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needed?"
"Aye," Sam replied, again falling into the brogue of his childhood, to match
the lilt of Keighvin's speech. "But those strangers were the holy saints, or
angels in disguise, sent from the Virgin, she said-"
Keighvin snorted. "Holy saints? Is that what you mortal folk decided? Nay,
Sam, 'twas us. At least, it was us when there were hungry children to feed,
and naught to feed them with; when there was no fuel in the house, and
children freezing. When some mortal fool sires children, but won't be a father
to them, leaving the mother to struggle alone. Our kind-we don't bear as
easily or often as you. Children are rare and precious things to us. We're
impelled to protect and care for them, even when they aren't our own."
Suddenly a great many of the old stories took on a whole new set of meanings.
. . . But Keighvin was continuing.
"This isn't the old days, though, when a stranger could give a poor lass a
handful of silver and gold in return for a kindness. For one thing, the girl
would be thought a thief, like as not, when she tried to trade it for paper
money. For another, someone would want to track down whoever gave it to her.
We have to truly, legitimately, earn money before we can give it away."
Tannim shook his head in mock sadness. "Oh, now that's a real pity, isn't it-
you elves having to work for a living. What's the world coming to?"
Keighvin cast the young man a sharp glance. "One of these days, my lad, that
tongue of yours is going to cast you into grief."
Tannin chuckled, uncowed by the fire in Keighvin's eye. "You're too late, it
already has." He turned to Sam. "These boys can literally create anything, if
they've studied it long enough beforehand. We've been making foamed aluminum
engine blocks ever since Keighvin here got his hands on a sample from a Space
Shuttle experiment." He hopped back up onto his cabinet, crossing his legs
like a Red Indian. "I'm not even going into how we got that. But, we've been
using the stuff in our cars-now, can you imagine what we could charge some of
the big boys to duplicate their designs in foamed cast aluminum?"
Indeed, Sam could. And the major racing teams had a great deal of money to
play with. "So that's why you set up this shop, Fairgrove Industries-but what
do you need me for?"
"We need a front-man," Tannim said, leaning forward in his eagerness to
explain himself. "We need someone who can give a convincing explanation of how
we're doing all this, and show us how to create a setup that will at least
look like we're making the things by some esoteric process and not by magic."
"But there isn't any process-" Sam began. "There isn't a firm in the world
that could duplicate-"
Tannim waved a negatory hand in the air.
"It doesn't matter if no one else can duplicate what we do," he said blithely.
"They'll expect us to have trade secrets. We just need someone who knows all
the right techno-babble, and can make it sound convincing. As long as you can
come up with something that's possible in theory, that's all we need. We'll
keep on buying machines that go bing, and you leak tech reports to the
curious."
Sam couldn't help himself; he started to laugh. Tannim and Keighvin both
looked confused and surprised. "What's so funny?" Tannim asked.
"Do you know much science fiction?" he asked, through his chuckles. Keighvin
shook his head. Tannim shrugged. "A little. Why?"
"Because a very famous author, Arthur C. Clarke-who also happens to be one of
the world's finest scientists and engineers-said once that technology that's
complicated enough can't be told from magic."
"So?" Tannim replied.
Sam started laughing again. "So-sufficiently complex magic is
indistinguishable from technology!"
Keighvin looked at Tannim for an explanation; the latter shrugged. "Beats me,"
the young man said with a lopsided smile, as Sam wheezed with laughter.
"Sometimes I don't understand us either."
It was nearly midnight when they'd gotten the basic shape of a plan hammered
out. By then, they'd moved into Keighvin's office-a wonderful place with a
huge, plate-glass window that looked out into what seemed to be an absolutely
virgin glade. The office itself was designed to be an extension of the
landscape outside, with plants standing and hanging everywhere, and even a
tiny fountain with goldfish swimming in it.
"Well, I'm going to have to go home and sleep on this," Sam said, finally.
"Then get into some of the journals and see what kind of a convincing fake I
can concoct before I can definitely say I'll take the job."
He started to get up, but Keighvin waved him down again. "Not quite yet, Sam,"
he said, his expression grave. "There's just one thing more we need to tell
you about. And you may decide not to throw in your lot with us after you've
heard it."
"Why?" he asked, a little surprised.
"Because Fairgrove has enemies," Tannim supplied, from his own nook,
surrounded by ferns. "Not 'Fairgrove Industries.' I mean Elfhame Fairgrove,
the Underhill Seleighe community here." He leaned back a little. "Keighvin, I
think the ball's in your-ah-'court.' So to speak."
Keighvin didn't smile. "Sam, how much did your granny ever tell you about the
Seleighe and Unseleighe Court elves?"
Sam had to think hard about that. Granny had died when he was barely ten;
fifty-five years was a long time. And yet, her stories had been
extraordinarily vivid, and had left him with lasting impressions.
"Mostly, she told stories with-I guess you'd say-good elves and bad elves.
Elves who wanted to help humans, at least, and elves who wanted only to hurt
them. She said you really couldn't tell them apart, if you were a human child-
that even human adults could be easily misled, and that sometimes even the
good elves didn't know who was good and who was bad. She said the Unseleighe
Court even had agents in the Seleighe Court. She just warned me to steer clear
of both if I ever met either kind, until I was old enough to defend myself,
and could tell a glib lie from the truth."
Keighvin nodded, his hair beginning to escape from the pony-tail. "Good
enough. And that fairly sums it up. There's the Seleighe Court-that's us, and
things like elvensteeds and dryads, selkies, pukas, owls, things that can pass
as humans and things that never could. Oh, and there's creatures native to
this side of the water that have allied themselves with the Seleighe Court as
well. And for the most part, the very worst one of us wishes is that the
humans would go away." The Sidhe looked out into the forest beyond the glass,
but Sam had the feeling he was seeing something else entirely. "For the most
part, we're interested in coexisting with your kind, even if it forces us to
have to change. Many of us are interested in helping your kind. We have the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]