Running of the Bulls
Harry Turtledove
illustrated by Greg Ruth
You are all a lost generation, she said back then. And anyone who looked at them as they spun their dizzy way through life would have had a hard time telling her she was wrong.
But one generation passes away and another generation comes along. This generation sticks its snout against the grindstone of work and never takes it away. That one plays instead. Or it marches off to war. Or it wanders aimlessly. There is one way to shape a lost generation, though not all who wander are lost.
Or a generation can march off to war and then wander aimlessly. After fighting a war and saving a world that probably does not need saving, a generation may find it lacks the strength and will for anything more. Her lost generation hatched that way.
So did mine. Even before the fighting ended, the docs were busy putting me back together again. They promised I would be almost as good as new when they got done with me. They were almost as good as their word, too.
When you talk about things like that, the little word almost covers a lot of ground. Most of the time, you do not even notice that word, especially when they aim it at someone else. But when they point it at you . . . Oh, yes, you cannot help but notice it then.
Good old Baek Jarns—which is who I am—did not sail home to Dubyook once both sides signed the treaty, then. I could not face it. Sympathy from my family would have been bad enough. Sympathy from my girl would have been a thousand times worse. And all the sympathy from everybody in the world would do nothing to set things right, to set them back to how they were before the war. When the docs almost at you, you take what you can get. You do not take whatever you want. That choice is no longer on the table.
On this side of the ocean, my money stretches a lot further than it would back home. They took a beating over here. Even the winners over here took a beating. No one has any money to speak of. Anybody with even a little can pass for rich as long as he takes a few pains.
I know how to do that. And I know how to bring in some more even if my draughts from Dubyook do not come. People over there read the stories Baek Jarns writes about what things here in Ecnarf are like these days. And people in Ecnarf read the stories Baek Jarns writes about what things in Dubyook were like before the war.
I bet that sounds crazy to you. To tell you the truth, it sounds crazy to me. But that is how things work right now. If you take your pains, if you work your angles, you can do fine for yourself.
One way to work your angles is to be sure you know which places have the name for good grub and which places you can really eat at without spending every slug you have and without making your tongue want to curl up and die. They are two different lists, believe me. A few joints go on both of them, but only a few.
I am sitting in one of these eateries, going through a plate of eggs scrambled with sliced mushrooms. That is what they would call it on the side of the ocean where I grew up, anyhow. Here in gay Sirap, in most joints they call it an omelette. The fancy name lets them charge three times as much for the same thing, or they think it does.
On the menu behind the zinc-topped bar in my place, they bill it as an egg-and-mushroom scramble. In Ecnarfish, of course, not the king’s Dunlinese or even the kind we talk in Dubyook, but they do. They do not give it a highfalutin name or a highfalutin price. They do not draw a highfalutin crowd, either. The place is full of touts and shopgirls and clerks and a couple of sweepers. A fellow who cannot be anything but an off-duty snoop reads the evening paper while he eats eggs and mushrooms just like mine.
A skinny working girl pauses by my table. She puts her hands on her hips, in front of her nice, round tail. She has painted her claws red. “You don’t take me out anymore,” she complains in a shrill voice.
“It would help if I’d ever set eyes on you before,” I tell her. “What’s your name?”
“Jajett,” she says. “What’s yours?”
“Baek.”
Her eyes narrow. “That’s a foreign name.”
“Well, I’m a foreigner. Will you stop caring if I buy you dinner?”
Jajett sits down across from me, so I guess she will. The waiter comes over. “What’ll it be?” he asks.
“Give the lady what I’m having,” I say. “Oh—and fetch a couple of brandies.”
“Fetch me a couple of brandies, too,” Jajett exclaims.
The waiter looks a question at me. “Take care of it,” I say. By the way he sketches a salute, he put in his time during the war. Not many Ecnarfish men his age—my age—missed out on doing a hitch. A lot of them did not live to see the end of it. Remembering dead friends and wondering why you are not dead yourself is not the smallest part of what goes into making a lost generation lost.
When her egg-and-mushroom scramble comes, Jajett digs in as if she has not eaten for days. For all I know, she has not, though she is pretty enough to make you think she would have scared up a little business somewhere.
She finishes fast. The dishwashers will not need to do much with her plate before they push it out again. She sends me a bright, hard smile. “Now what?” she asks.
If things were different, I might take her back to my flat, and you can draw your own pictures of what would go on after that. But things are the way they are. I am almost as good as the docs said I would be before the ether-soaked rag came down over my snout and they starting carving on me. Since things are the way they are, almost as good is not quite good enough.
Besides, those brandies buzz like wasps inside my head. I give back a smile just like hers, only I have better teeth. “How about we go for a ride, doll?” I tell her.
Jajett smiles some more. “How about we do?” she says. She does not even ask where. I pay the bill. I leave a tip over and above the service charge they tack on hoping you will not notice. We walk out into the night together as if we have known each other for years. Flagging a cab is the easiest thing in the world.
Some places, you go to eat. If you want to do some drinking, too, you can. Other places, you go to drink. If you want to do some eating, too, well, again, you can. The food will not be so good as at a proper eatery. But if you have already been drinking for a while, you do not much care.
We go from the first kind of place to the second kind. As we are about to walk in, they throw a drunk out. He already has blood dripping from the corner of his mouth, so he is a disorderly drunk. When he staggers to his feet—they really give him the bum’s rush—he looks ready to tangle with anybody he can get his hands on.
I am the closest anybody handy. I have been known to fight a drunk or three in my time. It settles your supper and aids the digestion. But I do not get to tangle with this one. Jajett yells something at him so filthy that I understand only a quarter of it, and I speak Ecnarfish pretty damn well, let me tell you. The bit I do get is the nice part, too.
If a man said anything like that to me, I would kill him. I would have to, or break every mirror I own. No judge, no court, could blame me. Chances are they would hang a gong around my neck on a red ribbon to show I committed a public service.
You cannot go around killing women, no matter what they say. It gets you talked about. The disorderly drunk shrivels up and lurches away, all his pride and temper blown to hell and gone. We stroll into The Gilded Peasant. Or maybe it is Pheasant—I never can remember.
Already inside are half a dozen friends and acquaintances of mine. I am anything but surprised. I always expect to run into people I know there. The place caters to expatriates, and to their money.