Angry Lead Skies

14

They got all of us, most of the bystanders, quite a few passersby, and even a handful of people inside neighboring buildings who didn't know what was going on and never knew what hit them.

I came out of it faster than before, my head pounding worse than last time. The first thing I saw was my eager beaver buddy Morley Dotes. Yet again. Only this time he had his temples grasped tightly and looked like he was working real hard on trying not to scream. Or was, possibly, contemplating the delights of suicide.

I grumbled, "Now we know why they didn't ask you to be a general during the recent scuffle with Venageta." Though considering the performances of some of the generals we'd had, who'd earned their bells by picking the right venue as a place of birth, Morley might've fit right in.

Dotes whined something irrelevant about the whole thing having been my idea and registered a plea for a lot less vocal volume.

"Pussy. I wake up feeling like this three or four times a week. And I function. What the hell are those people roaring about?" Neighbors not struck down were rushing into the street. In normal times their voices would have been considered restrained. Not so now.

They all stared at the sky.

I looked up just in time to see something large and shiny and shaped like a discus disappear behind nearby rooftops, heading north. "What the hell was that?" I glanced at Morley. "Never mind. Don't tell me. Your cousins just got away in one of those flying lights that people keep seeing."

"Cousins? Those things weren't elves, Garrett. Not elves of any kind. Their mouths and eyes were all wrong. They didn't have elven teeth. Maybe they're some kind of foreign, deformed humans. You might look into that. But they're definitely not elves."

Playmate came around. Between groans he asked, "Did we get him back?"

"Kip? We didn't even get a wink this time. Let's see what we did get. Maybe that whore Fate has a heart of gold after all."

We managed to collect a few scraps of silvery cloth and nearly a dozen other items of wildly varying shape and no obvious utility. Those included several small, torn bags made of a silvery, somewhat paperlike material. The rest resembled smooth gray rocks with a very unrocklike feel that came in varying regular shapes. Most had markings in green and red and yellow that looked like writing but which were in no familiar alphabet.

One of Morley's men came up with a bag that hadn't been opened. Its contents turned out to be two thick biscuits the texture of oatmeal cakes. They had a sorghum molasses odor.

"Food," Playmate said. "We broke up a meal."

"I could use something to eat," Saucerhead said by way of announcing his recovery. "We still got that cheese basket?" He rubbed his forehead as he looked around. He has an amazingly high threshhold of pain but now he had begun to respond to it. "What happened?" He reached out and helped himself to the elven oatmeal cakes. He wolfed them down before anybody could remind him of the legends about fairy food.

Nobody answered his question. Because nobody had an answer.

"Lookit there!" somebody shrieked. In a second half the crowd were pointing skyward again.

The silver disk was back. And it was in a big hurry. It left a thunderclap behind as it streaked off southward.

"Hey! There's another one!"

One turned into three in a matter of seconds. Only these weren't disks. They looked like giant glowing gas balls. On a smaller scale I'd seen something similar in the will-o'-the-wisps of the swamps on the islands I'd visited during the war.

The glowing globes chased the silvery disk.

Morley murmured, "I've been hearing about these things for weeks but I'd about made up my mind that they were pure popular hysteria."

I looked around for an easily accessible high place. I wanted a clear line of sight to the west, toward the heart of town. Toward the Hill. To discover if those lights ended up there. Because this looked like the sort of thing those people would pull. Squabbling amongst themselves using experimental sorceries while the folk of the city got run over.

Morley asked, "You think your friends the unemployed gods might be back, Garrett?"

That hadn't occurred to me. "I doubt it. They were more reserved. They didn't show themselves unless they wanted to be seen. Mainly because they couldn't be seen by nonbelievers unless they made a huge effort."

"I don't think that these people would attract attention if they were given an option. Something intense is going on with them, sufficient to make being noticed the lesser concern."

"Probably." I did think he was right. Logically, if you were a foreigner running around in an alien town you wouldn't let yourself be noticed unless it was unavoidable. "You think Saucerhead is going to croak on us?"

Tharpe had turned several indescribable colors, near as I could tell by torchlight. Torches and lanterns were turning up now that the curious felt safe enough to come out of their homes. Just as well that they hadn't before, too. We'd have awakened to find ourselves plucked of everything but our toenails.

"I think he might want to die," Morley said. "I think we ought to discover ourselves in another location sometime soon. This much activity is bound to attract lawmen."

And he wouldn't want the notice, however much he protests his innocence of the illegal of late.

Maybe old habits die hard.

These days, with the postwar economic depression becoming entrenched, the new secret police are very interested in any center of excitement. A minor bit no more scary than a street party can turn into a riot at the bump of a belly between an unemployed human and almost any nonhuman he might suspect of having moved into a human's job while human soldiers were away risking their lives on behalf of the kingdom.

These are social problems that aren't going to go away anytime soon.

I said, "We do have everything we need for a blowup."

Morley nodded. He understood. He shared my concern.

He has become very sensitive in these changing times. He doesn't like the way things are headed. Though it isn't the conflict that bothers him. That can be exploited to produce big profits. What he abhors is the growing power of the Crown and its determined interference in our everyday lives.

An elven trait, to believe that that government governs best which doesn't govern at all. Chaos is more fun. Anarchy is the ideal. And only the strong survive.

Morley would admit that a sustained harsh dose of genuine anarchy most likely would result in the extinction or expulsion of every species of elf currently calling TunFaire home.

I told Morley, "That was an absolutely marvelous suggestion, old friend. Can I assume that it'll be you carrying Pular Singe... ? What?"

Singe was still unconscious. But I wasn't concerned about her. "Morley. I just saw Bic Gonlit. He was watching us from across the street."

"So let's get Singe put back together and see if she can get on his trail. He just might know where to look for Playmate's kid."

"You don't think she can track Kip from here?"

"Not if he got carried away inside a giant flying wheel, I don't."

An excellent point. Not one I'd wanted to look at close up yet, though. You hope you can catch an occasional break.

Singe was getting her feet under her now, with a little help from Playmate.

"Let's see about traveling on, then," I told Morley. "I just spotted another familiar face. This one I recollect seeing in the vicinity of Colonel Block and Deal Relway in a none too distant past." I made a big effort to remember such faces so I can exercise some sort of exit strategy when I see one again. "I'll help with Singe."