Tim Powers - Dinner At Deviant's Palace

«What's good for the Lord isn't good for ordinary people,» she said. «We get sick here—and at his temple in the sister city, too, I hear—our hair falls out, and we get, like, sores, mostly on our feet and legs . . . and any that are pregnant don't stay that way long . . . and so when we get so bad we're gonna die, he—Jaybush—puts us into the . . . trash men.» She began crying again. «They call 'em trash men even if it's a girl they put in it. Don't make no difference, it ain't anything, not in that way . . . .»

Rivas was breathing fast. «What the hell, can't you . . . can't you kill yourselves, at least? Christ, they let you use tools, right?»

«Yeah,» the girl admitted, nodding. «But . . . it's a sin, of course, suicide is, though somehow here in the city people don't worry much about sins anymore . . . and anyway they . . . the trash men . . . gee, they do last practically forever. »

«Well, that's fine ,» Rivas whispered. «Listen, did a girl arrive here a couple of days ago? Slim and dark-haired with . . . I mean, a woman with dark hair . . . .» He tried to remember the glimpse he'd caught of Uri in the Regroup Tent night before last. «A little bit heavy,» he finished lamely.

«Everybody in all the wagons before yours, for a week, nobody's been brought here. They all went straight on south, the men to work on the boats and the women to be shipped direct to the temple in the sister city . . . that's where the Lord is right now . . . and of course all the far-gones were took right to the bleeder huts.»

«Where's the sister city?»

«I don't know. We better get back in our beds. They don't like it when we talk among ourselves.»

«Is it north of here, or south? The sister city,» he added, seeing her blank look.

«Oh. I don't know.» She shambled back to her bed, yawning.

Rivas looked out the window. The limping thing was a distant unrestful figure far out across the plain. «What goes on in the—what did you call 'em?—bleeder huts?»

The boards under her mattress creaked as she climbed ponderously in. «Oh,» she yawned again, «bleeding, I suppose.»

Well, yeah, Rivas thought, not moving toward his own bed. I had to ask?

«Tomorrow, probably,» the girl said sleepily. Then, after he'd given up on hearing any more from her, she added, «They'll take you to the beach settlement.» After another long pause, she went on, «And weld your leg irons on.»

Zat so, thought Rivas. Leg irons, is it, and welded on. But of course, Greg, it'll just be until you get so deteriorated that they put you in a trash man. My God. Well, I leave tonight.

«Of course,» said the girl, so sleepily that Rivas knew this would be her last statement of the night, «if they make you a trustee, you only gotta wear one.»

That doesn't change my mind, kiddo, he thought. He went back to his bed and lay on it until he was sure the bald girl had fallen asleep, and then he got up silently and tiptoed down the central aisle to the end of the room. The door there was locked, but it was the work of a moment to poke his knife blade between the door edge and the jamb, lift the bar out of the slots outside and ease the door open. Evidently the authorities didn't expect the inmates to have any tools—or initiative, probably.

He edged half his face past the door jamb, peered around with that eye, and then stuck his whole head out. It was brighter outside, with the stars and faint webbing of cloud reflected on the plain, and there seemed to be a faint glow emanating upward from under the glass. He didn't see any of the trash men.

To his right was the same bleak, unearthy vista he'd seen from the window, but the view to his left, which was south, was more conventional; rows and rows of barracklike shacks, pretty clearly identical to the one he was crouched in the doorway of, receded away in the dimness.

He noticed that each one seemed to be casting a very faint shadow of light, like a building in a photographic negative, but when he peered in wonder he saw that the «shadows» were just even, abraded patches of glass, which reflected the starlight and the subsurface glow in a faint, unfocused radiance. Evidently the shabby buildings were unmoored, and being gradually shifted toward the sea by the wind, like a fleet of very old and slow ships.

Rivas ran silently to the next row of sheds, and snoring from inside the nearest one confirmed his guess that it was a duplicate of the one he'd left. One row at a time, with much fearful peering-about between sprints, he passed ten rows of the long shacks, and except for the one he'd been in and the next two, they all seemed to be empty.

Once there had come a mournful, windy wail from far away across the glass plain, but though he'd snatched out his knife and then frozen, the sound had not been repeated and no motion had been visible anywhere, and he'd eventually moved on.

The tenth row of sheds was the last, and south of him now was only a number of small round huts on stilts. Unlike the barrack buildings, these were arranged in irregular clusters, like huge mushrooms or termite towers, and it was hard to guess how many there might be. The bleeder huts, he thought uneasily.

The shore lay somewhere beyond them, so after making sure his knife was both firmly sheathed and easily drawable, he set off at a careful jogging pace from which he could almost instantly stop, break to the side at a wide angle, or double his forward speed.

He passed a dozen clusters of the little raised buildings during the next ten minutes, but when he drew near the very last one, with only featureless glass beyond, he slowed, and when he was next to it he let his pace falter, and then finally he stopped.

What's this, he asked himself sourly, pure curiosity?

Well, hell, he thought, how can you not stop and at least peek into something called a bleeder hut?

He moved toward the structure's four-foot-high ladder as silently as a shadow . . . and in the sudden subjective silence, without his own breath and heartbeat pounding in his ears, he became consciously aware of something he'd subliminally noticed several seconds earlier.

Soft, regular breathing, not quite snores, could be faintly heard issuing from these stilted huts—and every pause between inhalation and exhalation, every hitch and sigh and occasional grunt, was exactly identical, from hut to hut, in perfect, effortless unison, a subtle prodigy being quietly performed out here on this lake of glass with no audience but Gregorio Rivas and the remote stars.

I'll be damned, he thought as he approached, then touched, the wooden ladder—at any moment now I may become the first person I've ever heard of to be a witness to people snoring in tongues.

The ladder was lashed together with wire and old rope, and creaked when he put his weight on it, but he was certain nothing inside the hut could hear any noise he might make; he wasn't sure exactly what there was to fear in this vitreous wasteland, but he knew there was nothing threatening nearby . . . certainly not in this lonely, southernmost hut.

The door swung open quietly at his touch—there was not even a token latch here. Inside he dimly saw five beds, but they were leaned up against the walls at steep angles, and when his eyes adjusted to the darkness he saw that each sleeping body was belted to the bed frame; and when he stepped closer to one, he saw that a narrow dark tube was attached to the inside of the person's elbow, and curled down to the floor, where it disappeared through a hole drilled in the boards.

Rivas felt a little queasy at the sight. Bleeder hut, he thought; I get it. But why drain off the blood of far-gone Jaybirds?

He went to the ladder and climbed back down to the glass, and then bent over and peered under the hut. All five tubes, he saw, fed into a central tank which was connected by metal pipes to a couple of smaller tanks. Something that looked like an old-time air conditioner was attached to the front of the main tank, and it had a metal nozzle projecting from it. He put his finger in the nozzle and felt the grooves of screw-threading . . . and when he took his finger out there was a dry powder on it.