There's been so much posted since Friday afternoon that I think I'll hold off on "The Explorers Club" until tomorrow. I didn't intend the Polis post to be so long, but what can I say? I love Job "Snow Job" Snow and the world he inhabits.

Polis - No. 3
Job Snow was a clever, lonely boy who felt a great obligation to serve his Polis, but who also yearned for a life of adventure. So, at age seventeen he joined the Foragers, the Bailiwick of Commerce's Forager Corps, a body that promised both civil fealty and heaps of adventure. He was, as might be expected, terrified the first time a training mission removed him from the comfortable familiarity and security of the urban jungle of the Polis and forced him to confront Man's primordial enemy, a dark and foreboding wood. Yet he discovered within himself reserves of courage to match his agile mind and soon discovered himself well-suited to the life of a Forager, full as it was with peril and deprivation. His bravery and intelligence were recognized and the lad was commissioned as an officer on his nineteenth birthday, as early as protocol permitted.

Upon returning from a long-range foray south of the Pale of Toledo, the young Lieutenant of Foragers was informed that his father, a civil engineer with the Bailiwick of Light & Power, had died peacefully in his sleep. Jonah Snow had raised young Job all by himself once the boy's mother, Jezebel, and younger brother, Eli, had perished, alongside so many others, in the icy waters of Lake St. Clair in the infamous White Ship disaster. Alone now without any family, without anyone, Snow - just Snow, his father had been the last one alive to call him Job - made the Foragers, and by extension the Polis, his whole life. It was a good life, a life with purpose, and he reckoned himself both fortunate and happy.

When Snow was twenty-three and in his sixth year as a Forager, a routine foray beyond the Pale went dreadfully wrong. Pirates fell upon the caravan, murderers and thieves who were not just aided but seemingly led by a traitor under Snow's command. The exact sequence of what next occurred has never been satisfactorily determined, but when a distress call was finally sent two days after the initial attack a rescue party from the Bailiwick of Reprisal found the corpses of eleven pirates, all of whom had died suddenly and violently, and Lt. Snow watching over the only other survivor from his command, a gravely wounded rookie Forager 3rd Class named Rupert Smithson. Smithson was in a bad way, but the surgeons would later confirm that his life had been saved by Snow's ministrations. Snow himself had been shot, stabbed, and presented no fewer than three cracked ribs, a broken nose, half a dozen fractures in his left foot, and a pulverized right eye socket. He would not let go of his pistol until sedated by the medics.

Overnight, the young lieutenant became a hero and sensation throughout the Polis. The Coleman, the Bailiff of Commerce, and seemingly half the Senate visited his hospital room, all of them eager to have their picture snapped with the young hero for the Free Press. The scandal of a traitor within the ranks of the Foragers rocked the political establishment. Hearings were held; heads rolled, administratively speaking; and those seeking political cover again held up "the heroic Leftenant Snow" as proof of the unspoiled virtue of the Polis's men and women in uniform. Over the course of months the hubbub died down, other stories grabbed the headlines, and mercifully few were paying attention when Snow was discharged from both hospital and the Forager Corps.

In a happenstance that would have an immeasurable effect upon the course of Snow's life, one of the few who noticed was a grand old dame of the Polis's high society (I have not bothered to name her). She earned Snow's devotion by praising his intelligence in outwitting his would-be-murderers, whereas most observers had gone on at length about only his courage. His own appraisal of the ordeal mirrored hers, and he saw in her much he could admire, a welcome change from the throngs of glad handers. She offered him a job as her private secretary and protégé; she had inherited a large business empire from her dearly departed husband, but as her only son, of whom she was greatly reminded by Snow, had recently died, she had no one to whom she could entrust the future of the enterprise. Much flattered and somewhat lost without the military discipline of the Forager Corps, Snow accepted, once again reckoning himself fortunate and with decent prospects of again being happy.

'Twas not to be so. The old bitty was a criminal mastermind, her dearly departed husband dead by her machinations, his legitimate fortune bent to her insidious purposes, her dead son - an unacknowledged bastard - the traitor in Snow's Forager patrol and recently deceased by Snow's own hand (at that precise moment, Snow hadn't had time to reload his pistol and was forced to throttle the brigand with his own mittened hands). She could have easily had Snow killed, but her mind was clouded by grief for her slain son, the only human being she'd loved in her whole wicked life, and she'd wanted to keep Snow close at hand, to frame him for her son's crimes and tarnish his gleaming reputation before inexorably leading him to slaughter. But he was clever and wary after his ordeal in the forest; he smelled a trap, thwarted her scheme, and turned the tables.

After the loud bit was over and he had triumphed, she and he had a brief but invaluable conversation about the dark underbelly of the Polis. She spat at him all the venom and invective in her black heart, but between the insults he felt he came to see and understand her true nature. He stared at her, into her, recognizing in her something dark and malignant that he'd hated his whole life as if by instinct but never before consciously identified. She screamed at him as the top of her lungs, berating him for that maddening stare, cursing him for lacking the decency to spare her the public spectacle of arrest and trial. She paused from her baleful tirade just long enough to gulp a lungful of air; in a single smooth motion, he raised his pistol and shot her twice between the eyes. He placed a pistol in her hand and when the Criminal Police arrived told them she'd forced him to shoot, used him to commit suicide-by-proxy.

Snow was once again a darling of the Polis's press corps, but this time the editors felt no need to restrain themselves; the documented heroism of Job Snow gave way to the legend of "Snow Job," ruthless foe of all those who sought to harm the Polis. But beneath the bombast the bastards of the Fourth Estate had stumbled upon a nugget of truth. He'd murdered a defenseless crone in cold blood. She'd been a vile, horrible thing, true, and certainly deserved her fate, but he could have just as easily turned her over to the police. All the bribes in the world could not have kept her out of prison. But she'd been a vile, horrible thing and he slept the sleep of the just. He dreamed not of her, not at all, but if he had a slight, sly smile might certainly have pursed his lips. No, there really was something to this Snow Job malarkey after all, something wonderful and frightful. To borrow a line from the cover of The Shadow No. 1 by Howard Chaykin, "He's back... and God help the guilty."

To be continued...

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
The Bruce Lee Band, "She's An Angel" from The Bruce Lee Band (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: Madcap mayhap mishap!