Epiphany of the Long Sun (63 page)

Swallow nodded.

"A boat has a certain character, just as this chair does. This is comfortable and solid, brown, and so forth. A boat may be a willing or a reluctant sailer, it may be stable or prone to rock. But a boat isn't a person."

Maytera Marble cleared her throat, a rasp like the scraping of a crusted pan. "Are you going to ask how they can build a talus with a certain character, Patera? I don't think they can, really. I've never…"

"Go on, Maytera."

"Never built a child. With a man, you know. But-but from what I understand, we can't either. We do our best, give the child all the advantages we can. But after that, it's up to the gods. To Molding Molpe and Lord Pas, principally."

Swallow nodded again. "It's no different here, Maytera. The layman thinks taluses are all alike. That's because they all sound the same to him. When you've spent a while talking to them, you find out they don't really talk alike even if they all sound like taluses. When it comes to ingenuity or honesty, that kind of thing, they can differ pretty widely. As you say, it depends on the spirit they get from the gods.

"They're all boring," Mucor told him; he seemed about to reply, but meeting her corpse-like gaze quickly looked away.

"There is another difference I wanted to inquire about," Silk interposed. "I mean between taluses and boats, or any other man-made object. If I were to go to Limna with a case full of cards, I could buy a boat; and once I had paid for it, it would be mine. I could sail it or leave it tied to a pier. I could burn or sink it if I wanted to, or give it to Maytera here, or to Chenille or anyone I chose. A talus is a person, and I would assume that in cities in which slavery is legal, anyone with sufficient funds could go to a facility such as yours and order a talus built-"

"You can do that here, Caldé," Swallow put in.

"Ah. That's interesting."

"Good thing?" Oreb inquired.

Maytera Marble said, "It seems to me that all this applied to me once as well, Patera. No one owned me. I've always been free, I'm sure, and yet I did what I was told. I still do, for the most part. I respect authority, and when I was younger, I don't think it even occurred to me to question it." She looked thoughtful, her head down and inclined to the left.

To encourage her Oreb croaked, "Talk now."

"Most bio-do you really want to hear this, Patera? I could tell you later, if you like."

"Of course I do. Tell us."

"I was just going to say that most bio children are like that, too. I don't mean that there are no bad children, though foolish people say that because it makes them feel virtuous. But there are really very few. I've taught children for a long time, and most can be controlled quite easily with a few little scoldings and a few words of praise." She paused, lifting her head and squaring her shoulders. "So can most grownups. Not quite so easily, but it isn't a lot more difficult."

Swallow chuckled. "She's right, Caldé. I boss almost two hundred employees here, and as a general thing a good chewing out now and then and a pat on the back for good work are all it takes. Once in a rare while we take on somebody that doesn't work out, stealing tools or whatever, and we've got to get rid of him. But it doesn't happen often."

"I've been thinking about Marl, Patera."

Silk nodded, noting as he did the first large drops of the rain that had been threatening; they were tapping on the window panes tentatively, but with growing urgency.

"Marl doesn't receive any wages at all. I told you."

Swallow raised an eyebrow. "Black mechanics, Maytera? It sounds like it."

"I don't know. I really hadn't considered it. I was just going to say that Marl seems like an extreme instance of-of pliability. I suppose you could call it that…"

Maytera Marble's remaining hand tightened its grip on the handle of the small basket in her lap. "And if you can make use of that pliability to control others as you do, Director, with a little money and scoldings and praise, then it seems to me people like you don't really need slaves, except as sops to their egos. I'm expressing this offensively, I know, but I think you see what I mean. As for black mechanics, aren't they legendary? Largely legendary, I should have said. I know that some people practiced the black art in the past."

"There's still a bit around in my opinion, Maytera. In my business we hear things, and that's one of the things we hear." Swallow turned to Silk. "I'm a blunt man, Caldé, and I'm going to ask you straight out. Are you interested in getting a new talus for the Guard? Is that why you're here?"

"I've been considering it," Silk admitted. "Several, perhaps."

Swallow smiled. "Good. Very good! I'm delighted to hear it. I've been telling our people that this unrest was sure to bring in some fresh business, and I'm glad to see I was right. You're wondering why you should have to pay for something that the city can't own, aren't you?"

"I am. Also how I can be assured that the taluses Viron pays for will be loyal and obedient."

"It's a good question." Swallow hitched his chair nearer his office table, resting his elbows on it. "First of all, if you want absolute assurance, I can't give it to you. Nobody can. I'm told there's an outfit in Wick now that tells people that, but they're lying. Suppose you went to that boatyard in Limna. Could the people building boats there give you an iron-clad guarantee that any boat they sold you would never sink or turn over? Under any circumstances?"

"I doubt it.

"So do I. If they did, they'd be lying exactly like those fellows in Wick. Here's the guarantee we offer. If one of our taluses betrays your interests or won't carry out a legitimate order, within the first two years you employ it, we will refund the entire amount you paid. When I say 'you' now, I mean the city. For the third year, the amount is cut by a quarter. You get three quarters of what you paid us back. During the fourth you get half, then a quarter."

"Nothing after the fifth year?" Maytera Marble asked.

"That's right. But you will have had five years service from your talus by that time, don't forget."

Silk nodded thoughtfully.

"I'd like to have your business," Swallow continued. "I don't deny that. We rarely receive an order for more than a single talus. And it would be a feather in our cap to be able to say we already had a large order from the new government. So here's what I'll do. I said a full refund if there's any serious trouble during the first two years. All right, for each talus you get over one, I'll increase the guarantee by one year. Say you were to order three. Is that about what you're thinking of, Caldé?"

"Perhaps."

"Then let's say three. That's two over one, so you'd get a full cash refund-we're talking here about the price of the individual talus, not the price of all three."

"I understand," Silk said.

"A full refund on that talus for serious trouble during the first four years. After that, three quarters, then half and a quarter, as I've already outlined it to you. You'll be entirely covered or partly covered for… How long, Maytera?"

"Twenty-five percent in the seventh year, Patera," she told Silk. "Nothing after that.

"Good deal?" Oreb tugged a lock of Silk's hair.

"A safe one, at least, I believe. You don't have to pay often, do you, Director Swallow?"

Swallow smiled and relaxed. "No, we don't. If we did, we'd be bankrupt. We paid a quarter-price refund fifteen years ago-no, make that sixteen. I was foundry supervisor then, and I felt it was a pretty dubious case. All of us knew it was, really, and if we'd fought it in court, we'd probably have won. But it was only a quarter, the customer was making a lot of noise, and the director we had then wanted to establish that we keep our promises. I'm not saying he was wrong, just that the talus in question had been abused. The customer'd had it piling bricks, which isn't natural."

"What is?" Silk inquired.

"Fighting and protection, the same things you'd expect from a watchdog." Swallow cleared his throat. "Can I get a little bit personal, Maytera? No disrespect intended, but you brought up an important principle, obedience to authority. What you said made a lot of sense, and I'd like to use you for an example."

Chenille said, "I don't think you ought to. Tell him no, Maytera. I don't think this is a good idea at all."

"Because it wlll make me more aware of my nature, dear? I don't believe it will, since I'm very much aware of it already. I've spent many, many hours thinking about who I am and what the gods require of me. But if it does, even a little, I'll thank the director very sincerely for the insight."

"No talk," Oreb advised Swallow.

He chuckled. "I won't say what I was going to, I promise. But I will say this. What I was going to say, I could have said about myself or anybody else in this room. I just thought the clothes might make it clearer."

"The clothes that were given to me when I woke? I didn't get to them, but you're right. After a while I sat up too, and another girl gave me my first clothes. Were you going to ask me what kind of clothes they were?"

Swallow nodded. "That's right, I was."

"A little black dress, very simple, with rather a short skirt. Underclothes." Maytera Marble paused to smile. "I was about to say I'd prefer not to describe them, but they were so plain that there's hardly anything to describe. Black shoes with low heels, but I don't think there were any stockings. A pretty little lace apron and a matching cap. It's easy for me to describe those clothes, because people from Ermine's came to Patera's palace just before we left, and there were young women dressed exactly as I was then, except that they had stockings."

"Did they come to clean?" Swallow asked. "Sweep and dust?"

"Dear Chenille and I have done that already. To wash the dishes they'll need tonight and set the table, and wash walls we haven't gotten to. At least I hope they'll wash those walls and the downstairs windows. I asked them to."

Swallow hodded again. "You see, Caldé, each of us is born to do certain things. Maytera was born to sweep and dust, and wash walls and floors, and she's still doing it. Did you have to urge her to?"

Silk shook his head.

"I would have been surprised if you'd said you did, and it shows the important principle I want to explain. When you're born to do a thing, and somebody gives you a chance to do it, that's all it takes. Everybody else is afraid I'll embarrass her, so let's talk about your bird."

"Oreb," Oreb elucidated.

"Nobody's got to make him fly. He flies because it's his nature. Nobody has to make him talk either. He was born to."

"Talk good!"

"There you have it. All right, it's a talus's nature to fight and protect property. Give your talus a chance to do those things, and it will do them. You're afraid the ones we build for you will give you a hard time, but you're Caldé, and if they did, you'd give them a hard time too, wouldn't you? Have them arrested and disarmed? And tried, too, eventually?"

"I suppose. so.

"Naturally you would. So why should they make trouble, when what you want them to do is what they want to do? The things they were born to do?"

"I was at a country house guarded by a talus not long ago, and Mucor told me it could be bribed, though it took a great deal of money." Silk looked at her for confirmation.

"Musk said so."

Chenille asked, "What would a talus do with money?" and Maytera Marble ventured, "The same things that you or I would, I suppose, dear."

"You were asking how you could buy something you couldn't own, Caldé." Swallow picked up a pencil, apparently to rap the tablet before him. "Let me tell you about that now, about the financial arrangements. When a talus is finished, it owes us, by law, the cost of its manufacture plus fifteen percent."

"Even though the city has paid for it?"

"Exactly. What the city's doing, you see, is advancing us the money we'd eventually get from the talus. We make no more than we would if we'd built without an order. Which we seldom do, by the way, since by building to order we get our money a lot sooner. What's even more important, we don't have to worry about the talus getting killed before it can pay us."

Silk nodded while his right forefinger drew small circles on his cheek. "I see."

"We require payment in full before the talus is finished. When it's finished, we explain that it has been built because there's an employer anxious to hire it. That's you, Caldé. We also explain the nature of wages, what wages it can reasonably expect, and what bonuses."

"But I don't actually pay it. Isn't that correct?"

"I can see you grasp the idea already. That's right, you don't. Let's say that you and your talus agree on five cards a month, a fair wage. From that, you deduct your expenses for fuel, maintenance, and repairs, if any. Most employers furnish ammo free of charge. It's customary."

Silk nodded again.

"You report the net to us, or you can have the talus do it. We deduct it from the talus's debt. Eventually its indebtedness will be wiped out and it can keep the wages it earns."

"Provided it survives that long."

"You've got it." Swallow glanced over his shoulder at the windows behind him, where the tapping of raindrops had mounted to a steady, insistent pounding. "If you'd rather have a look at our shops another time…?"

"Patera," Maytera Marble began, "I don't-"

She was interrupted by Silk, who stood as he spoke. "I'm eager to see them, and I'm sure a little rain won't hurt me. I was caught in that downpour a week from yesterday, but here I am. I don't want you to feel that you have to take us around in person, however, Director. Someone else can do it."

"Not take the Caldé around?" Grinning broadly, Swallow rose too. "I wouldn't miss it for any money. The ladies can wait in here if they like."

"I'm coming," Maytera Marble declared. "My granddaughter can stay here with Chenille."

"Me too," Chenille announced. "I want to see this."

"In that case Mucor will have to come with us, Patera."

"I can fly," she informed Swallow gravely. "Even in the rain. But they can't."

The promised umbrellas had been left on a chair in the outer room. Chenille picked one up. "Here's a black one for you, Patera, if you want it."