An Academy? That's Insane — 8
I left the five of them there, still gazing at me with faces gone soft with feeling, and climbed the stairs. Any moment now they would feel as if something in them had changed. And something had.
Soon enough, though, they would realize that they themselves had not. Strength may grow and a mind may sharpen, and still the self that has lived all the way to this moment goes on without a break. It is no different from swearing you will lose weight, taking up exercise, quitting after three days, and then eating back — on top of everything else — every bit the exercise burned.
I had considered setting a limit of three here as well. In the second world I made far too few harvesters. In the first, so many people wanted to multiply them that I meant to put a cap on the number; in the second, I held the line at three, because the first world had collapsed. The third world was the first time I did not begin already belonging to a group. I could not flee, or else I needed their power — and either way, parasitizing that group required a certain set of rules. Even if the rules were not truly real, I could act as though they were.
But here, I was free. So I decided to be free.
Of course, things might turn strange without warning. I might be carried off somewhere and left with nothing to do but produce harvesters. Even that would not be entirely bad. A group vicious enough to do such a thing would hardly spread with the unnatural speed of the first world. A ruler stuffed with nothing but desire would keep their use entirely to themselves. Which is to say — no problem.
Once I reached the upper floor, I went looking for Victoria. She was hurrying back to the cabin at that very moment, having realized I was gone. She would get there, confirm I was not in the room, and come straight back out, so I took the way we would not miss each other, and we met.
"Hey! I found you!"
The instant she saw me, Victoria came running. Fair enough. An ordinary child would, by now, have been put through something ugly in a corner of a third-class cabin. If she understood that what I really was amounted to a monster, she need not have worried so much.
"Yes. Bell is right here."
"If you're going somewhere, say so!"
"There wasn't time to tell you. You were completely lost in the machinery, Victoria."
I turned the subject just enough to twist it, until it sounded as though the fault were Victoria's.
"Even so— ugh. No. You're safe. That's enough. Let's go back to the room."
"All right."
Perhaps she was ashamed, even by her own reckoning, of how thoroughly the machinery had taken her. She pressed me no further.
I stayed on my guard afterward, in case something else should happen, but the night passed without incident. And when morning came, a city showed itself along both banks of the river.
I already knew it would. The ship had called at a harbor at dawn with its horn blaring, and I had been awake ever since, watching from the window. From that harbor we entered the river, and beyond the glass the broad plain gave way, little by little, to houses, and the houses, little by little, to a great city. Before long, as noon drew near, the ship came to rest at a port on the river that cuts through the heart of the enormous city.
Victoria and I went ashore together. Fortunately they did not inspect tickets on the way off, so we disembarked without trouble.
Beyond the harbor, steel frames and brick houses stood in easy company, and buildings rose high enough to be called skyscrapers. Enormous mechanisms were set into the faces of those buildings and into their guts, turning here and there. The whole city looked as if it had been built on the theme of a clockwork watch's insides. High overhead, craft like balloons drifted, and creatures like wyverns flew past in saddles, with people astride them.
"You're not very surprised."
"I am surprised."
"Heehee. See? This is Berne City. The most advanced city in the country, built with the latest technology there is."
Victoria said it in a voice full of pride.
I supposed it was fortunate the motive power was not steam, given how absurdly efficient this energy called mana is. Too much clockwork to call it arcanepunk, and not a wisp of steam to call it steampunk. Gaslamp fantasy? Closer to that.
"Taxi!"
The moment we reached the street, Victoria waved one down. Before long a three-wheeled vehicle of peculiar construction pulled up in front of us.
"Do you require service? Please make use of Cogni Transport Company! Set the number of passengers and your destination, complete payment, and you may board."
It was built on an inverted triangle, with an apparatus like an engine at the rear, and above that engine a brass doll given nothing but the shape of a person. An artificial intelligence, of course. Victoria, who found the machine not strange in the least, stated the number of passengers and what seemed to be an address, then held out the money.
The brass machine finished its calculation, set the luggage Victoria offered up on the roof, and opened the door. Once the two of us were inside, the doll at the rear moved an arm, shut the door, and we started off.
It felt, unmistakably, like another world. Far clearer than when I had known it only through Victoria's memories. If I had been someone who liked to travel, would I have liked this? I could not say.
At any rate, the taxi ran a long while and stopped where the skyscrapers were only a distant view. The house was not fine enough to be called a mansion, but it was more than good enough for people to live in.
"Cogni Transport Company is always with you. We hope you will ride with us often!"
The doll fixed to the taxi played the short recorded line, then left without so much as a glance back.
"I'm home!"
Victoria seized her bag, flung the door wide, and went in. No answer came back. She continued inside without a care, and I followed.
There was a place to knock the dirt from one's shoes, but Victoria walked straight in with hers still on. That is not proper, of course. Strictly speaking it is allowed — in one's own house. As a rule, one changes into indoor shoes at the entrance. This being a first meeting, I thought I ought to keep the manners I knew from Victoria's memory. The guest pair ran a little large, perhaps because they were meant for visitors. I stepped into the loose, flapping shoes and went in.
"Who the hell are you?"
"Mom. Another all-nighter? You're still not in your right mind, are you? Put the gun away."
Through Victoria's eyes, the woman aiming the gun at her had hollows black as soot beneath her own. Victoria's face said this again, so it was not so serious.
"I have never had a daughter like you. How dare you walk in here with your hair dyed like that! I told you — pull a stunt like that, and don't even think of setting foot in this house!"
"When did I ever dye it!"
"You've dumped purple dye all over it! Down to the roots — it wouldn't even be strange if you'd done it on the way here! What is this, your rebellious phase?"
No. That isn't it.
From a mother's heart, though, it really would look like the sort of incident in which a child has suddenly gone crooked. Before the matter could grow any larger, I stepped inside.
"Hello."
"Oh my. A guest?"
For an instant her expression eased, then sharpened again at the color of my hair. Only for a moment. Each time her eyes traveled over me, head to foot, the wariness thinned a little more. It must have been because I looked young.
"Tori, who is this?"
Tori is Victoria's nickname. Victoria let out a breath of relief, looked at me, and came to stand at my side.
"Mom, this is Bell. Bell, this is my mom."
Victoria's mother started toward me, then moved her hand with startling speed, rapped a knuckle against Victoria's head, and stopped in front of me.
"I'm Beatrice Vett."
"I'm Bell."
She offered her hand, so I took it. The moment our hands met, stark surprise crossed her face.
"Why, you're only a little lady. Tori. Where on earth did you bring a child like this from?"
Aha. She had judged me by the feel of my hand. Strictly speaking, it was true I had been made not long ago; not knowing that, the mistake was hardly a strange one. Victoria went rigid, as if a difficult question had been set before her all at once.
"No, it's— Mom. It's really a long story. The kind that would probably make you faint dead away if you heard it, so can I go put my things away first?"
She seemed to have decided to put it off for now, and pointed upward. Victoria's room was up there. Beatrice stared at her for a long moment, then nodded.
"Just wait a minute!"
Victoria snatched up her bag and hurried upstairs. Leaving a guest standing in front of one's own parents and doing as one pleased could hardly be called polite, could it? Beatrice seemed to think so as well. She looked up at the ceiling beneath Victoria's room with an expression of pure exasperation.
"Good grief. Will that girl get any better even if we send her to school... Come over here and sit."
Remembering me, Beatrice indicated a place. There was a large table that seemed to serve every purpose at once, papers strewn across it and several pens of the same kind lying where they had rolled. A few were worn nearly to nothing. She had been at this a long time.
"Look at the state of me."
Beatrice hurried over and cleared the documents heaped on the table. A sidelong glance showed sheet after sheet covered in large sums. According to Victoria's memories both her parents were merchants, so papers of that sort were no surprise. She gathered them into a rough stack in a corner of the floor and sat down across from me.
"So. Whose child are you, really? How old? And your family name?"
"I don't have a family name. My age is hard to say. And the details can wait until you've heard them from Victoria."
Beatrice's eyes narrowed, little by little. She had realized I was no ordinary child. I did not hide it. I could hardly have managed a convincing imitation of one in the first place. And it would depend, too, on how much Victoria chose to tell.
"Not an ordinary child, then. All right. Do you drink tea?"
"Water is enough."
"I'm not as stingy as that."
With that, Beatrice went to the kitchen and set about brewing tea. A fragrant smell rose, and by the time she had prepared this and that and returned to the table, Victoria came down as well, changed into clothes of a very easy sort.
Easy to the point of too little cloth for anywhere but inside the house, which earned her a scolding from Beatrice. Only for a moment. Once Victoria sat beside me and began to tell what she had been through, that air vanished all at once.