“Too packed for wags,” Jak observed. “Waste fuel. Keep wags for outside gates.”
Doc nodded sagely. “I think that friend Jak may be right. Think about how much fuel we’re wasting right now. By the three Kennedys, this is more packed than Washington on Thanksgiving Day with a free turkey.”
Jak and Dean both looked at Doc, puzzled.
He observed them, smiled sadly to himself. “A small joke, gentlemen. It would have been mildly amusing once.”
Tex kept hitting the horn, the sound blaring harshly at passersby and obstructions to traffic that did little more than turn and curse him.
“Shit,” he spit, “this little jam’ll take us all day to get through.”
“Is there no other route?” Ryan asked. It was a seemingly stupid, but leading question, and elicited the information he wanted from the unaware wag driver.
“It’ll all be the same,” Tex replied. “See, we don’t really have wags in the walls anymore ’cause there ain’t the room. Since Baron Silas found that the well still had some oil down in bottom, and he figured out how to get the refinery going, then there ain’t been much except people coming from all over to swell up the ville. Some of them come of their own accord, but a lot come from nearby villes ’cause of the deals that Baron Silas done gone and done with them all. Guess as how it’s brought a whole load of trade and jack in besides the well, which is nice for guys like me ’cause a lot of these new folk are card players, ‘specially the merchants, only they ain’t as good card players as me. That right, ain’t it, Crow?” he added, glancing at the giant Native American.
“Shot the feck up,” Crow countered with soft menace.
But the rambling monologue had revealed exactly what Ryan needed to know. He looked out of the blaster port again. People walked in the streets because there were stalls laden with goods on the old sidewalks. The traffic in the roads comprised more than just pedestrians: there were bicycles weaving in and out, and men and women pushing barrows laden with different goods that were either for sale or were in the process of being delivered from one dwelling to another. The crash of people spelled success for the ville. Each person had jack, and each person represented some piece of trade that either had gone on, or was about to.
Salvation had become a rich ville very quickly. And maybe there was the problem: Baron Silas had a large number of people within a very small space, and no room to expand the ville. To deconstruct and then remake the walls around the old boundaries of Salvation would take time and manpower that couldn’t be spared right now. Not with the vast amount of work that was taking place along the old blacktop linking the villes that were involved in the refinery reconstruction and giving them a route to the outside world, and not with the vast amount of work and manpower that was also being invested in the refinery that was the point of the alliance.
The sec forces of Salvation had to be stretched to the breaking point coping with the extra people and the extra work. As with most villes, particularly larger ones, Ryan could see at a glance that all the inhabitants that passed him by were armed, blasters hanging easily from holsters or cradled in arms as they walked.
So many people in such a small space. Tensions would be bound to arise. And if they did, they would be concentrated within the boundary walls, unable to diffuse outside.
Although he felt uneasy about their being deprived of their own blasters, Ryan felt sure that they would soon regain them. The way in which Crow had been ordered to deliver them to Baron Silas, and the way in which he had allowed them to be tested in unarmed combat could only point to one thing…
If they were to move on, then they had to first become part of Salvation’s sec force.
“THIS IS IT,” Crow said simply as the wag pulled up.
“As if I couldn’t have guessed,” Mildred observed, surveying the building in front of them. It was a large, ornate stone building that had probably stood since the founding of the old oil town from which the ville of Salvation had been forged. The white stone had become discolored with age and the old balustrades, cornices and carvings were now covered in a creeping vine of ironwork that spread tendrils of barbed and decorated dark metal across the front and sides of the building, as far as they could see. There were no breaks for the windows, the decoration also acting as a protective bar to any access other than through the ground level doors.