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Post By The hurried Hooded Hood proffers a tie-in chapter as requested Thu Nov 17, 2005 at 10:34:59 pm EST |
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Call of the Wild #9: Heartland | |
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| Amber St Clare elbowed her way through the crowd of smelly homeless people and scrambled up onto the dilapidated stage area where the soup trestle was. “What do you think you’re doing?” she almost yelped. Sarah Shepherdson looked guilty. “Giving Mr Carnowski a second bread bun,” she admitted. “I know it’s against policy, but he’s had a rough time recently since his trolley was stolen and…” “I don’t mean serving soup,” Amber clarified, shying away from the smelly tramp who was sniffing her hair. “I mean bringing our guest… here!” “Well it’s my Seamen’s Mission night,” Shep answered reasonably. “Where else would I bring her?” “I mean,” hissed the Lair Legion’s government liaison, “bringing an honoured guest to our country on her first visit – no, make that official, highly sensitive and important visit – bringing her to a waterfront soup kitchen!” Zdenka Zarazoza looked up from behind the soup cauldron. “Is not permitted for me to be here?” she asked in her Candian-accented English. “Is forbidden area hidden by decadent American government?” “It’s not forbidden,” Amber tried to explain. “it’s just not the kind of place we’d want to… I mean, we’re not hiding it but there’s so much more…” “Relax,” Jay Boaz suggested to the agitated administrator, coming to join them after parking the car he’d brought Amber in. “Sometimes Zdenka does that whole decadent thing just to wind people up.” “Is true,” admitted Rabid Wolf. “Is working remarkably well, usually.” Shep broke into a big grin. “You’re fitting in just fine, Z.” Amber hastily positioned herself on the other side of the table from the wandering hands of the down and outs. “She is not fitting in fine here. This is a flea pit charity centre. She’s a major Candian superhero, and we’re supposed to be showing her America.” “This is America,” Sarah assured Amber. “I checked on a map. Also, you can tell because people spell things differently.” She turned to the bum who was next in line for a bread roll. “Hey, Huey, how do you spell colour?” The homeless man panicked. “Er… How should I know? Do I look like I got a college education?” A horrible thought struck him. “You’re not going to start doing exams to get bread rolls are you?” A wave of panic washed down the line, which was the only washing quite a few of the derelicts had seen for some time. “Don’t worry,” Shep assured them, shaking her head but still smiling. “No tests. Everybody who brought a mouth with them gets a bread roll, okay?” She left the queue hastily working that one out and turned back to the others. “This is America too,” she repeated. “Please do not be angry with Miss Shepherdson,” Zdenka asked Amber. “Is not to be wrong of her to be showing me of this. This is best place I have seen so far in your America.” Hatman tried not to grin at Amber’s stricken face. “But… we’ve shown you the Twin Parody Tower, and the Cathedral, and the new monorail terminal, and the Museum of Oddities, and the Byrnewood Nature Park…” the liaison officer protested. “They are very beautiful,” Zvesti Zdrugo assured her hosts. “But this is better, I think.” “You noticed we had beggars on our streets, people living rough,” Jay remembered. “Even though there’s all this wealth here, some people don’t get enough.” “Is so,” Zdenka agreed. “But here is where you are doing the best thing. Here is where you are living with your hearts, I think.” “Well, I don’t really know what goes into the soup,” Shep admitted. “Think about it, Amber,” Jay urged. “Candia already knows we have technology and architecture and massive wealth and resources. But Shep’s shown a valued and important visitor that we’re also socially responsible. We have our problems, but we try to solve them.” Sarah handed the bread tray over to Amber. “One roll a piece,” she instructed. “I’ll go get more soup before we run out. We don’t want a repeat of the Minestrone Riots of ’04.” “The what?” asked Amber nervously. “We don’t talk about it,” Shep called over her shoulder before she disappeared into the crowd. Nobody pawed her. Evolution works. “She is very special,” Zdenka said to Hatman. “Shep?” Hatty considered the waitress. “How?” “Look at how she talks to her people. See how they open up as she comes to them. Every one is little bit better after they see her. Here they get soup and bread, yes? But also they get shown they are still people, and this is important too.” “I guess it is,” agreed Jay, charmed to see the familiar world through Zdenka’s eyes. “”No,” Amber was saying to the hobo in front of her. “One mouth, one breadcake. That is not a mouth.” “You don’t need to have super powers to be a hero,” Jay remarked. “But it helps when the Hellraisers come to massacre you,” Amber retorted sharply. “Not noticeably,” shuddered the capped crusader reminiscently. Sarah returned through the throng, carefully balancing a tray above her head on outstretched fingertips. “I’m back,” she called. “Mr Oddy, that’s not a mouth.” “That’s what I told him,” shuddered Amber. Suddenly there was a disturbance in the queue. At first it looked like a simple case of queue jumping leading to a scuffle, but the offender shook himself free of the angry vagrants who tried to pull him back and raced forwards towards the soup trestle. “Hey, wait your turn!” Jay told him, stepping forward to intercept; but the agitated man shouted something Hatman couldn’t understand and swerved round him and under the table. “Shoo!” shrieked Amber, backing away wielding a bread roll in self defence. The hobo didn’t go near her. Instead he fell down on his knees before Zdenka, head right down to the floorboards. “Vlasky mdurgo slavis mix yelso stavorich!” he cried out. Vlasky con strego Zvesti Zdrugo!” “He’s speaking Candian,” Jay recognised, “but he’s going way too fast for me to translate.” Rabid Wolf was already crouching down beside the stranger, reaching to help him sit upright again, talking to him in calm, soothing tones. Candian sounded almost musical when she spoke it. “Careful,” Amber advised. “You don’t know where he’s been.” She wished now she’d brought her handbag, because the risk of it being snatched here was outweighed by the value of the pepper spray. “But I know where he has come from,” Zdenka replied. “This man is Candian.” “Yurgo?” Sarah asked in surprise. “I never knew. Of course, him not speaking any language I can recognise didn’t help.” Yurgo turned to Sarah, gestured at Rabid Wolf, and jabbered urgently. The only words that were recognisable were Zvesti Zdrugo. “If he’s Candian, of course he recognises her,” Jay realised. “Rabid Wolf is one of their most famous superheroes up there, and also…” “And also I am goddess of the north,” Zdenka added. She laid a gentle hand on Yurgo’s head and he became calm. “I am telling him is alright.” “What’s wrong with him?” asked Amber, her heart softening as she saw the tears in the stranger’s eyes. “He is lonely and frightened,” Rabid Wolf explained to them. “He escaped here two years ago with his wife and two children, when the snows were heavy. He is coming to Paradopolis to drive decadent consumer vehicle for hire.” “A taxi cab?” Shep hazarded. “But he does not speak language, and is not supposed to be here. He fears police will find him and beat him. He is cheated by employer. He is threatened by landlord, until he has no place to sleep with family. He does not want to have wife to sell herself, yes? But baby is very sick. So he is praying. And then he comes here.” “Wait a moment,” Jay frowned. “Zdenka, are you saying he was praying to you?” “Is not quite that. I have not words for how it is. But he is needing help, as so many of my people need help. So I help if I can.” “You do charity work back home?” Shep said. “I do what I can,” Zdenka answered simply. “I make sun shine and rain fall in season and I make crops grow and animals to make more animals. Is not hard for me to do this, in Candia.” “I thought you were a shapechanger,” Amber puzzled. “Is right. The rest of things, I just… give permission.” “This wasn’t in the Candian briefing material,” Hatman noted. “I guess they wouldn’t want us to know their strategic metahuman assets.” “They do not know I do this,” Rabid Wolf shrugged. “But people of Candia, they know. Yurgo, he knows.” She looked down at the tired, hungry, worn out man and her own eyes were wet with tears. “But here I can do nothing for him. We are both very far from home.” “But not alone,” Jay told the goddess of the north, clasping an arm around her. “You’re always able to surprise me, Zdenka, every time I think… But that’s not important just now. You’re not here alone. You have friends. What you can’t accomplish by yourself…” A slow smile blossomed on Zvesti Zdrugo’s face. “It is good to have friends.” She turned to Sarah. “I think here you are person who looks after the forgotten people, yes? The one who makes things right for them?” “One of them,” agreed Shep. “It’s never enough.” “No,” agreed Zdenka gravely. “It is never enough. But you will help Yurgo? And Yurgo’s baby?” “Yes,” agreed Amber. “You can’t send him back!” Hatman warned the administrator. “That’s a death sentence.” “He’s an economic and political refugee,” Amber answered. “I can grant him asylum.” She looked a little sheepish. “I, um, happened to have some application papers with me in case anybody needed them.” “I’ll go with him and collect his family,” Jay offered. “And then…” “They can stay at my flat,” Sarah offered. “Until they get fixed up somewhere. It might be a bit crowded, of course, but…” “They can stay at my house,” corrected Amber. “Really. I never get to use the guest rooms anyhow.” Zdenka’s smile was like the sunrise. “You see?” she told her friends. “This is good place. This is real. Where is seen worst is also sometimes seen best.” She looked at Amber. “Where is seen heart of people, and of nation.” Amber blushed and passed a second breadroll to the vagrant in front of her. “But please don’t try and cram it in that other orifice,” she pleaded. Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2005 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2005 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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