Outlanders 21 - Devil in the Moon Read online

  Kane didn't dispute him, but not because he nec­essarily agreed with him. They'd argued the issue to death over the past couple of months, ever since they absconded with the suits from Sindri's stronghold on Thunder Isle.

  Kane had christened the garments shadow suits, and though they didn't appear as if they could offer protection from a mosquito bite, they had learned the suits were impervious to most wavelengths of radia­tion. The suits were climate controlled for environ­ments up to highs of 150 degrees and as cold as minus ten degrees Fahrenheit. Microfilaments controlled the internal temperature.

  The manufacturing technique known in predark days as electrospin lacing electrically charged the polymer particles to form a dense web of formfitting fibers. Composed of a complicated weave of spider silk, Monocrys and Spectra fabrics, the garments were essentially a single crystal metallic microfiber with a very dense molecular structure. The outer Monocrys sheathing went opaque when exposed to radiation, and the Kevlar and Spectra layers provided protection against blunt trauma. The fibers were embedded with enzymes and other catalysts that broke down all toxic and infectious agents on contact. The spider silk al­lowed flexibility, but it traded protection from fire­arms for freedom of movement.

  Regardless, Kane still felt the shadow suits were superior to the polycarbonate Magistrate armor if for nothing else than their internal subsystems. Built around nanotechnologies, the microelectromechanical systems combined computers with tiny semiconductor chips. The nanotechnology reduced the size of the electronic components to one-millionth of a meter, roughly ten times the size of an atom. The inner layer was lined by carbon nanotubes only a nanometer wide, rolled up sheets of graphite with a tensile strength greater than steel. The suits were almost im­possible to tear, but a heavy enough caliber bullet could penetrate them and, unlike the Mag body armor, wouldn't redistribute the kinetic shock.

  Brigid began returning the medical instruments to the case. "You'll heal just fine, Mina. But I'd rec­ommend you stay away from screamwings for the next few days."

  Mina didn't smile. She gazed at Brigid with some­thing akin to adoration shining in her dark eyes. Sud­denly, she blurted, "Basilisks."

  Brigid regarded her curiously. "Basilisks? What about them?"

  Mina gestured to the many scaled and winged bod­ies on the gully floor. "We call them basilisks. Or Chief Eljay does. He's says they're therapeutic."

  Brigid's eyebrows rose toward her hairline, then knitted at the bridge of her nose. "We call them screamwings. They're a species of mutant and not a common one. The last thing they are is therapeutic. Basilisks are creatures of mythology, whose eyes could cause plants to wither, trees to die and birds to fall from the air."

  Mina seemed uninterested in the differences be­tween the two monsters. "Chief Eljay says they do that. That's why the Forbidden Waste is still a waste."

  Brigid started to speak but Kane interjected impa­tiently, "She doesn't need a lesson in mythology, Baptiste."

  Brigid gave him a glance of green glittering irri­tation. She wasn't quite the ambulatory encyclopedia she appeared to be, since most of her seemingly lim­itless supply of knowledge was due to her eidetic memory, but her apparent familiarity with an astound­ing variety of topics never failed to impress—and oc­casionally irritate—Kane.

  Addressing Mina, Kane asked, "Who is Chief El­jay?"

  "He's the chief of staff, the head therapist of the sanatorium and the leader of the entire valley." Mina paused, nibbled her underlip nervously and added breathlessly, "The Valley of the Divinely Inspired."

  "The what inspired?" demanded Grant. "What's so divine about your valley?"

  Brigid smiled ruefully. "Divinely inspired is an old euphemism for insanity."

  Turning to the girl she asked, "Where's the sana­torium?"

  Mina gestured to the top of the gully walls. "Over that way, but I can't go back until sundown when the

  Day of the Basilisk is over. If Chief of Staff Eljay or Dr. Sardonicus sees me, they'll only set the basilisks on me again. And if they see you, they'll put you in the group therapy circle." She did a poor job of sup­pressing a shudder at the concept.

  "Should we assume that's something we should avoid?'' Kane asked wryly.

  Mina nodded vehemently, her curls bouncing. "Oh, yes."

  "Tell you what," said Brigid. "Let's sit here for a little while and you can tell us all about the valley, the sanatorium."

  She glanced at Grant and Kane. "I need to run a systems diagnostic on the interphaser before we power it up again."

  Mina stared searchingly at the little gleaming pyr­amid on the ground. "Did that machine bring you here? From where? Will you tell me where you come from? Will you tell me what it's like on the other side of the Forbidden Waste? Do you need machines to cross it? Will you tell me?" She spoke in little eager bursts.

  Kane smiled at the sudden onslaught of questions. Now that her fears had been allayed, the girl's curi­osity consumed her. "Sure, we will. But I don't know if it'll be half as interesting as your story."

  Chapter 3

  In actuality, Mina's story was not as strange as many the three travelers had heard over the past couple of years. Still and all, it did have the cachet of being unique.

  Speaking in breathless, fitful bursts, Mina told them how the little valley had sheltered Foxcroft Sanato­rium during the days of doom and the endless night that followed. Therefore, according to Chief of Staff Eljay, it had been spared because it was divine.

  Eljay himself was the latest in a long line of chiefs of staff, and when the caduceus stick was passed, so was the oral history of Foxcroft and the valley. In the beforetime, Foxcroft had served as an exclusive sanc­tuary for those seeking divine enlightenment. The in­stitution was dedicated to helping people find it, either through long immersions in ice-cold water, applica­tions of electrical current or prolonged periods of iso­lation in darkened, cushioned chambers. Others were encouraged to wear the jackets of clarity, canvas gar­ments with sleeves that could be tied together in the back. Allegedly, wearing the jacket while residing in a cushioned chamber helped facilitate clear and un­troubled thought patterns.

  The people who lived in and around the sanatorium now were descendants of those touched by the divine spirit. Of course, a caste system that clearly delineated the different degrees of "touchiness" was practiced.

  Occupying the top rung of the valley's social ladder was, of course, the chief of staff and his immediate associates, including Dr. Sardonicus. Everyone else was spread out over the lower rungs in no particular order. A person's position could change, either for good or ill, depending on the completion of various therapies or the whims of Eljay.

  During the Period of Behavioral Mastery, a person could climb up a rung if he or she was successful in the task facilitation. Essentially that meant the person survived the Day of Tilkut, the Day of Bast and the Day of the Basilisk. That was the main task—to fa­cilitate staying alive while a member of a Prey Party.

  Shortly before the three feast days that comprised the Period of Behavioral Mastery, Dr. Sardonicus re­viewed the charts in order to identify the incurables, known as the Chronics, the drains on the valley's re­sources. Curiously, every year Sardonicus managed to find an even dozen.

  The males were generally designated as slackers or self-medicators and literally branded as such. Sardon­icus was less creative with the female Chronics. In­variably they were classified as nymphomaniacs and branded with a small N.

  Mina touched the red scar on her forehead. "That's what I am."

  Brigid looked up from where she crouched over the metal-walled pyramid. Her eyes guttered with emer­ald sparks of anger and repugnance. "Do you even know what a nymphomaniac is?"

  Mina frowned thoughtfully for a moment, then shook her head. "I don't even know what slacker or self-medicator is."

  Brigid cast a questioning glance toward Kane and Grant. When she saw that Kane was trying very hard to repress a grin, she demanded, "You think this is funny?"

  He unsuccessfully turned a chuckle into a self-conscious cough. "You've got to admit there's a comical element to her story."

  Brigid straightened, saying darkly, "Let yourself be branded—maybe with the letter A—and we'll see how long you laugh."

  Taking a deep, calming breath, she declared, "It's pretty obvious how a deranged society like hers got started."

  Without waiting for anyone to ask, Brigid said mat-ter-of-factly, "Foxcroft was more than likely a private institution that catered to wealthy predarkers with a host of problems—psychological, mental, substance abuse, you name it. Since we're pretty close to Se-dona which was something of a New Age Mecca be­fore the nukecaust, this institution was probably only one of many like it in the area.

  "The original staff of the sanatorium and the pa­tients had no choice but to band together for common cause. Over the course of the last couple of centuries, a society based on psychological jargon and meth­odology evolved. It was the only thing the people here had to use as a template. They obviously have no idea of the true meanings of the terminology or the ther­apies."

  Grant knuckled his chin contemplatively. "What the hell did they use for food?"

  "This valley was apparently isolated enough so it was spared the most acute effects of the nukecaust," Brigid answered. "I wouldn't be a bit surprised to learn the institution was always self-sufficient with its own generators and vegetable gardens."

  Kane looked at the girl. "That's how it weathered skydark. Does any of that sound familiar to you, Mina?"

  She blinked in consternation. "I don't under­stand… what is nukecaust and skydark?"

  Kane frowned at the girl, but Brigid nodded as if her reply were expected and completely satisfactory. "That pretty much sup
ports my theory. She and her people have been cut off from the outside world since the nukecaust. They never heard the common terms for the holocaust and the nuclear winter."

  "That's not necessarily a bad thing," Grant ob­served bleakly. "They probably never heard of the barons or the hybrids or the Mags, either. Sometimes I wish I never heard of those things myself. If you've got nothing for comparison, there never was an end­ing, only a new beginning."

  The new beginning for humankind occurred on January 20, 2001. The detonation of a nuclear war­head in the basement of the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C., began a chain reaction, like the toppling of a row of dominoes. By the end of that day, the world in general and America in particular had been transformed into the Deathlands, a shock-scape of ruined nature, a hell on earth. Massive quan­tities of pulverized rubble were propelled into the atmosphere, clogging the sky for a generation, blan­keting all of Earth in a thick cloud of radioactive dust, ash, debris, smoke and fallout. The entire atmosphere of the planet had been hideously polluted by the nuke-caust, producing all manners of deadly side effects in the ecosphere.

  In the century following the atomic megacull, what was left of the world was filled with savage beasts and even more savage men. They lived beyond any concept of law or morality, and made pacts to achieve power, regardless of how pointless an exercise it seemed.

  Survivors and descendants of survivors tried to build enclaves of civilization around which a new hu­man society could rally, but there were only so many people in the world, and few of these made either good pioneers or settlers.

  It was far easier to wander, to lead the lives of nomads and scavengers, digging out Stockpiles, caches of tools, weapons and technology laid down by the predark government as part of the Continuity of Government program and building a power base on what was salvaged. The scavengers knew that true wealth did not lie in property or even the accruing of material possessions. Those were only tools, the means to an end. They knew the true end lay in per­sonal power. In order to gain it, the market value of power was measured in human blood—those who shed it and those who were more than willing to spill it.

  Some of the scavengers used what they had found in the Stockpiles and elsewhere to carve out fiefdoms, tiny islands of law and order amid a sea of anarchy and chaos. These people formed ruling hierarchies, and they spread out across the ruined face of America. They profited from the near annihilation of the human race, enjoying benefits and personal power that oth­erwise would have been denied them if the nukecaust had not happened.

  The hierarchies spread out and divided the country into little territories, much like old Europe, which had been ruled by princes and barons. The different hi­erarchies conquered territories, and claimed them as baronies. Although these territories offered a certain amount of sanctuary from the crazed anarchy of out­lying regions, most of them offered little freedom.

  After two centuries, the lingering effects of the nukecaust were more subtle, an underlying texture to a world struggling to heal itself, but the side effects of the war still let themselves be known from time to time, like a grim reminder to humanity to never take the permanence of Earth for granted again.

  One of the worst and most frequent side effects were chem storms, showers of acid-tainted rain that could scorch the flesh off any mammal caught in the open. They were lingering examples of the freakish weather effects common after the holocaust and the nuclear winter. Chem storms were dangerous partly because of their intensity, but mainly because of the acids, heavy metals and other chemical compounds that fell with the rain, so corrosive it could strip flesh from bone in less than a minute.

  Fortunately, chem storms were no longer as fre­quent as they had been even a century before, but there were still a number of places where the geolog­ical or meteorological effects of the nukecaust pre­vented a full recovery. These regions were called hell-zones, areas that not even the passage of time could cleanse of hideous, invisible plagues.

  Eyeing Mina closely, Kane again wondered just how many truly human people populated the world, but there was no way to hazard an accurate guess. Even the intelligence-gathering apparatus of the Mag­istrate Divisions in the villes could not learn with any certainty about what was transpiring beyond the con­tinental boundaries. Radio waves wouldn't reach across the sea because lingering radiation and atmo­spheric disturbances disrupted shortwave carrier bands.

  As far as he was concerned, learning that Mina came from an isolated settlement with little or no knowledge about the world outside her valley wasn't much of a surprise. There were probably hundreds of similar pockets scattered all over the world with no conception of the nukecaust or skydark or that life was more than a rudimentary struggle for survival.

  As if she picked up on his thoughts, Brigid com­mented, "This valley would make for a pretty inter­esting sociological study."

  "Yeah," Grant rumbled, "if we were on an aca­demic field trip. Which we aren't."

  Kane nodded in agreement. "Mapping out the par­allax points is our mission objective. We're bench markers this time around, not anthropologists."

  Mina murmured something inaudible.

  "What was that?" Brigid asked.

  Hesitantly, Mina asked, "Is that why you're here? To mark benches? There are a lot of benches at the sanatorium."

  "That's good to know," Grant said blandly.

  Mina's gaze fastened onto the gleaming pyramid. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion and she said quietly, "No, you're not here for benches."

  Grant, Brigid and Kane exchanged swift glances. When neither of the men showed an inclination to respond to the girl's observation, Brigid said, "We're explorers, more or less."

  A corner of Kane's mouth quirked in a smile. "Sometimes we're more, sometimes we're less."

  Facing Brigid, he said, "We killed a wagload of screamwings and helped Mina here rise in status in her settlement. That's enough extracurricular activi­ties for one morning. Recalibrate the interphaser and take us home."

  Brigid's back stiffened at the peremptory tone as she returned her attention to the little metal pyramid. Kneeling beside it, she touched a seam on its alloyed skin and from the base a keypad slid out. With an index finger she began tapping in a numerical se­quence.

  Mina watched the process with undisguised fasci­nation. Haltingly, she asked, "What is that?"

  "You wouldn't understand," Grant retorted brusquely. "I'm not sure if I do."

  "Tell me anyway. Please."

  Distractedly, Brigid replied, "It's a miniature quan­tum phase transducer, version two."

  Kane threw the girl a wry smile. "Is that of any use to you?"

  Mina's lips stirred as she silently repeated Brigid's description beneath her breath. Kane was tempted to dismiss the girl's attempt to learn something new as a wasted effort. His many years as a Magistrate had conditioned him to view all outlanders as inferiors, human due only to an accident of biology.

  Both he and Grant had come to realize otherwise since joining the group of exiles at the Cerberus re­doubt. They had no choice, particularly since a fellow exile and one of their most trusted allies was Domi, a feral Outland girl. Besides, all those at Cerberus were outlanders now in that they could never return to their lives in the villes. So, if living as an outlander made them citizens in the kingdom of the disenfran­chised, then Domi and even Mina were heirs to the throne.

  At a wordless utterance of irritation from Brigid, Kane turned toward her. "What is it?"

  She shook her head in angry frustration, red-gold tresses tumbling. "A glitch in the telemetric software. The satellite uplink is lost. I'm going to have to re­boot the entire system."

  Grant glanced at the sky, as if he expected to see the Comsat hovering overhead within reach. "Are you sure it's not the satellite?"

  "No, I'm not. I'm only sure the uplink is off-line."

  It had been a source of wonder to all of them when they learned that the Cerberus redoubt was linked with two of the very few functional satellites still in orbit, a Vela reconnaissance model and a Comsat. They were aware that in predark years the upper reaches of the planet's atmosphere had been clogged with orbiting satellites, many of them designed for spying and surveillance purposes. According to leg­end, there were settlements of a kind in space, even on the moon itself. They were just as aware that ville doctrines claimed that all satellites were now simply free-floating scrap metal. For a time, in the decades following skydark, pieces of them fell, flaming and disintegrating, once their orbits decayed.