Angry Lead Skies



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73

I looked out the peephole as someone knocked. I saw a lean
beanpole of a man all dressed in black. He had a black beard and
wore a wide-brimmed black hat. I didn’t recognize him.

Dean came into the hallway, started to go back when he saw that
I’d reached the door first. I beckoned him forward, to answer
while I eavesdropped and covered him from the small front room. The
stillness and emptiness in there were sweet. With luck the parrot
smell would fade away eventually.

Dean followed instructions but didn’t fail to stomp and
employ his full arsenal of disgusted expressions.

The man on the stoop asked, “Is this the home of the
confidential operative known as Garrett?”

Sounded to me like he knew the answer already.

Dean thought so, too. “Yes. Why?”

“I have a message from Miss Contague.” Sounded like
he was talking about a living goddess, the way he said that.
“For Mr. Garrett.” Making sure.

He went away without saying anything more.

“That was strange,” Dean told me, handing me a
vellum document folded and sealed with a red wax seal as ornate as
any used by the nobility. “That man had a voice like an
embalmer.”

“She chooses her henchmen to ornament her own epic. Which
she rewrites as she goes along.”

“It’s a crying shame. Such a lovely young woman to
be so twisted. I blame her father.”

“So do I. But however cruel Chodo was, he never put a
knife to her throat and forced her to do evil. She made the
choices.” When first we’d met Belinda had been trying
to kill herself by slutting it up down in the Tenderloin. At the
time that had been fashionable amongst unhappy young women from
wealthy families.

Even now Belinda seemed determined to bring about her own
destruction. Except that these days she wanted to go out in a
flashy orgy of violence. So her pain could be seen and shared by
everyone.

The Dead Man once told me that monsters aren’t born,
they’re made. That they are memorials which take years of
cruelty to sculpt. And that while we should weep for the tortured
child who served as raw material, we should permit no sentiment to
impede us while we rid the world of the terror strewn by the
finished work. It took me a while to figure out what he meant but I
do understand him now.

You just need one intimate look at what a fully mature monster
can do to achieve enlightenment.

He may have been the most wonderful pup you’ve ever known
but you don’t hesitate to strike the dog if he goes
rabid.

What is it?

“Belinda found the flying ship that got away out in the
wine country.”

Dean said, “It took that much paper just to tell you
that?” No wondering on his part about why she’d even
been looking.

“There’s some cry-on-the-shoulder stuff, too.”
Almost like a confession. Which made me wonder if I shouldn’t
be more pessimistic about my personal longevity. I might be
scheduled to share her funeral pyre. “And her people have
found the stable where Casey keeps his donkey.” That for the
Dead Man’s benefit, not Dean’s. Dean didn’t care.
“Things he told the people there led Belinda’s agents
to another apartment. It doesn’t sound as fancy as
Casey’s Bic Gonlit place but the stuff she says they found
there makes me wonder if half of TunFaire’s population
isn’t our pal Casey in disguise.”

Excellent. Will you want to relay any of this to Colonel
Block?

“Not today. Because he’d pass it on.” And the
people he’d pass it to don’t really need more power
than they already have. “You think we can use this as
leverage to work on Casey?” I wished we’d find
something. I was way tired of having the Visitor underfoot.
“Can we make him think we have him over a barrel, now?”
He’d been around too long just to hand over to the Guard,
now. Block and Relway would want to know why I hadn’t
bothered to mention him earlier.

Probably. And the point to doing that would be
what?

“Oh. Yeah. He’s on a mission.”

I will discuss it with him. Meanwhile, it is time you
stopped lollygagging and went back to work.

I’d begun to loathe the captain of industry gig.

All right. Yes. Everybody did warn me.
But . . . I guess it’s mostly because my
partners don’t have any patience with my relaxed attitude
toward work. They’re worse than tribe of dwarves trained by
Dean.

There is supposed to be a lot of humorless, from under the roots
of mountains, all work and no play, dwarfish blood up one of the
branches of the Tate family tree. I can’t provide any
arguments against the allegation, of my own knowledge. Tinnie
definitely finds it hard to step away from work for any extended
length of time.

I was the only key member of the new company not having great
fun with our venture. Kip haunted his vast new workshop twenty
hours a day, and usually fell asleep there. Fawning Tate nephews
and cousins rushed hither and yon, making sure Kip’s genius
remained unencumbered by scutwork. Experts from the discontinued
military leather goods operations now stayed busy trying to
determine the most efficient means of three-wheel production.

My own three-wheel, the only pay I’d yet received for any
of my trouble, had been spirited in from Playmate’s stable.
It now resided in the Tate compound inner courtyard, where there
were always folks lined up to take a short ride. The managers
didn’t want their several completed prototypes
defiled by the unwashed. Even brother, sister, and cousin
unwashed.

Though two-thirds of the shoe factory floor had been turned over
to new manufacture, the Tales weren’t abandoning their
traditional business base. They were just scaling back to the
peacetime levels known by their great-grandfathers.

Shoes become a luxury when you have to pay for them
yourself.

The Tates would remain the leading producers of fashionable
women’s footwear. They’d held that distinction since
imperial times.

Though I was a rabid fan of the three-wheel and wasn’t
interested in much else, less than half the reassigned production
space was intended for the manufacture of my vehicle. My associates
were equally taken with several other Kip Prose inventions. His
writing sticks were in production already, in three different
colors. And orders were piling up.

The Guard and the Hill folk hadn’t taken notice, perhaps
because writing sticks don’t fly.

Kip was having the time of his life. He was the center of
everything. Everyone else was having a great time, meeting the
challenges. Everyone but poor Garrett. There wasn’t that much
for him to do.

I’d used up my ration of genius.

There were no crooks here, trying to steal from the boss. I
didn’t have any other assets to kick in, except for knowing a
lot of different people I can bring to bear on a difficulty. But
the only bringing together I was getting done these days took place
back at the house, nights. Woderact was proving to be a researcher
every bit as dedicated as Evas had been. A tad more shy, initially,
but Fasfir kept egging her on. And climbed right in there with us
when the adventure called her.

TunFaire gets weirder by the hour. And my life marches in the
van.

There wasn’t much I could do but all my business
associates seemed determined to have me right there at the factory
not doing it.

I’m an old hand at skating out of the boring stuff. I
acquired that skill in the harsh realm of war. I ducked out of the
Tate compound. I recouped my spirit and recovered from my difficult
nights by undertaking the promised visits to the troubled Weider
satellite breweries.

That killed three days but didn’t demand much genius. Like
so many TunFairen villains, the various crooks were completely
inept. They betrayed themselves immediately. My report named
several managerial types who had to go when the thieves went
because bad guys as incompetent as the ones I’d caught
couldn’t possibly have operated without their superiors
turning a blind eye while extending a palm for a share of the
proceeds.



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