Feet of Clay

and panels to be shaped. Sparks erupted.

Stronginthearm took off his helmet (the Committee had been around again) ancl wiped the inside.

'Dibbuk? Where the hell are you?'

A sensation of filled space made him turn. The foundry's golem was standing a few inches behind him, the forge light glowing on his dark red clay.

'I told you not to do that, didn't I?' Stronginthearm shouted above the din.

The golem held up its slate.

YES.

'You've gone and done all your holy day stuff? You were away too long!'

SORROW.

'Well, now you're back with us, go and take over on Number Three hammer and send Mr Vincent up to my office, right?'

YES.

Stronginthearm climbed the stairs to his office. He turned at the top to look back across the red-lit foundry floor. He saw Dibbuk walk over to the hammer and hold up a slate for the foreman. He saw Vincent the foreman walk away. He saw Dibbuk take the sword-blank that was being shaped and hold it in place for a few blows, then hurl it aside.

Stronginthearm hurried back down the steps.

When he was half-way down Dibbuk had laid his head on the anvil.

When Stronginthearm reached the bottom the hammer struck for the first time.

When he was half-way across the ash-crusted floor, other workers scurrying after him, the hammer struck for the second time.

As he reached Dibbuk the hammer struck for the third time.

The glow faded in the golem's eyes. A crack appeared across the impassive face.

The hammer went back up for the fourth time—

'Duck!' screamed Stronginthearm—

— and then there was nothing but pottery.

When the thunder had died away, the foundry master got to his feet and brushed himself off. Dust and wreckage were strewn across the floor. The hammer had jumped its bearings and was lying by the anvil in a heap of golem shards.

Stronginthearm gingerly picked up a piece of a foot, tossed it aside, and then reached down again and pulled a slate out of the wreckage.

He read:

THE OLD MEN HELPED US!

THOU SHALT NOT KILL!

CLAY OF MY CLAY!

SHAME.

SORROW.

His foreman looked over Stronginthearm's shoulder. 'What did it go and do that for?'

'How should I know?' snapped Stronginthearm.

'I mean, it brought the tea round this afternoon as normal as anything. Then it went off for a coupla hours, and now this …'

Stronginthearm shrugged. A golem was a golem and that was all there was to it, but the recollection of that bland face positioning itself under the giant hammer had shaken him.

'I heard the other day the sawmill in Dimwell Street wouldn't mind selling the one it's got,' said the foreman. 'It sawed up a mahogany trunk into matchsticks, or something. You want I should go and have a word?'

Stronginthearm looked at the slate again.

Dibbuk had never been very wordy. He'd carry red-hot iron, hammer sword-blanks with his fists, clean out clinkers from a smelter still too hot for a man to touch … and never say a word. Of course, he couldn't say any words, but Dibbuk had always given the impression that there were none he'd particularly wanted to say in any case. He just worked. These were the most words he'd ever written at any one time.

They spoke to Stronginthearm of black distress, and a mind that would have been screaming if it could only have uttered a sound. Which was daft! The things couldn't commit suicide.

'Boss?' said the foreman. 'I said, you want me to get another one?'

Stronginthearm skimmed the slate away and, with a feeling of relief, watched it shatter against the wall. 'No,' he said. 'Just clear this thing up. And get the bloody hammer fixed.'

Sergeant Colon, after some considerable effort, managed to get his head higher than the gutter.

'You — you all right, Corporal Lord de Nobbes?' he mumbled.

'Dunno, Fred. Whose face is this?'

'’S mine, Nobby.'

'Thank gods for that, I thought it was me …'

Colon fell back. 'We're lyin' in the gutter, Nobby,' he moaned. 'Ooo.'

'We're all lyin' in the gutter, Fred. But some of us're lookin' at the stars.'

'Well, I'm lookin' at your face, Nobby. Stars'd be a lot better, believe you me. C'mon …'

With several false starts they both managed to get upright, mainly by pulling themselves up one another.

'Where're're're we, Nobby?'

'’m sure we left the Drum,… 've I got a sheet over m'head?'

'It's the fog, Nobby.'

'What about these legs down here?'

'I reckon them's your legs, Nobby. I've got mine.'

'Right. Right. Ooo … I reckon I drunk a lot, Sarge.'

'Drunk as a lord, eh?'

Nobby reached gingerly up to his helmet. Someone had put a paper coronet around it. His questing hand found a dog-end behind his ear.

It was that unpleasant hour of the drinking day when, after a few hours' quality gutter-time, you're beginning to feel the retribution of sobriety while still being drunk enough to make it worse.

'How'd we get here, Sarge?'

Colon started to scratch his head and stopped because of the noise.

'I reckon …' he said, winnowing the frazzled shreds of his short-term memory, 'I… reckon… seems to me there was something about stormin' the palace and demandin' your birthright…'

Nobby choked and spat out the cigarette. 'We didn't do that, did we?'

'You was shouting we ought to do it …'

'Oh, gods …' moaned Nobby.

'But I reckon you threw up around that time.'

'That's a relief, anyway.'

'Well… it was all over Grabber Hoskins. But he tripped over someone before he could get us.'

Colon suddenly patted his pockets. 'And I've still got the tea money,' he said. Another cloud of memory scudded across the sunshine of oblivion. 'Well… three pennies of it…'

The urgency of this got through to Nobby. 'Thruppence?'

'Yeah, well … after you started orderin' all them expensive drinks for the whole bar … well, you din't have no money and it was either me payin' for them or …' Colon moved his finger across his throat and went: 'Kssssh!'

'You tellin' me we paid for Happy Hour in the Drum?'