Kham found her babbling unsettling, but he couldn't afford to let it show. The scuzboys were staring at her like she was their mama, and he noticed that each of them wore a silvered rat skull on a chain around his neck. They were hers, all right. Kham tried to be cool. "Don't know what you're talking about. I heard a chummer was having some trouble."
"You say he's your chummer, you the one gonna have some trouble," Adam said. "We give you the same treatment we gonna give him. But we gonna let you watch what we do to him so you'll know what we gonna do to you."
The scuzboy started forward and Kham dropped into a ready stance. Scatter slipped back between them and the scuzboy jerked back. Kham thought he saw a flicker of fear in the scuzboy's eyes when he looked at the rat shaman.
"No," Scatter said. "This is not a gutter matter. Take the breeder down to City Hall."
"Aw. no!" Adam protested. "He hurt Cholly and Akira!"
Scatter straightened, drawing herself to her full diminutive stature. Her hunched-forward head didn't turn. Though she continued to stare at Kham, there was no doubt she addressed the scuzboy. "A complaint. I thought I heard a complaint."
"No, Scatter," the scuzboy said quickly. "I ain't complaining. We'll do like you say. Right, guys?"
His companions nodded in agreement, and the scuzboys backed away a few steps before turning and hurrying to the now-struggling catboy. The smallest scuzboy lifted a paw to cuff Neko into submission, but was forestalled by a shrill cry from the rat shaman. "And no more damage to him!"
Kham saw Neko smile before planting a kick into the midriff of the one who had been about to cuff him. The ork yelped.
"Unless he resists," Scatter added.
Neko stopped resisting and submitted to being roughly helped to his feet. Wise, Kham thought as they led the catboy away. Scatter tugging on his arm, Kham followed. Ratstomper was nowhere to be seen.
* * *
The series of chambers called "city hall" was hardly what a topsider would recognize as government offices, but in the Underground they served. The reinforced walls and occasional weapon emplacement made it look like an armed camp. Knots of heavily armed orks congregated here and there, staring openly at the small procession, but the only time the ragtag parade was stopped was before a pair of large, ironbound doors. The squad of trolls stationed there were obviously familiar with Scatter and the scuzboys, but they showed the shaman none of the deference the orks did. She almost lost her temper before they agreed to let her pass alone. It was only a few minutes before she returned and led the procession into a huge chamber lit poorly by scattered fixtures. At the far end of the room was a stepped platform, surmounted by a large chair that rose like a king's throne.
The chair was occupied.
As they marched the length of the hall, the man on the throne rose, but he did not face them. Instead he stared off to one side. Kham glanced in that direction and saw a group of women tending a gaggle of young orks. Across the hail was another group of armed orks. Both clumps were out of earshot of the throne, but they would be able to see everything that went on.
The big ork on the platform was more hunched than usual for his metatype, but the effect was one of coiled power rather than of bowed weakness. A cloak trimmed with human and metahuman scalps hung over those shoulders and concealed his body, but there could be no doubt that the hidden body was powerful. His head was large and his bald pate covered with warts. As they halted, he regarded them sidewise with one narrowed green eye for a minute before turning full-face to them. His other eye—blue, larger, and set at least a centimeter higher than the green one—opened as he turned. When he spoke, his voice was deep, resonant, and had the ring of authority.
"Why are you here?"
A grinning Scatter turned to Kham, but he decided that he wouldn't give her any satisfaction. Hoping his voice would stay steady, he said, "Hello. Harry."
"Hello, Kham," the ork with the mismatched eyes said softly.
The big scuzboy exchanged confused and worried glances with his fellows. "You know this topsider, Harry?"
"Yes, Adam, I know him. He's my grandson."
14
The scuzboys left in short order as soon as they untied Neko. The Green Band might have connections with Harry, but scuzboys knew families came before gangs. They wouldn't be getting their piece of Neko. At least not for a while.
Scatter was less polite. Without invitation, she followed as Harry led them to a small private chamber behind the throne, settling down on the floor by Harry's side after he took a seat in a battered but well-upholstered chair. Everyone remained quiet while an old ork woman brought in a tray of refreshments.
Kham recognized her and his stomach clenched. When she offered him the tray, he was careful not to look at her face. Any other time the selection of treats would have been appetizing, but just now even his old favorite, fried cockroaches, made his stomach turn. The old woman moved on, allowing Neko to make a selection. Kham stood awkwardly before the chair, keeping his eyes on Harry and waiting for the old man to speak first. Harry downed a few of the treats and accepted a cup from the old woman before he spoke.
Gesturing toward Neko with his cup, Harry said, "This is your friend, Kham. Are you going to vouch for him?"
Kham nodded slowly. "Yeah, I guess so."
"You remember what that means down here?"
"Yeah."
"Does your friend know?"
"I'll tell him."
Harry said nothing for a while, and Kham began to wonder if he was waiting for Kham to explain the situation to Neko. If he was, he'd have a long wait. A lot of what Kham would tell the catboy about local customs wouldn't be politic to say here in Harry's office. Fortunately, Neko held back his usual fragging curiosity and kept quiet. Maybe there was something to be said for Japanese manners after all. Finally Harry spoke again.
"You came back, but you didn't come to see us."
That was so obvious Kham didn't bother to answer. What was he going to say, anyway? Harry's stare made him nervous.
"Something is bothering you, Kham, and it's not just whether this norm's gonna play by the rules. You wanta talk about it?"
Kham shuffled his feet, feeling his usual embarrassment before Harry. The old ork always made Kham feel like a pup. The foot-shuffling trick was something he thought had been left behind when he'd left the Underground. Angry at himself for falling back into it, he forced himself to stand still. Squaring his shoulders, he said, "Maybe. Don't wanta interrupt anyting, dough. Ya got lotsa stuff ta do. Maybe some odder time when ya ain't so busy."
Harry gave him a hard look, then drained his cup. "I may not go topside," he said, balancing the empty vessel on the arm of his chair, "but I've got ears up there. It was your hall that burned. The 'bodies' of you and your crew that were found. I don't have to work hard to guess that this breeder is the 'young norm' whose body was found in your hall."
"If ya know everyting, ya don't need me ta tell ya about it."
"You're wrong, Kham." Harry leaned forward. "I do need you to talk to me. If you're bringing trouble down here, I need to know everything you know about it."
"The fix is in. Ain't gonna be no heat."
"You're sure?"
Kham shrugged an answer.
Harry frowned for a moment then turned to Neko. "Say, kid. . . ."
"Neko," the catboy impudently prompted.
Harry frowned, caught off-guard.
"Call me Neko."
"Awright, kid, have it your way. Down here I can afford to be polite. This is my place, you know, and here the orks are in charge. Your kind doesn't belong here."
"I believe that I have been so informed," Neko said, pointedly rubbing at a developing bruise on his face. "I have been introduced to your hospitality."
"Oh, don't we sound annoyed." Harry chuckled, then called for more drink. The old woman brought him a refill and took a place on the side away from Scatter, settling down by Harry's chair and resting her head against the arm. Harry took
a draught and said, "Well, I've had experience with your kind's hospitality, too."
Neko placidly stared at the darkness behind Harry. Scatter spoke up. "He thinks of himself as different from other norms."
Harry squinted at the rat shaman. "Does he now? Maybe he thinks he's not only different, but better."
"They usually do," Scatter said bitterly.
Harry harrumphed and redirected his gaze to Neko. "How old am I, kid Neko?"
Neko looked at him and shook his head slightly. "I do not know that much about orks."
"Guess."
Neko glanced to Kham in a silent appeal for help. Kham looked away, unwilling to get involved. If Neko thought Kham was abandoning him, tough. The catboy would get over it. The lack of support obviously didn't faze Neko, for the catboy spoke to Harry at once.
"You look younger than some of the orks I have seen here. That woman, for example," Neko said, nodding at the one who had served them. "You do not look that much older than Kham, but I know you are, therefore I am confused. Your familiarity with Scatter suggests that you might be of an age with her. Forty years perhaps?"
"Ain't surprised you can't tell." Harry reached a hand down to stroke the gray hair of the woman at his side. "This woman is Sarah, my daughter and Kham's mother. Hard to believe, ain't it? Gray hair, bent back, palsy—used up by the world and bent by the weight of time. Like most orks her age, she's burnt out, a cinder."
Harry paused. "She's not even thirty-five years old."
Neko stared at Sarah. The old woman looked back with rheumy eyes and smiled, showing the gaps in her yellowed teeth. Kham had to turn away from his mother. He wanted to remember her the way she had been. Looking at her now made that too hard; she was just too old.
"Appalling, isn't it?" Harry asked Neko.
"Age comes to everyone," Neko said quietly. "But if you are her father, why are you not more aged than she?"
Harry laughed. "Me? Me, I'm special. I wasn't always an ork; but then I guess I always was, or I wouldn't be now. That didn't make much sense, did it? I may not be burned out, but I ain't young either, and sometimes I get a bit confused. I'm not immortal, after all. And, like you said, sooner or later we all do have to pay the piper. Let me try again.
"I started my life as a norm like you, back before the turn of the century. I was down in Rainier when Saint Helens and Mount Rainier blew. The skies were gray with smoke for weeks. That was the first I heard of the magic that was coming into the world. Didn't much like it. Liked it even less when the Injuns used their magic to steal the land back from honest folk that had lived on it for generations. I remember the shantytowns around Seattle, saw them fill up with every bit of human refuse that could be crammed in, and watched the wall go up around the plex. I don't know who was worse then, the tribal guards with their holier-than-thou attitude, or the UCAS troops, enforcing the repatriation laws, always looking over their shoulders at the Injuns and playing yesmassa. They all treated us like cattle. I thought it was the worst thing that could happen to a person.
"I was wrong."
"If you think that living through the hell of those shantytowns will change a person, you're right. But let me tell you, it ain't nothing like what people'll do to you if you don't look like them anymore. If they can point at you and say, 'Look, that's not human.' You see, come '21 and the goblinization, I went ork. It wasn't a lot of fun. Pain, pain like you can't imagine, and you locked up inside while your body changes. Ever feel your muscles crawl or your bones squirm?"
Harry paused, as if waiting for Neko to answer. Kham knew better. No one ever answered Harry when he told the story. Somehow you just knew he wasn't expecting you to answer, he just wanted you to think about what he was saying. Neko stayed quiet, so Harry went on.
"I learned what hate really was back then. Hate changes people, kid, changes them a lot. People! thought I knew, people I thought were good people, did some pretty awful things. There was nothing to do but hit back. At least that's what I thought then. So I hit back, and went on hitting back for a long time. Sure. I did some things I ain't proud of, but I survived. Just like I've survived everything since then. And I got stronger. It was like some guy once said, if it don't kill you, it'll make you stronger. About eight months after I went ork, Sarah was born. She didn't have her fine tusks then, but you could still see what she was. Her mother wouldn't have anything to do with her, so I took her and left. I think Sarah's mother got one of those special divorces. I don't really know, and I don't care. Why should I? She didn't.
"Sarah and I went through some hard times, but we survived." He looked down and smiled at her, and she beamed back at him. Kham was sickened. The intelligent, vibrant woman who had raised him wasn't there anymore. Her expression was what one might imagine from a faithful mutt. Harry didn't seem to notice.
"The Underground didn't always belong to us," Harry said. "But it's ours now. We turned our backs on a world that didn't want us, and we made our own community down here. It was hard at first. Real hard, but we made it work. Most of the halfers that came down here with us couldn't take it, and they eventually left the tunnels all to us. World got easier for them topside once the strangeness eased off a bit; they still look almost human, if you didn't mind looking down at them. And I know a lot of norms who don't mind looking down on folks.
"We started a new life down here. I found a place and folks who appreciated what I could do. Made a name for myself. And all the time, Sarah was growing up. I was proud when she married and had kids. I thought she was a little young for it, but that was Fifth World thinking. We were in the Sixth World, now, and early on it was plain that orks come into their maturity much sooner than other people. Physically, anyway." He glanced at Kham and winked. Kham glared back. "Then I started to see that Sarah was getting older. Her hair was gray before mine. At first I thought she might be a freak, being the daughter of one, but she wasn't. She was just an ork. The others of her generation were just like her, old before their time. It wasn't fair. Orks were shunned and pushed into the bad places, and we were dying sooner. Just not fair.
"When you're ork, you find out that life ain't fair. You learn that there are some things you just can't fight, like people's hate. You just have to find another way. But age, and time? How do you light them? Strength can't do it, because age knows how to steal that away when you're not looking. Brains? No luck there either. Orks may not be as dumb as most breeders think, but our best and brightest ain't got an answer to growing old. The breeder labboys haven't done any better. The reaper still waits for us all; he just has an express lane for orks. So orks get old fast, and then they die. Is that fair?"
Harry's spread hands made it clear that he expected an answer this time. Neko replied promptly. "It appears to be nature, sir."
"Yeah, and no one's ever accused nature of being fair." Harry laughed bitterly. "Look at elves. They're children of this new age of magic, just like orks. But they're slim and pretty, like in the fairy tales. Tell me, kid. You ever seen an old elf?"
"No, Harry-san."
"I don't think you ever will."
Kham thought about Dodger. Kham had aged, yet the elf still looked just as he had when they had first met five years ago. Even Sally had aged, for all that she was still a beautiful norm. There were new lines around her eyes, harbingers of what was to come. But the elf, the elf looked like a teenager. Kham thought about what the raider leader had said, the one Dodger had called Zip. That old man had known Dodger. Zip had claimed that, as a kid himself, he had run the streets with an elf kid named Dodger. And the guy had recognized Dodger's face.
"It just ain't fair," Harry said.
"Perhaps elves age differently," Neko suggested. "You have told me that orks do, and I have known dwarfs who look much older than their chronological age."
"Sure, the halfers get looking old fast. Got beards down to their belly buttons by the time they're twenty, but they don't change after that. Like the damned elves, they stay the same."
"I mean
t to suggest that once those metatypes reach physical maturity, perhaps they simply stay physically the same until old age sets in. I read about something like that once. A case where senescence set in and a person showed all the signs of age in only a brief time and died shortly thereafter."
"Fantasy stuff," Harry snorted.
"Are you suggesting that elves are immortal?" Harry was slow to answer and, when he did, his voice didn't carry its usual conviction. "Me? Naw. I ain't no scientist, but I know nothing natural can live forever."
"Then you suggest that they have access to some magical way of prolonging life? Perhaps Scatter knows something of that possibility."
Uncharacteristically, the rat shaman had been staying out of the conversation. Now, even with attention focused on her, she kept her head bowed. "I have nothing to say on the subject."
Harry went on, unperturbed by his shaman's reticence. "Don't know about magic. Maybe the elves have got some special magic, maybe not. I don't know. Maybe it's just the way they are."
Kham thought about Zip's remarks and about what he had seen of Laverty. The elf had healed unnaturally fast. Was that a side-effect of life-prolonging magic? If so, it didn't belong to all elves, at least not to that degree. He'd seen Dodger wounded, and knew that the decker didn't heal magically as Laverty had. Maybe this immortality had to be . . . arranged. Like with magic crystals dug out of the ground in the Salish-Shidhe forest.
"Harry," Kham said, "if ya was an elf and ya had a magic way ta live forever, ya wouldn't want anybody else knowing, would ya?"
" 'Course not."
"And ya wouldn't want anybody knowing how ya did it."
"Makes sense. Leastways, it would to an elf. Those fraggers are too stuck up to be useful to people."
Never Trust an Elf Page 11