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On the other hand "more hidden underground than had ever been
discovered& "Sure, he thought, that was true enough. He and the Trader and J.
B.
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Dix knew very well that it was so, that there were far more Stockpiles hidden
away in man-made caverns than they had stumbled across thus far. That had to
be admitted. But strange weaponry? Bizarre secrets? Just a dream. The only
bizarre shit they'd ever uncovered was a sea of nerve gas in the hills of old
Kentucky, and they'd reburied it in very short order. For the rest although a
manufacturing industry was alive in the Baronies, creakingly primitive as it
was for the most part people were still living with mainly
late-twentieth-century artifacts and weapons, and if they were creating new
materiel it was based on the old. There were no new kinds of weapons in the
here and now. None whatsoever.
"Look," he said gently, "I have to tell you that there is no land of lost
happiness.
Your Uncle Tyas really was chasing a rainbow, and there's no crock of gold at
the end of it because there is no end."
Her head jerked up. She said almost defiantly, "He wasn't a fool and he wasn't
crazy. Whatever else he was, Uncle Tyas wasn't crazy."
"I didn't say "
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"He did find something! I know it. It was something important and it was
something& outrageous, something completely wild& something that no one's ever
discovered before. He wasn't simply some crazy old fucker obsessed with a
phantom!"
"Sure."
"And don't 'sure' me, asshole."
"Okay, okay. I'm sorry."
The anger went out of her eyes, the granite hardness from her face. Her body,
suddenly tense, relaxed. She breathed in and said "Okay" while breathing out
again. "I'm sorry. Hell, you saved my life." All at once she grinned. "You
can't be a complete asshole."
Ryan glanced sideways, saw that up front the Trader was watching him, eyebrows
raised. Through the steel mesh that covered the blown windshield he could just
make out that they were heading through trees, an overlush forest that a
century ago had probably simply been pine but was now a moist tangle of humid
undergrowth and purplish topgrowth. He remembered the area. They were about
five miles out of Mocsin. Talk about bizarre, he brooded. There was enough
that was bizarre in the Deathlands without adding to it with all these dreams
of fantastic weaponry and who knows what all else. This forest alone was
bizarre.
How it had grown was beyond him: a random gift from the Nuke. On the other
side of Mocsin it was mostly scrub desert to the foothills of the Darks, no
purple forest at all.
He suddenly thought, the Darks.
He said, "You were heading for the Darks. Was that where this wild blue yonder
all started?"
She scowled at him.
"Still heading," she said.
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"You're what
!"
"Still heading. Still heading for the Darks."
Ryan said, "Come on!"
"Don't patronize me," she said through her teeth, the angry look back in wide
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green eyes.
Ryan held up his hands in mock surrender.
"I'm not patronizing. I'm trying to be realistic. You got any idea what's in
between
Mocsin and the hills? One hundred klicks wilderness is what. You gonna walk
of it?"
"I'll get a buggy."
"How? You got any creds?"
"I'll sell my body."
"As to that," said Ryan, "there's quite a bit of competition in Mocsin.
And it's regulated.
And the pay's piss poor.
And it's a hell of a life.
And
& "
She shot him a withering look.
"You don't maybe consider I have a touch more class than the majority of my
working sisters?"
Ryan tapped his teeth with a fingernail and looked her over with amusement.
"Here it is," he said, his eyes locking on to hers. "You have more class than
I've seen in five years."
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"Only five years? How blasted gallant." Her tone was sardonic. "Don't bother
with the honey talk. I can get by."
Ryan stood up and leaned against the steel-faced wall. He went on as though
she hadn't said a word. "But that of course only makes it worse. You wouldn't
start out in the back-street sleaze pits, you'd go straight to the top. And
that means you'd start off with Jordan Teague, the fattest hog in the
territory. You'd not only supplant all his harem, which means they'd be
gunning for you the whole time, but you'd have to put up with his personal
habits and sexual demands, which are by no means couth."
" 'Couth!'" She laughed suddenly. "That I like!"
"When Teague's finished with you only take a month at the most, he has a low
boredom threshold you get passed down to his chief of police, Cort Strasser.
Teague's just gross, raunchy. Strasser on the other hand has very strange and
violent tastes. Whips, torture, humiliation. I don't believe Strasser likes
women very much."
"Okay, okay." Her voice was tight. She said quietly, "Is it any wonder people
want to escape& "
"If you've been around," Ryan said, "you know very well that not every city,
town or hamlet is the same as Mocsin. Sure there are plague pits all over the
place, but you could probably live your entire life out without seeing one."
Krysty stood up, faced him, her deep green eyes diamond hard, defiant. She
swept a swath of scarlet hair from her face and it tumbled back over her
shoulders. Ryan felt sudden and intense desire for her.
She looked at him and said, "I'm going on to the Darks."
Chapter Six
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"AND CHECK YOUR BOOTS," said the Trader through his cigar smoke. He waved the
cigar at J. B. Dix. "See they do it, J.B."
"Don't worry. They always do."
"You, as well."
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J.B. didn't say anything. He glanced at Ryan, a pissed-off expression on his
thin face.
"And don't look like that!" barked the Trader. "I know what I'm talking about!
It's the little details. You forget the little details, you might as well be
dead. Hell, you forget 'em and you will be dead!"
Ryan reflected that it was ever thus when they were approaching what the
Trader invariably referred to as a "pest hole" town or area controlled not by
men and women with a certain standard of civilized behavior, but by men and
women for whom there was no law but their own, no rules but those that they
invented on the spur of the moment to satisfy some passing whim or desire. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]