by James Axler
The last mile was torturous, and seemed to stretch out forever. Each step, although taking them closer, seemed to be removing them. The next patch of thick vines and brambles to be cleared should reveal a distant ville, but revealed…nothing more than vines and brambles, interspersed with twisted bark.
Jak, at the rear of the party, was keeping a sharp eye for those who had been on their tail before they reached the maze. But there was no indication of anyone following in their wake. Which, in itself, was unsettling. The companions had been tailed for a reason, so why had that stopped? He said as much, in a few terse words.
“Could be that they’ve got ways of following us without having to get close,” Ryan mused.
“If this baron is as, ah, advanced as the fat man suggested, then it could be that he has some old surveillance technology that is useable,” Doc interjected.
“Could be. Could also be that they don’t need to follow us now, ’cause we’re right on top of them,” Ryan added.
“I hope that’s right,” Mildred murmured, casting an eye over Ryan’s leg. From the way he was walking, she knew that he needed to rest it soon.
J.B., hacking at the undergrowth, was finding it easier and easier. The vines and brambles were dwindling, leaving just the thick grass between trees that were now becoming more and more evenly spaced, as though the untamed forest had, at this point, suddenly become tamed and laid out to a plan. Moving aside a tangle of vine, the thick oily leaves sticking to him as he parted them, the Armorer saw that ahead lay a patch of sparser grassland, dotted with only a few trees.
And there, in the shadows of late afternoon, were the outlines of a few tumbledown buildings. To the rear of them lay not the outline of distant trees, but that of taller buildings, stretching back as far as could be seen.
“At last,” J.B. breathed, almost to himself.
“THEY’RE IN SIGHT of Sector Eight,” the observer whispered into his handset.
“Good. Keep them in full view. Wait and see what happens when they meet the natives. I want to monitor their reactions. But you must—I repeat, must—intervene if there is any chance of revelation.”
“Copy,” the observer whispered. “All teams, converge on Sector Eight, be ready for takedown.”
THE FRIENDS MADE THEIR WAY across the open ground toward the buildings with caution. It might be easier to traverse, but by the same token it was also exposed. They would need to stay alert, as there was no place to hide.
At first sight, the buildings in front of them seemed deserted. Windows that were little more than holes cut in sheets of rusting metal, or framed by ill-cut wood that was only vaguely fitted into salvaged cinder block and brick, were black holes showing no signs of life within. It was almost as quiet here as it had been in the undergrowth. In the far distance, the indistinct sounds of movement—vehicles, masses of people, the clamor of a ville’s early evening routines—could be picked out. But here, it was as though this rough pesthole had been set up for some ill-defined purpose and then deserted.
“Triple red,” Ryan murmured. It was perfunctory, as they had all primed and cocked as soon as they emerged into the open. “Jak, I can’t see any sign of life from here. You see or hear anything?”
The albino youth shook his head. “Hard with noise in distance. Not much here. But they behind us. Far, but there.”
“Okay. We move in, recce and see if we can find shelter if it really is empty. If not, then…”
“Business as usual,” Mildred murmured.
“Right,” Ryan agreed.
By this time, they had reached the outermost buildings. Procedure was simple: while the majority of the group checked and covered the surrounding area, two would take the entrance to a building, one covering the other as they swept the interior.
Ryan, not trusting his leg, let J.B. and Krysty take the sweep. The first two buildings—even to call them that was an exaggeration, as they seemed to be barely standing—were empty. There were signs that people had lived here until recently, but had now departed: rotting food, soiled bedding and dirty rags that passed for clothing.
“Where did they go?” Ryan murmured, casting a searching glance at the seemingly deserted shanty ville.
“Mayhap they were frightened of us?” Doc suggested. “Or, more pertinently, afraid of those we recently fought?”
“That’s a good idea,” Ryan said softly. “Thing is, if they think we’re those bastards, then what will they have in store for us?”
“Caution should most definitely be the watchword,” Doc replied.
Proceeding in such a manner, they took in a number of buildings. All of them had the look of the recently deserted.
“It’s like they ran scared,” J.B. said with a shake of the head. “How do they manage to survive if that’s what they do?”
“Perhaps that’s how,” Doc answered. J.B. grimaced. “Can’t run forever. Bound to catch up with you sooner or later. We all know that. Besides, if this is Arcady, then where are the sec that we heard so much about?”
“Probably on our tails,” Mildred muttered wryly. “Still out there, Jak?”
“Yeah, someone,” the albino teen said, looking into the clearing between the mangrove and shanty.
“But if this is Arcady,” Krysty said, taking a look around, “then why is it like this? People living in shit? I thought Arcadian was a good baron, giving his people a good life. And a rich baron, who could afford it.”
“That’s what fat boy led us to think,” Ryan mused. “And this certainly doesn’t look like any part of Arcady we saw. Unless the baron likes to let outlanders see and think one thing…”
“I suspect it may not be as clear cut as that,” Doc mused. Then, to answer questioning glances he added, “Come—keep watch, but please…”
He led the main body of the party into three separate huts. In each, he merely said, “Observe, please,” before leading them out. Jak kept watch while Doc did that. Finally, the old man led them back to the point from which they had started.
“So what were we supposed to be looking for?” J.B. asked, puzzled.
Doc smiled, his strong white teeth giving the smile a sardonic edge. “I think Krysty hit the nail on the head, as the old saying goes. She talked of people living in shit. But they do not. Shit, piss, the kind of buildup of human ordure that we usually see in a shanty like this. Where is it? Where is the smell?”
Doc paused while they took this in: he was right. While not as sweet-smelling as it could be, there was only the smell of unwashed bodies lingering in the air. The dirt roads and paths were barely muddy.
“Fireblast!” Ryan exclaimed as it suddenly hit him. “Those huts have got latrines in them, and there’s a faucet stand in the corner of each.”
“Running water? Sanitation? What kind of a slum shanty has that?” Mildred posited. “That’s insane. If they have that, then why do they live like this?”
“We may discover that if we unearth any of them,” Doc mused. “They are supplied with water and sanitation. Moreover, those clothes may have been ragged and dirty, but they had been made that way by those who wore them. They must have plentiful clothing, otherwise why leave it behind? Have you known that before? And the food—that, too, must be plentiful, as there were many scraps. Ever known people in a seemingly poor shanty ville like this leave food lying around in such a manner?”
“But if they’re not really that poor, then why live like this?” J.B. queried.
“I suspect that we may find out, if we stay around here long enough,” Doc answered cryptically. “There are machinations afoot here that are hidden to us. Perhaps intentionally.”
“Worry ’bout later,” Jak said. “Got company.”
He indicated a direction farther into the shanty ville. Ryan waved his companions back into the shelter of two huts that stood on either side of the dust road. Checking that nothing was coming up from the rear, they assumed defensive positions—Ryan, Krysty and Jak on one side, with Mildred, Doc and J.B. taki
ng the opposite point—while waiting for whatever was headed their way.
When it came, it was somewhat of a surprise. Slowly, moving with a caution that was edged with fright, a group of raggedly clad people moved from the shadows of far-flung huts. Despite their clothing, they were far from ill-nourished. In truth, some of them were paunchy to the point of obesity. They moved almost as one amorphous mass: men, women and children, all jockeying for position. No one wanted to be in the lead, and those who found themselves thrust to the front were quick to try to fall back, pushing against those who came up behind them. It made their progress slow and shuffling. The fear and fright was so strong coming off them that the companions could almost smell it.
The two groups of three exchanged bemused glances across the distance between them. It was difficult to know what to make of this. If these people were really that scared, then why had they come out of the shadows?
Ryan took a calculated risk. He could see no blasters among the crowd jostling slowly toward them. He stepped forward, cradling the Steyr nose down in a relaxed grip. But not so relaxed that it couldn’t be brought into play easily and quickly.
As he emerged, the group of ville dwellers stopped suddenly. It was almost as though they cowered at the sight of him. Some even flinched, as though he was about to fire on them. When he stood his ground and did nothing, some of them looked up.
“You’re…you’re not going to take from us?” a man said haltingly.
“Why should I?” Ryan asked. “Is that what the others do?”
Mutterings shot through the crowd. He could make out some of it. They were talking about him, and not about who “the others” might be.
A woman stepped forward and pointed at him, yelling, “He only got one eye” and laughing before running back into the crowd, many of whom were now giggling.
“The others,” Ryan repeated. “Who are the others?”
Many of them looked at one another, as though they found the one-eyed man beyond their comprehension. The man who had spoken first said, “Others take stuff, want to hurt us. I think they like that bit. It’s not nice.”
Ryan was taken aback. “You don’t try to defend yourselves?”
The man shrugged. “They go soon enough. Then other others come and help, but sometimes they don’t. Mebbe you know them? Mebbe you got more stuff for us?”
A satisfied murmur rippled through the crowd, and they moved forward. Ryan took a step back, not because he thought they would attack, but because for one moment it seemed that they might overwhelm him.
His people took that as their cue to step out into the open. Their presence caused the approaching mob to stop momentarily, before gasping in amazement and moving forward. Before any of Ryan’s people had a chance to draw breath, the ville dwellers were milling around them, touching them and asking questions.
“You know others?”
“You have stuff?”
“Why you so white?”
“Why you so brown?”
Yet none of them waited for answers to the questions they posed before babbling on about something completely different.
Ryan looked, bewildered, over the heads of the milling throng to where he could see Krysty. She shrugged. She was as confused as he was by their behavior.
“They appear to be like sheep,” Doc yelled above the babble. “Passive, and completely without any kind of—”
“What’s sheep?” one of them said, tugging him on the arm.
“I—” Doc began, but was cut short by Jak’s terse comment.
“They’re here. Ones who follow.”
Melting out of the shadows and forming into black-clad pairs holding blasters—was this where his earlier opponent had got his blaster? Ryan wondered—came six teams. Their blasters were raised in the air, but there was little doubting their intent.
“Drop your weapons and come with us,” one of the black-clad men called. “You people,” he added in a harsher tone, “move away from the outlanders.”
The mob did as it had been told. Soon, they were standing apart, watching the proceedings. Ryan and his people were now surrounded on all sides, outnumbered two to one.
“You took out those rebels okay,” the black-clad leader said, as if sensing their mood, “but we’re ready for you, and better trained than that scum.”
“So what do you want? You want a firefight?” Ryan asked in a hard voice, his muscles tensed as he took in the manner in which they had been surrounded. These people were good. But his, he knew, could be better.
“Don’t want that any more than you do,” the men said tightly. “What we want is for you to come with us. Arcadian wants to meet you.”
“He’s got a real strange way of going about that,” Ryan replied.
“Mebbe. But he has his reasons. You might like ’em.”
Ryan took another look around at the black-clad sec, then at his companions. He could see from their expressions that they were with him.
“Okay,” he said slowly, “we’ll come with you. Might be interesting. But we don’t surrender blasters. You got nothing to hide? It won’t matter.”
The sec boss grinned. “Like your style, One-eye. Wouldn’t have it any other way.” He lowered his blaster so that it pointed at the dirt. “Let’s do it.”
Chapter Five
Chapter Five
As they fell in with the black-clad sec men, Ryan’s group had a lot to ponder. It had been couched in terms that were reasonable, but they all knew that resistance would have been met with a firefight. Arcadian wanted them, for reasons as yet unknown. If he wanted them to work for him willingly, he was showing a real lack of understanding. His behavior had done nothing less than to put them on triple red, with the utmost suspicion. If he wanted to just use them, regardless of whether or not they wished to acquiesce, then he was cutting them too much slack.
For, as they were escorted on foot through the outlying districts of the ville, there was much to observe and absorb for possible future use.
The sec team that escorted them was very careful about its chosen route. Instead of traveling in what seemed a direct route to the center of the ville, they took what appeared to be meaningless detours. Straight roads would be ignored in favor of sudden sharp turns to the left or right. Obviously, that was to keep them within a sector they had already seen, and not cross some kind of line. For there wasn’t a single one of them who had any doubt that Arcady was a ville of sharply differing sectors.
The Arcady they had seen when with Trader Toms was one of wealth and freedom. The center sections of the ville were filled with trade stores, craftsmen and bars providing brew and gaudys. The relative financial well-being of a ville could always be determined by the number and quality of those. The people they had met had been free to go about their business unimpeded. The sec had been present, but not overbearing—they had only stepped in when trouble flared because of arguments caused by brew or jack. The buildings had been old, for the most part obviously built by the founders of the ville or adapted from the main street and surrounding area of the old predark town that they had chosen to use as their shell, but there had been evidence of ongoing maintenance and new building that gave work to the people of the ville, and were again proof of its growing affluence.
None of which tallied with the run-down shanty ville full of tumbledown shacks that looked like their dwellers paid them no heed. For most of their winding trek through the outer reaches of the ville, this was all they had seen. Row upon row of virtually derelict shacks, but none that were empty. All showed signs of habitation, and by people very like those they had seen on their entry to the ville.
As they passed through the phalanx of sec men, they could see blank, drooling faces staring out at them. The people were fat, dirty, and even before you could see them the smell of their unwashed bodies assailed the senses. Some of them—the braver specimens—came outside their huts or stood in the doorways, watching or, if they felt particularly courageous, shouting at the newcome
rs in slurred, brain-numbed voices that were sometimes difficult to understand.
And yet these were people with running water and sanitation. Even the most advanced of villes that the companions had seen on their many journeys across the ravaged lands of the post-nukecaust America had been hard-pushed to have a sanitation and water system that came anywhere near aping that of the days before skydark. There had been some rich or advanced villes that had reconstructed pumping stations, and used old pipes to try to reconstruct that aspect of predark life. But never anything that had seemed to be as good as the systems they were familiar with from the many redoubts they had used during their journeys.
This was different. For a start, it had been so unobtrusive as to be almost unnoticeable…until Doc’s eagle eye had drawn it to their attention. The running water and sanitation systems in this part of the ville—assuming that this entire shanty-ville sector had been treated the same, which seemed reasonable—had been recently laid. Recently as in postskydark. These buildings hadn’t existed before the nukecaust, and each shanty had its own system. Someone—Arcadian or a baron before him—had laid out and engineered such a system, then allowed the shacks and tumbledown buildings to be erected around that system.
But why? Why go to all the bother of laying out such a system—a vast investment for any baron in terms of jack, resources and manpower—and then allow the people who lived above it to wallow in their own crapulence? Why feed them, as he obviously did?
It pointed toward a baron who had plans and schemes. That wasn’t unusual: they all did. To be a baron necessitated a certain degree of cunning and a lust for power. A baron without these qualities would soon fall by the wayside. But some had a more twisted psyche than others, and their schemes were more arcane and unfathomable.
To all of the companions, while passing through this sector of Arcady, it occurred that Arcadian may have a mind more labyrinthine than most. The question was simply this: how did they fit into that mind and its plans?
