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“But I don’t actually pay it. Isn’t that correct?”
“I can see you grasp the idea already. That’s right, you don’t. Let’s say that you and your talus agree on five cards a month, a fair wage. From that, you deduct your expenses for fuel, maintenance, and repairs, if any. Most employers furnish ammo free of charge. It’s customary.”
Silk nodded again.
“You report the net to us, or you can have the talus do it. We deduct it from the talus’s debt. Eventually its indebtedness will be wiped out and it can keep the wages it earns.”
“Provided it survives that long.”
“You’ve got it.” Swallow glanced over his shoulder at the windows behind him, where the tapping of raindrops had mounted to a steady, insistent pounding. “If you’d rather have a look at our shops another time…?”
“Patera,” Maytera Marble began, “I don’t—”
She was interrupted by Silk, who stood as he spoke. “I’m eager to see them, and I’m sure a little rain won’t hurt me. I was caught in that downpour a week from yesterday, but here I am. I don’t want you to feel that you have to take us around in person, however, Director. Someone else can do it.”
“Not take the calde around?” Gri
“I’m coming,” Maytera Marble declared. “My granddaughter can stay here with Chenille.”
“Me too,” Chenille a
“In that case Mucor will have to come with us, Patera.”
“I can fly,” she informed Swallow gravely. “Even in the rain. But they can’t.”
The promised umbrellas had been left on a chair in the outer room. Chenille picked one up. “Here’s a black one for you, Patera, if you want it.”
Silk shook his head. “Let Maytera have it.”
Hanging her basket on her right forearm, she accepted the black umbrella and shook it out. “It’s bad luck to open them indoors, they say, but I’ve already had mine. I can’t thank that nice young man for getting these for us.”
“One of your guards,” Silk explained. “Now that I come to think of it, it seems strange that you’ve hired bios to protect this place instead of a talus.”
“We do have a talus.” Swallow accepted a yellow umbrella from Chenille. “As a matter of fact we have two now, because of the unrest. They’re in the guard shack.”
He went to the door, opening his umbrella. “You went by it on your way here. They have windows so they can keep an eye on the gate, but mostly they listen for shooting or shouting. A lot of the little matters that our guards handle, a good bio can take care of better than any talus. Suppose you had taluses patrolling the streets instead of troopers, Calde. You’d have a dozen people shot every night, instead of one or two a week.”
Opening the green umbrella that Chenille handed him, Silk followed Swallow out into the rain. “I’ve dealt with taluses once or twice, and I’m sure you’re right.”
“They protect the plant at night, and we have them there ready to roll in case of serious fighting. So far it’s been around the Palatine and the Alambrera. I’m sure you know.”
Silk nodded.
“Would you like to look at them? There’s the guard shack.” Swallow pointed at a weathered wooden shed.
“Not now, thank you.” Silk had to raise his voice to make himself heard above the rattle of rain on his umbrella. “Later, perhaps. Right now I’d like to see how they’re made.”
“Good. That’s where I’m taking you. Excuse me a minute, and I’ll get the door.”
Swallow strode off through the rain; Silk limped after him as rapidly as he could, splashing through deepening puddles in shoes that were already sodden.
The wide wooden door Swallow had opened let them into a cavernous structure whose floor was covered with coarse sand; three men were working in a pit a few steps from the doorway, illuminated by a single bleary light high overhead. “This is the foundry,” Swallow a
Chenille exclairned, “You make those great big things out of sand? I don’t believe it!” Oreb flew off into the darkness at the other end of the building to explore.
“There are some glass parts, and they really are made out of sand, but not by us.” Swallow shut his umbrella and thumped its tip on the sand-strewn floor. “This is foundry sand and wouldn’t make good glass. But we cast some big parts in sand, which is what these men are getting ready to do.”
He pointed with his umbrella. “You see the hollow left by the form when it was lifted out? Those round pieces are called cores. They’re made of compressed sand with a starch binder, and if they aren’t positioned exactly right, and firmly enough that they stay in place when the iron’s poured, the whole piece will be ruined. What they’re doing here is preparing to cast an engine block, Calde.” At the last word, the workers looked up.
Silk had been trying to locate Oreb in the darkness. “This seems a very large place for three men.”
“When we’re going full tilt, which we will be tomorrow if we get your order today, there will be eighteen men and six boys working in here, Calde. I’ve had to lay off everybody except my best men, which I don’t like to do.”
Taking Silk unobtrusively by the elbow, Swallow led him deeper into the building, his voice kindling a second light. “They’re all good men to tell the truth, and the boys are smart lads who’ll be good men too before long. We can’t use anything else. I hate layoffs because I know the people I let go won’t be able to find another job, generally. But if they could, I’d hate them worse because I’d lose them, and you can’t just bring in an untrained man and have him go to work. It takes years.”
Maytera Marble inquired, “How old are the boys?”
“We start them at fourteen nowadays. I was twelve when I started.” Silk heard the soft exhalation of Swallow’s breath. “We had layoffs then, too, though it wasn’t as hard as now. Not usually. I never got to go to palaestra, but there was a woman on our street who had, and she taught me to read and write and figure during layoffs. I’m pretty good with figures, if I do say it. She was a friend of Mother’s and wouldn’t take anything for it, but I always thought that someday I’d get to where I could pay her. I was just about there, just made leadman here, when she died.”
Silk asked, “May I speak as an augur instead of calde?”
“Go ahead. I’m not religious, but maybe I should be.”
“Then I’ll explain to you that the woman who helped you out of friendship for your mother had been helped herself, when she was younger, by some earlier person you never met.”
Swallow nodded. “I suppose it’s likely enough.”
“She couldn’t repay that person any more than you could repay her, but when she helped you she wiped out her debt. When you help someone, you’ll wipe out yours. Possibly you already have — I have no way of knowing.
“I’ve tried once or twice, Calde.”
“You say you’re not religious. Nor am I, though I was very religious not long ago. Because I’m not, I’m not going to say that this passing forward from one generation to the next is the method the gods have ordained for the settlement of such debts, though perhaps it is. In any event, it’s a good one, one that lets people die, as everyone must, feeling that they’ve squared accounts with the whorl.”
Maytera Marble said, “Perhaps he already has, Patera, by employing those boys.”
Swallow shrugged. “They don’t pay, and that’s the truth. We pay a card a month, and they’re not worth it to us. But we’re not doing it from charity. We have to have them so they can learn the work. If we didn’t, someday we’d need foundrymen and there wouldn’t be any, no matter how much we offered.”