The Truth

and held out a hand. “’S’right, Mister Push. Don’t try the blarney gobble on me, juggins, I told ’em, I ain’t slanging the gentry, bugrit. Millennium hand and shrimp. Dang.”
    “Woof.”
    William glared at the dog again.
    “Growl,” it said.
    Gunilla scratched somewhere in the recesses of his beard.
    “One thing I already noticed about this here town,” he said, “is that people’ll buy practically anything off a man in the street.”
    He picked up a handful of the news sheets, still damp from the press.
    “Can you understand me, mister?” he said.
    “Bugrit.”
    Gunilla nudged William in the ribs. “Does that mean yes or no, d’you think?”
    “Probably yes.”
    “Okay. Well, see here now, if you sell these things at, oh, twenty pence each, you can keep—”
    “Hey, you can’t sell it that cheap,” said William.
    “Why not?”
    “Why? Because…because…because, well, anyone will be able to read it, that’s why!”
    “Good, ’cos that means anyone’ll be able to pay twenty pence,” said Gunilla calmly. “There’s lots more poor folk than rich folk and it’s easier to get money out of ’em.” He grimaced at Foul Ole Ron. “This may seem a strange question,” he said, “but have you got any friends?”
    “I told ’em! I told ’em! Bug’rem!”
    “Probably yes,” said William. “He hangs out with a bunch of…er…unfortunates that live under one of the bridges. Well, not exactly ‘hangs out.’ More ‘droops.’”
    “Well, now,” said Gunilla, waving the copy of the Times at Ron, “you can tell them that if they can sell these to people for twenty pence each, I’ll let you keep one nice shiny penny.”
    “Yeah? And you can put yer nice shiny penny where the sun don’t shine,” said Ron.
    “Oh, so you—” Gunilla began. William laid a hand on his arm.
    “Sorry, just a minute—What was that you said, Ron?” he said.
    “Bugrit,” said Foul Ole Ron.
    It had sounded like Ron’s voice and it had seemed to come from the general area of Ron’s face, it was just that it had demonstrated a coherence you didn’t often get.
    “You want more than a penny?” said William carefully.
    “Got to be worth five pence a time,” said Ron. More or less.
    For some reason William’s gaze was dragged down to the small gray dog. It returned it amiably and said “Woof?”
    He looked back up again.
    “Are you all right, Foul Ole Ron?” he said.
    “Gottle o’geer, gottle o’geer,” said Ron mysteriously.
    “All right…two pence,” said Gunilla.
    “Four,” Ron seemed to say. “But let’s not mess about, okay? One dollar per thirty?”
    “It’s a deal,” said Goodmountain, who spat on his hand and would have held it out to seal the contract if William hadn’t gripped it urgently.
    “Don’t.”
    “What’s wrong?”
    William sighed. “Have you got any horribly disfiguring diseases?”
    “No!”
    “Do you want some?”
    “Oh.” Gunilla lowered his hand. “You tell your friends to get round here right now, okay?” he said. He turned to William.
    “Trustworthy, are they?”
    “Well… sort of,” said William. “It’s probably not a good idea to leave paint thinners around.”
    Outside, Foul Ole Ron and his dog ambled down the street. And the strange thing was that a conversation was going on, even though there was technically only one person there.
    “See? I told you. You just let me do the talkin’, all right?”
    “Bugrit.”
    “Right. You stick with me and you won’t go far wrong.”
    “Bugrit.”
    “Really? Well, I spose that’ll have to do. Bark, bark.”

    Twelve people lived under the Misbegot Bridge and in a life of luxury, although luxury is not hard to achieve when you define it as something to eat at least once a day and especially when you have such a broad definition of “something to eat.” Technically they were beggars, although they seldom had to beg. Possibly they were thieves, although they only took what had been thrown away, usually by people hurrying to be out of their presence. Outsiders considered that the leader of the group was Coffin Henry, who would have been the city’s champion expectorator if anyone else had wanted the title. But the group had the true democracy of the voteless. There was Arnold Sideways, whose lack of legs only served to give him an extra advantage in any pub fight, where a man with good teeth at groin height had it all his own way. And if it wasn’t for the duck whose presence on