Beneath Ceaseless Skies #17 Read online

  Soon the sneering half-grown kid from the square was chivvying him along through the tables, through the thick sweeping curtains, and into an alcove behind another curtain, even thicker, so that when it was drawn to behind him the outside murmur was hushed.

  Another moment, and the curtain swept open and closed again around a thin, pale-faced man in a suit and a string tie. He eyed Jabey from beneath stark black eyebrows and motioned him to a circle of chairs around a low table.

  “You realize you are in a peculiar position?” the man said. “The number of individuals beginning their employment in this district after the age of five or six years is remarkably small.” One eyebrow arched. “Much like the number of tinymen at liberty to seek employment.”

  “‘At liberty’ is a manner of speaking, Mister,” Jabey said, lifting his chin.

  “I thought it might be,” said Sloan. “If I may?”

  Jabey shivered as Sloan’s cool fingers brushed against his neck, pausing at the scars. “I was lackey boy to a ganger named Yol for a long while.”

  “Until quite recently, I would guess.”

  Jabey met his eyes. “Yeah.”

  Sloan dropped his hand and nodded as if this were expected. “If you would show me the item you brought—the token, as it were, of your eagerness to join my enterprise.”

  It came to Jabey that he’d never looked at these glasses in proper light; what if they were just a cheap shiny? But the sudden sharp panic receded as he pulled them from his pocket and unwrapped the linen. They were indeed a tiny pair of opera glasses, with a simplicity and a heft about them that suggested expense.

  “How very interesting,” said Sloan, taking them from him. “You understand that I do not personally secure raw material?” he said. “And of course, if the child is dead or grown they are only a token, but even so....”

  Caroline. They were Caroline’s glasses.

  Jabey’s nails dug into his palms. A ‘token,’ right. And he was a tinyman, he knew what good tokens were to the dark quarter’s shapers-flesh, what manner of gimmickry they could do without even touching a person, so long as they had a handkerchief or a snip of hair. Stupid muck, what’d he been thinking? Not thinking, that was it.

  Sloan was patting at his pockets, finally bringing out an instrument with a gauge at its end, scented faintly of oil. He held the instrument to the glasses. “The child is indeed alive. Yet the reading is irregular....” He frowned and pulled a different gauge from his pocket, this one with tines jutting from its end, and held the glasses beneath the tines. “You are either a fool or far more subtle than I guessed.”

  Had it been any old gang chief maybe Jabey’s bravado could have held, but it melted under Sloan’s glare. “Mister, I guess I’m a fool, because I got no idea what you’re saying.”

  “Haven’t you?” But it didn’t sound like an accusation.

  And then the curtain opened and a man huge but blank-eyed stood there, his massive hand engulfing Caroline’s. A bogey. He intoned, “Delamander says, ‘This girl says she’s with your visitor.’”

  “Increasingly curious,” said Sloan. “Leave her here. Tell Delamander, ‘Sloan says, “Post an alert, and keep an eye on the borders. Security is over-loose.”‘“

  The man walked out.

  “Young lady, if you will kindly sit beside your associate here. May I ask how you come to be here, and with what purpose?”

  Caroline curtsied and sat. “Mr. Jabey brought me, sir. We made a bargain. I gave him my opera glasses”—she pointed—”and he brought me to his country.”

  “His country?”

  “She thinks I’m an elf or such-like,” said Jabey miserably.

  “And I always wanted so much to visit Faerie.”

  “Faerie, indeed,” said Sloan. “May I ask your name?”

  “Caroline Elisabeth Morrowbridge, sir.”

  “Morrowbridge. Morrowbridge—I could vow I was familiar with the name. Your parents...?”

  “My father’s Jonathan Standish Morrowbridge. My mother was Ellen Gainsborough before she married Father, but she’d dead now.”

  “Morrowbridge. Of course. And it explains the peculiar reading.” Sloan glanced at his instrument. “Not peculiar at all, actually. What a marvelous coincidence it all is, don’t you agree?”

  Caroline sat at the edge of her chair, silent, eyes bright. Jabey shook his head. “Look here, Mr. Sloan, I’m looking for a place to courie, as you like, and any other odd bits a tinyman might do. I didn’t mean nothing by bringing you those bungy glasses, nor by bringing this girl here, either, which I sure didn’t mean to do. If you’ve no mind to tell, that’s fine by me, sir, but just you know I don’t know nothing you don’t tell me.”

  Sloan raised an eyebrow. “A wise attitude—a pity more don’t take it.” He turned to Caroline. “Perhaps you would enjoy a tour of Faerie?”

  What about the job, Jabey wanted to ask. Was he in? Did he even want to be in? Gangers were no cheerful companions, but they were as good as kin next to clubbers, who were known for being sheer uncanny—which seemed a fair enough estimate of Sloan.

  Not that he’d a choice between Sloan and any old ganger. It was Sloan or Yol.

  He followed them out reluctantly, twitching at every sound behind him.

  * * *

  Sloan led them through warehouse rooms full of rabbits, rooms where goats bawled and lank-tailed monkeys screeched. He gave Caroline an apple to feed a pair of sheep bleating and milling in their pen. He led them strolling through laboratories thick with the same sharp odors that filled the sewers below.

  Jabey scanned each new room for familiar benches or shelves, for the particular water-stained ceiling that he remembered clearest of anything in this place because he’d spent so much time staring up at it, months and months as they drained the growth out of him.

  Finally they came to the room he knew, the high-beamed laboratory crowded with benches, instruments, and rows of vats. Sloan swept his hand towards one and said, “And here, as you can see, is how we begin the process of making tinyman.”

  Caroline turned to Sloan, eyes huge. “You make them?”

  “Certainly. Your associate Mr. Jabey was destined to be a full-sized man, once.”

  Jabey jammed his fists deeper in his pockets. He dared not look in the vat, where the baby slept. This part of the dark quarter he knew quite well; could never unknow, however he’d like to. The bogeys standing over the vats were the same that had tended him, the huge mindless men who spoke only others’ words. They’d never spoken any to him.

  “Then how did you make him small?” Caroline was saying.

  “We’ve certain methods that we find quite satisfactory.”

  “Trade secrets,” Jabey said, amazed at the mildness in his voice. “They don’t tell outside folk.”

  “The techniques would bore you,” said Sloan. “However, the principle is simple enough. You, as a living entity, enjoy certain quantities of which you are almost surely unaware: quantities such as the general health of your body, the amount of growth you will experience over your lifetime, the vast complicated sum of your intelligence.

  “Imagine yourself a beaker.” He dipped a nearby glass in the vat’s blue fluid. “Here you are. And here is something else—something entirely lifeless, completely inanimate.” He held up another glass, empty. “What a simple matter it is to pour some of you into some of it.” Fluid sloshed into the empty glass. “A tinyman was a full glass once, but we poured most of his growth into something else... useful.”

  What sort of useful? What was it they’d cheated him to make?

  And what was this ache in his hands, as though they would snap out and strangle Sloan of their own accord?

  “You mean Mr. Jabey is an ordinary man? He’s only—” Caroline paused, searching for the word. “He’s only made?” She peered around at Jabey, eyes glimmering with tears. “He isn’t of the fairy-folk?”

  Sloan didn’t seem to hear. “There is one more thing I should particu
larly like to show you, Ms. Morrowbridge,” he said. “This way, please.”

  Caroline gave Jabey a last forsaken look and followed, turning her head away when he caught up to her. He buried his hands in his pockets and stomped ahead. Dumb rich’s girl, he shouldn’t oughta expect anything else from her.

  Beyond was another hallway lined with doors, in each a window criss-crossed with bars. At one of these Sloan set a wide, shallow-stepped ladder and held Caroline’s hand as she climbed it. Jabey pushed up beside her.

  Through the window was a child’s nursery, very small, wallpapered and wood-floored and carpeted with a colorful rug. In the bed slept a girl somewhat smaller than Caroline.

  “Why is she here?” Caroline said.

  “A man has requested a simulacrum of his late beloved,” said Sloan. “We procured an unwanted girl infant, and have since been molding her flesh in the desired pattern. But of course she would grow at the rate of any ordinary child if we did not supplement that growth with, shall we say, the contents of someone else’s beaker.”

  “So you shall have another tinyman?”

  “Who can say? Human growth is costly. This man offered us a source of his own, rather than pay the fee we asked, and we must extract the growth indirectly, via tokens and potions—an inefficient method. Perhaps he will decide sometime soon that the usual growth rate is sufficient.” A slight cough. “I am not sure he will even see the project through. He is rather a nervous man.”

  Jabey looked at the sleeping girl, doubtless accustomed to her tiny world and the people staring at its window. He had been her once—only he had never grown, and she would. Maybe. So someone else would be the tinyman....

  A suspicion struck, as sudden and brilliant as a flint spark.

  He crawled down the ladder, certain every thought was written in the tension of his shoulders, in his glare. If Sloan noticed a change, he ignored it as he ushered Caroline to the floor.

  Caroline, who was terribly small for her age....

  Jabey kept his eyes low as he followed them, composing his face. What did it matter if Caroline’s rich papa was draining her growth away for that ‘project’ back there, to gimmick up his dead wife? It didn’t, that’s all. Caroline was a rich’s girl; she’d be all right no matter her size. It didn’t mean anything to Jabey.

  Sloan returned them at last to the club, pausing at the door to allow them ahead. “To the same meeting room,” he said. “We’ve one last matter to discuss.”

  It wasn’t until Jabey had pushed aside the curtain—under the blank eye of a sentry bogey—that he realized Sloan was some distance behind them.

  Caroline slid into a chair and watched Jabey carefully as he stood by the next one. That’s right, rich’s girl, look at him, nothing special, just made. “What is he going to do to us?” she asked.

  “Won’t do nothing,” Jabey growled. No way a gimmicker would risk gumming up a project.

  “He won’t turn us into anything, will he?”

  Sloan pushed aside the curtain and smiled down to Caroline.

  “Ms. Morrowbridge,” Sloan said, “it has been my unexpected pleasure to show you around my small realm.” Another smile, which Caroline didn’t return. “As a last treat before you make your way home, perhaps you’d care for a bit of a brew we make here?” From a tray behind him he brought a steaming mug and set it in front of her.

  She took a gulping breath. “I mustn’t drink things from Faerie. If I do, I’ll have to stay here for always.”

  “Ah, but in this corner of Faerie it is different. Here, you must drink a bit of our brew, or else we cannot allow you to leave. And you have had enough adventure for now, have you not? You would prefer to return to your home and your bed?”

  “Thank you ever so much,” Caroline said, “but I mustn’t drink it.” Her voice was firm but her hands trembled in her lap.

  “Just leave her be, why don’t you?” Jabey said.

  Sloan hushed him with a wave of his hand and crouched to look Caroline in the eye. “Ms. Morrowbridge, I shall be frank. I cannot allow you to remember clearly the things you have seen here.”

  “I won’t tell,” she whispered, shrinking back.

  “That is not enough, I’m afraid. This brew—which is, I assure you, a most pleasant and warming potion—will leave this night’s happenings a dream, and no more. If things have frightened you here, then you will remember them as only a nightmare. If you have been disappointed,”—he gave Jabey the barest glance—”then this brew will dull the sorrow. But I cannot allow you to leave until you drink it.”

  She turned frightened eyes to Jabey. She’d reason to be afraid, little rich’s girl in this down-and-under city. Something would have scared her sometime if she’d hadn’t come here.

  Still he didn’t like seeing it in her eyes. If forgetting was all Sloan’s drink would do to her, maybe it was just as well. Jabey nodded to her.

  “All right,” she said. Her eyes still on Jabey, she picked up the mug with both hands, lifted it to her mouth, and did not lower it until it was empty.

  “Excellent,” Sloan said. “Now, perhaps you will find the getting out of our district a simpler matter than the getting in.”

  He led them down a long casement of steps to a room with all the damp, dark odor of a cellar. At the far end was a rounded bronze door with a mechanism on its face. “We have our own uses for runners, on occasion,” he said. “Jabey, when you return we can discuss the details of your employment. I believe we can find a mutually satisfactory arrangement.”

  Jabey nodded, mute.

  Sloan pressed at one knob and twisted at another, and the whole door swung in—bringing the sewer stinks with it.

  “Right. Come on,” Jabey said, taking Caroline’s arm and helping her climb over the door’s edge. It clanked solidly behind them.

  The trek back to the west hill was slower because of Caroline, but less tentative now that Jabey’d begun to see the pattern of these new sewers. They’d just crossed a plank into familiar lines when Caroline sniffled. Another three steps, and she sniffled again.

  “That wasn’t Faerie,” she said.

  “Could have told you that,” Jabey said.

  “I knew it wouldn’t be. I know there’s no such place as Faerie.” Another sniffle. “I’m not a baby. But when you talked about it, it sounded like Faerie, all full of magic. And it was. Some of it was so very pretty, like the lamps that told the street names, and those creatures we saw dancing. I couldn’t have imagined half the things I saw. It was just like I thought Faerie would be.

  “I always knew why people wanted to go to Faerie—it was beautiful and strange and full of things that you couldn’t explain with ordinary words. But now I think understand why they should want to leave.” A pause. “That’s why I drank what Mr. Sloan gave me. Was I foolish?”

  “Maybe you don’t want to remember all that,” said Jabey.

  Caroline wrapped both her hands around one Jabey’s. “And I always knew you weren’t an elf,” she said softly. “But you’re still small, like me. I’m sorry Mr. Sloan and those people did those things to you.”

  “Nothing for you to do about it,” he muttered. It was just her istocrat manners talking, he told himself. It didn’t mean anything. “Come on, we gotta get you up there before dawn and people start watching.”

  She didn’t say any more, and in another ten minutes he was half-carrying her. It came to him, as they climbed the last few blocks uphill, that there’d be questions regardless. Her dress was streaked with slime and she smelled like a runner. They’d probably think she’d fallen in someone’s privy.

  At least she wouldn’t have to worry about explaining, if that muck Sloan knew his business. She wouldn’t know any better than anyone else.

  Finally, the right storm drain. He left her leaning into the wall while he clambered above to look for passersby. The faintest hint of dawn hung at the horizon. He boosted her up and got her the last few steps to the side door, where she fell into a heap, alr
eady dozing.

  Much longer and the whole world would be waking, not just the milkmen and the lamp-dowsers. Regular folk, and Yol, too, hunting his runaway runt. He knew a side drain down the hill where no one would bother him, where he could sleep a while before reporting in to Sloan.

  He turned towards the drain, glancing back once to the girl huddled at the door. She was just a rich’s girl, and anyway she was safe now. She was no worry of Jabey’s anymore. He crawled below and headed towards that side drain.

  Terribly small for her age....

  It was somewhere beneath the dark quarter, not quite to Sloan’s street, that Jabey realized what he was going to do. It didn’t feel like a decision, like when he’d stood at the door of Yol’s shop, thrown the severed slave collar behind him, and run. It was like the tide washing into Upper Inlet, each wave a little higher until the grounded ship rocked on her hull.

  He was going to save Caroline. They’d gimmick no more growth from her; he’d see to it.

  And, like a ship knew which way the ocean was, Jabey knew how. Maybe.

  He didn’t crawl up the same drain this time. He hadn’t been watching the way they’d come to Sloan’s laboratories, but his feet knew, even here below. When he was under the right street he started sniffing for that peculiar bitterness of a tinyman’s vatwater and followed it to an incoming pipe hardly wider than himself. He squeezed into the drain and edged upwards. Those drain holes in the corners of Sloan’s laboratory, they were big enough for him. He’d be fine. As long as no early-rising gimmicker spilled something and no one mopped the floor and no one had bothered to secure those grills that covered the drains, he’d be fine.

  Finally the pipe turned upwards and dim light filtered down. Jabey wedged himself against one side and wriggled up, wedged himself against the other side and up again. He reached the top and pressed against the grill, nearly slipping as he did. It didn’t move. He shoved his shoulder up and it unstuck. Carefully he slid it aside and heaved himself onto the laboratory floor, cringing as the grill scraped against cement.

  Across the room something skittered away. Jabey dropped to the floor, lungs tight. There was a squeak, more scuffling, and then he just saw a rat’s tail as it disappeared around the door.