Freight and Kettles
A corridor count wants numbers. A kettle wants to remain unnumbered. The difference is the undercity’s whole politics in a small object.
A fictional narrative within Callizto Dark Symphony.
They came with a tally, not a weapon. That was worse, in a way. Weapons you could see.
The woman who slept by the crate put her hand on the kettle as if it were a child’s head.
“Freight,” said the counter.
“Kettle,” she said.
Nim happened to be there with a can, which was luck or the node’s sense of theater.
“Kael wants counts,” the counter said, and then looked as if the name had come out without permission.
“Kael can have freight,” Nim said. “Kettles pay rent in stories. You want a story in the book?”
The counter did not. Books with stories attracted other books.
The harbor cat sat on the tally stick.
That was consulting.
They counted the moving crates. They did not count the still one. Stillness, here, was a kind of paperwork.
After they left, Joss’s niece Bee was not there, but her theology was: water does not read rotas. Kettles do not read tallies.
The woman boiled at the knock.
The loader left bread.
Nim wrote on the crate in charcoal, small:
NOT FREIGHT.
If it was erased, the kettle would still be a kettle.
If it stayed, some counter would have to read it and become a person for a second.
Either was a win.
The underlevels went on being a harbor that the surface called storage.
Storage, if you lived in it, was a city.