Arcadian's Asylum. James Axler

one another, as though they found the one-eyed man beyond their comprehension. The man who had spoken first said, “Others take stuff, want to hurt us. I think they like that bit. It’s not nice.”

      Ryan was taken aback. “You don’t try to defend yourselves?”

      The man shrugged. “They go soon enough. Then other others come and help, but sometimes they don’t. Mebbe you know them? Mebbe you got more stuff for us?”

      A satisfied murmur rippled through the crowd, and they moved forward. Ryan took a step back, not because he thought they would attack, but because for one moment it seemed that they might overwhelm him.

      His people took that as their cue to step out into the open. Their presence caused the approaching mob to stop momentarily, before gasping in amazement and moving forward. Before any of Ryan’s people had a chance to draw breath, the ville dwellers were milling around them, touching them and asking questions.

      “You know others?”

      “You have stuff?”

      “Why you so white?”

      “Why you so brown?”

      Yet none of them waited for answers to the questions they posed before babbling on about something completely different.

      Ryan looked, bewildered, over the heads of the milling throng to where he could see Krysty. She shrugged. She was as confused as he was by their behavior.

      “They appear to be like sheep,” Doc yelled above the babble. “Passive, and completely without any kind of—”

      “What’s sheep?” one of them said, tugging him on the arm.

      “I—” Doc began, but was cut short by Jak’s terse comment.

      “They’re here. Ones who follow.”

      Melting out of the shadows and forming into black-clad pairs holding blasters—was this where his earlier opponent had got his blaster? Ryan wondered—came six teams. Their blasters were raised in the air, but there was little doubting their intent.

      “Drop your weapons and come with us,” one of the black-clad men called. “You people,” he added in a harsher tone, “move away from the outlanders.”

      The mob did as it had been told. Soon, they were standing apart, watching the proceedings. Ryan and his people were now surrounded on all sides, outnumbered two to one.

      “You took out those rebels okay,” the black-clad leader said, as if sensing their mood, “but we’re ready for you, and better trained than that scum.”

      “So what do you want? You want a firefight?” Ryan asked in a hard voice, his muscles tensed as he took in the manner in which they had been surrounded. These people were good. But his, he knew, could be better.

      “Don’t want that any more than you do,” the men said tightly. “What we want is for you to come with us. Arcadian wants to meet you.”

      “He’s got a real strange way of going about that,” Ryan replied.

      “Mebbe. But he has his reasons. You might like ’em.”

      Ryan took another look around at the black-clad sec, then at his companions. He could see from their expressions that they were with him.

      “Okay,” he said slowly, “we’ll come with you. Might be interesting. But we don’t surrender blasters. You got nothing to hide? It won’t matter.”

      The sec boss grinned. “Like your style, One-eye. Wouldn’t have it any other way.” He lowered his blaster so that it pointed at the dirt. “Let’s do it.”

      Chapter Five

      As they fell in with the black-clad sec men, Ryan’s group had a lot to ponder. It had been couched in terms that were reasonable, but they all knew that resistance would have been met with a firefight. Arcadian wanted them, for reasons as yet unknown. If he wanted them to work for him willingly, he was showing a real lack of understanding. His behavior had done nothing less than to put them on triple red, with the utmost suspicion. If he wanted to just use them, regardless of whether or not they wished to acquiesce, then he was cutting them too much slack.

      For, as they were escorted on foot through the outlying districts of the ville, there was much to observe and absorb for possible future use.

      The sec team that escorted them was very careful about its chosen route. Instead of traveling in what seemed a direct route to the center of the ville, they took what appeared to be meaningless detours. Straight roads would be ignored in favor of sudden sharp turns to the left or right. Obviously, that was to keep them within a sector they had already seen, and not cross some kind of line. For there wasn’t a single one of them who had any doubt that Arcady was a ville of sharply differing sectors.

      The Arcady they had seen when with Trader Toms was one of wealth and freedom. The center sections of the ville were filled with trade stores, craftsmen and bars providing brew and gaudys. The relative financial well-being of a ville could always be determined by the number and quality of those. The people they had met had been free to go about their business unimpeded. The sec had been present, but not overbearing—they had only stepped in when trouble flared because of arguments caused by brew or jack. The buildings had been old, for the most part obviously built by the founders of the ville or adapted from the main street and surrounding area of the old predark town that they had chosen to use as their shell, but there had been evidence of ongoing maintenance and new building that gave work to the people of the ville, and were again proof of its growing affluence.

      None of which tallied with the run-down shanty ville full of tumbledown shacks that looked like their dwellers paid them no heed. For most of their winding trek through the outer reaches of the ville, this was all they had seen. Row upon row of virtually derelict shacks, but none that were empty. All showed signs of habitation, and by people very like those they had seen on their entry to the ville.

      As they passed through the phalanx of sec men, they could see blank, drooling faces staring out at them. The people were fat, dirty, and even before you could see them the smell of their unwashed bodies assailed the senses. Some of them—the braver specimens—came outside their huts or stood in the doorways, watching or, if they felt particularly courageous, shouting at the newcomers in slurred, brain-numbed voices that were sometimes difficult to understand.

      And yet these were people with running water and sanitation. Even the most advanced of villes that the companions had seen on their many journeys across the ravaged lands of the post-nukecaust America had been hard-pushed to have a sanitation and water system that came anywhere near aping that of the days before skydark. There had been some rich or advanced villes that had reconstructed pumping stations, and used old pipes to try to reconstruct that aspect of predark life. But never anything that had seemed to be as good as the systems they were familiar with from the many redoubts they had used during their journeys.