Brothers to Dragons (25 page)

"I'm doing you a favor." Tolson was looking away, out of the window. "You can just owe me."

"Try another one." Job felt he was becoming as cynical as Skip. "That bird won't fly."

"Hey, Joby, don't you know a good thing when you hear one?" But Tolson was grinning at Job in an embarrassed way. "All right, smart ass. Here's the rest. You're in Headquarters now, but you don't know nothin' about this place. I do. If you have to live in Xanadu, there's only one place to be: right here. Water's cleanest, dose rate way down, never an accident from a bad air drop. An' here's where all the power is. So you scheme an' struggle and fight to get in, an' you're makin' it on the inside, an' you sure as hell don't want to leave, even for only a few weeks. You lose an edge, that's all it takes."

"So that's it!
You
got picked to be part of that survey team, and you don't want to go. Come on, Skip, admit it."

"Yeah. Well, yeah, that's the way it's been shapin' up. Gormish picked me, an' acted like she was doin' me a
favor.
But I told her, she needs a real good language man, an' that sure ain't me. I got one language in my head, an' all the rest are animal noises. Pyle's bunch sound to me like dogs barkin' when they get together, Bonvissuto's lot might as well be gargling, an' there's a dozen other sets that's worse."

"So you're not doing
me
a favor—I'm doing you one."

"Don't you believe it." The certainty returned to Tolson's face. "You be savin' me a job I don't want. But I'm savin' your
life.
The survey will be all talk work, indoor work, easy on you. By the time you finish you know more about different bits of the Tandy than near anyone, an' Pyle an' Gormish an' Bonvissuto know you, know what you can do. After you done the rest of your training, that pays off. You make it here to Headquarters in a year or less, record time—took me four, and that was
fast
." He stood up. "So. What you say? We got a deal?"

"Skip, you got me on ice. I have no choice."

"Yeah." Tolson was grinning again. "That's how I figured. So I go an' start the wheels rollin'. You oughta' have four easy weeks, maybe five, before they kick your ass out of here an' into the survey team. You better be ready." He walked to the door, opened it, and turned back to Job. "Hey, one other thing, Joby. Don't let 'em bring you no mirror. Your face looks like a plucked chicken's ass when you got no hair."

Job lay back on the bed as the door closed.
Four easy weeks.
Like hell. He had seen prisoners who had eaten a hundred and fifty rads and tried to keep going in the training program. None had made it. The treatment he was receiving would help a lot, but the next month was going to be murder. He ran his tongue over the inside of his mouth. Already the tender tissues of his cheek and tongue felt rough and fissured. In another day they would be a mass of ulcers. Swallowing would be agony, speech next to impossible. And
then
it would really start to become unpleasant.

Job tried to visualize his own hairless head as it would surely be in a week or two: swollen, ulcerated, purulent, covered with weeping radiation sores. Instead his mind fed him the bald, grinning gnome face of Wilfred Dell. Only then did Job realize that during the past couple of weeks the agenda set by Dell in the Mall Compound had disappeared from his thoughts. Dell himself was a mirage, a wraith, no more than the distant memory of a former life.
This
was the world that mattered, the solid reality of the Nebraska Tandy.

Dell vanished. Balanced on the edge of sleep, Job saw in his mind the face of Hanna Kronberg. He realized the other implications of a survey of Xanadu installations: If the team traveled
everywhere
in the Tandy, as Tolson had suggested, then Wilfred Dell's secret agenda might not be so impossible after all.

Chapter Seventeen

In a moment shall they die, and the people
shall be troubled at midnight, and pass away:
and the mighty shall be taken.

— The Book of Job, Chapter 34, Verse 20

Four weeks were nowhere near enough. By the end of that time the intravenous feeds had been removed and Job was able to force down liquid nourishment, but he was so weak that half a dozen steps left him dizzy and panting. He was totally hairless, his face and chest carried the red stigmata of radiation burns, and the flesh had melted from his bones; his arms and legs were stick-thin, their muscles no more than strings and puny knobs of flesh. He could stand and walk, but a breath of wind would push him over. As part of a survey team he was a dead loss; that would be obvious to anyone.

Human inefficiency and the bitter Nebraska winter saved him. When he was discharged from Decon Center and shipped to the main Headquarters complex, two of the survey team's seven members had not yet arrived. They were finishing an assignment for Bonvissuto. Five more days, the others were told. But five days grew to two weeks, and it was not until the morning of the seventeenth day that word came from the missing two. Their job was done at last. They promised to be on their way that night from the far west of Xanadu.

Before they could leave, the weather played its part. A February ice storm raged in from the northeast and set its lock on the Tandy, dropping three feet of dry snow, halting all business, stopping all outside movement. The temperature dropped fifty degrees in eight hours. It was five more days before roads became passable and the missing two could be delivered to Headquarters.

Job had hidden away in the little underground room assigned to him, eating and drinking as much as he could stand, nursing his sores, keeping a low profile. By the time that the last two team members arrived he could walk up a flight of stairs—just. A meeting had been scheduled for the same afternoon. With the help of crutches Job struggled to the second floor, leaned panting against the wall outside the meeting room, and felt the tendons of his legs quivering like bowstrings.

As he had planned, he was the first person to arrive. When his heart had settled in his chest he hid his crutches behind the door, sat at the end of the long table, and adjusted his head dressing. Nothing could make him appear well, but if he appeared too sick they would not let him be part of the survey. The other team members appeared one by one and gave him a nod and a casual glance. If they thought he looked strange, they said nothing. Job made his own inspections and was not impressed. The two men and four women were healthy enough, but there was a dullness and a placidity to their eyes. The position of survey team member was not a coveted one. Maybe any smart Headquarters staff member would do what Skip had done, and find a substitute.

As soon as the team members were in position, three blue-clad men entered and went to chairs placed by the window. They were an odd trio, one Nordic, one darkly Latin, and one Oriental. They did not look at the survey team, and they did not speak. They sat, scribe recorders and notebooks on their laps, until Gormish, Pyle, and Bonvissuto bustled into the room, talking to each other in the odd version of
chachara-calle
that was unique to the Nebraska Tandy. Job had seen the Big Three at mealtimes from his corner in the Headquarters food center, but it had been a distant and a hurried look from behind the partitions—he wanted to draw no attention to himself. The new closeup view was not reassuring. Gormish was a short, gray-haired woman with a heavy build and a thin-lipped, determined mouth. She gave Job no more than a passing glance, but he was sure that she had read his physical condition exactly. Pyle was snake-thin and sinewy, with a lantern jaw, hooked nose, and deep-set unreadable eyes. His black hair was thinning in front, but at the back it was grown long and tied into a short pony tail. He constantly fiddled with his hands, cracking the knuckles, picking at the nails, chewing the loose skin at their edges, but his eyes were everywhere.

At first sight, Bonvissuto was much the most congenial of the three. He was chubby and full-faced, with laughter lines at his mouth and around his brown eyes. He reminded Job of Colonel della Porta. His voice was just as cheerful, bubbling over with energy and good humor as he came into the room and greeted the seated team members. It was hard to dislike him, but Job had heard the rumors around the training center: behind that bonhomie was a deadly efficiency and coldness; to reach his position as one of the three rulers of Xanadu, Bonvissuto had set a Tandyman onto his own brother and dropped him alive into the Tandy's main acid dump.

The seats for the Big Three were on the window side of the long table, in front of their scribes. There was silence as they took their places. All three glanced briefly at each team member, then turned to gaze steadily—at Job. He tried not to panic. It was natural that they should look at him, they knew every other member of the team from previous contacts. Yet his heart began to pound in his chest, harder than when he arrived at the top of the stairs.

"Job Salk, is it not?" Pyle, seated in the middle, spoke first and in fluent German. "Your record when you came here showed a gift for languages, and we heard the same thing from a friend of yours. I hope for your sake that it is not exaggerated."

Job's chances to speak German had been limited to conversations with a couple of street
basura,
almost four years ago, and their accent differed slightly from Pyle's. He wondered at the man's birthplace and heritage—Pyle was certainly not a German name—as he replied, "I don't think that it is exaggerated, but in this language I am certainly a bit rusty. And my mouth is sore from the radiation, so it is not easy to enunciate well. Give me two or three days with others who speak German, though, and I will sound a good deal better than this."

It was clear to Job that no one but Pyle and his scribe had any idea what he was saying. Gormish and Bonvissuto were staring questioningly at the saturnine man between them. He shrugged, frowned, and finally nodded to Gormish. "Good enough. Your turn."

She turned to Job. "You have been in Xanadu for almost four months. Tell me what you have done since you came here, and what you expect to do during this survey."

She spoke in Russian, fluently enough, but Job knew that it was not her native language. It had been learned, probably when she was in her early teens, and although she spoke it well there were still small errors in grammar and pronunciation. He made sure that his reply was delivered a little slower than his usual speech, and he avoided long words and difficult constructions.

By the time that he had finished and Gormish was nodding her satisfaction to the other two, Job was more relaxed and almost enjoying himself. Bonvissuto's switch to rapid and graceful Italian came as no surprise. Job replied with the same speed and elegance, made a joke at the end of his explanation of how he had come to be hurt, and was rewarded with Bonvissuto's broad grin.

"According to my staff he has equal command of all the major languages favored in Xanadu," said Gormish. "Well? More questions, or are we ready to proceed?"

The conversation turned to the survey. Job sank back in his chair and drew a long, painful breath. The test was over; he had passed it. Unless he were called on to speak again he would keep quiet, and concentrate on listening to the others.

An hour of haggling, questioning, and harsh comment confirmed what Job already suspected: the other members of the survey team were nothing but dullards, given the job because they were trusted by Gormish, Pyle, and Bonvissuto. Or rather—Job could see how the lines were drawn—two were trusted by Gormish, two were Pyle's people, and the other two belonged to Bonvissuto. Job was the odd man out, the person who had no allegiance but happened to be needed. One scribe also belonged to each of the Big Three, and they fulfilled roles as more than simple recorders; occasionally one would lean forward and whisper into the ear of his boss. From the few words that Job could catch he knew that Gormish's assistant was speaking in Mandarin Chinese; Gormish herself, from the look of it, was no mean linguist.

By the end of the second hour of the meeting Job was coming to another conclusion. The Big Three of Xanadu certainly had their differences. They argued and grumbled about many things; but in one area they were totally in agreement. Whenever the outside world was mentioned, whether it was the air drops, or the influx of new prisoners, or even something as uncontrollable and impersonal as the ice storm that had recently swept in from the north, the bitterness and hatred in each voice could not be missed. Even Bonvissuto's joviality took on a chill edge when he spoke of "Outside," the world beyond the Tandies.

It was not surprising—Job could see the scars of old radiation ulcers on each face at the table, and his own weeping sores were too commonplace to remark. What
was
surprising was the sense of approaching revenge, of a long-awaited reprisal soon to be delivered. But little was said explicitly.

"The survey
is
expensive of personnel resources." That was Gormish, talking to Pyle. "But we will have an exact measure of our strength, and that measure is necessary. We are talking of the management of a very large area, though admittedly a sparsely populated one."

She could not be referring to the Tandy; the Big Three already governed that, and it was not large or sparsely peopled. Job found his thoughts straying to Wilfred Dell. That sinister cherub could be called many bad names, but he could never be called a fool. He had been convinced that something was going on within the Nebraska Tandy; something that might also affect life in the Mall Compound, otherwise he would have had no interest in the matter. For the first time, Job found himself agreeing with Dell. But what
was
going on? He could no more put his finger on it, here at the center of things, than Dell had been able to do with his space-based observations from three hundred miles up. Some central piece of information was missing.

At the end of the meeting that piece was still absent. The team was dismissed and told to prepare themselves for their next-morning departure. There was no proviso of "weather permitting." Gormish and Pyle blamed Bonvissuto for the delay so far, and they were not willing to see it continued.