Also cowardly.
I kept wondering why the Confederates dispensed information so freely. Did they plan to keep us prisoners forever? Or try to subvert us? Or simply kill us? Could they be keeping even mightier secrets in reserve?
I ached for home, where everything seemed so simple.
Also much, much drier.
The door swung, hinges screaming. Even in that constant downpour, the musty smell seemed to take up more space than oxygen. A bear-shaped figure stood silhouetted in a rectangle of flickering yellow light.
I said, “Woodie Murphy?”
“Sure, an’ if it ain’t the blessed
Tommie
herself,” said the shadow, “come at long last t’rescue her loyal minions from moulderin’ perdition. Dorrie, come arunnin’! Our day of sweet deliverance is at hand!”
The secret word had been “Tommie”. Close enough. I felt the others pile up behind me, drawn to the pitiable amount of warmth inside the house.
Carlos Woodrow Murphy—alias “Uberd Ubvriez b’Goverd”—stood only a handspan short of two meters tall. Yet he was constructed with a heavy globularity that made him linger in the memory as squat, even dwarflike. He had long dark hair in the back, no hair at all in the front, a dark full beard and mustache shot through with gray. Behind his primitive spectacles, he possessed the haunted, soulful eyes of a dolphin.
Murphy wore the oiled, handwoven trousers, the high boots, the bloused shirt, the waxed leather jerkin of an Afdiarite city-dweller. A soft, foreign-sounding lilt in his voice—interrupted by an occasional stammer—made me think back to the briefing I had been given.
Murphy, an “Irishman” from that other Earth Confederates spoke of, had fought his share of an 850-year revolution in the cause of Irish independence. But when the opportunity arose, convinced that his comrades had forgotten the idea of freedom, degenerating instead into nihilistic murderers, he had migrated to the world of the Confederacy, Out here, he was fighting a revolution once again, although somewhat differently.
He had surprisingly small hands, one of which he used to seize my own. A voice, female, came from behind him: “Well, y’big lummox, don’t stand there gawkin’, ask ’em in! It ain’t a fit night outside for a magistrate!”
Confederates informally referred to the municipality that we had arrived in as “Mud City”. I had expected any soil that might once have existed on this soggy, rain-beaten world to have long since washed down into the sea. Now I faced scraping off a kilogram I had managed to accumulate—on each foot—in ten second’s exposure to the great outdoors.
The locals pronounced it “Hobgidobolis”. It was the capital of the nation-state of Udobia, the site of Gabelod, the official queenly residence—as it had been for her predecessor, Jagelid XXIII—of Eleador XLIX, whose royal countenance, judging from holograms ’commed to the mother-ship, closely resembled those of the riding-beasts of Sca.
Not that we would be seeing it. Our assignment limited itself to picking up this strangely-courageous deep cover agent, who had spent two decades “inventing” cheap mass-affordable flintlocks, introducing the concept of barrel-rifling, initiating mass-production, while also producing almanacs, newspapers, political handbills, that sort of item, for a living. By local standards, he had become wealthy doing it.
He had also managed to indoctrinate a promising Kilroy genius, one Johd-Beydard Geydes, himself an inventor, colleague, competitor in the printing trade. A member of the upper classes, thus influential in his own right, already Geydes had accepted the “non-aggression principle” that Confederates feel signifies an elementary understanding of basic ethical philosophy. He had even begun writing about it. Assured of other hands to carry the ball of social revolution, the phony b’Goverd looked forward now to “dying”, in order to move forward to his next assignment.
Or retiring, if his wife had anything to say about it.
“By all means!” he shouted suddenly. “What can I be thinkin’ of? Dorrie, put the kettle on at once, me darlin’. These poor boyos’re drenched!”
Murphy ushered us inside: myself, Charlie Norris from the
Peter LaNague,
Owen Rogers, plus a big-shouldered curly-headed martial-arts instructor named Redhawk Gonzales, who had demonstrated to me, during training, that the Confederacy had forgotten more about mayhem than Vespucci had ever invented. We had rigged ourselves out as Udobian sailors.
Inside, a low, heavy-beamed ceiling flickered in the orange-yellow light from a huge fireplace set into each wall. “B’goverd”, who was rich by local standards, could easily afford the tons of fast-growing vegetable matter this crude heating-system consumed. In such a manner did Afdiarites measure their relative status. Even so, directly in the focus of the roaring hearths, the chill damp of the planet remained intolerable.
Rogers pushed past me to thrust a gray-silver parcel into Murphy’s hands. “Better take this, Woodie. You look like government warmed over.”
In the light of four fires, I could see it, too. Murphy, the first Confederate I had met ever to do so, actually appeared old—heavy lines in his face, silver splinters among the ebony. Moving stiffly, he accepted the package, began to unwrap it, both his hands trembling slightly.
“Sure, an’ it’s the dirty blackmold-spores that’ve got t’me, after all this time, Owen darlin’, ’steada the dirty Black an’ Tan. Another year, two at most, an’ I’ll be subvertin’ the Devil’s bailiwick for him.”
“Six months, more likely,” Rogers contradicted him. “Unless you get back to the ship, where they can take proper care of you.” He indicated the half-opened package. “In the meantime, that’ll help some.”
“It will indeed.” Ignoring modesty, he peeled off his Afdiarite clothing, slipped into a perfectly ordinary smartsuit with help from Rogers, a look of benediction in his tortured eyes. “I’ll be after lyin’ down a while, I think. Mind y’keep your Sassenach hands off me wife!”
“You slipped up, that time,” laughed Norris. “Sassenach is Scotch Gaelic!”
“Shit!” Murphy answered, his Irish accent mysteriously vanishing, “Any of you guys got a cigarette? Smoking hasn’t been invented here yet.”
-2-
It had come time for the “primitive expert” to earn his passage.
Envious, I looked around at the other team-members, each huddled, considerably less miserable than I would soon be, beside one of the Murphys’ cavernous fireplaces. I set my jaw, then wrapped my sodden cloak about my chilly shoulders, trying to conceal the burden I had been entrusted with. The task ahead seemed very nearly insurmountable. It consisted of nothing more than a short walk through the streets of Hobgidobolis.
In the rain.
Sprawled in a heavy wooden rocking chair, the still-unconscious secret agent snored, competing creditably with the thunderous downpour outside his thick windowless walls. His color was noticeably better already, Confederate medical technology working its now-familiar “magic”.
“Up the high street this way,” I repeated Dorrie Murphy’s careful instructions, shivering with horrified disbelief at the pale wrinkled skin of my pointing fingers. “Then left after that, for two more blocks.”
She nodded, lifting a scoopful of coals from one of the hearths, to replenish the supply in a reservoir under the seat of her husband’s chair. He stirred, mumbled something about “Outbound at last!”, rolled over into what looked like an uncomfortable position, started snoring again.
I shivered again, shot a resentful glance at the others, nodded resignedly, lifted the latch. Forcing my way back into the eternal storm, I was soaked again instantly. So much for Confederate miracles. Shaking my head, I had to think hard to remember which way to turn up the street. The summery respite was over. Visibility was down to mere centimeters.
The Udobian streets were massively cobbled. There was no vehicle traffic; the downpour would drive hauling-beasts insane. Heavily-laden myself, I clambered from stone to rounded stone, attempting to avoid a ruined ankle, ineffectively shielded by the broad overhanging roofs of buildings set apart by swiftly-running gutters. It was impossible to hear anything but the rain, mingled with my own tortured gasping for air.
Suddenly: “What do ye think ye’re doin’ in this part o’town, Jack Tar?”
He had to shout it in my ear. The menacing demand was made by a hulking shadow deliberately barring my way. Instantly I regretted our choice of disguises. Apparently sailors were welcomed only at the port.
“Officer, I—”
The man stepped back quickly. With a swish even louder than the rain, the constable’s quarter-staff swung out in a wide arc toward the side of my head, clanging instead off the forte of my hastily-drawn smallsword, its tip still in the scabbard-throat. My hip took most of the force, although my wrist began tingling with its ferocity, as well.
“Resistin’ arrest, is it?” Setting both his hands on the staff, he raised it for a second swing. He never got the chance. Stepping inside his guard, I lifted my elbow, then straightened my wrist, burying half a meter of quarkotopic steel in his throat. He went down to his knees with a horrible gurgle, his blood blackening the runoff between paving blocks.
If he hadn’t rushed me I’d have simply given him the pommel on the jaw.
Gravel
skritched
on the stone behind me. I lurched as another wooden weapon sighed through the empty space I had just occupied. The brass-shod staff end slammed to the ground. This policeman had a whistle at his lips. I saw him draw breath to summon help, wrenched the blade messily from his partner’s neck, slashed it across his face. The whistle-stub fell to the pavement, whirled away in the torrent, along with most of his nose. The pale blue eyes above his ruined horror of a face were filled with surprise. He grunted with agony. I ended that with a deep thrust of my short, stiff blade through his solar plexus, finishing with a reflexive W-shaped pumping flex of the wrist.
The nightmare minutes stretched into what felt like hours. I tried dragging the bodies between two buildings, but they kept washing back into the street. Finally, I managed to wedge their quarter staves between a pair of walls, knotted their cloaks around them, then left both dead men half-floating, half-hanging, the first policeman’s limp arms making reproachful gestures as the moving waters waved them at me.
I staggered back into the street, shaking from much more than the cold. I resheathed a sword cleansed thoroughly by the rain, glancing around for witnesses, thanking whatever waterlogged gods this planet possessed that its buildings were constructed without any windows for busybodies to peer from. Seeing no one, I reoriented myself with some difficulty, resuming what was becoming an endless voyage to the house of Murphy’s native friend, the inventor-philosopher Johd-Beydard Geydes.
At the appropriate door, I unfastened the harness Murphy had given me. Attached to it was a fortune in gold, platinum, precious stones, practically everything the agent Murphy had accumulated here, plus a healthy portion of his original operating funds. Not surprisingly, the bulk of it was silica-gel crystals, another “invention” of B’goverd’s, the cornerstone of a coming industrial revolution. Geydes was rich, but he would need more capital if the renaissance the little Irishman had started were to continue. Both men had spoken of an academy. This was meant as the seed-money, to be delivered to Geydes with untaxable anonymity.
As quietly as possible, I lifted the slanted meter-square door of the delivery bin around back, accessible from the inside, as well. I laid the bundle on a grill set in its bottom to keep packages as dry as was humanly possible on this miserable planet, then slowly lowered the cover again, eager to retreat to Murphy’s—not to mention his fireplaces.
A hand fell on my shoulder.
“Now, now, my dear fellow, that shouldn’t be necessary.” A strong arm pressed my elbow, slowly forcing my swordblade down and back into its sheath. “I’ve an idea who you are and why you’re here. Shall we make our way to Ubert’s place, or stand here in the rain discussing it?”
I turned, looking up. And up. And up. In the rotten light, I could just make out the tall, gaunt, distinguished form of “Johd-Beydard Geydes?”
He shook his head sadly, “Dear boy, if I were in the employ of Her Equality’s Peace Police, you’d just have given away the name of a fellow conspirator. Pray so not bother making up an amateur lie with regard to your own identity. You’re one of Woodie’s mysterious friends who visit him from time to time. But this visit is the last, is it not?”
I shrugged.
“Let us be off, then. I would have a word with him before he departs.”
The journey back was easier, with two of us to hold each other up. Geydes paused momentarily at the alley where blood still ran into the street. “Bardin-Luther Garder and Jibby Ralv-Budge,” he shouted into my ear, “They weren’t such a bad sort. Rather a pity you had to kill them.”
I spat—the effect was lost in the downpour—refusing other comment. The cops had meant to kill me. We trod onward to B’goverd’s door.
Inside, the agent was sitting up, now, sharing a meal with the others.
“Johd-Beydard, ye rascal! Caught us up to it, did ye?”
The man nodded solemnly. “And now you’re going away to the stars from which you came. It will be most dull here without you, my old friend.”
“Ah, ye’ll find others to teach, Johd Beydard. That young Walder Boddale Bagdabara is after inventin’ repeatin’ firearms already, an’ a century ahead of schedule at that. Hedry Wallaz Keddedy’s foolin’ with magnetism.”