a vampire, I heard.” He stared intently down at his cards. “It feeds on pain. Don’t go to the Doll House, they told us. Better to get killed clean. It takes your manhood, they told us. It needs you to suffer, to be weak, forever, like little dolls. That’s what it feeds on.”
Renato glared at the Kid. “Don’t be a damn fool.”
“No one ever leaves, do they? You all just stay here and scab over and rot.”
Renato sighed heavily. “We’re doing good work here. Where else would we go? Kid, you came here by choice. No one made you. You know it was the right thing to do, Kid. You don’t have to be so tough here. You know, maybe someone should take you to see it, take you to sit by the waters. That’ll change your tune.”
“Maybe we should at that,” Creedmoor said. “So tell me, how does one get in to see the Spirit?”
“When the Director says.”
“Which is when?”
“When it’s right.”
He walked into Dr. Alverhuysen’s office that evening as if he owned the place, tools in hand. “Evening, Doctor,” he said, and before she could respond, he was already hammering away at the rickety half-made shelves in the corner.
She was sitting at her desk, in the light of a single candle, reading out loud from a little green book with pictures of ivy curled round the cover. Daisy was cross-legged on the floor, rocking from side to side, and the General sat ramrod-straight in the chair opposite. The Doctor’s giant oaf Maggfrid stood by the window like furniture.
“Don’t mind me, Doctor.”
“You work odd hours, Mr. Cockle.”
“Odd place. Odd times. Odd old world.”
Creedmoor had to admit that he was doing a terrible job. He was losing his patience for honest labor.
She kept reading in a quiet murmuring voice, between blows of his hammer.
“. . . ‘Yes,’ said the wolf, ‘your mother is here.’ And the woodsman’s sons looked at each other, and they looked at the wolf, and they thought about how tired they were, and what a long journey it had been through the woods; and so they did a very foolish thing, and they followed the wolf into the little house on the edge of the woods—”
“Fairy tales,” Creedmoor said. “When I was a boy back east in Lundroy, my mother used to read me fairy tales.”
“I’m sure she did, Mr. Cockle.”
“That was before my poor father died, of course. Never the same after that.”
In fact, Creedmoor’s father was, for all he knew, still alive. Certainly the bastard had been in rude health when he clouted young John Creedmoor round the ear for the last time and threw him bodily from the house. Creedmoor had lied on a sudden hunch that had told him that the Doctor herself had some damage of that variety; and it looked like he was right, because for a moment there was a flicker in her eye.
“Fairy tales,” he said.
“Yes. The book belongs to Director Howell. The General seems to have a fascination for fairy tales. At least, if the patterns of his speech are reflective of any inner mental process, and not simply arbitrary. Who knows? It may catch his attention. And Daisy won’t mind.”
Maggfrid said, “I don’t mind either.”
“Nor does Maggfrid, of course.”
“Good for you, Maggfrid! Nor do I. Does it work?”
“Not in the slightest.”
Creedmoor said, “That must be frustrating.” He thought:
—Well? Is it him?
—Possibly, Creedmoor. He is old enough.
He noticed the little bottle of green nerve tonic on the desk next to her glass of water and smiled. Ha! Old Dandy Fanshawe had been a devil for opium, too.
“Yes, Mr. Cockle?”
“Nothing, Doctor. Just enjoying the story. I’ll work quietly.”
“Be as loud as you like, Mr. Cockle—they won’t hear my voice, whatever you do.”
—Examine him more closely, Creedmoor.
“You sound tired. I can take over for a spell if you’d like.”
“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Cockle.”
“I like a good story, Doctor.”
He sat on the edge of her desk, next to the old man.
“Maggfrid, old fellow, come closer. Come on. Join in.”
He looked idly through the little pile of her books. Scientific texts, mostly. His eye was caught by a little red book, which looked out of place; and when he picked it up and flipped through it he saw that it was something called A Child’s History of the West. Some piece of pious propaganda left over from the old Red Valley Republic. How they’d loved to preach to children! Creedmoor flipped with amusement forward past pompous condemnations of the