Cruel Zinc Melodies

by Glen Cook

  My ratgirl had been the only one to figure out where to find me. Maybe because I hadn’t told anyone else where I was going.

  Tinnie sipped tea and stared at me over her cup, across the kitchen table. I gobbled oatmeal mush, taking time off to ask, “Is it all right for you to be away again, already?”

  “That problem has been handled.”

  “You locked Rose in a cage?”

  “Not Rose. Though she did do the hands-on. My uncle Archer came up with the idea. Rose is too lazy. The cage is reserved for Kyra. That girl is going to embarrass us all if she doesn’t show a little more sense.”

  “Turning into one of the fuddy-duddies, are we?” I’d once heard her departed uncle Lester make a similar observation about her.

  “Gaining wisdom. Try it sometime.”

  “I got wisdom coming out my ears.”

  “That’s hair.”

  “And if I don’t, you'll make every effort to encourage me.”

  She eyed me suspiciously, then backed down, smelling a trap.

  She’d heard a lot of male thoughts about the futility of trying to reform men. Mostly not from me. Being a selfish weasel, I try not to say things likely to put barriers in the way of my ambitions.

  Being a slick weasel her very own self, Tinnie revealed none of her thoughts about domestic reeducation.

  I will stipulate that, even after all this time, she might not have a fixed strategy. A glance round her circle of acquaintances wouldn’t betray any glittering example to emulate. The most successful couple either of us knows is Winger and the Remora.

  I changed the subject. “If you hang around I'll put you to work. Chuckles already has Singe shackled, scribing for him.” My formal penmanship leaves room for improvement. And I needed a final, formal report, full of final, formal recommendations and some creative bullshit to baffle Max and Manvil about the end of the dragon threat.

  That should be an easy sell once you explain the dragon’s... the entity’s... willingness to assist with the elimination of waste from the World.

  “What?”

  So much that you do not remember. Look. It lives off rotting organic matter locked in the silt and organic matter that filters down from the river. It wants to grow now, in order to reach out to its brothers. It will be thrilled to take waste matter direct, through the tunnels created by the oversize insects. It began lining those with itself before Singe arrived to rescue you.

  “Really?”

  Truly. And the World will have an exclusive.

  “Damn! I have the knack! Sweetest heart. Ready to go do some writing?”

  Vaguely, I felt the Dead Man reach out to Singe.

  Tinnie gave me the fish-eye again, entertaining the possibility that I was trying to run her off. She called my bluff. “I do need to stay away while the old folks work out what to do about Rose and Archer. I can do a few pages of transcription.”

  I didn’t slump.

  Dean asked, “Shall I bring a tea service to your office, then?”

  Tinnie suggested, “Why don’t I take care of that? That'll give him a chance to clear some of the mess away.”

  There would be clutter all over my little desk. She’d need room to work. “I’m going.” I little-old-manned it out the kitchen door. I used the wall for support, shuffling along the hallway.

  Singe met me at the office doorway. She told me, “I found your painting in the theater. We brought it back when we brought you. I hung it up for you.”

  “Thank you, Singe.” She would know all about the matter from the Dead Man. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  I was still in my office doorway when Tinnie arrived with the tea. “What’s the matter with you, Malsquando?” Irked and concerned at the same time.

  “Winter is over at last.”

  “Huh?”

  I stared at Eleanor.

  The dragon had left me with an unimaginable gift.

  It had duplicated Eleanor, too.

  The magic was back. But all the fear and foreboding had left the painting. The shadow against the darkness in the background had been replaced by the hint of a ghost of the face of a phantom dragon. It had a mischievous twinkle in its eye, telling me it would be a dragon if that was what we needed it to be.

  Tinnie couldn’t see the difference.

  Eleanor wasn’t running from anymore. Eleanor was running to. Finally.

  “Winter is over at last.”

  95

  The World opened on time. Its first offering was that ingenious historical tragedy, Rausta, Queen of the Demenenes. People loved it. They survived the scandalous use of women actors.

  Tinnie, Alyx, and their posse did surprisingly well. Heather Soames found her calling as a theater manager.

  The Amazons wore too many clothes and didn’t jump around enough, though. And Winger never popped out of her breastplate.

  I couldn’t shake the feeling of a presence watching over my shoulder.

  After the opening show the cast, angels, day-saving heroes, and owners lurched across to Morley’s Velvet Curtain and got some exercise patting one another on the back.

  About the Author

  Glen Cook was born in 1944 in New York City. He has served in the United States Navy, and lived in Columbus, Indiana; Rocklin, California; and Columbia, Missouri, where he went to the state university. He attended the Clarion Writers Workshop in 1970, where he met his wife, Carol. “Unlike most writers, I have not had strange jobs like chicken plucking and swamping out health bars. Only full-time employer I’ve ever had is General Motors.” He is now retired from GM. He’s “still a stamp collector and book collector, but mostly, these days, I hang around the house and write.” He has three sons? an Army officer, an architect, and a music major.

  In addition to the Garrett, P. I., series, he is also the author of the ever-popular Black Company series.