The Dragons of Babel

6 Crossing Fäerie Minor

Time did not exist. All the world hung suspended, like a fly in amber, within a medium as airless and unchanging as granite. Then, with the quiet, inexplicable jolt of the first atom popping into existence, the platform stretched and moved slowly to the rear. Light stanchions pulled apart, then bungee'd backward into the past. The station fell away, a flimsy raft of wooden buildings skimmed by, and the train was plowing a furrow, straight and sure, through the golden wheat fields of Fäerie Minor, swift as a schooner on a placid sea.

Alongside the tracks, telephone wires went up and down, up and down, like the ocean ceaselessly rocking. This was the land where horses ate flesh and mice ate iron, if all the tales were true. It seemed too empty to contain a fraction of the wonders attributed to it.

Will watched from a car that was crowded beyond all his prior experience. On the opposite seat, a goat-girl knocked knees with him and held up her chin so her fine, thin beard could be combed out by the russalka alongside her, all the while delicately eating a bouquet of daisies, nibbling the petals one by one so that she might perform a minor divination relative to some future leman, spouse, or back-door lover. An ogreish creature, four hundred pounds if he were a stone and wearing a suit three sizes too small for his bulk, had squeezed beside Will, stuffed a half-eaten sandwich into his breast pocket as if it were a dress handkerchief, and promptly fallen asleep. Drool slid slowly, steadily, down one long and yellowed tusk. There were others in the compartment besides. Though it was built to hold eight, there were dinters and imps, gnomes, a fire-hopper urchins, and feys, all crammed together like so many pieces of a trump l'oeil puzzle.

"Are we there yet?" Esme asked.

"No, little one. Go back to sleep."

The smell was extraordinary, too, a rich mixture of Babylonian tobacco, stale sweat. poudre de ris, rotting fruit, cinnamon, the clogged toilet at the end of the car, boredom, and simple desperation — and the window, try though Will might, would not open.

Crushed against the glass, Will found escape by staring off into the plains. They were so flat as to be mesmerizing, and stretched, he had been told, all the way to Fäerie Major. (But if there was one thing he had learned in the DPC, it was to put no trust in anything he had been told.) Once, at the extreme arc of a miles-long curve, he thought he saw Babel itself in the distance, a razor slash arrogantly bisecting the heavens. But he could not be sure, for the tower was too large, too tall, to be easily seen. Its walls and windows took on the colors of the sky. Then the cars swung around with a clatter and the tower, if it had been there at all, was gone.

In his mind's eye, however, he could see the shadow of that unimaginable spire sweeping across the plains, faster than any train, steady as the hand of a clock.

Without his volition, Will's hand rose and traced a word on the window:

!ИUЯ

But Will paid it no mind. He was still staring at the undulating land, feeling small and unimportant and quietly excited. Fear mingled in him with desire. With every passing mile, he experienced a growing emptiness, a gathering tension, a profound desire to be rewritten that was so strong as to almost be a prayer: Great Babel, mother of cities, take me in, absorb me, dissolve me, transform me. For just this once, let one plus one not equal two. Make me into someone else. Make that someone everything I am not. By the axe and the labrys, amen.

All prayers were dangerous. Either they were answered or they were not, and there was no telling which outcome would produce the greater regret. But they were necessary as well, for they suggested a way out of the unendurable present. Back in the village, there had been a whitesmith who had won big in the lottery. With the first third of his winnings, he had bought a wife. The second third went to alimony so he could be rid of her. With the last third, he had drunk himself to death. Not long before the end. he'd collided with Will in the street behind the tavern, fallen back on the wall, and then slid to the ground. Looking up, he had smiled beatifically at Will and winked. "Almost there," he'd said. "Just a few drinks more and I'm done."

His hand rose again. This time it wrote:

Esme poked an arm out from her wicker basket under the seat and tugged at Will's trouser leg. "Are we ever going to get there?''

"Someday," Will said. "Not yesterday, not the day before, and so far not today. I'll wake you when there's something to see."

"I'm thirsty," Esme said petulantly.

"I'll get you some water."

"I want a soda. An Irn Bru."

Will yawned. "I'll see what I can do." He stood up and the others on the seat expanded to fill the space he'd vacated. Muttering excuses, he squeezed out of the compartment and down the corridor.

The air was stuffy and the rhythm of wheels on rails hypnotic. Plodding along, Will fell by slow degrees first into a drowse, and then into a waking dream so vivid it could only be a true scrying. In this dream he had no sense of self, so that he watched all that transpired with a detached impartiality worthy of the Goddess herself. Had he seen the goat-girl come running after him and, pulling a knife from her purse, plunge it into his neck, he would have thought: Here is a murder. Perhaps the victim will die.

In the dream, something was coming for him.

Three witches had materialized in the final car at the very rear of the train. He knew their kind well. Witches were the self-appointed legislators of the world. They were forever sticking their long noses into other people's business, demanding that a rosebush be replanted, or a child renamed, or a petty criminal taken down from the gallows half choked but still breathing. It was next to impossible to be born, to lose one's virginity, to plot a murder, to die, or to be reborn, without one or more popping up and uttering gnostic solemnities. Many a time Will had wished the entire race of witches transported to the Southern Seas and there fed to the great water-beast Jasconius.

These three wore cotton blouses with bolo ties and matching gray-jackets and mid-length skirts. Their shoes were square-toed, with solid, inch-high heels. Even without the silver lapel pins depicting an orchid transfixed by a dagger, it would have been easy to spot them as political police. Two wore guns in hidden shoulder holsters; the third did not.

"Is he here?" the ranking officer asked. "Oh, yes. I can smell him. Faint, but certain." "I hope he's cute," said the rookie. She carried a truncheon at her belt.

They started up the train, bobbing like crows, sniffing the passengers as they went, nibbing canny fingers over sleeping faces. There was a negative glamour upon them so that nobody paid them any mind. The oldest was thrawn as rawhide and stern of face. The middle witch was stolid and heavyset. The rookie was slight and breastless. Dispassionately, Will wondered if she were female at all. She might have been a boy who'd let his hair grow long and liked to dress up as a girl.

"Let's hope he doesn't force us to kill him. That's always unpleasant, and the paperwork is a bear."

"Well, we won't have to kill him yet. He's certainly not in this car."

"This one's dreaming of his sister." The maybe-girl pulled a dead mouse by its tail from a sleeper's pocket and. with a moue of distaste, dropped it back in again. "Ew!"

"II you don't want to know, don't look," the plump witch said. "Drive forward. The stench of destiny grows ever stronger."

Passing between cars, Will was stopped by a tall, donkey-eared fey standing on the platform with an unlit cigarette in his hand, who said, "Yo, hero! Got a light?"

Dreamily, Will patted his pockets, came up with a twist of punk, and conjured it into flame. Donkey Ears accepted it with a nod of thanks, lit the cigarette, and drew in deeply. The punk he tossed away. Then he knocked the pack to Will. "Thanks, son You're a prince."

Will accepted a cigarette, lit it from the end of the stranger's, and started past him toward the door. But suddenly the man seized his shoulders and shook him violently, crying, "Hey! John-a-dreams! Wake up!"

Will blinked, shook his head, and was abruptly awake. "I know you," he said wonderingly. "You're Nat Whilk."

"So some call me, anyway." Nat had been the camp fixer back in Oberon DPC. Anything anybody wanted, be it a soccer ball, a wedding gown, a semiautomatic pistol, or a blow job, Nat knew where it could be found and for a small fee would share the information. Now his sharp-featured and deeply lined face looked concerned, and he said, "You had the awen on you, son. Tell me what you saw."

Will tilted his head back and felt the dream wrap itself around him again. The witches had paused in a familiar-looking car. The rookie knelt to peer under a seat and sniffed the sleeping Esme up and down. "Oh, here's a foul thing!" she cried. "We should strangle it in its sleep."

"And who's going to explain to the Social Services people why we intruded into their territory? You? Don't make me laugh."

Pulling halfway out of the vision with an effort, Will said, "It's the political police. They're after me."

"Shit!" Nat flicked his cigarette to the winds. "Through here. Quickly." He stepped into the next car, pushed open the ladies room door, and shoved Will inside. "I'll be making a racket. Don't do or say anything in response. Got it?"

"Yes."

Nat thrust the pack of cigarettes and a book of matches into his hand. "Whatever you do, don't stop smoking."

Will shut the door and slid the latch and sat down on the toilet. Outside, Nat began slamming on the door with his open palm. "Galadriel! How long does it fucking take?!"

While Nat pounded and shouted, Will drew on his cigarette.

When the ashes grew long, he tapped them into the sink. By imperceptible degrees he sank beneath the conscious world, and in his new state followed the witches' slow and methodical progress up the train, until they came to his toilet and were brought to a stop by the red-faced Nat.

"Who's in there, sir?" the first asked.

"My fucking inamorata is who!" Nat kicked the door so hard it shivered. "She must be taking the mother of all dumps. She's been in there for hours."

The middle witch sniffed at the doorway. "Phew! She's smoking up a storm." She waved a hand under her nose. "That's a criminal offense, citizen."

Nat redoubled his pounding on the door. "What did I fucking tell you, Gal, about those fucking cigarettes? Put that fucking thing out and get off your fucking ass and get the fuck out here right —"

"Sir. You're disturbing the other passengers."

"Yeah, well, maybe some of them need to take a crap, too." Bam bam bam. "You're breaking the law, Laddie-girl! Now haul your far butt out here. "He turned to the witches. "Shoot the lock."

They looked at him in astonishment. "You've been reading too many detective novels, citizen," the officer said.

"Look, I know you've got a gun. Shoot the lock! You're a fucking public servant, aren't you? What am I paying taxes for?"

The officer looked at the rookie and nodded.

All in one complicated motion, the rookie stepped behind Nat, whipped her truncheon about his neck, and placed a knee in the small of his back. Simultaneously, the stocky witch punched him in the stomach. He fell to his hands and knees, choking.

"Now. sir," the rookie said through gritted teeth." I want you to understand your situation. You've made a public nuisance of yourself. Which means I have the legal authority and some would say obligation to beat you to a bloody pulp. Now I'm going to ease up on your windpipe for just a second. Nod once if you understand."

Nat nodded

"Good. Now as it chances, we're acting under instructions at the moment and cant afford the time this salutary chastisement would require. However, We will make the time to correct and educate you if you force us to do so. Do you intend to put us in that position? I'll ease off on you for a second now." Nat shook his head.

"Excellent. Now I'm going to release you, and when I do, I fully expect that you will come slowly to your feet, bow once to each of the three representatives of His Absent Majesty's government you see before you, and then silently—silently, mind you!—return to your designated seat. Your lady will join you there when she wishes. If you find the waiting intolerable, you will continue to wait anyway." She stepped back. "Now. Show me that my faith in you was not misplaced."

Slowly, Nat stood. Painfully he bowed to each of the witches, each bow accompanied by three feather-light touches to his forehead, his heart, and his cock. Half bent over, he shuffled away.

The stocky witch snorted. "Asshole," she said.

Then all three moved on.

In his mind's eye, Will followed them up through the cars until they came at last to the locomotive and disappeared. Once gone, it seemed impossible they had ever set foot on the train at all. The past few minutes must have been a hallucination, a passing fancy woven by his brain out of boredom and nothingness.

But then there was a gentle rap on the door. "All right, lad. you can come out now."

Officially, all the space on the train was to be shared equally among the refugees. Yet Nat, typically enough, had arranged for himself a private compartment in the first car. He laughed ruefully as he led Will there. "Oh, I'm going to ache in the morning! Getting rolled by les poulettes at my age — you'd think I'd be beyond that kind of adventure by now."

"Listen," Will said. "I've really got to get back to—"

"It's already taken care of." With a flourish, Nat Whilk opened the door to his compartment.

"Papa!" Esme cried. She held up a can of soda. "I got my Irn Bru."

For an instant Will was silent. Then he said, "That was a good trick."

"Oh, you'll find that I'm full of tricks." Nat gestured Will into a seat. Esme climbed into his lap and stared out the window. "But we'll talk about me later. The first question is, why is the government after you?"

Will shrugged.

"Did someone put a curse on you? Maybe you broke a geas? Perhaps you fulfill a prophesy? Were there miracles at your birth? Any runic tattoos, third teats, other signs of fatedness?"

"None that I know of."

"Are you involved in politics?"

Will looked away.

Nat made an exasperated noise. "Look, kid, I took a knee in the yarbles for you. What's with the attitude?"

Esme wriggled in Will's arms, but he did not let her go. "You asked me for a light when you had a pack of matches in your pocket. You knew about Esme. Just how stupid do I have to be not to realize that you were waiting for me? All right, here I am. What do you really want?"

Unexpectedly Nat burst into laughter. "You're quick, lad! Yes, of course I was waiting for you." He held a hand out to show it was empty and then seemingly plucked a card from Esme's ear. While she clapped, he handed it to Will. It read:

Ichabod the Fool

Confidence Trickster

"Ichabod the Fool?"

"Just one of my many noms de scene. That doesn't matter. All that matters is that I'm a fully vested master in the Just and Honorable Guild of Rogues, Swindlers, Cozeners, and Knaves, and I'm prepared to take you on as my apprentice."

"Why me?"

"Why not? I need a partner and you owe me a favor. Also forgive me for pointing this out — with your problem, you need a steady source of income."

"What exactly is my problem?" Will asked warily.

"Money burns a hole in your hands." Nat took out a billfold, riffled through its crisp contents, and delicately withdrew a hundred-dollar banknote. "Here. If you can hold onto this for sixty seconds, it's yours."

The instant the bill touched Will's fingers, it burst into flames. In less time than it took to yank back his hand, the banknote flared, dwindled, and was gone.

Esme applauded. "Teach me that! Teach me that!"

"Yes. How did you do that?"

"Oh, it's one of my simpler tricks. Work it out for yourself." For a moment Will sat thinking. Then he said. "When I called up the lux aeterna to kindle a flame for your cigarette, you did the same for that banknote, Possibly, you held it folded in your hand. In any case, my own spell would mask the workings of yours. Only you left off the final half syllable... a schwa, a little puff of breath. Then, when I touched the bill, you quietly made that noise, finishing the spell. Instant fire."

"Bravo! I knew I'd chosen well."

Esme, grown bored with the conversation, ducked out of Will's arms and returned to the window. Outside were enormous hills of trash — mountains almost — with winding roads leading over them. Garbage-laden trucks lumbered up the slopes and disappeared into the interior. Between the hills and the train tracks was a network of streams and shallow ponds fringed with Pharagmites and rusting machines. An outcrop of rock rose up abruptly, painted over with artless, square-lettered graffiti: LEMURIA RULES and DUPPY POWER and INCUBAE SUCK. A vee of barnacle geese splashed down by a line of telegraph poles that staggered drunkenly through the marshland, never quite dipping their lines into the water.

"This place looks strange," Esme said. "What is it?"

"We're passing through the Whinny Moor Landfill, little grandmother. It's the largest artificial structure in the world. If you could fly with the wings of a roc, you could see it from outer space." Nat settled back in his seat. "Well. Now that we're all one happy family, I propose that we shorten the journey by telling stories. About ourselves, and where we came from."

"I haven't agreed to anything yet."

"Ah, but wait until you hear my story. That'll convince you." "All right," Will said. "I'm listening."

I was a gentleman in Babel once (Nat began) and not the scoundrel you see before you now. I ate from a silver trencher, and I speared my food with a gold knife If I had to take a leak in the middle of the night, there were two servants to hold the bedpan and a third to shake my stick afterwards. It was no life for a man of my populist sensibilities. So one day I climbed out a window when nobody was looking and escaped.

You who had the good fortune of king born without wealth can have no idea how it felt. The streets were a kaleidoscope of pedestrians, and I was one of them, a moving speck of color, neither better nor worse than anyone else, and blissfully ignored by all. I was dizzy with excitement. My hands kept rising into the air like birds. My eyes danced to and fro, entranced by everything they saw. It was glorious.

Down one street I went, turned a corner at random, and so by Brownian motion chanced upon a train station where I took a local to ground level. More purposefully then, I caught a rickshaw to the city limits and made my way outside.

The trooping fairies had come to Babel and set up a goblin market just outside the Ivory Gate. Vendors sold shish kebab and cotton candy. T-shirts and pashmina scarfs, gris gris bags and enchanted swords, tame magpies and Fast Luck Uncrossing Power vigil candles. Cupie dolls and 1:6 scale tooled-leather camel figurines with sequined harnesses. Charango players filled the air with music. I could not have been happier.

"Hey, shithead! Yeah, you — the ass with the ears! Listen when a lady speaks to you!"

I looked around

"Up here, Solomon!"

The voice came from a booth whose brightly painted arch read ROCK! THE! FOX! At the end of a long canvas-walled alley, a vixen grinned at me from an elevated cage, her front feet tucked neatly under her and her black tongue lolling. Seeing she'd caught my eye, she leaped up and began padding quickly from one end of the cage to the other, talking all the while. "Faggot! Bed-wetter! Asshole! Your dick is limp and you throw like a girl!"

"Three for a dollar," a follet said, holding up a baseball. Then, mistaking my confusion for skepticism, he added, "Perfectly honest, monsieur," and lightly tossed the ball into the cage. The vixen nimbly evaded it, then nosed it back out between the bars so that it fell to the ground below. "Hit the fox and win a prize."

There was a trick to it, I later learned. Though they looked evenly spaced, only the one pair of bars was wide enough that a baseball could get through. All the vixen had to do was avoid that spot and she was as safe as houses. But even without knowing the game was rigged, I didn't want to play. I was tilled with an irrational love for everyone and everything. Today of all days, I would not see a fellow creature locked in a cage.

"How much for the vixen?" I asked.

"C'est impossible," the follet said. "She has a mouth on her, sir. You wouldn't want her."

By then I had my wallet out. "Take it all." The follrt's eyes grew large as dinner plates, and by this token I knew that I overpaid. But after all, I reasoned, I had plenty more in my carpetbag.

After the follet had opened the cage and made a fast fade, the vixen genuflected at my feet. Wheedlingly, she said, "I didn't mean none of them things I said, master. That was just patter, you know. Now that I'm yours, I'll serve you faithfully. Command and I'll obey. I shall devote my life to your welfare, if you but allow me to."

I put down my bag so I could remove the vixen's slave collar. Gruffly, I said, "I don't want your obedience. Do whatever you want, obey me in no matters, don't give a thought to my gods-be-damned welfare. You're free now."

"You can't mean that," the vixen said, shocked.

"I can and I do. So if you—"

"Sweet Mother of Beasts!" the vixen gasped, staring over my shoulder. "Look out!"

I whirled around, but there was nothing behind me but more booths and fair-goers. Puzzled, I turned back to the vixen, only to discover that she was gone.

And she had stolen my bag.

So it was that I came to learn exactly how freedom tastes when you haven't any money. Cursing the vixen and my own gullibility with equal venom, I put the goblin market behind me. Somehow I wound upon the bank of the Gihon. There I struck up a conversation with a waterman who motored me out to the docks and put me onto a tug-boat captained by a friend of his. It was hauling a garbage scow upriver to Whinny Moor.

As it turned out, the landfill was no good place to be let off. Though there were roads leading up into the trashlands, there were none that led onward, along the river, where I wanted to go. And the smell! Indescribable.

A clutch of buildings huddled by the docks in the shadow of a garbage promontory. These were garages for the dump trucks mostly, but also Quonset hut repair and storage facilities and a few leftover brownstones with their windows bricked over that were used for offices and the like. One housed a bar with a sputtering neon sign saying BRIG-O-DOOM. In the parking lot behind it was, incongruously enough, an overflowing dumpster.

Here it was I fetched up.

I had never been hungry before, you must understand — not real, gnaw-at-your-belly hungry. I'd skipped breakfast that morning in my excitement over leaving, and I'd had the lightest of dinners the day before. On the tugboat I'd watched the captain slowly cat two sandwiches and an apple and been too proud to beg a taste from him. What agonies I suffered when he threw the apple core overboard! And now...

Now, to my horror, I found myself moving toward the dumpster. I turned away in disgust when I saw a rat skitter out from behind it. But it called me back. I was like a moth that's discovered a candle. I hoped there would be food in the dumpster, and I feared that if there were I would eat it.

It was then, in that darkest of hours, that I heard the one voice I had expected never to hear again. "Hey, shit-for brains! Aintcha gonna say you're glad to see me?"

Crouched atop a nearby utility truck was the vixen.

"You!" I cried, but did not add you foul creature, as my instincts bade me. Already, poverty was teaching me politesse. "How did you follow me here?"

"Oh. I have my ways."

Hope fluttered in my chest like a wild bird. "Do you still have my bag?"

"Of course I don't. What would a fox do with luggage? I threw it away. But I kept the key. Wasn't I a good girl?" She dipped her head and a small key on a loop of string slipped from her neck and fell to the tarmac with a light tinkle.

"Idiot fox!" I cried. "What possible good is a key to a bag I no longer own?"

She told me.

The Brig o' Doom was a real dive. There was a black-and-white television up in one corner tuned to the fights and a pool table with ripped felt to the back. On the door for the toilets, some joker had painted Tir na bOg in crude white letters. I sat down at the bar. "Beer," I told the tappie.

"Red Stripe or Dragon Stout?"

"Surprise me."

When my drink came, I downed half of it in a single draft. It made my stomach ache and my head spin, but I didn't mind. It was the first sustenance I'd had in twenty six hours. Then I turned around on the stool and addressed the bar as a whole: "I'm looking for a guide. Someone who can take me to a place in the landfill that I've seen in a vision. A place by a stream where garbage bags float up to the surface and burst with a terrible stench—"

A tokoloshe snorted. He was a particularly nasty piece of business, a hairy brown dwarf with burning eyes and yellow teeth. "Could be anywhere." The fossegrim sitting with him snickered sycophantically. It was clear who was the brains of this outfit.

"And two bronze legs from the lighthouse of Rhodes lie half-buried in the reeds."

The tokoloshe hesitated, and then moved over to make space for me in his booth. The fossegrim, tall and lean with hair as white as a chimneysweeper's, leaned over the table to listen as he growled sotto voce, "What's the pitch?"

"There's a bag that goes with this key," I said quietly. "It's buried out there somewhere. I'll pay to find it again."

"Haughm," the tokoloshe said. "Well, me and my friend know the place you're looking for. And there's an oni I know can do the digging. That's three, Will you pay us a hundred each?"

"Yes. When the bag is found. Not before.''

"How about a thousand?"

Carefully, I said. "Not if you're just going to keep jacking up the price until you find the ceiling."

"Here's my final offer. Ten percent of whatever's in the bag. Each." Then, when I hesitated. "We'll pick up your bar tab, too."

It was as the vixen had said. I was dressed as only the rich dressed, yet I was disheveled and dirty. That and my extreme anxiety to regain my bag told my newfound partners everything they needed to know.

"Twenty percent," I said. 'Total. Split it however you choose. But first you'll buy me a meal — steak and eggs, if they have it."

The sun had set and the sky was yellow and purple as a bruise, turning to black around the edges. Into the darkness our pickup truck jolted by secret and winding ways. The grim drove and the dwarf took occasional swigs from a flask of Jeyes Fluid, without offering me any. Nobody spoke. The oni, who could hardly have fit in the cab with us, sat in the bed with his feet dangling over the back. His name was Yoshi.

Miles into the interior of the landfill, we came to a stop above a black stream beside which lay two vast and badly corroded bronze legs. "Can you find a forked stick?" I asked.

The tokoloshe pulled a clothes hanger out of the mingled trash and clay. "Use this."

I twisted the wire into a wishbone, tied the key string to the short end, and took the long ends in my hands. The key hung a good half-inch off true. Then, stumbling over ground that crunched underfoot from buried rusty cans, I walked one way and another until the string hung straight down. "Here."

The tokoloshe brought out a bag of flour. "How deep do you think it's buried?"

"Pretty deep," I said. "Ten feet, I'm guessing."

He measured off a square on the ground — or rather, surface, for the dumpings here were only hours old. At his command, Yoshi passed out shovels, and we all set to work.

When the hole reached six feet, it was too cramped for Yoshi to share. He was a big creature and all muscle. Two small horns sprouted from his forehead and a pair of short fangs jutted up from his jaw. He labored mightily, and the pile of excavated trash alongside the hole grew taller and taller. At nine feet, he was sweating like a pig. He threw a washing machine over the lip, and then stopped and grumbled, "Why am I doing all the work here?"

"Because you're stupid," the fossegrim jeered.

The tokoloshe hit him. "Keep digging," he told the oni. "I'm paying you fifty bucks for this gig."

"It's not enough."

"Okay, okay." The tokoloshe pulled a couple of bills from his pocket and gave them to me. "Take the pickup to the Brig-O and bring back a quart of beer for Yoshi."

I did then as stupid a thing as ever I've done in my life.

So far I'd been following the script the vixen had laid out for me, and everything had gone exactly as she'd said it would. Now, rather than playing along with the tokoloshe as she'd advised, I got my back up. We were close to finding the bag and, fool that I was, I thought they would share.

"Just how dumb do you think I am?" I asked. "You won't get rid of me that easily."

The tokoloshe shrugged. "Tough shit, Ichabod."

He and the fossegrim knocked me down. They duct-taped my ankles together and my wrists behind my back. Then they dumped me in the back of the pickup. "Scream if you want to," the tokoloshe said. "We don't mind, and there's nobody else to hear you."

I was terrified, of course. But I'd barely had time to realize exactly how desperate my situation had become when Yoshi whooped, "I found it!"

The fossegrim and the tokoloshe scurried to the top of the unsteady trash pile. "Did you find it?" cried one, and the other said, "Hand it up."

"Don't do it, Yoshi!" I shouted. "There's money in that bag, a lot more than fifty dollars, and you can have half of it."

"Give mc the bag," the tokoloshe said grimly. By his side, the fossegrim was dancing excitedly. Bottles and cans rolled away from his feet. "Yeah," he said. "Hand it up." But Yoshi hestitated. "Half?" he said.

"You can have it all!" I screamed. "Just leave me alive and it's yours!"

The tokoloshe stumbled down toward the oni, shovel raised. His buddy followed alter in similar stance.

So began a terrible and comic fight, the lesser creatures leaping and falling on the unsteady slope, all the while swinging their shovels murderously, and the great brute enduring their blows and trying to seize hold of his tormentors. I could not see the battle — no more than a few slashes of the shovels — though I managed to struggle to my knees, for the discards from Yoshi's excavations rose too high. But I could hear it, the cursing and threats, the harsh clang of a shovel against Yoshi's head and the fossegrim's scream as one mighty hand finally closed about him.

Simultaneous with that scream there was a tremendous clanking and sliding sound of what I can only assume was the tokoloshe's final charge. In my mind's eye, I can see him now, racing downslope with the shovel held like a spear, its point aimed at Yoshi's throat. But whether blade ever connected with flesh or not I do not know, for it set the trash to slipping and sliding in a kind of avalanche.

Once started, the trash was unstoppable. Down it flowed, sliding over itself, all in motion. Down it flowed, rattling and clattering, land made liquid, yet for all that still retaining its brutal mass. Down it flowed, a force of nature, irresistible, burying all three so completely there was no chance that any of them survived.

Then there was silence.

Well!" said the vixen. "That was a tidy little melodrama. Though I must say it would have gone easier on you if you'd simply done as I told you to in the first place." She was sitting on the roof of the cab.

I had never in my life been so glad to see anybody as I was then. "This is the second tune you showed up just when things were looking worst," I said, giddy with relief. "How do you manage it?"

"Oh, I ate a grain of Stardust when I was a cub, and ever since then there's been nary a spot I can't get into or out of, if I set my mind to it."

"Good, good, I'm glad. Now set me free!" "Oh, dear. I wish you hadn't said that." "What?"

"Years ago and for reasons that are none of your business I swore a mighty oath never again to obey the orders of a man. That's why I've been ragging along after you — because you ordered me not to be concerned with your welfare. So of course I am. But now you've ordered me to free you, and thus I can't."

"Listen to me carefully," I said. "If you disobey an order from me, then you've obeyed my previous order not to obey me. So your oath is meaningless."

"I know. It's quite dizzying." The fox lay down, tucking her paws beneath her chest. "Here's another one: There's a barber in Seville who shaves everyone who doesn't shave himself, but nobody else. Now—"

"Please," I said." I beg you. Sweet fox, dear creature, most adorable of animals... If you would be so kind as to untie me out of the goodness of your heart and of your own free will, I'd be forever grateful to you."

"That's better. I was beginning to think you had no manners at all."

The vixen tugged and bit at the duct tape on my wrists until it came undone. Then I was able to free my ankles We both got into the truck. Neither of us suggested we try digging for my bag. As far as I was concerned, it was lost forever.

But driving down out of the landfill, I turned and where the vixen had been, a woman sat with her feet neatly tucked beneath her. Her eyes were green and her hair was short and red. I had the distinct impression that she was laughing at me. "Your money's in a cardboard box under the seat." she said, "along with a fresh change of clothing — which, confidentially, you badly need — and the family signet ring. What's buried out there is only the bag, stuffed full of newspapers and rocks."

"My head aches," I said. "If you had my money all along, what was the point of this charade?"

"There's an old saying: Teach a man to fish, and he'll only eat when the fish are biting. Teach him a good scam, and the suckers will always bite." The lady grinned. "A confidence trickster can always use a partner. We're partners now, ain't we?"

So ended Nat's story. Esme had stopped listening long ago. She was at the window again, staring out at tank farms and pyramids of containerized cargo sliding backward into the past. A line of high-tension towers leapt out of nowhere, matched speeds with the train, and paced it down the tracks. A second set of rails joined them, and then a third, and then a canal. All the world, it seemed, was converging upon Babel. "What became of the vixen?" Will asked.

Nat tapped his heart whimsically. "She's right here. Laughing at me." Then, serious again. "I can't say why I should like you, lad. but I do. So let me ask you again. Will you join forces with me? I'll teach you all the lore the short and clever ways of dealing with the world, and give you a full third share of the swag to boot. What do you say? Are we partners?"

Will felt a tickle on his knee. Looking down, he saw that his forefinger was tracing invisible letters, over and over, on the cloth of his trousers:

At which very instant the tracks curved and a mushroom ring of natural gas tanks swung away to reveal a wall that rose up to fill the sky To either side it stretched as far as the eye could see Will's heart quailed at the sheer size of it larger, it seemed, than all the rest of the world put together Abruptly the sheer magnitude of his ambition seemed folly That fell Tower was bigger and meaner and more ruthless than he could ever hope to be There was no way he could get revenge upon it

Not as he was now.

And yet. simultaneously, a pervasive sense of destiny filled him If I am to have my vengeance, he thought, I need to learn deceit and much else besides Very well, let this fool be my first teacher.

"Yes," he lied. "Partners."

Esme had grown bored with the passing landscape and was rummaging through Nat's luggage. She hauled out a transistor radio and snapped it on. Music more beautiful than anything Will had ever heard Hooded the car. It sounded like something that might have been sung by the stars just before dawn on the very first morning of the world. "What is that?" he asked wonderingly.

Nat Whilk smiled. "It's called 'Take the A Train.' By Duke Ellington."

Faster and faster the train sped toward the featureless stone walls until it seemed inevitable they should crash. Then, at the last possible moment, a tunnel opened in the wall, black as a mouth. The train plunged into it, and Babel swallowed it whole.