3. Earth was not what I expected it to be. I thought I knew what it would be like from Pittsburgh, but I did not know what being on stranded on Elfhome had done to the city. It was no longer a creature of Earth but grown to be a hybrid. A true human city is a screaming loud, dirty, crowded, strange beast. All the human toys that I thought I knew how to work had been changed in subtle ways; I didn’t understand how to use them anymore. I was angry with myself for having thought I could be useful without magic.
4. Humans have a fascination with the past that we elves do not understand. Is it because what came before was nothing but horror and enslavement? Because we have no golden age to harken back to? The American Museum of Natural History was like those houses of horrors that Pittsburghers like to stage at Halloween. Less bloody but equally surreal.
5. I was on a boat once in the Inner Sea when a sea dragon passed by. One moment there was only calm water and then something huge rose like a gleaming mountain and undulated past the boat. We were like ants on a leaf beside it. The wake nearly rolled us. Then it was gone. I put out my hands, felt paper under my fingertips and lifted up a cardboard box to find a child huddled underneath. Tears poured down her face; she’d been crying silently for long enough to wet her entire face. She gazed up at me in sheer horror. I’d never seen anyone so scared. And worse, I felt the echo that one dreamer has when they meet another that shares her world vision. She knew what was rising up before us. I felt like I was standing on the deck of the boat, watching the coils of something huge and deadly rise up. I knew—no, I knew nothing—I merely felt the sudden fracturing of the future, that at this moment death could come hard and fast, or slow as drowning, and that all I could do was not draw attention to the tiny vessel I stood on. So I lowered that impossible box of invisibility down over her again, and told her to flee.
PITTSBURGH BACKYARD AND GARDEN
“Welcome to Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden. Today, we’re tackling a common garden pest, the strangle vine.” Hal Rogers grinned at Jane Kryskill’s camera and motioned for her to pan right with the slightest tilt of his pith helmet.
“No way in hell,” Jane murmured. She did not need eight years’ experience of filming in Pittsburgh to know that a half-eaten deer did not make good ratings. It might be sensational news on Earth. It was, however, a fairly typical outcome when an Earth animal met any number of Elfhome carnivorous plants. Eighty percent of their Pittsburgh viewers would not be impressed, and the other twenty would call the studio the next day, pissed off that their dinner had been ruined by the sight.
Hal’s grin tightened slightly as he continued. “The strangle vine is a dangerous plant to deal with as it’s a master of disguise. It can produce up to five different types of foliage, depending on the type of anchor it attaches itself to. It makes safely identifying this plant very tricky. Thus, it’s best to investigate any possible outbreak with weapon in hand. Some people like a machete. Others, an axe. Personally, I like a flamethrower.”
He whipped up the wand and gave his signature evil laugh. The cackle inspired the rumors that he had accidently killed someone on his previous show and thus his backslide to obscurity. She’d seen the videos. The only thing he’d killed was the ratings; he’d been bored silly doing curbside appeal remodels and it showed.
“This is a Red Dragon Flamethrower. You can get it at Wollertons on the South Side.” Other places in town sold the same flamethrower, but they weren’t sponsors of the show. “It comes with this wand with a squeeze trigger and this propane tank backpack.”
Hal turned around to show off the ten-pound tank strapped to his back. “Simply turn this valve to on.” He turned back, his grin widening with glee. “And apply a spark!”
Others might see Pittsburgh as a demotion, but Jane knew that Hal truly loved any excuse to wreak massive destruction. Where else could he routinely play with sticks of dynamite? Of course there was the small matter that his judgment was poor, hence the reason Jane had her job. She had been hired on originally to be nothing more than a glorified gofer. Hal had ignored, shot, or run over (figuratively and literally) everyone else assigned to the show until it was just Jane and her elfhound, Chesty.
Hal nearly took off his eyebrows applying the spark and blackened the rim of his pith helmet so it smoldered as he continued. “The six types of anchor plants that the strangle vine uses are the Elfhome Maple and Beech, the Wind Oak, the Silver Ash, Ironwood saplings, and root-bound Black Willows. For this reason, we advise viewers to clear these native trees from their yards if possible. Strangle vines will use Earth trees for anchors but can’t mimic their leaves, which makes them easier to spot.”
The yard was filled with native plants, thus Jane didn’t notice the vine creeping closer to Hal until Chesty growled a warning.
“Check.” Jane silenced the big dog by acknowledging the threat. She pointed at the vine attempting to snag Hal’s ankle. “Careful.”
“See you!” Hal cried and let loose an arc of flame at the tendril. It recoiled at stunning speed. He laughed again, sounding slightly demented.
Jane’s camera chimed quietly as Hal chased the retreating vine across the yard. Locking the focus and the microphone on Hal, she tapped the phone icon. “Hm?”
“You do remember what happens after every Shutdown?” Dmitri Vassiliev, station manager of WQED, asked dryly.
“We all waste our time in a staff meeting as Hal derails brainstorming for new story ideas with suggestions on blowing things up.”
There was a moment of silence as Dmitri came as close as he would to acknowledging that she was right.
She continued on with what probably happened at the WQED studios that morning while she and Hal played hooky to film a new episode. “I figure Network just about shit themselves with last month’s stories that you dumped on them yesterday and spent all last night flooding our servers with conflicting demands because they couldn’t do anything as logical as actually reading your summary first. I also figure that they had ignorant questions like ‘why didn’t we get any video of the royal wedding’ or ‘where were the still shots of the new princess in her wedding gown’ and ‘why did we send them a hundred photos of hoverbike racers covered in mud instead.’ ”
The answer was that there had been no “wedding” per se, as elves apparently didn’t go in for that kind of thing, and the only photos of the bride were of her racing. They couldn’t find a single picture where Tinker wasn’t covered in mud, so they just sent them all.
“Someone did figure that out. Eventually.” Which meant there probably had been several dozen patiently ignored e-mails before the light bulb went on at Network.
Jane laughed bitterly. “This is a large strangle vine in the backyard of an EIA desk jockey who has two little kids. He called his supervisor asking what to do about the half-buried deer under his tree, and his boss called Hal.”
Dmitri huffed out as he realized all the vectors of the situation. The United Nations for some reason thought that clerical employees wouldn’t encounter Elfhome’s hazardous wildlife, so they provided no training on how to recognize lethal situations. The supervisor probably knew there were professional exterminators to handle things like strangle vines, but decided to ask Hal for help. For all his love of explosives, Hal was a political creature, honed by years of clawing through the ranks of network television to achieve in-front-of-the-camera status. That he insisted they tackle the strangle vine at dawn meant that the EIA manager was worth currying favors for—plus Hal would get to use his flamethrower. Lastly was that the lowly EIA employee wouldn’t know to keep his children out of the yard until it was safe.
“How soon do you wrap up there?” Dmitri obviously was trying to sound casual while his blood pressure spiked through the roof. The meeting was long over, and Dmitri rarely reamed them out for anything short of setting someone on fire—which they hadn’t done yet today—so why was he calling now?
“What else did Network drop on us?”
There was a too-long silence
that meant she was going to hate what Dmitri said next. “Network wants us to provide a ‘native guide’ for a crew filming on Elfhome…”
“You want me to play babysitter?”
“No, they asked for a guide, they’re getting you as a producer, and you’re going to keep them out of trouble even if you need to hogtie them, which I know you’re fully capable of.”
“I don’t do babysitting!”
“It’s not babysitting, and you’re very good at it, otherwise Hal wouldn’t be alive now.”
Chesty went to point on a strangle vine staging a surprise rear attack. Jane sighed. When was Hal ever going to learn that these things were more like octopuses than snakes? “That is debatable,” she said as Hal went down with a yelp.
“Ouch. Is he going to be okay?”
“Probably.” Jane backed up to where she had the tripod set up and a small arsenal of garden weapons and a fire extinguisher.
Hal rolled, cackling wildly, trying to bring the flamethrower to bear on the vine that had him by the ankle. Unfortunately, the plant was much larger than the homeowner had led them to believe. It jerked Hal up into the air even as he squeezed the trigger. He went flying into the tree, leaving a contrail of flame behind him.
“Shit.” Jane grabbed the chainsaw.
“Oh, the viewers are going to love this one,” Dmitri said and hung up, hopefully to call the fire department.
* * *
After Hal was packed off in the ambulance, Jane stopped in the Strip District to pick up supplies for the month. After a morning of fighting a giant man-eating plant with a chainsaw, she didn’t want to talk to anyone, and certainly not Dmitri about some stupid babysitting job to some stuck-up New York City network idiots. It was going to be twenty-eight days of useless fighting back and forth until the next Shutdown proclaimed one of them a winner.
She silently loaded her cart with fifty-pound bags of rice, dried beans, coffee, and dog food while considering her choice in career. This wasn’t what she thought she was going to do while growing up, but really she had stopped thinking about having a life when she was eighteen.
True, she had always loved filming videos, but it had never occurred to her that she could make money doing it. She had graduated from high school without a plan, vaguely thinking she’d do something like join the Pittsburgh police force or fire department or open a daycare. She lucked into the job at WQED and collided with Hal.
He’d pitched Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden to Dmitri as a remake of his network hit lawn-makeover show on a shoestring budget. In truth, though, it had been Hal’s way to flee an avalanche of failure on Earth. The early local episodes were boring, mundane and ultimately useless to anyone. Hal zombie-walked through the episodes, sliding toward alcoholism. Jane had been assigned to be Hal’s “production assistant” but what she’d really been hired to do was head off his self-destructive tendencies brought on by boredom.
Jane saw the need for change in the show—for Pittsburgh’s sake and Hal’s. Together they shifted it toward addressing the dangerous species of flora and fauna that crept into people’s homes. It was important work. They saved lives at the risk of their own.
Of course they’d had to steamroll over their producer to do it. An imported New York City talent, the man just didn’t understand Pittsburgh or how to stay in control of his minions. Her little brothers would have eaten him alive.
After they chewed through two more imported producers, Dmitri had promoted her into the slot. That was six years ago—and all six years they’d been the top show of Pittsburgh.
The checkout girl eyed the sawdust still clinging to Jane’s blue jeans, the soot on her face, and the one lone leaf stuck in her braid. “Strangle vine, eh? They’re bitches. Gave me nightmares as a kid. You know what Mr. Rogers says on PB&G?” She pulled a pair of pruning shears out of her back pocket. “Never go out unarmed.”
PB&G was the locals’ affectionate way of referring to Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden. The station ran with the nickname and changed their logo to look like a PB&J sandwich. The line was actually Jane’s favorite saying that Hal stole for the show. It reflected what growing up in Pittsburgh had taught her. None of the New York imports had ever been able to wrap their brains around that. They used to mock her—quietly—for always having a variety of weapons near at hand.
No way she was going back to that.
* * *
WQED was one of the three channels still in Pittsburgh, one-time proud home to Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, which made Hal’s last name of Rogers faintly ironic. Originally part of the PBS system, they lost their funding when the United Nations took control of the city, which was a bunch of bullshit as most of the population still considered themselves “Americans.” However, since Pittsburgh was now under UN jurisdiction, the residents only paid city taxes, not state or federal. WQED currently was affiliated with NBC since the local NBC station had been wiped out in the first Shutdown. The other two local TV stations hadn’t fared much better; all three stations were on equal footing. It was a lose-lose situation for the television viewers.
As it was, the WQED studio in Oakland was nearly razed by the Rim as it cut its way through parallel universes. From space, it looked like a perfect fifty-mile-diameter circle punched through reality. At street level, the line wobbled oddly so you couldn’t actually use map and compass to plot its course. She wasn’t sure if it was because the orbital gate shifted over time or if the Rim varied in thickness at different points. Whatever the reason, WQED no longer sat deep within the confines of city, but at the edge of the mile-wide field that was alternately used as a pasture, fairground, or airfield of the big living airships. One of the massive creatures currently floated above the grass, announcing that the viceroy was in town.
“No damage today,” she told the studio’s motor pool mechanic Juergen Affenzeller as he came out to greet her in the parking lot. She backed the production truck into its assigned space.
“Hey, Jane!” Juergen leaned in the passenger side to pat Chesty. Since he’d been introduced as a friend to the elfhound, he didn’t get his face ripped off. “Saw the show. That was epic.”
“Really?” He couldn’t have seen today’s filming but last week’s show had been fairly tame for them. They tackled Earth’s common poison ivy, oak, and sumac and Elfhome’s death crown and bloodied lace, which were both deadly in a very sedate way.
“It was totally awesome! Yoyo Hal!” Juergen bounced up and down as an upright version of Hal falling repeatedly out of the tall wind oak only to be re-caught and dragged upwards because he insisted on doing commentary in calm even tones. “It’s important to note that a strangle vine can have as many as thirty-seven snare vines. Gak! You need to strike the base of the plant, its nerve center, to kill the strangle vine. Fuck! Never tackle one of these alone. Jane!”
She stared at Juergen in dismay. He’d seen all that? Live? Unedited? With all the embarrassing parts still intact? How?
The mechanic continued to act out today’s filming. “And you. Rawr!” He mimed the chainsaw. “That rocked! And then Brian! ‘Don’t try this at home, hire a professional pest control contractor.’ ” Brian was Brian Scroggins, Pittsburgh Fire Marshal and accidental guest co-host on a regular basis. “Just epic.” She fled the embarrassing recount, ignoring the belated “So how is Hal?”
Dmitri was in the break room, stealing all the coffee. Jane would have avoided him otherwise.
“I need some of that.” She leaned against the doorway, waiting for the coffee and the questions.
He started a new pot of coffee brewing. “So?”
It was his way of asking all possible questions at once.
“The fire is out. Brian isn’t going to press charges. Hal has a broken nose, a dislocated left hip, probably a mild concussion—once again that damn pith helmet saved him from anything serious—and first-degree burns on his foot after his boot caught on fire. Nothing major but we’re still out of production until his face heals.”
/> Dmitri picked up the insulated pitcher full of coffee and tilted his head in a “follow me” signal. “Oh, didn’t know you could dislocate a hip.”
“It takes talent,” Jane growled as she followed him through the studio. It would get her coffee faster.
The office area was a kicked anthill of activity with people on the phone and gesturing at each other madly. Still, as Jane passed, people would nod and sometimes cover their headsets to murmur, “Great job, Jane” or “Great show, Jane.”
“What? Was everyone in production with you?” She clung to anger to tamp down on the hot blush of embarrassment burning at her collar line, trying to climb higher. She hated it when she ended up on camera. It meant she lost control of Hal, which was quickly followed by nearly losing Hal.
Dmitri snatched up the morning Post-Gazette and waved it toward her. “Princess Tinker came home last night with the viceroy.”
“I saw his gossamer out on the Faire Grounds.”
“Well, she just tore the living hell out of Perrysville North, beyond the Rim.”
“She what?”
“She strong-armed the EIA into providing bulldozers and dump trucks and started to build something.”
“And we don’t know what?”
“We sent Mark’s crew out to the building site to see what they could find out.” Mark Webster was WQED’s reporter most fluent in Elvish. “The elves have not a clue; they’re just blindly following orders. Apparently asking questions never occurs to them. One of the humans Mark interviewed claimed that they were building windmills out of pickup trucks. Ford F-250s. Another claimed that they’re building some kind of supercomputer running on magic. A third said that Tinker kept saying it was something that sounded like ‘infrastructure’ but he’s not sure he was hearing her correctly.”