Brothers to Dragons (20 page)

He exploded at the middle. The head, chest, and raised arms were blown high in the air, up and away from the running legs. While the half-torso was still rising, the three beams hit again and again. There was a series of secondary explosions. Head, arms, and chest spattered into bloody mists, the hips and legs formed another.

The whip cracks ended. A strange and absolute silence fell on the snowscape. The flakes still drifted down. Where they touched the road through the fence, a lurid splotch of crimson and black slowly began to fade to pink and gray.

Job shuddered. Wilfred Dell had told him that if and when Job gave the signal, the boundary security system would be switched off on this same road so that Job could escape. But Job would not
know
that the signal had been received and it was safe to pass through, until he was actually outside the Tandy. Did he have the nerve to try, after what he had just seen?

"That was lesson number one," the squat man was saying. He looked along the line of stunned prisoners. "Anyone else want to try? Guess not. We never have more than one in a busload. For your general information, your buddy there just used the only practical spin-off of the old SDI program. You saw it at low power. It steps up the energy if it doesn't wipe out a target first time. People here found out—the hard way—that it can vaporize a full-size batde tank if it has to." He turned away. "All right, Digger, get 'em in now, before we all freeze our nuts off."

The prisoners were steered to a long, low building of sheet metal and ushered inside. It was even hotter than the bus, and the sudden changes of temperature were too much for a couple of the men. They doubled over, clutching at their middles. The bearded guard, Digger, walked to stand by them.

"Wait it out." His voice was oddly gende. "It's the drugs, you see, just the drugs. Once you sweat 'em through your system you'll feel better." He helped one of the prisoners to his feet. "There we go. Clothes off now, all of you. It's bath time. Smell yourselves, an' you'll know why."

Job was soon naked except for the crucifix around his neck. He was issued a square cake of gray and grainy soap. He sniffed it, and wondered what Stella would have made of
this.
Its stink rivalled what it was supposed to wash off. He followed the other prisoners through a long continuous shower of hot water, soaping as he went. They were partially dried by hot air at the other end, and emerged to find Digger waiting with piles of clothes.

"Help yourselves, and get a move on," he said. "Paley will be along in a minute, an' he'll expect you dressed. There's all sizes, an' all clean."

Digger was an optimist. Job could find no shoes as good as the ones that he had abandoned, and all the clean clothes hung loose on his frame. He was not alone in that—half the new arrivals were as badly off. And now that he could take a good look at his fellow arrivals he noticed that he was not conspicuous in another way, too: they all seemed close to his age. That lessened the chance that someone else from Dell's organization was on the bus, because the schemer in the Mall Compound had told Job that all his people were a lot older than Job.

But how much could anyone rely on the word of Wilfred Dell?

Job allowed himself to be lined up again. In a few minutes the gorilla-armed Paley was back, walking along the file and examining every man critically.

"Not bad," he said. "Considering where you come from, and the condition of that bus. You had a rough trip. If you don't like the set of your clothes you can have a go at 'em later. You'll be fed in a few minutes, but before that here's lesson number two. You've arrived, and maybe you've heard that arrivals in Xanadu live only a year or two. That's true enough, so maybe you think you're dead already. You're not. Those numbers are
averages.
They include people like your buddy back there, who lasted all of two minutes. An' they include me, I've been here eight years going on nine, and I'm not planning on leaving any time soon. You'll get rotten jobs, first few months, all new arrivals do. You'll work Tandy Center, where it's hottest and you can average thirty rads a week. That's no picnic. You'll feel bad, just like I did. But if you're careful, you'll survive. And after the first months you can get work in places like this, where it's not much different from outside. Got any questions, before we go on?"

Job had plenty, but he was not about to ask them. A corollary of the Golden Rule (for whatever that was worth now):
Don't make yourself conspicuous.

A youth a few positions along took a step forward and half raised his hand. He was about Job's age, thin-faced and brush-haired, and he seemed less battered than most of the others.

"Sir. What's a
rad
?"

"You come here and you don't know what a rad is?" Paley studied him, poker-faced. "I can see you're going to do great in Xanadu. I bet you'll look real good with no hair."

He turned to glance along the line. "Any other questions?"

The youth looked puzzled, but there were no more takers.

"Right," said Paley. "Food now. All you can eat, then you get to sack out an' live like kings—'til the day after tomorrow. One thing, though. Just don't think it's going to be soft like this all the time."

* * *

Job lay in darkness, wondering where he was and how long he had been there. Had he been drugged? His head felt muzzy, his eyelids too heavy to lift.

The arrival at the Tandy. Then the bath, and the briefing. Then the warm dining room and food that was hot, plentiful, and bland. And then?

Then, nothing.

There had been no need for drugs. The long journey west had pushed him and the other prisoners to the limit. He had the feeling that he had slept the clock round, and more.

He opened his eyes and struggled to his feet. A thin line of light marked the door of the room. He went to it and tugged it open. There was a mutter of protest from occupied beds behind him as bright light spilled into the dormitory.

"Well, at last." A brisk voice greeted him. "You're the first, an' it's about time."

Job squinted into bright morning light and saw Paley, Digger, and Sim sitting across from each other at a square table. Paley was drinking from a metal mug. He gestured with it to a door on his right, as soon as he saw Job stop blinking. "Pee through there, if you need to. Then come right back here."

Job went through a second door and found himself outside the building. It was still cold. He found that his clothes might be ill-fitting, but at least they were warm. The snow had ended, leaving a three-inch blanket that felt soggy under his feet. To the east a ghostly sun shone through morning mist. The clouds overhead were thinning, rapidly burning off.

He used the outside toilet, but before he went back in he took the time to stare all around him. He had been well-briefed on the geography of the Nebraska Tandy, and could orient himself from the sun and the line of the outside fence. The hot, lethal heart of Xanadu lay about ten miles west. The fenced town where Hanna Kronberg had been sighted was beyond that, nearly to the western Tandy boundary. It was a long day's walk, if the temperature continued to rise and there was no more snow. But it would be futile to think of trying such a thing until he knew a lot more about Xanadu, and how it worked. He went back inside the building.

They had moved the table since he left. One chair, heavier than the rest, was against the wall. Paley gestured Job to sit down on it.

"Hungry?" And, at Job's shake of the head, "All right, let's get this over with. Don't worry, this is all pretty standard."

Before Job could move Digger had gripped his arm and was applying a spray hypo to his shoulder. The room spun and turned black, and then as rapidly steadied. Job was still sitting in the chair, but his mind went zooming up through the metal ceiling and hovered far above in the clouds.

"What's your full name?" Paley's voice came from miles away.

"Job Napoleon Salk."

"Check. How old are you?"

"Eighteen years and ten months."

"Check. Does he have J-D marks, Sim? His record shows it." There was a hand on his arm. Something was pressing at his wrist, then at his forehead.

"Check."

"Tell us where you were born, Job Salk, and where you grew up."

Job began to talk, without concern or reservation, about Cloak House and Bracewell Mansion. He told of his arrest trying to deliver a package of drugs to the Mall Compound, and of his return to Cloak House. He described his escape, and his life as a street
basura
and vendor. He left nothing out, and answered any question asked along the way.

"Check. How did you get caught, and sent to Xanadu?"

Job told of meeting Stella Michelson, of taking her away from Daniello and back to his home, of making love to her, of her return to the Mall Compound and of his own rapid arrest.

He was totally calm, although he knew that the very next question would lead to his death. When they asked
who
had sent him here, and
why
Wilfred Dell had sent him, he would tell them without hesitation.

"Christ." Paley had turned to Digger. "Did you hear him? He says this Stella Michelson is a Rep's cousin, an' he screwed her! It doesn't have
that
in his record. I guess her family hushed it up. Did they have him castrated before they sent him here?"

"He looked all there coming out of the bath."

"Then he's one lucky
hombre
."

Paley was staring at him. Job knew that this would be it, the key and fatal question. He waited peacefully.

But Paley's expression was more like admiration. "You're a nervy bugger, aren't you? You're plenty ugly, but you sure nabbed some high-class tail."

He added a note to the file in front of him. "All right, Digger, give him his shot. Anyone with his record has earned his way in here."

The second shot took Job down and almost out. He vaguely knew he was being led through into another room. He felt something rough and hard on his forehead, but it was a few minutes before he realized that he was sitting slumped over a wooden table, and that he was in the same dining room where he had eaten his last meal.

He was alone, with no sign of jailers. As he realized that, he understood something new about the Tandies: the men were criminals, but they were
not
jailers. If there seemed to be minimal supervision, it was because there was no need for supervision.
Everyone
was a prisoner, everyone had been condemned. If he wanted to run away, where would he go? Out through the boundary fence, to be blown apart in a hot spray of blood and tissue? Or on to the heart of Xanadu, to be poisoned by toxins or cooked in a lethal oven of radiation?

He did not feel like eating, but long self-discipline took over. He poured a cup of hot, sweet liquid that was someone's attempt to mimic tea, and forced it down. A plate of greasy vegetables and fried rice followed. He sat quietly until he was sure that his stomach was not going to reject everything, and at last went back to the room where Paley and the others were sitting. They gestured to Job to keep quiet. Another man from the bus sat in the chair, eyes glazed. He was describing the rape of a small boy in calm and chilling detail. The listeners showed equal lack of emotion.

"He checks," said Paley. "All right, give him the Number Two shot and get him out of here." He turned to Job. "You seem in pretty good shape so there's no need for you to hang around any more. I got another busload coming in at midday, an' we need the space. Here's your ID. Look for a blue van outside. Tell the driver—name's Ormond—that you're ready for assignment. You get no choice for the first three months, but you should start thinking about what you want to do after that."

Job stood for a few seconds before he realized that Paley was finished with him. There would be no more instructions. He wandered out into the sunshine and around the building, seeking Ormond and the blue van. He saw a couple of people, but neither took any notice of him. Everything was oddly casual in Xanadu. If general movement within the Tandy was going to be this easy, maybe Job's task was not impossible after all.

Start thinking about what you want to do.
That was the most surprising statement of all. The very idea that you had a real
choice
as to what happened was a new one. Every decision that Job had made since he was eight years old had been dictated by necessity. (Except, maybe for Stella—and what a hash he had made of
that
.)

The blue van was parked about thirty yards from the building with the engine running. Job approached the tinted windshield and held the little yellow ID card that Paley had given him towards the driver's window. "I'm looking for Ormond."

"I know you are. I'm Ormond. Stop gawping and get in."

Job could finally see inside. The driver was an attractive blond-haired woman in her late twenties.

He felt like an idiot. He
had
been staring. The people he had met so far at the reception building had happened to be men, like the busload he arrived with. But equally many woman were sent to the Tandies, with no attempt to keep the sexes separate. Anyone delivered to a Tandy was already officially dead. The Reginald Brooks of the world did not care if the residents chose to mingle and to mate—or even, against all logic, to breed.

There were eight people in the van, three women and five men, and with Job's arrival it was overfull. He squeezed in next to Ormond as she turned the wheel to take them west. Job could not examine the others in the bus without turning around and making it obvious, but from his first glance they were all at least ten years older than him. One was a woman in her sixties. No one spoke, but Ormond whistled as she drove, so off-key that it was pain to Job's sensitive ear. She was obviously cheerful. The residents of Xanadu appeared at least as happy as people outside. Job decided that misery must have little to do with life expectancy.

"They got a drop coming in at noon," said Ormond, after they had driven for ten minutes and Job estimated that they were within a couple of miles of the center of the Tandy. "You'll be able to see it easy from here. Over thataway."