The man shook his head sourly but he led Lalji into the winding room. The manure haze thickened. Big kinetic storage drums, twice as tall as a man, sat in a darkened corner, mud and manure lapping around their high-capacity precision kink-springs. Sunbeams poured between open gaps in the roof where shingles had blown away. Dung motes stirred lazily.
A half-dozen hyper-developed mulies crouched on their treadmills, their rib cages billowing slowly, their flanks streaked with salt lines of sweat residue from the labor of winding Lalji's boat springs. They blew air through their nostrils, nervous at Lalji's sudden scent, and gathered their squat legs under them. Muscles like boulders rippled under their bony hides as they stood. They eyed Lalji with resentful near-intelligence. One of them showed stubborn yellow teeth that matched its owner's.
Lalji made a face of disgust. 'Feed them.'
'I already did.'
'I can see their bones. If you want my money, feed them again.'
The man scowled. 'They aren't supposed to get fat, they're supposed to wind your damn springs.' But he dipped double handfuls of SoyPRO into their feed canisters.
The mulies shoved their heads into the buckets, slobbering and grunting with need. In its eagerness, one of them started briefly forward on its treadmill, sending energy into the winding shop's depleted storage springs before seeming to realize that its work was not demanded and that it could eat without molestation.
'They aren't even designed to get fat,' the kinetic man muttered.
Lalji smiled slightly as he counted through his wadded bluebills and handed over the money. The kinetic man unjacked Lalji's kink-springs from the winding treadmills and stacked them beside the slavering mulies. Lalji lifted a spring, grunting at its heft. Its mass was no different than when he had brought it to the winding shop, but now it fairly seemed to quiver with the mulies' stored labor.
'You want help with those?' The man didn't move. His eyes flicked toward the mulies' feed buckets, still calculating his chances of interrupting their meal.
Lalji took his time answering, watching as the mulies rooted for the last of their calories. 'No.' He hefted the spring again, getting a better grip. 'My helpboy will come for the rest.'
As he turned for the door, he heard the man dragging the feedbuckets away from the mulies and their grunts as they fought for their sustenance. Once again, Lalji regretted agreeing to the trip at all.
SHRIRAM HAD BEEN the one to broach the idea. They had been sitting under the awning of Lalji's porch in New Orleans, spitting betel nut juice into the alley gutters and watching the rain come down as they played chess. At the end of the alley, cycle rickshaws and bicycles slipped through the mid-morning gray, pulses of green and red and blue as they passed the alley's mouth draped under rain-glossed corn polymer ponchos.
The chess game was a tradition of many years, a ritual when Lalji was in town and Shriram had time away from his small kinetic company where he rewound people's home and boat springs. Theirs was a good friendship, and a fruitful one, when Lalji had unstamped calories that needed to disappear into the mouth of a hungry megadont.
Neither of them played chess well, and so their games often devolved into a series of trades made in dizzying succession; a cascade of destruction that left a board previously well-arrayed in a tantrum wreck, with both opponents blinking surprise, trying to calculate if the mangle had been worth the combat. It was after one of these tit-for-tat cleansings that Shriram had asked Lalji if he might go upriver. Beyond the southern states.
Lalji had shaken his head and spit bloody betel juice into the overflowing gutter. 'No. Nothing is profitable so far up. Too many joules to get there. Better to let the calories float to me.' He was surprised to discover that he still had his queen. He used it to take a pawn.
'And if the energy costs could be defrayed?'
Lalji laughed, waiting for Shriram to make his own move. 'By who? AgriGen? The IP men? Only their boats go up and down so far.' He frowned as he realized that his queen was now vulnerable to Shriram's remaining knight.
Shriram was silent. He didn't touch his pieces. Lalji looked up from the board and was surprised by Shriram's serious expression. Shriram said, 'I would pay. Myself and others. There is a man who some of us would like to see come south. A very special man.'
'Then why not bring him south on a paddle wheel? It is expensive to go up the river. How many gigajoules? I would have to change the boat's springs, and then what would the IP patrols ask? ‘Where are you going, strange Indian man with your small boat and your so many springs? Going far? To what purpose?' ' Lalji shook his head. 'Let this man take a ferry, or ride a barge. Isn't this cheaper?' He waved at the game board. 'It's your move. You should take my queen.'
Shriram waggled his head thoughtfully from side to side but didn't make any move toward the chess game. 'Cheaper, yes…'
'But?'
Shriram shrugged. 'A swift, inconsequential boat would attract less attention.'
'What sort of man is this?'
Shriram glanced around, suddenly furtive. Methane lamps burned like blue fairies behind the closed glass of the neighbors' droplet-spattered windows. Rain sheeted off their roofs, drumming wet into the empty alley. A cheshire was yowling for a mate somewhere in the wet, barely audible under the thrum of falling water.
'Is Creo inside?'
Lalji raised his eyebrows in surprise. 'He has gone to his gymnasium. Why? Should it matter?'
Shriram shrugged and gave an embarrassed smile. 'Some things are better kept between old friends. People with strong ties.'
'Creo has been with me for years.'
Shriram grunted noncommittally, glanced around again and leaned close, pitching his voice low, forcing Lalji to lean forward as well. 'There is a man who the calorie companies would like very much to find.' He tapped his balding head. 'A very intelligent man. We want to help him.'
Lalji sucked in his breath. 'A generipper?'
Shriram avoided Lalji's eyes. 'In a sense. A calorie man.'
Lalji made a face of disgust. 'Even better reason not to be involved. I don't traffic with those killers.'
'No, no. Of course not. But still…you brought that huge sign down once, did you not? A few greased palms, so smooth, and you float into town and suddenly Lakshmi smiles on you, such a calorie bandit, and now with a name instead as a dealer of antiques. Such a wonderful misdirection.'
Lalji shrugged. 'I was lucky. I knew the man to help move it through the locks.'
'So? Do it again.'
'If the calorie companies are looking for him, it would be dangerous.'
'But not impossible. The locks would be easy. Much easier than carrying unlicensed grains. Or even something as big as that sign. This would be a man. No sniffer dog would find him of interest. Place him in a barrel. It would be easy. And I would pay. All your joules, plus more.'
Lalji sucked at his narcotic betel nut, spit red, spit red again, considering. 'And what does a second-rate kinetic man like you think this calorie man will do? Generippers work for big fish, and you are such a small one.'
Shriram grinned haplessly and gave a self-deprecating shrug. 'You do not think Ganesha Kinetic could not some day be great? The next AgriGen, maybe?' and they had both laughed at the absurdity and Shriram dropped the subject.
An IP man was on duty with his dog, blocking Lalji's way as he returned to his boat lugging the kink-spring. The brute's hairs bristled as Lalji approached and it lunged against its leash, its blunt nose quivering to reach him. With effort, the IP man held the creature back. 'I need to sniff you.' His helmet lay on the grass, already discarded, but still he was sweating under the swaddling heat of his gray slash-resistant uniform and the heavy webbing of his spring gun and bandoliers.
Lalji held still. The dog growled, deep from its throat, and inched forward. It snuffled his clothing, bared hungry teeth, snuffled again, then its black ruff iridesced blue and it relaxed and wagged its stubby tail. It sat. A pink tongue lolled from between smiling teeth. Lalji smiled sourly back at the animal, glad that he wasn't smuggling calories and wouldn't have to go through the pantomimes of obeisance as the IP man demanded stamps and then tried to verify that the grain shipment had paid its royalties and licensing fees.
At the dog's change in color, the IP man relaxed somewhat, but still he studied Lalji's features carefully,
