Deathlands - The Twilight Children Read online

  "Dad!" Dean was flushed as he stepped forward. "Shouldn't speak to Dorothy like that."

  Ryan's good eye flashed with anger, and he half lifted his fist toward his son. "You don't ever talk out against me... or any of us. Not in front of strangers, Dean. Not ever!"

  The boy's head dropped, and he shuffled Ms feet. "Sorry, Dad, but..." The sentence faltered away into stillness.

  Jehu was standing at the back of the group and he pushed through to the front. "Sister Dorothy," he said.

  "What?"

  He put the tips of his fingers together, making a steeple from them. "Moses would not wish to hear the way you've just been speaking."

  "I speak truth. There's been nothing but ill luck and death since they set foot in our lands."

  "They didn't bring the stickies. Ryan and Mildred chilled them and saved our little ones from much, much worse."

  Dorothy stared at Jehu. "Moses knows this?"

  "Of course."

  "What did he say?"

  "That he would speak to the outlanders himself."

  It was the first that Ryan had heard of it. "When will that be, Jehu?"

  "Soon."

  "Today?"

  "Yes. When the word is sent. You should all stay ready and not leave the ville so that you can go as soon as Moses is ready to speak to you."

  Ryan bit his lip. "I don't get you people. Never seen a ville like this one. Yesterday you lose one of you to the stickies. Next morning out go your children, free as air. You told me there were armed guards on them. So, what happened?"

  Jehu looked embarrassed. "They saw some orchids so they picked them as a tribute to Moses. They thought our young ones would be safe."

  "Right. Now you know there are stickies in the forest. Look out the window. There's still people working in the fields."

  "But they're close enough to the causeway if the stickies attack." His face brightened. "Anyway, out-lander, you forget that you killed them all this morning."

  Ryan gripped the young man by the collar of his clean shirt. "Jehu, if I take a boat and catch me a trout in the lake. Catch five trout. Does that mean there aren't any more fish in the whole bastard lake?"

  "Course not."

  "Course not, shit for brains! And because we chilled a few stickies who weren't expecting to come against well-armed men and women, you think you can sit around and smile and tell yourselves that your fucking Moses is on top of the world and all's bitching well!"

  "Don't call him that!"

  To Ryan's amazed disbelief, Jehu was actually drawing his dagger, as though he were going to try to slit Ryan's throat, like he had Jimmy the night before. Ryan chopped at his forearm with the side of his hand, the steel rattling on the floor. At the same time he brought his knee up into the young leader's groin. Not hard enough to send him into shock and kill him, but hard enough to put him down and puking on the scrubbed planks.

  "Don't you ever do that, Jehu," he said mildly, "or you get to be dead."

  When he turned away he saw that Dorothy had gone pale. And that Michael had taken a step toward him, his knuckles white, eyes narrowed in anger.

  "Yeah?" Ryan challenged.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  "You aren't my father, Ryan Cawdor."

  "I know that, Michael." The one-eyed man watched the teenager with every fraction of his concentration. Ryan knew that he was fast enough in close combat, but he also knew that Michael was crucially quicker.

  "And I don't have to jump to do every damned thing that you tell me."

  "True again. Is there a point to this?"

  The youth stepped closer. To the right, and behind Michael, Ryan saw Krysty silently drawing her blaster.

  "You know the point!"

  "No. Tell me."

  "When I was at Nil-Vanity I spent my life being told what to do, Ryan."

  "You were a kid then." It trembled on Ryan's lips to tell Michael that he was behaving like a kid now, but he resisted the temptation.

  "You and your lot think that being old means never having to say 'sorry' for anything."

  "Well done, Brother Michael," Dorothy said, patting him on the back.

  "I believe that we would rather hear the organ grinder than his tame monkey," Doc said to the smiling blond woman, instantly wiping away her self-congratulatory grin. "Though, I confess in this case that I am not altogether clear in my mind as to which is which."

  "You shut the fuck up, Doc!" Michael snapped. "This is between Ryan and me."

  "No." Ryan shook his head. "I think you're wrong when you say that."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. I think that it's between the young ones of Quindley, with Dorothy here as their mouthpiece, and the five of us." He glanced at Dean. "Or the six of us."

  "Bullshit, Ryan." But Michael's anger was slipping away. It was obvious in the set of the j aw and the relaxing of the fists into plain hands. Observing body language was something that the Trader had taught Ryan at an early age, watching not just the eyes and listening to more than the words.

  "Look, we never interfere in the way a ville is run. You know that, Michael. Their business. Not mine. Not yours, either. You understand?"

  "Sure."

  Dorothy wasn't ready to allow the argument to slip away. "Typical oldie lies," she said. "You should listen to Moses, Brother Michael. He can teach you how to see the world clearly. Not through misted oldie eyes."

  "When I was a child I saw and spake as a child," Mildred said. "Not sure of the precise words. Something like. Now I'm grown up I put away childish

  thoughts and desires and I see clearly. Think on that, Michael."

  There was a long silence in the room. Soon the moment passed.

  ABOUT NINETY MINUTES LATER it was Donnie who made a hesitant appearance in the sunlit doorway of their room, his squinting eyes glancing uneasily all around without actually settling on any of them.

  Only five of the companions were there. Dean and Michael had left with Dorothy and Jehu and hadn't yet reappeared. Doc dozed on his back, snoring quietly. Krysty leaned on the sill, looking out over the lake. J.B. and Mildred were field stripping and cleaning her ZKR 551. Ryan lay on his bed, looking up at a mouse that was picking its delicate path over one of the heavy roof beams.

  "Moses will speak to you now," Donnie announced.

  Ryan swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood, reaching for the Steyr rifle and slinging it across his shoulder. "Fine," he said.

  JEHU WMTED FOR THEM outside the only stone-walled building in the ville. A magpie was strutting around and around the conical thatched roof, the bright light making its black feathers glow with a deep purple sheen.

  "You should have come more quickly," the young man said, looking worried. "You coming in with us?" Ryan asked.

  "It is permitted. But you must follow the law."

  "What's that mean, Jehu?"

  "It means that... Well, you'll see for yourselves inside. The temple of Moses is divided-"

  "Temple!" Doc snorted.

  Jehu carried on, trying unsuccessfully to conceal his irritation at the old man's sniggering. "The temple is divided. The public atrium is where we'll be. There is a wall that closes Moses off from the crude world. He speaks from behind it. But there is a mirror of magic that shows us only our poor faces. Moses watches us from behind it.

  They all turned as a blond girl, looking to be about twelve years old, came toward them from the direction of the kitchens, carrying a silver platter.

  "Noon food for Moses," Jehu explained, gesturing for the child to go on through. "She will leave it by the locked portal to the inner sanctum, and Moses will take it when there are no mortal eyes to gaze upon his divinity."

  Doc turned away, quickly clamping a gnarled hand over his mouth to try to muffle his instant laughter. "Mortal portal," he muttered.

  "Cut it out, Doc," Krysty warned.

  "My apologies." He bowed to Jehu. "I shall be the utter soul of discretion, young man. It will b e an unforgettable exp
erience, to f ind oneself in the presence of a godhead incarnate. A deity made flesh."

  Krysty had looked at the dish carried by the girl. "I thought that you were all vegetarians?"

  It was a grilled salmon, taken off the bone, the pale pink meat decorated with parsley, surrounded with creamed potatoes and thin-sliced carrots.

  "We eat no flesh of any sort," Jehu agreed. "But Moses is above and beyond any such restrictions. So we either fish or hunt for him or barter for meat."

  "Sure enjoys the good life, your Moses, doesn't he?" Mildred commented.

  "It is his right. Now come in and... please be respectful inside."

  "DARKNIGHT!" J.B. whistled between his teeth at the interior of the circular building.

  The rest of them were equally impressed. The buildings that they'd seen in Quindley ville had all been fairly crude and basic, with nothing beyond the simplest furniture.

  This was luxury on an almost unimaginable scale. If this was the public, common side of the "temple," then it was impossible to think what the godling's own quarters were like beyond the dividing wall.

  A thick carpet of animal furs covered the floor. Directly opposite them was the mirror that Jehu had mentioned. It was set in a frame of precious and semiprecious stones, giving it a rich, almost supernatural appearance,

  "There's onyx and chalcedony," Doc said in a reverential whisper. "About ten different kinds of agate. Tiger's eye and jet. Sapphires and rubies. Carved ivory, inlaid with gold."

  "Look at the pictures on the walls," Mildred said, turning to Jehu. "Those originals?"

  "Don't know what that means," he replied. "Moses sent out for them, years ago. Past history."

  The black woman walked around, peering at the paintings. One was of a man working at a gas station on a deserted road by a forest. "Hopper," she said. "And that one's definitely a Wyeth." She stared in disbelief at the strange, haunting picture of a bleached animal skull, set against an arid, pink-and-gray New Mexico landscape. "By God, but Fm sure that's an original Georgia O'Keefe. It's beautiful."

  Jehu raised a hand for silence and turned to face the mirror. "We are here, Moses."

  There was no reply.

  "Mebbe he's not home," Ryan said. "We won't wait."

  Jehu's jaw dropped. "You can't leave. Can't."

  He spoke more loudly. "The outlanders are Ryan Cawdor, Krysty Wroth, Mildred Wyeth, J. B. Dix and Doc Tanner. Ryan is the father of-"

  "The boy, Dean. Yes, I know that, Jehu."

  The voice was everything that a god's voice should be, deep and resonant, every word perfectly enunciated, managing to radiate wisdom and knowledge in every rich syllable.

  "Wow," Mildred said to Krysty. "A guy with a voice like that could have made a serious fortune doing voice-overs for ads for soap powder or life insurance."

  "They are welcome to Quindley. We have heard of your help with the evil mutated creatures that inhabit the wild woods around our sanctum sanctorum. And for that assistance we give you the thanks of Moses."

  "You're welcome," Ryan replied, staring intently at his own reflection on the wall facing them, guessing that it was an old-fashioned two-way mirror. The skill of making them had been lost during the long winters, but he'd seen a couple in the top-jack bedrooms of high-class gaudies.

  "You know that we have a rule that everyone must willingly sacrifice their lives upon reaching the end of their road at the age of twenty-five?"

  "Willingly?" Krysty queried.

  "Oh, yes." There was the faint sound of movement behind the mirror, like someone changing position on a chair. "This place is totally safe. Life is wonderful. But only because the supernal ancient ones accept our sacrifices. The balance and harmony must be maintained."

  Ryan was aware that the voice was brilliantly sidling into his mind, seeking to convince him of the essential rightness of the man-or god-called Moses.

  "Fight it, lover." Krysty's fingers were digging hard into his arm, her voice like a shower of chips of ice on a warm, welcoming fire.

  "Yeah," he said, his own voice sounding as though it were drifting to his ears from a dusty corridor in the abandoned west wing of a great mansion.

  "How long can they stay with us, Moses?" Jehu stood with his head bowed, hands tangling in front of him like a nest of small pink snakes.

  "As long as they wish."

  "Even me, O great panjandrum, Moses? Even this disgusting old sack of tripes that befouls the very air of your temple of temples, holy of holies, light of lights, ancient of days, lord of the cherubim and seraphim-"

  "Doc," Ryan whispered, "cut it out."

  Moses's voice was unchanged. "I recognize an unusual mind, Dr. Tanner. If you are here with us for long enough, perhaps you and I can find some idle moments to discuss questions moral and physical."

  "Philosophical and diagnostic," Doc replied.

  "Elementary and alimentary."

  Doc laughed, genuinely amused. "I admit, Moses... where were you when the light went out, by the way? I admit it is a rare delight to speak with someone capable of stringing together words that consist of more than a single syllable."

  "How old are you?" Krysty's question brought a silence into the ornate room. "Gone deaf, Moses? I asked you how old you were? Simple enough question."

  "The question is simple, Krysty."

  Ryan felt he was listening to an exceedingly wise and benevolent uncle, gently reproaching a callow and whining little girl.

  "So, why not answer it?"

  " I am old enough to have created and succored this ville of Quindley, without fear or favor. And that will be answer enough, Krysty."

  She sniffed, but kept silent.

  "That will be all, Jehu."

  "Yes, Moses."

  "Assure all my people that the outlanders mean no harm. Even one so unbelievably antiquated as Dr. Tanner is to be treated with respect."

  "You are truly all heart, Moses," Doc replied.

  "Now you may leave me. I have seen all I need to see. Take care of them, Jehu."

  Ryan took a step toward the mirror. "How about the stickies? You just going to let that go?"

  "Nothing needs doing, does it, Ryan? You are the man of action. I can tell that."

  "I'd go and send out a search party. Recce the woods. Up and down the coast of the lake. You got enough rifles, Moses. Look for tracks. Could be a whole bunch of muties within a mile of here. Find them and chill them."

  Just for a moment it seemed that the voice had lost its overweening self-confidence. There was a hesitation. "I shall think on that. Now, you can all go."

  NEITHER DEAN NOR MICHAEL reappeared until it was nearly time for lunch. And when they eventually arrived it was obvious that they'd had a major falling out.

  Ryan could hear them arguing almost before they reached the causeway, their raised, angry voices clearly audible as they strode through the floating ville.

  "Why should I?" Dean shouted.

  "You heard what Dorothy said."

  "So what?"

  "So what, yourself. Just because you got One-Eye for a father, doesn't mean you can stir it up between us." Now they were nearly at the building that housed the outlanders' quarters. "Well, fuck you, Michael."

  "And fuck you, too, kid."

  "Don't call me that"

  Ryan stood up from his bed and walked to the doorway, seeing that his son and the teenager were facing each other a few feet away. Both had hands on the butts of their blasters.

  "First person even thinks about drawing down on a friend gets thrown in the lake," Ryan said quietly, making both boys jump guiltily. "What's the trouble?"

  "Nothing." They spoke simultaneously, neither of them meeting his eye,

  "Well, that's good. Way I heard it I might have thought there was some problem. Since there isn't, you can both come in, wash up and get ready to eat. All right?" Neither of them answered. "All right?" There was an edge to his voice that they recognized.

  "Yeah," Michael said.

  "Sure,
" Dean added.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  "I'm not sure, Dorothy."

  "We keep close to the edge of the lake and then, if the stickles appear, we can swim for it. You are able to swim, aren't you, Michael?"