by Hugh Cook
Even so, it was less than proper for him to join them in conversation. He had his dignity to think about, and the dignity of a Frangoni warrior is ever one of the more conspicuous parts of his style. Hatch's dignity was conspicuous even though it had to compete with his height, with his hair-knot, his musclepumped torso and the grandly great sweep of his purple robes.
But ....
"You were talking of a dog," said Hatch, drawn back into the beggars' dialog despite himself.
The Frangoni prided themselves on their aloofness, but Hatch had lately been so stressed by the multiple pressures of his crisis, and so undeniably and unreachably lonely in that crisis, that he had allowed himself to have more to do with beggars than was properly decent, and was hard put to break the habit.
"A dog, yes," said Grim. "A dorgi. The petdog of Manfred Gan Oliver, that's what it was. Gan Oliver himself bred it by bucking a Lashund."
The implication was that Manfred Gan Oliver was a dog himself, for the ferocious hunter-killers known as dorgis are bred by mating long-legged Lashund hounds with the slaughterweight fighting dogs called thogs. Asodo Hatch had never before realized how like unto a thog was Gan Oliver, but once made the comparison was irresistible. The grim-faced head of the Free Corps was undeniably thoggish in all his major attributes, though it had taken a blind man to see as much.
Hatch was still grinning at the beggar's joke when he saw Gan Oliver's son, Lupus Lon Oliver, stealthing his way down Scuffling Road like a debtor in fear of an ambush by writ-bearing creditors.
"Lupus," said Hatch, calling out the Ebrell Islander's name so the beggars would be warned of his approach, and choke back any further jokes about thogs.
Lupus Lon Oliver started, with as much of a shock as if he had been touched at night by a hand of bones in a house thought deserted.
"Hatch," said Lupus, partially recovering himself. "I - I - have you seen Dog Java?"
"Why, yes," said Hatch. "It's been just a snack-snap since he was standing here as large as life. A combast or so."
A combast was a Nexus ration tube; and, by natural extension of meaning, the approximate time taken to leisure down such a ration.
"What - ah, where - "
"He went down the road," said Hatch. "I think he was heading for home. He was upset about something, I don't know what."
"I see," said Lupus.
Then the Ebrell Islander cleared his throat and hastened down Scuffling Road, rushing away with all the impetuous velocity of an Evolutionist sprinting for the river in the hope of surviving an imminent transformation from manflesh to fish.
As Lupus left, Hatch remembered Dog's knife. He thought to call Lupus back and ask him to pass on the knife, then thought better of it. Clearly something had badly upset the young Ebrell Islander, and from what he had seen Hatch could only presume that the Lupus and Dog were locked in some deeply emotional dispute. Probably, given their ages, they were disputing about love. Love for a woman? For each other? For a third man desired by both? Hatch, with more than enough problems of his own to worry about, had absolutely no desire to find out, but guessed that it would be unwise to arm young Lupus with murderous steel as the Ebrell Islander went in pursuit of Dog Java.
"There goes Gan Oliver's son," said Hatch, telling the beggars the air was again free for the exercise of their folly. "Perhaps he's the dog of whose breeding you spoke of."
"Why, no," said Grim. "For Lupus yet lives, but the dog of my eating is dead. This dog, you see, was a dog bred for love. Gan Oliver in exile, old Manfred, he pined for the love of yon dorgi within, hence bred a dorgi without to send it in to consummate his love by proxy. But the lockway denied dog as it did master, so, being built to love, or to pine in love's despite, the dorgi without did perish, hence my eating. My eating, which I will consummate, be you so good as to pass me the teeth. The teeth, Master Zoplin!"
"I suppose," said Master Zoplin, at last consenting to pass along the teeth, which Grim promptly snatched, "I suppose you'll be wanting my tapeworm next."
"No," said Grim, slobbing the teeth into place, "no, but I
wouldn't say no to the Eye. Who's got it? Have you?"
"I sold it to Hatch," said Zoplin. "He's awfully keen on the Eye is old Hatch."
"He's waiting with a stuffbag," said X'dex. "I can see it from here. He's waiting to sell something."
"To sell something?" said Grim. "What's he got to sell? His soul he sold at birth, like his father-Frangoni before him. What you waiting for, Hatch? You don't usually wait, not you."
"I told you," said X'dex. "He's selling."
"Then what? Pass us the eye, Friend Dex, Friend Dexlord Paspilion."
"I can't," said that worthy. "I'm studying ants."
"Ants!" said Zoplin. "I'm the one with the ants. They're half my lunch by weight and ten thousand thirds of it by number."
With that, toothless Master Zoplin picked up one of the pieces of baked yam from the banana leaf at his side, wiped it on his rags to remove any ants - for he was fastidiously vegetarian - then began to masticate the yampiece with his gums. As he did so, the worthy Lord X'dex Paspilion unscrambled the Eye from his left-hand socket, wiped it on his own rags, then passed it to Grim, who received it with gratitude.
"Ah!" said Grim, popping the Eye into his own left-hand
socket, "now I see him clear enough!"
Whether Grim saw or whether he didn't was a moot point. None of the three beggars had ever allowed Hatch to examine their allegedly precious Eye, so even after more than two decades of acquaintance he had no idea whether the three truly possessed some fabulous device which enabled them to see or whether they had been carrying on a running joke for all these years with a worthless bit of shiny metal.
"What do you see?" said Hatch, challenging.
"A Frangoni born ugly and since grown worse," said Grim. "A
Frangoni purple in his humors, with further purple drawn about his purpleness. Purple upon him, and with him - chocolate! That's what he's got! Chocolate! A vile and hideous drug if ever there
was one."
In truth, Asodo Hatch did have a consignment of chocolate
which he planned to sell for profit. Drug it was indeed, this chocolate being a species of psycho-addictor once very popular in
the Nexus.
"You smelt it," said Hatch. "You're blind to the sight but you smelt it."
"Smelt it, did I?" said Grim. "Then it must be melting."
Melting!
Hatch reached in alarm for his stuffbag, for the chocolate
within was equal in value to a ten-day supply of opium, and opium
he needed most urgently to satisfy his wife's inescapable
requirements. Of course the chocolate had not melted at all, for he had it in the bitterblock tablet form which is proof against all but the worst of the sun. Grim laughed, either seeing Hatch's alarm or guessing at it.
"A pox on all beggars," said Hatch.
"A pox indeed," agreed Grim. "Oh, pox would be luxury, or at least the getting of it. You'll be getting with luxury shortly,
won't you?"
"How so?" said Hatch.
"Why, for you'll soon be instructor. Isn't it? You're
fighting for it soon and shortly, isn't it?"
"Maybe," said Hatch, unwilling to discuss the details of the
agon to which he was committed.
"Maybe, maybe," muttered Grim. "Are you too poor to be giving
a beggar a yes or a no? It's true, isn't it!" Here anger, so sharp
that Hatch was startled by it. "You, you glut on chocolate, six
nights of the night, you glut it and squeeze it, but we poor beggars, worms and rats, rats as rags and maggots as comfort. Give
me the chocolate!"
"You need no chocolate," said Hatch, speaking lightly, and
trying thus to dismiss the truth of Grim's anger. "It's not good
for you."
"True, true," said Grim, softening, slackening, anger dying
to humor or its semblance. "I need no chocolate, need it not,
want it not. Why, rather, right now I want boy, not boy to be boy but boy to sell sister. Hey, you-boy, you have me a sister?"
"I have not a sister," said the boy whom Grim was addressing,
a boy whom Hatch had not noticed till that very moment, "nor you no need for one, for I had your eyes but I ate them."
This was a dire insult indeed, for they were talking in Pang,
in which the word for eyes is logo nuk, a homonym of the word
meaning testicles. (Thus eyes plural - the word for an eye
singular being chaba jaf, a word which also means egg, and hence
has given the Pang the phrase "to lay eggs on fur", which is used
amongst them to denote the act of sexual intercourse). In response
to this insult, Beggar Grim said something so obscene that Hatch
(fluent in Pang, but not perfect) was hard put to construe the
sense of it, though he gathered that the boy was being invited to
do something involving a head, a finger, a cat, a river-oyster,
some cakes of dung and his mother's brother's wife's daughter-in-
law.
"Boy," said Hatch, when Grim was done, "have you news for me?"
Every day Hatch went past the Brick and saw the Free Corps messenger boys torturing dogs or playing knuckle bones in the dust outside the place. Recognizing this urchin as such a boy, he
presumed that the noseless moneylender named Polk had sent him
with a message as his burden.
"Why news for you, Mister Purple?" said the boy.
Mister Purple? That was less than polite. Indeed, had boy been man, such an insult could easily have precipitated violence.
But the boy was a boy, and a boy who looked fleet of foot, so
Hatch saw no way to chastise him except at the risk of serious damage to his own dignity.
"You have a message," said Hatch. "Get on with it."
"Polk's not in the purple mood," said the small boy. "But he
sends his regards and sends three days for the chocolate."
"Three days!" said Hatch, aghast.
Polk had promised him ten.
"Three days," affirmed the boy, "which you collect from the
Brick."
Worse and worse. Not only was the price diminished, but Hatch
was going to be made to go to the Free Corps headquarters to
collect that price. Hatch, angered by insult, could not help
himself, and before he knew it he was saying it:
"No."
"No?" said the boy, exaggerating his wide-eyed amazement in
an attempt at achieving a comic effect. "Why, Mister Purple, three
days is three times your sister."
Three times your sister? What did that mean? The grammar was garbled, but the intent to insult was plain. Hatch was too close
to his breaking point to appreciate being made a comedy by a boy from the Brick.
"Come here!" said Hatch, rising from the shadows of the sugar juice stall.
He rose so swiftly that his legs almost buckled, for the
blood fled his head and he almost fainted. So he was in no state
to chase or catch the boy, who was running already. The boy paused
at the first rock on which dung-cakes were laid out to dry,
grabbed one of those fuel tablets and hurled it in Hatch's direction. It went saucering through the air and blunted itself on
a rock, being as yet too soft to brittle-break. Then the boy laughed and went pelting away through the heat of the day, running
so fast and free it was as if he inhabited a different weather entirely.
"Polk promised me ten," said Hatch, still standing, unable to
contain his amazement at the cheating unscrupulosity of
moneylenders.
"So you reject him at three," said Beggar Grim. "So now you can home you and feast on the fruits of rejection. Hatch, he will
feed, he will eat, he will glut himself sick on rejections!
Luxury, luxury! Why, and here's my luxury now! Shona, it's Shona."
Scent alone might have told Beggar Grim that it was Shona coming by, for she habitually drenched herself in Nudik Martyr, a gross proto-perfume too blatant for all but the hardiest of women
to wear. There had once been a fad for Nudik Martyr throughout the
Nexus, and, though twice a hundred centuries had passed since
then, the Combat College had been given no opportunity to update
or expunge that quirk of the fashions. Hence Shona, who loved the
stuff, smelt as if she had been first lathered in the pulp of a billion over-ripe blossoms and then scraped clean with sun-dried
orange peel.
"Been dorking the dorgi, have you, Shona dear?" said Beggar Grim. "Got any left for me?"
Usually Shona ignored such foul-mouthed overtures, for she
was too much the warrior woman to waste time on disciplining
beggars. But today she had a double handful of slob, a surprise
meant for one of the unruly dogs of the neighborhood. On Beggar Grim's provocation, she threw it at him.
"Ya!" shrieked Grim, as the filthy slush slap-sloshed into
his face.
His claw-scrabble hands tore at the cold effervescence,
accelerating its evanishment.
"Why, Hatch my man," said Shona, challenging that Frangoni
warman. "You left an age ago. Still here? Still waiting?"
"I'm waiting for Polk," said Hatch, pretending he was still
waiting, and doing his best not to look cheated and downcast, for he was unwilling to expose his vulnerabilities to any woman, even
one as staunch and trustworthy as Shona.
"The Cash, is it? That criminal! He'd diddle her own mother on the price of her tits and turds. What's he buying?" In quest of an answer, Shona took Hatch's stuffbag, hefted it, looked in it.
"Your chocolate, is it? Why, it's a fortune!"
"Ten days for my wife," said Hatch, still pretending such
good fortune was still on offer.
"Ten days!" said Shona, who knew all about Hatch's wife and her needs. "Why, this is worth twenty. There's a regular run on
chocolate, didn't you know? The Bralsh is buying the stuff at doubles and triples."
"The Bralsh!" said Hatch. "What would the Bralsh want with
chocolate?"
Said Shona:
"I know what's under my garter belt, but you won't find the Bralsh down there. All I know is the price. Here, I'll pay you with peace, I have some on me."
"You carry it with you?" said Hatch.
"Can't leave it at home, can I?" said Shona.
Then from a girdling money belt she dug a half dozen opium
balls, each encased in white wax and stamped with the vermilion
seal of the Official Purveyor of Peace. They made the exchange on
the spot.
"Thank you," said Hatch.
"It's a pleasure to be pleasing the next instructor," said Shona. "I wish you good luck for the evening."
In the evening, Hatch would be returning to the Combat College, for the competitive examinations in which he was currently engaged were about to enter their practical phase. When
next he entered the illusion tanks, he would not be able to lose life or singlefighters for the mere purpose of winning experience.
Instead, his career would be on the line; and his family's fortunes were riding on his career.
"The evening!" said Beggar Grim, unabashed and loud as ever now that he had rid himself of the slob thrown by Shona.
"Fighting, is it? I thought as much."
"No," said Zoplin. "Not fighting but whoring. He's meeting fair Shona tonight."
"Yes," said Shona. "We're interrogating dogs to see which one has the honor of your par
entage."
Then she mocked a kick in Zoplin's direction, so good in her acting that Hatch winced in anticipation of impact. But blind beggar Zoplin never stirred, and the kick fell short, and Shona winked at Hatch and set off for home, taking the chocolate and leaving the Frangoni in the possession of his opium.
"Oh, Shona!" said Hatch, calling her back.
"Yes?" said Shona, turning to see Hatch standing in the road with a knife in his hand.
"Could you give this to Dog Java's mother?" said Hatch. "Dog lives near you, doesn't he?"
"Yes," said Shona, accepting the weapon. "That's no problem.
I'll pass it on."
"But not to Dog," said Hatch. "Give it to his mother. Tell her I'm worried about her son. He's - I think he's in some kind of trouble."
"I'll talk to him, then," said Shona. "If I can find him.
He's often sleeping away from home these days, though I've no idea where."
With that, Shona again set off down Scuffling Road, which led north from the lockway, passing through the commercial center of Actus Dorum and finishing at Jara Marg, the square in which the Grand Arena stood. Shona did not dare the full length of the road,
but instead took the first turn to the right and headed east along Zambuk Street.
Hatch watched her till she took that turn, and a long watch it was, but he found himself unready to be moving. He wished the moment could be perpetuated to forever - wished that the harshness of the future could be indefinitely deferred and he left in peace with the beggars. Whom he envied.
Then he sighed.
Shona was gone from sight: and it was time to be going.
"So you'll be on your way now," said Grim, catching that sigh and divining its import.
"It'd take good gold in payment to keep me here," said Hatch,
who was not yet through with his appointments, for he was scheduled to meet with Sesno Felvus, the ethnarch of the Frangoni of Dalar ken Halvar.
"Gold I have not," said Grim. "But I do have a question."
"Speak," said Hatch.
"Is it true - "
"True!" said Master Zoplin. "What's he wanting with truth? A good lie is half the price and three times as worthy."
"Is it true," said Lord X'dex, "that stars become iron in their burning? As much I have said, and I think it a truth."