Seedling

by James Axler

Once they were past, Krysty inhaled the rich cook­ing smells. "Getting real hungered, lover."

  Up ahead was the nearest thing to a crowd Ryan had ever seen in all of his life in Deathlands. There must have been two or three hundred men and women. But the people seemed to sense the presence of the outlanders the same way a witch scented evil. They parted at the approach of Ryan and the others, like minnows before a cruising pike.

  The path had one last bend before it dropped sharply to a great oval space, which Ryan guessed must have once been the reservoir Mildred had men­tioned.

  And there was one of the more amazing sights he'd ever seen.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE TALL ONE-EYED man stood and gaped, surrounded by his friends, while the ragged crowd moved sullen and slow about them, like water roiling around a spur of granite.

  "Fireblast," he said quietly. "Now that really is something."

  All over Deathlands there were villes of every size and description, most ruled by a baron who held it by force of personality or arms.

  Most of them had markets of varying sizes. There would be stalls cobbled together, offering all manner of local produce: food and home brew; meat, eggs and milk; clothes; and there was almost always some dealer selling ammo and blades.

  But the great arena in the middle of the park was brimming with people. Some had come to sell, but most had come to buy or trade.

  "Any local jack?" J.B. asked. "Any baron around Newyork big enough to issue his own scrip?"

  Dred laughed. "No fucking way. There's some big dealers around Mattan, but no barons. No."

  "Harry," Retha said.

  "Who?"

  She grinned crookedly at Ryan. "Harry Stanton. Calls himself the King of the… What is it, Dred?"

  "Underworld. Yeah. There's him. But he's not a baron. No, jack isn't worth a candlelit fart in a fuck­ing hurricane."

  "How come nobody comes thieving?" Krysty asked. "Take over this place?"

  Dred shook his head slowly and thoughtfully. "No. There's a sort of a rule. Anyone tried it, then they'd be marked down and hunted by everyone in the whole of the ville."

  "Nobody ever try it?" Ryan was trying to guessti­mate how many people were down there, but he ran out after he hit three hundred.

  "Sure. Triple stupes. Sort of thickshits that'd catch a horse turd in midflight. They got chilled. Nobody for weeks tried that on."

  "Let's go look around," Ryan said. "Stick to­gether. Anyone drifts could get lost. And on-line red."

  Everywhere they encountered the same sort of dull resentment. One young girl, reeling on jolt, spit at Ryan, but an older man grabbed at her and pulled her away to safety. Nobody else looked directly at them.

  Even the dealers checked their hoarse chants and pitches as the small group of strangers stepped by their stalls, waiting until they'd walked on before re­suming their efforts to sell.

  "Never seen anything like this." J.B. was at Ryan's elbow, looking at the goods on offer on both sides of them.

  There was the rotting detritus of an entire civiliza­tion. So vast had been the metropolis of New York that the scattered survivors, a century later, were still scavenging a living from the remains.

  Some stalls held pots and pans, plates and glasses. Many were filthy, dented or chipped. Some showed the clearest signs of severe scorching during the sky-born holocaust. One stall had a number of books and comics, which attracted both Ryan and Krysty. But nearly all were badly damaged with pages missing and spines broken. Mildred joined them, picking up a copy of a magazine called Love and Rocke— She handled it with a reverential awe.

  "This was the best around. The Hernandez brothers." Mildred looked at the young woman behind the stall. "How much is this?"

  "What kinda question's that, lady? You a coupla fingers short a hand?"

  "I just wondered what you wanted for this old comic."

  "Jeez! You outies? Yeah, I see you are. We don't take outie jack here. You tell me what you want to give me for it!"

  Mildred looked at the others. "What can I… ?"

  "Clothes or some sort of weapons'd do fine, lady."

  "No. Thanks, but no thanks." She put the tat­tered, dry-leaved magazine back down, and they moved on through the market.

  They pushed along crowded aisles. Dred had told them the food was served on the south side of the old reservoir. They could see the smoke of cooking fires and ovens ahead of them.

  There were so many people there that they could only glimpse odd items on some of the trestles and boxes. People in Deathlands weren't that concerned with personal hygiene. You washed when you could, but if it was only every couple of weeks, then that was the way it was. But even Ryan was aware of the ap­palling stench that washed around them. Not just sweat, but sweat layered upon old sweat. And every­one seemed to have an aura of damp glowing around them, from wet clothes that never dried properly.

  One stall had a pile of tiles that Doc claimed must have dated from the middle of the nineteenth cen­tury, entwining floral patterns in faded crimsons and yellows.

  There was one young boy selling only lengths of string, rope and wire, of all sorts of dimensions and strengths.

  A long table, with three armed men behind it, was covered with handfuls of ammo of all calibers. J.B. paused and browsed awhile, coming up with a dozen antique rounds to fit Doc's .36. One of the men seemed delighted to take two of the Armorer's own S.6 mm rounds in exchange.

  One of the busiest sections of the market was the one selling clothes and footwear. A foxy-faced teen­ager with dreadful smallpox scars disfiguring his cheeks grabbed at Krysty's arm, nearly earning him­self a slashed groin from Ryan's panga.

  "Love the boots, Red."

  Krysty was wearing the same boots she'd had on when she and Ryan had first met—dark blue leather, now badly scuffed and stained, with chiseled silver points on both toes. There were also silver leather falcons with their wings spread across the fronts of the boots. The heels were worn down, and she'd had them repaired once. The soles were also becoming perilously thin.

  "So do I," she replied.

  "Give you any five pairs from the stall in trade. Good deal, Red."

  "No."

  "Come on. Eight pairs."

  Krysty smiled at him and started to move on.

  He clung to her arm. "Ten. Ten pairs of any kind!"

  She tried to shrug him off, but he persisted. Still smiling, the tall woman reached down and closed her fingers over his hand, squeezing hard enough to make him yelp in shock and pain. "No. I mean it." Her face was like Sierra ice. Krysty let go of him and walked on, leaving him to nurse bruised fingers.

  "Could do with a decent coat," Mildred said, si­dling close to Ryan. "Freezing wind."

  "See anything you want? We can barter some bul­lets for it."

  She sighed, glancing at a stall they were passing. Even from where they stood they could see the myr­iad fleas and mites skipping all over the rags.

  "Maybe I'll stick with being cold for a while."

  "Let me do the talking," Dred said as they reached the first line of food and drink stalls. Smoke bil­lowed around them, stinging their eyes and snatch­ing at the backs of their throats.

  But it was a smell they'd all encountered in many frontier villes.

  "Sure," Ryan agreed. "Get something we can eat now and something to take with us."

  A hand suddenly snatched at his sleeve, and he spun around to find himself looking down into the ravaged face of a middle-aged woman. Her hair was graying and tied back in a long ponytail. At one time she must have been very attractive, but someone had once taken a thin, sharp knife to her and marred her beauty. A network of long, narrow scars seamed her from forehead to chin, tugging down her eyes and making her look vaguely Oriental. Her nose had been deliberately split up both nostrils and had healed crookedly. The corners of her mouth had been ex­tended with a knife, making it seem as if she were al­ways smiling.

  There was a small metal locket around her nec
k on a length of plaited steel wire. She let go of his arm, and now both hands were reaching for the locket.

  Ryan noticed that both of her thumbs had been hacked off, showing only cauterized stumps.

  Dred had also turned, and he pushed the woman a few steps away from Ryan. "Fuck off, beggar! Go slut some other place!"

  "Want to ask him a question." The voice was plaintive, hoarse, used to rejection.

  "Let her ask," Ryan said.

  "She's a beggar," the teenager spit.

  "One-eyed man. What's his name?"

  Ryan opened his mouth to ask why she wanted to know, but Dred was quicker. He slapped at the woman, catching her a glancing blow across the cheek, making her stagger away. "His name's Chiller, so now you know. And that's what'll happen to you if you don't wheel that cut-up face of yours out of the fucking way."

  The crowd whirled around them, put on edge by the shouted anger in the youth's voice. When they stilled again, the woman was gone.

  Dred, cocky, strutted on.

  Ryan was close to Krysty. "Didn't have to do that," he said.

  "Young and wants to show off. Jak was a bit like that, some of the time."

  "Some of the time," he agreed.

  AMMO WAS AT SUCH a premium in the ville of Newyork that they were able to eat and drink well, and take some dried meat and bread with them—and for only five perfect 9 mm full-metal jacket rounds.

  They ate a rich stew from homemade bowls. The meat was almost certainly dog, though the seller claimed there was also some rabbit and even some tinned beef in there someplace. Chunks of some un­identified root vegetable floated stringiry in the dark brown gravy, as well as a handful of pallid beans. It was spiced with too little salt and too much pepper, as well as the ragged remains of some red chilis. With it there were some fresh sourdough biscuits, still warm from a portable clay oven that stood at the side of the caldron of stew.

  The man offered them watery milk or some home brew. All of them chose the latter.

  Mildred stifled a belch and popped the last of her bread, soaked in the last of the gravy, into her mouth. She swigged at the container of colorless hooch, coughing, eyes protruding. "Judas and his silver! That's strong stuff. Must be two hundred proof."

  "I have dined at some of the finest restaurants Eu­rope or the United States can offer, and I doubt I have ever dined better than that." Doc wiped at his lips and smiled. "Hits the spot and layers the stomach most perfectly. I declare that this establishment is worthy of three stars from Mongsoor Michelin."

  "Not bad," J.B. agreed.

  The stall holder had slipped the bullets into a leather pouch at his waist. "Anyone want some good jolt? All the way from the Amazon. Best you can find. Dreamland for hours."

  "Yeah, please," Retha said.

  Dred looked eagerly at Ryan, who shook his head at him. "No."

  "Why not?"

  "Why put a thief into your skull that'll steal your brains?"

  "Some sluts at the gaudy tent up that far hill, by that stump of the obelisk. I'll give you scrip to go." The man was eager for more trade.

  Mildred spit in the dirt. "Nothing changes, does it?"

  Retha looked puzzled. "You can make good jack there. Few hours fucking means a few hours eating."

  Mildred patted her gently on the shoulder. "Sure. Sorry, child. Shouldn't have spoken the way I did."

  Their stomachs pleasantly filled, the five old friends and their two young companions moved southward across Manhattan.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ONCE THEY WERE past the straggly line of gaudy tents, with their ragged crimson banners and ragged whores parading in their tawdry finery, the crowds thinned fast.

  There was an occasional stall or small tent, hold­ing a tattoo artist or a mutie seer or teller. A lean, hungry-looking man offered a strange selection of rings, bracelets and necklaces. Krysty picked one up to look at it and dropped it with an expression of dis­gust. "They're all human bones."

  "Yeah." The man grinned wolfishly, showing a mouth filled with jumbled yellow teeth. "And I knowed 'em all."

  "THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN Fifth Avenue, would it not, my dear Mildred?"

  "Guess so, Doc."

  "Look upon my works, ye mighty… This part has been devilishly hard hit. I can recall…but what is the point of all that? What is the point of all that? Yes­terday is gone. One day we will all die. In life, my friends, there is but that one great certainty. Dust, brothers and sisters. Dust."

  His shoulders started to shake, and tears ran through the grizzled furrows of his cheeks. Mildred went toward him, but Retha was quicker.

  "Hey, don't cry, old Doc. You said, least I think that's what you was saying, about us all dying, and yeah, we will. But you do the best while you can. That's all."

  "Out of the mouths of babes, Doc," Mildred said.

  "What's that weird place?" J.B. asked.

  "Where?" Mildred and the others looked a cou­ple of blocks north, following the Armorer's point­ing finger.

  "Like a kind of broken seashell."

  The haze from the cooking fires was drifting east­ward across the ruined buildings, making it hard to see more than a hundred yards in that direction. But they could all see what he meant.

  "Like a sort of small redoubt," Ryan said. "But I guess it can't be that, right smack in the center of the ville."

  The smoke thickened and the building vanished. J.B. asked Dred and Retha if they knew what it had been, but they both shook their heads.

  "Let's go see," Krysty suggested.

  Ryan wasn't happy at that. "Day's wearing on, lover. If we want to get south and find some place for the night, we need to move on."

  The wind gusted and the smoke cleared, showing the peculiar building more clearly. Doc and Mildred spoke in unison. "The Guggenheim," they cho­rused.

  "How's that?" Ryan asked.

  Mildred got in first. "Classic art gallery. One of the best in the world. Architect called Frank Lloyd Wright designed it. It's like being inside the shell of a great snail. I saw a wonderful exhibition of Georgia O'Keeffe. Let's go and look at it."

  Ryan glanced at the sky. It was darkening from the northwest, with the promise of more rain, though the falling temperatures threatened snow. "Could we hole up there for the night, Dred?"

  "Don't know. Yeah. Sure. Why not? Yeah."

  THE BUILDINGS around the Guggenheim were totally wrecked. Nothing stood more than a single story. But the stained white concrete museum was remarkably untouched. Ryan guessed that its peculiar shape and structure must have protected it from the blast that had demolished everything around it.

  "Anything worthwhile inside?" he asked Mildred.

  "Used to be some of the finest pictures the world ever saw. Renoir, Picasso, Mondrian, Klee, Van Gogh… names go on forever, Ryan."

  "I fear that little will remain of that collection now," Doc said.

  Sadly he was right.

  The outer doors and windows were smashed, and the lobby was filled with piles of rotting leaves. The air smelled cold and damp, unused. It was, oddly, very much like the smell they'd encountered in many of the hidden redoubts they'd entered.

  Ryan glanced across at Krysty. "Anything?"

  "No. Feels like nobody's been in here for a hun­dred years."

  Doc had wandered across the floor and was look­ing up at the enormous winding ramp that went clear to the roof. "Suppose there's nothing here for any­one. It's so damnably cold in here, and there's noth­ing to burn for a fire."

  Typically J.B. saw the situation from his own, per­sonal direction. "More than that, Doc. Way

  it's built, there's no way of defending it. You get trapped up that ramp and you're dead meat. No way of estab­lishing cross fire or any defensive positions."

  Doc smiled, his perfect white teeth showing up with an almost fluorescent whiteness in the dimness. "I'm sure you're correct, my dear fellow. If I had access to a temporal transporter, I would hasten back and ask Mr. Lloyd Wright to redesign it
so that it could be defended in the event of a firefight. I'm sure he'd be most happy to oblige."

  The Armorer didn't smile, throwing a finger at the old man.

  "Enough," Ryan snapped. "We going to stay here for the night?"

  "Not much heat here." Mildred looked around. "Some of those leaves might burn." But she sounded as doubtful as she felt.

  Behind what had once been some sort of sales sec­tion, J.B. had rummaged out a pile of white plastic strips. "These'll go. Keep away from the fumes, and they'll do. Them and some of the leaves. Once they dry out."

  Dred nodded. "Why don't me and Retha go hunt the park for branches and stuff? This far south there aren't many gangs, so's there could be some. What d'you say, Ryan?"

  "Sure. Good as anywhere. We've got enough to keep a watch. Solid roof. Worth something. But don't take long."

  "Can we borrow your blasters?" The question was asked very casually.

  "Nobody ever borrows anyone's blaster," J.B. re­plied curtly. "Never."

  AN HOUR AFTER DARK they had a good fire going. Ryan had decided to light it to one side of the bottom floor, where the smoke would be sucked away out of some of the broken windows. The plastic sent out a thick cloud of noxious black fumes, but it served to ignite the pile of twigs and branches that the teen­agers had dragged in, as well as drying out the big piles of leaves collected around the building.

  Before full dark came Doc and Mildred climbed up the winding, circular ramp, clear to the top of the building. The woman laughed quietly as they reached the haunted, shadowed level, with the floor sweeping gently away from them, around and around and down toward the lobby.

  "What is so risible, my dear doctor?"

  "Take me an hour or more to answer that one, Doc. But if you mean right now… Well, I just had a thought."

  "I'm all attention and quivering eagerness, mad­am. Tell me."

  "Just looking around here. Masses of rubbish and dead leaves and rags and all kinds of windblown and human shit. If this was a book or a movie…well, we'd burrow around and find a buried masterpiece by Van Gogh or someone."

  Doc nodded, his silvery mane luminous in the eve­ning gloom. "Yes, yes. And we would look at it, and then one of us would say that we wondered what the old picture was. But it would…"