The Wolf Age (43 page)

"This citizen smells like a never-wolf to me."

"You are smelling like a snake trying to weasel his way out of a dead-dog bet."

"That metaphor stinks worse than this guy does."

"You are stinking worse than-"

"Listen, if I buy you a meatcake will you stop with the similes? I get enough crappy rhetoric from politicians this year if I want it, which I don't."

"Two meatcakes."

"That's two breakfasts, then. I never ate more than one meatcake at a time on your pad."

"You are all the time drinking that rotten milk-drink, which I am never drinking, but I am all the time paying for-"

The squabbling peace officers wandered off across the Shadow Market.

Morlock looked at the young citizen, who had not yet moved away. His face was hollowed out with hunger; rags hung on him as if he were a scare crow made of sticks. Morlock had seen children starved to death, and this child was starving to death.

"You can't steal," Morlock said coolly. "You won't work. I suppose now comes the begging."

The young citizen tore at his hair and spat at Morlock's feet. "I work! I work! I work for three days running messages for Neiuluniu the bookie. He says come back tomorrow; I'll pay you. Come back tomorrow, Lakkasulakku; come back tomorrow, Lakkasulakku. Today I say pay me the three days or I don't run messages. So he has his boys throw me out. You think he pays me? You think he ever pays me?"

It might have been a lie, but Morlock didn't think so. Anyway, it didn't matter. He said to Hlupnafenglu, "Take the young citizen, Lakkasulakku or whatever his name is, to the outliers and get him some work. Better buy him some food on the way-have you got any coin?"

The red werewolf, his good cheer restored, looked wryly at him. "Enough. You'll be all right?"

Morlock opened his right hand and shrugged. Hlupnafenglu punched him farewell and walked off, the suspicious-looking youngster in tow.

Morlock turned and saw a crow sitting in the middle of the Shadow Market, looking at him. Morlock walked over to talk to the bird.

"I don't have any food with me-" Morlock began.

The crow croaked that she remembered him pretty well. At least he wasn't a stone-throwing type. She and the rest of her murder had fed pretty well on a loaf of bread he had thrown at a crow once. She figured she owed him one, if that's what he was asking.

"Is there a vendor here you trust?" Morlock asked. "Not a stone thrower? A man who knows things?"

The crow laughed. She knew a man whose house had no legs but it walked, and he lived around stones but never threw one at crows. She didn't know what he knew, but he gave them grain sometimes, and offal he had no interest in eating, and he asked intelligent questions, not like Morlock.

"Will you take me to him?" Morlock asked.

The crow nodded and took wing. Morlock loped after her through the shadowy crowd.

The crow's dark feathers were briefly outlined in golden light as she lifted above the shadows of the square. She dropped again into darkness, and Morlock almost lost sight of her as she descended just beyond the edge of the market. But she waited for him there until he caught up, and then she flew into the tangle of streets and dark-bricked buildings east of the marketplace. A short flight: she landed at the door of a stone building. Above the door hung a sign with a picture of a rock being weighed on a scale. On the door was written in black letters IACOMES FILIUS SAXIPONDERIS.

"Here is a man I've long wished to meet," Morlock said to the crow. "Stop by my cave sometime. I have some unground grain I'll give you and yours."

The crow assured him he would see her and her murder soon. She flew away.

Morlock knocked on the door. There was no answer, but it wasn't locked, so he pushed it open and entered.

Inside he found a single dim room cluttered with books and stones and papers and dust. In the center of the clutter was a balding man at a desk who was scribbling something on a sheet of paper. He occasionally paused, a faraway look in his dim blue eyes, and gave the end of his pen a thoughtful chew. In his abstraction he sometimes chewed the wrong end of the pen: there were ink stains in his graying beard and on his shirt. He wrote in the light of a window set into the wall. The window did not open on the city outside-there was a wintry scene beyond the frosted glass, pine trees under a dense cover of snow in evening light.

The man didn't seem to notice that anyone else was there, so Morlock rapped on the inside of the door.

The man at the desk jumped, spilling his ink so that it ran dark across the page.

"Go away, won't you?" the man said in Latin. "I'm busy."

"Making more prisons?" Morlock asked in the same language.

"Not today. What day is it?"

"The first of Drums."

"No it's not. What year?"

"The year of the Ship."

"Then I'm in Wuruyaaria."

"Yes. Didn't you expect to be?"

"I expected to be left alone so that I can finish a rather large job I have on hand."

"Another prison?"

"No, no, no, no, no, no. No. Definitely no. Well, it depends on how you look at it, I guess. Listen, if you cared about what I'm doing you obviously would have gone away by now and left me to do it. I'd rather not try to make you go away; you appear to be armed. Is there anything I can do to persuade you to go away?"

"I wanted to meet you, lacomes."

"Pleased to meet you. Really, it's been an honor. Good-bye!"

"But I don't accept your apology."

"I haven't apologized. I'm actually trying to be dismissive and insulting, and it wounds me deeply that you haven't even noticed."

Morlock recited, "'I, lacomes Saxiponderis, made this prison. Sorry about that, prisoner."'

"Oh." lacomes focused his cold blue eyes on Morlock at last. "I see. You were a prisoner at the Vargulleion. Did they let you out? They don't usually do that."

"I escaped."

"Good for you."

"Doesn't it bother you that your prison failed?"

"I'm sure it didn't. You didn't tunnel out, or break the bars, did you? There are silver cores in those iron bars. If you'd sawn into them you'd have had a sad surprise."

"I'm not a werewolf."

"Then what were you doing in the Vargulleion? It's a prison for werewolves, you know."

"They didn't consult me about it."

"Hm. I suppose not. They are pretty arbitrary. Still, I'd bet a nickel that the guards were inattentive. Am I right? You got out of there because the guards were napping or smoke-drunk or something."

Morlock nodded reluctantly, then added, "The locks weren't all that they might be."

The man threw up his hands; the pen flew out of his hand and bounced off the window behind him, leaving an inkblot on the frosted glass. "They didn't hire me to provide locks! They used their own people for the locks and bolts. Blacksmiths! Guys who usually made chains and manacles and stuff like that. I saw one of those locks. Key slots so big you could stick your little finger in them. Cell doors with simple crossbars. I said to them, `What happens when you have a prison riot?' They said, `There will be no riots. We have a way of breaking prisoners.' But broken things or people are pretty damned dangerous. I told them it was a mistake. What is the use of a prison for incorrigibles that has substandard locks? They said, `Perpetual vigilance shall be our lock.' And I said, `Look, in this kind of situation, you wear suspenders and a belt, just to be safe.' But most of them don't even wear pants, so I guess they didn't get it."

"But you took their money."

"Naturally, naturally. What's wrong with that?"

"The Vargulleion was hell before death. And you built it."

"The Vargulleion was, and is, a prison for criminals. I know it may seem odd to you, no doubt being a law-abiding sort of person, but society has to have a place to put its criminals if it's not going to kill them outright. This prison break you staged: anyone come out with you?"

"Practically everyone."

"Well, congratulations. Any idea how many murderers, rapists, extortionists, robbers, and all-around thugs walked out with you? Or were they all innocent? I understand everyone in prison is innocent."

"I was innocent."

"Then you were the victim of an injustice. To the extent I am responsible for that, I apologize. Are you prepared to apologize to all those who've suffered and died because you unleashed a wave of criminals on the world?"

"Eh."

"I'll take that as a no. I'm not laughing off what happened to you: really, I'm not. It bothers me more than I can easily tell you or you'd believe. But I don't think you can have a society without injustice. When people live together-and they have to live together-interests and rights clash and someone always loses."

"And as long as you are paid, you are content with that."

"In a word: no. I hate it. I think everyone should hate it, and I hate it that everyone doesn't hate it. Look, injustice operates in my favor sometimes, against me other times. I guess maybe I'm better off than many. It's one kind of fool who doesn't think there's injustice in his city or his state. It's another kind of fool who sees it and thinks it doesn't matter as long as it doesn't touch him. I'm neither kind of fool."

"What kind of fool are you?"

"I'm the kind of fool who leaves his door unlocked when he doesn't want to be disturbed!"

"That's no answer."

"I haven't got one. Not about society, anyway. I think we have to live in imperfect societies, because there are no perfect ones, and no perfect people. But we have to struggle against their imperfections, and our own. It's a struggle that never ends, but if we carry on with it, things may get better. Not perfect, maybe, but better."

"That's a long war," Morlock said, thinking dark thoughts.

"Right; right. The longest. It'll never be over. Anyway, I'm not temperamentally suited for perfection. If I woke up tomorrow in Utopia City, the first thing I'd do is hit the road and head out of town."

"People get tired of struggling."

"Well, everyone needs a break sometimes. I like to read books, personally. What do you do?"

"Make things."

"Oh?" Iacomes looked him over, noticing the wooden glove on his left hand. "That from a work injury or something? Excuse my mentioning it if it's too painful."

"I seem to be changing into a ghost."

"Really?" lacomes was fully engaged in the conversation for the first time. "Can I see?"

Morlock undid the bolts that fastened the wooden sheath to his arm.

"It looks like those anchors are driven into bone," lacomes observed, watching him. "Didn't that hurt?"

"No. Unfortunately not."

"Unfortunately?"

"It's the illness. First the nerves ache, and then they seem to die and feel nothing, and then the flesh becomes ghostly. Now my arm has no feeling up to the shoulder."

"Hm."

Morlock pulled the sheath off and his hand lay exposed: vaporous, drifting, ghostlike.

"Does it hurt?" lacomes asked. "After it becomes ghostly, I mean."

"There is a kind of pain, but it's not physical. I can't explain."

"Hm. I hope I never understand fully, to tell you the truth. Can you move things with it?"

"Leaves. Feathers. Bits of paper. Nothing much heavier."

"Can you reach through things with it?"

"Not glass, or metal, or stone. If it was alive, or is alive, my fingers seem to be able to sink into it some distance. But there is pain for the other, I believe."

"I'll take your word on that," lacomes said hastily. "Hm," he added more thoughtfully, as Morlock pulled the wooden glove back over his ghostly hand. "This all reminds me of something. But what, exactly?"

"You know something about the ghost illness?" Morlock asked, pausing briefly as he rebolted the wooden glove onto his arm.

"Well, I read something about it once, and that's not the same thing at all. Where is that thing? Hey, Rogerius."

What appeared to be a brass head lifted itself up from among a tumble of gray stones. It was suspended in midair by nothing more obvious than its own intention.

"I asked you not to call me that," the brass head said, looking at lacomes with discontented crystal eyes.

"Did you notice when I ignored you? No? Oh, well. Rogerius, I want you to find something for me."

"I am busy at my visualization. I remind you that if I do not finish my visualization, you will not finish your project."

"I want you to find something for me," lacomes repeated patiently. "I read something once-"

"I sense an indefinite but fairly large number of documents-"

11 -about illness. That should narrow it down."

"Still indefinitely large."

"Oh, come on. I'm not a hypochondriac."

"Do you include emotional disturbances in your definition of illness?"

"Depends. Doesn't it? Everyone who has emotions has them disturbed sometimes. But some people are more disturbed than others."

"The number is still indefinitely large."

"All right. The document I am thinking of described an illness that had something to do with ghosts."

"If we include emotional disorders, the number of relevant documents is still very large. Would you like an estimate or a count?"

"Neither," lacomes said hastily. "How many if emotional disorders are excluded?"

"Is that wise? The intruder-whose name you have not asked but whom I have of course identified-is subject to a number of emotional disorders."

"Who isn't?"

"I am not."

"Assuming that's true (which it's not), so what? Who wants to be a disembodied brass head?"

"I do."

"Very well, I grant your wish: you are a disembodied brass head. Don't say I never did anything for you. Now exclude emotional disorders and give me a count."

"Seven thousand and forty-two."

"Hm. That's a lot."

"Ghosts cause illness. It's a scientific fact."

"Aha. Exclude ghost as cause. What then?"

"There is a much smaller number of relevant documents."

"How many?"

"Five."

"How many are in this room? I seem to remember reading it in here. Or in the third-floor tower. Or in the kitchen. How many are in the house, here?"