The Grand Ballast Read Online Free PDF Page B

—actually shot, real blood spilling
across the boards in place of red silk.
    Kilroy was right—most
people were bored with death. Any slob could murder someone. Crime
was common but uninteresting. Acts of violence were as sloppy and
simple as finger paintings. Crimes of passion were as close to
nonexistent as passion itself. Wars still
broke out around the world, but strategy was given low billing.
Conflict escalated seemingly by accident, and when at last it faded
into truce, the result was usually unsatisfying. War yielded a
broken-spined dog sort of peace, nations dragging themselves into
corners to lick their wounds and wait for the end.
    “ Well,
any slert with a hole to finger can get ferked onstage,” O’ Fauh
shrugged his big shoulders and went on. “It’s the combinashern erv the
two—sex and death—that’s got people buying tickets.
    “ Sounds like a cheap
stunt.” Kilroy stuck the cigar in his mouth then pulled it out
again restlessly. “Interesting, nonetheless.”
    Bode almost grinned. Kilroy
was jealous—had to be. Angry he hadn’t thought of it first. Maybe
it was too bad for Bode he hadn’t. Maybe it would have been a mercy
for Bode to have been killed years ago in front of a hungry
crowd.
    “ Not cheap,” O’ Fauh
replied. “Wern show eh mernth. The star gets paid twenty-five grand
to die.”
    “ Twen-ty five grand,”
Kilroy repeated, enunciating each syllable. “What’s he spend it
on—lining for his coffin?”
    “ Merney goes to the
families. I can get you tickets, if you’d like to
ehttend.”
    More ash fluttered to the
windowsill. Kilroy offered O’ Fauh a tight smile through a cloud of
smoke. “I would like that. Get me two, if you can.”
    “ Certainly.” O’ Fauh patted
his knees. “We gotta milk these X-shows for all they’re werth,
’case Harkville gets its way.”
    “ Harkville?” Kilroy’s face twitched. “Harkville has its fucking way.”
Bode liked Kilroy’s look—fire in the brain and body. He and Kilroy
been savage together, once. They’d seen their colors and wants and
meanness tangle, and they’d drawn hope out of the snarl. “They do
what they want and the government leaves them alone.”
    O’ Fauh shifted again, and
his chair made a sound like a tire over a turtle shell. “’Cept now
whert they want is the X-Shows shert down.”
    Kilroy stood. Waved his
cigar. “Harkville— Harkville , with its dancing whores
and painted men, its waitstaff who’ll shoot absinthe up your ass
for an extra five dollars— Harkville objects to the X-shows?”
    “ It’s a
small but vocal contingent,” O’ Fauh said. “They think the shows
are inhumane .”
    “ The very inclusion of
Harkville on a map is inhumane!” Kilroy snapped.
    Silence. Kilroy put a fist
against his forehead.
    O’ Fauh cleared his throat.
“Just whert I heard.”
    Kilroy looked up again.
“That ‘town’ is a collection of garbage that would give Mr. Lein a
formidable erection.” He stubbed the cigar out and whirled, his
coattails sending up a puff of dust and dead bugs collected from
the windowsill. He strode toward the bed. “It’s what happens if you
let dogs and chimps run a town.”
    O’ Fauh crossed his
surprisingly small ankles. “Nerntheless, Harkville has influence
with our straw house of a gervernment.”
    “ Yes,” Kilroy mused. “All
Harkville would have to do is huff and puff and—”
    “ Exactly. Its people know
how to incite. To keep ’em quiet, the gervernment could intervene
and shert the X-shows down.”
    Kilroy shook his head. “The
X-shows do too much for the economy. They won’t be shut down. But
we could face regulations.”
    “ Yes, yes.” O’ Fauh
nodded.
    “ Well. No sense in worrying
yet.” Kilroy returned to the window and stroked Bode’s cheek.
Ripped the cigarette from Bode’s mouth and made as if to put it out
between his ribs. Bode jerked back; his elbow struck the window.
Kilroy’s smile grew stranger, more private. He ground the