Farnham's Freehold
Page 27
The butcher shop was crowded with live helpers and dead carcasses—birds, beeves, fish, anything. Hugh reflected that thirty-eight Chosen and four hundred and fifty servants ate a lot of meat. He found the place mildly depressing even though he himself had cleaned and cut and trimmed many an animal.
But only his habitual tight control in the presence of Memtok and his “cousins” in service kept him from showing shock at something he saw on the floor, trimmed from a carcass almost cut up on one block.
It was a dainty, plump, very feminine hand.
Hugh felt dizzy, there was a roaring in his ears. He blinked. It was still there. A hand much like Kitten’s—
He breathed carefully, controlled the retching within him, kept his back turned until he had command over himself. There had suddenly flooded over him the truth behind certain incongruities, certain idioms, some pointless jokes.
Gnou was making nervous conversation while his boss waited. He moved to the chopping block, unintentionally kicking the dainty little hand underneath into a pile of scraps and said, “Here’s one you won’t have to bother to taste, Chief Domestic. Unless the old one returns unexpectedly.”
“I always bother to taste,” Memtok said coldly. “Their Charity expects his table to be perfect whether he is in residence or not.”
“Oh, yes, surely,” Gnou agreed. “That’s what I always tell my cooks. But—Well, this very roast illustrates one of my problems. Too fat. You’ll feel that it’s greasy—and so it will be. But that’s what comes of using sluts. Now, in my opinion, you can’t find a nicer piece of meat, marbled but firm, than a buck tempered not older than six, then hung at twice that age.”
“No one asked your opinion,” Memtok answered. “Their Charity’s opinion is the only one that counts. They think that sluts are more tender.”
“Oh, I agree, I agree! No offense intended.”
“And none taken. In fact I agree with your opinion. I was simply making clear that your opinion—and mine in this matter—is irrelevant. I see they’ve fetched them. Did they stop to make them?”
The party put on heavy garments, went on inside. The engineer had said nothing up to then, effacing himself other than a nod and a grin to Hugh. Now he explained the problem, a cranky one of refrigeration. Hugh tried to keep his eyes on it, rather than on the contents of the meat storage room.
Most of the meat was beef and fowl. But one long row of hooks down the center held what he knew he would find—human carcasses, gutted and cleaned and frozen, hanging head down, save that the heads were missing. Young sluts and bucks, he could see, but whether the bucks were tempered or not was no longer evident. He gulped and thanked his unlucky stars that that pathetic little hand had given him warning, at least saved him from fainting.
“Well, Cousin Hugh, what do you think?”
“Why, I agree with Pipes.”
“That the problem can’t be solved?”
“No, no.” Hugh had not listened. “His reasoning is correct and he implied the answer. As he says, the problem can’t be solved—now. The thing to do is not to try to patch it up, now. Wait a week. Tear it out. Put in new equipment.”
Memtok looked sour. “Expensive.”
“But cheaper in the long run. Good engineering isn’t accomplished by grudging a few bullocks. Isn’t that right, Pipes?”
The engineer nodded vigorously. “Just what I always say, Cousin Hugh! You’re absolutely right.”
Memtok still frowned. “Well—Prepare an estimate. Show it to Cousin Hugh before you bring it to me.”
“Yes, sir!”
Memtok paused on the way out and patted the loin of a stripling buck carcass. “That’s what I would call a nice piece of meat. Eh, Hugh?”
“Beautiful,” Hugh agreed with a straight face. “Your nephew, perhaps? Or just a son?”
There was frozen silence. Nobody moved except that Memtok seemed to grow taller. He raised his whip of authority most slightly, no more than tightening his thumbless grip.
Then he grimaced and gave a dry chuckle. “Cousin Hugh, your well-known wit will be the death of me yet. That’s a good one. Gnou, remind me to tell that this evening.”
The Chef agreed and chuckled, the engineer roared. Memtok gave his cold little laugh again. “I’m afraid I can’t claim the honor, Hugh. All of these critters are ranch bred, not one of them is a cousin of ours. Yes, I know how it is in some households, but Their Charity considers it unspeakably vulgar to serve a house servant, even in cases of accidental death—And besides, it makes the servants restless.”
“Commendable.”
“Yes. It is gratifying to serve one who is a stickler for propriety. Enough, enough, time is wasting. Walk back with me, Hugh.”
Once they were clear of the rest Memtok said, “You were saying?”
“Excuse me?”
“Come, come, you’re absentminded today. Something about Their Charity not being in residence.”
“Oh, yes. Memtok, could you, as a special favor to me, let me know the minute Their Charity returns? Whether officially in residence or not? Not petition anything for me. Just let me know.” Damn it, with time pouring away like life through a severed artery his only course might be a belly-scraping apology to Joe, then get Joe to intercede.
“No,” said Memtok. “No, I don’t think I can.”
“I beg your pardon? Has this one offended you?”
“You mean that witticism? Heaven, no! Some might find it vulgar and one bullock gets you three that if you had told it in sluts’ quarters some of them would have fainted. But if there is one thing I pride myself on, Hugh, it’s my sense of humor—and any day I can’t see a joke simply because I am the butt of it, I’ll petition to turn in my whip. No, it was simply my turn to have a little joke at your expense. I said, ‘I don’t think I can.’ That is a statement of two meanings—a double-meaning joke, follow me? I don’t think I can tell you when Their Charity returns because he has sent word to me that he is not returning. So you’ll see him next at the Palace…and I promise I’ll let you know when he’s in residence.” The Chief Domestic dug him in the ribs. “I wish you had seen your own face. My joke wasn’t nearly as sharp as yours. But your jaw dropped. Very comical.”
Hugh excused himself, went to his rooms, took an extra bath, a most thorough one, then simply thought until dinnertime. He braced himself for the ordeal of dinner with a carefully measured dose of Happiness—not enough to affect him later, strong enough to carry him through dinner, now that he knew why “pork” appeared so often on the menu of the Chosen. He suspected that the pork served to servants was really pork. But he intended to eat no more bacon nevertheless. Nor ham, nor pork chops, nor sausage. In fact he might turn vegetarian—at least until they were free in the mountains and it was eat game or starve.
But with a shot of Happiness inside him he was able to smile when Memtok tasted the roast for upstairs and to say, “Greasy?”
“Worse than usual. Taste it.”
“No, thanks. I knew it would be. I would cook up better than that—though no doubt I would be terribly stringy. And tough. Though perhaps Cousin Gnou could tenderize me.”
Memtok laughed until he choked. “Oh, Hugh, don’t ever be that funny while I’m swallowing! You’ll kill me yet.”
“This one hopes not.” Hugh toyed with the beef on his plate, pushed it aside and ate a few nuts.
He was very busy that evening, writing long after Kitten was asleep. It had become utterly necessary to reach Barbara secretly, yet his only means was the insecure route through Kitten. The problem was to write to Barbara in a code that only she could read, and which she would see as a code without having been warned and without the code being explained to her—and yet one which was safe from others. But the double-talk mixture he had last sent her would not do; he was now going to have to give her detailed instructions, ones where it really mattered if she missed a word or failed to guess a concealed meaning.
His last draft was:
Darli
ng,
If you were here, I would love a literary gabfest, a good one. You know what I mean, I am sure. Let’s consider Edgar Allan Poe, for example. Can you recall how I claimed that Poe was the best writer both to read and to reread of all the mystery writers before or since, and that this was true because he never could be milked dry on one reading? The answer or answers in The Gold Bug, or certainly that little gem The Murders in the Rue Morgue, or take The Case of the Purloined Letter, or any of them; same rule will apply to them all, when you consider the very subtle way he always had of slanting his meaning so that one reaches a full period in his sentences only after much thought. Poe is grand fun and well worth study. Let’s have our old literary talks by letter. How about Mark Twain next? Tired—must go to bed!
Love—
Since Hugh had never discussed Edgar Allan Poe with Barbara at any time, he was certain that she would study the note for a hidden message. The only question was whether or not she would find it. He wanted her to read it as:
“If
you
can
read
this
answer
the
same
way
period”
Having done his best he put it aside, first disposing of all trial work, then prepared to do something else much more risky. At that point he would have given his chances of immortal bliss, plus 10 percent, for a flashlight, then settled for a candle. His rooms were lighted, brilliantly or softly as he wished, by glowing translucent spheres set in the upper corners. Hugh did not know what they were save that they were not any sort of light he had ever known. They gave off no heat, seemed not to require wiring, and were controlled by little cranks.
A similar light, the size of a golf ball, was mounted on his scroll reader. It was controlled by twisting it; he had decided tentatively that twisting these spheres polarized them in some way.
He tried to dismount the scroll reader light.
He finally got it loose by breaking the upper frame. It was now a featureless, brilliantly shining ball and nothing he could do would dim it—which was almost as embarrassing as no light at all.
He found that he could conceal it in an armpit under his robe. There was still a glow but not much.
He made sure that Kitten was asleep, turned out all lights, raised his corridor door, looked out. The passageway was lighted by a standing light at an intersection fifty yards away. Regrettably he had to go that way. He had expected no lights at this hour.
He felt his “knife” taped to his left arm—not much of a knife, but patient whetting with a rock picked up from a garden path had put an edge on it, and tape had made a firm grip. It needed hours more work and he could work on it only after Kitten was asleep or in time stolen from working hours. But it felt good to have it there and it was the only knife, chisel, screwdriver, or burglar’s jimmy that he had.
The manhole to the engineering service tunnels lay in the passage to the right after he had to pass the lighted intersection. Any manhole would do but that one was on the route to the veterinary’s quarters; if caught outside his rooms but otherwise without cream on his lip, he planned to plead a sudden stomachache.
The manhole cover swung back easily on a hinge, it was fastened by a clasp that needed only turning to free it. The floor of the tunnel, glimpsed with his shiny sphere, lay four feet below the corridor floor. He started to let himself down and ran into his first trouble.
These manholes and tunnels had been intended for men a foot shorter and fifty pounds lighter than Hugh Farnham, and proportionately smaller in shoulders, hips, hands-and-knees height, and so forth.
But he could make it. He had to.
He wondered how he would make it, crawling and carrying at least one baby. But that he had to do, too. So he would.
He almost trapped himself. Barely in time he found that the underside of the steel door was smooth, no handle, and that it latched automatically by a spring catch.
That settled why no one worried that the studs might gain unplanned access to sluts. But it also settled something else. Hugh had considered snatching this very chance, if he found things quiet at the other end: Wake Barbara, bring all four of them back via the tunnel—then outside and away, by any of a dozen weak points, away and off to the mountains on foot, reach them before light, find some stream and ford it endwise to throw off hounds. Go, go, go! With almost no food, with nothing but a makeshift knife, with no equipment, a “nightshirt” for clothing, and no hope of anything better. Go! And save his family, or die with them. But die free!
Perhaps someday his twin sons, wiser in the new ways than himself and toughened by a life fighting nature, could lead an uprising against this foul thing. But all he planned to do, all he could hope for, was get them free, keep them free, alive and free and ungelded, until they were grown and strong.
Or die.
Such was still his plan. He wasted not a moment sorrowing over that spring catch. It merely meant that he must communicate with Barbara, set a time with her, because she would have to open the hatch at the far end. Tonight he could only reconnoiter.
He found that tape from his knife handle would hold the spring catch back. He tested it from above; the lid could now be swung back without turning the clasp.
But his wild instincts warned him. The tape might not hold until he was back. He might be trapped inside.
He spent a sweating half hour working on that spring catch, using knife and fingers and holding the light ball in his teeth.
At last he managed to get at and break the spring. He removed the catch entirely. The manhole, closed, now looked normal, but it could be opened from underneath with just a push.
Only then did he let himself down inside and close it over him.
He started out on knees and elbows with the light in his mouth, and stopped almost at once. The damned skirt of his robe kept him from crawling! He tried bunching it around his waist. It slid down.
He inched back to the manhole shaft, took the pesky garment off entirely, left it under the manhole, crawled away without it, naked save for the knife strapped to his arm and the light in his teeth. He then made fair progress, although never able to get fully on hands and knees. His elbows had to be bent, his thighs he could not bring erect, and there were places where valves and fittings of the pipes he crawled past forced him almost to his belly.
Nor could he tell how far he was going. However, there were joints in the tunnel about every thirty feet; he counted them and tried to match them in his mind with the engineering drawing.
Pass under two manholes…sharp left turn into another tunnel at next manhole…crawl about a hundred and fifty feet and under one manhole—
Something more than an hour later he was under a manhole which had to be the one closest to Barbara.
If he had not lost himself in the bowels of the palace—If he had correctly remembered that complex drawing—If the drawing was up to date—(Had two thousand years made any difference in the lag between engineering changes and revisions of prints to match?) If Kitten knew what she was talking about in locating Barbara’s billet by a method so novel to her—If it was still Barbara’s billet—
He crouched in the awkward space and tried to press his ear against the shaft’s cover.
He heard a baby cry.
About ten minutes later he heard hushed female voices. They approached, passed over him, and someone stepped on the lid.
Hugh unkinked himself, prepared to return. The space was so tight that the obvious way was to back up the way he had come, so he found himself trying to crawl backward through the tunnel.
That worked so poorly that he came back to the shaft and, with contortions and loss of skin, got turned around.
What seemed hours later he was convinced that he was lost. He began to wonder which was the more likely: Would he starve or die of thirst? Or would some repairman get the shock of his life by finding him?
But he kept on crawling.
Kitten was awake.
He wasn’t aware of it until she followed him into the bath. Then she was saying with wide-eyed horror, “Oh, dear! Your poor knees! And your elbows, too.”
“I stumbled and fell down.”
She didn’t argue it, she simply insisted on bathing him and salving and taping the raw places. When she started to pick up his dirty robe, he told her sharply to go to bed. He did not mind her touching his robe but his knife had been on top of it and only by maneuvering had he managed to keep himself between her and it long enough to flip a fold of cloth over the weapon.
Kitten went silently to bed. Hugh hid the knife in its usual place (much too high for Kitten), then went into his living room and found the child crying. He petted her, soothed her, said he had not meant to sound harsh, and fed her a bonus dose of Happiness—sat with her while she drank it, watched her go happily to sleep.
Then he did not even try to get along without it himself. Kitten had gone to sleep with one hand outside her cover. It looked to Hugh exactly like a forlorn little hand he had seen twelve hours earlier on the floor of a butcher shop.
He was exhausted and the drink let him go to sleep. But not to rest. He found himself at a dinner party, black tie and dressy. But he did not like the menu. Hungarians goulash… French fries… Chinese noodles…po’ boy sandwich…breast of peasant…baked Alaskans—but it was all pork. His host insisted that he taste every dish. “Come, come!” he chided with a wintry smile. “How do you know you don’t like it? One bullock gets you three you’ll learn to love it.”
Hugh moaned and could not wake up.
Kitten did not chatter at breakfast, which suited him. Two hours of nightmare-ridden sleep was not enough, yet it was necessary to go to his office and pretend to work. Mostly he stared at the print framed over his desk while his scroll reader clicked unnoticed. After lunch he sneaked away and tried to nap. But the engineer scratched at his door and apologetically asked him to look over his estimates on refitting the meat cooler. Hugh poured his guest a dollop of Happiness, then pretended to study figures that meant nothing to him. After a decent time he complimented the man, then scrawled a note to Memtok, recommending that the contract be let.