L Neil Smith - [North American Confederacy 03]

by Their Majesties' Bucketeers (epub)

  “Mav, what are you doing? Do you realize that you are committing a burg—”

  SNAP! The hasp twisted off from the door, assisted in no small part by the manner in which Mav had inserted one of his accursed springbow bolts and levered it away.

  “—lary? What you are doing is illegal and immoral, insupportable conduct for a Bucket—”

  “Do be quiet a moment, Mymy, and kindly wait here for me in case someone comes. I do not believe it will be the good doctor, in any case. Keep your insignia at hand on the chance it is one of our own, will you?” With these words he stepped through the door he’d forced and disappeared into the gloomy interior.

  How had I come to this in so short a time? From the bosom of a highly respected and well-bred family, to common breaking and entering? Or at least to being the lookout for a breaker and enterer. So much for Service to Crown and Country: it seems to have some subtie corrupting influence, no matter how earnestly one strives to the contrary.

  A wisp of vagrant steam drifted up from Vyssu’s carriage. She, too, was acting in the prototypically criminal fashion, instinctively keeping the motor operating were a rapid departure suddenly called for.

  Or perhaps the corrupting influence was hers.

  In any event, I stood cold and shivering in the driving mist, quite unaware of what I should do if we were all discovered. Suddenly, there was a sound behind me—I whirled, and . . .

  “Mav! You have frightened me out of nine years’ growth! Back from your criminal career already?”

  He held in his hand a newspaper roll turned back to display an item prominently circled in wax pencil among the steamship schedules. “I was correct, Mymy! That initial telephone call Myssmo placed was routed to this very office! It would appear, my dear paracauterist, that the good doctor has taken it on the—”

  “Mav!" I jumped again, for suddenly beside me, a small child, soaking damp, had come upon me quite unseen. These raincloaks had a way of limiting peripheral vision. “Why, little lammie, you’re all wet!” I said. “Do come inside where it is warmer!”

  “An’ get braided by th’ Bucks fer B&E? Not on yer soggy life, Missur!”

  I blinked. Despite rher unkempt appearance, not mentioning the roughness of rher language, the little child was all but irresistible. True, perhaps those miniature surmale features, which all children bear, would someday acquire a masculine or feminine cast. Yet perhaps they would mature as they were set now, and the child would, as I had, remain (outwardly, and, I am chagrined to say, in social treatment) infantile. This would be a very different civilization indeed, did babies but resemble males or females.

  “Child,” Mav said at once, displaying a coin, “how long have you been standing there in that doorway?” He indicated the entrance to a neighboring establishment, a dealer in vague warnings based upon the shape that kood-smoke assumed.

  “Since it begun t’rain, guv. No place else t’go.”

  “Very good, child, now tell me, did you see Doctor Ensda leave this place a while ago?”

  “What, that old faker? What you want with him? I can give you better advice, and”—the child acquired an ugly, venal expression in rher dampened fur—“lots cheaper.” “I’ve no doubt of that, none at all,” Mav replied. “Will you answer my question?”

  “What’s in it fer me if I do?” Rhe knew, of course, for rher eyes never once left the silver gleam in my companion’s outstretched hand.

  “A considerable amount,” he said evenly.

  “Yeah, I saw him leave, hardly a minute before the three of you drove up. Look fer yerself—the pavement’s almost dry beneath that steam thingy of yours; that’s where his cab was waitin’. Now gimme!”

  Mav held the coin back. “Not quite yet, little missur. That’s quite a story—and it never occurred to me to examine the condition of the street; I must make a note of that for future application. But we must inquire first into your veracity—for there are no cabs in this rain!”

  “There are if they get here before the rain starts,” retorted the child, “an’ they go where you want if you hold a pistol to the driver’s head! Now gimme!”

  Calmly, Mav not only gave the money to the child, but doubled it. “Go find someplace to get warm and dry.” He showed me the newspaper again. The circled item was the planned departure of the freighter Habo, and, unlike the city’s land-bound traffic, it would not be delayed so much as a second by the weather; it would steam off almost precisely an hour and a third from now.

  Mav leaped into the carriage, dragging me after him. “Ensda would appear to be our lam!” cried he, “and could only have gone by way of Commoner’s Bridge from here! Let us be off before we lose him!”

  Vyssu wheeled away before either of us was quite properly settled. The rain garments dripped and steamed, their bulk making the compartment seem quite close and confining. I was thrown solidly against my friend, who gently aided me in regaining my seat, and we were both rather silent for a long while.

  Vyssu, visible through a window that connected her portion of the car with this, displayed great amusement. She had disdained use of the raincloak Mav had offered; it lay dry and neatly folded on the cushion beside her. Her hands seemed pretematurally calm and competent upon the steering tiller, just as they had while knitting or preparing food. I began to wonder whether there is truly anything in this world males claim as their exclusive jurisdiction that can not be accomplished more skillfully (and with less fanfare) by one of the other sexes.

  For his part, Mav seemed perfectly content to permit a female to do the driving; I must confess that no few of the corners Vyssu negotiated may have cost me some measurable fraction of my normal life expectancy. We raced through the town in the direction of the river and the port beyond, expecting at any time to overtake the only other moving vehicle on the streets, and thus a fleeing murder suspect. Along the way, we passed many a cab and private conveyance parked beside the road or beneath some sheltering construction.

  At last we came to Commoner’s Bridge.

  “Stop here!” cried Mav to Vyssu. “Surely he could not have come this far with both a recalcitrant driver and a damp and frightened animal! I believe that we have overhauled him—and that we may yet apprehend him here!”

  The madness (I thought at the time) of this assertion was soon to be more than matched by May’s next proposal. At his instruction, a reluctant Vyssu directed her machine to the far end of the bridge.

  It is necessary, here, to describe the Commoner’s Bridge on which we stood, for it has long since been replaced by a larger and, I think, a somewhat more sensible thoroughfare, firmly rooted at both ends as well as in its middle span. In those days, it was deemed unseemly that the pilings of the bridge should touch upon the island it crossed. King’s Island, site of the royal palace (and of the Sound Point Bucketeer station, as well), was to be reached directly by the Royal Bridge, which stretched across the west branch of the River Dybod somewhat further downstream from King’s Hall, on the western shore.

  For some reason, Commoner’s Bridge was placed across the northern tip of the island at what is called Sound Point, but, being Commoner’s Bridge, was not permitted to encroach upon the island itself. Thus there was a single clear and marvelous span across both river and island, a veritable marvel of engineering, which had been accomplished at great expense and effort for no reasonable purpose. Altogether, I suppose, there was a drop of eighteen or twenty lam-heights from the bridge to the island, and perhaps another nine or ten to the river on either side of the point.

  It was at the eastern extremity of the bridge that Mav insisted we park the carriage, in such a manner that, with one quick sweep of the tiller, Vyssu could turn the car and block the narrow roadway so that no vehicle (and scarcely a lam on fingertip) could pass.

  He left us there, admonishing us to be watchful, and walked back nearly to the center of the bridge, just above the eastern margin of the island. There, swathed and encumbered by his raincloak, the break In rhythm of his wa
lking clearly visible, owing to his old colonial injury and the rain, he stood looking at the iron bracing on both sides of the bridge and above, then clambered up upon the railing, grasped a pair of crossing stanchions, and began to climb until he reached the over-roofing cables and beams, perhaps three lam-heights above the roadway.

  With some further difficulty, he negotiated the brace-works until he hung directly over the center of the road, and there, with patience and with what seemed to me to be insane confidence in his theory that we’d passed Doctor Ensda, he waited in the pouring mist, one hand beneath his cloak and no doubt resting on the handle of his reciproca-tor.

  I waited, too, until I could bear it no longer. Vyssu glanced at me, without a word, but with a quizzical look in her fur, then reached through the driver’s window and tugged at the little tassel I had sprung upon my first occasion riding in this contraption. She removed the tree-wood juicing box, whose key was permanently affixed, and gave it several cranks, then set it firmly before me.

  “Thank you, Vyssu, I do not indulge.”

  “Nor, my dear Mymy, do I—nor do I ordinarily sit in this car in the rain waiting for the best friend I have to leap to his death from the top of a bridge. Now put your fingers in the apertures and pull the catch, for I am in need of a jolt myself, and soon!”

  I looked sharply at her, then at the box. Slowly, with reluctance and trepidation, I set a finger from each outer hand into the place provided for it. Not knowing what to expect, I took a deep breath, held it, and, with my middle hand, threw the catch.

  Someone once said that striking yourself repeatedly with a hammer has one beneficial consequence: it feels so good when you stop. That, in a prawnshell, sums up juicing. I will admit that it relaxed me. I will also admit that, when Vyssu had taken hers, I permitted myself one final lapse.

  Then turned again and watched my friend upon the cables and braces of the bridge.

  For bearing down upon us, traveling as fast as it could go, was a galloping watu with a taxi swaying in its wake.

  XII: A Study in Emerald

  As the animal and vehicle passed like a flash beneath him, Mav leaped from the cross braces. What further transpired at that instant I can only guess, for Vyssu swung the tiller hard, treading upon the steam valve. I was dashed to the floor once again; before I could regain my seat and the view from my window, the cab was nearly upon us, two struggling figures upon the roof locked in combat as the fear-crazed watu rolled its eyes and galloped onward. Despite myself I shrank back, for I could see the beast had gone quite mad. The lamn atop the cab thrashed at each other as if unconscious of the disaster about to overtake us all.

  Suddenly, upon the very brink of collision with Vyssu’s steaming engine, the taxi swerved and smashed against the railing. Screaming beast and vehicle pitched over, teetered. Mav and Ensda, cab and watu disappeared into the mist. I heard something huge and awful strike the water below. A yawning hideous gap was left in the rail behind them. I do not remember leaping from Vyssu’s carriage; all I know is that in a trice I was balanced on the very edge of the roadway, Vyssu hard beside me. Beneath us on the margin of the eastern shoreline the shattered fragments of the cab, the crushed and broken body of its watu, lay awash.

  A groan. Scarcely a lam-height below our feet, two figures clung to a trailing member of the bridge. One, rather, for it was Mav who held on desperately and with his walking legs still grasped the limp and silent body of his captive. He tried to speak again, but only a gasping wheeze escaped his nostrils.

  “Mav, for pity’s sake,” I exclaimed, “do not despair, for I shall save you!” With that, I ripped the ties of my rain-cloak away, whipped off the garment unheeding of the weather, and stretched out so that it brushed the detective’s carapace. Vyssu rapidly understood, braced herself behind me, and, seizing both the upper limbs I stood upon, held me back from tumbling to my own demise. Mav groaned once again, then painfully raised his third—and crippled— set of legs until he had the edge of the raincloak. With a mighty heave that nearly lost me my footing, he dragged himself and Ensda up the cloak until he got three hands over the kerbside. I snatched at him and pulled. He slid onto the pavement and together all three of us drew the lunologist to safety. The river raged below, swollen with the rain—and, perhaps, a surge of disappointment.

  Mav did not attempt to regain his feet, but lay for a while upon the underside of his carapace, breathing with some difficulty. Then, summoning at last some superlam-viin reserve, he croaked, “Braid him, he is ours!” and sank back, insensible. I felt about within the Inquirer’s cloak for his set of lamacles, sorted out the nine locking rings, and snapped them, one by one, upon the suspect’s wrists, following Mav’s new practice of imprisoning a felon’s limbs above—yet another point of recent controversy with Tis— the body, so that his jaws might not snap at an officer, instead of in the customary method. I then turned to my friend, regretting for a moment I had not brought my bag from the carriage. Suddenly it was at hand, delivered thoughtfully by Vyssu. I struck a match to find my smelling-vapors.

  There, in the flickering globe of light, I saw that Mav lay in a pool of blood.

  That endless carriage journey from the bridge back to the Kiiden is one which shall never fade from memory as long as the burdens of living continue to be imposed upon me. Ensda lay upon the floor, trussed up like some wild game animal, Vyssu quiet and intense at the tiller, and I, hovering without daring much to hope over what remained of my dear friend, whose adventure—and mine as well, it was beginning to appear—had ended with that moment at the rail.

  Little of consequence passed through my tortured mind during those protracted minutes save remembrances of Mav, a bright image here, a gentle word there, whole conversations with him which I found I could recall almost verbatim and which had taught me much about the world. One such, not coincidentally concerning Vyssu, struck me now, and I felt suddenly very small of mind and narrow for having let it slip past notice and thus misjudging her character considerably.

  It had been one recent forenoon, after Srafen’s murder, when the detective and I found ourselves en route to the Precinct station, too short a distance of traverse to justify the expense of a cab, yet too long not to entertain ourselves in friendly discourse. We chanced to pass by, on our way through the City, a tiny waif, only just beginning to manifest female characteristics, installed upon a corner, her middle arm supporting a tray of rudely handmade combs sawn from the dried carapaces of watun and ajotiin.

  “How touching,” I remarked sadly, “that such as she has no warm and loving home to feel secure in and is thus reduced to hawking cheap trinkets in the street” I could see her in my mind’s eye, fashioning these selfsame combs with primitive tools by the flickering light of a candle dearly bought, and, weary from her nightly labors, emerging at dawn to dispense them on the street.

  Mav paused and tucked away his pipe, examined the child’s wares with interest, and, producing a copper coin or three, exchanged it for one of the combs, a dark, striated, pretty thing, despite its homewrought crudity. This he ran experimentally through the fur upon his arm, manifested gratification, bade the pitiable urchin as good a day as she might expect to have, and urged me to continue upon our way.

  “Quite to the contrary, esteemed colleague,” he remarked suddenly, causing me to search back in my memory for whatever comment of mine had provoked this rejoinder, “while it is perhaps unfortunate that little alternative apparently exists for her at this time, I believe that many a better-placed young Fodduan might benefit from following a career such as hers, at least for some short while.”

  My pelt must surely have betrayed some hint of scandalized surprise. “How ghastly a prescription!” I cried, imagining myself in that destitute orphan’s place. “Whatever could one learn of any value from that, except perhaps despair and some final, terrible degradation at the end?”

  “Well, Mymy, there is some small satisfaction in seeing that you are not entirely a child of your class.” Mav c
rinkled, restoring the inhaling tube to his nostril. “You have traveled the ideological distance equal to one full House of Parliament.”

  I shifted my bag. “And precisely what is it that you mean to convey by such an odd remark?"

  “Simply that, given your upbringing, one might reason ably expect that you would take an attitude which most upper-class Pillars of the Empire, not excluding those appointed by the Triarchy to the Lezynsiin—”

  “I was not aware that street vendors amounted to that much of a political issue.”

  Again his pelt crinkled good-naturedly. “You’re quite correct, except that our little enterpreneur back there stands representative of everything which is happening in Great Fodduan political economy today, and of choices for the future which are being made, supposedly in our behalf—for better or for worse—this very instant. The Lezynsiin, for example, would view that little comb hawker as a public nuisance, annoying to the populace and cluttering the thoroughfare, possibly or potentially a menace, and on any account to be disposed of with inconspicuous facility by the Bucketeers. I have not the slightest doubt that, as a consequence, she tenders daily some portion of her meager earnings to the officer whose assignment her comer happens to be part of. An informal licensing procedure, to be sure, an ancient and dishonorable one which sometimes appears to be ineradicable and will remain so for as long as the Lezynsiin and those it represents continue to believe as they do.”

  I halted, beginning to feel somewhat insulted. “And this is the cold, uncharitable view which you attribute to me? Why—”

  He held up a hand. “A moment, Mymy—peace. It is the opinion which many of our class express. I said, however, did I not, that you yourself had moved one house away— toward the Nazemynsiin, the Middle House of Parliament?”