by James Axler
But in the Nikulino street
market there wasn't even a blunt knife on offer. Ryan also noticed that nobody appeared to be carrying any kind of weapon, at least not openly, except for the parading sec men and women, all of whom carried either pistols or rifles—Stechkins, Tokarevs and Makarovs. But, most commonly, the old versions of the Kalashnikov rifle.
The market offered everything else.
Food was scarce and, compared to some of the other items, expensive. Potatoes were plentiful, but the stalls peddling carrots, turnips and small amounts of hothouse fruits and tomatoes were sparse and the produce was costly. There was plenty of meat, with old women sitting behind their displays, rhythmically fanning away the hordes of buzzing blowflies. Mutton and horsemeat were most common, as was a surprising quantity of good fresh fish.
A few stalls sold prenuke memorabilia, like books and small household items. But the prices posted seemed ludicrously high compared with other things, and there seemed to be few takers.
One ramshackle table held only an array of false teeth, gleamingly pink and white and infinitely macabre. Another stall sold false teeth made from metal and wood, which seemed to cause Ryan's pain to surge again.
Clothes were sold in the largest number of stalls in the market, most of them crudely made and based on furs. One old woman had some finely worked hand-embroidered kerchiefs for sale, but nobody was buying. The stall next door was piled with secondhand rubber boots, and fifteen or twenty people were jostling to purchase them.
One section of the market was set aside for various crafts. A slim boy with only one leg pumped at a foot-operated drill and offered extremely fine engravings on glass of birds and butterflies. Another boy was selling tiny creatures of folded, colored card, attracting a good crowd to admire his skill. A chubby woman standing next to Ryan said something, gesturing to the boy's creations. Hoping he was right, Ryan muttered "Da" and smiled. She smiled back, so he figured he'd guessed right.
Some of the craftsmen had signs hung up to advertise their particular skills. It was Krysty who spotted the enormous golden tooth, carved from a single piece of wood, indicating the dentist.
It was only when Rick was deep in the miasma of trying to explain Ryan's condition that they realized they were attracting a crowd.
"Zup!" shouted the freezie, sweating with the tension. He looked worriedly at Ryan.
Since the pain from his ravaged tooth had miraculously vanished, it seemed a good moment to make their excuses and leave. But the kopeck had finally dropped and the open-air dentist grinned broadly. He pushed Ryan into a battered iron chair.
As the man smiled through the forest of ginger hair, Ryan was alarmed to see that he was totally toothless. Not a jagged stump remained anywhere.
He beckoned Rick to him, hissing in his ear, "Tell the triple…tell him I want only one tooth out and I'll point at it."
The freezie stumbled through an explanation, which seemed to amuse both the dentist and the growing crowd of watchers. Ryan was becoming less and less comfortable at being the center of attraction, but Krysty reassured him.
"Folks are the same everywhere," she whispered.
"What?"
"Love watching pain. Give 'em a good show, lover. Don't disappoint them."
It was only as the Russian started to poke around in Ryan's mouth that the one-eyed man realized he was being treated by a mutie. As mutations went it was comparatively slight and very common—variations in the numbers and placing of digits on hands and feet. In extreme cases you might see a mutie with thirty or forty tiny, feeble toes on each bare foot, like the stubby tentacles of a sea anemone.
The Russian had only two digits on each hand. But to make up for it, they were huge. The thumb and index finger were like the claws of a massive lobster. The skin was immensely thick, like horn, and there were no nails.
Ryan opened his mouth as wide as he could, leaning back, hands folded white-knuckled in his lap, and closed his eye. He swallowed hard and tried to steady his breathing, feeling an obscure and pointless wave of patriotism, which wasn't something that happened very often when a man lived in the Deathlands. But Ryan didn't want to behave badly in front of the mugging crowd of Russians. He didn't want to let himself and his country down by appearing to be a weakling, even though none of them knew he was one of the hated breed of Yanks.
The man, whose breath stank of vinegar and stale cabbage, turned and said something to Rick.
"Says he'll have to pull it out. Thinks he can see which one it is."
Ryan didn't much like the sound of the word "thinks," but he nodded anyway. He also didn't care for the way the red-bearded man was looking curiously at Rick. Because he was so close to Ryan, the freezie hadn't been able to prevent his hearing the quick burst of a foreign language.
Rick said something to the "dentist," which Ryan assumed was simple a "go" command. He opened his mouth wider and braced himself.
The pincering thumb and finger closed on the afflicted tooth, making him start at the shock of fresh pain.
It happened very fast.
The man's left hand pressed hard against Ryan's chest, keeping him still in the chair, and he felt an overwhelming sense of pressure. To his surprise, the first movement was one of pushing, then a squeezing, crushing feeling. There was comparatively little pain, but he heard a dreadful cracking, rushing noise, as if part of his jaw were being forcibly sucked out through his ears.
Ryan was aware of tendons creaking under the strain. Then blood gushed from the torn socket as the tooth was ripped free. It flooded into his throat, making him choke and gag. He pushed the Russian away from him and sat up, gobbing a great spray of thick blood into the dirt of the street.
Ryan's performance won a round of cheers from the circle of onlookers. He noticed that the driver of a small-goods wag had stopped his vehicle, leaving the engine running as he climbed from the canvas-topped cab to join in the fun.
The dentist, if such a description was appropriate for the claw-fingered butcher, held up the damaged tooth, showing the crimson root, bringing yet another round of applause.
Ryan stood up, holding his jaw in both hands, and moved it experimentally and cautiously. He grinned at the realization that the stabbing shocks of icy pain were gone. On an impulse he reached out and shook the Russian's hand.
The man beamed and said, "Dyengi."
Ryan turned to look at Rick, whose face had gone paler than pale and whose mouth was sagging open. Whatever dyengi meant, it didn't look like it was going to be the best of news.
The man repeated the word, this time the smile making itself scarce. His voice was louder, his eyes narrowing.
Rick licked his lips. Ryan noticed that the muscles of the freezie's arms were twitching and jerking, and speech seemed hard to come by. He raised a quizzical eyebrow at Krysty, who shrugged.
The Russian opened his left palm and tapped it with the claws of his right, shouting the same word.
"Money," Rick finally said faintly. "We never figured on… He wants some bread for pulling the tooth, Ryan. What the… What fuckin' steps do we take now, Ryan?"
"Long ones! Go!"
"AGAINST ALL REGULATIONS and orders of the transport department, the driver had left his wag unlocked with the engine running. He has been subsequently arrested and will be charged with offences under sections…"
Major-Commissar Gregori Zimyanin tutted and laid the typed report on his desk, looking up at Alicia Andreyinichna. "So many facts and so few of them of any interest to me."
He skipped a few lines of coded letters and numbers. The fate of the wretched wag driver was of no concern to him.
"It goes on, 'The three perps broke away and escaped in the above-mentioned wag. One seemed ill and was helped by the tall woman with the red hair, hair that I must report was the reddest it has been my privilege to see. I conducted an investigation into the crowd and could not find anyone who would admit to ever having seen hair of such a b
right hue. One man, whose details are appended below, said at first that it was not the reddest hair he had ever seen. Subsequent and diligent inquiries revealed he was color-blind and thought that spring grass was also red. By the hammer and the anvil!"
For a second time the crinkled, recycled folder smacked on his desk. The woman took a nervous step backward. There were so many rumors about Gregori Zimyanin and the barbaric easterly wilderness where he had made his bubble reputation.
"Never have I seen a man who will not use ten words when he can make do with a hundred. But, despite all of… there is still much here. Again, on the southerly and westerly edge of our city. Again three strangers. This time sounding like the three that the kulak encountered. The same dark glasses. Described again and again in statement after… Red hair. And this man who has one eye, when most show a preference toward a pair." It was an attempted joke, but Alicia Andreyinichna was too frightened of him to notice. For this was a new and a different Major-Commissar Zimyanin.
There was a fire smoldering in the eyes. Twice already she had seen the way his face turned to the long sniper's rifle hung upon the office wall, as though he wanted to take it down and go rushing out after this mysterious trio.
"And he is also missing a tooth. Who is he? Who is the woman? The sickly second man? They draw so much attention to themselves rather than pay the peasant a handful of copper. The witnesses mostly say they feared them. Why do they…? Ah, there is something here, little one."
He got up and paced across to the map, his boot heels clicking on the floor. His finger darted out and stabbed at the name of Peredelkino, hesitated, then moved again and hovered over Nikulino.
"The market was here? Yes. Pins, Alicia Andreyinichna. Little flags. Let us plot our strangers and see where they have come from and where they are going."
While the clerk bustled out to her office, the sec officer stared blankly out the window at the spring day. But his thoughts were slipping back, however absurdly, to a hunt over packed snow and ice. And some Yanks, one of whom—
The phone tinkled uncertainly and Alicia Andreyinichna picked it up. After a few words that he couldn't catch she came back.
"They've found the wag."
"Where?"
"Ramenki. There." She pointed a mile or so farther in from the outer suburbs.
"Ah, good, good. Very good. Now, the colored flags."
While she rummaged through her desk, Zimyanin gazed at the map, smiling to himself. His lips moved. "Thank you for giving me that information. It was most useful. I shall offer you a gratuity for your help, if you do not find such a thing offensive."
His secret language practice was interrupted as Alicia returned.
"Here." She handed him a dozen or so pins with little colored squares of paper attached.
He took them and looked again at the map. "Peredelkino. There. Then where the old man and his cart saw… good. Then the market and the escape in the wag. Finally where it was found dumped by them. Good."
"Is there anything else, Comrade Major-Commissar?" she asked.
"A thread or some cotton."
He waited until she reappeared, giving him a length of dark blue cotton. He tied it neatly around the most southerly flag, looped it around the next one and the next then adjusted it around the last little flag. The line wasn't straight, but it definitely showed an unmistakable progression. Zimyanin extended the remains of the thread in the same direction and nodded to the girl.
"Yes. See, Alicia Andreyinichna. Whoever they are, they are coming our way. We must prepare to greet them."
Chapter Seventeen
BACK AT THE BIG HOUSE the three men waited for the others to return. In their planning discussions Ryan had suggested that if all went very well, they might possibly return within a week or so.
The same meals of smoked fish and dried meat began to get very boring after the first day, and with the rise in temperatures the food began to smell. So Jak took Doc on hunting expeditions along the trail by the side of the stream to scavenge around the edges of the small hamlet in the trees.
They went out either early in the morning or late in the evening. J.B. would watch them move off into the half light as he leaned against the empty window frame on the second floor, the slight figure of the boy, his stark white hair flowing about his narrow shoulders like living spray and Doc, stumping along after him, the ferrule of his sword-stick rapping on the stones of the path.
While they were gone, the Armorer would sometimes climb to the ruined loft and slip through the hidden door and go down the spiral staircase. He'd wander silent and alone through the chattering consoles, pausing to wonder at the supernatural strength that had enabled Krysty Wroth to devastate the lock. It had saved their lives by freeing the gateway door, but also trapped them in the middle of a hostile continent.
By the time he returned to the first floor, Jak and Doc would be on their way back from the miserable ville.
To steal from a small community was always dangerous. If too much was taken, the locals would take the trouble to hunt you down.
Jak was very clever at it. He'd returned to the house with a sack containing eggs, potatoes and other root vegetables. A few slices of meat hacked off a ham dangling in a barn helped to complement their meals.
Doc kept smiling at the boy's cunning.
"Upon my soul, he is such a rapscallion. When we took the meat and the eggs, he stole more than we have brought with us and left a clear trail to an outlying cabin, deliberately dropping a couple of eggs and a slice of ham so the owner would follow the tracks and suspect his neighbor. And we would thus escape quite free of any taint."
J.B. was pleased with that. But the arrival of Jak and Doc the following evening with a small dog in their sack didn't please him. Not at all.
"Give it to me and I'll break its neck. Quick and easy. Won't hurt it."
Doc held the shivering little animal against his chest, looking down at the damp nose and worried eyes. "I regret, my dear John Barrymore, that I would attempt to prevent you from doing that."
"What?"
"I believe that you heard me clearly."
"Stop me?"
"Yes."
J.B. shook his head. "Doc, you are one double-cute old bastard. Stop me! Fine. Keep the mongrel. But if there's a moment that the dog risks us, I'll chill it soon as look at it. Your responsibility, Doc. Yours."
* * * * * *
"Let us help you. Fireblast!" Ryan's temper was beginning to flare out of control. Rick's wallowing self-pity put them all in danger. If one of the many sec patrols saw them, they'd stop. Rick was in no shape to try to speak Russian to them, and that would be that for them all. "Get up or I'll hurt you."
"Kick a man when he's down, eh, Ryan? Come on, man. Leave me. We're in the bottom of the ninth. Seconds to the gun. Near the tape. One last free throw." He stopped and shook his head, the tiredness overwhelming him, the pettish anger gone. "Bend down, Ryan, and listen."
"What?"
"Bend down. Please, Ryan. Krysty?"
"Yeah?"
"Give us a minute, will you?"
"Sure." She walked a few steps away, looking up and down the tree-lined avenue, finding it almost unbelievable that this was Russia. This was Moscow. These houses had been homes in the year 2001, filled with families. Then the nukes had come, coughing out their neutron sleep. And the world had died. Behind her, Ryan had knelt in the dusty road, head down, listening to Rick Ginsberg.
"Go on, Ryan," the freezie whispered, breathing hoarsely.
"Gonna tell me why? "
"I'm sort of… ashamed."
Ryan couldn't hide his surprise. "Why? What have you…?"
"My sickness. When I'm real tired like now and I lose control of my muscles and… Hell's bells, Ryan! Can't you guess? I've shit myself. Couldn't help it. Gotta clean myself. Won't take that long. Find a house and look for me. I'll make it."
"If I had a handful of jack for every man and woman I kn
ow that shit themselves, I'd be the richest baron in the Deathlands. Sure. Go ahead, Rick. We'll wait for you up there."
"Don't tell Krysty."
"Sure."
But he told her anyway. Why not?
MAJOR-COMMISSAR ZIMYANIN wasn't the happiest of sec men. The message was unequivocal, signed in red ink with a scrawled, testy signature that had creased and nearly torn the paper: Marshal of Internal Security, Josef J. Siraksi, one of the top-ranking officers within the Party and a man tipped, when his turn came around and he lived long enough, for the supreme position of leader.
Request denied. Insufficient evidence of any security risk. Int-Sec forces will maintain normal holding and patrol patterns. If felt necessary, then descriptions of the three suspects (the word was heavily underlined) may be circulated on condition yellow. But no higher.
There was a postscript in the marshal's own hand. "Do not look for terrorists beneath every stone, Comrade Major-Commissar. Moscow is not the Kamchatka."
"Your advice is much appreciated, my dear sir, and I shall follow it to the letter," Zimyanin said, having first checked the phrase he wanted in his battered phrase book.
He made sure that the door was firmly closed between his office and that of Alicia Andreyinichna. Then he stood up, face tight with anger, and walked to the window to look out over the bleak prospect, toward the shapeless worm of the Moscow River. He pressed his lips to the glass, whispering his rage.
"May rad cancer rot them all. May their wives fuck pigs. May they fall with their asses bleeding fire. May their noses rot and…" That brought him to another idea. "Aliev," he murmured.
The tracker could hunt a flea through a sandstorm.
"I want Aliev on twenty-four-hour standby!" he shouted at the closed door, and heard the young woman's muffled squeak of assent.
He looked out the window again. "Get my wag ready from transport requisition. I'm tired of this stuffy office. I'm going out to taste the air and see what I can see."