Cruel Zinc Melodies

by Glen Cook

Attitude for attitude. I do enjoy a challenge.

  He had no trouble making himself clear. Where he fell down was, because he was so proud of having pulled it all together, he insisted on identifying every little connective detail that only he had been in a position to jiggle into place.

  Bottom line was, according to him, in a time immemorial, before humanity wandered into this region, possibly before here was here at all? indeed, perhaps even before the arrival of the elder races? somebody buried something valuable way down deep in the silt, then plopped a sleeping guardian on top. More silt piled up. Everything remained undisturbed till the Faction started building bigger, badder, hungrier bugs that found their way down to it. The ghosts were the dragon’s sleepy thought projections, tools it used to frighten threats away.

  Bugs don’t worry about ghosts. Their frights are more basic, animated by two drives. To eat. To reproduce.

  I kept an eye on Kip while the Dead Man patted himself on the back.

  The kid ate the story up. All Kyra’s mystic powers weren’t enough to extinguish his intellect completely.

  You’ve got to admire a kid who can keep his head, even a little, under pressure from a female Tate. He said, “There’s a hole in your reasoning. The ghosts only bother humans.”

  The Dead Man had an answer. He usually does. Humans are the only sentient species to have gotten down deep enough for the dragon to reach and unravel the secrets of their minds.

  Nobody argued. Chances are, nobody understood. Singe snorted. I was sure she’d say something about all the rats that John Stretch had sent down. Then His Nibs would come back with something to the effect that he had said “Sentient.”

  “I'll get it,” Singe said.

  What?

  I said, “Kip, I need to talk to you about a better way to light a place the size of the World.”

  But he was preoccupied. No way could he remain focused long.

  I remember days like that. Some of them not that long ago.

  77

  We had company. More company. Only Singe had heard the knock.

  Barate Algarda and his marvelous daughter, both with hair gone wilder than Kip’s, added themselves to the mix. Which meant that they had to be brought up to date. And that they had to fill me in on whatever had happened after I’d left the World. I suggested, “You guys go first. Anything you tell us won’t be half as hard to swallow as what’s being served up here.”

  Algarda did their talking. “Link couldn’t be saved. Slump and Schnook are distraught. Schnook will be out of action a long time. Broken bones and internal injuries. Shadowslinger has a broken arm and a crop of bruises, too. The rest suffered minor injuries. Belle caught them preoccupied with getting Schnook’s beast under control. He led with a combo of stun and panic spells. Only what happened to Link was deliberate. The rest was collateral damage. Link has been after Belle for a long time. Belle must’ve had enough fear. Finally. It took forever but, like Schnook, the beast came out.”

  I glanced at the Windwalker. She seemed almost a zombie, interested only in scratching her head. She showed no expression and had nothing to say. Nor did she radiate any sensuality.

  I asked, “Did Kevans get home all right?” Of the room in general. Since she wasn’t present. But Kip’s attention was elsewhere.

  Algarda responded. “We hope so. We haven’t been home yet. It'll be a while, too. I have to check on my mother, then make the rounds of the parents who couldn’t get down there today. That tragedy needn’t have happened. But Link had to start something. And now he’s dead. Belle is going to wind up dead. The Guard are after him hard. He'll overreact again when they close in. And they will because they won’t have Schnook sabotaging the search the way Link did.”

  He didn’t sound happy. Who would in the circumstances? But he didn’t sound like he blamed me for anything. And that was the most important thing. Right?

  “He wasn’t using Lurking Felhske? Link, I mean.”

  Algarda went thoughtful. He scratched his head. “He did try that, years ago. It didn’t do him any good. I think Schnook bribed him to fail. Why?”

  “Because we’ve had a Lurking Felhske in the shadows since my first visit to the ruin where the kids had their clubhouse. He was watching them.”

  “Curious. That would’ve been before we realized the kids were doing something dangerous. Felhske costs. None of us would have taken on the expense before we knew there was a crisis.” Algarda went after his scalp like he had a toad in there instead of a flea.

  Why was my sidekick leaving the talking to me, never so much as suggesting a line of attack?

  “So. Parents wouldn’t be running Felhske.”

  “It doesn’t seem likely.”

  “The twins. Berbach and Berbain. They left the group. Possibly to market something the Faction developed.” I glanced at Kip, expecting a comment. I could go right on expecting. He hadn’t heard a word.

  “I know there was a parting. It wasn’t explained. With kids that usually means bad behavior. If they did create something with potential, Felhske could have to do with that. People on the twins? side of the Hill are a little strange and shifty.”

  He said that with a straight face. Then he grimaced.

  His toads were getting frisky.

  “Could Felhske have been hired to watch for a chance for the twins to get into the clubhouse and swipe secrets?”

  “No. They could come and go. If they wanted. The other kids weren’t down there most of the time. The twins knew the code spells to get past the wards. We gave Kevans a lot of room but she didn’t go out much. Her friends hung out at our house more than anywhere else. Somebody was always underfoot.”

  Was that irritation? “Then somebody else who wanted to know how to make giant bugs?”

  “Possibly. Though I think you’re feeding your suspicions off your prejudice against our class. Even the sociopaths among us don’t want another disaster like the rat and thunder lizard experiments that blessed us with the ratpeople. That kind of research is banned. No adult with a sound knowledge of that period would plunge into that abyss again. It was a close-run thing. But kids might. Their knowledge of history runs all the way back to breakfast. And then they don’t care.”

  Another peep into the Algarda family dynamic?

  I wanted to pursue his remark about thunder lizard experiments. The Dead Man proved he was with us by nudging me away. He passed me his recollections of an era he had witnessed firsthand.

  The Hill folk of the time had done an ingenious job covering up something far more horrible than their ratman experiments, despite a rash of nasty deaths. Letting the ratmen survive had been part of the cover-up, somehow.

  I said, “I'll catch Felhske and ask why he’s lurking. If I need to know. Look. We’ve been kicking something around. About what the kids stirred up.”

  I retailed the dragon hypothesis.

  Amazing. During our entire exchange there hadn’t been one interruption. Kip and Kyra, Winger and the Remora, Tinnie and Singe, the Windwalker and Dean when he appeared with fresh supplies, nobody said a word. Nor even moved much, except to scratch.

  I had an idea who to blame for that.

  Algarda opined, “I find it plausible. In fact, it ricochets off a theory I proposed in this very room, less than ten hours ago. And got put down.”

  He’d visited earlier? And nobody bothered to tell me?

  It was but a rudiment of a notion at the time, unsupported by evidence. It had to be developed. It had to be researched.

  Ah. Defensive. After only an oblique challenge.

  It did tell me what he had had Penny Dreadful doing today.

  “Add this,” Algarda said. “I talked with the family on the way to the theater today. We have a collective memory that goes back several centuries. They recalled two similar occurrences, neither inside the Karentine sphere.”

  Wow! My problem at the World had turned geopolitical. And historical.

  “I discovered four incidents,” Jon Salva
tion said, with that snotty tone always adopted by the guy who corrects whatever you’ve just offered.

  Winger knocked some of the brass off. “You and the girl. Penny.”

  “Yes. Well. Everything is in the Proceedings. If you can access them.” Smugness aimed my way. The Proceedings must be something they kept at the library. “Though the most dramatic incident may be apocryphal.”

  I asked Winger, “You going to let him use language like that?”

  Algarda considered a suite of responses. He settled on not letting his ego get in the way. “The two I know of happened in Oatman Hwy in 1434 and in Florissant about a century before that. Date uncertain. Florissant isn’t a principality blessed with an excess of literacy even today.”

  I couldn’t say. I’m not possessed of an excess familiarity with exotic geography.

  The Remora preened. “The other incidents happened inside Venageta. The Venageti tried to cover them up. Both were huge disasters. The more recent happened on the boundary between their part of the Cantard and ours about two hundred years ago. This is the one that might be apocryphal. Local tribesmen were supposed to have caused it.”

  I grumbled something about Pilsuds Vilchik being worse than the Dead Man at inflating a story in order to focus attention on himself.

  I’d later find out that he’d gotten into the library by confessing to be a playwright to Lindalee’s boss. That harpy was addicted to historical dramas. Salvation promised her a complementary first-class seat the night his play opened.

  He sneered. “You heard of the Great Roll-Up, Garrett?”

  “Of course. It brought all that silver to the surface. Where it could be fought over for most of two hundred years.”

  “That was the dragon.”

  I confessed, “That would explain some things about how the war got started.” Better than any of the propaganda. But only marginally.

  Algarda agreed. “That could be true.” He joined me in awarding Jon Salvation an abiding look of suspicion, though.

  I’m always suspicious when some dimwit shows off knowledge he has no business having. Or demonstrates skills at charming people that don’t fit my prejudices.

  What happened to the dragon? Or dragons?

  Do not push it, Garrett. The little man is possessed of several illusions that make him more useful deluded than ever he could be if exposed.

  That was a private message. An explanation would have to wait. I asked, “So, what’s really down there?” The Venageti had blamed “the Great Roll-Up” on ferocious earthquakes. I’d never doubted them. “We don’t want something busting out in the middle of the city.”

  “Dragons,” Jon Salvation said.

  “Dragons,” Barate Algarda agreed.

  Furious Tide of Light, positioned so neither Tinnie nor her father could see, nodded, then smoked off a violet-eyed promissory wink before snapping back into gray-eyed zombiedom, dully picking at her scalp.

  “Come on! Dragons?” I glared at the Remora. “I don’t buy it. It’s a dragon, how has it stayed alive? How come it hasn’t starved?”

  “There are dragons and dragons, Garrett. Stop thinking big green scaly mean things with breath so bad it’s flammable. There’s no evidence that anything like that exists. But there must be a reason for the legends. And we see living proof of other legends every day. Hell, your place here is infested with living legends.”

  You might say, since I have a dead Loghyr, a ratgirl, a murder of pixies (pleasantly unobtrusive of late), and a natural-born redhead in inventory. Not to mention the world’s greatest detective.

  “So this thing down under isn’t really a dragon. It just looks like a dragon, smells like a dragon, acts like a dragon, and thinks like a dragon. And might be what made people come up with the idea of the dragon.”

  “Exactly. Right first go. Darling, you haven’t been giving Garrett nearly enough credit.”

  And they wonder why regular folk look askance at intellectuals.

  Winger showed him a clenched fist. “I’ve got something I’m gonna give you. And it’s a long way from what you want.”

  Children!

  “Yeah,” I chimed in. Despite both beer and exhaustion I was wide awake now. One sneaky wink from the Windwalker. That woman would never need a compliance device. “So. Not a dragon. But a dragon. One that doesn’t need to eat for ten thousand years. Wow. Mystery solved.”

  Everybody stared. Even Old Bones, in his unique way.

  “I’m fishing for suggestions on how to lay the ghosts to rest,” I said. “I’m not the supergenius everybody thinks.”

  Those who had known me more than a week succeeded in restraining an impulse to disagree. So did the other two.

  No other response, either. “All right. It’s a dragon. How do we talk to it?”

  The Windwalker startled us by asking, “Why make it more aware of us by trying to communicate? If the historical awakenings were all worse than any natural disaster?”

  Did anybody mention that? I never heard that. Except by implication.

  People still knew things they hadn’t told me.

  Something passed between the Windwalker and her father. A silent argument, the bottom line of which was that she was not going to be quiet.

  Another bizarre angle to that relationship. Silent communication.

  Not the same as us. They are just close. And, after a reflective pause, But a gap seems to be opening. I caution you, urgently, not to yield to temptation.

  I glanced at Tinnie. “I don’t think you need to worry.”

  I must. I am at the mercy of human nature. Of which you demonstrate an abundant excess.

  Algarda got right back on his horse. “She has a point. The best thing that could happen would be for this dragon to go back to sleep. It would seem that they do sleep for geological ages.”

  Tinnie said, “Maybe they’re waiting for something. Maybe they have a whole different sense of time and ten thousand years is like a few hours to us. Or maybe they’re booby traps. Like for gods, or something. But once in a while some idiot finds a way to trip into their trigger line.”

  That’s my gal. Escalating the whole damned thing into the realm of the divine. Me, being me, I wound up to spout something about the immorality of us passing our troubles to generations not yet born.

  A dozen staring eyes brought the urge under control.

  Me making the argument would be weak, anyway. The great philosophical thread tying my life together is, put off till tomorrow whatever doesn’t absolutely have to be done today.

  The best course, indeed, based on the evidence available. Assuming we want to return to the situation that obtained a month ago. So we must do what we have been doing. Only more effectively. Mr. Prose.

  The formal address tumbled off into limbo.

  Kip!

  The boy yelped. And flinched away from Kyra. Betraying a guilty conscience simply by thinking he needed to open some space. “What?” In a breathless panic.

  You do understand that primary responsibility for events in the theater and its environs lies with the Faction? That it was your ill-considered experimentation that caused this dragon to stir?

  Being a teen, Kip was inclined to argue. But the pressure of the eyes was too much for him, too. “Yeah. I guess.” He scratched his noggin.

  Then you and the Faction are obligated to make sure nothing you may have left lying around, or, more particularly, anything you might have sneaked out and squirreled away, in any way exacerbates the situation.

  When you’re dead and don’t have to pause for breath, you can reel off sentences like that.

  Do I make myself plain? Do you understand?

  That is what the gallery overheard. I was sure there was more communication on a private level.

  Kip’s surrender was meek and complete. I half expected the ancient formula “It shall be done.”

  Excellent. Going forward from this moment Miss Winger and her associate will accompany you everywhere. For your protection.
r />   Winger received instructions on a private level.

  Kevans is partially responsible for this problem, too.

  I grumbled, “We already established that we can blame everything on the Faction.”

  Barate Algarda responded on behalf of Family Algarda. “Kevans will cooperate. Cypres. I believe Zardoz is the one who'll have to make this all right.”

  “Yes, sir. Zardoz and Teddy. And Mutter. And Slump and Heck and Spiffy.”

  I said, “We might see if John Stretch can find a few more rats to put down there. Just to ferret out any dead-ender bugs. Or any recent hatchlings.”

  You might consider speaking more carefully in this company, Garrett. Miss Winger being no less dangerous than the Algardas.

  I might, indeed. I’d been focused on what John Stretch had said about the rats likely being unwilling to go down under again. I should have been thinking about guarding his secret. Winger has a huge mouth. And no telling what Hill types would try if they got control of somebody who can master rats.

  78

  They were all gone, including Tinnie, who insisted she couldn’t trust Winger and the Remora to properly chaperone two reekingly hormonal teens. Which made sense. The part about not trusting Winger.

  I didn’t remind her that she hadn’t been much older than Kyra when we’d met. Of course, nothing more than a bad case of bugged eyes on my part came of that. Tinnie Tate was my good buddy Denny’s tasty young cousin. Practically family. She and his sister Rose were both off-limits. At the time.

  Times changed. Tinnie and Rose grew up. Rose turned wicked. Denny got himself killed, accidentally. Tinnie and I locked horns during the cleanup and got something going that neither of us has shaken since. No matter what distractions turned up.

  I drew me a pitcher of Weider’s most potent dark and retreated to the solitude of my little office. Which I share with the memory of one of my most potent distractions, Eleanor.

  I filled my mug. I turned my chair. I stared at the magical painting. “What do you think, sweetheart? Is it time Tinnie and I go to the next page?”

  The artist who painted Eleanor was an insane genius, slave to a powerful inner sorcery. All his work had been charged to crackling with magic. His portrait of Eleanor fleeing the horror of her past was his ultimate masterpiece. He poured bottomless love and hatred on top of everything else that made his works objects of such power and dread.