James Enge - This Crooked Way

"You don't understand!" he wailed. "That just creates more paperwork: unauthorized deactivization of an unregistered zombie is itself a code violation-there will be incident reports and witness affidavits and second-death certificates and tax assessments on the labor of the zombie and tax-penalty assessments on the unpaid labor taxes…. I'll be in the office all night long. And I promised to take my nonobligated semipartner Zaria to the election rally this evening out at Remer Fields."

"Well, there'll be other election rallies," I said.

He looked at me as if he suspected I might be an unregistered zombie myself. "Of course there will," he said sadly, "but she won't need to wait for one. My meta-cousin Vestavion will be all too willing to escort her tonight. That serial monogamist, that man-of-many-contented-partners, that winsome glib glad-footer! After all: you know the effect election rallies have on women. The speeches! The chanting! The policy presentations! It makes them crazy. I might as well start saving up now for their wedding morsel: they're as good as preengaged."

"Look-" I said, hoping to stop him before he confided in me again.

"I've warned her about him," he said confidingly. "But he's an accountant with a private banking firm, and I think she's swept up in the glamour of all that-"

"This was not a zombie," Morlock observed.

"I could have been a banker, but I like to work in the open-What did you say?"

Morlock said it again.

"What is it then? Or what was it, rather?"

"A harthrang," Morlock said, and stopped. As if, you know, that explained everything.

"Don't keep us waiting, Morlock," Roble said after a second or two. "What's a harthrang?"

"A demon possessing a corpse," said Morlock, as if he were saying, We've run out of onions.

"Impossible," quacked Glemmurn. "The municipal demon-shields are-"

"-flawed," Morlock interrupted, and gestured at the corpse with the smashed eye.

"Ur. Well. I'll still need a certificate of second death from a physician. And I suppose I'll have to write up a brief incident report and a crematorium deposit-slip. But," he added, brightening up as he went on, "I won't need any witness affidavits, and there won't be any tax forms at all to file. If I postpone a couple of visits until tomorrow, I could be out of the office before sunset, and rally here we come. Hm. Yes. Yes indeed. Oh, Zaria, Zaria, grant me the blessings of your sweet franchise-That is. Yes. I think I'll make an official determination that this was a harthrang, not an unregistered zombie. If, of course, you'll submit a letter of support addressed to my board of advisors, describing the harthrang phenomenon and the steps you took to neutralize the demon-How did you neutralize it, by the way?"

"He scared it away," said Roble.

Poor pasty-faced Glemmurn looked at my brother (what a study in contrasts!), looked at the corpse with the smashed eye, looked at grim crooked Morlock and said, "Yes, the board will accept that, I think."

I went back into the crooked house and sent Thend to fetch the physician next door, a red-haired bundle of self-regard who went by the modest moniker of Reijka Kingheart.

"I'll go!" hollered Fasra, when she heard me talking to Thend.

"You won't," I said. "Glemmurn is out there, and he'll be in here in a minute to look at the books. You're the only one who understands them-"

"Oh, come on!"

11 -and you're going to explain them to him. Thend: go." Thend looked at me, not angry, almost sad. Of all of us who survived, I think Thend was the one who'd been changed the most by our trip through the mountains. He was only fifteen, but he was getting the poise and the patience of a grown man, and his deep brown eyes seemed to see deeply into everything they looked at. I often had the uncomfortable sense that he was humoring me, going along with this farce of a parent-child relationship because it was important to me. But he went and did as I told him; that was the main thing.

"Stupid old Glemmurn," Fasra grumbled, approximately. "I wish he were in a sewer somewhere. I like Reijka, Mama."

I sort of hated Reijka's guts, but I didn't say so. "She'll be over here in a minute," I said, "and she'll probably want to have a look at our wounds before she goes. She always does."

Fasra quietly slammed open the cash drawer and demurely yanked out the bound volume where we kept track of our accounts and gently smashed it down on the counter.

"Don't tear any pages," I said as she flipped open the account book.

"I have my emotions well under control, thank you," she said, with a searing glance from her bright black eyes. "Now, let's see: when was that stupid, greasy, dough faced bucket of dumbness last here?"

I told her and stepped back out into the street.

Reijka Kingheart was there, examining the twice-dead corpse and somehow simultaneously giving Roble the eye. I could have told her it was a waste of time-Roble isn't much for the ladies-but why do her any favors? For one thing, she was a Coranian. I'm not a bigot; I just hate all those pastyfaced shifty bastards.

If you can stand to look at someone whose skin is the color of spilled milk, I guess she wasn't bad. And whatever charms she had, the whole street knew about them. Personally, I don't care whether a woman shows her arms and legs on the street, if they can bear the examination, but I think that the design she tattoos on her sagging middle-aged nipples should be a secret shared with a range of acquaintance narrow enough to exclude me. But the sheer fabric Reijka used for her body-wrap made the whole world her close personal friend.

Glemmurn was obviously impressed, and as she rose from where she had been crouching beside the dead body I thought he was going to ask for the bounty of her franchise, and to hell with nonobligated semipartner Zaria. But then she told him she wasn't going to fill out his stupid paperwork and his face turned to stone.

"This body has been dead for several days; decomposition is well established. I found several symbols carved into the flesh that appear to be the anchors for some sort of reanimating spell. I attest it to you in the presence of these gentlemen-and this lady," she said, nodding companionably toward me. I'd have corrected her about my status (and theirs) except that in Narkunden everyone is a gentleperson, even noncitizens like us. "But I'm not going to go to your office and swear out a statement in front of a justiciar. Not unless you're going to pay me for my time."

"Citizen Kingheart, my department's budget-"

"Listen, I have the same budget as you: thirty hours a day, no more or less. If you want a significant amount of my time, compensate me. You know as well as I do that you can put all our names and statements in your report and that will be as good as an affidavit, since agents have field-justiciar status for the purpose of taking testimony."

"Yes, but I don't like to use it unless it's necessary."

"Great weeping walnuts: be a man. Don't do any paperwork for him, gentlemen. He only wants it to bulk up his files. They weigh it all at the end of the year, and the bureaucrat with the heaviest stack gets some sort of promotion. That's what my ex-obligated full-partner used to say, anyway."

"Citizen Kingheart, I must caution you not to encourage resident con- tractees to shirk-"

"I am a citizen, and I know my rights and theirs. Anyway, don't you have a date tonight? Zaria was telling me about it. You want to stand here all day talking?"

Glemmurn jumped like he'd been stung by a queck-bug and looked anxiously up at the sun. "All right," he said. "I'd better check the books inside before I leave. Just pin your second-death certificate to the corpse."

"Done."

"Er. Someone should-"

"I'll take it to the body dump," Morlock said.