicated that he stands behind the MP at this difficult time, but told reporters it’s impossible to say if Skøtt will run in the next election. Skøtt has temporarily stepped down as the riding’s nominee in the next federal election, however, suggesting that she will not seek another term in the House of Commons.

Svenja Oceana Skøtt, aged 52, is one of the longest-serving members in the House of Commons, and is Canada’s first openly gay female MP. Ms. Skøtt has reportedly been battling severe stress for the past several months and is now undergoing therapy. Several other MPs have expressed their support for her circumstance, including Prime Minister Paul Martin, who called Skøtt a dedicated parliamentarian who’s clearly been under a great deal of stress. She’s an incredibly strong person and I’m sure she will come through it, All of us want to wish her the best, Martin said.

Skøtt is especially beloved on the archipelago of Haida Gwaii, a chain of islands sixty miles off the coast of British Columbia, and home to the indigenous Haida nation. She has been a tireless advocate for environmental and economic development throughout the islands, and helped to facilitate the recent name change from Queen Charlotte Islands to Haida Gwaii. In honor of her work, the Haida nation has dubbed her Gadáang Hlgit’ún - The White Swan.

Svenja Skøtt, The White Swan. Seven terms and she steals a trinket? It doesn’t pass the sniff test. Targeted searches reveal a long list of civic awards and articles about bipolar disorder. Apparently that’s the offending ingredient when the soup turns. It’s a good thing she’s Canadian; in this country, some religious moron would blame it on her sexual preference or find proof of imminent rapture, and she’d end up badmouthing the big boys on somebody’s shitty excuse for broadcast news. Still, the Canadians put her out to pasture, and decades of civic service were undone by a single slice of shiny. Too bad for Haida Gwaii. Too bad for Canada. So much the better for Switzerland; she’s living there now, fighting AIDS and working with the World Wildlife Fund. Apparently manic depression doesn’t affect your pandemic instincts.

Another ten minutes, and he’s certain he’s found his Hercules. Skøtt’s take on temporary insanity was cyclothymic, and she took talk treatment, not lithium, so there’s no pharmacological consequence, plus no previous history of bad behavior in Canada, or Colton, or anywhere else. That’s convenient. The image on the medallion? A swan. Skøtt’s bloodline is Danish, but Svenja is Germanic. It means swan. Those Haida folks sure are clever; medallions have meaning, and a swan really is a swan. And her hometown is Prince Rupert, British Columbia, just off the Hecate Strait, and the wettest city in Canada. So that’s where Ursa Minor has been spilling her soup.

Still, there’s a fly in the soup. Hercules ultimately became a God; he’s the Greek embodiment of redemption. AIDS and environmentalism are all well and good, but they seem to fall a little short of Herculean effort. So maybe the Elders think she has yet to redeem herself. More important, the shiny just doesn’t stick to the swan. It’s obvious that Sadr is the heart of the matter, and the central theme of Cygnus is self-sacrifice. This soup is rich, but it smells awfully suspicious, and it’s perfectly clear to Jack-the-Jack, master of none, that the White Swan stole it on purpose.

OO

In August, in Colton, the constellation Hercules is upside down with respect to the horizon.

From the episode Déjà Q, the sixty-first episode of the television series Star Trek, The Next Generation.

Scottish Gaelic is a Celtic language native to Scotland. A member of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages, Scottish Gaelic, like Modern Irish and Manx, developed out of Middle Irish, and thus descends ultimately from Primitive Irish. Scottish Gaelic should not be confused with Scots, which refers to the Anglic language variety traditionally spoken in the Lowlands of Scotland. Prior to the fifteenth century, the Anglic speech of the Lowlands was known as Inglis (English), with Gaelic being called Scottis (Scottish). From the late fifteenth century, however, it became increasingly common to refer to Scottish Gaelic as Erse (Irish) and the Lowland vernacular as Scottis.

Siigaay means ocean in the Haida language.

III

The Charge

There is one rule, and one rule only. It isn’t even a rule, really; it’s more like sacred counsel. A sage nugget of higher wisdom, hard-won and heavy, like an ancient stone carving nestled deep in the inner garden, lost under the old growth canopy, and faint like soft shadows in early morning mist. One squints and cranes and blinks away the slumber, pining for a glimpse of movement. Nothing. Summer days will favor the flowers instead, obscuring the mottled greens and the granite. But it’s there for a reason—for the long view back, and the memories of winter; cool vision under color; unblinking amidst the fog and the burn-off and the sweet summer swelter. Blossom and fragrance may come and go, but the stone gnome owns the place. Stoic and cold and silent and strange; every day it glowers at the gardener, demanding attention and a reckoning. One crosses the carving only rarely, and never without consequence. You must not be discovered.

The why of it all remained a little mysterious even now, and he sometimes liked to pretend that wider knowledge could have good effect. It would be terribly convenient to nurture an assistant; a sidekick for jawboning, an ear for bending, a soft heart and sharp wit for plots and plans and commiseration. Even the sweat stains and musk of muscled youth might yet find purchase in the psyche of an old man, there to divert the attention, to manage the heavy lifting, to stir the ancient embers that compel the fledgling world to rise up out of the spring rains and frolic. Yes, that would be lovely. Still, assistance was not entirely absent, and he never took it for granted. Never. These days, his work would be quite impossible otherwise. But arm’s length was one thing, and intimacy, another. He knew the limits and the landscape, and he rarely sought to goad the garden gnome. He sighed, unsmiling, and shut the cottage door, turning inward to tend the fire. Sometimes the solitary life was just a pain in the bum.

He’d departed early for the mail; a daily ritual that