The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers Read Online Free Page A

needed no sensing whatsoever, as it was clearly written in the girl’s every action.) He feared that if he let her within his guard, she would one day go further than she was ready to, and would then scream rape. Or, alternatively, that she would go hardly any distance at all, and that he would then yield to temptation and rape her in truth.
    Why did the young man take this business of rape so seriously? He was not one of those earnest young philosophers who pass through a phase of diligent asceticism at the age of eighteen. No: it was a survivor’s caution which governed his flesh.
    Chegory Guy was, as we have said already, an Ebrell Islander. By breeding at least, though not by birth. Yes, though Chegory Guy had been born on Untunchilamon, his parents had both been of Ebrell Island stock. Now the Ebrell Islanders are a race of drunkards, knifefighters and fornicators cursed by a genetic tendency to wanton dissipation. You doubt this? Are you then one of these Ashdan liberals who hold that hereditary traits are but illusory, and who believe (or at least claim to believe) that all things are possible for all people? Read on! And you will be enlightened.
    The Ebrell Islanders had long been a troublesome minority on Untunchilamon. They had always been for the most part unemployed. Gambling, drug abuse, violence and venereal disease were rife amongst them. They were customarily involved in smuggling, theft, prostitution, extortion and organised crime. They were a cancerous blotch upon civilisation.
    Therefore, when Chegory Guy was but nine years of age, the wise and magnanimous Wazir Sin had organised a pogrom against the Ebbies. The slaughter had been efficient in the extreme, and only a few of the underpeople had escaped into the wilderness. Among those few were the nine-year-old Chegory Guy, his father, his uncle Dunash Labrat and his cousin Ham.
    Strangely, the slaughter of the Ebrell Islanders failed to end unemployment, crime and prostitution in Injiltaprajura. Wazir Sin was vexed. He decided he had not gone far enough. So he drew up a Program of Purification. First he would hunt down any and all Ebbies who had fled into the Wastelands. Then he would slaughter the few survivors of the Dagrin - the aboriginal race of Untunchilamon. Then he would kill the crippled, the insane, the mutant, and anyone over the age of seventy. Then he would—
    But it is pointless to detail further this Noble Experiment, for it was not to be. Before the saintly Wazir Sin could enact his visionary program, the horrors of Talonsklavara threw the Izdimir Empire into disarray. The Yudonic Knight Lonstantine Thrug took advantage of the confusion, overthrew the innocent Sin, then murdered that upright imperial servant. Two years later, Thrug was imprisoned in the Dromdanjerie when his mounting insanity had reached the point where it had become undeniable. His daughter Justina installed herself in the belfried palace at the top of Lak Street and proclaimed an amnesty so general that its provisions extended even to the few remaining Ebrell Islanders.
    Some of the Ebrell Islanders who still survived in the wilderness returned to Injiltaprajura. Dunash Labrat came home to reclaim his properties, which had been managed in his absence by his wife. Though Chegory Guy’s father stayed in the heartland of the Scorpion Desert, Chegory himself came back to Injiltaprajura with his uncle (the aforesaid Dunash Labrat), and began an apprenticeship as an apiarist. This was aborted when young Chegory proved to be allergic to bee stings. Thereafter he took various forms of irregular employment until at last he landed himself a steady job on the island of Jod.
    On Jod, Chegory came into contact with Ivan Pokrov, and thus met Pokrov’s friend Jon Qasaba. An Ashdan. An Ashdan liberal, in fact. Jon Qasaba and his sister-in-law Artemis Ingalawa found the civilisation of Chegory Guy to be a project which appealed to their hopelessly optimistic liberal tastes. They