by James Axler
Far down the road, snuggled against a glistening stream that sparkled as it caught the sun’s rays, Ryan observed a watermill, its huge, wooden wheel turning over and over as the water splashed through it. The stream looked thin, a weedy little nothing of a water source compared to the vast rivers that crisscrossed the continent, but it sloshed along on its path, making its way to whatever sea or lake it finally fed, miles from here. The stream was why they were all here, Ryan realized. Its healing properties were what the whole of Babyville had been built up around, why the place was now guarded so firmly. And yet, the stream continued on, past the towering walls of the ville, through the Tennessee countryside. What was there to stop a bather dipping himself in there? Ryan wondered. Were the miraculous effects unique to this one spot?
Ahead of him, Ryan saw a number of parked wags, more than thirty in all, from the various visitors who had come to sample the rejuvenating wonders of the bathing pools. There was the VW Bug that he had seen drive through the gate, now unoccupied and parked beside a rusting military transport that was coated with sand. Some of the wags had been here a long time, Ryan could tell; they had been stripped down, broken up for their component parts.
When people left Baby did they just walk? Was it so incredible to feel that first flush of youth all over again that the converts walked, ran—hell, mebbe they even skipped—through the gates, not caring what they left behind? The people who ran the ville insisted on a high price for entry, Ryan knew, a great big chunk of everything a person owned, but leaving your wag behind, trekking out there into the wilderness on foot? That seemed incredible to Ryan’s way of thinking. It hadn’t been so far down the road that they had met Mitch and Annie and the nocturnal hordes of scalies. That had been rough, and they had had wags for protection. Would people really leave here with nothing?
Or mebbe they stayed, he thought. Mebbe that was the secret of Babyville—people grew young and then they stayed on to build the perfect world. It was only the few like Alec and Daisy who left to spread the gospel, share news of the miracle.
“You look troubled, Ryan,” Croxton said from the passenger seat of the wag, snapping Ryan from his thoughts. “Nervous?”
“New places,” Ryan said after a moment’s pause. “Don’t always know what you’re getting into.”
“I quite agree,” Croxton said, smiling amiably at Ryan as they pulled into the parking lot. “But I’m sure we’ll be quite safe. After all, you and your people have done a good job of keeping us all alive so far. And soon, friend, we’ll all be young and fit and healthy, even your man Doc back there.”
Ryan nodded, pulling the heavy, grumbling wag to a shuddering halt.
“You still doubt, don’t you?” Croxton said, gesturing all around him at the towering buildings and the construction work that was going on. “Even after seeing all of this.”
“I like miracles that I can touch and hold, Croxton,” Ryan told the old farmer as he climbed down the side of the wag, “not ones I have to be frisked and disarmed to witness.”
Croxton laughed, a booming, hearty sound. “I didn’t always believe, either, you know,” he admitted. “I wondered if Daisy had been entirely honest when she told me the story of her and her brother. But now we’re here, now I can see all this with my own eyes…? Well, it’s really something.”
Ryan sneered. “It’s something all right. Just keep your eyes open as to what.”
Chapter Thirteen
They were given simple accommodations in one of the blocky buildings of the ville, four to a room. The building was constructed of bricks and mortar, and, inside, the poorly plastered walls had been enlivened with bright stripes running to halfway up their sides, sunshine yellows and pomegranate reds. It all seemed a little overpowering.
There was negligible security here in the sleeping quarters, clearly the hope was that by disarming all visitors the capacity for trouble had been sufficiently diminished. The fact that most of the ville’s visitors were likely old folks probably helped reassure the locals, too. The group, along with similar visitors to the ville, mostly arriving in twos and threes, or sometimes elderly couples with grandchildren, were instructed that they were here for the use of the spring and that this would begin in the morning.
“How long will treatment last?” Charles had asked, his voice sounding gruff and his breathing strained.
“Just a few days,” explained the guide who showed them to their rooms. She was a perky blonde girl, with tanned limbs and a charming smile.
The rooms were small and their amenities nonexistent. Each had a small window with wooden shutters, and the one that Ryan shared looked out over the main thoroughfare of the ville. Each room featured two small bunks; the occupants were expected to double up.
“Huh. Guess this place proved more popular than they’d thought,” J.B. said when he learned of the sleeping arrangements.
“They seem to be doing a lot of construction work,” Paul pointed out. “I’m sure it’s just temporary.”
While the travelers settled into their quarters, Ryan and the companions huddled together in one of the cell-like rooms to discuss tactics. Ryan sat on a bunk beside Doc, while Mildred and Krysty took the other bunk. J.B. peered through the small, open window, watching proceedings outside as the sun sank, and Jak remained by the open doorway to the room, crouched on his haunches, listening for trouble. There was no door on the room, nor on any of the others—that was a luxury that visitors weren’t to expect.
“So?” Ryan said, opening the debate. “First impressions?”
The room was silent, no one speaking until finally Mildred piped up. “We need to look around. It seems to be what Daisy and Alec promised, but I hadn’t expected it to be quite so large.”
Doc agreed. “It is an impressive place,” he said. “This feels like that wondrous thing that people have been waiting for. A real town with real buildings, not just shacks. People helping one another with the miracle spring as the catalyst.”
“People helping one another?” Krysty repeated. “Did you see what they did to that man in the wag in front of us?”
“He tried to smuggle a blaster inside,” Ryan pointed out reasonably.
Almost before Ryan had finished, J.B. spoke, not turning his attention from the window. “You think this place is on the up-and-up?” he asked. “No. There’s something not right here.”
“And what would that be, John Barrymore?” Doc asked, ruffled.
J.B. just shook his head. “I can’t put my finger on it, not yet. But it’s there.”
“You have doubted this from the beginning,” Doc reminded him.
“And I ain’t seen anything to alter my opinion, Doc,” J.B. stated.
Doc looked as though he was about to say something more, but Ryan stopped him with a look. “Let’s play along for now,” Ryan proposed, “see what’s what. Keep an open mind.”
J.B. turned to the group, responding to Ryan’s words but clearly directing his reply to Doc. “My mind is open. Are your eyes?”
Mildred spoke then, trying to break the tension in the room. “I want to check out the spring, find out what I can about what’s going on here. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
As the companions sat there, mulling Mildred’s suggestion, Jak cocked his head. “Woman coming,” he said, indicating the corridor outside.
A moment after, the perky blonde strode past the open doorway, peering inside as she passed. She wore a loose summer dress that left her tanned arms bare. She was tall, but beneath the dress she still had a girl’s figure, the hints of womanly curves only beginning to take shape. Seeing people within the room, she stopped. “Cheer up, friends,” she said. “You’re here. You made it. This is your salvation.”
“We came a long way,” Krysty said, standing up from the bunk and approaching the blonde.
“My name’s Michelle. Your dreams are about to come true,” the woman assured her. “Life out there takes its toll, but we’ll fix that. The spring—you’ve never felt anything lik
e it.”
“How old are you?” Krysty asked, watching the woman closely.
Michelle smiled. “How old am I now, you mean?”
Doc stood then, his eyes wide. “You’ve tried it then? You’ve tried this…treatment?”
“We all have,” the apparently teenage girl assured him. “Everyone you see here. It’s a miracle.”
“We need to see it for ourselves,” Doc insisted.
“Tomorrow,” the girl told him, casting her glance across the whole group to take them all in. “There’s room for everyone.”
Doc peered closely at the girl, as though examining a slide under a microscope. “You are…?” he began, and stopped himself, a blush rising to his cheeks and up into his white hair. “I am sorry,” he said. “I am forgetting my manners. It is simply that I am—”
The girl placed her hand on Doc’s arm, squeezing it with mock flirtatiousness. “I don’t mind,” she told him. “I used to be just like you.”
Doc met her eyes. “Yet, you look so…beautiful,” he said, clearly at a loss for words—a rare event for the typically verbose Theophilus Tanner.
“What I have now is what the water gave me,” Michelle told him. “You’ll be the same, soon. Be patient and have faith. You’re among friends here.”
Still holding Doc’s arm, the blonde woman led him from the room and down the corridor. The companions followed, all except Ryan and J.B., who remained in the cell-like room for a few seconds.
“It’s not good,” J.B. said quietly. “Not good at all.”
Ryan looked at his oldest friend, his face racked with turmoil. “Do you ever wonder, J.B., if we have been running for so long that we wouldn’t know when to stop?”
“You think this is it?” J.B. asked, a hint of annoyance in his sharp tone.
Ryan inclined his head noncommittally. “I think we need to remember that one day we might just find something worth stopping for,” he said, and strode through the open doorway after Doc and the others.
The Armorer watched the open doorway for a moment before pushing himself up from the window-sill and following. “I just hope you have a plan, Ryan,” he muttered.
They followed Michelle down into a large, communal room on the first floor, where their travelers and a few other newcomers were milling about. Michelle pointed to the tables scattered around the room, and promised that a meal would be served shortly.
“What eat?” Jak asked.
“I’m starving,” Mildred added.
“We make our own bread here,” Michelle explained proudly. “And we have fresh and cured meats. Not much, but we’re always pleased to share with our new friends.”
Along with the other newcomers to the ville, the companions sat down to eat.
AFTER THEIR MEAL, the visitors chatted a little with one another before retiring to their rooms. They had all suffered long journeys to get here, each of them drawn by the story of a spring of eternal youth. There was a curious, shared sense of relief among the visitors. It was as if, now that they had reached Babyville, one more night wasn’t going to hurt them.
THE NEXT MORNING, Ryan and his companions were awakened with the other visitors and given a brief but enjoyable breakfast of toasted bread and a choice of goat’s cheese or fruit preserve. After they had eaten, Michelle encouraged everyone to follow her into an open-air courtyard that sat between the accommodations buildings. Ryan’s group of travelers, along with a number of other folks—most of them elderly, and including the people from the VW Bug—waited eagerly in the warm, morning sun. Alert, Ryan and his companions noticed that several armed sec men were wandering nearby, giving the appearance of acting casually, but doubtless keeping an eye on proceedings.
Encouraging everyone to form a circle, Michelle took center stage and introduced herself. “Hi, everyone,” she said, “and welcome to Babyville. I’m Michelle, and I’ll be your friend while you’re here.”
Michelle gestured with a fluid sweep of her tanned arm, and a young man politely made his way through the crowd from the back of the group. He was six feet tall, broad-shouldered and he wore his thick blond hair like a lion’s mane, its curls brushing against his shoulders. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, with well-defined arm muscles and he sported a healthy tan. A sliver of white, like a hairline fracture, ran down the right-hand side of his forehead, evidence of an old scar.
“New friends,” Michelle trilled as the man joined her, “I would like you to say hello to Eddie.”
Self-conscious, the crowd mumbled a hello.
“Hi,” Eddie began, presenting the crowd with a friendly wave and a bright smile of white teeth. “I’m going to be your friend, too, for the duration of your stay in our wonderful ville.” He gazed around the crowd, nodding when he saw Alec and Daisy as well as several other younger people that had traveled with other groups. “I see we have a few returning friends here, and to them I say ‘welcome back.’
“You have all heard stories about this place, about what we do here,” Eddie continued, his presentation smooth. “Perhaps you came because you couldn’t resist trying the miracle we have. Then again, perhaps you thought that it sounded incredible, mebbe even unbelievable, so you just wanted to take a look-see yourself before you dismissed it out of hand.” He pointed to one of the crowd at random, an elderly woman, stooped over a walking cane, with no front teeth in her mouth. “You, ma’am, why did you come here?”
The elderly woman looked uncomfortably about her before she spoke in a frail voice. “I been hoarding all my life, and when I heard of this place I figured that mebbe you had something here what would be worth all my hoarding.”
Eddie put his hands together in sincerity, offering her a genuine smile before moving on to another member of the group. It was Julius Dougal, one of Croxton’s party. “And what about you, sir? What brung you here?”
“Well, I’m not getting any younger on my own.” Dougal chuckled. “So I figured I’d give this a shot.”
“And you, sir?” Eddie moved on, working the crowd, pointing at Jeremiah Croxton.
“The bright young Miss Daisy here came to my ville,” Croxton said, “and told us all about the miracle she had found here. That you could make me young again.”
Eddie swept his arm to encompass the whole crowd. “Is that what you all heard?” he asked, raising his voice.
As one, the crowd nodded or spoke their agreement.
Eddie chuckled, and beside him, Michelle broke into a broad smile.
“You know what?” Eddie said, once he had finished laughing. “It’s all true. Whatever story you heard, about the pool, the spring, the rejuvenating waters—all true.
“Six months ago, when I submerged myself into the pool, I was a man of forty-seven years of age. I had moved from farm to farm doing what chores I could for whatever jack the owners would pay me. I slept in warm houses and I slept in cold stables and sometimes I slept right there under the stars. I had such cramp in my hands that they looked like claws, the muscles so fucked I could never straighten my fingers.” Eddie flexed his digits theatrically before the crowd. “I took a dip in the pool. That was all it was, just a dip. I’d been working these lands, the very fields you passed on your way in here, and I was all messed up so I stripped off my clothes and I took a dip in this pool what I found. Water looked clean, tasted fresh. What harm could it do? Right?”
The crowd was quiet, listening in awe to the man’s story.
“I didn’t even notice at first,” Eddie continued, and he indicated Michelle. “It took my lady here to see what had happened. ‘Eddie,’ she said, ‘you look real fine today.’ That’s the words she used—real fine.”
Michelle smiled, pointing to Eddie. “His hands weren’t bent up anymore,” she said. “A woman notices that in her fella.”
“I went back to the stream, the pool—” Eddie picked up the story “—and I washed there every day for a week. And every day I got a little better, a little bit younger. Didn’t even realize it at first, not till
the third day, in fact, when I looked in the mirror to shave and I saw this familiar face looking back at me. It was me, only the me I hadn’t seen since I had turned forty. Freaked me the hell out, it did.” He laughed again at that.
A middle-aged man standing in the crowd raised his hand to get Eddie’s attention. He had his arm around the waist of an attractive woman; slender with dark hair showing streaks of gray, crow’s feet at her eyes. “Why do we have to pay so much to use the pool?” he asked. “Isn’t it there for everyone?”
Eddie nodded as though he agreed. “That’s a darn fine question, sir, and I will answer that because I figure it’s one that’s crossed a lot of folks’ minds.
“The world’s a pretty nasty place just now, what with the muties and the chem rains and everything else that’s floating about out there, waiting to kill us. I heard it wasn’t always like that, but that’s neither here nor there. Imagine you take a dip in that pool, you and your good lady wife there, and just then some mutie son of a bitch comes along and steals your clothes, takes your woman. Mebbe that mutie pulls a knife on you, mebbe even a blaster. What do you do?”
“I don’t know,” the man admitted. “Shoot him, I guess.”
“What if it’s not one mutant but a dozen of the mad fuckers?” Eddie asked. “What if it’s a hundred and each one of ’em is gonna have his wicked mutie fun-time with your woman before they chill you and her both. Mebbe even have his fun-time with you. What do you do then?”
“I don’t know,” the man admitted, clearly uncomfortable.
“Yeah, you do,” Eddie told him. “Everyone here knows the answer to that question. You build a great big wall around the pool so no more muties can come along and surprise you ever again. So, that’s what I did. I built a wall and the wall became a ville and I called it Baby, because I figured that if everything around here was going to keep becoming younger then the place would never grow up.” He looked around, taking in the construction work within the ville’s walls. “Boy, was I wrong.” He laughed.
