Misbegotten Memories

Chapter 279

It took them just shy of a full twenty-four hour day to cross the lake.  For most of that time, their group was divided in three.  Mei and Dorian kept to themselves.  Isabel and the interpreter Owam sat off to the side.  Which left Fiona, Hector, and Darius as an awkward triad.

Fiona would place her hand on Hector’s arm and make some inane comment.  “I go back and forth between Cush and Bentley because I can’t decide which I like better.”  Then Darius would interject himself into the conversation.  “I have traveled in Stein, you know.”  And Hector would cringe at the situation in general.

No one on the boat slept during the night.  Hector didn’t know if that was due to the noise level, the fact that the ride was a bit rough, or the proximity of many strangers.  Dawn brought with it the sight of the distant shore.

“You said you are trading fertilizer for vegetables.  How long will you be staying in town?”

While Hector was figuring out how to respond to that question, Darius asked one of his own.  “What are you planning to do in Bentley, Fiona?”

Fiona somehow never looked annoyed by the interruptions from Darius.  “Oh, I work for a wholesaler of Fufu flour.”

“Interesting,” Darius said.  “What is that?”

“Wholesaling?”

“Fufu.”

“It’s a popular food.  The variety my employer sells is made from mashed yams.  Wonderful in soup.  A potent resource, too.  Wholesalers only sell in bulk, though, so you guys would have to be serious if you wanted to shop with my employer.  The prices are amazing if you can.  Anyway, let’s talk about housing.  I know a charming hotel you could stay at, Hector.”

Darius was ready with a follow-up.  “How much does it cost a night?”

Rather than participate in yet another triangular conversation, Hector walked to the edge of the boat to look at the approaching shoreline.  Their destination, a city named Wat, sat along a river leading from the lake.  Even from a distance he could see dams, locks, and waterwheels.  The buildings were large, the greenery vibrant, and the streets bustling.

Isabel appeared at his side.  “Owam tells me that city customs impounds all imports for evaluation before they can be sold.  I trust there are no pests in Wayne’s handiwork, but I’m not certain what the people of Bentley think of Jinn methodologies.”

Thinking quickly, Hector came up with a plausible narrative.  “I’m sure if you think hard enough you’ll remember that this fertilizer is made using a traditional Oceania recipe.”

The woman considered his suggestion.  “Do you consider the people of Tian ignorant?”

Her tone didn’t hold any heat, leading him to believe it was a genuine question.  “You’ve seen how much information is available on Union Central.  Tian has many brilliant minds, but they rarely get an opportunity to network.  Nor does the common person have any way to check if the things they hear are accurate.  I believe that people everywhere are more or less equally intelligent.  But access to information determines ignorance.”

“Said more clearly, yes we are ignorant.”  Isabel shook her head.  “I hardly know how to classify myself.  My ethnicity is Helvetian.  I was born into the Zing Empire.  Sent to Oceania to be slaughtered.  Now I live upon an unempowered world.  Where do I belong, Hector?”

“It’s a big multiverse, Isabel.  Why limit yourself to one country on one world?”

“Because that’s what it means to have a homeland.”  Isabel smiled as she gently mocked him.  “Where are you from, Hector?  Union Central?  Or did you crawl up from some more obscure world?”

“A very obscure, very unempowered world.  I’ve been told it is very Jinn-like, but in truth I would call it a fairly even mix of influences from the five true worlds.”

Isabel accepted his claim without question.  “And the memories you stole?  Are they of Tian?”

“Those began on a random unempowered world.  There was a lot of New Mart.  Only a few years on Tian.  The last one was spent in the tower of the Lord Platinum.”

“That is the elixir madame?”

Hector paused.  “Elixir madame?”

“The woman who makes the best elixirs in all of the world.”

“I suppose that would be Platinum, then.  Back to your other question.  You wanted to know where you belong.  What about Tian Tower?  It’s a great community in a city that has almost anything you could want.  The entire world is a safe haven.”

“Tian Tower is rogues and dreamers trying to figure out what it means to be Xian.  They mean well, but their interpretation is not very accurate.”  She sighed.  “Fools, all of them.  They freely exchange techniques with each other.”

“You know, everyone learns more techniques that way,” he observed.

“Not all techniques are equal.  Some there give away masterpieces for garbage.”

Hector snorted.  “So?  Are you worried you might accidentally enrich your friends?”

Isabel studied him for a few moments.  “You really think like that?”

“I would rather think that way and be wrong than the alternative.”

“Dorian claims you are the best man he knows,” Isabel said.

Hector blinked.  “Dorian says that?”  To the best of his knowledge, he hadn’t done anything particularly noteworthy in the man’s presence.  The judgment of a former bully might not be entirely accurate on such matters, though.

“You fight for the sake of others,” Isabel said, sensing he needed clarification.

“The Aes Reconquest is full of people who do the same.”

Isabel’s curious gaze returned to him.  “Did you not gain an insight into morality?”

“It would be more accurate to say my insight is about intention.”

Their boat slowed as they came alongside a pier.  The owner’s son ran forward to throw out mooring lines.  Officials appeared as if by magic to scrutinize the passengers.  The translator Owam interacted with the officials.  Their boxes of fertilizer were marked with chalk and taken away, leaving Mei holding onto the receipt.

“Your things are safe,” Fiona assured Hector.  “The government of Wat treats merchants fairly.  They make foreigners sell their goods at a state auction to ensure they receive duty on imports.  Don’t lose your slip, though.  That’s how you get paid.”

He turned to his comrades.  “So do we stick around or –”

Darius slapped him hard on the back.  “Let’s get a tour of the city.”

Hector frowned at the eunuch.  “Why are you –”  A serious look from Darius stopped him from saying any more.  Whether or not he understood the reason, he decided to humor the concerns of his friend, whatever they may be.

Though he quickly came to regret his laissez faire approach when the tour turned into a painful competition between the interpreter Owam and their casual acquaintance Fiona.  The two guides rushed to speak over each other.  Fiona was a native speaker of the Amaratti language, so her words came first.  Owam was more knowledgeable about the city of Wat but they had to wait for a translation from Zing by Isabel.  Neither guide was willing to cede the spotlight.

Even given the less than ideal circumstances, they received a solid introduction to the city.  Wat was bounded to the east by the lake and to the south by the river.  It only went ten miles towards the west before halting abruptly before a wall of trees.  Both guides agreed that the forest was best left to experienced hunters, being the domain of both powerful beasts and the Ancestor.  The city gently gave way to farmland to the north.

Within those bounds, there were several markets.  The one in the south-east corner was called the fish market.  Directly off the lake was the government importer market, where their fertilizer would be auctioned to the highest bidder one box at a time.  There was a vegetable market, of course.  And then the sprawling general market that had no particular specialty.

There were also restaurants everywhere.  The city of Wat celebrated soups to an extent Hector had never witnessed elsewhere.  Owam showed off by reading signs since Fiona wasn’t literate in the Bentley language and every restaurant proudly advertised some variety of soup.  Their group ate at an affordable place that had ox tail soup served with doughy Fufu.  The ingredients were only at level four energy density, but Hector enjoyed the flavor – all the more so after going a full day without eating on the boat.  Then it was off to find a place to stay.

They did not stay at the hotel Fiona recommended.  Mei shut down that suggestion quite firmly.  Once their redhead guide was gone, they settled into open beds in a hostel.  The moment the men were alone, Darius seized Hector.  “Do not mention your externality type while in this country, Hector.  Porters are rare most places and it is best to keep your ability secret in case we need to use it suddenly.  It is also unwise to advertise that you lack a weapon.”

Hector sighed.  “This outing is basically a shopping trip.”

“Your ignorance annoys me.  Do you realize how many times people tried to kill me on the unempowered world I came of age upon?  I was the only Xian there, with a body impervious to mundane attacks.  Yet fool after fool tried to eliminate me through deception or treachery.  I survived attempts to kill me in my sleep, poison me at meals, and all manner of nefarious plotting.

“If such means were employed against the most powerful person of an entire world, how much more should we expect it on Tian, where our flesh is a valuable resource?  Think, Hector.  This is not a shopping trip, as you call it.  The locals are not your friends.  We are here to take that to which we are not entitled as foreigners.  These people will try to cheat us, rob us, and kill us.  I am certain of it.  In matters of power or money, you can only trust your closest family.”

Hector pondered his response for a moment.  “There are a lot of different types out there.  Some would stab their own mother in the back for the slightest advantage in life.  Most are good people, though, and will do the right thing if you give them a chance.”

Some unknowable thought passed behind the eyes of Darius.  “I believe you will never learn this lesson, Hector.  Fortunately for you, I can never forget it.”

A knock at the door announced Isabel a moment before she entered the male dormitory.  “These accommodations are fine for sleep, but we find them to be dull.  We’re taking the interpreter and Dorian.  The two of you are invited if you wish.”  She switched to the Zing language briefly, causing Owam to exit the room.  Dorian popped out of his own bed to rush towards where Mei waited for him.  Hector shrugged.  “We might as well do something besides sit in our room.”

So they all went out into the city once more – minus Fiona, who was staying elsewhere and thus unaware of their unplanned outing.  With the dwindling amount of local currency they’d acquired from exchanging low level cores, they didn’t make any purchases.  They did scout out the prices of the various root vegetables on sale in the market.

It was all expensive, but the degree of expense varied a lot.  As expected, the major variable was the energy density of the product.  A level seven yam was twenty times the cost of a level six one.  Then a level eight one was a hundred times the cost of a level seven one.  There were no level nine products on sale, but inquiries indicated they could be had directly from warehouses if one had the funds – the price quoted was thousands of times higher than level eight.

Other factors impacting pricing were vendor reputation, volume of purchase, and type of vegetable.  Every shopkeeper giving high quotes justified their ask by claiming their competitors were unscrupulous and would surely cheat customers.  Hector didn’t put much weight to those claims.  The discount for large volume purchases, on the other hand, made perfect sense to him.  He’d often done bulk purchasing back on Earth to take advantage of similar deals – both in his personal life and even more in a professional capacity.  His kitchen freezer had been packed with chicken planks and his cupboards at times were death traps of precariously stacked protein powder tubs.  Similarly, at work there was often packing materials being stored in corners of the work floor because there wasn’t enough space to store them elsewhere.

Everyone agreed that they should make their purchase from a single seller to gain the largest volume discount possible.  What truly sparked debate among their group was the cost differences by type of root vegetable.  Cassava, yams, potatoes, turnips, radishes, beets, carrots, and onions all went for different rates.  It wasn’t so simple as one type being cheapest, either.  Some would be cheaper at lower energy densities and then far more expensive at higher levels.  There was clearly a complex interaction of consumer preferences and production costs.  Carrots soared in price as their level increased, which Hector took to mean that they were expensive to enhance with the Bentley farming practices.  Yet they were obviously popular enough that their numbers saturated the market at lower levels.

Finally, they were able to come to a conclusion based on discussions with various vendors through Owam.  Fufu powder made from cassava was widely considered the best cultivation resource.  The reason for this was that the ground cassava underwent a fermentation process, during which additional methods were used to further enhance the potency of the end product.  Of course, this also meant that they were choosing the most expensive option.

The potency and quantity of Fufu powder they could afford would not be known until they received the proceeds from the auction of their fertilizer.  Until then, they could only gather information.  As the sky darkened, they returned to their hostel.