[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

empire. Evil and greedy men flogging a horse to death but not realizing, not
understanding when it was dead, when extinction had been reached, and
continuing to beat it and beat it and beat it.
file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%...0Adrian%20&%20Laurence%20James%201
.0.html (154 of 335) [12/24/2004 11:16:08 PM]
d8
"You telling me the deadline's been reached? Mocsin's ready to blow?"
Fishmouth Charlie stared at him for some seconds, her bulging eyes fixed on
his, then she looked down at the bar top, spreading her hands on its shiny,
highly polished surface.
"Not as easy as that, Ryan." Her voice seemed, if anything, deeper, certainly
gruffer. "Couple of months back we had some kind of epidemic run through the
gaudies on the Strip. Real bad. Something internal, rotted 'em out. Teague's
medics couldn't cope, so they killed 'em, killed 'em all, girls and boys.
First off they needled 'em, but that was too damned slow, so one night they
came and took
'em away in vans. Machine-gunned 'em and burned the bodies. Out in the desert.
So all the gaudy houses had empty rooms and Strasser blitzed the place, went
through Shantytown dragging out just about anyone under the age of twenty,
took
'em off. They had to have something to keep the miners quiet, but some of the
men cut up more than usual. There was a riot, lotta guys shot. The sec men
contained it, put the clamp on, but maybe that was the final straw." She
shrugged, gestured around. "You can see how it is. Place is falling apart.
Generators going bust and there's nothing to mend 'em with. Lack of parts,
lack of interest.
Everything in this town is too old, too damned worn out. Unrepairable. Any
Page 93
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
case, you force a guy to use his wrenches at the point of a gun, he ain't
gonna do a prime job. He's gonna do just what's necessary to stop himself
getting his head holed and that's all. He's not gonna sweat for you, now is
he? So things just get worse. And worse."
Ryan nodded. He said, "But the miners. Stockpiling food, drilling new vents
that the overseers don't know about. Shit, Charlie, like Sam said, all that
takes time, not to mention a hell of a lot of effort, planning, thought."
Charlie shrugged.
"Who knows? I ain't privy to everything that goes down in this shithole, Ryan.
All
I know is that Mocsin's on the edge. It's like there's a button somewhere and
there's a finger hovering over it. And once the finger jabs down, once the
button's pressed
Blooey
!"
Rintoul, still casting glances at the hostile faces of the drinkers staring at
them,
file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%...0Adrian%20&%20Laurence%20James%201
.0.html (155 of 335) [12/24/2004 11:16:08 PM]
d8
said, "Yer'd think the place'd be an armed camp if all this shit is going on.
Patrols in the street, curfew, shoot to kill. Like that."
"We got a lot of crap at the entrance to town," said Ryan, "and they were
nervous, but they didn't seem to be pissing in their pants."
Charlie reached under the bar and pulled out a cigar. She warmed it over a
candle before sucking flame into its end.
"It's like I said, Teague's lost his grip and Strasser doesn't seem to care. I
guess they just don't understand after twenty years of tight control. They're
blind. It happens."
Ryan acknowledged the truth of this. All he knew of history told him that
often those who had been firmly in control of a potentially dangerous
situation for years gradually lost their objectivity. In their rigid and
unshakable belief in their own strength, their own power to keep the lid down
hard, they were blind to all else, even the most disturbing and concrete
evidence of disaffection.
Sure it happened.
And sure it was time Mocsin boiled over. You couldn't beat an entire town into
subjection forever.
He took his wine and strode over to the table where Ole One-Eye and Chewy the
Chase that terrible man crudely named after a suburb of what was once a
Washington suburb, according to some ancient map were seated, Chewy crouched
deep in his mobile chair.
Ryan said, "Look, count me out of this."
There was silence for a moment, then Chewy snickered and said, "Hey, ya know
what? They're crackin' down on muties now."
Ole One-Eye turned on him and rasped, "Don't use that word! How many times I
gotta tell you! I don't call you a crapping norm, do
I?"
file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%...0Adrian%20&%20Laurence%20James%201
.0.html (156 of 335) [12/24/2004 11:16:08 PM]
d8
Chewy said, "How many norms you seen walkin' around on no legs, huh? You
hideous apology for a human being."
"Pity they didn't blow yer vocals out when they blew yer legs! The shit I
hafta put up with!"
The nature of Ole One-Eye's particular mutation was more than merely dramatic.
Page 94
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
It was clear at once to any observer that at least one side of his bloodline
had gotten savagely zapped three generations back by a rabid breed of rad bug.
Maybe both sides of his bloodline. That would certainly account for the top of
his pate being flat and hairless and made up of flabby, spongy ridges of
flesh, and his having only one eye, one glistening ocular orb, dead center of
his forehead. From his nose downward, beyond the mouth and the stubbly beard
shot with gray, he seemed perfectly normal, though a little on the squat side
and with arms maybe a fraction longer than the average. But only a fraction.
It was not known exactly what part he'd played in the Mutie War of 2068. He
didn't talk about it much. Mutants escaping serfdom in the Baronies of the
East had fled West and gravitated by degrees to the area around old Louisville
and built up their own short-lived homeland over a period of four or five
years. But there had been too much tension. The people around there, the
normals, had grown discontented at what they saw as an invasion of their
territory, their "clean"
territory, by whole families of those whose indebtedness to the Nuke,
genetically speaking, was blazingly obvious. They wanted the muties out. The
mutant families, having finally escaped from conditions in which they'd been
treated worse than animals, refused to shift. They had built houses, farms,
repair shops, set up trade lines. The move toward outright war had a blind and
fearsome inevitability about it.
A norm farmer whose steam truck's boiler had burst near a mutie ville had
forced a couple of mechs to fix a running repair, then casually shot them both
when they'd asked for payment. If the farmer gained any gratification from
this act of gratuitous violence, he didn't have it for long. He was followed
to his own town and shot outside his home. What followed lasted maybe ten
months, during which time hundreds of mutants were massacred, whole villes [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]