Chapter 3: Bleak House
Saler's family lived northward, he told Piev and Gelert as they shuffled, all but running back to the safe, bright lights of the Square from the dinge and threatening alleyways clustered near the docks that seemed to be ten times more in the dark than seemed possible in the daylight. They chose it, he explained with bubbling voice as he tried to engulf enough air to keep pace, to be near the homes that his father oversaw, which was really only a sideline. His uncle, who really owned the house, instead went into the Business District, every day, where he kept up a small office within two blocks of the Reef Exchange. It was really only large enough for a big barquewood desk – that one was his uncle's – and a clerk's knee desk, which Saler got to use whenever his uncle brought him along. But that was alright, because they were hardly ever there anyway, and the real action was always out on the floor, or in one of the coralstone side-rooms that the Reef let for meetings. It could get pretty hairy in there, and Saler himself had even seen…
Gelert and Piev exchanged a glance and just let him talk. If there was ever an Inkling who was both frightened and winded out of his wits, it was Saler Takoya. It seemed the kindest thing to leave him alone.
('Imagine being affrighted at a place like that!' Piev whispered, not unsympathetic as she and Gelert kept up an easy lope. Neither was anything like winded. 'What a funny Inkling!')
They passed no one at all save a tall, painfully thin urchin trudging rather numbly in the opposite way, who carried a canvas sack on his back too large for his gangling body, and which seemed to tremble of itself. But he paid them no mind except to blink at them out of one peering, judging eye as they passed under the wan yellow lamps of the district. Saler quickened his pace to a run as they passed by; Piev just smiled and waved.
When they had come once again under the sleepless blare that was Inkopolis Square, Saler doubled himself over a table behind the food truck that served ridiculous oily sandwiches – and promptly collapsed into a dripping, bilious-yellow half-squid, too exhausted and winded to keep himself in quite one form or another. White foam bubbled over his membrane where it was exposed under his shirt with every sucking gulp for air.
'Saler!' Gelert half-shouted. He put out his hand to lay it on the other boy's shoulder, but drew it back at the last instant. He swallowed. 'A-are you alright?'
The supine boy just groaned, low and long.
'Hey, calmarades,' said the proprietor of the food truck, poking his red head out for a look around. 'Everything alright out there?'
'All goes well!' Piev called back with a wave and a broad, beaky grin. 'It is nothing but a little case of hypopneumastis. He will be healed by himself very soon.'
'Oh.' The proprietor's red antennae twitched at the three, as if he was uncertain whether he really ought to be reassured. 'You a nurse, missy?'
'Not at all!' Piev said brightly. 'But I know the Inkling physiology very well. Down to the bottom! I have done much work in it.'
'That's… good.' The proprietor said nothing and squinted for a long moment. 'Well, I've got a phone if you need to call somebody. Okay?'
'Is he really alright?' Gelert whispered after the proprietor had shut the door and disappeared from view.
'It is well sure! The Inkling, he is made to use first the gases dissolved in his own strength when a stress presses on him. It is so he may inflame himself and burn up the oil he keeps for when he is hungry, so that he can fly the shark and the Octarian who chase him. But so it is that mucinoid filaments are made rigid without the gases in the Inkling exocytem which give him his tone. Our friend had such stress already, and then we ran, and it was too much for him to port. You understand, yes?'
Gelert nodded his head, slowly, hoping that his bewilderment did not show upon his face too plainly. Saler emitted a sort of high-pitched gurgle.
'You see? He is repairing,' Piev said, pointing in evident satisfaction. Sure enough, the drooping arms and limp legs began to shorten, and the exposed membrane gradually began to lose the sickly colour of bile and chrome back to its usual olive hues. When he was more or less proportioned as an Inkling ought to be, Saler raised his hand, a little feebly. His eyes were slightly sunken into his black mask, and he avoided the gaze of the other two – Gelert in particular.
'I… er… sorry,' Saler said. He sounded too exhausted to even be really embarrassed. "I'll call my folks and tell them to send someone down to the Square to pick us up. But… ah… my uncle doesn't hold with cell tech. I don't suppose you…'
Gelert shook his head. 'Sorry, Saler…' he muttered. 'Neither did the old squids.'
'Ah… I should have figured. That was dumb of me,' said Saler, sounding about as low as a squid could be.
'The owner of the food truck did say we could use his,' Gelert said, with the nervous rising intonation of trying to make-right.
'Did he?' Saler said with a thin, exhausted smile. 'Good old Sean. Could you… I hate to ask… could you be a pal and bring it here, Wommly? I'd get up myself, but… no, never mind. I'll be alright, I think…'
'Never in my life!' Piev warbled, forcing the boy back into his chair. 'Rest, you!' Saler threw her a grateful, if slightly scandalized look.
'I'll do it,' Gelert said, knocking on the back door of the food truck a few moments later. It swung open instantly, the proprietor already extending a triangular block of a phone in a thick red pincer.
'I thought I had better have this ready in case you all might need it,' he said, looking over Gelert's astonishment. 'Password is "crusty". Just give it back when you've all done what you need to. I'd rather see you all leaving here with somewhere to go. Okay? And, here–' The proprietor dropped the phone into Gelert's unprotesting hands and ducked for a moment into the truck. When he reappeared, he held two paper boats, each containing its own greasy, preposterous tower of a sandwich staining the bottom.
'One for you, and one for him,' the proprietor explained. 'Growing Inklings need to eat: they shouldn't go collapsing outside my truck. And you, you look like you haven't had something like this for a while. No, you don't need to say anything – that look tells me all I need to know. You just knock again when you're done.'
'Thank you,' said Gelert, too taken aback to say anything else.
Saler accepted both the phone and the greasy sandwich with a look that was pitiably grateful. He devoured the latter with huge, wolfing bites that made Gelert realize just how badly he must have needed the oil after the evening so far. Gelert knew that he, too, must also be depleted of his dispensable ink – but he still could not force himself to finish more than a third of his own. It made him miss Mommaw Carpacci too much.
When Saler had finished, he could not quite meet Gelert's eye. The fleshy bowl of his upper tentacles curled as if from shame that one is better off saying nothing about.
'I'll… call my uncle, Wommly. He'll send someone to pick us up here. My folks are probably expecting me, so it… it shouldn't be long.' Saler took the proprietor's phone and plodded, heavily, off to a quieter corner of the Square. The other end picked up quickly, and although Saler kept his voice whisperingly low and apologetic, he kept having to raise it by turns so that Gelert occasionally caught the occasional one-sided snatch of the conversation:
'He wants to see me? Now?'
'No, I swear, I haven't been… the games ran late, and…'
A longer pause.
'No, she left… I met some new friends, I think… tell Uncle one of them wants to…'
There was an anxious silence.
'...yeah, a new team, too… no, tell him it doesn't have a name yet…'
'…as a pageboy at the Reef? …put in a word with Uncle before we get there?'
Saler gave a sigh that was not quite one of relief.
'Alright, thanks…'
Saler returned with a smile on his face like a distorted geometric figure. 'Got it done, Wommly! My aunt is sending out one of the cars. It will be here in about ten minutes.'
Gelert nodded his head, numbly. One of the cars?
'Oh, and, er…' Saler mumbled. 'My uncle will want to see you tonight, after we get to my folks' place. And he… er… if he sees you dressed like that – and don't get me wrong, I think it's fresh as fins! But I had to tell him that you wanted to be a pageboy, and… we've got to get you some new clothes, Wommly. That's… that's how it is.'
Gelert felt the ground opening under him.
'It's just that my Uncle is a huge fan of turfing,' Saler went on, seeing the alarm growing on the face of the other Inkling boy. 'He'll be thinking that you're one of the kids on the squads I played with, and it's just that he gets ideas in his head of what turf kids are like… and, er, we're going to have to play that up if we're going to follow the Captain's orders. And… and that's how it is.'
Gelert's hands balled into fists.
'No,' he said, soft as a breath. 'That's not how it is.' But Saler's nerves just kept prattling, and Gelert went unheard.
'Mister Gelert?' Piev said, trying her very hardest not to interrupt. 'I have many experiments which need me, their mother, and it must be that I go. But it is I think a good thing to change one's clothes, yes? It is one of the best parts of the life of Inkopolis, no?'
No, Gelert thought acidly. It really wasn't.
-.-.-.-.-
Gelert groaned when he saw where Saler Takoya must live. He had had a notion from how the boy had been acting, but one look at the chalk-white villa on the hill which was near-gleaming in the day-glow of the salt lamps lighting its high façade from below, at the four pearly cars bunched like coral in the front drive, and at the rubbish bins on the curb full of what he knew, without looking, must be enough food for the old squids to have made into a festival meal to feed the hatchlings for a week, with enough left over for themselves – with one look, he knew, with a dull ache that was almost anger, that Saler's family was what Ompa Diu called city people.
'You watch your back around them,' the old squid would say, shooting sidelong glances at the tourists who came down from Inkopolis to the village on Market Day to buy farmwares and snap pictures on their phones – mostly the latter. 'Anyone who can forget where his food comes from is bound to go wrong other places, too. City people don't think like you and me.'
Gelert had always thought it was strange, though, that Ompa Diu was happy enough to put on a smile to sell cut-rate roe to those same people, who always only ever bought a tiny tin, which was nothing like enough to even let you know you'd eaten after a hard day trawling nets. And now, now that he had seen Inkopolis for himself, Gelert began to understand why.
A tiny, crisp voice clearing its throat brought him back to the present. 'Will the young master's guest kindly care to come inside?' said the orange, eyeless sea cucumber from somewhere around Gelert's shins. (Just how that creature had managed to drive them through the thronging streets and crosswalks of an Inkopolis just waking up for the night, Gelert did not now want to contemplate.)
'You okay, Wommly?' said Saler, laying a hand on Gelert's shoulder. Geler thought he must be trying to be kind. 'You look a little spooked.'
'I am all right,' Gelert said, even though this was Inkopolis, and he was anything but. He wrenched his shoulder away. Saler looked a little hurt.
'Do enter then, please, and be timely,' said the small voice of the cumber. 'This is not ordinarily a night on which the family entertains.' And with one long, boneless proboscis, the cumber threw open the tall red double-doors of the entryway, without a hint of effort. And once it had opened, a small, dripping-yellow something hurled itself out of the aperture and onto Saler, clinging to the front of the boy's shirt.
'Sal!' it – or, rather unmistakably, she – squealed. 'Bruh-bruh! Missed you!'
'Easy, Io, easy!' said Saler, peeling the (very) young Inkling girl off of his shirt and holding her at arm's length with what was plainly a great deal of practice. 'Remember what Auntie said? That you're getting too big to jump on bruh-bruh Sal?'
'But that's what you do when you miss somebody!' said the little Inkling girl, as if that were the most obvious thing in the world.
'And where are your clothes, girl?' said the cumber, fussing her feathery protuberances like a queer moustache at the girl even as she made a grab at her.
'Dunno!' the girl squealed, oozing herself right out of the cumber's grasp. 'Forgot!' she said, flailing all of her arms, which were one and all too young to have budded out into digits. She rolled laughing upon the ground for a brief moment, then stopped in an instant and blinked her big, wide eyes at Gelert. 'Hey, bruh-bruh. Who's he?'
She could have been any one of the little squidlings back on the farm, Gelert realized with a start. More of them, as young or even younger than she, were coming to the farm every day. They all, one and all, had the same laughing look of wide-eyed wonder on their masks. She blinked at him as if he was a puzzle with a piece cut out and gone missing.
'What are you wearing?' she said, in the half-disgusted, querying tones of habit of the very young, in whom habit has become conviction.
'It's called a jerkin,' Gelert explained kindly. 'We wear it on the farm because it keeps the sun off, and it's tough enough to work in when you're handling hooks and nets. And it still leaves your arms free in case you have to half-squid yourself to get a job done.'
'That's weird,' the girl said, with as firm a decision as if she had been the Judge himself.
'You incorrigible child!' the cumber tutted, making another grab at the girl. This time was more successful than the last, and the cumber held the giggling, wriggling, squealing drip of a squidling high over the ground so that she would be less inclined to wriggle free. 'I shall see your father about this, and make no mistake! I declare, child, you make my organs go greyer every day!'
The little squidling just laughed the louder. The two boys and the cumber stepped inside, and Saler shut the door behind them.
'Sorry about Miss Marrows, Wommly,' he said when the cumber had gone up the grand, pink-dappled staircase in the foyer by leaps that such a creature really ought not be capable of, and was safely out of earshot. 'She's always been like that, so long as I can remember. We're all just used to her, I guess. She's really not so bad if she lets you get down below the prickles. And… er… sorry about Io, too. My sister, I mean. She's still young, and we keep trying to teach her what you can say to folks, and… what?'
Gelert was smiling. 'It wasn't much different on the farm.'
Poor Saler looked hopelessly confused.
'Good evening, Sal. I heard you coming in,' broke in a new voice coming from the upper landing. 'Good to see that you are back in one piece. Marrows' driving as mad as ever?' The speaker was an Inkling woman in long flannel nightclothes who called from the top of the stair, stifling a yawn with the back of a fine olive hand. To Gelert, it looked as if it had never strung a hook or mended a net in its owner's life. She returned his stare with a glance that was just as doubtful. 'This is the friend you wanted to bring to your uncle?' Her tone left little to the imagination as to just what her opinion was.
'Yep!' said Saler, beaming. He doesn't hear what she means, Gelert realized. 'Wommly, this is my Auntie Selca. Auntie, this is Womm– er, Gelert. He's good He won us our match today single-handed in the last minute! It was the freshest thing you've ever seen!'
'Your Uncle Hals will be quite eager to hear the story, I'm sure,' Saler's aunt answered with a smile that was cool around the edges. 'As for me, I could have done with a bit more notice, Sal. Half an hour is hardly time to arrange for hospitality. I am afraid that if your turfing-pal wishes to stay the night, it will be in your room.' Auntie Selca's eyebrows arched. 'Unless your friend would prefer I call Marrows to take him back in the car?'
'No!' answered Saler and Gelert at once, in two different shades of alarm.
'My room will be fine,' Saler went on. 'We'll need to go up there anyhow to get Womm– I mean, Gelert a change of clothes before we see Uncle. You know how he is.'
And all Gelert could see was his life flashing before his eyes again, through another dozen hairpin turns on the Inkopolis streets that night. He shuddered.
'Well,' Saler's aunt said, very nearly under her breath as she turned away from the railing, 'no one can say I did not try.' Then, louder: 'You two can find Hals down in the Cave. I will telephone down to let him know you are coming. Good night, Sal.'
'G'night!' Saler answered with a wave. His aunt retreated into what Gelert assumed must be a bedroom on the upper landing and latched the door behind her.
'Cave?' Gelert asked, more to cover up the stinging indifference hurled at him than from any real curiosity.
'Just wait until you see it, Wommly!' Saler said – which, of course, answered nothing. His green eyes were bright and eager, and he clapped Gelert on the shoulder, hard. 'But first, let's make you really look like a turfer! Trust me, it pays to make a good first impression on Uncle Hals. Come on–!'
'No,' Gelert tried to say – but by the time the word was on his break-points, Saler was already loping up the stairs with huge, bounding strides. Gelert thrust his hands into his pockets and followed after him.
'Here,' said Saler, making an eager gesture. 'In here!'
'Here' turned out to be one of the loudest, busiest, most chaotic spaces Gelert had ever seen. The House of Takoya was by and large arrayed sparsely with white walls and furnishings that resembled nothing so much as a postulate of Euclid; the walls were crying for a bit of homely ink-spatter from one of the younger squidlings, or a drape of pondflowers from the ornamental garden, or even some of Ompa Diu's home-grown piscine taxidermy, whose eyes always seemed to follow you all around the room. It was a model home for exactly the sort of dreary urbanity that Gelert had come to expect out of Inkopolis.
Saler Takoya had rebelled. His walls, every inch, were covered by posters of this or that brand (and given that bands and turf-stars were mixed with advertisements for tins of fish roe, it seemed to matter to him little just which) laid end-to-end with meticulous forethought to maximize the whitespace they eradicated. A whole bank of bookshelves claimed the northward side and were cluttered with figurines, all well-dusted, and were stuffed with glossy magazines and CD cases where the clutter left off. His closet was a cavern, and his wardrobe was a horde that bowed down the thick wooden bars on which it hung. His bed was a small, insignificant tangle of tousled sheets and blankets that had not been made. Off in a corner, covered in a patina of oil, dust, and neglect, stood a glassed-in barrister's bookcase. Behind the glass were only a very few dense sorts of books of the kind with titles like 'Treatise on…' and 'Course in…' whose spines were falling to shreds.
Yet there was a curious tidiness about it also: you could sense, without being told, that there was a scheme in mind as exacting as any ledger of accounts. It produced a warring bundle of impressions, and so Gelert just stood and stared, unable to even find the footing for a remark.
'Yeah,' said Saler with a sigh, seeing the expression on Gelert's mask. 'It could be fresher. But I'm always trying to make it better… what's wrong?'
After a long pause to wrestle his own thoughts, Gelert answered: 'We really aren't so different, are we?'
'No?' said Saler in the hesitating tones of someone who has been blindsided by something kind. 'I mean… no, I can't… see that we are. We're both Inklings, aren't we? And, er… we're about the same age, right? And we both turf, too, and from what I've seen, you've got real skills. That's enough for me, even if it isn't for… er… some people.'
'Do you mean that Rita girl?' said Gelert, seating himself unconsciously on Saler's small bed. He jumped up when the thought struck him with a jolt, too late, that it might be rude in Inkopolis.
'Oh, no. Go ahead,' Saler said distractedly. 'Yeah, her too, definitely. I've sometimes regretted falling in with her before now.' A sad smile spread over the boy's face as he seated himself next to Gelert.
'You're not the first I ever saw her go off on, either. I'd turfed alongside her for about three months, almost every day. We went through teammates like a minnow plate because none of them were ever good enough. She wanted to win. I guess I stayed as long as I did because so did I. That's why we were in the Free Play room instead of the ranked leagues – our last teammate was a roller like Piev, though he wasn't half as good as she is. He couldn't aim for oysters, but he would always roll along with a stupid smile on just because he loved turfing for turfing. I liked him a lot. But he wasn't good enough for Rita. He didn't want to win, and she saw it before I did.'
'What about you?' said Gelert.
Again the fishbone-thin smile. 'I am good, Wommly. Rita wouldn't have kept me around if I wasn't.' He chuckled and fell backward, staring up at the white ceiling with his black mask half-lidded. 'I don't know how the Captain saw what I was so fast, but I am a squelcher. I've splatted a lot of people, Wommly. I like doing it almost as much as the turfing itself. I should have been able to see what she was like before today. Maybe I even did. Maybe I just didn't want to admit it. So… er… I don't know how to say this other than that I'm sorry.' Saler groaned and righted himself.
'Well, cousin? How about we get you a fresh look?'
The 'No' leapt at once to Gelert's beak tips. With a force of will that galled him a little, he swallowed it down again.
After all, some things were more important than winning.
-.-.-.-.-
Gelert felt odd. Silly, too – but mostly odd.
'You look fine, Wommly,' Saler assured him with a smile that was a little fuller than usual. 'It's a good fit for you. And this is one of those ever-fresh looks that won't up and die in a fortnight. You look like a real turfer now!'
Maybe, thought Gelert, that was exactly the issue. He felt back-to-front without his jerkin. Saler had hummed and pondered and rifled through his Brobdingnagian wardrobe like a squid-shaped whirlwind and had emerged with a bundle of clothes, neatly folded – Gelert could not help remembering old Senex telling the squidlings the old epics in the tromping old dactyls on fireside-nights – like a warrior returning home with the spoils of a long war.
'Yes! I know this will work! Try that on, Wommly.'
'There's no trousers?' Gelert said doubtfully. Saler's whole face seemed to rankle.
'Hate 'em. It's nothing but long leg-sleeves down at the Exchange. I never wear them unless I have to. You pull them off alright, but you have a sort of rustic look. I don't know how to describe it. They suit you, but I can't stand 'em.'
Gelert was not entirely certain he did not feel the same about leggings. There was no lack of Inklings who wore them, but together with the loose-fitting glossy jacket in blue and black and shiny purple they made Gelert feel as if he had gotten dressed standing on his head. They had a glassy-clear stripe right down the side that coaxed his native ink to the membrane surface, which was doubly strange: it was very nearly the same feeling as looking at an X-ray of yourself – like you had caught your insides at an indecent moment.
'You'll see,' said Saler, raising his hand. 'Uncle will be sure to take a shine to you now.' He rapped three times on the heavy red door in the basement he said was the entrance to 'the Cave'. The basement was much the same as the rest of the house, but that door did not fit. Like Saler's room, it was defiantly ornate. It was as if all of the bas-reliefs of the ancient turfing-games from a museum were condensed onto one carven plank of solid wood. It looked outrageously expensive.
'Sal? That you? Get in here if that's you!'
Saler winced, looking at Gelert. He also instantly obeyed. The door swung open on a groaning hinge into a room every bit as chaotic, in its own way, as Saler's. Bookcases towered on every side, stuffed on the lower shelves with the same dense sorts of 'Studies on…' and 'Principles of…' as in Saler's grimiest case – which looked as if they had never been once opened, let alone read. The upper shelves were nothing but a collection of decrepit and disassembled ink armaments for bric-a-brac, with three shelves taken up entirely by a sort of little shrine of old photographs and newsprint clippings, all around three silver-coloured trophies of an Inkling woman poised with a pitcher in her left hand and a spear in her right, which was a winding tentacle. There was a fireplace, one of those fake bricked-in models that ran off electricity, and a decanter of brandy, and a small water-powered fumoir chuffing out cloying white smoke that rolled in billows. And splayed in two huge armchairs with their backs to the fire in the middle of it all were two old squids just sucking in the atmosphere with little sucking pops. From the way the firelight caught the crystals of old ink that glittered all across their membranes, Gelert knew just at a glance that they were both nothing like healthy.
'Well?' barked the larger, the one with the pads of yellow fat around his black, sunken mask. He furled a fat-tipped tentacle at the two boys. 'All hail the conquering hero! Come in and let's have a better look at you two, eh?'
'My Uncle Hals,' Saler whispered urgently in Gelert's ear. 'The other's my father, Salzig.'
Gelert nodded grimly. He was liking this less and less with every step; and had Saler not been pulling him forward, he might have run from that room pell-mell, and devil take the hindmost. The pong of brine and tobacco in that close space was incredible. It was nothing like the hale smell of the sea-breeze that came off the old squids back on the farm. There was a foetid, brackish undertone in it that brandy and tobacco could not cover up. Couldn't Saler smell it, too?
'Well,' said the other, Saler's father, who at least did not look so terribly unwell. 'At least this one doesn't look so surly as the last turfer you brought home, Sal.'
'I'd rather surly,' said Saler's Uncle Hals, even as he draped a tentacle into a snifter to lick up brandy with quick, graceless twitches. 'Surly I can work with. Surly means there's something there that wants to prove itself. This one looks the part, but I'm not sold.' He eyed Gelert coolly, as if he had picked him up off the shelf in a store as a thing to be bought.
'He's good, Uncle,' said Saaler quietly.
'Is he, now?' The tentacle fell limpid into the brandy. Gelert could actually see it swelling and losing tone as he watched. A gasp of grey smoke burbled all at once out of the old squid, along with a sigh of grotesque satisfaction. 'Can't the boy answer for himself, Sal? You're asking a lot of your poor Uncle. A pageboy's not a thing you take up like a new hat or a pet. It's something you got to be sure about. There's sharks out in force in the Reef, nephew mine. You should know it by now.'
'You terrible liar,' said Saler's father with a deep, liquid chuckle. 'You've wanted another set of hands for months. Don't pretend you haven't.'
'And if I have?' Uncle Hals gruffed. 'That hardly changes facts. You! Boy. Stay right there. I want a close look at you. Don't you move!'
The tentacle swollen with brandy pulled itself up as Gelert watched. It seemed to hand numb and lifeless as the dilapidated squid changed – with what looked like a huge effort – into a man-shaped creature that might, generously, be called an Inkling. The liquid flesh flowed with a sticky torpor that could not have been only age, for the old squids were always spryer than that. Saler's uncle was very tall and very round, and was dressed in a robe with sleeves that draped nearly to the ground and covered with embroidered cranes. The brackish smell came off him in roils as he strode around Gelert, hands clasped, looking over the boy from all angles.
Gelert was surprised that he felt sorry for him.
'That's an awful fresh getup,' said Uncle Hals with a frown. 'I ought to know as I've seen it on about five others of you calstar hotshots over the lunch hour this last month. How long have you been turfing, boy?'
Gelert was feeling pricked and on edge from the way the grotesque squid kept circling him, and he answered instantly: 'about four years!' If you counted the games the squidlings had played back on the farm, it wasn't exactly a lie.
'Start 'em young where you come from, eh? Well, it's something at least.'
'He won us our match today single-handed, Uncle,' said Saler.
'Heh. I could do that once too.' Saler's uncle made a broad, vague gesture at the clutter all around. 'Those days are long, long behind. I keep my memories and my triumphs right here, in this room.'
'Not this again, Hals,' said Saler's father with a bubbling sigh. Uncle Hals ignored him with a deafening silence.
'That one, right there,' said the huge Inkling, jabbing at one of the little shrines on the shelf with a finger that still drooped from the brandy. 'Junior Turfers City-Wide, Six-Eight Anno Teuthorum, Second place. And that one–' another jab, more emphatic. 'Squidbeak Academy Varsity Turf Squad, Regional Championship, A.T. Seven-One. Second place. And that!'
Saler's Uncle Hals sighed low and long, as if he was wrenched by bitter happiness. 'Calmarts Institute Turf Team. All-Conference Tournament. A.T. Seven-Four. Second place! After that, it all fell apart.'
'You mean you did,' Saler's father added.
'It's all the same,' said Uncle Hals with a dim, distant echo of something like mournfulness. 'We never did climb up the ladder like we wanted, did we? Sometimes I think that we tried to hold on too long. We might have cut our losses and saved a world of trouble.'
'We did our best,' Saler's father replied. The way they were carrying on these weary reminiscences like a joyless catechism made it clear to Gelert that this was far from the first, nor would it be the last time this exchange had happened right here, in this room. Just now, neither he nor Saler were even there.
'We always did. Only it was never quite good enough.' Then, without warning, Uncle Hals rounded on Gelert. He loomed like a living mountain. 'Six years I spent turfing, trying to make my name in this city. I played charger the whole time. I was a born backliner. Salzig here was my front man. We played a mean flank attack. What about you, boy?'
Gelert swallowed. 'I have been told I am a backliner,' he said carefully, not at all sure that it was the right answer.
'And yet Sal says you won a match "single-handed." Funny, that.'
'I wasn't making it up!' Saler half-whimpered. Gelert could hear the nerves in his voice.
'I didn't say you were, Sal. But it is unusual. Your friend is… not usual.' Gelert felt pinned to the floor by the stare Saler's Uncle Hals gave him just then.
'Gelert, is it?' said the huge Inkling after a long silence. 'You listen to an old squid for a minute, and you listen hard. I let Sal have his fill of turfing because, Sea take me, I still love the game. I think he might even make something of himself in it. But I had to admit in the end that I wasn't going to make it. I wasn't going to get my name in lights in the Square like all of us wanted back then. You all probably aim a lot higher than that. Probably you'd like your name on a tiny screen you have to squint at to see! But I had to find another game. And when I found it, I found I played it dripping well. And because Saler's wasn't always going to be able to pick up his pistols, I make him play my game, too. So let's get down to the Rules, boy.'
Uncle Hals settled himself back into his armchair with an unsteady sway backwards, as if his legs had suddenly lost all tone.
'Apparently, you can turf well. That's good. I like turfers. They tend to take to my game like catfish to chum. But you want to be my pageboy? I will expect a lot. And you want to turf while you do it? That's good. I like a pageboy with some ambition. Anything you see that you want for turfing? You want some spangly gear or that clean new rifle? It's yours. But–' Uncle Hals leaned his whole body forward. Even seated, the huge Inkling seemed suddenly to fill the whole room, corner to corner, right into the shadows.
'But–' Uncle Hals repeated, 'YOU HAD BETTER DELIVER, BOY. I had better see gold in your hands, and not this… this… stinking SILVER!' He shouted the last with such violence that little flecks of oily sputum peppered Gelert, stinging where they landed on his membrane.
'Is that agreed?' said Uncle Hals, the fury draining out of him just as quickly as it had come.
'Yes!' Gelert half-squeaked, wanting to turn, to run, to fly back up the stairs, back to Saler's room, back to the Square, even back to the Hostel with its musty beds and noisy dormitories – anywhere to be away from here!
Of course, his feet were rooted to the spot.
'Now, Hals,' said Saler's father, closing his eyes. 'You're scaring the pageboys.'
'So I am.' Uncle Hals slumped trembling back into his chair. He waved a swollen hand with another vague gesture before it started to melt and droop as Saler's uncle began, with clenched eyes and clear discomfort, to squid himself once again. By the time he had finished with the change, all of his tentacles draped limp and lifeless over the front and arms of his chair. Uncle Hals looked utterly exhausted.
'Oh, do go on, Sal, and leave us be. I'll have some figures to go over with you after breakfast tomorrow. And you.' He opened one eye, halfway, on Gelert. 'No chance you're going anywhere tonight. I'll expect you to eat with the family in the morning. Consider it your first order.'
More orders, Gelert seethed. Oh, certainly, why not?
'Come on, Wommly,' said Saler, laying a hand on Gelert's shoulder again. For once, Gelert did not in the least feel like writhing himself away. 'You… you look tired. We should try to get some sleep.'
Wishful thinking, Gelert thought.
