To measure the clouds (cont.)

or, part 2 (of 2) of a different point of view

Last week I posted the first part of this story. Well, it’s less a story and more a slice of a larger, connected narrative—the SciFi world of Precipice.

To anyone who read that first piece, thank you. I've linked that post below, in case you didn't read and you'd like to. The concluding Part 2 is below below.

To measure the clouds

It’s a little longer, this one. But if you’ve made it this far, then I hope you’re in for the rest. My thanks in advance.

I won’t dither here with any kind of further introductory preamble. I did too much of that last time.

Alt. art cover for the yet-to-exist graphic novel version of Precipice. Artwork by DALL-E and my brother (thanks, Sam!).

(Oh, everything Precipice-related is now also getting housed over in its own special section: https://slake.substack.com/s/precipice)

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PART 1 | PART 2

“I’m selfish,” I admit, not without a tinge of pain.

I take another step forward.

“I’m sorry, Warv. I owe you. A lot.” My words feel like stone. “But it’s not just that. I barely come see you. Because … ah fuck, don’t make me—”

“Language!” he snaps.

I brush that aside. Would that I could brush aside the welling in my stomach the same.

“I’m a selfish girl,” I repeat, hating the words, the way they taste. “I don’t know what else I can say.”

I look to him. He closes his eyes, opens them, let’s out a long sigh.

“Come,” he says, standing. “This old man misses you and cannot keep up this charade of anger for long.”

Feeling the emotions sink back, become replaced by others, I move to him. And in this action I find myself returned so easily, each step stripping away years. As I near him, Warv reaches underneath his desk and pulls out an old and battered stool, one with a seat made of actual leather, scarred and cracked like aging skin.

“I thought you’d thrown that away?” I ask, laughing.

“Of course not.” He pats the top of the stool. Too tall for an adult to use comfortably; not so tall for a child to sit atop, watching, learning.

I round the table, walk up to Warv. A man once impossibly large, impossibly adult, impossibly wise, now barely reaches to my chin. Leaning in, I wrap my arms around him, inhale his odour, the oil and must, the comfort of the fat he carries. Then I kiss him, once on his right cheek. “Missed you,” I whisper, refusing to let go and for him to see the wet of my eyes.

We pause and hold like this for a moment before he breaks free and steps back, adjusting his frames as though they offer any kind of focus. “Let me look at you,” he says, right hand shaking slightly.

Arms crossed, I watch this routine of inspection, the way he starts at my head and then works to my feet, mumbling quietly to himself. The action may seem strange—perverse, even—to others, but this is another ritual for him, so I respect it and let him continue.

“Still the same,” he concludes, nodding to himself. “The power of youth.”

“This one isn’t so young anymore.”

“And your actions reflect that, do they?”

I say nothing to that, ignore it, instead finding my hand feeling along the table’s edge, touching the coarse ridges and grooves that my thumb locates so readily. I sit back, propping myself atop the stool, leather-lined cushion wheezing in exhalation.

My knees bump the edge of the desk as I swivel.

“Not so short anymore, either,” I say, glancing to all that’s on the table’s surface. Diagrams, blueprints, drawings—the details may be different, but their essence remains unchanged: sketches of instruments, outlines of circuitry, graphs and equations with scrawls of writing in Warv’s shorthand that, despite my pleading, he never did teach me.

Then I see what he must have been working on moments before. I slide the diagram closer, try to work out what it details, what device it—

Warv’s hand sweeps in, pressing down.

“Just looking,” I say, peering.

“Not yours; not finished.” He tugs at it gently.

“Evidently. I imagine the coffee stain shorts the board.” Smiling, I let go. Warv tuts, then rolls the diagram up and proceeds to stuff it into a drawer.

“Coffee is a gateway into the mind’s creativity. Embrace what it can do for your work.”

“Hardly,” I laugh. “Weak as piss stimulant never got the world anywhere.”

“Speak for yourself, child.”

“Zirosh, though …” I drum my fingers on the desk, raising an eye to my old mentor.

“Bah. Disgusting, rancid.”

We smile at our short exchange. Then a silence settles between us, a strange stillness. Once again I find myself chewing my lip.

“So,” he says.

The silence drags on, the only sounds the whir of a small motor humming somewhere nearby, the ever-present lashing of the rain.

“I really will repay you,” I say, finally.

He shakes his head. “I don’t need your petty change, Jisa. Repay me instead by visiting. By seeing this old fool.”

He is right—nearly a year, give or take. I don’t know how, even though I do. Inside, I cringe. I’ve done Warv my fair share of favours since I left—procuring things he might otherwise have had trouble in, well, legally acquiring—but such deeds do nothing to balance what he did for me.

The guilt hurts, but I swallow it back to where it belongs. I make to speak, but he raises a finger.

“Now, why don’t you tell me why you’re really here. Tell me what you’re involved in, just so I can tell you exactly how much I do not want any part of it.”

Another small crash of relief. Getting Warv to agree to listen was always going to be the hardest. Coercing him into making what I require will be easier. I hope. But before I can formulate my words, they find their own way out: “I need to measure the density of the clouds.” 

The idiocy of the statement hits Warv, his eyes wide, mouth making to speak. Then his face dissolves into frown, his wrinkled forehead ruffling.

“The density?”

I wait, say nothing.

He adjusts the position of his frames so they sit at the very end of his nose. “You came here to me, and this is what you ask? I’m not sure I follow, child.”

“I’m not—” I stop myself. Restart. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

And why would I? It is a bizarre request, out of context, one I hope he cannot unravel.

“I simply wish to know their density,” I add. “To measure it, I mean.”

He interlaces his fingers, setting them across the girth of his stomach. “What puzzle piece are you handing me, I wonder? Is it not enough to know they are dense, that the rains are endless?”

Already his mind is turning. I see it behind his eyes, mind tracing my words, calculating what possible scenarios could lead to such a request. How far back can he go? Via which paths? What answers could he find, when even I know so little?

These thoughts send me straight to another. Yet, even now, the warmth and fuzz of that one night has dulled, has begun to tread a fine line between reality and dream. How many more days until I convince myself that none of that ever happened?

I blink myself back to the present.

“It is not enough,” I manage, mind scrambling to his question. “I need to know how dense they are.”

“Ah,” he says, unlacing his fingers. “Then you must measure them, no?”

Laughing at the necessity and circularity of his ways, I say, “Yes, Warv, I wish to measure the clouds. And I wish to measure them so I know how dense they are.”

“Interesting,” he mulls, now shifting his hands behind his back. “And how exactly do you propose to measure this density?”

I roll my eyes. “This is why I am sat here, in your shop, waiting for you to get to the point, you dumb fool.”

He tuts. “And there I was thinking you really did miss me.”

“Of course, that as well.” I wink, nudging a foot out and up, catching the underside of his overhanging stomach. It wobbles, sending a ripple of fat up to his chest. “But … mainly for the clouds.”

“Hmph.” Warv walks away, taking a small tour of the back wall. I keep my eyes on him, swivelling the stool to follow him as he moves.

“Such a device is possible, of course.” He steps toward a box—open at the top and near-overflowing with cables—and reaches in, rummaging, yet returns with nothing in his hands. “Why can’t you make it?” he asks, pivoting to stare at me.

“I could,” I say, shrugging. “But I need certain, ah, security that …” I trail off, making a noncommittal gesture.

“Aha. Well, then. It is at this moment I step out of this conversation.” Warv walks back, snatching his own chair and slumping down. “How do you do it?” he says, voice leaking exasperation.

“Do what?”

“Get yourself involved? Always.”

“You don’t even know what it is!”

“And you do?” His voice rises in accusation. “No doubt you’ve been told little aside from your isolated role. You’ll just follow orders, follow the smell of payment. No thought for consequence. Ramifications. Legality! Do any of these things even cross your mind? Do they mean anything to you, child?”

“I am not a child!” I snap. “And like you care about legality.” I look around the room, waving my arms at everything lining the walls, the floor, the mass of boxes overflowing. “How much of this is legal? If you really counted it?”

His cheeks flush red and he slams a fist onto the table, making the pencil jump. “Far more than you’d care to know. You think I have anyone else with your wasted skills, Jisa? This room doesn’t fill itself, does it? And so if you didn’t bring it—and don’t think I didn’t notice how aware you were of all that is new—then who did?” He stops, almost out of breath. “Me,” he says, voice suddenly weak. “Me, child. I fetch these things, find them, buy them, trade for them. All of it. All of it without you.” Still he breathes hard, wheezing. “So it’s all legal. Anything that doesn’t bear your touch. Which means just about damn near pissing all of it.”

Fuck.

I swallow again, then stand, place a tentative hand on his shoulder. He flinches, but lets me rest it there.

“Warv, I know my apologies won’t cut it. I know that. So, just … just listen to me.”

His right hand shakes by his side, and he tries to hide it by clenching his fist, repeatedly hitting his thigh.

“Stop,” I say, voice as gentle as I can manage. My left hand reaches down and touches his wrist, then takes his hand, unfurling his fingers. I hold his palm between both of mine, feeling the rough of his skin, the countless years of work those fingers have performed, a ledger of untold tasks marked through scar and callus. “I shouldn’t snap at you. I’ve no right to do that.”

He breathes deeply, air rasping in and out, the sound of death on a near-distant horizon.

“It is tiring work without you. Doubly so with age.” His voice is barely a croak.

Again the pang of guilt. Two men. Two wholly different men, playing wholly different roles, yet both releasing emotions that I was all but certain were dammed off. All within the space of a few days. Curse them both.

“Oh Warv, you big old fool.” And he chuckles at that, just a low grumble. “I’m making you a promise. I’ll be back. Just let me do this job, and then I’ll be back.”

He looks up at me, wrinkled forehead, empty frames, those sunken eyes full of sad hope.

“No promises,” he says flatly. “Promises get people nowhere. Especially you.”

He stands, pulling free of my hands and shaking himself. I find myself stepping back, dropping again into place on the stool.

“I don’t need to listen,” he says, finally. “You’ve said enough already.”

I squint. “Enough?”

“Perhaps my intellect has grown with age.” He looks thoughtful for a moment before continuing, scratching at his cheek. “Perhaps not. But what it certainly hasn’t done is decrease in any way. You come here wanting to know whether a cloud is dense. Or—and I suspect this is the rub of it—whether it is in fact not. Hmm?”

I should have known he’d work it out, that he’d be so quick. But what choice did I have? And does it matter now, really?

“Smarter with age, yes,” and I smile. “A little fatter, too, perhaps.”

He scowls. “You really can do this yourself. You do not need me.”

“But Warv, the–”

“Ah, now.” He raises a finger, that unifying gesture of my childhood. “Let me finish. I didn’t say I wouldn’t make such a probe.”

“You just said you wouldn’t!”

He continues to glare, but a warmth is there, returning to his eyes.

“I merely stepped out of the conversation. To shout at you. And now I am stepping back in.”

“So, this means?” I smirk, knowing, but still needing him to say it.

Eventually, I see him crack. “It means I’ll do it, idiot girl.”

I stand, eager, throw my arms around him. 

“Thank you,” I whisper. “Thank you.” Then I kiss him again, softly on his cheek. The left one, this time. 

“You win me too easily,” he whispers back. “You always win me too easily.”

We embrace a moment longer, and I feel his body relax, as though he were ice melting.

“It’ll need to be light,” I say as I release from him, excitement now within my voice. “Small and light.”

His eyes narrow, but his head nods. “Yes, yes. Small and light enough to carry, along with a few other tools no doubt.”

I nod back. He knows too much already.

“No matter,” he says, turning to his desk and placing his palms flat on the surface. “I can modify a scanner such that you’ll be able to probe moisture content. Very easy, very easy.” He starts to mumble to himself, ruffling through papers.

As he is doing this, I look around, suddenly realising the thing that has been missing all this time, that I had been too slow to notice. “Wait, where’s your cat? The little thing you found?”

He looks up, eyes rimmed with moisture if only for a second.

“Gone,” he says, adding nothing more.

“Oh. Sorry. I hope it comes back.”

He offers a wan smile.

“Warv?” I ask, cautious.

“Yes?”

“Forecasts would help,” I risk. “Then I can choose when.” I am sweating, a few drops funnelling down my back, another running down between my breasts. The reality of what I am to do begins to tug at me.

“Very well. For you. No one else. And for that, I am a greater fool than even you.”

I bite back my words. “I’ll be careful.”

“You certainly will, because know this, Jisa: you implicate me in any way, and this shop will be gone. Where I end up will be impossible to locate, even for one such as you.” His words are stern, those of the father he so wishes he could still be.

“I won’t get caught,” I say. “I never get caught.” I try to smile at him, but it comes out false, a forced tautness across my lips and through my cheeks. And that realisation, that awareness of sham, sensing that has me more frightened than anything else.

“People always get caught.”

Not me. Never. But doubt creeps like a strangling, blackened vine. I say nothing, though, standing and moving from the desk, suddenly wishing to get away. Wishing that the fading dream wasn’t of being there with that other man, against that window, wrapped in him; I wish instead that this, right now, was the dream. That soon I will stir and he will be there, and we would be cradled as the light streams towards us, watching the glistening world unfold. I want to surrender, to let him smother out this guilt and past, all my wrongdoings and hurt. To begin again.

“What I mean, child,” and Warv’s voice pulls me back, “is that this is no game. People get caught, people get hurt. In whichever way that is.”

I flinch, sensing something far deeper beneath his words. “It’s no different from anything else I’ve done,” I lie.

His mouth pinches into a tight line. Looking back to his desk, he says, “Three days. Give me three and it’ll be done.”

“Add it to the tab, then?” I joke, starting to leave, but not before giving him one final, fleeting hug. My words hold none of their intended humour.

As I near the door, Warv calls out.

“Two more things,” he says.

I look back, hand almost on the door.

“Detailed, precise forecasts can be vast things. It would help if I knew where.”

I cough. “Good point. Over Garran, that sort of area.” I wave my hand vaguely.

Warv squints. “Garran? Garran. Directly below,” and he looks up, consulting some mental vault, “Libek, yes?”

I nod. “Yes. Precisely.” What else is there left for him to work out? “See you in three days,” I say quickly, wanting this over, hand hitting the door’s release. It opens, hissing, letting in a gust of cold.

“I said two things, Jisa,” he calls back to me.

“Oh,” and I stop. Rain spatters against my boots, the wind eager to blow in across the threshold.

“I sense he’ll be good for you. Whoever he is.”

I freeze, half in, half out.

“Your eyes betray it easily, child. Let him be good to you, if he is good. Do that, for once.” He doesn’t smile. He just looks at me through those stupid frames. “Now, shut out that blighted weather.”

How can he know? How?

I step out, the door closing, sealing me off from Warv and my past once more, leaving me dazed in the rain.

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