A Company of Heroes Book Five: The Space Cadet (4 page)

Young Pilnipott decided to become a criminal mastermind.

Establishing himself proved to be a slow process, for he had to convince those who had hitherto considered him a laughingstock to now consider him a genius and become his willing and subservient accomplices. To overcome this formidable difficulty, he formulated a sublime plan, meticulously worked out over a period of months in every conceivable detail. Its rewards, if the scheme were successfully performed, would be great—certainly greater than anything his prospective collaborators had ever received from their petty crimes. As an additional inducement, he declined any personal gain: his accomplices could share among themselves all of the profits. This latter was considered an almost inconceivable largess.

Initially skeptical, the others could not help but be impressed by the detail of the plan, its promised reward and the bland confidence of its inventor. They accepted the scheme, said they’d give it a try and then they’d see.

It seems almost unnecessary to say that Pilnipott’s idea was a success and that his collaborationists, impressed beyond all expressing, even had they been that articulate, came back to him—and not merely as equals, but with the fawning respect due a true leader. And, of course, they readily agreed to split any future proceeds.

This satisfied Pilnipott—who had immediately insisted on the
nom de crime
of The Fox—through his teens and early twenties, but there came gradually a niggling dissatisfaction. He became aware of a lack of
absolute
control that kept his schemes from being performed with the faultlessness that he expected and demanded. No matter how perfectly formed were his plans, no matter that every possible contingency was allowed for, however unlikely, there was always one factor over which he had little or no control and that was that he had to depend upon others to carry out his perfectly-conceived crime—yet he was of necessity forced to employ the labor that was available—rather like a master architect who has to rely on retarded children to construct his buildings. However adept The Fox’s associates may be, however experienced, adroit and clever, they were nevertheless contaminated by unknown frailties, loyalties and motives. He found this annoyingly unacceptable.

Being a genius, The Fox quickly invented a solution that was as epic as it was brilliant. He would create his own gang as literally as a sculptor creates his own models from raw clay, molding and shaping to suit himself and no other.

The first experiment took years before he was assured that it would, indeed, work. He had an infant kidnaped and brought to his headquarters. Here, he had it cared for by an old woman (whom many thought was his mother but was not) until it was old enough to begin its training—which would be sometime between its twelfth and eighteenth month, The Fox determined.

Every night, Pilnipott read bedtime stories to the child—carefully chosen from his own highly idiosyncratic library of criminous books and periodicals. In addition, he took some considerable creative pleasure in recasting fairy tales, folk stories, legends and myths in a more criminal light. By the time the child was old enough to read on his own, it had its own peculiar literary slant well-developed, to say nothing of a coterie of outlaw heroes. Where other children dreamed of emulating Captain Truly Ironheart, the Savior of Woldercan, Pilnipott’s protégé worshiped Scarface Dan, the Demon Highwayman. Even more important than the humanities was the child’s practical education. His instructors were the elder pickpockets, thieves and confidence artists who, though respected and acknowledged masters of their craft, were finding their effectiveness hampered by the various infirmities of age. All of them were glad of The Fox’s offer. Better, they thought, that their efforts be rewarded by passing their experience and skill to a new generation than by spending their declining years in prison, betrayed by trembling fingers, tardy reflexes and meandering thoughts, wasting their considerable talents sewing gloves or assembling mailbags.

While the child was still barely able to walk on his own, Pilnipott rented him to various mendicants, beggars and confidence artists. These were delighted to have the use of a chubby, golden-haired, patently innocent waif and readily put him to any number of imaginative uses. Lomza Lohardarga, a beggar who had perfected the art of appearing completely legless, found her income more than doubled through no more effort on her part than holding an infant in her arms. Where a citizen would have passed by her with scarcely a downward glance—or perhaps a glare of annoyance when they found their busy path impeded by her unpleasantly truncated body—they now found their coins attracted to the radiantly-smiling babe like a needle to a magnet. “Fwank ‘oo kin’ thir,” the infant would lisp. “Mufoom bwess ‘oo.” Only the hardest hearts were able to turn away with a dry eye.

Broffol de Wet, a cat burglar of legendary repute, trained the child to slither through gates, railings, grilles and ventilators, allowing him unobtrusive, clueless access to hitherto inaccessible plunder in a crime spree that confounded police for more than a decade. Raoul Wo-Wo and his partner Esdraelon L. Hoorn, the most accomplished bunco-artists in Guesclin, found that a child added an invaluable aura of verisimilitude to their scams. They offered to purchase the boy outright and although the sum was a staggering one, Pilnipott gently but firmly refused.

At the same time The Fox’s protégé was being gainfully if illegally employed, his higher education was continued by the practical example of some of the most accomplished criminals in the country. By the time that the boy was four or five years old, Pilnipott had no fear of sending him out with only his own wit and devices to guide him. When after the first week The Fox contemplated, with some amazement, the accumulated loot representing the unaided efforts of his creation, he knew that his scheme had been vindicated.

He then advertised widely among the kidnappers and baby brokers, picking and choosing as carefully as a finicky shopper selecting a melon. The dozen or so infants thus selected every six months were transported to Pilnipott’s headquarters in the Transmoltus. There, for eighteen months, they were taken care of with, if not kindness, at least the bland, indifferent attention a dairy farmer would give a profitable herd. A high-ceilinged loft over a sponge warehouse had been transformed into a rudimentary nursery, given over to the care of the half-crippled hag who may or may not have been The Fox’s mother. In exchange for a daily quart of gin she saw that the infants were fed, if irregularly, and cleaned perhaps less often than absolutely necessary. The Fox, who maintained his own apartments three floors above, was not inconvenienced by either of these derelictions. Indeed, once he knew that his experiment was viable, he took no especial interest whatsoever in any of his charges for the first year and a half. After that, his only interest lay in the weekly accounting of their income. He trusted in his genius and the smoothly operating machine he had created.

For the remaining decades of his life, Hipner Pilnipott devoted himself to writing his memoirs, an encyclopedia of criminal techniques and a long-running series of popular teenage romances.

But let it not be thought that the children were in any way abused or maltreated or that they lived in conditions that were particularly substandard—at least as compared to what they would have suffered if left in their original environments, had they survived at all. Indeed, given the increasingly bilateral state of Tamlaghtese economy—the rapidity with which its population was being divided into two classes: the very small number who were benefitting directly from the introduction of spaceflight
versus
everyone else—Pilnipott’s children actually fared better than the largest proportion of the citizenry. He made certain they realized and appreciated this and that they grew up to despise the plump, pink children who were being pampered like suckling piglets in the big houses across the river and smugly confident they were more fortunate than the gaunt children scavaging ashcans in Transmoltan alleys. Pilnipott’s children, repeated assured that this contempt was real, hated tenfold in return.

The Fox’s progeny gazed, from their loftily assumed position, with disdain upon those on whom they preyed. They were educated, skilled, appreciated, feared, invisible—a special, unique class of their own and Pilnipott was scrupulous in making certain they never forgot that.

As soon as the children were able to walk, or at least stand unaided, they were expected to begin repaying The Fox for his generosity. For half a day, from dawn to noon, they underwent intense indoctrination by the Faculty. They were taught to read, write and reckon, for The Fox recognized the criminal utility of literacy (the need, for example, to write a ransom note or perhaps a memo informing a teller that she’s being held up. There was no excuse, The Fox earnestly believed, for these things not to be done in the best penmanship. To do otherwise offended his sense of the aesthetic. Slovenliness in details reflected upon
him
). For the remainder of the day, from noon until whenever they were returned, the children were leased out, as we have seen, to beggars, charlatans and shoplifters, who found the presence of a dewy-eyed toddler adding verisimilitude and engendering trust, or found tiny fingers or slim, lithe bodies useful in any number of ways. Those children who had some talent for mimicry or acting commanded the highest prices, for they could be trained to impersonate the blind, crippled or otherwise handicapped. These were allowed to attend special classes on prosthetic makeup and appliances, enabling them to all the better impersonate the afflicted. The older children, from eighteen months to two years or so, he allowed to operate independently if they showed sufficient talent and ability and these he released into the streets like an army of light-fingered monkeys. So confident was he in their indoctrination that he never doubted their trustworthiness.

Somewhere between the ages of five and ten, the children were allowed to fend for themselves, turned out to make room for the next generation—but were beholden for life to The Fox for seven-eighths of their income—and so well-trained were they that few, if any, questioned the fairness of such an exorbitant tithe. There were those, of course, who rebelled, and they simply were not seen again for The Fox did not allow paternal instincts to interfere with business, and none of the children questioned this, either.

At the time Mr. Gerber sold the child who was to become Captain Judikha to Hipner Pilnipott, the latter had been operating his syndicate for more than thirty-five years and had turned whole armies of larcenous urchins onto the streets; indeed, there was much to support the suggestion that in all likelihood the entire criminal class of the Transmoltus—and a dozen other cities both in Tamlaght and on the Continent—had its origins in the nurseries of The Fox.

Gerber depended upon his quarterly sales of ten to fifteen infants to The Fox for the greater part of his business. No more so than this particular time when his wagon held less than a third of its usual capacity. His accustomed sources had disappointed him terribly—mostly due to the combined effects of the drought and the volcano. Had he even suspected the appearance of the latter he certainly would have taken the northerly and easterly routes. He hadn’t, of course, and had instead found himself wandering uselessly around a blistered and fruitless landscape. So it goes.

Upon his arrival in the Transmoltus, he carefully pruned his stock—what was left, of course, after natural attrition. Some of the survivors were so sickly he knew there would be no point in showing them to The Fox. These he let go to his discounters at a loss. This left him with a miserable fifteen or so—a scant fraction of his usual selection. The Fox would be terribly disappointed, but there it was.

He had this dozen-odd cleaned up and kept them for a few days to give them a chance to fatten a touch, gritting his teeth at the cost of the milk, even though he purchased the soured, clotted, plaster-adulterated stuff at a considerable discount.

The Fox was, as Gerber half expected he would be, very disappointed.

“Hardly a decent showing this season,” he said, hands clasped behind his back, rocking on the balls of his feet, two sure signs that he was annoyed.

“Scant pickings, what with the drought and all,” Gerber explained, aggravated at having to apologize. “And the volcano.”

“Surely people haven’t stopped breeding? You’d think with all the farms dried up they’d have nothing else to do with their time.”

“So I would have thought,” agreed the broker, “but such did not prove to be the case.”

“Well, let’s see what we have then.”

The Fox waddled up and down the line of baskets that Gerber had placed in a neat row on the floor. He paced with his hands clasped lightly behind his back, his short arms barely allowing him to do this, stopping occasionally to rock back and forth on his little feet, as he considered first one infant, than another. He made little clucking noises with his tongue that made Gerber’s sweaty fists clench.

“All things considered,” The Fox said, finally, “it’s not a bad collection, even given the small number.”

“Thank you,” replied the broker, reluctant to acknowledge a welling surge of relief.

“Well, let’s see here. Might as well get right down to business.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hm. I’ll take these first three here. And that one. Um, that one. Those two. How many is that?”

“Uh, seven, Mr. The Fox, sir.”

“Hm. This one looks likely. And those two, and the one next to those, and...hm...oh, that one, too, I suppose.”

“That’s twelve, sir,” offered Gerber, scarcely able to believe his luck—and The Fox did not yet appear to be finished!

“Twelve, eh? Well...I rather fancied that one and that one too. Might as well take ‘em. How many’s that, now?”

“Fourteen, sir.”
Holy Musrum!

“Fine. Five crowns each, as usual? That’s, uh...”

“Seventy crowns, Mr. The Fox, sir.”

“Come on to my office and I’ll get the money for you.”

“Mr. The Fox, sir, why don’t you take one more, as a bonus? The last child? As my gift, as a, a kind of thank-you? Make it fifteen altogether.”