Текст книги "Hastrom City Rising (The Adventures of Letho Ferron Book 2)"

Автор книги: Doug Rickaway

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

They each withdrew their hands, and a comfortable silence settled upon them. After a moment, Zedock withdrew one of the Black Bears. It was Letho’s—he recognized the markings in the patina of the gun as one recognizes the wrinkles in one’s own skin. Zedock placed it on the cot near Letho, wheezing as he bent forward.

Time hadn’t been all that kind to Zedock. His skin hung like brittle paper, shot through with wrinkles and patches of discoloration. His eyes still sparked with fierce intellect, but they seemed to be perpetually floating in a soup of tears, as though he were constantly on the verge of crying.

“Thought you would like to have that back,” Zedock said, patting the gun, “but I didn’t want to dress Saul down like that in front of everyone. I’m sure you understand.”

“Too bad he didn’t extend that same courtesy to that soldier,” Letho replied.

Zedock sighed heavily, took a kerchief from his pocket, and dabbed beads of sweat from his forehead. “Maybe he was a bit hard on that kid, but this ain’t a world where you can be soft on people. Soft people get killed, Letho.”

“I’ve noticed. But you didn’t treat him that way. You can hold someone accountable without cutting them down.”

“You’re right. But you have to know that his heart is in the right place.” Zedock sighed, and his brow became furrowed. The skin around his eyes wrinkled in a way that gave Letho the impression that the age marks had in part formed while pondering this very issue.

“So, your son, huh? How’d that work out? How did I never know you had a son?”

Zedock’s eyes widened at the word “son,” and then he wiped away what appeared to be a tear at the corner of his eye.

“I see you’re picking up the noticeable difference in our appearance. The truth is, he’s not my blood, Letho. He was orphaned in the transition from Fulcrum to Eursus. I took him under my wing, and after a while, I just started calling him son. It stuck.”

Letho noticed another errant tear at the corner of Zedock’s eyes, and the old man’s lower lip was trembling. Was he about to start crying? Was he having a stroke?

“Everything okay, Zedock?” Letho asked. He scooted closer and put a hand on the old man’s shoulder, and to his surprise, it, too, trembled. Letho almost leapt up out of his seat when the old man placed a weathered hand on top of his own, patted it, and then let it drop to his side.

“Letho, there’s something I need to tell you. I meant to tell you before, but you never came back…”

The hairs on Letho’s neck stood up, and chills ran up and down his spine like mallets on a bone marimba.

“You see, I haven’t been completely forthright with you with regard to our particular relationship,” Zedock said, then stopped, as though his batteries were depleted. He continued to stare vacantly at the middling distance until Letho tapped him on the shoulder.

“Zedock—just spit it out already,” Letho said.

“Well, hell. I’m no good at this stuff, Letho,” he said, and then paused again.

Letho, whose stomach was lurching and spinning, grew impatient. “Come on, just tell me already!”

Zedock rocketed straight up from his chair with incalculable spryness and clenched both fists at his side. “You’re my son, dammit!” he shouted.

SEVEN – Proud Papa

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait a sec,” Letho said.

The room was spinning. His mind shook as walls inside began to tumble, taking with them preconceived notions about self and who he had believed himself to be.

“What do you mean, I’m your son? My parents died in a laboratory accident.” Letho felt his eyes go unfocused¸ felt the familiar slithery sting of a panic attack coming on, and fought back the urge to collapse on the floor before Zedock.

“Well, that’s part of the story.”

“How can this even be possible?” Letho shouted.

“Well, if you’d calm the hell down, I could explain it to you.”

Letho said nothing, just nodded, his breath fast and razor-edged in his heaving chest.

“Okay, it’s complicated, but I’ll do my best to explain it to you. Where to begin?” Zedock said.

“How about at the beginning?” Letho said.

“All right, already, smart-ass. Here we go.”

Zedock took a breath and launched into his story. “You see, I was once married to a woman named Marta. She’s the one that gave you those blue eyes of yours. She was beautiful, Letho. Way better than this old lug deserved. I can’t tell you how many times people told me that she was way out of my league, or that I’d knocked it out of the park when I landed her.”

Letho made a twirling gesture with his index finger, indicating that he wished for Zedock to get on with it.

“You probably didn’t get far enough in your life on Centennial Fulcrum to where you’d have encountered the rigamarole people had to go through to get certified to have children. We desperately wanted a child, but I just didn’t have the credits or the clout, even with my position as Head Inspector. It’s all very political, you understand?”

Letho nodded that he did indeed understand, and twirled his index finger again.

“Well, when we were denied for the fourteenth time, I had to get a little creative. You’ve heard the Tarsi say that Zedock Wartimer is a friend of the Tarsi. Well, that’s a whole ‘nother story all on its own. But I’ll try to hit the high points since you seem to be a mite impatient.

“You see, my family has been friendly with the Tarsi folk since the Fulcrum stations landed on Eursus way back when. Those Tarsi, they were inside those Fulcrum stations for a long time before they made it to Eursus, and over time they forgot a lot. Long story short, they lost a lot of their abilities and knowledge. From what Fintran told me, back in their heyday they would have been able to learn our language like a duck to water, or they would have invented a device to do the talking and translating for them. But when they got here they weren’t able to communicate with us. The powers that be wanted to take the Fulcrum stations and remove the Tarsi. My forefather convinced them to allow the Tarsi to stay on the Fulcrum stations as maintenance workers, as they were the only ones who knew how to fix things when they broke.”

“So the Tarsi were in the Fulcrum stations to begin with? Does that mean that the Tarsi created the Fulcrum stations?”

“Yes, Letho. All the stuff above—the town center, the domiciles—we built that inside the stations to make them fit us. The rest, the underneath, is all Tarsi, which you probably gathered in your time there. Most people went their entire life without setting foot down there. They don’t remember that the Fulcrum vessels were alien in design, as that information has slowly been phased out of the collective knowledge of the folks that live on the stations. From what I understand, they were beautiful inside, very organic and natural, before we filled ’em up with cookie-cutter apartments and office cubicles.

“Anyways, what I’m trying to tell you is that my relationship with the Tarsi is special. There was a time, Letho, when I was a younger man, when they thought that maybe I was the chosen one they had been searching for. I was fast and strong, and could understand what they were saying when they did their singin’ thing. But as we both know, that didn’t turn out to be the case.

“So like I was saying, Marta and I weren’t supposed to have a child, officially. But unofficially, well, we were determined. So I approached the Tarsi about concealing Marta with them in the underneath so we could get her off the anti-fertility drugs, and keep her out of sight during her pregnancy. It was a mutually beneficial situation, as you can imagine. We got to have a kid, and they got another shot at finding their chosen one. We had no choice, Letho, and we were hard-headed back then; we wanted a child so bad.

“So we faked Marta’s death and hid her in the depths with the Tarsi. It weren’t long before she was clear of the antidepressants and anti-fertility drugs, and we conceived a child. The plan was to smuggle the both of you back in as ‘refugees’ from a failed Fulcrum station, with a name change: last name Ferron. But bless her heart, my sweet Marta… she didn’t make it.”

Zedock bowed his head and placed a hand on his forehead to hide his eyes from Letho. His shoulders began to shake, followed by choked sobs.

“She died giving birth to you. We had to dispose of her body through one of the exhaust ports. It was shameful. But a good thing came out of all that. You, Letho.”

Letho’s head was spinning, his image of self dissolving. He had a mother who had given her life so that he could live? And a father who was alive?

“You were there the whole time,” Letho said, eyes wide, vacant, as if Zedock’s words had hypnotized him. “How come you never told me? Came to see me?”

Visions blasted through Letho’s mind like a flash flood washing out a gully. Living in the Fulcrum station’s home for parentless children, a time in his life barely remembered, as it was dirty and harsh. Going through his formal ed sequence with no one to congratulate him when his marks were high, or to offer advice on how to catch the eye of the girl he was sweet on. So many missed opportunities.

“I wanted to, so bad, Letho. You have no idea. But because I was Lead Inspector, a lot of eyes were on me all the time. It would have been… problematic for me to adopt a child, a single man. It would have raised questions about your origins, which would have been dangerous. For both of us. But I want to you to know that I was always there, watching. I am so proud of the man you have become, Letho. You had some strange detours from the path along the way, but those are what make you who you are. My only regret is that I didn’t tell you sooner.”

“I don’t know what to say, Zedock—uh, Dad—um…”

“I don’t expect you to know what to say, son. Hell, I don’t know what to say neither. I just wanted you to hear the truth, and now you have. Nothing has to change between us. We can just take it one day at a time, and see how it all shakes out.”

Letho said nothing, just stared deep into rheumy old eyes that he now realized looked a lot like his, in shape and size. Also the way that Zedock moved, breathed, carried himself. How had he not seen it before?

“I can’t believe you’re my father. This is just unreal.”

“Well, I swear by the good book and all. I am sure the doc could whip up a paternity test if you want.”

“Nah, that’s okay. I guess if you’re my dad I pretty much have to trust you.”

“Damn right.”

The two embraced, a son and father who had been torn apart by a rift in the fabric of space and time, now reunited. Tears were shed, and after a moment Letho felt his back growing sore from the firm pats that Zedock gave him as if to ensure that the embrace remained masculine. They broke the embrace, and Zedock place a hand on Letho’s cheek.

“Might want to trim that scruff—you look like homeless man,” Zedock said, laughing.

“What, and just leave the mustache? Not quite ready for that look,” Letho said.

“Fair enough. Hey, why don’t you let me get a look at that arm?”

Pain upon remembrance. Letho resisted an urge to recoil, to hide his mangled arm. But he allowed Zedock to peel back the torn fabric of his jumpsuit. Zedock pulled a folding knife from a sheath on his belt, and Letho flinched a little at the sight of it.

“Easy there, hoss. I’m just going to cut some of this fabric so I can get a better look.”

“Okay,” Letho said, a little embarrassed by his own reaction. “I’m usually much more macho. You know, it’s just, the whole losing an arm thing has me a little jumpy.”

Zedock said nothing, his eyes fixed on what remained of Letho’s arm. After a moment he sucked air through his teeth, whistling in apprehension or appreciation, Letho couldn’t tell which.

“Looks bad, right?” Letho said through a grimace.

“Actually, no. It looks as pure and clean as a baby’s bottom.”

“What?” Letho turned to look, expecting to see mangled flesh and ragged tendon barely clinging to bare bone. But sure enough, the wound was much further along than it should have been, and to Letho’s shock, but not complete surprise, he seemed to have regained a little of the tissue below his elbow joint. It ended in a wrinkled bulb of flesh that had five small globes attached to it in the familiar orientation of human digits.

“In fact, looks like it might be growing back,” Zedock said.

“Wow, that’s amazing,” Letho said.

“Tell me about it. Is there anything you can’t do, Letho Ferron?”

“Well, I can’t seem to take care of the people I care about,” Letho said. “All those people we went to save, they died. I couldn’t save them, Zedock.”

“That’s a damn hard pill to swallow, son. But consider this: no one else on the whole station had half the sack to pull what you pulled. The important thing is that you stuck up for what you believed in. You faced up to your fears, anted up, and threw in. No one else did. You didn’t see anyone else loading up a freighter to join you, did you?”

“No, sir, I suppose I didn’t.”

“Well, maybe those folks weren’t meant to be saved, Letho. You ever think of that? Maybe there’s a plan. Maybe Je-Ha…” But Letho cut him off with a raised hand.

“I’m all full up on divine plans these days, Zedock.”

“Fair enough, son. Fair enough.”

“Anyways, if it was all part of his plan, it means that he brought a very bad guy back into the world, and used those people to do it.”

“Well, I don’t quite see it that way,” Zedock said through a sigh. “But Abraxas is a very bad guy indeed. You saw him?”

“No, I never actually saw him, or Alastor. But Thresha did. She’s the one that told me they murdered all those Fulcrum citizens. Some kind of ritual to bring him back from the dead.”

Letho felt his nails digging into his own palm as he remembered. Zedock placed a hand on Letho’s shoulder.

They stayed like that for a bit, and then Letho was overcome by a yawn big enough that it threatened to split his head sideways. He suddenly realized how tired he was. How much the day had worn him down. His eyes became heavy, and Zedock’s voice became a little fuzzy, hard to keep up with. Letho felt like he was saying something about crossing a bridge when they came to it, but he couldn’t be certain.

Brain is occupied. Currently not accepting metaphors.

“Anyways,” Zedock said, “I think that’s enough heavy talk for one night. We’ll have more time to catch up later. What do you say we hit the sack?”

“Sounds good. See you in the morning?”

“Right,” Zedock said, clapping his hands on his thighs as he sprang up from his chair. “There’s soap and towels in the head down the hallway. I put a few clean suits in that dresser over there for you. I had to guess on your size.”

“Gee, thanks, Pops,” Letho said.

Zedock paused in the doorway long enough to offer Letho a rather crass two-fingered gesture. Letho didn’t think it a very polite way for a father to address his son, but they both laughed.

“See you in the morning,” Letho said.

Zedock smiled and turned to leave Letho’s new domicile. As he walked out, the light caught his face just right, and Letho could see new tears glistening on his cheeks.

****

That night, several floors below the place where Zedock’s revelation had rocked Letho to his very core, Bayorn the Elder was reeling from a revelation of his own. He sat with the Tarsi of Haven, many of whom he recognized from the Centennial Fulcrum, while others were strangers to him. He was disappointed to learn that there were no other Elders in this new, commingled Tarsi community, as he had been eager to speak to the others, to learn if they too were experiencing visions.

From the moment that he had been christened by Fintran with a singular but monumental kiss on his forehead, strange images and signs had begun to fill his mind. Some of these visions were glimpses of a future that filled him with hope: potential futures in which the plague of the Mendraga had been exterminated and life had begun to flourish, free from the ruining hand of Abraxas. But in other visions, Abraxas triumphed. These visions tormented Bayorn, as he saw Zedock, Maka, his friends, even himself, dying one by one in public executions, their bodies drawn and quartered atop the landing in front of Abraxas’s palace in the heart of Hastrom City. He could see their heads, eyes vacant, tongues lolling as they were placed on pikes that jutted from the walls around the city center. The worst punishments were always saved for Letho, the savior who would be, he whose body could not be killed. The ways in which they tortured his flesh would plague Bayorn for all of his days, whether or not the visions ever came to be true.

Bayorn worried for his friend. He didn’t like the dark shadows that the young Eursan had been casting on whatever crossed his path. He saw a rising tide of hatred that had not been there when he had first met the boy. Bayorn tried to remember the first inkling of this worrying blackness he had seen growing in Letho. Was it the gleeful way he had butchered the Mendraga on Alastor’s ship? No, many had shed the sour blood of the Mendraga that day, and even the most gentle of souls would likely agree that those who had murdered so many innocent Fulcrum citizens deserved whatever fate had befallen them.

Perhaps it was the way Letho had executed the mutated creature at the crash site. It wasn’t just that he had killed the creature, for surely that had been necessary. It had been the way in which he had done it: taking his time, seeming to inflict non-fatal wounds purely out of spite or cruelty. Bayorn shuddered. One shouldn’t torture such a base creature. There was no exacting retribution on something that couldn’t even grasp the concept, a beast merely acting upon its nature.

What if Letho had been acting upon his own inherent nature when he had tortured and killed the mutant?

But there was nothing Bayorn could do about these concerns, and it was pointless to waste further thought and worry upon the subject. “Your worries you cannot control, but you can control your worrying,” Fintran had always said.

Bayorn focused on the small group of Tarsi that sat in a ring around him, meditating. They were the last to have received the blood gift. Was it Letho’s blood that had catalyzed his own magnificent transformation, and by extension the transformation of the Tarsis? Or was it Fintran’s? Or was it the combination of the two? Bayorn did not know, and perhaps it did not matter. He had stopped trying to figure out the true nature of the prophecy, where the science ended and the mysticism began. The prophecy would move him and those around him, regardless of his knowledge and understanding.

Today, many Tarsi had come to Bayorn to place their hand upon his. He had opened a wound on the back of his handwith a piece of sharpened scrap metal, and bled freely. And those who touched his blood underwent the transformation—from the shamed form that they had taken on in their time dwelling as servants of the Fulcrum stations, back to the magnificent form of the ancient Tarsi that had so long ago left the planet Tarsis, fleeing Abraxas and his army of corrupted Tarsi. Abraxas had triggered a bloody civil war that had waged for centuries, a war between those who had accepted Abraxas’s gift of eternal life, and those who would rise against him, protecting the old ways and the freedoms encapsulated within them. Brothers fighting brothers. Fathers fighting their sons and daughters. He could see it now, as clearly as the Tarsi that sat before him. The sight was a gift from the Elders who came before, for they were one and the same now, their memories shared. But it would take time for the revelations to come, and Bayorn didn’t know how much he would be able to learn. Only time would tell, and Fintran wasn’t around to ask.

But today the descendants of those early Tarsi had lined up, one by one, eager to shed their former skins and become new. Eager, but afraid.

He could almost hear their thoughts. Will it hurt? What will it be like afterwards? Will I still be the same Tarsi as I was before?

He had periodically freshened the cut in his hand with a shard of metal, grimacing as the blade bit his flesh. And the Tarsi came to him and placed their hand upon his. Bayorn placed his other hand atop theirs, sandwiching it, then sang soothing tones as the first pains of transformation overtook them. He watched in awe as their bodies began to shudder, to grow. It never ceased to amaze him.

“Praise Je-ha!” one of them exclaimed.

“Praise Letho, the Sartan-Sien! May he walk in the light of Je-Ha!” another shouted.

Bayorn smiled at them, and tried not to let the worry in his mind shroud the joy that shone in his eyes.

****

The morning came in a rush. Letho didn’t remember showering or discarding his ruined suit down a trash chute. Everything had been obliterated by a sleep sledgehammer.

“Let’s go, folks, chow time! Rise and shine!” Letho could hear Saul drumming on his door with the incalculable energy of an adolescent.

“All right! I’m up!” answered Letho, rubbing his eyes and peeling a white ghost of evaporated drool away from the corner of his mouth. He fished a suit from the dresser next to his cot. It was very similar to what he had worn on the Fulcrum station, but it was emblazoned with the flag of a nation that was no more: Twenty stars of white and red were emblazoned on a sea of deepest blue, and in the center of the blue sea stood a bear, its claws outstretched, two sabers crossed behind it. The flag of Tajsun, the former state in which Hastrom City resided—before the great nation of Arandos had fallen.

When Letho stepped outside of his room, he found Saul standing at the end of the hallway, his arms crossed impatiently.

Hurry up, asshole. Chow’s on, Letho heard Saul’s furrowed eyebrows say.

“We have about thirty minutes in the cafeteria before the next shift comes in, so we gotta hustle. If you don’t get down to chow on time, you don’t eat,” said Saul. As they made their way toward the stairs, Saul fired another contemptuous look at Letho, letting him know that causing someone to miss chow in Haven might be a capital offense.

But then Saul’s expression softened, almost too abruptly. “Look, I’m sorry about last night,” Saul said. “It ain’t easy keeping this place running, you know. We risk our asses every day, going on runs, trying to keep the warehouse stocked.”

“And you resented the fact that you had to make a run just to rescue us. I get it,” Letho said.

“Well, it ain’t exactly like that. Let’s just say we don’t like going out there for nothin’.”

“Well, I hope I don’t disappoint you.”

“With the legends that are floating around about you? How could you not?” Saul said, laughing.

“Yeah, I know, right?” Letho said, imitating Saul’s laugh with eerie perfection. He punched Saul in the arm, careful to not actually cause bodily harm, but firm enough to get the point across. Saul’s next step was a bit of a stumble, partly from the force of the blow, but more from surprise.

“Two for flinching, Saul! You ever play that game when you were a kid?”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Saul said, massaging his bicep.

It’s not so fun when it’s happening to you, is it? Ass.

They continued up the stairs in silence. Saul’s mood appeared to improve, as he began to whistle an off-key tune. But it wasn’t quite in time with the clicking sound of his boot heels, which began to drive Letho a little insane. Didn’t everyone more or less whistle in time with their walking pace, or was he just crazy? He grinned as he imagined himself blasting Saul in the head with his fist, driving it through the rock wall beside them.

“Something funny?” Saul asked.

“Nah, just remembered something. What is that tune you’re whistling?”

“You don’t recognize it?”

“Should I?”

“I don’t remember the name… it was one of those popsynths. Something about a Fulcrum guy who wants to ask the girl at his work center out to a movie. Man, I can’t even remember the group’s name anymore,” Saul said, somewhat wistfully.

“Yeah, sounds about right. Most of that stuff was pretty forgettable. I like the vintage stuff,” Letho said. Saul favored him with a wary eye, and Letho smiled, offering him a shrug. “But I guess that stuff was cool, too. Catchy, or whatever.”

“Right,” Saul said. “So anyways, the cafeteria is just ahead. Below us there’s a workout room and training center, complete with a small recball court and a gun range. The recball court also doubles as a close-quarters combat training area.”

The door at the end of the hallway opened as a few citizens spilled out of the cafeteria, and Letho felt sweet ecstasy slide up his nostrils.

“Oh my God, what is that smell?” Letho asked. Competing ambrosial aromas rocketed toward his brain, which in turn commanded his stomach to contract so hard he almost doubled over from the pangs.

“That would be bacon, as promised by our fearless leader,” Saul said.

“Oh, man. And is that eggs? You guys have real eggs too?”

“Yep, we have a small farm set up below the machinery area—hydroponic gardens as well as livestock. A few scrub chicken and pigs, is all. No beefs, I’m sorry to say, but we’re working on it. Haven’t been able to find any uncontaminated stock. Livestock is hard to find out there. Almost as precious as ammunition.”

“I’ve never had a real egg before. Do the real things taste that much better than synthetic?” The obese fellow Letho once was was having a full-on thrombosis in the back corner of his mind.

“You have no idea, pal, but you’re about to find out,” answered Saul.

They lined up in the cafeteria and were each given a tray. As they went down the row, cafeteria workers served them each small but adequate portions of eggs, fruit, bread, and bacon. The woman named Tiny—who, when not operating the crane, was apparently tasked with the solemn duty of doling out bacon—gave Letho a wink when she slid a couple of extra slices onto his tray. He wasn’t sure what to make of the lurid wink, but the extra grease candy was much appreciated.

As Letho went to find his seat he realized that everyone had stopped eating and was staring at him. Letho would rather have taken a shotgun blast to the face than address an audience, but the stares persisted, lingering on his skin like flies. So he stood up, cleared his throat and slicked his hair back absently with his hand.

“Uh, hi. My name is Letho Ferron.”

A collective intake of breath robbed the room of oxygen and the audience erupted in a tidal wave of susurration. The whispers were varied, but conveyed roughly the same sentiment:

It’s him!

No it’s not. He died, remember? Went off to Alastor’s ship and never came back.

I heard he brought a Mendraga with him.

It can’t be him. He’s too short!

“Yes, it’s me. just wanted to introduce myself. Thank you for taking my friends and me in. Really dig the place,” he finished, attempting to make his smile appear as genuine as possible, but in the process causing his face to contort like cheap plastic. He hoped that his joke would earn at least a few chuckles, so he did something that any comedian would tell you not to, he attempted to explain; “Get it, dig the place? Because we are underground?” No one laughed, and Letho cleared his throat, hoping for a moment something horrible would happen to him, that the roof would collapse, that one of them would stand up and rush him. Anything to get him out from under the scrutiny of all those eyes. It was the ambivalence that unnerved him the most. He could have handled smiles, and even looks of derision, but the sea of vacant stares, the idea that he had absolutely know idea what any of them were thinking was truly terrifying.

“Is it true?” asked a woman with wide eyes and a shock of white hair.

“Is what true?” Letho asked.

“Did you really come back from the dead?”

“I… think so?” he said, in a statement that was also a question. “I’m not sure exactly, because I might have been dead at the time.”

Some laughed, while others continued to regard him with bullet-lead stares.

“How many Mendraga did you kill?” asked a young man with thinning hair and a blue-black tattoo of a lightning bolt draped over the craggy ruin of an eye.

“Enough to know that they aren’t as tough as they seem. And their heads blow up real good,” Letho said, dropping his hand to his Black Bear. In a flash he drew the pistol, spun it a few times on his finger, and holstered it again. The people in the cafeteria barely had time to react to the fact that he had drawn a pistol before the display of his talents was over. They cheered, and this time a little more of the crowd joined in.

I’m getting good at this.

“But you travel with a Mendraga. A woman. Word is that she was one of them that came to the Centennial Fulcrum with Alastor himself. I seen her!”

The mood that had moments before been laudatory immediately turned toward suspicion and anger. Just as Letho was scanning for exit routes, a reassuring hand clasped his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. The old man at his side raised his hand into the air, and the crowd immediately grew silent.

“Now folks, I’m sure you have lots of questions, but let’s save those for the next town meeting, shall we?” Zedock said.

“But what about the Mendraga?”

“Yeah!” shouted another from a mouth that looked tailor made to suck on a moonshine jar until its owner’s guts rotted out.

“Yeah! We deserve to know!”

The louder the crowd got, the more their collective pool of intelligence dwindled.

No one is as dumb as all of us! Letho’s mind sang, flashing an image of some poster he had once seen in someone’s cubicle of a bunch of cats scrambling to get out of a toilet bowl.

“All right, already,” Zedock said, not quite shouting, but raising his voice just enough to cause those directly in front of him to flinch and those in the back to snap to attention. “Yes, we brought a Mendraga in last night, and yes, she does know Alastor, but she is fully cooperative, and at this time is cooling her heels in the detention center.”

“What if she’s communicating with Alastor right now?” one shouted.

“Son, if she can talk to Alastor through thousands of tons of solid rock, I’ll shit in my own hat and eat it,” Zedock said. With this singular expression he had half of the crowd back in the palm of his hand. Letho marveled.