They all heard a burst of muffled giggling, coming from behind a curtained doorway at the far end of the shadowy room. But Torrance ignored it.
“A sense of humor can be a fine way of talking yourself onto the gallows, outlander.” The baron looked at his sec man. “Do they have names, Arkadin?”
“Danny and Willard King, Baron. Traveled with ammo. Lost the lot.”
“Still got pretty blasters there. Managed to hang on to those during the shaky last night? Perhaps you might like to give them to us.”
Ryan couldn’t tell whether it was supposed to be a joke or a threat. Or just the idle, vacuous suggestion of a sick and bored madman. In terms of giving up their blasters, it didn’t much matter which.
“No, Baron. You can try and take our blasters, but we don’t give them up.”
Again there was sniggering from the far end of the chamber. This time Torrance turned around, the question of their guns seemingly forgotten. “Oh, stop that rad-blasted noise, children.” He returned his attention to Trader and Ryan. “You can meet my little girls, outlanders.” The baron raised his voice. “Come out!”
“Well, I’ll be hung” Trader stopping his exclamation when Ryan nudged him hard.
Baron Torrance’s little girls came simpering out of their hiding places like a pair of overdressed spiders, sidling across the room, hand in hand, pushing and pinching each other, giggling and blushing.
The baron looked around. “For heaven’s sake. Behave, girls.”
Andy Arkadin stared fixedly across the room, taking care that his eyes never quite focused on anything. Or on anybody.
“Cissie and Bessie Torrance. These are two brothers, my cherubs. Danny and Willard King. They deal in ammo for blasters and got caught in the quake.”
Trader seemed quite paralyzed by the sight, but he followed Ryan’s lead and offered a small bow. “Good to meet you, ladies,” he said.
“Yeah. Best of the day,” Ryan added.
Cissie looked to be around fifty, with bubbly curls that had been dyed the color of Kansas wheat. But the coloring had been done several weeks earlier and the roots all showed a clear, strident silver. She was around five-six, looking as if she’d tip the scales a little over the two-fifty mark. Her face was set in a simpering mask that went well with her cupid’s-bow mouth, which had been carelessly daubed with scarlet lipstick.
The odd feature was her eyes, out of kilter with the girlish mask. They were a watery gray, like a dead cod, and they had fixed on Trader like a pair of homing missiles.
Bessie was clearly the younger, by around twenty years. Her hair was extremely long, hanging to her waist, colored an indeterminate midbrown. Ryan stared at it, unable to overcome his belief that he had seen any number of tiny insects moving amid the greasy locks.
Both women wore a bizarre mix of clothes. Cissie had a flowered skirt over a pair of torn jeans, tucked into a pair of rubber galoshes. One green and one black. Her upper half was shrouded in what looked like a tablecloth, crudely embroidered with garish flowers.
Bessie, fifty pounds lighter than her older sister, wore a dress made from dozens of pocket handkerchiefs, cobbled together with strands of multicolored silk. Her feet were crammed into golden pumps with high heels.
She was smiling at Ryan, her mouth smeared with purple lipstick, surrounded with a positive viper’s nest of septic cold sores.
“Can they stay to supper, Dadsy?” Cissie asked. “You know we never get to see outlanders these days.”
“They begged on their knees for the honor of sitting at a meal table with my little girls,” the baron replied. “Did you not?” He glared at Ryan and Trader.
It was a painless lie, as long as it was going to lead to a free meal. Ryan and Trader nodded. “Sure did,” said the older man. “Be a particular little booger of a pleasure. Won’t it, brother?”
“Sure will,” Ryan agreed.
The statement sent both sisters into another clinging paroxysm of tinkling laughter.
Torrance looked at his sec man. He wheezed as he tried to speak, but he was overtaken by a coughing fit. His eyes protruded like grapes in an egg custard, and a line of pink spittle drooled from his parted lips. His red complexion shaded gradually to an interesting purple hue. Nobody moved, and after several seconds the fit passed and he was able to speak.