by James Axler
J.B. spoke up from behind Ryan’s shoulder, his eyes watching the strangely garbed women carefully. “You use the mat-trans often?” he asked.
“No, never,” Phyllida told him. “But we had hoped to, as stories had been passed down for generations regarding its purpose. As I was telling your companion here, the device was out of commission for a very long time. Our people only achieved functionality again barely a day ago.”
“Then someone blew it up,” J.B. said drily. “That’s mighty inconvenient.”
One of the other Melissas spoke up, the honey-haired one called Charm. “William was a fool.” She spit. “He should have been driven out of Heaven months ago.”
“Heaven?” Doc asked with obvious surprise. These women dressed like angels, but surely...
Phyllida turned back to him and smiled. “Heaven Falls,” she said. “Where we live. We’ll show you, if you like, once we’ve assessed the damage to the mat-trans. It won’t take long.”
“Heaven Falls.” Doc rolled the name around in his mind. “It sounds, well... It sounds heavenly. Does it not, Ryan?”
The one-eyed man looked from Doc to Krysty and the others, judging their expressions. When he met with Mildred’s chocolate-brown eyes he saw her nod subtly. She wanted somewhere to check Ricky over more fully. A ville could be it.
“I think we’d like that,” Ryan said finally.
Together, the group made its way back through the redoubt to its heart, where the operations room and the mat-trans waited in their state of disarray.
“The bomb was set here,” Ryan said. “My friend tried to disarm it, but we ran out of time.”
“Placed the fire blanket over it to douse the flames,” J.B. said, as if in consolation.
Kneeling, Phyllida lifted the soot-streaked blanket and swept her hand through the mess underneath. It was still hot, but she didn’t seem to be bothered. Behind her, two of her companions were lamenting the shattered armaglass walls, while the other two checked the equipment in the control room.
“No signs of additional damage,” Adele said as she worked one of the consoles.
“All clear here,” black-haired Nancy confirmed, running a boot-up sequence on another console on the far side of the room.
Ryan and his companions watched in silence, and he felt almost violated by seeing other people operating the mat-trans controls. The companions had no clue as to how the system worked, but seeing strangers working the equipment felt threatening and very wrong.
After a few moments Phyllida straightened from the smoke-blackened tiles of the mat-trans floor and stood at her full height in front of Ryan. She was a beautiful woman, statuesque with the flawless skin of youth. Women like this didn’t usually exist in the Deathlands; it was a demanding environment, one that wore away at people, and at women most of all. Seeing these Melissas, as they called themselves, made Ryan feel uneasy, as if he was being tricked somehow.
“Thanks for everything you did to stop the fire,” Phyllida said.
“J.B. here—” Ryan began, but Phyllida interrupted him.
“You’re all to join us at the Home,” she said. “I’m sure that the Regina will want to thank you personally when she hears of your heroics.”
With that, the Melissas ushered the group from the control room and out into the corridor. Within minutes they were outside, following the dirt track that led from the redoubt door.
* * *
IT WAS BEGINNING to warm up outside. They were in a wooded area, lush grass lining the steep slope that led toward a blue, cloudless sky. Surprisingly, the usual chem clouds were absent here.
Though she had been outside briefly, Krysty wore a broad smile as she stepped into the sunlight again. She looped her arm through Ryan’s and pulled him into a sunny spot that was brightly illuminated on the dirt-and-tarmac path. “It feels good to be alive,” she told him, and Ryan knew what she meant. She had had no chance to express her concern for him in front of all these strangers, and her comment now was a veiled reference to how pleased she was that he had survived the bomb blast. Giving away too much about relationships, or much of anything else, wasn’t smart when you were around strangers.
“Your friend likes the sunlight,” the honey-haired Melissa observed.
Krysty remained on the path, twirling joyfully with her arms outstretched, a few feet from the redoubt’s entrance.
“She does at that,” Doc agreed, “and her name is Krysty, though forgive me if I have already forgotten yours, foolish old man that I am.”
“Charm,” the woman replied, flashing Doc her perfect smile.
“How very appropriate,” Doc replied.
The companions were allowed to keep their weapons, which boded well. In fact, allowed was too strong a word for it—the Melissas simply showed no interest in discussing their blasters just as long as they kept them holstered. Jak retrieved his Colt Python from where he had dropped it close to the redoubt entrance, and that was the only occasion where blasters were ever mentioned in conversation, wherein Linda instructed him to keep the weapon out of sight at all times. That was also when the subject of the late William came up.
“I’m sorry that you had to witness that,” Phyllida told Jak.
“Not see much,” Jak told her.
“The man was a violator,” Phyllida explained sorrowfully. It seemed that she regretted not that Jak had seen it so much as that their society had deviants at all.
“Violation is a disease,” she added. “It eats away at our love, fracturing the world we try to build. I’m proud of what I do for the Home, even though my contribution is small.”
“What is it you do?” Ryan asked her.
Phyllida thrust her shoulders back proudly, like a soldier showing earned medals, and gestured to her white-robed companions. “We are Melissas,” she said. “We protect the Home from factions that would destroy it, both from outside and within.”
“Then you’re sec women?” J.B. queried.
Phyllida looked at him and shrugged. “I haven’t heard that term,” she said, then remained silent, unsure of how to explain it to these strangely garbed outlanders.
Ryan and his companions followed as the white-robed Melissas led them up through the trees, following some unseen route they knew only from familiarity. There were flowers dotted here and there, more of them as they moved closer to their destination, brightening the surroundings with little oases of color: here a patch of magenta, there a line of red and white and blue. Occasionally, J.B. caught Phyllida and the others looking up at the sun, and he guessed that they were using it to navigate, the same way he did when he arrived at a new location.
Not far into the journey, Ricky stumbled and Mildred was forced to stop the group while she rechecked his wound. When he lifted his shirt, Mildred saw that the wound was still weeping blood; a darkness that was almost black had spread across the gauze she had used to patch him.
“Is your young friend going to be all right?” Adele asked with evident concern.
“He’ll be okay,” Mildred said, but there was worry in her tone.
Linda spoke swiftly, almost cheerfully. “We have a medical faculty at Home. Perhaps your companion could...” She trailed off, looking to the group’s leader for confirmation.
“Of course,” Phyllida said. “We would be only too happy to help.”
“Thanks,” Mildred said, but she sounded unconvinced. What kind of medical faculty? she wondered as Ricky replaced his shirt over the wound.
The group moved slower after that, with Ricky leaning alternately against Mildred and Jak as they trekked the path to Heaven Falls.
They were following a dead-straight path through the trees. Ryan sensed something familiar about the place; the foliage reminding him of Front Royal, where he had grown up. That was in Virginia, and he wondered if they had
landed close. He caught Phyllida’s attention and asked her.
“Where exactly are we?” he asked.
“Almost home,” Phyllida replied, unintentionally cryptic. “You’ll see in a few minutes.”
And see they did. About six minutes later the group reached the summit of a rise and the trees parted to reveal a great mountain range towering over the grassy plains. Ryan’s breath caught in his throat as he looked out over those familiar mountains, while the others stopped and stared. It was Virginia, he was almost sure of it. They were looking out over the Blue Ridge Mountains.
“Is it much farther to this ville of yours?” J.B. asked, his dour voice bringing Ryan back to earth.
“Through there,” Phyllida told J.B., pointing down a little ways through the crags.
J.B. and the others looked, and they saw lush green grass dotted by wooden, boxlike constructions that stood to roughly shoulder height. The boxy constructions featured latticed sides and stood atop what looked like table legs, and each had been painted white.
“Are those beehives?” Mildred asked, surprised.
“We farm honey here,” Phyllida told her in reply. “The bees like the coolness of the mountain air. They thrive in high environments.”
“I did not know that,” Mildred admitted.
Phyllida led the way through the rows of manmade beehives and deeper into the gorge between mountains. The beehives buzzed with a constant low hum, and Doc ducked his head as a bee flew close by.
“They won’t hurt you,” Charm told Doc, having somewhat attached herself to him during the journey over. “They just want to get to the pollen.”
Embarrassed, Doc laughed. “I told you I was an old fool,” he said.
There was an overhang of trees up ahead, creating a natural gateway leading into a sloping path. Beyond that stood a wide depression between the mountains within which lay the home of the Trai people.
And what a home it was!
There, in the wide plain that rested in the depression between mountains, stood a structure like nothing they had ever seen before. Like most villes the companions had encountered, it was surrounded by a high gated wall on which was located a sentry tower where sec men—or in this case, women—watched the surroundings, night and day. Behind that, white towers gleamed in the sunlight, arranged in a great circle that rose up into the sky, each building an almost perfectly circular tower. Tiny figures moved among the towers, striding across high walkways like acrobats in a circus act.
It was left to Doc to express what they were all thinking, albeit in his own inimitable style.
“By the Three Kennedys!”
Chapter Five
The companions followed Phyllida and the other Melissas onto the path that led into the gorge and, from there, to the gates themselves. As they approached, it became clear that the miraculous buildings were not quite circular. Subtle lines worked around their edges to form a soft hexagonal shape, utilizing the space perfectly. Arranged together like that, the buildings reminded Mildred of the pipes of her late father’s old church organ, but even those pipes had never gleamed so vibrantly as the buildings she now saw. While it reminded Mildred of the church organ, it also reminded her of something else—a fictitious city she had seen in an old movie serial back when she and her brother had just been kids.
“Mongo,” she muttered, shaking her head. “We’ve just walked to freaking Mongo.”
The others didn’t hear her; they were too wrapped up in the incredible sight in front of them.
“Welcome to Heaven Falls,” Phyllida announced, leading the companions to the gates of this incredible ville.
The gates to Heaven Falls were tall and well secured, fifteen feet in height with great metal rivets and hinges, two alert sentries watching from a tower that loomed over them to the left-hand side. The sentries were women, dressed in the same white robes as the party of Melissas who had found Ryan and his companions. The sentry tower was like a wooden box on stilts, with barred sides and no glass, making it difficult to shoot into but also preventing the additional danger of shattering glass should a bullet find a path through the bars.
Ryan thought of those things as he approached, wondering how far he would need to be to get a good shot from his Steyr Scout into the sentry box. Such were the thoughts of a man who had been shaped by the Deathlands, where every stranger had to be presumed to be an enemy. At least these strangers hadn’t disarmed them, and that counted for a lot as far as trust went. But Ryan was still conscious that he might be leading his friends into a trap.
It was a twenty-minute walk to the redoubt, but that had been with Ricky’s wounded flank slowing them. Ryan estimated he could march it in under fifteen minutes, sprint it in maybe seven. But with the mat-trans out of commission, that knowledge would serve them little good.
The sentries recognized Phyllida and her group, and the towering gates began to withdraw on a great winch mechanism. The winch squeaked loudly as it moved the heavy gates, granting Ryan and the companions their first proper view of the ville that lay beyond.
A main track led into the heart of the ville, with other roads peeling away at regular intervals. The streets were wide and unpaved, with farming machinery, including plows and mowers, waiting at the edge of the thoroughfare. The pale-colored buildings visible over the walls were clustered close to the center, with a lot of the land to each side given over to animal farming. It didn’t surprise Ryan that the animals were kept behind the gates—there was a lot to lose in animal farming. Rustlers could move in quickly and leave a ville starving in just a few hours.
Accompanied by the Melissas, Ryan and the companions entered. While the ville incorporated the central white towers, there were also other, lower buildings spread around, with plenty of wide-open space between them. Ryan’s first impression was that the ville might cover as much as a square mile, with the walls giving way to the towering slopes of the surrounding mountains—natural protection. Grass grew everywhere, a vibrant green carpet running all through the ville, and as one looked away from the main cluster of buildings one could see the grass borders segue into rolling fields where just two or three hut-like lodges had been built.
The ville was very clean. The roads themselves were marked by borders of flowers running in great sweeping lines all the way through the ville in strict flower types, making the roads seem almost as if they had been color-coded like a landing strip. Phyllida and her companions pointed out several interesting features, including a grand meeting hall that was circular in design and covered enough ground to house a battleship. The women were clearly proud of their ville, and they were open and upbeat in welcoming these outlanders to their home.
Ryan listened without comment, nodding as social protocol demanded, but adding little insight of his own. He was too busy taking in everything: the towering buildings that reached six or seven stories into the air; the covered drainage system that ran along the sides of the streets; the series of water pumps erected at regular intervals in the gated community. There were people, too, all of them dressed well, and happy. A lot of children under five ran up and down the street, herded by women in formal-looking attire, their hair pinned back neatly.
One child ran over to take in the companions, stopping fearlessly in front of Ryan and staring openly at him. The child had black hair that had grown a little long so that it was hard to tell if it was a boy or a girl.
“You’re dirty,” the child said cheerfully.
Ryan looked from the child to his clothes and realized that, at least by the standards of the ville’s other occupants, he and his companions were pretty dirty at that. He smiled at the child. “We’re hoping to get cleaned up,” he told him, “if we’re allowed to stick around.”
Phyllida turned back to Ryan, her blond hair catching the morning sun in a shimmer of gold. “That won’t be a problem, Ryan,” she
assured him. “We have facilities here for bathing and for cleaning clothes.”
Ryan nodded once in acknowledgment. “We’d be grateful, ma’am.”
The dark-haired child was being called by one of the neatly dressed women, but didn’t seem to notice. “Patrick! Patrick, come back here,” she cried, trotting briskly over on low-heeled shoes. Finally the child turned when the woman was almost at arm’s length.
“That man’s got a blaster,” Patrick told her without a hint of fear in his voice.
The woman looked at Ryan and smiled. She was young and pretty, with red hair a little darker than Krysty’s. “Sorry,” she said to Ryan before turning back to her charge.
“I’m sure he won’t use it,” she explained, taking little Patrick’s hand. “While you need to get to school before the bell goes, otherwise you won’t learn anything.”
Patrick seemed reluctant to go for a moment. “Are you going to teach us about blasters, miss?” he asked.
“Well,” said the woman, evidently Patrick’s teacher, “you’ll only find out when you get to school.”
This seemed to satisfy the child, who’d probably have forgotten the conversation by the time he got to school anyway. The redhead turned back to Ryan just once as she departed with Patrick. She looked apologetic, but Ryan thought he detected something else there, too—she was eyeing his weapons, the handblaster at his hip and the Scout longblaster slung across his back like the Grim Reaper’s scythe.
“Kid seemed surprised by my blasters,” Ryan said to Phyllida. “Don’t you have weapons here?”
“We have no need of them,” Phyllida replied, “though we do understand that things are somewhat different outside these walls.”
“Yeah,” J.B. observed dourly. “You could say that.”
What struck Ryan, however, was not the lack of weapons but the educational program that was apparently in place. Growing up as the son of a wealthy baron, his life had been one of privilege. Ryan had learned to read and to write and he had had a good schooling in history and other subjects, despite the mess the world at large was still in following the nukecaust of 2001. Ryan was one of the lucky ones, and his travels around the Deathlands had made him very aware of that.