The Lot of a Lichnik/3
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This most memorable of cases began on the slowest of days.
I'd been dispatched to Towntree Quads, a housing development in the east of Novodolorsk. The area had once been a series of ruined Ashkenatzan 'Goltzka' housing blocks, hastily refurbished to provide basic accomodation to the first Minarborian colonists. Living conditions fell far short of the Garden Standard, however, and as the nation found its feet the whole district was demolished. It was replaced by entirely new housing as part of 'Condos to the Horizon', a construction programme of the Second State Arbor's Hall of Roots. The programme was something of a flagship project in Minarboria's immediate post-foundational years, being personally overseen by the Second State Arborist himself - a man so respected for his achievements in the development of medium density housing that the old country had seen fit to name him "Lord of the Condominium" for similar efforts in Shirekeep.
The spacious buildings of the new developments featured the occasional wall mural on generally patriotic themes, rendered in Shrubly pastel tones. One such mural in Towntree Quads was a mosaic depicting the Queen of Minarboria leading an assortment of colonists out of the Lichbrookian sunrise, with one arm cradling a potted Minarbor and the Sword of Fire in the other hand. Unfortunately a recent storm had casued a tree to fall against the mosaic, tearing a swathe of shattered mosaic tiles from the middle of the image. On hearing of the event, the Cultor of Novodolorsk had resolved that this was an expression of the Shrub-God's disapproval of the mural; namely that the colours were not quite pastel enough. The Hall of Roots had ordered the remaining artwork to be torn down and replaced with an identical design rendered in more gentle colours. On account of the sacred imagery, the Houndmaster of the Novodolor Lichniks had ordered the repair to be closely supervised.
In this capacity I now stood beside an artisan foreman of the Hall of Roots, monitoring his zombot labourers as they moved about the scaffolding on the wall. Shepilov, although not strictly required, was at a loose end and had accompanied me on the pretext of getting outdoors in the relatively pleasant weather. The work proceeded satisfactorily - the only intervention I'd made was a denial of the foreman's suggestion that he use fewer of a certain type of tile with a gentle golden shimmer, to be placed around Minarbor as a halo. I'd reasoned that toning down the colour of the rest of the piece was wholesome enough, but detracting from the shining glory of Minarbor himself was a step too far. The foreman complied, and his zombots completed their work in perfect accordance with their programming. By mid-afternoon the scaffolding was dismantled and, after admiring the uncluttered pastel glory of the finished artwork one last time, everyone involved began dispersing to their respective bases of operation.
It was as Shepilov followed me back to our staff car that I became suddenly aware of his footsteps stopping. Turning around, I noticed him standing stock still; he was transfixed by a scene in the centre of the quad we'd been passing. It was a children's play area of the kind commonly found in these developments. Among its swings and roundabouts, a group of breather children were playing together in a sandbox. For a moment I saw nothing amiss, but then I spotted her; a little girl squatting on the far side of the group who clutched a stuffed toy raven in one hand, and idly sifted sand through the fingers of the other.
A lich child.
A lich child, of course, is an abomination to everything our kind stands for; breather children destined for eventual lichdom are quite good and proper, but an essential tenet of the lichly path demands a completion of the journey into adulthood - or at least late adolescence - before making the transition. There is simply no other way to ensure that one's morals and intelligence are sufficiently developed to be compatible with eternal undeath. No deathgiver in the realm holds a warrant to raise the dead at such an unrefined age, yet before our eyes stood evidence that somebody had done precisely that. Necromantic discrepancies were not amazingly rare and were generally Reaper business, but the creation of an undead child... that was Lichnik business. The defilement of the Queen's own form to this degree justified a direct intervention by her Jolly agents.
Shepilov began approaching the sandbox, followed by myself. We'd advanced a little more than halfway before the lich child looked up and caught sight of our uniformed figures stomping toward her. Clutching her toy raven tightly in her little hand, she sprang to her feet and began to run away at a surprisingly high speed. Shepilov homed in on her like a missile, his jackboots thundering through the middle of the sandbox to a chorus of terrified screams from the breather children. I sprinted behind him, hoping to catch the child before he did and thus spare her his less-than-gentle hand. In response, the already fast child sped up.
She disappeared behind a condo building, followed by Shepilov. I diverted my path and went behind the building from the other side, hoping to intercept the child's path and confront her head-on. A figure duly stormed around the corner and came straight at me - that of Shepilov, who skidded to a halt just before he hit me. "The little shit!" he said. "Where'd she go?" We looked around. In the second or so that she'd left both our sights, the child had somehow managed to escape entirely.
We wandered the general area in search of her, to no avail. There was no choice - we had to question witnesses.
After the screaming had died down and I'd offered my solemn assurances that nobody was under arrest, the children in the sandbox sniffed away their tears and slowly began to talk.
"Pleeease dun' hurt us, mister deadie!" said a boy in a colourful cloth cap, fighting back his own tears.
"I'm not here to hurt anyone," I said. "Watch out for this guy though," I added, nodding toward Shepilov with a smile.
The children immediately began screaming again, and I patted my hands to calm them down. "Hold on! Hold on!" I said. "It was only a joke! He's a nice Lichnik! Really he is!" Shepilov flashed a rictus grin which, although terrifying even to me, seemed to soothe the children instantly. A wide-eyed girl with a grimy face even flapped her hand at him in greeting.
"We just want to know about your friend," I said. "The one who ran away."
"She's a deadie!" chirped a red-haired boy. "A deadie deadface just like you!"
The other children burst into laughter, enraptured by the red-haired boy's oratory flourish. "Deadie deadface!" they cried between howls of amusement.
"Hey, that's not nice," said Shepilov with a theatrical frown.
The children fell silent immediately. "Sorry mister deadie sir," mumbled the red-haired boy, looking at the ground.
"Anyway," I said. "Can any of you tell me anything about your little lich friend, apart from the fact that she's a lich?"
"I dunno," said the cloth-capped boy with a shrug. "She dun' talk much."
"Oh! Oh!" said the grimy-faced girl, excitedly raising her hand as if in school. "She talk-ded to me!"
"And what did she say to you?" said Shepilov, who squatted to the girl's level with his monstrous yet inexplicably calming grin.
"She... she..." gasped the girl while she collected her thoughts. "...she said she runn-ded away from her mama and papa!"
"Where does she live?" I said. "Around here?"
"Nah I dun' think so," said the red-haired boy. "We only seen her today."
"Did she say where she did live?" I said. At this, the children looked sheepishly at each other and shook their heads. "Did she say why she ran away from her mama and papa?" I continued.
"Oh!" yapped the grimy-faced girl again. "She said... she said they wanted to take away her fact... fliddact... factalackery."
"Phylactery?" said Shepilov.
"Yeah!" said the girl. "Her fakta-dakta tree!"
Shepilov and I glanced at each other. "Do you know anything else about her?" I said. "Anything at all?"
"Well..." mumbled the girl as she looked into the sand at her feet, "She's good at makin' sandwalls. We maded a sandwall together and she said... she said I was her sandwall friend." A single tear rolled down her cheek. "And I miss her and... and I want her to come back here," she sniffled.
"Hmph," I said. "You and me both."
Shepilov rose to his feet, patting the girl gently on the head with a heavy gloved hand. "We'll get her back for you, kid," he said. "Just you wait."
"I do not know why you even ask me, Harkavin," said the Houndmaster. "Of course you can take the case. In fact I demand that you take it. Novodolorsk will not stand to see... a lichchild... walking its streets. I want her found as soon as possible. Then you will pursue those who brought her to undeath. If Sansabury discovers that this Kennel is tolerating the creation of lich children, of all things, the consequences are simply unspeakable. For all of us. Get it done, and get it done quickly."
Thus authorised, I began my investigation with what little leads I had; the lich child was apparently on the run from her parents who were threatening to remove her phylactery. All children make-up tattle-tales, of course, but anyone degenerate enough to drag a child into premature lichdom was quite capable of robbing that child of necromantic sustenance without a second thought.
The usual enquiries were made. Aside from the breather children at the sandbox who had enjoyed the lich child's brief visit, nobody else at Towntree Quads had seen her. I posted lookouts in the surrounding area, and trawled through several hours of surveillance footage from various locations around Novodolorsk. I dug up files from the Kennel archive about unscrupulous necromancers of the past - even took in a few ex-convicts for interrogation - but after a week I was no closer to an answer. Had Shepilov not been with me on that day at Towntree Quads, I'd have been tempted to suspect that I imagined the whole thing. The girl hadn't re-appeared anywhere else in the city; it was as if she'd never existed. On top of that, the Houndmaster was getting grumpy. Other cases were coming in and he wanted this one wrapped up. For his part, Shepilov displayed an unusual determination in helping me. I hadn't revealed to the Kennel how good he was with children - it would've dented his hard image somewhat - but something about this case really seemed to disturb him.
I was on the edge of throwing the case, at Shepilov's protest, into the Cold files until a letter appeared in my in-tray:
dear lichniks
i am very sorry that i runned away from you. I was frighted that you mite take away birdy.
from vascarina
The letter had actually been sent the day after the incident at Towntree Quads - dropped into one of Novodolorsk's many mailboxes in an unsealed envelope addressed simply to "LICHNIKS." After arriving at Novodolorsk's Hall of Blooms sorting depot, it had been sent to the mailroom in the basement of the Novodolorsk Lichnik Kennel - where it had languished in the "Recipent Unclear" tray for a week. It was only by chance that the mailroom's sole non-zombot worker - a breather clerk on a temporary placement - had learned of my case amid the gossip of the Kennel cafeteria and remembered the letter. It took him another day to fish the letter out of its pile in the mailroom, whereupon he'd delivered it to my office in person while I was out.
The letter, for all its brevity, had a single critical clue; "Vascarina" was not a common name. I began an immediate search of local birth records from the last decade, turning up only three individuals by that name. One was still a breather dutifully attending school, and another was the child of a Leichenbergish diplomat who had returned to Cibola some time ago. The third, however, was more interesting; Vascarina Goldcluck, a breather whose school had reported her absent without leave for the last two weeks. Said school were kind enough to provide a photograph, which they sent by zombot courier within an hour. I opened the envelope to see the face of a little breather girl smiling at me - the very same face I'd seen in lich form at Towntree Quads.
In addition, the school had given us the address of her parents.
I wouldn't consider myself a thug of Shepilov's calibre, but there's something beautiful about the sound of a wooden door frame splintering as it's smashed in by a dozen Lichniks in full tactical gear. Mr. and Mrs. Goldcluck weren't prepared - nobody ever is. I managed to stop Shepilov's becudgelled arm as it descended to smash Mr. Goldcluck's skull, which was fortunate as Mr. Goldcluck and his wife were breathers; their kind tend not to recover well from blunt force cranial trauma, if at all. They were duly dragged outside to the waiting 'walkies van'. Their daughter was nowhere to be found.
A search of the house revealed the Goldclucks to be dabblers in that most heinous of arts - amateur necromancy. The sigils carved into the internal doorframes were scruffy and incomplete, the half-burned candles were made of the cheap, impurity-ridden tallow that tended to sputter everywhere when lit, and there was absolutely no sign of the proper Lichgravial certification required to engage in this kind of activity.
In the middle of it all, taking pride of place on its own bookstand, lay the smoking gun of the whole sorry affair - a copy of the notorious Lichport Grimoire, the wildly inaccurate necromantic 'manual' originally penned by an agent of the Babkhan Foreign Ministry. Since the original had been destroyed, the edition relied on a handful of dubious copies which were themselves debased by further copying over the centuries. Among a small community of charlatan breathers who plied their trade to the gullible by offering no-questions-asked necromantic services, this tome had long held a status way above its actual utility. It methods, however, were occasionally effective in forming a self-sustaining phylacteric field if one was a) incredibly lucky, and b) didn't mind the constellation of side effects that invariably arose.
Aside from the paraphernalia of sub-standard necromancy, the rest of the house bore the usual signatures of breather family life. Vascarina's bedroom remained as if she hadn't long left it, full of schoolwork and dolls and little hairdressing implements. At the sight of it, Shepilov began swearing profusely in whispers - not the visceral, hormonal anger of the breather but the white-hot spiritual anger of the lich, the overwhelming sense that the balance of the universe had been utterly desecrated; that a butcher had stormed into the Garden, and that the time was well nigh for a cosmic retribution. Looking around at the accoutrements of a young life cast needlessly into chaos, I couldn't help but share his rage. It's not often that a Lichnik sees beyond a blind devotion to the Queen's immediate interests, but in that instant we felt our direct debt to Her Shrub and Consort. Through the cute dolls and the pastel pink wallpaper of this little girl's room, it seemed that Minarbor himself was politely requesting justice.
Through the peephole of his cell door, Mr. Goldcluck could be seen slumped on the bench with all the grey resignation of a condemned man. He'd refused to speak to us at all. Fortunately for him, he was saved from our more persuasive methods by the verbosity of his wife, a large jolly woman in a garish crimson and yellow dress, who was quite happy to confess everything and even tried to justify herself. Over the interrogation room table, I gently indulged her vanity to gain information.
"A mother's instinct being what it is," I said, "surely you have some idea of where your daughter is."
"Hah!" boomed Mrs. Goldcluck. "If I did, I'd have grabbed her back long ago. She's running around in a body that isn't hers, the selfish little madam! I won't stand for that!"
"If the body isn't hers," said Shepilov, "whose is it?"
"Oh it's simple," said Mrs. Goldcluck. "I didn't spend nine excruciating months bearing a child for its own sake... I can't stand the little brats, to tell you the truth. But it's the easiest way to get hold of a spare body. No, the purpose of Vascarina was to absorb the departed soul of my dear old mother. A wonderful woman, she was. Taught me everything I know. My best friend and soulmate. I happen to take the soulmate thing quite seriously. I promised her I'd give her unlife, even if her body was too old to render into a lich. I'd just put her in a new one."
"Necromantically animating a body with an alien soul before the original has left it?" I said. "That is incredibly dangerous, to say the least."
"No no no, you don't understand." said Mrs. Goldcluck, rapping the table with he knuckles to emphasise her point. "I got Vassy out first. Well, hubby did the honours actually. As soon as my dear M'ma passed away, we came home from the hospital and made Vassy some dinner with a little... special oil. Hubby's a chemist's assistant, so he knew what worked best. She didn't even finish two mouthfuls before she fell face-down in a plate of mashed potato. How we laughed!"
Shepilov winced, visibly restraining himself as Mrs. Goldcluck giggled. "Murder never struck me as particularly funny, Mrs. Goldcluck," he said. "Because that's what it was. Murder."
"Oh come on, you precious creature," guffawed Mrs. Goldcluck. "Vassy had a good life while it lasted. There's nothing we didn't give her."
Except love, I thought, but I was playing Good Cop so I kept the comment to myself. "You say you purged Vascarina's soul from her body," I said, "But she's still running around in full possession of it?"
"Yes, well that's where it went a bit wrong," said Mrs. Goldcluck. "Vassy had a little toy bird that she took around everywhere. A plush black raven. Loved it to bits. She called it Birdy. Anyway, this thing had fallen onto the floor under the altar when we began the ritual. We didn't notice at the time. We'd put one of my mother's necklaces on the body as a phylactery to bring her in. But this... damned toy...!"
At this point, Mrs. Goldcluck's jolly smile momentarily dropped and she hissed through her teeth with rage. Shaking her head, she continued:
"Vassy obviously loved this stuffed raven more than M'ma loved the necklace. Because it was Vassy who came back first... right into her old body! When we were done with the ritual, the first thing she did was roll off the altar and go THUMP on the floor." Mrs. Goldcluck banged her fist on the interrogation room table at the appropriate point, startling me a little. "Then there was this Shrub-awful crunch of rigor mortis and she stuck her arm under the altar cloth and grabbed hold of this toy. That's when we knew. Vassy had returned as a lich, and the little raven was her phylactery."
Shepilov pouted, remembering the words of the grimy-faced girl at Towntree Quads. "So you tried taking it away from her..." He said.
"Not straight away," said Mrs. Goldcluck "We tried to pass the whole thing off as a tragic accident. Sent her away to her room. But she wouldn't let go of that damned raven. Not for a second. So I tried to talk her into giving it up. The problem was, she listened well in school. She knows what a phylactery is and what it does. She knew giving up little Birdy would be the end of her. So in the end I just made a grab for the thing."
"But she was too quick?" I said.
"Oh I got to it," said Mrs. Goldcluck. "I just couldn't prise her fingers off. You wouldn't believe the grip she had. We got into a bit of a struggle. Just as hubby ran over to help, Vassy ducked out from under me and ran out of the front door. I'm in no condition to run but hubby went after her. Even he couldn't catch her. The little brat runs like the wind."
"Yes, I noticed that," I said with an involuntary smile. "Tell me," I said, "how does the Oubliette sound to you?"
"I beg your pardon?" said Mrs. Goldcluck, blinking pointedly.
"You'll be aware that no state on Micras tolerates these kinds of crimes against the child," I said. "Of course there are many methods of reforming criminals to be of some use to the Garden, but a few are unredeemable as anything but compost. I do wonder if you might fit into the latter category."
"But... but it's nothing serious, is it?" said Mrs. Goldcluck, her paunchy breather face flustering a little. "Especially if you can have a bit of a laugh in the process. What's wrong with working a little death here and there? You liches started it after all."
"We bring about death when the subject's damn well ready," hissed Shepilov. "Vascarina was never ready."
I rose to my feet. "Speaking of whom," I said, "we have a little lich girl to find. I'll look forward to shovelling you onto my roses next Springhigh, Mrs. Goldcluck. May the Shrub have mercy on your soul."
Not wishing to spend a second longer in the company of this deranged breather, I left the interrogation room with Shepilov and we headed back upstairs.
With a nod to the Reaper guarding the shattered front door of the Goldclucks' home, Shepilov and I went back in to look for clues. Not for the guilt of the parents - that much was beyond doubt - but any hint as to the current location of little Vascarina. For all the dour insistence of the Houndmaster in taking this walking embarrassment off the streets of Nodovolorsk, I was motivated more by the half-faded memory of my own long-dead daughter. While she'd lived, I wouldn't want her to have been lost without a safe home like this child was. It wasn't even a fatherly thing - Shepilov never had children, and his determination was even greater than mine. It takes a whole village, as they say.
We stood in the pretty little bedroom, rooting through all the items inside. For once, Shepilov refrained from his usual search method of ripping drawers out and flinging their contents across the room like a flurry of snow. Instead he gently lifted each item, examined it with a silent squint, and replaced it exactly where it had been.
"I wish you'd search like this everywhere," I said. "It'd be a little more Shrubly of you."
"Shut up, Harks," growled Shepilov as he slid the drawer of a miniature dressing table shut. He stood straight and shrugged. "I could do with your insight right about now," He said. "I can't see anything in here that hints as to where she'd be."
"There's a good couple of doll houses in here," I said. "Maybe she's browsing the toy store."
Shepilov shook his head. "I've had lookouts in all the stores for the last week. Nothing."
"You went over my head and committed other Lichniks?" I said. "I didn't know you'd posted your own lookouts."
"We're both Inquisitors aren't we?" he said.
"Well yeah, but I guess it's the principle of the..." I stopped as Shepilov shot me a glare which very much suggested he wasn't in the mood for my crap. "Well anyway," I said. "Maybe we're looking in the wrong place. Think back to what we know already. She's on the run, good at hiding, obviously aware of a lich's social duties if she wrote us an apology letter. She seems to be taking her new form seriously. Oh, and she likes playing with sand."
Shepilov, who was gazing out of the window, whipped his head around like an owl and stared at me. "That's it..." he whispered. Then, with a roaring lich rasp, "THAT'S IT!"
Hall of Roots Construction Aggregate Transfer Node No. 76 was a sprawling complex on Novodolorsk's northern edge. It lay alongside the main Merensk-Highbloom railway, from which sprang two dozen sidings full of freight wagons. Here, towering scoop cranes unloaded ballast, gravel and sand from the trains onto enormous heaps bigger than houses. A steady stream of trucks arrived to take material from these heaps for use in Novodolorsk's various construction projects. The cranes and heaps were imposing feature on the local skyline, being a general landmark for the north of the city. Except for the occasional Hall of Roots official or truck full of breather construction workers, nobody but zombots ever came here. We certainly hadn't thought to search the place. But if you happened to like the manipulation of sand, the sight of giant cranes scooping the stuff around all day provided some degree of enthrallment.
The clouds of dust billowing out of the place made the eyes seize up and insulted the shiny black paintwork of our staff car, but we pressed on. The security zombot on the gate wouldn't let us in without a builder's permit and began to physically wrestle me when I tried to walk past it. After Shepilov had relocated it to the ground with his fist, we lifted the entry barrier ourselves and drove into the loading area. The place was floodlit even during the day, and between the sturdy spiked perimeter railings and the officious security zombots it seemed unlikely that anyone weaker than a Lichnik could ever sneak inside.
We wandered the giant heaps for a while, failing to find anything more sentient than waddling zombots. To get a better view, but also for fun, we decided to scramble to the top of a heap of gravel. From here the entire complex could be seen, echoing to the deep gurgle of revving diesel engines and the clatter of passing express trains.
From there, we finally saw her.
She was on the outside of the complex looking in; one hand gripping the perimeter railing and the other clutching her toy raven as she peered through the gap at us. On catching our eye, she smiled.
"Don't run, Shep," I said. "It'll spook her."
Instead, Shepilov raised his hand and waved. After a short delay, the child slowly waved back. Shepilov took a few slow, unsteady steps down the avalanche-prone slope of our gravel heap. The child stayed where she was, so Shepilov made his way to the bottom of the heap. Still the girl didn't move. In fact, she was waving at Shepilov again.
"Don't run, kid," I muttered from the top of the gravel heap. "For the love of the Shrub, don't run." I decided to let Shepilov advance alone, lest my own movements cause the girl to flee. Shepilov ambled his way casually among some smaller heaps of sand, sometimes disappearing behind them. When he reppeared, he was strolling right up to the railing where the girl was. She kept her grip on the railing and was still smiling. Although out of earshot, I saw her talking to Shepilov. I watched as they spoke, sometimes animatedly, for some five minutes. Then pulled Shepilov pulled his collar and leaned his head forward. My earpiece duly crackled into life.
"Meet me at the front gate, Harks."
I leaned into my own collar microphone. "What's going on?" I asked.
"Just... meet me there."
I did as he asked, parking the staff car a short distance from the still-motionless zombot whose face had been caved in by Shepilov's fist. Inside the complex one of the giant cranes had swung into action over the wagons, releasing thick clouds of gritty dust across the entire complex. On account of this I couldn't see Shepilov approaching until the crane momentarily paused. The last wall of billowing brown grit was swept away by the breeze to reveal his stocky figure - holding the child in his left arm.
From his opposite shoulder flapped the toy raven, safe in the grip of the little arm wrapped behind his neck. With her other hand, the child gave me a clumsy wave and a smile. "Hello mister... hug fin!" she called out in a squeaky lich croak.
"No no, it's Harkavin," muttered Shepilov in her ear. "Har-kah-vin."
I moved to place myself in front of the fallen zombot, lest Shepilov's 'other' handiwork become apparent to the child he now held in his arm. "Hello Vascarina," I said.
Shepilov placed the little lich girl on the ground, opened the back door of the staff car, and she dutifully hopped in. As Shepilov closed the door, I whispered to him:
"How in the name of Minarbor's shuddering leaves did you manage that?"
"It was easy," said Shepilov with a shrug. "I just promised we wouldn't take Birdy away."
"Kennel, this is Raven Six. Subject Goldcluck Three is in our care. Returning to base."
"Copy that Raven Six, well done."
Shepilov had tweaked the zombot driver's maneouvrability metric before we headed back; for a smoother, albeit slower ride. It was getting late in the afternoon now. Through the car window, the sun was beginning to set through the innumerable smokestacks of Novodolorsk's industrial district. While the child taught Shepilov some kind of playground chant in the back seat, I surveyed the columns of Breather, Singer and Lich that we passed, swarming the streets at the end of their working day.
I pondered the child's future in this society. A lich child was an abomination, for sure, but it wasn't this kid's fault. For what it was worth, her demeanour was most civil and Shrubly. Although she'd forever be held back by her juvenile mental faculties, she had some room to develop in the eternal undeath that lay ahead of her. The Garden would find a use for her - of that I was certain. Even if she wasn't allowed to walk the streets of civil lichdom, they could put her in a special colony of some kind. If such a colony didn't exist, they could always build one. Her case would doubtlessly come before the Deathgiver General of Novodolor, for whom Shepilov and I had already drafted a written report in defence of our little subject - who else was going to stand up for her?
In a strange sort of way, her awkward existence was a sign of the Garden's triumph. Off the high northeast of our Benacian continent, the Raikothin once tried to grow a frosty Garden of their own. Their Garden was to be made of absolutes; fully optimised, everywhere, all of the time. But no Garden ever grew to its full potential like that. On most roses you'll find a little blackspot or a few aphids. Your pristine lawn might harbour enough wild grass varieties to sprout a meadow full of flowers. And who's to say that isn't better? Who's to say that little mistakes and unintended developments aren't Minarbor's way of nudging the blinkered and prejudiced toward a more harmonious Garden?
The child in the back seat of this car was meant to be an empty vessel, but the vessel took a life of its own - and indeed an unlife - stronger in spirit than its supposedly more worthy ancestors. And to me, the Spirit of the Garden seemed to demand - or rather, politely request - that she be permitted a continued existence. By doing aethereal battle on a plane unknown and reclaiming her body with the help of a little stuffed raven, she'd earned that existence far above the ossified interests of her elders. A nation full of lichchildren is no good thing at all, but if the Spirit of the Garden wills that one sometimes emerges against our expectation, then who are we to kick aside its work in deference to our original plan?
Not that a Lichnik would ever adulterate his Jolly service with such things as personal opinions. But I'm only humanoid, if not entirely human.
A little after we left the industrial district, I noticed something was amiss. "Shep," I said, "We should have taken that last turning to get back to the Kennel. Where are we going?"
"Oh, I had the bot make a little detour," said Shepilov. "I have to take care of something."
"You pick your moments," I said. "How long will this... something take?"
"About an hour," said Shepilov. "We can say the traffic held us up."
The finished mural at Towntree Quads shone a brilliant, silky gold in the light of the setting sun. We pulled up in the car and admired it for a moment, then Shepilov leaned over and opened Vascarina's door. The sounds of children playing and singing sparrows filled the air. "Remember this place?" he said.
"Yah!" said Vascarina. "It got sand!"
"Right," said Shepilov, pointing out of the door. "So go play. You've got an hour, then you come back here when we call you. Understand?"
"Yes mister Sheppidov!" said Vascarina, scrambling out of the car.
Shepilov watched her carefully as she stomped toward the play area, then he noticed my disapproving gaze. "A promise is a promise," he said.
Suddenly the quad echoed to a squeal of delight. From the crowd of children, the grimy faced breather girl came running over. She grabbed Vascarina by the hand, and they ran together to the sandbox.
