Then the medley of his friends’ voices filled his ears, and hands pulled him to his feet. Krysty fought back sobs, clinging to him. Ryan’s face was pale and drawn, glistening with perspiration.
“I’m all right,” he said, stroking her hair with trembling fingers. He reached out for Dean, who took and placed his hand on his shoulder for support.
They led Ryan to a wedge of shadow and lowered him into a sitting position. Jak offered him a jug of water, and he drank from it long and gratefully. J.B. scowled at the metauh rod in his hands, revolving it between them.
“What kind of crazy bastard weapons are these?” he demanded. “No trigger, no power source. I couldn’t get it to work.”
“That’s because you don’t have the training.”
They stared in surprise as Danielson approached them, stepping over the eviscerated body of Set. He looked down at the corpse and said, “You chilled them all. Jesus.”
“That’s what happens when you bring frog giggers to gunfights,” J.B. responded.
Mildred said to Danielson, “I saw you take a direct hit with one of those things. You’re not hurt?”
Danielson fingered his ankh amulet. “This absorbed and redirected the nerve-traumatizing effect of the mena energy.” He looked keenly at Ryan. “Cawdor, I always knew you for a nervy bastard, even when you were just a sprout. Your nerves must be made of steel cable.”
“What do you mean?” Ryan asked.
“I mean you should be lying there chilled—or at the very least, comatose and paralyzed.”
“I didn’t miss that last by much,” the one-eyed man replied. “It was like having a live wire connected to a suction pump jammed up my ass. All my strength felt like it was sucked away.”
Danielson nodded sagely. “The discordant-resonance effect. Your bioenergy harmonies were disrupted. You were stronger than the Incarnates figured. And very lucky.”
Ryan passed a shaking hand over his sweat-pebbled forehead. “Oh, yeah,” he said sardonically. “That’s exactly how I feel.”
Krysty swung her head toward the ragged man, green eyes blazing with a fury. “You’ve got a story to tell us, old man.”
“Yeah,” J.B. said stiffly. “Like how did these overdressed stupes know about Krysty?”
Danielson shook his head. “I can’t answer that question, but I’ll give up what I know. First, we’d better get the bodies out of sight. There’s some damn big buzzards with damn big appetites around here.”
Chapter Eleven
Krysty and Ryan accompanied Danielson into the storage shed while J.B., Dean and Jak dragged the corpses of the Incarnates into an outbuilding at the far end of Fort Fubar. The bodies were placed in shallow graves and covered in shrouds of canvas. On close examination, the helmets proved to be constructed of cunningly crafted wood, inlaid with colored ceramic tiles. The craftsmanship was of a very high order, bordering on the artistic.
Mildred and Doc sifted handfuls of sand over the puddles of gore on the ground and policed the area, picking up metauh rods and spent shell casings.
J.B. gave the horseless chariots a quick inspection, feeling a grudging admiration for the design which was both ornate and functionally elegant The conveyances were steered by a simple guide bar, the speed controlled by a joystick lever projecting from a very simple gearbox. It took him a minute to figure out the vehicles’ motive power—a stacked array of concave mirrored squares occupied an open box at the rear end of the chassis platform. The angle of the mirrors was controlled by a small crank winch.
J.B. knew that some predark industrialists and environmentalists had experimented with ways to convert the sun’s energy to electricity with solar cells. The little reflective squares were semiconductor chips and provided power to drive the vehicles. Despite himself, he was impressed with the technology. Still, he couldn’t even hazard a guess at the operation of the metauh rods.
Dean pulled sentry duty in the street while the adults returned to the storage building. Krysty spread out one of the sheets, and while J.B. and Ryan fieldstripped their blasters, meticulously oiling and cleaning their moving parts, they posed questions to Danielson.
“You built Fort Fubar?” Mildred asked.
Danielson nodded. “Yeah, about eighteen years ago. After Trader gave me the heave-ho, I hooked up with some Farers. Rather than scrape around in a barony, I convinced them to come out here with me.”