Deadly Quicksilver Lies (8 page)

I heard noises behind me. I spun around.

At least a dozen men stood staring at me. I checked the ward beyond them. There were lots more men back there. Plenty were wondering about the new guy. Some studied my outfit. Plainly, there had been no general clothing issued in years. Nor had anyone taken a bath during the modern era. Here was the source of the odor I’d caught in the hall. A glance told me the welcoming committee all belonged inside. It was obvious in their eyes.

I pounded and yelled some more. Service did not improve.

At least they hadn’t dumped me into the violent ward. Maybe I stood a chance.

An old character who looked like he weighed about fifty pounds stumbled toward me. “How are you doing? I’m Ivy.”

“I was doing great till about five minutes ago, Ivy.”

“How are you doing? I’m Ivy.”

“He don’t say nothing else, Ace.”

Right. I’m a quick study. Ivy never even looked at me. “Gotcha.”

A guy about nine feet tall guffawed. “You don’t pay Ivy no nevermind, boy. He’s crazy.”

“How are you doing? I’m Ivy.”

This was the tip of the iceberg. The part that would be easy. It was sure to get weird.

After thinking a while, somebody yelled at the big guy, “You got so much room to talk, muddlebrain?”

“Yeah? What do you know? I don’t belong in here. I was set up. Somebody drugged me or something. I woke up in here.”

Oh, my. A fellow traveler as bad off as I. I had a lot of sympathy for him — till some grinning idiot shrieked, “Powziffle! Powziffle pheez!” Or something like that.

The big guy hunched up, stooped, made gurgling noises, and started running around the ward like a gorilla, howling. His howls would have chilled the spine of a banshee.

“How are you doing? I’m Ivy.”

The big man’s racket started some other guy screaming. His cries were a species I’d heard in the islands, coming from a guy caught out in no-man’s land with a bad gut wound, begging for somebody to kill him. Soldiers from both sides would have done so gladly after a while. But nobody was dumb enough to go out there and let the other side snipe. So we’d all just laid low and listened, ground our teeth, and maybe thanked our personal gods it wasn’t us.

I glared at that door. Maybe I could chew my way through.

Or maybe... My pockets hadn’t been cleaned. They must’ve been in an awful hurry to get me put away. A real bunch of screwup Charlies.

Patients came to check me out — those who still had a foot in our world. Many were timid as mice. A look sent them scurrying. Others... Some might have been there as accidentally as I, only instead they belonged in the ward for the dangerous.

I wished everybody would back off.

Any doubts I had about the irregularity of my commitment disappeared when I discovered that they hadn’t cleaned my pockets. Had I been brought in legitimately, all my possessions would have been taken from me and would never have surfaced again.

I was encouraged. About a roach-weight worth.

The physical plant wasn’t encouraging. The ward was a hundred feet wide, three hundred feet long, and two storys high. There were rows and rows and rows of sleeping pallets but not nearly enough to go around.

The ceiling was way up there, a good twenty feet. Windows peeked through the wall opposite the door, way high, too small for a man to get out even after he cut the bars. I supposed they passed light during the day. What little light was available now leaked through windows high on the door side wall, there so the ward could be observed by hospital staff.

“How are you doing? I’m Ivy.”

“I’m doing just fine, Ivy. What say you and me bust out of this toilet?”

Ivy looked at me directly, startled, then scampered away.

“
Anybody
want to break out?”

17

My suggestion drew an underwhelming response. I gathered that half the patients could not be dragged out and the other half thought I was crazy. There? Forsooth!

The big man who had cautioned me about Ivy’s lack of capacity recapacitated himself. He came over. “Ain’t no way out, Slick. They was, half these guys would be long gone.”

I glanced around again. The prospects seemed ever less promising. “They feed us?”

The big guy grinned that grin the old salts put on when they see a chance to teach a greenhorn. “Twice a day, you’re hungry or not. Through them bars down there.”

I looked. I shrugged. Them bars was hopeless. “Things are that bad I might as well get me some shut-eye before I start my serious worrying.” I looked for an empty pallet. I had some thinking to do. Especially about why I found myself in such straits.

I wanted to scream as loud as any of the whacks in there with me.

“You get in line for a bed,” the big guy cautioned me. “You make friends, maybe somebody will share. Otherwise, you just wait till enough guys die to leave you your own.” His casual manner told me this was one of the capital laws of the ward. Amazing. You’d expect it to be
total
survival of the strongest.

“My kind of flophouse.” I settled near the door. That didn’t seem to be a popular area. Plenty of elbow room there. I pretended to fall asleep.

There were no corpses in the ward and no smell of death. That suggested that staff removed the dead quickly. So, how to use that in a scam the staff hadn’t seen before?

I gave the notion of a riot a look. Feeble. If I was the Bledsoe staff, I’d just let everybody starve till the fuss stopped.

“How are you doing? I’m Ivy.”

My act wasn’t fooling Ivy. I considered putting him out of his misery.

Which gave me an idea. A twist on the riot scheme. I went looking for the big guy. I found him seated against the far wall. I planted the reverse side of my lap on the hardwood, grunted. “I got about enough splinters.”

“Send out for a chair.”

A wise guy. “How come it’s so quiet?”

“Maybe on account of it’s the middle of the goddamn night.” Eloquent verbal stylings, too.

“I mean, we only had one screamer.” Not counting him. Nobody was yelling at the moment. “I heard there was lots of screamers. Mostly guys who can’t handle what they remember about the Cantard.”

His face darkened. “Yeah. There’s some of them. They get drugged if they get too bad. Like they get each other going.”

Interesting. “Know any way to set one of them off now?”

He studied me narrowly. “What you up to, Slick?” He thought there had better be a damned good reason for pulling a stunt like that.

“Up to getting out of here.”

“Can’t do that.”

“Maybe not. But they didn’t empty out my pockets before they dumped me in here. You game to try?”

He thought about that. His face grew darker. “Yeah. Yeah! I got business out there. Yeah. You get the damned door open, I’ll go.”

“You figure any of these guys would help?”

“Plenty would go if the walls fell down. I don’t know how many would help make them fall.”

“So could you get some guy screaming as the first step?”

“Sure.” He got up, strolled to the far end, messed with somebody a minute, headed back. Plenty of inmates watched him. The man he’d visited started screaming. Chills slithered all over me. He was one of the lost souls.

The big man asked, “Good enough?”

“Perfect. Now try to round up some guys willing to help out.”

He went away again.

I went into my act. “Shut up down there! I’m trying to sleep.”

The guy didn’t stop screaming. I’d been afraid he would. I glanced at the observation windows. Someone was up there, but the racket didn’t interest him. Were they that indifferent? I needed to be seen.

I yelled at the screamer. Somebody yelled back at me. I yelled at him. Some genius yelled at both of us like that would shut us up. The racket picked up. We were like a troop of monkeys. Some of the men started moving around, just shuffling numbly, without purpose.

The uproar finally caught the ear of whoever was on duty. He looked down but didn’t seem concerned.

I screamed louder than the screamer, threatening mayhem if he didn’t shut it up.

“How are you doing? I’m Ivy.”

“Pack your trunk, Ivy. We’re checking out of this cuckoo inn.”

The big guy came by. “I got a dozen guys willing, Slick. You want more?”

“That’s plenty. Now I need everybody back away from the door. It’s going to get nasty there when they come in.” I hoped. If I hadn’t been suckered too bad.

“They’ll figure we’re up to something, Slick. They only look dumb.”

“I don’t care. That won’t matter. I just need the door open.”

He sneered, confident I was on a fool’s quest.

I screamed some more at the screamers.

There were several people at the observation windows now — including she of the glorious gams.

I chuckled, sure I was on my way out. No woman would work the Bledsoe unless she had a giant soft spot. I roared, bounded over pallets, started strangling the loudest screamer.

The big guy came by and pretended to drag me off. I gave him further instructions, then ran him off. He wasn’t a bad actor.

Me, I was a master. I made it look real good. To my surprise, none of my fellow patients tried to stop me.

I only strangled my victim a little, enough to cause unconsciousness.

I galloped to the other end of the room, went to work on another screamer.

Soon there were guys flying all over the place. The majority got into the spirit. It wasn’t exactly a riot, though. Real violence was almost nonexistent. But the pandemonium was not pretend.

I glimpsed the woman arguing with the men. She wanted to do something. They didn’t.

Excellent.

A little goblin breed three feet tall scrunched himself into a ball near the door.

Upstairs, charity apparently overcame common sense.

I kept the show rolling. People did get hurt, but
I
wasn’t in a charitable mood, to put it mildly. If I stayed a nice guy, I wasn’t ever going to get out. If I didn’t get out, I’d never get the chance to crack the heads of the clowns who’d put me in.

The big guy came around again. He bounced me around some. “They’re coming,” I told him. “And you don’t have to be so enthusiastic here.”

He seemed scornful. I don’t know about what.

18

I glanced at the door, then cautioned the big guy, “Take it easy. We don’t have to convince them now.” No one was near the door but the little breed. He would be sorry he had volunteered. “How many will come?”

The big man shrugged. “Depends on how worried they are. Least eight or ten. You better watch out.” He tripped me. I tripped him back. We rolled around and punched each other. He was having a great time. “They have a policy of kicking the living shit out of troublemakers.”

“I kind of figured that was part of the program. Hell, I’ve stopped bleeding. I’m ready for anything.” I wasn’t looking forward to the kicking part. You lays your bets and takes your chances, but I was hoping things would go well and I would not have to deal with any boots.

You have to believe you’re going to win.

I did have to win. Nobody knew where I was. It could be weeks before anybody even missed me, what with Dean out of town and the Dead Man sleeping. It might be weeks after that before anybody tracked me down. If anybody bothered to try.

I didn’t have weeks. I didn’t feel I could waste the time I’d spent inside already. The Dead Man might chuckle and tell me to consider it a learning experience, which is what he does when I have a bad day.

If I didn’t break out, it was going to be the all-time bad day to start a long string of bad days.

The woman stayed at the observation window. I kept howling my head off and throwing people around and strangling other guys making noise.

The thing that got me, down deep, was that almost half the guys in the ward didn’t get involved. Most of those never opened their eyes. They just laid there, indifferent.

Man, that was scary. That could be me in twenty years if I blew this.

Fear provided the inspiration I needed to keep howling and foaming at the mouth. I tried speaking in tongues. That came to me naturally. A little something for when I got too old to make it on the street. A good howl and roll man can start his own church.

The door opened.

Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, those dopes actually opened the door.

It swung outward. Attendants boiled inside. They knew something was up. They were ready for bear. They had clubs and small shields. They all looked about twelve feet tall. They formed in a tight knot before they started forward.

A few months earlier, in a moment of weakness brought on by engulfing an inland sea of beer, I’d bought some stuff from a third-rate wizard who’d called himself Dread but whose name was really Milton. You don’t never trust the skills of a wizard named Milton — as I’d learned to my sorrow on trying to use one of his charms. His stuff came with a warranty, but he wasn’t around to make good on it.

In my pockets were several tiny bottles, the last of my purchase. According to Dread, they constituted the ideal means of dealing with unfriendly crowds. I didn’t know, never having tested them. I wasn’t sure I even recalled Dread’s instructions. It was real drunk out that night.

I told me I had another good reason for wanting out. I had to find old Milt and register a consumer complaint.

As I recalled, all I had to do was throw a bottle against a hard surface, then stand back.

I did the throwing part. My bottle missed all the boys and bounced off the wall. It skittered back into the midst of the attendants. Guys walked all over it, but it didn’t break.

My guardian angel was on the job. Cursing him, I tried again.

The second bottle broke. Gray mist boiled off the wall. It reached the attendants. They started cussing. Cussing turned to howling fast.

Meantime, my little breed volunteer slithered into the doorway so it couldn’t be closed. His job was going to get nasty if the staff got determined.

The attendants in the ward lost all interest in quieting people down. They were too busy scratching and rubbing and yelling.