Orson Card - THE CRYSTAL CITY

Tenskwa-Tawa nodded. "Me," he said.

"I see you in the ball," she said.

"What ball?" asked Alvin.

"The ball you make, the ball she carry." La Tia pointed toward Dead Mary, who did indeed have a burden slung over her shoulders. "I see him all the time in that thing. He talking to me."

Tenskwa-Tawa nodded. "And I thank you for helping," he said. "I didn't know you were with this company."

"I didn't know you the Red Prophet."

"So you two met?" asked Alvin.

"He been hotting up under the earth, far away," said La Tia. "He ask my help, wake up the earth there. Help the hot stuff find a way up. I think I figure out how."

"Then I'm as glad to see you here in the flesh as a man can be," said Tenskwa-Tawa.

"Many a man be glad to see my flesh," said La Tia, "but it don't do them no good."

Tenskwa-Tawa smiled, which for him was like a gale of laughter.

And Arthur Stuart thought, not for the first time, that these really powerful people were like a little club, they all knew each other and people like him were always having to stand just outside.

Springfield

Verily Cooper's knack wasn't just fitting barrel staves together to make a tight keg. He could see how most things were supposed to fit, and where the irregularities were that made it so they didn't. Most things-and most people. He could see who was friends and who was enemies, where pride or envy made a rift that few could see. The difference was that when two barrel staves didn't fit, he could get inside them and almost without thinking-and certainly without effort- change them till they did fit.

It wasn't quite so easy with people. You had to talk them round, or figure out a way to change what they wanted or what they believed about the world. Still, it was a good knack for a lawyer to have. He could size people up pretty readily, not as individuals, but how they fit together as families and communities.

Riding into the town of Springfield in Noisy River, Verily got a feel for the place right away.

The people that he met stopped and looked at him-what could a stranger expect, here on the frontier? Or at least what passed for frontier now. With the Mizzippy closed to white settlement, the land here was filling up fast. Verily saw the signs of it every time he traveled through this part of the west. And Springfield was a pretty lively place-lots of buildings that looked new, and some being built on the outskirts of town, not to mention the normal number of temporary shanties folks threw up for summer till they had more time to build something just before the weather got cold.

But these folks didn't just stop and look at him-they smiled, or waved, or even called out a "howdy do" or a "good afternoon" or a "welcome stranger." Little kids would follow along after him and while they were normal children-that is, a few of them could not resist throwing clods of dirt at his horse or his clothes (depending on whether Verily figured they hit their target or missed it)-none of them threw rocks or mud, so there wasn't any meanness in it.

The town center was a nice one, too. There was a town square with a courthouse in it, and a church facing it in each direction. Verily wasn't a bit surprised that the Baptists had to face the back of the courthouse, while the Episcopalians got the front view. The Presbyterians had the north side and the Lutherans had the south. And if Catholics or Puritans or Quakers showed up, they'd probably have to build their churches outside the town. Verily enjoyed the cheerful hypocrisy of American freedom of religion. No church got to be the established one, but you sure knew which ones were way more disestablished than others.

It was the courthouse, though, where Verily figured he'd have the best luck finding out the whereabouts of Abraham Lincoln, erstwhile storekeeper and river trader.

The clerk knew a lawyer when he saw one, and greeted Verily with an alert smile.

"I was hoping you could help me locate a citizen of this town," said Verily.

"Serving papers on somebody?" asked the clerk cheerfully.

So much for thinking I look like a lawyer, thought Verily. "No sir," said Verily. "Just a conversation with a friend of a friend."

"Then that ain't legal business, is it?"

Verily almost laughed. He knew what type of fellow this was right off. The kind who had memorized the rule book and knew his list of duties and took pleasure in refusing to do anything that wasn't on the list.

"You know," said Verily, "it's not. And I've got no business wasting your time. So what I'll do is, I'll remain here in this public space where any citizen of the United States is permitted to be, and I'll greet every person who enters this courthouse and ask them to help me locate this citizen. And when they ask me why I don't just ask the clerk at the desk, I'll tell them that I wouldn't want to waste that busy gentleman's time."

The man's smile got a little frosty. "Are you threatening me?"

"Threatening you with what?" said Verily. "I'm determined to locate a citizen of this fair town for reasons that are between me and him and a mutual friend, doing no harm to him or anyone else. And since this building is at the very center of town-a fine building it is, too, I might add, as good a courthouse as I've seen in any county seat of comparable size in Hio or Wobbish or New England, for that matter-I can think of no likelier place to encounter someone who can help me find Mr. Abraham Lincoln."

There. He'd got the name out. Now to see if the man could resist the temptation to show off what he knew.

He could not. "Old Abe? Well, now, why didn't you say it was Old Abe from the start?"

"Old? The man I'm looking for can't be thirty yet."

"Well, that's him, then. Tall and lanky, ugly as sin but sweet as sugar pie?"

"I've heard rumors about his height," said Verily, "but the rest of your description awaits personal verification."

"Well he'll be in the general store, now that he's out of the store business himself. Or in Hiram's tavern. But you know what? Just go out on the street and listen for laughter, follow the sound of it, and wherever it's coming from, there's Abe Lincoln, cause either he's causing the laughter or doing the laughing himself."

"Why thank you, sir," said Verily. "But now I fear I've taken too much of your time, and not on proper legal business at all, so I'll step on out of here before I get you in some kind of trouble."

"Oh, no trouble," said the clerk. "Any friend of Abe's is a friend of everybody's."

Verily bade him farewell and stepped back out into the afternoon sunshine.

Abe Lincoln sounds for all the world like the town drunk- or a ne'er-do-well, in any case. Failed at a store. No job to do so he can be found in a tavern or a general store. And this is the one I've been sent to find?

Though a drunk or ne'er-do-well would probably not get such a warm description from someone as precise and well ordered as that clerk.

To his surprise, when he stopped two men coming out of a barber shop-sporting that new clean-shaven look that required a man to spend ten cents a day getting his beard removed-and asked them if they knew the current whereabouts of Abraham Lincoln, they both held up a hand to hush him, listened, and sure enough, the sound of a distant gale of laughter could be heard.

"Sounds like he's over at Cheaper's store," said one man.

"Just straight on down the street," said the other, "kitty-corner from here."

So Verily followed the sound of laughter and sure enough, when he walked into the cool darkness of the store's interior, there were a half a dozen men and a couple of ladies, sitting here and there, while leaning up against the wall was about the ugliest man Verily Cooper had ever seen, who wasn't actually injured in some way. Tall, though, just like they said, a giraffe among men.