Chapter 8 - Fortune Auctions
Mr. Grey waited on a racetrack.
He stood, waiting, in a long, long queue of Starharbor citizens. The queue spiraled around the circular racetrack like a lens from a set of hypnotic novelty glasses; constricting ever inwards. Every head in the line struck a stiff angle towards the focal point of this whorling townsfolk line. Thousands of eyes fastened themselves to a mountain of a tent in the center. The tent flung its obsidian canvas skyward; a painted monolith wobbling in The Wind; fastened to a wooden crow’s-nest at its peak. To this crow’s nest, all those spiral eyes pointed. As though the eyes were calico stars forming a single nebula - mostly in sets of two, though here and there were lonely orbs, or spaces of blind, vacuous face - all orbiting a pinnacled, celestial roost.
The stars watched a signal flag flicker next to a sitting man in the nest. When he saw the flag that man took his booted feet from the railing of the lofty perch. He sat forward and brought his lips to the tapered end of an enormous, metal horn. The horn made several spirals of its own, curling upwards and outwards, until it blossomed in flower-petal metal flanges, like a balloon frozen in explosion. The man whispered something into the horn. The horn stole his words and carried them; first slowly, but then picking up speed, spinning upwards and outwards in a growing avalanche of noise.
As the sound shook its way through the curling copper tube, the susurrations of the crowd stopped. The man’s voice reached the exploded end of the horn as a fantastic crash of noise. One spoken word, erupting over the starry eyes in the people-spiral, threw the tent’s canvas sides into spasms, and shook the ground beneath the feet of the anxious crowd:
“NEXT!”
On this signal every person in the line moved forward exactly two steps in perfectly synchronized motion. First came the communal step forward of a left foot, plashing into a rut of jelly mud, followed immediately by a right foot pickup-and-drop. Like a very long and very bored centipede, wearing thousands of sets of slightly different shoes, the line moved forward one, deliberate segment.
After the thousand-thousand-people line completed its universal rotation, and the nesting crowman kicked his feet back atop the rail, the stars dispersed. The heads turned to their individual interests. Some conversed with segments directly before or behind them in line. Others turned to distracted people-watching. One grey set was among the latter.
Mr. Grey rolled the grey eyes slowly over his immediate neighbors. Their robes - worn for a muddy day on the track - were plain, like his own. He pulled out his pocket ticker, checked the time, and put it away again. He straightened the cuffs of his robe. He dusted his shoulder. He looked around again. He pulled out the pocket ticker again. He checked his purse for the hundredth time, reassuring himself that he’d brought enough treasure. He did all of this between the time when the last echoes of the word, ‘Next!’ ended, and the conversation around him began.
What did these little gestures say about the stoic grey businessman? Perhaps he had adopted the etiquette proper to the setting. Perhaps Mr. Grey simply assumed the habits and micro-expressions natural to the wild businessman-in-line. Perhaps Mr. Grey felt nothing different in that queue than he did clickety-clacking away in his cubicle. Perhaps Mr. Grey felt quite comfortable in that dense, dreary, trudging crowd.
Or, perhaps it was the opposite case. Is it not possible that to a man like Mr. Grey; a man whose dexterous use of word-machine and quill, in that remotest corner of the cubicle hedge, displayed a respect of efficient time usage; a man who suffered sweating hands and stood terror-still before the graveyard boredom of a workers’-prison cell; a man so choked and nettled by the closeness of strangers that his stoicism failed, and spasms broke his smooth, mechanical rhythm; might it be likely, even, that Mr. Grey felt decidedly uncomfortable ‘standing in line’? Could ‘standing in line’ be, to Mr. Grey, a nightmare; bored AND surrounded by strangers? Surely Mr. Grey felt keenly attuned - in the highest possible degree - to that creeping swirl of the star-eyed galaxy; which didn’t move forward so much as it gradually sank like the celestial counterpart, towards a final entropic heat-end over millions and billions of ages. It’s highly probable, in fact, that among all the sets of starry orbs in that spiraling field, the grey pair - more keenly than any other - felt their own heat-end creeping forward remorselessly. Is it just possible that this stoic, grey man-of-businessman waiting in line, who seems most appropriate for the situation, suffers just as much as any more emotive waiter?
The answer is, yes. Mr. Grey suffered. He showed it in his continual checking of the pocket-ticker, and his continual adjustments of robe, and his repeated checks on his treasure purse. The smooth metal of the pocket ticker, and the act of withdrawing and checking it, gave Mr. Grey brief tocks of narcotic-like comfort among ages of waiting. Mr. Grey rolled up and straightened out his grey robe sleeves over and over, but the field of eyes waited for him each time. And though he’d opened and closed, and opened and closed, and opened and closed his purse time after time after time, the contents never changed.
Neither did switching attention from his person to his environment give Mr. Grey relief. The line itself - aside from the announced interludes of plodding feet in muddy ruts - served only to remind Mr. Grey of his circumstances. The Wind hadn’t shown up herself; never being disposed to stand in line. She did, however, leave some of her clouds flying overhead. They floated briskly across the sky as though in mockery of the swirl’s crawling pace. The Wind had shaped these clouds into puffy letters. “What a dashing, gripping, thrilling day at the races!” read one strand of cumuli. Another threw down the word, “NEXT!” as sarcastic shadow-letters across the upturned orbs of one region in the spiral.
Mr. Grey turned his eyes to the racetrack grounds. Muddy ruts grooved into the oval surface channeled the line of marching citizens toward one too-large tent at the center, where each set of eyes was snuffed. Staggered stone grandstands enclosed the track. They hid from view all but Starharbor’s most dominating stilt-houses and skyscrapers. At the tops of the stands, pennants flapped noisily against the sky. Mr. Grey remembered when the stone steps had been topped in cushioning seats of peonies. He remembered the banners had once flapped with livelier personalities, as they advertised new bean flavors or sponsored the highwheel racing elite. But the king abolished the races. With good reason, no doubt, though Mr. Grey couldn’t name that reason precisely. After the abolition, the track gained its new purpose of ushering the long spiral into the void of canvas tent. The grandstands lost their purpose, and were left to fallow. Now thorny brokenbottle weeds choked the steps, and every banner wore the same corporate template, with the same word in bold, blocky letters. NEXT!
Mr. Grey found small pockets of relief in eavesdropping on the chatter of his fellow sufferers. They talked of the weather, and their jobs, and wheelhouses, and treasure problems, and the cost of beans lately, and the line. All small-talk, but sometimes the interlocutors would offer a witty remark on these topics, and give Mr. Grey food for thought.
Even in the overheard dialogue, however, Mr. Grey found a vex on his senses. One topic traded through every set of lips at one point or other, with a breath made foul in Mr. Grey’s nose, was a mythical break of the Odormoats. Not ordinary civil disobedience. That wouldn’t have made gossip’s front-page. This had been a crime on a broader scale, done by a legendary outlaw. Each set of lips added some grand feature to the tale: “I heard the marble train got derailed,” “a dozen bouncers’ highwheels! Sun in a strawberry jelly pond,” “A whole mob of shoulderers for a distraction, ain’t that something,” The whispers flew back and forth in exaggerated tones. But even Mr. Grey had to admit that, in this instance, this rule breaker escaped the Odormoats in a way worth noting. Some people called it the bold move of a romantic bandit; others, a ‘failure of the administration’.
And the name of the rulebreaker? The traded name which crawled, inexorably, from every line-stander’s gossipish lips? The name which nagged Mr. Grey with every utterance, wriggling its way down his ears and prodding his grey mind, like cerebral acupuncture?
Jodee Coats. Every articulation flew from the person who spoke it; not, seemingly, for their fellow gabber’s benefit, but launched directly against Mr. Grey’s casually attending ears. Jodee Coats. Every sensory attack of the name had him checking his ticker, or adjusting his cuffs, or turning another direction. Jodee Coats. No escape; no harbor. The name pressed itself on him; wrote itself indelibly, in exaggerated history, on his lobes.
Jodee Coats. She’d ambushed him in the Cubicle Hedge, coerced him into assisting her with a visa, blamed him for her problems, and stormed out after kicking a hole in his cubicle. So what? Why should that grate so intensely on Mr. Grey? Mr. Grey knew himself blameless in miss Coats’ attitudes and actions. She broke the Odormoats and left without a visa. Why did it matter? The escape wasn’t Mr. Grey’s fault. So why the squirming at her name, Jodee Coats?
Something in the manner she’d engaged him; it chafed Mr. Grey. The way she leapt on him, in that cubicle maze, when he’d reached his assumed sanctuary of cubicle, at the end of an arduous shift in the mines. Something in his quarterly review; it pricked Mr. Grey. Jack York had saddled him with her escape, regardless of his innocence. Something in miss Coats’s refusal to listen; it struck Mr. Grey the worst. In Mr. Grey’s interview, she struck him as completely, inconsiderately, and blindly fixated on one person; herself.
Whatever the case may be, Jodee Coats’s name bothered Mr. Grey. Jodee Coats enhanced the twin discomforts of ‘close proximity to strangers’ and ‘crushing boredom’ which were waiting-in-line’s hallmarks. Mr. Grey, in this setting, felt tortured.
So preoccupied was he by discomfort, that Mr. Grey alone forgot the inciting motions of the hornblower in the crow’s nest. So distracted was he, that his twin set of antsy grey stars were the only pair in that whole, long spiral of stars which missed the hornblower sending his words into the metal funnel. Stoic Mr. Grey alone stood unready for his single stride, towards the future waiting for him in the racetrack’s inky canvas center. When the hornblast came, and the other segments stepped, Mr. Grey stumbled. His stumble cascaded to every single citizens behind him in line. Each one bumped into the citizen in front of them, all the way around the spiral. A domino-effect of trips and curses.
Mr. Grey stepped forward. He apologized many, many, many times. He shrank smaller and smaller into his shoulders. Mr. Grey stood ready, intensely focused, the next time that command shook, once more, the field of stars:
NEXT!
“Four feathers, four feathers, do I hear four feathers? Four feathers once.” The single, sharp honk of a horn sounded from one corner of a dark tent interior.
“Thank you! Five feathers. Five feathers, one calcified bug. Five feathers and one calcified bug, citizens. A steal this one.” The king’s auctioneer - a large nosed man yelling staccato words - shook a tiny leather bag covered in question mark stitching. The fortune inside rustled.
“Might be the last good fortune in the lot! Five feathers, one calcified bug. Five feathers and one calcified bug.” A halfhearted honk struggled out of another corner. The auction jumped on it.
“Thank you sir. Eight feathers. Do I hear eight feathers now? This one feels like an offer of marriage. Could be nobility in your future with this one folks! Only eight feathers. Do I hear eight feathers?”
No one sitting on the crowded, cloth folding-seats inside the stuffy tent raised their bidding horn. Even the man who’d bid the five feathers and bug seemed to have gone a step too far. His wife hammered a fist on his shoulder, and his children clung to his calves and wailed about their forthcoming destitution.
The auctioneer went on, “Eight feathers once… Eight feathers twice… Sold to the family man!”
The crowd set their horns in their laps. They summoned a meager hand-clapping and foot-stamping for the fortune’s buyer. The applause produced temporary dust cloud from the floor dirt. It mingled with the pipe smoke in the hazy tent interior. A sneeze popped off from somewhere in the crowd.
From above, one of the glass lanterns straining for light descended through the murk. A hook and pulley system dropped it to hang just over the buyer and his family. The wife and children left off attacking the man for his hasty bid. The family joined their eyes with the rest of the bidders’. They watched the auctioneer undo the strings of the fortune bag and draw a scrap of parchment.
Though he’d sold and read hundreds of these parchment wisps so far, the auctioneer maintained a chirrupy enthusiasm for each new fortune. He said, “Let’s see here… Timeframe: many workdays.”
Groans of sympathy sounded in the smoky, dusty haze. The buyer’s family looked downcast under the dropped lantern. Bad fortunes always had ambiguous timeframes.
“Now, now, no despairing yet,” the auctioneer went on. “Hear this next part. Content: The business success of a loved one will bring great happiness to you.” The lantern shone brighter on the upturned cheeks of the man and his family, ‘great happiness’ being a rare get. The auctioneer ended the fortune reading with, “Terms and Conditions: You must kick an old habit or start a new hobby.”
The man didn’t seem put out by this last snag. He moved up to the auctioneer’s stage with his wife and children to receive his fortune. The family left the smoky tent, after taking the parchment scrap and paying their treasure to a clerk in the corner; one fortune richer, five feathers and one calcified bug poorer. A second applause pattered through the tent as they exited.
Mr. Grey stopped clapping at the exact midpoint in the applause’s fade. He set his left hand stiff and straight at his side. He picked up his bidding horn with the right. The tiny, curling instrument perfectly resembled its father horn, now unseen in its mounting place on the tent’s crow’s nest.
Light smote the million particles of dust and smoke flowing through the air, as the tent flap opened for an ephemeral flash and another citizen ducked in to replace the most recent buyer. The bag boy rushed over to the auctioneer with the next question-marked bag, served it up to him in both hands, and crouch-sprinted back to kneel at the side of the stage.
The auctioneers gave the fortune sack a few test shakes. He said, “I don’t know my dears… I’d say we’re close to the unfortunate dregs… Reallytruly, this one sounds like the last good one for a while. Worth a little extra treasure!”
Mr. Grey, sitting in his usual attitude, craned his neck in the way of a giraffe. Over the heads of the crowd he looked beside the stage. In the dim, smoky haze, Mr. Grey could just see the pile of fortune bags. The little leather sacks snuggled with each other like a massive litter of fresh cats. The pile, though still large, shrank with every fortune sold.
Mr. Grey adjusted his horn for ease of tooting. He took deep, preparatory breaths through his nose. He had resolved to get a good fortune at this age’s auction, even if it cost great treasure.
The auctioneer shook the question bag one final time. “Bidding starts at three shiny pebbles. Do I hear… Thank you very much madam. Five shiny pebbles and a bookmark, please. Flamelight robbery. Five shiny pebbles and a bookmark. Five… no need for solos sir, I hear you, indeed! Can I get two feathers and a teaspoon of cinnamon? Two feathers, teaspoon of cinnamon people!”
The initial bids came quick over each other. Soon the fortune rose to a treasure price of three feathers, a dash of salt, and two bookmarks. Mr. Grey tried honking his bid twice while the price climbed. Mr. Grey’s honks, however, had the perpetual misfortune of coming in at the same time as someone else’s. Coupled with Mr. Grey blowing his bids in the quietest note possible, and other people placed theirs with long and loud blasts on the horn, and little wonder it is that the auctioneer overlooked Mr. Grey.
But Mr. Grey had resolved on getting this fortune. He finally managed a louder blow than his competition. The auctioneer nodded his way and said, “A fine bid from ‘the man who came prepared’,” This nickname resulted from Mr. Grey having been quick and efficient when ushered into the tent (Mr. Grey came with every single auction document filled and signed beforehand, zero errors). The auctioneer continued uninterrupted, “Do I hear three bookmarks and a shiny pebble now? Three bookmarks, one shiny pebble. Going once? Ah, good sense from the man with the nose. How about one novelty spoon, three calcified bugs…”
Mr. Grey lost the bid. He relaxed his grip on the horn. He considered taking it further. Novelty spoons, however, were almost grand treasure, not to mention three calcified bugs. Such a bid would almost empty his purse, and Mr. Grey wanted a little treasure left over. He wanted a fine bean supper from an inn on the way back to prison. He let this fortune slide, hoping for something a little more in his price range later on. He could still get lucky with a modest - or even a good - fortune somewhere in the pile’s scraps.
When the bidding stopped, Mr. Grey felt vindicated abandoning the fortune. The auctioneer had wheedled the price to three full novelty spoons! The woman who’d bought this fortune looked young beneath the light of a descended lantern. She wore a frying-pan-patterned robe common to middle class citizens, and an anxious smile.
The auctioneer squinted at her through the smoke as he pulled the fortune from the bag. He said, “No doubt it’s good, miss. Surely a good one! Here we go; Timeframe: By the light of the next full moon.”
The crowd felt uncertain of this timeframe. It could have meant ‘before the next full moon’, which wasn’t far off. Or perhaps ‘when the full moon’s light was actually visible’ which couldn’t be predicted, since The Wind constantly dragged her clouds over the sky.
The auctioneer cleared his throat and resumed. “Content: Vast wealth will be yours.”
A few voices cheered. The woman choked back a sob. Vast wealth was the rarest fortune.
“And… oh dear. Well, ahem. Terms and Conditions: You must apply great effort to your daily labor.”
A susurration of sighs and groans disturbed the smog of dust and smoke. The young woman’s body folded as though she were a puppet, and her marionetteer had quit for lunch. A nearby elderly lady rushed to support her. In a tone of almost genuine sympathy, the auctioneer said, “Now, now my dear. Buck up! It’s not a bad fortune! ‘Good things come,’ they say…”
It was, however, a bad fortune. Essentially, worthless. The added condition of, “you must apply great effort to your daily labor,” altered the entire translation for the worse. In common parlance, the fortune said, ‘If you work more, you’ll get paid more.’ Instead of great wealth, the fortune now offered emotional support. The young woman’s costly fortune had all the value of a motivational office poster - as though some finders’ office had singled out this eager young buyer, in her commoner robe of frying pans, lured her with the promise of found fortune, taken as their fee her precious three spoons, and given the financial advice of, ‘hang in there’.
The overcome woman composed herself with her elderly neighbor’s aid. She walked up, accepted her expensive fortune as one receiving a court sentence, and departed.
Mr. Grey clapped his dry hands together in the same neutral manner. He noticed as she left, however, a subtle change in the crowd’s applause. There now seemed a sarcastic undertone to the clapping. Mr. Grey glanced at his nearest neighbors. He could just see their expressions through the semi-translucent smoke. He saw furrowed brows, narrowed eyes, and tightened jaws. These were faces one found only on skyscraper crenellations in the twisted aspect of a gargoyle; not faces one saw in Starharbor’s low herds. These faces took that fortune personally, as an offense on their own existences. The bidders wore grim and discontented looks, like those he’d noticed on certain tavern patrons, just before the riots.
Mr. Grey’s ears - sharper after his performance review in Jack York’s office - had picked up on this collective anger’s cause in the prior days. The ears snatched it; from the whispers of passing pedestrians under his workers’ prison window; from the shushed conversations of tram passengers; from the idle banter in the fortune line. The ears rang with the words, ‘manipulated fortunes’. People blamed the king. The king and all his men made cheap fortunes, said the whispers to the ears, with terms and conditions designed to get people working harder for less reward.
Tempers only burned hotter since buying a fortune from the regular auctions had become a lawful obligation of every Starharborean. The king’s fortune tellers were generous enough to write the exact right number of fortunes for the whole population. Anyone who didn’t or couldn’t pay for the earlier stock, however, or who arrived at the auctions late, or who simply had bad luck in their purchase, got mis-fortunes. These were ominous portents predicting financial ruin, or even (in extreme cases) non-existence.
Mr. Grey didn’t want to be in this smoky, dark, cramped tent if the bidders rioted. Nor did he want misfortune through waiting too long. Mr. Grey felt he needed a fortune, fast.
When the next citizen in the spiral line outside had entered, and the bag boy had brought the auctioneer the next fortune, the auctioneer began the bidding. “This’ll be a nice one fellas. A balance to that last stinker. No question!”
Mr. Grey’s horn resounded fiercely among the bidders. Several times did the auctioneer offer his gratitude to, “the man who came prepared.” The bid went from 3 calcified bugs, to 1 bookmark and 2 feathers, unexpectedly back to 3 calcified bugs (the auctioneer had mistaken the call of a migrating goose flying over the tent for a horn’s honk), then all the way up to a novelty spoon and a feather.
Mr. Grey stood fast at every new sum. The lighter greyness of his right knuckles stood out against the brass horn, while the left hand clutched his treasure purse in a strangle. Mr. Grey held firm, and each time the bid traveled higher, Mr. Grey dogged it with a sharp horn blow.
The auctioneer said, “Going thrice… Sold! To the man who came prepared. A fine fortune to be sure. All for a novelty spoon, a sprinkle of cinnamon, two calcified bugs, and one single feather!”
Mr. Grey realized he didn’t have the cinnamon on him. He would have to make change for one of his bookmarks.
At last, Mr. Grey had his fortune. His costly fortune… He’d need to pinch pebbles on the inn meal. But he’d got it done.
Mr. Grey waited for the reading. He set down the bidding horn. He checked the time on his pocket ticker. He put the ticker right back in its pocket, but kept his hand wrapped comfortably around its metal surface.
The polite clapping subsided. A lantern descended to spotlight Mr. Grey. The auctioneer pulled the strings of the fortune bag wide. Out came the scrap of parchment. The auctioneer’s eyes skimmed it. He looked up at Mr. Grey. He looked back at the parchment.
The auctioneer laughed once, unmistakably. Humor stretched his face. He tried to pass it off as a cough, beating his chest several times, and struggling to control his smile. Then the auctioneers read Mr. Grey’s fortune.
“Timeframe: long.” One audience member jumped up in the haze, sympathetically outraged at the barefaced laziness of that fortune’s writer. A nearby city bouncer’s shifting motion coerced the irate man back to his seat.
The Auctioneer went on. “Content: Great changes will soon come into your existence.” This was a valueless fortune, no mistake. A man seated behind Mr. Grey patted him on the shoulder; Mr. Grey fidgeted at the unexpected touch. He listened attentively for the last piece, hoping for some small consolation, some easy set of terms and conditions.
As the auctioneer read the final part of the fortune, he revealed the source of his good humor. “Terms and Conditions: you must exit your comfort zone.”