Then from out of the darkness, a monstrous shape lunged forward, and the old man screamed in fright, dropping his pipe.
“Hi, Mr. Arnstein,” Harold said, grinning sloppily. “I got speak about Laura.”
“Harold, don’t ever do that again!” Arnstein admonished angrily, searching on the ground for his pipe. He found it under his chair and lit it with trembling hands. “Damn near made me jump out of my skin. Thought you was a mutie.”
“Sorry. Laura?” he asked plaintively, trying to sneak a peek inside the tiny house.
“Not here,” Arnstein said, surprised he got the name right. Poor dumb thing got lost inside a walled ville. It was pathetic. The new baron should have shot him years ago, but Strichland wasn’t exactly famous for his mercy.
“Marry,” Harold gushed. “Wanna marry her.” He held out a package. “Brought gift. Dowry.”
The former sec man stumbled over the big word, and wasn’t exactly sure what it meant. But the voices in his head keep screaming it was the correct thing to do. Ask first. Always ask first.
“You want to marry my daughter, Laura.” The old man chewed over the pronouncement as if it were unknown meat. Damnedest thing he had ever heard. Why would even this half-wit want to marry a retarded whore?
“You fucking her?” he asked bluntly.
Harold felt his face burn bright red, and his vision clouded, dots of blackness swimming before him with a cloud of flies.
“Yes,” he blurted honestly, remembering how they had once kissed. “We in love.”
Rad-blast it! The hunchback and the girl were having sex.
“Sorry, son, but you’re a day late,” Arnstein said kindly. “She was just too much trouble here, knocking over things, setting fires, so I sold her to the gaudy house.”
Raw horror seized the goliath, his heart pounding savagely in his barrel chest. “She at bad place?” he squeaked like a child. He grabbed the old man and lifted him effortlessly off the chair. A massive hand closed around Arnstein’s neck, cutting off the air. “No! No! I marry her! She mine! You hear me? Mine!”
Feebly, Arnstein clawed at the hand holding him aloft. He tried to kick Harold between the legs, but he was too far away, his skinny foot only flailing helplessly. Finally, Harold realized what he was doing and eased his grip.
“Baron made me,” Arnstein wheezed. “Everybody has got to work. You know the rules, same as me. Hell, boy, you wrote them! No work means no food. Or worse, expulsion.”
Frightened, Harold glanced at the rusty wall of smashed cars rising above the ville. Outside, the muties would get you. Laura was too little to go there. He could, but he was strong and knew the great secret.
But Laura sold to the gaudy house! Raw fury seized the man, and he felt the adrenaline rush of killing flood his body when the ghostly voices commanded him to release the whitehair. He was Laura’s father. Would Laura marry the man who killed her blood kin? Conflicting emotions shook his fragile mind. On impulse, he released the man as if gesturing in surprise.
“Back,” Harold rumbled menacingly at the man cowering on the pavement. “You get back!”
“C-can’t,” Arnstein gasped, massaging his bruised throat. “She belongs to the house now. They own her. Probably already at work doing some sec man or farmer.”
The words so simply said hit Harold like punches, driving the madness from his mind and replacing it with a deadly cold fire. He turned and stumbled, going down the streets between the array of finished greenhouses. His pace quickly became a sprint, then a lope, as he dashed across the ville to save the woman he loved from being forced into kissing other men.
The blocks flew beneath his shoes, and the greenhouses passed by in the glittering majesty as if crystal phantoms. Reaching the market square, he plowed into numerous people, his every thought on reaching his goal.
Music, light and laughter came from every window and door of the building. A few men lounged against the wall, smiling and smoking on corncob pipes. The front door was garishly painted with a vulgar cartoon for patrons who couldn’t read, and the picture fueled Harold into an insane rage. Charging, he simply plowed through the door, ripping it off the hinges. The crash stunned him for a moment, then he found himself standing inside the gaudy house, with a burly man advancing upon him holding a dented baseball bat.