Walking the Dust
13: North East West South
There's one more thing the machine caravans do besides trade. Well, it's still a sort of trading, just not in the sense we normally think of it.
They trade in news.
If there's one thing people always want, it's stories. I think I've mentioned that before, because it's why I (and the rest of my family) do this.
People always want to know what's going on in the world, whether it's stuff about their next-door neighbour or from somewhere halfway around the world. I do a pretty good job of the latter, but people like me move around too much to keep up with town gossip. For that, you need someone who lives in the place.
But even between me and them, there's still a gap. We both tell stories about people — me about faraway places, gossips about the street round the corner.
What about events?
Back in Lo-Wil, if we wanted to find out what was happening in the next town over, we didn't have many options.
We could either go over there ourselves, and find out — or we could wait till the farmers and shepherds got together to trade. They did that every month, and that's about how current our news was. Even then, you had to rely on someone from the meet to tell someone else, and so on down the line.
Truth to tell, our family was so busy reading old books and learning our letters that it might be another month before somebody bothered to tell us.
But out here on the main trade routes, where a town has caravans coming through every other week, it's a lot easier to keep up. And that's where the machine caravans come into their own.
All the caravans I've seen have a guy who spends the caravan's time at a place finding out what's going on, who's had kids, what their crops are like, what other caravans have been through, and so on. They call themselves news talkers.
Sultan Devvin has a guy who's nothing but a news talker. That's all he does, all the while they're staying somewhere.
And then when they reach another town, he tells everyone what he knows about wherever they just left.
I was in a place called Shank High when Devvin's caravan came through, and while they were setting up in the marketplace, putting out their goods and raising tarps over their stalls, the news talker did his thing.
A couple of hundred people, from all over the town, came to the marketplace to hear him.
He wasn't young — later, when I talked to him alone, he told me he was over forty — but he had a strong voice and a twinkle in his eye that let you know he was watching. I'm pretty sure he embellished a lot of the news — they all do, from what I can tell — but I reckon it had at least some grounding in the truth. I don't think he missed a trick.
He told us about a plague that had hit the goats in a town called Valleysend. No-one knows what the plague was, but it made the goats froth at the mouth and go knock-kneed, so much that they couldn't stand up. The farmers tried to slaughter all the affected goats before it spread, but it didn't work.
That went down well. I guess a lot of people in Shank High traded meat from Valleysend.
Then he talked about the metalroad they were building between Newbegin and Wosh-Tun. It sounded like the metalcars I'd seen when I was there, but bigger — going right across the wasteland, from city to city. I was the only person interested in that, though, so he moved on pretty quick.
Next he told us that a well had run dry in a nearby town. I don't remember the name of the place, but people in the crowd recognised it and started worrying that all the people from that town would be coming to theirs, looking for somewhere new to live.
Then he mentioned a few families that had birthed, and some folks that had gotten married, all of them from towns around Shank High. Little pockets of different people were interested in each one of those stories.
There was a lot more, more than I could remember or try to write down. The thing was, this guy went on for hours.
By the time he'd told all there was to tell, the stalls were up and running, the goods were on display, and the sellers were ready to start shouting their wares to everyone in the crowd.
And it worked. Most all of the people who'd listened stayed for the market, and I'll bet they all bought something.
Sure, it's a public service. But those Sultans have always got one eye on the money.
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