giant hand.
“No more barn!” yelled the driver.
The tall dark-haired man squatted in front of Krysty, clinging on to a metal
projection to hold his balance as the buggy accelerated, jouncing over potholes
on the rough track.
“You’re safe now. We’re the Trader’s men. I’m Ryan. I look after things for him.
Who are you?” His voice was deep and warm, immensely reassuring.
She leaned back wearily against the two steps. Not even the sharpness of their
edges could make her feel uncomfortable.
“My name’s Krysty,” she said. “Krysty Wroth.”
Chapter Five
“IT’S A MYTH,” said Ryan. “Will-o’-the-wisp.”
“A land of lost happiness,” said Krysty.
“Crap. Ain’t no such thing.”
“That’s what Uncle Tyas used to call a double negative. What you just said is,
There is not no such thing. And that means, there is such a thing.”
Ryan leaned back in the swivel chair, his fingers frozen in the act of lining
tobacco along a paper, and gazed at the young woman seated opposite him. Almost
unconsciously he let his single eye drift across her eyes—large, profoundly
green, slightly almond shaped—down to high cheekbones that curved softly around
to a firm chin, the nose long, the mouth full-lipped and generous. There were
laugh lines there, an imp dancing in those emerald eyes. He thought it would be
delightful to dive into their depths, sink slowly down, drift. Still staring, he
slicked his tongue the length of the paper and deftly twirled the result.
“Finished?” There was a definitely a sardonic edge to her voice.
“Yeah.” He firmed up the cigarette, the best he could do with such crude
materials long ago dug up from a buried warehouse site, though the packages had
at least been airtight, and he tapped an end against his thumbnail, then fished
around in a top pocket, pulled out a lighter tube and flicked it. A flame sprang
up, quivering slightly in the draft. Ryan grinned and pointed at the lighter. “A
miracle. You know, we got maybe about a million of these little bastards. A
billion. Maybe—what’s the next one up?— trillion? Found ’em in a military dump
down south. Crates and crates and crates of the suckers. Guys who found ’em
didn’t know what the hell they were to begin with, couldn’t figure out how to
use ’em. Thought they were antipersonnel booby bombs.” He grinned again, shot a
glance across the war wag’s swaying cabin at J. B. Dix, who was busy greasing
one of his pieces—one of his many pieces. “That’s not to say that some of them
aren’t booby bombs,” he added. “The ingenuity of man in the causing of
destruction to his fellows is boundless. I read that somewhere, or something
akin to it. Education, you see. Like you. Dub-ull neg-a-tive.” He rolled the
words out slowly, frowning mildly as though judging them. “Yeah, that surely is
education. It’s still a crock of shit, though, this land of lost, happiness.”
“A paradise beyond the Deathlands,” said Krysty. She was rolling her own
cigarette from the tobacco supply, her long fingers dealing nimbly with its
creation. She was so fast that they seemed almost to flicker. Ryan watched,
fascinated.
She had cleaned herself up, now wore a green jump suit taken from Stores. It
fitted her in all the right places yet was loose and comfortable looking. She
had even polished her boots; the interior lights reflected off the buffed
leather. Her hair was just as lustrous, a shining flame-red cascade over her
shoulders and halfway down her back. To Ryan, when she moved her head, even if
gently, her hair seemed to be wildly alive, to shimmer with a restless motion.
“There is no paradise beyond the Deathlands,” he intoned mock-judiciously,
sucking smoke. The ancient, preserved tobacco was faintly sweet-smelling as it
burned. He wasn’t entirely sure what it was, although it wasn’t a relaxant like
happyweed. Ryan left that kind of thing for off-duty periods. “Only death. This
is a world of death. There is no other world.”
“Too pessimistic,” she said.
“I’m a realist. It’s the way it is, the way it’ll always be. There’s no escape.
They screwed us a century ago, and we’re left with the pieces. That’s it. You