Lori still sobbed quietly.

Jak refused Finn's offer of a slug of thick, sweet brandy. "No. Best we go and meet others. Talk battle plan. Not much time. Baron has a way with women that's fast and ugly."

Ryan stood up, stretching, holding the G-12. Jak Lauren glanced at it. "My eyes saw that. Said it wasn't like any normal blaster."

Ryan held it out. "Fifty-shot automatic. Caseless bullets. Carry 'em in pockets." He didn't mention their reserves of ammo back with their clothes and supplies at the gateway. "Four point seven by twenty-one mil. No recoil, and it's real quiet. Single, triple burst or continuous. Night sight. Nice gun."

The boy looked at it enviously. "Ten of those, and we wouldn't need your outland help."

A question came to Ryan. "Jak? How do you know where we come from?"

"Out the swamps. The old secret place. There's stories our fathers told that one day folks'd come from there and help us. Has to be you."

Ryan nodded. "Let's go then. One other question?"

"What?"

"How old are you, Jak?"

"Fourteen last midwinter."

The baron swayed on the tensioned struts and webbing that enabled him to stand upright on his weak legs. His fingers on the aluminum handle of the door of the cellar, he looked back at the two women, helpless on the tables. "Later," he said.

Lori's left eye was closed shut, purpled with a deep bruise. Her panties were around her knees, and her thighs were both scratched and bitten. The blouse was torn open, baring her breasts. Her pale skin showed bloody furrows, narrow as coffin nails. Krysty was untouched.

As Baron Tourment had loomed over her, grinning, his hands working like steel traps, she had looked directly into his eyes. "I have the Earth power, and I swear by Gaia that if you harm me I'll kill you."

He had straightened and left her, staggering clumsily on his steel-bound legs.

"You threaten me!" He was unable to hide his shock, and also, she noticed with a grim satisfaction, unable to conceal the touch of fear.

As he paused on the threshold, he looked venomously at Krysty Wroth. "Later, firehead. You'll beg for death after... after you tell me."

"Tell you what, cripple?"

The taunt failed to rile him. He even managed a laugh that echoed hollowly. "Tell me all I want."

Krysty had a little of the gift of doomseeing, and she realized that Tourment also had something of the gift. Or the curse. He must know about them. That was partly how he'd got to them. But if he had questions, then he had only some of the answers.

"You know nothing," she mocked. "Nothing. You would torture women to pierce your own blindness."

"What?"

"You fear the snow-wolf boy. And now you fear all of us."

"No. I have you and her. Soon I will have the other four."

So Finn had escaped. That in itself was a small victory for Krysty.

"A mouthful of dirt and slime is all you'll have. A gift."

Baron Tourment laughed. "Who makes me this gift, you gaudy slag?"

"The one-eyed man," she replied.

The door of the cellar slammed with such crazed violence that the lock splintered apart as the Baron burst out, away from the girl.

Krysty and Lori were left alone to wait.

Chapter Seventeen

Once inside the doors, Doc Tanner closed his eyes, standing still, hands folded in front of him. Like a pilgrim reaching the shrine of a blessed saint, he seemed transfixed with a deep religious awe. "Lordy," was all he said.

"What is it, Doc?" asked Finnegan.

The old man smiled with an infinite gentleness so unlike his frequent grouchiness that Finn took a startled step backward, "Should have said to me, 'What's up, Doc?' That would have been right. But forgive me, Finn. I know I ramble on."

"Tell us 'bout it, Doc," urged Ryan.

"Something wrong with him?" asked Jak Lauren, who'd been leading the way.

"Nothing's wrong, young man. Nothing. It's just that I can recall things you..." He shook his head, rubbing at his eyes. "Got a speck of dust in 'em. No, it's just walking in this establishment brings back such a flood of memories. Oh, my dear Emily! How she... Give me pause, gentlemen!"

Ryan, J.B. and Finn looked away, embarrassed by the old man's weeping. Jak Lauren and several of his tatterdemalion gang looked on, bewildered.

All around them, the dusty lobby of the Adeiphi Cinema, West Lowellton, silently waited.

Doc pulled out his kerchief with the swallow's-eye design and raised it to his beaky nose to snort into it with a bellow of noise. Sniffing, he looked around at the others. "Your pardon, gentles all. You cannot possibly imagine how, after all this time... Oh, such an eternity! It still has that flavor. Warm velvet plush, overlaid with dust. A little sweat. Darkness and flickering lights. Laughter and tears. Popcorn and Babe Ruths. And magic. That above all. I can still savor the magic."

"You remember vid-houses, Doc?" asked Ryan. "There hasn't been one open in Deathlands that I know of in a hundred years."

"I heard of one up in Jersey," said Finn. "Then I heard it was a gaudy porn-place."

The interruption gave Doc a moment to recover. He looked sideways at Ryan. "Very nearly, my dear Mr. Cawdor. But shall a butterfly be broken on a wheel or an old dog taught new tricks? No."

"Time's wasting," interrupted Jak Lauren. "Blood's flowing and there's dying."

He led the way into the interior of the building. As with the motel, Ryan was fascinated with this living artifact from the prenuke past. A pinhole glimpse of the dead America.

Ryan had noticed a small plaque on the outside wall, telling the world that "The Adeiphi Cinema was opened officially on September 24, 1989, by Senator John J. McLaglen."

It was a squat, rectangular building, with a faintly Spanish or Moorish look to it. Pale fawn stucco had weathered down to near white. A marquee awning, with vertical slit windows above it, had once held news of forthcoming attractions. On one side Ryan had seen a glass cubicle where he guessed tickets and food and cigarettes had once been sold. A peeling, faded notice warned, "The Surgeon General has determined that the more you smoke, the faster you die."

There were around thirty of the gang around the building. Ryan had been impressed with Jak's grasp of military security. They had been escorted back from the Holiday Inn, with guards ranged on either side of them, covering a couple of blocks in each direction. They carried a bewildering range of battered blasters, most of them either handguns or old hunting rifles that had their origins in Spain or Czechoslovakia. Pistols came in all shapes and sizes, virtually all showing signs of having been welded or having the bore enlarged. In the first couple of minutes Ryan spotted Colts, Pumas, Pythons, Brownings, Enfields, Webleys and Smith & Wessons, with a few Russian Stechkins and Makarovs. Predictably, because of the comparative ease of making ammo, there were some very old Colt Navys and Walkers.

Lauren's renegade unit was comprised mainly of men and a lesser number of women, between the ages of fifteen and thirty, with some of them older. They all looked scruffy, in patched clothes. And all of them looked as though they never quite got enough to eat.

The one characteristic that they shared, and that set them apart from most of the population of Deathlands Ч those that weren't muties, that is Ч was an alertness, a hair-trigger readiness; jumpy and sharp, their eyes were constantly on the watch. They were a bunch of ordinary people doing the best they could. Ryan thought then about what Jak had told them about his hopes and plans, and once again felt how much he wanted to help the snow-haired lad. Bat still at the core of his heart was Krysty Wroth. As he followed the slight boy through the swing doors into the auditorium, he was already calculating. How many men? Day or night? Frontal raid or try to sneak in? Whatever happened, there were men and women in the old cinema who would be dead within twenty-four hours. You didn't slice through someone's carotid artery without some of their blood splashing all over you.