Distopia (Land of Dis)

by Robert Kroese

  “This is all highly irregular,” he said, shaking his head. “Central doesn’t have the authority to send a new clerk without my approval. No, something is off here.” His hand clutched the hilt of his rapier. “Who are you, really?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have time to go over this all with you again, Lord Popper,” said Evena. “Fedric and I have work to do. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “You’re asking me to leave?” exclaimed Popper. “I’m the guildmaster! You can’t ask me to leave. No, I’m sorry, Miss. You’re quite charming, but I don’t believe for a moment you’re from the Guild Central Headquarters. You’re far too young, and your accent is decidedly not of Dissian origin.” He drew his rapier and held the tip of the blade a few inches from Evena’s throat. “You have five seconds to tell me who you really are, and what you’ve done with Halbert. If I believe you, I might let you live.”

  While pretending to be engrossed in the papers on the desk, Wyngalf moved his hand surreptitiously to the hilt of his own sword. He didn’t think Popper had noticed he was wearing one, as his coat covered the hilt and the scabbard was hidden by the desk. He doubted he was a match for an aristocrat who had undoubtedly received combat training as part of his primary education, but if he could surprise Popper while he was preoccupied with Evena, they might have a chance.

  But Evena evidently had something else in mind. “These matters don’t concern you, Fedric!” she snapped. “You can be replaced as easily as Halbert, you know. Now focus on your work. That ship will leave on time.”

  Stunned, Wyngalf dropped his hand to his side. “Yes, Ma’am,” he found himself saying. “Er, Lady Herringbone.” Nothing to do now but hope that Evena knew what she was doing. Wyngalf went back to shuffling papers.

  “You can drop the supercilious act,” said Popper, to Evena. “This man is no more clerk than I am. Let me guess: you’re a couple of traveling con artists, and you somehow managed to convince Halbert to leave his post so that you could clear out the strongbox. But I came along just in time to foil your plan.”

  “Yes,” said Evena. “That’s exactly right. And before we robbed you, we decided to really stick it to you by updating your antiquated filing system. Now if you’re through making spurious allegations, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  Popper stood open-mouthed for a minute, the point of his rapier wavering near Evena’s chest. Wyngalf, still pretending to be engrossed in the papers, watched him out of the corner of his eye. He wasn’t sure if Popper was actually beginning to doubt himself or if he was simply stunned at Evena’s gall. After some time, the guildmaster spoke.

  “Who is the governor general of the shipmaster’s guild in Vardis?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at Evena.

  Evena sighed. “Please, Lord Popper,” she said. “I understand your desire to fulfill your due diligence regarding this office, but we really don’t have time for these sorts of games. Perhaps once the Numinda Fae is on its way to—”

  “Answer the question!” snapped Popper. “If you’re from Central, it should be no trouble for you at all.” When Evena hesitated, he grinned. “Just one simple little question. Then you can go back to work.”

  Evena shook her head. “I don’t know why I subject myself to this,” she said. “I really don’t. I could have taken a cushy job at Central, but instead I spend my time traveling on creaky old ships to backwater ports like this one to try to make sure all the guilds are within three iterations of the current Tabaka protocols. And what thanks do I get? A rapier pointed at my throat.” She glared at Popper, but the point of his blade didn’t move. She sighed again. “If you must know, the current governor general at Vardis is Iliana Pravis.”

  “Ha!” cried Popper. “Nice try, but I’m afraid you’re wrong. The current governor general is my brother-in-law, Bander Willshott of Breem. Alright, outside, both of you. I’d rather not get blood all over the floor of the guild office.”

  Wyngalf sighed and set down the papers. The jig was up. They’d come all this way only to be murdered by a petty aristocrat with a chip on his shoulder.

  Eleven

  Wyngalf began to shuffle toward the door, but Evena didn’t move. She shook her head again and chuckled.

  “Your imminent death amuses you?” said the guildmaster.

  “No,” said Evena. “I’m amused by your lack of familiarity with guild politics, not to mention developments of note within your own family.”

  Popper scowled at her. “What in Dis are you talking about?”

  “Again,” said Evena. “I’m not surprised the news never reached you, given Halbert’s ‘system.’ Wyngalf, could you please hand me the interoffice bulletin from a fortnight ago.”

  Wyngalf nodded, and his eyes fell to the stacks of paper with their indecipherable markings. For a moment, he stood there, frozen.

  “Third stack from your left,” said Evena. “It’ll be the eighth document down.”

  Wyngalf riffled though the stack until he reached the eighth sheet of paper.

  “Hand it to Lord Popper, if you please,” said Evena.

  Wyngalf did so. The guildmaster took the sheet with his left hand, still scowling at Evena. “What is this?” he sniffed. “Some sort of….” He trailed off, studying the document. “By Varnoth’s eyes, my brother-in-law has been replaced!”

  “Suspected embezzlement,” she said. “He was relieved of his position three weeks ago. Iliana Pravis was elected to replace him in a special meeting of the guild council. I’m a bit surprised you didn’t hear about it from Willshott himself, but his silence on the matter may be a result of his cooperation with the guild’s ongoing investigation.”

  “Investigation?” said Popper, looking up from the paper with a somewhat dazed expression on his face. “What are you talking about?”

  “I can’t speak to the details,” said Evena, “but you can see why the council would want to limit Willshott’s communications with others who may have been involved in the conspiracy.”

  “Conspiracy!” the guildmaster cried, letting his rapier fall to his side. “What are you saying? The guild suspects me of being involved in my brother-in-law’s crimes?”

  “As I said, I can’t speak to the details,” Evena replied. “Suffice it to say that threatening a guild representative with a rapier is unlikely to reflect well on you in the eyes of the council.”

  “What?” cried Popper. “No! I wasn’t threatening you!” He hurriedly sheathed his sword. “That is, I was acting in what I assumed were the best interests of the guild. I thought you were con artists out to rob us!”

  “Or perhaps you knew exactly who we are, but you were worried about what we found in Halbert’s files,” said Evena.

  “No, no, no!” Popper exclaimed. “I mean, if there’s anything improper in that paperwork, it’s all on Halbert. The man was woefully incompetent. Why, I was going to fire him myself. That’s why I’m here, actually. I don’t know about anything in those files. That is, obviously I’m familiar with the business. What I mean is that I’m unaware of any improprieties. Of which I’m sure there are none. You didn’t, ah, find any, did you? Improprieties, that is?”

  “Scads of them,” said Evena, and Popper cringed. She let him worry for a moment before continuing: “But so far they seem to be explainable by Halbert’s incompetence. The only thing causing me to suspect you of complicity in Willshott’s crimes is your continued interference in our work.”

  “Interference?” said Popper. “Am I interfering? No, far from it! I was merely attempting to ensure that everything was running smoothly. But you clearly have everything under control.”

  “That we do,” said Evena coldly. “Now if you don’t mind, we have a ship to load.”

  “Very good!” Popper exclaimed. “Then if there’s nothing else, I’ll be on my way.”

  “Nothing else at this time, Lord Popper. I’d appreciate it if you could swing by in the morning to make sure Fedric has everything he needs. I’ll be leaving for Brob
dingdon on the Numinda Fae.”

  “So soon?” asked Popper, whose demeanor toward Evena had changed completely. “You just got here. I’d be much obliged if you could stay a bit longer. I’ve been trying to get this office in shape for years, but Halbert, you know… he was quite hopeless. But together, you and I could turn this office into the jewel of the Guild’s operations on the coast. With my vision and your administrative prowess, we’d be quite the team. Perhaps over dinner….”

  “That sounds lovely,” said Evena. “But I’m afraid I have pressing business awaiting in Bjill. We’re looking at a pumice miner strike up there.”

  “Good heavens,” said Popper. “That sounds dreadful. Those pumice miners are rough people. If you need an armed escort, I’d be quite willing to accompany you.” He patted the rapier hilt at his belt.

  “That’s very kind,” said Evena, “but unnecessary. Besides, I need you to keep an eye on Fedric here. He has quite a knack for details, but he lacks your capacity of visionary thinking. I’ll be returning in six weeks to make sure things are running smoothly, and—assuming you and Fedric have things well in hand by that time—I’d be more than happy to meet with you to discuss your ideas for improving this office.”

  “Wonderful!” exclaimed Popper. “Well, I’ll leave you to it, then. Good day to you, m’lady.” He bowed slightly and then turned to Wyngalf, who was still absently thumbing through papers. “Shape up, Fedric!” Popper snapped. “Lady Herringbone and I will broach no lollygagging!” He grinned ingratiatingly at Evena, and she managed to affect a reasonably convincing facsimile of a smile back at him. He turned and exited the office, closing the door behind him.

  “Tell me, Wyngalf,” said Evena, watching though the window as Popper trotted self-importantly back down the dock, “does your religion teach that every being in creation serves some purpose?”

  “Of course,” said Wyngalf. “Everything must work together to further the purposes of the Divine Noninity.”

  “And what purpose does someone like Lord Otten Popper serve?”

  Wyngalf thought for a moment. “Well,” he said at last, “the purpose isn’t always immediately evident.”

  “You know what I think?” said Evena. “I think some people don’t have any purpose. I think God made a mistake, and then tried to cover it up by calling those people aristocrats. Someday people are going to realize that the nobility aren’t actually good for anything, and a lot of noblemen are going to lose their heads.”

  Wyngalf frowned at the blasphemy, but he couldn’t help sympathizing with the sentiment. “‘Never underestimate the resilience of useless men,’” he said.

  “What’s that?” Evena asked.

  “One of the pagan thinkers I read in the stronghold library,” said Wyngalf. “Poltec the Cynic. He taught that every civilization requires a class of useless people to remind itself that humanity’s ultimate struggle is not against evil, but against utter pointlessness. So you see, Popper does serve a purpose. He exists so that you and I will wonder why he exists.”

  “That’s stupid,” said Evena.

  “Yes,” Wyngalf agreed. “Poltec wrote his Treatise on the Useless Class while working in middle management at a brand image consulting firm. It was only upon finishing it that he realized he had done no actual work for six years. He hung himself shortly after the treatise was published.”

  “What’s ‘middle management’?” asked Evena, furrowing her brow. “And what’s a ‘brand image consulting firm’?”

  “Alas,” said Wyngalf. “The answers to those questions are lost to history. So what was all that business about a conspiracy involving Popper’s brother-in-law? How did you know all that?”

  “Oh,” said Evena with a sheepish smile. “I saw something about Bander Willshott being replaced as governor general of the shipping guild by Iliana Pravis. The rest of it was improvisation.”

  “But… that’s amazing,” said Wyngalf. “You happened to read that one bulletin out of all this stuff, and you remembered the details with such precision. And then you were able to fabricate a story to fool Popper!”

  Evena shrugged. “I could recite the contents of every document on that desk,” she said, “and tell you exactly where each of them is. It’s a gift. The first time I recited a six-page shipping manifest from memory, my father summoned a priest to perform an exorcism. Fortunately his business sense kicked in when the priest demanded fifty gold pieces for the operation. He decided it was more cost-effective to put my demonic talents to work for him in his office. I was basically running the place by the time I was twelve. Of course, grownups don’t like taking orders from twelve-year-olds, so the ship captains and warehouse foremen were always trying to trip me up. I had to always look like I knew what I was doing, even if I didn’t. I found that even if I didn’t know something, I could usually fake it until I figured it out. I got pretty good at bluffing. After a while, they gave up trying to stump me. Which was too bad, in a way, because it was the only real challenge that job offered. I could run my father’s business in my sleep.”

  Wyngalf stared at her, trying to determine if she was putting him on. He decided she couldn’t be; there was no other way to explain her performance with Lord Popper. “That’s why you stowed away,” he said. “I thought you were just a spoiled kid. No wonder you were bored.”

  “Boredom doesn’t even begin to describe it,” said Evena. “I’m good at keeping track of details. That doesn’t mean I enjoy it. I craved novelty and excitement, but every day it was more shipping logs, inventory lists, and price matrices. Meanwhile, I met almost every day with ship captains who had traveled many leagues up and down the coast and experienced all manner of adventures. Probably many of their stories were embellished, if not completely fabricated, but that didn’t lessen their appeal. I’d been planning to stow away eventually for months, and when you showed up with your divine mission, I decided it was time. And so here we are.”

  “Trying to get you back home,” added Wyngalf.

  “Circumstances have changed,” said Evena.

  Wyngalf nodded. “Indeed they have. So what do we do now?”

  “We get that ship loaded,” said Evena. “And then I get on it and head north to Brobdingdon.”

  They spent the rest of the day coordinating the unloading and loading of the ship. That is, Evena coordinated it; Wyngalf was reduced to barking orders at the puzzled dock workers. The foreman at first resisted their efforts to take control of the situation, but it very quickly became painfully evident that Evena was miles ahead of him in her understanding of logistics, and the workers were so desperate for firm leadership and frustrated with their lack of progress (the cargo that had been loaded onto the ship so far turned out to be almost entirely the same cargo that had been unloaded an hour earlier), that it took very little prompting to coax them into tossing the foreman into the bay. Fortunately, as his pockets were not filled with gold coins, he was able to swim away with nothing injured but his pride. Halbert the clerk, sadly, still had not resurfaced.

  For all the incompetence of the management, though, Wyngalf was amazed at the volume and variety of goods that moved through the port of Skaal. This one ship contained textiles made from Peraltian wool in the mills of Brobdingdon, crates of pumice from Bjill, animal hides originating from the Vorgal territories far to the north, salt from the Trynsvaan, knickknacks produced by the gnomes of Swarnholme, and a dozen other sorts of cargo. These would be unloaded and replaced with fruits and nuts from the vast orchards to the east of Skaal, spices from as far away as Churesh, ceramics and jewelry from Avaress, and cured meats butchered in Skaal City from the herds of cattle that roamed the plains to the southeast.

  Once the ship was emptied and the loading process seemed to be going more-or-less smoothly, Wyngalf took a step back to marvel at the assortment of goods being delivered to Brobdingdon, from whence it would be distributed throughout Ytrisk.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” asked Evena, coming up next to him. “The mach
ine runs pretty well when you replace the stuck gears. It’s a tribute to the guild’s organization, really. Even having complete idiot in charge of the operation for Grovlik-knows-how-long didn’t do any serious damage. Remove the idiot, apply a little common sense, and goods begin to flow freely again. It makes me wish we had something like the shipping guild back home. On the Jagged Coast, every city manages its own trade, and there’s very little communication between the ports. We could greatly benefit from more coordination among the ports, but the local authorities in each town are more concerned with holding onto what power they have than increasing trade.”

  “Hmm,” said Wyngalf, nodding. There was something bothering him, though. “I can’t help thinking that Skaal City would be better off if it didn’t send all these riches away to Brobdingdon. Can’t the people here use meats and spices?”

  “Of course,” said Evena. “But the idea is that Skaal benefits more from sending these goods to Brobdingdon than Brobdingdon benefits by sending its goods here. If the Skaal authorities play their cards right, they’ll still get the better of Brobdingdon.”

  “Ah,” said a voice from behind them. “Mercantilism.” They turned to see Tobalt, who had sneaked up behind them.

  “Excuse me?” said Evena.

  “You’re evincing the central tenet of mercantilism, which views international trade as a zero-sum game,” said Tobalt. “Although it clearly is not.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Evena, raising her eyebrow at Tobalt. “Are you claiming to know more about the shipping business than I do?”

  “My apologies,” said Tobalt, with a slight bow. “I make no such claim, and apologize for giving you that impression. Your expertise in the finer points of the business clearly outstrips my amateur understanding by a fair margin. I meant only to correct one minor point, which is that speaking in macroeconomic terms, mercantilism is a misguided ideology, as it assumes that in any voluntary transaction between two powers, there is, to put the matter bluntly, a winner and a loser. Trade in such a scheme becomes, therefore, a zero-sum game, the goal of which becomes to get the better of one’s adversary. It is, sadly, this sort of misguided thinking that leads inevitably to the situation that you described as being endemic to the Jagged Coast: an unwillingness to expand trade out of fear of one’s fellows getting the upper hand. My theory is that this dynamic in human affairs is a holdover from prehistoric times, when cooperative arrangements were limited in scope to one’s one tribe or clan. As evidence of this, I present my own race: unable to cooperate on a large scale, goblins subsist by waylaying travelers and raiding the settlements of more developed races. Yet it is this same inability to cooperate in groups larger than a single clan that will be our undoing. Humans, able to take advantage of a much greater pool of talents and resources, gradually displace us with their superior technology and long-term strategic thinking. The process is slow, but I’m afraid that ultimately my race is doomed unless we can learn to adapt. And with few exceptions, goblins aren’t much for learning.”