“And what if you can’t find a dead employee handy?” Orick said. “What then?”
“Well, then I’d stick a knife in an employee and make him dead!” Gallen shouted, furious at Orick’s exasperating mood.
“Fine!” Orick growled. “That’s fine. I was just asking.”
It was early morning. Kiss-me-quick birds sang in the trees, hopping from bush to bush, their green wings flashing.
“I think I’ll go ask about this now, in fact,” Gallen answered.
“What about me?” Orick asked. “You can’t leave me here again.”
“And I can’t take you with me. Orick, there are some things we’ll need-food, shelter, clothing, weapons. You’re in charge of finding them and setting up a proper camp. We might be stuck here awhile.”
“Right,” Orick said.
Gallen hunched his shoulders. His muscles were tight from the tension, and suddenly he longed to be back home in Tihrglas, guarding some merchant’s wagon. Hell, on any day of the week, he’d rather take on ten highwaymen single-handed. Ah, for the good old days.
He ambled back to Toohkansay and made his way to the merchant quarters. There, he sold the shillings from his purse along with a bead necklace to a dealer in exotic alien artifacts.
Then he went to the merchant who sold “Bereavement Hoods,” and began to haggle. Gallen didn’t have enough money to buy the thing. The hoods were designed for those who wanted to “Share those last precious thoughts with the recently departed.” Gallen cried and put on a show, talking about his dear sister who had died, until he finally convinced the merchant to rent him a hood.
“Now you understand,” the merchant warned, “that your sister is dead. She’ll know who you are, and she’ll be able to talk through the speaker in the hood, but she won’t gain any new memories. If you visit her once, she’ll forget all about it, even if you return five minutes later.”
Gallen nodded, but the merchant drove the point home until Gallen finally asked, “What are you really telling me?”
“Well,” the merchant finally admitted, “it’s just that the dead are always surprised and happy to be visited, and they’ll tell you about the same fond memories time and again. They tend to get … repetitive.”
“So they get boring,” Gallen accused.
“Most of them, yes,” the merchant admitted reluctantly.
When Gallen finished, he went to the pidc, accessed the public records to find out who in Toohkansay made Guides, and found that they were made under the auspices of a Lord Pallatine. Gallen accessed Pallatine’s files, got a list of his workers for the past ten years. By checking vital statistics for each worker, he found that sure enough, a fellow named Brevin Mackalrey had been a corpse for less than three months, and poor Brevin was down deep in the crypts under the city, kept in cold storage so that his widow could speak to him on occasion.
Gallen hurried down a long series of subterranean corridors to pay a visit to poor old Brevin. The crypt was a dark, desolate place, with only a few visitors. Corpses were stacked in long rows, sleeping in glass coffins that could be pulled out for display. The temperature in the crypt was near freezing, and perhaps that tended to keep the mourners’ visits short. The bodies were stored for a year before final interment. Still, Gallen was surprised to see hundreds of bodies and only five people visiting them. Gallen searched alphabetically until he found Brevin Mackalrey, pulled the man out.
The glass coffin was fogged; icy crystals shaped like fern leaves had built up under the glass lid. Gallen opened the lid. Mr. Mackalrey did not look so good. His face was purple and swollen. He wore only a pair of white shorts. He had dark hair, a scraggly beard, and legs that were knobby and bowed. Gallen decided that this particular fellow probably hadn’t looked so good even when he was alive.
Gallen pulled up the fellow’s near-frozen head and placed the hood on. The hood was made of some metallic cloth, and electromagnetic waves from the hood stimulated the brain cells of the dead. As the dead man tried to speak, the cloth registered the attempted stimulation of the cerebral cortex and translated the dead man’s thoughts into words. The words were then spoken in a dull monotone from a small speaker.
Gallen activated the hood, waited for a few moments, then said, “Brevin, Brevin, can you hear me, man?”
“I hear you,” the speaker said. “But I can’t see you. Who are you?”
“My name’s Gallen O’Day, and I came to ask your help on a small matter. My sister has a Guide on, and she can’t get it off. I was wondering if you could tell me how to get one of them buggers off.”
“She’s wearing a Guide?” Brevin asked. A mourner passed Gallen, heading down the aisle of coffins.
“Aye, that’s what I said,” Gallen whispered, hunching low. “Is there any way to get it off?”
“Is it a slave Guide?” Brevin asked.
“Of course it’s a slave Guide,” Gallen hissed. “Otherwise, we’d be able to get it off.”
“If she’s a slave, it would be wrong for me to help you. I could get into trouble.”
“Well,” Gallen drawled, “how much trouble can you get into? You’re already dead!”
“Dead? How did I die?”
“You fell off a horse, I think,” Gallen said. “Either that, or you choked on a chicken bone.”
“Oh,” Brevin said. “I can’t help you. I would be penalized.”
“Who would know that you’d told me?” Gallen said.
“Go away, or I’ll call the authorities,” Brevin’s microphone yelped.
“How are you going to call the authorities?” Gallen asked. “You’re dead, I tell you.”
Brevin went silent for several moments, and Gallen said, “Come on, answer me you damned corpse! How do I get the Guide off?”
Brevin didn’t answer, and Gallen began looking about, wondering what kind of barter chip he might use. He whispered, “You’re dead, do you understand me, Brevin? You’re dead. You got no more worries, no more fears. If there was one thing in the world I could give you, what would you want?”
“I’m cold. Go away,” Brevin retorted.
“I’ll give you that,” Gallen said. “I’m going away. But first I want you to tell me how to take a Guide off of someone without setting off any alarms.”
Brevin didn’t answer, and Gallen decided to bully him into it. “Look,” he said. “I hate to have to do this to you, but you’ve got to answer me.”
Gallen took the dead man’s pinky finger and bent it back at an excruciating angle until he feared it might snap. “There now,” Gallen said. “How does that feel?”
“How does what feel?” Brevin asked.
Gallen saw that torture was no use. The dead man couldn’t feel a thing. Gallen scratched his head, decided on another tact. “All right, you’ve pushed me too far. I didn’t want to have to tell you this, but the reason you’re so damned cold is because you’re lying in this coffin naked. Did you know that?”
“Naked?” Brevin asked, dismayed.
“Yes,” Gallen assured him. “You’re bare-assed naked. At this very moment, I’m looking at your penis, and I’ve got to tell you that it’s not a pretty sight. You were never well-endowed in the first place, but now you’re all shriveled down to the size of a pinhead. Did you know that?”
Brevin emitted a low moan, and Gallen continued. “Now, not only are you bare-assed naked,” Gallen said, “but I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to drag your naked carcass upstairs and leave you in a hallway tonight, and every person who walks by is going to see what a shamefully inadequate organ you have. It will be an embarrassment to your whole family, I’m telling you. Everyone in Toohkansay will see your shrunken pud, and when they do, they’ll look at your wife and smile in a knowing way, and wonder, ‘How could she have stayed with that fellow all those years, what with him being so sorrowfully lacking?’ So tell me, my friend, what do you think of that?”