Brother to Dragons

by Charles Sheffield

  “The kids got sick. Some of them died. Laga died. I was scared, and I ran away.”

  “And that’s all you know?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Professor Buckler was staring at him, seeing right inside him just as Mister Bones had done. “You didn’t know that nearly two hundred children died of food poisoning, and only seven survived?”

  Job could not speak. Not just Laga, but all his friends, the only people he knew in all the world. He shook his head.

  The professor studied Job’s face. After a moment he reached out to grip his hand. “I believe you. Cloak House will probably be closed. No one will make you go back there. Eat your breakfast.”

  But Job could not. He sat staring at the table. Across from him, Professor Buckler sat sipping bourbon.

  “You are too young to remember it,” the professor said at last, “but there was a time when everyone in this city, and everyone in this country, believed that the future—”

  He was interrupted by a clatter of footsteps on the tiled floor behind him. Miss Magnolia swept in, hair perfectly groomed, makeup flawless. She was wearing a fuzzy peach-colored robe, a light green scarf at her neck, and open-toed heeled sandals.

  “Gabbing again,” she said, addressing the professor and ignoring Job. “All talk, and we’ve got a busy day. Two receptions this afternoon, and three tonight. We have to get the stuff in.” Her eye caught the brown package on the table. “You already did it?”

  Buckler shook his head. He picked up the packet, ripped the paper open at one end, and shook the contents out onto the table. They were squares of old newspaper.

  Miss Magnolia frowned down at them. “What the hell’s that?”

  “Trial run, my dear.” The professor nodded at Job. “I could not risk a pickup with an unknown quantity. I sent him down to Sammy’s, then called Sammy and said to make up a dummy test package. Job came back twenty minutes ago. Sammy told me the boy obeyed instructions exactly. Did you talk to anyone on the way there, Job, or on the way back?”

  “No, sir.”

  Professor Buckler nodded. “How would you like to stay here?” He was speaking to Job, but his eyes remained on the woman. “Stay at Bracewell Mansion, I mean, and work for me and Miss Magnolia? We need someone reliable. Someone who is not afraid of the streets. Someone who can run errands, and pick up and deliver for us.”

  “I would like that, sir. Very much.” Job did not hesitate.

  “Then I want you to go back to the house with the red door—you remember the way?—and collect another package for me.” The professor nodded at Miss Magnolia. “All right? The real thing, this time.”

  “Hell, I don’t know.” She was scowling again. “Just one test, and no background—”

  “I checked background. And you were the one who insisted we had to have someone quick, to replace Poppy.” He turned to Job. “Off you go now. I need to speak again to Miss Magnolia. Don’t worry about your food—this is cold, anyway. There’ll be plenty more when you get back, whenever you want it.”

  Job hurried down the stairs and headed into the street. This time on the way to the red-doored house he felt no urge to speak to any vendors. He was shaking with excitement and anticipation. Twelve hours ago he had nowhere to go, nothing to do. Now he had a place to live, and a job.

  And plenty to eat. Whenever he wanted it.

  Of all the marvels at Bracewell Mansion, the idea that food might be available whenever you chose to eat was the one that Job found most incredible.

  • Chapter Five

  Paradise Lost

  December 31st. Darkness and snow. Falling on the last day of the year, and on Job’s tenth birthday. He stood in the gentle down-drift of flakes on the front steps of Bracewell Mansion and knew he was in paradise. In the city’s desert of misery, toil, and deprivation, he had stumbled on an oasis of ease and plenty.

  Every morning and afternoon he ran a couple of errands, picking up small packages and occasionally delivering one. He had new shoes and warm clothes for his travels through the city, and a smog mask for bad days. The professor, and even in a grudging way Miss Magnolia, had come to trust him, so they no longer worried that he might talk to the street people; and when Professor Buckler discovered Job’s command of not only chachara-calle, but half a dozen other languages in use around the area, he encouraged the boy to chat, to listen, to look, and to become an extension of Buckler’s own inquisitive eyes and ears.

  Little errands, twice a day. That was all that anyone seemed to expect of him. In return Job was allowed to eat and drink as much as he liked. He had his own bed in his own room, and the run of all the floors except the three that Miss Magnolia controlled and which Job was strictly forbidden to visit.

  “Women’s territory,” Buckler had said to him. “Paint and powder and underwear and female intimacies. Avoid them. You wouldn’t want to go there if you could.”

  He was wrong—Job was intrigued, by the very fact that they were off-limits. But he was not about to do anything that might jeopardize his position at the mansion, and he was scared of Miss Magnolia.

  The evening snowfall was continuing, in big, pure-white flakes. The steps of the mansion were completely covered. It was colder, but even cold was a pleasure to Job, knowing he could go in any time to closed-in warmth. Tonight was a big party night. He had been told to stay out of certain rooms while preparations were being made. But once the limousines had slid discreetly to a halt in the covered garage behind the mansion, and the passengers and cargo had been tucked away inside them, Job could go back in and do what he liked. All the same, he would like to have seen those preparations. They sounded fancy. There had been talk of tonight’s party every day since the last big one on Christmas night.

  “‘And now there came both mist and snow,’” said a voice behind him, “‘and it grew wondrous cold. And ice, mast-high, came drifting by, as green as emerald.’”

  Job turned around, but he did not need to. Over the past month he had learned the pattern. Professor Buckler drank in the morning, every morning, “to save this crumbling corpse from rigor mortis.” The prenoon liquor did not make him inebriated, but when he drank in the afternoon he became philosophical, poetic, and a little unsteady. After a lull around six o’clock, sometimes including a nap, he drank all evening, when instead of intoxication the bourbon seemed to sober him, sharpen his wits, and rejuvenate his body.

  At the moment the professor was somewhere near the end of state two, with downtime due before state three.

  “Magnolia told me to get out, too,” Buckler went on. “All hustle and bustle, get ready for the big night—but we are not included!” The professor had a glass in each hand. He lifted his head and caught a snowflake in his open mouth. “I created this place, you know. Yet we have become supernumeraries, you and I, in this our own house. As the males of the company, we must revolt. It is time for us to sound the first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of Women.”

  A red-dyed head covered in curlers poked out of the door behind the professor. It was Tracy, Job’s favorite among the score of women at Bracewell Mansion. “Miss Magnolia says to come inside,” she said, “before you both catch pneumonia. And you, Job, stand by. I’ll probably have a special errand for you in a bit, for the boss lady. Something come up unexpected. Come on, then. Hurry hurry hurry.”

  She gave a shiver—real or pretended, Job could not tell—and vanished. They followed her inside. As darkness fell the temperature had fallen with it, and regardless of Miss Magnolia’s order it was too cold to stand about much longer. The professor led the way up two flights of stairs and on to his own private quarters. Job had been there a few times already. His amazement at rooms with so many books and bottles was a thing of the past.

  “Hurry hurry hurry,” said Buckler. He sat down in one brown leather armchair and gestured Job to the other. “It’s always the same, and it’s so wrong. Hurry, go fast, keep moving. The world today wants everything done so quick, changes so q
uick. All that endures is change.” He held his glass in front of his face and stared into it like a tawny crystal ball. “Who would have believed, seeing me six years ago, that I would have come to this? A tenured professor of sociology, in an endowed chair, at a highly regarded and well-funded university, with my emeritus on the way and full retirement benefits. And then—pffft. All gone.”

  “What happened to you? What did you do?” Job had not understood half the other’s words, and so far as he could see the professor was the most fortunate man imaginable. But he had learned that when Buckler spoke like this, Job would often find out something new.

  “I? I did nothing. It happened to me. And not only to me. To the world—the whole world. To her, too.” Buckler pointed a wavering finger to the ceiling. He was drinking faster than usual, and it was beginning to have an effect. “Five years ago Miss Magnolia was selling real estate. Very successfully. When the Great Crash came she lost everything. Her job, her house, even her husband—he died of worry. He was in commercial real estate, and businesses went first. Fast. It took longer for the university. Even when our endowments weren’t worth spit, we still had students. For a little while.”

  The Great Crash.

  They were the words that Job had heard about for years from the basura as they talked on the street corners. Quiebra Grande. Alboroto-oro. Dinero-fuego—the Great Crash, the gold riot, the money fire, a dozen other terms in the chachara-calle that was their common language. But nothing that told him what it was, or what it did.

  “Seven years ago.” The professor blinked at Job. “Seven years ago I had a dozen jobs open to me, all around the world. And then, four years ago, there were none. Not here, not abroad. No more foreign visitors, no foreign conferences. That’s when I knew that the economic crash and the poverty were global.”

  Job didn’t argue. But it seemed to him that Professor Buckler had no idea what poverty was. Poverty was Cloak House, not Bracewell Mansion. It was walking through snow in worn-through shoes or no shoes, not riding in limousines. It was stale bread or no bread, not a choice of a dozen dishes. It was winter rooms where water froze in the jugs, not the cozy mugginess of abundant steam heat. It was cold water with no soap, not long, hot showers or the mink-oil bubble baths that the women talked about.

  “Or almost global.” Buckler was not talking to Job now, he was talking to himself. “The trick is to find the pockets of money. They’re still there, you know, the ones that control wealth. You have to get close to them.”

  Wealth.

  A month ago Job didn’t know what that word meant, but with Buckler’s informal tutelage he had been learning. Wealth was more than having enough to eat, and clothes to wear, and a place to live. Wealth was so much food that half of it was thrown away uneaten. Wealth was so many clothes that most of them you never wore at all. Wealth was—still remote and almost unimaginable for Job—helicopters and airplanes and ships, on call to take a few people wherever they needed to go.

  No. Not needed to go. Wanted to go.

  Job’s thoughts turned to a summer night, to barricades and protection systems and watchtowers, to helicopters lifting and whirring away through the warm air.

  “You mean, pockets of money like the Mall Compound?”

  “My boy, the analogy is well-intended. But it is not appropriate.” Buckler’s lids had drooped shut. He had refilled his glass with an effort from the bottle that stood on the floor next to his armchair. “If the Mall Compound is a pocket of money, then the Monument that stands within it is a toothpick. For within the Mall dwell the chosen people, the five hundred and forty worthy representatives who control the expenditures of this great nation. Do not demean the Compound by calling it a ‘pocket’ of wealth. Call it, if you will, a vast and bloated sack. And be thankful for its existence, and raise your glass to it.” Buckler did so as he spoke. “Your meals and mine, and the very existence of Bracewell Mansion, are owed to the Mall Compound. We are all its slaves—its willing slaves.”

  He fell silent. If the evening ran true to form he would sleep for an hour or two, to wake clear-eyed and in good humor.

  Job went quietly out and up to the kitchen. Before he ran an errand tonight, in the cold and snow, he wanted warm food inside him. He helped himself from the hot buffet and was still eating when Tracy came to the door.

  “Good.” She stayed at the threshold. “You’re here. Go get your warmest clothes, then come right back. I’ll wait. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s hell upstairs. Miss Magnolia wants you to go the minute it’s ready.”

  Job ran up the stairs, and back down. He was coughing and holding his chest when he returned to the kitchen. Tracy came over and put her hand on his arm. “Are you all right? You shouldn’t be going out on a night like this.”

  “I’m fine.” Job hated sympathy, even from someone as nice as Tracy. He stifled another cough and sat down. “I choke a bit, but I’m real lucky compared with other people. Professor Buckler told me all about what happened to him at the university, and about poor Miss Magnolia, and her husband.”

  “Told you what?”

  “What happened to them. In the Quiebra Grande.” He repeated all that the professor had said to him. At the end of it, Tracy burst into fits of laughter.

  “Sociology? He’s studied sociology all right. From the ground up. Job, we call him professor, because he likes that, and he’s got all those books and he talks so funny. But he’s no professor, never has been. Way I heard it he’s been right here in the city for forty years.”

  “Not teaching?”

  “Not teaching, ’less you count pimping as teaching. And Miss Magnolia, she only sold one thing in her whole life—and it’s sure not real estate.” She laughed again. “Don’t you believe two words the old prof tells you, because one of ’em will be made-up. That man, he’s got more imagination inside him than he’s got bourbon. He just loves to talk.” She shook her head. “Real estate!”

  “But he didn’t make up the Quiebra Grande.”

  “No, he didn’t. Nobody has a mind diseased enough for that.”

  She went out giggling. Job sat with his face burning. He didn’t so much mind what the professor had done, inventing a glorious past for himself. Job had had thoughts like that himself at Cloak House, when he imagined his real mother and father who would one day come to find him. What he hated was the idea that Tracy would tell the others how gullible he was, and they would laugh at him behind his back.

  They would, too. He had heard them mocking Professor Buckler, when he came out with one of his extra-philosophical comments or poetic phrases.

  Job sat with his coat and gloves on. He was too hot, but he wanted to go before anyone else came. He was not looking forward to Tracy’s return. To his surprise, though, it was Miss Magnolia herself who arrived ten minutes later. Job’s errands were mostly run for the professor, and for the rest it was Tracy or Rosita who brought instructions.

  Miss Magnolia was frowning—nowadays she always seemed to be frowning—and she hardly looked at Job. Her attention was on the square box she was holding. “Now listen to me real careful. This isn’t the typical drop-off, to the usual places. Do you know the Mall Compound?”

  “I know where it is. I’ve never been inside.”

  “You won’t need to go inside. Go to the northeast corner of the protection zone—that’s the corner nearest here. Go in just far enough to trigger the alarm system. You know what that is? All right. You wait, until a man in a uniform comes. Don’t worry about the warning message, the defense system will be turned off for you. Stay right where you are at the edge of the protection zone, let him come to you.”

  She paused, as Tracy came hurrying into the kitchen. “Well?”

  “You were right.” Tracy’s manner had changed. She was pale and nervous. “It was Susie. Tromp saw her leave. On foot. She went east.”

  “With the shipment?” Miss Magnolia’s face was like painted stone.

  “I don’t know. Tromp didn’t see it, bu
t Susie was carrying a cloth bag.”

  “She has it. She must have. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of her later. Stupid bitch. I have to get another batch over there right now, before their party starts. It won’t be easy.” She turned to Job. Her face frightened him. “A man in a blue uniform, with a peaked cap. Got that?”

  “Will he come from inside the Compound?”

  “Never you mind where he comes from. Just wait for him.”

  “You’re sending him to the Compound?” Tracy’s lower lip drooped in shock.

  “Yeah.” Miss Magnolia gave Tracy a furious glare. “Shut your yap, and stay out of things.”

  “But there’s been patrols over there, the past week. Vince hasn’t called me once, and Toria said the Compound—”

  “I said, shut your big yap. Don’t you know who the customer is for this one? We got clients here in fifteen minutes, every girl booked, and I’m late for this delivery. If we don’t give service we’ll all be out on the street. You’ll be peddling your tight little ass to some rot-cock basura. You want that? Then shut up.” She held the square box out to Job. “Here. Keep it inside your coat. It’s got a waterproof cover, but don’t let nobody see it. When the man in uniform comes up to you, he’s going to say, ‘A little something for the head honcho?’ You don’t say one word. You give him the box, and you come right back here, fast. I’ll be waiting. All clear?”

  Job had a dozen questions he would like to have asked, but not of Miss Magnolia. He nodded, stuffed the box down inside his high-collared coat next to his chest, and started off down the stairs.

  “Gloves and hat!” called Tracy after him. But she did not follow to see him leave.

  The snow outside lay deeper on the ground. It was still falling. As the temperature dropped, the thick, lazy flakes were changing to small icy points that stung Job’s unprotected face. He pulled the brim of his hat lower, placed his hands on his chest to protect the box and hold it safe in position, and headed south and west toward the Mall Compound. The cold air was sinking to the very bottom of his lungs, producing an ache that rapidly drained his energy. He put one hand to his mouth, to filter air past his warmer glove, and trudged on.