by James Axler
“She’s got you there, Mildred,” Ryan said.
“Perhaps the time has come,” J.B. said, stirring in his chair, “to talk about compensation for those Dogs we put down.”
“I shall pay on the terms agreed, and gladly,” Dark Lady said. “I don’t believe in binding the mouths of the kine that tread the grain.”
“First Corinthians 9:9?” Mildred said in obvious surprise. “You know the New Testament?”
Ryan remembered she was a preacher’s daughter in her prior life.
Dark Lady smiled wanly and waved a hand at the book-filled shelves that surrounded her.
“If I get my hands on it,” she said, “I read it.”
“Read all books?” Jak asked in something like awe.
“Not all books,” she said. “But most of what I have, yes.”
“That’s what he meant,” Mildred said. “All these. Got a stingy way with demonstratives, the boy does. Pronouns, too.”
“Mikey-Bob will provide you your reward,” Dark Lady said. “You did substantial hurt to our foes. So what will they do now, in your professional estimation?”
“Maybe we hurt them bad enough that they’ll look for easier hunting grounds,” Mildred suggested.
Ryan snorted. “Dream on. I reckon we hurt them just bad enough they’re pissed off way past nuke red. They’ll come back and come harder. Triple sure.
“But Diego’s no stupe. He won’t try again until he’s got a better plan. We bought you some time. No more.”
Dark Lady nodded. Then she leaned back in her chair and eyed them appraisingly.
“What are your intentions? Will you be leaving us, now that you’ve fulfilled the mission I originally hired you for? No one could fault you for fleeing the wrath to come.”
J.B. glanced at Ryan. “Baron Sand still has Doc,” the Armorer said. “Isn’t our way to leave a man behind. Nor woman.”
“You could go elsewhere to plan your rescue of your associate. Even leaving the Basin proper might lessen your danger.”
Ryan shrugged. “I don’t think Diego’s a dog ready to let go of a bone just because it gets moved a little farther away. These are mobile coldhearts, as you yourself pointed out.
“And anyway, as long as you’re willing to pay for Crazy Dog scalps, that’s sweetening the pie. Mebbe Sand’ll pay for them, too, come to that.”
Mildred turned her head to look at him in surprise. “Why would she honor that deal, after what we just did to her? It wasn’t just the Dogs we laid the wood to tonight.”
“Just like before,” Ryan said. “Different business. And business is business.”
“She may indeed agree,” Dark Lady said. “Sand has her own code, and its core is as inflexible as its outer extremities are flexible. Plus she loves the game for its own sake. She may well choose to honor that agreement because it’s separate.”
She shook her head and frowned disapprovingly. “Or on her whim. She hates being bound by sense and reason as passionately as any other rules.”
Ryan stood.
“If your kitchen’s still open, we need to get some chow,” he said. “Or else our rumbling bellies’ll keep the whole house awake all night. And then mebbe get cleaned up so we don’t soil those nice clean sheets of yours.”
“Absolutely!” Krysty said. Mildred nodded eager agreement.
Ryan grinned.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Who are these people?” the ice-blond woman asked as Mikey-Bob ushered Krysty, Ryan and Mildred into Dark Lady’s office.
The kids, as Mildred couldn’t help thinking of best-buds Ricky and Jak even though Jak was a chronological adult even by the standards of her day, were out prowling the ville on this bright morning after their night’s adventures. This was the sort of thing that at best would bore them. And at worst, their volatility couldn’t help.
The Mikey head seemed more sullen than usual, Mildred thought. Bob looked pensive.
“They’re my new sec consultants.”
It was a cool day. Dark Lady wore a black turtleneck over black jeans. Mildred wondered if she had any other colors in her wardrobe.
“Your prices are excessive,” the blonde in the blue tunic declared. She had dismissed the newcomers with a brief look. She had a haughty supermodel look, with prominent cheekbones, a straight nose and blue eyes. Mildred tried not to hate her for her looks alone. That was racist.
I need to concentrate on hating her for her attitude, she told herself. Not that that should be hard to do.
“What Mistress Devere means, Dark Lady,” said the man at her side, “is, don’t you think you could bring your asking price down slightly? Inasmuch as we are long-time loyal customers.”
He was shorter, older, and clearly didn’t spend near so much time keeping himself in shape as the woman did. He had a homely, saggy, middle-aged face with a wart on his prominent nose. His graying brown hair was cut as if around the rim of the bowl, with a bald spot on top. It put Mildred in mind of the popular conception of medieval monks and their tonsures. The fact he wore a baggy brown smock that hung down to the thighs of his tan pants did nothing to dispel the resemblance.
“You are certainly free to seek elsewhere,” said Dark Lady. Her voice was calm and conversational, but her black eyes were fixed tight on the other woman’s ice sculpture of a face. “Just as we have other parties who are eager to purchase our wares.”
The woman flashed her eyes in what was clearly not meant to be a friendly, reassuring gesture. Her nostrils flared.
“Now, now,” the man said, patting air toward Dark Lady with his hands. “I’m sure we can work something out.”
“Indeed we can, Mr. Lowenstein. You can agree to meet my price. Or you can return to the barroom below and enjoy a refreshing beverage. On the house.”
“Um,” Lowenstein said. He wouldn’t look at his mistress, which was just as well, because she was giving him a bug-shriveling look, as if she were the sun through a magnifying glass.
“Are you whitecoats, then?” Krysty asked. She crossed her long legs.
Ryan gave her a sidelong eyebrow-raised look. Usually she was the tactful one. But her major antipathy toward whitecoats sometimes cramped that.
Lowenstein’s eyes got wide. “No, no, no!” he said, wagging his hands in horror.
“We are representatives of a research facility,” Devere said, enunciating each syllable in an overly crisp way. She actually talked like a not double-good speech synthesizer. “Nothing more.”
“I’m sure you are,” Krysty replied, smiling sweetly.
Dark Lady dropped her curved fingers and thumb on the hardwood desktop in front of her with a precise rap.
“Have you made your decision?” she asked.
Devere looked blazing blue death at Dark Lady. Unlike Lowenstein, the gaudy owner declined to shrivel.
“Yes,” the blonde said, as if the word were being torqued out of her with a pair of pliers. “But you may expect us to explore...alternate arrangements.”
“Good luck with that,” Mildred said. And gave the anticipated Death Look a big toothy smile.
* * *
“YOU ARE A man of parts, Doctor Theophilus Tanner,” Baron Sand said. Then she purred like a big cat adding, “Some of which are astonishingly durable for a man of your age.”
Doc lay with his weary head supported by a soft feather pillow on Baron Sand’s enormous canopied bed. The baron lay beside him on top of the pale-green satin coverlet with her bare pink rump in the air. The room smelled of sex, lilacs and cigar smoke.
“I suspect you might find me surprising in other ways, as well,” he said.
It was the second day of his captivity, which was shaping up in an extraordinarily unexpected way.
“You know so much history,” s
he said, shaking her head. “It’s almost as if you lived through it.”
“Indeed,” Doc said with an indulgent chuckle. “I have been on intimate terms with much of it. And I have taught history here and there to so many students.”
“I wish I knew more,” she said, clasping her knees and resting her cheek on them. It made her look like nothing so much as a schoolgirl. Albeit a more naked schoolgirl than Doc would have expected to encounter in his original lifetime—he scarcely counted the times he’d helped Emily bathe Rachel.
My poor lost loves, he thought, overcome by sudden desolation. How fresh those wounds still feel.
But Sand was lost in herself once more. “I try. I can’t even recall whether the Battle of Waterloo was in 1814 or 1914. Well, I don’t have the resources my beloved enemy Dark Lady does. And knowing that sort of thing is her job.”
That flicked him out of his sad reverie.
“What do you mean?” he said, raising his head. “My impression was most distinctly that she was what an associate of mine rather inelegantly described as a ‘flesh-peddler.’”
“Here, now.” She tut-tutted and pressed a fingertip to his lips. “That’s neither fair nor strictly accurate. To be sure, she provides the opportunity for her people to pay for their keep through selling that which my children give away purely for love. Whereas I provide for them by, for example, certain exactions upon travelers through my realm. Especially those with overdeveloped senses of credulity, or underdeveloped senses of the odds. But she doesn’t peddle anybody. Any more than she’d peddle her own tight and narrow fanny.”
“You paint her as quite the innocent.”
“That’s precisely the word. I like you, Doc. You know things.”
He smiled. “It seems as if you draw an elusive distinction between what she does and flesh-peddling,” he said. “But, back to the question of her real occupation—”
“Ah, but see, that’s more of a sideline for her. What she’s really about is both gathering and disseminating knowledge. It’s what she was trained for, you might say. In a most boringly rigorous fashion. Among other things.”
She lay back down on the bed and smiled at the round heavy rafters. “I could do you stories that would curl your hair,” she said. “For example—”
A ham-fisted knock sounded from the door.
“Go away!” she sang out sweetly.
“It’s Trumbo, Baron.”
“I know. Trumbo, my sec boss. Whom I left explicit instructions I was not to be disturbed except in case of alien invasion or unless the funhouse was on fire. And I don’t smell smoke.”
“There’s someone here to see you.”
“Tell them to go away. Tell them to come back during my next open office hours, which if I recall occur next Tuesday—the twelfth of never.”
“Double funny,” the sec boss growled. “It’s them.”
Sand sighed. “Why didn’t you say so?”
She sat up. Her breasts were so small they scarcely bounced, their tips almost covered by areoles surprisingly wide and dark brown, given her fair coloration. Doc had found little to complain about with them, though.
“I’ll be there in half a mo,” she said. Then she balled her hands into fists and slammed them down on the bed. “Bother.”
She looked at Doc. “So you still won’t extend your parole, dearest Doc?”
He shook his head. “I fear I cannot, madam. I have stretched the elasticity of my conscience and my duty to my friends as far as it will reach by agreeing not to attempt to escape while directly in your presence, nor to harm you in any way, nor attempt to use you as a hostage or otherwise to secure my liberty.”
“And I’m so glad you did,” she purred. “Admit it. You are, too, you randy old goat!”
“Well, I admit that I have found the results of those concessions amply gratifying. But not so much I can vouchsafe more.”
“You’re no fun.”
“You said otherwise, not so very long ago.”
She chuckled, then hopped up from the bed with surprising alacrity in one so large. Though she was far from slender, he had learned she was not so much fat as large, which among other things concealed a surprising bodily strength.
I shall have bruises for a week as it is, he thought. Not without a certain smugness.
She dressed quickly in white linen and a blue-velvet shirt and breeches. He stirred himself and retrieved his long johns from where they were thrown on a chest of drawers and pulled them on up his naked bony shanks.
“I’ll have to secure you, then, you know,” she said. She knelt beside the bed and pulled open a drawer built into the massive frame. It clanked when she rummaged inside it.
A moment later she came up with a large iron shackle lined with fine black-and-silver fur on the inside, to avoid chafing the limbs of a captive. She turned and affixed the non-shackle end of the chain to the corner of the bed nearest the door.
“There,” she said, sitting back on her heels. “You’ll be able to reach the door but no farther.”
He didn’t ask her how she knew. He was quite certain that she did.
“Be a love and bring your ankle over here, Doc.”
Obedient to the limited parole he had eventually given her, he did. At this point he saw no point in trying to resist or make a break for it anyway. Trumbo and his giant shadow Lobo had beefed up security considerably after the other night’s raid. He had to bide his time in any event.
There was no reason he could see not to enjoy his captivity as much as possible. He was morally certain his friends were scheming feverishly as to how to get him back. Though he himself could see no practical means of doing so.
But then, he wasn’t the cunning one in the group, nor the tactician. He felt quite confident leaving those roles to Ryan and the taciturn but exceedingly competent J. B. Dix.
The cuff felt like a sweet embrace as she clicked it home around a pink-and-white ankle and locked it.
“These are truly lined with mink?” he said.
“Yep.” She stood and kissed his nose. She didn’t have to stretch on tiptoe to do it, nor even raise her face. “They grow wild in what used to be Oregon. There’s quite a lucrative trade in trapping them for their pelts.”
“Indeed.”
“Be good,” she said with a twinkle. “But only until I get back.”
She was gone. The door closed with authority. Baron Sand was a woman who did little by half measure. Least of all live that way.
Doc took in a deep breath, then, putting his hands on his thighs, he rose and made his way to the door.
He paused; pressed his ear against it. He heard nothing, which he found reassuring, if only mildly so. If the baron caught him eavesdropping, she was likely to regard it as a sign of spirit; the woman had a love of mischief for its own sake, and that was a fact. But he felt less sanguine about the prospect of opening the door to find himself staring into the brutish face of Trumbo as its habitual sullenness turned to sadistic glee.
Ah, well, Theophilus, old man, he told himself. Nothing is more certain in this world than that we shall one day leave it. Though my efforts in that direction have admittedly thus far come to naught.... He turned the knob and pushed the door open two finger-breadths.
He saw nothing but a slice of the corridor, whitewashed walls dim in the afternoon. But he could clearly hear voices from the main salon. And that was his goal.
“Mistress Devere means,” a masculine voice said, oozing obsequiousness, “is that the time has come for you to take decisive action, Baron.”
“We are out of patience,” said a female voice like icicles snapping. “The time has come when you must act. Or we shall.”
Doc Tanner raised a brow. And who, or what, dares speak thus to Baron Sand in the heart of her very stronghold?
He already knew the answer would portend little good—for himself or his friends.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Ryan sat against the back wall of the big barroom of the Library Lounge. He ignored the setting, which was lazy with midafternoon, and even his companions, who sat around the table murmuring among themselves. The head he rested against the wood paneling was filled with storms and darkness.
Two days, he thought, and we’re still no closer to calculating a way to get Doc back.
“Well,” said Ricky, crossing his arms on the table and resting his chin on them. “At least the Crazy Dogs haven’t made a play for us yet.”
J.B. took off his glasses and polished them with a handkerchief not only laundered but pressed by Dark Lady’s employees.
“Reckon that’s a worse sign than a good one,” he said. “Means they’re up to something.”
“If only we were,” Mildred stated.
“Now, Mildred,” Krysty said sharply, “you know that’s unfair.”
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to criticize. It’s just— I feel so frustrated. And this feeling of helplessness...”
“Tell me about it,” Ryan growled. It was something he had little familiarity with. He wasn’t enjoying getting to know it better.
The problem was that the Casa de Broma was a pretty fair little fort. And even if Trumbo’s large and well-armed sec force hadn’t managed to keep them from stealing back the Great Whatsit, they wouldn’t be caught with their pants around their ankles a second time.
And reports from people traveling between the two villes indicated the population of Joker Creek was on the alert, too. However popular the baron was, her subjects seemed determined not to let intruders impose on them again.
Leaving aside their employer’s squeamishness, Ryan wasn’t the kind of man to try blasting his way through a load of civilians even to get to sec men hunkered down behind bulletproof walls. It would eat up a power of bullets, for one thing. And no matter how badly outmatched the sodbusters were by his seasoned crew of chillers, there was always the drunkard’s chance of a stray round taking one of them out. Even Krysty.
