Brother to Dragons

by Charles Sheffield

  He felt his way downstairs, hardly knowing if lights were on or off. The basement was a junkman’s dream, even more crowded than the upstairs.

  Job noticed nothing, except that near the bottom of the narrow stairs was an old mattress. He collapsed onto it. His bloated stomach gave a mild twinge, and then a more painful spasm. For a few moments he thought he had eaten too much and was going to lose everything. He tried to sit up. But before he could lift his head more than a few inches he was gone, swallowed by a sleep so deep and close to death itself that Sammy, checking a few hours later, had to listen and look hard to be sure that the uninvited guest was still a living, breathing boy.

  The basement of the house had no windows. It was thick-walled and quiet, holding its temperature night and day close to seventy-five degrees.

  For the first twelve hours Job did not move or dream. In the next half-day he ran a temperature, tossing on the mattress in semi-delirium. Occasionally he knew where he was, lying in Sammy’s cellar. But most of the time he was in Cloak House and the streets around it, with Father Bonifant and Laga and Nurse Calder and Colonel della Porta and Skip Tolson, all jumbled up together. In one terrible dream he woke inside the incinerator itself, surrounded by and tangled with dead boys. When they felt the heat they awoke to awful, twitching life. He broke loose and crawled away from them, across red-hot plates that seared his hands and made the blood boil in his veins. He screamed in agony and tried to lift smoking palms that stuck to the glowing metal.

  “Hey, you,” said a tenor voice. Job was being shaken, violently. “You wanna stay in my house, you don’t make so mucha that damn noise.”

  It was Sammy, gripping him in strong, sinewy arms. Job gasped and shivered.

  “Dreaming.” Clotted tongue, thick head. He was still half in his dream, heart pounding wild within his chest.

  “Hold quiet.” Sammy had lifted Job’s arm and was holding a black square instrument over his right wrist.

  Job sat up, stared blank-faced at grimy walls and felt-wrapped pipes. He did not remember coming here. “Is it morning?”

  “Evening. You slept round.”

  “Professor Buckler—”

  “No professor.” Sammy was peering through a glass panel in the middle of the instrument. “Sweet Jesus. You been jaded. Whyn’t you tell me?” The musical voice rose an octave. “Tonight, the professor come an’ explain. Or you go.”

  Sammy turned and ran up the steps, lithe as a snake. Job followed, slowly. On the way he took a first good look at the house. It was narrow, no more than fifteen feet from wall to papered wall. Piled boxes, high as Job’s head, left a four-foot tunnel through the center. Job lifted the lid of one. It was crammed with wigs and toupees, of all colors. The next held women’s hats, feathered and plumed and pom-pommed and in every style that Job could imagine. A third was filled with coat hangers.

  The stairs were steep and narrow. By the time Job reached the second floor he was breathing hard and his legs were wobbly. There was no sign of Sammy. Job went into the kitchen and found the same crockpot simmering on the portable stove. He helped himself, and ten minutes later had the strength to climb more bare wooden stairs. The third floor was like another kitchen, except that there were two stoves, half a dozen locked cupboards, and a long work-bench filled with glass beakers and measuring cups. An unfamiliar tart smell crinkled Job’s nose. There was no sign of Sammy.

  He kept going. The fourth floor was clearer than the rest. The walls were fresh-painted, and the landing window was free of grime. Job knew he was intruding, but he went on to the end of the landing. He found himself in a sky-lighted bedroom. Sammy was there, stretched out unconscious on a broad bed. A little twist of paper sat on the pillow beside the dark head. An urgent whisper of “Sammy” and a tug of the bare arm produced no effect. Sammy was out more deeply than Job had been, twenty-four hours earlier.

  Job’s first reaction was relief. Sammy was warm and breathing—and if Sammy were not awake, Job could not be cast out into the night. That thought changed quickly to alarm. This wasn’t sleep; it was a coma, like Laga’s coma.

  He reached over and shook harder. “Sammy!”

  There was no response. Job ran down the stairs to the first floor, opened the front door, and stood hesitating on the threshold. It was warmer than last night, but already quite dark. The vendors would have long since packed up their wares and gone, and any street basura still outside would be more likely to loot than help.

  Job closed the door firmly and hurried away along the sidewalk. Bracewell Mansion would not welcome him, but people there knew Sammy. They would have to help, no matter what they did to Job afterwards.

  The night was still, with a rising moon casting shadows from tall buildings. Job steered clear of the dark areas. He had gone no more than a couple of blocks when a tall, hooded figure stepped suddenly in front of him and grabbed his arm. He gasped in terror, jerked loose, and began to run.

  “Job!” An urgent hiss from behind stopped him. “It’s me.”

  He turned. Tracy was standing on the sidewalk, the cowl pulled back onto her shoulders to reveal her coiffured hair.

  “I was coming to see you.” Her voice was soft, and she was staring all around her. “I’ve only got an hour, then I have to go back.”

  “The professor never came.”

  “I know. That’s what I wanted to tell you.”

  “And Sammy’s sick—maybe dying.”

  “What!” They fell into step together and hurried back towards the house. “What happened to her?”

  “I don’t know. Unconscious, upstairs. I thought Sammy was a man.”

  “She was once. Now she isn’t. How long has she been sick?”

  “Not long. Less than an hour. She was talking to me. She said that if the professor didn’t come tonight, I have to leave.”

  “He won’t be coming. I told him last night that you’d been at the mansion looking for him, and he fell apart. He’s been drinking ever since. He’s scared of Miss Magnolia. That’s why I had to come.”

  They had reached the narrow house, and Tracy went in first. She stood staring around at the jumble of boxes and cartons.

  “Straight up,” said Job. “Up to the fourth floor.” He led the way, wheezing, until they came to Sammy’s bedside.

  Tracy leaned over the silent body, feeling the reddened cheekbone with the back of her hand and rolling back Sammy’s eyelid. A brown iris rolled into view, its pupil like a tiny black pinpoint.

  “Is she dying?”

  Tracy had picked up the twist of paper on the pillow and was sniffing it. She shook her head. “This is a case where the shoemaker ought to go barefoot. Sammy’ll be all right. Get me cold water.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” Job took a bowl and went through into the bathroom.

  “She’s been sampling her own products. I thought she’d kicked that, years ago.”

  “She found out I’d been jaded. I think it really frightened her.”

  “I bet it did. My fault, I should have told you to mention that first thing.” Tracy took the bowl of water. “Get out. Come back in twenty minutes. When you do, let me handle the talking.”

  “Is she—”

  “She’ll be fine. Close the door as you leave.”

  Job wandered back down the stairs. He didn’t know what to do. He had slept and eaten all that he could, and it was not safe to be on the streets so late. For the next quarter of an hour he rambled from room to room, lifting lids off boxes, peering into storage rooms, poking around dark closets, counting dresses and musty suits on old hangers. By the time he went back upstairs he was sneezing from dust and dazed by excess.

  Sammy was sitting on the side of the bed, cheerful and dreamy-eyed. She smiled at Job.

  “She’s still way up there,” said Tracy. “But she’s coming down. And I have to get out of here in the next ten minutes, or Miss Magnolia will crucify me.”

  “What is this place?”

  Tracy’s stare was as blank
as Sammy’s.

  “I mean,” said Job, “there’s all these old clothes and boxes and furniture…”

  “Ah.” Tracy nodded. “The house. When the owners went broke and skipped, Sammy took it over. Used to be a theatrical costumer and supply center. All the good stuff’s gone, though.”

  “And he gotta go, too.” Sammy was more alert, and she was no longer smiling. “I can’t have a J-D here. Too dangerous.”

  “He has nowhere to go, Sam.”

  “Tough. You think I run a welfare house? You shoulda told me he been jaded.”

  “Do you know how he got jaded? Trying to make a delivery of one of your packages to the Mall Compound.”

  “Not my business…you sent him to the Mall. You take him, if he got nowhere to go.”

  “I can’t. Miss Magnolia was the one sent him to the Mall, but she’d turn him right in. You know Miss Magnolia.”

  Job was going to speak but Tracy caught his eye and shook her head.

  “Hmph.” Sammy’s scowl said that she knew Miss Magnolia, and did not think well of her. She stood up from the bed and went into the bathroom.

  “What you think, I need charity boarders?” She was at the mirror, peering at her face. “No way. I’m on the edge, Trace. Broke.”

  “You need somebody around here, Sammy. For yourself. He found you, and he thought you were OD-ing. He went out looking for help. How many people would do that?”

  “I didn’t need no help.”

  “This time, maybe. What about next?”

  “May be no next time.” Sammy was applying a new layer of makeup, and the face beneath the powder and blusher was pale. “How he gonna pay if he stay?” she said over her shoulder. “I told you, I’m broke. He can’t pay, he gotta go. I don’t need anyone do pickup an’ drop-off for me. My business come right here.”

  “He has no money. You know that, Sam.” Tracy shrugged at Job. Sorry. I tried. She stood up. “I have to get back to Bracewell.”

  “It’s true that I have no money.” Job’s face was paler than Sammy’s. Tracy had told him to keep quiet, but she was getting nowhere. “I might be able to make some money for you, though.”

  “How? You got nothing, you don’t know nothing.”

  “I know how the street vendors work. I know how they talk, how they think, how they set prices.”

  “You got nothing to sell.”

  “I know. But you do. I don’t mean the drugs.” Job waved his arm around. “I mean everything else in this house, the clothes and fixtures and fake jewels.”

  “Is junk. All of it.”

  “You think it’s junk. But people buy junk. I know. I bought enough, when I worked with Mister Bones. People buy anything, if it’s cheap enough.”

  “That don’t make sense.”

  “What you got to lose, Sammy?” said Tracy. “You let him try street vending, if he doesn’t make enough you kick him out. If he does, you’re ahead.”

  “He been jaded.”

  “So what? If there’s ever a bust on this house, you think they’ll bother with a jaded kid? They’ll be after the real stuff.”

  “Still no. Too dangerous. I don’t want him in the house.”

  “All right. So he doesn’t stay here. But will you let him try being a street vendor, selling some of the stuff? You say it’s junk. He says he can move it.”

  Sammy turned from the mirror. Her makeup was perfect again. “He can’t move nothing, Trace,” she said. “I’ll bet on it. But you say you gotta go. So he stays one more night, we talk tomorrow morning. If you want.”

  “All right. That’s a deal. One more night, Sammy.”

  One more night.

  And then Job would be out on the frozen streets of the city. He had argued with Sammy, and failed to convince her. He knew it. He could see no reason for the look of sly triumph on Tracy’s face.

  • Chapter Eight

  Basura Boy

  Sammy would not let Job live inside the house. On that point she had remained adamant.

  But the rear of the basement led through to a covered area that had once been a garage. Its concrete floor was sloping, and its wooden doors were broken-hinged and cracked and one of them was cemented permanently shut, but the scarred old wood kept out the worst of the cold. Job placed old mattresses upright against the doors and stuffed rags into the biggest holes. The sloping floor he ignored. He had slept in much worse places.

  The mattresses had turned up in the attic when Job was making his first inventory of the house. Sammy had given him a go-ahead, but she had made it clear to Tracy that his food and lodging had to be paid for, and quickly. In two days Job identified a hundred items that should sell easily: fur hats of ancient style, mildewed but thick overcoats, solid old cooking pots, mismatched but solid boots and shoes, and fake stage jewels so big and bogus that Tracy laughed at the cheap glitter and swore that not even the street hookers would look at them.

  Job ran everything out on a handcart to the nearest street corner. It was a poor location, but he had one huge advantage over all the other vendors: Sammy had set no rules on selling. Job could undercut the market by any factor he chose. And with his prices, the street hookers did more than look—they bought, and so did passersby. At the end of the first day Job took home enough money to pay Sammy for a week, along with a piece of salt pork and a five-pound bartered basket of parsnips and potatoes. Sammy grudgingly admitted that maybe he had been right, and the house junk was an unrealized asset.

  “But what you gonna do next month, Jo-babe, when you sold everything?”

  That problem had already occurred to Job. For the moment he ignored it. He had at least a year’s supply of goods in the house, and three other things were more pressing. First, he had to make a full inventory and value what he had for sale. Second, he needed to nail down a good vendor location, shielded if possible from rain and the worst wind. And third—really first in his mind—he must work out a way of life that guaranteed he would never, never, never be caught and returned to Cloak House.

  A J-D on the streets was at risk all the time. The number of policemen was never more than a handful, even in good weather, but Job set and rigorously applied his own rules. If he heard advance news of police presence, or saw any sign of it, he packed up and took his cart home at once. If there was no warning, but police appeared or were rumored to be on the way—the basura spread that word like the wind—Job abandoned his cart with whatever was on it, and ran. He came back when it was safe. The cart was usually picked clean, but he felt lucky when it had not been stolen.

  He expected the inventory of the house to take weeks, because it seemed so cluttered and random. On the third evening he realized that the former occupants had followed their own plan. The house was organized for the production of theatrical works, and the boxes of clothes and furnishings were labeled. Man and Superman, The Taming of the Shrew, Death of a Salesman, The Pirates of Penzance, The Mousetrap, Hedda Gabler, The School for Scandal, Lady Windermere’s Fan, The Duchess of Malfi…

  Job listed every box he could find, then took the fourth day off from vending. Instead of selling he went buying, hunting through the stock of other street sellers for old books of plays while he chatted with the vendor, usually in chachara-calle, sometimes in other languages.

  In the basement that night he started to read what he had bought, learning how to interpret the contents of hard-to-reach boxes from the words written on their sides. It was the first use he had ever found for written information. He was finally admitting that Mister Bones had been right, years too late to tell him.

  The search for knowledge had two by-products. First, Job met dozens of other vendors and learned to his surprise that his arrival on the streets had already been noted—and disapproved. By extreme price-cutting he had been ruining the market for everyone. No one made any threats, but Job was learning. He assured them that from now on his prices would be in line (or just a tiny fraction lower).

  Second, Job began to make a short list of pref
erred vendor sites. He wanted a place that was sheltered and yet highly public. Most of all he wanted a corner location that permitted four-way escape.

  Within two weeks he had made his choice. It was a quarter of a mile east of Sammy’s house, near the corner of an avenue in the doorway of an abandoned store. It had been ignored by others because it was not sunny, and because there were vendors on either side and more across the street. But by summer the shade would be a blessing, and Job was willing to give up some business for protective numbers. Before any police reached him, they would have four or five others to deal with—and street vendors did not usually go quietly.

  He moved into the doorway with his cart in the fourth week. By now he was beginning to feel like an old hand. He joined in the day-long chatter of the vendors, adding to his language pool: Hungarian and Hindi, Armenian and French, Portuguese and Russian, mouthing words and phrases in silent mimicry. It was not mere entertainment. He had noticed that although all the vendors used chachara-calle among themselves, passersby stopped more and bought more at a vendor who spoke their own native language. Not only written knowledge had value.

  In the seventh week, a vendor moved his stall from across the street to a location about thirty yards along from Job. The street-seller was a tall man with a big black beard, and every day at noon he strolled down past all the vendors, greeting each one. The way he looked at everything and everybody made Job very uneasy. He listened hard when the man spoke. The language was chachara-calle, but it lacked the easy and natural flow of someone who had been raised to the street argot. And sometimes the man brought books with him, and read when things were quiet.