Chapter Seventeen

 

 

As fast as the striking vine was, Ryan Cawdor was faster. He avoided the flashing thorn dripping ichor, and seized the attacking plant limb just behind the scabrous attachment. It bucked in his hold, stronger than he would have thought possible.

 

Gehrig guffawed with laughter, nearly doubled over at the table. "You know, that shit usually gets everybody the first time."

 

Ryan eyed the raider captain coldly. "You want to have somebody put this thing away before I decide to pass it along?"

 

At least ten or a dozen other vines had leaped from the confines of the wicker basket and wound their way around the table, chair legs and other men. Two of the waitresses screamed, and the hypnotic trance created by the naked brunettes working the double-headed dildo on the stage was rudely shattered. The shrills of a faked mutual orgasm petered out.

 

Gehrig waved the knife he'd been using to carve bite-size hunks from the meat in front of him.

 

Three of his men responded at once, grabbing the rooted pod in the wicker basket and fighting the tentacles back into place.

 

"Effing tree-huggers call those things tanglers," Gehrig said. "They're a combination pet, watchdog and source of food and clothing. That's what we're getting out of our little raids," Gehrig said. "The tanglers have poison in them, you see. Harsh stuff. Takes long minutes to kill a man, and there's no antidote that we've been able to come up with. We've got some predark body armor that comes in handy for capturing these little gems."

 

Ryan watched as one of the hard thorns suddenly stabbed into the back of a man's neck. He cursed hoarsely in response, his face blanching white with the pain and shock of it. Another man reached out a gloved hand and plucked it from his flesh. A thin stream of blood threaded its way down into his collar. Back on stage, the two women were moving against each other again, and the crowd had turned away from Gehrig and his men.

 

"These we bring in with us are milked," the raider captain said. He reached inside his blouse and brought out a vinyl pouch on a clip around a chain on his neck "This" he poured out a greenish powder onto the tabletop, "is worth its weight in blasters, gold or any kind of money you'd care to name."

 

Ryan glanced at the powder. The granules were large, shaped like dry rice, only a quarter the size.

 

"Dreamsand," Gehrig said in a low voice. "Every little piece of it an experience like no other. Takes you just this side of death, brings you nightmares and dreamings the like you've never had before. Found out about it from a dryad seer I had chance to talk to. Had a bag of this stuff hanging around his neck." The raider captain made an open gesture, offering the dreamsand to Ryan.

 

The one-eyed man shook his head. Nothing that put him out of touch with being able to take care of himself sounded at all good. But he was aware of the lust emanating from the men around him.

 

"This dryad seer," Gehrig went on as he scooped the dreamsand back into the pouch with his little finger, "was on the run for his life. Seems he'd started a little business for himself back in Wildroot. That's what the tree-huggers call their thorpe. Prince Boldt didn't take kindly to self-enterprise. He sent his seed heralds out after the seer, probably intending to sacrifice him on one of those altars he's got tucked away out in the woods for those times when be really wants to make a point. Anyway, it didn't take me long to convince the seer to part with his information about how to make the dreamsand. Especially not since my mates and I had saved him from the seed heralds."

 

Ryan had the feeling that Gehrig's generosity hadn't extended much past the learning of that secret.

 

"After we milk the tanglers," the raider captain said, "we harvest some of them. Many as we can get. Bastard vines don't do so well transplanted here, but we can usually get another milking or three out of them before they drop dead. Then we turn them into mulch. Never have been able to get them to seed properly, but they grow everywhere in the dryad lands. And you should see these things moving when the dryads sing to them."

 

"They sing to them?" Ryan asked.

 

"Yes. Blighters can make the tanglers slither and dance, too."

 

"The vines got intelligence?"

 

"Or close to it." Gehrig rubbed his little finger against his lower gum.

 

Ryan saw the drug take effect almost immediately, lending the raider captain's eyes a glow.

 

"You don't want to try to take those vines on when you got a dryad around," Gehrig said. "What those bastard tanglers can't think of on their own, the dryads will. A man going up against them in the dark, he's best off killing any dryads within seeing distance, and even then could be better off just forgetting the tanglers because they'll be all stirred up by the tree-hugger getting himself killed."

 

"Tell me about Boldt," Ryan suggested.

 

Gehrig leaned back against the booth and let out an expansive breath. "He's smart and he's harsh. Has no qualms about killing his own people if it comes to that. Any one of them crosses him, he and the seed heralds that's his raid squad near as I can figuretake that person out. Sometimes those people will just turn up dead. Sometimes he offers them on the altar, sacrifices them to the pagan gods those people hold near and dear. Lugh Silverhand himself, and a goddess, but I don't recall her name at the moment."

 

"What does he do with strangers?" Ryan asked.

 

Gehrig's eyes gleamed like a cat's. "Thinking about your missing woman?"

 

Ryan nodded.

 

"It's a fool's errand you'd be on if you went after her. More than likely, he's killed her already."

 

"Either way," Ryan said, "I'm going to have to know the lay of it. Got a habit of going home with the ones I brought to the dance."

 

"I like the cut of you," Gehrig said, his eyes sleepy with the power of the dreamsand. "You speak your mind, and you aren't afraid to back it up, either."

 

Ryan ignored the compliment, getting to the heart of the matter. "How long has Boldt been around?"

 

"Forty years? Fifty years?" Gehrig shrugged. "Hard to say. I can't remember a time when he wasn't there. Since there were dryads in the forest, Boldt's been there guiding them."

 

"How many other nasty surprises does he have?" Ryan asked. "Other than the tanglers."

 

"The tree-huggers are a strange lot. As you could see, they dress all in green, worship pagan gods who demand blood sacrifices upon occasion, and have strange powers."

 

"Powers?"

 

"Scrying and the like," the raider captain said. "Premonitions. Fortune-telling. Like that. Once in a while some of my boys will come staggering out of that forest somewhat worse for wear. It seems Boldt is fighting against a little insurrection within his borders. He controls the weapons and only the ones who support his rule get them."

 

Ryan thought about the boy who'd intercepted them in the mountain range, on the run from the Celtic forces. "Any idea why they're not so happy with him?"

 

"Rumors," Gehrig said. "Whispers about something the dryads call the Time of the Great Uprooting. Some shit like that. Never impressed me. But the insurrection gave me the idea to branch out some. Figured if I could meet up with some of those rebel tree-huggers, I could start up an arms deal with them. They could give me tangler poison, and I could give them guns."

 

"They go for that?"

 

"No. Bastards have got their standards. I set out some of my team as bait and managed to capture a couple of them. Laid out the deal. Even let them see the guns I was going to be trading in. Told them they could take them with them, sort of on loan until I got my first delivery. Then they'd be like a signing bonus." Gehrig let out a disgusted breath. "They were so bastard narrow-minded they turned me down."

 

"Why?"

 

"Said the tangler plants were sacred to them."

 

"But they didn't have any problem going up against Boldt?"

 

"He's not sacred. He's just in control, according to the way they see things. What they want is to start a country of their own."

 

"Boldt won't let them."

 

"No. They're under a death sentence. Any of them who get found out."

 

Ryan wondered if that was how Tarragon fit in.

 

"So we play our little games at night," Gehrig went on. "I take a raiding party into the dryad lands, Boldt's raid teams try to run us to ground when they catch us and the rebels try to mug us for our weapons, without getting caught by Boldt's raiders at the same time. Course, the shoe's on the other foot, too, because they don't mind offing Boldt's people and framing us for it if they get the chance."

 

Ryan drank his beer, thinking. "Nobody knows where Boldt came from?"

 

"There are those who think those green bastards were always there, that the nukestorm just shook them out of whatever hiding place they'd set up for themselves. They got powers, Ryan, like I said. I've even heard stories of them flying through the trees, changing their shapes to those of animals, shrinking down to the size of ants."

 

"But never seen it?"

 

"Fuck, no! Those people, they've got some mutie powers, but it isn't anything more than that. I'd stake my left nut on that."

 

"Ever been into the dryad ville?" Ryan asked.

 

Gehrig acted as if he didn't want to answer the question at first. "Don't like the idea of anybody going out to throw his life away."

 

"The better informed I get," Ryan argued, "the less likely I'd be to throw my life away. And if I find out enough that going in doesn't seem a likely prospect, I won't go."

 

Gehrig stared at him hard, running his little finger across his gums again. "You'd do that?"

 

"If I knew she was dead, or was going to be and there wasn't anything I could do about it."

 

"You're a hard man."

 

"Just mebbe bright enough to see the difference between the possible and the impossible."

 

"I'm telling you now that going in after the woman is impossible."

 

Ryan nodded. "Mebbe. But I'll have to sort that out for myself."

 

"You owe her?"

 

"As much as anybody."

 

"You owe me, too, Ryan." Gehrig's voice was soft and low, but carried an edge to it.

 

Ryan didn't see it that way, but didn't argue. He let the silence between them build.

 

The raider captain leaned forward and took a pencil from his pocket. The lead was greasy and heavy. He took a moment to whittle it sharp again with a pocketknife. "I've had people scout the perimeter, but never inside." He sketched a horseshoe shape on top of the table. "He's got a fortress up in the mountains. It's all ringed by trees. One way in." He tapped the pencil point against the gap in the horseshoe.

 

"What about up the mountains?" Ryan asked.

 

"Be a real bitch to do. That spot was well-chosen. Easy to defend. Mountains are full of wolves, and they keep tangler plants all along the sides."

 

"That where you get most of yours?"

 

Gehrig looked at him.

 

"Didn't figure they'd leave them just sitting out for you to come along and take whenever you wanted."

 

"Yeah. That's where we get them." Gehrig laid the pencil against the left leg of the horseshoe. "Here."

 

"So they're conditioned to you coming up that way."

 

"It's easier. I get snipers up in the trees with silenced rifles, we can take out the perimeter guards, get sometimes an hour, hour and a half to work before any of the dryads get wise."

 

"How do you take the tanglers?"

 

"With the armor. Just wade in and get them, throw them in the baskets. Sometimes we have to kill three plants just to get one. They plant them pretty tight."

 

Ryan nodded. "Raid teams. Tanglers. Wolves. Anything else?"

 

"If by some lucky chance you were able to get inside the thorpe, Boldt's primary fortress is high up. In the trees here." Gehrig tapped the bow of the horseshoe.

 

"Is it a building?"

 

"Underground. Lives in the root systems from what I've been told."

 

"Who told you?"

 

"Dryads I've talked to over the years. They weren't in any shape to lie."

 

"Boldt lives in the roots? Not caves?"

 

"The roots," the raider captain insisted. "From the sound of them, they've been gen-gineered."

 

"So were the tanglers," Ryan said. "Something like that, does all them things, food, clothing, protection and the like, didn't just happen because of some mutie strain."

 

"I agree."

 

"How much tech does Boldt have?"

 

Gehrig leaned forward, eyes alight with the drug and larceny. "The way I hear it, Boldt has computer systems down there from predark days."

 

Ryan knew that meant the security didn't end with flesh-and-blood guards, wolves or plants. Still, leaving Mildred there without knowing one way or the other how things stood wasn't an option.

 

And if there was predark tech there, perhaps there was a mat-trans unit that would take them back to Deathlands, as well. The possibility drew him in.

 

"Boldt is bastard crazy," Gehrig said. "He starts some of the stories on his own. He's got him an idea that he's some kind of knight risen up to strike vengeance at the rest of the world. Every so often you can see him out there on a horse, wearing this black armor and waving a sword, swearing to bring new life to this barren world. Those are his words. Says Lugh Silverhand himself assigned him to bringing this about."

 

Ryan didn't comment. Since he'd been wandering Deathlands, he'd come across his share of religious wackos. With life in Deathlands ground back down to the basics, sometimes the things people chose to believe in the most were things they could touch, weigh and measure the least. It reminded him of the desert muties and their allegiance to the giant spiders.

 

"I'll keep that in mind," the one-eyed man said. "Right now I think I'm going to take advantage of that hospitality you mentioned."

 

"You do that," Gehrig said. He pulled a cigar from his pocket and lit up. "And you keep in mind what I said. You get a bug up your butt to go venturing into the dryad lands, you check with me first. I could help."

 

Ryan glanced at the flat stare the man gave him, knowing the raider captain wouldn't do anything that he didn't figure benefited him first. For the moment Gehrig wanted whatever he could get from Ryanwithout a direct confrontation. But the one-eyed man also got the impression that none of them was free to leave New London without Gehrig's permission. Even to save Mildred. "I'll keep that in mind," Ryan said.

 

 

 

DOC WANDERED the streets for most of an hour, drinking in the sights. He consciously stayed within the inner hub of New London, taking in the lines of the collapsed buildings, remembering what things had been like. They were more like the life he'd known.

 

A small shop, the windows filled with curios, caught his attention. He crossed the street, avoiding the horses and the carts, the clopping of the hooves echoing between the confines of the tall buildings on both sides. The window display was arranged on four wooden shelves wider than Doc could stretch his hands apart.

 

In the middle of the second shelf, next to a box kite done up in bright blue paper, was an old-fashioned wooden top. The string, obviously bleached but still looking gray, was wound tightly around the top.

 

Doc leaned against the window and felt the pain. He'd given such a top to his children, had spent a few delightful evenings playing with them while Emily watched on, saying how she had three children instead of the two.

 

His breath was tight in his chest, and he was close enough to the panes that it frosted the glass when he exhaled. His vision blurred with the tears as he whispered their names. Reality blurred with it, and he was only shaken out of it by the tapping against the glass.

 

Pushing himself back, noticing the gray old man his ghostly reflection assured him he'd become, Doc glanced at the source of the noise.

 

The shopkeeper stared at him from inside the store, with close-set, inquisitive eyes like those on a small bird. The test of the man reinforced the impression thin and gangly, narrow shoulders humped up like folded wings.

 

"Are you all right?" the shopkeeper demanded as he opened the door. One hand stayed out of sight under the leather carpenter's apron he wore.

 

It was a sad time, Doc reflected, when toy sellers had to go armed, as well. "I'm fine. Just a bit fatigued, my friend. I saw the toys in your window and got lost in a few memories."

 

The shopkeeper appeared to consider that for a moment. He shifted restlessly from foot to foot, then seemed to arrive at a decision. "I've got some tea brewed. If you've an interest."

 

"English tea," Doc said in delight. He felt his smile tight on his face. "Sir, you're a gentleman and a scholar."

 

"It's not Earl Grey," the shopkeeper said as he ushered Doc in. "And I've a few biscuits and a bit of honey, as well."

 

"Sounds like you've a well-laid table," Doc said. He introduced himself and offered his hand.

 

"George," the little man said. "George Ellison. And the honey is first-rate. Not many beekeepers in this part of the country now, you know. But I've a little arrangement with a lady in the ville who has a number of children. A hardworking lass, she is, but there are few toys for the children without a bit of bartering."

 

Doc stood at the high counter in the back of the store. The place smelled of woods and paints, varnishes and lacquers, wood smoke and pipe tobacco. It was a man's place, untouched by the finesse of a woman.

 

"Your place?" Doc asked.

 

Ellison nodded. "And my father's before me."

 

"Both toy makers?"

 

"Aye. A slim trade, but an honest one. Not an easy thing to find in these times."

 

"I will warrant not," Doc agreed, taking the cup of tea the other man handed him. He also made a selection from the tray of small biscuits that had been kept under a glass cover on a flowered plate.

 

"You're one of the newcomers."

 

"News, I see, travels fast here."

 

"What little of it there is," Ellison agreed. "I myself have not laid eyes on someone from outside New London these past seven years."

 

"That is a long time for a man to go without seeing new faces."

 

"We don't get many visitors." Ellison sipped his tea. "I've been told you're from across the water, but not one of the European countries."

 

"True." Doc found the tea strong, dark and good. The biscuits, as best he remembered them, were a little dry. "I'm from a dark, dark place once called the United States of America, but now appropriately named Deathlands."

 

"Tell me about it."

 

And Doc did, spinning out the stories, glancing frequently at the racks of toys on the shelves around them, enjoying the quaintness of the shop and the manners of the little man sharing the tea and countertop with him. Only every now and then did the guilt visit him about the predicament Mildred was in. Ryan would rescue her, though, if it was possiblewithout his help, should it come to that.

 

Then he brought the conversation back around to London, the original city. "I had friends in England," he said, "before the nukestorm blew into the world and caused the Lantic to drink down the cities."

 

Ellison raised his eyebrows. "You've been to Great Britain before?"

 

"A long time ago," Doc said. "So many things have changed during those years." He let the man go on thinking that he had been a small child when it happened. "I was wondering if there was anyone who had archives available to them regarding who might have lived in London after the disaster. Perhaps even before then."

 

Scratching his stubbled chin, Ellison said, "There's a man. A privateer who sails the coastal waters. He's called Long Johnson by friend and foe alike, though that's not his name."

 

"Is he playing on the sobriquet of Long John Silver?" Doc asked.

 

"No." Ellison held his hands apart almost two feet in front of him. "Man's reputed to have a shank on him this big."

 

"By the Three Kennedys!"

 

Ellison dropped his hands and nodded. "And a rough cobber with it, too, I've heard tell. Sometimes, they say, it doesn't matter to him whether it's a rooster or a hen he's a-mounting."

 

"Sounds positively Neanderthal," Doc commented.

 

"On the one side, sure. But on the other, Long Johnson is a man of letters. Educated in one of the European schools and from a baron's brood. Found him a life on the sea and a thirst for robbery. He does some business here in New London because we're the biggest thorpe around. He and Blackjack Gehrig are close."

 

"I have met Mr. Gehrig." Doc sipped his tea, waiting.

 

"Man also collects books," Ellison said. "Every kind of book imaginable. Long as it's paper and in one of the four languages he speaks. He has regular stops up north, where Old London used to be, and regular agreements with the mariners who swim along the bottom and bring up whatever they can that might still be salvageable."

 

Doc nodded. "Mayhap he has some files, or old telephone books that could contain the information I'm looking for."

 

"He'd be the only man I could think of to send you to," Ellison said. "But you'd be taking your own life in your hands when you talked with him. He's not an easy man to talk to, and totally crazy."

 

"Where would I find him?" Doc asked.

 

"Luck is with you," Ellison replied, "though whether good or ill, I can't say. But the pirate is in town."

 

Though he knew it was a long shot, Doc felt himself grow more excited. "Do you know where?"

 

Ellison glanced up at the cuckoo clock over the Mickey Mouse display behind the counter. It was a little after two in the afternoon. "The Globe opened up for a matinee at one-thirty. Knowing the captain, he'll be there since he's in New London. It's the only place where he can fulfill both his natures."

 

Doc wondered at the grimace that twisted the man's face as he made the pronouncement. "Could I beg directions from you?"

 

Ellison was silent for a moment. "Long Johnson will have a murderous crew with him. If he should decide not to take a liking to you, you'd not be surprised to find yourself suddenly the butt of his ill humor."

 

"I shall keep that in mind, my friend."

 

"This, then, is that important?"

 

Doc eyed the man squarely. "Yes, it is, friend Ellison."

 

Grudgingly the toy maker gave him directions. "Best you watch yourself in there. The Globe is not a good place to be," he warned.