“The way I see it,” said Ryan softly, “he’s come a damned sight too far.” He
stared accusingly at the Trader.
“We’ve been through this a thousand times, Ryan. My word is my bond. You ought
to know that by now. It’s the only reason I’ve stayed in business. Two years ago
I took Teague’s hand and promised him a fat delivery. That’s what we have here,
and I can’t back out. Fireblast it, man!” he suddenly exploded, “you know damned
well I’ve pulled back on everything! He wanted twenty cases of auto-rifles. He’s
getting eight. He wanted fifteen boxes of grenades. He’s getting six, and those
are stun not frag, and he knows we know the difference. I’ve pared the whole
consignment to the bone and he’s not going to be happy.”
“Too bad. The guy’s a leech. He’s getting more greedy and more dirty by the
hour. He’ll screw us if he thinks he can and the way things are, that’s exactly
what’s going to happen.”
“I know that,” barked the Trader. “I know all about Jordan Teague. Hell, I
traded stuff with the son of a bitch, from the very first cache, twenty-five
years ago.” He took a pull at the cigar, coughed a little, “Or thereabouts. He
was a rat then and he’s a rat now. I know it. But I shook his hand. The deal
goes through.”
The Trader swung around and glared at no one in particular. Dix was staring at
the radiant ribbon of road, picked out by the twin spotlights located high above
the cab, protected by wire mesh against a sniper’s bullets.
Darkness clung to the light’s penumbra. The highway unwound before them,
potholed and rutted.
Ryan leaned against the steel ladder that led up to the MG-blister built into
the roof of the cabin. He shrugged, glanced at Cohn.
“How long?”
Cohn said, ‘”Bout a half hour to dawn. Hills ahead. The road goes up. That’ll
slow us. Pass through the hills, and beyond that, maybe two hours to Mocsin.”
The Trader said, “We stop five klicks out. Take this one and the two big trucks
in. If I know Teague, we’ll have to wait a day before the bastard’ll see us.”
“He’s getting fancy as well as greedy.”
“He’s a rich man, Ryan. He knew folks’d come back to gold, knew it’d be in
demand someday. So he created the demand, he hurried things along. Smart
businessman.”
“And prime shit.”
“Sure.” The Trader grinned suddenly, his face a waxy pallor. “Like every
businessman since the world began, or so I’m told. Like me.”
Cohn snickered. He checked his pocket watch, reached out a hand and flicked a
switch in front of him. Atmospherics crackled loudly, then died. Cohn leaned
across the table and began checking out the rest of the convoy.
Ryan walked to the rear of the cabin. There was a passageway that led to the
armory, the bunk rooms, the kitchen facility. Over the roar of the engines he
could hear Loz, the cook, bawling some piratical song or other as he prepared
breakfast. To his left were steps leading down to the toilet. He stared down the
short shaft up which the Trader has so recently emerged jauntily, waving his
cigar. He could still smell the fumes trapped down there, the fumes that, on the
Trader himself, powerful as they were, had not quite hidden the even more
powerful smell of peppermint.
The Trader was dying.
Ryan knew the Trader was dying. J.B. agreed with him. Both men—war captain and
weapons master—had made a compact to say nothing to anyone else, least of all to
the Trader himself. The Trader was a proud man; he refused to admit to any
physical weakness or debility, and death was the ultimate, final debility.
Ryan had noted the evidence: the racking, lung-shredding cough in the mornings,
the sickness he thought no one knew about, the grayness of face, splashes of
blood he’d not noticed. It all added up. The disease was eating the Trader up
and it was getting worse, heading inexorably toward the final dreadful
extremity.
And although there were medicos back in the Apps, the old bastard refused to see