“Seen stickies all over Deathlands,” Jak said. “That one triple sick.”
The next occupant of the collection was in even worse physical condition. He was elderly and squatted in a corner of his cell, his head shaking back and forth in a rhythmic swaying. As the baron reached his cage the man rose and started to pace up and down, brushing his shoulders on the stone walls at either end, leaving a smear of blood at every turn.
His body was covered in suppurating sores.
“What they call a scabbie,” the baron said. “Prime specimen of the type.”
“Why don’t you let it die like it wants?” Emma asked, near to tears.
“Perfectly happy, you know. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Nothing wrong with it. Fed and watered and kept dry. Seems fine to me. Oh, yes, fine.”
Doc’s face had become suffused with anger. “This is a disgrace, Baron Sharpe! I have read of zoos during the twentieth century where captured beasts showed a similar pattern of grossly disturbed behavior. Pacing and mutilating themselves. Just as that poor wretch does.”
Joaquin touched a warning finger to his lips behind the baron’s back, trying to warn the old man to be quiet, who wouldn’t be quieted.
“No! This is a sickly and debased commentary on you, Baron Sharpe. In the ancient days of ignorance and barbarism, decent men and women would pay a handful of coppers to go along into the lunatic asylums and bedlams and laugh at the antics of the poor demented devils held prisoner within those dank walls. It was a fine sport for a Sunday afternoon! But those times are long gone. I thought that they were long gone. I see now that I was wrong. Can we leave this foul place?”
The baron turned his cold eyes on the old man. “I decide when we leave. I might leave. Joaquin might leave. But it could depend on the lady whether the rest of you ever leaves. Let her think on that and on what she decides to do.”
The third occupied cage contained a pair of children, looking to be aged about twelve and wearing stained cotton shifts. The girls were identical twins and clung to each other as the baron appeared in front of them.
“They are mysterious,” he said, showing a brief flicker of interest. “They speak a language so rare that no man can understand it.”
The twins looked terrified, big eyes turned to face their tormentor, who glanced at Joaquin. “Make them speak their mystic tongue.”
The sec man was carrying a musket and he thumped the butt against the iron bars, making them ring. “Come on, speak up!” he shouted.
The girls began to talk at the same moment, making, as far as anyone could tell, an unbroken string of identical sounds in perfect unison.
“There,” Sharpe said proudly. “If I could get that translated, who knows what mysteries it might reveal. The secret of how to transmogrify lead into gold. The fountain of youth. The Grail itself.”
As quickly as they’d started, the twin girls fell again into silence.
Doc looked at Sharpe and shook his head. “Those poor waifs are demented. Can you not see that in your own blindness? They speak only gibberish.”
“Nonsense, Doctor.” A smile crossed the baron’s brutal features. “I have just conceived a solution that will solve two of my problems in a single shot. You can pass the remainder of your days in the cage with them, and you will translate for me.”
“It won’t happen, Doc,” Emma said with a complete confidence. “Don’t worry.”
“If I say it will, then it will,” Sharpe thundered, his hand dropping to the butt of his Ruger.
“You can say all you like, but if it won’t happen, then it won’t,” the young woman replied, facing him down.
“This is a doomie,” the baron said, losing interest in the argument. “Of a sort. He makes prophecies but none of them can yet be understood. Perhaps another task for you, Doctor?”
The occupant of the last cage was a tall, slender man in his thirties, with a long, trailing beard that almost covered his nakedness. He seemed in both better physical and mental health than the others.