Brother to Dragons

by Charles Sheffield

  Job studied the newcomer, while the man studied him and everyone else. He did not look like police. But…

  Spring was arriving. A great storm of wind and warm rain arrived unexpectedly one mid-morning in Job’s eighth week on the street. Vendors covered their wares and fled swearing for shelter. Job’s doorway was too shallow to protect him from blowing rain, but it took him a while to admit it. After five drenching minutes he gave up and scuttled along to a stone overhang halfway down the block. A dozen vendors were already there. They included black-beard.

  Soaking wet and squelching in sodden shoes, Job could not be inconspicuous. His arrival was greeted by shouts of laughter from the others.

  “Nice and dry, chico!” “Hey, pescado, what kept you?” “Come in, rain man, join the fun.”

  The black-bearded man said nothing, but he grinned and handed Job a length of dry toweling. Job formally nodded his thanks and dried his face and hair.

  “Thank you.” He held out the cloth but kept his face averted.

  The man nodded and took the towel back. He eyed Job with open interest. “How old are you, my friend?”

  Answer, or not answer? Tell the truth, or make something up?

  “I am ten years old. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I see you watching me when I read. Maybe you want to learn to read books, too, as well as selling?”

  “I can read.”

  “Can you now? I meant real reading, with hard words.”

  “Yes.” Job was not surprised by the man’s skeptical glance. At Cloak House, Skip Tolson and Rick Luciano and Torval Berhammar could not read, and they had not been considered dimwits. Even under Father Bonifant, readers had not been in the majority.

  “All right, then.” The man was holding out a book with a stiff blue cover. “Try that. Can you read the title?”

  “‘Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.’”

  “Good. But that last word is not pronounced ‘Heeb-rides,’ it’s pronounced ‘Heb-rid-eez.’”

  Job raised his eyebrows, while the other vendors standing under the overhang nudged each other.

  “What’s the joke?” The man had noticed the grins.

  “I didn’t make a joke,” said Job, when no one else spoke. “It’s just that maybe they think it’s funny, when you start correcting the way I say things.”

  “Why’s that funny?”

  “I expect because”—Job switched to mimic the man’s accent and manner of speech, with its broad, twangy tone—“because when you speak chachara-calle, without knowing it you say things this way.”

  There was a roar of approval.

  “Is that me?” The black beard wagged, and the man looked around at the other vendors. “Is that really the way I talk?”

  “Dead-on!” “Justo!” “Precisamente!” Everyone was grinning.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. So I do sound like that. And I thought I spoke chachara perfectly. Nobody ever said a word to me before. But how come you can speak like me?”

  Job shrugged. The rain squall was over, and he wanted to get back to his stall. He had said and done too much already, showing off—that’s what it had been—how well he could read, and then showing off again to mimic the man and make the other vendors laugh. He had made himself far too conspicuous. “I just listen,” he mumbled. “Then I say what I hear.”

  He moved away. The man followed him. Job walked faster, deserting his cart and hurrying along the rain-drenched avenue until he could turn onto another street. He waited. When no one appeared after five minutes he peeked around the corner. The stalls were occupied again, with everything back to normal. The black-bearded man was sitting at his stall and reading his book.

  But Job went back, grabbed the handles of his cart, and left. Don’t get caught again. Never, never, never. That was the Golden Rule, the only important rule.

  He headed for home and the safety of his garage. Although it was not yet noon, he felt he had been exposed to too much risk for one day.

  Job spent an uncomfortable night. The next morning he decided that while running away had not been wrong, it had solved nothing. Today he again had to sell his goods, or he would soon be out on the streets; which meant that either he went back to sell at the usual place (which he now thought of as his), or else he had to find a new spot.

  But if he did move, and the man was police, it would be little trouble to track Job down. It was not practical to push the cart more than a mile each way. All that black-beard would have to do was walk the streets systematically, and he would find Job again in a day or two.

  In the end Job went to the usual spot with his handcart, but he piled on it only a quarter of its usual load. If he had to abandon it, the loss would be small.

  The rain had blown through and away, but instead of carrying dirty air with it the changed weather had brought an inversion layer. The air sat thick and heavy over the whole city. Even with his mask in place, Job felt the yellow fumes crawling to the bottom of his lungs. He walked slower and slower. One thing was sure, if he wanted to escape from someone today he’d be in trouble. He could not run more than a few yards without choking. He paused on the final corner. The avenue was filled with the morning crush of pedestrians and crawling vehicles. All the vendors were in position, including black-beard.

  Job trundled his cart the last fifty yards and set up shop in the usual doorway. The man had seen him arrive. Job was convinced of that, even though there had been no movement of the dark head in his direction.

  After half an hour Job’s suspicion was confirmed. The man stood up from his stall, stretched, and wandered casually in Job’s direction. He nodded when he was a few paces away and turned to walk directly towards Job. The hair on the back of Job’s neck seemed to crawl. The man’s nose and mouth were hidden behind his smog mask, but his dark eyes were visible. He was pretending to be relaxed, but he really wasn’t. He was as tense as Job.

  It was already too late to run away. Job sat dead still and waited.

  The man flopped down uninvited on the little stool that Job brought with him for customers who wanted to haggle before they bought. It was a breach of vendor protocol, to do anything that might interfere with another vendor’s sale, but Job sat uncomplaining.

  “What you did yesterday,” said the man at last. “That was pretty impressive. Imitating the way I speak. I was thinking about it all last night.”

  Which makes two of us. Job just nodded.

  “I was thinking,” the man continued, “if I sound different from all the people around here, I bet I lose a lot of sales. And I was wondering if you could help me do better—you know, catch me when I say something wrong, and tell me how to do it right.”

  Was that it? No more than a desire by the black-bearded man to fit in? It was tempting to believe that; but Job couldn’t take the risk. The other man was just too intense. “I don’t know. Some people can hear and say, others never do it right no matter how hard they try.”

  “Tin ear, you mean? Maybe that’s my problem. But I’d like to solve it if I can.” The man was smiling behind the mask, but it didn’t reach to the eyes. “Look, please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not asking something for nothing. I can pay, if that’s what you want. Or maybe you can teach me, and maybe in return I can teach you.”

  “Teach me what?”

  “I’m not sure. I’d have to give you a few tests first.”

  “I had plenty of tests when I was little. They were stupid. All they showed was what I knew, that I have bad lungs and bad teeth and a funny jaw.”

  “I don’t mean medical tests.” Now the eyes were smiling. “I mean mental tests. Did you ever have one?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” In spite of himself, Job was interested. The man talked differently from everyone he had ever met. “What are the tests for?”

  “They tell you what you’re good at—to be more accurate, they tell you what you might be good at. Take you, for instance. Everyone around here says you talk to them in
their own languages, without being taught. That sort of thing can be tested for.”

  “I already know I can learn languages.”

  “Sure. But there could be things you might be even better at, only you’ve never run into them. That’s what these tests do—tell how good you might be at something, before you ever try it.”

  He saw Job’s hesitation. “Look, this isn’t an urgent thing. Think about it, see if it appeals to you. Most people like to know what they’d be good at if they had a chance.” He stood up. “Maybe we can talk about it more tomorrow. By the way, my name is Alan Singh, What’s yours?”

  “Job Salk.”

  Mistake! His brain shouted the word at him. He had given his real name. It was on file at Cloak House and with the J-D center, more than likely it was on file in the Mall Compound.

  But Singh was nodding and turning away, as though asking Job’s name was no more than courtesy.

  Maybe it was just that.

  But Job was trembling. How much was due to fear, and how much to a perverse excitement, he could not say.

  • Chapter Nine

  Escapegoat

  Job had never taken a formal test in his life. The very idea of sitting at a table for three hours, just reading and writing, was peculiar—even without other distractions.

  He fidgeted in his chair and looked around the room. He had thought that Professor Buckler’s living quarters were full of books. But this place was books. From floor to ceiling every wall was covered with them. Bookshelves broke into the living space, so that just to move around the room you had to walk along long, narrow book-lined aisles. In fact—he stared around again—there was no living space. He could see no bed, no kitchen or bathroom.

  Alan Singh was sitting at another little table about ten feet away. He saw Job’s head movements and laid down the book he was reading.

  “Look, when you are all through I’ll give you a full tour if you want it.” His accent in chachara-calle was improving, but Job thought that he would never fully lose his foreign twang. And when it came to difficult subjects or fast talking, Singh still preferred to switch to standard English.

  “But those are timed tests you’re doing,” Singh went on. “If you don’t start promptly, you’ll never finish. I’m going to re-set the clock. Then I want you to stop gawking and begin reading and thinking.” He pressed a button on the top of a curious round-faced clock that had been distracting Job with its loud ticking sound. “You’re starting again—now. Get to it.”

  Job bent his head and began to read. Regardless of books and clocks he found it hard to concentrate. The journey here with Singh had been disturbing, and he was still not sure why he had agreed to come. He had told Sammy what he was going to do, and she had stared at him and told him he was mad. Singh was surely going to kill him or rob him.

  It still seemed to Job that she might be right. They had meandered for miles through a warren of littered streets, to a totally unfamiliar part of town and a matched group of buildings of gray stone. Someone clearly lived in them, because the grass between some of the buildings was well tramped down, and anyway, someone lived everywhere in the city that a person could live. But Job saw no sign of people. And although Singh seemed to know his way around the place, he did not act as though this was his home.

  Anything could happen to Job here, and no one would ever know it. He forced thoughts like that out of his head, and stared at the page.

  A man is traveling in a country where there are only two sorts of people: those who always lie, and those who always tell the truth. The man meets a native at a crossroads, and wonders how to get to the next town. He is allowed to ask the native just one question to find out the right way to go. What does he say to the native?

  After the first set of easy questions they were all like this. Weird. What sort of country had two such odd sorts of people? Nobody told the truth all the time, and probably nobody lied all the time. And why could the man ask only one question? What happened to him if he asked another one?

  Some of the problems weren’t questions at all. They were funny little drawings that you had to turn around or back to front or inside out, and then say which one was different from the others. Others asked about wood and metal balls dropped from the top of buildings, or weights placed into buckets of water.

  The final set was strangest of all.

  Three men are placed in a room with stickers on their foreheads. They are told that the stickers are either red or black, and that there is at least one red sticker. The first man who can say correctly what color the sticker is on his own forehead will be the winner…

  Anyone in his right mind would peel off the sticker and look at it. But Singh said that sort of answer was not permitted. The men had to reason the color of the stickers.

  Job frowned and puzzled and chewed at the end of the pen. He was amazed when the clock gave a loud pinging sound, and Singh said, “All right. Time’s up. Don’t write any more.”

  “I haven’t finished all the questions.”

  “That’s all right. Hardly anybody does. Hand it over.”

  It was Singh’s turn to frown and concentrate, while Job wandered around and stared at books. Some of the titles made no sense. He found a whole section of books filled with nothing but numbers, strange symbols, and a few lines of writing between them. He stared at other shelves for a long time before he realized that they held books in other languages, some that he already spoke but had never seen written down. The spelling was often confusing, and didn’t match the way that the words were pronounced.

  “Well, that’s one theory disposed of.” Singh had finished his pondering, and was leaning back in his chair. “Damnation.”

  Job came to sit next to him.

  “You’ve certainly got a talent,” Singh continued. “But it’s not what I hoped it might be.” He was flipping through the pages that Job had filled out in his careful printing. “You answered correctly every question about words and language. How long did that part take you?”

  Job looked at the pages. Singh was pointing to the easy questions at the beginning. “Not long. No time at all, I just filled them in.”

  “Most people can’t get them right, even if they take their time doing it. You’ve got a first-rate memory and a pretty good grasp of logic and spatial relations. But I don’t see any sign of unusual mathematical talent, or physical intuition.”

  Singh laid down the pages. “Probably just as well, from your point of view.” He leaned back and rubbed at his black beard. “Did you ever have any courses in science or math?”

  “Father Bonifant used to teach them at Cloak House. But when Colonel della Porta came he stopped that. He said the courses were ‘useless and seditious.’”

  “He was following the party line.” Singh stood up. “Come on, let’s go. I want to show you something.”

  He led the way from the book-lined chamber and out of the building. “This place used to be a university,” he said. “Before the Quiebra Grande, when there was money for things like education, people a few years older than you would come here for four or five years.”

  They were cutting across a big square of ground covered with long grass, following a well-walked path. Job stared around, and saw no sign of stores or workshops. “What did they do here?”

  “They learned—at least, some of them did. And I taught. In this building.” They were entering a massive stone edifice that looked to Job like one of the old churches that still scattered the city. He thought of Professor Buckler, and his talk of being at a rich university. Maybe Alan Singh maintained the same delusion.

  “This building, and this lab,” said Singh. They had walked up two flights of littered and filthy stairs to an open door. The room beyond was long and wide. Within it were rows of benches covered with dusty equipment. It had all been cannibalized. Job saw broken lenses, ripped-out wiring, and smashed glass jars. At the front of the room stood a platform, and behind it was a set of three wide blackboards. Singh went for
ward and mounted the dais. He turned to Job. His face had become wistful, lacking its usual energy. “Three thousand mornings, I stood up here and talked. Now I wonder where all my words went. And where my students went.”

  Job was becoming uneasy again. Singh was full of some obsession with the past. It had been a mistake to come here. But as though reading that thought, the man on the dais suddenly smiled.

  “You know, this is something I always wanted to do here, and I was never allowed to. Against university regulations.” He pulled a black cigar from his pocket, lit it carefully, and leaned forward with his elbows on the podium. He blew a smoke ring towards Job. “So, Job Salk. You’re not a scientist. Well, lucky for you. You won’t become a scapegoat, the way we did.”

  “What’s a scapegoat?” Singh had switched to standard English, and Job had never heard that word before.

  “I don’t know how to say it in chachara-calle. A scapegoat is someone who gets blamed for something.”

  “That’s a pagano. Same as a fall guy. Why are you one?”

  “Me, and science too. You know how the word ‘scapegoat’ came to be used? Thousands of years ago, the high priest would take a goat, and lay on it all the sins of all the people in a big ceremony. And then the goat was sent off to the wilderness. All the sins were supposed to go away with it. Just the way it happened to us.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s because you’re only ten. You’re too young to remember what it was like before the Quiebra Grande. Science used to be respectable. Twenty years ago it was all right to call yourself a scientist. But bit by bit there was more garbage, and more acid rain, and toxic wastes, and runaway reactors, and the air got worse and the water got worse. And there were more and more people, and the cities began to fall apart. The sewage and transportation systems overloaded. And all that was before the big financial crash and the beginning of the real troubles. Governments all over the world were in deep guano. They didn’t know how to solve any of the problems, but they needed their scapegoat. When the Quiebra Grande came and the population was up to nine billion, they picked their pagano: science. Scientists made technology possible. Technology produced wastes and pollution. Ergo, scientists were to blame for everything.