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The situation caused Dirant to recall that writer who said something about the commercial inclination's being a tyrant which throws down the military but oppresses the domestic. Silapobant had been as business-minded as anyone when in Fennizen's offices, but stationed abroad, he remembered families do not arrive by the same route as does income.
“When you think on it, our father started a family and left for the city,” he told Dirant.
“Until now I have not had cause to think on it, but doing so, that is correct.”
“Good. Are you still thinking? We have embarked on the opposite course because of circumstances and nothing else. Let us consider our position a little better.”
“Yes, let us.”
“This is for your good too, Dirtwo.”
Mrs. Silapobant giggled every time either of them used their familial nicknames. “Mr. Dirant, dear, may I say Dirtwo from now on?”
Silapobant, unsure of his brother's sentiments in the matter, looked to him, who said, “Rather than that, it is mandatory. We did not mention it before because if you chose to defy this law, civic duty would require us to fetch the mayor, and I have never met him.”
“Well, if you meet him in the future, please don't tell him!”
With that, Siltwo resumed, content with the interaction's outcome. “Is it better do you think for children to grow up in Fennizen with its high prices such that the most loving parents, supposing they are not always so rich as ours, must at times view them as expenses that perhaps they ought not to have incurred? What about making friends when they are surrounded by business rivalries they often reenact as a sort of play?”
“Does that really happen?” Elsifad asked.
“It does,” both brothers confirmed.
“How dispiriting it all sounds.”
“Perhaps so,” Dirant acknowledged. “As to those questions, I am in no way qualified to answer them, and yet I cannot concede a viable alternative exists unless you produce at this moment some clutch of ladies and gentlemen you have reared successfully using better methods. As it is you only condemn the pair of gentlemen here whom the existing system fashioned, and it is hard for me to hear my brother attacked.”
“I don't think I need say anything more about rearing. With your permission we must move on to the romantic and fanciful in life of which Fennizeners deprive ourselves all unintentionally. Dirtwo, tell us the story of Fennizen's founding.”
Puzzled, Dirant said, “The river bends there, and from that all happened as expected.”
Siltwo pointed at a spot on the floor. “Pack that up and place it there. The client will pick it up, and he is welcome to the mundane commodity. Let me now tell you the account of Ividottlof's founding.”
“I permit it. Later I will impress others with my esoteric knowledge and report the results.”
“I desire nothing else than for your success in that. So. I begin with an explanation of its name unless you know it already.”
“Did the inhabitants not give it the name of a god in the hope of attracting benevolent attention, in this case Ivid, also venerated as Liminkleshtfoken because he judges unerringly who is at fault when a contract is breached?”
“Not so, for the truth is that a man named Ividottkolt was minded to establish his household where he might be prosperous.”
“You must play the part in my conception of the scene then.”
Siltwo patted down an errant lock so as to acquire the requisite dignity of appearance. “Indeed so. He begged that very god you brought up with more detail than I expected for guidance, as was the custom in those days.” Siltwo chuckled at that. During the delay, Dirant struggled to ward off personal memories of divine guidance. Allowing his equanimity to be disfigured when someone was trying to tell him a story would have been rude.
He had negotiated the difficulty by the time Siltwo resumed. “He claimed to receive guidance too, though in what form we can only imagine. Or can we imagine it? Whatever it was, it told him that he would know where to settle when he saw the sign which corresponded to his arcane instructions. He traveled about all over the land, where is not recorded, until he saw a vomiting cow. That decided him. 'I must settle away from that to avoid disease. Or there is the idea that what I have seen is a portent of flooding, and therefore I will make that southern hill my home.'”
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“This is no criticism of you, but can this be called a hill?” Dirant wondered.
“The whole region is quite flat, and so by comparison. Dirtwo, was that the single problem you saw in the tale so far, or?”
“Other elements I presume from literary precedent will soon have their resolution, such as whether any flooding occurred. As to the disease, there is always some disease among cattle.”
“You were not always so patient. It is good to see such growth in a brother.”
“Yes, for now you may trust yourself capable of it as well.”
“Ah? Setting that aside, a village grew up around Ividottkolt's estate. The villagers enjoyed sufficiency if not prosperity. They suffered no diseases or floods. Or, diseases more than the ordinary. You are correct about there always being some. But! What happened next was so widely discussed at the time that we are forced to accept there was some incident, though the details of it are unknowable. Suddenly everyone became deaf. Is that believable? Yet all the journals and letters from the time attest to it. Then they saw strange lights over Cowsick Point. They did not name it so then, but Ividottkolt remarked upon the coincidence of location. The accounts differ there, whether some sort of slanted column of light appeared, or a flash repeated at intervals, or what one witness described as 'a red circle in a blue circle,' whatever we may take from that. Fennizen has nothing like that in its past.”
“That may be a recommendation rather than a criticism.” His flippant remark notwithstanding, the story did impress Dirant. “Siltwo, where is Cowsick Point in relation to Iflarent's Hideout? Might the ruins extend so far, below of course?”
The question arrested Silapobant in his dash toward more advantages of towns over cities and made him ponder. “Can it? Or . . . No, what am I thinking? There is no possibility of that. I have read that the largest Ertith city is estimated to spread over something on the order of two square miles, impressive for ancient times, but nothing near the distance required. But let us not give up. An outlying village may have been buried underneath there.”
“The two following questions are whether lost Ertithan techniques are responsible for the uncanny event and whether we can persuade Mr. Atkosol Tellanstal there is evidence of anything there worth excavating. Ah, but should that wait upon the exhaustion of the main site, or?”
A devotee of those exploratory sciences sculpted over decades from the stuff of human ingenuity in order to fulfill the noblest goal ever formed by man, that of achieving perfect understanding of the true and total rejection of the false, would have wept to hear the use those two intended to make of archaeology. If confirmation was required of the disfiguring effects of an upbringing in money-mad Fennizen, it was there. A devotee of the practice of realizing swift profits on the other hand would have recommended they swipe those sculptures, chip the painted part of the wall off, and unload them to collectors instead of bothering with tentative plans for long-term logistical support.
With the understanding between them that any attempt to convince Mr. Atkosol to widen his efforts would have to be laundered through the broadsheets until Stadeskosken started up its archaeological division, Dirant at last rose to take his leave. That meant he would stay for no more than twenty more minutes, just enough time for his brother to elaborate further on the pleasures of smaller communities.
“It is not so isolated as you may think from the culture and pleasures of the larger world. Can you believe that Shtaugirs is in this town at this moment?”
“Although he is a man familiar to you if I judge from the lack of a title, I am entirely ignorant of, ah, I am wrong. Is he that renowned confectioner, or?”
“Dirtwo, you must learn these things for the sake of future romantic endeavors. Yes, that is the man, and someday the influence of his handpicked samplers in tasteful tins, each of them unique, will force itself upon you. Of course he has his company which produces standard types, higher quality than most, but they are no substitute. Unfortunately, he resides in any one place for a short time before moving on after he has filled all the commissions he chooses to take, and double the misfortune, he chose them all before I was able to reach him. People have attempted to pay him double or triple the price to move up his list, but he will take his eighteen miskhanenar and nothing more.”
Not only equanimity but any pretense of it departed Dirant. “Eighteen miskhanenar! Are the samplers equal in weight to the customer, or?”
“Were they not so expensive, their effect would be slighter. That is one example only of what it may harm you not to know.”
An odd example, Dirant thought after his departure, but it was the one at hand. Circumstance has its own force, after all. For instance, suppose he saw Kodol “Pots” Hinpabafnoren there in Ividottlof, squatting under an open window with a notebook in hand? Obviously he would have avoided the situation entirely while thanking long-chanting Holzd for holding open the class of Ritualist for him instead of some occupation which attracted the attention of people such as that. Dirant had never heard that Holzd himself chanted, but his Ritualists did, and surely an epithet belonging to the priest might be transferred to the god provided there was nothing demeaning in it.
The reporter he did see was Mr. Nalfenk Migolkir. Far from engaging in any surreptitious activity, he was at an intersection in full view from five separate directions talking to several people and maintaining an attitude of courteous sophistication all the while. Nor did he or any of his associates lower their voices furtively or else raise them raucously like men who refuse to consider the effect of their actions. Dirant therefore passed them just as did any number of untroubled pedestrians and overheard portions of a conversation which interested him.
“The hotel, it's worried it kept a room for him for no reason.” That was in the local speech which invariably sounded to a Kitslofer as if the speaker were in such a hurry that he sometimes stumbled. It reminded outsiders favorably of younger brothers, newer students, and junior employees, suggesting as it did an eagerness which the more experienced at times regretted losing.
“Is there any possibility he put up in a different hotel instead?” There was Nalfenk, who spoke just as quickly, and yet because of his impeccable enunciation sounded relaxed and imperturbable.
His conversation partners shook their heads. “These places talk about these things. They'd hear that and think, I don't know, some kind of trick? Or? He's not putting up anywhere in town, that's all.”