The Unmade Man by Cy Tidd

Author:Cy Tidd [Tidd, Cy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rogue Leaves Publishing
Published: 2018-04-20T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

The man with no name was about halfway through a pot pie, with the peas picked out and arranged in a peculiar pattern on his plate, a line intersecting a circle, when the door to the pub opened. Two men stepped in. One after the other. They stopped just inside the threshold. They sniffed. Looked around.

The man with no name knew something about these new men. They were familiar. No, he decided, they themselves were not. Their clothes? Blue and black. Pants and jackets and good boots and stout belts and harnesses with all sorts of knickknacks sewn onto them. Some silver insignia pinned to their chests. The man had seen people dressed like this all over the city. Regular people paid them deference, moved aside for them, straightened up around them, glanced at them when they passed. Constables. This was not the ping of recent familiarity that resonated with the man, though. Something else. Something—ah, the man realized. Their mannerisms were familiar. The way they sniffed. That was significant somehow.

The men moved about the room, sniffing. The other diners looked at them, curious, then at each other.

The sniffing men walked closer to the man with the pot pie. Made eye contact. More sniffing. One walked behind the man, more sniffing. Eye contact between the sniffing men. A nod.

The two men walked back over to the door. One left. The other stayed and leaned against the doorframe, looking at the man with the half-eaten chicken pot pie. Not taking his eyes off the man with the pie, he flicked open a hard leather case on his belt.

Everyone in the room scrambled to the walls. The man with the pot pie didn’t know the significance of the hard leather case, didn’t know why everyone had vacated the space between him and the man by the door. The man with the pot pie stayed put.

He heard a muffled pop outside, followed by a peculiar whine that faded away as it went … upward?

The diners were looking at each other a lot now. Looking at him.

Outside, someone shouted, “Inbound!”

The diners all clapped their hands to their heads. The man was thinking about doing that when—

A sharp explosion of thunder banged around the street outside. Another. Another, and then a whole string of thunderous explosions. The man got his hands to his ears after the third or fourth explosion. It shook the building, all the shock waves outside, rattling the windows and knocking cups over.

Then silence.

The man considered running away. But something interesting was about to happen, and he wondered if he might find out who he was without the wall of water turning him away. That was better than a strange life experiment with forbidden memories, better than novel experiences like finding out about peas.

The door opened again, and a different man walked in. He was dressed like the sniffing men but in different colors. White with shades of gray. Pants and jacket, with good boots and a harness. Knickknacks and thingamabobs. Different bits from the sniffing men’s.

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