War in Heaven (55 page)

"Well, I wouldn't ask anyone to pay until he had received the meat."

"But I saw you give him the meat."

"Oh, I don't mean
that
meat," the wormrunner said, smiling. "That was just a little lagniappe to seal our agreement."

"I see."

"Perhaps you'll become my patron, too, and it will be my pleasure to bestow such gifts upon you."

"Perhaps," Danlo said.

"And now, why don't you accompany us back to my apartment? It's only a few blocks away."

Again, Danlo hesitated as he looked deeply into the wormrunner's glittering eyes. And then he said, "All right."

The wormrunner led Danlo back to the closed restaurant where the astrier man joined them. As they skated east towards the Merripen Green, the astrier hung back slightly, eyeing Danlo and his stained shagshay furs with open contempt. Near the North-South Glissade, they turned on to a little red street lined with closed shops and blocks of apartment buildings. Most of these blocks were deserted, but in the middle of one of them, a single open cafe attracted swarms of harijan, wormrunners, hibakusha and other dwellers of this dark neighbourhood. Despite the lack of flame globes on the narrow streets (and despite the starved, sunken faces), the presence of all these people hurrying in and out of revolving doors and drinking their weak mint tea behind steamy windows recalled better times of small comforts and the reassuring habits of everyday life. And then the wormrunner motioned for Danlo and the astrier man to follow him down a gliddery almost as dark as a path through the night-time forest, and nothing about this lonely, windswept street reassured Danlo. The sounds of other skaters striking steel against ice quickly faded to faintness. Danlo heard the click-clack of his own skates, of course, and the astrier's and wormrunner's quicker rhythms, but little else. The moaning wind that blew down the street carried the far-off screaming of hungry baby — or perhaps it was only the howling of one of the Merripen Green's snow cats getting ready to fight. The wind carried other things, too: biting particles of spindrift snow and the smell of roasting meat. The smell of meat seemed everywhere to permeate the air and when the wormrunner stopped and opened the door to one of the buildings, the scent of raw flesh spilled out into the night.

"Here we are," he said as he pushed into the hallway.

Reluctantly, the astrier followed him inside, and so did Danlo. In this ill-lit hallway, lined with greasy old tiles, dust, dead leaves and other filth, they passed two other people, hibakusha with radiation-eaten faces and smiles of greeting calculated to please the wormrunner. Probably, Danlo thought, the wormrunner paid them to keep silent as to the illegal activities occurring in the building. That the wormrunner truly operated a butcher shop out of his apartment Danlo saw the moment the wormrunner opened the black, shatterwood door. After letting the astrier man go first, Danlo stepped across the threshold and fairly gasped at the sight that awaited him.

"As you can see," the wormrunner said, "we've plenty of meat."

In truth, the little apartment had been completely emptied of furniture and rugs and all other signs of domestic life. In place of these things were clary cases displaying various cuts of meat. Stacked neatly on a bed of snow inside one of the cases, great bloody slabs of what appeared to be shagshay steaks immediately caught Danlo's eye. Pieces of what the wormrunner claimed to be seal meat filled half of one case, while in the case next to it, the hams of a musk-ox shone like brilliant ruby jewels. Something about all this meat disturbed him. It had a strange look to it, as if it had been moulded into unusual shapes and injected with preservatives and dyes to brighten its colour. It was really much too red, not at all like the meat of these blessed animals as Danlo remembered from his childhood. Perhaps, he thought, the wormrunner didn't know the proper way to dress meat or prepare it for cooking. Certainly the wormrunner would not have prayed for the animals' spirits on their journey across the frozen sea to the other side of day.

Nunkiyanima
, Danlo silently whispered inside himself,
mi alasharia la shantih. Vela Yaganima, Shakayanima, mi alasharia la, shantih, shantih.

Next to the shuttered window, the astrier man stood looking down at a case containing long tubes of sausages and bloody bowls full of liver, lungs, sweetbreads, brains and other organ meats. Danlo wondered if he was really interested in all this offal or whether he would ask the wormrunner to wrap up several slabs of shagshay steaks. He wondered for himself how much the wormrunner might ask for twenty pounds of seal meat, which he remembered in all its fat and richness as the sweetest meat of all.

"Would you like a cup of tea?" the wormrunner asked the astrier. He motioned towards the kitchen. "I've a store of Summerworld gold that I can brew while you're deciding."

Thank you, no," the astrier man said in a thin but cultivated voice. "I'm afraid I must hurry."

"And how about you?" the wormrunner asked, turning to Danlo. His bloodshot blue eyes drilled into Danlo's as if he were searching for something. "Why don't you remove your mask and furs and take some tea with me?"

"I ... think that I will keep them on," Danlo said.

"Is it too cool for you in here? Would you like more heat?" the wormrunner asked, stepping over to Danlo. "Well, it
is
cool, of course, because we have to keep the meat cool. But I should think that someone as healthy-seeming as yourself wouldn't mind a little coolness."

As if to test his assessment of Danlo's physical state, he smiled and squeezed Danlo's arm in a too-friendly way. Then he patted Danlo's back and shoulder, pressing deeply with his fingers, and he said, "Some of us have escaped the starvation by doing what we have to do. You've done better than most, it seems. Such muscles you have — it must take a lot of meat to feed such a fine body as yours."

Danlo closed his eyes a moment as he remembered the terrible lightness of Jonathan's body, which he could almost feel pressing him close, his little heart beating next to his heart, fast and urgent like a bird's. In his helplessness, in his shame, he felt his eyes burning, and he said, "I would like to buy twenty pounds of meat, or more if that is possible."

"Of course — that amount of shagshay steaks will cost a thousand city disks."

"A ... thousand disks?"

"It's the finest shagshay, the finest cut."

"And what could I buy for three hundred disks, then?"

"Is that all you have?"

"Could I take twenty pounds of seal meat for three hundred disks?"

"No — but I could sell you twelve pounds for that price."

"I ... would like more meat than that."

"Of course, of course — I could give you twenty-five pounds of organ meats for four hundred disks."

"Liver, then? Heart meats and brains?"

"Well, that, of course, mixed with intestines and lungs — I make a special mixture for those seeking bargains."

"No," Danlo said. "I do not want offal."

The wormrunner smiled then as if he had suddenly remembered something. "We keep the uncut meat in my cold room. If you're willing to be your own butcher, I might find a twenty pound leg of shagshay that I could sell to you at a lower price."

"Truly? And do you have any larger cuts of seal meat, as well?"

"I'm not sure what we have left — why don't we see?" the wormrunner said. Then he noticed that the astrier man also seemed very interested in acquiring this cheaper meat.

He bade the astrier to remove his furs, and he apologized, saying, "My cold room is a bit messy, and I wouldn't want you to stain such fine furs."

He led both of them towards the rear of the apartment where he opened the door to the cold room. He twisted the light key on the wall and motioned for the astrier man to go inside, followed by Danlo. A shock of cold air from the opened window enveloped Danlo as if he had been plunged into icy water. The fetor of old, rotting flesh made his belly clutch and almost heave. His leather boots slipped on the wooden floor, which was greasy with clots of hardened white fat and stained red with blood drippings. In one corner of the room stood a work table similarly spattered with gore, and in the other corner, two wooden tubs perhaps once used for bathing in hot water. But now they fairly overflowed with a slop of blood, bones, and pinkish flayed skin. He might have stared at these vessels of horror for a long time if another sight hadn't struck him with all the force of a lightning bolt. For there, along the far wall, pierced by great steel hooks bolted to the ceiling, hung the flayed, headless bodies of seven dead animals. They were all bright, red bands of meat and white fat and sawed bone. And they were neither shagshay bulls nor silk belly sows nor seals but a much more common animal apparently much easier to trap and kill.

No, it cannot be
, Danlo thought.
Man must never be a hunter of other men.

But they
were
men, or perhaps women, and Danlo saw this instantly, and he knew these hanging corpses for human beings with all the certainty that he knew his right arm was his own. He knew, too, all in a moment, that the wormrunner had lured them into this room much as he had Danlo, and had murdered them there. In truth, the slaughtering of a man could be more safely and efficiently accomplished in this cold room, for any sprays of blood along the wall would not warn off the wormrunner's patrons nor was there a danger that Danlo, in his death struggles, might fall against one of the meat cases and crack it beyond repair. Then, too, it would be hard work moving man as large as Danlo without using the cold room's hoists and hooks. So Danlo understood the necessity of the wormrunner's ruse and the logic of his being murdered there. But he was not quite prepared to become a headless corpse himself. He might have instantly turned and fled from the room if the wormrunner hadn't anticipated his actions. In truth, the wormrunner had anticipated almost everything about the slaying of his fellow man for meat. Just as Danlo looked up at the hanging corpses, in his moment of supreme horror and shock, the wormrunner leaped upon Danlo and grabbed him from behind. He was a very strong man, and he pinioned Danlo's arms between their thrashing bodies. This gave the astrier man his golden moment. The astrier — it suddenly became clear to Danlo that he wasn't really an astrier at all but only another wormrunner dressed to deceive prospective victims such as Danlo — had picked up a blood-encrusted axe from the work table. He came at Danlo with this axe. He swung it at his head. He might easily have murdered him, then, as he had many others. It is not a difficult thing, to murder a man. Immobilize him for only a moment, and sharp steel can bite through even the thickest of skulls. And the wormrunner
should
have been able to keep Danlo from moving during this single moment; half a year earlier, he would have matched Danlo's strength limb against limb and held him still for the killing stroke. But he hadn't counted on the cuttings of Constancio of Alesar; he couldn't have known the terrible, quick strength of Danlo's newly sculpted body. Danlo scarcely knew himself. But even as the astrier swung his axe, Danlo felt a surge of blood swelling his muscles as if starfire itself were pouring through him. He suddenly remembered the skills that he had learned as a child wrestling with his brothers in the snow. Almost without thought, he bent low and snapped his whole body forwards like a catapult, heaving the astonished wormrunner over his back into the air. In a shock of breaking bones and curses, the wormrunner collided with the false astrier, knocking him to the greasy floor. It was something of a miracle that neither of them cut themselves against the axe, which flew out of the false astrier's hand and struck the wall. If Danlo had been a different kind of man, he would have picked up this axe and brained these two murderous cannibals. Instead, for what seemed for ever, he froze like a snow hare and stared at them.

Never killing
, he thought.
Even to save one's own life, never harming another.

And then his moment of paralysis passed, and he turned to flee from this charnel house. He ran out into the street, pausing only to snap in his skate blades. He flew across the dark ice of unnamed glidderies for a long time, and he didn't care where he went. Although the wind blew keen and cold and he kept gasping for a clean breath of air, he couldn't get the taste of blood and death out of his mouth. His belly was ball of acid pain and emptiness. He felt the coins that Tamara had given him pulling down like stone weights. He knew then that he would never be able to buy any meat, either to save his own blessed life or even Jonathan's. He knew that he would never be able to
look
at meat again. And never again would he look at men and women without seeing them as meat that might ease the agony of another's endless, burning hunger.

Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world.

— Jesus the Kristoman

For most of a day after his near-butchery at the wormrunners' hands, Danlo brooded over the continued existence of these two men. He knew that he should tell someone about the wormrunners' meat shop; the problem was who to tell and how he might approach them. With the Order controlling only those parts of the city bounded by the East-West Sliddery and the Long Glissade (and of course the Hollow Fields), there was almost no rule of law in the wild streets elsewhere. Danlo might have gone to Benjamin Hur to ask for redress. But, most likely, Benjamin would have sent a cadre of ringkeepers to exterminate the wormrunners, and Danlo wasn't prepared to be the initiator of such violence. But neither could he simply allow other unsuspecting clients to walk into the wormrunners' apartment looking to buy a little meat.

As it would happen, fate (and his own wild actions) solved this agonizing dilemma. Unknown to him at the time, when he had left the wormrunners writhing on the floor of the slaughter room, he set off a chain of events that would shake the entire city. And it had all begun like this: when he had thrown the murderous wormrunner into his friend, the crash of them hitting the floor and their screams had shaken the entire building. One of the wormrunners' neighbours, venturing out into the hall to investigate the noise, had found the door to the apartment hanging open — and much more besides. The man probably had known that the wormrunners were selling meat from their apartment illegally. Perhaps he himself had even bought a few tidbits from one of the meat cases in the outer room. But he must have been stunned by what he found beyond the doorway to the wormrunners' slaughter room, for he ran out into the hall crying out an alarm that roused many others. The wormrunners, dragging their broken bodies across the meat-slimed floor of their apartment, had managed to barricade their door. But a gang of their outraged neighbours had broken it down. They had swarmed the wormrunners and killed them with their bare hands. And then they had gone to other buildings throughout the neighbourhood, crying out word of the wormrunners' abomination. Gaining in numbers building by building, they had forced their way into three other similar meat shops and had slain the wormrunners whom they found cowering inside.