2014 Campbellian Anthology

by Various

  “Thank you, Dr Whelar, you’ve been most illuminating.” I only said it to make him squirm. OK, and to stop him seeing that I’d just palmed one of the bullets.

  Chapter Four

  IT DIDN’T look like much from the outside. A tatty lock-up on the wrong level of town, just under one of the towering factories of Trade. The hustling thump of machinery drifted concrete dust down to mingle with the rain that fell on the Over-Traders, and us too, once it had gathered enough dirt along the way. Drips bounced from building to building, across gaps and walkways, feeling their way down, until they reached my neck. I flipped the collar of my coat against them, and against the all-pervasive factory thump that shook the bones; it succeeded in stopping neither.

  The tube that powered my scabby little carriage was the size of my hand, the shining element of yellowish-pink Glow a delicate filigree winding about inside. The ones that powered those factories above me were big as men, bigger, their elements twisted snakes as thick as my leg. Whole lines of them up there, side by side like monstrous fireflies lighting up the underside of Heights day and night, powering the power of Mahala—trade. The heart of our city has always been trade, ever since our sneaky-bastard warlord ancestor decided that this mountain pass was where he wanted to build a castle and strangle all the trade through it. Our strength, apart from the cunning position, is what we can invent and produce for the outside world, and we’re damn good at it. Being the middleman between two countries that loathe each other helps, too.

  So, just under Trade, beneath the factories that were the pumping heart of the city, their rumble echoing through every brick and girder and bone. This place wasn’t a factory. It was a shack with graffiti that would make a whore blush painted over the shutter. It looked derelict, as though the only thing holding the place together was the neighbouring buildings, to the sides, above and below. In the shuddering darkness, the shop hulked like a giant abandoned baby, unwanted, unloved. A classic case of appearances being deceiving. Yet if you knew just where to look…

  The bell-pull was disguised as a piece of chain that appeared to hold the door together. I made sure to avoid the myriad of traps that surrounded the shutter and doorway and gave the pull a yank.

  It didn’t take Dwarf long to answer. He wrenched open the door with a scowl that seemed to occupy his whole scrunched-up face.

  “What the fuck do you want?” This was a pleasant greeting by Dwarf’s standards. Then he saw who I was and dropped the act with a twisted grin that only served to make him look twice as ugly as the scowl. “Rojan, come in, come in.”

  I stepped through, ducking my head to avoid a string of cogs that Dwarf’s head cleared with ease. He walked with his odd, rolling gait down the narrow aisle between boxes of springs jingling from the shaking of the factory above and a consignment of sulphur that made my nose itch.

  Dwarf was well named. I’m pretty big, but he only came up to just above my elbow and was as wide as he was tall. His so-ugly-it was-attractive-in-a-weird-way face was mobile, lips and eyebrows and even nose seeming to mould to his mood or thought, so he had to exert a lot of effort to appear uninterested. He tried, though he’d never be better at dissembling than a five-year-old trying to con a sweet off their parent.

  We came to the main shop floor, a riot of bits of metal, odd gangly tools and chemicals I have no name for. Everything smelled of oil and sulphur and metal and—actually, I don’t know. I only know that no other place in Mahala was quite like it. It smelled of ingenuity, something that seemed to ooze from Dwarf like other men oozed sweat.

  Dwarf made himself comfortable in the tall chair behind his workbench and socketed a magnifying lens into his right eye. Something small and intricate lay in parts under a bright Glow globe. These bits alone in this place were perfectly still—: while the factory rumble made everything else shiver, the workbench was one of Dwarf’s masterpieces, and the surface stayed tranquil and motionless. He rubbed his fingers against his thumb, selected a minute screwdriver that looked even smaller in his fat, sausage fingers, and began to put whatever it was back together. “So, Rojan, what is it you’re after? You don’t like the pistol?”

  “It works all too well. I don’t like the pain, but that’s by-the-by. I want to know who made this, and who for.”

  I dropped the bullet into the circle of light on the bench. Dwarf didn’t move, still as stone for long heartbeats. Then his magnifying glass dropped out and he looked up at me beneath his beetling brows. “Rojan, you don’t want to get mixed up in this shit. I know you, and I promise you this will cause you more pain than you’ve ever known. Wave the bounty on this goodbye. I tell you this as a friend. You follow this, you’re going to find a lot of pain.”

  Not the best answer I could have had. “No bounty on this one. I need to know. Personal reasons. Family reasons.”

  He winced at that, his shoulders coming up as though to protect his neck. His rubbery face looked—well, it looked like an abused and incredibly ugly doll. But a scared one.

  Dwarf licked his lips and stared down at the mass of cogs and springs and other less identifiable bits of metal that were tumbled around his desk. “You know I made the bullets, you saw the mark. Sometimes—ah shit, Rojan, sometimes you just have to take the job, you know? I’ve got rent to pay, same as you, and I’m quite fond of my legs being both this shape and attached to my body. I didn’t ask what the bullets were going to be used for, I just made the damn things and was happy to have them out of my shop. This gun thing is Namrat’s invention, to be sure. No finesse, no style.”

  This from a man who had once theorised about a hand-held device for castration from a dozen paces away. “Not Namrat’s, my brother’s. And now someone’s abducted his daughter.”

  Dwarf stared down at his hard-bitten fingernails, but he said nothing. That was all I needed to know. Well, almost all.

  “Which branch of the Ministry was it?” And why was the Ministry getting Dwarf to make the bullets when they had plenty of their own smiths?

  He flicked me a look of absolute terror, one that made my balls shrivel. Dwarf wasn’t afraid of anyone that I’d ever seen, and I’ve seen some bad, bad people in his shop.

  “Rojan, I’m saying nothing. Nothing, you understand? I’ve got a family to—” He caught my eye and blushed, but he was still as stubborn, or as terrified, as ever. “OK, I got no family, I forgot who I was talking to, but I can’t say anything. Not if I want to live. It’s bad enough they’ll know you were here, if they find out what you’re after.”

  “All right, Dwarf. All right. I’ll leave you to your cogs. But I want a favour.”

  He looked up, half terrified still, half relieved. “Of course, of course. If I can, that is. Without losing my legs or any other vital pieces.”

  “Maybe you will and maybe you won’t. Depends whether the best—and most devious—alchemist I’ve ever seen comes to see you like I told her to. She’s fifteen and she almost killed me three times in one day.”

  Dwarf perked up immediately. “Fifteen, eh? A looker?”

  “You keep your hands to yourself, or I’ll use my pistol on you. A lot. In a certain area between your legs.”

  Dwarf held up his hands and chuckled in the filthiest way imaginable. “No, no, she’ll be safe with me. I like mine willing, and there’s precious few who’ll be that when they see my face. What did she use on you?”

  “Electricity.”

  He went very still apart from his eyes, which darted to and fro like wild animals in a cage. “Electricity, oh my boy, the things we could do. Consider her safe. What’s her name, so I’ll know her?”

  “Lise, and be sure to keep her secret till her birthday. Daddy is something high up, but he doesn’t know how to look for people. I don’t think he wants it broadcast that she keeps running away, so he won’t use anything official to find her. Three months till she’s sixteen. Deal?”

  Dwarf nodded, slow and thoughtful. “You think she’ll really come, and she’s really that good?”
/>
  “I’m surprised she’s not here already. And she’s damn good. Look at the hole she made in my coat.”

  “Then I owe you, and not just keeping her safe. The ’Pit. The bullets I made went down to the ’Pit, and don’t ask me how I know that, or tell anyone how you know.”

  The ’Pit? That was for corpses or those soon to be corpses. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask, but I’d pushed Dwarf as far as he could go. I knew Lise would come in handy for something other than making my day more interesting and way too painful. “Deal.”

  • • •

  I shook the rain from my coat and pushed open the door to the Beggar’s Roost, thinking dark thoughts about the synth levels in the falling water, almost fifteen years on from sealing the ’Pit. They said it was back at safe levels, but who knew for sure when it was the Ministry talking? There were still cases of synthtox down at Boundary, where the rain pooled before it drained away through the ’Pit. Where it looked like I might be headed.

  Synth; seeing Perak again had brought it all back, the way my, our, mother had died, when all I wanted to do was forget it. I concentrated on the task at hand instead and made for the bar, trying to ignore the dancers under the special Glow globes, lights more commonly known as Ten-Pinters, because they made the girls look as good as if you’d had that much to drink.

  Dench was nursing a pint at the end of the bar and eyeing up the dancers. He was a thick-set man in his fifties with a drooping, care-worn face and equally drooping moustache that belied an easygoing manner, especially with information. Today he had the frazzled air of someone with fifty things to do and only the time to do five.

  I took the seat next to him casually and he nodded, as though to someone he’d never met before who just happened to be there. He didn’t look at me after that, but stared vacantly at the dancers and mumbled over his glass like a drunk. I followed his lead and ran my eye over the girls.

  A place like this, they were likely either riddled with pox or hooked on Rapture. Spotting the junkies was easy—they moved with a languid grace, as though the world revolved at a different pace for them. The faces were blank of emotion, the drug sucking all feeling from them as surely as a knife drew blood. That was the attraction, of course, especially for girls in their profession. Don’t feel, don’t care, only survive. Make a hideous existence possible. If Lise ran away again and didn’t get under Dwarf’s friendly umbrella, this was probably what she had to look forward to. I’d been firm with Dwarf because I couldn’t leave anyone to that, even if they had tried to blow me up. The white and clammy underbelly of a pious city, where the shit falls to the bottom, quite literally.

  And the Ministry, the offices of the gods who keep those Over-Trade in chains of piety, let it happen. Why? Never quite figured that out.

  Of course, every now and again some starry-eyed acolyte will come down here to do Good Works and Save the Fallen. Most of them fall prey to a knife somewhere dark and fetid, followed by a judicious lifting of their purse. Some have such a crisis of faith, due to the fact that the Ministry haven’t sent these people to the ’Pit already for such crimes against the Goddess that they never believed were permitted, that they go mad. Some succumb to the Rapture, especially the acolytes that go mad. Occasionally we actually get a good one, one who accepts things as they are and tries to help. They do some good too. And hey, guess what? The Ministry “promotes” them in order to stop it. The Ministry like us down here, wallowing in shit. I think it makes them feel better about themselves. More pious or something.

  Maybe I should cheer up. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be incredibly rich and handsome, but I doubt that’ll happen either.

  Dench straightened up a tad, drained his drink and nodded at the steward for more beer. Once he’d skimmed the froth by sucking it through his moustache, an act that always made me feel vaguely sick, he started talking, low, almost as though he was still mumbling to himself.

  “I’ve got no leads to speak of. Been a few of these kidnappings lately, and I can never find who did it. You know what it’s like. The only thing I did find out, I don’t have time to follow it up. Won’t lead to anything anyway. Never does, cases like this.”

  Code for “I’m not allowed to look into this too far” maybe. The Ministry paid his wages, and sometimes, just sometimes, they don’t want people caught. Not Ministry people, anyway.

  “And just what was that only thing?” I mumbled over my own beer without looking at him. He spluttered at the bald question so I placated him as best I could. “All I want to do is help you out here. I can take a load off you. One less case for you to worry about.”

  He gave me a sour, disbelieving glare from under bushy grey eyebrows. “Two guys, similar to the description the husband gave. Stayed down in Boundary, night before she got taken. Boarding-house owner complained because they didn’t pay up.”

  “Two guys who can afford to be dressed all in leather, they stay down there, and give themselves away because they don’t pay? Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

  His face became guarded and pinched. “Yes. And no.”

  Three words that spoke volumes to me. Told me—again—that the Ministry were wrapped up in this somehow and Dench didn’t like it one little bit. And that was all I could get out of him.

  • • •

  I didn’t bother going home. My rooms would be covered in paint, because Sela was a girl of her word, and I was too tired to clean up now. When I left the Beggar’s Roost I threaded my way through the dark, rotting alleys and up dank stairwells towards the office. At least down here, a mere few storeys above the bottom of Boundary, the walkways didn’t bother me so much. Besides, moonlight never made it down this far, sucked up by the godly folk above us, so I couldn’t see how far it was to fall.

  The little temple stood open as I passed, sandwiched between a brothel and an apothecary that only ever had two herbs in stock, and those were both best for cooking. The priest here was one of the better ones, but I ignored his call to join in prayers. Temples held no interest for me, not any more. I watched the poor deluded fools going into a bland, whitewashed box instead of the temples we used to have, before Ministry tightened the strings on our souls, before they got rid of anything remotely joyful. It had been a slow, insidious path from the glorious Ministry revolution, saving us from the corrupt mage King, to this. At first they’d been benevolent dictators. One little step at a time, but all those little steps over decades added up to total control of mind and body.

  It had started when the synthtox came, when the Ministry knew it had fucked up and a slow wave of hatred had moved up from Boundary. They’d stamped on it, but made it seem like it was for our own good. It started with the banning of any song lyrics that weren’t hymns, to protect people, to let them know only faith. Then the changes in the prayers. The proliferation of these soulless buildings that masqueraded as temples, robbed of the grandeur, the serenity, the peace they had once had, even when I was a boy. Before the synth ruined everything, scarred a generation with loss and grief, where most everyone under Trade had known and lost someone to the synth, or the sealing of the ’Pit. It had started with one little step, and ended with this.

  They tried to keep up the pretence, but religious men in the Ministry now were few and far between. There was a flurry of activity in the temple, a poor and spartan thing compared to those I’d gone to as a child. No stained glass to strain the faint sun and paint rainbows on the floor. No incense, no choir, no pomp. No tranquillity.

  I’d call the people entering “worshippers” for want of a better word—most of them only went in to get out of the rain. But they gave thanks, Goddess knows what for, poor bastards, and they gave alms. They never wondered, never thought that they were the ones who needed the alms. In the churches Over, no bastard gives a lousy coin. These fools gave because then they were better, weren’t so low they couldn’t afford a bit of charity. It was a piss-poor way to feel better about yourself, and I couldn’t even bring myself to do that any more. />
  I made it on to the wider walkway that fronted the office, avoided the homeless man slumped in his usual spot outside the All Night Flash Fry Grill, spouting some claptrap about the end of the world, and unlocked the door. The office was lit, which seemed odd given that it was somewhere between midnight and dawn. Dendal sat at his desk, papers skewed across it every which way, scribbling something in crabbed handwriting that might as well be code. I shut the door quietly so as not to disturb him and padded across to my own desk.

  We kept a large sofa behind it, jammed against the wall between the spare chair and a stuffed tiger that Dendal refused to throw away, even after moths had mauled it so badly you couldn’t tell the colour any more. I took off my knee-length coat, eyed the new burn hole sourly, rolled it into a soggy ball for a pillow and lay down on the sofa with a sigh. It had been a long, extremely trying day and I had a lot to puzzle over before I could start seeing about finding Amarie. I needed sleep first, because exhaustion and beer were fuddling my brain. The sofa wasn’t long enough to stretch out on, so I propped my feet on the tiger’s head, wriggled my shoulders and shut my eyes.

  “So, you’re going to the ’Pit in the morning then.” Dendal’s voice was right by my ear; I’d never even heard him coming. I jumped half off the sofa before I realised it was him.

  “Namrat take you for his bitch, Dendal. Don’t do that.”

  He sat on the chair by my desk and gave me a wild grin. “But I like doing it. Take your great filthy feet off Griswald. Thank you. Now, you’re going to the ’Pit, yes?”

  “Maybe. And how do you know about it anyway?” Stupid question. Though he had other, more shadowy talents, the bulk of his magic—his Major—was communication and knowing things, just as my Major was finding people who didn’t want to be found, with the occasional flare—my Minor—of making my face look different, though I don’t use that part too often. It isn’t especially useful except for pissing people off. “OK, wrong question. Why do you want to know?”