Teth blinked as if he were in the grip of a lunatic. “It’s bran’ new. They giv’ it to me to break in! Wearin’ it’s one of my jobs!”
Dennis clutched the shirt tighter. “This? New? It’s hardly more than a rag! The weave is so coarse it’s about to fall apart!”
The old man gulped and nodded. “So?”
Dennis snatched at a spot of color at the fellow’s waist. He pulled free a square of filmy, opalescent fabric. It bore delicate patterns and had the feel of fine silk.
“Hey! Tha’s mine!”
Dennis shook the beautful cloth under Tern’s nose. “They dress you in rags and let you keep something like this?”
“Yeah! They let us keep some of our personal stuff, so it won’t go bad wi’out us workin’ on ’it! They may be mean, but they’re not that mean!”
“And this piece isn’t new, I suppose.” The kerchief looked fresh from some expensive shop.
“Palmi no!” Teth looked shocked. “It’s been in my family five generations!” he protested proudly. “An’ we been using it nonstop all that time! I look at it an’ blow my nose in it lots of times every day!”
It was such an unusual protestation that Dennis’s grip slackened. Teth slid to the floor, staring at him.
Shaking his head numbly, Dennis stood up and stumbled outside, blinking against the brightness. He walked unevenly past knots of laboring men—all dressed in prisoners’ garb— until he reached a point where the outer palisade came into contact with the glistening wall of the castle.
With his left hand he touched the rough treetrunks, crudely trimmed and mud-grouted, which comprised the palisade. With his right hand he stroked the castle wall, a slick, metal-hard surface that shone translucently like a massive, light-brown, semiprecious stone…or like the polished trunk of a mammoth petrified tree.
He heard someone approach from behind. He glanced back and saw it was Teth, now accompanied by two more prisoners, who looked over the newcomer curiously.
“When was the war?” Dennis asked softly without turning around.
They looked at each other. A tall, stout man answered, “Uh, what war you talkin’ about, Grem? There’s lots of ’em, all the time. The one when th’ Baron’s dad kicked out the old Duke? Or this trouble Kremer’s havin’ with the King…?”
Dennis turned and shouted, “The Big War, you idiots! The one that destroyed your ancestors! The one that threw you back to living off the dregs of your forefathers… their self-lubricating roads… their indestructible handkerchiefs!”
He brought a hand to his throbbing head as a dizzy spell struck. The others whispered to each other.
Finally a short, dark man with a very black beard shrugged and said, “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, man. We’ve got it better’n our ancestors ever had it. An’ our grandchildren’ll have it better’n us. That’s called progress. Ain’t you heard of progress? You from someplace that has ancestor worship, or somethin’ backward like that?”
He looked genuinely interested. Dennis let out a faint moan of despair and stumbled on, followed by a growing entourage.
He passed prisoners working in a vegetable garden. The neat rows of green seedlings seemed normal enough. But the implements the gardeners used were of the flint and tree-branch variety he had seen at Tomosh Sigel’s house. He pointed to the rakes and hoes.
“Those tools are new, right?” he demanded of Teth.
The old man shrugged.
“Just as I thought! Anything new is crude and, barely better than sticks and stones, while the rich get to hoard all the best remnants of your ancestors’ ancient—”
“Uh,” the small, dark man interrupted, “these tools are for the rich, Gremmie.”
Dennis snatched a flintheaded hoe out of the hands of one of the nearby farmers and waved it under the short fellow’s nose. “These? For the rich? In an obviously hierarchical society like yours? These tools are crude, barbaric, inefficient, clumsy—”
The fat gardener he had taken the tool from protested, “Well, I’m doin’ my best! I just got started on it, fer heaven’s sake! It’ll get better! Won’t it, guys?” He snuffled. The others muttered in agreement, apparently coming to the conclusion that Dennis was somewhat of a bully.
Dennis blinked at the apparent non sequitur. He hadn’t said anything about the farmer at all. Why did he take it personally?
He looked about for another example—anything else to get through to these people. He turned and spotted a group of men at the far end of the courtyard. They were not dressed in crude homespun. Instead they wore finery of the most brilliant and eye-pleasing shades. Their clothing shimmered in the afternoon light.
These men were engaged in a series of mock fencing bouts using wooden dowels instead of swords. A few guards lounged about, watching them.
Dennis had no idea why these aristocrats and their guards were here in the prison yard, but he seized the opportunity. “There!” he said, pointing. “Those clothes those men are wearing are old, aren’t they?”
Although it was now less friendly, the crowd nodded in agreement.
“They were made by your ancestors, then, right?”
The small, dark man shrugged. “I suppose you could say so. So what? It doesn’t matter who makes somethin’. It’s whether you keep it up that counts!”
Were these people blind to history? Had the holocaust that destroyed the marvelous old science of this world so traumatized them that they shied away from the truth? He walked purposefully over to where the dandies fenced by the wall. A bored guard looked up lazily, then returned to his nap.
Dennis had quite lost his head by now. He shouted at the prisoners who had followed him. “You don’t deny that aristocrats get the best, and coincidentally the oldest, of everything?”
“Well, sure…”
“And these aristocrats are wearing only old things. Right?”
The crowd erupted in laughter. Even some of those in the bright clothes stopped their dour mock swordfights and smiled. Old Teth gave Dennis a gap-toothed grin. “They’s not rich people, Denniz. They’s poor prisoners like us. They’s just built like some of the Baron’s cronies. ‘If you can wear a rich man’s clothes, you will wear a rich man’s clothes, whether you want to or not!’ ” It sounded like an aphorism.
Dennis shook his head. His subconscious was spinning and seemed to be trying to tell him something.
“Imprisoned for being ’built just like’ the Baron… that’s what Tomosh Sigel’s aunt said happened to the kid’s dad….” Someone nearby gasped aloud, but Dennis continued talking to himself, faster and faster.
“The rich force the poor to wear their gaudy clothes for them, day in, day out… but that doesn’t fray the clothes, wearing them out. Instead…”
Someone was talking urgently nearby, but Dennis’s mind was completely full. He wandered aimlessly, paying no attention to where he was going. Prisoners made way for him, as men do for the sainted or the mad.
“No,” he mumbled, “the clothing doesn’t wear out—because the rich get someone built like them to wear their clothes all the time, to keep them in…”
“Excuse me, sir. Did you mention the name of…”
“… to keep them in practice!” Dennis’s head hurt. “Practice!” he said it again and pressed his hands to his head at the craziness the word made him feel.