There. That’s better. Comfortable? You don’t look it; you look like you’ve just sat in a puddle of piss and’re wondering what the socially appropriate reaction is. Hypocrisy’s an art, boy; you’ll improve with age. Now you’re bemused, lordling, that you let an old soak chivy you around, and now he’s making fun of you. Well, the expression on your face is worth a chuckle; if you could see it you’d laugh yourself. You will see it years from now too, on some other young man’s face—that’s the only kind of mirror that ever shows it clear. And you’ll be an old soak by that time, and you’ll laugh and insult the young buck’s dignity, but you’ll be laughing more at the reflection of the man you used to be than at that particular stud himself. And you’ll probably have to tell the buck just what I’ve told you to cool him down, and there’s a laugh in that too; listen for the echo of a million and one laughs behind you. I hear a million now.
How do I get away with such insolence? What’ve I got to lose, for one thing. That gives you a certain perspective. And I’m socially instructive in spite of myself—I’m valuable as an object lesson. For that matter, why is an arrogant young aristo like you sitting there and putting up with my guff? Don’t even bother to answer; I knew the minute you came whistling down the street, full of steam and strut. Nobody gets up this early in the morning anymore, unless they’re old as I am and begrudge sleep’s dryrun of death—or unless they’ve never been to bed in the first place. The world’s your friend this morning, a toy for you to play with and examine and stuff in your mouth to taste, and you’re letting your benevolence slop over onto the old degenerate you’ve met on the street. You’re even happy enough to listen, though you’re being quizzical about it, and you’re sitting over there feeling benignly superior. And I’m sitting over here feeling benignly superior. A nice arrangement, and everyone content. Well, then, mornings make you feel that way. Especially if you’re fresh from a night at the Towers, the musk of Lady Ni still warm on your flesh.
A blush—my buck, you are new-hatched. How did I know? Boy, you’d be surprised what I know; I’m occasionally startled myself, and I’ve been working longer to get it catalogued. Besides, hindsight is a comfortable substitute for omnipotence. And I’m not blind yet. You have the unmistakable look of a cub who’s just found out he can do something else with it besides piss. An incredible revelation, as I recall. The blazing significance of it will wear a little with the years, though not all that much, I suppose; until you get down to the brink of the Ultimate Cold, when you stop worrying about the identity of warmth, or demanding that it pay toll in pleasure. Any hand of clay, long’s the blood still runs the tiny degree that’s just enough for difference. Warmth’s the only definition between you and graveyard dirt. But morning’s not for graveyards, though it works the other way. Did y’know they also used to use that to make babies? ‘S’fact, though few know it now. It’s a versatile beast. Oh come—buck, cub, young cocksman—stop being so damn surprised. People ate, slept, and fornicated before you were born, some of them anyway, and a few will probably even find the courage to keep on at it after you die. You don’t have to keep it secret; the thing’s been circulated in this region once or twice before. You weren’t the first to learn how to make the beast do its trick, though I know you don’t believe that. I don’t believe it concerning myself, and I’ve had a long time to learn.
You make me think, sitting there innocent as an egg and twice as vulnerable; yes, you are definitely about to make me think, and I believe I’ll have to think of some things I always regret having thought about, just to keep me from growing maudlin. Damn it, boy, you do make me think. Life’s strange—wet-eared as you are, you’ve probably had that thought a dozen times already, probably had it this morning as you tumbled out of your fragrant bed to meet the rim of the sun; well, I’ve four times your age, and a ream more experience, and I still can’t think of anything better to sum up the world: life’s strange. ‘S been said, yes. But think, boy, how strange: the two of us talking, you coming, me going; me knowing where you’ve got to go, you suspecting where I’ve been, and the same destination for both. O strange, very strange! Damn it, you’re a deader already if you can’t see the strangeness of that, if you can’t sniff the poetry; it reeks of it, as of blood. And I’ve smelt blood, buck. It has a very distinct odor; you know it when you smell it. You’re bound for blood; for blood and passion and high deeds and all the rest of the business, and maybe for a little understanding if you’re lucky and have eyes to see. Me, I’m bound for nothing, literally. I’ve come to rest here in Kos, and while the Red Lady spins her web of colors across the sky I sit and weave my own webs of words and dreams and other spider stuff—
What? Yes, I do talk too much; old men like to babble, and philosophy’s a cushion for old bones. But it’s my profession now, isn’t it, and I’ve promised you a story. What happened to my leg? That’s a bloody story, but I said you’re bound for blood; I know the mark. I’ll tell it to you then: perhaps it’ll help you to understand when you reach the narrow place, perhaps it’ll even help you to think, although that’s a horrible weight to wish on any man. It’s customary to notarize my card before I start, keep you from running off at the end without paying. Thank you, young sir. Beware of some of these beggars, buck; they have a credit tally at Central greater than either of us will ever run up. They turn a tidy profit out of poverty. I’m an honest pauper, more’s the pity, exist mostly on the subsidy, if you call that existing—Yes, I know. The leg.
We’ll have to go back to the Realignment for that, more than half a century ago, and half a sector away, at World. This was before World was a member of the Commonwealth. In fact, that’s what the Realignment was about, the old Combine overthrown by the Quaestors, who then opted for amalgamation and forced World into the Commonwealth. That’s where and when the story starts.
Start it with waiting.
A lot of things start like that, waiting. And when the thing you’re waiting for is probable death, and you’re lying there loving life and suddenly noticing how pretty everything is and listening to the flint hooves of darkness click closer, feeling the iron-shod boots strike relentless sparks from the surface of your mind, knowing that death is about to fall out of the sky and that there’s no way to twist out from under—then, waiting can take time. Minutes become hours, hours become unthinkable horrors. Add enough horrors together, total the scaly snouts, and you’ve got a day and a half I once spent laying up in a mountain valley in the Blackfriars on World, almost the last day I ever spent anywhere.
This was just a few hours after D’kotta. Everything was a mess, nobody really knew what was happening, everybody’s communication lines cut. I was just a buck myself then, working with the Quaestors in the field, a hunted criminal. Nobody knew what the Combine would do next, we didn’t know what we’d do next, groups surging wildly from one place to another at random, panic and riots all over the planet, even in the Controlled Environments.
And D’kotta-on-the-Blackfriars was a seventy-mile swath of smoking insanity, capped by boiling umbrellas of smoke that eddied ashes from the ground to the stratosphere and back. At night it pulsed with molten scum, ugly as a lanced blister, lighting up the cloud cover across the entire horizon, visible for hundreds of miles. It was this ugly glow that finally panicked even the zombies in the Environments, probably the first strong emotion in their lives.