“Seems to me” Krysty began, hesitating, then remaining silent. Ryan guessed that this was because of the uncannily sharp hearing of the Family member.
“I assume that you are staying at that wretched flophouse, the Banbury. That pit of fleas. That inhospitable abscess on the face of the ville. That sodden excuse for a hotel. That absurd and miserable”
Ryan interrupted him. “Yeah. We’re staying there. And most of what you say about it is right enough. But it’s the only game in town.”
The young man laughed quietly, a sound like a pair of black velvet gloves brushing together in a dusty room. “Then you shall be the guests of the Cornelius Family. Outlanders are rare as hen’s teeth in this place.”
“They check in but they don’t never check out,” Mildred said. “Like they used to say about an insect trap called a Roach Motel.”
“An amusing comment, Dr. Wyeth. Your knowledge of predark Deathlands is unusual. Other members of the Family might be fascinated to talk with you. Now, Mr. Forde, about your film show that I so rudely interrupted.”
“Doesn’t matter,” the man replied. Ryan noticed that Johannes’s voice had gone up an octave, a sure enough sign of nervousness. “Seemed like my ghosty horror movie worked better than I’d thought it would.”
“Fools!” Cornelius said, snapping his fingers dismissively.
“How long has your Family been the barons around here?” J.B. asked.
“Barons? Yes, others have called us that, Mr. Dix. We never see ourselves in that role. We have always been here. Ever since then and beyond that yesterday. We do not rule as barons or kings rule. We guide the people. We teach them and show them how best to serve themselves. And also serve us. That is how the Family operates, Mr. Dix.”
“Believe that’s called being a benevolent despot,” Doc suggested. “Not many made that work through history. Catherine the Great and Elizabeth of England. And now there’s the Cornelius Family.”
Ryan heard the note of gentle barbed mockery in the old man’s voice and hoped that Cornelius didn’t hear it, as well, his feeling growing all the time that this was a dangerous man and it would be better not to cross him.
But there was no reply.
Ryan waited, locked in his blindness, wondering what in the dark night was happening. He sensed discomfort, but nobody was speaking or moving.
Suddenly Jak broke the silence.
“We look alike, but not Family.”
“We had been told of you, Jak. Hair like snowy silk. Face as pale as the finest porcelain. Eyes like the embers that smolder in a dying fire. How can it be that you are not one of us?”
The white-haired teenager answered the question without any hesitation. “Because know not Family like you. I’m just me. Not you. Not like you.”
Ryan heard a sound like someone licking his lips, which was puzzling as there was no food there. Except for the raw, butchered meat on the hooks.
The door opened, and Cornelius said, still placid and calm, “Come to our house on the bluffs above the river to the east. Ask anyone for directions. I can safely say that every living soul in the ville knows where our house is. Come for an evening meal. We can find rooms for you all. I will expect you at six, just as the sun begins to sleep and Mistress Moon awakens herself.”
The door closed, and Ryan was aware of a collective loosening of breath from the others.
“Gaia! That was something over and”
“Rad-blast it!” the Armorer said. “Wouldn’t care to meet him in a dark alley behind a pesthole gaudy. Or any other time and place, come to that.”
Jak sounded genuinely upset. “Just because has white hair and skin thinks like me. Wouldn’t lick blood like that. Not me. No.”
“Lick blood!” Ryan exclaimed. “When did? Right at the end, there was a few moments when”
Doc answered him. “By the Three Kennedys! I thought for a second or two that blindness can have its advantages, my old and dear friend. The albino fellow was standing near a slaughtered calf, when he brushed against it, getting a large smear or gobbet of congealing gore on his sleeve. Most men would have looked for a way of cleaning themselves. Not Master Cornelius. He lowers his head like a heifer at a salt lick and laps the blood from his coat, as if it were finest nectar.”
“Should’ve seen the expression on his face,” Dean added. “Like a cat got itself the cream.”
“Stooped and ran finger in pool on floor,” Jak said. “Offered it to me.”
Ryan pulled a face. “Sure get some odd barons around Deathlands,” he said.
“He claims they aren’t barons,” Mildred said, “though you could’ve fooled me, the way he spoke. Not stupid. I felt he had a blazing intelligence operating beneath that Joe Cool mask.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Forde said. “The stench of blood is turning my stomach.”
OUTSIDE, RYAN TOOK a number of deep breaths, cleaning his lungs of the blood taint, shaking his head to try to clear the odd muzziness that he felt.
“Has that” Krysty’s fingers tightened like steel traps on his arm. Ryan scarcely missed a beat. “Has that snowbird flown back to his nest?” he asked, toning down what he’d been about to say about the albino.
“No, Mr. Cawdor, he has not. He has remained here to suggest to Mr. Johannes Forde that he might like to take a little film while he is here of my friends of the ville. Before they all scatter back to to their ‘nests,’ ” Cornelius said.
“No offense meant,” Ryan said, breaking one of the Trader’s cardinal rules that to apologize to anyone was to show a sign of weakness.
“And none taken. Mr. Forde?”
“Sure thing. Only take a few minutes to set up the camera. Out here?”
“In the street? Why not? I shall be the first member of the Family for many long years to be filmed.”
“I can prepare it tonight, if I can bring the wag up to your house.”
“But of course, Mr. Forde. I am sure some of the other members of the Family will be interested in what you do. We did not know that any such machinery still existed in Deathlands. It is of special concern to us, I assure you. Now, let us to this moviemaking.”
“He’s ready for his close-up, Mr. de Mille,” Doc said, getting a snigger of approval from Mildred. Nobody else understood the old Hollywood reference.
WINTHROP HAD SOME TROUBLE persuading his people to pose for Forde’s German-made camera. The buckskin-clad man set it on an aluminum tripod, peering through his viewfinder, gesturing for the ville folk to close up.
“Want to get you all in,” he called. “Don’t worry about it. You all look scared to death. This won’t be a frightening film. Be the same as the other ville films I showed you. Just get in an orderly couple of lines.” He squinted at them again. “Would Mr. Cornelius want to be in it?”
Ryan heard the soft, insinuating voice, coming from much closer then he expected. The man had a definite talent for silent movement. “Yes, Mr. Cornelius would very much like to ‘be in it,’ as you put it. I shall place myself right in the middle, with Mr. Winthrop on my right hand, as befits the right-hand man. And Miss Simpkins on my left, as befits the oldest inhabitant of the ville of Bramton.”
“Age ain’t no benefit, as well you know,” she spit. “To everything there’s a season, Cornelius, and that means a time to be born and a time to die. Just wish you and the Family would recall that now and again.”
Ryan waited to see if the white-haired man would respond, listening for the touch of barbed steel beneath the delicate silken glove.
He wasn’t disappointed.
“My dear Zenobia I may call you by that name, since we have known each other for all your lifefor all of my life, I meant to say. It would be a sorry mistake to imagine that age alone was a reason for preserving life in that shrunken heart and those frail, withered lungs.”
Ryan caught the fluttering note of panic in the old woman’s voice. “Don’t tell the other members of the Family that I spoke out of turn, Elric. Please?”
The man obviously had to have nodded some sort of agreement, as the subject was dropped.
And the filming took place.
Despite his objections, Ryan was placed in the front row, toward the left, at the center of his companions, his face turned to where he believed the camera to be.
“Even if I had my seeing, I wouldn’t have wanted this,” he muttered to Krysty.
“When your sight returns, you’ll be pleased we made you do it,” she replied. “Johannes’ll keep a copy for us, and we can watch it in a few days.”