temperance, 5.1
Oct. 27th, 2004 04:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mikkenekoA slightly better draft. Al and Readman talk. And talk, and talk. Good thing this guy's a Licensed Exposition Dispenser. *grin*
"It's a hell of a lot to take in, isn't it?" the man interrupted, and Al jumped a little. He sounded almost -- kind, and Al wanted somebody to be kind badly enough that he found himself relaxing, nodding, and turning towards the man.
"What about you, sir?" he asked. "Are you one of the travellers who got caught up in that... trap, as well?"
"Me? No," the man said, and he seemed startled by the question, then breaking into a rusty laugh. "Now I know you're new. Everybody in here already knows me."
"Everybody knows you?" Al found himself edging towards the man, looking around for a place where he could settle himself. "Are you... oh... one of the ones they call a "troublemaker," then?"
"The biggest," the man said dryly. "Or at least, that's what Doring thinks. I'm Geoffery Readman."
"You're --" Al cut himself off with a startled gasp, taking a look at the man for the first time. It was hard to believe, but yes, maybe this man could have been a big man like a blacksmith once, if he were less wrecked and wasted. Maybe, if that glint of intelligence and confidence in his eyes weren't so shuttered, he could have been the town's second Alchemist.
"I see you know something, at least," Readman observed dryly. He shifted in his ratty blanket, and jerked his chin towards the corner opposite from his. "Settle down and make yourself comfortable, son. I think we've got a lot to talk about."
Readman nodded at the packet in Al's hand. "You'll want to eat up, boy," he said, and whether the word was chosen on a guess at Al's age based on his voice, or just the word he used to refer to anyone younger than him, Al couldn't guess. "You don't know when you'll get more."
"Um... that's okay, I'm not hungry..." Al said nervously, but then noticed that there didn't seem to be any of the crumpled remains of the packaging on the floor around the other Alchemist. "You can have it, if you want," he said in an encouraging tone, setting the package on the floor and pushing it towards him. "I'll be fine. You look like you could use it a lot more than I could."
Readman smiled, although it didn't have much humor in it. "No thanks," he said. "I don't eat or drink anything that has Doring's drug in it. It does, you know," he added as Alphonse started. "Even here, he makes sure everybody depends on him. That's why you might as well eat up; you look tough enough, boy, but sooner or later someone will be desperate enough to jump you for it."
"I really don't need it," Alphonse found himself saying, although he knew it was madness to admit it, especially to a stranger, especially to another alchemist, even one he found he wanted to trust. "I don't need to eat. Or drink at all. So Doring can't touch me."
Readman startled, and gave him a close, hard look. Alphonse fidgeted uncomfortably, and after a moment Readman relaxed -- or maybe collapsed -- against the wall with a dry laugh. "Well, that's pretty handy, in Elliotsburg," he said with a wry smile. "At least someone in here'll have a clear head."
Encouraged, Al went on to say, "You seem to be pretty clear-headed yourself, sir."
"Sir?" Readman snorted. "Oh, no need to be formal with me, boy. Consider the surroundings." He sighed. "There's not much in me left to respect, after all that's happened."
"Um," Alphonse said, but he decided to reserve judgment on this point. He could almost hear Ed's voice in his head, chiding him about placing too much stupid faith in people who would just turn around and betray it, and how did he know this Readman was any better than Doring himself? He told his mental brother that he was too paranoid, thank you, and at this point there wasn't much to do but put his trust in this person, and besides, Readman had a nice voice, or so Al thought. Mental Ed called him an idiot, and threw a mental plate at his head, and Al shook himself out of his musings and back to the situation at hand. "But, if you don't eat, how can you expect to stay strong?" he said with some worry.
"I suppose I don't really," Readman said, sounding awfully careless about it. He lowered his head, eyes dark, mouth tightening. "It's a matter of principle, between Doring and I."
"But," Al began, horrified. "How can you hope to fix anything if you let yourself starve to death? Whatever happened, in the past, it can't be so bad that you don't want to go on living!"
"No, no. Don't be so dramatic, boy," Readman snorted, waving that aside. "To be truthful, I just haven't really had the strength to argue with that lot out there for dinner in some time." He sighed. "And by now, I don't really have the strength to cook it, either."
"Cook it?" Alphonse repeated with some confusion. Readman grinned.
"I'll show you, it'll be a pretty way to pass the time," Readman said. He levered himself up from the wall and leaned forward, grunting with the effort even this movement took, and reached to the side to pick up what look like a half-burned stick of wood. He drew a circle on the ground with it -- Al's assessment of him went up several notches, that even in this state he could draft a perfect circle by eye -- and began filling it in with lines and sigils.
Al watched his hand closely as he sketched the array, recognizing most of the elements he used immediately, if not exactly the configuration they were in. Decompose, heat, salinity -- or was that salt, when it was inverted like that? It looked more like the placement for --
Readman broke off, leaning over, breath coming in wheezing pants as he steadied himself with one hand. "Damn," the man muttered. "Know I'm in bad shape when I can't even finish the array, much less activate it --"
"May I?" Readman looked up at Alphonse as he plucked the stylus from the man's hand, and with quick and steady strokes completed the figures Doring had begun to draw. "I'd never seen this variation before," Alphonse said as he filled in the second circle. "I'm familiar with bisected triangles, but the trapezoid is new to me --"
"It's my own adaptation," Readman said faintly, fascinated as he watched Alphonse finish his array for him, entirely by interpretation, with only a few -- "That should be mercury in the right-hand corner, not Saturn," he said, "and the angle is off on the reconstruction rays -- You're an alchemist too?"
"Uh-huh." Alphonse obligingly made the corrections, and set the package down in the center of the array. He placed his large, gloved hand on the outer circle of the array, and it glowed as the reaction caught. "My brother and I both are. We came to Elliotsburg to investigate the vanished people."
"Your brother, eh?" Readman sat back, staring, as the food broke apart and reformed itself, now coated on the outside with a thin layer of black grime. "Let me guess -- Doring offered to take him on as an 'assistant'."
"How'd you know?" Alphonse said, squeaking slightly. "Although it wasn't so much offered as --"
"I know how Doring's method works, it's fine," Readman said, and smiled grimly. "I suppose you're looking for an explanation."
Alphonse nodded, metal plates clanking. Not taking his eyes off Readman, he settled himself down in the corner opposite Readman, waiting. The older alchemist didn't start right away, picking up the transmuted bread, and brushing off the transmutation residue, leaving a black streak on his hands. He sighed, and put it down again, and raised his eyes to Al.
"You have to understand, Doring didn't create this entire disaster by himself," Readman began. "He's a greedy weasel of a man without much in the way of morals, but he's not so heroic as all that.But by the time people realized how far he'd gone, he'd gone far enough that he didn't have any trouble -- or any qualms -- in putting them out of his way and continuing on his own."
"Who was helping him at first?" Al said, keeping his voice hushed so it didn't echo. Readman didn't need to bother; his voice was already thin and weak enough that it hardly carried.
"He had plenty of help, from the beginning, in putting the town under the yoke of the drug," Readman said, wincing as he resettled himself against the wall. "You could say it all started with the Salamars. They were a new-money family -- moved here about ten years and started investing. By five years ago they were running most of the textile factories in the city, and most of the profit they made went back into buying up more of it.
"Then, this February, the price drop hit -- not a big one, but it was enough to hurt them. They started looking around for ways to increase their profits. Dropping salaries, lengthening shifts -- "
"Why did the workers stand for it?" Alphonse asked. Readman smiled grimly.
"Partly because there weren't many alternatives available -- by that time the factory jobs were already most of the work in the city. If they quit, they'd have nowhere else to go. Even so, they didn't like it. They complained, protested -- there was even talk about quitting in a group, leaving town and seeking new work. Old man Salamar didn't like that, you can guess.
"That was when he went to Doring, looking for new solutions. Or maybe Doring came to him, I couldn't tell you now. Doring was a two-bit alchemist and pharmacist -- still is, really -- but he'd had a few dealings with one of the factory manager, one of the Salamar sons. He had this new potion, he told Salamar, which would keep the worker's happy, keep them on their feet longer, keep them in the jobs and the factories no matter how low the pay dropped. The best part, Doring said, was that the drug was easy to make from a weed that grows pretty common around here -- he could make as much as they needed, as cheap as you please.
"So Salamar started paying the workers in Rapture as well as money. And it worked like a charm. The complaints died off, the factories ran smooth as glass. For over a month. It took that long for the workers to realize that the Rapture had another side effect, which Doring and Salamar hadn't told them about --"
"Addiction," Alphonse whispered. Readman nodded grimly.
"Not only wouldn't you want to leave your job -- now they found they couldn't. There was an uproar -- lots of folks got angry, a couple of machines got smashed -- but none of them really knew what it was they wanted done about it. Salamar promised that he'd fix it, and they didn't really have any other choice but to go along with it. They stpped handing out the drug -- for about a week, people thought that was that. And then it was found out that Salamar had been putting it in the factory water pumps.
"That was it. Even the workers who hadn't been accepting the drug before, were hooked now. The factories got shut down, but that caused an even bigger panic. They became angry, and scared -- directed all at Salamar. Doring managed to play up the innocent card, the friendly alchemist who helped the public by giving out the drug even when Salamar refused, and holed up with his family up on the hill. Salamar got scared, and gave Doring a whole chunk of money to hire guards and seal the city, keep anyone from getting out and reporting to the military.
"The workers were in a panic, but Doring promised them they'd be all right, that he'd take care of them even if Salamar abandoned them, and all they had to do was come back to their jobs. Nobody was hearing from Salamar at this point, or his family; all the orders came through Doring and his squad of enforcers, who answered only to him. The rest of the townsfolk just shut up, and sat tight, and hoped it would all sort itself out soon."
He stopped, staring off into thin air. Alphonse had a very bad feeling about where the narrative was going. "What about you?" he asked, when Readman didn't seem to want to continue on his own.
Readman groaned, putting his head in his hands. "A fool, like the rest of them. I thought it was all Salamar's doing, and now that he was lying low, things wouldn't at least get any worse. You have to understand -- medicine wasn't my job, policing wasn't my job. I was just the town smithery, who happened to double as a metallurgy alchemist. I was working on a method to distill the drug out of the water in the factory wells, when -- Doring approached me at last."
He paused, then continued. "He offered to bring me in on the deal," he said bluntly. "To take me on as his 'apprentice' and give me a share of the wealth, the power of running the town, if I'd help him make and distribute the drug. He revealed then that he'd been contaminating the water supply for the whole town -- not just the factory pumps. He'd been doing it ever since the cordon got put on the city -- slowly building up the levels in the populace, before he sprang the secret on them, too late."
"I told him that he was a fool, and a coward, and a lot of other things besides," Readman said wryly, and a grin twitched his face as he remembered. "In considerably more detail, of course. He didn't like that. Never did like to be reminded of what a second-rater he was. We argued, I threw a punch -- he hadn't thought to bring his guards with him, sure that I'd go for it. I went out, started shouting the truth from the rooftops -- telling everyone what Doring was doing, had done. Hadn't got halfway to the market before Doring's goons caught up with me, and before I could do anything about it, I was here."
Al glanced around, and winced a tiny bit in sympathy. He'd only been in this place for a few hours and he already hated it -- and the other alchemist had been stuck in here for months. Alphonse renewed his vow that the first thing he'd do, when they took care of Doring, would be to get the other alchemist out of here.
Readman sighed, and Al found himself drawn. "I was sure that Doring was done for, even so -- sure that in a city this size, somebody would have the guts, or the wits, to take him out, or to get out of the city and spread the word, but... nothing. There was a lot of noise that night -- saw some fires. But come morning, everything was quiet again.
"Before long the other 'troublemakers' came filtering in. Got the rest of the story out of them -- Doring's running everything, now, and he doesn't tolerate arguement. Nobody's seen a hair of old man Salamar or his family -- even the seedy butler the family kept around has been running around freely, but there's no sign of the family themselves."
"You don't think --" Alphonse started, aghast, and Readman nodded grimly.
"Think he would," Readman said, grim anger overlaying his voice, "think he did. Think there's not much at this point he won't do. That was three months ago -- and by now, it's too late. The town falls a little further apart, every day, and it'll keep going until everything is gone."
"If you're an Alchemist," he found himself saying, "how can it be that you haven't escaped yet? Your hands are free, and it can't be that hard to find something to use to draw with --" He looked around, searching eyes finding a couple of pieces of charcoal, burnt wood, and crumbling plaster that could easily be used to draw with. His hands were free --
"I could get through the walls, certainly," Readman was saying, interrupting his musings. "But I'm not a young man wrapped in metal plates, you know. The guards would see what I was doing, and come to stop me, before I could get more than a few feet. Besides," he said wearily, tone darkening. "There's not really anywhere for me to go."
"But -- if you could get out," Alphonse began. "Take your story to the military -- they could come and intervene --"
Readman snorted, and it turned into a racking cough. "It's too late by now," he said, voice roughened. His hollow eyes regarded Al wearily. "I don't know what Doring told you, but by now he's got every man, woman and child in the town under his thrall. He keeps the wells contaminated; just enough to maintain low levels of the addiction in every body, but not enough to satisfy the craving. This place," and he waved a withered, claw-like hand around him to indicate the prison walls, "these people -- you see what happens at "meal times." That's what happens, when distribution breaks down, when people have nobody to turn on but each other. That'll be the rest of the town, sooner or later."
"But if things continue..." Al trailed off, uncertainly. "How can you be so certain, what will happen?"
"Doring's not half so great as he likes to pretend," Readman said with a bitter smile. "Worse than most, he doesn't know anything about managing industry, or large-scale distribution. He's been getting by so far on the systems old Salamar set in place, but he doesn't really understand them. It's been creeping up, bit by bit. The prison is the last place on his distribution list -- when there's some problem, some shortfall, you can see it hit here, first.
"I've seen --" He jerked his head at the wall behind him, the courtyard beyond, the rows of pallets, exhausted bodies. "What can happen even to a big, strong man, when they get to depend on the drug too heavily, and it gets cut off. The fever comes first, and the intense craving; the delerium tremens, and they start screaming at things nobody else can see. It burns them from the inside out -- if they're strong enough, they strike out at everything, anything around them until the fit passes. If they're not strong enough -- well, after two or three rounds of this, there isn't really anyone left who's strong enough. They fall into the trance, and stay there."
"For how long?" Al whispered. Trying to get the images Readman conjured up out of his head. Out of his mind, damn it, because his brother was not going to end up that way, he was not --
"A day or two," Readman replied. "Sometimes as long as three. Then they die."
[edit] Quote of the day: "Mikke was a happy homunculus. And Now She Ded From Too Much God-spit."
Updated my userinfo w/badge. :3
"It's a hell of a lot to take in, isn't it?" the man interrupted, and Al jumped a little. He sounded almost -- kind, and Al wanted somebody to be kind badly enough that he found himself relaxing, nodding, and turning towards the man.
"What about you, sir?" he asked. "Are you one of the travellers who got caught up in that... trap, as well?"
"Me? No," the man said, and he seemed startled by the question, then breaking into a rusty laugh. "Now I know you're new. Everybody in here already knows me."
"Everybody knows you?" Al found himself edging towards the man, looking around for a place where he could settle himself. "Are you... oh... one of the ones they call a "troublemaker," then?"
"The biggest," the man said dryly. "Or at least, that's what Doring thinks. I'm Geoffery Readman."
"You're --" Al cut himself off with a startled gasp, taking a look at the man for the first time. It was hard to believe, but yes, maybe this man could have been a big man like a blacksmith once, if he were less wrecked and wasted. Maybe, if that glint of intelligence and confidence in his eyes weren't so shuttered, he could have been the town's second Alchemist.
"I see you know something, at least," Readman observed dryly. He shifted in his ratty blanket, and jerked his chin towards the corner opposite from his. "Settle down and make yourself comfortable, son. I think we've got a lot to talk about."
Readman nodded at the packet in Al's hand. "You'll want to eat up, boy," he said, and whether the word was chosen on a guess at Al's age based on his voice, or just the word he used to refer to anyone younger than him, Al couldn't guess. "You don't know when you'll get more."
"Um... that's okay, I'm not hungry..." Al said nervously, but then noticed that there didn't seem to be any of the crumpled remains of the packaging on the floor around the other Alchemist. "You can have it, if you want," he said in an encouraging tone, setting the package on the floor and pushing it towards him. "I'll be fine. You look like you could use it a lot more than I could."
Readman smiled, although it didn't have much humor in it. "No thanks," he said. "I don't eat or drink anything that has Doring's drug in it. It does, you know," he added as Alphonse started. "Even here, he makes sure everybody depends on him. That's why you might as well eat up; you look tough enough, boy, but sooner or later someone will be desperate enough to jump you for it."
"I really don't need it," Alphonse found himself saying, although he knew it was madness to admit it, especially to a stranger, especially to another alchemist, even one he found he wanted to trust. "I don't need to eat. Or drink at all. So Doring can't touch me."
Readman startled, and gave him a close, hard look. Alphonse fidgeted uncomfortably, and after a moment Readman relaxed -- or maybe collapsed -- against the wall with a dry laugh. "Well, that's pretty handy, in Elliotsburg," he said with a wry smile. "At least someone in here'll have a clear head."
Encouraged, Al went on to say, "You seem to be pretty clear-headed yourself, sir."
"Sir?" Readman snorted. "Oh, no need to be formal with me, boy. Consider the surroundings." He sighed. "There's not much in me left to respect, after all that's happened."
"Um," Alphonse said, but he decided to reserve judgment on this point. He could almost hear Ed's voice in his head, chiding him about placing too much stupid faith in people who would just turn around and betray it, and how did he know this Readman was any better than Doring himself? He told his mental brother that he was too paranoid, thank you, and at this point there wasn't much to do but put his trust in this person, and besides, Readman had a nice voice, or so Al thought. Mental Ed called him an idiot, and threw a mental plate at his head, and Al shook himself out of his musings and back to the situation at hand. "But, if you don't eat, how can you expect to stay strong?" he said with some worry.
"I suppose I don't really," Readman said, sounding awfully careless about it. He lowered his head, eyes dark, mouth tightening. "It's a matter of principle, between Doring and I."
"But," Al began, horrified. "How can you hope to fix anything if you let yourself starve to death? Whatever happened, in the past, it can't be so bad that you don't want to go on living!"
"No, no. Don't be so dramatic, boy," Readman snorted, waving that aside. "To be truthful, I just haven't really had the strength to argue with that lot out there for dinner in some time." He sighed. "And by now, I don't really have the strength to cook it, either."
"Cook it?" Alphonse repeated with some confusion. Readman grinned.
"I'll show you, it'll be a pretty way to pass the time," Readman said. He levered himself up from the wall and leaned forward, grunting with the effort even this movement took, and reached to the side to pick up what look like a half-burned stick of wood. He drew a circle on the ground with it -- Al's assessment of him went up several notches, that even in this state he could draft a perfect circle by eye -- and began filling it in with lines and sigils.
Al watched his hand closely as he sketched the array, recognizing most of the elements he used immediately, if not exactly the configuration they were in. Decompose, heat, salinity -- or was that salt, when it was inverted like that? It looked more like the placement for --
Readman broke off, leaning over, breath coming in wheezing pants as he steadied himself with one hand. "Damn," the man muttered. "Know I'm in bad shape when I can't even finish the array, much less activate it --"
"May I?" Readman looked up at Alphonse as he plucked the stylus from the man's hand, and with quick and steady strokes completed the figures Doring had begun to draw. "I'd never seen this variation before," Alphonse said as he filled in the second circle. "I'm familiar with bisected triangles, but the trapezoid is new to me --"
"It's my own adaptation," Readman said faintly, fascinated as he watched Alphonse finish his array for him, entirely by interpretation, with only a few -- "That should be mercury in the right-hand corner, not Saturn," he said, "and the angle is off on the reconstruction rays -- You're an alchemist too?"
"Uh-huh." Alphonse obligingly made the corrections, and set the package down in the center of the array. He placed his large, gloved hand on the outer circle of the array, and it glowed as the reaction caught. "My brother and I both are. We came to Elliotsburg to investigate the vanished people."
"Your brother, eh?" Readman sat back, staring, as the food broke apart and reformed itself, now coated on the outside with a thin layer of black grime. "Let me guess -- Doring offered to take him on as an 'assistant'."
"How'd you know?" Alphonse said, squeaking slightly. "Although it wasn't so much offered as --"
"I know how Doring's method works, it's fine," Readman said, and smiled grimly. "I suppose you're looking for an explanation."
Alphonse nodded, metal plates clanking. Not taking his eyes off Readman, he settled himself down in the corner opposite Readman, waiting. The older alchemist didn't start right away, picking up the transmuted bread, and brushing off the transmutation residue, leaving a black streak on his hands. He sighed, and put it down again, and raised his eyes to Al.
"You have to understand, Doring didn't create this entire disaster by himself," Readman began. "He's a greedy weasel of a man without much in the way of morals, but he's not so heroic as all that.But by the time people realized how far he'd gone, he'd gone far enough that he didn't have any trouble -- or any qualms -- in putting them out of his way and continuing on his own."
"Who was helping him at first?" Al said, keeping his voice hushed so it didn't echo. Readman didn't need to bother; his voice was already thin and weak enough that it hardly carried.
"He had plenty of help, from the beginning, in putting the town under the yoke of the drug," Readman said, wincing as he resettled himself against the wall. "You could say it all started with the Salamars. They were a new-money family -- moved here about ten years and started investing. By five years ago they were running most of the textile factories in the city, and most of the profit they made went back into buying up more of it.
"Then, this February, the price drop hit -- not a big one, but it was enough to hurt them. They started looking around for ways to increase their profits. Dropping salaries, lengthening shifts -- "
"Why did the workers stand for it?" Alphonse asked. Readman smiled grimly.
"Partly because there weren't many alternatives available -- by that time the factory jobs were already most of the work in the city. If they quit, they'd have nowhere else to go. Even so, they didn't like it. They complained, protested -- there was even talk about quitting in a group, leaving town and seeking new work. Old man Salamar didn't like that, you can guess.
"That was when he went to Doring, looking for new solutions. Or maybe Doring came to him, I couldn't tell you now. Doring was a two-bit alchemist and pharmacist -- still is, really -- but he'd had a few dealings with one of the factory manager, one of the Salamar sons. He had this new potion, he told Salamar, which would keep the worker's happy, keep them on their feet longer, keep them in the jobs and the factories no matter how low the pay dropped. The best part, Doring said, was that the drug was easy to make from a weed that grows pretty common around here -- he could make as much as they needed, as cheap as you please.
"So Salamar started paying the workers in Rapture as well as money. And it worked like a charm. The complaints died off, the factories ran smooth as glass. For over a month. It took that long for the workers to realize that the Rapture had another side effect, which Doring and Salamar hadn't told them about --"
"Addiction," Alphonse whispered. Readman nodded grimly.
"Not only wouldn't you want to leave your job -- now they found they couldn't. There was an uproar -- lots of folks got angry, a couple of machines got smashed -- but none of them really knew what it was they wanted done about it. Salamar promised that he'd fix it, and they didn't really have any other choice but to go along with it. They stpped handing out the drug -- for about a week, people thought that was that. And then it was found out that Salamar had been putting it in the factory water pumps.
"That was it. Even the workers who hadn't been accepting the drug before, were hooked now. The factories got shut down, but that caused an even bigger panic. They became angry, and scared -- directed all at Salamar. Doring managed to play up the innocent card, the friendly alchemist who helped the public by giving out the drug even when Salamar refused, and holed up with his family up on the hill. Salamar got scared, and gave Doring a whole chunk of money to hire guards and seal the city, keep anyone from getting out and reporting to the military.
"The workers were in a panic, but Doring promised them they'd be all right, that he'd take care of them even if Salamar abandoned them, and all they had to do was come back to their jobs. Nobody was hearing from Salamar at this point, or his family; all the orders came through Doring and his squad of enforcers, who answered only to him. The rest of the townsfolk just shut up, and sat tight, and hoped it would all sort itself out soon."
He stopped, staring off into thin air. Alphonse had a very bad feeling about where the narrative was going. "What about you?" he asked, when Readman didn't seem to want to continue on his own.
Readman groaned, putting his head in his hands. "A fool, like the rest of them. I thought it was all Salamar's doing, and now that he was lying low, things wouldn't at least get any worse. You have to understand -- medicine wasn't my job, policing wasn't my job. I was just the town smithery, who happened to double as a metallurgy alchemist. I was working on a method to distill the drug out of the water in the factory wells, when -- Doring approached me at last."
He paused, then continued. "He offered to bring me in on the deal," he said bluntly. "To take me on as his 'apprentice' and give me a share of the wealth, the power of running the town, if I'd help him make and distribute the drug. He revealed then that he'd been contaminating the water supply for the whole town -- not just the factory pumps. He'd been doing it ever since the cordon got put on the city -- slowly building up the levels in the populace, before he sprang the secret on them, too late."
"I told him that he was a fool, and a coward, and a lot of other things besides," Readman said wryly, and a grin twitched his face as he remembered. "In considerably more detail, of course. He didn't like that. Never did like to be reminded of what a second-rater he was. We argued, I threw a punch -- he hadn't thought to bring his guards with him, sure that I'd go for it. I went out, started shouting the truth from the rooftops -- telling everyone what Doring was doing, had done. Hadn't got halfway to the market before Doring's goons caught up with me, and before I could do anything about it, I was here."
Al glanced around, and winced a tiny bit in sympathy. He'd only been in this place for a few hours and he already hated it -- and the other alchemist had been stuck in here for months. Alphonse renewed his vow that the first thing he'd do, when they took care of Doring, would be to get the other alchemist out of here.
Readman sighed, and Al found himself drawn. "I was sure that Doring was done for, even so -- sure that in a city this size, somebody would have the guts, or the wits, to take him out, or to get out of the city and spread the word, but... nothing. There was a lot of noise that night -- saw some fires. But come morning, everything was quiet again.
"Before long the other 'troublemakers' came filtering in. Got the rest of the story out of them -- Doring's running everything, now, and he doesn't tolerate arguement. Nobody's seen a hair of old man Salamar or his family -- even the seedy butler the family kept around has been running around freely, but there's no sign of the family themselves."
"You don't think --" Alphonse started, aghast, and Readman nodded grimly.
"Think he would," Readman said, grim anger overlaying his voice, "think he did. Think there's not much at this point he won't do. That was three months ago -- and by now, it's too late. The town falls a little further apart, every day, and it'll keep going until everything is gone."
"If you're an Alchemist," he found himself saying, "how can it be that you haven't escaped yet? Your hands are free, and it can't be that hard to find something to use to draw with --" He looked around, searching eyes finding a couple of pieces of charcoal, burnt wood, and crumbling plaster that could easily be used to draw with. His hands were free --
"I could get through the walls, certainly," Readman was saying, interrupting his musings. "But I'm not a young man wrapped in metal plates, you know. The guards would see what I was doing, and come to stop me, before I could get more than a few feet. Besides," he said wearily, tone darkening. "There's not really anywhere for me to go."
"But -- if you could get out," Alphonse began. "Take your story to the military -- they could come and intervene --"
Readman snorted, and it turned into a racking cough. "It's too late by now," he said, voice roughened. His hollow eyes regarded Al wearily. "I don't know what Doring told you, but by now he's got every man, woman and child in the town under his thrall. He keeps the wells contaminated; just enough to maintain low levels of the addiction in every body, but not enough to satisfy the craving. This place," and he waved a withered, claw-like hand around him to indicate the prison walls, "these people -- you see what happens at "meal times." That's what happens, when distribution breaks down, when people have nobody to turn on but each other. That'll be the rest of the town, sooner or later."
"But if things continue..." Al trailed off, uncertainly. "How can you be so certain, what will happen?"
"Doring's not half so great as he likes to pretend," Readman said with a bitter smile. "Worse than most, he doesn't know anything about managing industry, or large-scale distribution. He's been getting by so far on the systems old Salamar set in place, but he doesn't really understand them. It's been creeping up, bit by bit. The prison is the last place on his distribution list -- when there's some problem, some shortfall, you can see it hit here, first.
"I've seen --" He jerked his head at the wall behind him, the courtyard beyond, the rows of pallets, exhausted bodies. "What can happen even to a big, strong man, when they get to depend on the drug too heavily, and it gets cut off. The fever comes first, and the intense craving; the delerium tremens, and they start screaming at things nobody else can see. It burns them from the inside out -- if they're strong enough, they strike out at everything, anything around them until the fit passes. If they're not strong enough -- well, after two or three rounds of this, there isn't really anyone left who's strong enough. They fall into the trance, and stay there."
"For how long?" Al whispered. Trying to get the images Readman conjured up out of his head. Out of his mind, damn it, because his brother was not going to end up that way, he was not --
"A day or two," Readman replied. "Sometimes as long as three. Then they die."
[edit] Quote of the day: "Mikke was a happy homunculus. And Now She Ded From Too Much God-spit."
Updated my userinfo w/badge. :3
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2004-10-27 01:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 02:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 07:16 am (UTC)Readman started to draw an array minutes ago, and now Al is looking around for something he could use to draw? He already knowns the guy can. Bit confusing.
I trip over little details. (er, never really saw anyone use it online but trip = happy buzz). How Al hears mental paranoid Ed, how his opinion of the guy goes up because he can draw a circle. <3 Yay backstory too.
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Date: 2004-10-27 01:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 09:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 01:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 12:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 01:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 02:17 pm (UTC)...Well, all right, it doesn't, but you should have provided some anyway :p
Mikkeneko: GAH IT'S RAINING AGAIN
Mikkeneko: ~_~
Kaltia Amulis: *Dies laughing*
Mikkeneko: sooo don't want to go out now
Kaltia Amulis: If you go out, the rain will like, merge with your body, and you'll be lost down the guttering or something.
Mikkeneko: omgexactly ;_;
Mikkeneko: ...not that I don't practically live in the gutter already. >_>;
Kaltia Amulis: Mikke was a happy homunculus. And Now She Ded From Too Much God-spit.
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Date: 2004-10-27 06:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-28 07:57 am (UTC)Oh yeah, the whole 'torturing and crucifying your son' thing. But, SlothxEd! Can't we just forgive, forget and call it quits, already?!
*Weeps bitter, bloody tears*
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Date: 2004-10-28 03:00 pm (UTC)Oh yeah, the whole 'torturing and crucifying your son' thing.
You made me burst into gales of laughter. At work. You evil thing, you. Now I have to write this just so your angst will be justified.
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Date: 2004-10-29 03:40 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2004-10-28 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-29 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-29 10:43 am (UTC)