years.
Lila still did not know if he was going to take her with him. She hated him, but at least he wasn’t depraved like some of the other Wienans. She was a debt-slave, her contract sold to pay off her father’s debts. The contract still had seven years to run. Then she would be free, and with the money earned by her second job, independent. But seven years could be a long time to survive in this place.
CHAPTER 5
THE YAK
“ In the well-ordered garden it is always the weeds that grow fastest. So too in an ordered society, it is the weeds that grow with astonishing rapidity. You can either spend all your energies pulling up weeds, or you can learn to use them. ”
The Upanishad of the Gardener-Dewa Celine.
Sam Teovan was five years old when the newborn Princess Shari was wrapped in the softest of coverlets with its border delicately embroidered in gold thread and carried to her jeweled cot for the first time. He had been wrapped in old newspapers and destined to be thrust into a bin behind a dingy night-club when he’d been born. It hadn’t quite happened, and he’d received the food and warmth he craved from the mother who’d been nearly desperate enough to kill him. But he did have something in common with the Princess. At four and a half she’d abruptly lost her mother, and so had he. But while she had been taken from her palatial apartments and a small army of servants and handed over to a peasant-nursemaid with a solitary, crippled, too-old security man to obey the forms of giving her a bodyguard, he had had to flee to the dumps. She’d at least gone on living in the palace, if under far less opulent conditions. You could get killed for being an out-of-favor Princess in the palace, but children in the dumps seldom lived past a few weeks. For Sam it had been a stark choice of the dumps or being sold to the paedophile market. The preternaturally sharp child had known that the dumps, grim though they were, were the better option. Sam always knew the best option.
The Imperial city boasted of having the largest of many things, buildings, baths, subways. It also had the largest dump in human space. Nobody boasted about this, not even the scarecrow people who lived their entire, usually short, lives in the fifty hectare gradually infilling valley. It is said that you could find anything in the dumps, from lost jewels to tetanus or poisoned food. Somehow Sam always knew how to avoid the latter.
The Princess had gone from being an item to be pampered without fondness to gradually becoming the utter darling of two people who loved her unstintingly and eventually gave their lives willingly for her. Sam Teovan had gone from a loving but hopelessly drug-enslaved foolish mother, whom he had tried to save with all his too-old-for-four but too-young-to-understand ability, to the dumps. Here he had never again allowed himself to get close to anyone, not even the others of dump-urchin gang he’d run with, and eventually come to lead. Most of those who came here that young just died, but not Sam. He made the right choices, joined the right gang. To the gang he became a near-sacred oracle. When the Muti-men prowled at night, looking for body-parts for their foul trade, his lot were always elsewhere. Gang-fight traps somehow failed on Teovan’s bunch. He was also infallible about poison.
Then, late in the afternoon, just before the police death squads had moved in, he had told them to come with him into the city. They’d balked. The dumps were home, their life, their turf. He walked away from them, away from leadership and the power that had cost him the razor-slash across the cheek to win. He didn’t want to go either. But somehow he knew that to stay was to die.
Sam had gone from being a dump-picker to being a mugger and a second-story man, sleeping and living in the dank alleys of the poor, half-warehouse part of town. The scrawny wire-tough boy grew to be a scrawny wire-tough man working independently in the back
Lila still did not know if he was going to take her with him. She hated him, but at least he wasn’t depraved like some of the other Wienans. She was a debt-slave, her contract sold to pay off her father’s debts. The contract still had seven years to run. Then she would be free, and with the money earned by her second job, independent. But seven years could be a long time to survive in this place.
CHAPTER 5
THE YAK
“ In the well-ordered garden it is always the weeds that grow fastest. So too in an ordered society, it is the weeds that grow with astonishing rapidity. You can either spend all your energies pulling up weeds, or you can learn to use them. ”
The Upanishad of the Gardener-Dewa Celine.
Sam Teovan was five years old when the newborn Princess Shari was wrapped in the softest of coverlets with its border delicately embroidered in gold thread and carried to her jeweled cot for the first time. He had been wrapped in old newspapers and destined to be thrust into a bin behind a dingy night-club when he’d been born. It hadn’t quite happened, and he’d received the food and warmth he craved from the mother who’d been nearly desperate enough to kill him. But he did have something in common with the Princess. At four and a half she’d abruptly lost her mother, and so had he. But while she had been taken from her palatial apartments and a small army of servants and handed over to a peasant-nursemaid with a solitary, crippled, too-old security man to obey the forms of giving her a bodyguard, he had had to flee to the dumps. She’d at least gone on living in the palace, if under far less opulent conditions. You could get killed for being an out-of-favor Princess in the palace, but children in the dumps seldom lived past a few weeks. For Sam it had been a stark choice of the dumps or being sold to the paedophile market. The preternaturally sharp child had known that the dumps, grim though they were, were the better option. Sam always knew the best option.
The Imperial city boasted of having the largest of many things, buildings, baths, subways. It also had the largest dump in human space. Nobody boasted about this, not even the scarecrow people who lived their entire, usually short, lives in the fifty hectare gradually infilling valley. It is said that you could find anything in the dumps, from lost jewels to tetanus or poisoned food. Somehow Sam always knew how to avoid the latter.
The Princess had gone from being an item to be pampered without fondness to gradually becoming the utter darling of two people who loved her unstintingly and eventually gave their lives willingly for her. Sam Teovan had gone from a loving but hopelessly drug-enslaved foolish mother, whom he had tried to save with all his too-old-for-four but too-young-to-understand ability, to the dumps. Here he had never again allowed himself to get close to anyone, not even the others of dump-urchin gang he’d run with, and eventually come to lead. Most of those who came here that young just died, but not Sam. He made the right choices, joined the right gang. To the gang he became a near-sacred oracle. When the Muti-men prowled at night, looking for body-parts for their foul trade, his lot were always elsewhere. Gang-fight traps somehow failed on Teovan’s bunch. He was also infallible about poison.
Then, late in the afternoon, just before the police death squads had moved in, he had told them to come with him into the city. They’d balked. The dumps were home, their life, their turf. He walked away from them, away from leadership and the power that had cost him the razor-slash across the cheek to win. He didn’t want to go either. But somehow he knew that to stay was to die.
Sam had gone from being a dump-picker to being a mugger and a second-story man, sleeping and living in the dank alleys of the poor, half-warehouse part of town. The scrawny wire-tough boy grew to be a scrawny wire-tough man working independently in the back
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