The fear of giving birth to monsters was something
she shared with practically all of Deathlands’ sentient females. What with lingering radiation hot spots, polluted aquifers and chem-saturated rain, post-Armageddon genetics was an ongoing game of Russian roulette. Everyone realized that most of the fresh mutations induced by the environment were lethal-and if not that, then debilitating or disfiguring in some way. Though outwardly she didn’t seem to have been impacted negatively by the changes in her mother’s genetic structure, Krysty couldn’t know whether the genes she now carried had been damaged in the course of her life, and if so, all her future offspring. Deep down she understood that it was possible her DNA had already been compromised so badly that the Gaia line would end with her.
The concern had to have shown on her face.
The baron smiled at her almost paternally. “I’m done for now,” he said. “Let her put her clothes back on.”
Under the prying gaze of all those male eyes, Krysty dressed herself with all the dignity she could muster. She had won a pair of small victories. She had gotten through the exam alive, and she had kept her Gaia power a secret. When she had finished zipping up her coveralls, the baron addressed her directly for the first time.
“Is there anything else I should know about you?” he asked. “Any other interesting mutie peculiarities?”
She looked at him for a moment, as if trying to decide whether she should speak at all. Then she
shrugged. “I do have a power that can’t be seen,” she told him.
“And that is…?”
“I’m a doomie,” Krysty said. This was an exaggeration, if not an outright lie. She did have some ability to visualize the future, and in particular, impending clanger, but her gift was very limited and imprecise.
“Really?” the baron said. “What do you see in store for me?”
Krysty closed her eyes. “A bright future for you and yours. A long and healthy life. I see many girl great-great-grandbabies. Much power. You will gain a broader reach throughout the east. Before you draw your last breath, fear of your name will have spread across all of Deathlands.”
“So you don’t see any stickies in my future?” Elijah said, grinning. “Don’t you believe what your friend One-eye says about a conquering army coming this way?”
“Oh, I believe,” she told him. “I believe because I saw the stickies on the toll road with my own eyes.”
“You saw this mutie leader, too?”
“Yes, I did. He was big, with brown-and-white patches on his skin.”
One of the sec men leaned close to the baron and said, “Could it be him coming back after all this while? Could it be Zit?”
Elijah silenced the man with a wave of his hand.
Krysty looked the baron in the eye and said, “For some reason the stickies don’t seem to influence any
part of your future. Either they don’t attack or you repel them when they do. It isn’t clear to me.” “I like this doomie bitch,” Elijah said. Which was exactly what Krysty had intended. She smiled fetchingly at him. She was bartering now for any small advantage she could get. Though her situation looked fairly hopeless, the game wasn’t over until the last shot was fired. Krysty knew there was any number of ways that things could still work out for her and friends. She had to keep focused, ready to seize the chance when it came.
“How long you been running with Cawdor?” Elijah asked.
“Not long. A few months.” More lies.
“You must be screwing him, then.” Krysty didn’t answer.
“Funny that One-eye should take up with a mutie slut like you,” the baron said. “Or that you’d take up with him after what he done. Although, mebbe he didn’t tell you….” “Tell me what?”
“That he hired out to me as a mercie during the Mutie War. He was part of a special chill crew I sent into rebel-held territory. A bunch of escaped mutie slaves had built up this scratch-ass little ville in the middle of nowhere and named it Coupe, after one of their dead. They were nothing but a bunch of dirt farmers armed with blasters they stole from me. My orders were to make an example out of them, to chill the ones