Reaper Man

own mind best,” he mumbled.
    Y ES .
    “Then it’ll just be, oh, call it a farthing for the scythe,” Simnel gabbled. “Sorry about that, but it’ll use a lot of coals, you see, and those dwarfs keep winding up the price of—”
    H ERE . I T MUST BE DONE BY TONIGHT .
    Simnel didn’t argue. Arguing would mean that Bill Door remained in the forge, and he was getting quite anxious that this should not be so. “Fine, fine.”
    Y OU UNDERSTAND ? “Right. Right.”
    F AREWELL , said Bill Door solemnly, and left.
    Simnel shut the doors after him, and leaned against them. Whew. Nice man, of course, everyone was talking about him, it was just that after a couple of minutes in his presence you got a pin-and-needles sensation that someone was walking over your grave and it hadn’t even been dug yet.
    He wandered across the oily floor, filled the tea kettle and wedged it on a corner of the forge. He picked up a spanner to do some final adjustments to the Combination Harvester, and spotted the scythe leaning against the wall.
    He tiptoed toward it, and realized that tiptoeing was an amazingly stupid thing to do. It wasn’t alive. It couldn’t hear. It just looked sharp.
    He raised the spanner, and felt guilty about it. But Mr. Door had said—well, Mr. Door had said something very odd, using the wrong sort of words to use in talking about a mere implement. But he could hardly object to this.
    Simnel brought the spanner down hard.
    There was no resistance. He would have sworn, again, that the spanner sheared in two, as though it was made of bread, several inches from the edge of the blade.
    He wondered if something could be so sharp that it began to possess, not just a sharp edge, but the very essence of sharpness itself, a field of absolute sharpness that actually extended beyond the last atoms of metal.

    And then he remembered that this was sloppy and superstitious thinking for a man who knew how to bevel a three-eighths Gripley. You knew where you were with a reciprocating linkage. It either worked or it didn’t. It certainly didn’t present you with mysteries.
    He looked proudly at the Combination Harvester. Of course, you needed a horse to pull it. That spoiled things a bit. Horses belonged to Yesterday; Tomorrow belonged to the Combination Harvester and its descendants, which would make the world a cleaner and better place. It was just a matter of taking the horse out of the equation. He’d tried clockwork, and that wasn’t powerful enough. Maybe if he tried winding a—
    Behind him, the kettle boiled over and put the fire out.
    Simnel fought his way through the steam. That was the bloody trouble, every time. Whenever someone was trying to do a bit of sensible thinking, there was always some pointless distraction.

    Mrs. Cake drew the curtains.
    “Who exactly is One-Man-Bucket?” said Windle.
    She lit a couple of candles and sat down.
    “’E belonged to one of them heathen Howondaland tribes,” she said shortly.
    “Very strange name, One-Man-Bucket,” said Windle.
    “It’s not ’is full name,” said Mrs. Cake darkly. “Now, we’ve got to ’old ’ands.” She looked at him speculatively. “We need someone else.”
    “I could call Schleppel,” said Windle.
    “I ain’t ’aving no bogey under my table trying to look up me drawers,” said Mrs. Cake. “Ludmilla!” she shouted. After a moment or two the bead curtain leading into the kitchen was swept aside and the young woman who had originally opened the door to Windle came in.
    “Yes, mother?”
    “Sit down, girl. We need another one for the seancing.”
    “Yes, mother.”
    The girl smiled at Windle.
    “This is Ludmilla,” said Mrs. Cake shortly.
    “Charmed, I’m sure,” said Windle. Ludmilla gave him the bright, crystalline smile perfected by people who had long ago learned not to let their feelings show.
    “We have already met,” said Windle. It must be at least a day since full moon, he thought. All the signs are nearly gone. Nearly. Well, well, well…
    “She’s my shame,” said Mrs. Cake.
    “Mother, you do go on,” said Ludmilla, without rancor.
    “Join hands,” said Mrs. Cake.
    They sat in the semi-darkness. Then Windle felt Mrs. Cake’s hand being pulled away.
    “Oi forgot about the glass,” she said.
    “I thought, Mrs. Cake, that you didn’t hold with ouija boards and that sort of—” Windle began. There was a glugging noise from the sideboard. Mrs. Cake put a full glass on the tablecloth and sat down