And there had been the big stern-wheelers, the paddle steamers, huge as a city block, brightly painted, going all the way down to Norleans, offering every kind of gambling and vice that a manor a womancould want. There had been all sorts of accommodation on board the splendid vessels, at all prices. Several of them had steam-powered calliopes built into their upper decking that would play all the popular old tunes as the great stern-wheels thrashed the river into white foam.
Ryan recalled that a couple of gunners from War Wag Two had deserted to work as sec men on one of the boats. Delta Princess , it had been called. The memory came back as Ryan drifted toward the edges of the ville.
Trader had trailed the boat all the way north, days out of his route, until it made a landing at Cairo, where he’d picked the two men off the boats, giving them both a good flogging and then abandoning them.
A young J. B. Dix had asked why the Trader had gone to all that trouble if he didn’t want the men back.
“They go when I say, not when they say” had been the typically firm reply.
Something rattled under his feet, and Ryan realized for the first time that there was a pair of oars lying in the bottom of the vessel. He picked them up and slid them into the iron oarlocks, turning the boat around from its stern-first direction and aiming it toward the nearest of a long row of drab docks.
It was a fine morning, with the sun peering over the eastern horizon behind him. Ahead there was a three-masted schooner casting off, and a black-painted ketch was tacking away toward the west.
Despite the early hour, Twin Forks was bustling with commercial life.
KRYSTY HAD SLEPT badly that night, long dreams of slow confusion had kept her trapped in that uneasy world of half waking, unable to plunge deeper into sleep, equally unable to pull herself free from the nightmares into the real world.
Ryan had featured in some of the dreams, but he had been a stranger, walking among a crowd of other strangers. At one point Krysty had woken, dripping with a chill sweat, aware of the connotations of what she’d seen in the dream.
Her lover had been wearing a long gray raincoat, walking barefoot over cobblestones beneath a drizzling sky. He was part of a slow-moving column that trudged along, heads down, silent, some carrying bags and cases that held their few poor possessions. About a quarter of them were children. Hard-faced guards in slate gray helmets pushed them along with the muzzles of long rifles.
They walked down paths between countless huts. Beyond the buildings were the tall watchtowers, linked by high strands of coiled razor wire. Now the head of the column had reached double steel doors that opened into an underground bunker. Krysty was standing at the side, near the blank-faced Ryan, and she could see inside, see the rows of chrome shower-heads and the sluices and drains.
Flakes of something that resembled black snow were falling all over the camp, landing on the thin covering of snow. Krysty had rubbed at them as they brushed her clothes, and they had smudged and smeared, leaving a filthy trail on the material.
She had tried to stop Ryan going in, but it hadn’t been like a conventional nightmare. No screaming and shouting. It had been very quiet. Ryan kept vanishing into the crowd, then reappearing, but he kept his eye turned away from her entreaties, ignoring her whispered warning.
Finally she had seen only the back of his head as he vanished between the heavy double doors that closed behind him. It began to snow, white and black flakes mingling together.
Now she stood by the window of her room, forehead pressed against the cold glass.
There had been a mist on the river, wrapping itself around the shadowy buildings of the docks, shrouding the upper spars of the big sailing ships that waited to load or unload their cargoes.
It was barely dawn, and Krysty watched a black-painted ketch as it tacked across from east to west.