‘Yes, I am. Will you now answer my question?’
‘Since you insist. There are perhaps forty loans outstanding with respect to addressing interest payments on still other loans.’
The advocate licked suitably dry lips. ‘It was reasons of courtesy and respect, Master Bugg-and, I now see, certain misapprehensions as to your solvency-that encouraged me to refrain from asking for payment up front-for my services, that is, which have been substantial. Although not as substantial, proportionately, as I was led to believe.’
‘I don’t recall leading you into any such assumptions, Sleem.’
‘Of course you don’t. They were assumptions.’
‘As an advocate, you might have been expected to make very few assumptions indeed. About anything.’
‘Permit me to be blunt, Master Bugg. Where in this financial scheme of yours is the money you owe me?’
‘Nowhere as of yet, Sleem. Perhaps we should arrange another loan.’
‘This is most distressing,’
‘I am sure it is, but how do you think I feel?’
‘I am resisting asking myself that question, because I fear the answer will be something like: “He feels fine.” Now, were I to cling with great faith to those particular assumptions we spoke of earlier, I would now insist that this next loan be devoted exclusively to addressing my fees. No matter what lies I deliver to your financier. Which returns us, alas, to my original utterance, which was voiced in a tone of abject disbelief. You see, your financiers’ present state of panic is what has brought me here, for they have reached a level of harassment of my office with respect to you, Master Bugg, that has reached absurd proportions. I have had to hire bodyguards, in fact-at your expense. Dare I ask you then, how much money is in your possession?’
‘Right now?’
‘Yes.’
Bugg drew out his tattered leather purse, prised it open and peered inside. Then he looked up. ‘Two docks.’
‘I see. Surely you exaggerate.’
‘Well, I cut a sliver off one of them, to pay for a haircut.’
‘You have no hair.’
‘That’s why it was just a sliver. Nose hairs. Ear hairs, a trim of the eyebrows. It’s important to be presentable.’
‘At your Drowning?’
Bugg laughed. ‘That would be fun.’ Then he grew sober and leaned forward across his desk. ‘You don’t think it will come to that, surely. As your client, I expect a most diligent defence at my trial.’
‘As your advocate, Master Bugg, I will be first in line demanding your blood.’
‘Oh, that’s not very loyal of you.’
‘You have not paid for my loyalty.’
‘But loyalty is not something one pays for, Advocate Sleem.’
‘Had I known that delusions accompanied your now-apparent incompetence, Master Bugg, I would never have agreed to represent you in any matter whatsoever.’
Bugg leaned back. ‘That makes no sense,’ he said. ‘As Tehol Beddict has observed on countless occasions, delusions lie at the very heart of our economic system. Indenture as ethical virtue. Pieces of otherwise useless metal-beyond decoration-as wealth. Servitude as freedom. Debt as ownership. And so on.’
‘Ah, but those stated delusions are essential to my well-being, Master Bugg. Without them my profession would not exist. All of civilization is, in essence, a collection of contracts. Why, the very nature of society is founded upon mutually agreed measures of value.’ He stopped then, and slowly shook his head-a motion alarmingly sinuous. ‘Why am I even discussing this with you? You are clearly insane, and your insanity is about to trigger an avalanche of financial devastation.’
‘I don’t see why, Master Sleem. Unless, of course, your faith in the notion of social contract is nothing more than cynical self-interest.’
‘Of course it is, you fool!’
So much for awkward sibilance.
Sleem’s fingers wriggled like snared, blind and groping worms. ‘Without cynicism,’ he said in a strangled voice, ‘one becomes the system’s victim rather than its master, and I am too clever to be a victim!’
‘Which you must prove to yourself repeatedly in the measuring by your wealth, your ease of life, of the necessary contrast with the victims-a contrast that you must surround yourself with at every moment, as represented by your material excesses.’
‘Wordy, Master Bugg. Smug ostentation will suffice.’
‘Brevity from you, Advocate Sleem?’
‘You get what you pay for.’
‘By that token,’ Bugg observed, ‘I am surprised you’re saying anything at all.’
‘What follows is my gift. I will set forth immediately to inform your financiers that you are in fact broke, and I will in turn offer my services in the feeding frenzy over your material assets.’
‘Generous of you.’
Sleem’s lips disappeared into a bony grimace. One eye twitched. The worms at the ends of his hands had gone white and deathly. ‘In the meantime, I will take those two docks.’
‘Not quite two.’
‘Nonetheless.’
‘I can owe you that missing sliver.’
‘Be certain that I will have it, eventually.’
‘All right.’ Bugg reached into the purse and fished out the two coins. ‘This is a loan, yes?’
‘Against my fees?’
‘Naturally.’
‘I sense you are no longer playing the game, Master Bugg.’
‘Which game would that be?’
‘The one where winners win and losers lose.’
‘Oh, that game. No, I suppose not. Assuming, of course, I ever did.’
‘I have a sudden suspicion-this very real truth behind all the rumours of impending market collapse-it is all your doing, isn’t it?’
‘Hardly. Countless winners jumped in, I assure you. Believing, naturally, that they would win in the end. That’s how these things work. Until they stop working.’ Bugg snapped his fingers. ‘Poof!’
‘Without those contracts, Master Bugg, there will be chaos.’
‘You mean the winners will panic and the losers will launch themselves into their own feeding frenzy. Yes. Chaos.’
‘You are truly insane.’
‘No, just tired. I’ve looked into the eyes of too many losers, Sleem. Far too many.’
‘And your answer is to make losers of us all. To level the playing field? But it won’t do that, you know. You must know that, Bugg. It won’t. Instead, the thugs will find the top of every heap, and instead of debt you will have true slavery; instead of contracts you will have tyranny.’
‘All the masks torn off, yes.’
‘Where is the virtue in that?’
The Elder God shrugged. ‘The perils of unfettered expansion, Advocate Sleem, are revealed in the dust and ashes left behind. Assume the species’ immortality since it suits the game. Every game. But that assumption will not save you in the end. No, in fact, it will probably kill you. That one self-serving, pious, pretentious, arrogant assumption.’
‘The bitter old man speaks.’
‘You have no idea.’
‘Would that I carried a knife. For I would kill you with it, here and now.’
‘Yes. The game always ends at some point, doesn’t it?’
‘And you dare call me the cynical one.’
‘Your cynicism lies in your willing abuse of others to consolidate your superiority over them. My cynicism is in regard to humanity’s wilful blindness with respect to its own extinction.’
‘Without that wilful blindness there is naught but despair.’
‘Oh, I am not that cynical. In fact, I do not agree at all. Maybe when the wilful blindness runs its inevitable course, there will be born wilful wisdom, the revelation of seeing things as they are.’
‘Things? To which things are you referring, old man?’
‘Why, that everything of true value is, in fact, free.’
Sleem placed the coins in his own bulging purse and walked to the door. ‘A very quaint notion. Alas, I will not wish you a good day.’
‘Don’t bother.’
Sleem turned at the hard edge in Bugg’s voice. His brows lifted in curiosity.