"It doesn't sound dangerous. It sounds useful." There had been many times when Job wished that he could eat grass and leaves.
"Depends how you define danger. Do you want to see the world population double—again? That's what it might do, if we could all eat cellulose. It's nice to have plenty of young and poor, to look after the needs of the old and wealthy, but the biggest threat to the Royal Hundred, and therefore to me, is change. Any major change is bad. We control food and fuel and dope and land and almost everything else. But could we stay in control if the demand side on food went haywire? No one is sure. No one would want to try. That's why Hanna Kronberg is so dangerous. If she's still working on her project, inside the Tandy . . ."
Except that she was surely not. Job had become convinced of it as the bus toiled on over the Great Plains like a snail, hardly seeming to move in a whole day. He had been filled with a sense of paradox as they passed through the barren lands of Iowa, where topsoil had vanished and only a gray and sterile substrate was left for crops. The Nebraska Tandy was supposed to be a place of ultimate punishment. Yet every space image suggested a land more fertile than anything Job was seeing on the way. In Xanadu, Hanna Kronberg would not need to pursue her dream of humans who could eat twigs and leaves. And it made no sense for her to do so, for another reason: no matter what she developed, it could never be exported from the Tandy.
If you go in, you don't come back. Hanna Kronberg might be brilliant, but the one-way nature of the Tandy was as true for her as for anyone.
A clatter of metal a few seats in front woke him from his reverie. Feet drummed on the bare floor of the bus, rhythmic at first, then random and convulsive. Job heard a strangled cry and smelled a terrible stench of evacuated body fluids. The driver stopped the bus. He and his co-driver walked back to the seat where the noise had come from and bent over the prisoner there.
Job knew that it was too late. The same thing had happened five times in the past twenty-four hours. The pattern was clear now. The drug that kept the prisoners sedated had a cumulative effect, or it was being fed intravenously at higher and higher doses. First a prisoner showed little interest in food and relieved himself at less frequent intervals. Then the stimulant patches lost effectiveness. The prisoner would remain slumped in one place, unaware of anything. At last he went into periodic convulsions of increasing severity. If the first fit did not kill, the second or third would always do the trick.
The drivers finished their examination. They pulled the body into the aisle and dragged it away to the door of the bus. It would be stowed with the other five, in the empty luggage compartment. The task of the two drivers was to deliver a shipment of prisoners to the Nebraska Tandy. Dead or alive, that made no difference.
They left the door wide open. The wind that blew in was icy enough to make Job shiver in his thin shirt and pants, but he welcomed it. He could stand cold, but the smell of sweat and urine and excrement inside the bus made him gag. He had been unable to force down the last two food packages. He peered at the road ahead, wondering when he would catch a first glimpse of Xanadu.
The drivers returned rubbing chilled hands and cursing the snow, and slid the door closed at once. They were impervious to the stench. From their point of view it was part of a trade-off. Job had seen them eating the extra food packages left by the dead prisoners. The bus started on its way again.
Fifteen minutes later Job heard a change in the note of the engine. He thought at first that it was a mechanical problem, something that had held them up twice already on the trip. Then he realized that they were ascending an incline, so long and uniform that the ground ahead looked flat.
Over the brow of that long hill, according to everything that Job had been told in his briefings, lay the only entrance to the Nebraska Tandy. Already the sky ahead was a darker shade of gray.
In Xanadu, the sky burns black.
If you go in, you don't come back.
History recorded no exception to that rule.
Chapter Thirteen
Xanadu
The bus grumbled to a halt on a long, flat stretch of road. The nearest buildings were still a quarter of a mile ahead, half-hidden by a flurry of snowflakes. Just fifty yards in front of the bus stood a flimsy wire fence with huge red signs set along it at regular intervals:
T. A. N. D. I.
TOXIC AND NUCLEAR DISPOSAL
INSTALLATION ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK
NO EXIT PERMITTED BEYOND THIS POINT
The bus drivers were suddenly busy. One of them was tinkering with the dashboard, while the other went down the aisle. Job, halfway back, saw that the man had a hypodermic and a big bottle of milky liquid. At each prisoner he stopped, filled the syringe, and gave the man a shot in the thigh.
No pretense here of clean needles. But as the prisoners at the front of the bus began to stir, Job had a frightening thought. A stimulant that would bring a heavily drugged man to consciousness might blow an undrugged man's brain right out of the top of his head.
When the driver came to him Job put out a hand, restraining the syringe. "Not for me, I'm all right without it."
The man stared, at Job and then at the bottle he was holding. "You can't possibly be all right. You have to have this."
He moved the needle closer. Again Job pushed him away. "I'm fine." He spoke loudly and clearly.
"But—"
"Rafael!" The voice of the other driver came from the front of the bus. "Don't dawdle around. If he says he's awake, he must be awake."
The man with the syringe straightened, gave Job another puzzled look, and moved on. He was still injecting the last prisoners when the second driver left the bus, went around to its side, and pulled a flat runabout vehicle from the luggage compartment. Job heard the whine of an electric motor, and the shout, "All set. Come on!"
The second driver finished the last shots in record time and ran for the front of the bus. He moved a lever on the dashboard and at once jumped out, falling down in the snow. The other man helped him to his feet. They were both climbing onto the runabout when the engine of Job's bus roared to life. There was a jerk of meshing gears and skidding wheels. The driverless vehicle began to move along the road at a steady five miles an hour.
Job's first urge was to follow the drivers into the snowy road, but the bus was already rolling past the fence with its warning signs. Job moved to stand at the open door, peering through the front window. And then another vehicle was moving up alongside, paralleling theirs. As Job fell back into the vacant seat of one of the dead prisoners, a bearded man leapt across to the steps of the bus and ran lightly up them. In a couple of seconds he had control of the vehicle. He drove it to the nearest buildings and brought it to a careful halt.
A small group of people was waiting in the snow. They came forward as the bus stopped.
"All right." A squat man wearing a sleeveless shirt to show off massive arm muscles put his foot on the lowest step. "Let's see what pile of crap they've left with us this time. Digger and Sim, you get the live ones. Looks like they're pretty far gone. Smells like it, too."
The prisoners had been returning to dazed life. Judging from their groans and shudders, they felt terrible. The crew from Xanadu shepherded them from the bus and placed them shivering in a line in the snow. The cold wind sliced through the thin shirts, providing the last step of uncomfortable revival.
"Right then." The muscle man stepped in front of them. "In a few minutes Digger'll take you inside. You'll get warmed up, and a bath, and food if you feel up to it. But first things first. You made it. You're inside Xanadu now, the Great Nebraska Tandy. And you're going to stay here. There's the way out—but it's closed."
He pointed back up the road. There was a long stunned silence, while the prisoners scanned the empty waste of snow. At last one of them gave a warbling cry of fear. He started running towards the fence.
Job knew how he felt. He had the urge to run himself, but he noticed that the Xanadu guards made no move to pursue. They were watc
hing, waiting.
The fleeing man's condition was no better than Job's. As he ran his legs became wobbly and he moved with more and more effort. He slowed to a walk, until right at the fence line he gave a shout of triumph, raised his arms like a runner breaking the winners' tape, and rushed forward. As though that were a signal, a series of whiplash cracks sounded from beyond the fence. Beams of blinding blue flashed out from three small cones and converged on the escaping prisoner.
He exploded at the middle. The head, chest, and raised arms were blown high in the air, up and away from the running legs. While the half-torso was still rising, the three beams hit again and again. There was a series of secondary explosions. Head, arms, and chest spattered into bloody mists, the hips and legs formed another.
The whip cracks ended. A strange and absolute silence fell on the snowscape. The flakes still drifted down. Where they touched the road through the fence, a lurid splotch of crimson and black slowly began to fade to pink and gray.
Job shuddered. Wilfred Dell had told him that if and when Job gave the signal, the boundary security system would be switched off on this same road so that Job could escape. But Job would not know that the signal had been received and it was safe to pass through, until he was actually outside the Tandy. Did he have the nerve to try, after what he had just seen?
"That was lesson number one," the squat man was saying. He looked along the line of stunned prisoners. "Anyone else want to try? Guess not. We never have more than one in a busload. For your general information, your buddy there just used the only practical spin-off of the old SDI program. You saw it at low power. It steps up the energy if it doesn't wipe out a target first time. People here found out—the hard way—that it can vaporize a full-size batde tank if it has to." He turned away. "All right, Digger, get 'em in now, before we all freeze our nuts off."
The prisoners were steered to a long, low building of sheet metal and ushered inside. It was even hotter than the bus, and the sudden changes of temperature were too much for a couple of the men. They doubled over, clutching at their middles. The bearded guard, Digger, walked to stand by them.
"Wait it out." His voice was oddly gende. "It's the drugs, you see, just the drugs. Once you sweat 'em through your system you'll feel better." He helped one of the prisoners to his feet. "There we go. Clothes off now, all of you. It's bath time. Smell yourselves, an' you'll know why."
Job was soon naked except for the crucifix around his neck. He was issued a square cake of gray and grainy soap. He sniffed it, and wondered what Stella would have made of this. Its stink rivalled what it was supposed to wash off. He followed the other prisoners through a long continuous shower of hot water, soaping as he went. They were partially dried by hot air at the other end, and emerged to find Digger waiting with piles of clothes.
"Help yourselves, and get a move on," he said. "Paley will be along in a minute, an' he'll expect you dressed. There's all sizes, an' all clean."
Digger was an optimist. Job could find no shoes as good as the ones that he had abandoned, and all the clean clothes hung loose on his frame. He was not alone in that—half the new arrivals were as badly off. And now that he could take a good look at his fellow arrivals he noticed that he was not conspicuous in another way, too: they all seemed close to his age. That lessened the chance that someone else from Dell's organization was on the bus, because the schemer in the Mall Compound had told Job that all his people were a lot older than Job.
But how much could anyone rely on the word of Wilfred Dell?
Job allowed himself to be lined up again. In a few minutes the gorilla-armed Paley was back, walking along the file and examining every man critically.
"Not bad," he said. "Considering where you come from, and the condition of that bus. You had a rough trip. If you don't like the set of your clothes you can have a go at 'em later. You'll be fed in a few minutes, but before that here's lesson number two. You've arrived, and maybe you've heard that arrivals in Xanadu live only a year or two. That's true enough, so maybe you think you're dead already. You're not. Those numbers are averages. They include people like your buddy back there, who lasted all of two minutes. An' they include me, I've been here eight years going on nine, and I'm not planning on leaving any time soon. You'll get rotten jobs, first few months, all new arrivals do. You'll work Tandy Center, where it's hottest and you can average thirty rads a week. That's no picnic. You'll feel bad, just like I did. But if you're careful, you'll survive. And after the first months you can get work in places like this, where it's not much different from outside. Got any questions, before we go on?"
Job had plenty, but he was not about to ask them. A corollary of the Golden Rule (for whatever that was worth now): Don't make yourself conspicuous.
A youth a few positions along took a step forward and half raised his hand. He was about Job's age, thin-faced and brush-haired, and he seemed less battered than most of the others.
"Sir. What's a rad?"
"You come here and you don't know what a rad is?" Paley studied him, poker-faced. "I can see you're going to do great in Xanadu. I bet you'll look real good with no hair."
He turned to glance along the line. "Any other questions?"
The youth looked puzzled, but there were no more takers.
"Right," said Paley. "Food now. All you can eat, then you get to sack out an' live like kings—'til the day after tomorrow. One thing, though. Just don't think it's going to be soft like this all the time."
* * *
Job lay in darkness, wondering where he was and how long he had been there. Had he been drugged? His head felt muzzy, his eyelids too heavy to lift.
The arrival at the Tandy. Then the bath, and the briefing. Then the warm dining room and food that was hot, plentiful, and bland. And then?
Then, nothing.
There had been no need for drugs. The long journey west had pushed him and the other prisoners to the limit. He had the feeling that he had slept the clock round, and more.
He opened his eyes and struggled to his feet. A thin line of light marked the door of the room. He went to it and tugged it open. There was a mutter of protest from occupied beds behind him as bright light spilled into the dormitory.
"Well, at last." A brisk voice greeted him. "You're the first, an' it's about time."
Job squinted into bright morning light and saw Paley, Digger, and Sim sitting across from each other at a square table. Paley was drinking from a metal mug. He gestured with it to a door on his right, as soon as he saw Job stop blinking. "Pee through there, if you need to. Then come right back here."
Job went through a second door and found himself outside the building. It was still cold. He found that his clothes might be ill-fitting, but at least they were warm. The snow had ended, leaving a three-inch blanket that felt soggy under his feet. To the east a ghostly sun shone through morning mist. The clouds overhead were thinning, rapidly burning off.
He used the outside toilet, but before he went back in he took the time to stare all around him. He had been well-briefed on the geography of the Nebraska Tandy, and could orient himself from the sun and the line of the outside fence. The hot, lethal heart of Xanadu lay about ten miles west. The fenced town where Hanna Kronberg had been sighted was beyond that, nearly to the western Tandy boundary. It was a long day's walk, if the temperature continued to rise and there was no more snow. But it would be futile to think of trying such a thing until he knew a lot more about Xanadu, and how it worked. He went back inside the building.
They had moved the table since he left. One chair, heavier than the rest, was against the wall. Paley gestured Job to sit down on it.
"Hungry?" And, at Job's shake of the head, "All right, let's get this over with. Don't worry, this is all pretty standard."
Before Job could move Digger had gripped his arm and was applying a spray hypo to his shoulder. The room spun and turned black, and then as rapidly steadied. Job was still sitting in the chair, but his mind went zooming up through the m
etal ceiling and hovered far above in the clouds.
"What's your full name?" Paley's voice came from miles away.
"Job Napoleon Salk."
"Check. How old are you?"
"Eighteen years and ten months."
"Check. Does he have J-D marks, Sim? His record shows it." There was a hand on his arm. Something was pressing at his wrist, then at his forehead.
"Check."
"Tell us where you were born, Job Salk, and where you grew up."
Job began to talk, without concern or reservation, about Cloak House and Bracewell Mansion. He told of his arrest trying to deliver a package of drugs to the Mall Compound, and of his return to Cloak House. He described his escape, and his life as a street basura and vendor. He left nothing out, and answered any question asked along the way.
"Check. How did you get caught, and sent to Xanadu?"
Job told of meeting Stella Michelson, of taking her away from Daniello and back to his home, of making love to her, of her return to the Mall Compound and of his own rapid arrest.
He was totally calm, although he knew that the very next question would lead to his death. When they asked who had sent him here, and why Wilfred Dell had sent him, he would tell them without hesitation.
"Christ." Paley had turned to Digger. "Did you hear him? He says this Stella Michelson is a Rep's cousin, an' he screwed her! It doesn't have that in his record. I guess her family hushed it up. Did they have him castrated before they sent him here?"
"He looked all there coming out of the bath."
"Then he's one lucky hombre."
Paley was staring at him. Job knew that this would be it, the key and fatal question. He waited peacefully.
But Paley's expression was more like admiration. "You're a nervy bugger, aren't you? You're plenty ugly, but you sure nabbed some high-class tail."
Brothers to Dragons Page 15
