A Company of Heroes Book Five: The Space Cadet (3 page)

Gerber, who had no intention of encouraging the man’s inane conversation, ignored him—though privately he thought the girl needed eradication more than sanding. No point in stopping with that; might as well eradicate the father, as well, since he’d obviously be lonely without her and Gerber was not the man to endure another’s suffering. Eradicate the mother, too, why not.

“Still, she’s good enough at heart,” continued the innkeeper. “Like her poor mother, sick abed these last three weeks. Suffering something terrible from the ague-cake. Gotta keep a bucket by the bed day and night, and the sponges and rags we go through! Musrum only knows how we do it. It’s a burden, I got to admit it. A burden. Lemme tell you, if there was a market for phlegm like there was for babies, I’d be a rich man.”

“I really don’t think you ought to start saving any.”

“No? You don’t think so? Well, shit. And here I got nearly a barrelful already.”

“It ain’t the ague-cake,” said one of the three old men, whose presence Gerber had entirely forgotten. “It’s a curse.”

“Shut up,” snarled the innkeeper. “It ain’t no curse.”

“It is too a curse.”

“Ague-cake ain’t a curse, it’s a disease. That’s natural. Curses ain’t natural.”

“Yes they are.”

“The volcano’s natural and it’s a curse, for sure,” added a second old man.

“No, it ain’t,” said the first old man. “It’s just a mountain. Mountain’s ain’t curses.”

“They are when you don’t want one. You know anyone wants a volcano?”

“I sure didn’t want a volcano,” agreed the third old man. “My house is under it. If that ain’t a curse, I’d like to know what is.”

“I seen your house,” argued the innkeeper, “and I would of dropped a mountain on it if I coulda. I’d say it’s a
blessing
you got a volcano on top of it.”

“There you go!” cried the first man, caught up in an ecstasy of vindicated logic. “There you go! If you can have blessings, then you
gotta
have curses! Just like you can’t have good without there being some evil.”

“That’s right,” said old man number two, “it’s a question of balance.”

“And contrast. You gotta have contrast.”

“Yeah,” agreed the innkeeper sourly, “like you three make me feel young, smart and handsome.”

“Now that ain’t showing much respect, Master Thwern!”

“Yeah? Well, you can’t have respect unless you got some disrespect. Chew on that there contrast a while, you old fart.”

“Why don’t you show me my room?” asked Gerber. “And have my meal sent up to it.”

“Certainly, sir,” replied the innkeeper, glaring murderously at the three old men, who were, in fact, too blinded by the smoke to notice. He led the broker up a stairway almost as narrow as Gerber’s thin shoulders. It made two sharp turns before it opened onto the second floor. There was a hallway, barely wide enough for one man to pass, with only three doors; the innkeeper opened one, squeezing aside to allow his guest to enter. The room was dark, its only window a small, square, shuttered hole. The only furniture was a bed, a chair and a small, square table. Like the rest of the inn, the woodwork was unpainted and unvarnished: grey and splintery where it wasn’t stained black with grease.

He heard footsteps on the stairs behind him . “I hope that’s my dinner finally arriving,” he said.

“I’m sure it is, sir.”

“Good. I’ll leave the dishes outside the door when I’ve finished. I don’t want to be disturbed for the rest of the evening.”

“Yes, sir.”

The girl, carrying a cloth-covered tray, appeared behind her father who turned to her and said, gruffly: “About time! Go ahead now! Give the poor, starving man his dinner! What’re you waiting for?”

“I can’t get to him, Dad, you’re in the way.”

“Well, go
around
me, girl! Go around! Do I have to tell you how to do everything?”

“No, Dad,” she said, though it was obvious she thought he did.

The innkeeper pressed his back against the wall outside the door, but his stomach still nearly spanned the space. His daughter, a two-thirds scale model of her father, tried to sidle past him, her back against the opposite wall, but the overlap of several inches of flesh confounded her. She had to hold the tray directly above her head where, atop her stumpy arms, it was pretty much on a level with Gerber’s eyes. He lifted it from her hands and stepped back into his room.

“Miss?” he said.

“Yeff?” she replied as best as she could with her breasts pressed against her face by her father’s stomach.

“This reminds me—will you see to the brats in the caravan? Clean ‘em up as best you can—hose ‘em down
en masse
if you want—the bottom of the wagon has a drain—and give ‘em something to eat—milk, if you have it, I suppose. But be sure to cut it in half with water if you do.”

“Yeff fir,” she answered as Gerber closed the door on her and her father. The broker hoped they would not be there in the morning, still jammed in the hallway.

He placed the tray on the table and removed the cloth. His already thin lips compressed into invisibility at the grim sight of pale gristly meat of unidentifiable origin embedded in a greenish aspic of already-congealing grease, a single boiled potato that looked no larger than nor more appealing than someone’s big toe, a half dozen watery-looking cabbage leaves, a chunk of stale, grey bread and a glass of thin beer that looked disturbingly like a urine sample. He ate as much as his stomach and mood could handle, but after a few minutes decided to give the whole day up as a bad job.

He pulled off his clothes and neatly hung them over the back of the chair, which under the unaccustomed weight tipped over backwards in a dead faint onto the grimy floor. He let them lay there. He blew out the candle and felt his way to the bed, which was as damp and clammy as he expected—bringing to mind the innkeeper’s wife’s ague-cake.
Musrum’s pendulous balls,
let not my thoughts go there, please
.

As he wriggled his skinny flanks into the lumpy mattress, he wondered if perhaps it might not be worthwhile trying to save something worthwhile from an otherwise miserable day; a kind of dessert as it were. He thought about the blonde girl. She was soggily fat, like a loaf of bread left in a pan of water, her skin looked like wet crêpe paper, her hair was stringy and her dwarfish features were crowded into the center of her moon face like lumps in a bowl of cold porridge. He put his hands behind his head and thought about the prospect. She had not been able, he decided upon reflection, to take her eyes from him. Surely, he concluded, he was not suffering from an unwonted conceit: it would have been difficult for anyone to mistake her expression of openly lascivious fascination and invitation, like that of an amorous cow. He fell asleep among these pleasant contemplations. This was, as it would have proved, fortunate, for, difficult though it may have been for him to imagine, he was in fact mistaken in his interpretation of the girl’s interest. She herself was just then also falling asleep, in the room directly below his own, had he but known it, wondering if such a pockmarked face as the broker possessed would absorb water like the sponge it so closely resembled. She imagined his oversoaked head oozing all night and wasn’t looking forward to having to drag the mattress down the stairs and outside for drying. It was bad enough taking care of her mother’s things. She reserved her secret lusts for the professional wrestlers to whom she wrote ramblingly illiterate pornographic letters under the pseudonym “Ursula.”

The following morning was as grey as the last, but, at least for the moment, it was not raining. Instead, a fine ash was sifting from the low clouds. The broker declined breakfast and went directly to the stable.

“Fed the babes last night,” offered the innkeeper, sidling along beside Gerber, “and again this morning. Didn’t have much milk—cows’re a little scarce lately, as you might imagine, sir. But we did our best with some leftover gravy, gin and wine.”

“I’m sure,” said the broker. “How much do I owe you?”

“Well, sir, a quarter-crown, sir, would suffice. We’ll call that even. But I’m bound to inform you, sir, that some of them babes in your wagon is dead. I cannot assume responsibility, sir, I hope you appreciate that. They got washed and fed along with the rest, and that’s all you asked of us. Spooned in the feed whether they took it or not; all got their fair share; didn’t cheat you there, sir, not so much as a spoonful.”

“Yes, yes. Get my horse ready. I must be on my way.”

“Yes, sir, right away, sir.”

The innkeeper bustled into the open door of the stable and kicked at a pile of straw that proved to be the stable boy’s bed.

“Get the gentleman’s rig together, boy,” he ordered as a gaunt, stupid, pimply face emerged and looked at its master sullenly. The innkeeper repeated the order as the boy shuffled off, scratching his skinny posterior.

“Now,” he continued, turning to face the broker, “perhaps the good gentleman might consider a, um, business proposition?”

“Business?”

“Yes, sir. I was just wondering...well, sir, I was just wondering what you planned to do with them dead babies in there. Seemed to me that they can’t be doing you much good now.”

“No. They’re expected losses. I make allowances for a certain percentage.”

“Well, then, sir, that being the case, perhaps you might consider selling them to me?”

“Selling them?”

“Yes, sir.”

“To you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you’re perfectly correct: I have no use for them now. Wouldn’t do any harm at all if I could turn a little profit on them. What were you thinking of offering?”

“Well, sir, would you consider, say, five pfennigs each?”

“Five pfennigs?” He had paid fifteen apiece, but this would at least cut his losses by a third.

“Well, six, then,” offered the innkeeper, misinterpreting the broker’s thoughtful silence.

“Sold. How many did you find?”

“There was five dead’uns as of this morning. But I’ll take all you got.”

There proved to be six and the innkeeper handed over thirty-six copper coins while the stable boy removed the tiny bodies, dropping them into an empty feed bag. That left twenty-one still alive. at least five crowns apiece, perhaps more, there was still a handsome profit waiting in Blavek, even if Gerber lost another half dozen. This did not cause him to reconsider his promise to retire and he was even then contemplating his brother’s long-standing offer to join him in his pencil eraser business.

The transaction satisfactorily completed, the broker climbed atop his wagon, tied a handkerchief over his mouth and nose against the pervasive ash, and flicked the reins. The horse, its head hanging morosely and coughing delicately, like an aesthetic consumptive, began to move. Gerber glanced over his shoulder, but both the innkeeper and the stableboy were gone. Only the daughter was visible, struggling to drag a soggy mattress from the door and into the open yard. He turned back to face the long road to the east. It glistened like a snail track amid the black landscape. He didn’t give the innkeeper another thought, though several hours later he did momentarily wonder what he had wanted with the babies.

III.

Hipner Pilnipott preferred to be known as The Fox, though no one called him that other than his students, who were required to do so, and the woman whom everyone thought was his mother not the least because she encouraged it while secretly considering it a very funny title, mainly because of its inappropriateness. Pilnipott did indeed resemble any one of several different animals, none of which were anything like a fox. Of all the suggested alternatives—echidna, hedgehog and beaver, to name but a few—the most apt was the ordinary garden mole. For a mole, he would have been, of course, very large, but for a human being he was in fact quite small. He was pear-shaped and almost neckless—the smoothly curving line connecting the crown of his head with his expansive hips being unbroken by any discernable neck or shoulders. He resembled, in fact, an eggplant more than anything in the animal kingdom. His face came to a dull point; his blunt, protruding nose, made all the more prominent by the lack of either chin or forehead, was moist and pimply. He was fearsomely nearsighted and his already small eyes—as damp and beady as a pair of capers—were shrunk to pinpoints by the thick concave lenses he wore.

His detractors, however, were being far too literal, for while Pilnipott might physically be mole-like he did indeed resemble a fox in the only really significant way: he was magnificently wily. He had been a brilliant child in an environment where intelligence was underappreciated, especially when combined with any physical handicap, let alone the catalog of infirmities which burdened young Pilnipott. As might be expected, a decade of humiliations and beatings had driven the boy into a world of his own making. He devoured every book, magazine, tabloid and dime novel which had even so much as a single sentence describing a crime or a criminal. The most successful thief, malfeasor, misdemeanant, miscreant, pickpocket, picklock, burglar, second story man, scofflaw, gangster, racketeer, thug, swindler, confidence man, highwayman or outlaw became his ardent hero. Being an intelligent lad, however, he was not satisfied with admiration—he wanted to emulate. But, being intelligent, he was all too aware of his physical limitations. He was clumsy, nearly blind, claustrophobic, acrophobic, nervous, fretful and prone to jump at sudden, loud noises. His voice, weak and fluting, would never command respect. An order to “stick ‘em up!” would only result in a tolerant chuckle and either a pat on the head or a sharp cuff against an earhole.

He realized, however, that a successful crime actually consisted of two separate and distinct parts: planning and commission. These did not necessarily have to be performed by the same person. Indeed, there were persuasive arguments as to why they should be undertaken by entirely different people. The thug, physically active, with adept fingers and sharp eyes, capable of carrying any crime to its successful conclusion, did not of necessity possess the brains to invent that crime, let alone think through all possible consequences and permutations. That’s why so many of them, young Pilnipott reasoned, had a night’s dangerous labor rewarded with only a few crowns or a handful of worthless silverplate—or, all too often, several years at hard labor. On the other hand, the criminal mastermind, able to plan an escapade to its last detail, foreseeing every circumstance, did not of necessity have the brute skills required for its execution.