Angry Lead Skies

73

I looked out the peephole as someone knocked. I saw a lean beanpole of a man all dressed in black. He had a black beard and wore a wide-brimmed black hat. I didn't recognize him.

Dean came into the hallway, started to go back when he saw that I'd reached the door first. I beckoned him forward, to answer while I eavesdropped and covered him from the small front room. The stillness and emptiness in there were sweet. With luck the parrot smell would fade away eventually.

Dean followed instructions but didn't fail to stomp and employ his full arsenal of disgusted expressions.

The man on the stoop asked, "Is this the home of the confidential operative known as Garrett?"

Sounded to me like he knew the answer already.

Dean thought so, too. "Yes. Why?"

"I have a message from Miss Contague." Sounded like he was talking about a living goddess, the way he said that. "For Mr. Garrett." Making sure.

He went away without saying anything more.

"That was strange," Dean told me, handing me a vellum document folded and sealed with a red wax seal as ornate as any used by the nobility. "That man had a voice like an embalmer."

"She chooses her henchmen to ornament her own epic. Which she rewrites as she goes along."

"It's a crying shame. Such a lovely young woman to be so twisted. I blame her father."

"So do I. But however cruel Chodo was, he never put a knife to her throat and forced her to do evil. She made the choices." When first we'd met Belinda had been trying to kill herself by slutting it up down in the Tenderloin. At the time that had been fashionable amongst unhappy young women from wealthy families.

Even now Belinda seemed determined to bring about her own destruction. Except that these days she wanted to go out in a flashy orgy of violence. So her pain could be seen and shared by everyone.

The Dead Man once told me that monsters aren't born, they're made. That they are memorials which take years of cruelty to sculpt. And that while we should weep for the tortured child who served as raw material, we should permit no sentiment to impede us while we rid the world of the terror strewn by the finished work. It took me a while to figure out what he meant but I do understand him now.

You just need one intimate look at what a fully mature monster can do to achieve enlightenment.

He may have been the most wonderful pup you've ever known but you don't hesitate to strike the dog if he goes rabid.

What is it?

"Belinda found the flying ship that got away out in the wine country."

Dean said, "It took that much paper just to tell you that?" No wondering on his part about why she'd even been looking.

"There's some cry-on-the-shoulder stuff, too." Almost like a confession. Which made me wonder if I shouldn't be more pessimistic about my personal longevity. I might be scheduled to share her funeral pyre. "And her people have found the stable where Casey keeps his donkey." That for the Dead Man's benefit, not Dean's. Dean didn't care. "Things he told the people there led Belinda's agents to another apartment. It doesn't sound as fancy as Casey's Bic Gonlit place but the stuff she says they found there makes me wonder if half of TunFaire's population isn't our pal Casey in disguise."

Excellent. Will you want to relay any of this to Colonel Block?

"Not today. Because he'd pass it on." And the people he'd pass it to don't really need more power than they already have. "You think we can use this as leverage to work on Casey?" I wished we'd find something. I was way tired of having the Visitor underfoot. "Can we make him think we have him over a barrel, now?" He'd been around too long just to hand over to the Guard, now. Block and Relway would want to know why I hadn't bothered to mention him earlier.

Probably. And the point to doing that would be what?

"Oh. Yeah. He's on a mission."

I will discuss it with him. Meanwhile, it is time you stopped lollygagging and went back to work.

I'd begun to loathe the captain of industry gig.

All right. Yes. Everybody did warn me. But... I guess it's mostly because my partners don't have any patience with my relaxed attitude toward work. They're worse than tribe of dwarves trained by Dean.

There is supposed to be a lot of humorless, from under the roots of mountains, all work and no play, dwarfish blood up one of the branches of the Tate family tree. I can't provide any arguments against the allegation, of my own knowledge. Tinnie definitely finds it hard to step away from work for any extended length of time.

I was the only key member of the new company not having great fun with our venture. Kip haunted his vast new workshop twenty hours a day, and usually fell asleep there. Fawning Tate nephews and cousins rushed hither and yon, making sure Kip's genius remained unencumbered by scutwork. Experts from the discontinued military leather goods operations now stayed busy trying to determine the most efficient means of three-wheel production.

My own three-wheel, the only pay I'd yet received for any of my trouble, had been spirited in from Playmate's stable. It now resided in the Tate compound inner courtyard, where there were always folks lined up to take a short ride. The managers didn't want their several completed prototypes defiled by the unwashed. Even brother, sister, and cousin unwashed.

Though two-thirds of the shoe factory floor had been turned over to new manufacture, the Tales weren't abandoning their traditional business base. They were just scaling back to the peacetime levels known by their great-grandfathers.

Shoes become a luxury when you have to pay for them yourself.

The Tates would remain the leading producers of fashionable women's footwear. They'd held that distinction since imperial times.

Though I was a rabid fan of the three-wheel and wasn't interested in much else, less than half the reassigned production space was intended for the manufacture of my vehicle. My associates were equally taken with several other Kip Prose inventions. His writing sticks were in production already, in three different colors. And orders were piling up.

The Guard and the Hill folk hadn't taken notice, perhaps because writing sticks don't fly.

Kip was having the time of his life. He was the center of everything. Everyone else was having a great time, meeting the challenges. Everyone but poor Garrett. There wasn't that much for him to do.

I'd used up my ration of genius.

There were no crooks here, trying to steal from the boss. I didn't have any other assets to kick in, except for knowing a lot of different people I can bring to bear on a difficulty. But the only bringing together I was getting done these days took place back at the house, nights. Woderact was proving to be a researcher every bit as dedicated as Evas had been. A tad more shy, initially, but Fasfir kept egging her on. And climbed right in there with us when the adventure called her.

TunFaire gets weirder by the hour. And my life marches in the van.

There wasn't much I could do but all my business associates seemed determined to have me right there at the factory not doing it.

I'm an old hand at skating out of the boring stuff. I acquired that skill in the harsh realm of war. I ducked out of the Tate compound. I recouped my spirit and recovered from my difficult nights by undertaking the promised visits to the troubled Weider satellite breweries.

That killed three days but didn't demand much genius. Like so many TunFairen villains, the various crooks were completely inept. They betrayed themselves immediately. My report named several managerial types who had to go when the thieves went because bad guys as incompetent as the ones I'd caught couldn't possibly have operated without their superiors turning a blind eye while extending a palm for a share of the proceeds.