My years in the Corps, with its ancient and traditional naval associations, clicked in at last. This thing had to be some kind of aerial ship or boat. With a crew. With decks and bulkheads and hatches instead of floors and walls and doors. With heads instead of toilets and galleys instead of kitchens—and all that special navy talk us Marines always resented.
The silver elves must have been trying to teach Kip something, stashing him in a padded box. But they hadn't been harsh enough. Their rewards and punishments must have been too subtle. The boy began to complain the second the door opened, never once going for a "Good to see you again," or, "Thanks for coming to find me, Garrett." That being the case I shut him back in while I went on to explore the rest of the aerial ship.
After a while I reopened the hatch confining Kip. "Where can I find Lastyr and Noodiss?"
Bitch, bitch, piss, and moan.
"All right. Your call." I shut the hatch.
I went back outside "Hey, Marsha, did you happen to look for Dojango? I'm pretty sure they dragged him into one of those lead eggs."
In the excitement we'd forgotten the little brother.
Marsha went over to the fallen egg and yelled in the doorway. He didn't get a response. For a moment he and I both stared up the hill along the path taken by the berserk egg. Then Marsha went and yelled into the dented egg. That didn't do any good either.
"I'd better look," I said. "Chances are they wouldn't have left him in any condition where he could do some mischief." These silver elves were highly weird but I doubted that they were highly stupid.
I was right. I found Dojango in the dented ship, as unconscious as Singe and Playmate and Saucerhead Tharpe. "This is not good," I kept muttering to myself. Until my superior intellect finally seized the day.
I went up into the vineyards and asked around until I found a somberly clad, gloomily serious young man willing to abandon his post for a fee. I gave him messages to deliver to the Dead Man, to Morley Dotes, and to Colonel Block. In that order. I gave him half of his handsome messenger's stipend before he departed, giving him to understand that receipt of the balance was contingent upon his getting the job done right. He nodded a lot. All his mates seemed to think his going to the city was a huge joke.
Then I just felt like I could lie back and take it easy until reinforcements arrived. Taking a few minutes every hour to go see if Kip had started to catch on yet.
That boy was slow. After a while he mentioned hunger. "That right there's you one more motive for turning cooperative, I'd say. Whew! It's really starting to get ripe in there, too. Guess those good old silver boys let you out when you had to go." He refused to understand that right away, too.
Back outside, I asked, "How is Doris looking, Marsha?" I'd been rooting for a swift recovery. Making small talk with the healthy brother had worn thin in a hurry. Once we'd used up business and gossip all Marsha could talk about was the shortage of suitable females within his size range.
"An' you can stuff them ideas right there, Garrett. On account of I've already heard all the jokes about mastodons and blue oxen."
"Then I shan't belabor the obvious. Actually, I was going to suggest that you jog up and get our cart back. Singe packed us a load of sandwiches." She'd also eaten a load of sandwiches along the way but I hoped a few might have survived. And if not, I'd at least get a respite from the mighty lover's whining.
Marsha thought that was about the best idea he'd heard all week. He took off right away, tossing back, "Keep an eye on Doris, will you?"
"I will indeed." On account of I didn't want to be in the wrong place when the big goof tripped over his own feet and came tumbling down.
I made my rounds of prisoners and patients. They were all being incredibly stubborn about recovering, though I now saw some signs that they were coming back. Singe had begun babbling in her sleep, thankfully mostly in ratfolk cant. My grasp of the dialect is feeble. I was embarrassed only about half the time.
Doris was coming along fine. He made sense about seventy percent of the time. He stayed fine as long as he didn't get up and try to walk around. His sense of balance was out of whack. When he did try to walk he drifted sideways. Then he fell over.
Twenty minutes after Marsha left we had a visitor. Some sort of vineyard manager or overseer or supervisor, name of Boroba Thring. Boroba was a fat little brown guy on a skinny little brown donkey. He believed devoutly in his right to claim everyone and everything in sight in the name of his employer, evicting me in the meantime. Evidently he seldom dealt with anyone who told him "No." He'd come visiting alone and didn't see that as a disadvantage. He was one of those particularly irritating characters who couldn't conceive of anyone thwarting him, let alone ignoring him. Which is what I did for a while when first he spouted his nonsense. Once I became sufficiently sick of his voice, I said, "Hey, Doris. You can have this one to play with."
Thring didn't last long. I had Doris dump him in with the other prisoners. After that I passed the time amusing myself by figuring out how to strip silver elves.
The material they wore was tough but I discovered that it wouldn't stand up to a really sharp piece of steel.
Marsha arrived with the cart. "You're probably gonna want to keep those people in the shade, Garrett. I've seen albinos with more color to them."
"They definitely don't get out much." My, oh, my, the cargo area on the back of the cart still contained sandwiches that Singe hadn't eaten. And some beer in stoneware bottles. That was a nice surprise. I shared the sandwiches with the grolls. I shared the beer with me. I reserved the last sandwich and went to see Kip.
49
"This is the way it goes, kid." I waved the sandwich, took a small bite. "You can talk to me, the nice guy who's here to help you. Or you can talk to the Guard when they get here and take over. I know. You're a tough guy. You've been getting yourself ready for this in your daydreams for the last fifteen years. And so far it hasn't hurt much more than an ordinary dream. But when the Guards get here they'll have someone from the Hill with them. And you know those people won't think any more of stepping on you than they would of stomping a roach."
I looked into Kip's eyes and tried to imagine what he was seeing as he looked at me. Definitely not what I thought I was. Probably just a minor villain, laughing and rubbing his hands together while cackling about having ways to make him talk.
Time was getting to be a problem.
What I had to get around was Kip's absolute vision of himself as the hero of his own story. Which at this point meant crushing him in a major way because I couldn't come up with a means by which he could see an honorable escape route he could use without believing his escape was some sort of wicked betrayal.
I did some estimating of how much time I might yet have before those I'd summoned arrived. Seemed like it should be quite a while yet if things ran their usual course in officialdom.
I did some soul-searching, too. Because I wanted to know why some part of me was so convinced that it was important for me to get to Lastyr and Noodiss.
When I start thinking, and wondering about my own motives, life really starts to slow down. I can see why Morley gets impatient with me.
Marsha built us a fire. Doris had recovered enough to help without falling in. I gathered some of my favorite people in the circle of warmth. Singe. Playmate. Saucerhead. Casey and a member each from the other crews. They didn't look like much naked. The males were like shriveled up old prunes. Like mummies. One of the two females wasn't much more promising. The other got barely passing marks from me because I possess a prejudiced eye.
I hoped somebody would thaw out and tell me something interesting.