The Mummers were gone. Three disabled jeeps were canted across the road, and a handful of corpses dotted the ground. Horses milled about as the bodies were swiftly looted, and smoldering rags were stuffed into the vehicles’ fueltanks. Then the attackers whirled their horses and retreated back into the woods. The road was empty.
Patrick stood, white and trembling with adrenalin reaction. Something big had just happened, he could feel it. It was more than just an assassination, it was a declaration of open warfare. And—“I blew it,” he said in soft wonder. “I was right there, and I ran away.”
“Took your time getting here, though,” an amused voice said.
Patrick turned and saw Obadiah sitting crosslegged in the grass at the far end of the meadow. He had two horses and a pony hitched to a leafless sapling. “Got your transportation here,” Obadiah said. “Somebody already taken care of the four-wheeler.”
Lost in his own failure, Patrick said nothing. But Esterhaszy stormed up to the conjur man and lifted an angry fist. “Damn it, I worked hard to set up that treaty!” he raged. “And this little stunt smashes it flat into the ground.”
Obadiah grinned complacently. “Ain’t it a bitch?”
The first of the jeeps went up in a pillar of flame.
They reached the guerrilla encampment at sunset. It was sited in a small, deserted town, so overgrown with scrub and mutant creeper that it was invisible until they were upon it. The rebels had built their campfires and pitched their tents within roofless shells of buildings. They came and went between campfires, making it hard to gauge their numbers.
A rebel ran up to take their animals. He jerked his head toward one building. Faded paint barely legible on its windowless side read STEREO DISCOUNT. “In there,” he said. The man’s skin was piebald, all hand-sized patches of pink and brown, like a human quilt.
The building’s first floor had collapsed into the basement long ago, and the rebels had lashed together a makeshift ladder to allow entrance. Patrick and Esterhaszy clambered down.
Two brightly colored tents were pitched at opposite sides of the cellar, with a campfire midway between. At their approach, Victoria whooped, and ran up to hug Obadiah. She thumped his back vigorously. “Nicely done, old fraud! We had the spirits riding with us this time, for sure.”
Obadiah made a face. “Somebody cut it a little fine there at the start,” he said. “Almost lost us a reporter.”
Victoria dismissed this with a shrug. “They weren’t expecting us, is the thing,” she said. “It wasn’t just the truce—they weren’t expecting a daytime raid. We really caught them with their pants down.” Then she turned to Patrick, as if noticing him for the first time. “Stand right there.”
She darted into a tent, emerged holding his transceiver by the strap, and dumped it at his feet. “You’re no use to anyone without this,” she said. Then she whooped and slapped his back. “Welcome to the war, boy!”
Esterhaszy, ignored through all of this, glared angrily at her retreating back.
The moon had risen, and the rebels were clustered about their campfires, talking excitedly. Patrick moved quietly between fires, as they bragged to one another of the day’s exploits, of each Mummer killed, of how the bodies had jumped as the bullets struck them. He listened silently, reconstructing the events, discounting the braggadocio. And he studied the pecking order.
Both Esterhaszy and Obadiah ranked high in this assemblage, that much was clear, possibly through their connection with Victoria. They in turn deferred to Fitzgibbon, a bearded, bearlike man with one useless arm. He walked with a slight limp, and his eyes were bitter and filled with hatred. Still, there was a sense of raw, animistic power about him, and his rumbled orders were carried out immediately.
Patrick could tell that Fitzgibbon outranked even Victoria. She did not give orders in his presence. But by the same token, he was careful what orders he gave when she was about. And the common run of soldiers treated her with a kind of awed respect that was special.
Between campfires, Patrick saw a man holding a cup to the neck of a spavined-looking horse. Blood flowed black in the moonlight, stopped when the man touched the horse’s neck again. The transition was too swift for him to have staunched the bleeding. The beast had probably been implanted with a tissue-inert catheter.
Patrick followed as the man gingerly climbed down the ladder to Victoria’s encampment. He saw the man proffer Victoria the cup on bended knee. She accepted it graciously and raised it to her lips.
All conversation stopped as Victoria drank. Eyes watched intently. She finished the cup in one long draught, and this seemed to please her observers; they returned to their conversations.
As Victoria lowered the cup, she shivered and barely managed to suppress a smile. Her hair flamed in the moonlight.
Off alone in the dark, Patrick stared at the rebel leader, horrified and fascinated. Rubble crunched under approaching feet, and Patrick turned to see Esterhaszy at his side. “Short bowel syndrome,” Esterhaszy said softly. Victoria was deep in conversation with a guerrilla; he had no nose and his skin was waxy. “It’s a rare deformity, thank God. Just try keeping a child afflicted with it alive! And these superstitious louts try to see something special in it.”
A shriek of hideous laughter split the darkness. Obadiah appeared in the doorway above the ladder. He danced, waving a small radio receiver in the air, and cried, “I been listening to Radio Boston! Piotrowicz been hospitalized!”
A cheer arose, but he waved it to silence. “There be more! The Drift Corporation, in conjunction with both American and Greenstate governments, has offered a reward of five hundred Bank of Boston dollars for the apprehension or proof of demise of one Patrick Cruz O’Brien, for complicity in the assassination attempt on Keith Piotrowicz. Ain’t that something?”
Again they cheered, but this time mockingly, jeeringly. Faces turned to stare at Patrick. Even Fitzgibbon’s dark visage wrinkled sardonically. Victoria threw her head back and laughed.
As soon as he could, Patrick moved away from the fire, into the darker shadows between one tent and the wall. He could hear cheers and laughter rise from one part of the camp after another as the news was passed from fire to fire.
Esterhaszy laid a hand on his shoulder. “Listen,” he said after a moment’s silence. “Be sure to dry your socks by the fire before you turn in tonight.”
Patrick stared at the man, surprised that he could be surprised by anything anymore. Esterhaszy looked uncomfortable. “It’s an old campaigner’s trick, something you ought to know. You’ll go to bed cold and miserable if your feet are wet.”
Later, when all but the outposts were asleep, Patrick was still up. Feeling bruised and humiliated, he crouched by the campfire and added a handful of twigs to the glowing embers. They smoldered, went up in a sudden blaze of light, faded again.
By Patrick’s schedule, the polesat would pass overhead about an hour after midnight. And whatever else had happened, he still had a bulletin to file. He thought for a minute before composing the dateline, then typed out: IN HIDING.
Socks drying by the fire, he set to work on his story.
Breakfast the next morning consisted of sourdough wrapped around a stick and baked over coals. Patrick was just finishing as Victoria approached. He bolted the last mouthful, washed it down with the last of his beer, and slid the mask back over his mouth. “Come on,” she said. “I’m taking you and Uncle Bob for a ride.”
The three drove off in a four-wheeler. On the outskirts of the camp they passed an overgrown cemetery. A work crew was digging there, unearthing coffins and dumping their contents on the ground. One soldier collected wedding rings, while others broke teeth free of jawbones, smashing them in metal nutcrackers for the silver fillings.
Patrick looked at the necklace of oddly shaped silver lumps that Victoria still wore with her khaki fatigues, but said nothing. “We’re going to pick up a delivery,” Victoria explained. “Something a city-prospector has unearthed for Fitzgibbon
.” She turned to Patrick and said, “Well, aren’t you going to interview me?”
“Uh, yeah,” Patrick said. He still felt a little fuzzy from lack of sleep. “I’ve been talking with a lot of your people, and they seem to feel that you have some kind of supernatural powers. Do you?”
“They believe I do. Me, I’m a politician. I agree with the majority of whoever I happen to be with at the moment.”
“Okay, but when you’re among people who believe—what exactly do they believe you can do?”
“Well,” she began almost reluctantly, “they believe I have a Destiny. And in pursuit of that destiny, I will get clairvoyant flashes, the occasional glimpse into the future—that sort of thing.”
“Is that all?”
“No, I can see radioactivity too. A hot area looks like it’s glowing—usually deep red or dark purple. Kind of pretty. A hot wind seems to sparkle; I think that’s just low-level ionization I’m seeing. And as a side effect, I have an absolute sense of direction. Because the Meltdown site is a very strong presence to me. Wherever it is—even hundreds of miles over the horizon—I can feel it. Right now, for example, it’s over in that direction.” She point off to one side.
Patrick looked in the direction she pointed, and yearned for a compass and a good map. “Have you ever been tested for this? Under laboratory conditions?”
“No,” Esterhaszy said. “What would be the point?”
“And probably most importantly, I get advice from my mother.” Victoria paused. “She tells me … things I must do, and this counts a lot among my followers, because they believe that when she was alive, she was a very powerful witch.”
“Sounds to me like you’re a bit of a witch too,” Patrick said.
“No. My mother could heal, and I can’t.”
“Our destination is right in the heart of the Beast,” Esterhaszy said late that afternoon. “Small place just off of Honkeytonk, central to the little constellation of holdings the Corporation had put together.”
The four-wheeler bounced heavily. Patrick’s stomach felt miserable. “How much farther?”
“Almost there now—look, just through those trees.”
Their destination turned out to be a Victorian house, in amazingly good repair, set in a clearing just above the Susquehanna. The roof tiles were green and the sides and trim were painted three shades of red. Dirt paths led up and down the river, into the woods. “There’s practically a village here,” Esterhaszy said. “Little shacks all over. You’d be surprised how much business a whorehouse can generate.”
The road twisted through a stand of leathery-leaved trees, and the house disappeared. A log thrust across the road at waist height, and Victoria had to slam on the brakes to keep from piling into it.
A giant stepped out of a guardhouse hidden among the trees. A shotgun held casually in one hand looked ridiculously small and out of scale. He squinted at them through a pair of amateurishly twisted wirerims. “We’re here to see the Mermaid,” Victoria said.
“Long time no see, Sid,” Esterhaszy said. Smile lines appeared around the giant’s mask. Tucking the gun under one arm, he made a series of quick signs at them, his hands swooping and soaring like birds.
Esterhaszy grinned ruefully. “Maybe so, maybe so. Listen—any Corporation types up at the house?” The hands flew and were silent. “Well, because if there are, we’d want to postpone our visit, is all.”
Sid signed something else, then ambled back into the trees, to draw back the log. They passed down the lane and parked before the house.
Hex signs were mounted on either side of the main door—to ward off radiation, Victoria explained. She touched the center of one, and then her forehead. Esterhaszy scowled and muttered, “People will believe in just about any kind of superstitious crap nowadays.”
Patrick hitched up his transceiver, adjusted its weight. “I’d think you’d be rather tolerant of superstition, considering the use your movement makes of it.”
“Those suckers won’t stop the boneseekers from passing through whenever there’s a strong breeze. What they ought to do is cover the whole thing over with a geodesic with nucleopore skin and an airlock. Then they could decontaminate the interior, and it’d be as safe as Atlanta.”
“Where would they get that much filter?” Victoria asked, amused.
Then the door opened, and the madam appeared in it. At the sight of Victoria, the smile crinkles about her eyes disappeared. “We don’t want any trouble,” she said. Behind her, several prostitutes peered out, bony young things with wary eyes. Patrick was appalled to see how unhealthy-looking they were. Some of them had to be seriously ill.
Victoria said nothing. One of the whores reached around the fat woman to touch Victoria’s sleeve lightly. Still she did not react.
“We want to see Rebecca Schechtman,” Esterhaszy said. It would have taken a blind man to miss the relief on the woman’s face.
“Around back by the dock,” she snapped, and slammed the door in their faces.
A dirt path led around the house and down to a small houseboat moored to a river dock. A wide wooden ramp bridged the gap between houseboat and dock, and at the far side of it sat a woman in a wheelchair, taking in the sun. When they hailed her, she hastily drew a blanket over her lap. But Patrick had already gotten a good look at her legs. They were fused together, misshapen, with no separate feet.
“Sirenomelus,” Esterhaszy explained quietly. “It’s a birth defect. Swims like a fish, though.” He ran ahead of the others to greet her, bounding on deck and affectionately putting a hand on her shoulder, massaging it gently. “The Susquehanna’s no place for you, Becky,” he said. “When are you going to find a cleaner river?”
The mermaid shrugged. “Suits my business,” she said. Then she put an arm around Esterhaszy’s waist and squeezed. “It’s good to see you, you old goat.”
She led them to a storage room just off the whorehouse kitchen. There, some seven metallic suits lay carefully lined up on the floor. Astronaut suits, Patrick thought, and for a giddy instant marveled at their age, and their impossible survival.
Then—just as small differences were adding up, and Patrick could see his error—Esterhaszy said, “Where in the world did you ever find seven radiation suits?” And they weren’t for outer space after all, but mere lead worksuits, protective covering for men who worked with beta- and gamma-emitters.
Victoria touched the first almost reverently, and shivered. Then Esterhaszy took out a scintillation meter and began running it over the suit, passing its pickup carefully over every square centimeter of surface.
“How much?” Victoria asked. She removed her necklace of silver nuggets, carefully untangling its several strands.
While negotiations dragged on, Patrick wandered to the kitchen door and peered in. A clutch of hookers were ladling out their suppers from a kettle. He stared at one, a weak and anemic-looking blonde, almost boyish in figure, with short-cropped hair. There was something odd about her, though he couldn’t exactly place what.
The whore looked up and, seeing him in the doorway, smiled. She flashed open her gown, revealing small, sweet breasts and a set of tiny male genitalia dangling over her female parts.
Patrick blushed and looked away. The women laughed uproariously.
Then the others emerged from the storeroom. “Listen up,” Victoria said. “R&R if you want it. But get some sleep afterwards. I’ve paid for rooms for us on the top floor—any company, you pay for yourself. We leave at dawn.”
“Want me to give you the fee schedule?” Esterhaszy asked.
Patrick looked at the whores. He was horny enough, God knew. But they had laughed at him, and he doubted he’d be able to forget that. Then too, Victoria was listening. “No thanks; I’ve got some writing to do.”
In the evening, Drift Corporation workers from the nearby alcohol farms filled the common room. Most of them could expect to spend their week’s earnings on a quick half hour here. They lingered before spending, stretchi
ng their money as much as possible. Laughter and piano music strained into Patrick’s room.
Patrick pulled a pillow over his head, squeezed his eyes tight. Footsteps hurried along the hall, and a door slammed. Leather bedstraps began creaking in the room next door. Patrick tried to ignore it. A few minutes later the noises stopped, and the door banged open again. Beds began to creak in other rooms. There were small human noises as well.
He had to jerk off three times before he could get to sleep.
A hand touched Patrick’s shoulder and he awoke with a start. Victoria was leaning over him. She put a finger to his lips, and said quietly, “Let’s get a move on. The Corporation is on our tails.”
Patrick dressed quickly under the blankets, “How do you know?” he asked.
“I just know,” she whispered urgently. She led him out into the hall and down the back stairs. From the yard, Patrick got a glimpse into the common room, where the hookers mingled with their customers. The women had bright makeup marks in the middle of their foreheads and—like some of their clients—didn’t wear masks.
At the four-wheeler, Esterhaszy was struggling to load the newly crated radiation suits. When Victoria and Patrick pitched in, he grumbled, “Don’t know why I bother. Just because you had one of your dreams.”
“Look,” Victoria said exasperatedly. “Have I ever been wrong? Have I ever once been wrong?”
“How could they know, though?” Esterhaszy said. “Mama Rosa runs a tight ship. She might not like us, but she’d never … Say!” He looked at Patrick. “What did you put into that story you filed tonight? You didn’t mention visiting a joyhouse, did you?”
“Well, I figured—”
“Jesus! How many whorehouses do you think there are in this neck of the woods? How the—”
“Never mind that,” Victoria said. “Can we slip past them?”
Esterhaszy threw up his hands. “We don’t even know they’re coming.”
“Look there,” Victoria said. Way off in the darkness, there was a small, pale, almost invisible light. It moved forward, disappeared. “Idiot waited a frazz too long to turn off his lights.” There was the faint humming noise of distant vehicles approaching.
In the Drift Page 17