Faith of the Fallen

Richard, his stomach grumbling with hunger, listened as the man explained. "You first need to belong to a citizen workers' group; they protect the rights of citizens of the Order. You'll have to go before a review assembly for approval to join the workers' group, and a fitness panel to hear from a spokesman from the workers' citizen group who can vouch for you. You must do this before you can go for a job."

"Why can't I just go to a place and show myself? Why can't they hire me, if I fit their needs?"

"Just because you're from the country, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be mindful of contributing toward the greater good of the Order."

"Of course not," Richard said. "I've always worked for myself, thoughfarming to bring food to my fellow man, as is our duty. I don't know how businesses do things."

The big brown eyes paused their blinking. The man peered suspiciously for a moment, then his eyes finally went moony again. His jaw resumed its wobbling as he chewed his words.

"It's the primary responsibility of business to be sensitive to the needs of the people, to contribute to the public welfare, to be equitable.

The review board helps see to this. There is much more involved than the narrow goals of businesses."

"I see," Richard said. "Well, I'd be grateful if you could tell me how to go about it properly." He glanced briefly at Nicci. "I want to be a good citizen and do things right."

By the man's pride in the explanation, and the way his big eyes blinked faster as he laid it all out, Richard expected that the man was somehow involved in the labyrinthine process. Richard didn't ask how you got a spokesman from the citizen workers' group to vouch for you. The line inched forward as the man explained the finer details of different sorts of work, what each required, and how it was all for the benefit of those living within the Order and under the grace of the Creator.

As he droned on, delivering his information with smug satisfaction, Nicci watched Richard discreetly, and without comment, as he listened to the procedures. She looked as if she was expecting him to suddenly turn from polite to deadly. Richard knew there could be no point to a battle with this man, so he remained polite.

It turned out that the man, named Mr. Gudgeons, seemed to know the most about the quarry workers. Since Richard knew little about quarries, he passed the time as they stood in line by asking a few questions that pleased Mr. Gudgeons to answer-at great length.

The store ran out of bread and closed before they got any. The line of people dissolved into the downpour, mumbling to one another as they went about their woeful lot in life. Richard thanked the woman and Mr. Gudgeons before he and Nicci moved on.

Richard paused at a cross street while Nicci studied her paper with the list of rooms. All around, the blocky shapes of buildings rose out of the gloom. Red paint on the side of one brick building was so faded that it left the figure painted there looking like a blushing ghost. The faded whitewash of words beneath the vanishing man were no longer legible.

Passing men gazed at Nicci in her wet clinging clothes, never seeing her face. Her hair was plastered to her skull, her jaw quivered, and her hands trembled, yet she didn't complain about the cold, as did everyone else. They had been told that they couldn't get another list, with any new rooms that might have recently become available, until the next day, so Nicci was trying to keep this one whole, but in the rain it was a losing battle.

Mangy horses slogged through the mud, some of the wagons they pulled squeaking and groaning under the weight of a load. Only the main thoroughfares, like the one they were on, were wide enough to allow teams of horses and full-size wagons to easily pass in both directions. Some streets were only wide enough for wagons to go in one direction. Some of those, with no room to pull aside, were choked off by broken-down wagons. Richard saw a dead horse in one narrow street, the rotting animal, attended by a cloud of flies, still hitched to its wagon as it awaited someone to come haul it away. The blocked streets only added to the congestion of the others. Some streets, were wide enough only for handcarts. In many of the narrower passageways only foot traffic could fit.

The smell of garbage and the stench of streets that also functioned as open sewers had been enough to gag Richard for the first week until he'd become numb to it.

The alleyways where he and Nicci had slept were the worst. The rain only served to flush the filth out of every hole and carry it out into the open, but at least as long as he was standing it washed off some of the dirt.