Read Online No Present Like Time by Steph Swainston - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Steph Swainston
Tags: 02 Science-Fiction
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the Neithernor villagers to burn the moorland hillsides and destroy the plants but thankfully they never succumbed to the offer. Scolopendium extracted from the fern fronds flows out of Ladygrace together with more well-known drugs, and addicts’ money is sucked back in along the same routes. The ban is almost impossible to enforce.
To find scolopendium in a town look for boundaries, for example the edge between rich and poor districts, or between streets of different trades—where houses begin at the edge of the market or where at night people empty from cafés into clubs. The prospector should investigate places where newly arrived travelers are lingering. Longshoremen with cargoes from Hacilith are the most promising, because a handful of cat hidden in a cabin is worth twice as much as a richly stocked hold. When I was a dealer I witnessed even the most scrupulous merchants give in to greed. I determined not to buy from the pushers at the dockside, but they would only be a couple of links down the chain from one of the more powerful traffickers I know.
Buildings give clues: dirty windows and peeling paint in a rich district, or a tidy house in the middle of a slum. This is because they are houses where business is done. When I’m hooked, I read the signs subconsciously; a sixth sense guides me to a fix.
I walked past clustered half-timbered buildings with warm red brick in herringbone designs. Stonecrop grew out of the walls that were topped with triangular cerulean-blue tiles and bearded with long, gray lichen. The town looked like a grounded sunset.
Following my rules brought me to the quayside. Awndyn harbor was a mass of boats. At low tide they all beached, propped up against each other, and fishermen walked across their wooden decks from harbor wall to sand spit. At full tide they all sailed together, a flotilla of bottle green and white, Awndyn’s dolphin insignia leaping on prows and mastheads. As dusk fell, I watched them unloading, passing meters of loose netting in human chains to the jetty, where boys rocked wooden carts on iron wheels back and forth to get them moving on the rails. The boys were paid a penny a half day to shunt the heavy carts to a warehouse where fisherwives unloaded the catch into crates of salt and sawdust.
A fter dark it began to drizzle sleet. The road was plastered in a thin layer of wet brown mud. I walked along the seafront and passed the Teredo Mill, a tall cider mill with peeling rose-pink window frames, dove-holes in diamond shapes in its ochre-colored walls. It was roofed with white squares cut from sections of Insect paper. Last harvest’s apples had been pressed so the intense sweet smell that hung around the mill in autumn was replaced by the heady reek of fermentation.
A group of young apprentice brewers were sheltering in the underpass where a path ran under the waterwheel’s cobbled sluice. The wheel was raised from its millstream and clean water flowed along the conduit above their heads. They were smoking cigarettes after a day’s work. One of the promenade street lamps cast my shadow long across the road. The brewers regarded me curiously. The youngest had dyed purple hair, baggy checkered trousers and a black coat that reached the floor. I checked him out for the marks of an addict, drew a blank. Well, I haven’t hit gold but I’m very close. We fell into the quiet of mutual examination, until he nudged his friend and bowed. He walked over the road to me. “Comet?”
“Yes?”
“It is…it is you?” He looked back to his friends, who all made “Go on” motions.
I didn’t want their presence to scare away the sort of character I was really looking for. I was about to tell him to get lost but something of my Hacilith self was reflected in him. He didn’t know what to say—there was awe in his eyes like tears. His coworkers crowded around with eager expressions. They were a little too well-heeled to be true rebels. “So you’ve met the
To find scolopendium in a town look for boundaries, for example the edge between rich and poor districts, or between streets of different trades—where houses begin at the edge of the market or where at night people empty from cafés into clubs. The prospector should investigate places where newly arrived travelers are lingering. Longshoremen with cargoes from Hacilith are the most promising, because a handful of cat hidden in a cabin is worth twice as much as a richly stocked hold. When I was a dealer I witnessed even the most scrupulous merchants give in to greed. I determined not to buy from the pushers at the dockside, but they would only be a couple of links down the chain from one of the more powerful traffickers I know.
Buildings give clues: dirty windows and peeling paint in a rich district, or a tidy house in the middle of a slum. This is because they are houses where business is done. When I’m hooked, I read the signs subconsciously; a sixth sense guides me to a fix.
I walked past clustered half-timbered buildings with warm red brick in herringbone designs. Stonecrop grew out of the walls that were topped with triangular cerulean-blue tiles and bearded with long, gray lichen. The town looked like a grounded sunset.
Following my rules brought me to the quayside. Awndyn harbor was a mass of boats. At low tide they all beached, propped up against each other, and fishermen walked across their wooden decks from harbor wall to sand spit. At full tide they all sailed together, a flotilla of bottle green and white, Awndyn’s dolphin insignia leaping on prows and mastheads. As dusk fell, I watched them unloading, passing meters of loose netting in human chains to the jetty, where boys rocked wooden carts on iron wheels back and forth to get them moving on the rails. The boys were paid a penny a half day to shunt the heavy carts to a warehouse where fisherwives unloaded the catch into crates of salt and sawdust.
A fter dark it began to drizzle sleet. The road was plastered in a thin layer of wet brown mud. I walked along the seafront and passed the Teredo Mill, a tall cider mill with peeling rose-pink window frames, dove-holes in diamond shapes in its ochre-colored walls. It was roofed with white squares cut from sections of Insect paper. Last harvest’s apples had been pressed so the intense sweet smell that hung around the mill in autumn was replaced by the heady reek of fermentation.
A group of young apprentice brewers were sheltering in the underpass where a path ran under the waterwheel’s cobbled sluice. The wheel was raised from its millstream and clean water flowed along the conduit above their heads. They were smoking cigarettes after a day’s work. One of the promenade street lamps cast my shadow long across the road. The brewers regarded me curiously. The youngest had dyed purple hair, baggy checkered trousers and a black coat that reached the floor. I checked him out for the marks of an addict, drew a blank. Well, I haven’t hit gold but I’m very close. We fell into the quiet of mutual examination, until he nudged his friend and bowed. He walked over the road to me. “Comet?”
“Yes?”
“It is…it is you?” He looked back to his friends, who all made “Go on” motions.
I didn’t want their presence to scare away the sort of character I was really looking for. I was about to tell him to get lost but something of my Hacilith self was reflected in him. He didn’t know what to say—there was awe in his eyes like tears. His coworkers crowded around with eager expressions. They were a little too well-heeled to be true rebels. “So you’ve met the
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