A number of other weapons hung on the walls and filled the room, including four tubes that Jeebee was pleased to discover he could identify as rocket launchers. The ammunition for the rocket launchers was stacked beside them, and the launch tubes were clipped upright to a pole that rose to the center of the arch of roof overhead.
“You can put your rifles with the others in that rack on the side there.” Merry’s voice woke him out of his study of the room. She turned to the old man, who seemed not to have moved, but now held a revolver, loosely. “Nick, this is… ” Merry turned again to Jeebee. “What did you say your name was?”
“Jeeris Belamy Walthar,” Jeebee answered. “Call me Jeebee. Everybody does.”
“Nick Gage,” said the old man. He put the revolver casually away again under the seat of his chair, where it disappeared, apparently supported there somehow.
Jeebee extended his hand to the other, whose blunt, dry fingers closed around it, and who shook it a couple of times formally before letting go, without getting up from his seat at the machine gun.
“I had you in the sights on this from the moment you left the woods,” Nick said, patting the breech of the machine gun.
“Nick can do anything,” Merry said. “He’ll teach you all about the weapons. I’ll get you to riding, eventually, so you can take your shift of riding herd on the spare stock. I don’t suppose you can cook?”
“Not really… ” said Jeebee, embarrassed once more.
“Well, both Nick and I’ll have to teach you about that then, too.”
Merry turned to Nick.
“Dad says we’re going to take him on to replace Willie.”
“Willie knew a few things,” said Nick. His voice had a matter-of-factness that made everything he said come out almost as a monotone. “But maybe we can make even more of this one. Leave him to me.”
“Merry!” came Sanderson’s voice from the front of the wagon. “Can we get under way now?”
“Have you got anything else to pick up?” Merry asked Jeebee. Jeebee shook his head. He had his two rifles, even if they were in the rack some feet from him, and in the backpack he was wearing was everything else he owned.
“All right, Dad!” Merry called back. “We’re all set. I’ll be right out!”
She turned and went, leaving Jeebee alone with Nick Gage.
There was a moment of silence as they looked at each other.
“Did she or Paul tell you much?” said Nick.
“No,” said Jeebee, suddenly thoughtful.
“Thought not. That’s right, too,” said Nick. “It’s my job to tell you. Take a good look at me.”
Jeebee had of course been looking at him all this time. He kept on looking. He did not see anything he had not seen before.
“You see a little old man, right?” said Nick.
“If you want to call yourself that,” said Jeebee. It was a strange conversation and he felt awkward about how to handle it. “I guess I’d have to say you’re right.”
“Right,” said Nick. He held out his left hand, palm up. The skin of the palm was remarkably pink, contrasted to the leathery brownness of the back of the hand and all the rest of the skin surface of Nick that was visible. It was not so much a broad hand as a hand that seemed to have been stretched wide. There were large gaps at the base of the fingers between them. A hand that looked stubby and strong, not overly callused, but used.
“What do you see?” Nick asked.
“Your hand,” Jeebee answered.
“Right,” Nick said again. He closed his hand and magically it now held a knife with about a six-inch blade pointing right at Jeebee. “Now what do you see?”
Jeebee drew in his breath. His stomach muscles had tightened, and he found he was standing closer to Nick than he had thought. The knife point was less than its own length from those same stomach muscles.
“A knife,” he said after a moment, keeping his voice level.
“And that’s right,” said Nick. He put the knife back into one of the capacious pockets of the leather vest he wore over a red shirt and jeans, very like those worn by Merry and her father. “Figure it out if you can and tell me how it was done. When you do, we’ll talk about knives some.”
“I don’t know how you did it,” said Jeebee. “But it had to come from some place. The only place that could be is up your sleeve.”
“Good guess,” said Nick. “We’ll talk about knives then, but not today. Today I’ve got to show you around. Meanwhile… ”
He unbuttoned his left sleeve and pulled it up. A harness with what looked like a leather tube was attached to his forearm.
“That’s what did it,” said Nick. “Take a good look at that. That’s a rig. It’s also damn useless; all rigs are. Rigs will be just what you need one in a thousand times, but one in ten times they’ll get in the way of what you’re doing and get you killed.”
He reached up, unbuttoned something, and the whole contraption slid off his arm. He put it on a tablelike surface hinged to the wall next to his chair. “Meanwhile, remember that’s a trick. I know lots more besides that. Since I know tricks you don’t know, I’m not old and I’m not little. I’m bigger than you are. So you do what I say and I do what Paul says. All right?”
“All right,” said Jeebee, “for the moment, anyway.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Nick said as he got to his feet. “Come on with me now and I’ll begin to teach you what you’ve got to know about everything to do with the wagon here and what you’ll have to do.”
Nick reached into a drawer under the table surface beside his chair and brought out a typed list about three pages long. He handed this to Jeebee.
“This is a checklist of things you’re to do, or check on,” he said. “You’ll go clear through the list every twenty-four hours. The part of the list under Quiet Room is this room here. We call this the Quiet Room so we can mention it with other people around and not advertise we’re armed. After a while you’ll know the list by heart and be able to do the things automatically. Whenever one of us doesn’t have you doing something else like washing dishes or changing a tire or anything at all, fetching and carrying, you go to the next thing on the list and check that out. Now come along with me.”
He led Jeebee all through, around, and underneath the wagon. Jeebee learned that the vehicle was heavily armored inside, everywhere—though Jeebee was not taken everywhere. The two areas into which Nick did not take him were the bedrooms of Paul Sanderson and Merry. Otherwise, Jeebee was introduced to weapons, innumerable storage places, the equipment of the wagon itself, and everything about it.
There was one odd little room with all its inner surfaces covered with metal. It held an anvil on a sturdy support and a large black-metal dish on a tripod of three spread legs. The dish held what looked like the remnants of black chunks surrounded by gray ashes.
“This is where I blacksmith.” He gestured at a couple of large vents, one in one wall near the floor and another in the ceiling. “Battery drives fans behind those. I’ll show you that sometime when I’m working. Gets hot in here, then.”
Jeebee could believe it. There was barely room for both of them in the small room as it was. But he was intrigued by the idea of blacksmithing. It had been one of his dreams as a child, to hammer together pieces of white-hot metal and make things with them.
They left and Jeebee was turned loose to study his list. It included a number of car batteries. Two of these were up and working at any given time, two were live and ready to be put to use, and eight others were brand new, had no acid in them, and were waiting to act as replacements for the present working batteries.
These on-duty batteries were charged by a generator hooked to the wheels, as Merry had said, and produced light when the bulbs were turned on, in each of the rooms of the wagon.
Later on they stopped for lunch and Nick took him around the outside of the wagon. On the far side of it, which was why Jeebee had not seen it before, there was a long pipe built i
nto the body of the wagon, so from outside it showed merely as a slight bulge at the base of the box body, its outside painted black so that it resembled a decoration strip about eight inches wide. The pipe held water, which was purified after it was put in by being run through what was essentially a distilling apparatus. It was warmed by the heat of the sun absorbed by the black paint, to the point where it was hot enough that it came to the boil almost immediately, if put in a pot over the stove that was built into the wagon. That stove could cook things either with electricity or with ordinary fuel like wood.
“The only things you don’t have to worry about,” Nick said as they finished the tour of inspection, “are the wagons and the driving. The driving’s Paul’s responsibility—and he’ll be teaching you how to do that, because you’ll take your turn at that eventually, although he likes doing most of the driving himself. Then there’s the horses, and the horses are all Merry’s responsibility. How well can you shoot?”
Jeebee had gotten a little tired of being deprecating about what he could do.
“I’m not the world’s best marksman—” he began.
“That’s all I need to hear,” Nick cut him off. “Anyone who tells me he’s not the world’s best marksman can’t hit a barrel at five feet. Well, Merry will teach you shooting as well as how to ride. She’s a natural shot; even better than I am—and that’s saying a lot.”
“Oh?” said Jeebee.
“That’s right. You’ll see,” said Nick. “Now, that’s enough of that. It’s time for the wagon to quit pretty soon for the day. We always stop well short of sunset, so anybody around where we are will have a chance to see us in place for a while and spread the word. Brings customers. I’ll be cooking tonight. You can come help me.”
CHAPTER 9
The dinner Nick put together was essentially a stew made of beef and vegetables. To Jeebee’s surprise, the other man opened an apparently heavily insulated and tightly fitting locker in the room containing trade goods, in which there was a good deal of bacon and smoked meat, as well as what looked to Jeebee like a quarter from an obviously recently butchered, cow-sized animal.
He puzzled silently to himself as he watched and helped Nick in the preparation of the meal, as to how they could have fresh meat like this when they showed no signs of taking time out to hunt for it. Then it woke in him that of course the meat had come from the same place the vegetables had. Paul would have customers with such things to trade along their route. At a guess, the smoked meats and the bacon were for a time when such fresh meat was not available.
The wagon had a small metal stove, ingeniously designed to be easily detached from its flue and carried outside by insulated handles.
Nick carried it outside this evening after the wagon stopped and did the cooking. It had a firebox underneath its solid metal top that was fed with chunks of already burning wood from the fire he had lit immediately beside the wagon when they had finished moving for the day.
With the stew they had bread, produced from another locker, and which also must have been traded for. Both foods were served up on a sort of compartmental tray like those Jeebee had occasionally seen in school lunchrooms. Folding lawn chairs were brought out from the wagon and they all ate with their trays on their knees, sitting around the fire. After they were done, everybody gave their trays and utensils to Jeebee, and Nick took him around to show him how to get hot water from the solar-heated tank on the far side of the wagon. The water flowed from a spigot at one end of the tank, into a washbasin that opened out like a swinging compartment table from the side of the wagon, forward of the tank.
“Wash your hands before you wash the dishes,” said Merry.
Jeebee felt a moment’s irritation at the tone of her voice. However, he was surprised to notice, it was not as much irritation as he might once have felt; and it went away in a moment. There was something about these new times that allowed for peremptory orders, and for a lack of resentment on the part of those who had to take them.
He was at the bottom of the chain of command, here at this wagon. It seemed natural, therefore, that everybody should give him orders. Besides, he realized, looking at his hands, they were indeed dirty. He used the basin’s soap and some water from the tank to wash at the spigot. The water was, remarkably, not merely warm, but hot. He wet his hands, then turned the water off while he soaped up. It was a shipboard trick to conserve water, which he had read about. When he had scrubbed his soapy hands together thoroughly, he turned the spigot on again, briefly, and rinsed them clean.
He was slightly ashamed to realize he had forgotten to notice how dirty they were. Now, with clean hands, he filled the pan with water and washed the dishes.
Nick appeared in time to show him where to put them away, then led him back to the fire, where they found Paul and Merry simply sitting, talking and enjoying the colors and heat of the fire as the sunset faded and the day cooled. Nick took one of the two empty chairs. Jeebee hesitated, not taking the other one.
He turned to Paul, and waited until he and Merry paused in their conversation. Paul looked at him questioningly.
“Wolf won’t come down to the wagon,” Jeebee said, “but he’s used to getting together with me most nights just at twilight and at dawn. If you don’t mind, I’m going up into the woods where he can come up to me and feel safe.”
Paul nodded. He got to his feet and went into the wagon, coming out a few minutes later with something that looked like a very large fishing reel loaded with line. Its base was welded to a block of metal, so that it could be set upright. He carried this back to his chair, sat back down with it beside him and pulled the end of the line out, handing it to Jeebee.
“Just hang on to that when you go up into the woods,” Paul said. “Have you got a watch?”
Jeebee nodded and pulled back the cuff of his leather jacket to show the digital watch he had strapped to his right wrist.
“Right here,” he said to Paul. Consciously, he lied to them. The fact was that the watch was an experimental model with a hundred-year battery, the first and only one of its kind. It had no more been available on the market at the time when the world had fallen apart than the electric bike. But, since the others were not going out of their way to give him any unnecessary information about themselves and their possessions, Jeebee felt no need to give them information it was not immediately necessary for them to know.
“As I say, hang on to the line then,” said Paul, “and give a yank on it every five minutes or so. If you don’t feel a yank back, wait a bit then yank again. When you feel a single yank back, you’re good to stay up there for another five minutes. If you get three quick yanks, then stop whatever you’re doing and come back. If you don’t feel anything, use your own judgment about what you want to do. On that basis, go ahead.”
“Fine,” said Jeebee. He took the end of the fishing line in his grasp, wrapped it several times around his left hand and then started across the fairly level land toward some trees that here were only about fifty yards away.
The line was light, and the reel ran freely. He was hardly conscious of the pull of it against his hand as he walked into the trees. He went into the trees about fifteen yards, found a little open space that was actually no more than a wide spot between the tree trunks, and sat down.
The light was fading slowly but inexorably. He remembered that when he stopped at night, he normally built a fire. Wolf might be expecting that. He tied the string to a nearby tree trunk and scraped together some twigs and fallen branches so that he would have dry wood. He used the fireplace starter that he carried, folded up like a jackknife in his pants pocket. It gave off a spark that caught on the dry leaves and other tinder he had placed under a little pyramid of twigs.
A tiny flame flickered up. Delicately and carefully, he fed it to greater life with slightly heavier pieces of dry branches, and in a matter of minutes he had a small but cheerful fire going.
He waited by it but Wolf did not show up. He waited, in fact, until it was
full dark, tugging on the line every time the silent alarm of his watch sent a vibration into the skin of his wrist at the five-minute intervals for which he had set it. At last he faced the fact that Wolf would not come, tonight at least. He put out the fire, feeling a little empty inside, and made his way back out of the woods, the string taking up its slack as the reel evidently rewound.
Once again in the open he saw the wagon clearly, like a lantern lit from inside. The thick red paint of the sign was now black against the yellow-lit outer body canvas, in a night that had already seen the sun down and the moon not yet up. The sky, moonless, was thickly sprinkled with stars above him. But these did not give enough light to do more than announce their own presence.
The lantern-lit letters spelled out Paul Sanderson and Company, Peddler, almost as plainly as they had in sunshine. It was as good an advertisement and beacon at night, lit up this way, as it had been in the daytime. He went toward it.
As he got close, he saw the other three still by their fire. An L-shaped, black, metal rod had its long end vertically driven into the earth beside the fire and its short, horizontal end bent into a hook from which a coffeepot hung over the flames. The three had cups in their hands.
“Didn’t find him?” Paul said as Jeebee got close. “Help yourself to the coffee cup on your chair seat, there.”
“He didn’t come. That’s right,” Jeebee said flatly, filling his cup at the pot. He tasted the dark liquid. It was real coffee.
“Thought so.” Paul nodded. “The dogs would’ve sounded off if he had.”
Jeebee looked around for the dogs but saw only the yellow female, Greta. She lay with her head on the boots of Merry, who sat, coffee cup in hand, on the far side of the fire.
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