by James Axler
Women worked in this ville; however, many of them worked not in occupations but as wives and mothers. Children were important to keeping the machine that was Hollowstar in motion, a new generation replacing the elderly—those that lived that long—at regular intervals. Despite the seemingly sedate pace of life that echoed the old vids on which the ville was modeled, there was a restless urgency lurking beneath the surface that was born of the high-tension wire on which their lives were balanced.
There had to be some release. And so those women who were not wives and mothers found themselves, at some time or another, doing service in the gaudy houses that lay on the outskirts of the ville, hidden behind the facade but common enough knowledge for the traveler to find them with ease. After all, they oiled the wheels of the local economy as much as they provided relief.
So what did these women do in their downtime? They drank in the bars of whatever ville they worked. Maybe to blot it out, maybe because they liked it, maybe…J.B. didn’t know, and could only guess. The reasons didn’t really matter to him. He just knew that this was what they did. Here as much as they did anywhere else. And they drank alone.
That was why he thought she was a gaudy house slut when he saw her in there. It wasn’t the first time that he’d seen her. When he was in the center of Hollowstar, either going to or from Luke’s, or even when he had been on some task for Trader, he had seen her often over the past few days. For this reason, if nothing else, it entered his head that she had to work the gaudy house mostly at night. Once he had seen her leaving Luke’s when he had been on his way there. What the big guy got up to was no business of J.B.’s, and he hadn’t asked. Neither had Luke said anything.
She was always alone, which was another reason he fig ured she worked in a gaudy house. She was never with anyone. Most of the women who didn’t work the houses could be seen with a man or with kid at some point. It was that kind of a regimented ville.
Each time he’d seen her, their eyes met and he’d seen some kind of spark in there, a light that seemed to be smiling at him, even though her face said nothing. Hell, he didn’t even know what her name was. Maybe if he did, he could have found where she worked and paid for a few hours. Maybe not. In a way it would ruin the illusion.
J.B. was no romantic, but this thing that he could feel within him was like nothing he had ever felt before. Hunn sat next to him, a bristling ball of energy. Even when she was still, the nervous tension that powered her had a kineticism that made her seem to be in perpetual motion, even when she was still. Normally, he took no notice. Now, it seemed to irritate the hell out of him, a constant reminder that she was there when he wanted to be alone, so that the woman across the bar would talk to him.
So that when she did, he could be certain she was looking at him, not at Hunn, or at both of them when he heard her voice for the first time.
“You gonna sit there, or you gonna buy me a drink?”
Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
The Present
“DARK NIGHT, when the fuck are you going to stop?” J.B. asked of LaGuerre. The trader had kept his convoy rolling for hours after the skirmish, and even though dusk was descending, he showed no signs of calling a temporary halt to their insistent progress.
“Don’t see no reason to stop, man,” LaGuerre replied in a lazy drawl. “Shit, we’ve already been attacked once. Don’t want it to happen again, right?”
The Armorer was furious, but he tried to keep his anger in check. The battle had been easy for those in the convoy, but for Ryan and Jak it had been strenuous. The two riders had to be exhausted and in need of a break. Instead of which, they had been trailing in the wake of the convoy as the heat of the afternoon began to fade, and the wall of heat haze was replaced by the wall of twilight.
“Riders are supposed to be tough,” Eula added. “Every rider we’ve ever had has been hard.”
“And how many have you had, just in the time you’ve been with this convoy?” J.B. questioned.
She shrugged. “Dunno. Six, mebbe eight or nine.”
“In less than two years, and you’re not even sure how many.” The Armorer spit. “You ever stop to think why?”
“Those are the risks.” LaGuerre shrugged.
“Bullshit. You run a good convoy, then you look after the people you run. Good working and a good profit comes from taking care of the pieces that make the whole. That means people as much as wags and ordnance. Keep the same personnel and you get a better-run convoy.”
“Those words of wisdom from your precious Trader?” LaGuerre sneered. “And where is he now?”
J.B. left his post and crossed the cramped interior of the wag. Before LaGuerre had a chance to react, the Armorer had his hands around his throat, pinning him back against the wall. The trader still had his aviator shades on—they never seemed to leave his face—and so J.B. couldn’t see into his eyes. But his breathing had become short, gasping, and was an indicator of his level of fear.
“What happened to Trader isn’t anyone’s business but his,” J.B. said softly, his voice hard-edged. “I’ll tell you something else, too—it wasn’t the way he ran his convoy that gave him grief. Might just be that way for you, though.”
Even as he spoke, he felt the cold, hard muzzle of a blaster nudge gently at the base of his skull. The soft click of a hammer being pulled back sounded loud in his ear, the vibration reverberating in his skull.
“Easy, John Barrymore Dix. You wouldn’t want to do anything too stupe, would you?”
For a moment the world seemed to stand still. J.B. could feel everything around him as though the detail were heightened, his senses taking in every scrap of information as though it would be the last thing he would ever know. He was aware of LaGuerre’s breath, hot and stinking of garlic, and the breathy wheeze that accompanied every fetid gust as the man’s chest tightened. He could feel the vibration of the blacktop beneath his feet as it rattled the suspension of the armored wag. He could feel the sweat as it began to gather around the rim of his fedora, soaking the line of hair around the hat band. Farther down his body, a small, cold pool was gathering in the hollow of his back as he unconsciously arched his spine away from the source of danger.
Bizarrely, it struck him that he could feel nothing of Zarir’s presence. The jolt-wired wag jockey was oblivious to anything except the road ahead of him and the controls at his fingertips. Perhaps he was even oblivious to his own self. Certainly, he seemed to have no notion of the drama being played out to his rear.
Most of all, J.B. was aware of the blaster muzzle at his neck. He was aware that Eula was holding it steady. So steady that it was firm against the neck muscle, without the slightest tremor. He hadn’t noticed that she had a handblaster. It wasn’t like him to miss that, unless she had it well concealed. Okay, that didn’t matter right now, but if she didn’t just blow his head off, then it would be worth remembering.
He figured it was an old revolver as that had definitely been a hammer click and not just a round chambering. And it must have a pretty long barrel, too, as she was some distance away. He couldn’t feel the heat of her body up close, or feel her hot breath on him. Long barrel and she was at arm’s length—that made it difficult for him to risk a sweep back to try to deflect her aim.
Maybe it was a .357 or a .44. It didn’t really matter, but while he let it play through his mind it allowed him to try to mentally step back. The girl had wanted him with them in the lead wag, and she’d been studying him the way Jak studied prey. Whatever reason she had for wanting him there, it wasn’t a burning admiration. But she had a purpose. She wanted him there for the long haul, so it was unlikely that she would just take his head off for the sake of it.
“Okay, listen carefully,” he said slowly. “I’m going to let go of this bastard, and I’m going to step back slowly. I’m telling you this so you don’t get twitchy.”
“Does it feel like I get twitchy?” she asked deadpan.
“No, it doesn’t. But I like to
be sure,” he replied, thinking all the while that she was way beyond triple dangerous. Anyone that sure that he could read her calm was worth treating with caution. He added, “I can’t move until you stop trying to push that blaster through the back of my neck.”
“Okay. I’m going to move back slowly, too. But not so slow that you could try anything and get away with it.”
“I can believe that,” he said simply. As he spoke, he felt the pressure ease on the back of his neck, fading as the muzzle moved away from his skin, and only the tingling after-impression was left. Equally slowly, he loosened his grip at LaGuerre’s throat and stepped back.
“That’s cool,” LaGuerre said, gingerly feeling the skin beneath his beard, his voice roughened by the pressure. “We’ll say no more about this, okay? It was a disagreement in the heat of the moment. You’re not so stupe as to carry this forward, and neither am I.”
J.B. raised an eyebrow and said nothing for a moment. At length, he said simply, “If that’s what you think, I’ll go with that.”
The Armorer turned to Eula. She still had the blaster in her hand. The part of him that was always the Armorer was pleased to note that his guess of a Colt .44 had been correct. The other part of him—J. B. Dix the man—had other things occupying his mind.
“You going to put that thing away, or you want me to admire the job you’ve done on it?”
She let the hammer down gently, put the blaster back in a holster concealed in the thigh of her combat pants. The old blaster was nearly the length of her thigh, and learning to walk without revealing the hiding place had to have taken a lot of practice—another sign of her dedication to her task. Whatever that might ultimately be…Her eyes hadn’t left his the whole time, and it was still as though she was scoping his very soul. There was something about her that was familiar, but he still couldn’t place it.
“Good to see you’re so dedicated to your friends,” she said. “Man who’d risk his skin for others is a rare enough commodity these days. Wonder if you were always like that.” Her tone was flat, but there was something about the way she chose her words that told him he was missing out on something important.
“Not for me to say,” he answered in as noncommittal a voice as he could. “You’re not so bad like that yourself, are you?”
She shrugged. “Man pays my jack, figure he has a right to me covering his ass.”
J.B. nodded. “Fair point.”
He turned to LaGuerre. “Still think you’re a triple shit rat fuck to not stop.”
The trader shrugged. “Hey, you can’t please everyone. I told you when I picked you people up that I wanted to make a straight run without stopping. You’ve seen why—you get scumfuckers like that attacking all the way across this pesthole.”
“True enough,” the Armorer replied, “but we saw them off, and there’s little chance of another attack so soon. Any muties and coldhearts out here are going to be pretty spread out. Ryan and Jak need to rest up, at least get a break so they can sleep. Fuck it, man, they’ll be crashing the bikes because they’re falling asleep on them if you don’t give them the chance to rest. We don’t need them to be trailing behind as much as we need them alert and ready to fight. Least you can do is let them stash the bikes and catch some sleep in one of the wags while we ride. Everyone else gets a chance to rest.”
“Zarir doesn’t,” the trader pointed out.
J.B. looked at the wag jockey. The man was staring ahead at the road, muscles set like high-tension wire around stone. He didn’t seem to have heard his name mentioned, even to have registered what had just occurred at his back.
“Man, that boy is so hyped on jolt he’s not sleeping or waking. He’s more like a machine than this wag.”
LaGuerre smiled, almost to himself. “Yeah, guess you got a point about that. Still don’t want to stop.”
“So you want to lose two good men and their bikes for the sake of pursuing this nonstop stupe plan? It’s playing the odds, man. We stop now, make a quick switch and we can be on our way before any fucker has a chance to catch up with us. Check what’s around. There’s jackshit.”
The trader stroked his beard. He looked at Eula, though his eyes were still hidden by his shades, and it was only the inclination of his head that signaled his question.
Without a word, the young woman went to the ob ports on either side of the wag and looked out into the twilight. J.B. could see over her shoulder that the land was empty as far as could be seen.
“I guess Dix is right,” she said almost absently, as though absorbed in her own thoughts.
“You bet I am,” J.B. said softly. The look she shot him was unreadable, but the one thing he knew for sure was that it wasn’t undying admiration.
“I think he’s right,” she told the trader. “Makes sense, and there’s not going to be a better time.”
LaGuerre paused for a moment. Finally he said, “Okay, let’s do it. But no fucking around. This is going to be quick.”
J.B. nodded shortly and crossed to the comm mic. How to make Ryan and Jak aware of the convoy coming to a halt when the comm transmissions were inaudible to them? He would have to slow the convoy so that they were able to see that it was coming to a halt.
“Millie, Doc, Cody, we need to bring in Jak and Ryan before they drop. Get your wag drivers to slow their speed so that they can see. We stop suddenly and they’ll smash into the back of us.”
“A good point, my dear John Barrymore,” came Doc’s voice. “Such an unnecessary accident must surely be avoided.”
MILDRED LOOKED at Reese, but the giant woman was impassive. She had said no more than a few words in all the time that Mildred had traveled with her, and it was unlikely that she was about to start now.
“So how much do you have to slow, and how quickly?” she asked. Reese shrugged. Mildred waited, but nothing more was forthcoming. “Well,” she continued, trying to keep the irritation from her voice, “I’m not just asking you out of idle curiosity. I’m assuming that you have some kind of procedure that you use when you get such an order.”
Reese tore her eyes from the road and bore them on Mildred. But rather than the hostility that Mildred expected, there was puzzlement in them. “A what?” she asked simply.
“A procedure.”
“What’s that?”
“The thing that you usually do when you get such an order.”
“Uh…” Reese nodded slowly, as though it now made sense. “Never had an order like that before.”
“What do you mean, you’ve never had an order like that before?” Mildred was keeping her temper, but only just, and she was sure that the repressed rage was coming out in her tone.
“Just what I say. Never done a run like this before, never had an order like that before. So got no pro-see-der.”
Mildred put her hands to her face, massaging her temples. “Then what,” she said slowly, “do you intend to do?”
Reese gave the slightest of shrugs. “See what they do in front, then follow them.”
LAG UERRE SEEMED to be the only one who could get through to Zarir. The wag jockey still stared straight ahead, seemingly unseeing and uncomprehending, but steering straight and true.
The trader stood and crossed the interior of the wag until he was by Zarir’s side. He leaned over him, arm around his shoulders, whispering something into his ear. The wag jockey’s head moved. It was the smallest of movements, noticeable only because he was otherwise so still. LaGuerre smiled, patting him on the shoulder before returning to his seat. The wag began to slow, almost imperceptibly at first but gaining a backward momentum as the distance grew longer.
So the convoy was going to pull up gradually, giving the incommunicado rear riders a chance to assimilate what was happening. That was good.
What was, perhaps, not so good—what was worrying the Armorer—was the way in which the trader had a hold over the wag jockey. Was it just jolt, or was it something else? He’d seen mutie psi-powers over the years; hell, he’d even seen good
old-fashioned hypnotism. If it was something like this that the trader was using to keep Zarir under control and awake for such long periods—not just shit like jolt—then there was no way of knowing how much control he had over the rest of the convoy crew. Maybe that would explain Eula’s strange attitude. Maybe not.
The Armorer didn’t have the doomie sense, but he hadn’t got this far by ignoring alarm bells when they went off in his head.
And this time they were deafening.
DOC LOOKED across at Raven, who had expertly slid into the driver’s seat to replace Ramona while the wag was still in motion.
“It would appear, my dear, that your immaculately performed maneuver was unnecessary, as we shall shortly be stopping, albeit possibly briefly.”
“Boy, you love those big words, hon,” Ramona muttered sleepily from the bunk, where she lay stretched out with her eyes still closed.
“Then allow me to be a little more succinct—”
“Still too big, hon,” she interrupted.
“Oh, yeah, and you wish you could say those words more often,” Raven said to her, barely keeping the laughter from her voice.
“Woo, yeah,” Ramona replied, in a tone that belied the expression. “Listen, Docky-babe, we don’t usually do the long haul like this, but there have been plenty of times on long stretches where we’ve had to swap over for one reason or another. The big wag drivers, like Ray and Reese and the ones before them, they use jolt and shit to stay awake. I’m not overly fond of that shit, and neither is my girl here.”
“Yeah, look at what it does to you…Why the hell you think they usually drive alone,” Raven pointed out.
“A fair point,” Doc conceded. He was still a little nonplussed at being called “Docky-babe,” but didn’t wish to press the matter. Instead he asked, “And so we slow down gradually before coming to a halt?”