“Heard any news?” Morty asked as he emerged from his bedroom.
Xiomber looked up from his morning paper, tea mug in one hand and a sour scowl on his face as he sat in the dining space and enjoyed his quiet.
“News news, or real stuff?” Xiomber asked.
Morty walked over to join his egg-brother at the table. The place was cheap, but their needs weren’t all that great right now. And a month on the run had given Morty a far-greater appreciation of the simple things in life, like hot food that didn’t come out of a convenience store refrigerator. And a roof over his head when it was raining.
The table even a had a pretty good view of the city from about seventy stories up. Churquark was the name of both the city and the planet. It was mainly a Grace world, so there was art everywhere, but the window next to the kitchen table looked out over a two hundred meter tall bronze statue of a Chaa, one of the Elders, poised apparently at that moment of awakening that had transformed them from amazingly-advanced scientists into gods.
And that wasn’t even the weirdest thing Morty could see from here, as he pulled up a seat and poured himself some tea.
“Whatever news you got, Xiomber,” Morty replied to his partner. “You always wake up at dawn and scour the boards and papers for things. I need my beauty sleep.”
“Ain’t that the truth?” Xiomber nodded.
Morty just grinned and let his egg-brother’s sarcasm roll off his scales. He was feeling especially feisty this morning.
“So talk to me,” Morty prompted.
“We been here three days, Morty,” Xiomber sighed.
“And we’ve been on the run for five weeks,” Morty countered. “Maximus ain’t taken over the galaxy in that time, and nobody’s heard anything about Gareth or Talyarkinash, so either they got away, or the Constables really did catch them and have been hiding them someplace.”
“We better hope that the Constables didn’t catch them then,” Xiomber paused and sipped his tea noisily, like an alligator running low in the water, eyes and snout above the steam. “Prices for gear had gone through the roof on the black market.”
“Everything?” Morty felt a metaphorical scorpion perch on his shoulder and eye the side of his head hungrily. Never a good way to wake up.
“Everything we would need to build a new lab,” Xiomber explained. “Generators, control surfaces, secondary coils, even the sensors like we used to locate Sarzynski and Dankworth in the first place.”
“They know the truth, then,” Morty was sure.
“That’s my guess, too,” his partner nodded. “Somebody rolled, or maybe they finally raided the palace back on Zathus. Rumor on the street was that Maximus shut the place down when you and I bailed, and nobody cleaned it up afterwards. Wouldn’t take much to put two and two together, ya know?”
“No way to build a new lab?” Morty asked, just in case.
“Not an underground one,” Xiomber said. “And I’m guessing all the legitimate physicists in the family are probably cursing our names right now for the amount of paperwork they suddenly have to go through to replace or upgrade anything.”
Morty shrugged. Small price to pay, if they wanted to ensure that the Accord of Souls was still here in a year.
Ya burn the house down, you don’t get to complain about sleeping in the backyard when it rains. Summoning a human like Maximus had to be the dumbest idea he’d ever let himself be talked into. Summoning Gareth to stop him had perhaps balanced the scales a little. Hopefully enough.
If the Chaa really were gods, he was going to have to do a lot of hand-waving, when he got to his final reward. Angry deities weren’t going to be happy at what he had done to the galactic commons they had carefully built and arranged before leaving. And they sure weren’t going to like humans running around outside their house.
“Any good news from all that?” Morty continued after a moment of thought.
“We’re connected into the underground here,” Xiomber said in a careful voice.
“But?”
“But both the Constables and Maximus are hunting our asses, Morty,” his egg-brother said. “And offering threats and rewards that are going to get somebody to roll on us, eventually.”
“You’re the street etiquette expert,” Morty replied. “Is there anybody who could protect us? I’m willing to work for my keep, as long as they don’t go down Cinnra’s path and decide they need more humans. Even cops. At some point, someone will talk.”
“Or a human will walk into a teashop and get tasted by a Grace?” Xiomber sneered.
“Hey, you left him alone, too,” Morty said. “If she knows what he tastes like, my greatest hope is that the cops scared the wits out of the girl. You saw what that Vanir chick was like when she took off after Gareth.”
“Yeah,” Xiomber shuddered, eyes flickering with memory. “Ain’t going there again.”
“So find us someplace to set up shop,” Morty said. “Even half-legit works for me. I haven’t completely forgotten how to write code for responsible companies. I really don’t want to have to go back to Yuudix and hide among a billion grains of sand. Don’t think that would stop the Constabulary.”
Xiomber nodded in agreement. He started to say something when his pocketcomm beeped.
The two Yuudixtl looked at each other for a moment, and then Xiomber shrugged and answered it.
“They’re your kopeks,” he said into the phone and then listened.
“Yeah?” Xiomber said a moment later. “Okay. Thanks. I owe you one for that. Later.”
He hung up and stared at Morty
“We got a problem.”