Silence Is Golden

---

I'm walking through the dingy alleyways that have become my venue in Nachton. I hear the sniffles and grunts of the lowly people here as if they were swine and I their swineherd. It is an interesting relationship. I feel almost as if these unfortunates might, in some way, be reflections of my own life... how it might have been. Perhaps how it was before. But not how it is now.

I'm not far from the Strip, but far away to know the little girl under the awning there is in the wrong place. She's too well-dressed and she's not dirty enough. She's also crying, and perhaps that's what turns my head; the high, soft wails of a person who does not belong here.

Maybe if the wretches at my feet hadn't reminded me so vividly of what I might have become, I would have turned my back on her and left her to whatever fate was in her future. But I had cried like that once before too, when I was six or seven years old, before I learned the value of silence.

I think, at that age, I was still innocent enough not to realize what I must do in order to live, who I had to step on, where to apply careful pressure to get ahead. I hadn't known kindness, so I didn't know what I could possibly be missing, but I knew humiliation and I was still naive enough to shed tears.

---

There had been a blanket on the street, an old worn blanket, obviously someone's garbage. I had rushed to grab it; such a treasure was luxury for a begger-boy. I was smaller than the other boys, though, and a brief tussle left me nothing but a broken wrist for my exertions.

I stood in the rain much like the little girl barely tucked under her alcove, and I cried, and I remember not knowing what the feeling was inside me that had made me do so. Never having had much, I had never truly experienced loss.

Her thin wail sings to me. She is, without a doubt, lost. Her clothes are expensive. In her tiny hands she clutches a pink purse with a bright orange flower in sequins on the front. They sparkle brilliantly in the wet of the rain and I can see that my eyes are not the only ones attracted to the child. I will her to be quiet; one of the huddled masses in the alleyway is moving slowly toward her.

She looks around. She doesn't see me, pressed back into the shadows, and she doesn't see the man with hollow eyes in deep, wasted sockets who stares at her with a predatory air. The moonlight falls upon her face and I see she is Asian. I feel something in my chest... a sensation I suppose could be likened to being kicked by a mule. I put my finger to my lips, unconsciously.

The girl wrings her hands, tightly gripping the little handles of her purse, and she ventures a step out into the rain. The gutter over her head chooses that time to break loose a bit, and a gout of chilly water splashes down upon her. She drops her purse onto the muddy street and the orange flower winks up at me.

The man with the hollow eyes is looking hungrily at her, not at her little purse, and I feel... dizzy. She cries harder as she tries to rub at her eyes and grope for her purse at the same time, little fingers splaying in the mud at her feet as she sobs wordlessly. Be quiet!

But the hollow-eyed man is moving in on her, and I know the look on his face well enough.

---

The first time I had cried, it had brought me what I thought was good fortune. The carnival-men heard me, and they took me with them and set my wrist and healed me up. They taught me to tumble, they taught me to twist and turn and do amazing things that would please a crowd.

They taught me things that would please men. And women. And they made sure I practiced. They taught me the value of silence, for every time I cried out, every time my young mind protested that this was not how things should be, they reminded me that what they had fixed, they could make painful again. What was whole was easily shattered, and they knew how to strike, where to strike; how to break a bone so it would heal cleanly; how to dislocate a joint so that it would be easily replaced.

But if I kept quiet and did what was expected, I was left alone. They began to bring me 'clients,' men, women, something in-between. I remember crying out the first time, unable to keep quiet. I was afraid. They broke my arm for my insolence. I think the Master would have punched me instead, but he stopped at the last moment. I had a good face, and he didn't want to ruin that. With a broken arm, I could still service. With a broken jaw, I was a liability.

Again the lesson was loud and clear. Silence, always compliance, always obedience. I turned into what they asked of me, but it was only to save myself. Inside, something had awakened, something resilient and strong that told me I could escape from there if only I had the patience.

I kept quiet for four years. I didn't utter a word. Not to myself, not to my clients, not to anyone. I was afraid that the only sound that would come out would be the sound of a six-year-old's crying. They called me a mute, and I let it be. It was my silence that allowed me to eventually leave, for no one saw it coming.

---

He moves at the same time as I do. I see only his hand reaching for her. My eyes, so much more sensitive now than ever before, can see the dirt and filth underneath his cracked, blunt fingernails as they stretch for her.

There is no one element of my personality that moves me toward them, I don't think. I can't say the action is born of anything resembling a desire to do good. I want the girl to be quiet. Maybe, somewhere deep down, I don't want her to be broken too.

If an observer had said I moved across the alleyway with superhuman speed, they would be correct. I did go as fast as I could. I moved between the two, catching the man's wrist in my own and breaking it as I squeezed. His bones were brittle, that was no feat of strength.

The little girl screams and falls down, crab walking backwards. Here in the slums no one seems to think that's anything out of the ordinary. If anything, the swine on the streets just get quieter. They have learned what the little girl hasn't, and they grow still and quiet.

The man's reaction is impressively fast for someone I had thought half-dead. His left arm flies out and a dirty knife slips into my side, toward my back. Had I still been alive I might have worried; he's hit me in the region of my kidney and although the knife isn't sharp, it's long and has enough point and force to penetrate deeply.

That makes little impact now, however, save to irritate me and give me just cause to finish the job. Why do I care if this little girl sees what's happening? I shield her anyway, hiding my actions with my body as I simply crush the hollow-eyed man's windpipe. I turn, still hiding the body, and as she raises a shaking finger to point at me I realize the knife is still buried in my side. I remove it and toss it aside, and crouch down in front of the little girl.

Picking her pink purse up, I hand it to her. I expect her to leave now and go find her way back into the city, but she throws herself at me and grabs fistfuls of my shirt. I don't care who she is. I didn't help her because I like her; I wanted her to be quiet and now she has grown even louder.

I stay still and let her wipe her filthy face all over me as she cries, and I try not to wrinkle my nose as I realize I have ruined a perfectly good shirt. Her hair falls away from her neck and I tilt my head, wondering.

Why not? I embrace her as if a caring parent, and ever so gently bite down. It's so much better than the swine I kicked my way through on the way out here, and it stills her, quiets her, calms her. Why I pull away quickly, I'm not sure. Barely a few seconds have passed, but I disengage and let her continue to clutch me.

I can't just leave her now. I've gone through the trouble to save her once. I don't know or care where she came from, or where she should be returned to. But I do lift her up, along with her little purse, and carry her down the streets. Her sobbing hasn't begun again and I start to think that perhaps she might learn after all.

The Police Department is well-lit, and I stop in sight of it. She wants me to accompany her in. That much is clear from the way she clings to my hand and stares at me with wide brown eyes. I shake my head.

"Go ahead."

She stands there as I give her a little nudge with my leg. I sigh.

"I can't go in with you. I don't like them very much. They'll like you though. Go."

Her eyes water again. I shake my head, my patience worn to nothing. "Pretend I'm there with you. Can you do that?"

She looks at me like I'm crazy, which I am beginning to suspect is true, and then she nods.

I wrench my lips up in as close to a smile as I can get. "Good."

She turns to walk away and I say, "Don't tell them what happened."

She pauses, grips her little purse, and says, "I'll be quiet."

I nod and walk away. I don't look back. What happens to her now is up to her. I didn't help her to be nice; I helped her because I thought maybe it would silence the wails of the small child I still hear echoes of now and then.

As the rain falls down again, I realize I can still hear him.