Motherlode

by James Axler

  She took a tiny sip. “It frustrates and infuriates me how many people in our current age seem willing to accept their fate, to live in a world constantly devolving, constantly descending into some...some pit of apathy and misery. Yes, a terrible thing happened to the world. Terrible things happen today. And terrible things have always happened.”

  She took a bigger drink.

  “Fatalism may have its uses,” she said. “But dwelling in it makes you a willing victim. Makes you an accomplice in your own slow destruction. That is what I am sworn to counteract. That’s what I do.”

  “What do you do, Dark Lady?” Krysty asked.

  She shot a warning green glance at Mildred, who just might’ve made an incendiary comment about Dark Lady’s trade.

  “Aside from the obvious, I mean.” Krysty took her own glass in one hand as the other gestured around at the bookshelves in the neat office, and by extension, the entire gaudy.

  Dark Lady was sitting back clinging to her glass with both hands and gazing down into it as if it comforted her and she was hoping it would counsel her.

  “Rebuild,” she said. “With books. Knowledge. A spirit of doing, of making, not blankly accepting. Or just taking. And yes, our trash.”

  “So if you aren’t baron, who is?” asked Ricky, who looked only briefly sulky when J.B. waved the brandy tray away from the youth.

  “Nobody,” Bob said.

  He set the mostly empty tray on the desk and looked a question at his employer.

  “Of course,” she said. “I poured for you, as well.”

  Both hands came out and picked up the two remaining shot glasses of brandy. They raised them, then the heads turned toward each other.

  “Here’s looking at you,” Bob said.

  “Here’s mud in your eye,” said his brother. They clinked glasses and drank.

  “Why has not a power vacuum arisen, then, in the absence of a strong central figure?” Doc asked.

  “What the nuke do you think Dark Lady is?” Mikey asked. He belched, set the glass down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The right one.

  “Excuse you,” Bob said.

  “Whatever.”

  “The residents of Amity Springs seem to find their own autonomy, as individuals and family groups, sufficient.”

  “She’s way too modest,” Bob said. “She pretty much runs the show. She lets everybody make up their own mind. Then they usually do it her way.”

  “Not always,” she said.

  “They wouldn’t if you were an iron-fisted baron, either,” Ryan stated.

  She finished her glass and glanced at the decanter. With something that struck Ryan as a lot like regret she leaned forward and precisely set the empty tumbler on the tray.

  “I negotiate on behalf of the ville,” she said. “And regardless of the impression the boys might give you, I do consult the others. I have no authority here.”

  “She’s just always right,” Mikey said, then to his twin, “What? It’s true.”

  “That’s why Baron Sand asked you to remind me of her offer,” Dark Lady said. “And why I felt able to refuse it without consultation. Again. As I have when the whitecoat representatives have made similar offers.”

  “Whitecoat representatives?” Ryan asked.

  “Who do you think buys the hot-stuff scavvy?” Mikey asked.

  “Oh, way to go, asshole,” Bob said. “Loose lips sink shit.”

  “It’s ‘ships,’” Mildred said before she could catch herself. Then because she reckoned it was too late to stuff that bullet back in the blaster, and also because she was Mildred, drove right on. “It was a saying from—”

  “The Second World War,” Mikey finished smugly. “Yeah. I know. I actually read. You wouldn’t think I’d need to, with these good looks. But the boss kinda insists.”

  “My brother especially likes books about war,” Bob said. “Go figure.”

  “I see no great harm in revealing that fact,” Dark Lady said. “After all, our guests aren’t stupid. If they were, I wouldn’t continue to repose faith in them recovering my stolen property. The ville’s stolen property, to be exact, although I own a share.”

  “You said ‘whitecoat representatives’?” J.B. asked.

  “Yes,” she replied. “From a facility somewhere outside the Basin, is all I know for sure. They take some pains to disguise where they come from. For obvious reasons.”

  She shrugged. “I suspect they disguise themselves, too, and that instead of hirelings negotiating on behalf of this group of whitecoats, they’re members—whitecoats themselves. But of course the prejudice against whitecoats still runs hot and wide.”

  “Not without reason,” Krysty pointed out.

  “Perhaps not. Still, they would risk humiliation, harm, or even outright lynching should it become widely known they are whitecoats. For my part, I’m willing to accept them so long as they follow the same rules of decent behavior I expect everyone else to. At the very least, the whitecoats who were responsible for destroying the world are long dead.”

  “For the most part,” Mildred murmured.

  “Amity Springs has a reputation for unusual tolerance,” Krysty said. “Of muties especially. Both Madame Zaroza and Sand mentioned it.”

  “And Sand seems to have a soft spot for muties,” Mildred said, “not to mention other kinds of freaks.”

  “Among Sand’s many vices and crimes,” Dark Lady said, “no one could truthfully accuse her of intolerance. Except perhaps for behavioral norms. Especially rules concerning other people’s goods.

  “But as for Amity Springs, yes. While no muties live openly among us, at least overt discrimination against them is rare. For what it’s worth, and as Madame Zaroza may have told you, it’s her preference that her caravan camps well outside the limits of villes her traveling show plays. I cannot say her people would be accepted with open arms in this community. But they would be safe.”

  “What about Mikey-Bob?” Ricky said. “Uh, sorry.”

  “We told you, we’re not muties,” Mikey said. “We’re conjoined twins. Dumb-ass kid.”

  “Sorry! Sorry!”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Bob said. “It’s a good point. Easy enough mistake to make, even a dolt like you’s gotta admit.”

  “It’s hard to imagine anybody discriminating too actively against you, Mikey-Bob,” Krysty said.

  “Not twice,” both heads said in unison. They smiled.

  Ryan thought they looked as if they might be reminiscing a bit.

  “Is that your influence, Dark Lady?” Krysty asked.

  “I do what I can. Let me emphasize that you use the right word—influence.”

  “So, is there anything else you need to talk to us about?” Ryan asked. “We all had a long day.”

  She looked at him with challenge in her dark, black-painted eyes.

  “Can you recover my stolen artifact?” she said. “Please answer honestly.”

  “I have no idea,” he said. “Honestly. She may not still even have it. I reckon you’re not the only one who can have dealings with these whitecoat reps or whatever they are.”

  She nodded.

  “Also, her place looks like a tough nut to crack. Even sneaking in for another crack won’t be triple easy. Her peasants or subjects or whatever the fireblast they are seem to like her fine. If they or their dogs find out strangers are creepy-crawling the area, they’ll run right and tell her.”

  He frowned and scratched his jaw.

  “One thing in line with that—I won’t tell you exactly how we are gonna play getting your doodad back. Because you got a spy in your house.”

  Mikey-Bob growled in outrage.

  “Are you implying—” Bob began.

  “—that we’re the spies
?” Mikey finished.

  Ryan faced them both with a cool stare. He instantly discovered he couldn’t look both of them in the eye at once. So he settled on fixing his gaze at a point between their heads, where their ears almost touched.

  “I’m only saying there is one.”

  “I know,” Dark Lady said.

  “We might assist you in divining the miscreant, my dear lady,” Doc said brightly.

  “And dealing with him,” J.B. said. “Or her.”

  Sadly, the black-clad woman shook her head.

  “It isn’t that simple. If I eliminate the current spy, Sand will merely emplace another. And be aware that I’m on to her.”

  She gave her head a little shake and produced a wan and wistful smile. “Well, she knows that, too. It’s one of these games of ‘I know that she knows that I know.’ And so on ad infinitum. But at the least it would alert her that something is afoot.”

  “If I take your meaning correctly,” J.B. said, “don’t you think she knows that already?”

  “Again—it’s a matter of degree, Mr. Dix. Heightened awareness on my part would lead immediately to the same on her part. And I should think that would be the last thing you would all want. If you do still intend to carry out my commission. You do, don’t you?”

  “I said yes,” Ryan said. “If it can be gotten back, we’ll get it.”

  She nodded.

  Ryan sensed there was something more to her reticence to act against the baron’s spy in her house. Was it reluctance to really believe one of her own would betray her, or reluctance to harm one of her own?

  “In any event,” Dark Lady said, lifting her face and her tone, “neither you nor I need specify further at this present time. I only wanted to make sure that you intended to keep trying. And that you thought there was a possibility you might succeed.”

  “Oh, there’s a possibility,” J.B. said. “When you got Ryan Cawdor on the job, there’s always a possibility.”

  “So I gather,” she said, looking at J.B. and then back at Ryan. The intensity of the way she looked at him was starting to tickle his subconscious. Not enough he was sure what it was trying to tell him, though.

  “Before we all retire for our well-earned rest,” she said, “there is one final point I’d like to raise. Baron Sand is right. The Crazy Dogs have become an intolerable nuisance.”

  “After that scene tonight down in the bar,” Ryan said, “it’s a safe bet they’re about to become more than that.”

  “Indeed. As a consequence, I would like to extend to you the same offer Baron Sand has. Aid us in solving the Crazy Dogs problem, and I will pay you well. Over and above the agreed-upon price when you recover my property.”

  “Are you crazy, D.L.?” Bob demanded.

  “Crazier than usual?” Mikey said. “You wanna pay ’em for what they’re already doing?”

  “You trust them?” Bob asked.

  “Yes. And yes,” Dark Lady said. “I want to ensure they are dealing with more than just the Crazy Dogs that make themselves unpleasant to Sand. And at this stage, frankly, I believe it’s in our interests—especially mine—to do what we can to assure ourselves of these people’s help.”

  “It’s not like they got your precious jimjam back,” Mikey said.

  “It’s not as if it was an easy task I set them,” she replied. “I have little use for excuses. I don’t really think they’ve made them, so far. They have reported factually what happened.”

  She looked yet again at Ryan. “And this task, at least, is eminently straightforward. And I daresay, more in line with their usual line of work.”

  Ryan held her gaze a moment more. Then he tossed back the last of his brandy.

  * * *

  THEY WERE STILL climbing the stairs to their rooms when Mildred blurted, “Ryan, what in the name of God’s green Earth were you thinking?”

  “Which time?” he said.

  “Well, any of it! But just for argument’s sake, let’s start with why the Hell you thought it was a good idea to blurt out every last detail of why you agreed to start working for our employer’s mortal enemy.”

  “Keep it down,” Ryan said. “I don’t mind having it out. I do mind everybody else in the damn gaudy knowing all about it.”

  “Don’t you remember what Dark Lady said about spies, Millie?” J.B. asked.

  “That there was one here,” she said, “yeah.”

  Then in a softer tone, “And so, yeah, I will turn it down. But so what if that Sand has a spy in this cathouse?”

  “Don’t you reckon Dark Lady has spies of her own?” J.B. asked, as mild as always.

  “J.B.’s right,” Ryan said, resisting the urge to add, “of course.” They’d gotten Mildred quieted down but not yet mollified. “Or at least, I wasn’t about to assume she doesn’t have a spy in Sand’s happy valley. And how do you think she’d feel about us when she found out we’d neglected to mention that one little detail?”

  They had come onto the landing and out into the corridor where they roomed.

  “Like we’d sold her,” Mildred said. “But wasn’t there a risk she’d decide that anyway when you told her? Mikey-Bob sure jumped on that conclusion with both his size-eighteen feet.”

  “Yeah, a risk,” Ryan said. “Better than a head shot certainty.”

  She sighed. “Well—okay.”

  He turned away. “If there’s nothing else.”

  “There is one thing,” she challenged.

  “Make it fast.”

  “What’s the plan here, Ryan? Don’t you think it’s time to let us in on it? Or at least, you know, give us a clue?”

  “Plan?” He shook his head. “Got no plan. I’m making it up as I go along.”

  “I don’t buy it,” Mildred said firmly. “You’ve always got an angle. There’s always some devious scheme cranking away in that head of yours. You expect me to believe that isn’t happening now?”

  “Well, now,” he said with a smile, “I didn’t say that.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Still groggy and rubbing sleep from her eyes—and remembering, both with amusement and a pang of loss, how hard her ophthalmologist coworkers would have ridden her for that, in an age that was long dead, and so were they—Mildred followed her friends down the stairs to the bar room of the Library Lounge.

  It was still early by barfly standards, apparently. Hers, too, the way she felt. The sun had come up, apparently, and a gray light shone through windows bared by thick pulled-back curtains that kept the place sepulchral most hours of the day.

  On the bench that ran along the back wall, same as the bar and to the right of it, Ruby, one of the entertainers, sat reading a large open book on a table. She wore a loose dark blue jersey or sweatshirt. Mildred couldn’t see what else she might be wearing. She had reading glasses perched on the tip of her pert nose, and seemed very intent.

  “Mikey-Bob’s in the back, y’all,” she said with a wave of her hand as the companions paused on floorboards freshly covered with sweet-smelling sawdust. Mildred wondered where that came from. “I’d walk lightly around him if I was you. Both of him’s in a growly bear mood this morning.”

  “You mean sometimes he’s not?” J.B. asked.

  “You all go ahead,” Mildred said, for some reason separating both syllables of you-all more carefully than usual, as if she were afraid of being taken for as country as Ruby sounded. “Just get me whatever you manage to wangle out of Mikey-Bob, please.”

  “Your leg broken, Mildred?” Ryan asked. “You look like you can go fetch for yourself.”

  “That’s all right,” J.B. said. “I’ll get hers for her.”

  With Ryan grumbling about J.B. being henpecked, and Krysty looking as if she were fixing to weigh in and have her say, the group went past the ba
r through the swing doors into the kitchen. When they opened, Mildred heard Mikey’s dulcet tones demand to know what the nuke they thought they were doing traipsing into his kitchen without so much as a by-your-leave.

  Ricky kind of crab-walked, and then walked backward. He seemed fascinated by Ruby, who admittedly had a striking face, although for her shape she might as well have had two bodies to play counterpoint to Mikey-Bob’s two heads, from the bagginess of the garment she was wearing. No doubt he was having no trouble envisioning the full bosom beneath, and the way it had constantly threatened to explode out of her bustier the night before.

  He wound up stalled and staring when the doors swung shut on his friends and the loud argument Bob and Mikey were having at the tops of their shared prodigious lungs. The doors opened again. A brown-leather-clad arm reached out, grabbed Ricky by the collar and hauled him bodily inside.

  Shaking her head and smiling to herself as the doors swung shut again, Mildred approached the young woman. “Mind if I sit down?”

  Ruby glanced up at her. “Oh, no. Not at all. Make yourself at home, Ms. Wyeth.”

  Mildred sat. “What are you reading?”

  “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon,” she said. She closed the book on a finger, picked it up and turned it over to peer at the spine. “Volume, uh, Three.”

  “You’re kidding,” Mildred said reflexively. But even as she did she saw the words embossed on the cracked and ancient cover in largely missing gold leaf.

  “Why are you reading that?” she asked as Ruby spread the book open in front of her again. She resisted the urge to add, “Of all things?”

  “It’s interesting,” Ruby said.

  “Most people these days don’t seem any too interested in history. Or in learning to read, come to think about it.”

  “Well, I didn’t think I was, either. But Dark Lady taught me long ago, and suggested I read this one. She says without understanding the past you can’t really understand the present. That that’s a big problem with the world today—that so many people ignore the past. Or are actively afraid of it.”