The Philosophical Strangler(22)
“One. If the Baron’s like most Groutch noblemen I’ve known, he values his reputation for ruthlessness a lot more than his reputation for lovemaking. Rich as he is, he can always buy another bedmate, and what does he care what she really thinks? But if he loses his reputation for being a snake—well, you know what these highborn scum are like. We both do, it’s what puts the food on our table. Word gets out he’s been made a patsy and he’s not long for the world. Not in New Sfinctr!”
“He’s right,” said Angela, in a voice like a mouse. Jenny nodded her head about a hundred times. Her long blonde hair rippled like a curtain in the breeze.
Greyboar went on. “Two. It’s all beside the point anyway. Professional ethics is professional ethics. Period. It’s the way it’s got to be. You don’t understand that, Ignace. You never have and you never will. Nothing personal, it’s just—sure, you arrange the job and you always go along, and I wouldn’t even look at another agent—but.” He took a breath. “But I’m still the one that does the squeeze.” He looked down at his hands. “More times than I can remember, now.”
He was silent for a moment, then continued.
“It’s a stinking, rotten trade, Ignace. My sister was right about that, I always knew she was.” I started to say something but he held up his hand.
“Don’t say it! ‘Pay’s good. Work’s steady. What else do you ever get in this world?’ I’ve heard you say it once, I’ve heard you say it a million times. Don’t disagree, either. Fine for Gwendolyn, she’s got her fairy-tale dreams of revolution and justice and rights to keep her going. But me—” He stopped and took a deep breath, looked at his hands again. “Me, I’ve got my professional ethics.”
As the wise man says, “It’s all nuts, anyway.” Sure and I crossed the line, then. I motioned to the girls. They slipped off the bed and came over to me. I waved them behind me. Cleared my throat.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to take a slight exception here, big guy.” I even managed a feeble grin. “Just can’t do it. Just can’t.”
I could feel the girls huddled behind me, up close. Angela was about my height, and was clutching my right arm, pressed into me. Even in the peril of the moment, the feel of her nude form against my back was incredibly distracting. For that matter, having Jenny’s blonde hair floating over my left shoulder and her arm wrapped around my belly was just as unsettling. She was shivering with fear even more than Angela, and while her figure was on the lean side there wasn’t any doubt at all that it was purely female.
I almost burst into hysterical laughter. At least I’d undergo the Final Squeeze with a light head! It seemed like all the blood in my body had rushed somewhere else. Dizzy, I was.
Greyboar stared at me. I think that was the only time, in all the years we’d known each other—since we were kids scraping in the gutter together—that I’d ever really impressed the damn monster.
He smiled a crooked smile. No comfort to me at all, that smile. Reminded me of a crocodile.
“Ignace! After all these years, don’t tell me you’ve discovered philosophy?”
Well, you can imagine! That did it! I hit the roof! I was hopping around in a fury! I mean, the insufferable nerve of the guy!
“You and your damned philosophy!” I roared. Well, sort of what you might call a high octave roar. Your operatic baritone types don’t actually lose a lot of sleep worrying about my competition for their jobs.
“The sleep I’ve lost because of your philosophy madness! The money! The peace of mind! Dragged me all over Grotum! Got me mixed up with high politics! Heresy! And now this!”
I shoved my face into his great granite block of a so-called visage.
“All right, big guy! Put up or shut up! You’re the great philosopher! You’re the student of heavy thoughts! I’m just the mental pip-squeak here, right? You’re the one learned from the guru! You’re the one spent the Old Geister knows how many hours on the way back here from Prygg discussing the whichness of what with the great wizard Zulkeh! Wish he was here! He’s the world’s biggest windbag, Zulkeh is, but he’d figure a way out of this in his sleep! That’s why he’s a great wizard and you’re a great lump of gristle with delusions of grandeur! You’re in a—what would you call it, you genius, you—you philosopher? A dilemma, that’s it! The great philosopher Greyboar, what just happens also to throttle necks on the side—just to pay the rent and keep his pea-brain agent in ale, you understand?—why, he’s faced with an ethical dilemma, he is!”