Brothers to Dragons

by Charles Sheffield

  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, b
ut 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 locadon, 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 preferred 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-caUe 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.

  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 blackbearded 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 waite
d. 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.