Michael Flynn - Up Jim River

The folk, too, had that same improvisational quality. They made life up as they went along. Rioting was the municipal sport; but a man was as apt to fight someone one day as stand him a drink the next. If on Thistlewaite all plans failed, on Harpaloon they barely got started before another overtook it.

The town had been built in a bowl valley on the western edge of the Jazz, hard by a natural harbor on the eastern shore of the Encircled Sea. For most of the local year, the sea breeze tempered the climate, keeping it cool and moist and escorting the occasional storm as the price; but twice each year the winds reversed and carried the dust off the grasslands. The hot-breathed, bale wind was called the shrogo , and during the season people doffed their waterproof tweed caps and donned instead the bright checkered head scarves known as caephyas . It was a bad time of year; for the warm, gritty breeze rubbed tempers raw, and even the meekest of men would grow irritable. The seasonal body count typically rose a bit in the good years, and spiked in the bad.

The few minutes on the train platform were all the convincing Méarana needed that the shrogo was in full career. Peddlers with mobile carts did a brisk business at the midtown rail terminal, selling headgear to touristas to protect hair and neck from the dust. Méarana bought a type of caephya called a chabb . Rimmed with tassels and woven of a light cloth known as shoddy , it wimpled her golden features in an emerald frame, so that her face, peering out as if from a window, seemed small and almost childlike. Lead slugs sewn into the hem allowed her to drape it to best effect and kept the fly ends from flapping in the stiff breeze.

Donovan she thought abrasive enough that the wind might need protection from his face. But he purchased a red-and-white checkered caephya and two pairs of protective goggles, called gloyngo santas .

They had noticed that some Harpaloon terms were strikingly similar to the Gaelactic, where síoda meant a kind of silk and angioini cosanta meant literally “the goggles protective.” But caephya and chabb and other words were unknown and seemed peculiar to Harpaloon. The Pedant suggested that these terms had come from the aboriginal’ Loon tongue.

The Phundaugh Plough and Stars was a short walk from the terminal and the Fudir found that all had been arranged there to his instructions. Members of the Brotherhood, acting with that solidarity that persecution creates and bribery knits together, had even conjured the illusion of occupation. Beds were mussed, linens used, clothing left in disarray. Room service had been ordered. Surely, this was fellowship!

Or an opportunity to live high on another’s expense. Donovan brushed away the tear of sentiment in the Fudir’s eye. And a close inspection of the disarray revealed some small objects missing.

The harper regarded this with no little amusement. The Fudir’s primary occupation on Jehovah had concerned small objects going missing. Not that she hadn’t been pilfered, too; but nothing of terribly great value had walked away and, “It does make a fair compensation for their effort, doesn’t it?”

“The Brotherhood was to have covered it,” the Fudir grumbled, surveying the remnants of his luggage. “And I was to compensate the Brotherhood from the Kennel’s chit.”

“Perhaps Curling Dawn’s steward did not explain things so clearly to his groundside contacts.”

“Perhaps Curling Dawn’s steward is wearing our second-best set of wrist bangles.”

“He may be. But note: it was the second-best he took.”

A sealed envelope bearing the tail-biting logo of the Ourobouros Circuit was waiting in the room: the reply from Hang Tenbottles to the request she had squirted en route. Méarana picked it up, but Donovan plucked it from her hands and inspected the envelope closely.

“It hasn’t been opened,” the harper said.

“Or it’s been opened by an expert.” He frowned some more over the cover, then handed it back to Méarana. “What does Tenbottles say?”

The harper broke the cover and pulled out the flimsy. “585.15, 575.02!” she read. “1041.07 937.20 +407.11. 870.07 253.09.”

Donovan grunted. “Well, that’s informative.”

“There’s more,” she said, gesturing to the sheet.

Donovan took it from her.

“It’s in code.” she told him.

“Really?”

“Your humor is heavy-handed. Everyone encodes Circuit messages. It saves face-time.”

“All right. What’s the basis for the code?”

“Weren’t you once a spy or something?”

Donovan shrugged. “Why pick a lock if someone will hand you the key?”

I love this , said the Sleuth. I can sink my teeth into this one .

“If you had any teeth,” Donovan told him. “I think the Brute owns those.”

The better to bite you with, said the Brute, showing a rare flash of humor.

Let me see the message, said the Pedant. I never forget anything.

The response was a chorus: “We know.”

Méarana scanned the message into her personal brain. She knew that Donovan was holding another of his internal debates and wished she could hear what the others were saying. Hearing half of a dialogue might enable one to tease out the whole thing; but hearing only two parts of a heptalogue was another matter entirely.

Hang had listed everything that Bridget ban had sent, received, or accessed during her home leave. Books, journals, correspondence, call logs… Some were local, or to and from Die Bold, and Méarana recognized many as dealing with ranch management. There was a Circuit call placed to the College of Scholars on Kàuntusulfalúghy, and a reply from the same source, but the contents had not been entered into the penátès.

“The College of Scholars,” said Donovan. “She was probably checking the bona fides of that Debly Jean Sofwari.”

“Sofwari was on her reading list, too,” Méarana said. “Here’s a story in something called the Kauntling Journal of Accumulated Facts . ‘27th Eve: a genetic reconstruction of the Old Planets.’ What does that mean?”

The scarred man shrugged. “It means Sofwari told your mother something hard to believe and she wanted to find out if he had the chops.”

“Well, yes, I suppose; but I meant what does the title of his story mean?”

“Do I look like a scholar? OK, Pedant, you know all sorts of useless facts. What does… Well, what good are you, then? Of course. The rest of us will try to bear up under your silence. Fudir, what do you think you’re…!”

Méarana looked away in embarrassment at the argument. When she had gone on her search for the scarred man, she had found more than she had bargained for.

“Donovan doesn’t know how to wheedle,” the Fudir told her. “He doesn’t politick enough. Now we’re going to be ignorant for a while until Pedant resurfaces all because Donovan buigh doesn’t know how to kiss his own ass.”

Méarana would not look at him. “Ignorant?” she said.

“Pedant has our long-term memory, or a big chunk of it, anyway. When he sulks, we forget things.”

The harper looked at him, at the ever-mobile eyes. “You should try to get along.”

“Get along? He’s me.”

“All the more reason.”

The two of them fell silent then. A certain sort of propriety had been breached. The scarred man usually tried to keep his internal chaos from breaking surface; the harper usually refrained from mentioning it. Méarana took the decoded list and pretended to read it once more.

After a while, the Fudir said, “The Pedant doesn’t know everything. He can only know what we’ve seen or heard or read. He never forgets, is all. But our memory is holographic; so it’s not like the rest of us know nothing when he’s… in his tent. Genetics is an ancient dogma. It has something to do with Predestination. We should try to get a copy of the story. The witch went out of her way to read it, so it may mean something. What else did she read during home leave?”