MAYFLOWER

CHAPTER TWELVE

Glinda looked behind. She had the feeling that someone was following her. But the road was empty. She traveled with regret and no regret. The capital was not a place to live nor even to stay a moment longer than needed. Hando had described it. "If you spend too much time in this city you will find it full of horrible and evil deeds. It is supposed to be the center of a Christian world. It is confusing. Every dreg of the planet is attracted here and every angel is so repulsed they run. Those with the most appalling crimes can hide here. If you look at the daily news it will be the same each day. Claims of black magic, a priest and a prostitute, a husband strangles his wife, a wife poisons her husband." The regret was that she had no choice but to give up on helping her father. Wherever she looked there was silence in regard to him as if he had not existed. Except from Hando, but Hando insisted that she leave.

The capital was really a series of cities, or interest groups as Hando described them, who watched each other warily, built walls around their area of control, and would resort to violence over the minutest, perceived threat. The King and Queen and their government were a hazy presence who mostly took no interest in what the citizens did to one another, but then struck with ferociousness for some matter that no one could figure out the importance of. It was far from the solid and noble place that they were told about in the villages.

She had fled among the turmoil. The plan was that she would rest in the basement of the bookstore until transport could be found. It was thought best to find her a place on one of the motorbuses that had routes out of the capital. They traveled in groups and with armed guards for safety. Hando had contacts, but they were all nervous. Passage was hard to organize. Rumors of trouble came from every corner. The City Watch patrolled the streets and roughed people up with impunity as if they had been given permission to let their repressed desire for thuggishness out.

She had been told to wait, hide in the basement, until a ride from the capital could be secured. It was during the sleeping hours that she heard a banging from upstairs. The bookstore was empty and she was in the basement alone. The knocking was relentless and she snuck upstairs to investigate. The shutters had been pulled down. Glinda looked through a crack. It was a man with his body turned to face the street and his arm up and behind him so that he could bang on the door. His head sharply turned and he saw her eye through the crack. "Open up will you, hurry." He turned back to watch the street. She opened the door, figuring that it was someone for Hando. "Who are you?" he said. "Where is the Hand?" He pushed the door shut, turned before Glinda could get a good look at him, clicked the locks, and used the curtain crack to see out. After being satisfied that he was safe he turned to her. "Marcus Hando. Where is he? Why are you looking at me like that?" He was the strangest man Glinda had seen. Half his face was covered as if by a metallic mask, but it was not a mask. It was part of his face, forming an eye that poked out like that of a frog, a mouth that was a rectangular slit, and covered well up his forehead, with a normal head and tufts of hair above. "What's the matter, haven't you seen someone with a bit of mech work before?" He put his hands up to emphasize his point. One hand was a hand like a hand with skin and knuckles the other was made of metal and screws to look and move like a hand. "Who are you? Are you a Luddite?"

"I am Avon the Scientist's daughter. Hando told me to stay here until I heard from him."

"Avon's daughter, is that so." The man made a sharp whistle.

"Who are you?"

"I'm Brag. The Hand's man on the inside. Although not anymore. You see all those City Watch about, they're looking for me." Glinda's hand went to her nose. "Yes, I know, I stink. Been in the sewer, haven't I. Is there food here? Where's the Hand?"

"He said he would come back after the sleeping hours, when there were more people on the street." The capital had a set four hours in a designated twenty-four-hour cycle that it deemed sleeping hours. This was to a hark back to old Earth where they had a nighttime. "There's food. Tins of corn soup."