by K. J. Parker
Marzo thought for a moment, then said, “Cheap. Not free.”
Gignomai laughed. “All right, then, cheap. Very cheap.”
“Fairly cheap,” Marzo amended. “Like all the other stuff from the factory. I always reckon, people don’t appreciate stuff unless they have to pay for it.”
Like justice, Gignomai didn’t say. In the end, nobody had paid too dearly for it, but it most certainly hadn’t been free. “We’ll have to talk about that some time soon,” Gignomai said, “when we’re not so bloody tired. I suggest a realistic approach.”
“Practical,” Marzo grunted. “After all, we’re practical men, right?”
Which was only fair, Gignomai had to think. If I turn into my father, Marzo can turn into Luso. “You know,” he said, “I think that when we’re free and independent, we ought to have more civic leaders as well as the mayor. I think we should have a Justice of the Peace.”
Marzo looked at him, then burst out laughing. “But that’s ridiculous,” he said. “You can have justice, or you can keep the peace. Can’t have both.”
Gignomai found that he was laughing too. Fine joke. “Unrealistic, you think.”
“Impractical.”
There was something on Gignomai’s face, something wet. If it had been anybody else, he could’ve sworn it was tears. “I never liked Stheno much,” he said. “But Luso was different. It’s a pity that torture was his way of showing affection.”
“He was always polite to me,” Marzo said. “He didn’t have to be. A real gentleman, you might say.”
When Furio came home, not long afterwards, he found them laughing helplessly. He looked for a bottle, several empty bottles, but couldn’t see any.
Gignomai slept at the store that night, at least, he occupied a bed. As he lay in the dark, he tried to convince himself that what he’d seen, or believed he’d seen, was real: the house burning, Luso lying face down on the ground. He tried to persuade himself that the Tabletop was uninhabited now, that the house was a ruin, the family dead, no guards on the Doorstep, no distant thump of a shot far off in the woods. He closed his eyes, and he could see them all as sharp as midday, which made it impossible to believe the wild hypothesis. The only one he couldn’t see was his sister, who’d died young. He had no idea where the tears came from.
The next day, there was a meeting at the store. The main room was crowded, but perfectly quiet. Everybody knew they had to be there, but nobody wanted to speak.
Marzo had fixed up a platform out of empty crates. There were two chairs on it. At Gignomai’s suggestion, the legs of the chairs had been fixed to the crates with brackets—just bits of scrap iron sheet bent at right-angles and punched with nail holes—so there was no danger of overbalancing and falling into the crowd.
Marzo stood up. He could feel the crate he was standing on wobbling under his weight, so he made sure he kept his feet still. He said that what had just happened was something that had to be done (he didn’t expand on that), and now it was done and over with, the important thing was to look forward. He told everybody about the factory, and what it’d mean to all of them: cheap tools and hardware, which meant they wouldn’t have to buy those things from Home any more at crazy prices that kept them all permanently poor. In fact, with the factory making nearly everything they had to have, did they really need ships from Home at all? Ships, he said, that didn’t just bring stuff, they took stuff away—practically every steer raised in the colony, and what did they get in return? He didn’t answer his own question.
Some of them might be worried about what Home might do if they told the ships not to bother coming any more. Well, that was a fair point. They paid rent for this land they worked so hard, to a bunch of rich lords far away across the sea who’d never been here, who wouldn’t last five minutes here if they did come. That was the other thing that kept them poor, he said, rent, and the Company trade monopoly. They could carry on as they were, and be poor all their lives, keep the peace, close down the factory, keep the law, be good. Or, there was another way. It would mean taking a risk. The government might send soldiers, men with pikes and swords—though he didn’t think they would, it’d cost them more than they made out of the colony, and where was the sense in that? But suppose they did, what would happen then?
He paused for a moment, letting the fear sink in. Then he said, Gignomai met’Oc, who started up the factory, has figured out how to make guns. He’s promised (and I believe him, Marzo said, looking unimpeachably solemn) that he can make enough guns to arm every man who’s prepared to fight. The point being that the government troops don’t have guns. They have long spears and swords. Most of them have never even seen a gun, or heard one go off. Now he couldn’t promise that at the first volley the government troops would turn tail and run back to their ships so fast a greyhound couldn’t keep up with them, though he was pretty sure in his own mind that’d be the likely outcome. He made no promises about things outside his control. No. It all depended on what they, the men of the colony, wanted, and what they were prepared to do to get it. A few days ago, maybe, he wouldn’t have made this suggestion. But since then, a lot had changed. The men of this colony had taken on the met’Oc and their guns, in their impregnable fortress, and they’d won, and all of them had come home safe. So, he asked them to consider, if they could beat the met’Oc, why not the government?
Sooner or later, he said, they were going to have to fight. The savages still had the guns the met’Oc had given them, and one thing he was absolutely certain of was that the government wouldn’t be sending any troops to protect the colony from the savages. Like it or not, the old days were gone; like it or not, they had no choice but to fight someone, sometime. So, if they had to fight, why not fight the people who were making their lives a misery, draining all the wealth out of the colony, taking it all and giving nothing back? Maybe, he said, they’d never fought up till now because they’d had nothing to fight with, or maybe it was because they’d had nothing to fight for. But that, Marzo said, was back then. This was now, the day after the battle of the Tabletop, the end of the past, the beginning of the future. Well, he said, they might like to think about that. It was entirely up to them, of course, but he knew which way he’d choose to go.
One last thing, he said. It had been a great privilege and honour to be their mayor, but whatever they chose to do, there’d be hard times ahead. They needed the right man to lead them, and a middle-aged storekeeper wasn’t that man. Accordingly, with deep regret but knowing he was doing the right thing, he was resigning the office of mayor, and he invited them all to join with him in electing the right man for the job, an educated man, a man who’d already given proof of his energy, resourcefulness and commitment to the future of the colony, the man who’d built the factory that would make their future possible, a man born and bred to lead: Gignomai met’Oc.
Nobody moved, or said a word.
Then Marzo said, “Does anybody want to vote against Gignomai met’Oc as mayor?” He waited: one, two, three. “Carried unanimously,” he said. “Gignomai met’Oc is your new mayor.”
Gignomai sat perfectly still in his immovable chair, and kept a straight face. He couldn’t have said a word if he’d wanted to. He felt as though his lips were sewn together.
“You could have warned me,” he told Marzo, when the people had gone home, and they were dismantling the platform.
Marzo shrugged. “Being around you for a while, I guess I learned a thing or two. Besides, I thought you’d be pleased.”
“You thought that.”
“Ah well.” Marzo put a claw-hammer to the nails securing his chair to the brackets. “I’m out of it now, thank God. You started it, you can see it through. Like I said,” he added spitefully, “born and bred to lead.”
Gignomai smiled, a lolling, death’s head grin. “Justice,” he said.
“Just being practical,” Marzo replied. “You’re the right man for the job. You’ve got the knack of twisting people. We need a man like you.”
Marzo smiled. He was determined to enjoy this moment, no matter what. “Why should a man have only one reason?” he said.
Five Years Later
When they found him, Gignomai was in the hammer shed, stitching a broken drive belt back together. He gave them his sourest what is it now look, but they took no notice.
“Someone here to see you,” young Heddo said.
“Tell him to get lost, whoever he is.”
“You ought to come,” the Fasenna boy said, “in case there’s any trouble.”
Gignomai sighed, and left the unmended belt drooping from the pulley. “Fine,” he said. “Since nobody around here seems capable of doing anything except me. Who and where?”
“Out front,” Heddo said. One question answered.
It was the old man. Gignomai hadn’t seen him since before the Burning. In fact, nobody could remember the last time they’d seen any of the savages, though that didn’t stop fools and time-wasters like Rasso from harping on about them at council meetings. He looked very old and frail now, leaning on the arm of a tall, square young woman in one of those ludicrous long coats. The way he didn’t react when Gignomai walked up to him suggested he’d gone blind.
“Hello,” Gignomai said.
“Gignomai met’Oc.”
“Right here,” Gignomai said. “Can you see me?”
That made the old man laugh, for some reason. “Clearly enough,” he said, apparently to an invisible person standing two yards to Gignomai’s left. “There’s no need to shout, by the way. I’m not deaf.”
Gignomai smiled. “I am,” he said. “Spent too long close to the big hammer. I guess it makes me talk too loud, I’m sorry. I’m…” Amazed you’re still alive. “Glad to see you.”
“I had to come and say goodbye,” the old man said. “Could somebody fetch me something to sit on? I find standing very difficult these days.”
Gignomai grabbed an empty crate that happened to be about the right height, and guided the old man down onto it. The square woman took a dozen steps back, until she was hard to see among the trees.
“Going somewhere?” Gignomai asked.
The old man nodded. “We all are,” he said. “My people, I mean. We’re moving across the eastern mountains.”
“Are there mountains in the east?” Gignomai asked.
The old man laughed. “You have no idea about this country,” he said, “about how large it is, or how it’s made up. The furthest my people have ever been is fifty days’ ride from here that’s about a thousand Imperial miles. Beyond that point the grasslands give way to scrub, and in the distance, nothing but sand and desert, as far as the white-topped mountains that block the view.”
“You’re going there?” Gignomai asked, astonished.
“Good heavens, no.” The old man smiled. “Only as far as the near mountains, about twenty-six days’ ride. Between them and the far mountains is a great plain of tall, dark grass, through which two great rivers run side by side. We’ve decided to go there,” he went on, “to get away from you.”
“Oh,” Gignomai said.
“We believe,” the old man went on, “that we will be safe there for some time. Should you cross the near mountains, we will either go north, where the winters are hard but the pasture is excellent in summer, or south, where there are further plains as far as the eye can see. It may take you several hundred years before we run out of land to escape into, depending, of course, on how quickly you breed. And in two hundred years, who knows? Things may be different.”
Gignomai thought for a while. Then he said, “Why are you going? We’re no bother to each other.”
“My people think differently,” the old man said, wriggling a little to get comfortable. “When you showed us the snapping-hen pistol, some of us, as you know, took it as proof that what we’ve always believed was untrue. They started believing in you—that you exist, here in the same world and time as we do—and from there it was only a short step to seeing you as an intolerable threat. At first, they wanted to attack you, kill you all and burn your houses to the ground.”
“You persuaded them not to,” Gignomai said.
“On the contrary.” The old man lifted his head proudly. The gesture would have worked quite well if he hadn’t been facing a tree instead of the person he was talking to. “I urged them to wipe you out without fear or mercy. After all, I’d seen this place, and heard what you did to your own family up on the flat hill. I told them, I had been to your country and seen your beautiful city, I knew that your people are exceptionally wise and immeasurably strong. Our only chance, therefore, was to kill you all and hope that would persuade your people that this place is too dangerous, considering the sparse returns they’d be likely to get from exploiting it.”
“I see,” Gignomai said. “Well, I’m glad they didn’t listen.”
The old man grinned. “Many of them did,” he said. “More than a thousand, at one point. There would have been enough of us, if we’d come at you suddenly and unexpectedly. Fortunately, the other faction prevailed. They believe in you, because of the snapping-hen, but their solution is to move away. They maintain that there’s no point defeating an enemy if, in order to do so, you turn yourself into him. Once I’d thought it through, I could see that they were quite right. So, we’re leaving.” He lowered his chin onto his chest and sat quite still for a while, until Gignomai wondered if he’d fallen asleep. “I’ve been teaching them your language,” he said suddenly, “And everything I can remember about Home. Quite a large number of our young people are very keen to learn.”
“Really?” Gignomai said. “I thought you all wanted nothing to do with us.”
“We study you,” the old man said mildly, “the way a doctor studies a disease. If we know about you, we can do everything we can to stop ourselves becoming like you. That’s their argument, at any rate. Personally, I believe you are a contamination that should be avoided at all costs. As evidence of my view, I offer myself. I hold myself responsible, you see.”
“Responsible?” Gignomai asked. “What for?”
“For you,” the old man said. “The time I spent in your country filled me with such a longing for all the wonders and beautiful things I saw there that I couldn’t resist meeting you, when you first came to find us. As a direct result, you showed us the snapping-hen and changed us for ever. My fault. But they will insist on pestering me to teach them, and I do so love to speak your language and hear it spoken. So I teach them, and risk making matters infinitely worse. Which is why,” the old man went on, lowering his voice and turning his head, as though looking round for eavesdroppers, “I have a very great favour to ask you, if you wouldn’t mind. I have no great hopes that my ruse will succeed, but it might just delay the inevitable for a little while, which would be something.”
“What can I do for you?” Gignomai asked.
“You can tell them,” the old man said in a loud, hoarse whisper, “that the savages have told you that beyond the near mountains there’s nothing but desert, burning hot by day and freezing by night. You have this information from an unimpeachable source, who had also told you that the savages have contracted a terrible disease—caught from your people, I would suggest. Something you’ve become immune to over the years, but which is wiping us out by the thousand. In a desperate attempt to save ourselves, we are migrating to the desert beyond the mountains, believing that the extremes of heat and cold there will halt the progress of the disease, or at least slow it down. To all intents and purposes, you can tell them, we no longer exist, as far as your people are concerned.” He paused for breath, and said, “Will you do that for me? As a very great favour?”
“I think it’s the least I can do,” Gignomai replied gravely.
“Thank you,” the old man said. “If they believe you, there’s a chance that in time your people will forget about us, at least until we
meet again, and any stories that might still be told about us will be held to be impossible legends, echoes of folk tales you brought with you from Home. For our part, we will try and believe that you never existed, and that I’m mad and never did cross the sea. Really, it would be for the best, if you think you could manage it.”
“I’ve never exterminated a whole nation before,” Gignomai said.
The old man looked very solemn and wise. “If anybody can do it,” he said, “you can.”
Two days later, a dot appeared at the seam of the sea and sky, which gradually grew into a ship. By the time a man with keen eyes could distinguish the sail from the hull, the Council had met in emergency session and ordered out the militia. Runners scampered off to the nearest farms, while the militiamen who happened to be in town at the time, some two dozen of them, ran to the big shed on the quay and dragged out the cannon. When they judged the ship was just out of range, they fired a single shot which, much to their surprise, pitched no more than twenty yards off the ship’s port bow, lifting a great plume of water, like a leaping dolphin.
The ship dropped anchor immediately and ran up a flag, which nobody could see clearly enough to identify. The cannon was reloaded, and the touch-hole was covered up with someone’s hat, to make sure it wasn’t accidentally lit. Maybe half an hour later the ship lowered a boat, which began the long struggle to shore. The cannon crew covered it until they were quite sure the thing hanging off its keel was a limp white flag.
Just to be on the safe side, the militia fired their guns in the air as soon as the boat was close enough for them to see the faces of the men in it. The boat’s crew backed water frantically, stopped, and brandished the white flag. Furio, who’d just arrived to take charge, beckoned them to come in closer. When they were within shouting range, he called out, “That’s close enough,” and signalled to his men to level their guns.
A man stood up in the prow of the boat, waving his hat. They weren’t from the government, he shouted, it wasn’t a Navy ship. They were merchant seamen employed by the met’Ousa, with a message for Phainomai met’Oc. They were unarmed (at this point, all the oarsmen raised their hands, an eloquent but meaningless gesture) and they had no hostile intentions. Furio thought for a moment, conferred with the cannon crew, and beckoned to them to come ashore. He may simply have forgotten to tell his men to stop pointing their guns at the men in the boat.