“Won’t forget it, Captain,” J.B. added. “Worth our remembering.”
Huston’s ruddy face was pale, a line of strain etched deep around his eyes and mouth. He shook his head at the two prisoners. “Not my fault,” he muttered. “You don’t know what they said they’d do if I didn’t”
The Magus patted Huston on the shoulder, and the captain jumped as though the man’s touch were tainted with high voltage. “Man has to do what other men tell him to do.” The curiously dead metallic eyes turned toward Ryan. “Just the kind of thing our dear mutual comrade the Trader would have said.”
“Better if you give your blasters to us,” Wolfram suggested jovially, as if he were asking them if they wanted to take off their coats before eating.
“And his knife,” the Magus hissed. “The long, honed butcher’s blade. And search the Armorer with a very special care. I recall his pockets were sometimes filled with delicious toys. Plas-ex and grens.”
“That was then, Magus, and this is now,” J.B. said, holding out his arms sideways, allowing the lean, part-android to search him. “Wasting time. Those days of explosives and implodes are long, long gone.”
“Prefer to spend your time with time-jump black bitches, do you?”
J.B. didn’t rise to the sneered taunt. “Better person than you could ever be, Magus,” he replied calmly.
Wolfram giggled. “This is so like olden times, is it not? So many memories that we share. Some truths and some false memories. How given we old men are to the vice of lying, Ryan Cawdor. I have a question for you, my old comrade-in-arms.”
“Ask it. Doesn’t mean I’ll answer it.”
“Where is your little boy, Dean? We sadly lost track of him some weeks ago. It would have been so nice to have the mongrel cur of that she-panther, Sharona.”
Ryan was shaken to the core as he realized how the two cold-hearts had been following him and the others through Deathlands. And how much they seemed to know. “Boy ran away, down near Death Valley,” he said. Least that was one thing they didn’t know. Wouldn’t ever know.
Wolfram nodded, still smiling. He reached to tug out a large black satin kerchief and wiped sweat off his high forehead. “A lie, of course. But we shall find time to ask that and so many, many questions, Ryan.”
“Go fuck a dead scabbie, Gert.”
“You will answer,” the Magus said, pointing at Ryan’s good eye with his gleaming nail. “Nothing on this blighted earth is more certain.”
“What’ll make us talk?” J.B. asked, moving closer to Ryan, spotting the vein that throbbed across his friend’s temple and the way the great cicatrix of the scar in his cheek was purple and twitching. They were dangerous signs that Ryan’s temper was slipping from his control.
“How to make you talk, friends?” Wolfram threw back his head and bellowed with laughter, his jowls quivering, belly rippling. Opening his mouth, he sang in an unexpectedly high, pure lyric tenor. ” ‘If you had wings like Noah’s dove, then you’d sail up the river to the ones you love.’ ” He stopped, his jolly face turning to greasy planes of wind-washed bone, eyes narrowing with anger. “But you don’t have wings, like Noah’s dove, do you, Ryan Cawdor? Do you, John Barrymore Dix? No, you do not.”
Neither man answered, though the truth of Wolfram’s mocking was unanswerable. Krysty, Mildred, Doc and Jak were gone, spirited away either up or down the big river, out of reach into the drifting fog, helpless prisoners.
“Get to it,” Ryan said wearily, trying not to show his own despair.
The Magus turned to the captain. “Do you have the private dining room ready?”
“Yes.”
“There will be no need for you to join us, Captain.”
“Fine with me.”
“And in another few hours you will be rid of us forever. Does that not bring a smile to your wrinkled old cheeks? As well as a purse of jack for your devious aid.”
Huston nodded at the Magus. “Guess it’ll be good to move on without you and all your trouble.”
Ryan was still fighting against the surging, blood-red rage. “Just fucking tell us what your plan is! You going to chill us, then do it. But you could let the others go.”