The Hammer

by K. J. Parker

  He’d got most of the job done when he came up against a seized bolt. Damp had got into the mechanism, and the nut was rusted on solid. He tried heating it with a blowpipe and a lamp, but that didn’t work, and there wasn’t enough room to get in there with a hacksaw. He wriggled into a gap between the frames that was rather too small for him, and set about cutting off the nut with a hammer and cold chisel.

  “You’ve been busy.”

  He looked up so fast he banged the top of his head on a cross-beam. He felt a strong pulse in his scalp, and something wet dribbled down over his forehead.

  “Scalp wound,” said the voice. “They bleed like the devil.”

  As quickly as he could, Gignomai unwound himself from the machine and peered out. “Luso,” he said, “what the hell are you doing here?”

  “Thought I’d come and see what you’ve been up to.”

  “You can’t,” Gignomai replied. “I don’t exist, remember?”

  Luso laughed. He was wearing a magnificent hunting outfit that Gignomai hadn’t seen before, but recognised instantly. “Present from our cousins?”

  “It’s a bit small for me,” Luso replied. “I had Spetta take it out as far as she could, but sometimes when I move I hear tearing noises. What do you mean, you don’t exist?”

  Spetta. Always so good with a needle. “Father cancelled me,” Gignomai said. “Didn’t he copy you in?”

  “Oh, that.” Luso frowned. “All right, then, you’ll have to be my imaginary friend. I didn’t have one when I was a kid, so I reckon I’m entitled.”

  “You didn’t have one because none of the imaginary people wanted to know you.”

  Luso’s big laugh sounded like a bull roaring. “Well, you’ve made up for that,” he said. “All your friends these days are pretend people. What the hell is this contraption in aid of?”

  “It’s a flower press,” Gignomai said. “Don’t touch that.”

  Too late. A worm drive component skittered off the platform and into the grass. “Sorry,” Luso said. “Was that important?”

  “Forget it,” Gignomai said. “Get off the platform before you do any more damage. I’ll come out.”

  Luso backed away with exaggerated delicacy, like someone miming a cat. “Presumably it’s this thing that makes that unholy racket,” Luso said. “You do realise, you can hear it from the Doorstep.”

  “Scaring the deer away? My heart bleeds.”

  Luso sat down on a log. He looked like he owned the place. “Yes,” he said, “for which I’m much obliged to you. They’ve moved up from the Doorstep to Upper Room, and we’ve been taking them out by the dozen. We’ve got enough smoked venison laid up to see us right through till new year.”

  “Thrilled to have been of service.” Gignomai looked around for something to sit on, then gave up and squatted on the ground. “Why are you here?”

  Luso was examining him. “What’ve you been doing to yourself?” he asked. “You look like you’ve been in a fight every day for a week.”

  “Odd, that,” Gignomai replied, “since we don’t do fencing practice any more. No, it’s just usual wear and tear, I guess.”

  “I hardly recognised you. You’re not getting enough sleep.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  Luso nodded. “She sends her love. I didn’t tell Stheno I was coming, or he’d have done the same.”

  “I doubt it.” Gignomai stretched out his legs. Cramp wouldn’t help matters. “Why are you here?”

  “To ask you to come to the wedding,” Luso replied. “It wouldn’t be right if you weren’t there.”

  “Sorry,” Gignomai said quickly, “can’t. Too busy.”

  “Balls.” Luso lifted his head. He was surveying the site, as though he intended to buy it. “What’s that big shed over there?”

  “That’s for making cheese.”

  “Of course. Look,” he said, leaning forward a little, “I know I should’ve stopped Father from sending you that ridiculous letter. I didn’t; I’m sorry. But when you come to the wedding—”

  “He’ll set the dogs on me.”

  “No he won’t.” Luso scowled at something. “You have my word. I’ll make sure there’s no trouble. I’ve made it a condition of the marriage.”

  Gignomai stared at him, then laughed. “You’ve done what?”

  “I told him,” Luso said. “You forgive Gig, or the wedding’s off. He wasn’t happy about it, but he’s agreed. So…”

  “Forgive me,” Gignomai said. “I see.”

  “That’s how he sees it,” Luso said. “You’ve got to talk to him on his own terms or he simply refuses to listen. You and I both know—”

  “I don’t have to talk to him at all. It’s been wonderful, not talking to him. It’s probably my greatest pleasure in life right now.”

  “In that case, I’m sorry for you. Listen, Gig, we’ve got to be realistic.”

  “And practical?”

  “Yes, and practical. You know what this wedding means?”

  Gignomai shrugged. “I’ll have a psychopath for a sister-in-law. Big deal. She’ll fit in well.”

  “It means,” Luso said, “that we’re going Home. Things are changing. The Revisionists are in real trouble, the economy’s a mess, the Optimate tendency’s on its knees and the KKA are poised and ready to jump in. The met’Ousa are right there on the front lines, it’s only a matter of time. And when the KKA get in—”

  “I have no idea,” Gignomai said, “what you’re talking about.”

  Luso sighed. “Yes, you do,” he said. “It means Boulo and Pasi will be going Home very soon now, and we’ll be going with them. The exile is nearly over, Gig. We’ve done our time and soon we’ll be back where we belong. It’s in the bag. And you’re coming with us.”

  “Am I really?”

  “You bet your life,” Luso snapped. “You think I’m going to let our family go home and leave my brother behind with these savages? It’s not happening. Look, I know you haven’t been happy here. Understandable. There just isn’t a place for you here. Back Home, it’ll be completely different. A man of your energy and intelligence—”

  “Thank you so much.”

  “Well, it’s true. I always knew you were the best of us. Stheno’s been squashed by his responsibilities, keeping us all fed and clothed. He’s just a farmer now. Father—well, what sort of a life has he had? Back home, he’d have been First Citizen. Out here, it was just a waste.”

  “And you?”

  “Me?” Luso grinned. “I’m your stereotypical second son, all I care about is hunting and having a good time. And keeping the peace. It’s what I’m for. But you’ve got all the good things in our family, and you’re still young enough to make something of yourself.”

  Gignomai was looking for something in his pockets. “You reckon?” he said.

  “Fact,” Luso replied. “I’ll tell you something, Gig. Ever since I can remember, I’ve envied you. You’re smart and you’re brave and you don’t give in. It’s amazing what you’ve done here with nothing. God only knows what you’re up to.”

  “I told you. Pressing flowers.”

  “And making cheese, yes. I don’t know what you’ve got in mind, but just think what you could achieve back Home. Think about it, for crying out loud. You want to build factories? Well, fine. You could be the richest man in—”

  “You’re not going Home,” Gignomai said quietly. “Not ever.”

  Luso was furious. “You stupid little bastard, haven’t you been listening? I told you, the met’Oc—”

  “It’s not going to happen,” Gignomai said. “Trust me.”

  “You don’t know anything about it,” Luso roared at him. “Listen to me for once in your stupid life. We’re going Home. It’s a done deal; it’s settled. And I’m damned if I’m going to let your stupid pride get in the way of our family being where it ought to be.”

  “Fine. You go.”

  “Not without you. Not acceptable.”

  Gignomai shivered. The bl
ood from his cut was trickling down his nose, and it tickled. He wiped it away with the back of his hand; there was a lot of it. He could feel the cut throbbing, as if it was keeping time with the rhythm of the hammer, substituting for it now that it was silent. “You really want me to come.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’m definitely not coming.” He wiped his bloody hand on the seat of his trousers. “Just for once, you can’t have everything your own way. Interesting new experience for you.”

  He watched Luso closely, expecting him to move any moment: a lunge, an attack initiated. Fencing lessons. But Luso didn’t move, which surprised him.

  “I’ve missed you,” Luso said.

  Gignomai felt a sharp pain in his head; the hammer, extremely strong. “Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Afraid you’re running out of siblings, I assume.”

  It was a clumsier thrust than he’d have liked, but it made Luso shake. “That’s it?”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  Luso stood up. “You’re a fool to yourself,” he said. “I’ll expect you to be there. Don’t mess me around. Understood?”

  “What’re you going to do, Luso? Send your men to drag me there? Tie me to a chair?”

  “The thought had crossed my mind.” Suddenly Luso sighed. He seemed to deflate a little. “But I decided against. I thought I’d appeal to your better nature instead.”

  “Tell you what.” Finally, he’d found what he’d been looking for. It had slipped through a hole in the pocket and lodged in the lining. He teased it back through the hole with his fingertips and closed his hand around it. “I may come, after all. But in case I don’t, here’s my wedding present for my new sister-in-law.”

  He started to take his hand out of his pocket. Luso froze, watching the hand, as if he was afraid it’d be a weapon. Except, if it had been a weapon, Luso wouldn’t have frozen.

  “Gig,” Luso said.

  Gignomai removed his hand from his pocket and opened it. On his palm lay a small silver brooch, mounting a single blue stone. “Go on,” he said. “Take it.”

  He’d waited all his life for Luso to look at him like that. “Take it,” he repeated. “After all, it’s a family heirloom. She ought to have it, don’t you think?”

  Luso turned and walked away. Gignomai watched him until the trees swallowed him up, then wrapped the brooch in the foul scrap of cloth he used as a handkerchief, oily rag and emergency bandage, and stowed it carefully in his other pocket.

  The Calimeo family came to town to buy rope.

  Furio, standing on the porch, saw them coming up the street and darted inside. Marzo stopped him before he could disappear into the cellar.

  “What?” Marzo demanded.

  “They’re coming,” Furio said.

  Marzo frowned. “Who? The met’Oc? The government?”

  “Worse.”

  “Oh.” Marzo somehow managed to slide between Furio and the cellar door. “Would you mind seeing to them? I’ve got to fetch something.”

  Portly he might have been, but Marzo could be diabolically agile when he wanted to be. Furio addressed his refusal to a closing cellar door, and then the shop door opened. He turned round slowly, and smiled.

  The Calimeos were generally referred to as the Summer Cold (annoying and so very hard to get rid of). There were six of them, always together: father, mother, uncle and three juvenile daughters, or it might have been the same daughter projected back in time and observed at eighteen-month intervals. The daughters never, ever spoke. Their elders made up for it.

  “What can I—?” was as far as Furio got before the torrent overwhelmed him. All three of them tended to talk at once, all on different, equally fatuous topics, none of them apparently aware that the other two were in the same room. If, as a result of the blended hubbub of their voices, their interlocutor appeared to be having trouble understanding them, they helpfully shouted. Furio fixed a smile on his face, said yes, sure, is that right at fixed intervals, and hoped very much that Uncle Marzo would meet a giant rat in the cellar, which would eat him up.

  “Damnedest thing,” the uncle was saying. “Them savages.”

  Furio blinked. “Savages?”

  Infuriatingly, the uncle chose that moment to pause a fraction of second to breathe in, and Mother filled the empty fragment of time with a question, which he entirely failed to hear. She repeated it at full volume at precisely the same time as Uncle replied to Furio’s enquiry.

  “What savages?” Furio said.

  “At East Ford.” Furio strained his ears to pick uncle’s theme out of the fugue. “Fifteen or twenty. Just sat there. All day. Damnedest thing.”

  East Ford. He tried to picture it in his mind. Seven miles or so upstream from the factory site, a flat, treeless meadow, good grazing, prone to flooding in the spring and autumn. Empty, nothing to see. Flat. You could see, or be seen, for miles.

  Fifteen or twenty?

  Forcibly, as though dragging a reluctant animal, he pulled the picture of the savages’ camp into his mind. “Did they have livestock?” he asked. “Wagons, tents, that sort of—?”

  Father Calimeo was telling him about an encounter he’d had with the met’Oc raiders, twenty years ago. They’d ridden past him on their way to somewhere else. It had been the standout event of his life. “Did they have livestock?” Furio repeated loudly. Maybe the other two were talking to people next to him, people he couldn’t see. Imaginary friends.

  “No, no livestock,” Uncle Calimeo replied. “Just fifteen or twenty of them, men and women too. Just sat there cross-legged in the grass like they were waiting on something. Watching me. Damnedest thing.”

  Watching someone who didn’t exist. Waiting on something. Mother Calimeo was describing a bolt of cloth she’d seen on the shelf behind his head six years ago. Either her memory was exceptionally vivid, or she could see back through time. Oddly enough, he remembered the exact same bolt: blue cotton, with a faint yellow check. Father had sold it to…

  “Geant Poneta,” Mother Calimeo said, a split second before he could. “She made it up into two shirts for the boys and a working dress for her niece, for her eighteenth. It had a double row of horn buttons.”

  “Can’t think what they were looking at that was so damned interesting,” Uncle Calimeo went on. “I was just rounding up the stock, moving them up the valley, same as I’ve done every year for I don’t remember how long. Just sat there and watched. You wouldn’t credit it.”

  “We want to buy some rope,” Father Calimeo said loudly, as if to a deaf man, or a stranger. “Thirty ells of the hemp three-ply. Rope,” he added, making a coiling round the arm gesture.

  “Rope,” Furio repeated. “I’ll see what we’ve got.”

  “Bought some rope in here sixteen years ago,” Uncle said. “Jute four-ply, damned good rope. Left it out in the rain one year and after that it was no good anyhow.”

  Damnedest thing, Furio thought, fifteen or twenty of them, watching. How could you watch someone you knew wasn’t really there? He turned round and looked Uncle straight in the eye. “Was one of them an old man?” he asked.

  “Rain gets in it, in between the strands, it starts to rot,” Uncle replied. “Next thing you know, it comes apart in your hands.”

  “No old man,” Father said. “Reckon they was all about your age. Mind, it’s hard to tell with them savages.”

  Furio dropped the rope. “You saw them too.”

  “Sure I saw them. There was twenty-six.”

  “Fifteen or twenty,” Uncle said. “No old man, though. Not as I could see.”

  “They were just sat there,” Father said. “Watching what we was doing. I yelled at them, “Go on, get lost,” but they just went on sitting.”

  Uncle shook his head. “Damnedest thing,” he said.

  “That’s the niece over to Wellhead,” mother pointed out. “Married Daso Disiano, but he died. He was a thin, short man, went bald early. You won’t remember him, I don’t suppo
se. There was a daughter.”

  The three Calimeo girls were sitting on a long packing case containing Gignomai-made hay rakes, only two left. They sat in a row, swinging their legs, not in time. “That’s four-ply,” Uncle pointed out, “not three-ply. We asked for three-ply. Three-ply hemp.”

  “I think we may have some in the cellar,” Furio said, and bolted like a rabbit.

  There was a man called Sao Glabrio, who lived at Middle Bridge. There was no bridge at Middle Bridge, though there may have been one once, and the Fesennas were always talking about building one there. Glabrio farmed in a small way: two brood sows, a small suckler herd of roundback dairy cows, a handful of goats who wandered on and off the property as the mood took them. His wife had died long since; his daughter was married to Desio Heddo. Glabrio and Heddo loathed each other and never spoke a civil word. The only member of his family Glabrio had any time for was his grandson, Scarpedino, who would inherit the Glabrio place when the time came, assuming he could be bothered with it. Glabrio didn’t get on particularly well with his neighbours, either—the Biasige on the north side or the Fesennas on the south.

  Not long before the met’Ousa arrived on their ship, the eldest Fesenna boy and some friends of his decided to go long-netting on Glabrio’s pond. Glabrio called it a lake. It was half an acre of brown water and eight-foot-tall sedge, surrounded by bog. No use to anybody except for a few winter duck. The Fesenna boy called on Glabrio to ask his permission, which was refused. This didn’t matter, since long-netting is best done at night, and Glabrio’s house was on the other side of a tall ridge, so lights and noise wouldn’t carry. Glabrio always did his early morning chores at the same time, in the same order, and wouldn’t be anywhere near the pond until mid-morning.

  The boys reached the pond at about midnight and set up the net all round the pond, hanging it from the tops of sedge stalks. Then they loosed their dogs into the pond to put up the ducks. They were good at their job. They got a dozen ducks rising up off the water, and another half dozen coming back in again. It all went pretty well, until the youngest Fesenna boy (too young, really, but he’d whined to be allowed to come) fell in the water.