The God Of Lies
Chapter 14: The God of Lies
The second planet was a desert, except the sand was mirrors.
Not flat glass — crystals, each one about the size of a fingernail, heaped into dunes that rose and fell like an ocean frozen mid-wave. The two moons hung overhead, one large and amber, one small and white, and their light multiplied across the crystal surface until the whole desert blazed. You couldn't look directly at the ground. You had to squint.
"My eyes hurt," Nobita said.
"Don't look down," Doraemon said.
"The ground is down."
"Look at the horizon."
The horizon was also reflective. Nobita squinted at it and decided this was not helpful advice.
The map coordinates pointed toward a formation of larger crystals near the center of the desert — columns ten meters tall, standing in a rough circle, each one reflecting a slightly different version of the sky. The group picked their way toward it, feet crunching on smaller crystals with every step, leaving footprints that caught the moonlight and turned silver.
Suneo walked ahead. His Space Suit was white, with a narrow silver stripe down each arm — he had asked Doraemon specifically about the color options, and Doraemon had said "white is the only option," and Suneo had said "that's fine, white is the most elegant," which was true, but the silver stripes had not been mentioned in Doraemon's description of the suits and Suneo had chosen to say nothing about them.
He was thinking about the eyes in the treeline.
Green. Amused. Watching him specifically, or so it had felt.
"Someone's following us," he said.
"You said that on the last planet," Giant said.
"I was right then too."
"You didn't see anything."
"I saw eyes."
"You saw the wind."
"I told you there was no wind."
Giant shrugged, which settled the question from his perspective. Suneo looked at the horizon again, which was still blazing and unhelpful. He kept walking.
They were twenty meters from the crystal columns when a voice said: "Extraordinary, isn't it?"
They stopped.
A man stood at the edge of the columns. He was tall, taller than Giant, and dressed in dark green — a long jacket, narrow cut, with gold trim at the cuffs and collar. His hair was black and slightly too neat. His face was pleasant: regular features, a smile that arrived a fraction of a second after the rest of his expression, like it had been placed there rather than grown.
"The crystals," the man said. "They're actually compressed light. Millions of years old. The moons are younger — they formed after. It's quite the accident of geology." He spread his hands in a way that managed to suggest he had been personally responsible for the geology. "I'm Lucas."
"Hello," Shizuka said.
"Lucas," Nobita said. "Are you from Earth?"
"I travel widely." The man — Lucas — stepped forward. His footsteps on the crystals were perfectly silent. Suneo filed this away. "I've been looking for the Treasure of Mirrors myself. Wonderful to encounter fellow seekers." He looked around the group. "What a remarkable little team."
"Thank you," Nobita said.
"We don't need help," Suneo said.
"I wasn't offering to help. I was expressing admiration." Lucas smiled. "I'm very good at finding things. I've been tracking this map for longer than you've been alive. I know the safest paths, the traps to avoid, the riddles on planets three and four." He looked at each of them in turn. His eyes were green. "I thought perhaps we might travel together. As fellow treasure hunters."
"That seems reasonable," Doraemon said.
Suneo looked at him.
"It does," Shizuka said.
"He seems nice," Nobita said.
Giant had already moved toward the crystal columns, apparently having decided the conversation was finished. Shizuka followed. Nobita followed Shizuka. Doraemon followed Nobita, after a glance at Suneo.
Lucas fell into step beside Suneo.
"You're the one with the map," Lucas said.
"My father bought it."
"Remarkable man, your father. Private auction in Geneva, wasn't it?"
Suneo stopped walking. He stared at Lucas. "How do you know where the auction was?"
Lucas spread his hands again. "I travel widely. News reaches me."
"News about my father's private purchases reaches you."
"The map is rather famous. In certain circles."
Suneo looked at him for a long moment. Lucas returned the look with an expression of comfortable amiability, as though being stared at was pleasant. His smile stayed at exactly the same angle it had been a moment before.
That was the problem, Suneo decided. The smile wasn't moving. It wasn't responding to anything. It was a display smile, the kind you put on when you needed someone to feel safe.
Suneo knew that smile. He wore it himself.
He said nothing for the rest of the afternoon.
They navigated the crystal columns together. The columns turned out to be markers — each one held a carved clue, and the clues together pointed toward the exit coordinate. Lucas was helpful throughout, knowing which columns to check and which were false. He laughed at Nobita's jokes. He complimented Shizuka's sharp eyes. He listened to Giant's observations with the focused attention of someone who had decided that listening carefully was an effective strategy.
Everyone liked him.
Suneo watched.
That evening — or what passed for evening under twin moons on an alien crystal desert — the group stopped to rest in a shelter formed by three of the largest crystals. Doraemon produced rice balls from his pocket. Real ones, from a konbini on the way through Tokyo — he had stopped for two minutes at a Family Mart near Nobita's house before setting the Anywhere Door, a detail everyone had been grateful for when lunchtime arrived on planet one.
The rice balls were tuna and salmon. Suneo ate his without tasting it.
He had been thinking about the Geneva comment.
Lucas had said it casually. News reaches me. But the comment had been perfectly placed — just specific enough to establish credibility, just vague enough to be unfalsifiable. That was a technique. Suneo knew this technique. He used it himself when he wanted to seem more informed than he was.
He waited until Lucas was telling a story about a previous treasure hunt — something involving a blue sun and a navigation challenge — and then he leaned over to Doraemon.
"The coordinates for planet three," Suneo whispered. "Don't show them to Lucas."
Doraemon lowered his rice ball. "Why?"
"I want to test something first."
Doraemon looked at him. Then he nodded, very slightly.
The test was simple.
While Lucas was talking, Suneo mentioned — casually, as though it had just occurred to him — that the map indicated the third planet's entrance was at the eastern face of the main crystal formation. He made this up entirely. He said it in a tone of mild uncertainty, the way you share information you're not quite sure about. Then he went back to eating.
Two hours later, as they were wrapping up the camp and preparing the Anywhere Door, Lucas said: "We should orient ourselves when we arrive. The entrance point will be the eastern face, I believe."
Everyone looked at him.
"From what I've read about Andromedan cartography," Lucas said smoothly.
"From what you've read," Suneo said.
"Yes."
"That's interesting." Suneo watched him. "Because I made that up. There is no eastern-face instruction. I told you a false detail to see if you'd repeat it."
The crystal desert went very quiet.
Lucas looked at Suneo. The smile had shifted. Not much — it was still present, still pleasant — but something behind it had changed. Recalibrated. He looked at Suneo with what might have been, under the surface, something like genuine interest.
"Come with me a moment," Lucas said.
"No."
"I won't hurt you."
"I know," Suneo said. "But you'll try to convince me of something, and I want to decide before you start."
Something happened to Lucas's face that was not quite a smile and not quite a frown. It was the expression of someone who has not been caught in a long time.
"Five minutes," Lucas said. "Then you can decide."
They walked twenty steps from the group. Far enough that the others couldn't hear.
Lucas stopped. He turned to face Suneo. He looked down at him — Suneo was significantly shorter, a fact Suneo was aware of and had decided not to think about — and the pleasant face did something complicated.
Green light shimmered across him. Not blazingly, not dramatically — just a shimmer, like sunlight shifting on water, and the face and clothes changed. The man called Lucas became something older and sharper. The jacket was still dark green but the cut was different now, the trim was different, the posture was different. The eyes were the same. Amused. Old. Certain.
"My name is Loki," the figure said.
Suneo crossed his arms. "I don't know who that is."
"Asgardian god. Norse mythology. God of mischief, primarily. Also lies." Loki gestured at himself with one hand. "I am not typically defeated by twelve-year-old boys."
"I'm eleven."
"That somehow makes it worse." Loki settled into a slightly different posture. Still amused, but differently — more real, less performed. "You're very good at that, you know. The test. Most people would have challenged me immediately after I said Geneva."
"Challenging immediately lets you prepare an answer," Suneo said. "Waiting lets me gather evidence."
"You've thought about this."
"I lie a lot," Suneo said. "I know how it works."
Loki was quiet for a moment. The twin moons moved behind clouds — amber first, then white — and the crystal desert dimmed. In the lower light, the shimmer on Loki's surface was more visible, like he was assembled from something that wanted to be other shapes.
"I was going to offer you a deal," Loki said. "Split the treasure fifty-fifty. Cooperate to retrieve it, divide the reward."
"No."
"You haven't heard the terms."
"The terms don't matter. You'll change them."
"You don't trust me."
"I don't trust anybody," Suneo said. "But you especially."
Loki tilted his head. He looked at Suneo with an expression that was not quite respect — gods do not respect eleven-year-old children — but was something adjacent to it. Recognition, perhaps. "We're the same, you and I. You understand that."
"We're not."
"Tricksters," Loki said. "People who get what they want through cleverness instead of strength. Who are never the hero of the story." He paused. "You're always the sidekick. The braggart. The coward who runs away."
Suneo's jaw tightened.
"I've watched you on the first planet," Loki said, his voice comfortable, the voice of someone delivering an observation rather than an insult. "You answer riddles your friends can't. You notice things they miss. You knew I was following before anyone else suspected. And yet you're never the one who saves the day. Doesn't that seem—"
"My friends are waiting," Suneo said.
He turned and walked back.
Loki watched him go. When Suneo was almost back to the group, Loki's voice carried across the crystal field, still pleasant, still amused.
"You'll change your mind. Everyone does, eventually."
Suneo did not tell the others that Lucas was a god.
This was partly because he didn't know exactly what a god meant in this context, and telling your friends you'd been chatting with a deity while they were having rice balls might require more explanation than he wanted to give.
It was mainly because he didn't want the conversation about why he'd kept it secret for two hours.
"Lucas left," he reported when he got back. "He was a con artist. I caught him repeating false information. He ran off."
"Oh no," Nobita said. "He seemed nice."
"He was good at seeming nice," Suneo said. "That's different."
Shizuka looked at Suneo for a moment longer than necessary. He looked at the middle distance and waited until she looked away.
Doraemon said nothing. He had already set the coordinates for planet three. The Anywhere Door swung open, and cold air came through it — the sharp, still cold of somewhere frozen.
They went through.
Behind them, at the edge of the crystal columns, a long shadow stretched in twin moonlight. It stood there for a moment.
Then it vanished.
But quickly. Not worriedly. There was no hurry in the way it disappeared. It vanished the way something does when it knows exactly where it's going next.