Playfair's Axiom

by James Axler

  “Happy shaking that place from boot heels,” Jak remarked. “Big hum back. Makes bones itch.”

  Ryan frowned and scratched his cheek thoughtfully with his thumb. Bristle made a rough sound.

  “I take it you have a destination in mind?” Doc asked.

  “We’re going to Breweryville.”

  “You think Emerald’s gone there?” Krysty asked.

  “No,” Ryan said. “Think about it.”

  He felt safe glancing at her, since she’d pulled up alongside with swinging, confident strides of her long, strong legs. He took Garrison absolutely at his word they’d be gunned down instantly if they so much as glanced back.

  Anyway the cracked, heaved pavement had begun sloping beneath Ryan’s boots. In a few dozen steps they’d be out of sight of the Soulardville sec posse.

  Krysty’s smooth brow creased in a frown of concentration. “Despite the fact they trade,” she said, “there seems to be some hostility between Brewery and Soulardville.”

  “That’s how I read it,” Ryan said.

  “They seem to be the powerhouses of this vicinity, which means they’re automatically rivals to some extent, even though we’ve seen no sign of overt conflict. That means there’d be too great a chance this brewmeister would use Emerald to strike against his rival, her father.”

  She glanced up at Ryan. “Or misuse her.”

  “Yeah.”

  “On the other hand, and paradoxically, he might try to buy Soulard’s favor by shopping her back.”

  “Uh-huh,” Ryan said, nodding.

  “So, why are we going there, lover, since it seems pretty definitely the girl we’re after didn’t?” “Double-easy. Information. From what we heard back in Soulard, B-ville’s the biggest ville around. Does lots of trade.” He shrugged. “Also, they’ve got no reason to cover for Emerald.”

  “And what might we have to tender in exchange for the desired information, my dear Ryan?” Doc asked.

  “Information, for one thing,” Ryan said. “People’re always hard up for news of the outside world. Even in a place does a lot of trade like B-ville. I’m sure we know something we can swap to this brewmeister. And if not, mebbe we can do him a service. Something.”

  “Serenely confident as ever, I see,” Doc said.

  “Or overconfident,” Mildred said.

  “Whichever,” Ryan agreed.

  What was obviously the southern boundary of Soulardville approached on the right. To the left, more or less intact industrial and commercial buildings marched down the bluff into the green water of the Sippi. Ahead Ryan could see the great redbrick walls and towers of Breweryville rising above green treetops.

  “Enough jibber-jabber,” he said. “Jak, you swing out point. Krysty, take our left side.” Those derelict buildings made him nervous. Anything could be denning in them, from stickies to coldhearts armed to the teeth and looking for unwary prey to wander past between the two rich villes.

  “Mildred, you wing out right. Doc, you come up ahead of me. I’ll pull rear-guard. Now, double-fast march!”

  THE EIGHT-YEAR-OLD boy squalled as the sec man broke his right upper arm with a sickening thud of a lead-loaded truncheon.

  “In order to achieve the maximum potential of government to do good,” the man with the stained apron and fringe of white hair said, mopping his round, jovial face with a scarlet handkerchief, “it has to achieve respect. Right? Right. Nobody argues that.”

  Crying, the small boy fell to the ground.

  “And what’s one inarguable component of respect?” the baron—or brewmeister, as he insisted on being called—asked. He sat on a beer keg in the shade of a tree growing in a little courtyard, in font of a tall redbrick structure Ryan guessed was his headquarters. The building was big and square and looked kind of like an old-time church, complete with a crenellated tower with a clock in it. The clock’s black iron hands seemed perpetually frozen at midnight. The upper third or so of the tower was made of a lighter, yellower brick than the rest. The boundary was uneven. Ryan guessed something, probably the nuke blast to the west, had knocked the original top off the tower.

  Their host spoke as casually as if he were discussing nothing of significance. Perhaps the petunia that nodded bright heads in the exquisitely tended beds to either side of the entry steps. Or the other flowers growing in the beds inside the little courtyard fenced with a waist-high railing of spike-topped black iron, their fragrance doing little to dispel the pervasive stink of rotting hops. The ville still kept up its traditional occupation, along with farming and various forms of manufacture.

  “Fear, of course,” the brewmeister said as if nothing unusual was happening. “Fear. I prefer not to rule by fear. You can ask any of my people—ask ’em yourself, Ryan. Be my guest. But the time comes around occasionally when it is necessary for a benign ruler to reinstill fear in his subjects. So that they can be reminded of the consequences of failure and disobedience, before going back to the grateful and happy fruits of the good governance I provide them.

  “Now, what can I do for you ladies and gentlemen?”

  Ryan spoke fast to overwhelm Mildred’s growl behind him. “We could use some information,” he said.

  The baron nodded and smiled. “And what have you got in exchange?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Why, Baron,” Doc Tanner declared, throwing his arms wide in a theatrical gesture, “we bring news of the great wide world beyond these magnificent walls.”

  He held his loaded sword stick in one hand. His pale blue eyes had a faraway look in his tanned and weather-beaten face. Ryan wondered if his mind had gone someplace else—someplace where kids weren’t eaten alive by flying muties, or had their arms broken by a cruel baron.

  The brewmeister pulled a face and tipped his head left and right. “We get plenty of news,” he said, “what with all the trade caravans who come in here. Plus we have a secure dock for rivermen to tie up. Still, you look as if you may have an interesting story or two to tell. What information do you want, exactly?”

  Breweryville was a vast compound of tall redbrick walls and towers, surrounded by fields lined with crops in neat rows. Laborers in shabby linen smocks and woven straw hats worked the fields under the eyes of watchful sec men, who sat in the shade of parasols slapping the palms of their hands with their long oak truncheons. The workers’ clothes looked homespun, mebbe a product of the big ville itself, mebbe brought in via trade. One way or another new-condition clothes scavvied from the ruins of the great city seemed to be considered too valuable to waste on the grunt laborers.

  From inside, the walls showed different colors at various heights, ranging from near ground levels to up near the top. Apparently the inhabitants had rebuilt and repaired damage done by the bombs and quakes. They had plenty of material to do it with, Ryan reckoned. And time. It did suggest they’d been here a while. As Soulardville had.

  The towers on either sides of the huge gates through which the companions had been escorted bristled with the barrels of what Ryan suspected were actual full-on machine guns.

  The sec men hadn’t even bothered relieving the outlanders of their weapons. Ryan was too canny to be reassured. They were being told, not subtly, they posed no threat.

  The fact was, as far as he could see, that was true. This ville had a lot more activity than Soulard, a lot more people doing a lot more bustle. And a shitload more sec men.

  “Got questions concerning Baron Savij of Soulardville’s daughter, Emerald,” he said.

  The baron’s eyebrows rose like fuzzy white caterpillars arching their backs. “Ah,” he said sagely. “That will be pricey information indeed. Why do you want to know about her?”

  “What do you offer us for that information, Baron?” Doc asked. “Nothing is free in Deathlands. Except of course, death itself!”

  Yeah, Ryan thought, thanks loads for reminding the baron of that. Plus all those sec men standing right behind us who suddenly don’t have anything much to do.


  The brewmeister goggled at the old man. Ryan wondered if he got so little back-chat he had trouble understanding it when it came his way. But then the stout old baron laughed heartily and slapped his apron-covered thigh.

  “By the days of the smoke clouds!” he exclaimed. “I must admit you’re an entertaining bunch. Very well.”

  He leaned forward with a shrewd look on his face. “Let’s get down to talking beans and bullets,” he said. “I understand you are a skilled healer, Mildred?”

  Ryan looked around at Mildred, who was still upset about the child with the broken arm. Her face was purplish and her eyes looked like boiled eggs.

  “Yes, she is,” Krysty Wroth said quickly.

  She’d recovered her composure before Mildred. Of course. She was Deathlands-born. She knew how things went. No matter that even she sometimes had trouble swallowing them.

  Somewhere, deep down inside, Ryan reckoned, Mildred still figured she was just visiting this hellacious future, so completely unlike the sparkling, clean-smelling world she’d known. Or mebbe that this was a dream, a horrible nightmare, she’d awaken from one day.

  The brewmeister nodded. “Then there is something you can do for me,” he said. “There’s a little girl, delightful child. She was struck this morning by what our own healer calls a bout of appendicitis. Now, our healer unfortunately lacks the skill to treat that condition, since cutting is required. He’s sorry for that now. Very, very sorry.”

  He turned his bright smile on Mildred. “Can you perform the necessary operation?”

  Her color, which had begun to return to normal, went all purple again, and her eyes bugged out.

  “What makes you think I’ll—”

  “Tell me, dear Mildred,” Doc said brightly, “did you ever learn the old oath—what was it?—the Hippocratic oath that physicians used to take?”

  Mildred went dead still. The color dropped from her face. Krysty was by her side, her bright red hair obscuring her face momentarily as she leaned close to Mildred’s ear to whisper something. Ryan didn’t need any psychic powers to guess Krysty was reminding the overamped doctor that whatever horrors went on in this ville, a little sick girl had nothing to do with perpetrating them.

  “Yes,” the stocky black woman managed to reply. Then as professionalism took over she continued in tones that became progressively more controlled and businesslike as she spoke.

  “I can perform an appendectomy if the patient is not too far gone. If the appendix has burst, and she’s got peritonitis, there’s nothing I nor any healer in this world can do for her.”

  “Our ville healer says that crisis is still a few hours off,” the brewmeister said. “Fact is, he bet his life on it. Such invasive cutting, however, lies unfortunately beyond his competence.”

  “Do you have antibiotics?” Mildred asked.

  “We do. Prime quality salvage.”

  “What about painkillers? This is going to be hard enough without trying to do it without anesthesia.”

  In fact, even Ryan knew it was fairly simple surgery. He approved of Mildred not tipping that. Of course, the baron probably knew that as well as he. But why give anything away free?

  “We have various opium extracts available,” the brewmeister said.

  “Good,” Mildred said. “They can help treat shock in the patient, too. If she isn’t too far gone I can do this. But you’ll have to answer all our questions, not bargain over every syllable. You understand?”

  The baron spread his pink hands wide. “It shall be my pleasure. You shall be performing me an invaluable service.”

  Mildred looked at Ryan, who nodded.

  “Then I better get right to it,” Mildred said. “Time’s blood, as they say these days. Where is she?”

  The baron gestured. “Some of my sec men will escort you. They’ll ensure you have everything you need to perform a successful operation.”

  “Doc,” Ryan said, “go with the healer. Give her a hand.”

  “Certainly, Ryan.”

  Mildred frowned again, but they were comrades. Ryan didn’t want anybody going off alone in this latest nest of adders if he could help it. Having something urgent to do would keep Doc focused; and of all of them he probably had the knowledge best suited to help the physician. Anyway, Ryan wanted Krysty to hear what the brewmeister had to tell them.

  Mildred got it, too, in just about two heartbeats. She nodded briskly. A pair of sec men with stone faces led her and Doc out the little gate and across the compound at a brisk pace.

  “Not to check a gift blaster’s bore for rust,” Ryan said, “but I got to ask—isn’t it a bit coincidental that this daughter or granddaughter of yours falls sick the very day a triple-skilled healer happens to stroll through your gates?”

  The brewmeister laughed. “Why, whatever gave you the impression she was any relation of mine?”

  Ryan frowned, confused. “Well, you’re so all fired to see her cured. She’s one of your big wheel’s kids, then?”

  “She is the daughter of my bitterest and most vocal critic in the Breweryville council,” the baron said.

  “Then why the nuke do you want Mildred to save her?”

  “Why, to put him in my debt, of course. Plus it will piss him off to no end.” He laughed again, as happy as a child with a new toy.

  The brewmeister looked up at the clouds. “Let’s repair to the shade of the pergola,” he said, nodding his shiny dome toward a wooden-frame shelter built in the middle of the little garden courtyard, its sides and rafters overgrown with fragrant honeysuckle. “The sun’s coming out, and there’s no reason to be uncomfortable, is there?”

  WHEN THEY WERE seated on wooden chairs in the shade of lush vines laden with white and yellow flowers, silent servants in linen smocks brought a jug with several stone mugs. The servants set mugs before the baron, Ryan, Krysty and Jak, and then poured them full of frothy dark beer.

  “What can I tell you about the princess, then?” the brewmeister asked. He picked up a mug and drank deeply. Then he sighed contentedly, setting the mug on the table and wiping foam from his mouth with his hand.

  “You know she left Soulardville, right?” Ryan tasted the beer. It was full-bodied and flavorful. It was also familiar: they’d been served the same at dinner the previous night in the current Baron Savij’s palace.

  The brewmeister got a cagey look in his eye, then he shook his head. “Yes, I do,” he said. “Word gets around about that sort of thing.”

  “We’re looking to bring her back,” Ryan said.

  He wondered if word got around about what the Soulardites did to keep clear of the menace of the screamwing colony up in that high skyscraper. He decided it wasn’t worthwhile asking.

  “Indeed. Savij has hired you, then?”

  “He wants his daughter back,” Krysty said.

  “Yes. No doubt he does. You don’t think she came here, surely?”

  “No,” Ryan said.

  “Why wouldn’t she, though?” Krysty asked. “It seems there’s rivalry between you and Soulardville. Your ville might offer her attractive refuge.”

  “I don’t know how much they told you about the so-called Princess Emerald in Soulard.”

  “Not much,” Ryan admitted.

  “She’s no dewy-eyed innocent. She’s seventeen years old with a reputation as a hellcat. It doesn’t surprise me she left the place, frankly. By all accounts she’s a young woman of some ability and enterprise, if lamentable decorum. No doubt she felt that Soulardville restricted her horizons too much to endure.”

  Or that the horizon of Soulardville was going to fill up with her own personal flock of screamwings, Ryan reflected. He certainly wasn’t fool enough to trust this wily old baron. On anything, least of all that he wasn’t fully aware of Emerald’s real reasons for splitting.

  But playing stupid was often smart. Trader’d had to pound that through his arrogant skull. People were always willing to believe it—believe they were smarter than you, especially. And being undere
stimated also gave you an edge. An edge a man like Trader could turn into clear profit.

  Ryan had learned how to use that kind of an edge as well.

  “Still, she would have felt safe here, right?” Krysty pressed, her green eyes wide. Ryan realized that he wasn’t the only one smart enough to play stupid.

  “She would’ve regarded that as walking into a trap. Oh, quite correctly, of course. She would be much too valuable a bargaining chip not to use. I have a responsibility to this ville and to its people. It’s up to me to protect them, to make their lives as much better as I can. I could buy a lot of benefit for Brewery with Emerald Savij to trade.”

  “Do you know where she went?” Ryan asked.

  “Only that it was somewhere other than here.”

  “Surely you must hear rumors,” Krysty said with a brilliant smile.

  “Well, yes, I admit we have. A young woman as…energetic as Emerald tends to make waves when she passes. We know she stayed a time with Horse McKinnick’s scavvie band in the ruins of downtown. She didn’t linger long, and I gather left with some acrimony. But they would know where she went from there, if anybody would.”

  “How do we get this McKinnick to tell us?”

  “An excellent question, Ryan. An excellent question. If Krysty will forgive my lapse into vulgarity, the only means that suggests itself is to grab him by the balls. He is neither an honest man nor a reasonable one. He fancies himself brilliant, but all he shows is a degree of cunning you’d expect from a vicious animal.”

  “You trade with him?” Ryan said.

  “Not with him, no. We’d shoot him down on sight. Anybody sane would. He’s hard to miss—he’s almost seven feet tall, with a great tangle of reddish hair and beard. And he also has a patch, over his right eye. I suspect strongly that is his only point of similarity to you, Mr. Cawdor.”

  The brewmeister shrugged expressively. “We do conduct trade with his people. What else can we do? If we had to pass favorable judgment upon all our trading partners before we did business with them we’d get scant commerce.”