James Axler - Ice and Fire

"Good afternoon, strangers. Come into my little cave of riches with a good heart. Be at peace with all men. Gentle be the selling and the buying and could you shut that coil-bound door?"

The last seven words were uttered in a raised voice laced with anger.

Krysty hastily pushed it closed, making the bell jingle once more.

"Keeps out the scale-blasted flies, you understand. Can I help you outlanders to any small curio or other?"

"This stuff all come from before the long winters?" Krysty asked, brushing the dust of the street from her long, fiery hair.

"Indeed. Much of Southern California took the big plunge into the Cific, down the Andreas. Lot of neutrons around here. My father and me been collecting since then. I pay packies to go scouring the old gulches and ghost villes."

At last he stepped out from the darkness, sliding through a curtain of clear glass beads that clicked softly.

The man was in his late fifties and wore a loose shirt, hand-woven in varying shades of purple and green. He sported old-fashioned glasses with lenses tinted a very deep blue, and he held his head on one side like a querulous parrot.

"I do not see well. An accident in a warm spot that became hot without my noticing it. Corneal damage, I believe. That is why I keep my humble establishment a touch gloomy. It pains me less."

"Mind if we look around?"

"Course not, Mr. Cawdor."

"How'd you name my name, Mr?.."

"Zombie and his two-wheelers help me in finding items for my store. He described you very well. My name is Brennan. Yes, the same as Baron Edgar. He is my brother. His nephew, Layton, is my grandson."

It seemed like he was going to go on and say more. Maybe a lot more. But a shadow fell across the window and he turned like a startled hare, taking three steps back to the shelter of his beaded curtain.

"It's all right," Krysty reassured him. "Friend of ours. Rick Ginsberg. Hey, Ryan. Looks like he's been laying out some jack on clothes."

The bell chimed thinly as the freezie entered the shop cautiously. "That you, guys? Thought I saw you from the bedroom. I changed that old suit for something more practical. Laid out most of my cash... I mean jack."

He was wearing a pair of faded Levi's, tucked into ankle-high hiking boots with studded soles, a washed-out work shut in light brown and a heavy-duty quilted jacket.

"How do I look?"

"Hell of a lot better, Rick," Ryan said. "Could find the going warm in that coat. But, yeah, make life easier for yourself when we get moving again."

"Mr. Ginsberg," the shopkeeper said, "I'm Rufus Brennan. Welcome to my store. Browse around and hope that you will be guided to what is right and fitting for you."

"You never owned a jewelry store down near Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, did you?" Rick asked.

"No. Those names are not familiar to me. Why do you ask?"

"Just the way you do the sales pitch. But let it pass."

"Let's look around some," Ryan suggested. "Then we can get back and see how J.B. and Jak have been doing. You feeling okay, Rick?"

"Sure. It's just that seeing all this stuff from... We'd have said most of this was plain junk. But it's a time warp. Walking down the street here with the houses and the stores... similar but not the same. No, not the same at all."

He took off his spectacles and began to polish them furiously.

Predark wasn't a very large store, but it was crammed with all manner of memorabilia. One corner was filled with childrens' toys and games. Creatures with names like Care Bears and Dumpyloves, and comp-controlled dolls that would do everything except make people love you. There were plastic figurines that you could move and place into stiff poses. They all had incomprehensible names such as Hutch and Fonzy and Indiana and most seemed to come from places with strange, Oriental names.

There were all sorts of souvenirs. Ryan guessed people must once have collected them to remind themselves of places they'd visited. Disneyland was one that he'd heard of. Tuckaluckahootchie Caverns was one that he hadn't.

One table held a dozen different kinds of telephones. Ryan picked up one that was made to look like a droopy white dog. "You got working transceivers in the ville?" he asked.

"No. Few years back my brother tried to get one installed. Not much interest. Folks figured that Snakefish is such a small ville you could lean out on your porch and shout to most everyone that you wanted."

Krysty was fascinated by an intricate metal tool with prongs, spikes and cogwheels. "Gaia! What's this do?"

Rufus Brennan sniggered. "That used to have a little box, but it was all raggedy. But I know what it was — for coring an avocado — and if you twist that button it will remove the seeds from grapes. Kind of useful, isn't it?"

Krysty laughed, tossing her hair back. Even in the gloom it danced and burned with a living fire. "Useful? I'd rate it about level with a glass scattergun on the useful scale."

"Hell's bloody bells!" Rick exclaimed from the side of the store, where small ornaments and books were piled.

"What've you found?" Ryan asked.

"My past, Ryan. This book. Poems and short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. I had this given to me as a school prize when I was about eleven, around 1981. Scared the shit out of me with its pictures and the creepiness of..."

"Did your friend say he was eleven years old in 1981?"

"No," Ryan said. "He didn't. And if you started talking around about how he did, then it might not be a great idea. Man could get himself hurt with bad hearing. You understand me, Rufus?"

"You can put the blaster back, Mr. Cawdor. I understand you. But if anyone else around the ville misheard when your friend was born it might be harmful. Do you understand me?"

For a moment Ryan considered icing the store owner. Questions about Rick would lead to questions about the rest of them. Where have you come from? Where exactly did you leave your wag? How did you get here?

Not the kind of questions that outlanders welcomed in a small ville, however friendly some of its inhabitants might be.

He looked at Brennan for a dozen heartbeats. "Yeah. I understand. Guess we might both take some real good care."

Krysty tugged at the sleeve of his jacket. "Ryan! Look!"

Rick Ginsberg, the dusty, leatherbound book open in his hands, had sat down on the floor. His eyes were wide and staring, and gobbets of tears coursed down his cheeks. Ryan could see he had been looking at an illustration of a large black bird. Rick's lips were moving and he kept repeating the same word.

"Nevermore," he said. "Nevermore. Nevermore."

It was a cold evening in Snakefish.

Only Doc and Lori had eaten in the dining room of their boarding house. The others had taken their suppers upstairs on trays, all sharing the room where Rick lay in a frightening, almost catatonic trance. He still held the Edgar Allan Poe book. Ryan had tried once to remove it from his hands, but the freezie had wailed like a lost soul and tried to bite him on the wrist.

There had been little time for Ryan to debrief J.B. and Jak. Rufus Brennan had been the soul of kindness and discretion, helping Krysty and Ryan to carry the weeping man across to the Rentaroom, bustling him up the stairs before too many prying eyes could see him.

There was a log fire laid in the grate, and the Armorer had used a pyrotab to get it blazing, filling the curtained room with bright, crackling heat.

Despite that, Rick didn't seem able to stop himself from shivering. His fingers opened and closed and his teeth chattered together. They'd decided to leave on his newly purchased clothes, piling on a couple of blankets for good measure. Doc had asked Ruby Rainer to send up an enamel pot of hot, sweetened tea, explaining that their friend had suffered something of a shock and needed to be kept warm.