The Half-Made World Read Online Free PDF Page A

around in drunken circles about the roulette wheel and the dice tables and the knots of men clutching tightly to their cards and their little heaps of coins and worn, sweaty banknotes.
    Everyone was talking much too loudly about sex, about business, about crime, about war—and about plans for when the War was over, which always got a laugh. A man with a quick mind and sharp hearing could have picked up valuable intelligence—and Creedmoor had a passably quick mind and the ears of a fox. But he was retired, and happily so, and so he shut his ears and let the babble wash over him. He liked to be among people; he liked the noises and smells of crowds. This wasn’t peace. There was no peace and there never would be. But it was close enough.
    He sat in a half-dark corner playing cards with strangers. His back was to the wall, just in case.
    The table was playing the Old Game, with the suits they used in the towns of the Delta—rifles, shovels, wolves, and bones. A game of bluff and cunning: Creedmoor excelled at it. There was a rich-looking man in a green necktie and glasses, a less rich-looking man in a brown suit with a bald head, and a stupid-looking young man called Buffo who’d joined the boat that morning from a one-street town called Lezard, with bloodstains on his boots and a burlap sack full of clinking gold coins. No questions asked. Buffo balanced a black-haired green-eyed girl on his lap, who seemed to like it when Creedmoor smiled at her. Everyone was substantially less rich than they’d been at the start of the evening, except for Creedmoor and the girl, who appeared to be a neutral party.
    Creedmoor had joined the boat two days ago in a town called Humboldt, where some old enemies had spotted him. He’d been sitting on a painted bench on Humboldt’s waterfront, watching the young women go by in their blue and green summer dresses, when his peace had been shattered by the sound of Engines and the smell of smoke. Even before he saw it, he sensed the black staff car coming down the dirt road behind him. Linesmen . He jumped up, walked quickly but calmly down the pier, and bought a ticket for the first boat out. In the old days, he might have stayed and fought, but he was tired of fighting. Anyway, he was only passing through Humboldt on a detour to avoid the Shrike Hills, which, when he’d last been that way thirty years ago, were full of drowsy little villages. Now, to his great annoyance, the hills were being flattened and built over by the Line—farms replaced by factories, forests stripped, hills mined and quarried to feed the insatiable holy hunger of the Engines.
    He was happy enough on the boat. He hadn’t been traveling anywhere in particular anyway. It was six years since he’d last heard the Call. It was impossible to avoid his masters or escape them, but he did his best to make himself appear both idle and useless to them—a burnt-out case. It appeared to be working well enough. He regarded himself, provisionally, as a free man.
    More money changed hands. The rich-looking gentleman in the necktie gave a sad laugh and tossed his last crumpled bills in the air. Creedmoor deftly snatched them.
    “You’re a devil, sir.”
    “Not tonight,” Creedmoor said, and smiled.
    Creedmoor’s hair was a little thin, brown turning gray; his face was red and lined and rough. He looked like he came from Lundroy peasant stock, which he did. If you saw him smile, you might think he was still a young man; if you saw him sometimes when he thought he was alone, he might look a hundred years old. The three men who sat across the table from him behind rapidly diminishing piles of money had seen a simple old man. Now, Creedmoor judged, at least two of them were considering drawing a weapon on him. He hoped they wouldn’t be so foolish.
    Creedmoor’s hoard of bills and coins grew, big and glittering and beautiful. The rich-looking gentleman staggered drunkenly off, cursing in disgust. The black-haired green-eyed girl