Wolves of the Calla (20 page)

“Yar,” he said, hawked, and spat off to the left. “Not that I’ve seen or heard it myself, you understand. I never wander far; too much to do on the farm. Those of the Calla aren’t woodsy people as a rule, anyway, do ya kennit.”

Oh yes, I think I kennit,
Susannah thought, spying another blaze roughly the size of a dinner plate. The unfortunate tree so marked would be lucky to survive the coming winter.

“Andy’s told of the thinny many and many-a. Makes a sound, he says, but can’t tell what it is.”

“Who’s Andy?”

“Ye’ll meet him for y’self soon enough, sai. Are’ee from this Calla York, like yer friends?”

“Yes,” she said, again on her guard. He swung her wheelchair around a hoary old ironwood. The
trees were sparser now, and the smell of cooking much stronger. Meat . . . and coffee. Her stomach rumbled.

“And they be not gunslingers,” Overholser said, nodding at Jake and Eddie. “You’ll not tell me so, surely.”

“You must decide that for yourself when the time comes,” Susannah said.

He made no reply for a few moments. The wheelchair rumbled over a rock outcropping. Ahead of them, Oy padded along between Jake and Benny Slightman, who had made friends with boyhood’s eerie speed. She wondered if it was a good idea. For the two boys were different. Time might show them how much, and to their sorrow.

“He scared me,” Overholser said. He spoke in a voice almost too low to hear. As if to himself. “ ’Twere his eyes, I think. Mostly his eyes.”

“Would you go on as you have, then?” Susannah asked. The question was far from as idle as she hoped it sounded, but she was still startled by the fury of his response.

“Are’ee mad, woman? Course not—not if I saw a way out of the box we’re in. Hear me well! That boy”—he pointed at Tian Jaffords, walking ahead of them with his wife—“that boy as much as accused me of running yella. Had to make sure they all knew I didn’t have any children of the age the Wolves fancy, aye. Not like
he
has, kennit. But do’ee think I’m a fool that can’t count the cost?”

“Not me,” Susannah said, calmly.

“But do
he
? I halfway think so.” Overholser spoke as a man does when pride and fear are
fighting it out in his head. “Do I want to give the babbies to the Wolves? Babbies that’re sent back roont to be a drag on the town ever after? No! But neither do I want some hardcase to lead us all to blunder wi’ no way back!”

She looked over her shoulder at him and saw a fascinating thing. He now wanted to say yes. To find a reason to say yes. Roland had brought him that far, and with hardly a word. Had only . . . well, had only looked at him.

There was movement in the corner of her eye. “Holy
Christ
!” Eddie cried. Susannah’s hand darted for a gun that wasn’t there. She turned forward in the chair again. Coming down the slope toward them, moving with a prissy care that she couldn’t help find amusing even in her startlement, was a metal man at least seven feet high.

Jake’s hand had gone to the docker’s clutch and the butt of the gun that hung there.

“Easy, Jake!” Roland said.

The metal man, eyes flashing blue, stopped in front of them. It stood perfectly still for perhaps ten seconds, plenty of time for Susannah to read what was stamped on its chest.
North Central Positronics,
she thought,
back for another curtain call. Not to mention LaMerk Industries
.

Then the robot raised one silver arm, placing a silver hand against its stainless-steel forehead. “Hile, gunslinger, come from afar,” it said. “Long days and pleasant nights.”

Roland raised his fingers to his own forehead. “May you have twice the number, Andy-sai.”

“Thankee.” Clickings from its deep and incomprehensible guts. Then it leaned forward toward
Roland, blue eyes flashing brighter. Susannah saw Eddie’s hand creep to the sandalwood grip of the ancient revolver he wore. Roland, however, never flinched.

“I’ve made a goodish meal, gunslinger. Many good things from the fullness of the earth, aye.”

“Say thankee, Andy.”

“May it do ya fine.” The robot’s guts clicked again. “In the meantime, would you perhaps care to hear your horoscope?”

At around two in the afternoon of that day, the ten of them sat down to what Roland called a rancher’s dinner. “During the morning chores, you look forward with love,” he told his friends later. “During the evening ones, you look back with nostalgia.”

Eddie thought he was joking, but with Roland you could never be completely sure. What humor he had was dry to the point of desiccation.

It wasn’t the best meal Eddie had ever had, the banquet put on by the old people in River Crossing still held pride of place in that regard, but after weeks in the woods, subsisting on gunslinger burritos (and shitting hard little parcels of rabbit turds maybe twice a week), it was fine fare indeed. Andy served out whopping steaks done medium rare and smothered in mushroom gravy. There were beans on the side, wrapped things like tacos, and roasted corn. Eddie tried an ear of this and found it tough but tasty. There was coleslaw which, Tian Jaffords was at pains to tell them, had been made by his own wife’s hands. There was also a wonderful pudding called strawberry cosy. And of course there was coffee. Eddie guessed that, among the four of them, they must have put away at least a gallon. Even Oy had a little. Jake
put down a saucer of the dark, strong brew. Oy sniffed, said “Coff!” and then lapped it up quickly and efficiently.

There was no serious talk during the meal (“Food and palaver don’t mix” was but one of Roland’s many little nuggets of wisdom), and yet Eddie learned a great deal from Jaffords and his wife, mostly about how life was lived out here in what Tian and Zalia called “the borderlands.” Eddie hoped Susannah (sitting by Overholser) and Jake (with the youngster Eddie was already coming to think of as Benny the Kid) were learning half as much. He would have expected Roland to sit with Callahan, but Callahan sat with no one. He took his food off a little distance from all of them, blessed himself, and ate alone. Not very much, either. Mad at Overholser for taking over the show, or just a loner by nature? Hard to tell on such short notice, but if someone had put a gun to his head, Eddie would have voted for the latter.

What struck Eddie with the most force was how goddam
civilized
this part of the world was. It made Lud, with its warring Grays and Pubes, look like the Cannibal Isles in a boy’s sea-story. These people had roads, law enforcement, and a system of government that made Eddie think of New England town meetings. There was a Town Gathering Hall and a feather which seemed to be some sort of authority symbol. If you wanted to call a meeting, you had to send the feather around. If enough people touched it when it came to their place, there was a meeting. If they didn’t, there wasn’t. Two people were sent to carry the feather, and their count was trusted without question. Eddie doubted if it would work in
New York, but for a place like this it seemed a fine way to run things.

There were at least seventy other Callas, stretching in a mild arc north and south of Calla Bryn Sturgis. Calla Bryn Lockwood to the south and Calla Amity to the north were also farms and ranches. They also had to endure the periodic depredations of the Wolves. Farther south were Calla Bryn Bouse and Calla Staffel, containing vast tracts of ranchland, and Jaffords said they suffered the Wolves as well . . . at least he thought so. Farther north, Calla Sen Pinder and Calla Sen Chre, which were farms and sheep.

“Farms of a good size,” Tian said, “but they’re smaller as ye go north, kennit, until ye’re in the lands where the snows fall—so I’m told; I’ve never seen it myself—and wonderful cheese is made.”

“Those of the north wear wooden shoes, or so ’tis said,” Zalia told Eddie, looking a little wistful. She herself wore scuffed clodhoppers called shor’boots.

The people of the Callas traveled little, but the roads were there if they wanted to travel, and trade was brisk. In addition to them, there was the Whye, sometimes called Big River. This ran south of Calla Bryn Sturgis all the way to the South Seas, or so ’twas said. There were mining Callas and manufacturing Callas (where things were made by steam-press and even, aye, by electricity) and even one Calla devoted to nothing but pleasure: gambling and wild, amusing rides, and . . .

But here Tian, who had been talking, felt Zalia’s eyes on him and went back to the pot for more beans. And a conciliatory dish of his wife’s slaw.

“So,” Eddie said, and drew a curve in the dirt. “These are the borderlands. The Callas. An arc that goes north and south for . . . how far, Zalia?”

“ ’Tis men’s business, so it is,” she said. Then, seeing her own man was still at the embering fire, inspecting the pots, she leaned forward a bit toward Eddie. “Do you speak in miles or wheels?”

“A little of both, but I’m better with miles.”

She nodded. “Mayhap two thousand miles so”—she pointed north—“and twice that,
so
.” To the south. She remained that way, pointing in opposite directions, then dropped her arms, clasped her hands in her lap, and resumed her former demure pose.

“And these towns . . . these Callas . . . stretch the whole way?”

“So we’re told, if it please ya, and the traders
do
come and go. Northwest of here, the Big River splits in two. We call the east branch Devar-Tete Whye—the Little Whye, you might say. Of course we see more river-travel from the north, for the river flows north to south, do ya see.”

“I do. And to the east?”

She looked down. “Thunderclap,” she said in a voice Eddie could barely hear. “None go there.”

“Why?”

“It’s dark there,” said she, still not looking up from her lap. Then she raised an arm. This time she pointed in the direction from which Roland and his friends had come. Back toward Mid-World. “There,” she said, “the world is ending. Or so we’re told. And there . . . ” She pointed east and now raised her face to Eddie’s. “There, in Thunderclap,
it’s
already
ended. In the middle are we, who only want to go our way in peace.”

“And do you think it will happen?”

“No.” And Eddie saw she was crying.

Shortly after this, Eddie excused himself and stepped into a copse of trees for a personal moment. When he rose from his squat, reaching for some leaves with which to clean himself, a voice spoke from directly behind him.

“Not those, sai, do it please ya. Those be poison flurry. Wipe with those and how you’ll itch.”

Eddie jumped and wheeled around, grabbing the waistband of his jeans with one hand and reaching for Roland’s gunbelt, hanging from the branch of a nearby tree, with the other. Then he saw who had spoken—or
what
—and relaxed a little.

“Andy, it’s not really kosher to creep up behind people when they’re taking a dump.” Then he pointed to a thatch of low green bushes. “What about those? How much trouble will I get into if I wipe with those?”

There were pauses and clicks.

“What?” Eddie asked. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” Andy said. “I’m simply processing information, sai.
Kosher:
unknown word.
Creeping up:
I didn’t, I walked, if it do ye fine.
Taking a dump:
likely slang for the excretion of—”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, “that’s what it is. But listen—if you didn’t creep up on me, Andy, how come I didn’t hear you? I mean, there’s
underbrush
. Most
people make noise when they go through underbrush.”

“I am not a person, sai,” Andy said. Eddie thought he sounded smug.

“Guy, then. How can a big guy like you be so quiet?”

“Programming,” Andy said. “Those leaves will be fine, do ya.”

Eddie rolled his eyes, then grabbed a bunch. “Oh yeah. Programming. Sure. Should have known. Thankee-sai, long days, kiss my ass and go to heaven.”

“Heaven,” said Andy. “A place one goes after death; a kind of paradise. According to the Old Fella, those who go to heaven sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, forever and ever.”

“Yeah? Who’s gonna sit at his left hand? All the Tupperware salesmen?”

“Sai, I don’t know.
Tupperware
is an unknown word to me. Would you like your horoscope?”

“Why not?” Eddie said. He started back toward the camp, guided by the sounds of laughing boys and a barking billy-bumbler. Andy towered beside him, shining even beneath the cloudy sky and seeming to not make a sound. It was eerie.

“What’s your birth date, sai?”

Eddie thought he might be ready for this one. “I’m Goat Moon,” he said, then remembered a little more. “Goat with beard.”

“Winter’s snow is full of woe, winter’s child is strong and wild,” said Andy. Yes, that was smugness in its voice, all right.

“Strong and wild, that’s me,” Eddie said. “Haven’t
had a real bath in over a month, you better believe I’m strong and wild. What else do you need, Andy old guy? Want to look at my palm, or anything?”

“That will not be necessary, sai Eddie.” The robot sounded unmistakably happy and Eddie thought,
That’s me, spreading joy wherever I go. Even robots love me. It’s my ka.
“This is Full Earth, say we all thankya. The moon is red, what is called the Huntress Moon in Mid-World that was. You will travel, Eddie! You will travel far! You and your friends! This very night you return to Calla New York. You will meet a dark lady. You—”

“I want to hear more about this trip to New York,” Eddie said, stopping. Just ahead was the camp. He was close enough so he could see people moving around. “No joking around, Andy.”

“You will go todash, sai Eddie! You and your friends. You must be careful. When you hear the
kammen
—the chimes, ken ya well—you must all concentrate on each other. To keep from getting lost.”

“How do you know this stuff?” Eddie asked.

“Programming,” Andy said. “Horoscope is done, sai. No charge.” And then, what struck Eddie as the final capping lunacy: “Sai Callahan—the Old Fella, ye ken—says I have no license to tell fortunes, so must never charge.”