The Philosophical Strangler

  Greyboar shrugged. "Sure, I know. So what? I never have liked the way dwarves get treated in this world, you know that. You should be against it, too—self-preservation, if no other reason." I was quite offended at the evil grin that he gave me at that point. "Easy to mistake you for a dwarf, in the dark."

  Then he made that firm-type gesture with his great ugly hand which I hated—it meant: the question's settled.

  "Let 'em stay. And let 'em build their stop on the Railroad. Nothing else, maybe that'll put me back in Gwendolyn's good graces, just a bit. She's been a topside organizer of the Railroad for years. Has strong feelings on the subject, strong feelings. So when she hears, maybe she'll decide I'm not quite the complete worthless scum of the earth, after all."

  So the dwarves stayed, and, sure enough, it didn't take them long to build a stop on the Railroad. Then, before you knew it—almost overnight, it seemed like—our cellar became the main stop for the Railroad in New Sfinctr. Dwarves sneaking in and out all times of the night. I was surprised at first, but after reflection it made sense. A lot of it was Angela and Jenny. Pretty soon the girls got so involved in Railroad work that they stopped even talking about opening their dress shop.

  Mostly, though, it was Greyboar. Biggest problem the Railroad always had was keeping the porkers from discovering and busting up the stops. Never a problem, that, with our stop. The first time the porkers came by, poking and prying and asking questions, Greyboar went out to talk to them. He gave them The Stare, and that was that. They never came around again.

  But, like I've said a thousand times, it's the natural state of life to be unjust. As the wise man says: "Every silver lining has a cloud."

  Because, you see, Gwendolyn did find out. And, sure enough, she did come to the conclusion that maybe her baby brother, the cold-blooded murderous thug, was—just maybe—not such a totally worthless piece of human garbage, after all.

  And, of course, if you want to get yourself into big trouble—Big Trouble—there's no quicker way to do it than to get into Gwendolyn's good graces.

  PART III: SYNTHESIS

  Chapter 22.

  Disaster Strikes

  It was bound to happen. The signs had all been there,

  gathering like clouds. Good deeds done, promises kept, righteous behavior maintained, the lot. I could feel disaster coming, like hearing thunder over the horizon.

  Now that we were flush, it was impossible to get Greyboar to work at all. Hildegard's bonus, on top of the Cardinal's treasure, had elevated us into the ranks of the "idle rich." Which is a splendid place to be, of course, but not when it leads to delusions of grandeur. The fact is that your true idle rich can stay that way because they've got other people slaving away to keep them in that blessed state. All we had was a hoard that would be gone soon enough, and the pitiful earnings which Jenny and Angela brought in from the dresswork they did on the rare occasions they weren't totally preoccupied with the Railroad.

  Live on the interest, you say? Huh. Not familiar with the practices of Groutch bankers of the day, I see. Fees for this, fees for that. Not to mention the charming practice of charging you 4% of the existing balance every month in recompense for the time and labor involved in calculating your 4% interest. No slouches, they.

  Fie on all respectable financial institutions! My bank is the bottom of a mattress. Which is safe enough when you've got Greyboar snoring away on top, but it's still withering away.

  But—

  No use. Greyboar refused each and every job I turned up. His criteria for "philosophically acceptable" chokes got more ridiculous by the day. I tried to point out the contradiction involved between demanding an advance in entropy while simultaneously maintaining ethical standards that no genuine beatified saint could ever have matched, but—

  No use. Every day, the same thing. Practice his "Languor," study his "Torpor," daydream about the eventual bliss of eternal "Stupor." Except for whenever the Cat floated back around, at which point all of that philosophical nonsense went right out the window in favor of, uh, what you might call "empiricism." As in, pleasures of the flesh. At those times, I always had to make sure I'd extracted whatever moneys we needed before Greyboar and the Cat had finished with their first clinch and gone upstairs. Never get to the mattress thereafter.

  * * *

  Yes, I could feel it coming. Disaster.

  I started getting twitchy. Moving from one window of the townhouse to another, scrutinizing the streets below, watching for the first signs. Muttering under my breath. Eating sandwiches while on guard, instead of joining the festive little crowd at the dinner table.

  Angela and Jenny were peeved with me, needless to say. Accused me of being a paranoiac. At one point, they got annoyed enough to put me on a regimen of abstinence for a week. I'll admit that jolted me out of it, for a time. Terrible thing, abstinence. I'd always thought so, even in the good old days before I'd fallen madly in love like some fairy tale dunce.

  Didn't last, though. Soon enough, that immensely pleasant state which the upper crust likes to call "post-coital tristesse" turned into genuine distress. Staring up at the ceiling, expecting a meteor to come through any minute.

  So Jenny and Angela would boot me out of the bed and I'd go wandering through the house in the dead of night. Afraid even to light a candle lest some lurking danger spot me in the darkness. A ghost before my time. A specter, I say! In my own home!

  Stupid, of course, all of it. A total waste of time and effort. I should have remembered the sayings of the wise man: "Don't bother looking for trouble. It'll find you all on its own." Or: "When troubles come, they come not in single spies but battalions." (I think he stole that one; doesn't really sound like him.)

  Or, of course, the classic: "You want to relax? Drop dead."

  But, still—

  The way it happened was so unfair.

  * * *

  "You've got guests," announced Angela.

  I jumped, and spun around from the peephole in the front door. "Who? Where?"

  Angela was standing in the entrance to the front parlor, grinning like an imp. Jenny's face was perched over her shoulder.

  "Lots of them," added Jenny. Grinning like an imp.

  I peered at the pair suspiciously. I didn't like the expression on their faces. Not one bit. Not at all.

  Partly that was from bitter experience. Partly it was simple indignation. No girls that young and fresh and good-looking should be able to imitate denizens of the underworld.

  But mostly it was because another of the wise man's sayings was clanging in my mind: When the cat looks like it's swallowed the canary, start chirping.

  "Who?" I demanded again. "Where?" I repeated. "No one's come near the house. I've been watching!"

  The faces got impier. You know that look. The one where the guilty party wallows in their guilt. Basks in their sin. My stomach felt like lead. I looked down at the floor.

  "Through the Railroad, of course," chirped Angela. "How else?"

  "From be . . . low . . ." quavered Jenny, in a tone of mock doom. She and Angela burst into laughter.

  Not fair!

  Chapter 23.

  A Crazy Proposal

  Angela and Jenny led me into the "salon," as they liked to call

  it.

  Disaster, sure enough.

  Not just one calamity, either, but a whole collection. There they were:

  Zulkeh, the pedant from perdition.

  Shelyid, the dwarf from disaster.

  Hrundig, the mercenary from—never mind. (And just what the hell was he doing in that company, anyway?)

  Magrit, the proper witch. And her familiar—the salamander Wittgenstein.

  Finally, of course, Gwendolyn.

  * * *

  Greyboar was already there, standing in one of the other doorways leading into the salon. The Cat was pushing her way past him, drifting her way into the room.

  " 'Lo, Gwendolyn," I heard him mumble.

  The chokester seemed in a bit of a d
aze. He looked around for a place to sit, but there wasn't any. The couch and the two chairs we had were already taken by the guests. (I kept a tight lid on frivolous expenses, you understand.)

  " 'Lo, brother," came her response. She wasn't quite frowning—you've never seen a real frown until you've seen Gwendolyn's, let me tell you—but she certainly didn't seem overjoyed to see her long-lost brother. Tense as a coil of steel.

  The ice was broken by Shelyid. The dwarf sprang off his chair and raced over to Greyboar, squealing his happy greetings. A moment later, he was hugging the strangler's right knee.

  Greyboar winced. You wouldn't think it, looking at the little guy, but Shelyid's as strong as an ogre. Strange dwarf. Ugly as sin, for one thing. Hairier than a musk ox, for another.

  "Hey, take it easy, Shelyid."

  "Oh! Sorry." The dwarf released Greyboar's leg and grinned up at him. Greyboar grinned back. He's really very fond of that dwarf.

  So am I, actually. A bit to my regret, then, because Shelyid raced over and gave me the same hug. I thought my ribcage was going to go, but I was surprised at how happy I was to see him.

  Then Wittgenstein piped up and I wasn't surprised at how much I hadn't missed the slimy creature. "Isn't that sweet, Magrit? Midgets meet again."

  "Shut up, Wittgenstein," growled the witch. "We're supposed to be on our best behavior."

  "That is my best behavior," groused the salamander. "What am I supposed to do? Be polite?"

  Greyboar nodded to Magrit. "I see you escaped the Cruds. I was a little worried when we heard the Ozarines had invaded Prygg."

  The witch sneered. "Those chumps? They couldn't have caught me even if I hadn't had the Rap Sheet."

  I made frantic little waving motions with my hands. You know the ones: shuddup, shuddup, shuddup.

  Magrit's sneer deepened. "And what's your problem, Ignace? Don't want any mention of the Rap Sheet in your presence?"

  Very frantic waving motions: shuddup, shuddup, shuddup.

  "You remember the Rap Sheet, don't you? You ought to, Ignace. You helped steal it."

  "Absolutely!" shrilled the salamander perched on her shoulder. Wittgenstein reared up like a herald. "Ignace was deeply involved! Totally! Integrally!"

  SHUDDUP, SHUDDUP, SHUDDUP.

  Jenny and Angela were staring at me, wide-eyed.

  "You stole the Rap Sheet?" gasped Angela.

  "Is that what you were doing in Prygg?" demanded Jenny. She stared at Greyboar. "So that's why you won't ever talk about it!"

  I clutched my head. The whole world would know!

  "Shut up!" I cried.

  "Whatever for, Ignace?" demanded Wittgenstein. As always, the high pitch of the familiar's voice grated on my ears. "Since when have you become so modest?"

  Wittgenstein swiveled his neck and peered intently at Jenny and Angela.

  "Yes, yes, ladies! You are in the presence of terrible desperadoes! The very men who were complicit in the theft of Ozar's Rap Sheet which drew down the wrath of that mighty empire upon poor, downtrodden Grotum. Responsible, I say, for the invasion of Pryggia and the ensuing horrors and atrocities."

  He rose to his full height and pointed at me. "J'accuse!"

  "Oh, stop it," said Magrit.

  Wittgenstein snickered. "But it's all true, Magrit! You know it is. You were there, after all." Snicker, snicker. "It was your plot in the first place."

  Wittgenstein's beady red eyes rolled back to Jenny and Angela. Again, that nasty snicker. "From subtle hints, I'd say the two of you have formed a romantic attachment to this Ignace fellow. Dummies."

  Jenny and Angela nodded. Gwendolyn frowned. Magrit sneered. Shelyid looked confused. Zulkeh didn't.

  Wittgenstein snickered again. Then, hissed: "Cradle robber. Bigamist cradle robber."

  "He is not a bigamist!" snapped Jenny.

  Angela giggled. "More like a trigamist." She put her arm around Jenny, and smiled seraphically. "As for the charge of robbing the cradle—well—"

  "It's true," pronounced Jenny. "We are but lambs, led astray by this lustful beast." She put her arm around me and rubbed her hip against mine. The motion involved was not, uh, lamblike.

  For the first time, the wizard Zulkeh spoke.

  "Do I understand correctly? Is it true that this wight has engaged in carnal intercourse with both of you hoydens? Who have, in your turn, transgressed the well-established bounds of heterosexual propriety?"

  Jenny and Angela nodded happily.

  "Like I said," piped up Wittgenstein. "A bigamist cradle robber." The salamander goggled the girls. "And dykes, to boot."

  "Bah!" spoke Zulkeh. The wizard stroked his beard. "You would do well, Magrit, to silence that unnatural beast. Its ignorance is beyond belief. The charge of bigamy is utterly specious, inasmuch as bigamy presupposes the sundering of lawful bonds through subterfuge, whereas we have, in this instance—I misdoubt me not—neither lawful bonds to be sundered nor any subterfuge utilized in not so doing. This—" he continued, while everyone was trying to catch up with the tortured logic—"being due to the fellow Ignace's well-known disdain for all moral precepts."

  He waved his hand in judgment.

  "As well accuse a wolf of moral turpitude for being a carnivore. Now, as to the charges of cradle robbing and perversion, it seems to me, at first glance, that we have to deal with more substantive matters. I would remind all present, in regard to the first, of the well-known precepts of Nabokov Laebmauntsforscynneweëld. Then, dealing with the problem of perversion, we can begin with the texts of Sappho Sfondrati-Piccolomini, in whose execrable verses are clearly—"

  "Enough!" bellowed Magrit. She planted her hands on the arms of the chair and swiveled her ample figure toward Zulkeh. Her plain and modest long dress fit her middle-aged matronly appearance. But the scowl on her face was as ferocious as you'd expect from one of the world's down-home, no-fooling, proper witches. "Enough already!"

  The wizard glared at her. I expected another of the mighty wrangles between the two of them which I had gotten used to—sort of—while we were in Prygg.

  But Greyboar interrupted. "Why are you here?"

  Silence fell. All eyes turned to Gwendolyn.

  "Oh, no," I moaned. (Very softly, mind.)

  Sure enough: "I need your help, brother."

  * * *

  The words were choked out, as if she were trying not to say them. The next words, even more so: "And yours too, Ignace."

  She wasn't even looking at me when she said it. Just slumped in her chair, staring at the floor.

  My temper started to rise. "What's this? All of a sudden I'm not the little scuzzball what ruined your brother's moral fiber? All of a sudden—urfff!"

  Angela's elbow hit me like a rocket, right in the wind. An instant later, Jenny's hands were clapped over my mouth.

  "Just ignore him," she said to Gwendolyn, very sweetly. "Keep talking. Please."

  Gwendolyn raised her head. When she caught sight of the three of us, she barked a laugh. "What a picture! My congratulations—Jenny, isn't it? And you too, Angela. I was never able to shut him up that quick."

  I snapped back a hot retort. "Grrrmrrgrnrrbrr!" Jenny's hands clamped down, and I fell silent. Not so much from the pressure, but from the sight of Angela's elbow. Cocked, and ready for another shot.

  Gwendolyn shook her head ruefully. "You are a piece of work, Ignace. Only person I know who gets angrier when he gets a compliment than an insult."

  She ran the fingers of her left hand through her thick mass of long, black hair. It was a gesture which I remembered well, from the years back. As always, her fingers got a bit tangled up. Gwendolyn's hair wasn't quite as kinky as her brother's. But, then, she had a lot more of it.

  The gesture drained away all my anger in an instant. I felt myself slumping a little. Damn woman! I never had been able to maintain a proper spite against Gwendolyn. Not when she was in my presence, anyway.

  "The reason I need you too, Ignace," she said softly, "is because Greyboar'
s always a little lost without you. You and your fussing, and your mother hen routine."

  She emitted a chuckle that was more in the way of a sigh. "Missed it myself, tell you the truth, all these years."

  She stared at me for a moment, as if she were studying something. Then, sighed again and squared her shoulders, turning her head toward Greyboar.

  "You heard about Benvenuti?"

  The strangler nodded. "Yeah. Not much. He got caught, and then seems to have escaped."

  Gwendolyn shook her head. "Not exactly. He escaped from the dungeons, yes. But after that—" Her hand waved about, vaguely. "We're not sure what happened. I asked my dwarf friends to see if they could find out anything. They were able to pick up his trail, eventually. He must have gotten lost in that labyrinth under the Pile, and kept going downward. But—"

  She fell silent, tightening her lips. Then: "The dwarves tracked him to one of the entrances to the netherworld. Further than that, they wouldn't go. Dwarves stay clear of those depths. Always."

  "And rightly so!" exclaimed Zulkeh. "Dwarves are expressly forbidden any congress with the netherworld. Both in Holy Writ and in all the prophetic commentaries. 'Tis because they are damned in the Lord's eyes, of course."

  I tried—failed—to follow the logic. But Zulkeh was steaming right along.

  "The Lord's decree, needless to say, is rigorously enforced by the powers in the netherworld. As a result, your average dwarf is firmly convinced that he can under no circumstances survive a journey into the infernal regions. Superstitious dolts! The truth, of course, is quite otherwise. I have studied the problem extensively, and I can assure you—"

  "Enough!" bellowed Magrit. "Let Gwendolyn finish, for the sake of all creation, before you bore us all to death!"

  Gwendolyn spoke hurriedly. "I finally asked Zulkeh for his opinion. He consulted—something—and said that Benvenuti apparently had some trouble with the devils—"

  I couldn't suppress a sudden hysterical laugh, gurgling up past Jenny's fingers. Apparently had some trouble with the devils! Gee, no kidding?

  "—and wound up getting pitched out of the infernal regions altogether. Into—into—you know."