Chapter Sixteen
"Six feet three. Weighs Be surprised if he
tipped the scales above one-ten. Slim build. Long white hair and
pale face. Looks quite a bit like Jak. Black suit, beautifully cut.
And a I guess it's a cloak across his shoulders. Black satin, lined
with scarlet silk. From the quality of his clothes, the Family must
be seriously wealthy."
"Age?"
"Difficult, lover. Around the late twenties, into the
thirties."
"Weapons?"
"Nothing I can see. No obvious bulges under the arm or at the hip.
His clothes are cut too well and too tight to let him hide a
blaster."
The panic in the audience had subsided instantly at the appearance
of the young man. Everyone turned and looked for their seats, and
those who had fallen were helped to their feet by their
neighbors.
Forde was fumbling with the controls of the projector, eventually
finding the control that switched off the powerful halogen bulbs,
plunging the blood-scented abattoir back into total
blackness.
"Dean, would you switch on the lights on the wall by the door where
we came in?"
Ryan felt his son move away and was aware of a stab of something
that he guessed was fear.
He felt for Krysty's hand and held her tightly. "Things all right?"
he whispered.
The voice that answered came from a dozen feet away and slightly to
his right, where he knew the movie screen had been. "Everything is
perfectly all right, Mr. Cawdor. The alarm is over."
"So I hear. You have me at a disadvantage, Mr? You can see me, but
I don't see you."
"Seeing and not seeing are merely the opposing sides of the same
coin."
"Can't say I believe that. And I still don't hear your
name."
"I'm Elric Cornelius. I am one of the members of what is known
locally as 'the Family,' I believe. And you and your friends are
welcome to Bramton."
"Thanks."
"Oh, the taint of blood in this room is quite overwhelming. Can I
suggest we all move outside into the afternoon sunshine before I am
overcome by the smell."
His voice was languid and gentle. Ryan had a strange and sudden
vision of an elegant snake, coiled on a warm stone, when the man
talked.
But his words had an immediate effect on the villagers of
Bramton.
Chairs tumbled over again as they almost fought to get out of the
butcher's back room, pushing and jostling. Ryan sat where he was,
still holding Krysty's hand. He heard J.B.'s voice rise over the
bedlam and the sound of a single round from the Uzi, fired into the
ceiling.
"Cut out the panic! Door's plenty wide enough for everyone to get
out safe and unhurt. Now, calm down and shut the noise, all
right?"
"Well said, Mr. Dix." Cornelius hadn't moved during the brief
hubbub. "My family sometimes puzzles at the way good, honest,
decent, sensible folks are moved to behave like headless chickens.
It is a puzzle wrapped in a mystery."
"Shrouded in an enigma," Doc added. "You left that part
out."
"Indeed, I did, Dr. Tanner. And you were right to reproach me for
it."
"Wasn't a reproach, young man. Much more of a small jog to your
memory for quotations."
"I stand corrected, Doctor." There followed a meaningful pause that
Ryan could almost see. "It is a rare experience for any member of
the Family to be corrected."
Ryan wasn't sure if Doc recognized the cold anger that lay behind
the gentle words. But to his heightened senses, it sounded like the
crack of a lash across the face.
There was the noise of everyone leaving the room, muted and
subdued.
"Who's left?" he whispered to Krysty.
"All of us. Winthrop and Cornelius."
Once again he heard the bored voice, revealing that Cornelius had
preternaturally sharp hearing to have picked up the breathed words
from Krysty.
"And Mr. Winthrop will be leaving to join the rest of his flock,
Miss Wroth."
"Yeah, I'm on my way. Stayed behind in case you wanted Thought you
might need me to Nobody to be picked for today, though? Not
time."
The words from the mayor of the ville tumbled nervously, one over
another.
"For pity's sake, Mr. Winthrop," Cornelius said, betraying the
first hint of emotion. "You must allow your brain to function
before you operate your mouth. Think before you speak,
man."
"Sorry, Mr. Cornelius. Sorry about that." Feet moved quickly over
the sticky floor, the door opened and then closed, so quietly that
Ryan could barely hear it.
"Seems to me" Krysty began, hesitating, then remaining silent. Ryan
guessed that this was because of the uncannily sharp hearing of the
Family member.
"I assume that you are staying at that wretched flophouse, the
Banbury. That pit of fleas. That inhospitable abscess on the face
of the ville. That sodden excuse for a hotel. That absurd and
miserable"
Ryan interrupted him. "Yeah. We're staying there. And most of what
you say about it is right enough. But it's the only game in
town."
The young man laughed quietly, a sound like a pair of black velvet
gloves brushing together in a dusty room. "Then you shall be the
guests of the Cornelius Family. Outlanders are rare as hen's teeth
in this place."
"They check in but they don't never check out," Mildred said. "Like
they used to say about an insect trap called a Roach
Motel."
"An amusing comment, Dr. Wyeth. Your knowledge of predark
Deathlands is unusual. Other members of the Family might be
fascinated to talk with you. Now, Mr. Forde, about your film show
that I so rudely interrupted."
"Doesn't matter," the man replied. Ryan noticed that Johannes's
voice had gone up an octave, a sure enough sign of nervousness.
"Seemed like my ghosty horror movie worked better than I'd thought
it would."
"Fools!" Cornelius said, snapping his fingers
dismissively.
"How long has your Family been the barons around here?" J.B.
asked.
"Barons? Yes, others have called us that, Mr. Dix. We never see
ourselves in that role. We have always been here. Ever since then
and beyond that yesterday. We do not rule as barons or kings rule.
We guide the people. We teach them and show them how best to serve
themselves. And also serve us. That is how the Family operates, Mr.
Dix."
"Believe that's called being a benevolent despot," Doc suggested.
"Not many made that work through history. Catherine the Great and
Elizabeth of England. And now there's the Cornelius
Family."
Ryan heard the note of gentle barbed mockery in the old man's voice
and hoped that Cornelius didn't hear it, as well, his feeling
growing all the time that this was a dangerous man and it would be
better not to cross him.
But there was no reply.
Ryan waited, locked in his blindness, wondering what in the dark
night was happening. He sensed discomfort, but nobody was speaking
or moving.
Suddenly Jak broke the silence.
"We look alike, but not Family."
"We had been told of you, Jak. Hair like snowy silk. Face as pale
as the finest porcelain. Eyes like the embers that smolder in a
dying fire. How can it be that you are not one of us?"
The white-haired teenager answered the question without any
hesitation. "Because know not Family like you. I'm just me. Not
you. Not like you."
Ryan heard a sound like someone licking his lips, which was
puzzling as there was no food there. Except for the raw, butchered
meat on the hooks.
The door opened, and Cornelius said, still placid and calm, "Come
to our house on the bluffs above the river to the east. Ask anyone
for directions. I can safely say that every living soul in the
ville knows where our house is. Come for an evening meal. We can
find rooms for you all. I will expect you at six, just as the sun
begins to sleep and Mistress Moon awakens herself."
The door closed, and Ryan was aware of a collective loosening of
breath from the others.
"Gaia! That was something over and"
"Rad-blast it!" the Armorer said. "Wouldn't care to meet him in a
dark alley behind a pesthole gaudy. Or any other time and place,
come to that."
Jak sounded genuinely upset. "Just because has white hair and skin
thinks like me. Wouldn't lick blood like that. Not me.
No."
"Lick blood!" Ryan exclaimed. "When did? Right at the end, there
was a few moments when"
Doc answered him. "By the Three Kennedys! I thought for a second or
two that blindness can have its advantages, my old and dear friend.
The albino fellow was standing near a slaughtered calf, when he
brushed against it, getting a large smear or gobbet of congealing
gore on his sleeve. Most men would have looked for a way of
cleaning themselves. Not Master Cornelius. He lowers his head like
a heifer at a salt lick and laps the blood from his coat, as if it
were finest nectar."
"Should've seen the expression on his face," Dean added. "Like a
cat got itself the cream."
"Stooped and ran finger in pool on floor," Jak said. "Offered it to
me."
Ryan pulled a face. "Sure get some odd barons around Deathlands,"
he said.
"He claims they aren't barons," Mildred said, "though you could've
fooled me, the way he spoke. Not stupid. I felt he had a blazing
intelligence operating beneath that Joe Cool mask."
"Let's get out of here," Forde said. "The stench of blood is
turning my stomach."
OUTSIDE, RYAN TOOK a number of deep breaths, cleaning his lungs of
the blood taint, shaking his head to try to clear the odd muzziness
that he felt.
"Has that" Krysty's fingers tightened like steel traps on his arm.
Ryan scarcely missed a beat. "Has that snowbird flown back to his
nest?" he asked, toning down what he'd been about to say about the
albino.
"No, Mr. Cawdor, he has not. He has remained here to suggest to Mr.
Johannes Forde that he might like to take a little film while he is
here of my friends of the ville. Before they all scatter back to to
their 'nests,' " Cornelius said.
"No offense meant," Ryan said, breaking one of the Trader's
cardinal rules that to apologize to anyone was to show a sign of
weakness.
"And none taken. Mr. Forde?"
"Sure thing. Only take a few minutes to set up the camera. Out
here?"
"In the street? Why not? I shall be the first member of the Family
for many long years to be filmed."
"I can prepare it tonight, if I can bring the wag up to your
house."
"But of course, Mr. Forde. I am sure some of the other members of
the Family will be interested in what you do. We did not know that
any such machinery still existed in Deathlands. It is of special
concern to us, I assure you. Now, let us to this
moviemaking."
"He's ready for his close-up, Mr. de Mille," Doc said, getting a
snigger of approval from Mildred. Nobody else understood the old
Hollywood reference.
WINTHROP HAD SOME TROUBLE persuading his people to pose for Forde's
German-made camera. The buckskin-clad man set it on an aluminum
tripod, peering through his viewfinder, gesturing for the ville
folk to close up.
"Want to get you all in," he called. "Don't worry about it. You all
look scared to death. This won't be a frightening film. Be the same
as the other ville films I showed you. Just get in an orderly
couple of lines." He squinted at them again. "Would Mr. Cornelius
want to be in it?"
Ryan heard the soft, insinuating voice, coming from much closer
then he expected. The man had a definite talent for silent
movement. "Yes, Mr. Cornelius would very much like to 'be in it,'
as you put it. I shall place myself right in the middle, with Mr.
Winthrop on my right hand, as befits the right-hand man. And Miss
Simpkins on my left, as befits the oldest inhabitant of the ville
of Bramton."
"Age ain't no benefit, as well you know," she spit. "To everything
there's a season, Cornelius, and that means a time to be born and a
time to die. Just wish you and the Family would recall that now and
again."
Ryan waited to see if the white-haired man would respond, listening
for the touch of barbed steel beneath the delicate silken
glove.
He wasn't disappointed.
"My dear Zenobia I may call you by that name, since we have known
each other for all your lifefor all of my life, I meant to say. It
would be a sorry mistake to imagine that age alone was a reason for
preserving life in that shrunken heart and those frail, withered
lungs."
Ryan caught the fluttering note of panic in the old woman's voice.
"Don't tell the other members of the Family that I spoke out of
turn, Elric. Please?"
The man obviously had to have nodded some sort of agreement, as the
subject was dropped.
And the filming took place.
Despite his objections, Ryan was placed in the front row, toward
the left, at the center of his companions, his face turned to where
he believed the camera to be.
"Even if I had my seeing, I wouldn't have wanted this," he muttered
to Krysty.
"When your sight returns, you'll be pleased we made you do it," she
replied. "Johannes'll keep a copy for us, and we can watch it in a
few days."
"He getting paid by the ville for this?"
"Surely. One of his horses is lame and he'll get a fresh draft
animal for nothing."
"Good deal," Ryan said.
Forde called out, "Quiet now. Here we go, ladies and gentlemen. No
moving, but your best smiles. Now!"