materiel, their war wags. But it was pretty much penny-ante stuff, and in any
case most of it had been supplied by the Trader directly, and although he could
not stop—not that he wanted to—the slow march of a manufacturing industry that
had started in a small way a generation back—the crude electrification of small
plants in certain places, mostly based on the utilization of hundred-year-old
equipment that had survived; knowledge gained from old manuals and handed-down
memories and skills—he could still see to it that he, and he alone, controlled
the heavy hardware that had been salted away so many years before. He still had
his secrets, though there were many who plotted and schemed in smoke-filled
rooms to wrest them from him, many who saw him as the ultimate block to their
own acquisition of power.
The Trader’s philosophy had changed through the years. At first he’d sold,
bartered and traded damned near anything and everything he could lay his hands
on, for gold, coin and creds. His success was due solely to his own natural
vigor and energy and the smartness of Marsh Folsom, who could read and write and
because of this could go some way to deciphering some of the meager clues they
had found in the original Apps caverns and other Stockpiles.
Folsom knew from his reading that the old-timers used incredibly complex pieces
of machinery called computers, and he figured that much of the paperwork .they
had found in the Stockpiles had a lot to do with those things, but unless you
had been trained how to use them there was no way you could crack the code.
Although both he and the Trader had actually seen these computer machines in
their travels around the Deathlands—mostly wrecked, unsalvageable, though
there’d been some that had appeared intact—you also needed power, a lot of
power, to turn the blasted things on. And even if you could somehow work it,
Folsom knew they’d still be useless because no one could comprehend how to
handle them. A live machine you didn’t understand was as redundant as a dead one
you did. Maybe more so.
Still, they’d persevered. Folsom had followed up clues on military maps, had
pinpointed locations, areas of possibility. The Trader had gone out to those
locations and dug around, sometimes hitting pay dirt, more often than not
drawing one big fat zero. The percentage against them over the years was
depressingly high. In every ten tries, maybe one was on target.
Their second major find had been a sea of gas in vast containers hidden below
the peaks of the mountain range that stretched toward the cold zone to the
north, maybe two hundred kilometers beyond the ruins of Boston. It had been a
bitch to transport shipments of it the enormous distance back to the Applayshuns
through rugged and dangerous terrain, frequently fighting a running battle with
muties, mannies, cannies—the muties with pre-cog powers even more eerie than the
doomies’—and sheerly vicious norms who attacked from crazed blood lust alone.
But out of that terrifying odyssey had grown the Trader’s band, for although
Folsom played around with his maps and files, the Trader recognized the more
immediate need for satellite recruitment, a nucleus of hardcase guards and
blasters who would fall in with his ideas, obey orders, keep their mouths shut
tight.
That had taken time. You couldn’t simply grab the first guys who came along. The
Trader wanted—needed—integrity in his followers: fearlessness, nerve, a resolute
loyalty and maybe something approaching devotion. And once he’d got what he
wanted, or as nearly as he decided he was ever going to get, he ran a tight
ship.
You wanted creds? You worked for them. You wanted a life that, hard as it might
be, was a hell of a sight easier than that experienced by the vast majority of
the Deathlands dwellers? You had to earn it. You wanted sex? You either got
yourself a solid partner, or you paid for it. It was readily available; there
were plenty of burgs in the Deathlands that were simply open brothels. What you
did not do, however, was grab it any old damned where. You did not use force.