Dark Carnival

by James Axler

  "You saying that Sky wants to come join us, Doc?" Krysty smiled. "You think she'd fit in?"

  "And why not, pray?"

  " Jak rode plenty of good miles with us, and he was about as far out of the ob slit as you can get." Ryan laughed. "But we're going to be away soon…probably tomorrow, Doc. Where's the girl now?"

  "She is a young lady, Ryan, and I would be obliged if you could all remember that salient fact."

  "Sorry. Where is she?"

  "Said that Traven insisted that everyone in his group was together at night. Sky also told me some things about the way that he dominates the young people. It is, I am reluctant to admit, like the description you used, Mildred. The man appears to be the worst kind of bullying control-freak."

  Ryan wiped his mouth with a threadbare linen napkin. He looked with some reluctance at the pile of uneaten crab claws, but decided he'd reached his capacity.

  "Doc. One thing. Since Jak went, I think all of us have sort of been looking for someone to replace him. That's wrong. Jak Lauren's safe with Christina Ballinger in New Mexico now. I hope. Life moves on. But if Sky wants to join with us and there's no problem, then there's no problem."

  "That is spoken like a gentleman and a scholar, my dear Ryan. Now, those crab claws appear quite delicious. Or perhaps the devilied whitebait. Maybe even both. Is that a caper sauce with the grilled sole? I vow that I have rarely encountered a baron who took such care over the inner man."

  LATER THE PARTY SPLIT UP into its current components. Doc returned to his own room and watched some vids of a television series that Boss Larry piped through. Ryan and Krysty tried to watch it, but it seemed a plot of such staggering complexity that they gave up on it.

  "It wasn't the giant and the dwarf," Krysty said, lying back on the huge bed. "Nor the damned fine coffee and the cherry pie. It was the woman who was dead, then Japanese, then alive again."

  Mildred and J.B. had also made their excuses and retired to their suite along the corridor.

  Dean had gone to bed early, then got up and shyly asked if he could come in with Ryan and Krysty.

  "Tell me stories about all the dirt bastards you chilled, Dad."

  Ryan shook his head. "Too many and it's too late, son. Man remembers all his enemies, and he never locks himself into the present or the future."

  "You remember some enemies."

  "Two. Cort Strasser. Skull-faced sec boss of a frontier ville. Ran into him two more times. Now he's gone to rot forever. Other was a Russkie."

  "You knew a Russkie!"

  "Twice. Man called Zimyanin. Tell you that story sometime, Dean. Bald bastard, nearly chilled me. Last time I saw him was through a gateway door and some great…great golden shape was closing on him. Probably dead-now."

  "Tell me…" The boy's voice was pleading, but he kept yawning, head nodding.

  Krysty patted him on the arm. "Sandman time, Dean. Come on."

  "Sandman? Who's that? That another enemy like Skullhead and the Russkie?"

  Ryan squeezed the small hand in his, and the boy meandered across the room, through into his adjoining room, and closed the door softly behind him.

  He whispered a goodnight through the gap.

  The door opened a moment later. "Dad?"

  "What is it?"

  "Pharaoh's Curse was about the best ace on the line I ever had in all my life. Thanks."

  "Glad you liked it. Don't think I'll forget it in a hurry."

  "Yeah. G'night, Dad. G'night, Krysty."

  This time the door remained closed.

  A little later Ryan and Krysty held each other tightly in the great bed and made gentle, tender love. And then slept a quiet and dreamless sleep.

  KELLY ARRIVED soon after dawn. "Boss Larry'd like to see you, Ryan. In an hour."

  "Just me?"

  "Yeah. Just you."

  Krysty rolled on her back and stretched, clawing at the cool morning air. "Did that group of oldies get to see him yesterday?"

  "Mrs. Owen and friends?"

  "One with that lovely amber necklace. Silver cross on the end of it. One that Doc sent all a flutter."

  "No. They waited, but Boss Larry was too stoned."

  Ryan got up and began to dress, oblivious to the presence of the sec man, pulling on his pants and lacing his boots. He reached for his coat.

  "You dropped something," Kelly said, leaning against the front door of the room. "Bit of paper. Down by the leg of the bed. There."

  "Thanks." Ryan stooped and picked it up, seeing that it was the odd coded message. Bright lances of sunlight came through a gap in the curtains, and for the first time he could read part of the scribbled message.

  "R.5. S NMex nr Tex," it read. Then some numbers. He slipped it back in his pocket, intending to talk to J.B. about it.

  "I'm ready," he announced.

  Kelly nodded. "Traven and his posse stayed in the park last night," he said.

  "Yeah. So?"

  "Nothing. Let's go see the boss."

  KELLY TOOK HIM to the vast shadowy lobby of Centerpoint, where several sec men were standing around, most showing signs of tiredness. Their body language revealed they were about to come off duty and be replaced by the next shift.

  "Good time to hit them," Ryan said.

  Kelly nodded. "Training's slipped in the last couple of weeks. Traven's subverted a number of them. Younger men. That's what worries me, Ryan. Seriously worries me. Been a couple of executions for treason in the last week. Hadn't been more than a handful of traitors in the last four or five years."

  "Can't you take him out?"

  "Traven?"

  "Sure." Ryan looked at the elevator, where a shifting light showed that there was a car moving toward the lobby. "Doesn't carry a blaster, does he?"

  "Could've chilled him when he arrived. Too late now."

  "Never too late."

  Kelly shook his head, unsmiling. "Wrong, friend. Too late when you're in the big hole and the wet earth's landing on the back of your neck. That's too late. Here's the elevator. Go on up. Press 'Roof.' Boss is up there waiting for you."

  Ryan took a step toward the open steel doors, then hesitated. "Something else?" he asked.

  "Keep your boy close," Kelly said quickly. "Now, get going. Boss Larry doesn't take kindly to being kept waiting."

  The doors slid shut, and Ryan pressed the recessed button with the word Roof alongside it in raised black letters. There was the faint hum of the machinery clicking into gear, and the elevator began to rise smoothly.

  Already he was starting to sweat. Ryan had never been a lover of intense humidity. The dry heat of the southern deserts didn't bother him, but this sweltering moistness was uncomfortable.

  With a slight jar the elevator halted, and he stepped out into the revolving room at the top of the tower.

  It was dark and silent, with only one guard leaning sleepily against a wall. He straightened as Ryan appeared in front of him.

  "Yeah? Oh, you're the outlander Boss Larry wanted to see. He's in his workroom."

  "Where's that?"

  "Up there," the man replied with a wave of his hand in the general direction of the back of the vast room.

  Ryan's temper had never been of the best, but as he grew older he generally managed to control it, to recognize the first crimson flaring of the fire and extinguish it.

  Not this time.

  Without a moment's pause he stepped in close to the sec man and locked both hands into the lapels of his jacket. He braced his wrists inward and lifted at the same time, taking the man's toes clear off the floor.

  "Asked you where," Ryan said quietly, watching the man's face begin to swell and turn purple.

  The only reply was a rattling, choking sound. Ryan released some of the pressure and let the man down gently.

  "Show you." As Ryan let him go, the guard rubbed his neck and stooped to pick up his beret, which had fallen off in the brief struggle. "Didn't have to show me the fuckin' black sleep."

  "Try doing your job pro
perly."

  "Yeah, sure. Come on." He muttered to himself, "Do the job and you don't know who you're working for. Boss or that Traven and his posse. Yeah, sure."

  They reached another elevator, concealed in a decorative column at the center of the slowly moving room.

  "Boss is up there."

  Ryan nodded. "Thanks."

  The man looked at him for a moment, then turned on his heel and trudged back to his post, fingering the butt of his Government Model Colt.

  There was only one button, showing an arrow pointing upward. Ryan pressed it, and the doors opened almost immediately. He stepped in, sniffing at the powerful scent of sweat that filled the car.

  He guessed that the workroom was hidden in the very top of the tower. The elevator didn't seem to go up more than fifteen or twenty feet, then it stopped and the doors slid open.

  "Come in, Ryan Cawdor," said the familiar voice. "I wanted to tell you that dear Adam has told me to have you chilled."

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  "I LIKE STARTING the day with some good news, Larry. What else did the little prick have to say?"

  Boss Larry Zapp was sitting in a huge canvas-and-leather chair by a long bench, which was covered with a mountain of electrical hardware. Ryan had never seen so much stuff—circuit boards, wires, plugs, sockets, chips, monitors and tangles of dusty equipment that threatened to topple and overwhelm even the giant figure of the baron.

  And the rest of the workroom was the same.

  Laser-vid screens sat in one corner, oscilloscopes in another. Comp recorders jumbled clear to the dusty ceiling. Another bench with shelves on top of it was lined with thousands of mags and books, all in total disorder. Ryan noticed, at a second glance, that the two shaven-headed mutes were sitting on each side of the shelves, like a pair of carved, life-size bookends.

  Boss Larry didn't reply. His breath wheezed in and out, and he looked at the small piece of techno gear in his pudgy fingers.

  Ryan waited.

  "If that's all you got to tell me, Larry, I'll be going. Can't waste a nice morning up here."

  "He means it, Ryan." There was a weight of despair in the words.

  The one-eyed man stepped a little closer, wrinkling his nose as he tried to identify a strange, sickly odor in the room. Then he saw the scraps of crumpled, blackened silver foil on the bench, all showing traces of a fine pink powder.

  "You been dreeming, Boss," Ryan said. "Traven gives you dreem and then pulls your strings."

  The leonine head nodded slowly, the disarrayed silver hair covering the face. "Oh, yes, Ryan. But you forget his lovely young friends. They don't care that I'm old, ill, terrified and fat. To them I'm as young and spry as they are. Such sweet children and they make me—" He paused, then shouted in a deafening bellow that made Ryan jump. "Make me happy!"

  The two servants both turned their heads slowly toward the baron, as though even their vanished hearing had caught something of the roar of anguish.

  At that moment Ryan realized a terrible truth: anything that Baron Larry Zapp had once been was gone, destroyed by the insidious application of dreem, combined with who knew what sexual excesses. The whirling little dervish with the pretty clothes was someone to reckon with, a figure of genuine, potent evil.

  Ryan knew it was time to move on.

  "Why tell me what Traven wants, Larry?" he asked.

  "Thought you'd like to know."

  "We'll go."

  Again the movement of the head. "Not, Ryan. Not. Sec men are his now. Promises of— All the ways out are way-out now."

  Ryan nodded. "I see."

  The hidden workroom was quiet. Without windows to see from, Ryan was only just aware of the ponderous revolving of the tower.

  "Your son."

  Ryan wasn't sure he'd heard the soft whisper. "Dean?"

  "Adam likes him, Ryan. Oh, yes. Precious. His precious, Ryan. Boy that young. Pretty. What he wants most."

  That was the moment when Ryan Cawdor made the conscious decision that Adam Traven would have to be chilled. Regardless of the personal cost and the consequences.

  "Who's going to do the chilling, Larry? You? Traven?"

  "Don't know. Don't care. Don't—"

  "Going now, Larry."

  "Want a radio?"

  "What?"

  "Gift for you. Souvenir from Greenglades ville. Thank you and come again." His hands rummaged through the morass of gear in front of him, emerging triumphantly with a small black box with a plas-glass dial and silver controls. "Here. Found hundreds. Worked on them myself. Still few in Deathlands got radio gear. Pick them up and talk. Late at night. Can't see me when I talk. Listen in. Here."

  Ryan took it, warm from the boss's hand. "How's it work? Range?"

  "Easy. Buttons marked. Autosearch. Talk and listen. Timer. Range?"

  "Yeah."

  For a moment Ryan was glimpsing something of the old Larry Zapp, a technical genius and hustler. Before the drugs pulped his brain.

  "About three…maybe four thousand miles. Old days wouldn't have been anything. Airwaves jammed and crowded and packed and filled and— Now the skies are clear as a child's smile. Take it."

  "Thanks." Ryan slipped it into his coat pocket, his fingers again brushing the torn piece of paper with its cryptic message.

  "Sorry, Ryan." A gobbet of a tear glistened on the man's unshaven cheek.

  "Never apologize, Larry. Trader used to say it was a sign of weakness."

  "And good old Trader was right." Now he was busy again, pouring something from a vial onto a piece of metal foil and lighting a burner under it. He leaned over and inhaled the acrid fumes. "Ah, yes."

  Ryan turned away, his mind racing as he tried to figure out a plan that would get them away from the murderous trap. Behind him he heard the noise of the elevator moving, gears humming, the thick cables vibrating. He eased his hand onto the butt of the SIG-Sauer and waited.

  Boss Larry was slumped over his bench, oblivious to anything.

  "Wondered if I might find you here," Traven said as he stepped out into the room with one of his young men and two of the girls. A brace of armed sec men were behind him, blasters already drawn.

  "Just leaving."

  The room was too dark for the mirrored jacket to look its best, but the diminutive figure was still impressive. "Don't think so, Ryan," he said. "Lard Ass been dribbling off at the mouth."

  It was a statement, not a question. Ryan left his hand where it was, ready for a last whirlwind firefight. He looked at the faces of Traven's companions. The odd androgynous bisexuality, the narrow, flat eyes, totally without expression reminded Ryan of the dead eyes of the great white shark that he'd once seen. ,

  There was nothing as overt as hostility, just a blankness, a pinched and corrupt disinterest.

  "He said I'd be happier if you and your crew were some other place?"

  This time it was a question.

  "Yeah. We're going today."

  "Where?"

  "Some other place."

  "Ah." Traven spread his hands like a haggling merchant. "Some other place. I think we should stop all this shit."

  "Go ahead."

  "I'm clever, Ryan Cawdor, taking this over. Don't need a blaster or a blade. Just this." He tapped his narrow forehead. "My posse does what I say. Give me all the pleasing I want. Now I want your son."

  "Why?"

  "Because I want him. Just that. I could get Larry to have you all executed. There's an easier way."

  "Tell me."

  "Walk. You, the black woman, the redhead, the gun freak and the old one. Walk out the gates into the daylight and leave the little boy. I truly want him very badly."

  "My son."

  "Sure." Traven threw back his head and laughed, a sound like a hacksaw slicing through a sheet of crystal. Almost as if he'd thrown a switch, his posse all laughed at the same moment.

  "Need to talk about it, Traven," Ryan said.

  "Sure, buy time. Can't spend it. Life costs in minutes and ho
urs. Then your account runs out, and there's no more jack beating in your chest."

  "Tell you my decision tomorrow morning."

  Traven smiled. "Same time and same place." He half bowed. "And y'all have a nice day."

  Ryan left the gloomy chamber, the only sound the muffled sobbing of Boss Larry Zapp.

  KELLY WAS SITTING on a low wall around a display of ornamental cacti. He saw Ryan come out of Centerpoint and stood.

  "What'd Traven want?"

  "Larry, you mean?"

  The sec man shook his head. "No. Boss is sinking real fast. You think he's mebbe waving, and you find out the poor fat bastard's drowning."

  "Traven wants us all to leave."

  "Your kid?"

  "No. Wants Dean left behind."

  Kelly nodded. "Thought so. You gonna run for it? Hard to get out, I tell you."

  Ryan's policy in life wasn't to trust anyone too far. The exceptions were Krysty, J.B., Doc, Mildred and Jak Lauren. The stocky noncom wasn't one of the exceptions.

  "Maybe."

  "Sucking death! Here comes that redheaded beanpole from the posse."

  Sky was running in slow motion, her arms spread wide, like the long wings of an albatross. She was wearing precisely the same clothes she'd had on the day before.

  "Hey, Ryan." She ignored Kelly completely, as though the noncom were a dead man.

  Ryan nodded to her. "You looking for Doc?"

  He was rewarded with a bright smile. "How d'you guess? Course. Adam says we can go out tonight, and I want to tell Doc I'll see him real late. After dark snaking."

  "What's that? Dark snaking?"

  She touched her hand to his lips and held it there. In an uncomfortably arousing moment, Ryan realized that he could taste the young woman's body on her own fingers.

  "Secret," she said. "Adam up in the tower with our fat friend?"

  "With the baron? Yeah."

  "See you later, Ryan. Bye." She headed toward the main entrance, floating like a multicolored bird riding an invisible thermal of warm air.

  Kelly spit among the magnolias. "Bitch," he said with little passion.

  "Yeah."

  "You tell Doc from me he'd do better letting a swamp scorpion get in— Hell, he can find out for himself. I'm through with advice."