Michael Flynn - Up Jim River

The emperor shook his head. “Only here in tea ceremony, two three other times, is emperor become Jimmy again.” He turned abruptly to the harper. “Tell me of home world, Mistress Harp.”

“Dangchao Waypoint? It’s a small world, a dependency of Die Bold. Mostly open prairies on Great Stretch continent, where we raise Nolan’s Beasts. A few big towns. When we go to Die Bold, we say we’re going to ‘The City.’ May I have one of those finger sandwiches? What is the spread?”

“Pimento and Devonchao cream. Made in Praefecture of Wild Violets. I hear of planet in Wild, out in the Burnt-Over District. They talk of ‘The City’” He waved an imperial wrist. “Out past Ampayam and Gatmander. Somewhere.”

“The ‘Burnt-Over District,’” the harper suggested.

“Traveler tales. Suns go nova now and then. Burn up cities.”

“If their suns went nova periodically,” the Fudir said, “it would burn up more than their cities. There’d be no one left to spread travelers’ tales.”

“The Wild,” said the harper, “is a region of romance. Anything can happen there.”

“Even romance,” the Fudir replied. “But what usually happens out there is death or bankruptcy. Or both. Most of the worlds are uncivilized. A few have spaceflight; none have rediscovered sliding. Their cities are smelly and dirty, and you’d be lucky not to come away diseased. Romance,” he concluded, “is best considered from a distance.”

“You have harp with you, mistress? Of course. Ollamh never far from instrument. You bring with tomorrow. Play songs of your Dangchao, so far away.”

Méarana put her cup carefully on its saucer. “Well… Donovan and I have some business to conduct…”

“Oh, no,” said Resilient Services. “I must insist.”

And there was something hard in the way he said it that caused the harper to hesitate and glance at her companion.

“I had planned to visit the Corner,” the Fudir said. “You can entertain the emperor while I do that.”

“Yes,” agreed the emperor of the Morning Dew. “You do that.”

The next morning, as Méarana prepared for her command performance at the palace, the Fudir prepared to enter the Corner of Jenlùshy For this, he did not dress as he had for the palace. Indeed, he barely dressed at all. Around his waist he tied a simple blue-and-white checkered dhoti. On his feet, sandals. His upper body he oiled.

“Easier to slip out of someone’s grip,” he said with a leer. Save for secreting various weapons in unlikely places, that completed his toilet.

The harper looked him over before he departed. “That’s no more than a long towel wrapped around you,” she said, pointing to the dhoti. “How do you bend over in that thing?”

“Very carefully. Be sure to keep the emperor happy. I think he’s a little taken with you. But remember: no hint of anything wrong ‘up in the skies.’”

“How many times will you tell me that, old man? Just be careful in the Corner. The concierge told me it’s a dangerous place.”

“Full of Terrans. You be careful, too. There aren’t any Terrans in the palace, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous.”

He slipped out the service entrance of the hotel and followed the Street of the Tin Smiths to the Street of the Plastic Injection Molders, where he turned left and entered the Corner.

He had never been to the Corner of Jenlùshy, but he knew it when he was in it. Thistlewaite buildings tended toward the ramshackle, even without the help of a ‘quake, but as he proceeded farther along Beggars’ Lane they grew positively sketchy. Many did not bother with such vanities as walls. What could a wall ever do except collapse? If curtains and tapestries did not exactly bar entry to the burglar, neither did they hurt as much when they fell on you. And what might be within such hovels as to tempt a burglar?

Granted, this was no more than an accommodation to the geophysical realities, but by Alfven! A Terran ought not care if walls came down on him! Compared to the expulsion of their ancestors from Olde Earth, what harm could a few bricks and beams do? Nor ought they ape the dress of the Thistles quite so closely, nor speak that unadorned dialect of Gaelactic favored here. On Jehovah, the Terrans of the Corner spoke the old patois among themselves, and spoke it proudly.

The directions he had obtained from the Assistant Underwasherman in the hotel’s laundry brought him as far as the Tibbly Fountain, which formed the social center of the Corner, and there he found the women filling their water jugs. The Great’ Quake had wrecked the water distribution and one of the prices of independence was that you went to the end of the line when it came to restoration of services. The more he had seen of the Morning Dew, the more he had realized how unfinished Bridget ban had left things. What had she learned here that had sent her off elsewhere?

The Fudir found himself an overhang sheltering an outdoor moka shop and he leaned against the pole while he admired the sight and studied the crowd.

His home Corner on Jehovah was larger than this and its folk more bustling. There was a kind of unhurry to the crowd around him, leaving time for a bit of sport among the younger water-women, who splashed one another and laughed. This dampened their colorful sorries in often delightful ways.

He also noted the mama-sans watching from doorways and balconies, and the gonifs and grifters lounging about. Not one of them had failed to mark his presence.

Well, it was a small Corner as these things went, and a stranger stood out. The Fudir considered whom he might approach, and finally decided on a small, rat-faced man who squatted on his heels on the other side of the square, engaged in no apparent vocation. In any crowd of this sort, the Committee of Seven would have its eyes and ears, and the savvy man learned to recognize them.

But the Fudir hesitated. The rat-faced man was surely armed, and just as surely unfriendly to strangers. And who knew how the Seven would receive him after all these years? Did the Corner of Jenlùshy have anything like those Dunkle Street ghats that made the Corner of Jehovah so perilous for intruders? His own skills with knife and tongue must had rusted during his long inaction. If he failed here, what would become of Méarana?

What sort of piss-ant cowardice is this, the Brute demanded. One of the Fudir’s legs twitched, as if trying to step forth on its own.

He who hesitates is lost . And never more so than he who hesitates in a Terran Corner.

Comrades? I suggest we get off the pot , said the Sleuth.

«No,» said Inner Child. «No no no no no…»

“Donovan?” the Fudir whispered. “Help me out here.”

“All in favor of remaining a sitting duck,” said Donovan, “say aye.”

Well, a moving target is harder to hit…

The Fudir crossed to the fountain with only a slight hesitancy in his step. It could have been a limp. The chatter and gaiety continued, but he was tracked by two dozen pairs of eyes.

The die is cast , the Sleuth announced. Or as Caesar said , alea iacta est.

Actually, Caesar said it in Greek. It was a quote from a play by Menander: ’Avερρíφθω κμβς . That was the Pedant. It could not possibly be anyone else.

«Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up…»

At the fountain, the Fudir stared into the waters. The rat-faced man affected not to notice him and continued to do nothing with great concentration. When the Fudir had once more gotten a hold of himself, he stretched and, in doing so, made a sign with his right hand.

The rat-faced man had been twirling a stick with one hand. Now he dropped it and, in picking it up, made the answering gesture.