“I don’t want to see you get hurt, Mr. Hammett,” she said, and went quickly around the big furry bush in the slanting silver rain, and was gone.
“You supposed to be a tough guy?” O’Brien laughed.
“You could always treat her a little better.”
“You see what she looks like? She let’s herself become an Old woman. It was the same back in Baltimore. Hell, she didn’t look so bad when she was reborn on the River, but she started going to hell all over again.” He grinned. “I want some nice fresh nooky while my loins are still up to it.”
“Meaning Arda?”
His eyes narrowed. His flat nose, which oddly enough lent him a brutal handsomeness, managed to look even fiercer. “What about Arda?”
“Somebody’s trying to hurt her.” I reached down on the ground and picked up one of the arrows he’d been shooting. It was identical to the one Arda had shown me in her hut. I raised my eyes to his. “Somebody shot an arrow at her recently.”
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223
“She needs a man.”
“She’s got a man.”
“You mean Poe?” He made a face. “He’s a nancy if I ever saw one.”
“She doesn’t seem to think so.”
“What the hell’s your interest in all this, anyway?”
“She’s under the impression that somebody is trying to take her from Poe.” I held up the arrow. “This is the kind of arrow her assailant used.”
“Are you saying I shot the arrow?”
“It’s a possibility.”
He grabbed at me then, but he was too paunchy to move quickly and so I was able to move right as he moved left.
“Arda wants you to leave her alone.”
“That’s my business.”
“You’ve got a wife of your own. Why don’t you try spending a little time with her?”
But I was getting sanctimonious again. I thought of my own wife, the one I’d left back there on Eddy Street along with my daughter, when I went off all liquored up to accept the accolades of Lillian and all her slick friends. I was in no position to give even a crud like O’Brien any moral preachments.
He snatched the arrow from my hand and said, “If I was you, I’d be getting out of here.”
“Just remember what I said. Arda wants you to leave her alone.”
“I’d say that’s up to me.”
He then turned around and picked up his bow and shot an arrow straight into the hard, shiny heart of the tree. It wasn’t difficult to imagine him shooting an arrow into me.
224
Ed German
FOOL’S PARADISE
225
The next twenty minutes, I followed a path that took me to the center of the forest. Out of boredom more than anything, I’d started following various paths to see where they’d take me. Back in the real world, I’d studied a lot of maps, especially when I’d worked for Pinkerton on various railroads, and being a pathfinder held a real fascination for me. Anyway, as I said, Riverworld wasn’t exactly overrun with spellbinding things to do.
I was taking a wide leg in the path, one that ran beneath a heavy canopy of trees, when I spotted the woman. She was lying on the ground, faceup.
Even from here, I could see that she looked grubby and strange. I could also see a trickle of blood on the side of her face that was being washed away by the rain dripping from the leaves above.
I ran to her and knelt next to her and started to turn her over for a better look at her crabbed, filthy face when—
When one of the highwayman’s more venerable tricks was pulled on me.
Leave a helpless woman of whatever age in the middle of a path and what gallant man can resist coming to her aid?
Well, I came to her aid, all right, and that was when somebody stepped out from behind one of the trees and hit me squarely over the head.
All I had time for was a small lightning bolt of pain, and then all was darkness.
I came to in a large hut. A fire burned in a dugout in the center of the mud floor. The warmth of the flames felt good. The only bad thing was the stench of the place. Whoever lived here was not what I’d call cleanly.