Faded Steel Heat Part 10

It seemed like a mile to the door. My heels clacked hollowly. Their sound echoed off the walls. Preparations were under way for the party but so far only to the extent that the hall had been stripped of clutter like carpets, furniture, portraits of imaginary forbears, old armor, crossed swords and pikes, and most anything that could become a weapon after the weather turned drunken.

There was no one watching the front door. The old man's paranoia couldn't run too deep. I clomped up and let myself out while making a mental note to suggest a less relaxed security posture.

I surveyed the neighborhood from the porch. Daylight was a ghost of its former gaudy self. "You got to dump, you'd better go do it now, you runt turkey."

The bird squawked, said, "I wanted you outside so I could talk."

The Dead Man. Of course. I knew we were headed this direction as soon as he started insisting that I take the little vulture everywhere. Not only would he use that ugly feather duster to spy on me, he meant to nag me like he was my mother.

I muttered, "Bird, you are doomed! Doomed!"

"What?"

"You've got me talking to myself. What do you want?"

"You need to come home. We have company only you can handle."

"d.a.m.n." What did that mean? I didn't ask because he wouldn't tell me. His excuse would be that the bird could talk only so much before he injured his throat, a limitation I've never witnessed when that vulture-or the Dead Man-had something to say that I didn't want to hear. "Want to name names?"

"No. Don't waste time."

I'll strangle them both. It's got to take more effort to deny me than to say a name.

I took the direct route, which turned out to be a poor choice.

Grand Avenue from the Landing south to the Dream Quarter was choked with prohuman demonstrators. They were mostly younger than me. It didn't seem possible that there could be so many, that they could all belong right here instead of scattered amongst a hundred towns and cities and a hundred thousand farms. But, of course, resentment of nonhumans is an ancient exercise. We had great and vicious wars in ages past. And today plenty of men older than me, secure in their trade or employment, are as intolerant as any youngster with no prospects.

I hit Grand where six hundred guys from The Call were marching back and forth practicing their manuals at arms using quarterstaves and wooden swords instead of pikes and sharp steel. Their apparel was moderately uniform. Their s.h.i.+elds matched. Most wore light leather helmets. They were true believers in the highest cause and they had faced deadly enemies on the plains of war. This night would turn nasty if some genius on the Hill decided the army should disperse the demonstrators.

Any troops sent in faced demobilization themselves. An interesting complication.

I relaxed, awaited a chance to cross when I wouldn't inconvenience any nut. You don't want to irritate somebody who has several thousand of his best friends handy. Not unless you're armed with the headbone of an a.s.s.

A nice gap opened. Me and fifty other apolitical types decided to go for it.

"Hey! Garrett! Wait up!"

I knew that voice. Unfortunately. "d.a.m.n!" Maybe I could outrun her.

21.

"Garrett!" That was my pal Winger doing the hollering. Winger is a big old country girl as tall as me, a good-looker, who abandoned her husband and kids to chase her fortune in the city. "Dammit! You stop right there, Garrett!"

"Wait," the G.o.dd.a.m.n Parrot squawked in my ear. I stopped. I was well trained. Several people nearby stopped, too, all startled by the bird's having spoken.

A kid asked, "Does your bird really talk, Mister?" She was maybe five with blond hair in ringlets and the biggest innocent blue eyes ever invented. I wanted to make a date for about fifteen years but her dad looked like a guy who thought too much like a father. "Yes, he does. But it's hard to get him started."

"Awk! Pretty baby! Pretty girl!"

"Unless you're someone special."

The bird spotted Winger. "Awk! Holy hooters! Look at them gazoombies!" Nature had been generous to Winger.

I squeezed the bird's beak before he got me a.s.sa.s.sinated.

"I love you, too, Mr. Big," Winger said, hustling up. She ignored kid and dad completely. The father decided he wanted nothing to do with lowlifes like us. He took off across the street. Winger demanded, "Where do you think you're going, Garrett?"

"I was seriously contemplating crossing the street while the goofb.a.l.l.s don't have it blocked, Hawkeye."

"He was trying to get away from you, genius," said a voice from behind me.

"Saucerhead!" I turned. Saucerhead Tharpe is a mountain of a man whose face has been rearranged several times too often. He grinned down at me. His teeth were stunted, black, and broken.

Between them Saucerhead and Winger have about enough sense to get out of the rain. After a lively debate obese with irrelevance. But you can count on their friends.h.i.+p. Well, all right, you can count on Saucerhead's friends.h.i.+p. Winger's tends to get slippery if money is involved.

"h.e.l.lo, Winger my love. h.e.l.lo, Saucerhead. How are you? I'm just fine myself, thank you. Nice to see you. I can't chat right now. I've got to run."

"We'll run with you," Winger told me.

"Why?"

"Because your sidekick isn't athletic enough to do it hisself so he hired us. He figures you might need your diaper changed."

"Yeah," Saucerhead said. "He's got a notion somebody might actually want to hurt you."

"I can't imagine why."

"I can't imagine why, neither, Garrett," Winger grumbled. "I mean, you only trample all over people's feelings-"

"Stuff it, Winger. Last time you had a feeling you beat it to a midwife to find out if it was gas or pregnancy."

Winger grinned.

The man with the cute little girl increased his pace. He ignored her demands to hear the pretty bird talk again.

The Call guys started a chant and cheer combination that was both moving and chilling. Then they started marching in place. Their feet shook the pavement. They had a band, too, we discovered to our dismay.

I never liked military bands. I don't get real excited about patriotic marches, either.

I paid attention and concentrated when I was in the Corps. I got real good at what I did. I became one of the best in a force made up of the elite of the elite. That helped me stay healthy. Never before then, then, or even now, has my soul suffered any compulsion to become an anonymous fraction of a brainless ma.s.s that has its thinking done for it by somebody who shouldn't ought to be trusted to water horses.

Another chance to cross presented itself. I stepped out. Winger and Saucerhead stepped with me, one on either side. What was going on in the Dead Man's minds?

Maybe he was finally drifting away for good, tarrying in a paranoid fantasy before letting go?

"This political c.r.a.p is out of hand," I told Saucerhead.

Tharpe is no thinker. He takes a while to form an opinion so he must have applied some serious mind work to the matter. "I don't get it, Garrett. They're overreacting. It's like they're screaming because TunFaire is full of people who live here."

If Saucerhead has a prejudice, I've never noticed. Of course, he can develop one professionally if the pay is right. He's a bone-breaker by trade, though he needs odd jobs to keep body and soul together.

"The other day you told me these times would be good for you."

"Yeah. But times being good for me don't mean it's right, what's happening. People are going crazy. It's like some mad wizard cast a hate spell so everybody would act twice as stupid as usual."

Saucerhead and Winger searched the shadows as we walked. I kept an eye on the darkness myself. I was edgy. Times had not been easy lately. I thought about penning an autobiography called Trouble Follows Me Trouble Follows Me or maybe or maybe Danger Is My Business. Danger Is My Business.

Nothing happened except that we had to detour one small riot. Straggler rightsists had run into night folks who didn't share their viewpoint. Most of the night crowd aren't human and none have had sensitivity training so they respond to offensive behavior by breaking heads.

I don't know why when you put three drunks together they decide they can conquer the world. If they choose to start with a troll, they get hurt. No matter how much they drink that troll is still impervious to just about everything but lichen infections.

Beer may not be the root cause of social problems at all, despite what the teetotallers claim. Old Man Weider may be producing the cure for our social ills. Suppose we let the morons get tanked and go looking for big trouble? Big trouble can eliminate them. Bingo. No more problem.

You can't convince me that I'm obligated to save you from yourself. If you want to head for h.e.l.l by way of smoking weed or opium, or by drinking, or by being dim enough to call a giant names to his face, go head. Enjoy the slide. I won't get in your way.

Nope. I won't hand you a bucket of grease, either. You've got to do it on your own.

22.

"What's the drill?" I asked as we turned into Macunado east of my place. I spoke for the G.o.dd.a.m.n Parrot, in case the Dead Man needed to let me know about any special plans. Saucerhead and Winger thought I was asking them. They were unaware of the special relations.h.i.+p between the character with no mind and the one with way too many.

Winger said, "We walk you to your door and make sure you're safely inside. You pay us."

"Pay you? That's going to come out of the Dead Man's side of the business. I didn't ask for baby-sitters."

His Nibs didn't rise to the bait. He didn't want anybody to know he used the parrot.

Saucerhead said, "Will you look at them kids, Garrett? That's disgusting."

He meant several youths of preconscription age gathered on a street corner. They were baiting a covey of adolescent elf girls who were way out of their own neighborhood, not to mention out after dark. Their fathers would have whipped their bottoms purple had they witnessed what was happening. The boys were uncomplimentary in the extreme, their vocabularies heavily racist-although the clothing they affected was borrowed directly from elven styles. The girls giggled at the boys and dared them to do something. Anything. Because then they would make the boys look as stupid as they were talking.

"You want me to go tell them to mind their manners?" I asked.

"Huh?" Tharpe responded, baffled. "Manners? What're you talking about, Garrett?"

"No. What're you you talking about? If not their behavior?" talking about? If not their behavior?"

"Their hair, man!" Tharpe eyed me like he wondered if I was going blind. "Look at their hair."

"They've got a lot of it." Most of them had it up and artificially curled and it looked like h.e.l.l, but so what? It was obvious already that they didn't mind being the b.u.t.t of mockery.

Saucerhead never outgrew his military haircut. He grumbled, "What kind of parents would let their kids go around looking like that? You want to know why Karenta is going to h.e.l.l..."

I did but I didn't think Saucerhead's theory would hold much water.

Hair had nothing to do with those boys' behavior-though behavior and hair might be two symptoms of the same disease. And the girls bore an equal responsibility. Hardly anybody, human or elven, would argue that there are any women more beautiful or sensual than the elven-and these girls were blessed additionally with the glow of youth. And they flaunted every weapon they had to get those boys to humiliate themselves.

The boys were too naive to realize they were going to lose no matter what they did. That's a hard lesson for even a man of my mature years. I'm past standing on street corners and howling at the unattainable but I suspect no woman ever gets entirely beyond belittling you, however subtly, for finding her attractive.

I was stretching Saucerhead's mind to its limit trying to explain what was going on across the street when Winger opined, "You're really full of s.h.i.+t, Garrett."

"Tell you what, Winger. You tell me about the women you hang out with."

"Huh? What's that got to do with anything?"

"You're going to tell me how women really think. But you hang out with me. You hang out with Saucerhead when he doesn't have a girlfriend tying him down. You hang out in lowlife taverns trying to get into fights with guys who remind you of your husband. You hang out with thieves and thugs and confidence men and none of them are women so I don't think the fact that you squat to pee qualifies you as an expert on female culture as practiced in our great metropolis."

"Shee-it. There you go cutting me down again 'cause I come from the country."

This could go on for hours. Winger always has a comeback, even if it doesn't make much sense. Lucky for me, we came to my house. It was night out and as quiet as it gets in my block but d.a.m.ned if Mrs. Cardonlos wasn't outside watching my place like she expected entertainment of the sort only I can provide.

I studied the area carefully. First I get an armed escort, then I find my neighborhood nemesis on point. "What's happening, Old Bones? How come the wicked witch of Macunado Street is on patrol?"

Saucerhead looked at me like I'd gone goofier than he'd ever expected. "Just thinking out loud," I said. "Priming him."

"Yeah?" Winger said. "Then tell him to read his account book. There's two marks each due here."

"Two marks? Don't be ridiculous."

It is indeed ridiculous, Garrett. The woman has swung into her avaricious mode. And she is testing our ability to communicate, to establish, if she can, our limits. Two pennyweights silver was the agreed upon fee. And that was overly generous. On reflection I believe you ought to convince them to take an equivalent value in copper sceats. The price of silver is depressed. It will stabilize at a higher level once the euphoria of victory is swept away by reality's breeze.

What was he going on about? "Euphoria? You've got to be kidding. You know what's happening in these streets?"

Winger and Saucerhead gaped.

Yes. I do know. Would you say that what is happening involves the sort of people who deal in large quant.i.ties of n.o.ble metals?

"All right. I understand." Dummy me. I understood, too, that I had given Winger a bucket of information for free.

Please deal with those two quickly. We have company and I am impatient to correct that.

Oh my.