by James Enge
“Never mind it, old friend,” said Morlock, and Hlupnafenglu tugged playfully on Hrutnefdhu's ear.
Apetown looked busier than Dogtown, anyway. The ground floor of many a tower was given over to workshops of craftsmen: cobblers, smiths, glass blowers, bakers, butchers, launderers.
“Hands,” said Morlock aloud. He had been trying to settle in his mind the difference between Dogtown and Apetown, and he realized it all came down to hands.
Hlupnafenglu looked bemused, but Hrutnefdhu instantly understood him. “Yes, you're right. It's a more prosperous place: there's more work people can do. It may not be work that gains anyone great bite, but it's work that other people will pay to have done.”
“And when the sun goes down—”
“Yes, the shutters will drop here. Dogtown is livelier then. There's singing and shows. And if you want a thug for hire, you go to Dogtown, day or night.”
They walked on through the warm hazy morning.
When they left the rumble of Apetown behind them, they came to a wide-open space between the brooding hulk of Mount Dhaarnaiarnon and the staggered cliff sides of Wuruyaaria. It was paved in stones that alternated black and white in no clear pattern. It was cut off from direct sunlight, and would be until the sun rose considerably higher in the murky sky.
“Here we are,” said the pale werewolf. He looked around the Shadow Market, and his face twisted with annoyance. “Not too many vendors, and some of them I know are quacks.”
Morlock was looking, too. At a booth near the market entrance, a male with the torso of a young boy and the limbs and face of a young wolf was having his ears pinched by a long-nosed saturnine male with a gray gown and a conical cap adorning his day shape. A mature female, perhaps the boy's mother, was standing over them; she was fully human except for her long lupine jaws and somewhat hairy face. She was asking in Moonspeech how much the fee would be and the vendor was asking in Sunspeech how she proposed to pay.
In the next space over, a wolf-faced young man with immaculately styled hair was listening to a group of young women in the day shape sing a song in Moonspeech. If a wolf face can look dubious, he looked dubious. Morlock was no judge of songs in Moonspeech, but he thought he had heard some broken notes.
Next over was a booth full of red-ribboned scrolls and velvet-bound books. Its vendor was a male with a wolf's body, human hands and feet, and a droopy semihuman face.
“I'll just step over and have a word with Liuunurriu, there,” the pale werewolf said. “He doesn't like strangers, and it wouldn't do to look too interested so…”
Morlock nodded, and he and Hlupnafenglu drifted in the other direction.
“I think I remember Apetown,” said the red werewolf abstractedly, after a few moments. “I don't remember the looks, but I remember the feel. Always hurry, hurry, hurry and fetch the bones. Fetch the bones; fetch the bones.”
Morlock said nothing.
“Fetch the bones,” Hlupnafenglu repeated again. “Why would people want bones?”
“For marrow,” Morlock suggested. “Or soup.”
“Soup!” shouted the red werewolf. “There was a great vat of it in the middle of the hut! And a great fat female who kept telling me, ‘Fetch the bones, yuh-yuh…. Fetch the bones, yuh-yuh….' And she said my name. Only I don't remember it now.”
“You may yet.”
“I hated her. I don't remember her name, but I remember the hate. I don't think she was my mother. I hated the bones, too. The stinking stupid bones. That was why. That was why. There was no soup that day. No soup, sir. No soup, ma'am. Take your no-soup and swim in it!”
The more the red werewolf remembered the angrier he seemed to get. Morlock found this interesting, but not so interesting that he failed to notice someone trying to unfasten his money pouch from his belt, craftily reaching under his left arm. He grabbed the pickpocket's extended fingers with his right hand and twisted.
The pickpocket, a strikingly flat-faced young male, screamed and fell sprawling on the ground. He had been standing unbalanced, and he didn't know enough to not draw attention when he was caught. All this marked him as an inept and inexperienced thief—which was in his favor, as far as Morlock was concerned. So Morlock released his fingers without breaking them.
His reward for this was a reproachful glare from the clumsy pickpocket as he lay on the black-and-white pavement. “You broke my fingers,” he wailed, rubbing his left hand furiously with his right.
“No,” said Morlock. “But I can, if you insist.”
“I told you, Snellingu,” said a white-haired male standing nearby, wearing dark armor with the Wuruyaaria ideogram. “Pickpocket.”
“Snatch-and-grab, snatch-and-grab,” irritably replied another watcher (evidently Snellingu) with a long scar on his face that cut across his lips. “You see so stupid he is being. He's being no sort of pickpocket. He's grabbing someone's cash box by now if you didn't have keep staring at him. And you are expecting me paying off the bet.”
“Listen, it's my job to keep an eye on the criminal element.”
“That's why you keep to be visiting your father's sister on nights-with-no-moon. We all are hearing about her criminal element, if you're getting my drift.”
“I do not get your drift, and you still owe me breakfast.”
“You have be owing me breakfast three half-months straight and bent.”
“Minus today's. That's what I'm saying. Hey, don't let him get away, Chief.”
“I'm not your chief,” Morlock replied. “And he can go where he likes.”
The young male, scrambling to his feet, glared suspiciously at Morlock.
“I like that!” said the white-haired watcher. “We come here to defend you from this dangerous criminal and you—”
“Take him and bake him,” said Morlock. “But not on my evidence. The young citizen tripped and fell.”
“No pickpocket!” said scar-faced Snellingu, catching on suddenly. “The citizen is saying so! And thus I am owing you jack-minus-jack and you owing me breakfast, today, tomorrow, some more days.”
“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 scarecrow 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, Iacomes.”
“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, Iacomes Saxiponderis, made this prison. Sorry about that, prisoner.'”
“Oh.” Iacomes 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 per
fect, 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?” Iacomes 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,” Iacomes 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?” Iacomes 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,” Iacomes 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.