by Gene Wolfe
"There's still a bit around in my opinion, Maytera. In my business we hear things, and that's one of the things we hear." Swallow turned to Silk. "I'm a blunt man, Caldé, and I'm going to ask you straight out. Are you interested in getting a new talus for the Guard? Is that why you're here?"
"I've been considering it," Silk admitted. "Several, perhaps."
Swallow smiled. "Good. Very good! I'm delighted to hear it. I've been telling our people that this unrest was sure to bring in some fresh business, and I'm glad to see I was right. You're wondering why you should have to pay for something that the city can't own, aren't you?"
"I am. Also how I can be assured that the taluses Viron pays for will be loyal and obedient."
"It's a good question." Swallow hitched his chair nearer his office table, resting his elbows on it. "First of all, if you want absolute assurance, I can't give it to you. Nobody can. I'm told there's an outfit in Wick now that tells people that, but they're lying. Suppose you went to that boatyard in Limna. Could the people building boats there give you an iron-clad guarantee that any boat they sold you would never sink or turn over? Under any circumstances?"
"I doubt it.
"So do I. If they did, they'd be lying exactly like those fellows in Wick. Here's the guarantee we offer. If one of our taluses betrays your interests or won't carry out a legitimate order, within the first two years you employ it, we will refund the entire amount you paid. When I say 'you' now, I mean the city. For the third year, the amount is cut by a quarter. You get three quarters of what you paid us back. During the fourth you get half, then a quarter."
"Nothing after the fifth year?" Maytera Marble asked.
"That's right. But you will have had five years service from your talus by that time, don't forget."
Silk nodded thoughtfully.
"I'd like to have your business," Swallow continued. "I don't deny that. We rarely receive an order for more than a single talus. And it would be a feather in our cap to be able to say we already had a large order from the new government. So here's what I'll do. I said a full refund if there's any serious trouble during the first two years. All right, for each talus you get over one, I'll increase the guarantee by one year. Say you were to order three. Is that about what you're thinking of, Caldé?"
"Perhaps."
"Then let's say three. That's two over one, so you'd get a full cash refund-we're talking here about the price of the individual talus, not the price of all three."
"I understand," Silk said.
"A full refund on that talus for serious trouble during the first four years. After that, three quarters, then half and a quarter, as I've already outlined it to you. You'll be entirely covered or partly covered for… How long, Maytera?"
"Twenty-five percent in the seventh year, Patera," she told Silk. "Nothing after that.
"Good deal?" Oreb tugged a lock of Silk's hair.
"A safe one, at least, I believe. You don't have to pay often, do you, Director Swallow?"
Swallow smiled and relaxed. "No, we don't. If we did, we'd be bankrupt. We paid a quarter-price refund fifteen years ago-no, make that sixteen. I was foundry supervisor then, and I felt it was a pretty dubious case. All of us knew it was, really, and if we'd fought it in court, we'd probably have won. But it was only a quarter, the customer was making a lot of noise, and the director we had then wanted to establish that we keep our promises. I'm not saying he was wrong, just that the talus in question had been abused. The customer'd had it piling bricks, which isn't natural."
"What is?" Silk inquired.
"Fighting and protection, the same things you'd expect from a watchdog." Swallow cleared his throat. "Can I get a little bit personal, Maytera? No disrespect intended, but you brought up an important principle, obedience to authority. What you said made a lot of sense, and I'd like to use you for an example."
Chenille said, "I don't think you ought to. Tell him no, Maytera. I don't think this is a good idea at all."
"Because it wlll make me more aware of my nature, dear? I don't believe it will, since I'm very much aware of it already. I've spent many, many hours thinking about who I am and what the gods require of me. But if it does, even a little, I'll thank the director very sincerely for the insight."
"No talk," Oreb advised Swallow.
He chuckled. "I won't say what I was going to, I promise. But I will say this. What I was going to say, I could have said about myself or anybody else in this room. I just thought the clothes might make it clearer."
"The clothes that were given to me when I woke? I didn't get to them, but you're right. After a while I sat up too, and another girl gave me my first clothes. Were you going to ask me what kind of clothes they were?"
Swallow nodded. "That's right, I was."
"A little black dress, very simple, with rather a short skirt. Underclothes." Maytera Marble paused to smile. "I was about to say I'd prefer not to describe them, but they were so plain that there's hardly anything to describe. Black shoes with low heels, but I don't think there were any stockings. A pretty little lace apron and a matching cap. It's easy for me to describe those clothes, because people from Ermine's came to Patera's palace just before we left, and there were young women dressed exactly as I was then, except that they had stockings."
"Did they come to clean?" Swallow asked. "Sweep and dust?"
"Dear Chenille and I have done that already. To wash the dishes they'll need tonight and set the table, and wash walls we haven't gotten to. At least I hope they'll wash those walls and the downstairs windows. I asked them to."
Swallow hodded again. "You see, Caldé, each of us is born to do certain things. Maytera was born to sweep and dust, and wash walls and floors, and she's still doing it. Did you have to urge her to?"
Silk shook his head.
"I would have been surprised if you'd said you did, and it shows the important principle I want to explain. When you're born to do a thing, and somebody gives you a chance to do it, that's all it takes. Everybody else is afraid I'll embarrass her, so let's talk about your bird."
"Oreb," Oreb elucidated.
"Nobody's got to make him fly. He flies because it's his nature. Nobody has to make him talk either. He was born to."
"Talk good!"
"There you have it. All right, it's a talus's nature to fight and protect property. Give your talus a chance to do those things, and it will do them. You're afraid the ones we build for you will give you a hard time, but you're Caldé, and if they did, you'd give them a hard time too, wouldn't you? Have them arrested and disarmed? And tried, too, eventually?"
"I suppose. so.
"Naturally you would. So why should they make trouble, when what you want them to do is what they want to do? The things they were born to do?"
"I was at a country house guarded by a talus not long ago, and Mucor told me it could be bribed, though it took a great deal of money." Silk looked at her for confirmation.
"Musk said so."
Chenille asked, "What would a talus do with money?" and Maytera Marble ventured, "The same things that you or I would, I suppose, dear."
"You were asking how you could buy something you couldn't own, Caldé." Swallow picked up a pencil, apparently to rap the tablet before him. "Let me tell you about that now, about the financial arrangements. When a talus is finished, it owes us, by law, the cost of its manufacture plus fifteen percent."
"Even though the city has paid for it?"
"Exactly. What the city's doing, you see, is advancing us the money we'd eventually get from the talus. We make no more than we would if we'd built without an order. Which we seldom do, by the way, since by building to order we get our money a lot sooner. What's even more important, we don't have to worry about the talus getting killed before it can pay us."
Silk nodded while his right forefinger drew small circles on his cheek. "I see."
"We require payment in full before the talus is finished. When it's finished, we explain that it has been built because
there's an employer anxious to hire it. That's you, Caldé. We also explain the nature of wages, what wages it can reasonably expect, and what bonuses."
"But I don't actually pay it. Isn't that correct?"
"I can see you grasp the idea already. That's right, you don't. Let's say that you and your talus agree on five cards a month, a fair wage. From that, you deduct your expenses for fuel, maintenance, and repairs, if any. Most employers furnish ammo free of charge. It's customary."
Silk nodded again.
"You report the net to us, or you can have the talus do it. We deduct it from the talus's debt. Eventually its indebtedness will be wiped out and it can keep the wages it earns."
"Provided it survives that long."
"You've got it." Swallow glanced over his shoulder at the windows behind him, where the tapping of raindrops had mounted to a steady, insistent pounding. "If you'd rather have a look at our shops another time…?"
"Patera," Maytera Marble began, "I don't-"
She was interrupted by Silk, who stood as he spoke. "I'm eager to see them, and I'm sure a little rain won't hurt me. I was caught in that downpour a week from yesterday, but here I am. I don't want you to feel that you have to take us around in person, however, Director. Someone else can do it."
"Not take the Caldé around?" Grinning broadly, Swallow rose too. "I wouldn't miss it for any money. The ladies can wait in here if they like."
"I'm coming," Maytera Marble declared. "My granddaughter can stay here with Chenille."
"Me too," Chenille announced. "I want to see this."
"In that case Mucor will have to come with us, Patera."
"I can fly," she informed Swallow gravely. "Even in the rain. But they can't."
The promised umbrellas had been left on a chair in the outer room. Chenille picked one up. "Here's a black one for you, Patera, if you want it."
Silk shook his head. "Let Maytera have it."
Hanging her basket on her right forearm, she accepted the black umbrella and shook it out. "It's bad luck to open them indoors, they say, but I've already had mine. I can't thank that nice young man for getting these for us."
"One of your guards," Silk explained. "Now that I come to think of it, it seems strange that you've hired bios to protect this place instead of a talus."
"We do have a talus." Swallow accepted a yellow umbrella from Chenille. "As a matter of fact we have two now, because of the unrest. They're in the guard shack."
He went to the door, opening his umbrella. "You went by it on your way here. They have windows so they can keep an eye on the gate, but mostly they listen for shooting or shouting. A lot of the little matters that our guards handle, a good bio can take care of better than any talus. Suppose you had taluses patrolling the streets instead of troopers, Caldé. You'd have a dozen people shot every night, instead of one or two a week."
Opening the green umbrella that Chenille handed him, Silk followed Swallow out into the rain. "I've dealt with taluses once or twice, and I'm sure you're right."
"They protect the plant at night, and we have them there ready to roll in case of serious fighting. So far it's been around the Palatine and the Alambrera. I'm sure you know."
Silk nodded.
"Would you like to look at them? There's the guard shack." Swallow pointed at a weathered wooden shed.
"Not now, thank you." Silk had to raise his voice to make himself heard above the rattle of rain on his umbrella. "Later, perhaps. Right now I'd like to see how they're made."
"Good. That's where I'm taking you. Excuse me a minute, and I'll get the door."
Swallow strode off through the rain; Silk limped after him as rapidly as he could, splashing through deepening puddles in shoes that were already sodden.
The wide wooden door Swallow had opened let them into a cavernous structure whose floor was covered with coarse sand; three men were working in a pit a few steps from the doorway, illuminated by a single bleary light high overhead. "This is the foundry," Swallow announced as Maytera Marble and Mucor entered under a single black umbrella. "I always start visitors here, because it's where I started myself. I sifted, shoveled, ran errands, and the rest of it. It's hard, dirty work, but I was bringing home a little money to help my folks, and I've never felt so good about anything I've done in my life."
Chenille exclairned, "You make those great big things out of sand? I don't believe it!" Oreb flew off into the darkness at the other end of the building to explore.
"There are some glass parts, and they really are made out of sand, but not by us." Swallow shut his umbrella and thumped its tip on the sand-strewn floor. "This is foundry sand and wouldn't make good glass. But we cast some big parts in sand, which is what these men are getting ready to do."
He pointed with his umbrella. "You see the hollow left by the form when it was lifted out? Those round pieces are called cores. They're made of compressed sand with a starch binder, and if they aren't positioned exactly right, and firmly enough that they stay in place when the iron's poured, the whole piece will be ruined. What they're doing here is preparing to cast an engine block, Caldé." At the last word, the workers looked up.
Silk had been trying to locate Oreb in the darkness. "This seems a very large place for three men."
"When we're going full tilt, which we will be tomorrow if we get your order today, there will be eighteen men and six boys working in here, Caldé. I've had to lay off everybody except my best men, which I don't like to do."
Taking Silk unobtrusively by the elbow, Swallow led him deeper into the building, his voice kindling a second light. "They're all good men to tell the truth, and the boys are smart lads who'll be good men too before long. We can't use anything else. I hate layoffs because I know the people I let go won't be able to find another job, generally. But if they could, I'd hate them worse because I'd lose them, and you can't just bring in an untrained man and have him go to work. It takes years."
Maytera Marble inquired, "How old are the boys?"
"We start them at fourteen nowadays. I was twelve when I started." Silk heard the soft exhalation of Swallow's breath. "We had layoffs then, too, though it wasn't as hard as now. Not usually. I never got to go to palaestra, but there was a woman on our street who had, and she taught me to read and write and figure during layoffs. I'm pretty good with figures, if I do say it. She was a friend of Mother's and wouldn't take anything for it, but I always thought that someday I'd get to where I could pay her. I was just about there, just made leadman here, when she died."
Silk asked, "May I speak as an augur instead of Caldé?"
"Go ahead. I'm not religious, but maybe I should be."
"Then I'll explain to you that the woman who helped you out of friendship for your mother had been helped herself, when she was younger, by some earlier person you never met."
Swallow nodded. "I suppose it's likely enough."
"She couldn't repay that person any more than you could repay her, but when she helped you she wiped out her debt. When you help someone, you'll wipe out yours. Possibly you already have-I have no way of knowing.
"I've tried once or twice, Caldé."
"You say you're not religious. Nor am I, though I was very religious not long ago. Because I'm not, I'm not going to say that this passing forward from one generation to the next is the method the gods have ordained for the settlement of such debts, though perhaps it is. In any event, it's a good one, one that lets people die, as everyone must, feeling that they've squared accounts with the whorl."
Maytera Marble said, "Perhaps he already has, Patera, by employing those boys."
Swallow shrugged. "They don't pay, and that's the truth. We pay a card a month, and they're not worth it to us. But we're not doing it from charity. We have to have them so they can learn the work. If we didn't, someday we'd need foundrymen and there wouldn't be any, no matter how much we offered."
"Then it was good of you to… Lay them off? Is that what you call it? So they could attend a palaestra. Because
I'd think that if you were teaching them, they'd be the last ones you'd want to send home."
"They were," Swallow told her shortly.
Chenille had been looking at the largest ladle Silk had ever seen, a great cup of scaly pottery large enough to hold a man. "Is this what you melt the iron in?"
"That's right." Swallow was himself again at once, brisk and all business. "It's heated in this brick furnace here." He went to it. "It burns charcoal with a forced draft, and it takes a lot. Those bunkers you saw against the wall where we came in were for sand. Every casting we make uses up a little, and they're our reserve. These bunkers hold charcoal and steel scrap. We fill up that crucible with scrap, lower it into the furnace, and put the lid on. When it's been in long enough, depending on how much scrap was in it, we lift it out the same way and pour."
A slightly smaller crucible stood on the other side of the brick furnace; reaching into it, Chenille displayed an irregular scab of shining yellow metal. "This looks almost like gold."
Oreb flew over for a closer inspection.
"It's brass," Swallow told her. "A talus's head requires some pretty complicated castings, and brass is easier to cast than iron, so we use that for the head."
Silk said, "Some taluses wear helmets, I've noticed, while others don't."
"The helmet's actually a part of the head," Swallow told him. "Or you could say it takes the place of the skullplate. Would you like helmets on the taluses we're going to build for the city? I can specify them in the contract."
"I don't know. I was wondering whether a helmet furnished better protection for the head." In his mind's eye, Silk saw the talus he had killed; the shimmering discontinuity that was the blade of the azoth he had thought Hyacinth's had struck it below the eye, vaporizing metal and inflicting a mortal wound.