Arcadian's Asylum (7 page)

When it came, it was somewhat of a surprise. Slowly, moving with a caution that was edged with fright, a group of raggedly clad people moved from the shadows of far-flung huts. Despite their clothing, they were far from ill-nourished. In truth, some of them were paunchy to the point of obesity. They moved almost as one amorphous mass: men, women and children, all jockeying for position. No one wanted to be in the lead, and those who found themselves thrust to the front were quick to try to fall back, pushing against those who came up behind them. It made their progress slow and shuffling.
The fear and fright was so strong coming off them that the companions could almost smell it.

The two groups of three exchanged bemused glances across the distance between them. It was difficult to know what to make of this. If these people were really that scared, then why had they come out of the shadows?

Ryan took a calculated risk. He could see no blasters among the crowd jostling slowly toward them. He stepped forward, cradling the Steyr nose down in a relaxed grip. But not so relaxed that it couldn’t be brought into play easily and quickly.

As he emerged, the group of ville dwellers stopped suddenly. It was almost as though they cowered at the sight of him. Some even flinched, as though he was about to fire on them. When he stood his ground and did nothing, some of them looked up.

“You’re…you’re not going to take from us?” a man said haltingly.

“Why should I?” Ryan asked. “Is that what the others do?”

Mutterings shot through the crowd. He could make out some of it. They were talking about him, and not about who “the others” might be.

A woman stepped forward and pointed at him, yelling, “He only got one eye” and laughing before running back into the crowd, many of whom were now giggling.

“The others,” Ryan repeated. “Who are the others?”

Many of them looked at one another, as though they found the one-eyed man beyond their comprehension. The man who had spoken first said, “Others
take stuff, want to hurt us. I think they like that bit. It’s not nice.”

Ryan was taken aback. “You don’t try to defend yourselves?”

The man shrugged. “They go soon enough. Then other others come and help, but sometimes they don’t. Mebbe you know them? Mebbe you got more stuff for us?”

A satisfied murmur rippled through the crowd, and they moved forward. Ryan took a step back, not because he thought they would attack, but because for one moment it seemed that they might overwhelm him.

His people took that as their cue to step out into the open. Their presence caused the approaching mob to stop momentarily, before gasping in amazement and moving forward. Before any of Ryan’s people had a chance to draw breath, the ville dwellers were milling around them, touching them and asking questions.

“You know others?”

“You have stuff?”

“Why you so white?”

“Why you so brown?”

Yet none of them waited for answers to the questions they posed before babbling on about something completely different.

Ryan looked, bewildered, over the heads of the milling throng to where he could see Krysty. She shrugged. She was as confused as he was by their behavior.

“They appear to be like sheep,” Doc yelled above the babble. “Passive, and completely without any kind of—”

“What’s sheep?” one of them said, tugging him on the arm.

“I—” Doc began, but was cut short by Jak’s terse comment.

“They’re here. Ones who follow.”

Melting out of the shadows and forming into black-clad pairs holding blasters—was this where his earlier opponent had got his blaster? Ryan wondered—came six teams. Their blasters were raised in the air, but there was little doubting their intent.

“Drop your weapons and come with us,” one of the black-clad men called. “You people,” he added in a harsher tone, “move away from the outlanders.”

The mob did as it had been told. Soon, they were standing apart, watching the proceedings. Ryan and his people were now surrounded on all sides, outnumbered two to one.

“You took out those rebels okay,” the black-clad leader said, as if sensing their mood, “but we’re ready for you, and better trained than that scum.”

“So what do you want? You want a firefight?” Ryan asked in a hard voice, his muscles tensed as he took in the manner in which they had been surrounded. These people were good. But his, he knew, could be better.

“Don’t want that any more than you do,” the men said tightly. “What we want is for you to come with us. Arcadian wants to meet you.”

“He’s got a real strange way of going about that,” Ryan replied.

“Mebbe. But he has his reasons. You might like ’em.”

Ryan took another look around at the black-clad sec,
then at his companions. He could see from their expressions that they were with him.

“Okay,” he said slowly, “we’ll come with you. Might be interesting. But we don’t surrender blasters. You got nothing to hide? It won’t matter.”

The sec boss grinned. “Like your style, One-eye. Wouldn’t have it any other way.” He lowered his blaster so that it pointed at the dirt. “Let’s do it.”

Chapter Five

As they fell in with the black-clad sec men, Ryan’s group had a lot to ponder. It had been couched in terms that were reasonable, but they all knew that resistance would have been met with a firefight. Arcadian wanted them, for reasons as yet unknown. If he wanted them to work for him willingly, he was showing a real lack of understanding. His behavior had done nothing less than to put them on triple red, with the utmost suspicion. If he wanted to just use them, regardless of whether or not they wished to acquiesce, then he was cutting them too much slack.

For, as they were escorted on foot through the outlying districts of the ville, there was much to observe and absorb for possible future use.

The sec team that escorted them was very careful about its chosen route. Instead of traveling in what seemed a direct route to the center of the ville, they took what appeared to be meaningless detours. Straight roads would be ignored in favor of sudden sharp turns to the left or right. Obviously, that was to keep them within a sector they had already seen, and not cross some kind of line. For there wasn’t a single one of them who had any doubt that Arcady was a ville of sharply differing sectors.

The Arcady they had seen when with Trader Toms was one of wealth and freedom. The center sections of the ville were filled with trade stores, craftsmen and bars providing brew and gaudys. The relative financial well-being of a ville could always be determined by the number and quality of those. The people they had met had been free to go about their business unimpeded. The sec had been present, but not overbearing—they had only stepped in when trouble flared because of arguments caused by brew or jack. The buildings had been old, for the most part obviously built by the founders of the ville or adapted from the main street and surrounding area of the old predark town that they had chosen to use as their shell, but there had been evidence of ongoing maintenance and new building that gave work to the people of the ville, and were again proof of its growing affluence.

None of which tallied with the run-down shanty ville full of tumbledown shacks that looked like their dwellers paid them no heed. For most of their winding trek through the outer reaches of the ville, this was all they had seen. Row upon row of virtually derelict shacks, but none that were empty. All showed signs of habitation, and by people very like those they had seen on their entry to the ville.

As they passed through the phalanx of sec men, they could see blank, drooling faces staring out at them. The people were fat, dirty, and even before you could see them the smell of their unwashed bodies assailed the senses. Some of them—the braver specimens—came outside their huts or stood in the doorways, watching or, if they felt particularly courageous, shouting at the
newcomers in slurred, brain-numbed voices that were sometimes difficult to understand.

And yet these were people with running water and sanitation. Even the most advanced of villes that the companions had seen on their many journeys across the ravaged lands of the post-nukecaust America had been hard-pushed to have a sanitation and water system that came anywhere near aping that of the days before skydark. There had been some rich or advanced villes that had reconstructed pumping stations, and used old pipes to try to reconstruct that aspect of predark life. But never anything that had seemed to be as good as the systems they were familiar with from the many redoubts they had used during their journeys.

This was different. For a start, it had been so unobtrusive as to be almost unnoticeable…until Doc’s eagle eye had drawn it to their attention. The running water and sanitation systems in this part of the ville—assuming that this entire shanty-ville sector had been treated the same, which seemed reasonable—had been recently laid. Recently as in postskydark. These buildings hadn’t existed before the nukecaust, and each shanty had its own system. Someone—Arcadian or a baron before him—had laid out and engineered such a system, then allowed the shacks and tumbledown buildings to be erected around that system.

But why? Why go to all the bother of laying out such a system—a vast investment for any baron in terms of jack, resources and manpower—and then allow the people who lived above it to wallow in their own crapulence? Why feed them, as he obviously did?

It pointed toward a baron who had plans and schemes.
That wasn’t unusual: they all did. To be a baron necessitated a certain degree of cunning and a lust for power. A baron without these qualities would soon fall by the wayside. But some had a more twisted psyche than others, and their schemes were more arcane and unfathomable.

To all of the companions, while passing through this sector of Arcady, it occurred that Arcadian may have a mind more labyrinthine than most. The question was simply this: how did they fit into that mind and its plans?

While those thoughts had been passing through the minds of the friends, in their differing ways, they had traversed the shanty sectors and were now about to enter the center of the ville.

They turned another corner, and the shacks and tumbledown huts suddenly fell away. A bare expanse of ground, about fifty yards in length, lay ahead of them. Beyond that was a wire fence that stretched in either direction. There were no guard posts.

The sec boss spoke for the first time since they had begun the march. He had obviously caught the way in which they had all looked at the ground, and also the glances that passed between them.

“This patch is just to make sure that the people of this sector don’t stray too far. Must be obvious they ain’t the brightest, but Arcadian looks after even the feeble. We don’t let ’em buy the farm, not when there’s enough to go around.”

“Very admirable, such altruism,” Doc murmured. Much as he tried, he couldn’t keep the sardonic edge from his voice. The sec boss noticed.

“Listen, other villes can do things the way they want. Arcadian believes in the greater good for the greatest number. We all do. That’s how we live in these parts.”

And presumably those who don’t think that way don’t live here for long, one way or another, Doc thought. But he kept it to himself, figuring it wiser to keep his mouth shut for the moment.

In silence, the group walked along the edge of the barren ground until they reached a path that had been trodden flat. It was straight and led to a gate in the fence. Although the wire fence was about twelve feet high, the gate was only half that, and was only wide enough for two people to pass though at a time. On the other side, barely a few yards from the fence, were the backs of better constructed, better maintained buildings. Through the windows, covered in what appeared to be plastic, they could see people going about their business and sparing not a second look for the fence, the group, or the shanty ville beyond. There was something about their complete unconcern that seemed odd. They were so used to this segregation that it was invisible to them.

As they turned onto the narrow path, the sec force was very careful to herd them so that they moved three abreast—a sec man on either side of one of Ryan’s group—and stayed very particularly on the beaten path. Both Ryan and J.B. spared a glance for the blank expanse of dirt on either side of them. Could the area be mined? Or was this just a piece of behavior that was ingrained? Both knew that to ask would be pointless; all the same, knowing could be important at some future point.

If either man had to lay odds, they would have put their jack on it being ingrained behavior. What happened next determined that. As they reached the gate, Ryan was astounded when the sec boss stepped up to the gate and simply pulled it open.

There was no lock. No charge running through the fence. It was simply an access cut into the wire fence that could be passed through at any time, by anyone.

They were ushered into another sector, and as they walked through the gate, each wondered about the kind of ville Arcady might be. It would appear, on first impressions, that people acted in predetermined ways simply because they had always done so, and to step outside that box would be something that would not—could not—cross their consciousness. Yet how could this tally with the thriving ville they had seen when they were with Toms? And if the sec force was as blandly rigid as it appeared to be right now, how could it act as a defense against outside forces?

Too many questions, and as of yet no indications of answers.

As they passed through the gate, all of them noticed that the sec guards seemed to loosen a little. Blasters fell from the poised to the casual; those who had been marching in step now went out of step with each other. It was hard to tell whether it was an unconscious move, now that they had crossed into another territory, or whether it was designed to make the group less conspicuous. If that was the aim, then it certainly seemed to be working. The formal procession that they had formed in the shanty ville now became a loose group. Rather than being the guarded and the guards, they
seemed to be walking together. And the people who passed them on the streets didn’t give them a second glance.

There was no doubt now that they had moved into a sector of the ville that they knew. This was the central area that they had stayed and worked in when passing through with Toms. It struck them all as odd that the shanty ville and the affluent sectors should be so close together. The reasons for that might become apparent, once they met with the baron and were, hopefully, made privy to his reasons for wanting them back in his ville.

For now, they could only marvel at the differences between two sectors of the same ville, so closely aligned geographically and yet so far apart in every other way.

Now, rather than people standing and staring in slack-jawed incomprehension, the companions were barely noticed as they walked the streets. In part, this was due to the way in which the black-clad sec stood slightly away from the companions, keeping their presence known yet retaining an unobtrusive air. However, part of it was also because this main section of the ville was busy—people had neither time nor inclination to stare or wonder at the group that moved among them.

As they traveled from the less-populated streets that ran near the wire fence and toward the more densely populated center of the ville, the number of people bustling in the thoroughfares became greater. Absorbed by whatever business they were going about, they had no reason to give a second glance to the group. Indeed, from the manner in which they moved, weaving their way in and out of the spaces between Ryan’s people and the sec who were now merely—seemingly—accompa
nying them, they not only hardly seemed to notice that the companions were there, but also gave cover should the outlanders feel the need to make a break for it.

The thought may have briefly crossed Ryan’s mind, but it was swiftly dismissed. To try to escape from the clutches of the sec would be pointless. First, although they could use the crowds as cover, where would they go? The sec seemed to have the ville sewn up tighter than the pussy of a gaudy who hadn’t yet been handed the jack. Second, if they did get past any of these obstacles, then where could they head? Jackson Spire was the nearest ville they knew of, and that was a few days away, as well as being an Arcady satellite. Third—and perhaps most importantly—Arcadian had wanted them. Ryan figured they’d better find out why before any action was taken.

Early evening was beginning to fall, and the lamps that lit the streets were glowing, the lamplighters whose task it was to keep the oil and tallow lamps filled going about their business. The interiors of stores and bars were brightly illuminated. Some used tallow, oil or gas. The ville seemed able to generate electricity, as well, from the plant housed in a building that lay just a little off the square, behind another building that Mildred recognized from a thousand journeys, TV shows and magazine photographs of her youth. There had been a time when every small U.S. town had a library like the gray stone building fronted by covered steps, the roof supported by Doric columns. There weren’t many of them left now.

The clock set on the tower that climbed above the building had long since ceased to operate. Not that it
mattered in this land where the chron was used for convenience rather than to be strictly adhered to. The stone had been blasted by water or sand so that it was now as clean as the day that it had been erected. Hanging from the roof of the covered steps was a banner that hung low enough to obscure the old inscription that had been carved over the building’s double doors. The banner was in red, purple, yellow and green. It was a tapestry with one word—Excelsior—that was resplendent over a number of scenes that showed men and women—all smiling—performing constructive tasks in the field and in the town. It reminded Mildred of something she had seen when young. It wasn’t until they were almost at the foot of the steps that she was able to recall the images it drew upon. Communist banners from the old Soviet Union under the leadership of Stalin—images of the noble worker that hid a regime of terror and poverty, half remembered from old newsreel and TV footage in history classes.

She wondered if Arcadian was aware of this, and—whether he was or not—it was somehow a clue to his character.

Meanwhile, as they crossed the square, other thoughts had been passing through the minds of her companions.

Jak had been looking for a means of escape. Like Ryan, he had considered the advantages and disadvantages of making a break, and like Ryan he could see that it was heavily weighted in favor of them staying. However, Jak was itchy as if he were infested with bugs at the idea of containment, and if for nothing other than a kind of security blanket, he looked for an escape route.