Читать книгу Haven's Blight - James Axler - Страница 11

Chapter Four

As the hot sun poured from the blue Gulf sky, the Tech-nomads and the companions raced east before the storm. The clouds began to pile up the sky behind them, black and ominous.

The companions had gathered on the lead ship, the New Hope, in the bow, sitting on the hot wood deck or leaning against the rail, talking with Long Tom, who was the squadron commander, though neither he nor any other Tech-nomad would use the term, and some of his crew. Ryan squatted in front of the cabin, admiring the curve of Krysty’s buttocks as she stood in the prow gazing forward. The movement of her long red hair wasn’t altogether in tune with the stiff wind blowing from their starboard quarter.

“So how did you know the hurricane was coming?” Mildred asked.

“Well, duh,” said Highwire, an overly wound Asian techie with prominent ears and horn-rimmed glasses. He was shorter than J.B. and wispier. “We talked to them others of our group by phone.”

J.B.’s own face tightened up a bit. It wasn’t a respectful way to talk to his friend, much less his woman. Ryan shot his friend a deceptively lazy look. These people were their paymasters, not to mention the fact they outnumbered the companions enough they could just pitch them over the rail for the sharks if they got pissed off, despite the companions’ weapons and proficiency at using them. And it wasn’t exactly a surprise when Tech-nomads showed bad manners, even by rough and ready Deathlands standards.

“So, do you use surviving communications satellites?” Mildred asked.

“Nope,” Sparks said. A wiry black kid—almost all the Tech-nomads were on the lean side—he wore shorts and a loose jersey, and his hair in dreads. “Use meteor-skip transmission. Bounce the signal off the ionized trails they leave. Reliable and easy. Don’t have to wait on satellite coverage. Which is pretty scant these days.”

“Meteors,” Krysty said. “But they’re not all that common except when the showers happen a few times a year, are they?”

“Always meteors falling,” said Randy, the fleet’s electronics ace. He was another black man, but big and powerfully built, with a shaved head and a surprisingly high-pitched voice. He always seemed pissed off about something and spoke in aggressive, staccato bursts. Dark lenses covered his eyes as if they were part of his face. That creeped Ryan out slightly, although he suspected that was the intent. “Whether you see them or not.”

“Who’d you get the word from?” J.B. asked.

“The Tech-nomad flotilla,” Long Tom said.

Ryan scratched at an earlobe. “What’s that mean, exactly?”

The captain shrugged. He lived up to his name. He was a long lean drink of water with muscles like cables strung along bone, a long narrow head with ginger beard and receding hair both shaved to a sort of plush.

“Lot of things,” he said. “It can refer to the seaborne Tech-nomad contingent, or even all Tech-nomads worldwide. In this case it refers to a group of seacraft passing across the mouth of the Gulf.”

“Tom,” said Great Scott, an overtly gay guy in a loose canvas shirt and shorts, who shaved his head and wore a tiny little soul patch. His voice had a warning tone.

He was another technical wizard of some sort Ryan didn’t even understand. Then again, that pretty much defined any random Tech-nomad. Even when they had some kind of readily defined and comprehensible specialty—like Sparks, the commo guy, or Jenn, who kept the Hope’s unconventional power train turning smoothly and was keeping to her cabin today, unfortunately incapacitated by grief at having watched her lover die the previous day—they usually had a raft of other skills. Almost always including ones Mildred and even Doc Tanner strained to grasp, and which went right by Ryan.

The captain scowled. “Blind Norad, Scott. They’re two hundred miles away. It’s not like these people know where they’re heading, or could pass along any information to anybody. And besides, they’re on our side. Remember?”

Long Tom smiled. He had what amounted to extraordinary diplomatic skills for a Tech-nomad. Ryan reckoned it had a lot to do with why he was boss of this traveling freakshow.

Great Scott just glowered. Ryan reckoned he could read that pretty clearly, too. There were Tech-nomads, and there were outsiders. Never the twain should meet.

And he could understand that, at least. It was the same way he felt about the little group of survivors he’d gathered around him, who’d become his family in a deeper and truer way than any blood kin ever had.

Voices pulled his attention aft. Doc was walking toward them talking animatedly with the squadron’s chief engineer, a pretty woman named Katie who wore incredibly baggy khaki coveralls with only a green sports bra beneath them. She had her brown hair covered by a red bandanna. Her normal gig was boss wrench on Smoker’s Finagle’s First Law. But her skipper had virtually built the ship’s steam-powered engines with his own hands, Ryan had been told. He could keep them turning smoothly while his mechanic spent much of her time doctoring up the eccentric and cranky rotor-sail-driven system onboard New Hope.

Doc and Katie were just passing the foremost of the three rotor-sails: tall white cylinders pierced with spiral whirls of holes that apparently could catch wind from any angle to turn the rotors. These in turn could either act somehow like sails, or drive propellers. They also turned generators to store power in batteries for when the winds died down. It was a mystery to Ryan, and it was fine with him if it stayed that way.

The sails tended to creak shrilly and annoyingly when a stiff wind turned them rapidly, as it did now. Everybody had to raise their voices to make themselves heard.

“What I’m endeavoring to understand, dear lady,” said Doc, who was in his shirtsleeves, the height of informality for him, “is, why do you not share the gifts of your wondrous technology with the world at large? It sorely needs them.”

The group of Tech-nomads at the bow went silently tense. “What do you mean by that?” Randy barked.

“Why, nothing deprecatory, friend,” Doc said, blinking like a big confused bird. “I merely…wondered. Oh, dear.”

Doc’s experiences being yanked back and forth through time had had effects other than prematurely aging him. They had fuddled his mind. It didn’t keep him from being brilliant, nor functioning at a very high level. For periods ranging from minutes to months at a time. And sometimes he was easily confused.

“I’ve been wondering the same thing, too,” Mildred said. “I mean, no offense or anything. But why don’t you share more of your knowledge with people? You could make a big difference.”

“You think we haven’t tried?” Katie asked with unlooked-for ferocity. Normally the wrench was among the most approachable of Tech-nomads, would’ve been considered affable by the standards of normal people. To the extent anybody in the Deathlands could be considered normal.

The others tossed a look around like it was something hot.

“Uh-oh,” J.B. said to Ryan under his breath. “We stepped on some toes, here.”

Ryan shrugged. However spiky the Tech-nomads could be, no one had ever called them quick on the trigger. While he was never going to take for granted they could never get pissed off enough to chuck him and his friends over the rail and tell them to walk from here, a Tech-nomad was more likely to get spit on your shirt screaming into your face than take a shot at you.

Long Tom wrinkled up his bearded face. “Don’t think we haven’t tried,” he said. “The problem is, people aren’t willing to listen.”

“Tom,” Great Scott began. “Are you sure—?”

“No,” Tom said. “It’s been a long time since I was sure of anything. But if we’re going to trust these people to have our backs in a fight I think we can open up a little with them.”

“Good thing we had them in that fight with the mutie sea cows,” Sparks said. “Without Ryan and the kid they’d’ve sunk us for sure yesterday.”

Jak looked fierce at being called a “kid,” but he didn’t say anything.

“Problem is,” Sparks said, “most people don’t want to know. Or the barons won’t let them learn. And we never teach to barons.”

“You don’t believe in law and order?” J.B. asked.

Sparks shrugged. “Mostly we don’t believe in rule.”

“When we give common people what I like to call tech-knowledge-y,” Styg said, “the barons steal it, suppress it, or both.”

Styg was a stocky Tech-nomad with curly brown hair, who carried a number of pens and mechanical pencils in an ancient, cracked, yellowed protector in the pocket of the long-sleeved blue, white and black plaid flannel shirt he wore despite the humid heat. He’d been introduced to the companions as, “Styg, short for Stygimoloch. Don’t ask.” Nobody had.

“When we give it to barons the barons use it to strengthen their iron grip on the people. So I say, fuck barons, and fuck people who won’t help themselves.”

That got a murmur of assent, although Long Tom looked pained. To Ryan the Tech-nomads sounded frustrated.

“What if they grab you and try to make you teach them?” Ryan asked.

Long Tom chuckled humorlessly. “That’d be a triple-poor idea, friend. We make real bad captives and hostages, and even worse slaves.”

“We got measures,” Randy said with a nasty grin.

“What ones?” Jak asked.

“Pray you never find out.”

“Wait,” Krysty said. “There’s something here I don’t understand.”

“What’s that?” Long Tom asked. Like all the men except Great Scott, he was especially attentive to Krysty. Mostly it amused Ryan.

“Isn’t the cargo we’re guarding Tech-nomad tech for the baron of Haven?”

Everybody spoke denial at once. “It’s not the baron,” Long Tom managed to say over the others. “It’s his chief healer and whitecoat, Mercier.”

“But he works for the baron,” J.B. said. “What’s the difference?”

“She,” Katie said.

“Huh?” J.B. said.

“Mercier,” Long Tom said. “She’s a she.”

“Don’t you think a woman can be a whitecoat?” asked Katie, who seemed to still be in defensive mode.

J.B. shrugged. “Man, woman, doesn’t matter to me. At least, not that I’d ever let on, or Mildred’d yank a knot in my…tail.”

“Damn straight,” Mildred said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts.

“Question stands, though,” Ryan said. “Baron, baron’s healer, whitecoat, whatever.”

“She’s different,” Great Scott said. “She’s a great whitecoat, very dedicated. Just like her father.”

“We’ve got total respect for the late Lucien Mercier,” Sparks said. “Even if he did go to work for that shitheel Baron Dornan.”

“Maybe Dornan wasn’t such a total shitheel after all,” Long Tom said. “He hired Lucien.”

“Gimme a break,” Randy snorted. “His own kids had to chill him.”

“So he wasn’t Father of the Year,” Long Tom said. “He still had the welfare of his people at heart.”

“Except for the ones he worked to death, tortured, or just plain murdered,” Randy said. “He was a tyrant motherfucker.”

“Now, Randy, you know a lot of that’s down to his sec boss Dupree,” Long Tom said.

“He hired the man. He kept him on. You met Baron Dornan. He didn’t like a mosquito to fart in his ville without his by-your-leave. Dupree did nothing Dornan didn’t sign off on.”

“Baron Tobias is different,” Katie said firmly. “He’s not like his father at all. Except he supports Amélie in her work the way his father did hers.”

Ryan perked his ears up. The Finagle wrench had changed her tone again. She sounded distinctly fond of Baron Tobias of Haven.

“And his sister,” Great Scott said with a certain bitchy relish. “She rules as his co-baron. She’s a big supporter to Amélie, too.”

“Because she keeps her alive!” Katie said.

“Elizabeth Blackwood has some kind of wasting disease from childhood,” Long Tom explained. “Amélie has managed to slow its progress. Now she’s working on a cure.”

Krysty caught Ryan’s eye. He could tell she was wondering the same thing he was: was that the cargo they were guarding? The cure for the life-threatening illness?

In one way it didn’t matter: the gig was the gig. They’d given their bond to do the job. They’d do it as best they could. But Ryan’s mind couldn’t help calculating in the background: could they turn this to some kind of lasting advantage in Haven?

ISIS HAD TURNED UP. Ryan had noticed that except during emergencies or special maneuvers, the captains and even crews of the three vessels tended to circulate among the ships at whim. He guessed there wasn’t much reason not to.

Now the tall, silver-haired woman said, “I still think it’s a mistake dealing with a baron at all. Even if it’s through a trusted servitor.”

Long Tom shot her a pained look. “Isis, we’ve been through all this—”

“There’s still time to come to our senses.”

“But, Ice,” Katie said, “it’s Baron Tobias.”

She cocked a thin-plucked brow at the other woman. “And that matters how?”

“Well, he’s hardly a typical baron. He really tries to help his people.”

“So did the old baron, Dornan—in his way,” Randy said. “He got the same concern for the people a rancher has for his cows. It profits him to keep the livestock healthy as possible. Nothing more.”

“Oh-hh,” Katie said in exasperation. “You people.”

“If we judge people by actions and not what we imagine their motivations are,” Long Tom said, with an air that made Ryan sure he was invoking some long-held principle of Tech-nomad life, “then Tobias is a pretty right guy. He hasn’t shown any of his father’s hard-ass tendencies so far.”

“He certainly has a fondness for leading the troops into battle,” Great Scott said. “Not one to lead from behind.”

“You people aren’t exactly backward when it come to a fight,” Mildred said.

Ryan frowned at her. He didn’t want to get into any debates with these people. Anyway, they seemed to do ace at arguing without any help from outsiders.

But instead of snapping at Mildred the shaven-headed man just shrugged. “Well, true enough. When we have to.”

“Beside the point, anyway,” Isis said. “Power corrupts. If Tobias isn’t objectively bad now, he’ll go bad. And he’ll have more of our tech to help him.”

“Fine grasp of cliché, Isis,” Great Scott said, sneering. “But does power really corrupt, or do only the corrupt seek power?”

“Tobias Blackwood had power pretty much thrust on him,” Long Tom said. “He was born to it.”

“Aside from the killing his dad part,” Randy said.

They started an increasingly savage wrangle. More crew were drifting over to join in, not all of them from New Hope’s contingent. Apparently word a juicy argument was on had spread among the squadron.

Ryan quickly caught the eye of each of his companions in turn and jerked his head, slightly but emphatically, aft. Moving softly so as not to attract attention, he headed amidships himself. When he turned his back to the rail near where one of the water-strider pedal-craft was strapped to the hull and leaned back, he saw the others drifting after.

“’Bout time,” Jak said. “Bored.”

“I think it’s their favorite sport, arguing,” Mildred said, shaking her head.

“Indeed,” Doc agreed.

“Speaking of which, Mildred,” Krysty said with a smile, “do we really want to wade into the middle of it ourselves? These people have spent years roaming the Deathlands in each other’s company. The whole wide world, as far as we know. They’ve got a whole complicated spider’s web of relationships spun together. Do we want to get tangled in that, especially with emotions involved?”

Ryan raised a brow at that statement. He’d been about to raise that very issue with Mildred himself.

Mildred sighed. “Yeah. Sorry. I realized what I was doing the moment I opened my mouth. I guess I’m as bored and stir crazy as Jak, here.”

Krysty caught Ryan’s eye behind the other woman’s back and winked. He grinned.

“Trader used to say when minds and hands were idle the Devil’d find a use for ’em,” J.B. said. “Like most everything Trader said, that proves out true. Except when he was trying to pull a fast one, of course.”

“What do?” Jak demanded. “Stuck on boat.”

“Well,” Ryan said slowly, “as to that, we can always clean and oil our weapons again. The spray and salt air can eat a barrel from inside like belly worms. And we never know when trouble’s going to hit. Only that it’s going to, sure as the sun rises in the east.”

A patter of bare feet on the deck brought everybody’s head around. Katie was running toward them, her hazel eyes wide.

“Why, Katie, dear child,” Doc said. “Whatever has put you in such a state?”

Ryan caught the eye of a wolf-grinning J.B. and shook his head. Slick old bastard, he thought.

“Long Tom wants you up front,” she said breathlessly. “There’s a fleet lying just over the horizon, off the entry to the estuary where Haven is. Tom thinks they’re Black Gang pirates!”

Ryan nodded briskly. “Saddle up, everybody. Break time’s over. And the last easy day was yesterday.”