The Dragons of Babel

by Michael Swanwick

  "No kidding," Will said. "His gym anywhere around here?"

  "Down the street and over a couple of blocks. Place called the Sucker Punch. You can't miss it."

  Ghostface was still in the diner, so Will left a note on the dash of the Cadillac. A few minutes later, he was at the Sucker Punch A.C. If there was one thing Will had learned working for Toussaint it was how to walk through any front door in the world and act as if he had a perfect right to be there. He went in.

  The gym was dark and smelled serious. Punching bags hung from the gloom. Somebody grunted in a slow and regular fashion, like a mechanical pig, from the free-weight area. There was a single regulation ring in the center of the room. A trollweight bounced up and down on his toes, shadowboxing.

  "Go home, little boy," an ogre in a pug hat said. There ain't nothing here for you."

  "Oh, it's not about that, sir," Will said automatically. By that meaning whatever the ogre thought it meant. The alderman had schooled him never to meet aggression head-on.

  "No? You don't wanna build yourself up, get the girl, and beat the crap out of whoever's pushing you around?" The ogre squeezed Will's biceps. "You could use it. Only not here. This is a serious club for serious fighters only."

  "No, sir, I'm with Alderman Toussaint." By the ogre's expression, Will could see that he recognized the name and was not impressed. "I was hoping you could tell me something about Bobby Buggane."

  "The bum. What's he done now?" "He was murdered."

  "Well, I ain't surprised. Buggane was no damn good. Coulda worked his way Up to the middle of the card, but he wasn't willing to put in the effort. Always jerking off somewhere with his spook buddy, when he shoulda been working out."

  "Somebody said they got into doing crimes together." It was a shot in the dark, but Will figured the odds were good.

  "Yeah, well, like I said, I wouldn't be surprised. There's a lot of crap a gorilla like Buggane can pull off if he's got a haint accomplice. You go into a jewelry store and pinch the ward when the guy ain't lookin' and replace it with a spring of plastic fennel. Looks just like the real thing. Then that night the spook slips in and shuts off the alarm. If you're like Buggane and can rip a safe door off its hinges, you can walk off with a bundle. Somebody pulled something like that at a warehouse down in the Village about six months ago. Got away with a fortune in slabs of raw jade. I remember it because Buggane quit the gym right after that, and I always wondered."

  "Raw jade's got to be hard to sell, though." Will said. "I mean, in bulk."

  "Not if you got connections. Even if you don't, something big like that could be moved through your regular fence, provided you waited until things had cooled down some. Not that I'd know personally. But you hear stuff."

  "Huh," Will said. "This girlfriend of his you remember her name?"

  "Naw. Daiera. Damia, something like that. Maybe Danae. Only reason I recollect at all is that I asked Buggane once was she a pixie or a russalka or what and he said she was a diener. Deianira the Diener, that was it. That's a new one on me. I thought I knew all the ethnics, but I ain't never heard of a diener before. Listen, kid. I really have got work to do."

  "I'll be out of your way, then." Will said. "Thanks tor your help." He took one last look around the gym." I guess Buggane should have stayed in the ring."

  "Oh, he wasn't a ring boxer," the ogre said. "He was a pit boxer."

  "What's the difference?"

  "Pit boxing's strictly death-match. Two fighters climb down, only one climbs out. Buggane had a three-and-two record when he quit."

  "How the fuck," Will said, "can somebody have a three-and-two record, when he's fighting to the death?"

  The ogre grinned. Then he explained.

  Less than an hour late,. Will, Salem Toussaint, and Ghostface stood waiting in the shadows outside the city morgue. "Okay," Ghostface said, "I thought I knew all the racial types, from Litvak night-hags to Thai shit demons, but you say this girl is a what?"

  "A diener. It's not a type, it's a job. A diener is a morgue attendant who's responsible for moving and cleaning the body. She also assists the coroner in the autopsy. I made a few calls and Deianira's on night duty this week. Though I'm guessing she might take off a little early tonight."

  "Whys that?"

  "This is where Bobby Buggane's body wound up." "I think, boy," Toussaint said firmly, "you'd best tell us the whole story."

  "All right," Will said. "Here's how I put it together. Buggane and Ice steal a truckload of jewelry-grade jade together and agree to wait six months before trying to fence it. Buggane keeps possession — I'm guessing it's stashed with his girlfriend, but that's not really important — and everybody has half a year to reflect on how much bigger Buggane's share will be if he stiffs Ice. Maybe Ice starts worrying about it out loud. So Buggane goes down to the basement to talk it over with his good buddy. They have a couple of drinks, maybe they smoke a little crack. Then he breaks out the crystal goon. By this time, your brother's lost whatever good judgment he had in the first place, and says sure."

  Ghostface nodded glumly.

  "Ice shoots up first, then Buggane. Only he shoots up pure water. That's easy to pull — what druggie's going to suspect another user of shortchanging himself? Then, when Ice nods off, Buggane goes back to his room, takes down the ward, and flushes it down the toilet. That way, when he's found dead, suspicion's naturally going to fall on the only individual in the building able to walk through a locked door. One whom he's made certain will be easy to find when the police come calling."

  "So who kills Buggane?"

  "It's a set up job. Buggane opens the window halfway and checks to make sure his girlfriend is waiting in the alley. Everything's ready. Now he stages a fight. He screams, roars, pounds the wall, smashes a chair. Then, when the neighbors are all yelling at him to shut up, he goes to the window, takes a deep breath, and rips open his rib cage with his bare hands."

  "Can he do that?"

  "Boggarts are strong, remember. Plus, if you checked out the syringe on his dresser, I wouldn't be surprised to find traces not of goon but of morphine. Either way, with or without painkiller, he tears out his own heart. Then he drops it out the window. Deianira catches it in a basket or a sheet so there's no blood on the ground. Nothing that will direct the investigators' attention outside."

  "She leaves with his heart."

  "Now Buggane's still got a couple of minutes before he collapses. He's smart enough not to close the window — there'd be blood on the outside pan of the sill and that would draw attention outward again. Bui his hands are slick with blood and he doesn't want the detectives to realize he did the deed himself, so he goes to the bathroom sink and washes them. By this time, the concierge is hammering on the door."

  "He dies. Everything is going exactly according to plan." "Hell of a plan," Toussaint murmured.

  "Yeah. You know the middle part. The cops come, they see, they believe. If it wasn't for Ghostface kicking up a fuss, we'd never have found out all this other stuff."

  "Me? I didn't do anything."

  "Well, it looked hinky to me, but I wasn't going to meddle in police business until I learned it mattered to you."

  "You left out the best part," Toussaint said. "How Buggane manages to turn killing himself to his own advantage."

  "Yeah, that had me baffled, too. But when a boxer picks up a nickname like 'the Deathless,' you have to wonder why. Then the ogre at the gym told me that Buggane had a three-two record pit boxing. That's to the death, you know. It turns out Buggane's got a glass heart. Big lump of crystal the size of your fist. No matter how badly he's injured, the heart can repair him. Even if he's clinically dead."

  "So his girlfriend waits for his body to show up and sticks the heart back in?" Ghostface said "No, that's just crazy. That wouldn't really work, would it?"

  "Shhh," Will said. "I think we're about to find out. Look."

  A little door opened in the side of the morgue. Two figures came out. The smaller one was helpin
g the larger to stand.

  For the first time all evening, Toussaint smiled. Gold teeth gleamed. Then he put the police whistle to his mouth.

  After Buggane and his girlfriend had been arrested, Ghostface gave Will a short, fierce hug and then ran off to arrange his brother's release. Will and the alderman strolled back to the limousine, parked two blocks away. As they walked, Will worried how he was going to explain to his boss that he couldn't chauffeur because he didn't have a license.

  "You done good, boy," Salem Toussaint said. "I'm proud of you."

  Something in his voice, or perhaps the amused way he glanced down at Will out of the corner or his eye, said more than mere words could have.

  "You knew," Will said. "You knew all the time."

  Toussaint chuckled. "Perhaps I did. But I had the advantage of knowing what the city knows. It was still mighty clever of you to figure it out all on your own."

  "But why should I have had to? Why didn't you just tell the detectives what you knew?"

  "Let me answer that question with one of my own. Why did you tell Ghostface he was the one who uncovered the crime?"

  They'd reached the limo now. It flickered its lights, glad to see them. But they didn't climb in just yet. "Because I've got to live with the guy. I don't want him thinking I think I'm superior to him."

  "Exactly so! The police liked hearing the story from a white boy better than they would from me. I'm not quite a buffoon in their eyes, but I'm something close to it. My power has to be respected, and my office, too. It would make folks nervous if they had to take my intellect seriously as well."

  "Alderman, I..."

  "Hush up, boy. I know everything you're about to say." The alderman opened a door for Will. "Climb in the back. I'll drive."

  One day in early spring, Will returned to the Rat's Nose. "You're back again," Nat said.

  "I. uh, kinda got a haint out of trouble, and somehow the word slipped out. Salem said I was too high profile to work for him anymore." Esme crawled out from under the table. "Who's he?" "I'm your Unca Will. You remember me," Will said. "I used to be your papa."

  "Oh, yeah." In the accepting way of a child, Esme filed away this new information, to be forgotten as soon as he went away again. Will found, to his surprise, that he felt a pang of regret at not being her lather anymore. "Can I have a basket of pretzels?"

  "Sure you can," Nat said. Then, to Will, "You've been wearing the ring?"

  Will held up his hand to display the cheap pinchbeck ring that Nat had commissioned for him. "Are you finally going to explain the purpose of it?"

  "Take it off."

  Will did.

  Nat indicated the pale circlet of flesh where the ring sat, an indentation that did not recover with its removal. "On such small details is verisimilitude built." He removed something from an inside vest pocket. "Try this on."

  The ring was solid and had it weighed so little as a breath more might have been called massive. It was woven of red, yellow, and white gold. A single ruby, bright as a fresh drop of blood, formed the eye in the head of a fanged Wyrm, biting savagely into the ring. On close examination, Will saw that the tricolored gold formed the scales of a body that coiled three times around his finger before ending in the Wyrm's mouth.

  It fit the indentation perfectly

  "Tell me," Nat said. "If you're presented to a prince, on which knee do you kneel?"

  "Always the right."

  "A waiter comes by with a platter of cheese. What hand do you use?"

  "Never the left."

  "If the music has a time signature of three-four, what should you dance?"

  "The waltz."

  "It you get into a dagger fight, and your opponent thrusts low and to the right?"

  "I parry it in octave."

  "If an elf-lady asks you to fondle her breasts?"

  Will smiled. "A lady must always be obeyed."

  "And if the next time you see her she acts as if it never happened?"

  "It never happened."

  Nat lifted his glass in a silent toast, and drank. "My little boy is all grown up!" he said. He removed a pasteboard card from an inside pocket of his jacket and laid it on the table before him. It was an engraved invitation. "There is a masked ball next week at House L'Inconnu. It's black tie, so be sure to wear a tux." "Just what do you have in mind?" Will asked.

  "We're going to pull the Missing Prince scam," Nat said. With a mock-salaam, he added, "Your majesty."

  13

  The Hippogriff Girl

  The guests arrived at House L'Inconnu by calishe, stretch limo, rickshaw, hansom cab, and palanquin. They drove Duesenbergs and Harleys and teams of matched white stallions. One came by saddle-owl. A trumpeter and a horn player welcomed each at the main entrance by the turnaround with short phrases of Handel's Water Music in place of a fanfare, while the vehicles were whisked away to off-site parking. In the foyer, a string quartet played Mozart to gentle the transition from outdoors to indoors.

  Will arrived in a taxi. A storm cloud had washed through the upper levels of Babel, leaving the streets so slick they reflected the neon lights in bright smears. Taking a deep breath and leaving a twenty dollar tip for luck, he donned his domino, strode past the valets, heralds, and musicians; surrendered his invitation; and allowed uniformed flunkies to deferentially gesture him through a labyrinthine tangle of corridors. He fetched up in an antechamber within earshot of the ballroom, where a monstrous pile of pink chiffon, the matron of the house, lounged on a couch skillfully contoured to hold her enormous bulk. So large was she that, reclining, her pallid flesh billowed up higher than Will's chin. Half elf-lady and half termite queen, she so filled her gown that it threatened to burst with every breath she took.

  For a long, silent moment she critically examined his costume and demeanor. In the background, the band was playing "Fly Me to the Moon."

  'Monsieur Pierrot, j'observe. Je présume vous parlez français." "I do, madam, well enough to recognize le bel accent d'Ys. My French would pain you to hear."

  The matron's eyes glittered. A tiny smile opened in her vast and pallid expanse of face, exposing small, sharp teeth. "That is quite considerate of you, Master" — she glanced down at an invitation held up by a liveried dwarf. Will had not noticed before — "Cambion. Quite considerate indeed for someone I do not recall inviting. Did you forge this?"

  "Only the name, Fata L'Inconnu. The invitation itself I bought from one of your poorer relations."

  "And why would you do that?" Her tone was not exactly frigid but there was no warmth in it, either.

  Will bowed ever so slightly. "I am a social climber."

  Again that sharp little smile appeared, as if she were a duelist whose opponent had made an unexpectedly shrewd feint. "Are you trying to charm me with the truth?"

  "It is all that I have, madame."

  The matron laughed. "Oh! Oh!" One hand waved feebly in the air and the dwarf placed a tissue in her fingers, so she could dab it daintily at her eyes. "You are a rogue, my gallant young clown, and doubtless you are after either my jewels or some lady's virtue. Were I not old and fat, I would take great pleasure in determining which is the case." She heaved her vast bulk upon the couch, sending ripples running down her flesh and back up again. "But I am conscious of my duties as a hostess. You are a mouthwatering morsel, and the demoiselles will enjoy breaking your treacherous heart."

  "You do me a disservice," Will said, bending to kiss her pudding-soft hand, "if you think me incapable of appreciating your inner beauty."

  "Isn't he cunning, Shorty? Isn't he clever?"

  "Too clever by half," the dwarf agreed. "As your chief of security, I recommend his immediate castration. After which, I suggest that he be flogged bloody and then thrown out on his ass."

  "You're such a worrywart, Shorty. Let my little pussies have their catnip." The fata turned to Will. "Get on with you! The dancing is through that door and down the steps."

  And so Will entered the ballroom.

  T
he ballroom was a semicircular terrace with only a canopy of stars overhead. Apparently spells protected it, for the rain cloud that had drenched the streets outside had not let fall so much as a drop here. A dance band played at the far edge, between two enormous cut-crystal bowls containing mermaids wearing faux-seaweed bikini tops and nothing else. Those guests who were not on the dance floor stood in knots at the railings or sat in scattered chairs set beneath the flambeaux that lined the terrace perimeter. The elf-lords wore holographic costumes like Will's own—phantom jugglers, river gods, and astronauts, through which might be glimpsed formal evening wear if one stared hard enough. The ladies wore costumes that were fantasies of feathers and gems with layer upon layer of overlapping glamour. Will assumed the worst of the ruling classes. However, spoiled though the elf-maidens doubtless were, there was no denying their beauty. They were as glossy and mouthwatering as a basket of poisoned apples. He went to the nearest and bowed. "May I have this dance?"

  She looked him over with skeptical hauteur. "Do I know you, Lord Pierrot?"

  He responded with his best wise-guy smile. "Does it matter?"

  Her gaze paused for an instant at his hands and a new warmth entered her voice. "No," she said. "No. it does not."

  She moved as lightly as a feather on the wind. Will enjoyed dancing with her immensely, though he found her costume distracting. It was a Lily St. Dionysée gown that gathered under her breasts, which she had left bare but sprinkled with gold dust. A feathered demi-mask in the shape of a crescent moon had been ensorcelled to superimpose a sow's head over her own. It was a pattern Will recognized from the fashion magazines Nat had made him study, that of Inanna in her pig avatar. The sow's head snapped and slavered soundlessly and when he spun his partner — her name, she confided, was Fata d'Etoile — around, silvery strings of drool flew off into the air.

  "You have lovely hands," she commented. "You have lovely breasts."

  "These old things?" she said, pleased. "I've had them forever." Then, returning to her original subject. "That's an interesting ring you're wearing."