Free On Blue's waters by Gene Wolfe Page B

gun, adding that I could not afford to buy one.
    His bushy eyebrows rose. “Not a needier? You had one in the old days. Still got it?”
    I shook my head.
    “I’ll get you one.” He leaned back, sucking his teeth. “It may take longer, I don’t know. If worst comes to worst, I’ll give you mine. I doubt that I’ll ever need it again.”
    “I’d prefer a slug gun. I’ve heard that someone here is making them now, and making cartridges for them.”
    He rose with the help of his stick, saying, “I’ve got a couple in the next room. I’ll show them to you.”
    It was a far larger house than ours, though not, I believe, so solidly built. The room to which he led me held cabinets, several well-made chairs, and a big table covered with papers. I bent to look at them.
    He saw me, and picked up a sheet. “Your stuff. Just about all of it is. The traders have it sometimes, mostly off a lander if you ask me. They’re surprised to find out we’re making our own here in New Viron.” He chuckled. “ We means you, this time. I tell them we can make slug guns and mean Gyrfalcon, and we can make paper and mean you.”
    He handed me the sheet and took out a key. “We can do a couple of other things that mean a lot more. We can make a paper mill, and make a lathe and a milling machine for metal that are good enough to let us copy a slug gun. But I don’t tell them that. We want sales, not competitors.”
    I protested that he made no profit when I sold my paper.
    He smiled. “Sometimes you sell it to me.”
    “Yes, and I’m extremely grateful to you. You’re a good customer.”
    “Then I sell it to them, some of it. I don’t make anything when Gyrfalcon sells his slug guns either, or not directly. But it brings money here, and sooner or later I get my share. So do others. You did your own woodworking, didn’t you, building your mill?”
    I had, and said so.
    “What about the metal stuff? Did you do that, too?”
    “Others made those for us. They had to extend us credit, but we repaid them some time ago.”
    The key turned in the lock, and the door of a cabinet swung open. “Then you could make the paper Gyrfalcon and his workmen used when they drew out the parts for this slug gun. One hand scratches the other, Horn.”
    “I thought you said they copied the parts of a slug gun someone brought from home.”
    “Oh, they did. But it’s better to measure once and draw it up than to keep on measuring. I won’t ask you to tell me which of these was made back in the old place and which here. You could do it pretty easily, and so could any other man who had his wits about him. I want you to take them both in your hands, though. Look them over, and tell me if you think one ought to shoot better than the other, and why.”
    I did, opening the action of each first to assure myself that it was unloaded. “The new one’s a little stiff,” I said. “The old one’s smoother and a fraction lighter. But I don’t see why they shouldn’t shoot equally well.”
    “They do. They’re both mine, and I’ll consider it an honor to give either one to you, if you want it.” Marrow paused, his face grave. “The town ought to pay you. We can’t, or not nearly enough to make you want to go for the money. The question is, is New Viron going to be richer in a few years, or poorer? And I don’t know. But that’s all it is, not the rubbish about morals and so forth that the old Prolocutor goes on about. We need Silk for the same reason we need better corn, and we’re asking you to bring him here to us for nothing.”
    I picked up the newly made slug gun, and told Marrow that I would need a sling of some kind for it.
    “Aren’t you going to argue it with me? Your Caldé Silk would have, if you ask me.”
    “No,” I told him. “If the parents are poor enough, the children starve. That would be enough for Silk, and it’s enough for me.”
    “Well, you’ve the right of it. If they’re poor enough, the parents do, too. That