"Sure."

 

"Goon DAY TO YOU." The greeting came from a tall young man. Like everyone else, he was wearing jeans and a shirt, his long blond hair tied back in a ponytail. Dorothy bad introduced him as Jehu, the leader of Quindley.

 

"You're young to be in charge of a ville like this," Ryan stated. "How long you been the baron?"

 

Jehu smiled. "There speaks the outlander, Ryan Cawdor. We have no baron."

 

"Leader? Chief? What's in a name, Jehu?"

 

"Our laws come from Moses. I am his chosen instrument, just for a single year."

 

"How do you mean?" J.B. asked. "You mean you just run the place for a year, then someone else does it? I heard about villes like that. Specially in the old Bible Belt lands. How long before you hand over?"

 

Jehu had eyes of deep cornflower blue. Now they looked curiously at the Armorer. "I end as the summer ends. I fall with the fall. How old are you, John Dix?"

 

"More than thirty and less than forty. How about you?"

 

"This is my twenty-fifth summer."

 

"Good age to be," Krysty said. "Doesn't seem that long that I was in my twenty-fifth summer."

 

"You are past it, truly?" Dorothy asked.

 

"Truly. Does it matter?"

 

The woman glanced at Jehu, who imperceptibly shook his head. "No," she said. "It doesn't matter. Not much."

 

"Michael and Dean here are the only ones under the age of twenty-five," Mildred said. "You keep picking on age and being old. What's so special about being over twenty-five?"

 

The man answered. "It is possible that you will get to speak with Moses before you-" he hesitated a brief moment "-before you leave us. Ask him."

 

"Where does Moses live?" Mildred asked.

 

"He doesn't 'live' in the way you might understand," Jehu replied. "Moses is here and there and everywhere."

 

"Like a god?" Doc asked.

 

"Better than a god," Dorothy stated. "A god is someone who doesn't exist. Moses exists."

 

"Does he have a house with many mansions?" Doc pointed ahead of them, to the only stone-walled building in the ville. It was circular, with a conical roof of fresh thatch. The back wall was directly against the outer defensive stakes.

 

Jehu nodded. "His spirit dwells there."

 

"Not his body?" Krysty said. "Don't we get to actually see him?"

 

Dorothy gave her a pitying smile. "Nobody at all gets to see Moses. Except the boy or girl honored by being chosen as the leader for the year."

 

"Moses picks them personally?" Michael had moved close to Dorothy.

 

"Not himself. But at the time they are permitted to let fall the reins of their year, it is Moses who releases them."

 

Jehu coughed. "Sister, it will soon be time for the ending of work for the day. After prayers, the outlanders can come and sit with us at our meal." Dorothy hesitated. "Does Moses..." "Yes, he knows. Moses knows all, sister."

 

"Blessed be that knowledge." Dorothy crossed herself and lowered her eyes.

 

"Amen to that."

 

"Can we wash up?" Krysty asked.

 

"Of course. There is a building set aside for outlanders who are permitted to stay in Quindley." The young man looked at the seven friends. "But it is a place divided."

 

"Divided? What do you mean?"

 

Jehu spread his hands like a market huckster displaying his wares. "Men on one side and women the other. As you will not stay long, the old and young can remain together,"

 

Ryan felt his temper flaring, but Krysty sensed it and gripped him by the wrist. "Only for a night. Two at the outside, lover," she said. "Not a problem. We're guests in their ville, so we play the game by their rules."

 

"When in Rome, one must do as the Romans do." Doc intoned.

 

"Trader did a good deal in Rome once," J.B. said. "Bunch of knives."

 

"In Rome!" Doc exclaimed. "I had not realized that the gentleman was familiar with the Eternal City."

 

"Halfway between Atlanta and Chattanooga, Doc.   -That the place you mean?"

 

"Not quite, my dear John Barrymore. Not quite."

 

Chapter Twenty

 

"Bugged?" Ryan looked around the semicircular room. Its longer, flat wall of feather-edged boards was what divided them from the women's half of the thatched building. The floor was tongue-and-groove planks.

 

J.B. sat on one of the narrow wooden beds, laying his Uzi across his lap. "No," he replied. "Quindley doesn't look much like a hi-tek ville to me. Fact is, it looks the opposite. Like those places with Amish barons. Can only just about bring themselves to use the wheel."

 

Doc lay on another bed, his hands locked behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. "I was never comfortable with thatch above me. I fear that some great cockatrice will tumble into ray snoring mouth while I sleep."

 

"Once had a mutie rat fall on me, Doc," said Dean, who was roaming around the room, peering at the handmade tables and chairs. "Tried to bite my tongue right out, before I was properly woked up."

 

"By the Three Kennedys! You poor mite." Doc sat up, his eyes wide with dismay. "What happened?"

 

"I bit its head off," Dean replied, sitting on the bed nearest to the door.

 

"It had it coming," Michael was tying down on his side, facing the blank wall.

 

"Right! Hot pipe, but you should have seen the look on its face when I gobbed it out in the dirt."

 

Jehu had left them, saying that they had half an hour before the evening food would be served. "Get water through the trap in the floor. Bucket on a rope. We barter for soap. But it's costly, so be sparing with it."

 

There was a single bar on the central table, in a shell dish. It had the look and consistency of old tallow. So far none of them had bothered to use it.

 

"What do you make of this place, J.B.?" Ryan asked.

 

"Like to meet up with this Moses" was the Armorer's elliptical reply.

 

Ryan nodded. "Know what you mean. All this clean, healthy living. Got to be something wrong."

 

ON THE OTHER SIDE of the partition, Mildred and Krysty had reached the same conclusion.

 

They shared a bucket of cold, clear water, struggling to get anything approaching a lather from the cake of soap, having to be content with a greasy scum on their skin. Krysty had considered washing her hair, but changed her mind.

 

"What do you reckon about this place?" she said, sitting cross-legged on one of the beds with her vivid green eyes closed, concentrating on one of the Earth Mother's meditation techniques for inner power.

 

Mildred stood staring out of the narrow, barred window, across the expanse of the lake. "Don't know. I really don't know."

 

"Neat and tidy."

 

"Healthy."

 

Krysty ran her fingers through her hair, producing a shower of tiny, fiery sparks. "Clean."

 

"Too clean?"

 

"Could be."

 

Mildred turned from the window. "It's like I once visited Disneyland, over in Los Angeles. It was wonderful and I had a great time there, but... maybe it was just a little too squeaky-clean. Same feeling here."

 

"And they're all so damned young!"

 

"Still, they've been okay with us, Krysty. Apart from being snotty about how old we all are. All except Dean and Michael, of course."

 

' "The way they look at Doc, it's like he's carrying a living curse."

 

Mildred sat on her bed, considering the wall between them and the men. "Think we might be able to find a way around that for tonight?"

 

Krysty laughed. "Can't you and J.B. do without it, just for one night?"

 

"Yeah. It isn't just the sex, though that's real good. It's being close to someone you...you love. There. Now I've said it. Love. Don't you feel that with Ryan?"

 

"Sure I do, Mildred. There's been times, when we pass through somewhere real beautiful, that I want to settle down with Ryan and raise kids and all that shit.

 

Other times, it seems we can only ever keep running and chilling."

 

"They don't call this place Deathlands for nothing."

 

"I know. I've seen more corpses in the past couple of years than..."

 

"Than I've had hot dinners? That's the saying from my time. But I haven't had all that many hot dinners since I woke up here in Deathlands."

 

"Well, if the meal that they promised us is as good as the stuff looked growing in their fields, we could be in for a real treat."

 

IT WAS DOROTHY who came calling for them a half hour or so later.

 

They'd heard a noise-like a kind of trumpet booming out over the ville-that they assumed was a signal for all the workers to come in along the causeway so that Quindley could be secured for the night.

 

"Light's going," Michael said, standing by the open door and peering out into the evening gloom.

 

"They don't have a generator," J.B. said. "No 'lectric power."

 

"Saw a couple of gas tanks, along by the place where this Moses lives," Ryan said.

 

"My recollection of New England makes me think that it could be somewhat cold in the winter." Doc rubbed his stomach. "I admire the morality of those who eschew meat-eating, but I cannot conceal my carnivorous desires for a good chunk of flesh every now and again. I am wondering just how much longer we will be kept waiting."

 

"Here comes Dorothy," Michael said from the door.

 

"How DID YOU GET ALL the blasters your people carry?" J.B. asked, as the young woman led them through the quiet lanes of the ville.

 

"The blasters?"

 

"Yeah. Guards on the tower and the ones on the gate, all got good long guns. Brownings, a Mann-licher Model S, chambered for a .375 round. Couple of Marlins. Nice Winchester. Not many handblasters, though."

 

She stopped and looked at him, her face illuminated by the burning torches set in brackets along the way. "Moses knows the answer about the blasters. I heard there was a store in town, miles off from Quindley. But all this was long ago." She frowned with the effort of memory. "Called Jolly Jack's Sporting Goods. Least, I think that was the name."

 

"Yeah. They'd sell mainly rifles and scatterguns," the Armorer agreed.

 

"How long has Quindley been run like this?" Krysty was at Dorothy's shoulder.

 

"Run like what?"

 

"Neat and not eating meat and well guarded."

 

Dorothy smiled. "Since the day before yesterday. That's what Moses says to tell outlanders who keep asking too many prying questions."

 

"How many people live here?"

 

She looked at Ryan. "That's the end of questions. We have to go for the meal."

 

Dean tugged at her sleeve. "Come on. Tell us how many live here."

 

The young woman smiled. "For you, Dean... You aren't spoiled like... There are thirty-seven men between fifteen and the top. Forty-six women."

 

"What's 'the top' mean?" Michael had contrived to be right beside Dorothy again.

 

"The top is what we in the ville here call the ending time." She shook her head, so that her long blond hair caught the reddish glow of the torches. "But I've spoken too much. Much too much, Michael."

 

"Where are all the children?" Dean asked.

 

"Heard her say no more questions," Ryan warned.

 

"No!" Dorothy spit at him "He and Michael may ask me anything they wish."

 

"Well?" Dean had his hands on his hips, grinning triumphantly at his father.

 

"Young ones below five live in one building. Middle ones from five to fifteen live apart as well."

 

Ahead of them the large double doors of one of the thatched huts swung open, spilling a lake of golden light across the packed earth.

 

Jehu stood there, staring out into the darkness of the evening. "Late, Sister Dorothy," he called.

 

"We're coming."

 

THE DELICIOUS SMELL of cooking seeped out from the long dining hall. The air was smoky from the lights, and from the ovens that could be glimpsed through a door to the rear of the building.

 

The inhabitants of the ville were seated at two long tables that ran along the wooden walls, with a shorter table laid crosswise at the head.

 

Every seat seemed to be filled, though Ryan noticed immediately that males and females were strictly segregated-men to the right and women to the left. Only the smaller top table held a mix of both the sexes.

 

"All young," he breathed to J.B., as they paused in the entrance to the hall.

 

"All young," the Armorer agreed.

 

Jehu had taken his own carved chair at the center of the high table. There were already four or five men and women with him, along with eight empty seats, waiting for Dorothy and for the seven friends.

 

The place had been filled with noisy conversation as they'd walked toward it, but, at the moment of their entrance, an unearthly silence fell over the room.

 

"Welcome, outlanders," Jehu called. "Come in and sit and receive the hospitality of Quindley."

 

"Thank you kindly," Ryan replied, checking automatically what kind of weapons the young people were wearing.

 

Most had knives sheathed at their belts, but only one or two seemed to be carrying handblasters.

 

But what was most noticeable was the reactions to their presence in the dining room, revealed on every face at every table-a mixture of curiosity and vague dislike. But, here and there, was the clearest expression of something that went a whole lot further than dislike.

 

The animosity was voiced before they even walked halfway around the room, behind Dorothy, toward the vacant seats at the top table.

 

"Not right, Jehu!" a man called out, but it wasn't possible to see who.

 

"Old outlanders not permitted in Quindley." This time it was one of the women.

 

"Was Moses asked, Jehu?" This time the speaker had risen to his feet, a slender boy, who looked to be about seventeen, with a squint in his right eye.

 

"Of course, Donnie. Would I admit strangers without the word of Moses?"

 

A woman, heavily pregnant, also stood up, pointing with a wooden ladle at Doc. "What of him, Jehu? What of that obscene sight?"

 

"Madam," Doc said, bridling with anger, "I might be many things, but I would suggest that obscene is not properly one of them."

 

"Two from seven only would pass the test!" shouted the first person to have spoken, finally rising to his feet to reveal himself to everyone.

 

His hair was cropped short, and he wore a pale blue bandanna knotted around his forehead. He pointed a bony forefinger directly toward Doc.

 

Jehu was on his feet, shouting for the teenager to sit down again and keep quiet. "Enough, Jimmy. You shall not go against the command of Moses."

 

"This is a blasphemy, Jehu!"

 

"You can argue this in council."

 

"When?"

 

"Two nights from now."

 

"Too late." Jimmy pushed his way from the table and stalked toward the outlanders, his fingers brushing the hilt of his knife.

 

Ryan, Krysty and J.B. all drew their blasters, covering the lad.

 

"Not unless we have to," Ryan whispered.

 

Jehu jumped over the table with a casual, athletic ease, his right hand clutching a narrow, glittering blade. "Moses will make you pay the price, Jimmy!" His voice cracked with the sudden high tension of the moment.

 

"Fuck that. Fuck Moses and fuck you, oldie!"

 

He moved so quickly that he took everyone, including Ryan, by surprise. He threw his knife with a deadly, practiced, underhand flick, the polished steel slicing across the hall toward Doc's throat.

 

Chapter Twenty-One

 

It was Michael Brother who saved Doc's life.

 

Ever since they'd met, Ryan had been constantly astounded at the dazzling speed of the teenager's reflexes. But he was still shocked at Michael's incredible reaction to the sudden, murderous attack.

 

It was almost as though time itself had been slowed, the hurled blade spinning in the air as it hissed toward the helpless old man.

 

In the background there was a collective gasp of indrawn breath at the certain knowledge that the wings of Death were folding around Doc. Nothing could possibly save him.

 

Nothing.

 

As casually as if he were plucking a hovering fly from the still summer air, Michael reached out his right hand. Almost lazily, it seemed. He took the thrown knife by the hilt, when it was less than a yard from Doc's neck.

 

He held it for a moment, then dropped it by his feet, the steel tinkling on the wooden floor.

 

"No," he said quietly into the total stillness.

 

The teenager called Jimmy stared hi total disbelief. "You fucking traitor."

 

"Shall I chill him?" J.B. asked.

 

Ryan shook his head at the question. "No. Wait." For a few heartbeats, it seemed like everything was balanced on the edge of a razor.

 

Half the young men and women were up on their feet, most with their own knives drawn. One wrong move now and there would be serious blood-spilling.

 

It was Jehu who defused the moment.

 

Moving catfooted, he walked behind the paralyzed Jimmy, placed an arm around his shoulders, almost like an old playmate at the end of a day's sport, and cut his throat.

 

The honed dagger entered just below the left ear, with the faint crunch of punctured cartilage. Jehu drew it swiftly but firmly across, slicing through the helpless boy's windpipe, opening up the big artery under the right ear.

 

The bright blood jetted out from the white-lipped wound, splashing up to the heavy rafters that ran across the dining hall.

 

Jehu pushed the twitching corpse away from him, letting it drop to the crimsoned planks. The heart still labored, but the river had slowed to a trickle. Jimmy's hands were opening and closing, as if he were trying to cling to life.

 

"He shouted 'traitor' to us all," Jehu said, his voice trembling with the emotion of the killing. "But Jimmy was the real traitor here. A traitor to us all. A traitor to Moses. A traitor to Quindley."

 

There was a murmur all around the hall that could have been agreement.

 

Or could have been disagreement.

 

But not a soul lifted a voice to oppose what had happened or what had been said.

 

"Blasters away," Ryan advised, bolstering the SIG-Sauer, He glanced across at Michael. "Done good."

 

But the teenager simply stared at him, his eyes blank and incurious.

 

"I owe you my life, Master Brother," Doc said, wiping at his clammy forehead with the swallow's-eye kerchief. "Better than owing Asculepius a cockerel. It is a debt that I shall always stand ready to honor, whensoever you feel the need to call upon me, Michael, and where-"

 

"All right, Doc," the teenager muttered. "Only caught the knife, is all. Didn't know the poor kid was going to end up like a butchered steer in the shambles."

 

Jehu stooped and wiped his blood-slick blade on the dead boy's shirt, carefully avoiding daubing his boots with the spreading pool of crimson.

 

"Come and eat now, outlanders," he said. "I give you my deep sorrow that our ville was so shamed." He turned and pointed to a couple of the youngest-looking lads at the table to the right. "Remove what was Jimmy, and we will inter him, properly, tomorrow. After the dawning."

 

"Seem to have lost some of my appetite," Krysty whispered to Ryan.

 

DESPITE THE HORRIFIC outburst of savage violence, the evening meal carried on almost as though nothing

 

had happened. The body was dragged out, leaving a dark, glistening smear behind it.

 

Immediately the doors were closed again, and Jehu clapped his hands to order the food brought in. It was carried by several of the younger women, on platters of turned beechwood and hand-thrown pottery.

 

Large bowls were placed at intervals along all the tables, and everyone helped themselves to the steaming mix of vegetables. Ryan noticed that the cutlery on the top table was matching steel, but the rest of the people were making do with a makeshift collection of plastic and cheap metal.

 

Ryan was seated on the right hand of Jehu, with Krysty on the other side of the ville's leader. Doc sat next to Ryan, with an empty chair yawning conspicuously at his right. The rest of them were spaced out along the high table, with Dorothy sitting between Dean and Michael, engaging them both in a whispered, intense conversation.

 

The food was excellent, with a richness and diversity that was more than enough to dispel even Doc's proclaimed reservations about vegetarian eating.

 

There was delicious creamed carrots, mixed in with nutty, macerated celeriac; buttered leeks, with slices of lightly fried turnips decorating the top of the dish; potatoes in all shapes, sizes and varieties, roasted in their skins, mashed up with tiny shreds of cooked red cabbage; curling heads of kale, with deep-fried wafers of potato piled around them; baked potatoes, slashed open, with melting knobs of trade butter and sea salt.

 

There were at least a dozen kinds of bread. Some of it with little pieces of apple and pear baked into it; soda bread, with a dozen dishes of jelly; rolls so fresh they almost burned the tongue and melted in the mouth.

 

There was elderflower wine to drink, with apple juice and cold, pure water.

 

As soon as some of the dishes began to empty, the young women brought in fresh bowls, until the tables seemed to groan under the weight.

 

To follow the meal there were custards and a range of fresh fruits, including delicious golden melons.

 

Ryan hadn't realized just how hungry he'd been and he had to ease his belt out a couple of notches. There was little conversation, with everyone concentrating on the meal, though the one-eyed man was concerned at the way that his son and Michael seemed to be hanging on every word from the blond-haired Dorothy.

 

Only when the first overwhelming pangs had been satisfied did Ryan embark on a cautious talk with Jehu.

 

"Real ace-on-the-line meal," he said. "Moses responsible for that, as well?"

 

Jehu nodded, sipping at a glass of water.' *Moses is responsible for everything within the ville of Quind-ley," he replied. "For every thing and for every person. We are what we are, because of Moses."

 

"Will we meet him?"

 

"No." Jehu hesitated. "Unless he chooses to let you speak with him."

 

Krysty had been listening to the conversation. "Speak with him, or see him?"

 

"Oh, only speak. Nobody sees Moses. I thought you had been told that."

 

Ryan glanced around the room, noticing that Doc was still the center of attention, though the young men and women of the ville seemed to be under orders to try not to stare at him-orders that they were finding difficult to obey.

 

"Jehu?" Ryan said, deciding that it was pointless to ignore the obvious question any longer.

 

"What is it?"

 

"Your ville has babies and children?"

 

"Yes. Of course. Or we would all die out."

 

"But you have no old people here?"

 

"Ah... You have observed this?"

 

"Have to be triple stupe not to. Doesn't seem to be a single man or woman over the age of about thirty or so?"

 

"Younger," Jehu agreed, cutting himself a slice of one of the honeyed melons.

 

"Younger?" Krysty repeated. "How much younger?"

 

"Nobody in Quindley ever lives beyond their twenty-fifth birthing day."

 

"Twenty-five." Ryan nodded. "Yeah, I can believe that. But what happened to all the older men and women here?"

 

"They were translated to a different place. So Moses teaches us."

 

"Dead," Krysty said, the word flat and dull in the air between them.

 

"Outlanders would say that the oldies have died. We do not always say so."

 

"Some virus, is it? A sickness?"

 

Jehu looked puzzled. "A sickness, Krysty?"

 

It was her turn to look bewildered. "There has to be a reason why there's nobody over the age of twenty-five, Jehu. People don't just die on their twenty-fifth birthday."

 

"Yes, they do."

 

Ryan and Krysty sat silent, staring at each other across the front of the ponytailed young man, whose bright blue eyes were gazing out over the crowded room.

 

Ryan swallowed a mouthful of the light wine. "You telling us what I think you're telling us, Jehu? Nobody old hi the whole ville, because you chill them?"

 

"Of course we do. Oh, I know what you think. The ways of many outland villes are different. We know that. Moses has explained how there is no wisdom beyond our lands. This is why we don't normally allow strangers in. Unless they... But let that pass. Dorothy said you helped with stickies and with finding the body of Jolyon, brother to Isaac. So, in the ways ordained by Moses, we take you in and feed you. Let you rest before going on your journey."

 

Doc had finally picked up on what was being said and he sat, a forkful of carrot frozen halfway to his mouth. "Are my old ears betraying me, my dear Ryan?" he whispered. "Or did that slip of a child say they killed everyone once they reached the age of twenty-five?"

 

Ryan let his held breath whistle softly between his teeth. "No, Doc, you heard right all right."

 

"Then that explains the hostility to me. I must seem like some Methuselah to them."

 

"Who was Methuselah, Doc?" Ryan asked.

 

"Oldest man in the Bible. He was..." Doc waved his hand, holding the fork, the food spilling back onto his plate. "By the Three Kennedys, Ryan, but I think that we should not linger long in this place."

 

Jehu had stood up and was rapping on the oak table with the hilt of his spoon, waiting until the dining ball fell silent, "Brothers and sisters, the meal is done. And, as we follow the path of Moses, we shall now retire to meditate on the day and to rest. Our guests will retire to their quarters." He rapped the spoon again for emphasis. "They are the guests of Quindley and of Moses. They will not be harmed and will be shown respect. Despite most of them being oldies."

 

Ryan looked around the room as the young leader made his short speech. He saw every face turned toward the top table, most eyes averted from the wrinkled face of Doc, avoiding J.B., Mildred, Krysty and himself.

 

But many of them, particularly the younger women, were staring at Dean and at Michael with something that seemed to approach a kind of hunger.

 

Both of them had been tucking into the excellent meal with every show of enjoyment. But they'd also both been listening intently to whatever it was that Dorothy had been saying to them. And that worried Ryan.

 

IT WAS A MILD NIGHT, with a sky like black velvet, sprinkled with brilliant stars. Frank and Ray had guided them back to their quarters. Michael and Dean lagged behind, whispering to each other.

 

Before being shepherded into the divided hut, Ryan and Krysty embraced and kissed, as did J.B. and Mildred. The two young men of Quindley scarcely bothered to conceal their disgust.

 

"Bad enough having oldies in the ville without triple-sick sexing like this," Frank said.

 

"You want to be careful, sonny," Mildred snapped. "Or I'll come and kiss you when you aren't looking and you'll get to be old and wrinkled like me. Just like that." She snapped her fingers. "So watch your little shit mouth."

 

ONCE THEY WERE ALONE, Ryan sat on his bed and beckoned his eleven-year-old son to him. "Want to have a word with you, Dean."

 

"What?"

 

The torches were beginning to smoke and gutter, and someone had placed an ancient brass oil lamp on the central table, which bathed the room in a gentle, golden glow. But it didn't give enough light for Ryan to be able to see properly what was going on in the boy's face.

 

"Speak to me, Dean."

 

"What about?"

 

He wished that Krysty had been there. With her semimutie powers, she was amazingly sensitive to what people said. And, more importantly, to the way in which they said it. She would have heard things in Dean's voice that Ryan could only begin to try to guess at.

 

"What did Dorothy say to you and Michael during the meal?"

 

"Nothing much."

 

"What? She was talking all the way through."

 

"Why do you want to know, Dad?"

 

The small vein was beginning to tick in Ryan's temple, the inexorable sign that he was on the verge of losing his temper. Dean was deliberately concealing something from him. He didn't know what and he didn't know why.

 

"I ask the questions and you answer them. We're in a strange ville. Real double strange. Anything that you've been told could be a help in working out if there's any sort of danger for any of us. All right?"

 

"Dad, I'm real tired. Dorothy didn't say nothing about stuff like you just said. Nothing like that. Now, is it all right if I go to bed?"

 

The boy's whole body language was shouting out a stubborn resistance. Ryan had a momentary temptation to slap him senseless, but he struggled and overcame it, knowing it would do no good, except in terms of relieving some of his own feelings.

 

"Sure," he said finally, ruffling Dean's hair. "Go to bed, son."

 

Chapter Twenty-Two

 

"Good day to you." Jehu stood in the open doorway of their quarters, the bright morning sun turning him into a sharp-edged silhouette.

 

"Hi, there." Ryan and the others had discussed what they'd found out during the evening meal, before they had all retired to their beds.

 

The fact that Quindley deliberately butchered anyone who passed their twenty-fifth birthday hadn't really come as that much of a surprise. They had all noticed the extreme youth of everyone in the well-ordered ville.

 

Doc had been most persuasive for their leaving the place at first light.

 

"Did they explain why they followed this barbarous practice?" he'd asked.

 

Ryan hadn't known the answer to that. "We never got around to talking about why they did it, Doc. Bad enough that they did it at all."

 

"They have shown us some courtesy, and the one they call Jehu, aided by young Michael here, most certainly saved my life. But who knows how they might feel tomorrow? I have not encountered such overt hostility since I addressed a meeting of young female students in 1888 and opposed the idea that they should ever be allowed to vote."

 

"Best not let Mildred hear you admit to that argument, Doc," J.B. warned. "Likely to find you've got your balls nailed to the wall."

 

Doc had smiled. "Well, the truth is, I was never actually opposed to the idea of universal suffrage. I only did it to annoy my dear Emily and draw attention to myself. And it worked well. She was so delighted to have the chance to persuade a young male chauvinist to her views that we spent many late hours together while she wooed me over to her side."

 

It was eventually agreed that they would stay in Quindley for at least another day. Ryan's argument for this was that they had vastly superior firepower to anything the young men and women carried. And they were being very well fed and should take advantage of the chance to catch up on some decent meals and sleep on good, clean beds.

 

Now it was time for them to go again to the dining room and break their fasts.

 

"Many of us are already out at work, either in the fields or in the woods around," Jehu said. "There go some of the youngest, to help to gather branches and twigs for the fires. We need a good store against the cold of winter." He brushed back his long hair. "Perhaps you might go and watch them, later."

 

There was a group of fifteen little children, all wearing pale blue shirts and pants, most of them with the same blond hair. As they walked along the gently swaying causeway, several of them turned to look back at the outlanders. One or two of them made a curious gesture, with their index finger and little finger stuck straight out, aimed at Ryan and the others, while the two middle fingers were kept clenched.

 

"They point at us with the sign to ward off the maleficent powers of the evil eye," Doc said. "It saddens me to see such perverse and heathen foolishness in what should be an earthly paradise."

 

Jehu heard him and turned around. "If it were not for the word of Moses, then it would be more than fingers pointing at you."

 

"That a threat?" Ryan asked.

 

"Make of it what you will."

 

"If Doc had been chilled last night, then there wouldn't have been a living soul left hi your fucking dining room! Make of that what you want."

 

"Is that a threat, outlander?"

 

Ryan stepped in close, feeling all of the old strength and power surge through his body. It was good to know that his body had purged itself so quickly of what had come so close to being a terminal illness.

 

"No, Jehu. It isn't just a threat. It's a promise."

 

THE TENSION EASED over the breakfast.

 

There were cereals and fruits, eggs, which also came from the ville's trading with other, smaller communities, and wooden platters of breads and conserves.

 

The hall was almost empty, with everyone already out in the fields. Dorothy came in halfway through the meal and smiled at Dean and Michael. She sat with them at the end of the table. Ryan caught Krysty's eye

 

and frowned, but there was no point in making any sort of an issue out of it. "When do you want us out of here?" he asked Jehu.

 

The young man was taken by surprise by the question, spluttering through a mouthful of wholemeal bread. "Stay as long as. ..long as you want. Both your two boys are interested in what we do. Why not give them another day or so to really understand what Quindley is all about?"

 

Dorothy looked up. "Don't forget that Moses will want to speak to the outlanders, Jehu."

 

Ryan ignored her. "Don't like coming and taking anything for nothing, Jehu. Sure you wouldn't like us to go and do some hunting for you?"

 

"Meat is poison. But there are vermin in the woods. If you could cut down on their numbers, then we'd be grateful to you." He smiled. "That would be good."

 

They all looked up as the doors opened and a man stumbled in. He was more ragged than anyone they'd seen, his clothing dirty, his chin unshaved. He was escorted by two of the women, each of them with a handblaster at the waist. All three sat down at the far end of one of the long tables, ignoring the outlanders.

 

"Who's that?" J.B. asked.

 

"He is soon to be selected." Jehu finished his mug of water and wiped his mouth. He stood, obviously not wishing to pursue the conversation further.

 

But the Armorer didn't want to let it He. "What does 'selected' mean? I've seen prisoners in my time. Thaf s what he is, isn't he, Jehu?"

 

"No. He can leave if he wishes, on his own terms. But he has known since birthing that he is of the people and belongs to Moses and the people."

 

Dorothy also stood, an arm resting lightly on Michael's shoulder. "If you stay here with us for another three days, then you'll see for yourself how blood returns to blood here in our ville."

 

Krysty nodded. "I get it. Poor bastard's got his twenty-fifth birthday coming up. That it?"

 

The young blond woman nodded. "Yes. That's it. Now-" she rubbed her hands as if she were wiping away a problem " -now, I'm taking Dean and Michael on a tour of the ville. Rest of you oldies can go where you please."

 

"Watch the wood gatherers," Jehu suggested, "and perhaps cull some of the carrion from the deep forest."

 

"Sure," Ryan said. "Why not?"

 

THE FIVE FRIENDS RETURNED first to their quarters, to wash and ready themselves for the day. The sun shone brightly, turning Shamplin Lake into a silvered ocean. A gentle breeze whispered from the north, bringing the fresh scent of pine needles. Out across the water a large fish leaped and turned, the light catching the rainbow gleam of its scales.

 

Krysty was in the men's part of the room, ignoring a scowl from Frank. "It's really beautiful, lover," she said, beckoning Ryan to the view from the window.

 

"Yeah. Long as you're under the age of twenty-five."

 

She turned to the young man who was lounging in the doorway. "I just don't get why, Frank."

 

"Moses says it's what's needed."

 

"Why?"

 

He looked a little puzzled. "You don't ask 'why' to things Moses says."

 

"You mean you just do his bidding and work hard and then, just when most people would be marrying and having children and settling down, you just offer yourself up. And you miss all the good things."

 

Frank stared at the red-haired woman as if she was totally deranged. "We have to do it. It's the way. Always was the way here in Quindley."

 

"No point in arguing," Mildred said. "Just like banging your head up against a brick wall."

 

"It isn't even thought of." Frank was almost lost for words. "To argue about anything Moses... What he says is what happens. That's all."

 

"We going to get to meet him?" Ryan asked.

 

"You don't-"

 

"Yeah. I remember. Talk to him but not see him. When's that happen?"

 

"Soon. But if he wants it, then it'll happen. But if Moses decides not, then it won't."

 

DOROTHY HAD VANISHED with Michael and Dean.

 

The rest walked over the causeway, in among the cultivated fields and allotments. Jehu himself had come to lead them, his hair untied, streaming about his shoulders, making him look like one of the children in the corn.

 

Most of the young men and women ignored the outlanders, though there was still some residual resistance to the sight of Doc. But the old man strode along, swinging his sword stick, smiling at everyone.

 

"A good, good morning to you all. May the bird of happiness fly up your nose, children. Tote that bale and lift that barge, or something like that. So that juvenile man river can just keep rolling along."

 

Not one of them spoke to him, several making the same sign to avert the eye of evil.

 

Jehu paused. "Could you not talk to them, oldie Doc? It will make trouble. Moses said you could walk around, but he would be unhappy if there was difficulties."

 

"And if Moses is unhappy, then everyone gets to be unhappy. That it, Jehu?" Mildred grinned. "Apart from there being nobody over twenty-five, I can't say there are many black youngsters in Quindley, either."

 

The frank and open face clouded over. "It isn't that we are precluded... prejudiced? Is that the word?"

 

"Sure is," Mildred agreed. "Keep talking, sonny. Tell me how some of your best friends are black."

 

"No, I have no friends who are black," he replied, straight-faced. "Moses would welcome anyone.. .if they are young enough. In fact, he makes a point in his teachings to us that we need new blood. There are not enough babies being birthed here in the ville. But it seems that no black-faced people come here. I think there might have been one or two, passing by. But none of them have stayed here. Never."

 

"Us black folk got more sense, land's sake we do."

 

"THE LITTLE ONES WILL BE just a way along this path here. We can walk up to the top of the hill and look down on the part of the woods where we always come to collect the broken branches for the fires."

 

"You got guards out?" J.B. looked around, the Uzi ready in his hand.

 

"There will be four with them, each carrying a long blaster. Moses ordered a doubling of care when he heard about your finding the stickies." Jehu hawked and spit on the path, rubbing it in with his feet, while making the horned gesture with his fingers. "Satan's spawn," he said.

 

"You not had trouble with them before?" Ryan was taking deep breaths of the morning air, still conscious that all wasn't completely well with the wound in his neck. But Mildred had put on a fresh, much smaller dressing that morning, reporting that the healing process was almost done.

 

"We have had small attacks by muties. But they aren't organized, and we retreat to the ville and hold them off from there. But stickies are not well-known."

 

"They can go around in little groups," Ryan said. "But I've known of camps of dozens, and some of them have been well run. Mebbe you've been lucky."

 

"Quindley looks after itself." Jehu recited it like it was a great religious truth.

 

THE SCENT OF BALSAM grew stronger as they walked in single file through a sun-splashed path of the forest, climbing along a well-marked trail.

 

Krysty and Ryan were bringing up the rear when she suddenly stopped, pressing her fingers to her temple.

 

"Trouble?" he asked, his hand dropping by a combat reflex down onto the butt of the SIG-Sauer.

 

"Could be. Just felt a flash of something."

 

"Close?"

 

"Fairly close. Doesn't feel like norms. More like muties, but.,."

 

"Stickles?"

 

Krysty shook her head. "No. Gone again. Don't mention it to the others. Could be wrong."

 

Jehu had stopped at the crest of the hill, sweeping out his hand to indicate the woods and clearings below him, dotted with the diminutive figures of the little children, busy collecting wood for the ville's fires.

 

"Here is the rich and wonderful plenty that Moses has given us," he said. "This is our reward for treading only in the prints of his feet."

 

Then the screaming started.

 

Chapter Twenty-Three

 

Ryan had the Steyr SSG-70 unslung and to his right shoulder before the first echo of that desperate shrill scream had begun to fade across the whispering tops of the pines. He put his eye to the Starlite night scope, using the power laser image enhancer, searching for the best target, the frightened children filling his field of vision.

 

"Stickies!" Krysty breathed at his side. "Knew I felt something bad."

 

Jehu rushed down the far side of the gentle hill, toward the panicked little ones. He carried no blaster and had simply drawn his dagger, the same blade that had opened Jimmy's throat the night before.

 

"Brave or stupe," J.B. said, standing with the Uzi at his hip, looking down at the scene of confusion.

 

"Why do you not commence firing at the ranks of the ungodly, John Dix?" Doc asked.

 

"Out of range."

 

The nearest child was more than three hundred yards away, but they were all running back and forth, screaming for rescue from the four or five muties that had come lurching suddenly out of the undergrowth.

 

"Can't we go down and help?" Mildred had the Czech ZKR 551 target revolver cocked in her hand.

 

Excellent shootist though she was, the range and the rapid movement below made it an almost impossible shot.

 

"Wait," Ryan said. "Could be an ambush. Could be more of them in the trees."

 

"I make it five. Two children down already." J.B. shaded his eyes with his hands, peering into the sun. "Think they're after prisoners."

 

"Suffer the little children," Doc muttered, but Ryan was already concentrating on doing some shooting.

 

The rifle snapped once, and he had the satisfaction of seeing one of the marauding stickles throw up its hands and tumble into the dirt like a discarded sack of old clothes.

 

The other four paused at the sound of the shot. On the ridge, Ryan could hear their harsh, guttural yells of alarm and warning. He decided that the likelihood was that it probably wasn't any kind of trap.

 

"J.B., go down there. Rest of you with him. I'll do what I can up here and then follow on down."

 

The Armorer didn't need to be told twice. Giving a whoop of delight, Uzi at his hip, he ran down the hillside, pursuing the tall, lean figure of Jehu.

 

Mildred was at his heels, followed by the lumbering Doc. Krysty hesitated a moment, her snub-nosed Smith & Wesson 640 double-action in her right fist.

 

"Dean and Michael?" she queried.

 

Ryan squeezed off a second round, cursing under his breath as he saw the shot gouge a strip of white wood out of a larch, inches from the head of one of the stickies.

 

"Bastard! Dean? He and Michael went with that Dorothy. Both got blasters. Would have heard shooting if they'd been jumped by muties."

 

She nodded. "Guess so. See you down there." Krysty turned and ran after the others, her blazing crimson hair streaming behind her like a battle pennant.

 

Ryan knelt down to make himself steadier, aiming carefully and putting the third bullet through the chest of another of the stickies, seeing through the scope the way that the round punched a hole larger than a man's fist out of the creature's back. The stickie staggered backward, tripping over a cowering child before crashing down in a tangle of limbs.

 

"Two down," he said.

 

The three surviving muties had gathered themselves into a vaguely defensive ring. Sunlight glittered on steel, and Ryan saw that they all held crude axes.

 

Jehu was less than fifty yards away from them, arms pumping, mouth open in a soundless scream, his slim knife in his hand. The dappled sunlight filtering through the branches of the trees splashed on his golden hair as he charged.

 

One of the little girls, eyes staring in mindless terror, actually ran into the arms of the tallest of the surviving stickies. The suckered fingers grabbed at her arms, tearing circles of skin away, blood speckling her pale blue shirt.

 

Ryan saw it all through the scope, but it was over too fast for him to do anything to prevent it.

 

The mutie's hand went to the child's throat and clamped shut. The immensely strong fingers squeezed once, and blood gushed from her open mouth and nostrils, from her ears and from her sky-blue eyes.

 

Ryan didn't have a chance to prevent the brutish murder, but he had time to avenge it.

 

The stickie whooped in glee at the easy killing, lifting one crimsoned hand to its face, its forked reptilian tongue snaking out to lap the fresh blood.

 

The 7.62 mm round smashed into the center of its hoggish nose, tumbling as it entered the space behind the face, shredding the vicious brain as it distorted, eventually exiting just behind the creature's left ear.

 

Stickies rarely carried blasters. Their perverse delight in all fires and explosions meant that any gun falling into their suckered hands tended to be emptied mindlessly into the sky-or into each other.

 

Also, they had virtually no idea at all of combat skills. Generally they would attack when they felt like it and stop when they'd either been victorious or were dead.

 

The two muties left standing might have had a chance of survival if they'd turned and run into the surrounding forest. But, despite the fact that Ryan had obviously been able to pick them off at long range, they made no attempt to escape.

 

"Fireblast!"

 

Because of the contours of the hillside, Jehu was now directly hi Ryan's line of fire, obscuring the chance to take out the last two muties with a pair of easy shots.

 

J.B. and Mildred were closing in on the stickies Doc twenty paces behind them, Krysty just overtaking him. gut none of them was near enough to interfere in the final scene of the lethal drama.

 

The Armorer's words came to Ryan. "Brave or stupe?" There was no need at all for the young man to risk his own life by throwing himself against the pair of waiting muties. He could easily have stood off and allowed Ryan, Mildred or J.B. to have safely chilled them.

 

"For Moses!" The cry rose above the sobbing of the surviving children, most of whom were now sitting or lying on the soft grass between the trees, watching the last moments of the muties' assault on them.

 

The nearest stickie swung its crude ax at Jehu, but the agile young man dodged under it, cutting upward with his own knife. Ryan was on his feet, walking slowly down the slope, knowing that haste would do nothing to alter the eventual outcome. He heard the mutie yelp in pain, and saw a dark patch of blood appear along the side of its ribs.

 

The second creature grabbed at the diving figure of the young man, and there was the loud noise of ripping cloth. But Jehu's momentum carried him through and past, snatching a moment to try to stab the mutie.

 

"Stupe and brave," Ryan muttered, pausing in mid-stride, seeing that the leader of the ville wasn't particularly skilled at knife-fighting.

 

The Trader used to say that you didn't get to live long in Deathlands if you didn't have courage. But you lived even less long if you didn't also have some brains.

 

"Brains before balls" had been his shorthand saying, though it had sometimes annoyed the tough women who rode with him on the war wags.

 

Jehu had the balls all right, getting up hi a fighter's crouch, facing the two gibbering stickles. But his small knife was no weapon against their hatchets.

 

"Mildred!" Ryan yelled. "Do them."

 

For someone who had won a silver medal in the free pistol-shooting at the last ever Olympic Games in Miami in 1996, it was like picking off carp in a bathtub.

 

The doctor fired two careful shots, the Smith & Wesson .38s easily finding their targets.

 

One stickie hurled his ax spinning high in the air as he went down, with a bullet through his left eye, the blade sticking among the upper branches of a Douglas fir. His comrade was hit in the side of the head, just above the right ear, the big round exiting through his left cheek, an inch below his eye.

 

After the fiat crack of the revolver, the morning seemed almost silent.

 

The weeping little ones had fallen away to a quick sobbing. One small boy moaned in pain and shock, a long strip of skin torn away from ankle to thigh, blood soaking into the soft carpet of pine needles beneath him. Jehu had dropped to his knees, his eyes closed, his lips moving.

 

"Nice shooting, Mildred," J.B. said, his eyes glinting behind his glasses as he continued to scan the darkness beneath the surrounding trees in case there were more stickles on the loose.

 

Ryan continued down the slope to rejoin his friends. Krysty and Doc were trying to comfort the terrified children. Mildred Wyeth had walked over to check that all of the muties were dead. Not that Ryan had any doubts on that score. He knew killing shots when he saw them.

 

"All done?" he called.

 

"Yeah." Mildred looked around the clearing. "We going to leave them here? The kids should be taken back to the ville as soon as possible. There's four of them dead. The one with the wounded leg needs treatment."

 

"Jehu?" Ryan had nearly reached the kneeling young man, who seemed to be oblivious to what had happened around him. "You all right?"

 

"Blessed Moses forgive us for our sins."

 

Ryan laid a hand on Jehu's shoulder, shaking him gently. "Come on. It's over."

 

But the blue eyes stayed closed, the droning voice not ceasing. "Let us welcome the shadow of death in this dark valley. It is a sign that we have not worked hard enough and have walked from the path of light into the deep midnight. Save us, wonderful Moses, from this place of blood."

 

Ryan shook him much harder. He'd seen plenty of religious crazies throughout Deathlands and never met one that he'd truly liked.

 

"Get the fuck up, boy," he said."You're the leader of this place, and you got some dead children to take home and bury. And there's wounded. Decisions on the stickies." He hauled Jehu to his feet.

 

"You saved my life. You, an oldie. An outlander. Saved my hie."

 

His voice trembled with shock.

 

"It was Mildred who took out the last two for you."

 

"The... the black woman oldie?"

 

Mildred turned and smiled. "Kind of difficult to come to terms with, is it, boy? Not just an old person. Not even an old woman. But an old black woman. Goin' to take some hard thinking on that, isn't it?"

 

The children had been herded together, and J.B. had hoisted the injured little boy onto his back. In their horror at the stickies, most of the little ones seemed to have temporarily overcome their revulsion and fear of Doc and were happy to have him standing close by, guarding them.

 

The woods were returning quickly to normal. A red-capped jay had perched on a broken branch near where the mutie's ax had become jammed. Turquoise flies were gathering to feed on the dark puddles of spilled blood.

 

Far above them Ryan noticed a jet-black carrion crow, circling slowly, bright eyes staring down at the prospect of some fine feeding.

 

MILDRED BANDAGED the boy's leg as soon as they got back, covering it with a layer of clean linen, having first washed the raw wound with a bowl of the crystal lake water. As he recovered his nerve, the child became less and less happy about being tended by an outland stranger. All his young life he'd been reared on Moses's teaching that old meant bad and evil.

 

The bodies were taken away into one of the smaller buildings that backed onto Shamplin Lake, to be mourned by the community. Dorothy appeared out of the crowd, with Dean and Michael following sheepishly at her side.

 

"You bring death at your shoulder, outlander," she hissed accusingly. "Isaac's sweet brother, then Jimmy and now four of our precious jewels."

 

"You think we're in league with the bastard stickies? Then you got a sicker warped mind than I thought."

 

"Dad!" Dean was flushed as he stepped forward. "Shouldn't speak to Dorothy like that."

 

Ryan's good eye flashed with anger, and he half lifted his fist toward his son. "You don't ever talk out against me... or any of us. Not in front of strangers, Dean. Not ever!"

 

The boy's head dropped, and he shuffled Ms feet. "Sorry, Dad, but..." The sentence faltered away into stillness.

 

Jehu was standing at the back of the group and he pushed through to the front. "Sister Dorothy," he said.

 

"What?"

 

He put the tips of his fingers together, making a steeple from them. "Moses would not wish to hear the way you've just been speaking."

 

"I speak truth. There's been nothing but ill luck and death since they set foot in our lands."

 

"They didn't bring the stickies. Ryan and Mildred chilled them and saved our little ones from much, much worse."

 

Dorothy stared at Jehu. "Moses knows this?"

 

"Of course."

 

"What did he say?"

 

"That he would speak to the outlanders himself."

 

It was the first that Ryan had heard of it. "When will that be, Jehu?"

 

"Soon."

 

"Today?"

 

"Yes. When the word is sent. You should all stay ready and not leave the ville so that you can go as soon as Moses is ready to speak to you."

 

Ryan bit his lip. "I don't get you people. Never seen a ville like this one. Yesterday you lose one of you to the stickies. Next morning out go your children, free as air. You told me there were armed guards on them. So, what happened?"

 

Jehu looked embarrassed. "They saw some orchids so they picked them as a tribute to Moses. They thought our young ones would be safe."

 

"Right. Now you know there are stickies in the forest. Look out the window. There's still people working in the fields."

 

"But they're close enough to the causeway if the stickies attack." His face brightened. "Anyway, out-lander, you forget that you killed them all this morning."

 

Ryan gripped the young man by the collar of his clean shirt. "Jehu, if I take a boat and catch me a trout in the lake. Catch five trout. Does that mean there aren't any more fish in the whole bastard lake?"

 

"Course not."

 

"Course not, shit for brains! And because we chilled a few stickies who weren't expecting to come against well-armed men and women, you think you can sit around and smile and tell yourselves that your fucking Moses is on top of the world and all's bitching well!"

 

"Don't call him that!"

 

To Ryan's amazed disbelief, Jehu was actually drawing his dagger, as though he were going to try to slit Ryan's throat, like he had Jimmy the night before. Ryan chopped at his forearm with the side of his hand, the steel rattling on the floor. At the same time he brought his knee up into the young leader's groin. Not hard enough to send him into shock and kill him, but hard enough to put him down and puking on the scrubbed planks.

 

"Don't you ever do that, Jehu," he said mildly, "or you get to be dead."

 

When he turned away he saw that Dorothy had gone pale. And that Michael had taken a step toward him, his knuckles white, eyes narrowed in anger.

 

"Yeah?" Ryan challenged.

 

Chapter Twenty-Four

 

"You aren't my father, Ryan Cawdor."

 

"I know that, Michael." The one-eyed man watched the teenager with every fraction of his concentration. Ryan knew that he was fast enough in close combat, but he also knew that Michael was crucially quicker.

 

"And I don't have to jump to do every damned thing that you tell me."

 

"True again. Is there a point to this?"

 

The youth stepped closer. To the right, and behind Michael, Ryan saw Krysty silently drawing her blaster.

 

"You know the point!"

 

"No. Tell me."

 

"When I was at Nil-Vanity I spent my life being told what to do, Ryan."

 

"You were a kid then." It trembled on Ryan's lips to tell Michael that he was behaving like a kid now, but he resisted the temptation.

 

"You and your lot think that being old means never having to say 'sorry' for anything."

 

"Well done, Brother Michael," Dorothy said, patting him on the back.

 

"I believe that we would rather hear the organ grinder than his tame monkey," Doc said to the smiling blond woman, instantly wiping away her self-congratulatory grin. "Though, I confess in this case that I am not altogether clear in my mind as to which is which."

 

"You shut the fuck up, Doc!" Michael snapped. "This is between Ryan and me."

 

"No." Ryan shook his head. "I think you're wrong when you say that."

 

"Yeah?"

 

"Yeah. I think that it's between the young ones of Quindley, with Dorothy here as their mouthpiece, and the five of us." He glanced at Dean. "Or the six of us."

 

"Bullshit, Ryan." But Michael's anger was slipping away. It was obvious in the set of the j aw and the relaxing of the fists into plain hands. Observing body language was something that the Trader had taught Ryan at an early age, watching not just the eyes and listening to more than the words.

 

"Look, we never interfere in the way a ville is run. You know that, Michael. Their business. Not mine. Not yours, either. You understand?"

 

"Sure."

 

Dorothy wasn't ready to allow the argument to slip away. "Typical oldie lies," she said. "You should listen to Moses, Brother Michael. He can teach you how to see the world clearly. Not through misted oldie eyes."

 

"When I was a child I saw and spake as a child," Mildred said. "Not sure of the precise words. Something like. Now I'm grown up I put away childish

 

thoughts and desires and I see clearly. Think on that, Michael."

 

There was a long silence in the room. Soon the moment passed.

 

ABOUT NINETY MINUTES LATER it was Donnie who made a hesitant appearance in the sunlit doorway of their room, his squinting eyes glancing uneasily all around without actually settling on any of them.

 

Only five of the companions were there. Dean and Michael had left with Dorothy and Jehu and hadn't yet reappeared. Doc dozed on his back, snoring quietly. Krysty leaned on the sill, looking out over the lake. J.B. and Mildred were field stripping and cleaning her ZKR 551. Ryan lay on his bed, looking up at a mouse that was picking its delicate path over one of the heavy roof beams.

 

"Moses will speak to you now," Donnie announced.

 

Ryan swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood, reaching for the Steyr rifle and slinging it across his shoulder. "Fine," he said.

 

JEHU WMTED FOR THEM outside the only stone-walled building in the ville. A magpie was strutting around and around the conical thatched roof, the bright light making its black feathers glow with a deep purple sheen.

 

"You should have come more quickly," the young man said, looking worried. "You coming in with us?" Ryan asked.

 

"It is permitted. But you must follow the law."

 

"What's that mean, Jehu?"

 

"It means that... Well, you'll see for yourselves inside. The temple of Moses is divided-"

 

"Temple!" Doc snorted.

 

Jehu carried on, trying unsuccessfully to conceal his irritation at the old man's sniggering. "The temple is divided. The public atrium is where we'll be. There is a wall that closes Moses off from the crude world. He speaks from behind it. But there is a mirror of magic that shows us only our poor faces. Moses watches us from behind it.

 

They all turned as a blond girl, looking to be about twelve years old, came toward them from the direction of the kitchens, carrying a silver platter.

 

"Noon food for Moses," Jehu explained, gesturing for the child to go on through. "She will leave it by the locked portal to the inner sanctum, and Moses will take it when there are no mortal eyes to gaze upon his divinity."

 

Doc turned away, quickly clamping a gnarled hand over his mouth to try to muffle his instant laughter. "Mortal portal," he muttered.

 

"Cut it out, Doc," Krysty warned.

 

"My apologies." He bowed to Jehu. "I shall be the utter soul of discretion, young man. It will be an unforgettable experience, to f ind oneself in the presence of a godhead incarnate. A deity made flesh."

 

Krysty had looked at the dish carried by the girl. "I thought that you were all vegetarians?"

 

It was a grilled salmon, taken off the bone, the pale pink meat decorated with parsley, surrounded with creamed potatoes and thin-sliced carrots.

 

"We eat no flesh of any sort," Jehu agreed. "But Moses is above and beyond any such restrictions. So we either fish or hunt for him or barter for meat."

 

"Sure enjoys the good life, your Moses, doesn't he?" Mildred commented.

 

"It is his right. Now come in and... please be respectful inside."

 

"DARKNIGHT!" J.B. whistled between his teeth at the interior of the circular building.

 

The rest of them were equally impressed. The buildings that they'd seen in Quindley ville had all been fairly crude and basic, with nothing beyond the simplest furniture.

 

This was luxury on an almost unimaginable scale. If this was the public, common side of the "temple," then it was impossible to think what the godling's own quarters were like beyond the dividing wall.

 

A thick carpet of animal furs covered the floor. Directly opposite them was the mirror that Jehu had mentioned. It was set in a frame of precious and semiprecious stones, giving it a rich, almost supernatural appearance,

 

"There's onyx and chalcedony," Doc said in a reverential whisper. "About ten different kinds of agate. Tiger's eye and jet. Sapphires and rubies. Carved ivory, inlaid with gold."

 

"Look at the pictures on the walls," Mildred said, turning to Jehu. "Those originals?"

 

"Don't know what that means," he replied. "Moses sent out for them, years ago. Past history."

 

The black woman walked around, peering at the paintings. One was of a man working at a gas station on a deserted road by a forest. "Hopper," she said. "And that one's definitely a Wyeth." She stared in disbelief at the strange, haunting picture of a bleached animal skull, set against an arid, pink-and-gray New Mexico landscape. "By God, but Fm sure that's an original Georgia O'Keefe. It's beautiful."

 

Jehu raised a hand for silence and turned to face the mirror. "We are here, Moses."

 

There was no reply.

 

"Mebbe he's not home," Ryan said. "We won't wait."

 

Jehu's jaw dropped. "You can't leave. Can't."

 

He spoke more loudly. "The outlanders are Ryan Cawdor, Krysty Wroth, Mildred Wyeth, J. B. Dix and Doc Tanner. Ryan is the father of-"

 

"The boy, Dean. Yes, I know that, Jehu."

 

The voice was everything that a god's voice should be, deep and resonant, every word perfectly enunciated, managing to radiate wisdom and knowledge in every rich syllable.

 

"Wow," Mildred said to Krysty. "A guy with a voice like that could have made a serious fortune doing voice-overs for ads for soap powder or life insurance."

 

"They are welcome to Quindley. We have heard of your help with the evil mutated creatures that inhabit the wild woods around our sanctum sanctorum. And for that assistance we give you the thanks of Moses."

 

"You're welcome," Ryan replied, staring intently at his own reflection on the wall facing them, guessing that it was an old-fashioned two-way mirror. The skill of making them had been lost during the long winters, but he'd seen a couple in the top-jack bedrooms of high-class gaudies.

 

"You know that we have a rule that everyone must willingly sacrifice their lives upon reaching the end of their road at the age of twenty-five?"

 

"Willingly?" Krysty queried.

 

"Oh, yes." There was the faint sound of movement behind the mirror, like someone changing position on a chair. "This place is totally safe. Life is wonderful. But only because the supernal ancient ones accept our sacrifices. The balance and harmony must be maintained."

 

Ryan was aware that the voice was brilliantly sidling into his mind, seeking to convince him of the essential rightness of the man-or god-called Moses.

 

"Fight it, lover." Krysty's fingers were digging hard into his arm, her voice like a shower of chips of ice on a warm, welcoming fire.

 

"Yeah," he said, his own voice sounding as though it were drifting to his ears from a dusty corridor in the abandoned west wing of a great mansion.

 

"How long can they stay with us, Moses?" Jehu stood with his head bowed, hands tangling in front of him like a nest of small pink snakes.

 

"As long as they wish."

 

"Even me, O great panjandrum, Moses? Even this disgusting old sack of tripes that befouls the very air of your temple of temples, holy of holies, light of lights, ancient of days, lord of the cherubim and seraphim-"

 

"Doc," Ryan whispered, "cut it out."

 

Moses's voice was unchanged. "I recognize an unusual mind, Dr. Tanner. If you are here with us for long enough, perhaps you and I can find some idle moments to discuss questions moral and physical."

 

"Philosophical and diagnostic," Doc replied.

 

"Elementary and alimentary."

 

Doc laughed, genuinely amused. "I admit, Moses... where were you when the light went out, by the way? I admit it is a rare delight to speak with someone capable of stringing together words that consist of more than a single syllable."

 

"How old are you?" Krysty's question brought a silence into the ornate room. "Gone deaf, Moses? I asked you how old you were? Simple enough question."

 

"The question is simple, Krysty."

 

Ryan felt he was listening to an exceedingly wise and benevolent uncle, gently reproaching a callow and whining little girl.

 

"So, why not answer it?"

 

" I am old enough to have created and succored this ville of Quindley, without fear or favor. And that will be answer enough, Krysty."

 

She sniffed, but kept silent.

 

"That will be all, Jehu."

 

"Yes, Moses."

 

"Assure all my people that the outlanders mean no harm. Even one so unbelievably antiquated as Dr. Tanner is to be treated with respect."

 

"You are truly all heart, Moses," Doc replied.

 

"Now you may leave me. I have seen all I need to see. Take care of them, Jehu."

 

Ryan took a step toward the mirror. "How about the stickies? You just going to let that go?"

 

"Nothing needs doing, does it, Ryan? You are the man of action. I can tell that."

 

"I'd go and send out a search party. Recce the woods. Up and down the coast of the lake. You got enough rifles, Moses. Look for tracks. Could be a whole bunch of muties within a mile of here. Find them and chill them."

 

Just for a moment it seemed that the voice had lost its overweening self-confidence. There was a hesitation. "I shall think on that. Now, you can all go."

 

NEITHER DEAN NOR MICHAEL reappeared until it was nearly time for lunch. And when they eventually arrived it was obvious that they'd had a major falling out.

 

Ryan could hear them arguing almost before they reached the causeway, their raised, angry voices clearly audible as they strode through the floating ville.

 

"Why should I?" Dean shouted.

 

"You heard what Dorothy said."

 

"So what?"

 

"So what, yourself. Just because you got One-Eye for a father, doesn't mean you can stir it up between us." Now they were nearly at the building that housed the outlanders' quarters. "Well, fuck you, Michael."

 

"And fuck you, too, kid."

 

"Don't call me that"

 

Ryan stood up from his bed and walked to the doorway, seeing that his son and the teenager were facing each other a few feet away. Both had hands on the butts of their blasters.

 

"First person even thinks about drawing down on a friend gets thrown in the lake," Ryan said quietly, making both boys jump guiltily. "What's the trouble?"

 

"Nothing." They spoke simultaneously, neither of them meeting his eye,

 

"Well, that's good. Way I heard it I might have thought there was some problem. Since there isn't, you can both come in, wash up and get ready to eat. All right?" Neither of them answered. "All right?" There was an edge to his voice that they recognized.

 

"Yeah," Michael said.

 

"Sure," Dean added.

 

Chapter Twenty-Five

 

"I'm not sure, Dorothy."

 

"We keep close to the edge of the lake and then, if the stickles appear, we can swim for it. You are able to swim, aren't you, Michael?"

 

"Yes. But not very far."

 

She smiled at him, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm. "Course you can. Anyway, stickies can't swim."

 

"Who says?"

 

"Moses."

 

Michael kicked at the loose pebbles that covered the long expanse of beach. "How's he know that?"

 

"Stupe!" she said affectionately. "Moses knows everything. Really everything."

 

"Why didn't he know that the stickies were going to attack the children and chill some of them? If he knew, then he could have prevented it."

 

Dorothy stopped dead and let go of his arm, turning away to stare silently out over the mirrored surface of Sham pi in Lake. She shrugged her shoulders, easing the cord strap of the rifle she carried.

 

For fifty beats of the heart, neither of them spoke.

 

"It's true," he insisted.

 

"No."

 

"Why not?"

 

"Because it's all part of the big pattern. Moses says he knows everything, but he often can't tell us because it would spoil the big pattern."

 

"What?"

 

Dorothy turned, and he saw unshed tears glistening in the corners of her blue eyes. "Like when there was a sickness in the ville, when I was only about ten summers old. Blackwater fever, Moses called it. Nearly a third of us died, wasted away, shitting black blood. Moses knew it was coming."

 

Michael shook his head. "I heard all that when I was an oblate in the sanctuary. 'God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.' Heard it. 'It's God's will, children.' God's will that those mutie bastards butchered the little ones this morning. How can you believe that, Dorothy?"

 

"Come and sit down with me," she said, wiping her eyes, managing a smile. "Just in among the trees."

 

"Stickies?"

 

"Not this close to the ville. Anyway, we'll hear them coming, won't we?"

 

She placed one hand on his arm, the other hand on the side of his neck, leaning toward him so that Michael could catch the scent of her body. Dorothy lifted her face, eyes closing, her soft red lips parting to show the gleam of white teeth.

 

The late-afternoon sun was sinking out over the water, sending a great slash of crimson from the western horizon. Michael kissed the young woman, feeling his instant arousal as her tongue flicked out between his lips, pushing it way past his teeth. He put his arms around her and clasped her tightly. Dorothy's right hand dropped from his arm and eased itself between them, across his stomach, feeling lower. "Mmm." She broke away and smiled at him. "We should definitely go and sit down for a bit."

 

SHE WORE NO UNDERCLOTHES, and the teenager found her warm arid ready for him. The moment he had wriggled out of his clothes, she cupped him in her hand and guided him into her, gasping at the moment of penetration.

 

"Slowly, slowly," she whispered.

 

Michael could feel her flexing the inner muscles of her body around him, sucking him deeper. "God, Dorothy... I'm... I'm going to-"

 

"No, you aren't. Not yet. Not until I'm ready, as well." Her sharp teeth nipped him on the side of the throat, bringing a small cry of delighted pain.

 

She moved against him, her hips coming off the soft turf, her arms spread above her head. There was a flurry of sound in the undergrowth and Michael checked himself, straining to look over his shoulder. He felt himself beginning to shrink as his mind was flooded with a picture of a giant stickle grabbing him by the genitals with its rending, suckered hands.

 

"It's okay," Dorothy promised. "Only a squirrel. Don't stop now, or I'll have you put in one of the stand-ups."

 

"What's a-"

 

"Shh. Show you later. There's two close by here. Show you... later."

 

LATER MEANT THE SUN slipping halfway down over the edge of the lake, bringing elongated shadows and a chill to the air among the trees.

 

Michael lay flat on his back, Dorothy lying sprawled on top of him. He felt totally drained, hardly responding when she ran the tip of her tongue into the corner of his mouth. She reached for him, and he winced at the stickiness as she unpeeled his cock from his stomach.

 

"Don't think I can do it again," he said.

 

"Maybe not now. But there's tomorrow, Michael, and tomorrow and lots more tomorrows. Right now it feels like you couldn't even raise a smile."

 

"Did it four times in.. .well, it can't be anything over the hour," he replied, not quite managing the difficult task of mixing pride and modesty.

 

Dorothy smiled into his face. "You have lovely hair," she said. "Black and strong. And such dark eyes. Hardly anyone around Quindley has dark eyes."

 

"I noticed. Hey, shouldn't we be getting back to the ville? Be dark soon. They'll think the stickies got us."

 

She knelt on the grass and pulled on her pants, easing them up over her hips. "That was real nice, Michael."

 

"Yeah. Good for me, too. Real good."

 

"You had lots of women, Michael?"

 

He fastened his belt, checking that the Texas Long-horn Border Special was snug in its holster. "Lot of

 

women? Why, sure I have. Me and Ryan and the others all get our pick, wherever we go. Hardly a ville in Deathlands that I haven't got a lover."

 

Dorothy kissed him on the cheek. "You're cute, you know. I guess that Krysty and the other woman must have had lovers as well, have they?"

 

"Sure."

 

"I'll ask them both about it when we get back to the ville. Be interested to hear how they talk about picking all these male lovers."

 

Michael swallowed hard. "No, Dorothy. That wouldn't... We have a kind of rule that we don't speak to others about our private life."

 

She smiled. "I believe you, Michael."

 

There was a cool breeze blowing, and they both felt a few spots of rain.

 

"Dean got pissed at me for wanting to be alone with you," Michael said.

 

"Could that be trouble?"

 

He shook his head. "Don't think so."

 

"Will he go and tell the one-eyed man what we've been talking about?"

 

"No. Don't think so."

 

"Will he agree?"

 

Michael sighed. "He's real bright and tough as a diamond. But he loves his father."

 

"I can never begin to understand that. To feel great affection for someone as old as that."

 

"Do you feel affection for me, Dorothy?"

 

"Course. Wouldn't have done the loving with you if I didn't. Never mind what..." She stopped.

 

Michael didn't notice the hesitation. "How long before you get to be twenty-five, Dorothy?"

 

"Long enough," she replied. "Hey, I promised to show the stand-ups. Two of them are just along here. Unless the stickies found them, of course."

 

THEY WERE WITHIN fifty yards of the top of the lake's shore, set among the shadowed fringe of sturdy beech trees, two stone columns, each about eight feet tall and less than five feet across.

 

"Come on," Dorothy said.

 

As they drew closer, Michael saw that there was a tiny barred window about five feet from the ground.

 

"They look like tiny prisons for... Shit a brick! There's someone in that... in both of them. My God, Dorothy, what have they done?"

 

"The old one is an outlander. He was caught ten days ago. Tried to rape little Eleanor. She told us so."

 

Michael stepped nearer, peering in with a ghoulish fascination. Now he could see there was a rusted iron door with a large lock set into the front of each stone pillar.

 

"How do they sit down?"

 

She laughed delightedly. "They don't, That's why they're called 'stand-ups,' you goose!"

 

"Who feeds them?"

 

"Nobody."

 

"Then they die."

 

"Eventually."

 

Dorothy joined him, putting her arm through his, smiling contentedly at the grizzled face that stated out through the bars. Though the light was fading, the teenager could see that the man's eyes were sunken and dulled. His mouth sagged open, but all that came out was a dry, gobbling sound, tike an enraged turkey.

 

"What language does he speak?"

 

"None at all. We cut out his tongue before he was locked in."

 

Michael was beginning to feel a little sick. "Is he tied up in there?"

 

"No. No need. Some of the time when they die and get taken out, we find they've tried to bite open their own wrists or scratched at the blood tubes in the neck."

 

"Dorothy..." came a croaking plea.

 

"He can talk!" Michael exclaimed, looking at the second cramped prison.

 

"Course. It's Heinrich. He was the one you saw in the dining room last night."

 

"The one who's nearly reached-"

 

"Twenty-five. Yes." She stood close to the bars. "Stop all that noise, Heinrich. Should have done what Moses told you. Then you could have enjoyed the passing ceremony like most of us do."

 

"Shoot me, Dorothy, please. Throat hurts and I shit myself and my knees are on fire and my ankles are breaking."

 

"He's talking stupe, Michael." Dorothy lowered her voice. "Though sometimes Moses tells us to really break their ankles before locking them in."

 

"Least give me some water."

 

"Not after what you did. Running away like that. Shames the whole ville."

 

"Something to drink.. in the name of blessed Moses, Dorothy... please..."

 

She giggled. "I could give him something to drink, Michael. I had three tumblers of water at noon meal and I'm about ready. Think he'd like it?"

 

"No!" The teenager turned away in disgust. "How can you be so nice to me, and at the same time be so cruel, vicious and sick, Dorothy? It doesn't make sense."

 

"They deserve it. Both of them. If it wasn't so dark, we could make the loving in front of them. Think how they'd feel, all naked and locked up and helpless... Watching. It'd be excellent, Michael. Part of their punishment."

 

"No." He suddenly made up his mind and drew the small revolver from its holster.

 

"What are you doing?"

 

The young man in the closest of the stand-ups started to beg. "Oh, please, outlander. Please do it,"

 

Michael cocked the .38 and leveled it at the white face in the darkness behind the bars. Dorothy had her hands to her mouth.

 

"You can't... Blasphemy, Michael! Moses would have you locked up in there. Cut off your lovely strong cock and break your fingers and your ankles and elbows and your knees. It's death to defy him. Bloody death!"

 

The barrel of the handblaster was steady, Michael's finger tight on the trigger. Everything he knew that was right made him want to fire the gun and put the two wretches out of their prolonged agony, show them mercy.

 

Dorothy had fallen to her knees, hands lifted as though she were praying. "I beg you, Michael. Moses'll have me chilled, also. Honestly. Think of what we did this afternoon. Think I love you. Think of what we talked about. You and me. And little Dean. All of that'll be for nothing."

 

"It's not decent, Dorothy, to treat human beings like beasts, no matter what they did or didn't do."

 

"He raped a little girl." She pointed to the farther stone column. The sun was almost gone, and it was no longer possible to make out the faces of the prisoners. "And Heinrich knew the laws. Lived here all his life. Knew it. Took part when the older ones gave their selves up for the good of the ville. For all our futures. And he ran from that when it was his turn. Yellow-gutted coward."

 

Michael slowly lowered the blaster, easing the hammer down.

 

"Ah" right," he said, his mouth so dry he could hardly hear himself speak.

 

But for most of the way back to the fire pit safety of Quindley he heard the screams behind him.

 

Chapter Twenty-Six

 

"Abe?"

 

"Yeah, Trader?"

 

* 'Remember that time we got stuck in the middle of the freeway bridge?"

 

"No. Can't say I do."

 

The older man shook his head impatiently. "Your brain's fucked, Abe, you know that?"

 

"Where was this bridge, Trader?"

 

"Somewhere in the Rockies. We only had War Wag One, doing some dealing around the old Phantom Canyon Highway. Up toward... What the fuck was the place called? Kind of a ghost town. Had a big fire during the long winters."

 

"Leadville?" Abe offered hesitantly. One of the changes that he'd noticed in Trader was that he seemed even more short-tempered than he used to be.

 

"No. I know Leadville. Had a theater. Local gaudy used it to put on special shows." Trader laughed and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "Not that special. Limit to the combinations, ain't there, Abe?"

 

The little ex-gunner wasn't altogether sure what his former leader meant, but he nodded enthusiastically. Their camp fire was burning brightly and Trader had

 

used his trusty, battered Armalite that afternoon to take out a small black bear. They'd roasted some of the tender parts, like the tongue and paws, and were both well filled.

 

"You get a slut with a man. A man with two sluts. Three sluts or four. Seen shows in the outskirts of some of the Eastern city-tombs. Men with men." Trader spit into the smoldering embers. "Turns your stomach, that kind of thing."

 

"Yeah," Abe agreed. "Never had no time for| benders and ass bandits."

 

"Me, neither." He hesitated. "What the fuck was l| talking about, Abe?"

 

"Shows in Leadville."

 

"Sure. Sluts with each other. Like that. See *em goin' down on each other. Get me a rock-solid boner just thinking about it. Know what I mean?"

 

"Sure do." The previous day Trader had leaned on the elderly owner of an out-of-the-way general store to the east of old Seattle to give them a bottle of home brew. Now it was almost gone. Liquor didn't do anything to improve Trader's temper.

 

"Like sluts an' dogs. Once saw a full-grown stallion and a three hundred pound breed slut. Up in the shens. Marsh Folsom could Ve been there. Ripped her in two." He took a last slug from the bottle, then hurled it into the trees around them, where it shattered. "What was I talking about before you started on about sluts, Abe?"

 

"Some trouble we once had on a bridge."

 

"Sure. Victor. That was the name of the ville. Remember Ryan Cawdor saying he thought it was real 'picturesque.' That was the word. Old Ryan still use big long words like that, does he? Does he, Abe?"

 

"Sometimes." That seemed a safe, middle-of-the-road reply to the question.

 

"Was I telling you about the time on the bridge, Abe? My fucking memory is getting worse and worse. You noticed that, Abe? Huh?"

 

"No. I got a mind like a sieve, Trader. Words go hi one ear and then they fall clear out the other."

 

The older man nodded, his grizzled hair almost white in the evening light.

 

"Yeah. You was always like that, Abe. We was on this old freeway bridge. Some local vigilantes put up a burning barricade against us. Behind us there was some stickles that got hold of some implode grens and they was trying to bring the whole mess down, with us in the middle."

 

The event didn't ring any bells for Abe. It sounded dramatic enough for him not to have forgotten it. It obviously happened before he started riding with the war wags.

 

"So what happened?"

 

"Old J.B. popped off a couple of frags from the gren launcher on the rear turret of War Wag One. Blew them stickles into a fine pink spray."

 

"You go back?"

 

"Shit, no!" He pounded one fist into the other. "Day Trader turns back is the day Trader catches the

 

last train for the coast. We drove on. That switch-hit dyke Hunaker was at the controls."

 

"I liked Hun.' Abe remarked.

 

"Me, too. Some of the time. Not all of the time. I always said that a man who gets too close to a woman might as well cut off his balls with a bayonet."

 

Abe smiled, though he wasn't really sure that Trader was joking about it.

 

Far above them, plunging out of the cold infinity of space, they both saw a piece of military detritus finally tumbling from its hundred-year-old orbit. It was an archaic remnant of the old Totality Concept of the United States, or the Eastern Bloc's equivalent, Project Szvezda, a brilliant streak of pink-purple, flaring across the heavens.

 

Trader stared up, watching it fall, and shook his head. "This used to be a good country, once," he said quietly. "I think about it in those long waking hours of the early morning. But I don't have the learning. Not like Ryan. Wonder if he's got that message we sent after him. How long did we give him? Three months, was it?"

 

Success. Will stay around Seattle for three months. Come quick. Abe.

 

That had been the simple message given out to every traveler and packman they could find hanging around the ruins of the once great city.

 

Abe remembered the last one, just before they moved out of the ghostly chamel house, into the cleaner air of the Cascades. It had been a skinny, hard-eyed man who carried blasters. He had a small black-and-white pony, with a number of handmades and rebuilds in his saddlebags. He was off on his annual trip to the Northeast the next morning, traveling alone across the windswept solitude of the high plains country, through the Dakotas and south of the Great Lakes into New England.

 

They'd come across him sitting by a small fire, backed into the corner of a broken wall, in a place the locals called Gasworks Park, with rusting metal pipes and tanks, many of them still showing the faded graffiti of the predark era. One said, inexplicably, Grunge Lives. Neither Abe nor the Trader had ever come across anyone whose name was Grunge.

 

They had explained to the gun trader that they were trying to get in touch with a group of old friends, that they didn't know where in all Deathlands they might be, but they wanted a message delivered to them.

 

Lonnie had asked for jack. Trader had worked the action on the Armalite and the gun dealer had agreed that he'd be real happy to do it for nothing.

 

"Man with one eye. Name of Ryan Cawdor."

 

"Funny to give a name to an eye," Lonnie commented.

 

Abe had ignored him. "Woman with hair redder than the best chem sunset you ever saw. Skinny little guy with glasses and battered fedora hat. Called J. B. Dix. And don't say that you think it's funny to give a name to a hat. Black woman with plaited hair. Mildred Wyeth. Two younger ones. Little kid called Dean,  aged around eleven or twelve. And a teen called Michael Brother. Oh, yeah. And there's a double-crazie old guy called Doc Tanner. You see them you'll know them."

 

They'd sat around for most of the night, talking about places they'd been, frontier gaudies and bars that they all knew, shootists and sluts. Some of them chilled. Some alive.

 

They'd parted company in the morning, with Trader giving Lonnie a final warning. "Deathlands is really a triple-small place, friend. I ever get to hear that you met up with Ryan Cawdor and didn't pass on our message, then I'd make certain sure you knew it was a bad move."

 

THE LAND WAS RICH IN GAME, and the living for the two men was easy. At one point it looked like they were running low on ammo, and they'd killed a fine eighteen-point deer and hauled it to the local store. The owner was a middle-aged woman with an ugly skin condition, and she hadn't been keen to take the venison in exchange for bullets.

 

Trader looked around the shop, noticing a glass display case filled with delicate porcelain dolls, all wearing old-fashioned costumes.

 

" Pretty, those."

 

"Sure. My pride and joy. Want a look?" She went over and opened the cabinet, taking out an Oriental doll in a silk kimono. The pock-marked woman had handled it as though it were a new-hatched butterfly, smiling down at it. Her face had become transfigured, making her seem almost beautiful.

 

Trader reached out for it, but she pulled back.

 

"I'll be real careful," he said, brushing with a long forefinger at the sleek, black hair of the doll. "Truly is a work of art, ma'am."

 

"Please don't squeeze her too hard or muss up her dress, mister."

 

"We was talking about some ammo for this," he said, gesturing with the doll toward his own Armalite. "And for the big blaster of my little friend with the mustache. Few .357s and he'll be happy as a hog in muck."

 

"I don't trade much, mister." Her face showed her worry. "Mostly straight jack deals. That venison sure looks good, but I got no need for it."

 

"Could be making a mistake, lady."

 

"How's that?"

 

For a moment Abe had expected Trader to pluck the head off the Japanese doll and crush it underfoot, or take the butt of the rifle and destroy the entire cabinet.

 

"Anyone could ride on by and all they want is a haunch of good deer meat. And you'd have to disappoint them and who knows what kind of damage they might do."

 

"If they started to.. .if anyone started to do some harm to me or anything in this store, then my three sons would take that plenty ill, mister."

 

"That so?" Trader stood very still, his head slightly on one side, listening. "I hear the wind through the

 

trees. Stream running fast some place out back. And you got some hungry chickens there, as well. I hear them. Hear them ail. Don't hear anything much like three sons, lady."

 

"They're likely sleeping."

 

"Mebbe I should go and make sure. Could be they got taken by some choking sickness while we out here passing the time of day." He took three long strides toward the curtained rear of the small building.

 

"No!"

 

Trader stopped, still holding the fragile doll with the greatest of care. "No? You sure about this, ma'am? Could be they're out working in the forest. Likely they'd relish a good meal of roast venison when they comeback?"

 

The woman seemed to have aged twenty years in a single minute. "Mister..."

 

"What?"

 

"You are a real low-life son of a bitch, ain't you? Picking on a lone widow lady."

 

The Trader bad appeared to be genuinely surprised and shocked. He laid the Japanese doll gingerly on the chipped counter that ran across the center of the store. "Now, I never thought to be spoken to like that, ma'am."

 

She gestured to the shelf to the right of a window that had two panes of glass replaced by waxed paper. "Bullets is there. Take what you want and then get out."

 

"Thank you kindly. We'll leave the meat out on your porch, if that's agreeable."

 

"Sure, sure." She was almost crying. "Do what you , you mean old bastard, and leave me alone."

 

AWAY TO THE WEST, toward the Cific Ocean, Abe heard a rumble of thunder. The sky had been darkening even before the sun went down, promising a chetn storm.

 

"Best get under cover, Trader," he said.

 

"Yeah. Wonder if any of those messages got through to Ryan yet?"

 

"We sent enough. One of them'll reach him, Trader. Bound to find them."

 

"How long did we say we'd wait up here for him and J.B. and the others? Was it a couple months, Abe?"

 

"Three months."

 

"Sure. I remember now." He stood, stretching until his muscles cracked. "Hey," he said, "did I ever tell you about the time we got caught in a trap in War Wag One, up on an old freeway bridge?"

 

"Yeah." Abe kept his face blank. "Yeah, Trader. You told me about that."

 

Chapter Twenty-Seven

 

All seven of them ate their breakfasts together. Michael had come in late and gone immediately to bed, answering with monosyllabic grunts Ryan's questions as to where he'd been and what he'd done.

 

Now, with a bright sun outside and a fresh wind from the north, he seemed in better spirits.

 

"Had the black dog at your side last night, Michael," Ryan said.

 

"Yeah. Sorry. Went walking with Dorothy and we sort of talked a lot and I wanted to think about some of the things that she had said to me."

 

Ryan cut a slice off a watermelon. "Want to tell us about it yet?"

 

"Not yet. Needs thinking."

 

"Lot of skeeters in the woods, were there?" Dean asked innocently.

 

"Some gnats. Why?"

 

"Just you got a real nasty bite on the side of your neck, Michael."

 

The teenager blushed, clapping his hand immediately to the sore-looking red mark. "Oh, yeah," he muttered. "Remember it was a kind of big insect."

 

"With blond hair and blue eyes," the eleven-year-old sniggered.

 

JEHU ARRIVED just as they were finishing their food, with half a dozen of the young men and women from the ville, including Dorothy, Isaac and Frank.

 

"Moses wants some fresh fish for his meals for the next two or three days," the ponytailed leader said. "He suggested that you outlanders might wish to spend a day out in the sun on Shamplin Lake."

 

"Sounds good." Ryan looked around at the others. "Anyone object?"

 

"I am notorious for not being one of the best sailors in this heathen land," Doc said ruefully. "But I would relish the fresh air and kick of the wheel and the song of the wind and... something about a jolly fellow rover." He shook his head. "But, let it pass, let it pass."

 

"What kind of fish we going after?" J.B. asked, as he picked up the Uzi.

 

"The best," Isaac replied. "Moses won't think about eating anything that isn't perfect and cooked perfect."

 

"How come he eats fish and tells you to only eat vegetables?" Krysty asked. "I know we talked about this before, but I still don't honestly understand."

 

Dorothy answered. "Moses isn't like the other men and women. When one of us moves on, Moses takes on himself all the sins and imperfections of the flesh." She recited the last part like a child carefully remembering a lesson. "So, he also has to test himself against all evils."

 

"What piscine treats- I'm sorry, evils, does your prophet and oracle intend to have offered to him today? Delicate baby carp? Trout, plucked from the bone and rolled between the thighs of young virgins? Eels, smoked to mouth-watering wonder over hickory wood? Or salmon, cosseted for his dining pleasure and served with a helping of tiny vegetables, picked at dawn and sliced by blind watchmakers until..." Doc looked around, sensing the bewildered silence that hung about him. "Ah, I see that once again I have made the cardinal error of allowing my mouth to operate before I have properly engaged my brain."

 

"Rainbow trout, mainly, from Shamplin," Jehu said, breaking the uneasy stillness. "We'll catch several and then select the best for Moses."

 

"Lake should be well stocked." Mildred looked out across the water. "Can't have been fished much for a hundred years or so. Must be some monsters out there."

 

"There are huge pike," Isaac replied, licking his lips nervously. "Bigger than a grown man,"

 

"And eels," Dorothy offered. "Every year, as the greening comes to the land and the ice melts, we lose little ones to the works of the deep."

 

Dean glanced nervously at his father. "Mebbe I'll stay behind here," he said.

 

"We'll be fine." Ryan looked at Jehu. "When do we go?"

 

ON THE SEAS, lakes and rivers all around Deathlands, it wasn't that unusual to see gas-powered boats, using the crudely refined gasoline that was one of the chief items in the complex barter chain.

 

But it was no surprise to find that Quindley relied on old-fashioned human power.

 

The boat was a clinker-built dory, about fifteen feet long, with enough room for about a dozen people. It was made from narrow strips of varnished oak, and high-sided-

 

"We could step a mast in her, but the wind is gusting quite strong." Jehu looked away to the far north, where there was a thin bank of blue-gray clouds. "Best we watch the weather that way. Shamplin can be a treacherous mistress when there's northerly squalls about."

 

He took his place in the stern, holding the tiller. Dorothy went into the bow, where there was a pile of weighted nets. She called to Michael to join her. The rest of them found places on the thwarts, handing along the heavy oars and slipping them into the oarlocks.

 

Ryan sat with Krysty, J.B. with Mildred and Dean with Doc. Isaac sat at stroke, with Frank on his right. There were two other young ones from the ville, named Nanci and Calvin, who took the last empty places.

 

The boat was tied up to the side of the main causeway. Most of the little children, about to be escorted into the forest again, stood and stared at the outlanders, as they prepared to take to the water.

 

"Everyone ready?" Jehu called, turning to the teenage boys who waited to loose the ropes. "Let go front and back. Give us a good push out. Keep the oars out of the lake for a moment. Start when I say."

 

The boat drifted out onto the rippled water, the wind immediately catching it, making it drift awkwardly sideways, toward the south.

 

"Oars in. Pull when I say. And pull! Out and in! Out, in, out, in. Good. Not too hard, Doc. Save your energy for later in the morning."

 

IT WAS SURPRISING what good progress they made. Jehu steered them in a roughly northerly direction, into the prevailing wind, pointing out that it would make their return journey that much easier when they might all be feeling a little tired.

 

They soon established a good rhythm, following the pace set by Isaac, under Jehu's orders. The oars rose and fell in unison, sending tiny whirlpools spinning through the dark, mirrored water. The wake was straight and true, and the lake bubbled merrily beneath the stem of the dory.

 

"Someone should sing us a chanty..." Doc said, panting a little at the unusual exercise.

 

"What's that?" Dorothy asked from behind him.

 

"Old sea song, my dear child. Helps to keep us all together. Older even than me, some of them. Back to the days of beating around the Horn and reefing t'gallants in the teeth of a raging easterly gale."

 

"You know any, Doc?" Jehu called.

 

"It's advertised in Boston, New York and Buffalo, A hundred jolly sailors, a'whaling for to go,

 

Singing, blow ye winds of morning, blow them to and fro, Haul away the running gear and blow, boys, blow."

 

Krysty gave a piercing whistle of appreciation between her teeth. "More, Doc, more."

 

"I fear that I shall become overdrawn on my already weakened state of breath. However, I know a verse or two more. Everyone must come in on the chorus. The bit about 'blow ye winds of morning.' All right?"

 

Isaac glanced over his shoulder, grinning at the old man. "Doin' good, Doc. Helps us along into the sharp teeth of this chilly wind."

 

"I'll sing you of the clipper ships,

 

A-speeding in and out,

 

They say we'll take a thousand whales

 

Before we're three months out.

 

Singing blow ye winds of morning, Everyone!

 

Blow them to and fro..."

 

Despite his appearance, Doc was blessed with a powerful, tuneful voice, and he led them through the old sea song.

 

Doc also gave them "Unfortunate Miss Bailey" and "The Leaving of Liverpool," while Mildred chipped in with "Shenandoah."

 

If it hadn't been for the wind, which seemed to be getting stronger every mile into the expedition, it would have been a perfect morning.

 

A few miles north, the shore came sweeping out in a wide, thickly wooded promontory. Jehu encouraged the oarsmen, telling them the best fishing grounds lay only a short distance beyond the point.

 

"Then we can rest."

 

As they pulled steadily past the spit of land, all of them looked at it.

 

There was no sign of life, just the endless rolling slopes of the hills, almost covered hi conifers. No trace at all of the advanced civilization that had once stamped its mark upon the landscape.

 

"Wouldn't have thought this was once a big tourist area," Mildred commented.

 

"The planet recovers itself, from even the deepest wounds." Doc held his oar clear of the water and leaned on it for a few moments. "like the old lost road that ran through the woods, where the rain and the wind had destroyed it so completely that you would never have known that there had been a road. There is a poem on that very subject, but I fear that the bones of it have fled from my memory.

 

Krysty also took a breather, staring at the land that scrolled slowly past them.

 

"There's..." she began. "No. I thought I saw someone watching us from the edge of the trees."

 

"Stickies?" Jehu called.

 

"Gone now. Might have been."

 

Everyone stopped rowing and the dory quickly lost Way, coming to a gentle halt, then starting to move backward as the wind grasped at it.

 

"Can't see anything," Michael said from his place in the bow.

 

"Probably my aged eyes failing," Krysty replied.

 

"Start rowing again," Isaac shouted. "Wind's getting bad. If it rises any more we should think about turning around for home, Jehu. You reckon?"

 

"Only another quarter mile," the long-haired young man replied. "Can't go back without some good fish for Moses."

 

Dean had been trailing his hand hi the cool water while they drifted. But he suddenly jerked it out, giving a gasp of shock. "Something touched it," he said.

 

"Fish?" his father asked.

 

"Felt big. Sort of rolled under the boat."

 

"The Emperor Pike," Calvin said.

 

"Maybe." Jehu leaned over the stern, shading his hand to try to see beneath the broken surface. "Thought I saw something as well, but-"

 

Without any further warning, something lunged beneath the bottom of the dory and turned it over, tipping everyone into the lake.

 

Chapter Twenty-Eight

 

Ryan was taken totally by surprise. The loom of the oar came sharply up beneath his chin and rattled his teeth. The very next moment he was beneath the surface of Shamplin Lake, his mouth open, inhaling the chill water.

 

He felt something brush against his legs, and he instinctively kicked away. His hand pushed at the creature that had turned them over with such effortless ease, and he felt the roughness of scales. The depths around him sucked and swirled as the huge fish whipped its tail back and forth, propelling itself out of sight. There had been a momentary blurred glimpse of a silvery body, narrow and lean, and a head that tapered like an alligator's. Ryan guessed it was the big pike that they'd talked about. But this one was truly enormous, well over twenty feet long.

 

With a whoop he broke surface, immediately treading water and looking around to try to get his bearings.

 

The gleaming underside of the boat was less than ten yards away from him, but the strong wind was already pushing it in a southerly direction. Ryan counted heads.

 

He checked Dean, his hair pasted to his skull, already kicking out toward the overturned dory. Doc, his sword stick between his strong teeth, was doing the breaststroke beside the boy. J.B. and Mildred were a little farther away, nearer the land. The Armorer had his fedora clutched in bis left hand, the Uzi over his shoulder.

 

Something moved past Ryan, only a few feet below him, something that reminded him of the hideous power of the Great Whites that they'd encountered before.

 

Calvin appeared close by the boat and turned to grin at Ryan. "Must've- " he began.

 

Then the giant mutie fish came up directly below him. The tail fin broke the surface almost between Ryan's legs, and he rolled out of the way. The one-eyed man glimpsed the elongated, feral head, with the smiling jaws and the cold, passionless eyes. Rows of jagged teeth clamped shut around Calvin's midriff. Despite the yelling and the splashing, Ryan distinctly heard the splintering of the young man's ribs. Calvin's head jerked back and forth as the pike shook him like a terrier with a rat. Blood gushed from his mouth, and one of his eyes literally burst from its socket with the awesome pressure.

 

As suddenly as it had appeared, the pike vanished. Calvin's right arm, fist clenched, was the last thing to disappear beneath the bloodied surface of the lake.

 

The killing had taken less than fifteen seconds.

 

Ryan trod water, easing the Steyr across his back. He checked that Krysty was also there. She'd reached

 

the boat and was managing to hang on to the planking. Her long red sentient hair gripped her skull so tightly that it looked like a bathing cap of crimson silk.

 

Jehu was there as well, his ponytail undone, his eyes wide and blank with shock. The other young woman, Nanci, was crying, barely keeping afloat a few yards behind Ryan, farther away from the dubious safety of the wrecked dory.

 

"Michael!" Dean shouted.

 

The teenager wasn't in sight, though it was possible he'd come up behind the hull of the boat. Dorothy was also missing. They'd been sitting together in the bow, along with the nets. It crossed Ryan's mind to wonder if they might have gotten tangled in them.

 

Krysty gave Dean a leg up, so that he was able to perch on the pitching dory, looking all around. "Not there, Dad!" he yelled, his voice cracking.

 

Ryan lifted himself as high as he could, but from his position the wavelets were too high and choppy for him to be able to see more than a few yards. For a moment he thought that he saw something, a looping, glistening coil, covered in iridescent scales thicker than a man's waist, breaking the surface and then vanishing again. He remembered that Dorothy had mentioned there were mutie eels in the lake.

 

Fighting not to betray too much of his fear, Ryan began to kick his way toward the boat.

 

"Everyone try and climb on!" he shouted.

 

"What about Michael?" Dean was rocking from side to side, his arms outstretched like a tightrope walker.

 

"Can't do a thing."

 

"We can turn the boat, if we all get together." Jehu had made a valiant effort to pull himself together. "Safer in than out with Emperor Pike looking for noon meal."

 

"There's an eel, Ryan, closing hi behind you!" Krysty was pointing, her green eyes staring in horror.

 

With a considerable effort of will, Ryan managed to resist the temptation to look behind him. That single, sinuous coil had been enough.

 

"Go, Nanci!" Jehu had drawn a small skinning knife from his belt, as though he were about to plunge into the water to go to the young woman's rescue.

 

"No!" Ryan bellowed, now close to the upturned craft.

 

J.B. had just managed to clamber up the slippery wood and was sitting astride the keel, checking the Uzi, readying it to open fire.

 

"Duck, Ryan," he called, hardly even raising his voice, calm and in control.

 

Guessing that he was in the line of fire at the unseen eel, Ryan kicked up his heels and duck-dived, swimming down several feet. He heard the faint impact of bullets above and behind him, conscious, then, of a powerful thrashing turbulence.

 

The moment his head broke the surface again he looked around, seeing the white, terrified face of Nanci close to him. A few yards away there was a rolling mass of dark gray-green scales and foaming water.

 

Krysty beckoned them both to get out of the lake to a sort of safety.

 

There was still no sign of either Michael or the young blond woman.

 

Ryan had just reached the boat, dragging Nanci behind him with one hand, when he heard a great whoop of exultation from his son above him.

 

"There he is!"

 

The turbulence behind him had ceased, and Ryan was able to blink water from his good eye and glimpse the dark head of Michael Brother a good thirty yards to the north. With his sleek black hair, the teenager looked for a moment like a questing seal.

 

The boy shouted something, but Ryan didn't catch it first time around, his hearing blurred by the wind and the water slapping against the boat. But Michael called out again and, this time, Ryan heard him.

 

"Trapped in the nets. Help me!"

 

Without a moment's hesitation, Ryan handed the rifle up to his son and kicked off again. His clothes and heavy combat boots were weighing him down, already making him tired, but there wasn't a moment to be wasted. Dorothy had already been caught and held under water for the best part of a minute, perhaps longer. The passing time was always grossly distorted at moments of extreme action and tension.

 

Jehu and Krysty were hauling the exhausted Nanci to the temporary haven of the upturned dory as Ryan swam away again from them.

 

He was aware of the corpse of the enormous eel, floating on the surface off to his left, dark blood trickling from a row of bullet holes from the Armorer's Uzi.

 

"She's only just below the surface, Ryan!"

 

Michael was close to panic, frantically beckoning for Ryan to hurry and help him.

 

"Under you?" The rising wind was ruffling the surface of the lake, making it impossible to see anything below the white-capped waves.