Neutron Solstice

by James Axler

  "I beg pardon for dropping at the eaves, Ryan," said Doc. "The dancing was far too tiring. Lori and I are going to bed." Seeing Ryan's raised eyebrow, he added, "Yes. We are going to bed together. I may find dancing a little much now, at my age. But that does not mean I am totally impotent."

  "Sorry, Doc," muttered Ryan.

  "Apology accepted. Krysty." He gave a half bow.

  "Good night, Doc. Good night, Lori. Sleep well."

  "Thanks. And you," replied the blond girl.

  "Doc," called Ryan, suddenly aware that the dance seemed to be breaking up around them with couples drifting away.

  "Yes?"

  "Did you hear any of that? About my brother and…and this," he said, fingering the patch over the barren left eye.

  Doc smiled, looking startlingly, touchingly youthful. "Of course. But I had known it all along. Good night, my friend."

  "Good night, Doc," Ryan said.

  Chapter Nine

  INSIDE THE HEAVY DOOR WAS a thick drape of black velvet. Mephisto eased it to one side, creeping through, allowing it to fall silently into place behind him. He paused, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim light. A thick yellow candle, made from corpse fat, guttered in one corner of the motel room, filling the air with the pungent odor of ambergris and squill.

  The sec boss knew from long experience that it was best to be careful when approaching Baron Tourment in the night. His predecessor had died from a snapped neck for just such a foolishness.

  "Lord," he called, from the safety of the doorway, keeping the heavy octagonal table between himself and his slumbering master.

  "I heard you creeping on tiptoe along the corridor, Mephisto." The sonorous voice sounded gently amused, "Though the knocking of that ice-chiller came close to drowning the sound."

  "Shall I turn it off?"

  "No, no, any machine that still functions from before the fireblast deserves every chance. What is it? You have news? I can tell. I heard the noise of the swampwag a half hour back."

  Mephisto took a few more careful steps. His eyes had adjusted, and he could make out the calipers leaning against the side of the long bed. Tourment's bare feet protruded beyond the bottom of the blankets. The air-conditioning in the room whirred and hissed, keeping the awful damp heat at bay.

  "He brought a bird from a ville."

  "Where?"

  "Moudongue."

  "Aaah." He sounded like a great cat purring its satisfaction. "Our hunched friend Pecker, as they call him. Master Bochco as he is truly named. How many?"

  "There were seven and now six."

  "The black on the bayous?"

  Mephisto nodded, knowing that Baron Tourment could see him well enough. "I have arranged a payment of food. But they killed a dozen of the morts-vivants and ran."

  "To Moudongue, Mephisto?"

  "Four men and two women, is the message."

  "And they are still there?"

  "Oui."

  "The question is, where do they come from? Who are they? What do they want? Are they to be allies for the snow-head bastard and his wolf pack? Questions, questions, Mephisto, and no answers."

  For a moment Tourment managed to stand without the aid of his exoskeleton, flailing his great arms in a fit of anger. But the effort was too much, and he crumpled backward onto the bed.

  "Questions," he repeated softly. "Will they join the renegades?" Then he began to laugh. "But if they are strangers in Moudongue, at Mardy… I guess that mebbe there's nothing for us to worry on."

  "Should I send men to the ville? Better to be safe than sorry, lord?"

  "When they are sorry, then we shall be safe, mon cher Mephisto."

  "Could they…they be blasters from the Deathlands? Hired guns?"

  "Generosity. That was my error. I left them a little more than usual last year, and how do they repay me? By buying guns? Surely they would not dare, Mephisto, would they?"

  "The people love you, Lord. Only the snow-head and his running curs… The rest are in mortal fear of you."

  Tourrnent smiled indulgently. "If the saints in their wisdom had not wished them to be bled, then they would not have been created as hogs."

  Mephisto laughed heartily, wondering as he always did whether the note of fear rang through his desperate merriment.

  "You did well to wake me, Mephisto. If the strangers have arrived…the ones seen by the blind witch…then we should walk light. Take a dozen men and two swampwags and go hunting."

  "How should we take them, Lord?"

  Again he smiled lazily. "Alive, if you can. Specially the women. Oh, yes, Mephisto. I would have the women brought to me alive."

  The sec boss backed out of the bedroom, nodding his eager agreement. When he closed the door, he leaned against it for a moment and took several long, slow breaths, finally recovering his composure.

  Only then did he go to call for his men to go hunt in the ville in the swamp.

  Chapter Ten

  RYAN MADE LOVE TO KRYSTY as quietly as he could. Wrapped in a blanket, J. B. Dix was sleeping in the far corner of their hut, away from the door and window. His hat was by his side, and his Steyr AUG 5.6 mm pistol was tight in his fist. Doc and Lori lay side by side against a wall, the old man snoring gently through his open mouth.

  Finn wasn't there.

  Toward the end of the night's revelry, the mother of the girl that Finn had been dancing with had come along and whisked her away, chattering accusingly in Creole French at the plump blaster. But all hadn't been lost for Finnegan. The giantess who'd snatched J.B. had tired of his lack of enthusiasm and had sidled up to Finn. Nobody knew what she'd whispered, but it was the first time that either the Armorer or Ryan could recall seeing Finnegan actually blush.

  As the dance had ended and Ti Jean had come to see them all through the small ville back to their own quarters, Finn and the woman had disappeared. The Cajun had laughed at it. "Marie has found a man worthy of her," he said.

  KRYSTY HAD REACHED for him in the sultry humid darkness of the hut. Her long fingers spidered over his muscular chest and across the flat wall of his stomach, then down lower, finding him springing to a hard erection. He turned his head, raising himself on one elbow to kiss her. It was a long, lingering kiss, their tongues thrusting against each other.

  "Yes, love. Oh, yes," she sighed as his hand touched her thighs. Her long legs opened to him, so that he could read the moist warmth of her body. The tender bud of flesh hardened as her passion rose. She kissed him all over his face and neck, nipping with her sharp teeth, drawing a bead of crimson salty blood from his lips. He bent his head to nuzzle her breasts, the nipples swelling at the touch of his tongue.

  Unable to control his fiery lust, Ryan had rolled on top of her, his hips rising and falling, letting her reach and guide him into her.

  He climaxed moments before the girl, her nails raking at his bare shoulders, clutching him deep within her. She'd sighed, pressing her lips against his chest to quiet herself, fighting not to waken the others in the hut.

  "I love you. By Gaia, but I love you with all of my heart, Ryan Cawdor."

  "And I love you, Krysty." But the words still wouldn't come easily to his lips, which for so long had been used to a cold tightness when he rode with the Trader. Love and tenderness hadn't played much part in Ryan's life for far too long.

  "You don't have to say it, lover," she'd whispered. "I can feel you feel it. That's enough for me." She kissed him as they rolled apart. "One day it'll be easy and natural, Trust me, lover."

  "I do, Krysty." And he really did.

  Around three he woke, pressed against her back, cuddling like two spoons, snug in a box. The contact was enough to rouse him again, but the second time she mounted him, sitting above him, grinning triumphantly down into his face. Her hair seemed to billow about her face and shoulders, even though there was no wind in the hut.

  With all the dozens and dozens of women that Ryan Cawdor had taken to bed, none had been like Krysty. She had the most amazing cont
rol over all her muscles, so that he felt sucked and gripped into a cave of sexual heat that squeezed at him, milking him for her pleasure.

  After the second time they both rose, naked, and walked to the window of the hut, peering out through the slats across the trampled earth of the square toward the sullen, rippling surface of the river.

  They stood together, savoring the faint breeze that came sidling in through the blind. She shivered, and he put his arm about her waist, pulling her close to him.

  "Cold?"

  "No. It's not that. I think I hear engines."

  "Swampwags."

  "I don't know. They're far off, almost beyond my hearing. I don't know if I really hear them or whether I'm imagining."

  "Are you a woman dreaming you're an eagle, or an eagle dreaming that you're a woman?" he asked her.

  "Don't be so fucking runic, lover," she said. "Next you're going to be asking me to describe the sound of one hand clapping."

  "No, I'm… Look, there in the shadows, to the far right."

  If they hadn't been standing so close to the window, they never would have seen the movement. It was a man, bent low, scurrying across the gap between two of the wooden huts. He was followed by another, and then a third. As the last one darted across, Ryan caught the flicker of silver moonlight glancing off steel.

  "He's got a blade," whispered Krysty.

  "I knew that Ti Jean was a swift and evil bastard," said Ryan.

  "It might not…" She stopped. "No. That's stupid. Course it means trouble."

  "And the engines you hear."

  "Yeah."

  "Couple of hours to dawn. What can…? This Mardy festival, I heard of things like this. Some backwood villes where they pick a boy and let him do what he wants. Eat and drink what he wants. Fuck anyone he wants. For a special day each year. Then they slit his throat for the promise of a good crop. I wonder if…"

  Krysty left his side, padding to her clothes. "Best get moving." She dressed with an elegant haste, tugging on her boots.

  He joined her, polling up his trousers, then fastened the buckle on his belt and checked his guns. Moving silently to the door and inching it open, he peered around the edge of the warped frame. He saw nobody out there. Yet his sixth fighting sense told him that the whole of Moudongue was bristling around them.

  "I'll wake the others?"

  "Yes. I'll wake Doc."

  J.B, came instantly to full awareness, the gun probing out into the darkness, his eyes open. "What? Trouble?"

  "Men on the move. Holding knives. Krysty thinks she hears swampwags, far off."

  Lori came awake, trembling a little like a frightened fawn, eyes glistening. "What?"

  "Trouble," said Krysty, matter-of-factly.

  Ryan knew from previous experience that Doctor Theophilus Tanner wasn't the quietest of men when it came to being roused from sleep. He knelt beside him, cautiously extending his right hand and clamping it across the old man's jaws, holding the mouth shut. Simultaneously he hissed into Doc's ear, "It's Ryan. Keep still and quiet." Doc jerked and struggled, his hands scrabbling to free himself, but Ryan was far stronger, holding him down on the floor. "Fireblast, Doc! Wake up, will you? Keep quiet—there's danger."

  Only when Doc was finally still did he release him. The old man sat up, rubbing his face. "Upon my soul, Mr. Cawdor, but you have a grip like a poacher's trap. What ails you now?"

  Krysty answered him. "We've seen men moving around the huts with cold steel in their hands, Doc. And I heard engines, miles off."

  "What about Finn?" asked J.B., standing at the window, flattened against the wall, squinting out. "He's with that giant whore."

  "Where?"

  Lori answered. "Saw big woman and Finn. Go to house with picture of bird on door."

  "A white cockerel with a red band about its neck," exclaimed Doc. "Three down from the long hut where we all danced."

  In a couple of minutes everyone was fully dressed and armed and ready. Ryan once more looked out of the shuttered window where J.B. had been keeping watch.

  "Anything?"

  "No. Thought mebbe I heard a noise, along to the side, by the river."

  Ryan eased out of the hut, keeping in the dark lake of shadow and peering into the surrounding forest where the Armorer had said he'd heard something. It was difficult to tell, but there could have been the faintest light of a fire. A dim red glow, but he couldn't have sworn to it.

  J.B. joined him. "What d'you figure?"

  "Get out. I reckon we should make for that township we saw. West Lowellton. This Baron Tourment runs Lafayette. Keep out of that ville. I figure we'll lose if'n we try and fight these Cajuns in the mud. Better we get into some ruins and make them play on our patch."

  "'We go and get Finn?"

  Ryan nodded, slowly. "Yeah. You take Doc and Lori and go get him. I want to see what those bastards are doing by the river. I'll take Krysty. Meet you out where the trail narrows. Get to the far side of that and cover the path."

  J.B. nodded and turned to go back inside the hut, then paused. "Chill the big woman?"

  "'Course," replied Ryan.

  ALL THE NOISES of the Atchafalaya Swamp were oddly muted.

  Ryan led the way, with Krysty a silent shadow at his heels. There wasn't a light showing in the whole ville, but ahead of them they now saw that a large fire was lit deep into the curtain of the mangroves. The wind was drifting eastward, toward the ville, so they could smell the scent of the burning wood.

  "I hear a drum. Muffled, slack kind of noise," said Krysty. "Beating slow and even. It's 'bout in time with a heart."

  Ryan heard it, too, or more exactly, felt it, as though it was striking within his body.

  Something suddenly scurried away from beneath the toes of his boots, making him jump. It vanished with a soft plopping sound into the river.

  Now they were so close that they heard the crackling of the fire. They also heard an occasional mumbled chanting, rising and falling in the damp air.

  Ryan stopped so abruptly that Krysty nearly bumped into him.

  "What is it?" she whispered.

  "Don't like this."

  "What?"

  "This whole fucking place. The heat. The damp. The fucking mud. That creepy ville with its songs and dances and all the time… always there's something fucking rotten going on. Since we met we've been in the cold, high country. That's better, somehow. This swamp is fucking evil, girl."

  "I feel that, too. Mebbe stronger than you, lover. How's 'bout us turning right around and heading back for the gateway and getting out?"

  "No, Krysty. Trader always figured a man had to go out and hit a lick for what he believed was right. If'n everyone turned their backs when things got mean, then I guess the world would just get real fucking mean. Let's go see what the Cajuns are doing out here."

  Now they were within fifty paces of the blazing bonfire, close enough to make out figures moving in a shuffling ring around it. They were men and women, from what they could see through the dangling fringe of Spanish moss on the trees. The riverbank was only a few yards to their left.

  "Look," breathed Krysty barely audibly, pointing ahead and slightly to the right.

  Someone was standing rock-still, leaning against the trunk of a topless sycamore. It was one of the Cajuns who'd asked Krysty to dance: a large, squat man, wearing an old plaid shirt torn across both shoulders. He had a long beard, streaked with silver like a tree seared by lightning. There was enough orange light from the fire to show that he was cradling a blaster. It was a long, old-fashioned musket, like the one…

  "The one that killed Henn," Ryan said.

  Revenge was one of the sweetest-tasting dishes in all creation to Ryan. But he had been alive long enough to know that it was also a dangerous pleasure. If this was the man who had slaughtered Hennings, then it would be good to ice him. But only if it could be done safely.

  The drums, would drown out the noise of a cautious approach, Ryan realized as he studied the man, who was obv
iously supposed to be on guard. The stock of the musket, bound with baling wire, rested on the soft earth. There was a machete, similar to Ryan's own steel panga, sheathed on the man's left hip; a smaller knife was strapped to his right knee. Beyond him, the fire was burning brightly, the breeze carrying the scent of bitter spices to them.

  At his side, Krysty looked up at Ryan's, face, seeing the orange light flickering across the hard, almost brutal planes of the high cheeks, throwing his good right eye into shadow. The faint gleam, of the strong teeth was revealed between parted lips. It was a face of total, cruel concentration. The girl knew that he was considering how best he could murder this Cajun: it showed in every angle of the taut face. Yet it was a face that only an hour or so before she had seen melt into gentle consideration in their love-making.

  The Cajun's name was Henri de la Tour. As he leaned against the bole of the tree, he contemplated the hours to come. Once the rituals were finished, they would collect the outsiders and take them for the new ceremonies. But if the baron was interested in them, then they must not be unduly harmed.

  Yet the girl with hair as red as glowing coals in a fire…

  His head was sunk on his breast, and he lifted it, jerking a hand up in irritation at the feathery touch of an insect near his ear. The movement exposed the side of his neck above the collar of the shirt, uncovered by the long beard.

  "Merde," he hissed. Even to someone who'd spent all of his life in the swamps, the insects could be torture. There had been a woman in Moudongue, named Jenny, whose skin had carried a subtle odor that was irresistible to the hordes of biting insects around the bayous. Poor Jenny. She'd tried getting help from the local voodoo priests. Even gone to Mother Midnight and begged aid against the swarming skein of fluttering flies that always hung around her long hair and face. In the end, Henri recollected, Jenny had been driven insane. Clearly mad, she had run screaming into the splashing shallows of the nearest slime hole, tearing great bloody gouges in her face. No one who had watched the frenzy of her thrashing in the gray-brown ooze tried to help her. It hadn't taken long for the sinister caymans, attracted by the disturbance, to slither from the banks.