Read Online Tomorrow, the Killing by Daniel Polansky - Free Book Online

kind.’
    We sat quietly while the familial dispute worsened.
    ‘My brother’s a hero,’ she said suddenly, as if expecting me to contradict her.
    ‘I’ve heard that.’
    ‘My father too.’
    ‘That’s the word.’
    There was the sound of something breaking. One of the participants had thrown something against a wall. I assumed it was Edwin. He’d something of a reputation as a firebrand, despite his age.
    ‘They fight a lot,’ she said. ‘I’m not supposed to know that.’
    ‘I don’t think either of us are.’
    ‘If they’re both heroes,’ she asked, ‘then why do they fight so much?’
    ‘Heroes can’t disagree with each other?’
    ‘Of course not,’ she snapped. ‘Being a hero means you always know what the right thing to do is.’
    ‘What if there’s more than one?’
    ‘There’s only ever one right thing to do,’ she said, the final moral authority on the subject.
    ‘Often not even that.’
    What little enthusiasm I’d managed to inspire in the girl dissipated quickly. She all but leapt up from her seat. ‘I don’t think I like you,’ she said.
    ‘A popular sentiment.’
    She lifted her chin till it pointed at the ceiling, turned imperiously and marched back the way she’d come.
    Free of the possible censure of a child, I smoked a cigarette and said a silent prayer for those poor fools who’d chosen to personally ensure the continuation of the species. It must be exhausting, having to pretend you had the answers. My position within Black House required a rather casual relationship with the truth, but even I wasn’t forced to uphold such an absurd fiction every moment of the day.
    I never ended up seeing Roland. A few minutes after Rhaine went to her bed I decided to head to my own. It had been a long trek to Kor’s Heights, with little enough to show for it.
    When the general had asked me if I’d met his daughter, I’d lied and said I hadn’t. At the time I hadn’t seen any point in mentioning our initial conversation, brief and meaningless as it was. Having had a follow up, I wasn’t so sure. There seemed to be a great deal of the child I’d met in the woman whose life I was trying to save.
8
    I awoke the next morning stewed in my own sweat, and well past breakfast.
    I didn’t mind. It was too hot to eat, too hot to do anything but lie in bed and be too hot. Sadly I didn’t have that luxury, so I stretched myself into yesterday’s shirt and dropped down the stairs.
    Wren was hung over a table, naked from the waist up.
    ‘I’ve got a message I need run.’
    ‘Can it wait till the afternoon?’ he asked. ‘It’s hot as hell out.’
    ‘It’ll only get hotter,’ I said, and he pulled himself up off the wood sulkily. ‘I need you to find Yancey. Ask him what he’s got going on this evening. Tell him I’d like to pay him a visit.’
    He smiled. He liked the Rhymer. Everybody liked the Rhymer. ‘Where are you going?’
    ‘I gotta make my tithe.’
    He nodded sympathetically and went back to not moving. I watched him enviously, then slipped out the back.
    The job of the city guard, contrary to popular belief, is not to stop crime. They do stop crime, albeit rarely and mostly by accident, but doing so is not their primary function. The guard’s job, like the job of every other organism, singular or collective, is to maintain its existence – to do the bare minimum required to continue doing the bare minimum.
    I’m in the same general racket, which is why once a week I nip over and toss the hoax a cut of my enterprises. Not a big one, but not a small one either. Enough for them to leave me alone and let me know if anyone is planning to do otherwise. Everybody in my line does, everybody who isn’t a fool, everybody who wants to keep at it for more than a fortnight. Because while as a general rule the guard don’t seriously concern themselves with catching criminals, they’re apt to rediscover their zeal if they hear of anyone keeping too much of their own