Category: Character

Lodestar 56b: Scrim continued

Part Two of Chapter 56: Scrim Learning his Ropes

In the night, a number strong with drink clambered up to Scrim’s hide to talk about his fate and how he wanted to forget it with sex. “What about it, partner?” he said.

Scrim rolled to his feet. Pushed the number to the window hole, then fought him through it.
The number screamed getting pronged on an upstanding old iron below. He screamed and screamed until the transies came first for laughing at him and chiacking, and then killing him some more with their knives.

Scrim hugged himself tight all night breathing Min-breathing.

When the hooter called, the transies left quick-smart. Then crows came. So crows clean up the dead in the city as well as in the rubble. Soon after, Mapmaker squeaked by on his wheels.
Scrim stayed hid to see what was what.

Mapmaker stopped at an alley across the street. Put his trike into the alley. He set out his things in the mouth of the alley. Both sides of him were the dead houses of the wall strung together with lectrics on their outside.

Further in, behind the trike, stood a steel egg as tall as a Scrim, an egg that Scrim could only see iffen he did a trick with his eyes where he stared through the wall behind the egg and suddenly the egg was there.

Scrim’s side of the street—what he saw of it yesterday—was a cobble of lanes and high-ups, all of them near to half-broke. Not one window had glass. Entries were black holes like the black hole into the home cave in the rubble. He saw another egg when he leaned a little out his window hole. That one at the west end of the street, where the sun sank.

Both sides of the street now had people setting up tables and tents. They filled the tables with all kinds of green plant foods, and roots, and flats of bread what made him hungry. Some had bottles of drinks. Making him thirsty. In the rubble the littlies got theirs first. The long-legs last. Here, he didn’t know and wouldn’t find out if he didn’t go down.

He tried to not see the crows. Made himself a mouse and crossed the street to Mapmaker.
“A man left me these,” Mapmaker said. “Smoked rabbits. I don’t need them. Maybe you can trade the ones you don’t eat.”

Scrim took them, two sixes of naked animals with no fur strung on a pair of strings. Hard-smoked. With short ears and like rabbits only by their same-size.  

A number who came to do business with Mapmaker pushed Scrim so he had to step into the street.

“You, boy! With your rabbits.” A man across the street beckoned him. “You look so lost you’ll get found quick-smart. You trading those rabbits?”

That word again, trading. Scrim had no meaning for it. He shrugged.

“Like, are you swapping?” the man said.

Scrim shrugged again.

“Come here. Stand with us. We’re all getting nervous for you.”

Scrim glanced around. No danger he could see.

“That’s Tom,” Mapmaker said at Scrim past the man sitting opposite him. “He’s a friend of mine.”

Scrim nodded, then crossed the street to where Tom and another man had built a table with poles and an old flat-wood.

Tom shook Scrim’s hand, “Any friend of Mapmaker’s is my friend too. Come behind the table with us. Look at how Wobby trades. I’m the watch-out for danger. Stray whistlers, uncouth transies, crazed numbers and, of course, the customers and their guards. See our scars? Courtesy of Mapmaker. We’ve never got picked yet. Mostly people prefer trading at their houses, at night. Wobby will show you.”

Music started up from a speaker hanging above the place.

“Wrap it up, Tom. Here they come” Wobby said. “Don’t look anyone in the eye, kid. But watch all of them like you are a hawk.”

The customers came tootle-cardling like magpies, the way they chattered and called to each other, making a party in the street. Their clothes were new and all the colors of old oil in a puddle of rain. Their own true wrinkles could hardly be seen under their thin masks, white-painted with friendly smiles, but staring with their own stony eyes at everyone and everything around them.

The numbers buying food and drink were kept moving by a squad of transy guards, the sort what must have got their smarts back. Each customer also had a transy dancing attendance. Sometimes such a customer-and-guardian pair followed a particular number around the market discussing them, be they man or woman, as though the number couldn’t hear what customer said about them.

Scrim burned for the numbers.

After the market, Tom and Wobby took Scrim home with them. They lived a couple of streets west with a handful more people, in a ground-hole hid under a row-house with its walls still standing, roof gone, and hollow inside. A green garden grew inside the walls.

Hundreds of flyers, that Wobby called pigeons, went out in the daytime getting their food and came back at night for sleeping and roosting on every perch Tom and his group put up. Tom’s lot made tallows with pigeon-fat that they wanted Scrim to trade.

“Why not from your stall?” Scrim said.

“Because we don’t want it known we have this good a place and good family.”

“How come you let me know?”

“Mapmaker signed at us that you are his friend so we help him help you be a trader,” Wobby said.

“Did you see the nubies today? Three of them,” Tom said. “The robots,” he explained to Scrim’s puzzling face. “One in the alley behind our friend Mapmaker. One opposite us and one at the end of the street.”

“You telling me and me not seeing them, gives me the heebies worse than any customer-and-guardian tandem,” Wobby said.

“With a trick of my eyes I saw a steel egg in the alley,” Scrim said.

“That’s them,” Tom said. “They’re nubies folded up. Most people don’t have the knack of seeing them. Like Wobby.”

“Why we always bring Tom,” Wobby said.

All week, every night, Wobby showed Scrim the overhead routes through the ruins, what the flyers had showed Wobby, though in some places they had to run along an alley or a street. But that was alright for they were two, one for watching the other-his-back.

At every place Wobby said, “Next week you’re gonna have to be especial careful here on your lonesome.”

The first time Scrim laughed to hear Wobby using Min’s favorite words, “especial” and “careful”.

“Transies is always a gang, never alone,” Wobby said, still teaching Scrim his ropes. “If one sees you, they’ll all chase. But they’re frighted to climb, maybe scared of falling and wrecking their new bodies.”

At the end of every route was a place with people hiding who had use for tallows and smoked rabbits. They gave Wobby and Scrim whatever they grew, whatever they made, whatever they could find. Even sunshine yellow flowers sometimes that Wobby took for Sal, his girl.

At one place Wobby said for Scrim to give a whole tallow for one sheet of thin grey paper that Mapmaker had a use for.

When Wobby gave a tallow and two smoked rabbits at the next place for a pot with a hole like a fist punched through, Scrim despaired his learnings. “What good? That huge hole!”

Wobby laughed. “I love pots with holes. Good for growing things in. It’s great, you getting into trading. I can spend more days in the sun.”
 

— — — —


The first next dusk of Scrim on-his-own, when the meats were all traded away and the new tallows resting after they were made, Scrim searched out a high ruin for his new hide. The nubies had gone home and he wouldn’t meet any transies iffen he stayed off the streets. 

Halfway between the market and Mapmaker’s place were two tall narrow walls once making the corner of a high house. With the rusted bar-ends sticking out inside some-places, it was easy to climb, and all that climbing done out of sight of the street. At the top, to the left of the shaft, swayed a little room on its lonesome, like a tree-house.

Scrim remembered trees. Long time away when he was a bub. Before he was a kinnie. Sleeping that night was good and warm too because he traded two coats that day. His windows were spy-holes in the walls of his hide. In the dawn he spied out his new scene.

Through the middle hole he saw way out east. The rubble with the cliffs at the end of the world. If he had a telescope he might even see Min walking her walk, teaching the new lot their ropes. A wave of home-sick overflowed his eyes. He sniffed it up. I can’t be looking out that hole too much.

At another injury to the wall, in the most east-wise corner, he saw Mapmaker on his roof feeding his pigeons and petting them. After that Mapmaker stood up a thing with a yellow round with yellow stripes spurting from it. Numbers and transies in the street wouldn’t see it, or even Min with her telescope, because of where the thing was between the stair-house and the front wall. Who was Mapmaker signing to?

In his stair-house Mapmaker waved like he knew Scrim’s hide. Then Mapmaker pointed to the round yellow thing like he told Scrim it telling him I want to see you, Scrim.

Lodestar 56, Scrim

[I didn’t want to post the whole chapter if I was going to be knocked back again.]

Scrim Learning his Ropes … Part 1
In the dawn the winkle-pickers dragged a couple of fighting screaming numbers from their hiding places. At Scrim’s hide they laughed. “You safe now, little love. See you in bits when the nubies get you.”

After the truck left, Scrim heard pigeons on the roof above him. He remembered the crust in his pocket and was chewing it without making a sound when a shining reflection flashed along the wall opposite and a high wild whistle, close enough to touch almost, dried the bread in his gullet.

Something big out there! Out the front. What did Mapmaker say? Scrim slid up to standing, pressed himself into the room’s angle, and fought crumbs from his lungs without coughing, gasping, or choking.

He breathed big to recover. Also without a sound. Then stopped breathing coz … Tick. Pause. Tick. Pause. Tick. Pause.

Claws? Clicking along the ground outside? The time between clicks made the thing sound like a giant tall enough to peer into Mapmaker’s three-high window. Ah-nui-bots, was the word Mapmaker said. 

Scrim wanted to gulp air. Min said when you’re frighted, breathe deep in and out by your nose. Calm y’self, Scrim, he thought in her snippy tone.

Thump! In the front room! His heart skittered.

The cat walked into his hide. Thin and grey, it nuzzled up to him.

In the front room—outside it—a small, nearly friendly whistle said, “Where you go?”

The cat butted against Scrim’s legs like it said, get off my bed.

Scrim lifted one foot. All the place he could spare.

The cat sat down in that corner and started washing itself.

The whistlers clicked away. So big! Where’d these things keep themselves? When he studied the city through Min’s telescope, he never saw anything but the numbers, and the transies in the square at the end of the maze, and the wall of houses-and-lanes lectrified with steel-ropes ringing the tall ruins of the city. He badly wanted to see them, these anubots, but he wasn’t in his own place. In the rubble he would of known every escape in the scene.

Next time, he promised himself. This place was more of a mystery than he expected. He sank down beside the cat and dared to put his hand on its soft back. It purring but after a time got rid of his hand with a blunt bite. Not nasty but saying, I got things to do. It started washing its back leg so Scrim busied himself with the sand.

At the hour of sundown the hooter called. The same as the kinnies always heard. The cat pricked up its ears. Scrim too, when he saw its attention. Soon after, he heard metal on metal squeaking and coming nearer and nearer. It stopped at the door. Door squealed opened. The metal thing came inside. The door closed.

The cat opened its eyes wide at Scrim. He didn’t dare move against that fierce light.
The man tocked himself up his stairs, came puffing and grey-faced into the room.

The cat released Scrim from its spell. Mapmaker had got no feet, just stubs of under-legs. He wore covers on his stumps and had a stick to help him along. He was shorter than Scrim.

“When I real little, before kinnie, I used to slide up the mud-slide with pulling on a rope.”

The man looked deep into Scrim. “That soft thinking is like you friend-gift me. Outside life is as hard as a true-stone. Soft is a gutted rabbit. For out there I say you pack that soft deep into you heart.”

Scrim thrilled to hear the man talking like a kinnie.

“Now tell me this maze you made. Show me what you know. I will talk in my normal voice because the transomatics hear me talking all night to my cat. But you must whisper so they won’t know when you leave.”

“Them tran-som-matics?”

“What you call transies. People what come to keep ahead of death by body transplant. What this city is known for, that and every other kind of transplant. Trouble is, when the transomatics first wake up, they are like new children and have to relearn everything— walking, talking, working. Once they are halfway back to normal, their keepers give them the night-streets for their learnings.”

“The ones catching new numbers is transomatics?”

“Yes. Though lots stay young and silly and are kept for making our lives a misery, it seems to me. The truth probably that such a disaster can’t easily be explained to the outside world, like the transy’s family and such. Probably the City keeps the young-and-silly to prevent it getting a bad name. One reason, I expect, they closed the gates to the world.”

“And for keeping the numbers in?”

“I know what you thinking, Scrim. Why still no way out? Scanning the wall with the telescope did you see the ones hanging burned on the wires?”

“All my kinnie-life the same rags. No new ones. Min says they are from the beginning.”

“When people that become numbers are took and all the people in their village are also took, they might think, where is home? They tell me that. And before they can get home, for a long way there is only rubble, desert, camel riders and crocodiles. They think, why not stay, instead making themselves so they are not what the customers want.”

“How?”

“One woman who comes to my stall, I paint her with soot and colors. At her hide she needles it in. She has a tree, leaves, fruit growing all over her.”

“It works?”

“The customers don’t like how she peers from among the leaves. Other times I paint a map of sun-sores. Nobody wants them either.”

“I bet.”

“And there’s hiding. Lots hide. Like you’ve got to. High-up is best when you know nothing yet. Out of reach of every kind of bad. Not near to the maze. I’m safe here because the nubies come to watch the flyers and the cat, and every transy is afraid of meeting a nubie one dusk. As you must be.”

While he looked for a hide, Scrim saw no nubies. He only had the time between the end of the day and the hooter letting the transies out, so he picked the first not-too-high place off the street. He slept. This time his bed was the bare floor.

Lodestar Over- and Under-Pass, 55.5

There were always going to be a few knotty sections in a mash-up of six novellas as the original plan was to tell the stories of each of the point-of-view characters separately. That intention got shoved to the wayside when Kes fell for Ahni and there threatened to be a lot of interaction. I let it happen, I confess. I wanted to see how the romance would pan out.

One by one the rest of the characters joined the fray. It seemed to go all right. I’m a pantser by nature, the kind of writer who slides by the seat of her pants, without too much planning. Like all pantsers I thought I could write myself out of any problem. ‘Pantser’, by the way, sounds uncomfortably like ‘Pantzer’ which I seem to remember is a type of artillery tank. Lol, one of those writers just pushes their way through! Or they tank in a deep wide trench!

We are now at a place where three viewpoint characters are in play—well, waiting in the wings—with another taking the stage. And he had to. Because if he isn’t at the appointed place at the right time, Srese will fail to be in the right place and time to meet Ahni and Kes.

This is Scrim I’m talking about, of course. He was one of the first characters who stepped into this saga, and that with just the two words at the end of his story. But don’t worry, a lot of new-miles, hours and days will be told before he says them. Most characters jump into their stories with a couple of lines of dialogue relating to their beginnings or middle events. Then it’s up to me to connect them.

Also, Scrim needs to meet up with Rockeater Ridge’s remaindered avatar. Remember him? Some of you may want to catch up with Sard before that happens. Link to Chapter One

There’s advice everywhere for budding novelists about the no-no of writing dialects. And yet, I wanted to try it. I wanted to see if it really would become a chore that readers would rather do without. Let me know if you hate Scrim’s turn of phrase?

Lol—as a reader—I just reviewed a book [link] where that became a chore very fast. My authorial defense for Scrim in Lodestar is that most of Scrim’s words are modern-day English, and it’s just that their combinations need interpreting.

Finally, if you know anything at all about sailors carving leopard seal tusks, and how the products are called scrimshaw, you will have been wondering about Scrim’s name. My lips are sealed. All will be revealed in the goodness of time.

‘Seeding’ info in stories on the go …

What I’m writing now in Lodestar contains a few events that for better a better reading experience, should’ve had their beginnings seeded into earlier chapters. For example, you will meet Moab, one of the Marl-Family. He was thought lost/dead, never mentioned because that’s the herder/hunter folk’s tradition.

The chapter being wrangled into existence is one of my so-called bridges from section to section. The timeline is complex at this point. I may later post a map.

Snippet 2

Once everybody crossed the channel there was a confab among the Kuri-Family group. Since they were last to cross, their decisions would stay private a while longer. Jenk gave Moss, Kyle and Io his instructions, to explore the road west, mark the water-crossing somehow, and rest in the new grazing grounds. Discover its seasons. He gave more than half the herd into their care, consisting of most of the brood animals, young females and a few sires. Plus they had their own riding camels and stringers, of course.

“A few herdies wouldn’t go amiss,” Kyle said.

“Suggestions?” Jenk said tersely. …

“Lewit and Jeldie? Not her fault she’s a Jovat. Not his fault he’s a Lomack. Merin and Kier? Same again,” Kyle said.

“Marl-Fa might want to come totally,” Moss said. “What’s against asking him? I’m young for chiefing, anyone wanting to grab the chance will say. And then? We have exactly three defenders?”

“The Marl-Family and all their camels?” Jenk said. “We don’t know how much grazing there will be. But I hear you.”

“Jenk,” Kuri-Chief said. “Camp with them this side of the Red Channel. The tidal flats, sea-lettuce grazing will last a day or two. One or the other of the young men and Ivy can cross the water, see the lay of the land. The grazing, campsite near any freshwater supply. Once they return, you rejoin us.” She gestured at Kes and herself. “We’ll speak with Marl, Kier and Merin, when we arrive at the Party Camp.”

Kuri-Chief at the head of the column, and Kestrel at the rear, swung into east with the remaining third of their herd. Nearly all of the remaining animals were stringers and trained riding camels, carrying the Kuri-Family’s tent, a couple of annexes and also all the numbers fostering children. With a few additional animals destined for slaughter, they were a lean and mean herd.

About Lodestar

About Lodestar Part IV
Lodestar, up to this point, was written from more or less one viewpoint per part.
This fourth installment is in effect a series of short installments (novellas, probably) where some of the main minor characters are sidelined and others drawn forward. One or two important characters are only just now being introduced.

The various people whom I asked to critique the series fifteen years ago, advised against introducing important new characters at this late stage. I thought it through at the time, but quailed at the work involved in the restructuring. Put The Lodestar series aside. Years passed while I worked on a new series. Different, I thought.

But my ‘unconscious’ a marvelous entity I am only now learning about, was well and truly in charge, and encouraged me to write multiple stories featuring a main character being invaded and controlled by a foreign influence.

I’m laughing now when I read those lines, knowing that I am absolutely ruled by my unconscious, as you are by yours whatever you may believe. Fifteen years ago, I wasn’t writing unknowingly about my own personal unconscious mind, but about an alien, about an invasive computer program, and about the implant.

Without me realizing, which is the part that still amazes me. Until I had three mostly polished novels, ready to be professionally edited. That’s when I realized. At the time I was poor and troubled, and could afford to have only one of them edited professionally. So I decided to forward the most recent work, which was ‘Mongrel’.

Five years ago my life fell apart as long-time readers will know, and after the chemo, when I set about picking up the pieces, I decided I was done with marketing. The stress of dealing with giant corporations was not doing me any good. I decided that life is too short to hanker after the pittance that I would earn for not writing in the mainstream.

That’s not to say I won’t publish them at all. They’d be a lot easier to read as novel lengths than a chapter at the time.

Fast forward to the idea of the ‘story-debt’. It really grabbed me, for after I labored over The Lodestar world for ten years, its characters and their lives stayed with me. It’s like they are real people somewhere out there. I wondered if by paying off my story-debt, by ‘publishing’ them here, on my blog, these characters would then stop haunting me?

t’s a work in progress. Below a snippet …

The Implant, 1
‘I can almost feel the textures of the nutrient jelly I rest in. I’ve imagined them so often it must be that I now feel them. The heat of my skin melts the material near me, making it silky and fluid. It’s firmer further out. A spider webbing of fibrous supports grows among and between my miniaturized cables.

Fresh nutrient mix is added to the bottom of my housing, its floor is gridded and sits on a saucer, the whole is very like the design for a bird-feeder I have somewhere in my memory banks, though the action of the nutrient mix is opposite to that in the bird-feeder.

I don’t like remembering that I don’t have a skin and that I still don’t have a body. It is not my imagination that I feel a frizzle of anger pass along my synapses. If I’d had a body to use, I would’ve been able to express myself more satisfactorily. Where is that minx Ahni? The speaker fitting is clogged and I cannot call out. I’m not happy with the level of carelessness in this place. Who is on duty? I shouldn’t have to worry about utilities. That was always the work of the host.’

    Lego: Bosley’s Builders, 14

    14. The Stairs Go-to Crew

    Bosley studied the staircase Tim put together to get people to their accommodation after the complaints about the ready-made he conveniently installed at the end of the block right by his and Trish’s quarters, with no access by anyone else.

    He shook his head. Nice staircase but a heavy use of materials. And bulky. And not used now that that half of the crew were absent. Wendy and Jackie were at the hospital, Wendy at her midwifing. Dan was away somewhere salvaging. And Jed … Who knew if he’d even turn up again.

    Think we scared him off.  Not a happy young man. Just the six of us here, counting Nin Wiz who is a silent fella, Ruff who is not a noisy type either, Trish, Tim, Drew and me.

    He looked around. Drew stood on the hardware store’s front terrace, gesticulating. Hard at work discussing the hardware store’s fire-stair with Ms Bee and Ms Sander that looked like. All three engrossed in the discussion.

    Bosley listened for the rest of the crew. He heard Tim and Trish discussing the next stage on their cabin with a throw-away comment every so often at Nin. Sounded like they were all quite busy too.

    He chuckled at the offending staircase. So I’m safe disappearing this object of despair? Object despite that it couldn’t be shifted without breaking it down. Despair because of the heartache the building of it caused the builder. Disappear because it’s in the wrong place, takes up too much space and I need it gone. 

    With each thought he jimmied off a tread. Stacked them back in Tim’s container. Then he fetched a brick separator and levered off bricks starting from the top. The clattering of the blocks on the ground brought only Ruff.

    What idea haven’t I used yet to get a good stair go-to crew? Bosley ruminated. Well, I know we already have him, it’s just that he’s hiding his talents under a constant stream of denials. So. Idea?

    “Before we begin on the bunkhouse,” Bosley said next morning. “I’d like for us to put together a semi-permanent stair or ladder to get to the top of the walls. Who’s going to give that a go? Drew?”

    “Drew?” Drew said. “Drew gets to build the stairs?”

    “What?” Boz said in an injured tone. “I thought you said that way back. That you wouldn’t mind being the stair-go-to guy?”

    “I really really don’t remember that,” Drew said. “What about Tim?” he said at Tim, who just arrived at their little confab.

    “What about Tim?” Tim said.

    “Nope,” Bosley said. “Tim put his hand up for the freshwater supply.”

    Tim spluttered. Changed tack. “This is about stairs? I saw you pointing. Shouldn’t be too hard to install a ready-made since we already have the scramble stair. But …”

    “With Ruff the only user?” Bosley interrupted.

    They all looked at Ruff scrambling up the uneven bricks, plates and tiles rising to roof-level.

    “I don’t know how he doesn’t fall,” Drew said.

    “I think Nin helps him to not fall,” Tim said.

    “I want to see that, that ‘shouldn’t-be-too-hard’,” Drew said.

    “Fine,” Tim said. “I’ll do the ready-made, you do a …whatever. A thing with which we can with our best foot forward rise from a floor to the floor above.”

    “May the fastest man win the go-to-stairs moniker,” Bosley said. “The other one can be the freshwater supply guy.”

    Drew and Tim went away together to think through their options. “Because,” Drew said, “The water supply is at least as big, if not bigger, than a handful of stairs.”

    “Well, keep it under your hat,” Tim said. “But I’m better at walls and roofs than either of the other two.”

    Drew laughed. “Me? I’m better at numbers and figures.”

    Tim laughed too. “So let’s stay friendly. We’ll work at night. Keep the rest in the dark. I help you, you help me. Nin Wiz will help us both. Let’s do a kind of scramble-stair up to the half-floor …”

    “With a brown three-rung ladder to the bunk house?” Drew said. “That way we’ll save the yellow ladder for us mortals to get up to Nin Wiz’s abode.”

    “Nice,” Tim said. “Let’s now go locate the components without remarking on them and then knock off for the day.” He chortled. “Should keep everybody guessing.”

    “See you at midnight?” Drew said.

    “Make that 3 AM, when everybody is in their deepest sleep, and I’ll see you here.”

    They separated, prowled around and fixed the different components on their internal maps. Met at 3 AM. Worked. Installed the stairs with Nin’s help.

    Drew’s stair to the half floor.

    Tim, caught by daylight, and needing all kinds of help.

    Bosley studied the ready-made stair on its pedestal with him. “Why?” he said.

    “The windows?” Tim said. “Umm.”

    “Why the pedestal?” Bosley said. “And how do we get up onto the bottom step?”

    “Mmm, I don’t know yet,” Tim said. “I was thinking that we’d need stairs something like this to get to our cabin, which will probably end up being on the same level as bunkhouse and so …”

    “Tim, relax,” Bosley said. “I fully expect Drew to solve that problem. He’s probably already puzzling on it. I need you to start thinking about the freshwater supply.”

    “We’ll need to get the power on first,” Tim said.