by James Axler
“Robot stuff?” Ryan asked, glancing back at the building.
“From what I’ve seen, they use the building as a repair shop and medical center,” Krysty said. “I’m not sure they see much difference between those things.”
As Ryan focused on the building, the crosshairs reappeared across his left field of vision, a ghost overlay on the image. “Yeah, I guess.”
They continued walking, taking it slowly as Ryan realized how exhausted he felt. He had been fed a steady drip of proteins while held in the drawerlike unit, and while he was fully nourished he had little energy—that had been used up by his body for repairs.
People flitted past on the wheeled disks, while another group traveled toward Ryan and Krysty in a group, riding aboard a wheeled transport roughly the size of a wag but entirely open to the elements. Ryan looked at the vehicle as it passed them and moved down the road. Its passage was almost silent and it had no driver, just a cylindrical box of lights up front a little like the thing that had assisted Betty during her examination.
Krysty watched Ryan, the smile never leaving her face. She was pleased to have him back—it had been a fraught two weeks waiting for the man she loved to wake up after all that he had been through. As they walked, Krysty brought him up to speed on what the companions had been doing in his absence—J.B. and Mildred had checked out every nook and cranny of the medical center, while Jak and Ricky had spent time scouting the ville and its immediate surrounds, coming and going as they pleased. Doc, she explained, had been disappointed in the food here and had taken it on himself to show the local “Progressians” how to cook, despite the lack of a variety of ingredients. Krysty didn’t tell Ryan about her own recovery, nor how much time she had spent in a medically induced coma; she did not want to worry him.
“You weren’t tempted to move on?” Ryan teased. “To leave me behind?”
“No one gets left behind,” Krysty reminded him. “Especially you, lover.”
It was true. No one would ever be left behind. Ryan had been with J.B., Krysty and Doc longer than anyone, and the others were just as much family to him now. But there had been an occasion—once—when someone had been left behind: Ryan’s own son, Dean Cawdor, stolen by his mother, Sharona, and lost to him for the cruel eternity that only a grieving parent could know. Dean was alive, but changed, and his recent reacquaintance with his father had been brief and had not ended well. It was something Ryan couldn’t fix, though he hoped that one day Dean would come back to him. It was something that Ryan didn’t vocalize, but he thought of Dean just about every day.
Fifteen minutes’ slow walk brought the couple to the edge of the ville, where a mighty river flowed. “J.B. calls the river the Klamath,” Krysty said.
J.B. was the guardian of the maps for the group, and he employed a mini-sextant to get their bearings when they traveled. Without him, the group would be lost in Hell; as it was, they traveled the post-nukecaust roads with the knowledge of where they were, but they were still the roads of Hell.
“A lot of California was devastated when the quakes hit,” Ryan observed, peering out at the raging waters. Whiteheads leaped and dissipated there, like horses in the sea.
Ryan was correct in what he said. California had been struck hard by the nukecaust and all that followed. Great chunks of the west coast of America had been sheared off when the San Andreas Fault broke open, and some of the state had been relegated to an archipelago of tiny islands dotted in the Pacific. J.B. couldn’t know it, but the Klamath River had been widened in the past century as a result of the tectonic plate movement, and now ran at a faster speed than it had a hundred years earlier.
Ryan looked across the rushing river to where a great dam had been constructed. The dam was made from huge hunks of stone that had been carved and shaped with craftsmanlike precision, barricading the river. A grand walkway ran across the top, as wide as a two-lane blacktop, arching forty feet above the tumultuous surface of the fast-flowing water. The dam ended in a high protective wall on the far bank, while the near side was attached to a monitoring tower that rose another twenty above the high wall. It was an impressive feat of engineering, something seldom seen in the devastated Deathlands.
“What’s that?” Ryan asked, his eye focusing on the details of the pale, curved wall of stone. “A dam. But I don’t see a whole lot of farming going on.” In fact there was none; the area surrounding the ville appeared to be devoid of life.
“J.B. says they use it to power the equipment here,” Krysty told Ryan. “Some kind of hydropower arrangement, like a watermill only bigger.”
“Much bigger,” Ryan acknowledged as he eyed the watchtower. “Stands to reason. Lotta tech here—needs a lot of power.”
“That tech saved your life,” Krysty reminded him. Then she reached inside the back pocket of her pants and pulled something free. Coiled on itself, the thing looked like a handful of thick black cord. “I saved this,” she told Ryan, handing it to him.
Ryan took the item, unraveled it and looked it over. It was his old eye patch, the one removed back in that redoubt where they had been attacked by the mutie plant. He held it up for a moment, tracing the stitching that held the leather to the cord, seeing the spots where it had frayed. “I don’t need it anymore,” he said, and he drew his hand back and threw the patch toward the rushing water below.
Krysty’s hand darted out, grabbing the patch as it dropped. “I’ll keep it,” she told Ryan when she saw his confused expression. “A keepsake of what you were,” she added, slipping the eye patch back inside her pants pocket.
“I make my own keepsakes now,” Ryan said, stepping back from Krysty. “Stay there.” He looked at her and held himself still, waiting for the camera eye to snap a picture of her. After five seconds it did, capturing Krysty’s image for posterity. In his eye, she would always be beautiful, her hair catching in the wind, the river racing behind her. Now he could call upon that image whenever he wanted to—in his eye.
Chapter Nine
“The food here is so terribly bland, do you not agree?” Doc asked as he blew on a spoonful of soup to cool it.
Doc was sitting at a beech wood table in a large room whose panoramic windows overlooked the river and the hydroelectric dam stretching across it like a stone cutlass. Across from him, Mildred, J.B. and Ricky sat eating from their own bowls of soup while Jak sat a space down from Doc, mopping his bowl with a bread roll from the pile that dominated the center of the table. Tasty or not, Jak ate the meal with gusto.
Around the room, several other groups were eating. They were locals, dressed in plain overalls and coverings in muted colors, whites and pastels. They ate quietly in ones and twos, and mostly in silence.
“I haven’t paid it much mind,” J.B. admitted distractedly. He had heard the argument before; they all had. The old man was nothing if not consistent.
J.B. was gazing down at the dam and the two people who stood close to its edge on the raised river banks. Krysty was easily recognizable even from this distance with her vivid red hair, while Ryan’s huge frame made him easy enough to spot if you knew what you were looking for.
“I have spoken to the chefs de cuisine about adding salt, spices and so on, but they seem ignorant of the whole concept of seasoning,” Doc espoused. “Alas it seems that humankind’s culinary knowledge has been forgotten along with so much else in these terrible times.”
“Food is food, and free food tastes that much better,” J.B. said, his eyes flicking up to the white-haired old man over the rims of his glasses. “At least we didn’t have to hunt and chill anything to get this, and that’s a definite appetizer in my book.”
“Quite,” Doc acknowledged, nodding.
Mildred tore a chunk from a bread roll and chewed on it thoughtfully. “I’ve had worse,” she admitted. “Rat meat, leafy stew, boot—” She stopped abruptly, remembering the horrific mo
ments when she had almost become a cannibal. Ryan had secretly promised to chill her then, if that’s what was needed, and so she had trusted him with her life until she could be cured. “I’ve had worse,” she finished lamely.
Laughing, Ricky reached for another roll. “It won’t ever taste as good as my mama’s cooking,” he said, “but I’ll take it if it’s free.” Then he took a second roll and a third, and began juggling them with casual dexterity. “Anyone else want a roll?” he asked.
Jak and J.B. told Ricky that they did, and both found themselves the recipients of juggled rolls that landed perfectly on their respective plates.
“With an arm like that, he should have played baseball,” Mildred said, shaking her head.
“Mayhap one day,” Doc told her, “when all of this horror is past.”
J.B. chewed a corner of his roll thoughtfully and glanced back to the window. Ryan and Krysty could be seen there making their way gradually back up the paved street. “You think Ryan’s going to be okay?” he asked Mildred.
“He’s got a new eye,” Mildred reasoned. “That’s going to take some getting used to. But it can only be beneficial for him, and for us too.”
“I don’t know,” the Armorer said. “Ryan’s done pretty okay by us with just one eye. There hasn’t been an occasion I can think of where I’ve regretted the loss of his eye. Can you?”
Doc and Jak shook their heads, while Mildred verbally agreed.
“I have not known Ryan very long,” Ricky admitted, “but the man is a crack shot with his blasters. I never gave much thought to what it must be like for him, living with one eye.”
“It messes with your depth perception,” Mildred told Ricky and the others, “but Ryan compensates well. He’s had a lot of time to get used to living like that. I just hope this new eye doesn’t throw off his rhythms.”
“Ryan Cawdor is a survivor,” Doc reminded them all. “He will always win through. I suggest we accept the outcome of this visit—his new eye—as propitious and do not look the proverbial given horse in its mouth.”
* * *
OUTSIDE, RYAN HAD expressed feeling tired and so Krysty walked with him slowly back to the medical facility.
“Any idea how many people live here?” Ryan asked, admiring the towers.
“A hundred, maybe more,” Krysty told him.
As they walked, Ryan assessed their surroundings. Everything looked newly built, even the street looked freshly paved, its stones shining a brilliant white. But here and there, Ryan spotted evidence of another world, the world before the nukecaust—a road sign, triangular metal on a pole that had been bent to one side; hints of the blacktop of an ancient road that had run along the same pattern as the streets.
“I wonder what this place used to be?” Ryan said.
Krysty pointed to a low building that ran crosswise to the others, poised at the end of the broad thoroughfare. It looked dirtier than the rest and older, despite some obvious attempts at repair work. “See that? Old military redoubt. That’s where we popped in via the mat-trans. It must have been built back before the nukecaust.”
“Unusual seeing so much aboveground,” Ryan observed. In his experience, most of the ancient army facilities were built underground, with just an entrance visible aboveground.
“Doc figures that when the plates started shifting around the whole redoubt popped out from under,” Krysty said, “or that everything around it sunk.”
“That sounds more likely,” Ryan said. “Redoubts were built to last.” He eyed the ancient building a few seconds longer, marveling at their luck in landing in a safe community. Usually it went the other way—if there were people living near a mat-trans, the first thing they would do would be to try to chill Ryan and his companions. And the second thing they would do, as the old Deathlands joke had it, was die. Heaven Falls came to mind.... Nothing was given away free.
* * *
RYAN AND KRYSTY joined the others just as they finished their meal.
“’Tis heartening to see you back on your feet,” Doc said, standing to shake Ryan’s hand.
“Thanks, Doc,” Ryan said, grasping the old man’s hand. “You too.”
“You’ve had a look around?” Mildred asked. “Is everything okay? Do you feel all right?” Mildred was a doctor and her question was strictly professional; if Ryan expressed any concerns she would have him checked over immediately.
“I’m okay, Mildred,” Ryan answered, keeping his voice low, “and I think it’s time we were going.”
J.B. looked at Ryan quizzically. “Something bothering you?”
He shook his head. “Nothing particular,” he said. “I just don’t like staying in one place for too long. Remember Heaven Falls.”
“I hear you,” J.B. agreed.
“Jak? Did you look around?”
Leaning back in his chair, Jak nodded solemnly, picking at his teeth.
“We both did,” Ricky explained. “Got about a mile out. No one was bothered much about it.”
“What did you find?” Ryan asked the dark-haired teen.
“Nothing worth finding,” Ricky told him. “We’re a little way up in some mountains—”
“Here,” J.B. said, showing Ryan their approximate position on a map he had produced from one of his capacious pockets.
Ryan looked over the map as Ricky continued.
“The immediate area is dead, nothing much out there other than birds and insects,” Ricky said.
“Nothing worth eatin’,” Jak elaborated tersely.
“Looked like mebbe some villes out to the east,” Ricky picked up. “Small dwellings bunched together. Could be farm types, but we didn’t get close enough to find out.”
Ryan nodded. “That’s okay. Gives us something to go on, anyhow.
“Now, unless anyone objects, I’m going to speak to our hosts and thank them for their hospitality, and for my hospitalization,” Ryan continued, “and then we are going to do what we always do—walk. So, any objections?”
There was none. The companions had traveled the hell roads for a long time; they trusted Ryan’s instincts, and when he said it was time to move on, then it was time to move on.
* * *
WHEN RYAN EXPRESSED his desire to leave, Roma escorted him to another building that lay close to the Klamath River. “I’d like to thank our hosts for everything they’ve done,” he told her.
They traveled on the back of an automated vehicle, its driver a box of lights located at the front of its open frame. Ryan sat, his hands resting on the tops of his thighs, close to the holster on his right hip. He didn’t like traveling around alone like this, but the others had gear to pack up, so there it was.
After two minutes of smooth, near-silent movement, the automated vehicle drew to a halt outside a towering circular structure overlooking the river. The tower rose three hundred feet into the air, housing over fifteen levels within.
Roma walked with Ryan, leading him inside. “The ville is ruled from in here,” she explained, as they strode through an empty lobby.
The lobby was circular like the structure, empty with a vast column in its center that thrust up into the main body of the building itself. The lobby’s walls were made from tinted glass, possibly even armaglass, like the walls of the mat-trans. The glass was smoky and behind it Ryan could see electrical circuitry, tiny diodes flashing frequently amid the complex structure.
“Lot of tech here,” Ryan observed, indicating the walls.
Roma merely smiled as she ran her hand over the hidden sensor plate that opened the doors to one of a bank of elevators located in the central hub of the lobby. They stepped inside and the elevator door swished closed before the car sent its passengers up into the body of the building. The elevator was silent, Ryan could only detect the movement by the way his stomach droppe
d—it was fast, then.
Five seconds passed, and then the door pulled back and Ryan saw a shadow-filled room beyond. The room was huge, with high ceilings, grand walls and no seating. The lights were recessed and obscured, casting only a little illumination into the room. It smelled of recycled air, grease and oil, mechanical things, fans dissipating heat.
As Ryan entered, he flicked his artificial eye to night vision, scanning the poorly lit room. Though the room was not fully circular, the walls were curved, and there appeared to be no exits other than the elevator bank located behind him. The room was large enough to comfortably house a dozen wags without anything getting scratched. There was glass along the walls, cabinet-type doors behind which more circuitry hummed, diodes twinkling with light like stars in the night sky; colored stars, reds and greens and yellows.
Up ahead, dominating the room, was something that looked like a high wall, and it was plated with circuitry, the copper lines of the circuit boards catching what little illumination was cast from the lighting to create a ghostly crisscross of shining metallic streaks. At the top of that wall, Ryan saw people waiting, standing twelve feet above him, pacing along the high balcony as they came to see who had arrived. There were seven of them in all, their faces hidden in shadow, even to Ryan’s enhanced night vision. They wore long robes that trailed down to the floor, shapeless things that obscured their bodies entirely.
Roma waited by the elevator as Ryan entered the room, her hands held neatly behind her back.
“Mr. Cawdor has expressed his intention to leave,” she announced, “along with his companions.”
Ryan took up a position in the center of the room, scanning the shadowy figures above him. “I wanted to thank you for everything,” he said. “My friends tell me you patched them up pretty good—me too—and you asked for nothing in return. Charity like that’s rare in my experience, so I owe you my gratitude.”
He stopped, and for a moment the only response was silence. He eyed the figures poised above him, watching for any signs of life.