Genetopia (17 page)

Chapter 14: Henritt’s story

“Faster, faster!”

Henritt Elkyme leaned forward in his carriage’s deep bucketseat. Banana-leaf screens shielded him on three sides, so that all he could see of Farsamy was the cobbled street, the jostling crowds and the tight-packed buildings to either side. Henritt took a crop from its carved holder and flicked it at the sweat-streaked flank of the nearest mutt. “Faster,” he said again.

This place had an air of transience, of lean-tos and podhuts thrown casually together–here today, but probably not the next–against a backdrop of trees, hills, the great river Farsam, luxuriating in their ancient permanence. It made him uncomfortable.

He flicked again at the nearest mutt then, catching gentle old Pilofritt’s look, eased himself back into the cushions. Pil had been with the clan for many years, a bondsman given in tribute to Henritt’s father Kymeritt by the neighbouring Tenka clan, as part-settlement in some obscure dispute.

Henritt chewed on a jaggery stick, then tossed the sugary husk out into the street when he had finished. Pil would be right, of course: there was no hurry, no need to work the beasts too hard. It had been a long journey and everyone was tired. He closed his eyes, sick already of the sight of so much flesh, human and otherwise. Sick of the smells of shit and sweat and dirt, the babble of voices, the occasional raised beseechment to whatever gods these people worshipped. And yet... the clamour, the tension of mixing with the world beyond the clan–it was exciting, too. He, Henritt, purebred son of Kyme of the clan Ritt, had been to Farsamy many times before, but this was the first time he had led the delegation to Carnival. As Pil kept reminding him, he had much to learn. And also, so much to see and do!

~

He walked through the early morning crowds, resenting all around him.

His head hurt, his stomach burned, his throat was dry and swollen, making it hard to talk or swallow. Not that he wanted to.

Pil had woken him too early–deliberately, he felt sure. Carnival was under way and he had stock to buy, a head to clear. Henritt recalled the night before, lying slumped at the roadside with the street rats sniffing at him, trying to work out if he was garbage to be consumed. He’d flapped at them, driven them from him. They should have been able to tell. He couldn’t remember returning to the lodging house. No doubt Pil would fill him in on the details if he could be bothered to ask.

The delegation from Rittasan had established itself in one of the squares near to the centre of Farsamy. Here, Carnival filled every open space, with stalls and pens spilling over into streets and thoroughfares.

Dew lingering from the cool night gave the cobbles a surface slick with slurry and a smart algal scum that dissolved away any debris the rats had missed.

“Hey, Janos!” he croaked, waving at a young bonded behind the Ritt stall. Janosofritt looked moribund: hooded eyes sunk deep into his pallid face. Just as he should: for much of the night the two friends had matched each other drink for drink.

The boy smiled and waved. He was good company, even if his fawning did verge on the outrageous. He was a good worker, too.

Henritt stepped behind the stall, eyeing the arrangements critically, gesturing at Janos or one of the mutts to refine the display.

Under the canopy he was sheltered from the growing intensity of the morning’s sun, but there was no respite from the heat and the pervasive smells of the stock. He sat on a cushioned stool, ready to do business, ready to take his first serious steps in multiplying the clan’s wealth.

The delegation from Rittasan had brought samples of some of their best smartfibres to Carnival. Their livelihood was founded on the fibre beds, the techniques for farming and moulding the smartstuff jealously guarded, passed down through the generations. Clans would travel for days and weeks to buy in stocks of Ritt fibre and its products: the fibres had much in common with the coarse spider silk to be found in some parts of the wilds; refined over generations, when Ritt fibres were woven together they would bond and scab over, forming waterproof sheeting that could be used for clothing, bottling and other containers; depending on the after-treatment, Ritt fibres could be used in the construction of buildings, boats and carriages. The stock they would sell at Farsamy market would finance the trip and the purchases Henritt was to make; the longer term deals and contracts initiated here were what really mattered.

Henritt had spent many such trips studying at the feet of his father, or Uncle Chardinritt. He was aware that he sometimes gave the impression of callowness, of disinterest even, but he was well-taught and his brain was sharp. He would not let the clan down.

~

Give him a mutt, any day! Mutts were straightforward in their loyalty and devotion: a good mutt could be nothing but obedient, after all. They didn’t have it in them to be condescending, to patronise their betters in the way that Pilofritt had perfected, to simultaneously obey their master’s every word and yet undermine his standing in the company of equals.

And Janosofritt! The boy had loved it.

“Perhaps the finest you will find in all of the eastern provinces,” Henritt told a wild-eyed Riverwalker, allowing him to run the loose fibres through his hands, feel their quality.

“Most certainly the finest,” Pilofritt chipped in, simultaneously defending the clan’s standing and undermining Henritt. He had been like that since the start of trading, and Janos had not even troubled to hide his delight each time the old bondsman corrected Henritt.

“A fine selection of raw materials,” the Walker said. From the look in his eyes he was clearly impressed. “Tell me, what do you craft with these fine fibres?”

Henritt started to answer, but Pilofritt beat him to it again: “We do not need to craft anything with our fibres for trade at Carnival. Their quality speaks for itself.”

Now, another Riverwalker moved over to join them. Older, with crowsfoot lines around her eyes and a steady, measured pronunciation, she said, “You are being disingenuous, no? Such riches! You must have many uses for these fibres. In Restitution we use smartfibres to enhance Beshusami podhut pods–I’m sure you do the same.”

“Oh, we have many uses for our fibres,” said Pilofritt. “But we always welcome exchanges of ideas and skills with our neighbours...”

~

After several days of this, Henritt had had enough of Pilofritt taking over at every opportunity. “I am going to inspect stock,” he said, addressing no one in particular one day.

“I will accompany you, sir,” said Pil immediately.

“You do not trust me to choose wisely?” demanded Henritt.

“You are my master and superior, sir. I merely advise and help you to refine your judgement. It is my duty.”

Henritt met the old man’s gaze. Turning away, he plucked another jaggery stick from behind the stall and bit into it, enjoying the kick from the coarse palm-sugar snack. He knew Pil disapproved of such stimulants. He tossed the husk into the gutter for the street rats. Why should he care what the bondsman thought? Pil might be purebred, but he was no freeman.

He led the way towards the Pillories and Willow Way. Bodies pressed all around. The wealthier clansmen and freemen wore fabrics made from Ritt smartfibres, their poorer fellows and bonded in cottons and woollen cloaks.

Henritt knew that if he paused for Pil’s advice he would be told to explore the engineering stalls in the Elderman Quarter. The Ritt clan might be blessed with the source for some of the finest raw materials in the region, but innovations in their uses came from elsewhere. There would be gadgetry and clever devices aplenty in the Elderman Quarter, but the real trade there was in talent and forging longer term partnerships: talented engineers to be recruited to the clan; innovative clans with which to construct alliances.

But Henritt was young and, he would readily admit, easily bored. His older brother Willemritt was the one who had been groomed in the semi-mystical techniques of fibre production and it was Willemritt who was obsessive about the clan’s product. Henritt was smarter than that. He knew that the real power lay in marketing and politicking. Let Will bury his head in the fibre vats day and night! It was Henritt who came to town, Henritt who saw the sights and met the people from outside the clan’s small world.

And he knew exactly what would please his father, Kymeritt, far more than any exotic gadgetry. “Okay, Pil,” he said. “Let’s go look at some livestock.”

~

They were chained by the ankle to loops of smartfibre bonded to the cobbles. Thirty or forty, perhaps, in this one pen alone. The smell was almost overpowering: faeces and urine but, more than anything, a booming, musky body odour. It made Henritt wish it was still raining, something to wash some of the stench out of the air.

He stood before a group of five males. They varied in height from one that barely reached Henritt’s chin to one that towered over the others, like a mighty tree amid saplings. Despite the variation in body size, they looked as if they were all from the same stock: flat faces with almost no nose at all, wide mouths that split open to reveal even teeth in an expression more nervous than threatening. Their fur was thick, matted, starting above the eyes and extending over the head and down across the upper part of the body where it became thick and tangled, like the pelt of a goat.

“Janos would like them, no?” said Henritt, half-turning to address Pil. The bondsman chuckled, then looked pointedly downwards. Henritt reached over the stock fence with his crop and flicked at the loincloth of one of the mutts. “Ah,” he said. “I see.” They’d been gelded. “I’m sure he could find a use for one, even so.”

The beasts had good broad backs and shoulders. They might be worth the reserve price.

Pil put a gentle hand on Henritt’s arm and shook his head. “Good stock don’t need gelding,” he said. “They must have needed calming. Probably wild stock–didn’t want ’em rutting.”

Henritt nodded. It paid to be careful. Most of the mutts he had known were, by their nature, obedient and hard-working. But he knew that many were flawed in some way: sickly, untrustworthy, malignant.
Imbuto
was the term they used: superficially healthy, but harbouring corruption in the core. His father would not thank him for bringing imbuto stock into the clan.

A herd of hogs in a nearby stall attracted his attention, squealing and chattering excitedly. One had blood smeared across its face, its features a curious mixture of hog and other. A street rat was dangling, twisting and writhing, from a mouth disturbingly human in form. The hog bit hard and the rat went limp. The beast tossed its head back and swallowed while all around the other hogs pushed and snapped and chattered in their singsong voices. As a child, Henritt had pretended to identify words in those voices, had imagined an entire language of hoggery. The beasts were vile things but, bred true, they had a loyalty to humans ingrained in them as solid as that of any mutt.

Henritt took Pil’s arm and they left the hog stall behind. “I want something special for Father,” he said. A plaything, a toy that will ever remind him of his youngest son’s devotion and fitness to take on the affairs of their branch of the clan. “A gift.”

“The clan will be served well enough with the contracts we are negotiating today,” said the bondsman. “Gestures merely impress. Good business sense repays the faith your father has invested in you.”

“True,” said Henritt. “But I want to impress him, too.”

~

“You won’t find better than this one in a year of Carnivals,” said the trader, a squat man with a grubby headcloth and blackened teeth. “Bids have already passed double the reserve price.”

Henritt smiled, nodding absently. This mutt was the best he had seen. A bitch, the top of her head barely reached his chin, but she was finely proportioned, the musculature solid around shoulder and thigh, but not too heavy. Her skin was a pale honey-brown, furred with a light downy fluff that grew more thickly across chest and groin. She could almost have been human, but for the fur and the dark, dark eyes: black at the centre, fading to a glowing tan hue where the whites would normally have been. The hair on her head was dark with shades of chestnut and copper, cut short to emphasise the evenness of her features.

He stepped close, reached for her mouth, and pulled the lips apart to examine two even rows of teeth. Dugs firm, no sign of lumps or slackness. He turned her, checked for signs of rot or infestation; gestured with his crop for her to walk as far as her chains would allow. She moved well.

He glanced at Pilofritt. “The bidding will go too high,” said the bondsman. “We have several of this type already. She wears chains–for what reason?”

“Ever the cautious one, eh, Pil?”

Before Pil could respond, Henritt went on: “Father would enjoy her, don’t you think?”

The bondsman bowed his head. “He would be impressed,” he conceded.

~

When Henritt returned just after the middle of the day, someone had upped the bid. He was glad to be alone now, with Pil remaining at the stall. “I’ll match the price,” he told the trader. “And up by a tenth.”

Someone else was examining the bitch, pulling her about, pawing at her. The mutt stared resolutely at a point above the woman’s head, waiting for her to finish.

There was something in this one’s look, her stance, that marked her as different, Henritt thought. A defiance, perhaps. Not a good thing in a mutt, but in this instance it raised her above the rest.

He went to her, studied her again. “Are you a talker?” he asked. Many mutts were dumb, at best communicating only with grunts and some simple Mutter-pidgin. Some could be quite fluent, though, he had heard.

She looked at him, opened her mouth enough to expose her neat, off-white teeth. No sound passed her lips, though. Her expression lacked anything human and in that instant Henritt was struck by the animal nature of the thing he was buying for his father.

~

“Clan Coltar have confirmed orders through to Hawksrise,” said Henritt over a stick of beer, celebrating another good day’s trading. “Clans Treco and Willarmey, too.”