Tanderon (40 page)

Once we were rolling again, I decided it was time to talk about Flowerville. Putting it off any longer would be foolish, and Teddy had already had a nap.

“I know you were out hunting while you were at 2,” I said to draw her attention, and incidentally to ease into the subject. “What I don’t know is how much information you have on Flowerville people.”

“Aside from what you said about them the other day, not very much,” she admitted in distraction while trying to get air rather than dust through her open window. “Why does everyone get so tight when they talk about Flowerville? They tried to ambush us, but we got them instead.”

“You’re not very impressed because you were armed and had other agents around to back you at the time,” I said, paying only half attention to the road. “And you weren’t in the middle of their own town, either. Teddy … how much rough treatment do you think you can take? Without any help from me and without showing off your 5 rating in hand to hand?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and I could feel her stare as well as glimpse it out of the corner of my eye. “Why won’t I be getting any help from you?”

I pulled off the road and stopped the car so I could turn in the seat to look at her.

“Do you remember when we were dragged in front of that man Jake back in Wheatley?” I asked. “Who did he speak to first?”

“He spoke to me first,” she answered with a frown when I seemed to have gotten off the subject. “What are you getting at?”

“He spoke to you first because you look like the older one of us,” I explained with a calm I wasn’t feeling. “You’ll get the same attention in Flowerville, and that’s just the way I want it. They’ll concentrate on you and I’ll be too scared to help, but that will leave me free afterward to look for that vial. Their attentions aren’t gentle and I won’t be getting away with it entirely, but I can’t afford to take the chance of something serious happening to me. You don’t know Flowerville, and even if you happened to locate the vial you might not be able to get to it.”

“What will they do to me?” she asked in a toneless voice, staring at nothing.

“Everything a bunch of warped men can do to a woman,” I told her with a sigh, not about to pretty it up. “They consider it an initiation rite when you join their club, but if you don’t push too hard it ought to be just bearable. Tell me now if you think you can’t handle it, and I’ll try to come up with something else. Once we walk into that place there’s no backing out.”

She thought about that in silence for a time, and the obvious – but false – conclusion finally came to her.

“Is that why you brought me?” she asked, bitterness heavy in her voice. “Because you needed a decoy to sacrifice to the animals?”

“I brought you because I thought you could handle it,” I said in complete honesty, keeping my gaze on her even though she hadn’t looked up. “If all I needed was a decoy to waste, I would have brought Nalvidi. I doubt if there’s anyone around who would miss him.”

Her body trembled faintly, but she found it possible to force a smile as she finally looked up at me.

“That’s one of the good parts about being out here,” she said, obviously fighting to chase the bleakness out of her eyes. “I don’t have to listen to Nalvidi and his ‘what ifs.’ Do I have to take it quietly, or can I at least scream?”

“As loud as you like,” I assured her, making no effort to hide how much I hated the necessity. “See if you can drown me out. And fight back as hard as you can without getting fancy. They like a struggle and get meaner if they miss it. None of it will be a picnic, but the first day will be the worst. Try to remember that.”

She took a deep breath and leaned back to send her gaze through the windshield again.

“Well, I was the one who wanted to be an agent,” she reminded herself with a sigh.

“Nobody twisted my arm, so the worst part about all this is that I have no one else to blame for my being here. Let’s get started. The sooner we get there the sooner it’ll be over.”

“I’m going to put some more gas in the tank first,” I decided aloud. “If we don’t pass a place to get more gas soon, all of Alf’s cans in the trunk will be empty and we’ll be walking again.”

I got out and used up another can of gas without really filling the tank all the way.

Another half dozen cans and that was it. I started the car up again and we both watched for somewhere to stop, but didn’t find it until we were down to the last two cans. It continued on like that until we were within twenty miles of Flowerville, a point we reached in about the same number of hours. It was still dark when I pulled the car off the road into some bushes and trees, and then Teddy and I went to sleep.

Going into Flowerville in daylight was bad enough. If we’d tried it in the middle of the night, we might not have survived.

Driving into Flowerville was worse than driving into Wheatley. Flowerville had been a mining town before the mines gave out, and it was dreary with a permanent feeling of deep, empty holes. The dirt covering everything wasn’t light and dusty but dark and brooding, the whole picture making you want to walk close to the buildings to keep from having to go down the middle of the deserted street.

We parked the car on a side street and walked farther into the town, and that was probably the last we’d see of the vehicle. Any car that wasn’t clearly marked as the property of a club was up for grabs, either to be stolen as it stood or stripped down to its component parts.

It would have been nice to continue using the car, but walking was safer than driving even if Flowerville was bigger than Wheatley. The police were harder here and tried to keep the size of the clubs down so those clubs would be easier to control. That meant if the police caught us they would send us back “home” – after having their own fun. And sneaking along is more easily done on foot, especially since we saw only a few people up and about. Most of the club members were probably resting up from the revels of the night before.

We’d gone a number of blocks without seeing anyone who looked like a club member, but we’d seen a few people scurrying around showing faces filled with hatred and fear and a desperate hope that they not be noticed. The clubs didn’t accept everyone, I knew, and there were also those who couldn’t face the “initiation rites.”

We were passing an ugly, three-story building when a man in a worn yellow suit topped with strings of junk jewelry stepped out of a doorway right into our path. We made sure to gasp as we stopped short and tried to back up, and only then noticed that there were two more like the first behind us. The three closed in and started to pluck at us with big, unpleasant grins on their faces.

“Lookit what we got here,” the first one said with a laugh. He was only a little bigger than average height, and was very thin. “I guess we been extra special good ‘cause somebody give us a couple a presents, and I do love playin’ with new presents.”

“Better not break them presents, Havelin,” a second one said with just as much amusement. “Wiger’ll chop you t’pieces if’n you do.”

“Wiger don’t scare me none,” Havelin sneered, running his hand over Teddy’s body.

“I like the looks a this one, an’ I might just keep ‘er.”

“We didn’t come here for that!” Teddy said sharply, pushing his hand away as she took over the lead the way she was supposed to. “We come to join a club, not play on the street. Are you th’ boss around here?”

The two behind us snickered, and Havelin scowled.

“You want the boss a this here club?” he asked, furious madness peering out of his dull eyes. “Okay, yer gonna get ‘im. Too bad, pretty, ‘cause I woulda treated ya good. Let’s go see th’ boss.”

He grabbed a handful of Teddy’s hair and dragged her into the brick building. I pretended to hesitate as I looked around, only to find the other two grinning at me. I started to back away, but they still had no trouble grabbing me and dragging me after Teddy.

It was dark inside the building, but the dark was lifeless and stifling rather than cool and soothing. There were shadowy doorways to either side of the reeking, garbage-strewn hall we were taken through, and every twenty feet or so was a bare, feebly glowing lightbulb hanging from a strung wire. The lightbulbs were trying to keep the lifeless dark away, but it wasn’t difficult to see that it was a losing battle.

Teddy was pulled along ahead of me, and I could almost feel the brief shudder that passed through her.

We went down to the end of the long hall, and Havelin turned into one of the doorways on the right. I was forced that way too, into a room that had no furniture in it and almost no air. Heavy pieces of material in clashing patterns and colors hung from all of the walls behind the lightbulbs, and even our footsteps on the bare floor were muffled.

The only thing the room held was a big, stained mattress over in the far right-hand corner, with an uneven mound right in the middle of it. Teddy was already standing near the end of the mattress, and in another moment so was I. Havelin let Teddy’s hair go, and he moved to the left of the mattress to kick it.

“Wake up, Wiger,” he called with a strange sound to his voice, as though he was being as loud as he dared. “Got a couple a pretties here askin’ t’ see ya. None a us would do ‘em.”

The body on the mattress stirred and then sat up, giving us our first look at Wiger.

Standing up he probably would have been as broad as he was tall, which is not to say that he was short. He had thick hair all over him that he scratched at automatically, and his face had a broad, flat nose and narrow, mean eyes. He inspected Teddy and me for a moment, and then spoke to Havelin.

“Where’d ya get them two?” he asked in a flat rasp. “I ain’t never seen ‘em around b’fore.”

“He didn’t get us nowhere,” Teddy interrupted insolently, tossing her head. “We got ourselves here all on our own. We come from Wheatley to join your club, but if you don’t like the idea we’ll find someplace else.”

“Teddy, don’t get him mad,” I whispered, plucking at her shirt as if too afraid to do any more. I could see the angering effect of Teddy’s words in Wiger’s eyes, and could only hope she got the message. She was pushing too hard again, and Wiger wasn’t Lammerly.

“I don’t care if he does get mad,” Teddy answered with a haughty toss of her head, making me wish I could close my eyes in pain. “Let’s go find someplace else, Diana.”

She turned and started toward the door, but I didn’t move. I’d been watching Wiger carefully, and it was clear he wasn’t the sort to be impressed by haughtiness. Now he nodded toward Teddy, and Havelin and one of the men near me went after her.

Havelin ran ahead and slammed the door closed before Teddy could reach it, and then the two men grabbed her. She struggled and fought but didn’t use anything that could have won the fight for her, not even when they ripped her clothes off and went to work with their fists. I crouched down where I was and buried my head in my arms, fighting to keep myself from ruining everything by interfering. I kept my eyes closed and my fists clenched, and didn’t think about how easy they would be to kill even when Wiger and the fourth man joined them and they switched from fists to rape.

Teddy’s screams and the men’s laughter attracted the attention of a few more club members, and some of them discovered me. I was roughly pulled out of the crouch by my arms, and suddenly found myself the center of interest of three men. They laughed happily as they looked me over, then laughed even harder when I tried to pull away. They were dirty and in need of a shave, but their eyes said they didn’t care what they looked like since they were there for their own pleasure rather than mine.

The two who weren’t holding me put their hands on me too, and kicking and struggling didn’t keep me from being lowered to the floor. They took their time taking my clothes off, but that was only supposed to add to my very obvious terror.

When they got down to serious fun, they didn’t take their time.

There’s no way of knowing how long it went on, but eventually party time ended. I lay whimpering on the floor at the feet of the last ones who had used me, curled up on my side with my eyes squeezed shut. I’d been able to hear sounds from Teddy for quite a while, but right now there was nothing but the sound of satisfied laughter and casual conversation from the men standing above me.

Teddy and I had been an unimportant diversion, but we’d been found attractive enough to keep. A hand touched me and I cried out involuntarily – which set the men to chuckling – but the touch had only been a prelude to being lifted off the floor.

Teddy and I were carried to a nearby room and dumped back on the floor, our ransacked luggage dumped down with us, and then the door was closed and we were left alone. A few minutes earlier Wiger had given someone instructions to check on whether or not we’d really come from Wheatley, which meant our visit to the town hadn’t been a waste of time.

It took a couple of minutes, but eventually I was able to get to my knees and crawl over to Teddy. She looked worse than I’d thought she would, and I grabbed her wrist fast to check for a pulse. I found one but it was thready and weak, and if I’d had a stimulant I would have been afraid to use it. I checked her out as best I could and tentatively decided that at least one of her ribs was broken. Her face was puffy and badly bruised, and there were large, ugly marks all over her body. There had also been so many club members waiting to take her that she was bleeding.

I sat back and put my head in my hand for a minute, during which time I asked whatever powers there are why she’d had to act the way she had and make things worse for herself. In Flowerville the situation was bad enough without needing any encouragement. Then I noticed that there was a mattress in this room too, so I blocked out my own pain and moved Teddy over to it as gently as I could. When I got her onto the mattress her eyelids flickered, and then her breathing started to come in gasps.

“It’s all right,” I said quickly, stroking her forehead. “It’s over now and they’re gone.”

She moved her head back and forth a little, then managed to focus on me.

“Did I do all right?” she whispered raggedly. “Did they leave you alone?”