Jim Baen's Universe-Vol 2 Num 1

by Eric Flint

  "Look! They're not dead!" shrieked one of the little ps.

  (Looks silly; I hereby declare that the plural of p is pees.)

  (No, looks obscene; I hereby declare that the plural of p is pese.)

  "Ghosts!" shrieked the other.

  "Oh, stop that!" snapped one of the Oes. "We're not ghosts, we're Oes."

  It seemed to examined itself. I think; hard to tell; no eyes.

  "Yuck!" it exclaimed. "How are the mighty fallen!" Then, philosophically: "Could have been worse, I suppose. They might have split us lengthwise and made us all into Fs." It shuddered. (And there's a nauseating sight, let me tell you, watching an O shudder.) "A fate worse than death!"

  "Look on the bright side!" exclaimed another of the newly-revived Oes. "They always say vowels have more fun!"

  In an instant, the cry went up, and before you knew it the whole teeming mass of Oes were— what? Let's just say they seemed to be having an orgy and leave it at that. Hard to tell, really.

  "Don't watch, children!" hissed the surviving elder P, shepherding the little ones away.

  "Now what?" demanded Gwendolyn. She glared at Magrit.

  "What are you glaring at me for?" snarled Magrit.

  "Who else is there to glare at so maybe they'll come up with an idea for what to do next?" She glared at Les Six. "The Beerbelly Boys?" (They looked offended.) She glared at me. "The Tail That Talks?" (I'm sure I looked nonchalant.)

  Magrit threw up her hands. "I'm a working witch, dammit! I'm not some kind of philosopher! I can't make heads or tails out of this place!"

  Gwendolyn got a wild and wicked look in her eyes.

  "What the hell, why not?" she mused.

  It never fails to amaze me how fast that woman is. I mean, even though she looks sort of normally attractive in a female human way except that she's oversize, Gwendolyn can benchpress six hundred pounds. So you wouldn't think the monster could move like a mongoose but she can. Oh yes she can.

  The next thing I know she snatched me off of Magrit's shoulder and tossed me high (way high!) up in the air. Spinning and twirling around! Of course, I landed on my feet (cats have got nothing on salamanders), but even so I was outraged. Incensed!

  I made my feelings clear, but Gwendolyn ignored me. Rather, she ignored my words. She was scrutinizing my tail.

  "That way!" she announced, pointing along the direction my tail happened to be lying.

  The whole idea was idiotic, but nobody saw any point in arguing. Not even me. Actually, after a while I decided to be flattered. After a little while longer, I decided there was a profound lesson here: a salamander's tail is worth more than eight human heads.

  On and on we trudged. (They trudged; I rode on Magrit's shoulder). On and on they trudged. On and on they trudged. On and on— you get the idea.

  After who knows how long, the landscape started to change. Say better— there started to appear the resemblance of a landscape, since you can't hardly call Pure Flat Flatness a "landscape." Not much, mind you— just the occasional stone here and pebble over there, until finally we came across some ruins.

  Ruins of what? Don't ask me. Ruins of ruins, looked like.

  Then— a sepulchral voice.

  "Save the runes," it moaned. "Save the runes."

  A rune came out from the ruins.

  "Save the runes," it moaned again. "You can start with me. I'm Γ."

  "Who?" demanded Magrit.

  "Γ." It seemed to shrug. "If you want to be formal about it. My friends call me Γrank. Or Γran, depending on what sex I am."

  "Which sex are you, then?" asked Gwendolyn.

  "What are you, stupid or something? If I'm ?rank, I'm male; if I'm ?ran, I'm female. Once I had a friend who needed his soul saved, so I was ?ra. Which reminds me— " Here it started moaning again: "Save the runes, save the runes."

  "Save you from what?" growled Gwendolyn. She was starting to get testy, I could tell.

  "From extinction, what else? What are you, a moron or something?"

  "How about I call you Γrankfurter," she cooed, fingering her cleaver.

  "Nay, lass!" protested the first of Les Six.

  "'Tis low! 'Tis low!" disapproved the second.

  "Haute cuisine— that's the ticket!" exclaimed the third.

  "Γilet Mignon!" enthused the fourth.

  "Γillet of Γish, rather," opined the fifth.

  "Properly Γlayed and Γried," qualified the sixth.

  Magrit intervened. "Easy there! Γrank doesn't mean any harm, do you now, lad? It's just his way, that's all."

  Γ apparently decided to fall back on his stock in trade.

  "Save the runes! Save the runes!"

  Magrit waddled over and patted the creature. "There now! There now! It's all right— you can tell me all about it. Save you from what, exactly?"

  Terminal idiocy, it seemed. Immediately the rune lipped off again.

  "What are you, another moron? From— "

  It got no further, of course, because Magrit gave it one hefty wallop and knocked it ?lat. (Sorry. I couldn't resist.)

  "Don't get Γresh with me, you little Γreak!" she bellowed. "Keep a civil tongue or I'll turn you into Γlapjacks!"

  "Yes, ma'am!" squeaked the twit.

  "Good. Let's try again. Save you from what?"

  The rune snuffled. "Extinction, that's what. They're rounding us all up and turning us into" —a shudder— "scrap. And then they're melting down the scrap and turning it into" —a wail of horror— " common ordinary letters!"

  "Who's doing this?" demanded Gwendolyn.

  "What are you, a— " It paused, found wisdom. "The Captains of Industry, that's who. And their goons."

  Les Six started to ask who the "Captains of Industry" were but before they got well started the rune jumped up, exclaimed "too many questions! too many questions!" and started scurrying off to the—east?—west?—whatever. After a moment it stopped, turned back, and shouted: "I'll show you! I'll show you!"

  * * *

  And so it was that eight human idiots and a salamander down on his luck found themselves trailing after a lippy rune across the Realm of Words for what seemed an eternity until eventually we came to a slight rise in the "landscape" from the "top" of which we were treated to the vista of—

  — a vast jumble of giant factories, stretching as far as the eye can see.

  "'Orrible!" croaked the first.

  "A vision of Hell itself," groaned the second.

  "No vision!" countered the third.

  "Hell itself!" mourned the fourth.

  "Don't mourn!" cried the fifth.

  " Organize!" bellowed the sixth.

  And with no further ado the half dozen halfwits charged down the slope, capering and cavorting like so many tots in a toy store.

  "I'll take that one!" cried the first, pointing to a huge, smoke-belching factory bearing the proud logo I. G. Sprechenindustrie.

  "I'm for General Words!" hallooed the second.

  "I've a yen for Nouns R Us!" hollered the third.

  "Me for Microspeak!" cried the fourth.

  By the time the fifth and the sixth added their bits to the round, they were too far off to hear. But, judging from the directions they were taking, I thought the fifth had set his aim for the huge International Business Mots complex and the sixth seemed to be wavering between General Linguistics and LTVerbs.

  "Idiots!" screamed Magrit. "Morons!"

  "Them, too?" asked ?.

  "Now what?" wondered Gwendolyn.

  "Save the runes," moaned the rune. "Save the runes. Look! Over there! See what I mean!"

  In the distance, we saw a long train of wagons hauling up before a huge stockade. Within the barbed wire compound I could see a bunch of grimy barracks and what looked like smokehouses. With the nonchalance of long habit, burly guards were herding little runes out of the wagons and through the gates.

  "What are they handing the runes?" asked Gwendolyn.

  "They say it's soap!" cried Γ. "But it's a t
rick! It's a trick!"

  Suddenly, one of the smokehouse chimneys belched a great plume. Γ shrieked. "They're melting us down! They're melting us down!" It clutched Magrit's leg.

  "Save the runes," it moaned, "save the runes."

  I could see it coming a mile away. I tried to whisper sweet reason into her ear but the old witch was getting her dander up. And who was there to help me advance the voice of sanity?

  Gwendolyn? Hah! Hah! The Agitatrix herself!

  "You know," mused the damned lady wrestler, "maybe Les Six have the right idea. And besides, what else have we got to do?"

  A moment later she was striding off. "I'm for that one!" she announced, pointing to a great ugly heap of a factory called UmlautMobil.

  "As for us," said the witch, "it's the stockade. Let's see what these bums are up to."

  "Us?" I cried. "Us? What have I got to with this madness? I'm an intelligent amphibian— the pinnacle of evolution! What natural selection hath wrought!"

  Unheeding, Magrit waddled down the slope. I would have jumped off her shoulder and hid somewhere but I hate to walk and, besides, where was there to hide? Not a mousehole in sight.

  Behind me, I heard Γ moaning: "Save the runes, save the runes."

  I twisted my head and glared back. "Fuck the runes! And the horse they rode in on!"

  Turning around, I could see the stockade looming larger and larger.

  "Save the salamander," I moaned. "Save the salamander."

  3

  Well, there's good news, bad news, and terrible news.

  The good news is that Magrit landed a great job almost as soon as we walked into the door of UmlautMobil. She was shooting for some kind of low level chem lab job, but the company president wouldn't hear of it. No, no! Seems that humans hardly ever apply for a job in the Realm of Words on account of there's all these words ready and eager to do the coolie work, so the company president was only too delighted to offer Magrit a plum job as his executive secretary. Easy work, great money, perks you wouldn't believe ("of course your salamander can have his own desk!"), the whole bit.

  The bad news is that in order to get the job Magrit had to hump the company president.

  The terrible news is that she turned him down.

  I couldn't believe it!

  "Oh, sure," I complained bitterly, as she stalked out of the building, "God forbid you should put out for a respected pillar of the community. Oh, no— not Ms. Morality! Not Ms. Pick-and-Choose! Drooling, gibbering lunatics, sure. Young windbag apprentices, sure. Drunken sailors on leave, sure. Hordes of flea-bitten barbarians, sure. Escaped— "

  "Three barbarians are not a horde!" she snapped.

  "Those three were!"

  "That creep!" she snarled. "That drooling old lecher!"

  "Wolfgang drools worse— "

  "Wolfgang drools cute! The rich fatboy drools rich fatboy disgusting!"

  "So what? Concentrate on the adjective: rich. We're in the 'realm of words,' Magrit— nouns and verbs don't count."

  Well, as you can see, I won the argument hands down, but it didn't do me any good since once Magrit gets set on a course, that's that. Logic, reason, common sense— out the window!

  Oh, well. It's the hallmark of sane salamanders that we adjust instantly to reality, no matter how grim. So I took it in stride when Magrit gave up the silly idea of going back to work in a factory (oh, yes, she's a true-blue prole by origin; that's what explains her low tastes, even for a witch) and decided to resume her normal trade. Even though I knew we'd be lucky not to starve to death since all of our customers would be words and what, I wondered, would words need with a witch?

  Quite a bit, as it turns out. Mostly fortune-telling. It seems words are all convinced that after they're made they're going to be sent somewhere which they call the "Realm of Reality" where they will be —you're going to love this— words, what else? They say they're where words come from. Anyway, the point is that lots of them want to know exactly where they're going to wind up.

  It's kind of pathetic, actually, especially for all the "thes" and "ands," each and every one of which is convinced it's going to be the key word in the key sentence which— you name it!

  Which, of course, Magrit was more than willing to do, gazing into the crystal ball that she picked up years ago in a junk store.

  "I see a man—he has a full beard, a lofty brow—a very lofty brow—he's sitting at a desk; he's writing—what? Yes, I see it now —he's writing a great novel— no! It's going to be the greatest novel ever written, probably; certainly the longest. He's finished the book! Now, he's scratching his head; stroking his beard; pursing his lips thoughtfully. What can he be— oh, I see it now! He trying to think of a title for the longest, greatest novel ever written. Yes, yes, it's coming to him now. He writes the first word— War. Yes, that's it. Now he's really thinking hard, really hard. Suddenly— his eyes light up! Yes, he has the second word of the title —and it's— yes! yes! It's you! It's you! War and— "

  And (pardon the pun) another happy customer trots off. Well, not trots actually, since words don't have legs and feet so they move around in the weirdest ways imaginable, but you get the idea.

  The truth is, Magrit's lousy with a crystal ball. She usually reads palms or tea leaves when she tells fortunes, but words don't have palms and they don't drink tea. They don't drink anything, as a matter of fact, or eat— which makes the bosses happier than clams.

  When they discovered this fact, Les Six really hit the roof. No sooner did they get off work on their first shift than they all headed for the gin mills, only to discover that there weren't any. Soon enough, they were crowded into Magrit's parlor, bitterly expressing their complaint. They started with lofty political principles:

  The first: "'Tis a plot to keep the wages down!"

  The second: "As 'tis well known that the variable portion of the capital— "

  The third: " —more commonly known as the wage bill— "

  The fourth: "— is regulated by the necessity to reproduce the working class in its historically determined standard of living."

  The fifth: "The which, in this benighted place, approximates the living standard— "

  The sixth: "Of stones."

  Soon enough, however, they got down to the gist of the matter, which (I will summarize a mound of verbiage) was that inasmuch as it was widely known that drink is the curse of the working class, the downtrodden masses in the Realm of Words had been foully deprived of their curse in addition to the blessings of life which are, as a matter of course, naturally denied the proletariat.

  As always with Les Six, complaint soon led to action. Magrit's little parlor was located on the bottom floor of one of the many tenements in one of the many slums which surround the word factories. In a matter of days, Les Six obtained the floor above from a landlord who, though grasping, was the word "butterfingers." Within days thereafter, they had transformed the seedy dump into an even seedier gin mill and were ready for the business which they confidently expected their daily agitation on the job would soon drum up.

  I thought they were nuts, and was highly amused, until they turned out not to be nuts and I got dragooned into being the bartender. I couldn't believe it! I mean, what possible use could words have with booze? Or coffee, and damned if Les Six didn't add on a coffee house. ("Keeps the high-falutin' intellectual words out of our hair.")

  But, practically overnight, The Gin Mill and Pretentious Coffee House became the center of social life in the slums. Which tells you all you need to know about social life in the slums of the Realm of Words. I thought I was going to die of overwork.

  I complained to Magrit, but the rotten witch had already jumped aboard the bandwagon. Now she was telling all her customers that when they went to the Realm of Reality they were all going to be words spoken by profane proles hunched over their alepots in taverns, plotting and planning the revolution. No sooner did they leave her parlor than the cretins (words are not bright) piled into the saloon, eager to prep
are for their future life.

  Words are weird. Must be why humans like them so much. I remember one in particular— "because." It insisted on shortening itself to "be," so that it could go around bragging that it was a rebel without a cause.

  The whole set-up in the Realm of Words is weird. (Our part of it, anyway— later, we found out that the Realm of Words has lots of different levels. All of which are weird.) There's a handful of humans who own all the word factories. Where they came from, nobody knows, and the owners aren't talking. Under them, there's a class of parasite words who lord it over all the other words. They toil not, neither do they labor. They are called the Proper Words, and they are all capitalized.