Pilgrimage to Hell

'They what!'

'I said, the men...'

'Yeah, yeah. I heard you. Deliberate?'

Charlie's tiny mouth closed, then opened. It was her way of smiling.

'Sure, deliberate. They'd have blown the other two, but something went wrong. Fuses, timers — I dunno. So they barricaded themselves in down there.'

J. B. Dix's eyelids fluttered. It was his way of expressing astonishment. He said, 'I take it you're sure about this?'

'As I am that you're drinking my wine and not paying for it.'

'Oh. Yeah.' Ryan reached into a back pocket and pulled out some tin. He said, 'How blown?'

'Roof rockfalls. Teague's two main sources are now blocked to hell. The other two mines are smaller, easier to defend.'

'Defend? They have pieces?'

'They killed a whole squadron of Strasser's sec men. Tore 'em apart barehanded. As you're probably aware...' the deep tones were thick with irony '...Teague's police are well weaponed up. Handguns, auto-rifles, MGs. And plenty of ammo.'

'Gas would clear 'em,' J.B. pointed out.

Charlie shook her head, black curls dancing.

'Miners have blocked off the entrance to both mines, and the old ventilation system.'

'So they just die of no air?'

'Uh-uh. They've been drilling their own air holes. It'd take Strasser's men days, weeks, to find them. Months, maybe.'

'Food?'

'Sure.'

'Water?'

'Plenty. Pure, too. Can't be got at from outside.'

'I suddenly have the feeling,' said Sam dryly, 'that this one's been a long time in the planning.'

Charlie's tone was equally dry. 'Right.'

Ryan said, 'What we have for that fat bastard won't make a piece of spit's worth of difference, Charlie. One, it wasn't a mighty load to begin with. Two, owing to circumstances not entirely beyond our control, the load is damned near halved, anyway.'

Charlie shrugged and said, 'Makes no odds. You trading with Teague makes you the enemy, places you on his side of the fence. Firmly, buddy. Story goes you helped set the bastard up, anyway.'

'Shit!' exploded Ryan in exasperation. 'That was twenty years ago!'

A tingle of alarm ran up his spine. There was, it occurred to him, another angle to all this. If Teague was desperate...

He turned to Samantha. 'Radio the Old Man. Tell him what's up. Find out if the main train's still checking in on the hour, and tell him to switch to every fifteen minutes.'

Sam gulped her wine and made for the door. Rintoul, a stocky, chubby-faced kid, whispered 'Shit!' His pudgy fingers clasped at his belt as he glanced around the bar nervously. Charlie made a dry, choking sound through her mouth. Laughter.

'Teague's no fool,' said J.B.

'Ten years ago he wasn't,' agreed Charlie. 'Five years ago he maybe wasn't. But only maybe. Now times have changed. He's sucked this place dry for too long, put nothing back in its place. Maybe the blood was rich twenty years ago, but it's thin as whey now. The assets are stripped. Cupboard's bare. There's nothing left. Teague don't know what's going down half the time. Strasser's king of the shit pile, and he's insane. All he cares about is watching kids killing kids, male and female. You get the message?' She glared at Ryan accusingly.

Ryan drank some more of the wine. Stasis he understood, the stagnation of empire. Evil and greedy men flogging a horse to death but not realizing, not understanding when it was dead, when extinction had been reached, and continuing to beat it and beat it and beat it.

'You telling me the deadline's been reached? Mocsin's ready to blow?'

Fishmouth Charlie stared at him for some seconds, her bulging eyes fixed on his, then she looked down at the bar top, spreading her hands on its shiny, highly polished surface.

'Not as easy as that, Ryan.' Her voice seemed, if anything, deeper, certainly gruffer. 'Couple of months back we had some kind of epidemic run through the gaudies on the Strip. Real bad. Something internal, rotted 'em out. Teague's medics couldn't cope, so they killed 'em, killed 'em all, girls and boys. First off they needled 'em, but that was too damned slow, so one night they came and took 'em away in vans. Machine-gunned 'em and burned the bodies. Out in the desert. So all the gaudy houses had empty rooms and Strasser blitzed the place, went through Shantytown dragging out just about anyone under the age of twenty, took 'em off. They had to have something to keep the miners quiet, but some of the men cut up more than usual. There was a riot, lotta guys shot. The sec men contained it, put the clamp on, but maybe that was the final straw.' She shrugged, gestured around. 'You can see how it is. Place is falling apart. Generators going bust and there's nothing to mend 'em with. Lack of parts, lack of interest. Everything in this town is too old, too damned worn out. Unrepairable. Any case, you force a guy to use his wrenches at the point of a gun, he ain't gonna do a prime job. He's gonna do just what's necessary to stop himself getting his head holed and that's all. He's not gonna sweat for you, now is he? So things just get worse. And worse.'

Ryan nodded. He said, 'But the miners. Stockpiling food, drilling new vents that the overseers don't know about. Shit, Charlie, like Sam said, all that takes time, not to mention a hell of a lot of effort, planning, thought.'

Charlie shrugged.

'Who knows? I ain't privy to everything that goes down in this shithole, Ryan. All I know is that Mocsin's on the edge. It's like there's a button somewhere and there's a finger hovering over it. And once the finger jabs down, once the button's pressed — Blooey!'

Rintoul, still casting glances at the hostile faces of the drinkers staring at them, said, 'Yer'd think the place'd be an armed camp if all this shit is going on. Patrols in the street, curfew, shoot to kill. Like that.'

'We got a lot of crap at the entrance to town,' said Ryan, 'and they were nervous, but they didn't seem to be pissing in their pants.'

Charlie reached under the bar and pulled out a cigar. She warmed it over a candle before sucking flame into its end.

'It's like I said, Teague's lost his grip and Strasser doesn't seem to care. I guess they just don't understand after twenty years of tight control. They're blind. It happens.'

Ryan acknowledged the truth of this. All he knew of history told him that often 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, doI?'

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