James Axler – Stoneface

Fleur refilled his coffee cup and stood beside the chair, leaning a hip against it. She looked bored, industriously inspecting her nails.

Hellstrom took a sip of his coffee. “Where was I?”

“Making short story long,” Jak said.

The white-clad man didn’t appear to be offended, or, for that matter, to have even heard the young man’s words. “I heard a lot about War Wag One and Two, about Trader and specifically about you, Cawdor. You appear to have a talent for insurrection. How many barons have you overthrown?”

“Only those who’ve needed it, Lars.”

“I envied those barons, the lives they led, the people they controlled. I knew I could never reclaim my own birthright, but I knew I could establish my own barony, one so powerful that it could never be defeated. I was born to lead, to command, but there was one problem I had no followers.”

Hellstrom leaned back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other and clasping the knee with both hands. He seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. “In my late teens, I discovered my latent psionic abilities. I found that I could sometimes sense what other people were thinking, and I assumed everyone had this ability. Eventually, of course, I learned otherwise. My power was undeveloped, truly a ‘wild’ talent. I found I could read some people all of the time, some part of the time, and some none of the time. I needed a method, a doctrine to employ, so I could zero in on those individuals my raw powers would influence. Then I remembered reading about Charles Manson.”

“I remember reading about him, too,” Mildred said bitterly. “He was a sociopathic loser, a manipulator of the spiritually weak.”

Fleur made a growling sound deep in her throat. “That’s heresy, you Beforetime bitch.”

Hellstrom shushed her into glowering silence. “He was a very successful manipulator, nonetheless. He spun out an entire apocalyptic mythology, which now, in hindsight, seems to be a prophecy. I figured that if people bought his mixture of mysticism, ritual and paranoia a century ago, they’d buy it again, especially with a new spin put on it.”

“And,” Krysty interjected, “especially if your mind influenced them.”

“Quite true. The more I used my psychic gift, the stronger it became, like strengthening a muscle. I began encountering people whose minds were vulnerable to my own. I not only could sense what they were thinking, I could project my own thoughts into their minds, and, in short, I controlled that mind on a modest scale. It’s probable that Manson himself possessed and exercised this power to a very developed degree.”

“But,” J.B. pointed out, “you aren’t a doomie.”

“No,” Hellstrom admitted. “My talent is of a different order. I interact with brain-wave patterns. Precognition and empathy operate on emotional states. For example, Ms. Wroth somehow intercepts the intent to cause harm, but she’s not actually peeping into the future. Whereas I receive thought impressions, I’d guess that Ms. Wroth mentally picks up flashes of color, denoting emotions. Am I correct?”

Krysty nodded. “To some extent. The colors are very brief, almost subliminal. Orange for anger and red for murderous intent. If I hadn’t been trained to interpret the bursts of color, I never would have realized what they meant.”

“At first,” Hellstrom continued, returning to the primary topic, “my followers were the walking wounded, the flotsam and jetsam, strictly the dregs of Deathlands. But as I continued my wanderings, I found followers, especially among the Farers and the bikers. Through them, the new Family managed to acquire a few decent blasters, but the life of nomads was wearing thin. It was too risky, especially after we drifted into this region. We lost several people to screamwings, and even more to the Indians. In fact, I rescued Fleur from the Indians during one skirmish, didn’t I, Fleur?”

“Yes.” She bit out the word, with no inflection or emotion attached to it.

“A little over three years ago, we arrived in this area, at the foot of Mount Rushmore. I’d heard about it in my youth and I wanted to see it. We had barely pitched camp when a band of Sioux came upon us. We managed to chill quite a few, but racked up some casualties ourselves. That night, while we were tending to our wounded, the Anthillthe Commander, in factmade contact with me, via a beetle. The people up there had observed our fight and they wanted a trade.”