The Truth Read online

  “You’re not a member of a Guild, Mr. King?” said William, during a pause for breath.

  The cigar traveled from one side to the other and back quite fast, a sure sign that he’d hit a nerve.

  “Damn Guilds,” said its owner. “They said I should join the Beggars! Me! I never begged for nothin’, not in my whole life! The nerve! But I’ve seen ’em all off. I won’t deal with no Guild. I pay my lads well, and they stand by me.”

  “It’s the Guilds that are trying to break us, Mr. King. You know that. I know you get to hear about anything. If you can’t sell us paper, we’ve lost.”

  “What’d I be if I broke a deal?” said Harry King.

  “This is my tosheroon, Mr. King,” said William. “And the kids who want to take it off me are big.”

  Harry was silent for a while, and then lumbered to his feet and crossed to the big window.

  “Come and look here, lads,” he said.

  At one end of the yard was a big treadmill, operated by a couple of golems. It powered a creaking endless belt that crossed most of the yard. At the other end, several trolls with broad shovels fed the belt from a heap of trash that was itself constantly refilled by a line of carts.

  Lining the belt itself were golems and trolls and even the occasional human. In the flicking torchlight they watched the moving debris carefully. Occasionally a hand would dart out and pitch something into a bin behind the worker.

  “Fish heads, bones, rags, paper…I got twenty-seven different bins so far, including one for gold and silver, ’cos you’d be amazed what gets thrown away by mistake. Tinkle, tinkle, little spoon, wedding ring will follow soon…that’s what I used to sing to my little girls. Stuff like your paper of news goes in Bin Six, Low Grade Paper Waste. I sells most of that to Bob Holtely up in Five and Seven Yard.”

  “What does he do with it?” said William, noting the “Low Grade.”

  “Pulps it for lavatory paper,” said Mr. King. “The wife swears by it. Pers’nly I cut out the middleman.” He sighed, apparently oblivious of the sudden sag in William’s self-esteem. “Y’know, sometimes I stand here of an evenin’ when the line is rumbling and the sunset is shinin’ on the settlin’ tanks and, I don’t mind admitting it, a tear comes to my eye.”

  “To tell you the truth, it comes to mine, too, sir,” said William.

  “Now then, lad…when that kid nicked my first tosheroon, I didn’t go around complaining, did I? I knew I’d got an eye for it, see? I carried on, and I found plenty more. And on my eighth birthday I paid a couple of trolls to seek out the man who’d pinched my first one and slap seven kinds of snot out of him. Did you know that?”

  “No, Mr. King.”

  Harry King stared at William through the smoke. William felt that he was being turned over and examined, like something found in the trash.

  “My youngest daughter, Hermione…she’s getting married at the end of next week,” said Harry. “Big show. Temple of Offler. Choirs and everything. I’m inviting all the top nobs. Effie insisted. They won’t come, o’course. Not for Piss Harry.”

  “The Times would have been there, though,” said William. “With colored pictures. Except we go out of business tomorrow.”

  “Colored, eh? You get someone to paint ’em in, do you?”

  “No. We’ve…got a special way,” said William, hoping against hope that Otto was serious. He wasn’t just out on a limb here, he was dangerously out of the tree.

  “That’d be something to see,” said Harry. He took out his cigar, stared reflectively at the end, and put it back in his mouth. Through the smoke, he watched William carefully.

  William felt the distinct unease of a well-educated man who has to confront the fact that the illiterate man watching him could probably outthink him three times over.

  “Mr. King, we really need that paper,” he said, to break the thoughtful silence.

  “There’s something about you, Mr. de Worde,” said the King. “I buy and sell clerks when I need them, and you don’t smell like a clerk to me. You’ve got the air about you of a man who’d scrabble through a ton o’ shit to find a farthin’, and I’m wonderin’ why that is.”

  “Look, Mr. King, will you please sell us some paper at the old price?” said William.

  “Couldn’t do that. I told you. A deal’s a deal. The Engravers’ve paid me,” said Harry shortly.

  William opened his mouth, but Goodmountain laid a hand on his arm. The King was clearly working his way to the end of a line of thought.

  Harry went over to the window again, and stared pensively at the yard with its steaming piles. Then…

  “Oh, will you look at that,” said Harry, stepping back from the window in tremendous astonishment. “See that cart at the other gate down there?”

  They saw the cart.

  “I must’ve told the lads a hundred times, don’t leave a cart all laden up and ready to go right by an open gate like that. Someone’ll nick it, I told ’em.”

  William wondered who would steal anything from the King of the Golden River, a man with all those red-hot compost heaps.

  “That’s the last quarter of the order for the Engravers’ Guild,” said Harry, to the world in general. “I’d have to repay ’em if it got half-inched right out of my yard. I’ll have to tell the foreman. He’s getting forgetful these days.”

  “We should be leaving, William,” said Goodmountain, grabbing William’s arm.

  “Why? We haven’t—”

  “However can we repay you, Mr. King?” said the dwarf, dragging William towards the door.

  “The bridesmaids’ll be wearing oh-de-nill, whatever that is,” said the King of the Golden River. “Oh, and if I don’t get eighty dollars from you by the end of the month, you lads will be in deep”—the cigar did a double length of the mouth—“trouble. Head downwards.”

  Two minutes later the cart was creaking out of the yard, under the curiously uninterested eyes of the troll foreman.

  “No, it’s not stealing,” said Goodmountain emphatically, shaking the reins. “The King pays the bastards back their money and we pay him the old price. So we’re all happy except for the Inquirer, and who cares about them?”

  “I didn’t like the bit about the deep pause trouble,” said William. “Head downwards.”

  “I’m shorter’n you so I lose out either way up,” said the dwarf.

  After watching the cart disappear, the King yelled downstairs for one of his clerks and told him to fetch a copy of the Times from Bin Six. He sat impassively, except for the oscillating cigar, while the stained and crumpled paper was read to him.

  After a while his smile broadened, and he asked the clerk to read a few extracts again.

  “Ah,” he said, when the man had finished. “I reckoned that was it. The boy’s a born muckraker. Shame for him he was born a long way from honest muck.”

  “Shall I do a credit note for the Engravers, Mr. King?”

  “Aye.”

  “You reckon you’ll get your money back, Mr. King?”

  Harry King usually didn’t take this sort of thing from clerks. They were there to do the adding-up, not discuss policy. On the other hand, Harry had made a fortune seeing the sparkle in the mire, and sometimes you had to recognize expertise when you saw it.

  “What color’s oh-de-nill?” he said.

  “Oh, one of those difficult colors, Mr. King. A sort of light blue with a hint of green.”

  “Could you get ink that color?”

  “I could find out. It’d be expensive.”

  The cigar made its traverse from one side of Harry King to the other. He was known to dote on his daughters, who he felt had rather suffered from having a father who needed to take two baths just to get dirty.

  “We shall just have to keep an eye on our little writing man,” he said. “Tip off the lads, will you? I wouldn’t like to see our Effie disappointed.”

  The dwarfs were working on the press again, Sacharissa noticed. It seldom stayed the same shape for
more than a couple of hours. The dwarfs designed as they went along.

  It looked to Sacharissa that the only tools a dwarf needed were his ax and some means of making fire. That’d eventually get him a forge, and with that he could make simple tools, and with those he could make complex tools, and with complex tools a dwarf could more or less make anything.

  A couple of them were rummaging around in the industrial junk that was piled against the walls. A couple of metal mangles had been melted down for their iron already, and the rocking horses were being used to melt lead. One or two of the dwarfs had left the shed on mysterious errands, too, and returned carrying small sacks and furtive expressions. A dwarf is also very good at making use of things other people have thrown away, even if they haven’t actually thrown them away yet.

  She was turning her attention to a report of the Nap Hill Jolly Pals annual meeting when a crash and some cursing in Uberwaldean, a good cursing language, made her run over to the cellar entrance.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Chriek? Do you want me to get the dustpan and brush?”

  “Bodrozvachski zhaltziet!…oh, sorry, Miss Sacharissa! Zere has been a minor pothole on zer road to progress…”

  Sacharissa made her way down the ladder.

  Otto was at his makeshift bench. Boxes of demons hung on the wall. Some salamanders dozed in their cages. In a big dark jar, land eels slithered. But a jar next to it was broken.

  “I vas clumsy and knocked it over,” said Otto, looking embarrassed. “And now zer stupid eel as gone behind the bench.”

  “Does it bite?”

  “Oh no, zey are very lazy wretches—”

  “What is this you’ve been working on, Otto?” Sacharissa said, turning to look closer at something big on the bench. He tried to dart in front of her.

  “Oh, it is all very experimental—”

  “The way of making colored plates?”

  “Yes, but it is just a crude lash-up—”

  Sacharissa caught sight of a movement out of the corner of her eye. The escaped land eel, having got bored behind the bench, was making a very sluggish bid for new horizons where an eel could wriggle proud and horizontal.

  “Please don’t—” Otto began.

  “Oh, it’s all right, I’m not at all squeamish—”

  Sacharissa’s hand closed on the eel.

  She came around with Otto’s black handkerchief being flapped desperately in her face.

  “Oh, my goodness…” she said, trying to sit up.

  Otto’s face was a picture of such terror that Sacharissa forgot her own splitting headache for a moment.

  “What’s happened to you?” she said. “You look terrible.”

  Otto jerked back, tried to stand up, and half-collapsed against the bench, clutching at his chest.

  “Cheese!” he moaned. “Please get me some cheese! Or a big apple! Something to bite! Pleeease!”

  “There’s nothing like that down here—”

  “Keep avay from me! And do not breathe like zat!” Otto wailed.

  “Like what?”

  “Zer bosoms going in and out and up and down like zat! I am a vampire! A fainting young lady, please understand, zer panting, zer heaving of zer bosoms…it calls somezing terrible from within…” With a lurch he pushed himself upright and gripped the black twist of ribbon from his lapel. “But I vill be stronk!” he screamed. “I vill not let everyvun down!”

  He stood stiffly to attention, although slightly blurred because the vibration shaking him from head to foot, and in a trembling voice sang: “Oh vill you come to zer mission, vill you come, come, come, Zere’s a nice cup of tea and a bun, and a bun—”

  The ladder was suddenly alive with tumbling dwarfs.

  “Are you all right, miss?” said Boddony, running forward with his ax. “Has he tried anything?”

  “No, no! He’s—”

  “—zer drink zat’s in zer livink vein, Is not zer drink for me—” Sweat was running down Otto’s face. He stood with one hand pressed over his heart.

  “That’s right, Otto!” shouted Sacharissa. “Fight it! Fight it!” She turned to the dwarfs. “Have any of you got any raw meat?”

  “…to life anew and temperance too, And to pure cold vater ve’ll come…” Veins were throbbing on Otto’s pale head.

  “Got some fresh rat fillets upstairs,” muttered one of the dwarfs. “Cost me tuppence…”

  “You get them right now, Gowdie,” snapped Boddony. “This looks bad!”

  “—oh ve can drink brandy and gin if it’s handy, and ve can sup vhiskey and rum, but zer drink ve abhor and ve drink no more is zer—”

  “Tuppence is tuppence, that’s all I’m saying!”

  “Look, he’s starting to twitch!” said Sacharissa.

  “And he can’t sing, either,” said Gowdie. “All right, all right, I’m going, I’m going…”

  Sacharissa patted Otto’s clammy hand.

  “You can beat it!” she said urgently. “We’re all here for you! Aren’t we, everyone? Aren’t we?” Under her baleful gaze the dwarfs responded with a chorus of half-hearted “yesses,” even though Boddony’s expression suggested that he wasn’t certain what Otto was here for.

  Gowdie came back with a small package. She snatched it out of his hand and held it out to Otto, who reared back.

  “No, it’s just rat!” said Sacharissa. “Perfectly okay! You’re allowed rat, right?”

  Otto froze for a moment, and then snatched up the packet.

  He bit into it.

  In the sudden silence Sacharissa wondered if she wasn’t hearing a very faint sound, like the straw at the bottom of a milkshake.

  After a few seconds Otto opened his eyes, and then looked sidelong at the dwarfs. He dropped the packet.

  “Oh, vot shame! Vere can I put my face? Oh, vot must you zink of me…”

  Sacharissa clapped with desperate enthusiasm.

  “No, no! We’re all very impressed! Aren’t we, everyone?” Out of Otto’s sight, she waved one hand very deliberately at the dwarfs. There was another ragged chorus of agreement.

  “I mean, I haf been going through ‘cold bat’ now for more zan three months,” muttered Otto. “It is such a disgusting thing to break down now and—”

  “Oh, raw meat’s nothing,” said Sacharissa. “That’s allowed, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but for a second zere I nearly—”

  “Yes, but you didn’t,” said Sacharissa. “That’s what’s important. You wanted to and didn’t.” She turned to the dwarfs. “You can all go back to what you were doing,” she said. “Otto is perfectly all right now.”

  “Are you sure—” Boddony began, and then nodded. He’d rather have argued with a wild vampire than Sacharissa at this moment. “Right you are, miss.”

  Otto sat down, wiping his forehead, as the dwarfs filed out. Sacharissa patted his hand. “Do you want a drink—”

  “Oh!”

  “—of water, Otto?” said Sacharissa.

  “No, no, everyzink is okay, I think…Uh. Oh dear. My goodness. I am zo sorry. You zink you are on top of it, and zen suddenly it all comes back to you. Vot a day…”

  “Otto?”

  “Yes, miss?”

  “What actually happened when I grabbed the eel, Otto?”

  He winced.

  “I zink zis is maybe not the time—”

  “Otto, I saw things. There were…flames. And people. And noise. Just for a moment. It was like watching a whole day go past in a second! What happened?”

  “Vell,” Otto said reluctantly, “you know how salamanders absorb light?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Vell, zer eels absorb dark light. Not darkness, exactly, but zer light vithin darkness. Dark light…you see, dark light…vell, it has not been properly studied. It is heavier than normal light, you see, so most of it is under zer sea or in zer really deep caves in Ubervald, but zere is always a little of it even in normal darkness. It really is very fascinating—”

>   “It’s a kind of magical light. Right. Could we just get more towards the point a bit?”

  “I haf heard it said that dark light is zer original light from which all other types of light came—”

  “Otto!”

  He held up a pale hand. “I haf to tell you zese things! Haf you heard the theory zat zere is no such thing as zer present? Because if it is divisible, zen it cannot be zer present, and if it is not divisible, zen it cannot have a beginning which connects to zer past and an end zat connects to zer future? Zer philosopher Heidehollen tells us zat the universe is just a cold soup of time, all time mixed up together, and vot we call zer passage of time is merely qvantum fluctuations in zer fabric of space-time.”

  “You have very long winter evenings in Uberwald, don’t you?”

  “You see, dark light is held to be zer proof of zis,” Otto went on, ignoring her. “It is a light without time. Vot it illuminates, you see…is not necessarily now.”

  He paused, as if waiting for something.

  “Are you saying it takes pictures of the past?” said Sacharissa.

  “Or zer future. Or somevhere else. Of course, in reality zere is no difference.”

  “And all this you point at people’s heads?”

  Otto looked worried. “I am finding strange side things. Oh, zer dwarfs say that dark light had odd…effects, but zey are very superstitious people so I did not take that seriously. However…”

  He scrabbled among the debris on his bench, and picked up an iconograph.

  “Oh, dear. Zis is so complicated,” said Otto. “Look, zer philosopher Kling says zer mind has a dark side and a light side, you see, and dark light…is seen by zer dark eyes of zer mind…”

  He paused again.

  “Yes?” said Sacharissa politely.

  “I vas vaiting for zer roll of thunder,” said the vampire. “But, alas, zis is not Ubervald.”

  “You’ve lost me there,” said Sacharissa.

  “Vell, you see, if I vas to say something portentous like ‘zer dark eyes of zer mind’ back home in Ubervald, zere would be a sudden crash of thunder,” said Otto. “And if I vas to point at a castle on a towering crag and say ‘Yonder is…zer castle,’ a volf would be bound to howl mournfully.” He sighed. “In zer old country, zer scenery is psychotropic and knows vot is expected of it. Here, alas, people just look at you in a funny vay.”