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Starfall

Page 18

by neetha Napew


  "Keep your eye on business all the time, Mr. Cawdor?"

  "Yeah."

  "I like that in a man."

  "Don't give a damn what you like," Ryan said. "One of Trader's hardest and most fast rules was to get business done ASAP. Once it was done, there was no reason to hang around unless somebody was fishing for information. Or wondering if they were big enough or bad enough to take you."

  "Trader was a smart man. Come on inside the house. Hospitality can be quick, too, and I want to have a look at those blasters before we sit down to dicker too hard. Got some sipping whiskey inside that I brew myself. Make it out of potatoes, but it carries a hell of a kick."

  "We'll see," Ryan said.

  ANNIE LET THEM into the main house, and Ryan was sur­prised at the decor. Where the exterior of the house was rough, the interior showed the effects of considerable hard work. The floors were wood, but carpets covered them in places, all of them depicting outdoor nature scenes: wood­lands and creatures, fish and rivers, snow-topped moun­tains. Looking at them, Ryan knew the influences had come from the land around the trading post.

  He followed the woman through a narrow hallway off the main door, set between two rooms that had large Xs cut in them for blasterports. Evidently the woman took her security measures to heart.

  As they stepped into the big room, he signaled to J.B. and had the Armorer step away to the right, then signaled Jak and Dean to step to the left. By the time they stopped, they formed a half circle around Annie and her people. Some of the trading post's gunners were still behind them, but they weren't bunched up.

  The room was massive, filled with handmade furniture that sported overstuffed upholstery. Two of the walls held floor-to-ceiling shelves that were filled with books. A third wall was a taxidermist's dream, lined with the heads and bodies of wild game. Ryan scanned the assembled mount­ings, spotting bears, cougar, fish, snakes and other mutie animals that he wasn't so sure of.

  There were also seven human heads. Five of them had belonged to men, and two to women. All of them looked terrified, and the flesh hadn't been as easily preserved as fur. Skin stretched taut over bone, and stitches showed on the faces of two men, showing where wounds had been closed up after death.

  A huge fireplace occupied the fourth wall. There were no windows.

  Annie stopped at a large table cut from tree trunks. Smooth river stones covered the tabletop, all of it leveled off by a flawless lacquer that held a suet-yellow color. She flipped a switch under the table, and electrical lights flooded the room.

  "Make yourselves to home," Annie said. "Those that I let inside the trading post I take pride in showing hospitality to."

  Ryan took a seat on one of the three large couches in the center of the room around the big table. J.B. sat across from him while Jak and Dean hung back. There were plenty of seats for Morse and his boys, Elmore and the others. Doc walked straight across to the shelves.

  "Madam, I must say you have quite an eclectic collec­tion of books," the old man said.

  "Out here, Doc," Annie said, pouring drinks in glass jars, "I can't be too choosy about what I'm able to get. I take whatever I can get my hands on."

  "Twain, Faulkner, King, Sheldon and names here that I am afraid I do not recognize, and I consider myself a learned man. Have you read them all?"

  "As much as I've been able," Annie said. "As many as caught my eye and held my attention. I'm still a working woman, and I have to put in time every day if I plan on keeping this place together."

  "Have you a favorite?"

  Annie gestured to one of the men to hand out drinks. The man didn't look too happy about it, and used only one hand to carry the wooden platter of drinks. The other he kept on his rifle. "Jack London," she said. "I loved Call of the Wild and White Fang, and most of his other works. Brilliant writer."

  "Why Jack London?" Doc asked.

  "Man wrote about it the way it was," a new male voice said. "And the way it is."

  Ryan glanced at the doorway and watched as a big man doffed his fur cap and entered the room.

  "This is my son," Annie said. "His name's Max, and he's going to make sure the business we conduct is right and fair."

  Max carried his mother's complexion, but most of the resemblance ended there. Ryan surmised that he had to have taken the majority of his looks from his father. Max had dark hair, plastered tight against his scalp from wearing the heavy fur cap, and tied into short braids. Nearly six and a half feet tall, he carried slabs of muscle on his broad frame. He wore leathers, all handmade and showing scars from hard wear.

  "They come alone," Max said, taking one of the jars of liquor. He took a deep drink without showing any of the effects of the alcohol. He kept a long-barreled .44 Magnum Colt Model 624 in his fist. A camp ax hung by a thong from his belt, balanced by three throwing knives on the other side. He wore a bow over his shoulder and twin quiv­ers of arrows on his back. Knife handles showed from his boot tops, as well.

  "Was anyone left on the boat?" Annie asked.

  "Empty."

  "Anything on it they didn't tell us about?"

  "Not that I could find." Max poured some more whiskey into his glass. "From what I saw, not all of these folks are together."

  "I know about Morse and his boys."

  Max nodded. "I watched those seven come up the hill together." He pointed out Ryan and the others. "They move like one. Been together a long time, and in dangerous places from the looks of them."

  "You didn't have a reason to go on that boat," Dean stated angrily.

  "Dean," Ryan said, "back off."

  The boy's color remained mottled, and Ryan knew the boy had inherited more from him than a mere physical re­semblance. But the anger that resided in his son was going to have to be tempered if he was going to get a handle on it.

  "It's not right, Dad," the boy said. "For all we know, this bastard set fire to the boat and burned it to the water-line."

  If he was offended by the accusation, Max didn't show it. Instead, he seemed more amused than anything.

  "We'd have seen the smoke," J.B. stated.

  "The boat's still there," Max said as calmly as if they were discussing the weather. "I didn't do nothing more than look it over."

  "I reserve the right, as always, to look out for my own welfare, young man," Annie said to Dean. "Your father knows this, and accepted it when he started up to this trad­ing post."

  That was the truth, and Ryan knew it. They couldn't have stayed with the boat and accomplished the trading. From the instant they'd left it behind, he'd been prepared to lose it. Now he recognized that Annie had read the commitment he'd made to getting the necessary supplies. It put them both on equal footing.

  "There's something else you might consider," Annie told them.

  "What?" Mildred asked. Her attitude showed that she didn't appreciate the high-handed way the woman had taken with them.

  "There's a storm coming tonight," Annie said.

  "How do you know?" Ryan asked.

  The woman focused her attention on him, the dark slate eyes locking on his. "I've lived here almost all my life. I know the land, and I know the weather that surrounds it. And I'm telling you now that there's a storm blowing in from the south that'll be here by nightfall."

  Ryan glanced at Morse, and the sailor gave him an ab­breviated shrug.

  "You're welcome to tie Junie up to the pier below," Annie stated, "but you're also welcome to stay up here at the trading post if you've mind to."

  "I thought your guest houses were full up," Ryan said.

  She nodded. "They are. But you're welcome to sleep in the barn if you'd like. It'd be better than trying to rest up out in that boat with the river running wild as it's gonna be."

  "Getting off the boat for the night sounds good, lover," Krysty said. It was her way of letting him know she sensed nothing untoward about the offer.

  Then again, Ryan had no reason to believe that her cus­tomary powers of deduction were what they usually wer
e.

  "I'll even add a little more to sweeten the pot," Annie stated. "The guest I've got staying with me even has his personal cook with him. He's rented my rooms and access to my larder. When he heard you folks were coming, he made me promise to ask you up to the table if you stopped by."

  Doc turned to her and put on his most charming smile. "Dear lady, the mere thought of enjoying a delicious repast with you is fraught with the promise of exhilaration. I should think we would be delighted to join you. What say you, friend Ryan?"

  "Sounds okay," Ryan replied. "But I want some idea of how much jack you're going to charge us before I accept your hospitality."

  Annie grinned at him, her eyes blazing. "A practical man, Ryan Cawdor?"

  "Always want to know if I can carry the freight before I heft it to my shoulder."

  "Then I give you my word that the price you'll pay for the experience won't be anything you can't live with. My word on that. And I can vouch for the cook. He's been in my kitchen for the last nine days."

  "Do you have a place we can wash up?" Mildred asked.

  "There are horse troughs out in the barn," Annie said. "Got a hand pump out there, too, and a fireplace you can use to heat up water for baths. We get our water from an underground stream, not that shit out in the river, so you don't have to worry about diseases. It can be drank without purification or any fear of contaminants. There's tack you can use for bedrolls."

  "When do we get to look at the supplies?" Ryan asked.

  "If you want to do it now, Max will take you."

  "I'd like to see what I'm getting."

  Annie looked at her son, who nodded.

  "Come with me," Max said.

  "J.B.," Ryan called, "you come with me. The rest of you get down to the barn. We'll be along in a few minutes."

  "Doc," Annie said, "I was wondering if you might spend a few minutes."

  "I fear I really do not like shirking the work my fellow companions must be about in the barn," the old man said.

  "It's okay, Doc," Ryan said. "We'll get things ready."

  Doc looked vaguely surprised. "Well, if you are sure."

  "I'm sure." Ryan followed Max and J.B. deeper into the huge house along another corridor. He marked two lefts, then they were in another windowless large room. Three big tables occupied the center of the room, surrounded by wooden stools that didn't look at all comfortable.

  "Have a seat," Max said, pointing at one of the tables.

  "I'll bring out some of the merchandise, give you a chance to look it over."

  Ryan and J.B. sat while the big man walked over to the door to an adjoining room and fitted a key into the lock. He let himself inside without looking back.

  "Got one guest staying in both guest houses," Ryan commented.

  "Heard that," J.B. said.

  "Brought his own cook. Must be a hell of a fucking guest."

  "Some of those blasters facing us off when we stepped through the palisade doors were sec men."

  Ryan nodded. He'd noticed the same thing. Sec men who'd spent time at their job developed a certain pattern of movement, a way of carrying themselves. "Going to be an interesting night."

  "If we stay," J.B. said. "Don't have to do that."

  "Play it as the hand is laid out. If a storm is coming, safest place for that boat is in some kind of harbor. That dock down below might not be much, but it's deep enough to keep the boat together if the water gets rough."

  MILDRED TOOK CHARGE of the group back in the barn. She assigned Jak to watch Elmore, and she let the Heimdall Foundation man know he was on a short leash. Elmore wasn't happy about it, but he didn't try to slip off after the first time, either.

  The barn stood nearly twenty feet tall, a big spacious building with a hayloft overhead. Stalls held eight horses with room for four more. Tack and saddles covered one wall, hanging from hooks. Loose straw lay over the hard-packed earth.

  "Comfortable place," the ferret-faced man who'd guided them to the barn said. "Tight and dry during the rainy season. Spent many a night here myself."

  "You're not one of the guests Annie's got right now, are you?"

  The man shook his head. "I'm one of Annie's regulars. Do my scavenging and trading with her 'cause she's fair to me. When times get lean, and they do often enough in the cold season, she stakes me, lets me stay in the barn if I got no other place."

  "Where are you spending the night tonight?" Mildred didn't relish the idea of a bunch of strangers camping out among them. It was bad enough having Morse and his boys and what remained of the ex-prisoners of the coldhearts around them.

  "Outside." The man hooked a thumb over his shoulder. "Got a tent, and Annie's giving me my meals for a few days."

  "Is that normal?"

  The man regarded her suspiciously. "Annie's done me enough favors, I don't kick much when she asks me for one." He excused himself and left the barn.

  Mildred returned her attention to the barn. Dean laid out a fire in the stone fireplace, using wood that was neatly stacked up in a lean-to fifty yards from the barn. The horses whinnied and nickered as the people moved around among them.

  "Horses used hard," Jak commented as he leaned against the wall and watched over Elmore.

  "I noticed that," Mildred said. She hadn't exactly been a city girl all her life before being frozen in a cryo chamber and thawed after the nukecaust But traveling with Ryan and the other companions had sharpened her eye.

  The horses were leaned out from hard travel, their coats not well taken care of. A few of them moved gingerly, as if their hooves had deep stone bruises.

  "Horses shod, too," the albino said quietly. "Probably roadwork, not open range. Used to living in ville."

  "Sec men and horses that have been pushed hard," Mil­dred said. "Kind of leads you to think that Annie's present guest wore out his welcome somewhere else, doesn't it?"

  Jak grinned coldly. "Best we move early in morning."

  Mildred nodded. "We'll make our own damn breakfast or skip it if Ryan and J.B. can push the trade through to­night. Being in the middle of somebody else's trouble is the last place I want to be." She moved off, intending to see to the placement of their people in case things turned bad.

  "WE DO OUR OWN RELOADING where we can," Max said as he pushed boxes of ammo across to Ryan and J.B. "But the scavengers working the regions within trading distance around us still come across stuff like this often enough."

  Ryan picked up a box of 9 mm ammo and slid it open. The bullets inside stood at rigid attention, gleaming from the thin oil coat that covered them. The noses were con­cave, letting him know they were hollowpoint. "Glasers," he commented. "These are some serious rounds."

  Max nodded, staying out of reach, his hand never far from his blaster. "Annie wanted you people to have the best."

  J.B. reached over for one of the bullets, rolling it appre­ciatively between his forefinger and thumb. "These bullets had a rep for one shot, one kill."

  "I've used them," Max stated. "They live up to their name. I noticed you people packed 9 mm rounds, and you looked like you've been traveling hard for a while."

  J.B. examined the round. "Factory made," he told Ryan.

  "Got pellets suspended inside in liquid Teflon. You shoot something, they disburse inside it like a shotgun round. Tear the hell out of anything they hit. Pellets hit bone, ricochet around and follow the natural line of the bone till they rip out somewhere new." A smile curved his lips.

  Ryan knew about the round. He'd come across them from time to time. It put him on edge that Max and Annie were so willing to part with ammo obviously worth so much.

  Max had also brought rounds for J.B.'s shotgun. There was a mixture of flechette, as well as double-aught. Again, like the 9 mm rounds, they were factory perfect.

  "Noticed in some of the bandoliers on the sec men," the Armorer said, "they were carrying homegrown loads."

  "Yeah." Max moved easily, transferring more boxes of ammo from the grease-stained mail pouch to the table.
He returned Ryan's and J.B.'s gazes without flinching, but Ryan knew the man had realized he'd given away the fact that part of the group had been sec men.

  "Who're they here with?" Ryan asked.

  "Annie'll provide the introductions tonight." Max put the last box of ammo on the table and tossed the empty mail pouch onto the table, as well.

  Ryan ran his eye over the factory boxes. There was ammo there for all the companions' weapons, including, oddly, Doc's Le Mat blaster. Max had memorized them all in the few minutes he'd been with them.

  "Who's he running from?" Ryan asked.

  "Nobody said anything about him running from noth­ing," Max answered.

  "Didn't have to," Ryan replied. "You brought us back here and start passing out ammo like it's Christmas or something. Offer us the barn and a meal tonight. That in­dicates to me that you people want us here."

  "Storm's coming," Max said flatly.

  "I've been wondering about that, too." Ryan returned the man's level glare. At his side, he noted that J.B. already had his hand on his shotgun's grip, ready to swing it up. "I was thinking mebbe we should just finish up our trading, get the fuck out of here and take our chances with the storm."

  "If the storm gets too rough tonight on that flooded river, you're going to get that boat swamped and lose it."

  "Mebbe. But I'm wondering what we can expect to face if we stay around here."

  "A dry bed and a good meal," Max said. "That much is certain."

  "Yeah. But it's the entertainment you got waiting in the wings that leaves me wondering."

  Max waved at the boxes of ammo. "Deal's on the table, mister, and staying the night's part of it."

  "And if I choose not to stay?"

  "Then you walk out of here the same way you walked in, and you get nothing from here."

  J.B. took off his fedora and worked at the worn creases, taking time to get them as straight as possible. He worked one-handed, the hat in his lap and covering the fact that he'd raised the shotgun to waist level under the table.

  "Fireblast," Ryan swore. "If we stay, it only makes sense that we know what we're up against."

  "Nothing you ain't seen before probably dozens of times." Max paused. "Tell your friend to either use that shotgun or put it down before I push this to the edge. And don't get any fancy ideas about slipping out of here in that boat. You try it, you won't clear the river in it. Me and Annie, we ain't made it here all these years by rolling over. I figure you know where to draw the lines, too."

 

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