Michael Flynn: Up Jim River

It’s a big Spiral Arm and the human stew has been thoroughly mixed. Languages have changed and blended along with the cultures they once supported. I would like to thank Basheer Alawamleli for help with Arabic words, Kathleen Wong for some Chinese advice, and Rohit Ramaswamy, Geetha Rao, and Raj Nanduri for terms and usages of the Tamil language. Naturally, pronunciations (and grammars) have changed a bit over the centuries, and I have deliberately altered them to suit my purposes.

Lucia D. Thompson — d.b.a. Méarana, a harper, daughter of Bridget ban

Donovan (the scarred man) — d.b.a. The Fudir, sometime agent of the CCW

Cerberus — receptionist at the Kennel

Zorba de la Susa — retired Hound, Bridget ban’s mentor

Graceful Bintsaif — journeyman Hound assigned to the Academy

Johnny Barcelona — d.b.a. Resilient Ser vices, emperor of the Morning Dew

Morgan Cheng-li — Grand Secretary of the Morning Dew sheen

The Bwana — Chairman of the Terran Brotherhood on Thistlewaite

Boo Sad mac Sorli and Enwelumokwu Tottenheim — commercial jawharries on Harpaloon

Greystroke — a Hound

Little Hugh O’Carroll — his Pup, d.b.a. Rinty

Billy Chins — a Terran khitmutgar and actuary on Harpaloon

Shmon van Rwengasira y Gasdro — Director of the Dancing Vrouw Tissue Bank

Dame Teffna bint Howard — a tourista from Angletar

Teodorq Nagarajan — a Wildman

Judge Trayza Dorrajenfer — a prosecuting magistrate on Boldly Go

Cheng-bob Smerdrov — an import-exporter on Gatmander

Debly Jean Sofwari — a science-wallah from Kàuntusulfalúghy

Maggie Barnes — captain of the trade ship Blankets and Beads

Dalapathi Zitharthan ad-Din — “D.Z.,” her first officer

Mart Pepper, “Wild Bill” Hallahan, et al. — crew of Blankets and Beads

Paulie o’ the Hawks — a second Wildman

Zhawn Sloofy — a translator from Nuxrjes’r

Djamos Tul — a translator from Rajiloor

Bartenders, sliders, Terrans, flunkies, movers, ’Loons, merchant princes, cab drivers, news faces, Amazons, Gats, Residents, Dūqs, sundry wildmen, and the Princess of the Farther Spaces

THE WILD

THE RIM

Planar projection of La Frontera District, ULP. View is from Galactic North. Not all intervening worlds are shown along the main roads. Worlds are not all on the same plane.

This is her song, but she will not sing it, and so that task must fall to lesser lips.

There is a river on Dangchao Waypoint, a small world appertaining to Die Bold. It is a longish river as such things go, with a multitude of bayous and rapids and waterfalls, and it runs through many a strange and hostile country. Going up it, you can lose everything. Going up it, you can find anything.

A truism in the less-than-United League of the Periphery holds that every story begins on Jehovah or ends on Jehovah. This is one of those that begin there. It is a story of love and loss and finding—and other such curses.

What makes the saying a truism is that Jehovah’s sun—the Eye of Allah—is a major nexus on Electric Avenue, that great network of super-luminal highways that binds the stars together. More roads converge there than anywhere else in the South Central sector, and so the probabilities favor—or the Fates pronounce—that sooner or later everyone passes through.

And when they do, they come to the Bar of Jehovah, for unless your pleasures run to such wildness as hymn-singing—and what can be so wild as that?—there is no other place on the planet so congenial. The hymn-singing is good and surprisingly affective, but many of those who wash up on Jehovah seek to anesthetize the memory of the past, and not to anticipate the glories of the future. For many of the patrons, there is no future, and there is not even the memory that there may once have been one.

In a Spiral Arm where “the strong take what they can and the weak suffer what they must,” Jehovah is the pearl without price, she whose worth is measured in rubies; for she is too valuable a prize to be taken. “A hundred hands desire it,” the saying runs, “and ninety-nine will keep the one from seizing it.” And so it is a refuge of sorts for many, and a cash cow for the Elders. And if cash cows remind one of golden calves, that can be overlooked at round-up time.

And so colorful and cryptic Chettinad merchants rub shoulders with their rivals from the Greater Hanse; the crews of tramp freighters with Interstellar Cargo; with Gladiola seed ships, and League marshals and colonists and trekkers; with touristas, too: those starsliders who come in on the great Hadley liners for their quick blick and then off again ! to stars worth longer visits.

And so also, with the detritus of the Spiral Arm: those who tramp from star to star, one step ahead of a creditor or a spouse or a League marshal; those whose lives and dreams have become to dream their lives away.

One of these is the scarred man. He has a name, or he has many names, but that one will do for now. It is no longer clear, even to him, which of his names are real, or if any of them are. He has sat so long in his niche that he is very nearly a fixture of the Bar, an ornament like the great gilt-worked chandelier mobile that casts an uncertain and ever-changing light upon a patronage equally changing and uncertain. He has become, for a small and self-selected group of connoisseurs, something of a tourist attraction himself. He has come because his past is too heavy to bear, and here he may slide down his load and rest. Recently, certain elements of that past have come to press upon him…

…But this is not his story; or it is not quite his story.

And lastly—and these are most rare—come those who are not driven by their past, but drawn by their future. It might seem odd that the path to the future would pass through the Bar of Jehovah; but the path to heaven is said to wind through purgatory.

As, too, the path to hell.

And so the story begins, if it did not begin elsewhere and at another time. The scarred man sits in his accustomed place in the Bar, robed in shadows in a niche cut into the wall. The other niche-seats are favored by lovers seeking shadows—but there is no love here. Or love only of the most abrasive sort.

The early morning is a somber and introspective time, and the scarred man’s visage is nothing if not somber and introspective. He owns a gaunt and hollow look, as if he has been suctioned out, and not even a soul remains. He is all skin and skull, and his mouth sags across the saddle of his hooked chin. He has been known to smile, but not very often and never is it comforting to see. He is weathered, his skin almost translucent. His hair is snow-white, but not the white of purity, for that has been a long time lost. A checkerboard of scars breaks the hair into tufts like a woodland violated by streets and winding roads. Those scars and a sad story have kept him fed and reasonably drunk for a long time. He has changed the story from time to time just to keep it fresh; but his eyes are never still and the true story may have never been told.