Faded Steel Heat

74

During supper I was ordered to call Miss Montezuma Tama and learned that North English's place really was deserted.

The man from the gate was named Stucker. He avoided conversation with a passion. Tollie was a Montezuma-stricken fourteen-year-old who managed the livestock. There was a silent old man who had one eye and a hook for a right hand. Venable constituted security at The Pipes. Venable thought thunder lizards were the most wonderful things the gods ever created. He couldn't understand why they were unpopular. He could go on about them forever. He kept a pack of his own as pets and security associates. They would have the run of the estate tonight. Venable claimed his babies only ate strangers.

I suspected that, if you got yourself eaten, Venable's position would be that you couldn't possibly have been friendly.

An advantage of thunder lizards as guards is their stupidity. You can't bullshit them. But stupid is exploitable, too. They'll forget everything and go for the snack if you toss them something like, say, a squawking parrot with his wings clipped.

Tama discouraged table talk, though Venable wanted to bring me up-to-date on things to do with thunder lizard fandom. Tollie couldn't stand to look at Tinnie or do much more than croak if he tried to talk to Tama.

After supper we headed for the library. I insisted. Marengo might say no if we waited. His racist treasures might be damaged by eyetracks.

Long ago I learned that nobody wants to share information that looks like a resource.

The room set aside for the library was huge and cluttered. Most of the stuff there had to predate any notion of a specialized library. Some, I'd bet, predated any notion of Marengo North English.

Tama said, "Marengo wants to set up his research center here. But he's never found time to get started."

I got the impression she'd heard talk till she didn't listen anymore. "It's not like he's short on manpower. He could drag in a bunch of true believers and set up in a day."

"He's too paranoid."

"Yeah?" I set my lamp on a dusty side table, assayed the job ahead. Books were jumbled into small wooden crates in no obvious pattern. Scrolls were tied in bundles of four or five. I selected a bundle. "How do you feel about what he's trying to do?"

"My thoughts aren't consulted." She wasn't going to offer an opinion.

Did she know anyone well enough to take that risk?

Tinnie prowled the room slowly. She used her lamp to illuminate books where they lay, maybe hoping to luck onto something. Luck did seem as sensible a strategy as any. She harrumphed.

I said, "Miss Montezuma, you're being disingenuous. I asked your personal opinion, not if you're a consultant to the Inner Council of The Call."

"Tama, Garrett. Tama. Listen to me. I'm Marengo's companion. His mistress. Strictly utilitarian. What I think doesn't matter any more than what the chamber pot thinks. Unless one of us actually says something. I like my life here." Most of the time, her eyes said.

"And when the bloom begins to fade?"

She understood. She'd thought about that. That was obvious immediately.

I recalled how North English had slobbered over Belinda.

Uncle Marengo was in a mood to expand his horizons.

I dropped the subject.

Tinnie exercised uncharacteristic self-restraint. "Here's something." Her timing was flawless. The volume she handed me looked like it might actually be useful. It was Werebeasts: The Monsters That Walk Like Men.

The title turned out to be the most interesting part of the book. It dealt only with people who turn into wolves or bears or big cats or critters of a more mythological conviction. Those gods or devils who turn into eagles or snakes or whatnot, with no problems in the weight differential department, were the only self-directed changers mentioned. The creatures I wanted to demystify were anything but divine.

Tama neither dug in nor read over my shoulder. Was she illiterate? Probably. A pity but common enough, especially among women. I learned to read and write because that was a good way to kill time in the long, dull intervals between war's storms of high terror. A lot of guys did. It was encouraged. Written communications get less garbled over time and distance. Karenta's more literate forces proved marginally more efficient and effective than Venageta's over the war's final generation.

Now Karenta's masters are troubled. They have begun to suspect that allowing commoners access to books may have been a grave mistake. Literacy puts crazy ideas into heads more useful when empty. Books let guys who have been dead for a hundred years pass on the one original notion they ever had, which meant immortality for countless social insanities.

There was scare talk about the mob possibly teaching their young to read, too, thereby perpetuating the abomination. Today's free-thinking insanity might continue for generations. It might destabilize the natural order.

Few girls get much education. Tinnie is an exception because amongst the Tates everybody produces. The Tates are more like dwarves than people, some ways. Tinnie manages their bookkeeping.

In time, Tama said, "I'm no night person, Garrett. And I've been up late a lot recently. I need to get to bed."

I missed her point. She reiterated, more directly.

"I need to hit the sack, Garrett. Marengo will strangle me if I leave you unsupervised."

"Oh."

"I'll show you your rooms. I'll trust you not to sneak off with the North English family treasure during the night."

Without light, tippytoeing between the thunder-lizard pups? Wouldn't Venable be pleased?

I didn't run with Tama's straight line. Tinnie waited for it, watching me with smouldering eyes.

Tinnie noted Tama's mention of rooms, plural, as in closed doors for everybody, maybe with nobody knowing where anybody was.

I got assigned first, presumably on the assumption that Tinnie was less likely to go rambling.

It was very dark in my room, beyond the circle cast by Tama's lamp. "There's your bed," she told me. "The chamber pot is underneath. I'll see you and the bird tomorrow." She took off with Tinnie.

I had returned to the door without killing myself on stealthy furniture, leaned into a hallway filled with darkness. The women were out of sight already. Tinnie hadn't left a trail of bread crumbs covered with foxfire. Bad girl. Or maybe not bad enough.

The Goddamn Parrot chuckled softly.

I was beginning to wonder if having the old gutter-beak version of the bird back might not be preferable.

"There are things in the dark," I told him. "Beware!" I shuffled to the bed, undressed.

75

The bed was a fine great mass of down that gulped me whole. I was asleep in seconds, too exhausted to be long disappointed by my solitude.

Nor was I disappointed when, later, I wakened to discover solitude's end. "Did you use a ball of string to mark the way?"

Tinnie hissed, "How did you know it was me?"

"Who else?"

"How about that gaunt witch Montezuma? Or has she been here already?"

I know it's you because I know the scent of your hair and the shape and feel of the rest of you, I didn't say out loud. Also, you are less bony than, not to mention shorter than, the aforementioned gaunt witch. "Not yet, she hasn't. I find it hard to believe myself but not everybody finds me as irresistible as you do."

"Oh? I'm the weak one? You want me to show you just how resistible you really are?"

"Hold it down, will you? You'll wake the parrot up."

"Now you're trying to shush me up?"

I knew just the thing to shush her up. But it didn't take for very long. It never does, partly because Tinnie really likes being shushed up.

Two unpleasant things happened at the same time. The Goddamn Parrot broke out in some kind of sea chanty about swords and silver and dead men while someone else gave me a quick, savage finger poke with a nail probably specially sharpened for the task. A soreness upon my ribs suggested that the offending digit had struck several times previously. A whisper accompanied the pain. "Garrett! Somebody's in here with us!" It was not a quiet whisper. The woman was not ashamed.

I groaned, "You're evil. Let me rest."

The bird shrieked like his just deserts were trying to get hold of him. Tinnie snarled, "Garrett! There's somebody in here, dammit!" Which pronouncement was followed immediately by a racket as somebody tripped over some sly and belligerent bit of furniture.

The Goddamn Parrot screamed rape. Tinnie screamed fire, presumably on the assumption that that was more likely to get attention. I yelled, "Be quiet!"

As I climbed out of bed, feeling around for something suitable for bashing undesirable visitors, furniture crashed nearer and nearer the door. Said door opened. For an instant a hunched shape shown in silhouette against a ghostly light from the corridor. Before the door closed I had taken advantage of that light to navigate past two pieces of furniture that would have ambushed me otherwise because they did not seem to be where I remembered them. A third piece, more patient than the others, waited till the door closed to move into position.

The impact of plunging headfirst into a wall—even with my arms thrown forward to absorb it—was enough to leave me groggy and seeing double. Which I was doing when I opened the door and leaned out cautiously.

My night visitor was moving away fast, vaguely illuminated by a weak lantern trailing from her left hand. Her? The figure looked something like Tama, and also a little like the herd boy Tollie, yet distorted. Perhaps by the crack taken by my noggin. So maybe the sweet thing had considered offering some special hospitality and been panicked by hearing Tinnie speak as she was sneaking up on me. Maybe. It could happen.

I could not think of a reason why the kid would want to sneak in on me. Unless he thought he was entering Tinnie's room.

Whichever, how come the wannabe visitor's other hand was hanging on to a hatchet or cleaver or some such large, heavy, sharp piece of metal?

"Who was it?" Tinnie whispered from behind me.

"I don't know."

"I'll bet I can guess."

"No doubt you can. To the bleakest possibility. And make it all my fault."

"Hey, that's your place, lover. In the wrong. You think we should barricade the door? Just in case?"

"I think we should barricade the door." If what I thought I saw was real, that was one nasty piece of iron. "Just in case. But you'd better hope they don't hold bed check over to your room."

"I sleepwalk."

Right. We moved some furniture. Then we went back to bed. Then, somehow, I got distracted and ended up falling asleep before I had a chance to spend any time figuring out what had just happened.