The Truth (7 page)

“That’s it, then,” said Gunilla. “All done. All right, lad? How many copies do you want?”

“Er…twenty? Thirty?”

“How about a couple of hundred?” Gunilla nodded at the dwarfs, who set to work. “It’s hardly worth going to press for less.”

“Good grief! I can’t imagine there’s enough people in the city that’d pay five dollars!”

“All right, charge ’em half a dollar. Then it’ll be a fifty dollars for us and the same for you.”

“My word, really?”

William stared at the beaming dwarf.

“But I’ve still got to sell them,” he said. “It’s not as though they’re cakes in a shop. It’s not like—”

He sniffed. His eyes began to water.

“Oh dear,” he said. “We’re going to have another visitor. I know that smell.”

“What smell?” said the dwarf.

The door creaked open.

There was this to be said about the Smell of Foul Ole Ron, an odor so intense that it took on a personality of its own and fully justified the capital letter: after the initial shock the organs of smell just gave up and shut down, as if no more able to comprehend the thing than an oyster can comprehend the ocean. After some minutes in its presence, wax would start to trickle out of people’s ears and their hair would begin to bleach.

It had developed to such a degree that it now led a semi-independent life of its own, and often went to the theater by itself, or read small volumes of poetry. Ron was
outclassed
by his smell.

Foul Ole Ron’s hands were thrust deeply into his pockets, but from one pocket issued a length of string, or rather a great many lengths of string tied into one length. The other was attached to a small dog of the grayish persuasion. It may have been a terrier. It walked with a limp and also in a kind of oblique fashion, as though it was trying to insinuate its way through the world. It walked like a dog who has long ago learned that the world contains more thrown boots than meaty bones. It walked like a dog that was prepared, at any moment, to run.

It looked up at William with crusted eyes and said: “Woof.”

William felt that he ought to stand up for mankind.

“Sorry about the smell,” he said. Then he stared at the dog.

“What’s this smell you keep on about?” said Gunilla. The rivets on his helmet were beginning to tarnish.

“It, er, belongs to Mr…. er…Ron,” said William, stillgiving the dog a suspicious look. “People say it’s glandular.”

He was sure he’d seen the dog before. It was always in the corner of the picture, as it were—ambling through the streets, or just sitting on a corner, watching the world go by.

“What does he want?” said Gunilla. “D’you think he wants us to print something?”

“Shouldn’t think so,” said William. “He’s a sort of beggar. Only they won’t let him in the Beggars’ Guild anymore.”

“He isn’t saying anything.”

“Well, usually he just stands there until people give him something to go away. Er…you heard of things like the Welcome Wagon, where various neighbors and traders greet newcomers to an area?”

“Yes.”

“Well, this is the dark side.”

Foul Ole Ron nodded, and held out a hand. “’S’right, Mister Push. Don’t try the blarney gobble on me, juggins, I
told
’em, I ain’t slanging the gentry, bugrit. Millennium hand and shrimp. Dang.”

“Woof.”

William glared at the dog again.

“Growl,” it said.

Gunilla scratched somewhere in the recesses of his beard.

“One thing I already noticed about this here town,” he said, “is that people’ll buy practically
anything
off a man in the street.”

He picked up a handful of the news sheets, still damp from the press.

“Can you understand me, mister?” he said.

“Bugrit.”

Gunilla nudged William in the ribs. “Does that mean yes or no, d’you think?”

“Probably yes.”

“Okay. Well, see here now, if you sell these things at, oh, twenty pence each, you can keep—”

“Hey, you can’t sell it
that
cheap,” said William.

“Why not?”

“Why? Because…because…because, well, anyone will be able to read it, that’s why!”

“Good, ’cos that means anyone’ll be able to pay twenty pence,” said Gunilla calmly. “There’s lots more poor folk than rich folk and it’s easier to get money out of ’em.” He grimaced at Foul Ole Ron. “This may seem a strange question,” he said, “but have you got any friends?”

“I told ’em! I
told
’em! Bug’rem!”

“Probably yes,” said William. “He hangs out with a bunch of…er…unfortunates that live under one of the bridges. Well, not exactly ‘hangs out.’ More ‘droops.’”

“Well, now,” said Gunilla, waving the copy of the
Times
at Ron, “you can tell them that if they can sell these to people for twenty pence each, I’ll let you keep one nice shiny penny.”

“Yeah? And you can put yer nice shiny penny where the sun don’t shine,” said Ron.

“Oh, so you—” Gunilla began. William laid a hand on his arm.

“Sorry, just a minute—What was that you said, Ron?” he said.

“Bugrit,” said Foul Ole Ron.

It had
sounded
like Ron’s voice and it had seemed to come from the general area of Ron’s face, it was just that it had demonstrated a coherence you didn’t often get.

“You want more than a penny?” said William carefully.

“Got to be worth five pence a time,” said Ron. More or less.

For some reason William’s gaze was dragged down to the small gray dog. It returned it amiably and said “Woof?”

He looked back up again.

“Are you all right, Foul Ole Ron?” he said.

“Gottle o’geer, gottle o’geer,” said Ron mysteriously.

“All right…two pence,” said Gunilla.

“Four,” Ron seemed to say. “But let’s not mess about, okay? One dollar per thirty?”

“It’s a deal,” said Goodmountain, who spat on his hand and would have held it out to seal the contract if William hadn’t gripped it urgently.

“Don’t.”

“What’s wrong?”

William sighed. “Have you got any horribly disfiguring diseases?”

“No!”

“Do you
want
some?”

“Oh.” Gunilla lowered his hand. “You tell your friends to get round here right now, okay?” he said. He turned to William.

“Trustworthy, are they?”

“Well…
sort
of,” said William. “It’s probably not a good idea to leave paint thinners around.”

Outside, Foul Ole Ron and his dog ambled down the street. And the strange thing was that a conversation was going on, even though there was technically only one person there.

“See? I
told
you. You just let me do the talkin’, all right?”

“Bugrit.”

“Right. You stick with me and you won’t go far wrong.”

“Bugrit.”

“Really? Well, I spose that’ll have to do. Bark, bark.”

Twelve people lived under the Misbegot Bridge and in a life of luxury, although luxury is not hard to achieve when you define it as something to eat at least once a day and
especially
when you have such a broad definition of “something to eat.” Technically they were beggars, although they seldom had to beg. Possibly they were thieves, although they only took what had been thrown away, usually by people hurrying to be out of their presence. Outsiders considered that the leader of the group was Coffin Henry, who would have been the city’s champion expectorator if anyone else had wanted the title. But the group had the true democracy of the voteless. There was Arnold Sideways, whose lack of legs only served to give him an extra advantage in any pub fight, where a man with good teeth at groin height had it all his own way. And if it wasn’t for the duck whose presence on his head he consistently denied, the Duck Man would have been viewed as well-spoken and educated and as sane as the next man. Unfortunately, the next man was Foul Ole Ron.

The other eight people were Altogether Andrews.

Altogether Andrews was one man with considerably more than one mind. In a rest state, when he had no particular problem to confront, there was no sign of this except a sort of background twitch and flicker as his features passed randomly under the control of, variously, Jossi, Lady Hermione, Little Sidney, Mr. Viddle, Curly, the Judge, and Tinker; there was also Burke, but the crew had only ever seen Burke once and never wanted to again, so the other seven personalities kept him buried. Nobody in the body answered to the name of Andrews. In the opinion of the Duck Man, who was probably the best in the crew at thinking in a straight line, Andrews had probably been some innocent and hospitable person of a psychic disposition who had simply been overwhelmed by the colonizing souls.

Only among the gentle crew under the bridge could a consensus person like Andrews find an accommodating niche. They’d welcomed him, or them, to the fraternity around the smoky fire. Someone who wasn’t the same person for more than five minutes at a time could fit right in.

One other thing that united the crew—although probably nothing could unite Altogether Andrews—was a readiness to believe that a dog could talk. The group around the smoldering fire believed they had heard a lot of things talk, such as walls. A dog was easy by comparison. Besides, they respected the fact that Gaspode had the sharpest mind of the lot and never drank anything that corroded the container.

“Let’s try this again, shall we?” he said. “If you sell thirty of the things, you’ll get a dollar. A whole dollar. Got that?”

“Bugrit.”

“Quack.”

“Haaargghhh…gak!”

“How much is that in old boots?”

Gaspode sighed. “No, Arnold. You can use the money to buy as many old—”

There was a rumble from Altogether Andrews, and the rest of the crew went very still. When Altogether Andrews was quiet for a while, you never knew who he was going to be.

There was always the possibility that it would be Burke.

“Can I ask a question?” said Altogether Andrews, in a rather hoarse treble.

The crew relaxed. That sounded like Lady Hermione. She wasn’t a problem.

“Yes…Your Ladyship?” said Gaspode.

“This wouldn’t be…
work
, would it?”

The mention of the word sent the rest of the crew into a fugue of stress and bewildered panic.

“Haaaruk…gak!”

“Bugrit!”

“Quack!”

“No, no, no,” said Gaspode hurriedly. “It’s hardly work, is it? Just handing out stuff and takin’ money? Doesn’t sound like
work
to me.”

“I ain’t working!” shouted Coffin Henry. “I am socially inadequate in the whole area of doing anything!”

“We do
not
work,” said Arnold Sideways. “We is gentlemen of les-u-are.”

“Ahem,” said Lady Hermione.

“Gentlemen and
ladies
of les-u-are,” said Arnold gallantly.

“This is a very nasty winter. Extra money would certainly come in handy,” said the Duck Man.

“What for?” said Arnold.

“We could live like kings on a dollar a day, Arnold.”

“What, you mean someone’d chop our heads off?”

“No, I—”

“Someone’d climb up inside the privy with a red-hot poker and—”

“No! I meant—”

“Someone’d drown us in a butt of wine?”

“No, that’s
dying
like kings, Arnold.”

“I shouldn’t reckon there
is
a butt of wine big enough that you couldn’t drink your way out of it,” muttered Gaspode. “So, what about it, masters? Oh, and mistress, o’course. Shall I—shall
Ron
tell that lad we’re up for it?”

“Indeed.”

“Okay.”

“Gawwwark…pt!”

“Bugrit!”

They looked at Altogether Andrews. His lips moved, his face flickered. Then he held up five democratic fingers.

“The ayes have it,” said Gaspode.

Mr. Pin lit a cigar. Smoking was his one vice. At least, it was his only vice that he thought of as a vice. The others were just job skills.

Mr. Tulip’s vices were also limitless, but he owned up to cheap aftershave because a man has to drink
something
. The drugs didn’t count, if only because the only time he’d ever got real ones was when they’d robbed a horse doctor and he’d taken a couple of big pills that had made every vein on his body stand out like a purple hosepipe.

The pair were not thugs. At least, they did not see themselves as thugs. Nor were they thieves. At least, they never thought of themselves as thieves. They did not think of themselves as assassins. Assassins were posh, and had rules. Pin and Tulip—the New Firm, as Mr. Pin liked to refer to them—did not have rules.

They thought of themselves as
facilitators
. They were men who made things happen, men who were going places.

It has to be added that when one says “they thought” it means “Mr. Pin thought.” Mr. Tulip used his
head
all the time, from a distance of about eight inches, but he was not, except in one or two unexpected areas, a man given much to using his brain. On the whole, he left Mr. Pin to do the polysyllabic cogitation.

Mr. Pin, on the other hand, was not very good at sustained, mindless violence, and admired the fact that Mr. Tulip had an apparently bottomless supply. When they had first met, and had recognized in each other the qualities that would make their partnership greater than the sum of its parts, he’d seen that Mr. Tulip was not, as he appeared to the rest of the world, just another nut job. Some negative qualities can reach a pitch of perfection that changes their very nature, and Mr. Tulip had turned anger into an art.

It was not anger
at
anything. It was just pure, platonic anger from somewhere in the reptilian depths of the soul, a fountain of never-ending red-hot grudge; Mr. Tulip lived his life on that thin line most people occupy just before they haul off and hit someone repeatedly with a wrench. For Mr. Tulip, anger was the ground state of being. Pin had occasionally wondered what had happened to the man to make him as angry as that, but to Tulip the past was another country with very, very well guarded borders. Sometimes Mr. Pin heard him screaming at night.