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WHO'S THAT FELLAH IN YOUR NISHIA-BELLA?
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I'm not a devout man, and I don't mind saying it. Especially now, with half the country chargin' off to be Shavvies, and all of 'em nutty with religion. I take my religion no more serious than I do my drink—not as serious. Religion is for children, and frightened old citizens, and the sickly.
But I'm a man that knows the value of money, and when the lady from Castle Fra—Bardow Kellyr's brass-and-pig-iron wife—made me a proposition, and she put a sufficient value on it, religion or no religion I was ready to go.
Get a group together, she said. Offerin' me plenty of money just for that part of it, you see. One hundred fifty decacredits she offered me, and a man like me doesn't see a hundred fifty decacredits in a lifetime, not all together in his hand like I saw them that night at the Castle. Get together a group, she tells me, maybe twenty-thirty of us. Call ourselves the Holy Defending Army of the Faithful, she says. Have some meetings, put up posters around, all sayin' the same thing—that it's that witchwoman Drussa Silver that's responsible for all the trouble we're havin' lately.
Well, I don't mind doin' that, by the Duties—not for a minute, because it's certain sure something is responsible, and the Silver woman more likely than most. What with food shortages, and bombings in the cities, and Chapels bein' burned down, and people goin' after each other with everything but their bare nails, why the country's like Hell come on Freeway and takin' over early.
It's not natural, I say, for people to behave the way they are these past months, and not natural for people to do the things I have with my own two eyes seen the Shavvies do—and between one unnatural thing and another, there's bound to be a road goin' back and forth, and time the people knew about it.
So I says I'll do what she wants, and willing. Especially for the money. And even when she told me the rest of it, I didn't mind. A life isn't so much to me, you know. Those as live have only one misery after another, it's those as die that have it easy, and who's to say those of us who help somebody along the road of the newdead aren't the heroes? That's what I always say to myself when I wake up in the middle of the night with my nerves comin' back at me. And then she said another two hundred decacredits, and that helped me make my mind up. And then she said, quiet as silk, that she'd kill me and my mother as well if I talked, and I knew she would too. She didn't need to tell me that—not me. Everybody knows about Bardow Kellyr's wife. A woman made of the same stuff the mountains are, and hot a nerve in her, and five hundred strong men in Castle Fra as would die for her if she raised an eyebrow to ask 'em. Talk about anything she said to me? Not likely.
I remember me well when Tayn Kellyr was Governor of this Sector, because I almost starved to death. There was no crime when she was head of the show, and you figured if you even had an illegal thought she'd know it and you'd be inside Caper Hole Tube before you saw the lawrobot comin' up your street, oh yes. I was happy when she gave it up and turned it over to her bumble-elbow of a husband, so a person at least had a fair chance in this life.
And so I did like she said, and it didn't take long. Seems as if the people were achin' to have the blame for all the worry put square on somebody, and Drussa Silver made an ideal somebody. The country's full of nuts, and all of 'em ready to take out after anybody as offers 'em any kind of mad scheme, so findin' men to be in the glorious Army was no trouble either. We dressed ourselves up in red-and-green stripy cloaks—and bedamned hot they were, too—and we did the whole thing. We marched in the streets, carryin' a giant figure of Drussa Silver on poles, and we set it afire in the main square just hard by the Street of Small Roses. Danced around it while it blazed away, screamin' "Death to the Silver Devil!" (I thought that was catchy.)
We had a hunger strike, and we boycotted places that traded Shavvy goods, and we covered the Sector one end to the other with posters that said "ARE YOU AFRAID TO GO TO SLEEP AT NIGHT, CITIZEN? HERE'S THE REASON WHY!" and then a picture of Drussa Silver big and sort of loomin' down over you. We spread stories that she stole children to be raised Shavvy—lifted 'em right out of their sleeping-slots without so much as goin' near 'em, and she could do that, too, you know—which helped make it convincing. And we just basically set ourselves to bringin' everybody round to the idea that she was the devil's own mother, that Silver.
Did a good job, too. People packed into our meetings, and they cheered us on when we said she ought to be taken away and lasered. Though I don't know as how they'd of approved of such a thing, really—not if the time had come to do it. Most people are mighty poor at violence these days, especially the Old Faithers. Too docile. Too well-trained. The bloody Twice Twelve Duties runnin' out their ears and their asses, it's no wonder.
Well, we worked at it till we judged the time was right, and then we made our plans. The Silver has a habit of walkin' down by the river in the evenings, with half a dozen of her stupid sheep along to listen to her carry on about Choosing and Seeking. Wouldn't you think grown people would find better ways to waste their time? Even a child knows there's no choosing in this world—not for most of us—and as for seeking, it's seeking to stay out of the rain and out of the way of the lawrobots that about covers it. The woman talks nonsense, and those as listen to her must be hard up for entertainment.
We followed her, of an evening, till she was in a good place for what we wanted to do, down under a bridge where the river ran shallow and broke around the bridge pillars, with the trees comin' down thick along the banks and only a narrow path to walk. She was almost alone. Just two women and the offworld Student with her when we set our knives at the ready and stepped out onto the path.
We backed her up against a pillar, and did a good deal of wavin' our knives around and carryin' on about how we were saving the people. All according to the instructions Tayn Kellyr passed along, you see. We had to make it absolutely certain that nobody got the idea the Silver was killed by some maniac or anything like that—it had to be done so everybody knew it was the Defending Army slaying the enemy of the Old Faith. Citizen Kellyr was most particular about that part of it.
I had the woman, her back to the pillar, and my knife against her pretty neck (not that I like knives, let me say right here and now, but the lady Kellyr said lasers wouldn't give the right impression, so knives it was), and was just well into my speech, when the whole thing went crazy on us ...
Crazy, I say. It's me as says it.
Like I told you, I'm not a religious man. I don't hold with prayer and I don't hold with miracles, and I wouldn't hold with tithin' if there was any way I could get out of it. But I'm here to tell you, as true as my name is Kipper Clary, that I saw the Silver change before my eyes, and she was herself no longer. A giant serpent she became, with the long tongue on 'er flickerin' like lightning. She rose higher than my head by once again my height—red wings, she had, and eyes that shone like black diamonds and shot rays of fire out over the river, and a thousand rattles hissing on her tail. Round her body, and I as tell you this ready to die for the truth of it, there crawled lizards long as my arm, and great scorpions lashin' their stingers like whips—oh, I tell you, I ran. I ran! I don't care if I was offered a hundred fifty milacredits—I wouldn't of stayed there, not for any price, nor would my men. I ran, and they ran, and only one of us that didn't—and he stayed not because he was brave but because he was so scared he couldn't move.
He came whimperin' in an hour later tellin' a tale that made no sense at all. I didn't want to listen to it, because I was frettin' over what I was goin' to tell Citizen Tayn Kellyr, and the two hundred decacredits I'd lost. But he would have me hear it—nothing would do but I should listen to his drivel—and so I gave in and let him talk, but I made up my mind to be rid of him. A man without even the guts to run is no damn good at all, I say.
It seems that after we left, he told me, Drussa Silver became herself again. And she was angry, he said. He said she fairly glowed in the dark, she was that angry, and it was the offworlder she was angry at. I forget her exact words as he quoted 'em—all of 'em worth a credit apiece and not part of my speech nor likely ever to be—but the heart of it was that the offworlder had a hell of a lot of nerve interferin' in her business, and she'd thank him not to do it again.
Which is what makes no sense. He didn't do anything, you see. I was there. I was there the whole time, and he never moved so much as a fingertip to help the woman, just stood there like a twig, starin' at us and frownin' a little like something smelled bad to him. But my man tells me Drussa Silver fussed at him a good ten minutes, and then said gentle but firm that she wanted his word he'd never more do whatever it was she claimed he'd done. But the Student said no, my man says. Shook his head, and said no. Said she might do whatever she liked, but he'd promise her no such thing. Now make sense of that, will you?
Well, I went back to Tayn Kellyr, and a bad time I had of it. She was angry. She fair took my head off my body, just laid me back with that tongue of hers that like to cuts a man into little whimpering pieces. Called me a coward, she did, and said I'd been taken in by baby tricks and how she should have had better sense than to send such a lily-liver as me, and a lot of other things equally nasty to listen to. There wasn't much I could say back, seein' as how I had run, so I bit my lip and I took it. I didn't think it was fair, and I thought Tayn Kellyr might have run from a fifteen-foot winged snake her own self. But I couldn't be sure of it, seeing as it was her ... and I hate to admit it, but she might not of run. I stood and took it, and I told her I was sorry, and she quieted down some.
She's a beautiful woman, is Tayn Kellyr, and a sorry life she must have had with that man she's tied to, and a cold bed at night, though they say the nobles do no loving except what gets their babies—above it, they are, so I've heard all my life, though I don't know as I believe it. But I believe it of that Kellyr woman. She stood up and looked me in the eye and she said to me, "That's all right, Citizen Clary," bitter and bitin' off every word between those fine white teeth. "It's not your fault," she said, which was only fair.
"And I don't know whose fault it is, Citizen," I said respectfully.
"Mine," she said, and that surprised me a good deal. "Mine," she said, "because I thought it could be done this easily. I should have known that this was work for an expert, and an expert I shall have, next time."
She gave me a look—such a look I can't tell you, it fair froze my blood in my veins. But she spoke civil enough, and she seemed to have stopped holdin' it against me. She added another fifty decacredits to my pay, though I'd failed the job, instead of takin' back every credit but the ones I'd paid for the posters with, like I'd thought she would do.
"You'll be trying again, then, Citizen Kellyr?" I asked, speakin' high-class and easy, as long as we were on that kind of basis for a few minutes, but she only waved me out of the room like she couldn't stand the sight of me any longer, and I took my money and went without botherin' her more. A man doesn't cross Tayn Kellyr, not if he doesn't fancy bein' shipped out to the central Sector to work in the fertilizer plants.
I don't know what kind of expert the woman intends on callin' in to help in the next try. A snake expert, I would say, and a scorpion expert—phaw, I'll see those big bugs with their tails whippin' round in my sleep for the rest of my days.
Wonder how she plans to go at it?