by James Axler
"Not my face!" he'd screamed as they came in after him.
So they hadn't touched his face.
They'd walked away and left him lying crooked and puking in his own blood and piss.
But alive.
And, in the manner of things, the wheel had gone rolling slowly and soundlessly around. Now he was sitting with all his pomp and his blasters, and Ryan and J.B. were stuck at the wrong end of the table.
So it goes.
"Tell your boy to put his knife away, Ryan."
"You tell him."
The chair shifted a little more. "Don't know how well your daddy taught you, son, but you get to throw your little blade. After that you got nothing. How's that seem?"
"It seems fine to me. Sure, your sec men chill us all. But you don't get to see it, because you're dead on the floor."
Ryan nodded approvingly. "Right, boy," he said quietly.
Boss Larry laughed. "You taught him well. It occurs to me that you had no knowledge that I was baron here in Greenglades ville. True?"
Ryan nodded again. "True. We were sort of passing through when we ran into your boys."
There was a silence.
The room continued to revolve slowly. Ryan was barely aware of it until he looked out of the side windows and watched the movement of the surrounding country. Then he felt a sudden wave of nausea.
The shadowed figure in the big chair clapped his hands, a soft, moist sound. Two dark shapes rose at the signal, moving into sight from behind one of the tables. They were both short and muscular, wearing the same camouflage gear. But both were bareheaded, showing shaven skulls.
One moved to each side of the chair, and there was a controlled, violent struggle. After much panting and heaving, Boss Larry spoke again.
"I'm up, sod your fumbling! I'm up!" The companions heard the sound of a hard slap on bare flesh.
Supported by the two young men, Boss Larry Zapp finally lumbered slowly out into the light, where they could all see him.
"Been eating well, Larry?" J.B. asked sarcastically.
A rough guess would have put the baron of Greenglades at the four-hundred-pound mark, give or take fifty pounds.
His hair was uncombed, shoulder length and mainly silver. He wore a loose caftan of dark maroon silk, with bare feet showing beneath it. His eyes had almost vanished in waves of fat, and his small mouth rode triumphantly over several layers of jowls. The baron's hands were small and feminine, and his short fingers each sported a different ring.
Unusual among barons, he didn't appear to be carrying any sort of weapon.
"You didn't come to pursue me," he said. "If I thought you had, then you'd be chilled, like that!" He attempted to snap his fingers, but they were too plump. "You may live. To err is human and to forgive is divine. You erred, Ryan and John, and now I forgive you. I spare you. I let you live. You may go free. But…"
"We get the message, Larry," Ryan said. "Give us our blasters back, and we'll go right now."
"The boy's knife?"
"Sheathe it, Dean."
Though they were still surrounded by the blasters of the sec force, the tension of the moment had passed and Ryan no longer felt threatened.
"Don't rush off, people. There are old times to mull over. Good and bad times to remember. Years to discuss. But I see I have failed to notice your three other friends."
Kelly coughed. "Can I tell you who they all are, Boss?"
The baron was panting with the effort of being vertical. "Yes, you… One small point, Ryan."
"Yeah?"
"'Boss Larry' will do nicely. Or 'Baron Larry.' 'Baron Zapp' is adequate. But 'Larry' alone isn't the sort of respect for someone of my wealth and power. Remember it, won't you? Now, Kelly, their names."
The noncom rattled them off, ending with Doc Tanner, who bowed to the shuddering figure of the baron.
"I am delighted to make your acquaintance. Positively delighted."
Boss Larry stared at him, no sign of any emotion on the great slabs of flesh that made up his face.
Ryan asked the question that was most intriguing him. "How did you get all this?"
"This? The ville?"
"We left you up by the lakes, and you didn't even have a pot to piss in."
There was a readjustment of the face that was a sort of a smile. "There are those who can do it, Ryan, and those who can't. Trader was one of those gifted individuals who could do it. I'm another." He paused as a thought struck him. "You heard, of course, that Trader is still alive?"
"What?" The exclamation came simultaneously from J.B. and Ryan.
"Surprised?"
"He died months ago. Who told you he was still living?"
With an effort Boss Larry managed to raise a ringed finger and tap the side of his nose. "Aha. Now, there's a thing, isn't there? You saw his corpse, did you?"
"No. Nobody did. Went off alone."
Zapp laughed, his whole body vibrating in a series of seismic shudders. "Alone. And so the fable started of his passing."
It was a bombshell to Ryan. The Trader had been suffering for months from a cancer that was chewing up his guts. He had to be dead.
"I don't believe it. The story's a lie," he said flatly.
"Now, you may say that, my dear Ryan, but you couldn't possibly expect me to agree with you."
"Boss?" Kelly said questioningly. "What do we do with them? Give them back their blasters? They got some real good weapons."
"Of course they have. Of course they have. Ryan and John wouldn't have lived this long unless… I never answered your question, did I, Ryan? Got sidetracked with that tale of the Trader."
"Yeah. How did you get here?"
"Women. Cherchez les femmes, as the French used to say." As he spoke, he stared at Krysty and licked his lips in an unmistakable gesture. "After I healed—you did a good job, people. Afterward I found some more women. Gaudy sluts are five for a meat stew in those pestholes. Changed them for a quantity of gas. Traded some of that for some horses and a few old carbines. More blasters and more gas. Moved into food." He giggled. "One of my real favorites. Then I found this place, and now I rule it all and everyone calls me baron and boss."
A voice came from behind them, from by the elevators, "Everyone but me, Lard Ass. Everyone but me."
Chapter Twenty-One
"AND WHO THE sweet sunlight is this miserable bunch of raggedy bastards?"
Ryan deliberately didn't turn around quickly, as everyone else did. His main interest was in watching the face of Boss Larry Zapp. A secondary interest was in seeing the reaction of Kelly, the noncom sec man.
Larry started to blink very fast, and his hands clasped so suddenly that his rings clashed like temple bells.
Kelly's reaction was more fascinating. Despite the gross insult to his baron, the stocky guard showed no reaction whatsoever.
Then, and only then, did Ryan turn around.
He'd rarely seen anyone that he'd so disliked at first glance. Cort Strasser was one name that came to mind.
But the man standing by the entrance to the slowly revolving tower room was up there with the very best. Or the very worst.
He was only about five feet six inches tall, and skinny, weighing around one-twenty-five. He had long black hair that curled over his narrow shoulders, and his mustache spilled down both sides of his full, almost feminine lips. His eyes were dark brown, with long lashes.
The man's clothes were a mix of the functional and the overdecorative. His jeans were stained and torn, patched around both knees in darker material. His shirt had ruffles down the front and around both wrists. Over it he wore a black leather jacket with long fringes, and small patches of broken mirror sewn all over it. He wore a pair of silver sunglasses with blue lenses, hung on a yellow braid around his neck.
Ryan spotted a small, pearl-handled, silvered pistol tucked into the man's belt. It wasn't possible to give a positive identification, but it could have been a Beretta Model 95.
The stranger returned Ryan
's once-over stare.
"See Lard Ass is collecting some more outlander waifs and shit," he said in a drawling voice.
Ryan didn't respond to him, looking instead at Larry Zapp. "Do you get to introduce your friend to us, Boss?"
"I'll introduce myself, thanks very much, Mr. One-Eyed Jack. My name's Traven. Adam Traven. Adam, like the son of man. That's me, isn't it, Lard Ass? Man's son. I'm a close friend of the baron, here, Jack One-Eye. Real close. Me and my posse."
"Posse?" Ryan repeated.
Boss Larry answered with an uncomfortable eagerness. "Means the group of friends that Adam's got here. Adam's posse. Couple of young men and about six young women. Very lovely young women, if I might say so, Adam."
"You may, Larry, baby."
Ryan realized something was weirdly wrong in Greenglades ville. A baron like Larry Zapp, with a well-organized and efficient sec force, had to have a lot of power to back him up. So why was he toadying and brownnosing to this jumped-up little prick in the pretty jacket?
"Shall I tell you who our new guests are, Adam?" the baron asked with a shrinking hesitancy that sat oddly with his statuesque bulk.
"Yeah," Traven replied with a dismissive wave of the hand.
It crossed Ryan's mind that it would be a good feeling to have the cartilage in the man's throat crunching between his fingers.
"The ladies are Miss Wroth and Dr. Wyeth." The word "doctor" produced a flicker of interest from the little man. "Old one's called Doc Tanner. Kid's name is Dean. Son of Ryan Cawdor. Other one's J. B. Dix. Heard of 'em, Adam?"
"No." A considered pause. "Well, I might have heard the name of Ryan Cawdor. Some place. Some time. Brushed a few flies from around a frontier pesthole, up in the Darks. That it?"
"Something like that," Ryan said.
Strangling would be good, or maybe to press the muzzle of the SIG-Sauer into Traven's prissy mouth hard enough to splinter his front teeth and hard enough for the foresight to draw blood from the lips. And watch the arrogant bastard's eyes go blank and scared.
"Where they come from?"
"All over," Ryan replied before Larry Zapp could start his reminiscences about the old days with the Trader.
"Staying long, Cawdor? Nice ville. Look around. Take the kid on the rides. Baron Boss Larry'll show his ville. Won't you, Boss Larry?"
"Sure. Be glad to do that."
The man spun around, as delicate as a dancer, the lights shimmering off the shards of a mirror on his jacket.
"There. Happiness on every hand. I'll go back to my posse."
Boss Larry pulled his two silent supporters forward a few stumbling steps. "Adam?" he said plaintively. "Adam?"
"What is it, Lard Ass?"
"You know."
"I do? Oh, sure I do. You want me to fix up a little of this and a little of that, don't you?"
Larry Zapp's face split into a sunny beam. "That'd be real good, Adam. Thanks. Thanks a lot."
Ryan was standing beside Kelly, the sec man, and heard the faint hissed intake of breath. He glanced sideways, but the man's face was completely blank.
Traven stopped his spinning dervish dance, and stared intently at Ryan. "Yes, I've heard of you. Hear that flowers die as you pass by. Old women moan and little children weep. Your breath is ice and your piss is acid steam."
"I'd say that was all triple-crap," said the one-eyed man.
Traven nodded slowly. "You would, huh? Just so you don't stay here too long, outlander. Boss Larry has his own path to walk."
He rocked back on his high-heeled boots and strode toward the elevators. He left behind him a lake of discomfort.
Dean, finally sheathing his knife, went to stand beside his father, and looked up into his face. "All right?" he said.
"Sure."
Boss Larry had slapped his two servants again, steering them toward his reinforced chair.
"Why doesn't he speak to them?" J.B. asked Kelly.
"No point. Deaf and mute. That way they can't betray his secrets. Probably have had them blinded if he could have."
"Take them and feed them, and find them rooms," Zapp ordered as he sank into his seat. "And tell me when you've done it. Mebbe I'll see them later and show them around the rides."
He pushed himself petulantly in the revolving chair so that he was once more staring out across the Florida swamps.
"Time to go, people," Kelly said, gesturing to the six friends with the blaster.
"You don't need that, do you?" Mildred asked.
"My .45? Suppose not, lady. I mean, Doctor. No."
"So, would it be within the realms of the most distant possibility that we might be allowed to retrieve our own firearms?" Doc queried. "It would really be most awfully kind of you."
"Sure. Sucking death! Why not? Why should I care when Adam's posse run this ville? Help yourselves, people."
"Thanks. But who is—"
Kelly wagged a warning finger at the one-eyed man. "Best thing to do with your lips, Ryan, is to keep them sealed tighter than a duck's ass. That way you can pass a day or two here and have some pleasure. And move on, all alive and well."
"Still a lot of questions hanging in the air," J.B. said, as they filed out to the central section of the tower, where the elevator doors stood open and sec men waited in front of each one.
"Same answer to most, and you just met him," Kelly replied.
NOR FAR FROM CENTERPOINT they were taken to what had once been a large hostelry, called the Gator Motel. It had been cruciform in shape, with its lobby at the midpoint of the four arms. But there had been a fire, long years ago, which had destroyed three-quarters of the building.
Now only the Gator Wing remained.
"How many rooms you want?" asked the stocky noncom. "Six, five, four, three, two or one. Makes no difference to me."
Ryan glanced at the others. Mildred took an almost imperceptible half step closer to J.B. Dean looked at his father.
"One single room for Doc. Double for J.B. and Mildred. Double for me and Krysty." He hesitated. "And a single adjoining for my son."
"Done. There'll be some of my men around the Gator all the time. Best you don't wander. Might run into some of the posse. Once Boss Larry's had his happy fix, he might call around and you can go on the rides. Until then, stay here."
"BEEN IN WORSE PRISONS," Krysty said, lying stretched out on the queen-size bed, feet crossed, staring at the star-painted ceiling.
Ryan had washed his face and shaved, using the disposable razor that was in a plastic mug at the side of the basin. The water was hot and only faintly tinted. He'd read that water in the old pre-nuke days had been clear in the center of big villes as it was in a mountaintop stream.
A rapping sounded on the bolted door between their room and Dean's. "I'll get it." Krysty swung off the bed.
The boy had also washed, and had gelled his hair to his scalp, making him look older and oddly sinister. Ryan went over and patted his son on the shoulder, hesitating a moment.
"Fireblast! What's that smell?"
Dean blushed. "Called Prince Mayakovsky Splash On. Said on the bottle to use plenty, so I did. Is it awful, Dad?" He glanced at Krysty. "What do you think?"
She sniffed cautiously. "I think mebbe I'd use a tad less next time. But it'll wear off fast. Hungry, Dean?"
"Sure. Time for second food?"
Ryan glanced at his chron. "Yeah, I'll order up for us."
"Dad, can I ask a question? Know you think I ask too many."
"Long as it's the right time, I don't mind. What is it?"
"The baron… All around are signs of triple-power, jack and sec men."
"Right."
"The guy… Adam Traven. How come he orders Boss Larry around like he does? Got him running scared."
Ryan finished wiping his face on the fluffy white towel. "Good question, son. Mebbe we'll find an answer. Until we do—" he shrugged, "—who knows?"
Chapter Twenty-Two
A BRIEF, FLURRIED thunderstorm had blown in from the east
while the companions were eating. Dean had dropped his paper plate of fried chicken and run to the smeared window. He pressed his face against the glass, watching the blinding daggers of lightning as they tore open the slate gray clouds, bringing a burst of torrential rain that laid the dust and cleared away the stifling humidity.
Ryan and Mildred had come in during the storm, followed shortly after by Doc Tanner. The old man had been drinking brandy, supplied by the sec men, and was in an unusually expansive mood.
"The pounding of the hammer of Thor upon the anvil of… of someone or other, whose name I have conveniently forgotten. I remember a particularly bitter attack of sheet lightning in the fall of 1895. We had been traversing a bare mountainside on our way to Hidden Lake, up in Montana. The very rocks sang with the concatenation of thunder and lightning. The ozone in the air made one's poor addled brain spin."
Dean looked at Doc, puzzled. "You said 'eighteen,' Doc."
"What was that, my fine young comrade?"
"You said you saw a storm in 1895, Doc. How can that be?"
"The tale is long, my boy. If you care to come to my room, I shall have another sip at the rather good cognac and I will reveal to you the mystery of my own being. Come." He stood, making an imperious gesture.
Dean glanced at Ryan, who nodded his approval. "Sure, son. Don't worry. Won't go off anywhere without you."
The boy went out with Doc, the old man's cane rapping smartly on the threadbare carpet in the corridor beyond.
The door hadn't closed properly, and Krysty moved toward it, hesitating a moment. "Someone coming," she said.
It was Kelly.
The noncom glanced around the room, seeing the remains of their meal. "Everyone eaten?" he asked.
"Sure, thanks."
The sec man had a sprinkling of rain across his shoulders, damping his short-cropped hair. "Hell of a storm out there."
"We saw it," Mildred said.
"Passed the old man and your boy along the passage. Once Boss Larry gives the word, you can take him on some of the rides. Be a double-buzz."