Fengill harvest

There was a smell like burning tin in the air, and the harvesters hastened their work.  The smell meant that rain was coming and fengill would only grow in marshy ground.  Wet mud already sucked at the beige calf-high boots they wore; when the rain started to hammer down like it had a vendetta against the ground the mud would liquify quickly and become a quicksand-like morass.  The fengill was grown in long rows between birindi trees, parasitic plants whose long branches swept down close the ground and snared small predators with long, trip-wire vines.  Once caught the vines secreted a paralysing, flesh-dissolving toxin known as Birindi-tears and consumed its prey.  The harvesters stepped with practised speed and care amongst the vines and over the branches, hauling the spongy, brain-shaped herb from the ground in leather-gloved hands.
Fengill was toxic unless cooked in one of several ways, some of which had the attraction (or terror, depending on your taste for adventure) of leaving some of the toxic still active.  Fengill soup could be bland but satisfying, especially when served with poached eggs and rye bread, or it could be a hazy memory of shifting colours and sensations and a inability to distinguish between yourself, the food, and the furniture.  Unsurprisingly the less cooked it was the higher the price commanded.
"Eight minutes!" called the foreman, indistinguishable from the other harvesters.  Tremayne tilted his head back so that he could see the sky through the slits in the beige face-mask and squinted a little.  The slits were ragged and misaligned and trying to focus through them gave him a headache.
"Six, I'd say," he said in a low voice.  Two rows away, just close enough to hear, Herbrecht looked up as well, and then nodded.  The face-masks came to a hooded peak above the harvesters' heads and when he nodded it was like a unicorn dipping its head ready to charge.
"Foreman's an optimist," he said.  His voice was deep and throaty.  Tremayne leaned down, shifting his weight slightly to sway his body away from a branch as the wind caught it, and lifted another fengill from the ground.  There was a slight resistance as he picked it up, but it pulled away easily enough leaving a short trail of root behind it.  That root would work its way back into the ground and grow a new plant over the course of four weeks, by which time they'd be harvesting over in Hegaton's March.
"He's new," he said, his voice flat.  They both knew the foreman was new and they'd both seen evidence already that he wasn't ready to be foreman.  Three harvesters were in their beds fighting off the effects of fengill poisoning and the foreman wasn't even admitting to carelessness or breach of duty.  "Damn.  He's coming this way."
Herbrecht didn't turn his head, but his body language suggested that he was aware of this too.
"You two!"  The foreman's voice was reedy and young.  "Hey, you two!"
"Still hasn't learned any names," said Tremayne.  The foreman still wasn't close enough to hear them. They both continued harvesting, ignoring him.
"Hey! Hey! I said YOU TWO!"
Herbrecht raised his head finally and his eyes met the foreman's despite the protective hoods and masks.  The foreman paused.  "We have names," said Herbrecht.  "We even respond to them."
"Like I care.  You two need to stay out here and get purple fengill.  This is just a shower that's coming, you'll be fine if you stay watchful."
Fengill turned purple in the rain as the plant pumped extra toxin into its lobes, ready for the parasitic worms that the rain would bring to the surface of the soil.
"No sir," said Herbrecht.  Tremayne stood full upright then, waiting for the next words.  The foreman ignored him, missing that Tremayne stood at least a metre taller than him.
"You don't get to say no!"  The foreman's finger stabbed out, pointing, jutting, at Herbrecht.  "You do as I saw or I'll report you to the Officer.  You'll enjoy yourself harvesting without the protective clothes, will you?"
"That smell," said Tremayne.  "That's not a shower.  That's a storm."
The foreman didn't look at him, still staring and pointing at Herbrecht.  "Shut up.  What would you know, useless lickspittle.  You're not foreman here, I am.  Remember that."
"If you apologise now, he will forgive you," said Herbrecht.
"What?"
Finally the foreman looked over at Tremayne, and his arm and hand sank slowly down to his side.
"Tremayne is foreman-by-custom," said Herbrecht.  "You might have been told about him when you were recruited."
"No such... such... no such thing," said the foreman.  His voice had gained a quaver that wasn't there before.  "There's no such thing.  He's on stilts.  This is a joke, hazing.  Right?  I'll report the pair of you for this, you just wait!"
Tremayne stepped over the rows in a single stride, his feet landing in the mud with a squelch that sounded like the mud had been trying to get away from him and failed.
"You're a myth," said the foreman, but his voice was getting weaker.  "You're not real."
"Very real," said Tremayne.  "And as foreman-by-custom I have no choice.  You're endangering lives and issuing stupid orders and refusing to learn.  You are hereby demoted."
"You can't do that!"  It was a shocked whisper, almost a prayer.  The foreman repeated it twice more, as though trying to make it true by hearing it.
Tremayne reached down and lifted a birindi vine up.  It curled and twisted in his gloved grip, trying to coil around him and start digesting.
"No...," said the foreman, horror in his voice.  Tremayne said nothing, but dropped the vine around the foreman's neck.  Then he looped it, and again, and again until the whole vine was coiled around the foreman.  It glistened spectrally as the venom oozed out, and the vine tightened itself.
The foreman sank to his knees, his hands coming up with no strength to try and free himself.  The first drops of rain, red as blood, hit the ground.
"Best get in," said Tremayne.  "Storm's starting."

Astrance

Water gurgled in the bilges and Phlebitis, doomed sailor, turned his lip up in a faint snarl.  The bilges stank, of dead, fishy things and things that had managed to rot in salt.  The smell was unpleasant, sour in an odd way that he couldn't put his finger on, and probably the third worst thing he'd ever smelled.
The second worst thing he'd ever smelled was boiled frog, and his ship had hauled a cargo of frogs across the Winter Ocean for over six years, boiling the wretched things once they were out of sight of land.  He'd thought that he'd never get the smell of boiled frog out of the wood of the ship, nor that he'd ever forget it.  His nightmares tended to start with the pervasive, vile-green miasma of a freshly boiled frog and usually ended with him waking up in time to vomit over the side of the bed.  His cabin-boy now refused to sleep in his cabin and slept the with the others sailors in a cabin at the other end of the ship instead.
The worst thing he'd ever smelled was Astrance, a spice grown in the tiered gardens of Neuschatsel, that was dried for shipping.  The smell started with the deep, rich tones of fresh fertiliser and went into incontinent dog territory after a second or two, then settled into the higher notes of a three-day old chicken carcass rotting in the sun.  It made vomiting seem pleasant because the acrid notes of bile counteracted the smell quite well, but as the crew had rapidly discovered, there's only so many times you can throw up if you want to have a usable throat.  They were now settling mostly for handkerchiefs dipped in dilute ammonia solution, but Phlebitis found it easier to come down to the bilges three times a day and breathe deeply.
He loathed Astrance more than he loathed boiled frogs, and he'd thought he'd already plumbed the depths of hate that a soul could sink to.
Astrance carried a significant premium with it because there were so few crews willing to transport it, and sea-transport was the only real way to get it anywhere because land-transport could be abandoned by its drivers when they decided that the smell was too much.  Here at sea the choice was between the smell and suicide, and Phlebitis thought that his crew had finally weeded out all those who preferred death.  The price he was being paid to haul it would be trebled when he landed and handed it off to the factors, but the sea-route seemed infinitely long and infinitely miserable.  The only consolation he had was that if the smell permeated his clothes like the boiled frog had it stood a good chance of finally repelling advances from Madame Sosotris when he next visited the Unreal City.
Astrance was mixed, in small quantities by highly trained chefs, with a herb called Fengill that was grown in low, marshy swamplands by the Maigre river.  Done correctly the smell of the spice was modulated into something earthy but wholesome, and the poisons in the Fengill, which could pole-axe an ox in under thirty seconds, were attentuated into something with a tingle and a hint of forbidden sensation.  The whole thing was said to be highly addictive, though possibly lethal if the eater were to get overenthusiastic with the portions, and drove the high prices that those who produced and carried Astrance could demand.
Phlebitis had no desire to try the food, just in case he could still smell the vile odour of the spice just by looking at the food.
Footsteps splashed behind him, and he turned.  The cabin-boy, his face reddened by ammonia burns, looked at him with milky, cataractal eyes.
"Boat ho!" he said, coughing.  His spit was milky too, and bubbled in the bilges, no doubt another side effect of the ammonia.
"What?" said Phlebitis, not believing the cabin boy for a second.  "We're in open water, boy.  There's no boats out here.  Is it a ship?"
"Boat ho!" said the cabin boy.  A thin line of spittle ran out of the corner of his mouth.
"Right," said Phlebitis.  "A boat.  Ho.  Ho-ho-ho."
"And a bottle up your bum!" said the cabin boy, completing the traditional shanty.  Phlebitis rolled his eyes, and headed up to the deck.

*

To his astonishment there was indeed a small rowing boat trying to pull alongside his ship.  The wind was full in his sails and he thought they were probably making forty knots, so that the rowing boat was staying in sight at all struck him as impressive.  He gave the order to spill some of the wind from the sails and slow the ship down, and they let the row-boat catch up to them.  The man sitting in the stern had a face that looked to have been beaten down to a pulp and then resculpted by a golem-maker, and the... thing... rowing had eight arms each more muscular than either of Phlebitis's legs.  It stayed in the boat, slumped over the oars as though tied to them and the man in the stern stood up and waved for a ladder.
A rope ladder was cast over the side of the ship, and the man came up.  He stood on deck, took a deep breath, and promptly ran down the ladder again.
"Hear ye, hear ye!" he yelled from the relative safety of the row-boat.  "Hear now that the trade in Astrance is forbidden on the Angled Isles and the shores of Mostlybony on pain of being buried in the damn stuff.  And don't try telling me you've not got any, that stench is almost strong enough to kill."
Phlebitis leaned over the side of the boat and looked down.  "What do you mean, trade is illegal?" he said.  "Are you saying that possession of Astrance is now illegal in the Angled Isles?"
"Nope, you can own as much as you like," said the man in the boat, sitting down now.  "But you can't buy or sell it.  Or give it away for that matter.  Foul stuff."
"Then what do traders do with it?" asked Phlebitis, trying to stay calm.  "Dump it overboard?"
"No, that's illegal too!" said the man.  "At least in the coastal waters of Mostlybony and the Angled Isles."
Phlebitis swore colourfully, managing three and a half-minutes before he needed to draw breath.  The man in the boat nodded, impressed, and then the thing at the oars sat up and started rowing again.
"Forty-five seconds," said Phlebitis to the crew.  "Then run us over him and cut that damn boat in half.  Making bloody Astrance illegal while we're still carrying the stuff!"

Acting on impulse

They say that a man is happy if his business is his pleasure.  I'm actually here today to tell you that although you may have achieved this, your business is a cruel and disturbing one, and you should probably stop doing it.
Well yes, and stop doing that actually.  It'll send you blind.
No, seriously, stop doing that please, or I'll get the scissors out and cut them off.
There, that wasn't so hard was it?  Well yes, I suppose arguably it was, but.... Yes, I am allowed to sigh at you like that.  I need ways to convey these things, and you don't seem to pay any attention to normal cues.  No, I don't know why you don't pay attention.  No, nor do I care.  Well go and see a psychiatrist then.  They're paid to listen to you neurot at them.  Actually it is a word, because I'm allowed to neologise.  I've done my time in the word-mines thank-you, and if I want to introduce neurot then I may.  And I think you'll find it's the answer to 17 across in this Saturday's Listener.
Well maybe you should.
No, I've been hired by your HR team.  Ok, your ex-HR team, and I'm sure they'll be delighted to discover that on Monday.  Ah, really?  That's probably one of the reasons that they've hired me then.  Because hiring sky-writers to let them know they're fired is expensive, unnecessary and humiliating.  No, hiring chuggers to go door-to-door in their neighbourhoods and spread the word of the sacking seems just as expensive and unnecessary.  No, I think posting it up in the local post-office, supermarket and restaurants is also unnecessary and humiliating.  Well I suppose there's an element of caring in that suggestion – I said an element, not to go ahead and do it!  Oh good grief, seriously?  You need to learn to control your impulses: people do not want their elderly mothers calling them and telling them that you've fired them and threatened to burn down their nursing homes.  Well I definitely didn't know you were joking.  No, I don't think she did either.  No.  No.  Oh good grief.  Why do even know the phone number of an arsonist?  Give me that.  Give. ME. THAT.  Damn it, you've got a grip like a sacculina barnacle.
Right, look.  The problem here is that you're impulse-driven and so much so that you can't even stop and recognise it.  Let me tell you a short parable, the tale of the ghost of my dead wife.
"Once upon a time there was a man who lived happily with his wife in a small house in a cul-de-sac not far from the magnificent Cathedral of the Derived Mind.  One day he was looking for the rat poison as there were rats seemingly getting into the cupboard where the rice sack was kept.  Looking at the bottle with its vivid green label and its little black skull and crossbones he was seized by an uncommon impulse and added a generous shot to the cup of tea he'd made for his wife.  Shortly thereafter, while he was poisoning the rice that the rats were eating, his wife drank her tea, and then retired to bed in pain.  That evening she died, and the man was moderately upset.
Three days later he brought home another woman he'd met while standing in line at the supermarket checkout.  She was tall and calm and wore fishnet stockings, a skirt that didn't quite cover her thighs and a bustier that was two sizes too small.  The man showed her into his bedroom and then hurried to the bathroom to brush his teeth and clean anything that was sweaty.  Such as his palms. When he turned the lightswitch on, the ghost of his dead wife was sat on the edge of the bath.
"Not now, woman," he said through clenched teeth, hoping that the woman in the bedroom wouldn't hear him.  "Come back tomorrow and moan at me then."
"You know she's a whore?" said his dead wife.  She opened her mouth in laughter and the man saw the flames of hell flickering at the back of her throat.
"She named her price in the supermarket," he said. "It was less than the groceries I was intending to buy."
"That does indeed sound like a bargain," said the woman.  "But when you buy the apples that are cheap, don't they often contain worms?"
"Well isn't that a lovely image?" said the man, brushing his teeth with vigour.  "I'm sure that will put me off if I let myself think about it.  Which I won't do, thank-you."
"Bury me properly and I'll let you get on sleeping with diseased, gold-digging bitches," said the ghost calmly. "Otherwise I'm going to keep kicking up a stink.  Literally, probably."
"I buried you!"
"You dragged me out to the back-garden and put the paddling pool on top of me," said the ghost of his dead wife.  "Foxes were chewing my skull last night, and I think one of my arms has been dragged off by a badger."
"Is that what that noise was?"
"You might have looked out of the window," said the ghost.  "But no, you and your hands were busy with each other.  You're pathetic, you know."
"And you're dead," said the man.  "Now let me get on with entertainment that doesn't require me to be solo."
"Bury me properly."
"Where?"
"In the grounds of the cathedral, of course."
And so it was some hours later the man prevailed on the prostitute to take two suitcases away from the house with her and deposit them in the gardens of the cathedral, where the custodians found them and their contents and promptly had the police arrest her and accuse her of murder.  She led them back to the small house, but the man in there was also dead, having eaten poisoned rice."
What?  Oh yes, there's a moral to this tale.  It's that prostitutes should be very careful to explain up-front what they're being paid for and not take on any additional tasks no matter how generous the offer may sound.
No, you don't look much like a prostitute, but I don't really know what a prostitute does look like.  Well there are other morals you could take away from the tale.  Like how sex is bad for you or how you should avoid having foxes chew your skull or something.
Yes, I imagine that your ex-HR team might let foxes loose in the office after they all get called by their elderly mothers.  Or at least after the nursing homes start burning down.
Yes, I do think calling the arsonist back might be a good idea.  No, I'm not telling you where I live.  No.  No.  Stop asking, or I'll tell you another parable.
Thank-you.

Harry and Harry

The house stood at the end of the street, set a little apart from the others.  Harry's dad had pointed it out one evening when the wind was up and making the trees sway like corn-stalks.  "They always builded them with one slightly apart at the end of the row," he said, his voice thick with the slime clogging his throat and lungs.  He coughed, spat something out of sight, and pointed in the other direction. "The first one, the one at that end was knocked down when they widened the road," he said.  "Didn't hafta, but we all knew it was the right thing to do."  He started coughing more then, and when Harry tried to bring the conversation up a few days later his dad wouldn't say anything about it.
Harry paused, the shopping bags feeling like they were dragging his arms from their sockets, and looked at the house.  In the last fifteen years it didn't look like it had changed at all; the gables were still stark black beams framing a whitewashed wall, and the eaves overhung the walls providing a narrow shelter from the New England rain if you stood in close enough.  The mullioned windows shone faintly in the looming twilight and there was a hint of beige curtain on the inside if you squinted carefully.  The curious thing was, as he stood there looking, was that he couldn't remember ever seeing anyway taking care of the house.  Surely in fifteen years a roof slate must have slipped, or a gutter cracked?
Harry sighed and turned away, walking the few remaining feet to his own front door, and kicking it rather than setting the shopping down and being faced with having to pick it back up again when the door was opened.  His muddy shoe scuffed a brown mark on the door, and he stared at it guiltily, wondering if this is why he needed to do repairs every Spring and the house at the end of the street still looked pristine.
The door opened and his sister, Harry, gave him a baleful stare.  "Don't kick the door," she said.  "It demeans me."
Harry shrugged, and then sucked air through his teeth; that had hurt.  "Sorry, sis," he said and lugged the shopping to the kitchen table.  He could hear the silence behind him while she waited until he'd put the shopping down before she closed the front door.
"Professor Rogers came over again today," she said.  He looked round, she was leaning in the doorway to the kitchen, her heavy frame blocking it effectively.  Her pudgy face looked a little pale, and she was worrying at her nails and not looking up.  "He asked me again if I'd consider being his housekeeper."
Harry started unpacking the bags at the table.  His sister, Harriet, had some kind of agoraphobia that meant she hardly ever left the house.  He secretly thought that she'd benefit from walking down to the end of the street and back again every day, and if she took a job it would make living here a little easier. It might be a small town, but daily expenses seemed to increase more rapidly than Harry's salary and he was starting to wonder how safe his job was anyway.
"What did you say?" he asked.  They'd already had two shouting matches over him suggesting that she take the job offer.
"I said no, of course!"  He voice raised and he knew that if he looked up she'd be staring at him, her deep-set eyes red and aflame with anger.  "I can't leave the house!"
"You might have to," said Harry.  "I'm not sure how much longer I'll have a job for."
"What?"  It was a reflexive question, not meant.  A second passed, and then, "What?"
"You heard me," said Harry.  He almost regretted saying it, it was provocative and unnecessary.  "The museum's not doing so well and it's getting harder to get the people in.  And summer's ending, we get fewer visitors in winter.  There's talk of cuts."
"But they can't get rid of you.  We'd starve to death."
Harry looked up at this; his sister was staring at him with a terrifying intensity.  "We'd have to sell the house and leave," he said slowly.  "Split the money, go our own ways."
"NO!"  He ducked, having learned from the last fight, and a moneybox that usually sat on the windowsill in the hall by the front-door sailed over his head and thumped against the wall.  He knew without looking that it would have broken the plaster.  "No, you lie!  You lie!  You're a filthy liar!"  She staggered backwards, looking wounded, and then grabbed the door handle and opened and slammed the front-door.  "LIAR!"
She stamped upstairs, and slammed more doors up there, screaming 'liar' to punctuate each slam.
"Kind of," whispered Harry under his breath.  He stood up and started unpacking the shopping again. The house had been left entirely to him in their parents' will so if it had to be sold his sister would get nothing unless he was feeling generous.  And lately he wasn't feeling generous at all.

Cthulhiana

The high street was quiet; there was a homeless woman, dressed in a damp dressing-gown, sitting cross-legged in front of a cardboard box outside the Post Office, and there were two dogs trotting happily along, each holding the other's lead in its mouth.  A single car had driven past them in the last five minutes, and the traffic lights appeared to have defaulted to a holding pattern of green, perhaps hoping that being obliging they might summon more traffic.  Miss Flava looked at Detective Inspector Playfair, who was looking in the window of a travel agency.
"I thought all of these had closed down," she said, nodding at the window where sun-faded posters showed white-sanded beaches and palm trees.  There were a number of hand-written index cards advertising trips to Jordan, Syria and Israel for fifteen nights and upwards.
"The internet's done for a lot of them," said Playfair.  "But don't underestimate how lazy people are.  There are still those who'd rather watch someone else use the internet for them than learn how to do it themselves."
Miss Flava hmmed to herself, thinking of several of the older officers back at the police station whose only activities seemed to be making tea and watching other people do things for them.
"Right," said Playfair, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet.  "Let's get this over with then."
They looked both ways, even though the road was so empty that it deserved tumbleweed, and crossed over.  On the other side of the road, sandwiched between a Subway and Starbucks, was a small shop with a mullioned bay window and a black-painted door with a little, corroded, brass bell at one corner.  The sign painted above the window read "Tea and Tentacles".
"What does this place do again?"  Playfair's voice was gruff and he appeared to be fascinated by the scuff marks on the bootscraper outside the door.
"Cthulhiana," said Miss Flava after a moment; she had to consult her notepad to check what the word was.  "Louise said to tell you that it's like Victoriana, only with more tentacles."
"Japanese?"
"No!" Miss Flava couldn't decide if she was more shocked that her boss, who was definitely in his fifties, knew about that kind of cultural reference or that she found the idea of it somehow creepy.  It didn't fit with her self-image of independent, well-read and liberal.
"Ah, evil squid monsters that will arise when the stars are right then," said Playfair.  Miss Flava shook her head, knowing that he couldn't see her, and wondered if he'd sneaked a look at her pad back in the car.  What he'd just said was word for word what Louise had told her over the phone.  "Well, let's get inside and see these knick-knacks, gew-gaws and whatjamacallits for ourselves then."
"Goo-gor?" asked Miss Flava, feeling rather out of her depth.
"You probably pronounce it jew-jaw," said Playfair without a trace of humour but still managing to condescend like a deity.
"I don't pronounce it at all," she said primly, the effect rather ruined by the bell ringing as Playfair pushed the door open and drowning out her last words.
The interior of the shop was patchily lit, with small LED spotlights in the ceiling picking out display cases and shelves, leaving shadows to pool along the walls and occasionally in the middle of a display for no apparent reason.  There were bookcases along the back wall, some of which were located unobtrusively behind a small counter. On the counter was a cash-box and a large calculator, and behind it was a wooden stool on a cast-iron pedastel that looked as though it belonged in a Charles Dickens novel.  There were a grand total of five display cases set in the middle of the room, each containing two glass shelves and holding an oddity of items.  One case seemed to be mostly jewelry, another was knives, and a third seemed to hold maps, or possibly odd drawings.  Against another wall was a collection of scarves with eye-watering patterns blotched on to them by what looked like unskilled batik.  In the corner nearest the door was a stuffed cat with demonic red eyes and possibly a touch of mange.
"Can I help you gentlemen?"
Miss Flava stiffened with outrage as the owner of the voice, an elderly woman shuffling along with the help of a stick, came into view from out of one of the patches of shadow.
"Police," she said, holding out her warrant card.
"Bless you dear, I can't see a thing," said the woman.  "Not since the Mi-Go took my eyes away with them.  They're going to bring me back some new ones you know.  Improved ones, that can see into many more places."
"OK," said Miss Flava, her voice neutral.  She risked a glance at Playfair, quite expecting him to be inflating his lungs ready to lecture the woman on the improbability of her eyes being worked on independently of the rest of her body, but he seemed more interested in the contents of one of the display cabinets.
"Playfair?" she said, wondering if he'd been listening.
"This statuette," he said, pointing.
"Bless you dear, I can't see a thing," said the woman as though it were an automatic response.
"It's about a foot tall," said Playfair, leaning back as though the statuette were hard to see too close up.  "Has about sixteen arms, head is a bit like an exploded tulip, and appears to be standing on a pile of children's corpses."
"Oh that one," said the woman.  "£170 dear, and I won't take any less."
"Doesn't it look familiar to you?"  He was looking at Miss Flava, who's eyebrows elevated so rapidly they pulled her crow's feet taut behind them.
"I'm pretty certain I'd remember anyone with thirteen arms," she said.
"Sixteen, dear," said the old woman.
"Not the arms," said Playfair.  "The face.  Look at that and tell me that isn't Tommy Richards."
Miss Flava leaned forward, her skepticism written all over her face.  A moment later it had vanished.
"That's better than the police photo-fit managed," she said.  "If it weren't for the arms I'd swear it was him."
"Well, and the head's a bit on the squished side," said Playfair.  "But still.  Who's the sculptor?"  His voice was now directed at the old woman.
"Cassandra Styles," said the woman.  "I've got all the paperwork here somewhere, though if I'm going to get that out you're going to buy it."
"Not necessary," said Playfair with a ghost of a smile.  "It's evidence in a presumptive murder investigation.  Miss Flava, take it into protective custody please."
"What?" said Miss Flava and the old woman simultaneously.
"Now, please," said Playfair.  "I want to talk to Cassandra and find out what else she's been sculpting."

Sleeping Zombie

There was an odd knock at the door; it sounded almost like something heavy had fallen against the door making a dull thud.  But then it came again, rather later than might be expected for a knock, and then again, after a still-too-long interval.  Sighing softly to herself, Bess set down the needlework she was doing – patching a pair of trousers at the crotch – and went to the door.  She opened it, wondering if the weird old apple-seller was back with her glistening, too-good-to-be-true fruit, and looked outside.
"Braaaaaaaaainssss," moaned the shambling, grey, fly-blown figure that swayed outside the door.  It held one handless arm aloft and then brought it down.  Bess stepped backwards and the stump missed her, but her eyes followed it down and found the missing hand lying on the grass.  There were still flies buzzing around it, and she could see through holes in the grey, ragged skin that maggots were churning in the rotting flesh beneath.  The smell finally struck her, a charnel-house smell worse than the one from the place where the huntmen butchered their kills, and bile rose in her throat.  She took another step backwards, her hand rising to her mouth and nose and her eyes watering so that the zombie at the door was just a blur.  Her knees trembled and gave way, so she never saw the zombie step inside and fall over her, its teeth grinding together as it tried to chew her young, vital flesh.

*

"Aw, coaldamp," said Morgó.  He was slightly ahead of the rest of the dwarves as his pants, his second-best pair, were rather too tight around his thighs and he was hoping that Bess would have finished the repairs on his best pair.  "Guys!  Zombie!"  He unstrapped his mining pick from his shoulders, giving the other dwarves time to catch up.

"What's it doing?" asked Kuka, peering at the zombie.  The doorway of the house was shadowed and it was hard to make out exactly what was going on there.  "Is it eating something?"

"Bess!" said Morgó.  "Gaspockets, what was she thinking?  Quick, let's go get it and see if she's alright."

"What if she's a zombie already?" Tudor's voice was calm, not betraying the anxiety he felt.  They'd all appreciated having someone who didn't dare leave and so would do all the housework around.

"Let's try and make sure she isn't before we worry about that!" said Morgó.  "Charge!"

The zombie was slow-moving and the mining picks were kept in excellent condition so it took the dwarves very little time indeed to drag it out of the house and then dismember it into something more closely resembling death.  As they stood back, getting their breath back and cleaning their picks off, the birds of the forest started swooping down to feast on the wriggling maggots now strewn all about their front-lawn.

"Someone's going to have to bury the bits that are left," said Tudor, and they all looked towards the house, hoping to see Bess looking back.

"She looks a bit dead," said Kuka after a minute.  "Do you think she was trying to have sex with it?"

Tudor swatted him about the head.  "Baromarcú," he said.  "Do you think everyone tries to have sex with everything?"  Kuka hung his head in shame.

"Well," said Morgó, trying to sound cheerful.  "Let's go and find out if she's too dead to bury what's left of the zombie then."

The dwarves shuffled inside, picking Bess up on the way, and sitting her down in the chair where she'd been sewing.  Morgó picked the pants up and exclaimed with pleasure: they were just about finished.

"She's still warm," said Tudor, looking at her.  "She's drooling a bit too, so if she's dead it's pretty recent."

Kuka poked her arm and Bess twitched a little.  He poked it again, and a low moan escaped her throat.

"Not dead," said Tudor thoughtfully.  "But she's got bite marks–" he swatted Kuka before he could make any lewd suggestions, "–so I think she's probably on the turn."

"Aw, coaldamp," said Morgó.  "No more housework then."

"We'll have to go back to taking turns," said Tudor, frowning.  "But what are we going to do about Bess?"

"Bury her," said Vidor, looking at the floor.  "We've got to bury the other guy now anyway."

"...we could burn the other one," said Kuka quietly.

The seven dwarves looked at each other, not quite meeting each other's eyes.  Finally Tudor said, "No, we're not burning Bess.  And burying her seems like a lot of work... we could always put her up in the old tower."

"What, the light-house?"

"Yes," said Tudor.  "Ever since the lake dried up – and that was no-one's fault! – it's been a bit useless.  There's a nice room at the top, big windows and all, and there's only one door.  Nail a couple of boards across it and she won't be able to get out."

There was some muttering, but the fact that Bess could walk there herself was the deciding factor in the argument and so she was escorted to the old light-house, walked to the top of the stairs, and then the locked in the room at the top.  At the bottom the dwarves looked at the door and decided it was probably zombie-proof as it was, so they locked that too, tucked the key under the doormat, and went home to see if the birds and rats had eaten all the zombie bits so that they wouldn't have to burn them.

And so it was that Bess lay down on the old light-house keeper's bed and fell asleep because there was nothing there to feed her undead hunger.

Email ritual

The archaeologist sucked on his e-cigarette.  Orange liquid swirled in the transparent chamber, and I could feel Clytie pulling on my arm as she stood on tiptoes, trying to get a better look at it.  When he exhaled the smoke was orange as well, and there were flashing motes in it.
"This is what we think was a shared building of some kind," he said, gesturing behind him.  Out of the mounds of pyroclastic flow were rectangular blocks piled neatly on top of one another.  In the middle of them was a rectangular gap, which was dark and uninviting.  "We've reason to believe that it was 'office' of some kind, but we haven't yet worked out what rituals were carried out here."
"What makes you so certain that there were rituals performed here?" asked a middle-aged woman in the middle of the tour group.  Her hair was white and architecturally styled, and her couture was showing pastoral scenes; I thought I recognised Lake Windermere before the inundation as I watched it change.
"It's called an 'office'," said the archaeologist with patience.  "'Offices' were ritual positions held by high-ranking C20-baseline humans, and we know that they had many rituals that they performed.  Such as 'going to work'."
"I tried 'going to work' once," whispered Clytie, and then she giggled.  I patted her arm in as friendly a manner as I could.  Clytie is lovely most of the time, but whenever she's on a sub-cycle she's as irritating as a mantis-pet.  "It was really weird; I spent eight hours sitting at a desk and periodically a man would come past and ask me if I thought I was going to get paid for it."
"Some officiants were paid," said the archaeologist, overhearing Clytie.  "But we haven't been able to work out yet what that entailed."
There was a generally muttering from the group, and then the archaeologist took another drag from his e-cigarette and led the way through the dark rectangle.  As he stepped through heat-sensitive lamps turned out and illuminated a stone-floor room, still rectangular.  There was a horseshoe shaped object in the middle of the floor with an opening to the rear that seemed only to force people entering to walk around it to a staircase at the back.
"We've clearly entered from the rear, "said the archaeologist, gesturing at the horseshoe shape.  "Officiants coming in from the correct side would presumably enter this shape where they would perform their first ritual of the day."
"What would that be?" asked a merboy.  He was stood near the front, and I'd noticed him earlier; he was hovering near an elderly couple and occasionally glancing up at them as though they were his grandparents, but they'd barely noticed him.  I suspected he was a plant for the archaeologist.
"I'm glad you asked," said the archaeologist confirming my suspicions.  "It was the email ritual."
Clytie giggled again and stroked my arm as though it were a mantis-pet.  I tried not to shiver.
"Email was a time-consuming activity that dominated baseline human attention for nearly a hundred years," said the archaeologist.  "It required constant attention and when left alone for any period of time would grow out of control and require drastic action to tame again.  People talked of mass-delenda, some kind of culling process.  There were officiants who wrote learned treatises on how to keep email at a near-zero state, which we think means that it was essentially quiescent and didn't attempt to control baseline humans.  The email ritual was a cleansing step, whereby the officiant would attempt to destroy as much email as had grown overnight so that the day could be used for something productive.  It was therefore an essential part of the 'office' that the officiant delete email as a first step in the day.  Note that the email is contained within this horseshoe structure and paths around it are allowed, so clearly it could grow large and unboundedly.  We should be very grateful that the scourge of email was eventually overcome!"
"Wow!" said the merboy, but no-one was listening now.  They were all eyeing the horseshoe shape with apprehension.
"Is there still... email... in there?" asked the middle-aged woman.  She took a step back.
"No, we've not been able to find any email at all," said the archaeologist.  "It appears to have been completely eradicated.  Now, moving on and up these stairs...."