The Hammer Part 18

"They didn't do it," Marzo said, in a dull, flat voice. "It was Scarpedino Heddo. The strangers had nothing to do with it."

Everyone suddenly went quiet and thoughtful. Then Stenora the horse doctor said, "Are you sure?"

"Yes," Marzo replied irritably. "I had it from Lusomai met'Oc himself. Scarpedino's run off and joined the met'Oc. I saw him there. The strangers weren't involved in any way."

Gimao the chandler, who'd been sitting perfectly still wearing a stunned look, frowned heavily. "I heard Scarpedino'd been spending time with them," he said. "I dare say they put him up to it."

"Don't be b.l.o.o.d.y stupid," Marzo snapped. "Lusomai said Scarpedino and the Gabelo woman had been playing some sort of nasty games for some time. Seems like it got out of hand, and that's all there is to it. And now we've got this mess to deal with."

That didn't go down so well. "You can't blame Ciro Gabelo," Ra.s.so said. "He a.s.sumed-"

"He was a b.l.o.o.d.y fool," Marzo cut in. "Does anybody know where those two offcomers have got to? They'll have to be told."

"Aren't they up on the Tabletop?"

Marzo shrugged. "I didn't see them, but it wasn't as though I was given a guided tour. Still," he went on, "I guess the met'Oc probably know where they are. They aren't going to be happy about this."

"So what?" Stenora said. "Even if the oarsmen were innocent, it's not our fault, what Ciro did."

"I'm not sure people like that are going to see it in those terms," Marzo replied. "Of course, it helps that Ciro's dead."

There was dead silence for a moment. Then Gimao murmured, "Do you know what you just said?"

Marzo closed his eyes and sighed. "You know," he said, "if this is what high public office is all about, you can shove it. What I meant is, since the man who did the killings is dead, we aren't going to have the aggravation of those two demanding justice, which would've meant either handing over Ciro Gabelo or refusing and risking a G.o.dd.a.m.ned war. You do realise, don't you, that this is a really bad situation. I'd be glad of some help, if it's all the same to you. I don't remember volunteering for any of this."

Another silence, longer and gloomier. Then Gimao said, "Don't look at me. I'm not getting involved."

Marzo didn't bother to reply. "Ra.s.so? You were there when the s.h.i.+p came in."

"What the h.e.l.l's that got to do with anything?"

"Those two flowers of the n.o.bility know you," Marzo replied. "And it's your turn. I've done enough."

Ra.s.so looked terrified. "You want me to go and tell them."

"I take it you're not volunteering." Marzo laughed. "No, you're right. I've already been up there, I guess I'm it." He rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. It had been a long day. "Fine," he said. "I'll go back, and I'll talk to them. I'll see if I can make a deal. But if I can," he went on, "it's binding on all of us, agreed? I don't want a murmur out of any of you or anybody else. Otherwise you can find some other idiot."

n.o.body spoke. He could feel them waiting for it to be over, and the oddest thought crossed his mind: I despise them. My friends and neighbours, known them all my life, and I wouldn't give spit for any of them. They're just not...

Practical. Not practical men. Not like some.

"That's fine," Gimao said timidly. "You go ahead and do whatever you think's best. We'll all be right behind you, no problem about that."

Marzo nodded (and it was as though he was looking into a mirror, and seeing there a man who kept the peace). "That's settled, then," he said. "Now, if you wouldn't mind, I want to get out of these wet boots and have some dinner."

They didn't hang about. When they'd gone, Teucer brought him a plate of bread and cheese; they hadn't known when to expect him back, so they'd already had dinner. Displaying unusual tact and sensibility, she put the plate down and withdrew quickly.

Marzo ate slowly-he was too tired to be hungry-and between mouthfuls figured out a plan of action. It was fairly horrible, but he hoped it'd do. Then he took his boots off and propped them up in front of the fire to dry, at which point, Furio arrived home, took one look at him and said, "Uncle? Has something happened?"

"You again," said the guard.

Marzo nodded. "That's right," he said. "Have we got to do all the business with the bag?"

"Yes."

"Fine." Marzo closed his eyes, and the bag went over his head. "Take it a bit slower today, would you? Last thing I need's a twisted ankle."

This time, Luso was dressed in what Marzo took to be his hunting outfit. It must have been the very best quality, eighty or so years ago, but now it was mostly darns and patches. It looked like what the strangers had been wearing, and Marzo guessed it must have come from Home.

"Always delighted to see you," Luso said, "but I wasn't expecting you. How can I help you?"

It was easier, Marzo found, if he looked at the floor or the wall a few inches above Luso's head. He recited the facts as quickly and plainly as he could.

"Thank you," Luso said quietly. "I'm grateful to you for coming straight to me."

Marzo made himself look at him. "It's a mess," he said, "and I don't know what to do. I was hoping..."

Luso smiled, and Marzo felt a weight lift off him. "These things happen," he said. "Don't look so sad," he added. "It's not the first time, won't be the last. The main thing is, we're here talking to each other instead of organising raiding parties." He perched on the edge of the table, the way he'd done yesterday. "You're right in a.s.suming my cousins will be angry," he said. "The crew of their s.h.i.+p are, naturally, under their protection, and they have an obligation to see justice is done. Fortuitously,"-later, Marzo made a mental note to remember that word in that context; so much better than they way he'd said it-"the man who killed them is himself dead, which relieves us of the need to do anything about him. On the other hand, it complicates matters. Justice, you see, has got its own sort of twisted arithmetic. Justice demands that for every crime there should be a punishment. If the obvious party to be punished is unavailable for some reason, you've got a problem. Complicated, of course, by what people feel is expected of them."

Marzo didn't like the sound of that. "These people..."

"My cousins," Luso said. "Distant cousins, but we are related, yes. Also, for the purposes of the rules of conduct, they're our guests, therefore de facto members of the household, which unfortunately makes it my problem. Well," he added, with a faint grin, "it doesn't have to be a problem. That's where your help would be greatly appreciated."

"What can I do?" Marzo asked.

Luso edged forward a little. "I think this is an interesting moment in the history of this colony," he said. "All sorts of bad things are happening, which makes it dangerous, but on the other hand, we've got two key a.s.sets: you, and me. Don't know about you but I think we're getting along pretty well. I think we can sort this out. Do you?"

Marzo hesitated, then nodded.

"Splendid," Luso replied. "All right, here's the deal. We forget about what we agreed yesterday-sc.r.a.p it completely. Instead, we set off my man Scarpedino's offence against the three dead men. Wipe the slate clean, start again. I believe I can square it with my cousins, if you can handle your people. I'm sure you can."

Marzo felt a wave of panic sweep over him. He did his best to put it aside. "I think so," he said.

"That's grand," Luso said. "That's what I call a sensible approach. Actually, it works out quite well. It gives my cousins an opportunity to be magnanimous, which stands them in good stead with us. We'll have to find a way to make it all right with the rest of their crew, but you can leave that to us. Really, there's no desperately pressing need for them to know the exact truth of the matter, if you see what I'm driving at. Main thing is to put it all behind us as quickly as we can. Agreed?"

Marzo waited for a moment or so before saying yes. It occurred to him that Luso somehow knew that the deal they'd just reached was the deal he'd come here to suggest. Certainly, it did feel rather like their minds worked in a remarkably similar way. Or maybe that was what Luso wanted him to think. Not that it mattered particularly, yet.

"I think," Luso said, standing up, "this calls for a drink. No, not the family stuff," he added, to someone in the background that Marzo couldn't see. "The bought stuff."

Marzo recognised it as soon as he tasted it. He had half a case of it left, stored carefully behind a stack of empty crates in the back cellar. Which reminded him...

"Ah yes," Luso said, when he'd mentioned it. "Good point. Is the wounded man fit to travel?"

"I think so."

"Splendid. Best thing would be if you sent them up here, and we'll take care of them. Get them out of your way, before there's any more trouble."

Marzo hadn't thought of that, and s.h.i.+vered. He ought to have thought of it. Entirely possible that the three survivors might want some degree of revenge or justice. Then it occurred to him to wonder how he was supposed to send them. What if they didn't want to go?

"I'll have my cousins write a letter," Luso said, before he could raise the question. "Do you think you could arrange transport?"

It was a small colony and Furio had lived all his life at the store, where sooner or later everybody came. A face he'd never seen before was, therefore, a remarkable thing.

The man was there when he arrived one morning. He was unpacking tools-a hammer, half a dozen files, a steel square-from a canvas bag. He looked up as Furio approached, but didn't appear to have seen anything to interest him. He was tall, thin and dressed in cloth that hadn't been bought in the store; Furio knew every single bolt they'd ever stocked.

"From the s.h.i.+p," Gig told him, when Furio managed to s.n.a.t.c.h a moment of his time. "My cousins have decided to invest in the project. Very big of them."

Suddenly there were new faces everywhere. It was disturbing, like living in a dream or a different world. But the newcomers worked hard and brought new skills, or were better than the colonials at old ones. There were two smiths, employed full time in straightening horseshoes and forge-welding them lengthwise to form the long bars that would make up the drop-hammer frame. Three carpenters were building a machine out of oak beams; Gig called it a lathe, for making the pulley wheels and bearings. Half a dozen more worked on the hammer-head and the anvil; they'd been stonemasons, Gig explained, and knew how to square up stone blocks with chisels, and there wasn't a world of difference between that and chipping flat surfaces on blocks of iron. Furio tried to work out exactly how many of them there were, but as soon as he thought he'd arrived at a definitive total, a new man appeared out of nowhere and he had to recalculate. He couldn't help wondering how on earth Uncle Marzo was finding food for all these men, let alone supplies and materials, but it had become a subject he didn't dare discuss either here or at home.

The hammer seemed to grow during the night, like a strange kind of giant mushroom. Gig had two s.h.i.+fts running-the glow from three furnaces and a dozen forges was enough light to work by. Parts were fabricated in daylight and a.s.sembled by firelight. So far, a thousand sc.r.a.p horseshoes had gone into making the two upright beams of the hammer frame, also discarded wheel tyres, hinges, bolts, hooks, scythe blades, axles, practically every piece of rusty junk dragged out of barns and briar patches right across the colony. They'd been heated up, hammered straight, welded into bars, folded, welded again, folded again, welded lengthwise to other bars. There was a machine for twisting strands of wire together into rope. Furio had no idea who'd built it. It was there and running one morning, with one stranger turning a handwheel and another feeding it three lines of wire. Meanwhile, the shed that would house the hammer was being built up round it, like an eggsh.e.l.l forming around an already hatched chick. They couldn't put the roof on, Gig said, until they'd dropped the hammer-head down into the frame, but he wasn't going to wait till the hammer was finished before building the shed. Another team were rigging up the gear-train that would take off power from the waterwheel and run the hammer and the saw-benches. It was like watching a child with no skin growing at a monstrously accelerated rate.

The faster the thing grew, Furio found, the less he had to offer. By now he'd proved quite conclusively that he was no carpenter, metal worker, joiner or mason. He could lift one end of something, so long as someone explained slowly and clearly exactly what was expected of him. He could drive in relatively unimportant nails. He could pick things up and carry them; he could be trusted with a certain degree of unsophisticated sorting into piles. But he was slow, tired too easily, lacked initiative, didn't seem to have the knack of working efficiently with others-not for want of trying, maybe as a result of trying too hard. There was one job he knew he could do well-quartermaster and supply clerk-but whenever he suggested it Gig didn't seem to hear him or quickly changed the subject, and he guessed this was because Gig suspected him of spying for his uncle. An illiterate off the s.h.i.+p got the job instead, and did it very well using a system of tallies notched into bits of stick with a penknife.

Among all the new faces, there was one old face he kept looking for but never seemed to see. Aurelio, the met'Oc smith, hadn't shown up yet, although a light no longer showed in the livery window. It was possible, of course, that the old man had repented and gone back to the Tabletop-certainly, no reason why Furio should've been told if this was what had happened-but he doubted it somehow. So far, in spite of the furious pace and demanding nature of the work, n.o.body had left and gone home as far as Furio could see.

One day, when he'd had enough of carrying fifteen-foot planks from one side of the site to the other (he didn't know what they were for, or why they couldn't have been offloaded in the right place to begin with) he looked round to make sure n.o.body was watching, then walked quickly away into the woods. If anyone had seen him, they'd a.s.sume he was going for a p.i.s.s, but it was hardly likely anybody would spare him even that much thought.

He followed a deer track for a while until he came to a hollow, rising steeply on the far side. He could still hear the incessant chime of hammers and a few faint, irritated voices, but at least his ears weren't ringing. He climbed to the top of the rise, sat down on a fallen tree trunk and simply enjoyed being there, for quite a long time.

The crack of a twig in the hollow below brought him back. He looked down and saw Gig, walking purposefully, carrying a rag bundle. He'd already opened his mouth when he decided not to say anything. He wouldn't hide or anything stupid like that, but he wouldn't announce his presence, either. Not, at least, until he'd seen what Gig had with him so carefully wrapped up.

He knew what it was as soon as it came out of the cloth, though he'd never actually seen one before, but he'd heard Gig talk about them and other people had described them. It was about eighteen inches long; a wooden curve with an iron pipe let into it, and an iron plate mounted on one side. On the plate-he wasn't quite close enough to see clearly-some iron thing like a bird's head and neck, rearing up over some other iron thing like a flattened thumb. A bird's head-hence the name, the snapping-hen. Gig had said it was called that because when the hammer flew forward and struck the flint against the steel, it looked like a chicken suddenly stooping to peck. He'd imagined it all wrong, of course, but now he could actually see one he could appreciate the similarity.

Gig pulled something from his pocket. It was the pointy end of a cow's horn, with a wooden stopper in the tip. This stopper pulled out, apparently, and as you withdrew it, you tilted the horn back, as though you were trying not to spill something inside it. In fact, the stopper was also a measure. He watched Gig pour a sort of black sand out of it into the open end of the iron pipe. Then he hesitated, not knowing what to do. Furio grinned. If Gig put the snapping-hen down so he could put the stopper back in the horn, the black sand would spill out of the pipe, likewise if he put down the horn. What he needed, obviously, was a third hand. He eventually solved the problem by gripping the stopper in his teeth and sticking it back in the horn that way. Then he dropped the horn on the ground and fished around in his other pocket until he found something else: a small round nut, or stone, except it was silver-s.h.i.+ny. Then he froze again, confronted by some new difficulty. Then he popped the silver ball in his mouth while he went back once more to his pockets and dug out an inch-square sc.r.a.p of linen rag. This he stretched over the open end of the tube, like the cloth you put over a jar of jam. He leaned forward until his nose was practically touching the tube, and gently spat the silver ball on top of the cloth stretched over the open hole. Next he pressed the ball with his thumb until he'd sunk it into the tube mouth.

(I'll bet Luso doesn't do it this way, Furio thought, or if he does, we've clearly overestimated the threat he poses.) Next Gig looked round for a bit of stick. It had to be the right size. After quite a while he eventually found one, and used it to shove the ball further down the tube. He seemed quite concerned about this stage of the operation. Furio guessed it had to go all the way down to the bottom, or something bad would happen. Then the cow horn came out again. Gig pulled back on the bird's head until it clicked, then pushed the flattened-thumb away from him. It hinged forward. Under it was a hollow, like the bowl of a very small spoon. He unstoppered the horn, half filled the spoon with black sand and pulled the flattened thumb back to where it had originally been. There was a repeat performance of putting in the stopper; the horn back in the pocket; then...

Gig stood quite still, holding the snapping-hen, not apparently doing anything. It wasn't fear exactly, though if he'd been in Gig's shoes, Furio would've been petrified, because all manner of bad stuff happened, apparently, if you made a mistake getting the snapping-hen ready. Not fear; as far as he could tell, it was a kind of unwillingness-the dog that doesn't come back when it's called, the horse that won't come to the halter, the child who won't come in to dinner. Gig looked for all the world like someone who was about to do something he didn't want to, but had to, but didn't want to. It crossed Furio's mind that a friend, if Gig had one, would probably go down there and talk to him to see if he could help. Of course, he stayed where he was.

Then Gig pulled the bird's head back a little further, and there was another click. He looked round-something to shoot at, presumably-then raised the snapping-hen at arm's length, as though he was trying to get it as far away from himself as it would go. When his arm was straight, he stood quite still.

There was a click, as the bird's head pecked, and a hissing noise. A little round ball of white smoke lifted off the side, followed by a rus.h.i.+ng boom, like thunder in a small room. Furio saw Gig's hand lift, like a smith swinging a hammer. There was white smoke everywhere, a whole cloudful. And that, apparently, was that.

He saw Gig slowly lower his arm, look carefully at the snapping-hen, then stoop and lay it down on the ground. He walked over to the place he'd been pointing at, but Furio couldn't see what he leant forward to examine. He watched him look for quite some time, but he didn't seem to have found anything.

Many and various were the outcomes he'd contemplated, but this hadn't been one of them-not a clean miss, at five yards. Clearly it was harder than it looked.

He knelt down and prodded the leaf mould with his finger. It'd have had to make a hole, a big, deep one, and if he could find the hole, at least he'd know by what margin he'd failed to connect. Even so-a stump the size of a man's head, at five yards, and he'd missed it. Terrific.

Still, it worked, and that was the main thing. The fact that a bow and arrow would get the job done in a quarter of the time (and you might even hit something) and with infinitely less fuss was neither here nor there. He was conscious of having taken another step on a long road. It was a cold feeling, but there was a degree of intellectual satisfaction, such as a scientist might feel at the conclusion of a successful experiment. Not what he'd been expecting, but never mind.

He took a moment to listen. He could hear the hammers, the saws, voices. It wasn't the same as being there, where he was part of it or it was part of him. It occurred to him that he could simply walk away, choose a direction and keep walking until he came to a place where he felt like stopping, and be rid of it all, now, before it closed in on him and swept him away. The urge to do just that was so strong that he could barely keep his feet, but then he thought, No, don't be ridiculous, this is what you want want. You started it. Besides, it's all gone too far now.

There was something heavy in his hand. He looked, and saw the snapping-hen, which he'd completely forgotten about. All that, and he couldn't even hit a tree stump. Hardly what you'd have a right to expect from the harbinger of the end of the world.

He picked up the oily rag and wrapped it up carefully, making sure that the hammer and frizzen were properly concealed now that there were men on the site who might well recognise a snapping-hen if they saw one. Really there was only one direction, back the way he'd just come to rejoin the main road. Or maybe not; there was one faint possibility...

"I'll be gone for a few days," he told the foreman (Dacio, the s.h.i.+p's mids.h.i.+pman; a good, solid man who never thought unless he had to). "Keep them going on the hammer, that's top priority, and if there's time, get them started on the belts for the overhead shafts. And check all the incoming consignments against the materials book. I'm starting to have my doubts about Marzo Opello."

Dacio didn't actually salute, but the effect was the same. He'd been in the navy before he signed up with the met'Ousa, and although that had been several years ago, he was taking a long time to recover. "Leave it to me," he said confidently. I might just do that, Gignomai thought, but you wouldn't like it if I did.

He nearly managed to forget to take the snapping-hen, but at the last moment he noticed it, when he was rummaging in his trunk for his spare boots. He looked at it for a while, then stuffed it into his knapsack. It was too long to go in sideways, and he had to leave the barrel end sticking out of the top. He packed the powder flask as well, and the patches, and the spare flints, and the bag of b.a.l.l.s; like going away on a visit with your wife, who insists on taking every d.a.m.n thing with her.

He left just before first light, not that that meant anything any more. The night s.h.i.+ft still had some time to go. They were fitting the bearings for the overhead shaft, which meant a lot of men standing still holding lanterns while the fitters checked tolerances with the gauges that had been so much trouble to make. It was a good time to leave, while they were busy. He felt painfully guilty, like an absconding husband.

By the time the sun was up he was clear of the woods, following the course of the river. It seemed a logical thing to do, because a large body of people with grazing animals wouldn't go far from water, would they, and as far as he knew there weren't any lakes or big ponds. Sloppy logic, of course. He didn't actually have the faintest idea where they'd gone, in which direction, at what speed. He was walking out into the wide empty world with a heavy pack and food for three days, on the offchance of b.u.mping into them.

He followed the river for two days, then stopped. He'd started out with romantic notions of living off the land-shooting a deer with the snapping-hen, maybe-and cramming his mouth with the legendary nuts and berries with which the wilderness is supposed to abound. So far he'd seen one bush laden with unidentified glossy black berries which were almost certainly poisonous, and one hare, about a quarter of a mile away, which ran off when he moved. He had enough food to get him back to the site, or he could keep going and trust to luck. Also, his feet hurt.

He turned back, walked for half a day and found them. Either he hadn't noticed them on his way out, which was hardly likely, or they'd come in across country, making for the river, after he'd gone on. That was also fairly unlikely. The sheer size of the spread they made-two thousand sheep, a thousand goats, ambling along as they grazed-meant they were very hard to overlook, and the outlying edges of the spread were several hours ahead of the main body. It would be like an entire country sneaking past you in the dark.

Of course, he thought as he walked towards the camp, they may not be the same lot. Could be a completely different tribe or sect or whatever, and I can't speak the language.

But he kept walking, and when he was about half a mile from the camp, scattering the more adventurous goats, two men suddenly stood up out of the gra.s.s in front of him. They wore the same strange long coats as the ones he'd met before, and stared at him in roughly the same way. He smiled at them and kept going.

The language problem meant he couldn't just find someone and ask, "Excuse me, which way to the lunatic's tent?" which robbed him of any semblance of the initiative, so he was mightily relieved when a man and a woman approached him, stopped, looked at him, turned round and walked back the way they'd just come. He followed them right into the middle of the camp. They didn't look round once.

There were plenty of women, not many men. They were uniformly tall and thin, with high cheekbones, long faces, long necks, broad bony shoulders standing out through the thick rough cloth of their practically identical coats. They looked at him, didn't move, studied him as though he was a puzzle, for the solving of which no valuable prize was offered. His guides walked past them without a word and weren't acknowledged, as if non-existence was contagious and they'd caught it from him. His nerve was just about to give way when a face appeared in the fold of a tent curtain-a huge grin with a pair of wide eyes balanced on top.

"My dear fellow!" the old man yelled. "Yes, over here. Quickly!"

Gignomai wasn't sure he liked the "quickly." He darted across, and a huge hand on a thin wrist shot out, grabbed him round the knuckles and dragged him into the tent. The hand was warm and soft, like a woman's, and compellingly strong.

"Sit down, please," the old man said, as he yanked the curtain back in place. "You shouldn't..." he hesitated, then went on, "I am most awfully pleased to see you again, but really, you oughtn't be here, you know." He was still standing. He peeled the curtain delicately aside, glimpsed through, and turned it back. "Sit down, sit down," he said. "Please, do make yourself at home."

There was only one stool. Gignomai sat on the floor, which was covered by a thick, dusty carpet. "I'm sorry," he said. "If it's going to make trouble for you."

The old man shook his head so fiercely that Gignomai was afraid he'd hurt his neck. "Oh, you don't need to worry about that," he said. (Gignomai thought. About something, but not that?) "As a lunatic, I'm privileged and therefore immune to censure. You..."

"Am I in danger?" Gignomai asked.

"What? Oh, no, of course not. They wouldn't dream of harming you; they don't believe you exist. Now then, what can I offer you? Tea? My granddaughter has just brewed me a fresh pot. Or would you prefer milk?"

"Tea," Gignomai said, and the old man, active as a locust, dodged past him and came back a moment later with two tiny, exquisite translucent white bowls. Gignomai mimed sipping, then put his bowl carefully on the ground beside him.

"Now then," the old man said, perching on the stool like a big bird on a wire. "How may I be of service?"

Now that he was here, after the gentle melodrama of his arrival, the request sounded absurd. But it was the question he'd come to ask. "I'd like to ask a favour, if I may."

"Of course. Anything within my power."

"Do you think I could come and live with you, here, till the spring?"

The old man's eyes opened very wide indeed. He opened his mouth and closed it again three times before he spoke. "Naturally I would like nothing better," he said. "Merely to sit and talk, in a decent language, with a cultured man, about books and pictures and normal civilised things, is the most wonderful thing I could possibly imagine."

"But," Gignomai said.