Editor’s note: This is the 10th installment in a 15-part serialized mystery by Oakland’s Robin Sloan. Catch up on any chapters you’ve missed at www.mercurynews.com.
CHAPTER 10: Basilisk House
I was spelunking deep into the Yerba Buena Zone, following the lead of the Bay Area’s greatest detective. It felt like I was following an ant across the kitchen floor, watching it trace with perfect confidence a path invisible to me.
Annabel Scheme was tracking teenagers using internet teeth.
She led me through the roasting district, redolent with the smell of coffee beans. I almost fainted. We cut through an alley, neon-colored socks and bras drying on a line overhead, to arrive before a broad, plain building made from dark brick. I counted four rows of windows, all of them papered over, some glowing faintly from within.
The traffic through the building’s front door was all teenagers, all wearing weird teeth. Above the entryway, stenciled letters named the building Basilisk House.
Scheme levered her shark teeth halfway out of her mouth. “They’re protecting her, Will,” she whispered. “Like she’s their queen. I can taste Quintessandra’s signature in there.”
She looked back and showed me a smile that was, I think, supposed to be wry. Instead, with those close-packed teeth, it felt like I was following a predator into its den.
We stalked the building’s first level, where the doors were all open, revealing tiny spaces of ambiguous function and privacy. There was one room packed with bunk beds; another where two teenagers sat curling dumbbells, breathing out through their noses. One of them caught my gaze and smiled. Between his lips, I saw a crescent of eye-popping pink.
The only sound was the rustling of bodies and, from somewhere above, the muffled boom of a yerbacore beat. As Scheme pressed further in, the teens swiveled to track our passage. Their youth cascaded across their mouths in perfect sync.
We found the kitchen, and beyond the kitchen, we found a long room filled with the detritus of the building’s former inhabitants. Old ergonomic chairs. Filing cabinets. Dead monitors. The floor was thick with cables, and they ran in loops and tangles toward a door at the room’s far end. We stepped lightly.
The door was half-open, as casual as the rest of Basilisk House, and it revealed a large storage closet where the cables found their destination, a rack of whirring, blinking servers. Beside the rack was a mini fridge and beside the mini fridge was a small desk, where a figure slouched in an ergonomic chair.
The network’s administrator was playing a 3D video game. On an enormous monitor, his avatar tossed lightning bolts from both hands.
Scheme rapped on the wall, and he spun in his chair, startled. He was very young. His face had an unlined openness, offset only mildly by the hot glitter of his chrome teeth.
He looked at Scheme and the lights in his teeth swam. Scheme looked back and her teeth blinked a reply.
It went on like this for almost a minute. I began to wonder if I should leave.
Scheme levered her shark teeth out of her mouth. “Sorry about that,” she said. “This is the taste I was following. It wasn’t Quintessandra after all.” She massaged her jaw.
The cherubic admin popped his teeth out, too. “You’re pretty good,” he said, leaving the “for a wizened husk of a human, clearly near death” silent. He produced a dark chamois, wiped his mirror-like teeth, and placed them neatly on his desk. “Sorry if I’m not who you’re looking for. My name is technically Demondre, by the way.”
Scheme smiled sweetly. “Technically Demondre, do you run this network?”
He perked up. “You know it, yerb! This right here is the heart of the LENGUA. L-E-N-G-U-A. That stands for Local Empathetic Network Granting Underground Access.” He sounded like he had been waiting a long time to tell someone that. “I came up with the words after I chose the —”
“We can tell,” Scheme said. She stepped closer, looking directly at him. You rarely wanted Scheme looking directly at you. “We need to find someone on the LENGUA.”
Demondre shrugged helplessly. “There’s no search. That’s the whole point. No search, no tracking, no ads. Whatever happens, happens. Then it’s gone.”
“That’s great. I love it. But you’re the system administrator, and all of these teeth are connected to that” — she stabbed a finger at the server rack — “and we are trying to save the world.”
Scheme dropped into an ergonomic chair and told Demondre the whole story, starting with the disappearance of Stella Pajunas. She told him about our encounter with the woman named Lois from another timeline, the one where they hadn’t filled the bay.
“Whoa,” Demondre breathed. “What did the witch put in that tea?”
“We need Quintessandra’s MIND, Demondre. I truly believe she’s our only hope. Can you tell us where to find her?”
The master of the LENGUA spun in his chair, making two full revolutions, looking straight up, then kicked around to face the monitor. He tapped a key and the video game disappeared, replaced by a dense status display. His fingers purred on the keyboard. He looked at the display. Another purr. Then, he flipped his glittering teeth back into his mouth and turned slowly to face us. I think he was trying to be cool, but he still just looked sweet. The lights on his teeth flashed.
Scheme put in her shark teeth and flashed a message back.
Later, as we followed the system administrator’s directions deeper into the belly of the city, she told me: “Demondre said, ‘I always wanted to help somebody on a quest.’”
Tomorrow, Part 11: The Sunken Ship (June 17)
