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. Know what I mean? But now, hell! Them sec men of his are startin' to beat up on the armless, earless and noseless. They'll be puttin' 'em up agin a wall next, you mark my words.' He turned to Ole One-Eye. 'They say they aim for the heart, but with you I reckon it'll be someplace else.' He cackled, raised his glass of beer. 'The perfect target. Here's lead in yer eye, pal.'
Ryan said, uneasily, 'Look...'
Ole One-Eye made a dismissive gesture with his right hand, drank with his left. He said quietly, 'Shut it, Chev,' then looked up at Ryan. 'Don't mind him. Wind's in the wrong direction. His legs've been giving him shit for days.'
Chewy drank more beer, stared down at what was not there and had not been there for some years. He said, his voice suddenly a hoarse whisper, 'Nukeblasted right.'
Ole One-Eye smiled gently, gazing up at Ryan. His eye was white irised, pinkish around the edges.
'Speaking as one one-eye to another,' he said softly, 'I'd say ya better figure out fast which way ya gonna jump, boy. All hell gonna break out soon, and that's a realer feelin' than when young Chev here gets aches in his hocks. Ya gotta choose, boy. Choose damned soon.'
Ryan stared down at the guttering flames reflected from the candles in the pools of spilled beer on the tabletop, aware that the buzz of conversation in the bar, muted and desultory as it had been, had suddenly ceased altogether. Even Rintoul, a mouthy kid at the best of times, though a good shot and loyal, had shut up. He could see Ole One-Eye's face, upside down, hideously distorted, in the liquid, could even see that single eye fixed on his. All at once stories he'd often heard on his travels slid into his mind, stories of mutants with the 'blazing' eye, the eye that, blasted you with a look, the eye that killed. Couldn't be true, of course. Foolish talk. Yet why not? There were sensers, weren't there? Sensers who sniffed out danger, danger that was to come, danger that was just around the corner, short-term, within the hour. And there were those who had an even rarer and more terrifying power; the doomseers: precogs who had sharply defined visions of the future, what was to happen in the longer term. So why not the Eye? Why not a look that could burn your mind out.
He shook his head, looked up suddenly at the reality rather than the strange mirror image. Ole One-Eye's single eye shifted up, too, to follow him. Ryan drank what remained in his glass.
'You're probably right,' he muttered.
The other chuckled quietly. 'That's m'boy,' he said. 'One thing about you, Ryan, you're dependable. Known for it.'
Ryan rubbed at his face, at the stubble growing on his chin. Weirdly, he felt that he'd just made an important decision, a vital decision, although he was not aware that his conscious mind had done so, and the reply he'd just given had been little more than noncommittal.
He said, 'You old bastard, I think you've been trying to hypnotize me.'
This time Old One-Eye's chuckle became a wheeze, full of genuine amusement.
'I don't have the Devil's Eye, son, just one good optic that's seen me through a mess of years but it's as straight as yours.'
'Yeah. Well. Good luck.'
Ryan turned on his heel and made for the bar again. He glanced to his right as the door to the place banged open, but it was not Samantha the Panther. He saw a man whose clothes seemed too big for him, as though he'd shrunk in a shower of rad rain, been not quite eaten up by the acids. He face was gaunt, hollow eyed. His skin was burned nearly black and looked to be so thin that you could poke your pinky through. He shoved the door closed again, his whole body trembling. He seemed to be in a state of near-terminal flap.
Charlie, behind the bar, glared at him.
'Kurt! What the hell you doing out?'
The man said hoarsely, 'I had to get out, Charlie. Up in the roof I was going goddamned crazy. The walls were closing in on me. Had to get out. I had to.'
Charlie snorted, began rubbing a cloth vigorously over the bar. It was clear she was angry.
'You get back upstairs again, ya stupe. Blast it, I don't know why the hell I bother!'
The man called Kurt staggered toward the bar. He seemed at the end of his tether.
'I met him, Charlie, across the street. Bastard recognized me.' His piercing eyes were alive with terror. 'Charlie, what am I gonna do?'
'This is all I need.' Charlie jabbed the cloth toward the far end of the room. 'Beat it. Get back upstairs. Don't make a sound.' She snapped, '
The man pushed past them, ran stumblingly along the side of the bar and into the thicker shadows at the end of the room. Ryan heard the rustle of a curtain, a door bang.
J.B. nudged him.
'Let's move. We got the picture.'
'Yeah, okay.' He turned to Charlie. 'What was all that about?'
Charlie nodded in the direction the man had gone. She said, 'My lodger.' Her mouth opened and shut a couple of times. 'I'm looking after the guy.'
Ryan knew it would be demeaning to Charlie, whom he liked, but he suddenly had an urge to burst out laughing. He fought to keep the urge down.
'Actually, he's in deep shit. I'm gonna have to sneak him out of town sometime. Got in bad with one of Strasser's gorillas and disappeared. About five, six months back. Then he reappeared about a month ago, looking like he'd been whipped up in a twister, spread all over the landscape then stuck back together again the wrong way. Seems he'd walked back to Mocsin from the Darks.'
'The Darks?' Hardin frowned at her.
'Yeah. You remember a head case called McCandless?'
'Sure.'
'Ryan.' J.B. tapped him on the shoulder.
'Okay, okay. Wait.'
'McCandless took off to the Darks with a party of guys including Kurt, who'd signed up on the spur to get
