by Ryder Stacy
“Who’s that big old country boy?” Simpkins asked, as he took in Archer, seated on the last hybrid.
Archer was looking up and around at the huge Caucus Dome like a kid’s first time in the big city. It was so big and round. And now that he saw that it wasn’t about to snap them up like some sort of immense venus flytrap, he wanted to go inside and see just what it was. He’d let Rock handle the rest.
“Oh, a—bodyguard,” Rockson hesitated, knowing he didn’t want to get into detail about any of them. For Simpkins would quickly see that they had nothing to do with the Caucus people.
“And you have a Chinese and a black with you as well. You don’t see too many of them around here. Thought most of them had been blown up. Well, don’t you worry. We ain’t got no problems with that stuff here. In fact, I think we got a few of our own, somewhere around the place.”
“That’s mighty open of you,” the Doomsday Warrior replied with a smile. Chen and Detroit did the same.
“Anyway,” Simpkins went on, sliding back down into his chair as if all this standing around was starting to tire him out, “that’s it.” Rock noticed that the guards were all fat as well as old. Where the hell did they get enough food to feed them? And if there were thousands more inside—? This whole place was becoming more of a mystery every minute.
“Handelman,” Simpkins said to the man who was sitting at the chair next to the talkative Caucus officer. “You’re a Facilitator 2nd Class. Take this crew inside, show them around a little and get them settled into the Junior Delegates commissary. I assume these fellows are hungry,” Simpkins said, patting his wide stomach. “Get ’em some chow.”
“Ah, do I have to?” asked Handelman, who had a wide handlebar mustache going all across his plump face. It was almost the plaintive whine of a child. This one didn’t seem like an Einstein, Rock could see that instantly. “I was just getting some notes together for the kick-off ceremonies tomorrow afternoon.”
“You’ll do them later,” Simpkins replied, with a certain cool demeanor that clearly showed that you didn’t want to go against the man, or have him as an enemy.
“All right, Mr. Rockson.” Handelman got up from his seat, and scratching his head beneath his straw hat, led them through the main gate. He walked pretty slowly considering he wanted to get back to his notes. “Better get down from your animals here. There’s plenty of side tunnels and light fixtures—and all kinds of stuff in here; they could get—”
“TUNNNNEELL,” Archer groaned out as the wide corridor stretched on ahead for what looked like miles.
“What’s wrong with him?” the Caucuser asked Rockson.
“Oh, he just has a thing about tunnels. You know how it is. He got stuck in one when a child. Also, he was hit in the head a few years ago and—” Rockson shrugged.
The answer seemed to satisfy Handelman, who led them down the long concrete corridor and then took them to the right. They came into a large square room with hay on the floor and the smell of manure thick in the air. There were stables all over the place, maybe a hundred of them with all kinds of breeds eating hay, drinking from buckets of water.
“Here you go, fellows,” Handelman said, leading them to the far end where a bunch of stalls were empty. The place looked clean, well cared-for. The smell of horse dung was almost painfully strong toward the back. The other steeds all looked up as the four new hybrids were led in. They hardly noticed, being more interested in their food. Like all living creatures, intellectual curiosity came second to stomach-growl quenchings.
“Stableboy!” Handelman exclaimed, clapping his hands with loud, smacking sounds so that Archer looked over, startled, reaching for his chair-sized crossbow behind his shoulder. A youth in his mid-teens jumped down from a storage loft with a magazine in his hands. The magazine was all faded and yellowed, Rock noted.
“Yes, sir,” the stable lad said as his eyes quickly rested on the Freefighters’ mounts. He whistled as he walked over and patted Snorter on the nose. Rock’s ’brid usually didn’t like strangers a hell of a lot, especially those who touched it when it didn’t necessarily feel like being touched. But the mutant horse didn’t seem to mind at all with this kid, and nuzzled his face.
“You’re pretty good with these fellows,” Rockson commented, smiling at the youth.
“Been around them my whole life,” the lad went on as he took Rock’s and then Chen’s mounts and led them into the open stalls.
“Now, give them some prime oats today,” Handelman said, almost scolding the lad although he hadn’t done anything wrong.
“What about our supplies that we have all battened down on our animals?” Rockson asked as he patted Snorter on the wide rump as the animal passed by and looked around at its stall a little edgily, making some low whinnying sounds to show its nervous displeasure.
“Easy, boy, you and me going to be good pals,” the stableboy said softly in the animal’s ear, rubbing his hand down the side of its face. The ’brid quieted down instantly.
“We’ll send some porters down here to get it all, once you’re settled in,” Handelman replied.
Rockson didn’t mention their weapons. He wasn’t in the mood to give them up. They had only been in the place a few minutes, but already the Doomsday Warrior was feeling a sense of foreboding. There was a strange aura to the place.
“I’ll take care of ’em all,” the bucktoothed youth said, taking Archer’s and Detroit’s animals as well and leading them to the next two stalls. Archer gave him a suspicious look, until the kid grinned back innocently. The huge Freefighter relaxed with that and he smiled back his own innocent look. The giant functioned at a fairly primitive level, but he could tell who was okay and who wasn’t. The kid was all right. “TAAAKKEEE CAARRRE HORRSIE,” Archer said, looking sternly at the lad.
“Don’t worry about that!” the stableboy exclaimed. “I love ’brids of all kinds. These are all beauties!” He looked around at the other steeds eating away like threshing machines in the private stalls and then turned toward Rockson, whispering conspiratorially with his hand over his mouth. “Most of these other hybrids ain’t the best,” the stableboy went on. “They’re overweight, ain’t been ridden enough, energy level is low. Why even their teeth is bad in a lot of ’em. Sort of like some of the people you’ll be meeting. Your animals are tough, look like combat animals from some of these scars. Their muscle tone’s real good. Naw, tell your pal here I’m going to make these ’brids feel right at home. Give ’em a real vacation.”
“Sounds good,” Rockson said, taking out a gold coin from a small packet on his utility belt. “I don’t know if these are worth anything,” the Doomsday Warrior said, slipping it into the boy’s palm so Handelman couldn’t see. For all he knew the man would take it away otherwise.
“Thanks,” the stableboy said in an excited whisper. “Your animals is going to shine like new, before I gets through with them.”
“We must get moving,” Handelman said, yawning and rubbing his large stomach which was evidently feeling empty. “There’s a lot to show you. This place is huge and has enough nooks and crannies to get lost in. Why there’s a legend around here about a new delegate back in ’82 who had to take a leak in the middle of the night. He’d only been here a day. He left his room and apparently took a wrong turn. Never been seen again.”
The Freefighters all chuckled. Even Archer, who found the idea of one’s demise occurring during a search for a good piss spot to be quite amusing!
But Rock had the missing men on his mind. “Listen, Handelman, we are looking for a group of friends from Colorado. Lost them in a sandstorm.”
“They might be inside, might not,” the man retorted. “Only way to know is to look-see.”
Eighteen
“Please, let’s get a move-on,” Handelman said as he led them back out of the stables, which the Freefighters were happy about doing as the smell from the place had permeated their nostrils. He led them down one of the main tunnels that led into the stadium proper.
They came to another doorway, then entered a small room off to the side. Inside was a bored, bureaucratic fellow reading a book entitled, Manual of Retrospective Recordkeeping and the Caucus Rules.
“Handelman here, Assistant Junior Secretary Level Three. Have some weapons storage for you. Give ’em up, delegates. Rules!”
“Now wait a minute,” Rock exclaimed. “I thought you said we could keep our supplies. We’re not exactly the types who feel comfortable without them. I mean, where we live, every damn thing around, even flowers, are trying to do you in.”
“Sorry,” Handelman replied with a trace of humor on his face. “We’ve had too many assassination attempts—and successes—over the years here in the Caucus Dome. We just have to put them under lock and key. Politicians can get pretty excited from time to time. And when tempers and feuds because of different points of view and what not explode—well, if you have something strapped on, you just may use it. Oh, I’ve seen a few shootings in my time. Including what we call the Massacre of 2067, when factions from the left and the right were voting on something that was incredibly important to both wings of the aisle—I can’t even remember just what it was right now. But two or three of the Right-wing faction pulled out some firearms and opened up. Well, the left hadn’t come unprepared either, and pulled out their own deathdealers. There were bullets flying everywhere. When it was over, twenty-five people were dead, chairs ripped apart, even managed to rip a hole in the plastic ceiling. Since then—no weapons. It ain’t just you.”
“Sounds like a fun place,” Detroit muttered.
They surrendered their firepower to the bureaucrat, who took out forms and passed them out to each of them. “I’d like you to please read and then fill these out. Name, place of origin, type of weapon—you’ll see, it’s all there.”
Rockson took an ancient, half-melted ballpoint which still barely functioned, and began laboriously filling in the thing. It could hardly be read, although the forms in triplicate beneath it still were inked enough that they picked up the information. The other Freefighters looked as unhappy about it as he did, and Archer looked positively forlorn, as he wasn’t exactly the literate type.
Rock walked over a few feet to Archer, once he himself was done, and began helping him with his form.
“Hey, you can’t do that,” the form taker suddenly said sharply. He bounded up from his crumbling, spring-popping office chair and looked harshly at the two men. “Everything is done by rules and regulations around here. Otherwise there would be total anarchy. Now, you can see, on that sign up on the wall,” the bureaucrat said, as if it were the crime of the century he was witnessing, “ ‘ONLY ACTUAL OWNERS OF WEAPONS CAN FILL OUT FORM 167B’ ”
“Well, that’s all well and good,” the Doomsday Warrior replied with a slight smirk. “But since my oversized pal here can’t write or read, in fact he can hardly speak, I’ll be helping him.”
Archer sort of snorted. The bureaucrat looked up at Archer, who stared back down, the right side of his mouth starting to curl up in a definite animal-growl expression. Generally, the near-mute could hold his anger. He knew how strong he was. But once in a while, when he got riled up, he started losing it.
“I think he feels bad that he’s not educated,” Rockson leaned over and spoke softly. “He can get pretty upset when he’s mad, so—”
The bureaucrat gulped and glanced at Archer and then turned quickly away. “Well, I guess in this particular case an exception can be made,” the form taker said, coughing hard, somehow pretending that it didn’t really matter all that much anyway.
When all their forms were complete the bureaucrat got up, huffing and puffing from his chair, and led them down an aisle toward the back of the room. Shelving extended for hundreds of feet, floor to ceiling. Many of the spaces were already filled with firepower. From shotguns to immense blunderbusses. The place had enough death-potential stored up in here to take on an army. One by one they handed over their own firepower, not liking it at all.
Rock gave his shotpistol but kept his mini-derringer, a two-shot affair, in his shirt. If you could hang onto the thing when it bucked, you could probably take out a wall with the mini-.357! He was going to keep his Bowie blade which was hidden beneath his jacket too, but the bureaucraft was apparently used to such shenanigans and pulled the jacket back, taking the long blade out.
“Can’t fool me, fellows,” he laughed for the first time. “I’m an expert when it comes to ferreting out all weapons.”
Detroit undid his grenade-bandoliers and with a grim look handed them over as well. Then his .9mm Liberator went. He kept a small blade that unfolded hidden in his belt, which the form man somehow didn’t see.
Chen gave his blade and a small .9mm that he carried sometimes as well. He didn’t mention that he had about a half-dozen shuriken, two of them explosive. And again the bureaucrat couldn’t find them when he patted the Chinese Freefighter down.
The bureaucrat reached for the huge crossbow nervously as Archer swung it back around his shoulders. He held onto the thing as if it were his firstborn. And let out a little snarl again. “NOOOO BREEEAAAKKK!”
“I’d make sure that thing doesn’t get damaged,” Rockson warned the weapons taker. “Not even a scratch.”
“Oh no,” the man replied, shaking his sweat-beaded brow. He held out his arms to receive the weapon, but Archer wouldn’t let go of it until Rockson gave him the go-ahead sign. Mumbling and looking quite perturbed about the whole thing, Archer then handed over his alumisynth quiver, which held all kinds of arrows. But he managed to hold onto something—his long knife inside his deerskin pants. The bureaucrat wasn’t about to search him. In fact, he pulled back quickly, wanting to be as far away from Archer as possible.
And with that, the Freefighters supposedly all searched and weaponless, the bureaucrat handed each a slip of paper—the last sheet of the triplicate form.
“Now, you’ll need these when you come to retrieve your things.”
“Great!” Rock replied with an undercurrent of sarcasm. Though the bureaucrat in charge of firearms forms didn’t even seem to notice. That was one of the good things about that type—they didn’t see or hear a hell of a lot of what was going on around them, as they were usually too busy getting fat, or filling out meaningless pieces of paper!
“Okay, let’s get the hell out of here,” Handelman said gruffly, as he looked at his ancient wristwatch held on his wrist by a cord. “We’ve got a lot to do, and see.” He led them down the main lobby, a good two hundred feet. They reached another wide opening and walked through.
“Jesus—” Rockson whistled through wide-open lips while Detroit and Chen just stared ahead, as if in a daze. For they were looking down over the insides of the great Caucus Stadium. Rockson had never been inside a structure so immense. It was hard to believe it was man-made, so huge was the inner main area. The huge curved ceiling seemed impossibly high. From one end of the sports complex to the other it must have been four football fields wide, perhaps two long. Steel beams crisscrossed on every side and along the plastic ceiling. Light came in from various plastic-light-sheets set into symmetrical designs. Whoever built the place had done a damn good job. For the giant sports dome had to have been completed a hundred and twenty years ago, maybe more.
Rock looked all around the dreamlike structure. There were so many levels, tiers everywhere, rising up so there were five different levels all around, circling the entire stadium. There were just a few people around, and it was obvious that they weren’t regular delegates but rather cleaners. They went around in the endless rows of chairs dusting, making sure that everything would be in spotless, shipshape condition in preparation for the upcoming convention. Men were down on their hands and knees, dusting and scrubbing the floor; waxers and shiners worked on the chairs, on the walls, on the immense stage and podium that stood in the dead center of the stadium floor.
As Rock turned his head from side to side, the place just overwhelmed him more and more. From the outs
ide of Caucus Dome, the structure had seemed huge, impossible to comprehend. But once inside, the huge structure seemed even more impossible to take in mentally. The top of the curved plastic dome, with all its beams, seemed larger than the sky itself. It just seemed to rise up and off in every direction. Rockson’s eyes kept moving around as he tried to take it all in.
“Come on,” Handelman said, bored with it all, since he had lived and caucused in the Caucus Dome for years. He led them down the aisle, one of a dozen or more of them. Down toward the stadium stage. Folding seats ran off in both directions. There must have been tens of thousands of seats that circled the inside of the stadium, forming tiers that circled around the entire space.
“Some son-of-a-bitching place,” Detroit commented as the Freefighters followed just behind Rock, Handelman in the lead.
They walked down the aisle for a good five minutes, so much area was there to get to the center. They were all in a state of awe.
As they reached the end of the aisle, they looked across the floor. It had once been astroturfed for the games that had gone on a century before. But even the toughest material would have started breaking down after the decades. In the center of the areas of faded green covering was the wood plank platform. This was huge, too, raised up about ten feet from the floor. It was a good hundred feet in diameter. And it was centrally situated, so anyone in the stadium could see it from any of the seats. If nothing else, the whole thing had been well designed.
They stood there for a while watching the work crews tear ass all over the place. There must have been hundreds of workers moving around as if they had only minutes to complete their jobs. Rock glanced around at what he had thought were large waxing machines until he got up close. Men were driving these machines that he suddenly realized were motorized carts with red, white, and blue stripes on the sides, making a loud chugging sound. The drivers wore straw hats, and had plump-faced, blank expressions. It was like America of the years just before the atomic clouds hit. The world-gestalt of a century before permeated the place, creating an aura of a time that would never exist again.
