It was a fact that had also impressed itself upon Mandeville himself.
“Damnation and blast it!” The baron stamped his foot in a strangely childish temper. “I wanted to show you my guns and swords before we ate. But now it’s the mid of the day and the games are set for two o’clock.”
“Do you collect anything else, Baron?” Krysty asked.
“Pictures and weapons are” He was suddenly suspicious. “Why? What have you heard about my private What?” His eyes blinked and he tugged at the white beard, trying for a strained, false laugh.
“What am I Of course you didn’t know. Couldn’t, unless that unnatural bitch has been”
He had a gold hunter watch in a pocket of his vest, on a golden fob chain. It suddenly started to play a tinkling, melodious little tune, which, oddly, reminded Ryan of an antique Western vid, but he couldn’t recall what it was.
It broke the thread of Mandeville’s anger.
“I think that every one of you probably possesses some sort of cunning in fighting. I feel that, Cawdor. Yes, oh, yes. The ladies will watch, if they wish. And the bright little boy. But the rest of you will amuse us.”
“If you like,” Ryan said casually. “But if you have anyone who reckons themselves with a hand-blaster, then I’d back Mildred against them.”
“Back the woman? Sergeant Guiteau is the best I’ve ever seen. Mildred can shoot against him if she wishes.”
She smiled. “I wish, Baron. I really wish.”
ONCE AGAIN THE REFECTORY table groaned under an assortment of cold meats, salads and pastries, with jugs of chilled fruit punch to drink.
J.B. sat next to Ryan, picking at a plate of sliced roast beef with some cold potatoes and pickles.
“Think going in for these combat games of his is a good idea, Ryan?”
“I don’t know. Just have to wait and see. They start in an hour, so we won’t have long to wait.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Andromeda lay behind Trader and Abe, and they were now resting on a hillside overlooking the dull waters of the Cific Ocean. The ghostly ruins of the old ville of Seattle were about a hundred miles to the east of them, overlooking Puget Sound.
“I never lost the pleasure of looking at the fucking sea, Abe.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
The smaller man was still unable to believe that he’d really done it.
Done it on his own.
Everyone had believed that the Trader was dead, that he had simply walked away from the war wags when the rad cancer that had been chewing his guts for years had finally flared up past the level of tolerance.
“Look” he pointed with his right hand, away to the north “see them?”
There was a cold mist drifting off the bleak shore, and Abe couldn’t make out at first what Trader was indicating. Then he saw them.
“Whales.”
“Gray whales, Abe.”
“Yeah.”
They watched in silence. The sun was setting away to the west, beyond the farthest edge of the sea, pouring a torrent of blood toward them across the coppery water.
The leviathans were moving through the crimson alley, rolling and dipping. Abe’s sight was erratic at any great distance, but he counted five or six of the adult whales, with three or more calves gamboling around their mothers.
“Ain’t they the greatest?” Trader said. He stifled a cough, biting at his lip.
Abe turned to look at his former boss, seeing that the old lines of pain were more deeply etched around the mouth and eyes, and that his hair was whiter and thinner. The man himself was markedly leaner.
And the Trader hadn’t ever been known as a man who carried a lot of surplus weight.
“All right, Abe.”
“What?”
“Man who has too many questions is going to get too few answers.”
“I know that.”
“But you want to know. Know about where I went and why. And what’s been happening since then.”
“Sure do, Trader.”
“Man says a thing once won’t say it twice. That true?”
“Yeah.”
“True of me?”
Abe grinned. “Sure. Truer of you than any other man living, Trader.”
“So, you figure we should try and contact those two miserable sons of bitches? Ryan and John B. Dix?”