The Calderan Problem (Free-Wrench Book 4)

by Joseph Lallo

  “The wisdom of our decision did not become apparent until word reached us of the calamity that claimed so much of your land. Your tragedy was lamentable, but there can be little doubt that had we remained open to your people, we might well have shared it. And though the years following the calamity brought refugees to our shores that shamefully had to be turned away, we now stand at the golden dawn of a new day, and we look forward eagerly for what the future may hold.

  “A sumptuous cake is being placed before you now, a recipe passed down within my own family. Please eat heartily. When you are through, we shall show you to your rooms and you shall be free to enjoy the land I’ve spent this precious time describing.”

  Servants set out plates at the table and Mr. Graus sat, his voice low as he returned to the subject that had dominated his conversation with Mack.

  “We’ve danced about the point of it for long enough, Captain West,” he said, picking up where he’d left off. “Tomorrow we shall be stepping before the council to discuss the issue of your and your crew’s continued asylum here. As it stands right now, you are welcome, but at any moment, for any reason, the council may seek to revoke it. If—or more likely, when—it happens, I will of course rise in your defense, but the immediate and inarguable claim will be made that I am biased both by the very specific service you provided my wife and the relationship of my daughter with your crew. The argument will be made that outside of small advances in medicine and technology, the outside world offers little and threatens much, and I am not certain I have sufficient evidence to contradict such claims.”

  Captain Mack leaned back in his chair as a steaming cup of something that certainly began its life as coffee was set before him. He stared at it, the patterns of coconut milk and sprinkled spice impeccably traced out by the server swirling away in the latest artistic flourish of the meal.

  “I learned an awful lot about your people today, Mr. Graus,” he began. “This all was a fine lesson. You put it together a lot fancier than folks on my side of the ocean would have, but it painted the same picture. And knowing what I know about the folks back home and what I learned about the folks here, I don’t know that I would want to open up them borders for even a single one of us. But it doesn’t matter what you want. You don’t run a ship based on what you want, and you don’t run a nation based on what you want. You do what needs doing. And you can’t afford to sit here and let the world get on with its business without you. You know why?”

  “I have my theories, but I am curious as to your view.”

  “Because if we did this same show-and-tell back home, talking about all we’ve seen or done, twelve courses wouldn’t be enough. Right now, you got through talking about the calamity and you’re putting out the cake and coffee. Back home, we’d still be on the soup and nuts. Because the calamity wasn’t the end of anything. We hauled ourselves up into the mountains and we kept at it. Yeah there was more war. Yeah there was more struggle. But we kept growing. You’ve got a few impressive bits here, but the most potent pieces of machinery you’ve got are those cannons, and you only built them to keep us out. Why? Because struggle gets people moving, makes people stronger. We may not have been as happy along the way as you Calderan folk, but we’ve come a damn sight further since you closed your borders than you have. We’ve grown and we’ve changed. We’ve learned and we’ve improved. You need a dose of what we’ve got just as much today as you did back before you built those cannons. And there’s loads more to learn from us now than back then.”

  Graus nodded. “No doubt, but what if I bring that to the council and they are willing to trade the tranquility for the growth? Suppose my people quite rightly suggest that a bit less advancement and growth in exchange for continued peace is more than equitable?”

  “I’d say that’s a fine trade to take if you can get it, but it ain’t on the table. We made it here. Your folk were hungry for what we had to offer. And if we hadn’t, someone else would’ve. And most folk who might see fit to try buyin’ and sellin’ from you folk ain’t as principled as my bunch. You held the tide back with a couple of peashooters for quite a while, but sooner or later the world is going to come a knockin’, and if you don’t get yourself some friends to help you out, you ain’t going to be ready for what they’re liable to bring.”

  “We’ve turned away the best you had to offer for many years.”

  “No. You turned away the bits we were willing to send your way. Around here we might have a reputation as them nice folks who brung medicine and took one of the locals out to see the world. Back home, folks have different things to say about us. Top of the list, we’re the folks who took down the dreadnought.”

  “Yes. Nita spoke about it at length in her letters.”

  “Good. Picture that monster in your head, and think about this. The fuggers built that thing to keep us surface folk in the mountains in line. We were barely holding on, struggling to survive, and they put together an airship that could flatten a city to keep us on the straight and narrow. Think of what sort of a thing they would put together when they set their sights on you Calderan folk.”

  “When?”

  “A cat can only toy with the same mouse for so long before it gets tired and looks for another. I ain’t sayin’ it’s tomorrow, but mark my words. The fug ain’t liable to stay my problem for long. Someone in this room is going to have to deal with it. And if it ain’t you, me, the missus, and our like? Who’s that leave?”

  Mack turned to Nita and Lil, then to Lita, Coop, and Joshua. Mr. Graus tightened his lips and leaned back.

  “A point well made, Captain…”

  #

  As the wine and desserts were cleared away, the conversation between the Grauses and the Wind Breaker crew continued. The only ones to leave the table had been Butch, who had strong-armed her way into the kitchen to see just what sort of ingredients they were working with, and Mrs. Graus, who saw fit to accompany her. The captain and the patriarch of the family delved deeply into discussions of the future of their association, leaving the Graus and Cooper siblings to get to know one another better. As the stronger drink flowed, what little filter and inhibition Coop had managed to impose on his behavior dropped away and he became, if anything even more Coop than usual.

  At the moment, he was standing on his chair recounting an anecdote that it took his entire body to tell.

  “… So I was up on the bar, right? This one fella’s got my leg, and this other fella—a real bruiser—he’s got my head locked up in his arms. He’s fixin’ to twist it clean off. They think they got ol’ Coop beat, but what don’t they know?”

  “That ol’ Coop’s sister looks out for her brother!” Lil called across the table.

  “That’s right she does,” he said. “Now Lil grabs one of them bottles they wrap up with the twine and stick a candle in—beats me why they do it—but she takes it and whomps him right in the noggin. Down he goes. Then I kinda fall back, on account of him wrenchin’ on my head was just about the only thing keepin’ me up, and I give the fella on my foot a boot to the nose. Down he goes. Turns out, them two got brothers too, and more than one each. Pretty soon the whole place is jumpin’ up and down on us. Or at least tryin’ to, but once I hit my stride there ain’t no keepin’ me down. I took a couple of shots to the head, but that ain’t never done a Cooper no harm, and I dished ’em back two-fer-one. That’s when a fella who don’t know how to have a proper tussle decided he had to pull a knife on Lil.”

  “Took a good hard swipe at me. Mussed up my good coat!” Lil said.

  “And who comes in to mop things up?” Coop said.

  “Was it the captain?” Joshua said. “He seems a rough customer.”

  “Nah, Cap’n Mack ain’t one for a bar these days,” Lil said.

  “It was that Gunner gentleman then,” Lita said. She covered her mouth. “He didn’t shoot anyone, did he?”

  “Nah. Gunner knows better not to pull a gun in a brawl. One gun comes out, and
a dozen more follow it, and then two things happen. A bunch of folks don’t make it home that night, and we ain’t allowed back in that bar no more.”

  “Both are pretty lousy,” Lil said with a nod. “Come on, though. One more guess.”

  “I can’t imagine who is left.”

  Lil pointed. “She’s sittin’ right over there.”

  “Nita?” said both Joshua and Lita in surprise.

  “Well sure. Ain’t nobody I know better at shuttin’ down a fight than Nita. Her with her wrenches and boots. Plus, when a body tries workin’ her kidneys, that whachacallit… corset has them ribs that bust up their knuckles.”

  “You never told us about this,” Lita said.

  Nita blushed and took a sip of her wine. “There are some things I’d just as soon not worry mother with.”

  “But she gets one look at a fella with a knife on Lil and in she runs. She wasn’t even in the dang bar,” Coop said. “She was outside jawin’ with some lady about a job. But she barrels in, swingin’ them cheater bars she keeps on her belt, and pow, lays him out.”

  “Plus two more of his buddies for good measure,” Lil said.

  “You ask me, all the rest of the folks lookin’ to get a piece of either one of the Coopers took a look at the helping of Nita they’d have to polish off and decided they’d had their fill. Everyone goes their separate ways, in a hurry.”

  “Includin’ us, seein’ as how the last one in the place usually has to pay for all the stuff that gets busted,” Lil said.

  “Forgive me if I missed it,” Lita said. “But what started this brawl?”

  “It was…” Coop hopped down and took a seat. “Come to think of it, I don’t rightly know.”

  “I think I said somethin’ about the way the fella’s face looked,” Lil said.

  “He did have a lopsided head,” Coop said. “And a real hiccup in his getalong.”

  Joshua laughed. “What is a hiccup in his getalong?”

  “You know. He walked funny. Had one of these,” Coop said, hopping back up and walking with an odd stutter to each alternate step. “Like he had a nail in his boot and never bothered to fetch it out.”

  Joshua slapped the table. “A glorious turn of phrase!”

  Lita smiled at Joshua. “What do you think, brother? The Coopers?”

  “Certainly the Coopers,” he said.

  “Lita, Joshua… we talked about this…” Nita warned.

  “Nita, I think they can come to their own decision on the issue,” Joshua said.

  “Tell me, what instruments do you play?” Lita said.

  The Coopers looked at one another.

  “You all say that like there ain’t no doubt we got at least one,” Coop said.

  “Heavens, silly me,” Lita said. “I’d forgotten that even something so fundamental to our education might be absent from yours. We all, as a matter of course, learn at least a bit of an instrument. Most of us learn several.”

  “Yep, I knew that,” Lil said. “Nita plays the fiddle, and the harp, and one of the ones we ain’t got that I can’t remember much.”

  “I’m fair to middlin’ with a guitar, but I ain’t sure I’m what you’d call a real player.”

  “And I don’t play nothin’ at all,” Lil said.

  “Wait,” Coop said, snapping. “Spoons! I play the spoons like all get-out.”

  “That, I simply must see,” Joshua said. “Playing spoons.”

  “And Lil, Nita says that you’ve got some real potential as a dancer.”

  Lil blushed and turned away. “Aw, she might say that, but I ain’t so sure it’s so.”

  “Then we shall see that as well,” Joshua said. “I’ll be happy to work up some choreography once I see to what style Lil is best suited!”

  “What for?” Lil said.

  “This is something that had been discussed as a potential means of introducing you, and through you all of Rim, to the Calderans,” Nita explained, a note of apology in her voice. “Sometimes it is helpful, diplomatically, to meet people on their own terms. Lita and Joshua felt if members of the Wind Breaker crew might be willing to demonstrate some unique artistic expression for an audience of interested parties, it would help ease you into our society. I wasn’t sure it would appeal to you.”

  Coop scratched his head. “Is it gonna be a whole show. You Calderan folk doin’ stuff too? Because I reckon I could keep some folks in a bar entertained with spoons if they’d already had a few, but it ain’t what I’d call a night out all by itself. And seein’ as how I seen Lil here dance a few times, I don’t think she’s liable to keep folks entertained unless they’re lookin’ for a laugh.”

  “You keep talkin’ like that and I’ll just let the next fella who wants to pull your head off go ahead and do it,” Lil countered.

  “Oh, we’ll make it the centerpiece of a larger show in your honor! At a smaller venue. Luthor Rehr’s dinner theater would be perfect. A small stage, intimate atmosphere…” Lita said.

  “Dinner!” Coop said. “Well if you all are gonna have us put on a show durin’ dinner, Butch’s gotta make supper for you folks. That’s how you get to know people, is see what they eat, right?”

  “Now that’s an idea!” Lil said. She raised her voice. “Butch! You wanna make dinner for some Calderans if we put on a show?”

  Butch’s answer, contrary to the tone, was to the affirmative.

  “Well that settles it,” Lil said. “Me and Coop’ll show you what we got, and if that seems like it’ll help you Calderan folk make your minds up about us, then we’ll put on a show for you all.”

  Joshua clapped his hands together and rubbed them eagerly. “Splendid!”

  #

  Lucius P. Alabaster marched back and forth with mounting impatience.

  “Unacceptable. Utterly unacceptable,” he muttered viciously.

  The room he’d been asked to wait in was not conducive to pacing. Particularly not the extremely animated pacing Alabaster favored. He wasn’t a man who did anything small. For him, illustrating his displeasure with a situation was a full-body performance complete with oratory. The small, dark room he was in now was home to a pair of armchairs and an overhead lamp, and there was barely enough room to accommodate them. Each lap around the room took two and a half strides, and once every other lap the arm of a chair caught on the cane holstered like a sword at his belt.

  “To think, the man is lucky enough to secure the invaluable aid of Lucius P. Alabaster, and not only does he effectively squander my talents with inane quests even an ape could achieve, he doesn’t even have the decency to be punctual. Instead he has me enter through the back door of the Ruby Club. This was my home away from home, a place in which I may as well have been royalty. Now I must skulk about like some lowly worker.”

  His righteous indignation grew, spiraling faster and faster within his mind as the seconds ticked on.

  “Give me but a tenth of the resources and time to prepare that this man has taken and I’d rule this world a dozen times over. Just wait until…”

  Alabaster’s tirade trailed away as he heard steps approaching the door. He bashed his head on the hanging lamp in his haste to hop into one of the seats. Once seated, he checked that the folio and satchel beside it were still in place, then reached up to steady the lamp.

  A man opened the door and entered. He dressed more sensibly than Alabaster, though that was anything but a difficult distinction to earn. He wore a black outfit of simple, sturdy make. It was formal without being ostentatious, and common enough for him to blend instantly into a crowd. Not quite as tall as Alabaster, the man still had the long, scrawny build of the average fug person. Deep lines in his face betrayed a more advanced age, but by virtue of the quirks of the fug folk, it wasn’t clear if he was a decade older or a century. He carried a folded newspaper under one arm.

  To look at him, one might imagine he was little more than a servant working in the country club waiting beyond t
he door through which he’d entered. For the better part of the time Alabaster had known him, that’s precisely what he believed this man to be. The recently revealed truth had been, quite literally, humbling.

  “Ah, yes. Mr. Tusk,” Alabaster said. “I’d wondered if you were forced to cancel our meeting.”

  Alabaster was plainly, and poorly, moderating his tone in an attempt to appear to be Tusk’s equal. It said something about Lucius that in his mind he was lowering himself to that level rather than elevating himself. Ferris Tusk, through a long life of careful and masterful manipulation, was almost singlehandedly responsible for the position of power now enjoyed by the fug folk. Alabaster, on the other hand, had pursued a scheme that, had it been successful, would have literally wiped out that society.

  “I was detained. Barnum was in the midst of a long-winded recollection of a big-game hunt from some time ago and I didn’t want to be rude and take my leave until he was through.”

  “Ugh. That bloviating, boastful, bloated blowhard could fill an entire evening with his half-remembered drivel of waddling out into The Thicket and having his staff fire guns at wild animals,” Alabaster said. “The fool exists to fill silences with his mindless, unending dreck.”

  “A common trait among members of this club, I’ve noticed. And in a parallel observation,” Tusk tossed the paper down on the small table between the chairs and took a seat, “I see you’ve availed yourself of the fourth estate, as requested.”

  Alabaster looked appreciatively over the image of him that occupied most of the front page of the paper.