Cruel Zinc Melodies

by Glen Cook

  You will see. Then: Fuel. They will need fuel to heat the shack. You may have to go to the waterfront to arrange a delivery. Because all of TunFaire’s fuels have to be barged in from up or down the river.

  Yet one more chore. And one I didn’t know how to execute. That’s Dean’s area of expertise. We’re profligate with fuels here. We’re too prosperous. Except in the Dead Man’s room, of course. Wood, coal, and charcoal all are delivered. At some expense. The delivery folk have to travel with armed guards.

  Not many villains will go for a load of firewood accompanied by guys with crossbows. That’s a quick way for a dimwit to commit suicide. Though stupid is as plentiful as air.

  Make good use of the time available to you today.

  That sounded portentous.

  Tomorrow will be your turn at the shovels.

  “Oh, don’t tell me!”

  It is about to come down. It could go on for days.

  A professional storyteller once clued me that the way to drag your audience along is to hit them with One Damned Thing After Another. And that’s my life. The malevolent, sniggering, buggering toadlet gods tugging on the threads of my tale plot it by that very method.

  The older religions? we’re afflicted with several hundred? generally assign three vindictive crones to work the warp and woof of individual destinies. But that all goes on in a side room. The main stage features a team of fifteen working Poor Garrett’s Ever More Miserable Homespun.

  Singe says I overdramatize. Which only proves that she hasn’t been paying attention.

  Do you suppose this might be a good time to roll out your equally absurd tendency toward equine hysterics?

  “What?” Then I got it. He was needling me.

  Horses.

  Because I have a rational, reasoned attitude toward those fiends.

  People mock me when I report anything about the innate wickedness of horses. Those monstrous beasts have most people so fooled that every damned idiot out there thinks they’re man’s best friend. Big old cute pals who carry civilization itself on their backs. But the truth is, the beasts just lie in the weeds, waiting for a kill shot they can score while leaving nobody the wiser.

  You don’t want to be alone with a horse.

  Never, ever, under any circumstance, do you want to be alone with a whole bunch of horses.

  Amusement tainted the psychic atmosphere.

  There seemed to be a lot of that lately.

  But what does he know? Even when he was breathing and waddling around on his hind legs he couldn’t have ridden anything smaller than a woolly mammoth.

  You know what needs doing today. And you have finished eating. I suggest you earn some of the buckets of money the Weider interest has thrown your way.

  Buckets? I hadn’t asked Singe how much more money Gilbey had sent over. Old Bones made it sound like it would be worth finding out.

  Time to go, Garrett. It cannot be long before Miss Winger begins delivering persons of interest who may not wish to be seen by you.

  “Harsh.” But what I was really thinking was, who could that possibly be? Which tossed up an “Uh-oh!” as I caught a whiff of something maybe called plausible deniability.

  He wanted me away from the house, stumbling around, making myself a fat, solid alibi.

  Time to go.

  I took care of personal business, pulled myself together, dressed for winter, and stepped outside. And ducked right back inside for a sock cap and muffler to add to what I had going already.

  The cold had hit me like a punch in the snoot. That meant Dean and Singe were keeping the house too damned hot. They were turning silver into smoke.

  53

  This wasn’t my first time out before the sun hit the meridian. Mine is a life of sorrow and misfortune. More often than I like I’ve had to be out with the early worms. Back when I was one of the Universe’s Elect, a Marine, I had to be up before the sun dragged its sorry ass over the horizon every freaking morning. So, though it was unnatural, I could take it.

  I didn’t like the looks of the snow in Macunado Street. The slackers on the crew before mine wouldn’t do anything but make a show. Tomorrow would be hell. As in the realms of the cruelly used dead in religions where the abode of the fallen is an icy waste and the souls there do hard labor for having been too milquetoast in life.

  I gave it all a second look, shrugged, sucked it up, and headed out.

  It was time for an off-season New Year’s resolution. I spend too much time grumbling and anticipating all the ways that life will jump up and bite me. I should become more positive. And more active. I should drink less and get up earlier.

  I’ve told myself the same thing at least once a week for the last five years. Along with, I need to get more exercise and to shed ten pounds. Or maybe twenty, these days.

  So far it only takes for a few days at a time before the relapse sets in.

  “I ain’t seen you out this early in years,” Saucerhead told me.

  “A gross exaggeration, sir.”

  “Possibly an exaggeration. But not gross. What’s all this stuff? What’s going on?”

  “I’m doing a two birder. These guys are going to build you a guardhouse. Complete with a charcoal stove and a garderobe. They'll do it fast and efficient, right here, in broad daylight, while Weider’s contractors watch.” My workmen were breeds who were eager to work. “How many showed up today?”

  “Almost all a’them, what Luther says. They’re getting scared a’being outta work.”

  “This ought to give them a little extra incentive, then.”

  “Or start a riot.”

  “I see four Relway tin whistles without even trying. Anything starts, there'll be a bunch of guys donating skilled labor to the Crown.”

  Desultory work continues round the seasons on the Marcosca aqueduct. Someday? maybe even during my lifetime? it will improve dramatically the quality and quantity of water available to the city. The system is a long, slow project because the labor is almost entirely convict.

  Saucerhead watched the breeds unload carts and a lumber wagon. I suggested, “Show them where you want the shack put up. That one with the growth on his face is the top kick. Goes by Rockpile.”

  There was a story behind that name but Saucerhead wouldn’t care. A guy called Saucerhead all his life don’t much care how somebody else got hung with an oddball nickname. Unless they hit it off and decided to go get drunk together.

  Tharpe had definite ideas about the optimum size for his guardhouse. He and Rockpile began jabbering.

  Bill appeared. So suddenly I jumped. “What the hell?”

  “You ought to keep one eye open.”

  I’d started thinking about Tinnie and where my life was headed. “Maybe I ought to. What’s on your mind?”

  “I spent part of the night here with your thugs, last night. Mr. Tharpe mention that?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, whatever is down there is getting stronger. Putting an end to the damned bugs would probably turn that around. They weren’t all the time chewing on it, it could go back to sleep. But they just keep hatching out.”

  “And?”

  “Just saying. Do something about the bugs. The rest could follow.”

  “We'll see some action on that today.”

  My partner had plans afoot. Numerous plans. Some of them he’d let me in on. Plans were why he’d recruited so many messengers.

  “That’s good. Me, I don’t mind the bugs. But the music could drive me nuts.”

  “Music?” I hadn’t pursued that. I hadn’t dismissed it, either. I’d heard something myself, though calling it music would be a stretch.

  “They’re bad melodies,” Bill said. “Very bad melodies. In several senses of bad. But mostly just awful as music.”

  I waited. Bill was one of those guys who has to fill a silence. And had a gift for making himself understood.

  “This'll be hard to explain, Garrett.” We were old pals now. Brothers of the sword. “You
'll understand after you hear the music. Which you'll do for sure if you hang around here after dark.”

  “All right.” How would a thing buried down deep know when it was dark? “Give it a shot. Sometimes I can figure things out. Wow. Look at those guys go.”

  Rockpile and his gang had a frame going up. Workers from the contract crew were watching. They didn’t look happy.

  “All right. But I need to digress. When I got back from my five in the Cantard, the first job I got was working for my uncle. He was a specialty founder. A small operation. We made custom alloys, especially latten and electrum. Exotic stuff, but useful to people who can’t afford solid gold and silver. And to some specialist operators on the Hill.”

  “Latten? Electrum?”

  “Electrum doesn’t matter here. Nor does latten, either, really. Except that I used to help make it. It’s an alloy of nickel, copper, tin, and zinc that takes gilding well. It isn’t easy to make. The zinc part is where I was headed with the metals and music notion.”

  “You were moving too fast and light for me, Bill. You lost me way back.”

  “Which explains why I live in a loft over top of a third-rate tavern. Lack of polish in my communications skills.”

  “I'll buy you a jar of the finest. Do your best to make me understand now.”

  “All right. Metals make music. They ring. Like wind chimes? You use strips or tubes of copper. Or silver, if you’re too rich to be allowed to live.”

  “Sure. I’ve seen them made out of glass and ceramics, too.”

  “Good on you, boy. But let’s stick to metal. Zinc. When you mix up latten you feed in small, flat strips of zinc, after your other metals have melted. Strips like you could use to make wind chimes. If you made one out of zinc, though, all you’d get is a lot of clink-clunk. Zinc don’t sing.”

  We were getting somewhere. On a long road winding up a tall hill. “Are we getting somewhere?”

  “Considering your slick-talking ways, it’s a wonder you’re still alive, let alone successful.”

  “So I’ve heard. My social skills get the best of me sometimes. Zinc wind chimes.”

  “Exactly. The music is like the sound of the world’s biggest zinc wind chime.”

  Really? I stood there trying to trap random snowflakes with my open mouth.

  “Let me take that back, Garrett. I thought of something it’s more like than wind chime music. Only I don’t know what you call it. One of those music things where you hit little pieces of metal, all different sizes, with little wooden hammers.”

  “Chimes,” I said.

  “That’s the kind that hang off a rail. Yeah. But I mean the kind where they’re laid out on a little table.”

  I could picture what he meant. Only place I ever saw one was in the orchestra pit of one of the World’s competitors. “I don’t know, either. But I know what you mean.”

  “Good. Because the music is like from a band of those, all with zinc chimes.”

  “If the racket is that bad, how come you think it’s music?”

  “You have to hear it to get it.”

  “If I must, I must.”

  54

  Saucerhead and Rockpile worked well together. The guardhouse went up quickly. Saucerhead’s henchmen glowed with anticipation. I reminded Tharpe that the job was more than just hanging out in a warm place.

  His guys were on the job, though. Men called Sparrow and Figgie Joe Crabb brought in a prowler they said was up to no good around back of the World. He wasn’t big. He wasn’t well dressed. He stank. Not as much as Lurking Felhske, but enough to stand out in a city where most people are allergic to soap. He could’ve stood to eat a meal, too. His limbs were like spider legs. He needed to stand straighter, too. His hair was a tangled mess of greasy strings. He wouldn’t look anyone in the eye. He knew who I was. He was hoping I wouldn’t remember him.

  Life had been one disappointment after another. His luck wouldn’t change today.

  “Snoots Gitto. It’s been a while. Little out of your normal range, aren’t you? What’s your story?”

  Snoots mumbled something about he was looking for a job. That changed under the press of a battery of sneers. My companions didn’t know Snoots but they knew the breed.

  Snoots then whined about trying to find something he could sell so he could buy something to eat. Snoots has a talent. He can mumble and whine at the same time.

  He might be telling the truth. If information was what he wanted to find.

  I told Saucerhead, “Let’s don’t start pounding him yet. Snoots is more than he seems.”

  “Seems like a bum to me.”

  “Exactly. But he’s really a spy for Marengo North English and that crowd.”

  Tharpe, Sparrow, Crabb, and a couple others considered Snoots. And didn’t believe me.

  “Behold the master race,” I told them. Then, “Snoots, you’ve stumbled into the gooey poo. Only one way out. You tell the truth.”

  Snoots stared at the pavements and made whiny noises. They didn’t add up to words.

  “What’re you doing here? I’m listening. If you deal off the top of the deck, I won’t give you to Rockpile, there. You do mess with me, I'll have these guys break stuff and pull bits off till you do convince me. Then I'll turn you over to Rockpile anyway. He can drag you over to the Al-Khar. Where, I’m pretty sure, your name is still on the list of people Director Relway wants to meet bad enough to pay a finder’s fee for an introduction.”

  Snoots became cooperation itself. If Cooperation were a goddess, Snoots would be a kitten purring in her lap and butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. He said, “There was a rumor that some nonhuman labor might be about to be used around here.” He cast a worried glance at Rockpile.

  “A rumor? Who did you hear it from?”

  Snoots Gitto wasn’t a complete craven. But he was a realist and a pragmatist. He knew he would give up everything. Given time. Time was of no value to him. So he wasn’t principled enough to make us hurt him for a while before he accepted the inevitable.

  “Couple of the tradesmen on this project. We have a party place over yonder a couple blocks. They passed the word. Sounded like they were just pissed off at their foreman. But I wasn’t doing nothing. So the sector chairman sent me to check it out. I was trying to find the snitches when these guys started hassling me.”

  “And what snitches were you looking for?”

  Snoots dragged his feet a while. Naming names would make him unpopular.

  He figured six seconds was an honorable effort. “Myndra Merkel and Bambi Fardanse.”

  “Bambi?” Saucerhead gasped. “Really? You’re serious?” I beckoned. “Luther.” The foreman had been hanging around, trying to catch the conversation. I told him, “Bambi Fardanse and Myndra Merkel. Tell them to pick up their tools and go home. They don’t work here anymore.”

  That set him off. “Who the fuck do you think you are? You don’t fire people. They don’t work for you. They work for? Yah!”

  The shriek started when Saucerhead laid hands on. Saucerhead has a knack for wringing inarticulate noises out of uncooperative people.

  “That should do it. I think we have his attention. Luther. Those men are gone. See to it. Snoots, tell your boss to mind his own business. Your bunch messed with Max Weider once before. He went easy because he had friends involved. That won’t happen again. Understand? Considering the current political climate?”

  That weather was fickle but the people in charge, and, notably, the master of the secret police, enjoyed an antagonistic attitude toward the human rights movement. There were those? notably, the head of the secret police? who were overjoyed whenever evidence of rightsist misbehavior fell into their laps.

  Snoots bobbed his head. He made inarticulate, whining sounds. I spun him around, slapped him on the seat of the pants. “Off you go. And I hope I don’t see you again in this life.”

  “You maybe shouldn’t’ve said that, Garrett,” Tharpe opined a moment later. “Now you got him think
ing about options he never saw before.”

  “He won’t think too hard. Look over there. A man Snoots is sure to recognize. And recall that we have a special relationship.”

  Morley Dotes, Puddle, Sarge, and somebody I didn’t know were ambling along the far side of the street. Paying the World no heed. Morley and the stranger were engaged in an animated conversation. Sarge and Puddle seemed bored.

  I muttered, “That son of a bitch is looking for a place to put a restaurant.”

  “What?”

  “Huh? Oh. Just being startled by seeing somebody actually take my advice.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “It is in this case.”

  Puddle noticing me staring. He said something. Morley looked over, waved, showed me a rack of needle teeth, then went on about his business.

  Nearer to hand, Rockpile’s crew started roofing the guardhouse.

  55

  The thing below must have burped. Or something. We all felt the psychic wave. I gasped. Everyone made some kind of noise.

  Workmen poured out of the World like rats fleeing fire. A horde of a dozen, at least. Across the way, Morley and his crew stopped to watch.

  Flying lizards flapped up off the roof. They wobbled away clumsily, hurling indignant shrieks behind. Bugs burst out of hiding and raced off in every direction. There were only a few but they were all the biggest I’d seen yet.

  Saucerhead murmured, “Damn, I’m glad they didn’t make no spiders! I hate spiders.”

  I looked around nervously. When somebody says something like that it’s certain I'll be up to my hips in tarantulas the size of sled dogs within minutes.

  No spiders materialized. Saucerhead Tharpe was at peace with the gods.

  They love some of us more than others. They are quite mad. And their favoritism is completely unreasonable.

  The psychic wave passed.

  Several workmen refused to go back inside. I told the foreman, “They don’t go, Luther, it’s a voluntary quit.”

  I noted that those of Rockpile’s crew who were most obviously breeds had shown the least reaction to the psychic shock. A few hadn’t responded at all.