Paul Mcauley: Shrine of Stars

They slowly got around to bargaining, and at last, with Tibor following, climbed down to the lowest branches of the banyan to inspect a long narrow pirogue. It had been dug out of a single tree trunk and had a log outrigger and a high prow. A reaction motor lay in the stinking water which half-filled it. Although Ayulf could not get the motor to start, he promised that it usually ran as sweet as the streams of the paradise which the Preservers would create at the far end of time. The sun had set and, despite the little lights strung through the branches of the banyan, there was not much light under the shanty, but Pandaras could see better in the dark than the trader. He took a hard look at the motor—it was clogged with dried mud and probably had been dropped in the river at some point—and said that it was a big motor for a small boat.

“Sometimes in my line of work you need to get somewhere quickly,” Ayulf said, showing his ruined teeth in a ghastly grin. “This will take you anywhere on the river, my little man, swift as a thought from the Preservers.”

Pandaras smiled at him. “It might do that once it is fixed. If it can be fixed. The inlet and outlet channels are clogged and bent, but that’s a trivial matter. What’s worse is that the reaction chamber might be corroded under all this mud, and the feeder valves and the ignition spark will need complete readjustment. That is, if they are still working. There’s a hole in the fuel tank, too. Did someone shoot at it?”

Ayulf walked his long fingernails up his narrow jaw and pulled at his ear. He glanced at Tibor and crowded closer to Pandaras, who lightly touched the hilt of his poniard. The trader pretended not to notice the gesture. He stank powerfully of tobacco, sweat and urine. He said, “If you know something of motors, you will see that this is a fine one, very powerful.”

“I see that it is very broken. No doubt you got it from someone who was foolish enough to drop it into the river or have their boat sunk from under them. It’s been lying too long at the bottom of the river to be any good, but I’d be happy to take it away from you as a favor, since the look of it spoils the rest of your fine fleet.”

With hot food in his belly and his face and feet and hands washed in filtered water, Pandaras felt more cheerful than he had since the flier had taken away his master and destroyed the Weazel . This poor shanty could almost count as civilization, and bargaining was the stuff of civilization, the way by which you measured yourself against your fellows. He had Tibor carry the reaction motor into the shanty and pretended to be angry that someone had burdened Ayulf with something in such a bad condition. On this basis, he and Ayulf bargained for an hour over glasses of peppermint-flavored arak; Pandaras took care to pour most of his share through a crack in the floorboards whenever Ayulf was distracted by one of his women.

Ayulf was a crafty bargainer, but he was not as clever as he thought he was. He had been too long amongst river pirates and the simple fisherfolk, and had lost his edge. He suggested almost straightaway that Pandaras leave Tibor with him and take the pirogue and the motor, and plenty of supplies too, but Pandaras said that he wanted only the pirogue, although he would take the motor if Ayulf had no need for it. In the end, it cost Pandaras half Yama’s store of iron coins as well as the husks of the burnt-out machines. He had shown these to Ayulf early on and knew, by the widening of the man’s yellow eyes, that the trader instantly coveted them.

Ayulf broke open another bottle of arak to celebrate the deal, and although Pandaras drank only enough to be polite, it quickly went to his head. “That’s it,” Ayulf said encouragingly. “Drink. Be happy. We’ve both done well with this deal. Let your slave here drink, too. Aren’t we all friends?”

“I do not drink alcohol,” Tibor said. “It is a poison to my people.”

“We wouldn’t want to poison you,” Ayulf said. “Not you. You’re worth a lot to your master.” He said to Pandaras, “You can really fix that?”

“I’m going to do my best,” Pandaras said, and opened up the motor’s combustion chamber and began to remove and clean the feeder valves and the rotary spark. The crow perched close by, cocking its head this way and that, fascinated by the bright bits of metal which emerged from their coatings of mud. Ayulf watched sidelong, and said that Pandaras seemed to know a little about motors.

“One of my uncles on my stepfather’s side had a trade in them. This was in Ys, where such things are forbidden, so it was on the black side of the market. Others think that our bloodline is famous only for songs and stories, and see our hands and think that we cannot do good work with them. But while our fingers are crooked, they are also strong, and we are very patient when we need to be. You might think this motor worthless, but when I’m done it will be better than new. You are very generous, Ayulf, and I thank you a million times over. Here, more of this rotgut, eh? We will drink to my success.”

“You stay here a few days,” Ayulf said. “You and your slave.”

“He isn’t my slave.”

“He has to be someone’s, and he came with you. Maybe we become partners, eh? Make much money. There is much that needs fixing here. I hear the war goes badly, which means it goes well for you and me, eh? More and more in the regular army run away from it, have to sell stuff cheap to buy what they need dear, and caterans are always hungry for the best weapons, no matter what side they are on.”

“I have to find my master,” Pandaras said.

Tibor said, “And the ship.”

Ayulf poured Pandaras’s shot glass brimful, drank from the bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “It left you behind, eh? Maybe after an argument or a delicate kind of disagreement? I sometimes find those who have fallen out violently with their shipmates, if the caymans and fishes haven’t found them first.”

“There was certainly a fight,” Pandaras said, glaring at Tibor.

“And you lost and were left to rot on some island? I know how that is. Are you sure they want you back? More likely you ran away, eh? They wouldn’t leave a valuable slave behind with you. Yes, you took him and ran away, I would guess. No, it’s all right, I won’t tell. Listen, why go downriver? I have all you want here. Food and drink and women. Well, the women are animals, of course, but they know how to please a man in the warm trade.”

Ayulf grabbed at the nearest of the women, but she pushed him away with a loud laugh and turned back to frying shrimp in a big blackened cast-iron pan.

“Always cooking,” Ayulf said. He started at the woman and made a humming noise in the back of his throat. “Why now, eh? Why so late? You all eat too much, you and your brats. I should throw a few of you to the caymans, eh? Which ones first?” He stuck his long middle finger (its nail had been filed to a sharp point, and was painted red) at the nearest woman and made a noise like a pistol shot. She giggled and put her hands over her face. Her fingers were webbed, and spread very wide, like a fan. They were tipped with little black claws.

“Someone is coming,” the oldest woman said, from the far corner of the shanty. She was very fat, overflowing the stool on which she perched. She was working at a bit of wood with a tiny knife. Her skin was as green as moldy cheese. She said, “They bring hides to trade, man. They will make you rich.”

“They share their thoughts,” Ayulf told Pandaras. “They are not like us, who keep our thoughts sealed in our skulls. Everything is shared with them, like air or water. Kill any one of them, and it makes no difference.”

Pandaras nodded. He was having trouble focusing on the spring, ball-bearing and three bits of metal that should fit together to make one of the feeder valves. There seemed to be too many of them, and his fingers too clumsy. He was drunk, and he had not meant to become drunk. But Ayulf was drunk too, and Pandaras had his poniard and the arbalest, and, at a pinch, Tibor (although he was not sure that Tibor, for all his size and strength, would be any good in a fight). And fisherfolk were coming. The trader would not try anything in front of them.