Damon Knight - Orbit 16

“No, I won’t breathe a word of your secret to the monkeys,” Canute promised.

“We pay the monkeys only half as much per equal weight for their night soil as we pay the people in the town. And the monkeys bring theirs to us; we don’t have to go and get it. Ah, there is profit everywhere you look, in the stones, in the air, in the very rain. What a money harvest we do have! Mills and mills and cents and cents, and at the end of a week we may even have another nickel for our hard work.”

“It’s a wonder you don’t gather belly-button fuzz and process it for profit,” Canute laughed.

“Of course we do,” Effie cried. “We gather more than a pound a year of it from the people of the town, and this in spite of the fact that many of the burghers will not cooperate with us and say that the whole thing is silly. But there are a few friendly people in town who wear wool. The woollies are the best for the fuzz. And it can be made into the softest of all sheens. Oh, do stay over and have a look at our night life tonight, Mr. Freeboard! Really, it’s wonderful the times that we do have.”

A third grackle came and stuck itself in the bird lime on Effie’s head-garden. And then was heard “Sorrow in Three Voices by Grackles”: but only those three would be stuck there. Others would veer away from the three birds in trouble.

But a fourth grackle did come, a bird carrying a long piece of broken looking-glass in its beak. It was too wise to get caught in the bird lime, but it was watched with avid eyes. Sometime it would drop that broken piece of silvered glass, and some person would rush in and catch it before it hit the ground. There’s profit to be had from old mirror glass.

A man with affluent gestures arrived at Hiram Poorlode’s booth in a sudden hurry. He had the sharp, lean, craggy face of a bird of prey. He was taut and of a restless thinness in every part. Why, he was none other than the Lean Eagle from Lean Eagle Street!

“Hiram, I’m caught short,” said that opulent man who wore diamonds on every finger. “I have to cover. I’m overextended. It will be only for a few days. I need two and a quarter million dollars and I need it now. I have my dray here.”

But the Lean Eagle was the highest-flying and the most rapacious moneyman ever. Why should he come to Leptophlebo Street to borrow?

“With me, a man’s face is his security,” Hiram Poorlode said, “and I know your face, Mr. Schlemel kurz Karof. A man of such a name and reputation is security itself.”

Hiram removed three of the largest flagstones from the street on which he had been sitting. He passed the heavy bars of gold up to the nine lackeys who served Mr. Schlemel kurz Karof. It took a fair number of gold bars to amount to two and one-quarter million dollars.

“There has to be an explanation to this!” Canute Freeboard howled out loud. “Oh, but by all the equivocating things that be, there can’t be any explanation to it!”

When the lackeys had loaded all the gold bars onto the dray, Mr. Schlemel kurz Karof signed a note and gave it to Hiram Poorlode. Then that opulent man went away with his dray and his lackeys, and Hiram Poorlode replaced the three flagstones in the street.

Canute Freeboard hummed a little tune to himself. There were some notes missing from that tune. “How long did it take you and your husband, at a nickel a week, to get to a position where you could make instant loans of two and a quarter million dollars and still have lots more gold glinting in your gold-hole under the street?” Canute asked Effie.

“It sure did take a long time,” she said. “There just aren’t any shortcuts.” Effie took from her husband the note that Schlemel kurz Karof, the Lean Eagle, had given him. She dissolved the ink oil it and put it with the ink accumulation. And she put the de-inked paper with the paper accumulation.

“How will you collect, when the writing is dissolved off the note for the ink?” Canute asked Hiram.

“Ah, a man’s face is his security to me,” Hiram said. “He will pay me back. And if he does not, what is the difference? In time I will accumulate that amount again, and I have lots of time.”

“Hey, is the handsome man going to stay around for the night life this evening?” two pretty young skinny ladies asked. “We sure do have a lot of fun at night-life fiesta.”

“These nice young ladies are Regina and Maharana Shortribs,” Effie Poorlode introduced them. “I believe that a good-looking young man like you could have a lot of fun just skylarking with them at night life, Canute.”

“You know what we do for the climax of a night-life go-it-all?” Maharana asked. Oh, the skin and bones of that young girl! They’d send shivers of delight through anyone.

But sometimes one must put second things first.

“Ah, about that loan,” Canute said to Hiram. “Oh, by the swept cobbles of Leptophlebo Street, there has got to be an explanation to this! About that loan, Mr. Poorlode?”

“Oh, certainly,” Hiram said. “I’ve been observing you, and I now have complete confidence in you. I’ll lend you the money. Eighty-five thousand dollars, was it not? Do you want it in gold or in certified cash warrants?”

“In gold, in gold. Oh, what a beautiful, hardscrabble, skinny street this is!” Canute rejoiced. “How have you done it? How have you accumulated millions of dollars in gold on a nickel a week?”

“In bad weeks we don’t make near that much,” Effie Poorlode said.

“Ah, but where does the gold come from?” Canute pursued the matter.

“Oh, there’s several legends about the origin of the gold,” Hiram told him. “One story is that it’s rabbit gold and that it reproduces itself, that it all comes from two nuggets that got together under the flagstones.”

“But there is raw nugget gold there. There is bar gold and ingot gold. And there is coined gold of various coinages,” Canute protested. Hiram had already removed the stones that covered the gold in the street.

“Yes,” Hiram agreed, “several pairs of different forms of rabbit gold would be required, wouldn’t they? Then there’s the story that it’s all monkey gold. The monkeys find it and refine it in the woods. Then they give it to us noble burghers of the street. They are afraid to keep it. It is said that they did keep it when they were men, and that that’s what made monkeys out of them. You don’t believe that entirely? Oh, I see that Hoxie has been monkey-lacing my act behind my back.” And Hoxie had been doing that. But had he been saying “Do not believe all of it” with his monkey-lacing, or had he been saying “Do not believe any of it”?

“The third legend is that it is all pound-of-flesh gold,” Hiram said. “This legend states that we sell pounds of flesh for the yearly bashes of the Extortioners’ Guild and the Hatchet Makers’ Guild and especially for that dread secret society Glomerule; and that we receive our gold for the pounds of flesh. Ah, there it is, Canute, all ready for you to take it: eighty-five thousand dollars’ worth of gold. It’s quite a bit over a hundred pounds. The young ladies will help you carry it.”

“Which of the three legends is true, Hiram?” Canute asked softly.

“Oh, they’re all a little bit true, but all together they would account for only a fraction of our gold.”

“What accounts for the rest?”

“How can we tell you that? It’s a secret. We know you are not so base a person as to want us to tell you the answer. You will have the pleasure of guessing it as the years go by, but we will not tell it to you. Ah, your gold is ready for you, Canute.”

“We know you are not such a fink-dink as would like to be told,” Effie said. “It took the last one about a thousand years to guess it, and you want to miss all that fun?”