Min Qi Man took a small drink from his glass. A flash of pain crossed his face, so at least his taste buds were still working. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," he said, vaguely. Then, eyes glazed, he wandered a couple of paces before suddenly sitting down cross-legged and staring intently into his hooch as if he'd lost something in it but couldn't quite remember what.
Rose stayed with Middenface. He began to get his hopes up.
"Not bad," she said of the drink. "I've tasted worse."
"Really?" Middenface deadpanned. "Ye must ha' been in some terrible bars."
The young woman laughed heartily, her whole body shaking with it. Since the fight, she'd managed to stuff another huge meal into herself, including some fish they'd caught in the lake, so there was quite a lot of flesh to shake. Middenface liked that. A man needed something to hold onto while he...
"Any left for me?" Johnny's voice said beside him, snapping him out of his fantasy. His partner didn't look any more cheerful than he had earlier.
"Aye," Middenface said, "plenty fer all."
Johnny looked at Rose, then at Middenface. "I'd like a word," he said.
Rose smiled good-naturedly. "Sure thing, I'll leave you boys to it."
"Naw, he dinnae-" Middenface began.
"Preciate it," Johnny interrupted before he could finish, and Rose moved away, sending a last sultry smile Middenface's way.
"What did ye dae that fer?" Middenface demanded of his partner angrily.
Johnny shook his head. "Sorry, but that can wait and this can't."
"Who says?" Middenface grumbled, but he left it at that. Johnny looked serious, and anything Johnny was serious about usually meant trouble. "Whit is it? Are ye fretting aboot how tae take on Delater now O'Blarney's oot o' the way?"
Johnny frowned. "Yeah, I'm worried about that. But I think we've got a more major problem." The white slits of his eyes darted left and right, making sure they weren't being overheard.
"Weel spit it oot, man, dinnae keep me in suspense!"
"O'Blarney knew too much about us," Johnny said. "I don't like it."
Middenface relaxed. Nothing to worry about, after all, just Johnny's excessive caution. He had to admit it had sometimes saved their bacon in the past, but sometimes it was just aggravating. And, he thought - looking over at Rose, who was chatting and smiling with One-Eyed Jack - this was one of those times. "Calm doon," he said to Johnny. "Nae need to worry just because we're world famous!"
Johnny didn't look satisfied. "It wasn't just me and you. He seemed to know about all of us. And he knew far too much. He even knew what weapon I was carrying. He knew its design specs. That's not something I tend to advertise."
Middenface shrugged. "So he was spying on us. Didnae dae him much guid, did it?" He nodded over at O'Blarney, dull green eyes staring sightlessly up at the star-filled sky.
Johnny still didn't look satisfied. "I don't think he was spying on us," he said, shooting bright glances round at the rest of the group. "I think one of us was spying for him."
"Jings, that's the daftest thing I ever heard!" Middenface said. "Who'd hire one o' this bunch o' neep-heids fer a spy? And anyway, if someone was spying fer him, they've probably decided to change sides now, ye ken what I'm saying? Now, if ye'll excuse me, there's a lassie over there who's dying fer the pleasure o' my company."
Without giving Johnny the chance to argue further, he topped up his glass then headed over towards Rose.
"Just be careful," he heard Johnny say, but he didn't pay him any mind. Wasn't he always careful?
Johnny watched his partner walk away, already a little unsteady on his feet. He shook his head, annoyed. Middenface usually had better sense. But then, as soon as people started thinking with something other than their heads, trouble was sure to follow.
And talking of trouble... Durham Red sauntered up, looking around at the other Strontium Dogs with contempt. "Well, this is fun," she said dryly. Johnny ignored her and carried on studying his fellow bounty hunters, wondering which of them it was, who had sold them down the river. He narrowed his eyes, itching to use his alpha rays on every one of his companions, strip bare the secrets of their minds and expose them to the light. Trouble was, it took energy, more energy than he had left after that fight. Even then, he could only scan one person every few hours without leaving himself so mentally depleted he'd be vulnerable to any sort of attack. Once he started doing that, the traitor would know he was suspected. No knowing what he'd do then.
At that monet, a horrible screeching sound tore through the air.
Johnny's head snapped round in alarm. But it was only One-Eyed Jack, who had dug out an ancient-looking fiddle from somewhere in his pack and was regaling the gathered mutants with something that could only loosely be described as music. The others didn't seem to mind. As soon as the tune - Johnny guessed it was a jig - started up, the Sloth pulled Jo into his arms and began spinning her slowly round the campsite. A few seconds later, Middenface persuaded the Blimp to join him. The blonde-haired mutant was laughing, her curls bouncing on her head as Middenface twirled her through the air. His face was flushed, with happiness as well as the booze, Johnny thought. Even Min Qi Man seemed to be getting into the spirit of things. Still sitting cross-legged on the ground, he had started to wave his arms woozily above his head, like some ancient, slightly brain-damaged god. None of them was in time with the music, but they all looked like they were having fun.
Maybe Middenface was right, maybe he was just being paranoid.
He dipped the ladle into the drink, topped up his glass and poured one for Red, who was still standing silently behind him. "Here," he told her, "you look like you need it."
"Thanks." She took a small sip and looked down at O'Blarney's corpse. "I guess I can see what they saw in him," she said after a moment.
"What who saw in him?" Johnny said, puzzled.
Red turned to look at him. "The women, the human women he carried on with."
"He was a flesh freak?" This was news to Johnny. Robot-human unions were illegal, very illegal. Most norms hated that kind of behaviour even more than they hated mutants, and that was saying something.
Red smiled, bitterly. "Why do you think they put him on trial? For killing mutants?"
"That's what I heard."
"Well you heard wrong. They gave him a medal for that, pinned on his chest by President Hillary herself. It was only when the Commission found out he was a human love god as well as a mutant killing machine that they started gunning for him."
Johnny shook his head, wearily. "I guess it figures."
Red looked at him, suddenly serious. "You ever wonder why we do it, Johnny? Why we take their orders and catch their criminals and let them treat us like we're worth less than shit?"
"All the time," Johnny said, looking out into the darkness.
Red smiled, not very pleasantly, and handed him back her goblet. "You know what," she said, " I need a drink - and this isn't it." Her fangs glittered red in the firelight.
"Don't even think about it," Johnny growled warningly at her.
She laughed. "Don't worry, I was thinking of hunting further afield. Reckon you can probably spare me now the job's done." Without another word she turned tail and loped away into the darkness, as silent and as lethal as a panther. Her form melted into the night, leaving only her hair to glint redly from the shadows before that too disappeared from sight.
Johnny grimaced. He knew Red couldn't help her hunger any more than he could help his eyes or McNulty could help his lumps. But he didn't like the thought of urges people couldn't control, needs so strong they overrode everything else. Because when someone had those needs, those urges, they weren't in charge of themselves anymore. He could never entirely trust Red, because he knew there was nothing she wouldn't do, nothing at all, to get her daily fix of blood.
His eyes narrowed, suddenly thoughtful, staring into the darkness beyond the campfire. But he couldn't see anything, and he was starting to think round
in circles.
The rest of the night passed slowly for Johnny and quickly for everyone else. He rejoined the rest of the group, but he was careful not to drink too much, not to let his senses become too blunt. He was determined not to let his guard down.
Middenface didn't seem to have any such concerns. He was concentrating all his energies on the Blimp, hanging around her like a shadow all night. She didn't seem to mind, and a few hours and few drinks into the festivities, she let him put his arm around her. Kisses followed, and then Johnny noticed that the arm which Middenface had rested outside her clothing was slowly creeping its way inside. It might have gone further, if both hadn't passed out in a drunken stupor some time after midnight.
The rest of the party didn't last much longer. Middenface's brew was a lot of things - disgusting for one - but it certainly wasn't weak. The Sloth and Jo curled up together near the fire. One-Eyed Jack fell asleep cradling his fiddle like a baby and Min Qi Man passed out where he was, legs still crossed, his upper body bowed over so that his forehead rested on the ground. Only Enigma bothered to get her bedding out, but she fell asleep lying at right angles across it, the long ends of her hair perilously near the dying embers of the fire.
Johnny tried to stay awake himself, to keep a watch, but by dawn his exhaustion proved too much and his eyelids fell shut and didn't blink open again.
He woke, two hours later, to piercing screams.
It was Jo. She had leapt to her feet and was staring at the ground beside her in utter horror. Her screams roused the others, and everyone rushed towards her, weapons drawn. After a second, they saw what the problem was. Weapons were holstered as everyone took a nauseated step back.
The Sloth, it seemed, had fallen asleep over a small sapling. It was now a properly-formed tree. And it was growing straight through the hairy mutant's chest.
The Sloth was undoubtedly dead. A dark crimson stream of blood had spewed from his mouth onto the ground beside him. Some of it seemed to have spattered over Jo, who continued to scream hysterically. Enigma looked on the point of fainting too, even the normally imperturbable Min Qi Man was wearing an expression of horror.
There was a moment of inaction, then Red - looking sated and happy - jogged back into the camp from the direction of the foothills. Her expression fell as she approached them.
"What the hell happened?" she shouted.
"Fell asleep on a tree," Johnny told her, nodding at the Sloth's corpse.
"Not him," Red said impatiently. "O'Blarney."
It was only then that they realised O'Blarney's metal body had disappeared.
13 / SECRETS
Ladybird tried to peer round the bodies of her fellow villagers to get a look at the figure lying on the bed in the Temporary Leader's house. She would have asked people to move aside, only she wasn't meant to be there in the first place, and if she drew any attention to her presence someone else might realise that too and kick her out.
There was a lot of activity going on, much of it self-important, but little of it purposeful. It wasn't the first time Ladybird had noticed how useless her people were when it came to a crisis. Three years ago, a stray spark from the blacksmith's forge had caught in the thatch of Brother Sunflower's cottage. Her people had run around like headless chickens and by the time anyone had thought to set up a line to pass water buckets from the well to the fire, two more cottages were ablaze and the whole village was in danger of burning down. Perhaps it had something to do with the sacred Weed which their holy books insisted be smoked as often as possible.
Finally, she managed to force her way to the front of the crowd. Her father, who was standing at the head of the bed, shot her an annoyed look but chose not to say anything. She imagined he would wait until they were back home before giving her his usual lecture. Didn't matter. She got to stay and watch and that was what mattered.
Not that there was much to see at the moment. The figure on the bed was absolutely still, lifeless. Of course, like the Glass People, he had always moved far more slowly then them - but now he wasn't moving at all. Painful as it were to contemplate, it seemed that Brother O'Blarney was dead.
Her father, rather half-heartedly, was attempting to give him the kiss of life. It didn't seem to be having any effect. Ladybird wasn't surprised. Whatever Brother O'Blarney was, she didn't think he worked the way normal people did. And when he'd been alive, she'd never noticed him breathing, so she didn't see any reason why he'd start now that he was dead.
And then there was a screeching buzz, and a blue arc of electricity shot out from O'Blarney's body and connected with that of her father, flinging him back against the far wall. O'Blarney's eyes snapped open, throwing out a grass-green light.
"Oh," he said. "Nice one."
It took over a day for O'Blarney to return to normal. At first, his words were slow, slurred. His injury had apparently damaged his miraculous ability to speak quickly enough for them to understand him. But after they'd provided him with the tools he requested, and he'd spent some time poking ponderously around in his own chest, he seemed to return to normal. Ladybird was fascinated to see that his insides looked as strange as his outsides. He seemed to be composed entirely of wires, and lights and nuts and bolts - nothing organic at all. You'd almost think he was a machine, but of course that wasn't possible. By that time Brother O'Blarney was ready to tell them what had happened, Ladybird's father had also recovered from his electric shock. Only the slight singing of the hair around his temples remained as evidence of his injury.
"Brother O'Blarney," her father said now, "we're so glad to see that you appear to be cured."
"What happened?" O'Blarney asked.
The villagers exchanged looks. "Actually," Appleseed Smith said eventually, "we were hoping you could tell us."
He sat up, even more slowly than usual. There was a slight creaking sound from his joints and he seemed to be in pain, if he felt pain. "Well, where the hell did you find me?" He sounded impatient.
"With the Glass People," Ladybird said. Her father frowned at her, but it was she who'd found O'Blarney, creeping out in time to see the final slow moments of his battle with her soul mate and his companions. "You were lying dead in the middle of their camp. They were all asleep so we came in and took you out."
Brother O'Blarney was paying her undivided attention now. She found the intense gaze of his flat green eyes rather disconcerting. "And what, exactly, did you do to them?"
Her father came up behind Ladybird and rested his hands on her shoulders. The gesture probably looked protective but she knew it was as much to shut her up as anything else. "We left them alone," he said. "As you had instructed us."
"Of course," O'Blarney said, bowing his head in a gesture that hid his expression from those around him.
"So..." Her father coughed delicately, as if about to raise a painful subject. "What exactly were you doing in their camp? I thought you told us they were dangerous?"
O'Blarney looked sad. "And I was proved right, 'cause there I was minding my own business, communing with the beauty of nature, and they come along and attack me. There was nothing I could do, no way I could fight back without hurting them, and you know I'd never do that."
The villagers all nodded. It was one of the things which had helped them to trust Brother O'Blarney, his utter devotion to all living things. In fact, they had first stumbled across him as he'd been trying to set the broken wing of a tiny baby bird, blown out of a tree in a storm. The bird had died, but the action had won him a place in the villagers' hearts. He refused to eat meat, claiming that he didn't need it to live and wouldn't let any animal die to feed his appetite. He even cared for plant life, avoiding any meal which had required the death of a living creature.
A few of the villagers had tried followed his example, living only off berries and fruits which could be taken without killing the trees from which they came. A few weeks later, near starvation, they had given up. Which only increased their respect for Brother O'Blarney further. Clearly, h
e was capable of a level of self-denial far above their own. That was when people began to whisper that he might be a new prophet.
Then, when he offered them a way off this planet, a way to cure themselves of their strange affliction and rejoin the wider society from which they had been exiled for so long, they were sure. He was the one. It explained everything: the way he moved like one of the Glass People but spoke like one of the villagers, the fact that he looked like a statue but lived like a man. He was the link, the bridge between their world and the greater universe beyond.
Except it was all taking rather longer than they had expected.
"Indeed," her father said now to O'Blarney. "Indeed, all life is sacred." He paused a moment, but it was clear there was something else he wanted to ask, and also clear that he didn't quite know where to begin. "Now, I realise that this may not be the best time, that you may still be feeling under the weather. In fact, I shouldn't even be talking about it at all, forget I even mentioned it..."
Ladybird's father ran a hand through his grey-flecked beard, a nervous habit she knew well. The other villagers all looked at him, willing him to speak, but unwilling to fill in the silence for him.
O'Blarney narrowed his eyes, spilling the green light over the silver curves of his face. "You want to ask about the project," he said.
Relieved, Ladybird's father nodded. "I wondered if there'd been... any progress."
O'Blarney nodded, then put out a hand to steady himself as if the move had disoriented him. "The mining is going well."
Ladybird's father was now running a hand through his hair while the other one continued to play with his beard. "Yes, yes, it is. The miners have been working very hard. And we sent more, as you requested, even though it's meant we've been very short-handed for the harvest."
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