Chapter Thirty-Three

 

 

Doc was still sleeping when they trudged back to the mansion. But he woke up, looking and sounding drugged, sighing at a sudden stab of pain, clutching at the bandages around his stomach. "If I die, Dr. Wyeth, then I shall never forgive you. Do they still have multimillion-dollar medical-malpractice suits here in Deathlands?"

 

"Don't think so, Doc," Mildred said, grinning. "Just have to come back and haunt me."

 

He smiled. "Truth be told, my dear madam, I think I am beginning to feel a little better. I could even manage a drop or two of clear soup, with a brace of coddled eggs. Or some steamed cod with a tiny portion of creamed potatoes. Thinly sliced bread and butter with the crusts cut off. A crystal dish of strawberry conserve. A well-cooked portion of veal Holstein and some lightly boiled cabbage with apple and cinnamon. Fresh-made vanilla ice cream with stewed pears. A schooner of director's port." Doc stopped the list of food and drink as he realized that everyone else was grinning at him. "Well," he said defensively, "it is surely a welcome sign of my impending recovery, is it not?"

 

 

 

THE COUNTESS DIDN'T SHOW for supper that night, choosing to stay in her own quarters.

 

Straub took her place at the head of the table, in good spirits. "I am delighted to hear that the admirable Doc Tanner is recovering from the emergency operation."

 

"Should be up and about in a couple of days," Ryan said. "I'd hoped to be on our way before then, but Guess we'll have to impose a while longer."

 

"Give you a little more time to change your mind about what she wants you to do for her." Straub was twiddling the silver disk around, and Ryan found his eye was caught by it, feeling sucked toward the whirling center, his mind becoming numb, his hearing fading into fuzziness.

 

Jak broke the spell and jerked him back to the dining room. "You got time tell us about end of Trader," he said. "Don't see much wrong your mind, Straub."

 

There was a clear threat, overlaid with anger, and it made the bald man start uneasily. His black eyes met Jak's crimson gaze. "Trader? He and I were on a beach with muties. Ignorant armies clashing by night. I recall that. Another man. Small, with a mustache."

 

"Abe," Ryan said, taking a couple of deep, slow breaths to bring himself back from the brink of mesmerism. The experience warned him yet again how dangerous Straub could be and how one ignored him at one's peril.

 

"Abe?" Straub tested the name as though it were an unusual cheese. "Perhaps."

 

"So, what happened? Don't believe you can't remember. Tell us, Straub."

 

Jak's threat was palpable, but it had little effect. "You must understand I have been through deep and mysterious changes in becoming slave to the countess. Not just in my body, but in every part of my brain. Presume not that I am the man I was, Jak Lauren. I can only operate at her will. Perhaps if she gave me permission to explore that closed room of memory"

 

"You must know if Trader's dead or not," J.B. said, finishing the last spoonful of a steamed jam pudding with a white sauce that was flavored with too little nutmeg. "You were right there in his face."

 

Straub shook his head slowly. "I cannot help you. I see two scenes. One where Trader is butchered on that wet, shingled beach, surrounded by a mound of mutie corpses, faithful Abe dying at his feet from a score of wounds. Then I see him running away, wounded perhaps, but alive." He beamed. "And I do not know which is true. Perhaps neither."

 

 

 

EVERYONE RETIRED EARLY, exhausted from the rigors of a peculiarly strained dayDoc's sudden illness after the visit to Graceland and then the operation, followed by the grotesque horrors of the execution of the treacherous sec sergeant.

 

They all looked in on Doc before going to bed, delighted that the indomitable old-timer was already showing signs of returning to his crazed good health.

 

Mildred found that he was running a slight fever and gave him some drugs from the ville to try to reduce it. But it pushed his always fragile mind away over the brink.

 

He reverted to a time when he was living back on a cold winter's day in the nineteenth century, married to his beloved Emily. Doc was convinced that he had been out sleighing and skating and had caught influenza, which accounted for his temperature and general malaise.

 

"Keep darling Rachel and dear little Jolyon away from me, my beloved sweetheart," he said, eyes closed, breathing fast, cheeks flushed.

 

Krysty sat with him, holding his hand, giving him comfort in his isolation, talking quietly to him, trying to help him maintain a grip on real reality.

 

"You're fine, Doc, and you're with us. Soon be fighting-fit again."

 

He nodded, smiling. "Always one to look on the sunny side of the street, Emily my dove. If only I had refused to go on the horse-drawn sleigh with those confounded Ambersons. They think themselves so magnificent!"

 

 

 

IT WAS A LITTLE AFTER NINE when Ryan and Krysty went to their room and slid the bolt, undressed and climbed into their four-poster.

 

They lay together, side against side, watching the occasional flash of pinkish chem lightning through the mullioned windows on the east side of the room.

 

"How long before we leave this place, lover?"

 

Ryan rolled over to face her. "If it hadn't been for Doc's sickness, I was planning to move at dawn. Slip out and steal one of their wags and get going back northeast to the redoubt and jump on again."

 

"Countess would have come after you."

 

"No. She's arrogant beyond belief, but she isn't stupid. She knows that a full-scale knock-'em-down firefight would go against her. We got the power."

 

There was a long silence. Krysty's right hand reached out and feathered across Ryan's chest, touching him lower, waiting, caressing him very gently, waiting.

 

"No?" she whispered.

 

"Not tonight, I don't think. Just not in the right mood for it."

 

Krysty withdrew her hand. "Any reason?"

 

"Keep thinking about that bitch and her demands on me. Can't she see that if there's a biological problem, then it must lie with her? It gets to me the way she keeps looking at me. It's kind of scary."

 

"Why not do what she wants?"

 

Ryan sat up, startled. "How's that? You greasing my wheels, lover?"

 

" 'Course not. You know me better than that, Ryan. Not a teasing matter. I truly wouldn't mind if you slept with her just the once. Take the pressure off all of us. I have this bad feeling. I can see it, lover. That she's going to cause some triple-bad trouble to try and get her own way. I see death."

 

Ryan sighed, fumbling down her arm until he could grip her hand tightly. "I know all that old-vid shit about a man's got to do what a man's got to do. I guess it wouldn't hurt, not in the cosmic scale of things, if I did it. But it would matter, Krysty. It's wrong. Trying to talk around it and justify it doesn't alter that. I can't ride around this one. Sorry. We can hold on for a couple more days. And then we'll be safe."

 

"Straub?"

 

Ryan sniffed. "Yeah. Man to watch. Might be worth chilling that cold-heart son of a bitch before we move on. I know he's got this weird change, and losing his cock and balls and all that. But there's still something deep-down, fundamentally evil about Straub. Caught him trying to get me under with that silver toy of his. Nearly managed it, too."

 

"Keep away from him until we break and run. The deaths that I see are linked to him."

 

"I couldn't do it with her. And that's all there is to it, lover. Couldn't." Ryan let go of Krysty's hand and rolled over onto his back again.

 

 

 

THEY SLEPT until the full fury of a chem storm broke around three in the morning, making the windows rattle, sending roof slates clattering into the courtyard. The room was brightly lit by the constant lightning, and demonically heavy rain pounded against the casements.

 

As it finally moved away toward the west, Ryan slid to the side of the bed, stroking Krysty's breast, feeling the nipple harden at his touch.

 

"You want to, lover?"

 

He took her right hand and guided it over the flat, muscular wall of his stomach, until she could check it for herself. He felt her smile as her strong fingers tightened around his hardness.

 

"I want to," he whispered.

 

 

 

IT WAS STILL RAINING steadily as they all went down for breakfast. Doc was dozing when they looked in on him, but his mind seemed to have returned to the present. He was aware of why he was ill and what had happened to him, asking for food, though Mildred urged caution for the time being.

 

To Ryan's surprise, they found that the countess was already seated at the head of the table, eating half of a honeydew melon, sugared, with a side dish of raspberries with clotted cream.

 

She smiled at them. "Awful storm last night. Done some damage to the roof and smashed a window in the east wing on the first floor." She gestured for them to help themselves from the row of silver chafing dishes on a long sideboard.

 

They served themselves from the usual array of eggs and meats and fish and fruit, sitting down and eating, mostly in silence, until the countess spoke again.

 

"Hope it didn't disturb you too much. The storm. How is the dear old Doc?"

 

"On the highway back to health," Mildred replied. "Could be up and moving in a couple of days if there's no infection."

 

"So, you'll be leaving us then?"

 

Ryan answered her. "I think so. Been good staying here, and we appreciate your hospitality. Thanks from all of us, Countess."

 

She nodded and smiled graciously. "We don't see many outlanders here who carry their own sense of power, Ryan. We have travelers and mercenaries and third-rate traders. Failures and losers. Mostly wanting free food and beds for a while. I turn them away. My only interest is in winners. Losers just get caught on the wrong side of the line. I don't know them. Don't want to know them."

 

During the short speech, her manner changed. The glossy, friendly mask slipped sideways, and the real nature of the ruthless woman peeked through. Her hooded eyes narrowed and her lips grew tight and thin. Her hands clenched, knuckles whitening around the silver spoon.

 

Straub shuffled in his seat, smiling nervously at Ryan and the others, trying to hide a small shrug of apology but terrified of showing it to his mistress.

 

"What are your plans for today?" he asked Ryan, seeking to ease past the moment.

 

"Thought I'd take a walk and look out over the gorge later," he said. "All this rain should have made the big river kind of spectacular."

 

The bald man nodded. "Sounds a good plan. Perhaps I'll come with you."

 

It was about the last thing that Ryan wanted, but he saw no reason to upset Straub, not when they would so soon be leaving the ville. "Sure."

 

"Too wet," Jak said.

 

"I'll stay and keep an eye on Doc." Mildred took a last sip of water from the goblet and stood. "You going to go out wet-walking, John?"

 

The Armorer shook his head. "Rain doesn't have much appeal for me, thanks. Take a rain check, I guess."

 

A joke from J.B. was as rare as a benevolent stickie, and Ryan grinned broadly. "Nice one, bro," he said, then turned to Krysty.

 

"How about you, lover?"

 

She looked across the dining room at the gray morning and the steady trickle of water across the windows from a blocked gutter. "You go, Ryan. I can find something to do around the house. Wouldn't mind some time in that library."

 

 

 

WHEN THEY FILED OUT, Ryan saw the countess standing by the front door, idly running her fingers across the pattern of a beautiful inlaid table, veneered with a dozen different colors of marble. She beckoned to him.

 

He gestured to the others to go along. "Be with you in a minute," he said. "Then I'll get myself ready to go out into the grounds."

 

Straub was suddenly at his shoulder, almost shepherding him toward the woman. "Before we go for our walk, Ryan, how about a small drink in my room to warm us? I have an excellent liqueur brewed from peaches and cherries. Just the stuff to keep away the cold and wet."

 

"Why not?"

 

The countess turned to face him, smiling, the mask back in place again. "A last question. And I promise I will not ask you again. I have never met a man who I more wanted to father a child for me. It is a small matter. A few minutes that may even prove enjoyable for both of us. Please, Ryan." She reached out with a studied impulsiveness and gripped his hand tightly and stared into his face. "I beg you."

 

He shook his head. "Not the way I live my life, Countess. I'm real honored, but you have to look elsewhere. Can't believe you wouldn't find a long line of men ready and willing and probably able. Sorry."

 

She nodded and let go of his hand, keeping her noble smile pasted firmly in place. "I understand. Just remember this moment, Ryan, and the price it may cost. Talk comes very cheap, but the price of action can be colossal."

 

The countess turned away without any further explanation, walking quickly along the hall until she vanished into the pool of shadows that melted at the bottom of the wide main staircase, leaving Ryan alone with Straub.

 

 

 

THE RAIN WAS still falling, sheeting gray and desolate across the trees and leaf-strewed lawns outside the window of Straub's room.

 

It was a large chamber, with an in suite bathroom. The walls were draped with black velvet, sprinkled with silver-and-gold stars and moons. A number of small round tables, inset with chalcedony and onyx, were set around the room, bearing crystal globes and odd-angled prisms. There was a sofa upholstered in deepest purple and a single bed, narrow and uncomfortable.

 

"Sit down," Straub said. "I'll get a couple of glasses for a sip of my sable nectar. Then we can brave the elements. It will be a fine sight."

 

The one thing that Ryan coped with badly was boredom. He needed to be up and moving, and the sudden illness of Doc had meant that they were hanging around the ville for longer than he wanted. He knew that without action his razored combat reflexes became blurred and his concentration wandered.

 

But a walk in the bracing rain would make him feel better, and a small drink with the bastard, Straub, couldn't do much harm.

 

He sipped at the tiny engraved glass, the jet black liqueur tasting oddly sweet and bitter. But there was the delicious flavor of tart cherries and summer-ripe peaches.

 

"To wishes fulfilled and enemies confounded," Straub said, raising his own glass. "Good, is it not, Ryan?"

 

"Excellent." It had a warming glow as it slipped down. He drained the glass, looking at the few sticky drops that remained in the bottom.

 

"Another?" He reached out to pour a second measure, smiling at Ryan as he did so.

 

Straub lit a number of long purple sticks of incense, filling the room with a heavy scent of lime and ginger. It seemed to be darker, and the bald man switched on a very bright overhead light that focused down onto the table where he and Ryan were sitting. Ryan closed his eye for a moment, blinking at the dazzle, aware that he was feeling more tired than he'd thought.

 

"You all right, Ryan? You look sleepy." Straub's voice sounded solicitous but oddly muffled, as if he were speaking from a far-off room.

 

"Fine. Fireblast! But my head is"

 

"Open your eye, Ryan." There was a sharper note in the man's voice, snapping out the order.

 

Ryan swallowed hard, feeling the short hairs at his nape beginning to prickle with unease. His brain was puddled, like at the beginning of a jump, and his hearing was becoming more and more muffled. Unconsciously his hand began to teach for the butt of the SIG-Sauer, but it was missing, the holster empty.

 

"Open your eye, you fucking shit!"

 

Startled, Ryan did as Straub commanded, finding himself staring directly into the spinning silver disk that the bald man held in his right hand. It gripped his attention, though he made an effort to look away. It felt as if his brain were gripped in a vise, sucking him under.

 

Straub laughed, the voice echoing and echoing, filling the scented room. "So fucking easy, you triple-stupe arrogant bastard! It's cost you everything. Your friends are all prisoner now or already dead. After you've obliged the countess, then you will join them. It's over, Ryan. Over."