“J.B.? Go in or stay out?” Ryan asked.
“I’m not the one to ask right now. I can’t see worth a damn in the dark. Daylight, sure. Even though I don’t like leaving blasters behind, I vote we stay.”
“Anybody else want to add an opinion?” Ryan asked. No answer came. “Then it’s settled.”
Ryan strode back over to the check-in counter and unlimbered his Steyr, taking time to unload the cartridges. After doing likewise, J.B. handed over his Uzi, preferring to keep the raw force of the M-4000 shotgun hanging beneath his coat by a shoulder strap.
“That all of the extra blasters?” Hans asked as he looked them over.
“Yeah. We’re keeping the pistols, per your adviceexcept for my friend, there. He’s hanging on to the shotgun.”
“I can take your word there’s no extra hardware?”
“Unless you want to search us, and I don’t have a problem with that.”
“No need. We try and limit the violence inside, but we can’t fully stomp it out,” Hans said. He reached down for a receipt book and scribbled down the makes of the weapons and Ryan’s name. The receipt book had carbons, and he handed over a copy. “Where do we get mall creds?” Ryan asked as he folded the slip of paper and placed it in a pocket.
“Bank of Freedom, Incorporated. You’ll see it on the right when you go through the second checkpoint. You can exchange your currency there.”
“Right.”
“What’s the rate of exchange?” Mildred asked.
“Varies. Never heard any complaints. Freedom Mall wants to keep your business, so we play fair with what you want to spend. When you’re ready to go, you can give back what you didn’t use and we’ll return what’s left of your funds minus a ten percent handling fee.”
“Lots fees in place,” Jak observed.
“Welcome to a sampling of a civilization of sorts,” Mildred said with a chuckle. “Let’s just hope there isn’t a Freedom Mall sales tax.”
THE MALL INTERIOR WAS a queer mix of preservation, restoration and retrofitting. There were two floors, with the second floor having a high ceiling that stretched up to a series of clear sky panels that allowed the sun to provide interior illumination. Half of the upper level was floorless, with open walkways that allowed the sunlight to filter down below, giving room for multiple sets of wide stairwells and narrow, nonfunctioning escalators. An overblown abstract sculpture also dominated in the area they currently were looking at, the “arms” of the piece stretching skyward, graceful and long.
The populace spilled out everywhere, most walking, some on skateboards or inline skates. A rickshaw-styled taxi service seemed to be doing well, manned by weary-looking bare chested men as the two-seater carriages rolled past.
Most of the visible storefronts had kept their original signage, with new additions added below. Others had chosen to strip away or cover the names of original Freedom tenants. Mildred counted several familiar names from her previous life that were still in evidence.
“First thing we do is find a place to stay,” Ryan said.
“Well,” Mildred said brightly, “any mall this size I ever went into had directories to help out new visitors. Directories were also good promotion for stores. They helped steer you where they wanted you to go, not where you might stumble by accident.”
“Comp terminals?” Dean asked.
“No, Dean, not that high-tech, although now that I think about it, some places did feature information banks with computers, in case someone was interested in finding out more about a store or wanted to find a particular brand of merchandise. Pretty slow, primitive stuff, though, and designed to be idiot proof to keep Joe Public from becoming frustrated and screwing up the system.”
“Could just ask somebody. Might be a lot simpler,” Krysty said. “Plenty of folks to choose from.”
“In a place this size?” Mildred retorted. “By the time they explained where we wanted to go, we could have already been there.”
“It was just a suggestion,” Krysty replied.
“I must confess to a strange feeling hovering between euphoria at having a roof over my head in a secure environment, and claustrophobia at the number of people crammed alongside us in here,” Doc commented after being jostled by a passing couple.