Playfair's Axiom

“We noticed,” Mildred said.

“Now would you mind telling us who you are?” Ryan said.

“Shouldn’t we make ’em stop talking, Tully?” a black kid with a single-shot black-powder longblaster asked. He looked to be no more than twelve and his eyes were saucer-large with excitement.

“Why’d we want to do a thing like that, McCoy?” the leader asked laconically.

“Well. Um.” Evidently McCoy hadn’t thought that far ahead. But he was game, and resourceful. “Mebbe they’ll plot their escape.”

“Why, then, you’ll just shoot them dead with that big scary blaster of yours, won’t you, McCoy?” Tully said. “Speaking of which, you did remember to reload that smokepole, right?”

The youngster puffed himself up. “O’ course! What do you think I am?”

“A greenie on your first patrol outside the wire,” Tully said. “You put a fresh cap on, too?”

“Well, don’t be a—Oh. Um, wait.” He fumbled at a pouch at his waist. “Wait one.”

Turning his head so the kid wouldn’t see him smile, the patrol leader turned back to Ryan. “To answer your question, we come from a ville called Soulard. A mile or so south of here, along the old highway. Peaceful place.”

“Why did you kidnap us, then?” Krysty asked.

He smiled. “Looks to me like we rescued you.”

“Looks to me like you captured us,” Ryan said. “Saving us for the stewpot?”

“What, you think we’re fuckin’ cannies?” shouted the man who’d mishandled Ryan’s longblaster earlier. He wore a T-shirt with even the brief arms torn off to reveal bulky biceps and triceps. Though he looked barely in his twenties, he was a big old slab of beef, with a blunt face fronted by a mashed tuber of a nose and a couple of brown eyes narrowed with angry suspicion. The sides and back of his head were shaved up to a clump of brown hair that stirred in the acid-tangy breeze.

“Ease off, Lonny,” the ginger-haired man said coolly. “They got a right to be a bit testy. I would be, in their circumstances.”

“But they run with a mutie!” He waved a hamhock of a hand toward Jak. “Look at him, white as clean snow and rat-red eyes!”

“I’m no mutie!” Jak shouted, spittle flying from his pale lips.

“He’s an albino,” Ryan said. “It’s a natural condition, if a rare one. He’s no mutie.”

“Bullshit,” Lonny said. Jak’s red eyes flamed. He looked likely to spring for Lonny’s throat, despite the huge disparity in size.

“Lonny!” The patrol leader didn’t stir, but his voice cracked like a whip. “Back off. We need to talk to these people. Brother Joseph will figure out what to do with them.”

Lonny spit in the pale grass that grew in the shade of the overpass. “Brother Joseph.”

“Enough, Lonny. We don’t need to be airing our dirty laundry in front of strangers, either.”

But Jak’s hot blood was up. “How we know they not cannies?”

“Lord, lad,” Doc murmured. “Let it go.”

“Look at them,” Mildred said. “Ever see cannies look that healthy?”

Jak frowned. His white teeth made paler dimples in his lower lip. “No,” he admitted after a moment.

“Me neither, now that she mentions it,” Ryan said. “All right. Truce. We might as well go along with these people, even laying aside they got the drop on us. We already know this ain’t a healthy vicinity to wander at random.”

“No kidding,” McCoy said. “You’re triple-lucky you didn’t stir up a pocket of serious rad-death emitters. That’s worse than getting eaten by cannies, any day! The baron, he—”

“McCoy,” Tully said sharply, but nowhere near as sharply as he’d spoken to the beefy Lonny. The black kid shut his mouth and swallowed hard. Tully looked back to Ryan.

“Let’s just say you seem a bit too dangerous to allow to wander around freely kicking over hornets’ nests. We have to live here.”

“What if we tell you we don’t mean you any harm or trouble?”

“I’d say evidence suggests otherwise. Least so far as trouble’s concerned. And I can tell you plain, you’ll have every chance to state your case once we get back safe to our ville. Which is far from certain yet, so less talking, please. None of us wants to draw more hassles.”

“People want avoid trouble bad,” Jak grumbled, indicating their captors with a nod of his head.

“If we tried a little harder to skip trouble,” Krysty said, “we might be a whole lot happier.”

“Only a droolie looks for more trouble than looks for him,” Ryan replied.

“What does that make us?” Mildred asked.

“People a triple load of trouble looks for. Now shut it.”

Mildred looked miffed, but she pressed her lips tight.

Tully slapped his hands on his lean thighs and stood. “That’s clean rain falling now,” he said. “We can move.”

Ryan’s nose had already told him that the lethal acid downpour had halted. The sound of drops falling on the asphalt-covered overpass and the cracked pavement beyond its shelter didn’t change.

“Are you quite certain about that, young man?” Doc asked. “A return of the acid precipitation could quite spoil one’s day, were one caught in the open.”

Tully frowned at him a moment as if sorting out his words. Ryan got the impression the lanky man was no stupe. He just wasn’t used to hearing that sort of talk.

Well, in the Deathlands, nobody was. It had taken Ryan some time to get used to Doc, too. And that was just in his lucid moments.

“That’s how it goes here,” Tully said. “Fresh rain always follows the acid. Dilutes it and washes it away. That’s one reason the settled villes survive.”

Ryan looked at Krysty. She had her limited doomie moments, but more important, she was better attuned to the natural elements than anybody Ryan had met. Whether it was her link to the Earth Mother, Gaia, or just a natural ability, he couldn’t say.

She nodded. “I feel he’s right.” Then she flashed him that smile of hers that always made him realize how lucky he was. Even in situations as tight as this one.

“Best pick up your pal,” Tully said. “We don’t have to run anymore. But it’s not healthy to hang around out here.”

“Mildred?” Ryan said.

The physician was already kneeling over J.B. He was unconscious. Sweat sheened his forehead, more than what was due to the humidity.

“I don’t like it,” she said. “But it doesn’t look like we’ve got much choice, do we?”