Malone was hungry.

The big cooked breakfast he'd shared with the Brigadier was two days away, and he'd barely eaten since. He still had most of the money he'd given him, so he could buy himself a nice not pie or a bowl of thick, chunky soup if he wanted, but he didn't like the idea of being left penniless and so was keeping it in reserve, hoping to find paid work before he was forced to use it. So long as he still had money, he had a good, legal and respectable way of feeding himself. Once it was gone, though, he would be forced to make a painful choice. Either steal food, or go back to the embassy and admit defeat. The Brigadier would take pity on him, he knew. Give him a good meal, fill his ears with comforting words about how many destitute people starved in the world's greatest city every day, tell him that failing in his mission was no shame. There would be shame, though. Immense shame, and Malone was damned if he would let it come to that. Starving would be preferable. He might even steal food if that was what it took. He was, after all, on a mission to save all civilisation. A little theft, from people who could well afford it, was perfectly justified in pursuit of such an important mission.

He'd been turned away from twenty factories already that day. Factories filled with hundreds of hopeless workers labouring eighteen hours a day until their bodies were broken and crippled, to produce goods and items that the rich took for granted and used with casual indifference. Virtual slaves who took the factory jobs because they literally had no other choice and whose greatest terror was that they would commit some trivial offence that would get them fired, to starve on the streets. To become shrunken corpses that more fortunate people would step over while barely noticing until they were carried away by the street cleaners and thrown into the municipal funeral pit. Being turned away, again and again, from factories like that, because the foremen clearly thought he'd been sacked from somewhere else and that he must be a troublemaker, was eating away at his self respect, his sense of self worth. What kind of hopeless loser must he be if he couldn’t even find work at a place like that?

The trouble was, it was precisely his self respect and sense of self worth that were the problem, and he was bright enough to know it. The foreman would see that sense of self worth glowing inside him and would interpret it as cocky arrogance, a devil may care attitude that would spell trouble in the future. What they wanted were people without self respect. People who'd had every trace of it crushed out of them, who'd been left hopeless and desperate until they would do anything for employment, no matter how arduous or dangerous. If he was going to successfully infiltrate the city's workforce, that was the kind of person he was going to have to appear to be. After two days, therefore, Malone was finally coming to realise what he was going to have to do.

The street he was walking down was a bare stone canyon, so tall and narrow that the sky was nothing but a tiny strip of blue high overhead. The ground was crushed stone that had settled and compacted so firmly over the years that it was like walking on bedrock in which carriage wheels had worn two sets of deep ruts. The walls on either side of him were bare obsidian, completely unadorned, with only the occasional plain wooden door and small window through which nothing but grimy darkness could be seen. Sounds came from behind them. The humming of machinery, the clacks and clatter of something moving rhythmically, all so loud that deafness must have been an occupational hazard for the poor wretches doomed to work there. Clothes mills, Malone deduced. Cloth and fabric was being made behind those doors, cloth to make the fine clothes he and the Brigadier had become accustomed to wearing. He felt a little sick inside. All those years, he'd never thought about where those clothes came from. If anyone had asked him, he'd probably have imagined a group of small family businesses, each one a husband and wife, maybe a couple of adopted animals, chatting happily about the day’s gossip while they operated the machinery. He'd never imagined anything like this, the amount of sheer human misery that lay behind the simplest red jacket, the finest lace trimmed shirt. I've led a sheltered life, he realised. The Brigadier's protected me from the harsh realities of our civilisation. Now I'm seeing the truth of it.

There was a drunk lying in the street ahead of him. A crumpled mass of clothing from which a thin, pale hand emerged gripping a bottle of cheap beer. At first Malone thought it was another corpse, like others he'd seen over the past two days, but then it moved, turning slightly to bring a stubbly, hollow cheeked face into view. Two eyes opened a crack, seeing nothing at all, then closed again and the drunk rolled over until nothing could be seen of him but grimy, threadbare workhouse clothes. Malone stepped carefully over him, as dozens of other people must have, and continued on his way.

At the end of the street was the entrance to the next factory he wanted to try. The strong smell of glue came from the door as he pushed it open, along with the sound of dozens of conversations, almost shouted to be heard above the sound of steam machinery and rattling of thousands of glass bottles. He stepped aside as a tall, fat man in stained overalls pushed his way past him, then walked hesitantly into the factory. He tried to appear timid and afraid, to match the character he now knew he would have to play.

Something, some kind of liquid, was being mixed and bottled here. Women in tattered clothes so stained that no hint of their original colour remained were stirring the liquid in huge vats while men tipped in sackfulls of powdered ingredients. Some of the powder billowed around in the air, so that the far wall of the room, over fifty feet away, was almost lost in a white haze. Some of the women had scarves tied around their faces, others didn't. It didn't seem to make a difference either way as they all took turns to give great, hacking coughs, including the half raised adopted animals some of them had brought with them.

Fat pipes ran from the underside of the vats, and every so often a worker would open a valve to let the liquid run through smaller pipes as they branched and branched again to where it was poured into clay bottles. Great puddles of the liquid lay under each bottling point, emitting the acrid aroma of stale figs. Younger women strained with effort as they brought heavy crates of empty bottles and took away crates of full bottles to where labels were stuck onto them with thick, sticky glue. Everyone worked like machines, their full attention on their tasks, never once looking up at the other people in the room, but they shouted conversations at each other, all merging to form a single unintelligible hubbub. The din was so loud that each person could only be heard by the person standing directly beside them.

“What do you want?” demanded a loud voice, and Malone spun around to see a large, angry man glaring at him. Malone almost answered at once, but caught himself in time. The role he was playing demanded that he freeze like a mouse caught in the gaze of a cat, and so he made himself look terrified and cringed as the huge man bore down on him.

“Well?” the man repeated. The works foreman, Malone presumed. “What do you want?” Still Malone kept silent, just staring back, his eyes wide with terror. “Get out!” the man replied. “Get off with you!”

“Please, Sir,” said Malone as hesitantly and timidly as he could. “I need work, Sir.”

“What's that? Work? There's no work here! Now get off with you!”

Malone decided he was overdoing the timidity and decided to get a little more assertive. “I need work!” he repeated. “I need money! I haven't eaten for two days! Please, I'll do anything! I just need work!”

The foreman raised a hand to clout him about the head, and Malone had to resist the impulse to break his arm. The Brigadier had fought him how to fight with his bare hands, but those skills would do him no good here. He cringed, therefore, and tensed up to receive the blow.

The blow never came, though, and after a few moments Malone raised his eyes hesitantly to see the foreman regarding him curiously. “Where are you from?” he asked. “Not from around here, are you?”

“I'm from...” Momentary panic gripped him as he failed to remember the name of the southern province the Brigadier had given him. He decided to just make up a name and hope for the best. “Mellia. I'm from Mellia. Please, I’ll do anything!”

“Mellia? Never heard of it! What are you doing here?”

“I'm looking for work! I'll do any...”

“I meant, why did you come to Farwell?”

“I heard... I heard that...”

“You heard that the streets were paved with gold? You heard that even the laziest, bone idle layabout could make his fortune here, right?”

“I'm willing to work!” replied Malone, allowing himself to sound a little angry. Just a little. “I can work hard! As hard as anyone! I came to Farwell because I heard that a man willing to work could earn a living wage!”

“A man? You're still half dog! Get back to your parents, come back when you're fully human!”

“My parents are dead! I’ve got nothing to go back to!”

“Dead, eh? How did they die?”

Malone had given this some careful thought and saw it as an opportunity to lay the groundwork for what lay ahead. “They were murdered!” he said. “By guardsmen!”

“Criminals, were they? You think we're going to hire the child of criminals? You're probably a criminal yourself, aiming to steal...”

“They weren't criminals! They never did anything wrong! The guards were looking for someone! They... They killed them! They never did anything wrong and they killed them!” Don’t be too specific, he told himself. He remembered Crane's words of advice on how to tell a good lie. The man had turned out to be a Carrow agent, unsuspected by anyone, so he'd probably known what he was talking about, and he'd warned never to give unnecessary details. Give just the bare framework of the story and let the other guy fill in the details himself. That way, he'll be more likely to believe it.

The foreman stared at him, and Malone could see the process taking place in the other man's head. Saw him imagining heavy handed guards demanding subservience from the simple villagers, brandishing weapons as they demanded to know who was hiding the men they were looking for. He saw him imagining one of the guards getting a little too aggressive with Malone's mother, her husband stepping forward to defend her, the guard's wrath falling on him instead... There were two types of guardsmen, he knew. Those who genuinely wanted to catch criminals and protect the innocent, and those who simply saw it as an opportunity to wield authority over people helpless to resist. The latter kind saw any act of defiance, no matter how justified, as a challenge to their very manhood and were capable of unimaginable violence in response to the slightest provocation. Malone’s parents, he wanted the foreman to believe, had died for the crime of being insufficiently deferential to the bullies.

A faint flicker of sympathy appeared on the foreman's face, but then disappeared. “I'm sorry, but there’s no work here,” he said. “We've got everyone we need.”

“I’m strong! I can carry things...” The foreman was taking him firmly by the arm, though, and was guiding him back to the door. Malone didn't resist. There were plenty of other factories still to try, and he'd gotten further this time than he had any time before. He'd continue to work on his act, and there was bound to be a place somewhere that was hiring. He just had to be patient. “Do you have any food?” he asked as the foreman led him back out into the street. “Please, I haven't eaten in two days! Just a crust, something you were going to throw away anyway...”

Someone else pushed past them, out into the street. One of the male workers, his clothes and skin white with powder, his hair sticking up in tangled, matted spikes. He was coughing badly and sucking in great lungfulls of clean air as he stood gasping. He spat onto the compacted gravel of the road, and the spit was white with powder that he'd brought up from his lungs. “Sorry, boss!” he said when he was able go speak again. “Just need some air! Just a moment...”

“Get back to work, Bracker!” the foreman warned. “You're holding up production!”

“I will! Just a moment, please! I can't breathe in there...” He began coughing again, and had to lean against the wall to steady himself. Dust spread in a cloud around him, carried away in the light breeze, and fat flakes of compacted powder fell from his clothes to make a pattern around his feet.

“I can do his job!” put in Malone quickly. “Until he's feeling better! Let him have a rest, I'll take over until he's ready to come back! I'll show you what a good worker I am...”

The foreman ignored him. “Get back to work now!” he told Bracker. Inside the factory, the woman who stirred the vat that Bracker fed with powder was staring at them, still stirring the liquid even though she had nothing new to stir in. The people further along the pipeline were standing idle, though, and empty bottles were piling up at the end, waiting to be filled. “Now!” he warned.

Bracker nodded weakly and turned to go back in, and the foreman watched as he went to pick up another large sack of powder, Malone forgotten beside him. Bracker hoisted the sack onto his shoulder, but another fit of laughing took him and he had to put the sack down until it passed. The foreman marched angrily in, grabbed the man by the elbow and dragged him back to the door. “You want fresh air?” he said. “Have as much as you want! You're fired!”

“No!” cried Bracker in terror. “I can work! Please! I have a wife and a son to feed!” He pulled away from the foreman and bent to pick up the sack again, lifting it up and carrying it up to the vat. He tore the end open and poured it in, all the time struggling to hold in the coughs that kept trying to escape from his mouth. As the dust rose in a cloud around him again, though, he lost the struggle and was unable to resist as the foreman dragged him back to the door. “I can work!” he kept repeating. “I have a wife, a son...”

Malone made sure to slip inside as the foreman pushed the man out and closed the door firmly behind him. “What'll happen to him?” he asked, feeling sick with guilt. The man would have fallen Ill whether he'd been there or not, of course, but would the foreman have fired him if there hadn't been a new man ready to take his place?

“What do you care? You wanted a job, you got one.” He pointed at the sacks of powder and Malone picked one up, grunting with the weight. The foreman watched sternly as he carried it up the ramp to the vat and poured it in, but then he lost interest and wandered off to supervise something else.

The woman with the large wooden ladle glared at him as she stirred. An accusing stare, almost hateful, which disturbed Malone because he'd never been glared at that way before. “Was he a friend of yours?” he asked. The cloud of dust rose up to envelope his head and he started coughing. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and tied it around his face. It helped, but only a little.

“What do you care?” said the woman, echoing the foreman. “You wanted a job, you got one.”

“I didn’t want to take someone else's! Besides, the dust was killing him. He'll be able to get another job now, one that's better for his lungs.”

“You think someone's going to hire someone who was fired from his last job? If he’s lucky he'll get taken on by the guard, or maybe the army. That's the only hope he's got now.”

“He'll never join the guard!” shouted across the stirring woman at the next cauldron. “He'd never turn his back on his people like that! He's a good man, Bracker. He's one of us!”

“The army, then,” said Malone. “The army’s a good life. I've known people in the army. He might do well in the army...”

“With lungs ruined by bicarbonate? How long do you think he can march with lungs like that? The army won't take him. Jenny, his wife, will have to work, and he'll have to stay home with the fox. The poor thing’ll be raised by a man with ruined lungs.”

A shiver ran up Malone's spine. The parent bond caused the child to grow to resemble the parent. If the parent had blue eyes, the child would have blue eyes, and if the parent had ruined lungs, the child would have ruined lungs as well, despite never having breathed in a single speck of bicarbonate of soda. Bracker’s child was doomed to a sickly life and an early death.

“Some countries have charities for people like that,” said Malone. “Helberion...”

“This isn't Helberion! The bosses don't give a shit for people like us! You've doomed that poor little fox! They'll have to isolate it, break the parent bond between foxie and father, and he's nowhere near having a human mind yet. Who knows how long it'll take Jenny to raise it herself, especially if she's out working ten hours a day.”

Malone felt himself wilting with shame and guilt under her harsh words. “But if he'd stayed here, he would have died!”

“Then Jen could have married someone else. Foxie would have formed a parent bond with the new husband and would have become human in another couple of years. You denied them that by getting him sacked.”

Malone was aghast. “You're saying it would be better if Bracker had worked himself to death?”

“Welcome to Farwell, dog man, where the streets are paved with gold.”

Malone spent the rest of the day working in an awkward silence. He could feel the hostility of the other workers, and the guilt of Bracker's plight continued to gnaw at him, but there was nothing he could do about it and there were bigger issues at stake. He would have to make friends with the other workers at some point though, if he was to find out what he'd come here to learn. He would just have to hope that people would come around to him, just by virtue of his being there, sharing their lives and their working conditions. That would take time, though. He would just have to be patient.

He just worked, therefore. He carried sacks of baking soda, poured them into one vat after another while the women stirred. He coughed and adjusted the handkerchief around his face time and again to try to filter out the dust. Every so often the foreman would pass by, and Malone would feel a prickling on the back of his head that told him that he was being watched, the foreman making sure he was as good a worker as he'd claimed to be. The feeling would pass after a while, and Malone would look up to see the foreman strolling on to the next room, apparently satisfied.

The day went on, he continued to work. His arms and back started to ache after a while, but not painfully so. It was the kind of ache that came from regular exercise, of the kind he was used to from his time with the army, the kind of ache that spoke of muscles firming up and growing stronger rather than being overtaxed. The other workers carrying heavy loads did it without effort and without muscles that looked any larger than his, so he presumed that he would eventually just get used to it.

After a few hours a bell was rung and all work stopped. People stood up and stretched, swinging their arms around, and then made their way to a smaller room on the other side of a small wooden door in the far wall. The room contained padded chairs into which people collapsed with a sigh, while others went through another door into a urinal. One of the men turned on a gas heater and began warming up some water for a cup of tea.

Just a tea break, then, Malone realised. Not the end of the day, even though the sky was starting to get dark through the small, grimy window up near the ceiling. Someone produced a tin of biscuits and Malone grabbed a handful, to the reproachful look of everyone else in the room. Malone was too hungry to care, though, and stuffed them into his mouth, swallowing mouthfuls of cold water to help them down his throat.

Not knowing how much longer the working day would last, he then went through into the urinal to relieve himself, where he found himself squatting between two women who pointedly ignored him as they did their business. There was nowhere to wash his hands, so he just rubbed them on the filthy towel that hung on a rail, then went back to the tea room. He sat down in the only vacant chair and looked at the biscuit tin longingly, but he decided he'd made himself unpopular enough for one day and so just sat there, allowing his legs and still not quite human back to recover from their exertions.

“Hi,” said the man sitting next to him. “Welcome to Goldwater’s.”

Malone looked around in surprise. “Hi,” he replied. “Don't you hate me, then?”

The man laughed. “Don’t get upset about Brakker. People come and go from here all the time. He was going to get the sack anyway, always slacking and skiving. Spode knows that as well as anyone.” He indicated the woman who'd been giving Malone a hard time, who glared back. “My name's Jenner.” He held out his hand.

“Malone,” replied Malone, taking it. The man's hand was hard and calloused, but had a firm, friendly grip. “I'm from...” Panic seized him again as he failed to remember the name of the place he'd given the foreman. “Parras,” he said in desperation, hoping Jenner and the foreman would never get together and compare notes. “It's down south. Most people in these parts have never heard of it.”

“I thought your voice had a southern accent,” said Jenner, nodding wisely. “I'm from Enderby. We all come here for the same reason, right? To make our fortunes. And we all end up in a place like this.”

“What is this place exactly?” asked Malone. “I mean, what are we making here?”

Jenner reached around behind him to a cabinet of small cubicles in which small items, screws, nuts and bolts, etc, were stored and produced a scrap of paper. One of the labels which another group of workers were sticking to the bottles. He handed it over. In the middle of the label was the drawing of a rather unwell looking man. Above it were the words ‘P. W. Goldwater's all purpose tonic' and below was written ‘The quick and effective kidney and liver cure. Also effective for the treatment of cholera, diphtheria, bronchitis, influenza and many other ailments.’

“I've seen this!” said Malone in delight. “We've got in in Hel, er, in Parras! I've seen it for sale in dozens of shops!”

“This stuff’s exported all over the Empire, and beyond. And it’s all made here, in this building. That's just one of the tonics and medicines that Goldwater makes, though. He's got other factories making all kinds of other stuff. He's one of the biggest producers of medicines in the world.”

“It's all just bicarbonate of soda,” said another man sitting opposite. “Baking soda mixed in this, baking soda mixed in that. A bit of colouring, something to make it fizz and bubble. You could just as well buy a sackful of the stuff you’ve been pouring into the vats for a fraction of the price. It’d do you just as much good.”

“Yeah? What do you know, Tench?”

“More than you, apparently. Want some tea, dog boy?”

“Don't call him dog boy!”

“It's okay,” said Malone. “I heard the offer of tea more than the dog boy. I'd love some, thanks. And could I have some more biscuits?”

“Not too many, it all comes out of the tea room fund. You'll be expected to contribute to the fund when you get paid.” He poured a mug of tea and handed it across, along with a couple of the hard biscuits.

“I'd be happy to. How much do we get paid, by the way? I forgot to ask.”

“As a new guy, you’ll get eight shillings a week. It goes up a shilling a year to a maximum of fifteen, unless you get made up to foreman or something. Thruppence a week for the tea room fund will be fine.”

Malone sipped at the tea. It was hot and bitter but filled him with new energy and optimism. He dipped one of the biscuits into the steaming black liquid to soften it up. It felt good as it slipped down into his belly and his body digested it gratefully.

“Do you know where I can find a place to spend the night?” he asked. “I need lodgings. Somewhere not too expensive.”

“Kiply’s got rooms,” said Tench. “Not much. A roof over your head and a cot to sleep on, but when can you expect for five shillings a week? At least the rats and the lice come free.”

“He can't afford five shillings a week!” replied Jenner. “Not on a new guy's wages!” He turned to Malone. “You can bunk with me, if you like. Six shillings a week for a place in Drockers, but we can go halves. There's a second bunk leftover from the last guy who bunked there, just need to shake out the cobwebs. What do you say?”

“That sounds perfect! Thanks! Is it far?”

“Down Wells Avenue, turn right at the end. Number six nineteen, Drockers Block. About ten minutes away on foot. The factory across the street can be a bit noisy, I'm afraid. They work all through the night, in two shifts, pressing metal, but after a full day in this place you’ll sleep right through a brass band playing right outside your window.”

“I spent last night in the doorway of a tannery, almost froze solid. Anything would be an improvement on that!” He felt a huge grin spreading across his face. “Thank you!” He felt happy, triumphant. That morning he'd been a vagrant, wandering the streets, sent by the Brigadier to do an important job and with no idea how to do it. Now, he had a job, a home, friends. All he had to do now was make contact with the people who were stirring up the Empire's workforce, trying to incite a civil war. In that jubilant moment, he felt as though he was half way there.

The bell rang again and people began grumbling as they got back to their feet. “Break's over,” said Jenner, putting his cup in the sink and pumping the pump handle to wash it out. “Back to work. Meet you outside the main doors at closing time.”

“See you there!” Malone gulped down the last of his tea, washed the cup out, and followed the other workers back out into the factory floor.