One Drop

Four steps into the alley, the footsteps behind him stopped.

Marlow did not stop. Stopping makes you easy to aim at. He kept his pace and moved in against the wall. He shifted the box into his left arm. Keep the right hand free.

A man came out of the corner ahead.

Gus Trevarian. Another scavenger. Ten years older than Marlow and twice his size. Thin blond hair slicked down with oil, a nose that was flattened once and stayed crooked. When he grins, two of his front teeth are gold. He grins so you will see them.

Marlow disliked the man. He did not hate him, though. Marlow did not think enough of himself to hate somebody who had scavenged in this town for twenty years and was still alive.

“Heyyy, Marlow. I heard. That grate on the drain, the third bar's come loose, so they say.”

“Wouldn't know.”

“A man who wouldn't know don't get his shoulder split open by iron.”

The two men behind Gus split to the left and right of the alley. Making a ring.

Ten meters back, Willa stopped where she was, holding the lamp.

“Willa, get back.”

“I'll get back. I'm not running.”

“I said get back.”

“And I said I'm getting back!”

The one on the right came first.

Marlow heaved the box up in both hands and thrust it at the man's face. The man's eyes went to it. In that one moment, Marlow put his right foot inside the man's knee. The man's own momentum put him on his face. Marlow brought the butt of the hook down on the back of his head. There was an ugly sound of it meeting bone, and the man stopped moving.

The one on the left had a gun.

No scavenger in this town has a gun. The rounds cost too much. One round buys a cow.

“Put it down slow. Set the box down and walk home, that's the end of it. Nobody has to get hurt.”

“You know what's in it?”

“Hell no. I know the price.”

“How much?”

“About forty times what you'll earn in your whole life.”

The finger of the man on the left moved.

Maybe he had not meant to fire. He fired anyway.

The sound swelled inside the alley. Marlow put his face down behind the box.

The round hit the box.

It hit, and it stopped.

It did not bounce off. It did not sink in. Not one mark appeared on the surface of the box. The round was the thing that flattened, and it dropped onto the cobblestones.

The alley went quiet.

Gus looked at the flattened round. Then at the box. Then at Marlow. The gold teeth had gone away.

“Hey. What is that thing.”

“I'd like to know myself.”

Gus took a step back. Two steps. He jerked his chin at the man on the ground and had the one with the gun carry him.

“Marlow. I'll tell you one thing. You'll owe me for it.”

“Don't want it.”

“You want it, so shut up and listen. This morning, at the second bell, a price went up behind the market. Gray iron box, sixty centimeters on a side. Whoever brings it in gets paid what it's worth.”

“So?”

“The ship came down at the third bell.”

Gus walked out of the alley.

＊

Under the aqueduct there is a thick water main that stopped being used. Thick enough for a man to walk through with his back bent. The water was shut off thirty years ago and it has been that way since.

Marlow went inside it. Willa followed with the lamp.

He set the box on the floor. When he peeled the cloth off his shoulder, the wound was still open. Blood had run down to his elbow.

“See, look at that, I told you. Tie it first.”

“Later.”

“Later means you die.”

“I won't die.”

“Everybody who died said that.”

“And who told you that?”

“They told me before they died.”

While he was winding the cloth, one drop of blood fell on the box.

A line ran across the surface of the box.

A line that had not been there a moment before. From the place the blood fell it spread slowly, out in every direction.

Willa brought the lamp closer.

The line went all the way around the box and stopped.

The lid rose a centimeter.

“Wait wait wait wait.”

“Stay clear.”

“No.”

“Willa.”

“Three steps back. Not one step more than that, ever.”

Marlow lifted the lid.

Inside was filled with packing like white cotton. Cold. His fingers went numb at once.

In the middle of the packing lay a single glass cylinder. About half the length of his arm. About as thick as his wrist. Both ends were sealed with metal, and numbers and short letters were cut into the metal.

Inside the cylinder there was water.

Tip it and it moved. Only water.

Willa noticed it first.

“Hey. Hey, listen. Here, look here.”

A white powder had bloomed around the metal mouth. Rubbed between his fingers, it was gritty.

He did not have to taste it.

Salt.

Marlow stood holding the cylinder, and for a while he could not think at all.

The Empire had been carrying seawater by ship.

People in this town live avoiding even the sight of the sea. A child's feet go back on their own when a wave comes. Cross the wall and you get shot. It has been that way for hundreds of years.

And that sea's water had been inside an iron box, flying through the sky.

“This is bad. Hey, I mean it, this is bad. Let's get rid of it.”

“Get rid of it where?”

“Well, um…”

“The sea, then.”

“Don't say stuff like that!”

Willa put out her hand.

“Don't touch it!”

“I'm not touching it! I'm pointing, that's all!”

What Willa was pointing at was the floor.

When he lifted the cylinder, a single drop of water had spilled from the metal mouth.

Where it landed, Marlow's blood had pooled.

The blood and the water touched.

There was no sound. There was no light. Both of them simply went away. The blood and the water were gone from the floor.

What was left behind was one black grain. There had been only a single drop of water. Even so, the grain was the usual size.

About half the size of a grain of rice, neither clear nor black. While you look at it, it holds a color that seems unable to decide what it is.

Willa brought the lamp closer. Her voice had dropped to half.

“That's the thing Nim has at his place, right.”

“It is.”

“But we didn't use a cow or a sheep.”

“We didn't.”

“Then what did it use? Hey. What did it use?”

Marlow did not answer.

Instead of answering, he rolled up his left sleeve.

There are numbers on the inside of his elbow. They have been there since he was born. They are under the skin and rubbing does not take them off. His mother said she did not know. The day he was told his mother had died, that conversation ended too.

A seven-digit number.

Marlow took out the name tag he had been gripping since morning and laid it beside his arm.

The number on the dead man's tag, and the number on his own arm. The first four digits the same, only the last three different.

Then he remembered the tag Drag had set on the pan of the scales. On that one the first four digits were the same as well. Only the last three were different from his arm and from the dead man both.

Three numbers with the same name.

Willa looked at the numbers on his arm, then at the tag, then at Marlow's face.

“Marlow.”

“Don't say it.”

“I'm saying it. How many more are there?”

＊

At the mouth of the water main there was a sound of metal dragging.

Marlow put out the lamp.

In the dark, a voice came.

“Marlow! It's me, it's Gus! Don't swing that hook, don't swing it!”

The voice was wrong. The breath too short.

Willa lit the lamp again.

Gus was on his knees at the mouth of the pipe. He was wet with blood from his right ear down to his jaw. With one hand he was holding the wrist of the other. On the hand he was holding, the middle two fingers were gone. Only three were left.

“Where are the other two?”

“Gone.”

“Dead?”

“Not dead. Taken. They walked off, on their own legs. Lined up and went along. I called their names. Twenty years I worked with those men. Didn't even turn around.”

Gus spat blood and went on. His voice was shaking. He had nothing left over for bluster.

“I heard the buyer's name. No, they made me hear it. They took two of my fingers for the one job of making me carry it to you.”

“The name.”

“Sybil Orvaine.”

Willa's lamp shook a little.

Marlow did not know the name.

Willa did.

End of Chapter 2