Hellsborough Exposed — chronicles

Van, on the voice inside a humidity plant that questioned him after he escaped the swamp:

"Your statements are remarkable. You seem to be speaking the truth, and it is clear that you are not of The Dark Peak."

"I can ascertain this by the conformation of your cerebral structures and the exotic positioning of your internal organs and the shape and size of your heart."

"Tha can see through me?"

"Yes, I can see all but your thoughts; if you was of The Dark Peak, I would be able to read those too."

Watching John Shalesmoor fidget behind the bar, I made the mistake of reaching for an off-world idiom:

"He looks like he's got ants in his pants, as we'd say in the off-world," I said.

"Ants?"

"Little critters, like wasps without wings, except some of them do have wings, when it's hot in full Fecunder."

"Wasps?!" said Van, a little too loudly. "It is the prophesy," he hissed through his teeth.

"No Van, it's just a saying from the off-world."

A blinking steel ball rolled up to our table, and I was sure somebody had sent a bomb. "So what's this then Pip?" said Van, looking down at it. "Looks like a gutterball to me." "What's a gutterball?" Van reached down and picked it up. "No Van!" "No what? He's all reyt, look, he's purring."

Van Hallam named me his trusted first lieutenant over a Double IPA at a table serviced by Foul Linda, while most of the bitterfinger sat close enough to hear. His reasoning, delivered with the confidence of someone who has never once considered they might be wrong: the others were reactive, he said — none of them had that yearnin' for learnin'. I have since learned that this is Van's standard method: compliment freely, then wait for you to make the thing he wants seem like your own idea.

Van Hallam has arrived at the Ripperthroats, which is either a great honour or a catastrophic administrative error, and the distinction matters less than you might expect once you are there. All denizens make this journey eventually, along the River Dun, and the milting at the Ripperthroats are not the meek, peripheral creatures they are on the surface. They leave the running of the place to the denizens. They keep an eye on things. Nobody knows what the eye is for. Nobody who has asked has returned to report.

Pip Rippon was absent for three weeks following the exacid removal — taken, returned, no memory of the interval whatsoever. Van described this as expected and produced rockcrust. What Pip had missed, Van noted, included the Days wi'out names, which Van described as "all the fun" and did not immediately elaborate on.