those who had been firmly in control of a potentially dangerous situation for
years gradually lost their objectivity. In their rigid and unshakable belief in
their own strength, their own power to keep the lid down hard, they were blind
to all else, even the most disturbing and concrete evidence of disaffection.
Sure it happened.
And sure it was time Mocsin boiled over. You couldn’t beat an entire town into
subjection forever.
He took his wine and strode over to the table where Ole One-Eye and Chewy the
Chase—that terrible man crudely named after a suburb of what was once a
Washington suburb, according to some ancient map—were seated, Chewy crouched
deep in his mobile chair.
Ryan said, “Look, count me out of this.”
There was silence for a moment, then Chewy snickered and said, “Hey, ya know
what? They’re crackin’ down on muties now.”
Ole One-Eye turned on him and rasped, “Don’t use that word! How many times I
gotta tell you! I don’t call you a crapping norm, do I?”
Chewy said, “How many norms you seen walkin’ around on no legs, huh? You hideous
apology for a human being.”
“Pity they didn’t blow yer vocals out when they blew yer legs! The shit I hafta
put up with!”
The nature of Ole One-Eye’s particular mutation was more than merely dramatic.
It was clear at once to any observer that at least one side of his bloodline had
gotten savagely zapped three generations back by a rabid breed of rad bug. Maybe
both sides of his bloodline. That would certainly account for the top of his
pate being flat and hairless and made up of flabby, spongy ridges of flesh, and
his having only one eye, one glistening ocular orb, dead center of his forehead.
From his nose downward, beyond the mouth and the stubbly beard shot with gray,
he seemed perfectly normal, though a little on the squat side and with arms
maybe a fraction longer than the average. But only a fraction.
It was not known exactly what part he’d played in the Mutie War of 2068. He
didn’t talk about it much. Mutants escaping serfdom in the Baronies of the East
had fled West and gravitated by degrees to the area around old Louisville and
built up their own short-lived homeland over a period of four or five years. But
there had been too much tension. The people around there, the normals, had grown
discontented at what they saw as an invasion of their territory, their “clean”
territory, by whole families of those whose indebtedness to the Nuke,
genetically speaking, was blazingly obvious. They wanted the muties out. The
mutant families, having finally escaped from conditions in which they’d been
treated worse than animals, refused to shift. They had built houses, farms,
repair shops, set up trade lines. The move toward outright war had a blind and
fearsome inevitability about it.
A norm farmer whose steam truck’s boiler had burst near a mutie ville had forced
a couple of mechs to fix a running repair, then casually shot them both when
they’d asked for payment. If the farmer gained any gratification from this act
of gratuitous violence, he didn’t have it for long. He was followed to his own
town and shot outside his home. What followed lasted maybe ten months, during
which time hundreds of mutants were massacred, whole villes burned and
steam-dozered. They gave as good as they got, but there were too few of them,
too many normals who, in any case, called to certain of the East Coast Barons
for arms and heavy hardware and reinforcements. The upshot was that in the late
fall of ’68 the muties had moved out, headed farther into the Central
Deathlands, dispersed. Ole One-Eye had turned up in Mocsin and settled there.
Chewy the Chase grinned toothily, scratching his head. He said to Ryan, “The old
bastud’s insults are losin’ their kick. Time was he could be a mean-assed son of
a bitch. Maybe I’m gettin’ used to him. Whattya say, Ryan?”
“Yeah,” Ryan said,
“Say one thing for this craphole of a town,” Chewy said. “That fat hog of a
Teague never used to give a shit if you had one head or two, one prick or three.