generation.’
A Junior stood up and said, ‘I have a question I’d like asked too, as long as you’re going to be asking questions. This Maggomas must be an old man now, maybe he’ll know the answer. I’d like to know how come Seniors live on limitless credit for doing nothing while working men have to get by on the pitiful rations they give us. That’s what I’d like to know.’ He sat down again.
Other questions followed. The Chester Juniors asked what they would never have dared to ask any Senior to his face: how was it that the cloth-cocks took the most powerful manna to dream themselves into fitting strength of mind and virtue, but still acted with spite and self-indulgence when awake? How was it that they said one thing and did another, all the time cursing the Juniors for famishing deceitfulness? Enforced the age-line except where it cut them off from the objects of their own lusts? Would hear no petition from younger men unless in the presence of the Boardmen, whose power over young men’s lives was utterly intimidating? Ruled that a young man had to carry all his life a name picked from a list drawn out of the Boardmen’s dreams, though he might wish to call himself after some friend or hero in respectful memory?
Their voices raw with fury, the Chesters gave the Endtendant no chance to speak. He stood silent, ice-eyed, like a personification of the cold heart of their rage.
When the excitement began to die down, Hak made one last try: ‘How do we know that this DarkDreamer has told us the truth?’
‘Ask one you trust,’ d Layo rejoined. He nodded at Kelmz. ‘What
does the first fighter in the Holdfast, the man who won’t take his mantle, have to say?’
Kelmz cleared his throat and said he thought truth had been spoken.
The Chesters set up a roar and a storm of clapping. Hak bowed to it; he promised on behalf of the whole company to do what was needed to speed the Endtendant on his way. Immediately, d Layo outlined what he wanted.
‘When the rumors of his having claimed a son got out, Maggomas left the Tekkans and went off to Bayo, and we haven’t heard of him since. We can’t go to the Board and ask them where he is, and the men at Bayo are Penneltons assigned there this five-year, so they won’t know anything. Some of the older Bayo fems might remember, though, and anything they know we can get out of them – if we can reach them and deal with them privately. We need you lads to see to it that we won’t be disturbed in Bayo.
‘Set us down on the coast a little way north, and you go on upriver and dock at Bayo as usual. We’ll make our way there through the marshes and try to enter the fems’ quarters after dark. All you have to do is to make dinner in Bayo such a drunken, enjoyable affair that no Penneltons come wandering outside while we’re looking for a way into the fems’ section.
‘After that, we’re on our own – but the longer you can keep our visit among you secret, the better for us and for you.’
‘Done,’ said Hak, promptly, before any more could be asked. ‘Done!’ shouted the Chester Juniors. Someone added, ‘And a DarkDream to seal it,’ a cry which others took up.
Ferrymen were only permitted to dream between runs, under the auspices of their Seniors. Now they were daring in their excitement. Learning that d Layo had only enough manna to serve a few, they quickly put together a group of eight to represent the complicity of them all in the fugitives’ lawlessness. Sullen-face and the freckled lad were both included.
For the others, Hak had kegs of beer broken out to go with the scanty evening meal. Supplies were apt to run short at the end of the coastal run, and the only ferrymen to escape the grip of hunger tonight would be those lucky enough to be caught up in a dream. Some of the more talented chanters performed around the play-pen, improvising lyrics and obscene pantomimes, a welcome distraction
to the others.
Hak was a good chief; he knew how to
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