Into the thinking kingdoms - Alan Dean Foster [119]
“Giela,” Simna muttered. “What a mess!”
Kneeling by the little man’s side, Ehomba searched until he found a wooden serving bowl. Tossing out the last of its rapidly hardening contents, he inverted it and placed it beneath Knucker’s greasy hair. It was not a soft pillow, but it would have to do. This accomplished, he set about trying to rouse the other man from his stupor.
Simna looked on for a while before disappearing, only to return moments later with a jug three-quarters full. Watering Knucker’s face as if it were a particularly parched houseplant, he kept tilting the jug until the contents were entirely gone. The last splashes did the trick, and the little man came around, sputtering slightly.
“What—who’s there?” Espying the basics of a friendly face in the darkness, he smiled beatifically. “Oh, it’s you, Etjole Ehomba. Welcome back to the party.” Frowning abruptly, he tried to sit up and failed. “Why is it so quiet?”
Disgust permeated the herdsman’s whispered reply. “You are drunk again, Knucker.”
“What, me? No, Ehomba, not me! I had a little to drink, surely. It was a party. But I am not drunk.”
The herdsman was implacable. “You told us many times that if we helped you, you would not let this happen to you again.”
“Nothing’s happened to me. I’m still me.”
“Are you?” Staring down at the prostrate, flaccid form, Ehomba chose his next words carefully. “What are the names of my children?”
“Daki and Nelecha.” A wan smile creased the grubby face. “I know everything, remember?”
“Only when you are drunk.” Rising, the herdsman turned and started past Simna. “Paradox is the fool at the court of Fate.”
Simna reached out to restrain him. “Hoy, Etjole, we can’t just leave him here like this.”
In the dark room, hard green eyes gazed unblinkingly back at the swordsman’s. “Everyone chooses what to do with their life, Simna. I chose to honor a dying man’s request. You chose to accompany me.” He glanced down at the frail figure on the floor. Knucker had begun to sing softly to himself. “He chooses this. It is time to go.”
“No, wait. Wait just a second.” Bending anxiously over the chanting intoxicant, Simna grabbed one unwashed hand and tugged firmly. “Come on, Knucker. You’ve got to get up. We’re leaving.”
Watery eyes tried to focus on the swordsman’s. “Your father abandoned your mother when you were nine. You have no sisters or brothers and you have always held this against your mother, who died six years ago. You have one false tooth.” Raising his head from the floor, the little man turned to grin at the silent, stolid Ehomba. “There are 1,865,466,345,993,429 grains of sand on the beach directly below your village. That’s to the waterline with the tide in. Tomorrow it will be different.” Letting go of the dirty hand, Simna straightened slowly.
“The axis of the universe is tilted fourteen point three-seven degrees to the plane of its ecliptic. Matter has twenty-eight basic component parts, which cannot be further subdivided. A horkle is a grank. Three pretty women in a room together suck up more energy than they give off.” He began to giggle softly. “Why a bee when it stings? If you mix sugar cane and roses with the right seeds, you get raspberries that smell as good as they taste. King Ephour of Noul-ud-Sheraym will die at eight-twenty in the evening of a moa bone stuck in his throat. I know everything.”
A grim-faced Simna was watching Ehomba carefully. Finally the herdsman bent low over the prone body and forestalled the little man’s litany of answers with an actual question.
“Tell me one thing, Knucker.”
“One thing?” The giggling grew louder, until it turned into a cough. “I’ll tell you anything!”
Eyes that could pick out a potential herd predator lurking at a great distance bored into the other man’s. “Can you stop drinking whenever