by neetha Napew
The man froze in place, making no effort to raise the .38 revolver he had. "Look," he said uncomfortably, "I don't want any trouble."
"You got a funny way of showing it," J.B. said.
"You fuckers are just as bad as them coldhearts," a skinny woman with ratted hair and a bruise under one eye snarled.
"Mary," the man who'd spoken up said, stepping over to shield the woman as she got to her feet, "you stay out of this."
"This woman," Ryan said, "has managed to hurt somebody I care about. Now you people, I don't even know. But I opened up the doors of this fort and let you in. And if there's a way to get you out of here, I aim to see you clear of this mess. You get in my way, though, and I'm going to put you outside."
"You can't do that," the woman said.
"Mary."
She turned to him, snatching at his shirt. "Clete, he can't do that. Don't you dare let him."
"Then we do what he says."
"You can't let him hurt that woman any more, either."
"Do you know her?" Ryan demanded.
Phlorin sat in pain from the blows, but she wasn't praying or singing anymore. Neither was Krysty, and that suited Ryan fine for the moment.
The noise of the chem storm drumming rain into the building sounded more hollow than ever in the silence that followed the question.
"No, mister," the man said, "we don't know her. Until today when them coldhearts jumped us and brought us here, we never saw her before."
"Anybody else?" Ryan flicked his one-eyed gaze from person to person, even looking at the children.
"I know of her."
Ryan pinned the speaker with his gaze.
The man stood only a little above Ryan's shoulder, thick set through his shoulders but tapered at the waist and haunches like a man accustomed to running or missing meals. He dressed in homespun hand-me-downs that didn't quite fit, a faded red cotton shirt and dungarees that had patches over them. His walking shoes were scuffed but serviceable, predark by the look of them instead of handmade. Ryan guessed his age as late thirties, with unkempt dark hair shot with gray streaks hanging to his shoulders and two or three weeks' splotchy beard growth covering his seamed and weathered face. A knife blade had bisected his right eyebrow years earlier, rearranging the flesh so that it looked as if part of the brow were crawling up from his eye socket.
"Not her so much," the man said, "but what she is, mebbe."
"What do you know?" Ryan asked.
The man appeared hesitant. "Heard her calling herself one of the Chosen."
"That means something to you?"
"Heard of the Chosen. All women. All mutie women, from the way I been told. Got these strange powers, they say. That's why the Slaggers were so hard on her. Guess they heard some of the same stories."
"My dear fellow, what powers are you speaking of?" Doc, drawn out of the dementia that had almost claimed him, focused on the man.
The man shrugged. "Don't rightly know. I heard tell they know things before they happen. Heard they can see a lie the instant they been told it. I've also been told they can chill a man by just thinking about it if you get enough of them together."
"And precisely how are they supposed to do these things?" Doc persisted.
"If she's one of the Chosen," the man said, "she'll have a bag of simples."
"Simples? And what are they?"
Ryan looked at the clothing and packs the coldhearts' prisoners had brought with them. "Which pack is hers?"
THE SCARRED LEATHER BAG had a beadwork design on it. The bag was old, the leather fraying around the thick gut strings that held it together. Some of the beads were missing. Once, they'd been brightly colored reds, yellows, greens, blues, and they'd formed a pattern. Studying the pattern, Ryan thought maybe the design had once been of a quarter moon and a field of stars.
"Simples are potions," the man said. "Poultices. Mebbe even jolt that she uses to get her brain all frenzied up to do some of the big stuff. They carry herbs and such, too. And there's cards."
Ryan went through the pack, finding the things that the man recited. The potions were in ceramic containers with corks, wrapped in layers of cloth to keep them from breaking. The poultices were in other containers and smelled strong and sour.
"Let me see those," Mildred asked.
Ryan handed them over, then returned his attention to the pack. Phlorin rocked, slowly and steadily nearby, her attention focused totally on him. He found herbs packed in homemade wax paper, the plants and flowers pressed neatly between the pages. And he found the cards in a drawstring leather pouch.
There were sixty or seventy of them. All of them had faces and figures painted on them. The art looked original, drawn from some kind of source, but not printed out the way they used to be in the predark ages.
"Hand painted," J.B. commented. "But there looks to be more than your regular fifty-two cards and jokers."
"There is." Ryan spread the cards out before him, contemplating the array of women featured on the cards. One showed a winged woman pouring from one cup to another, with a road leading up a mountain in the background. The legend at the bottom read Temperance. Another was of a woman with one hand on a wolfs head, the sun blazing high overhead. The legend on that one was Sun. The suits seemed to be broken down four ways, just like a normal deck. But the suits were moons, bowls, knives and spears. "I've seen something like this. When I was riding with Trader, we come upon this ville had an old woman in it who said she could tell the future with cards like these."
"The tarot," Mildred said. "Supposed to be a game from the Middle Ages. Maybe even further back than I can remember. Storytellers used them to help make up stories as they went from town to town. From there, I guess somebody got the idea of making those stories more personal and started telling futures."
"Do not be so hasty as to dismiss the power of those cards, dear lady," Doc said. "The great and learned minds of the Totality Concept had committed prodigious amounts of capital investment into the research and development of cogitation as regards to the black arts. Some were not so sure that those tales contained only the accoutrements of Joseph Campbell's myths."
"Those cards are so much bullshit, Doc," Mildred argued. "Good for slumber-party excitement."
Ryan returned the cards to the drawstring leather pouch. "What about those herbs and potions?"
"Purely homeopathic cures and aids," Mildred said. "Some of them make sense. Like this plant." She held up a piece of bark wrapped in wax paper. "Aloe. Helps with burns, as an antibacterial and as an insect repellent." She fanned out the other packages in front of her. "Some of this stuff I can figure out, but there's a lot of it I'm not sure about."
"Can we use the things in there?" J.B. asked.
"Some. I don't know about all."
"Make room in the packs for them," Ryan said. "We'll sort it out later." They didn't pass up on meds when they could get them. Traveling as they did meant a lot of risk, and there were few healers along the way.
He glanced up at the man. "What's your name?"
"Elmore. Franklin Elmore."
"You ever heard of one of these Chosen taking over somebody else's mind?" Ryan asked.
"No, but I'd believe it if you say it's true. I've even heard those women could fly."
"Their society consists of women only?" Doc asked. "No men have evidenced these powers?"
Elmore nodded. "From what I've always been told."
"What about the men of their community?"
"There ain't any," Elmore answered. "Just women. A man tries to get too close to them, they chill him. Anybody who's been up and around this territory and come across any stories of the Chosen, they'll tell you that."
The comment started Ryan's mind spinning again, thinking about the things Krysty and the woman had said to him. That explained the way she'd treated him on top of the building, not wanting to touch him. And it explained Phlorin's statement that he'd taken Krysty's birthright from her.
"Ah,
if you will pardon the seemingly insensitive nature of my asking," the old man went on, "but that begs the question of how such a society handles…procreation."
"They fuck like regular people," Elmore said. "Got the same equipment as any woman, and some of them are downright attractive. Only they don't like it so much. And there's a price they pay."
"What price?" Ryan asked.
"There's a few stories," Elmore said, "and I don't know if any of them are truth. But some say the Chosen only keep their powers as long as they keep their knees locked. First time she ruts with a man, she doesn't have her powers anymore."
"Then why fuck?" Ryan asked.
"Got to have more Chosen." Elmore grinned. "Otherwise they'd have run out of members a long time ago. I've heard they have some kind of gathering. A council, mebbe, somebody told me. They judge who's worthy and who's not worthy. The ones mebbe ain't so worthy, they become breeding stock."
"Oh, dear God," Mary whimpered, drawing in close to her husband.
Elmore turned to the woman and nodded. "Yes, ma'am, that's the kind of bitch you were trying to protect. But it gets worse. See, the Chosen capture men from time to time. Bring them into special camps quarterly, and have them lay with all the women selected as breeding stock. Takes place four times a year, based on the moon cycles."
"The equinoxes and solstices," Doc said.
"Don't know about that," Elmore replied, "but if you're talking about summer, spring, fall and winter, that's them."
"You know what kind of women we're talking about here, don't you, friend Ryan?" Doc asked. "The noble bard wrote about them a number of times, and their appearances were never to the good. Yon woman is a witch!"
Chapter Nine
"I've heard some call them that," Elmore admitted. "But don't you dare call one of them that to their face. I've heard they curse you, put a hex on you that can give a man anything from a few days' worth of rotten stomach to outright death. They're just the Chosen."
"What happens men who breed?" Jak asked. "Mebbe find one, talk him."
Ryan thought it sounded like a good plan, and he was aggravated he didn't think it through as clearly as the albino. But his head was still too jumbled from all the problems they had facing them. Leaving the junkyard fort without getting chilled was one of the biggest.
"They don't get away," Elmore said. "They get through using him, the Chosen sacrifice him. See, there's a purification process they go through to make sure his seed's ready before he puts his crank in any of them." He glanced at the women in the group. "Sorry if I've offended anybody. Just telling it how it is."
"In exactly what manner do they purify them?" Doc asked.
"Don't know. I just know that by purifying the man, the Chosen make sure the get of that fucking receives the powers of the Chosen. And that more'n likely it'll be a she-get rather than a he-get."
"And if the baby is a boy?" Mildred asked.
"They hold on to it," Elmore said, "till the next big quarterly meeting. A week, three months, whichever it is. Then they have another sacrifice, this one supposedly more pleasing to whatever they pray to than anything else. After all, it's part of themselves they're offering up."
"Monsters," Mary hissed from her side of the room.
"Men make mockeries of us," Phlorin said weakly. "And you sit there, so weak. You hang on to that man beside you, and you never think to try to have your own life. You wait for old age to claim you and never realize your true station in this life. Women are bound to this world. Our cycles are like those of the moon, which affects everything on this world. Men are abominations, put here by the dark forces that rule the shadows. Men only know the hunger that stays forever in their bellies and their loins. Their imagination is only desire misnamed. Their lust has no conscience."
"You mean a hard dick has no conscience," Elmore said.
She spit.
"The Chosen's society takes care of its breeding stock?" Doc asked.
Elmore nodded. "Sure. Feed it. Clothe it. Keep it fucked and pregnant every quarter that it ain't. This purification process, it ain't always so gentle. Some of the get of these unions, they're mutie strain. Mindless monsters that receive some of the powers but no brains to use them with. Some of them are so deformed that it would be a burden on the Chosen to keep them."
"Chill, too?" Jak asked.
"Before they draw their first breath, way I hear it," Elmore answered. "A woman in the breeding stock, they pick her young enough that she can bear thirteen children. Some kind of mystical number to them."
"That again points back to the roots in witchcraft," Mildred said. "Not the Totality Concept."
"Not necessarily, dear lady," Doc argued. "Limiting replication is a self-serving design. What we're discussing here would severely curtail the gene pool available to these women. By the Three Kennedys, if they've been operating like this for any length of time, they could be carrying on disastrous DNA that would result in all kinds of birth defects and malformed children."
"The number of live births among them has been decreasing," Elmore said. "Which is why they been stealing kids the last five or ten years."
"You're not from here, are you?" Ryan asked.
"No. Farther west," Elmore replied. "Raised up by the Cific Ocean."
"Then why are you here?"
"Wasn't no paradise there." Elmore shrugged. "Guess I was just looking for someplace better. Lots of folks are. Problem is, I think we see each other in passing, but all we're doing is trading one set of problems for another. Folks get tired of that problem, they move on again."
Something about the man's answer didn't ring true to Ryan, but he couldn't pinpoint it.
"They steal people's children?" Mary asked. She held the little boy in the group close to her.
"Yes, ma'am," Elmore said. "But only girl-get. You got a boy. You got nothing to worry about. You'd probably come closer to losing your man than you would your child. Your man can fuck, and he's proved himself to any Chosen watching you all by fathering that boy. They'd take your man, leave you and the boy for dead."
"Why take the girl children?" Mildred asked.
"They got ways of knowing which ones have some of the power." Elmore pointed to the herbs and potions in front of her. "Probably some of them in there. Or mebbe they just mind-talk with them. Had a man tell me once that a Chosen could look in a young girl's eyes and know if she could be brought up their way."
"Widespread possibility of the psychic talents," Doc said. "Still think you're looking at a society founded totally on superstition?"
"Blow it out your ass, Doc."
"I find this all amazing to contemplate," the old man said. "At another time, I should like to advance further inquiries into this field of experience."
Elmore shrugged. "Told you about everything I know." He looked at Krysty rocking gently against the floor, her mouth silently moving to whatever words she was saying. "I'm just sorry it don't seem to help your problem none."
"Got a new problem," J.B. called from the window. "Rain's slacking up. Chem storm's about to pass over. The baron's men aren't going to wait around long before they decide to do something."
RYAN SAT AT THE WINDOW, peering over the sill. He kept the Steyr in his hands, taking small comfort from the solid feel of the sleek steel.
Phlorin lay against the back wall, her breathing sounding raspy and thin. Krysty still hadn't come out of the coma that had claimed her.
"Slaggers are still interested in how it goes down, too," J.B. said.
Ryan followed the line of the Armorer's pointing finger and spotted the coldhearts in hiding farther out, away from the junkyard. Some of the mongrels had put in an appearance, as well, requiring the baron's men to fire at will to prevent the hounds from closing in on them. As it was, Ryan knew of two men who were lost anyway. The dogs also succeeded in chasing nearly half the horses away after the baron's men had worked to keep them covered during the chem storm.
"We still got a
few hours of daylight left," J.B. commented.
Ryan nodded. "That can work for us or against us, depending on how good the baron's men are in the dark."
"Home-ground advantage goes to the Slaggers, though." A crooked smile framed the Armorer's face. "And those bastard dogs."
"We got too many problems inside this fort," Ryan stated.
"I know."
"Trader'd think me a fool for putting up with all of them for so long. I need to find out what kind of hold that witch has over Krysty, and who of these folks the baron's men are after. Then I need to get us the hell out of here."
"Mebbe." J.B. took off his glasses and gave them a quick shine. "But I think back in those days when Trader was sharp, he'd have taken advantage of the rain, too."
"Rain's over," Ryan said. Outside, only a light mist hazed the air. But it was still enough to give a man pause about going out into it. If enough of the airborne caustic liquid was breathed in, lungs could become inflamed, a breeding ground for pleurisy or another respiratory ailment that would end up in a long, hard death.
J.B. put his glasses back on. "Which problem you going to deal with first?"
"Krysty."
"Could be hard going."
"Already is," Ryan admitted. "If I knew what to do, one way or the other, I could get it done."
"Best way to do anything," the Armorer said, "is to put the ace on the line and let the chips fall."
Ryan knew that was true, but he also knew that doing that was going to risk Krysty. Somehow, though, he knew she wouldn't want him to let the situation remained unresolved.
"ANY CHANGE?" RYAN ASKED.
Mildred shook her head. She sat next to Krysty's pallet, the red head lying in her lap. She brushed at the prehensile hair, trying to calm it from the bunch of frayed knots it had twisted itself into. "She's got a fever. Low grade and nothing's that's going to be dangerous, but it's wearing her out."
"How about the old woman?" Ryan cut his gaze over to Phlorin, who had woken and pierced him with her red-rimmed gaze filled with hate.
"Figured she'd be dead by now," Mildred admitted, "with that hole in her chest. We're talking about a lot of trauma to her system. She's a stubborn woman."