The Talisman

Nor did they question. He told them that his father had died the year before, and that his mother was quite ill (he thought of adding that the Queen’s repossession men had come in the middle of the night and taken away their donkey, grinned, and decided that maybe he ought to leave that part out). His mother had given him what money she could (except the word that came out in the strange language wasn’t really money— it was something like sticks) and had sent him off to the village of California, to stay with his Aunt Helen.

“These are hard times,” Mrs. Henry said, holding Jason, now changed, more closely to her.

“All-Hands’ is near the summer palace, isn’t it, boy?” It was the first time Henry had spoken since inviting Jack aboard.

“Yes,” Jack said. “That is, fairly near. I mean—”

“You never said what your father died of.”

Now he had turned his head. His gaze was narrow and assessing, the former kindness gone; it had been blown out of his eyes like candle-flames in a wind. Yes, there were trapdoors here.

“Was he ill?” Mrs. Henry asked. “So much illness these days—pox, plague—hard times . . .”

For a wild moment Jack thought of saying, No, he wasn’t ill, Mrs. Henry. He took a lot of volts, my dad. You see he went off one Saturday to do some work, and he left Mrs. Jerry and all the little Jerrys—including me—back at home. This was when we all lived in a hole in the baseboard and nobody lived anywhere else, you see. And do you know what? He stuck his screwdriver into a bunch of wires and Mrs. Feeny, she works over at Richard Sloat’s house, she heard Uncle Morgan talking on the phone and he said the electricity came out, all of the electricity, and it cooked him, it cooked him so bad that his glasses melted all over his nose, only you don’t know about glasses because you don’t have them here. No glasses . . . no electricity . . . no Midnight Blue . . . no airplanes. Don’t end up like Mrs. Jerry, Mrs. Henry. Don’t—

“Never mind was he ill,” the whiskered farmer said. “Was he political?”

Jack looked at him. His mouth was working but no sounds came out. He didn’t know what to say. There were too many trapdoors.

Henry nodded, as if he had answered. “Jump down, laddie. Market’s just over the next rise. I reckon you can ankle it from here, can’t you?”

“Yes,” Jack said. “I reckon I can.”

Mrs. Henry looked confused . . . but she was now holding Jason away from Jack, as if he might have some contagious disease.

The farmer, still looking back over his shoulder, smiled a bit ruefully. “I’m sorry. You seem a nice enough lad, but we’re simple people here—whatever’s going on back yonder by the sea is something for great lords to settle. Either the Queen will die or she won’t . . . and of course, someday she must. God pounds all His nails sooner or later. And what happens to little people when they meddle into the affairs of the great is that they get hurt.”

“My father—”

“I don’t want to know about your father!” Henry said sharply. His wife scrambled away from Jack, still holding Jason to her bosom. “Good man or bad, I don’t know and I don’t want to know—all I know is that he’s a dead man, I don’t think you lied about that, and that his son has been sleeping rough and has all the smell of being on the dodge. The son doesn’t talk as if he comes from any of these parts. So climb down. I’ve a son of my own, as you see.”

Jack got down, sorry for the fear in the young woman’s face—fear he had put there. The farmer was right— little people had no business meddling in the affairs of the great. Not if they were smart.

13

The Men in the Sky

1

It was a shock to discover that the money he had worked so hard to get literally had turned into sticks—they looked like toy snakes made by an inept craftsman. The shock lasted only for a moment, however, and he laughed ruefully at himself. The sticks were money, of course. When he came over here, everything changed. Silver dollar to gryphon-coin, shirt to jerkin, English to Territories speech, and good old American money to—well, to jointed sticks. He had flipped over with about twenty-two dollars in all, and he guessed that he had exactly the same amount in Territories money, although he had counted fourteen joints on one of the money-sticks and better than twenty on the other.

The problem wasn’t so much money as cost—he had very little idea of what was cheap and what was dear, and as he walked through the market, Jack felt like a contestant on The New Price Is Right—only, if he flubbed it here, there wouldn’t be any consolation prize and a clap on the back from Bob Barker; if he flubbed it here, they might . . . well, he didn’t know for sure what they might do. Run him out for sure. Hurt him, rough him up? Maybe. Kill him? Probably not, but it was impossible to be absolutely certain. They were little people. They were not political. And he was a stranger.

Jack walked slowly from one end of the loud and busy market-day throng to the other, wrestling with the problem. It now centered mostly in his stomach—he was dreadfully hungry. Once he saw Henry, dickering with a man who had goats to sell. Mrs. Henry stood near him, but a bit behind, giving the men room to trade. Her back was to Jack, but she had the baby hoisted in her arms—Jason, one of the little Henrys, Jack thought—but Jason saw him. The baby waved one chubby hand at Jack and Jack turned away quickly, putting as much crowd as he could between himself and the Henrys.

Everywhere was the smell of roasting meat, it seemed. He saw vendors slowly turning joints of beef over charcoal fires both small and ambitious; he saw ’prentices laying thick slices of what looked like pork on slabs of homemade bread and taking them to the buyers. They looked like runners at an auction. Most of the buyers were farmers like Henry, and it appeared that they also called for food the way people entered a bid at an auction—they simply raised one of their hands imperiously, the fingers splayed out. Jack watched several of these transactions closely, and in every case the medium of exchange was the jointed sticks . . . but how many knuckles would be enough? he wondered. Not that it mattered. He had to eat, whether the transaction marked him as a stranger or not.

He passed a mime-show, barely giving it a glance although the large audience that had gathered—women and children, most of them—roared with appreciative laughter and applauded. He moved toward a stall with canvas sides where a big man with tattoos on his slabbed biceps stood on one side of a trench of smouldering charcoal in the earth. An iron spit about seven feet long ran over the charcoal. A sweating, dirty boy stood at each end. Five