“We’ve come from afar,” he said, “and have far yet to go. Our time here will be short, but we’ll do what we can, hear me, I beg.”
“Say on, stranger!” someone called. “You speak fair!”
Yeah ? Eddie thought. News to me, fella.
A few cries of Aye and Do ya.
“The healers in my barony have a saying,” Eddie told them. ‘First, do no harm.’ ” He wasn’t sure if this was a lawyer-motto or a doctor-motto, but he’d heard it in quite a few movies and TV shows, and it sounded pretty good. “We would do no harm here, do you ken, but no one ever pulled a bullet, or even a splinter from under a kid’s fingernail, without spilling some blood.”
There were murmurs of agreement. Overholser, however, was poker-faced, and in the crowd Eddie saw looks of doubt. He felt a surprising flush of anger. He had no right to be angry at these people, who had done them absolutely no harm and had refused them absolutely nothing (at least so far), but he was, just the same.
“We’ve got another saying in the barony of New York,” he told them. ” ‘There ain’t no free lunch.’ From what we know of your situation, it’s serious. Standing up against these Wolves would be dangerous. But sometimes doing nothing just makes people feel sick and hungry.”
“Hear him, hear him!” the same someone at the back of the crowd called out. Eddie saw Andy the robot back there, and near him a large wagon full of men in voluminous cloaks of either black or dark blue. Eddie assumed that these were the Manni-folk.
“We’ll look around,” Eddie said, “and once we understand the problem, we’ll see what can be done. If we think the answer’s nothing, we’ll tip our hats to you and move along.” Two or three rows back stood a man in a battered white cowboy hat. He had shaggy white eyebrows and a white mustache to match. Eddie thought he looked quite a bit like Pa Cartwright on that old TV show, Bonanza. This version of the Cartwright patriarch looked less than thrilled with what Eddie was saying.
“If we can help, we’ll help,” he said. His voice was utterly flat now. “But we won’t do it alone, folks. Hear me, I beg. Hear me very well. You better be ready to stand up for what you want. You better be ready to fight for the things you’d keep.”
With that he stuck out a foot in front of him—the moccasin he wore didn’t produce the same fist-on-coffintop thud, but Eddie thought of it, all the same—and bowed. There was dead silence. Then Tian Jaffords began to clap. Zalia joined him. Benny also applauded. His father nudged him, but the boy went on clapping, and after a moment Slightman the Elder joined in.
Eddie gave Roland a burning look. Roland’s own bland expression didn’t change. Susannah tugged the leg of his pants and Eddie bent to her.
“You did fine, sugar.”
“No thanks to him.” Eddie nodded at Roland. But now that it was over, he felt surprisingly good. And talking was really not Roland’s thing, Eddie knew that. He could do it when he had no backup, but he didn’t care for it.
So now you know what you are, he thought. Roland of Gilead’s mouthpiece.
And yet was that so bad? Hadn’t Cuthbert Allgood had the job long before him?
Callahan stepped forward. “Perhaps we could set them on a bit better than we have, my friends—give them a proper Calla Bryn Sturgis welcome.”
He began to applaud. The gathered folken joined in immediately this time. The applause was long and lusty.
There were cheers, whistles, stamping feet (the foot-stamping a little less than satisfying without a wood floor to amplify the sound). The musical combo played not just one flourish but a whole series of them.
Susannah grasped one of Eddie’s hands. Jake grasped the other. The four of them bowed like some rock group at the end of a particularly good set, and the applause redoubled.
At last Callahan quieted it by raising his hands. “Serious work ahead, folks,” he said. “Serious things to think about, serious things to do. But for now, let’s eat. Later, let’s dance and sing and be merry!” They began to applaud again and Callahan quieted them again. “Enough!” he cried, laughing. “And you Manni at the back, I know you haul your own rations, but there’s no reason on earth for you not to eat and drink what you have with us. Join us, do ya! May it do ya fine!”
May it do us all fine, Eddie thought, and still that sense of foreboding wouldn’t leave him. It was like a guest
standing on the outskirts of the party, just beyond the glow of the torches. And it was like a sound. A boot heel on a wooden floor. A fist on the lid of a coffin.
SEVEN
Although there were benches and long trestle tables, only the old folks ate their dinners sitting down. And a famous dinner it was, with literally two hundred dishes to choose among, most of them homely and delicious.
The doings began with a toast to the Calla. It was proposed by Vaughn Eisenhart, who stood with a bumper in one hand and the feather in the other. Eddie thought this was probably the Crescent’s version of the National Anthem.
“May she always do fine!” the rancher cried, and tossed off his cup of graf in one long swallow. Eddie admired the man’s throat, if nothing else; Calla Bryn Sturgis graf was so hard that just smelling it made his eyes water.
” DO YA! ” the folken responded, and cheered, and drank.
At that moment the torches ringing the Pavilion went the deep crimson of the recently departed sun. The crowd oohed and aahed and applauded. As technology went, Eddie didn’t think it was such of a much—
certainly not compared to Blaine the Mono, or the dipolar computers that ran Lud—but it cast a pretty light over the crowd and seemed to be non-toxic. He applauded with the rest. So did Susannah. Andy had brought her wheelchair and unfolded it for her with a compliment (he also offered to tell her about the handsome stranger she would soon meet). Now she wheeled her way amongst the little knots of people with a plate of food on her lap, chatting here, moving on, chatting there and moving on again. Eddie guessed she’d been to her share of cocktail parties not much different from this, and was a little jealous of her aplomb.
Eddie began to notice children in the crowd. Apparenty the folken had decided their visitors weren’t going to just haul out their shooting irons and start a massacre. The oldest kids were allowed to wander about on their own. They traveled in the protective packs Eddie recalled from his own childhood, scoring massive amounts of food from the tables (although not even the appetites of voracious teenagers could make much of a dent in that bounty). They watched the outlanders, but none quite dared approach.
The youngest children stayed close to their parents. Those of the painful ‘tween age clustered around the slide, swings, and elaborate monkey-bar construction at the very far end of the Pavilion. A few used the stuff, but most of them only watched the party with the puzzled eyes of those who are somehow caught just wrongways. Eddie’s heart went out to them. He could see how many pairs there were—it was eerie—and guessed that it was these puzzled children, just a little too old to use the playground equipment unselfconsciously, who would give up the greatest number to the Wolves… if the Wolves were allowed to do their usual thing, that was. He saw none of the “roont” ones, and guessed they had deliberately been kept apart, lest they cast a pall on the gathering. Eddie could understand that, but hoped they were having a party of their own somewhere. (Later he found that this was exactly the case— cookies and ice cream behind Callahan’s church.)
Jake would have fit perfectly into the middle group of children, had he been of the Calla, but of course he wasn’t. And he’d made a friend who suited him perfectly: older in years, younger in experience. They went about from table to table, grazing at random. Oy trailed at Jake’s heels contentedly enough, head always swinging from side to side. Eddie had no doubt whatever that if someone made an aggressive move toward Jake of New York (or his new friend, Benny of the Calla), that fellow would find himself missing a couple of fingers. At one point Eddie saw the two boys look at each other, and although not a word passed between them, they burst out laughing at exactly the same moment. And Eddie was reminded so forcibly of his own childhood friendships that it hurt.