Read Online On Whetsday by Mark Sumner - Free Book Online

and drew a deep breath. “Look, kid, you want the picture book? It's a deal. You want pops? Take a dozen. But I can't trade you a maton, because I don't have a maton.”
    Denny thought for a moment, “If these dasiks like my dad's stuff so much, how do you know they won't trade you a maton for it?”
    Poppa Jam shook his head, “No. They won't. You have to trust me. Trading with all these guys is what I do, and I can tell you none of them is going to give a human any kind of complex electronics, like a maton. It's against the rules. The big rules.”
    “But...why?” asked Denny.
    “Does it matter?” Poppa Jam said with a shrug.
    Denny opened his mouth to say more, but really, there was no more to say. Instead, he turned slowly and left the Porium. Behind him, he could hear Poppa Jam saying something to Cousin Haw. He sounded angry.
    Without a maton, there was no way to tell what else was on the memory the chug had given Denny. Maybe it didn't matter. After all, the only thing they'd been able to see with Loma's reader was the story about the old disease, and Denny couldn't see how that mattered to anyone. It was just a story from old Earth. A dead story, like the ones in Loma's books. Probably the whole thing was just trash, something the chug was throwing away.
    Denny was almost back to the compartment house when someone came hurrying up beside him. He was surprised to see that it was Cousin Yulia, hunched in her big coat. Fear, yes, but it wasn't just fear.
    “Did you find something at the Porium?” Denny asked.
    “Yes,” said Yulia, then, “No. I mean...nothing I have the credits to buy.” She glanced over at Denny, looked away, then glanced at him again. She bit her lip so hard Denny could see the lip turn white.
    “What's wrong?” he asked. “Do you want to borrow some credits?”
    “It's not that. It's...I know.”
    “Know what?”
    Cousin Yulia moved around to step in front of Denny. “I know where you can find a maton.”

 
     
     
     
     
     
    14
     
     
     
    Yulia looked quickly around the street. Then she surprised Denny by reaching over and grabbing at his hand. “Come this way,” she said.
    Denny opened his mouth to reply, but before he could get a word out he found himself stumbling forward as Yulia tugged him quickly across the cracked street toward the long-abandoned building that stood opposite the Porium. Only when they were in the deep shadows beyond the sagging blue doors did she finally release him.
    “What are you talking about?” Denny asked. “How can you know about matons?”
    Yulia’s pale eyes flicked left and right and Denny could see her throat work as she swallowed hard. “I was in the Porium. I heard what you were saying. I…” She peeked out at the street and quickly took a step back into the shadows. “Come over here.” She stepped away from him, nearly disappearing along the dim hallway.
    Denny hesitated for a moment, and then followed her into the gloom. He had never liked this building. It wasn’t very tall, just a half dozen floors, but the upper levels leaned in on themselves like carelessly stacked plates. Years of being open to the weather – and years of humans carrying off parts of the building for other uses – had left the place with warped walls, leaky ceilings, and floors with cracked and missing tiles. The lift had long ago stopped running, and the pipes and wires had long been hauled away. Down on the bottom floor there were chairs, lots of chairs, but they were far too small for most humans and not even Poppa Jam could be bothered to cross the street to collect them. Denny had sometimes wondered if the building had once been used by some other kind of people. Someone like humans, only smaller.
    On top of everything else, the place smelled bad. Stale and moldy. As Denny tried to keep up with Yulia, he could hear the soft movement of little creatures around him. Scuttles, certainly. Maybe scats. Denny’s father had always told him to stay out of