James Axler - Haven's Blight

The sails tended to creak shrilly and annoyingly when a stiff wind turned them rapidly, as it did now. Everybody had to raise their voices to make themselves heard.

“What I’m endeavoring to understand, dear lady,” said Doc, who was in his shirtsleeves, the height of informality for him, “is, why do you not share the gifts of your wondrous technology with the world at large? It sorely needs them.”

The group of Tech-nomads at the bow went silently tense. “What do you mean by that?” Randy barked.

“Why, nothing deprecatory, friend,” Doc said, blinking like a big confused bird. “I merely…wondered. Oh, dear.”

Doc’s experiences being yanked back and forth through time had had effects other than prematurely aging him. They had fuddled his mind. It didn’t keep him from being brilliant, nor functioning at a very high level. For periods ranging from minutes to months at a time. And sometimes he was easily confused.

“I’ve been wondering the same thing, too,” Mildred said. “I mean, no offense or anything. But why don’t you share more of your knowledge with people? You could make a big difference.”

“You think we haven’t tried?” Katie asked with unlooked-for ferocity. Normally the wrench was among the most approachable of Tech-nomads, would’ve been considered affable by the standards of normal people. To the extent anybody in the Deathlands could be considered normal.

The others tossed a look around like it was something hot.

“Uh-oh,” J.B. said to Ryan under his breath. “We stepped on some toes, here.”

Ryan shrugged. However spiky the Tech-nomads could be, no one had ever called them quick on the trigger. While he was never going to take for granted they could never get pissed off enough to chuck him and his friends over the rail and tell them to walk from here, a Tech-nomad was more likely to get spit on your shirt screaming into your face than take a shot at you.

Long Tom wrinkled up his bearded face. “Don’t think we haven’t tried,” he said. “The problem is, people aren’t willing to listen.”

“Tom,” Great Scott began. “Are you sure—?”

“No,” Tom said. “It’s been a long time since I was sure of anything. But if we’re going to trust these people to have our backs in a fight I think we can open up a little with them.”

“Good thing we had them in that fight with the mutie sea cows,” Sparks said. “Without Ryan and the kid they’d’ve sunk us for sure yesterday.”

Jak looked fierce at being called a “kid,” but he didn’t say anything.

“Problem is,” Sparks said, “most people don’t want to know. Or the barons won’t let them learn. And we never teach to barons.”

“You don’t believe in law and order?” J.B. asked.

Sparks shrugged. “Mostly we don’t believe in rule.”

“When we give common people what I like to call tech-knowledge-y,” Styg said, “the barons steal it, suppress it, or both.”

Styg was a stocky Tech-nomad with curly brown hair, who carried a number of pens and mechanical pencils in an ancient, cracked, yellowed protector in the pocket of the long-sleeved blue, white and black plaid flannel shirt he wore despite the humid heat. He’d been introduced to the companions as, “Styg, short for Stygimoloch. Don’t ask.” Nobody had.

“When we give it to barons the barons use it to strengthen their iron grip on the people. So I say, fuck barons, and fuck people who won’t help themselves.”

That got a murmur of assent, although Long Tom looked pained. To Ryan the Tech-nomads sounded frustrated.

“What if they grab you and try to make you teach them?” Ryan asked.

Long Tom chuckled humorlessly. “That’d be a triple-poor idea, friend. We make real bad captives and hostages, and even worse slaves.”

“We got measures,” Randy said with a nasty grin.

“What ones?” Jak asked.

“Pray you never find out.”

“Wait,” Krysty said. “There’s something here I don’t understand.”

“What’s that?” Long Tom asked. Like all the men except Great Scott, he was especially attentive to Krysty. Mostly it amused Ryan.

“Isn’t the cargo we’re guarding Tech-nomad tech for the baron of Haven?”

Everybody spoke denial at once. “It’s not the baron,” Long Tom managed to say over the others. “It’s his chief healer and whitecoat, Mercier.”

“But he works for the baron,” J.B. said. “What’s the difference?”

“She,” Katie said.

“Huh?” J.B. said.

“Mercier,” Long Tom said. “She’s a she.”

“Don’t you think a woman can be a whitecoat?” asked Katie, who seemed to still be in defensive mode.

J.B. shrugged. “Man, woman, doesn’t matter to me. At least, not that I’d ever let on, or Mildred’d yank a knot in my…tail.”

“Damn straight,” Mildred said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts.

“Question stands, though,” Ryan said. “Baron, baron’s healer, whitecoat, whatever.”

“She’s different,” Great Scott said. “She’s a great whitecoat, very dedicated. Just like her father.”

“We’ve got total respect for the late Lucien Mercier,” Sparks said. “Even if he did go to work for that shitheel Baron Dornan.”

“Maybe Dornan wasn’t such a total shitheel after all,” Long Tom said. “He hired Lucien.”

“Gimme a break,” Randy snorted. “His own kids had to chill him.”

“So he wasn’t Father of the Year,” Long Tom said. “He still had the welfare of his people at heart.”

“Except for the ones he worked to death, tortured, or just plain murdered,” Randy said. “He was a tyrant motherfucker.”

“Now, Randy, you know a lot of that’s down to his sec boss Dupree,” Long Tom said.

“He hired the man. He kept him on. You met Baron Dornan. He didn’t like a mosquito to fart in his ville without his by-your-leave. Dupree did nothing Dornan didn’t sign off on.”

“Baron Tobias is different,” Katie said firmly. “He’s not like his father at all. Except he supports Amélie in her work the way his father did hers.”

Ryan perked his ears up. The Finagle wrench had changed her tone again. She sounded distinctly fond of Baron Tobias of Haven.

“And his sister,” Great Scott said with a certain bitchy relish. “She rules as his co-baron. She’s a big supporter to Amélie, too.”

“Because she keeps her alive!” Katie said.

“Elizabeth Blackwood has some kind of wasting disease from childhood,” Long Tom explained. “Amélie has managed to slow its progress. Now she’s working on a cure.”

Krysty caught Ryan’s eye. He could tell she was wondering the same thing he was: was that the cargo they were guarding? The cure for the life-threatening illness?

In one way it didn’t matter: the gig was the gig. They’d given their bond to do the job. They’d do it as best they could. But Ryan’s mind couldn’t help calculating in the background: could they turn this to some kind of lasting advantage in Haven?

ISIS HAD TURNED UP. Ryan had noticed that except during emergencies or special maneuvers, the captains and even crews of the three vessels tended to circulate among the ships at whim. He guessed there wasn’t much reason not to.

Now the tall, silver-haired woman said, “I still think it’s a mistake dealing with a baron at all. Even if it’s through a trusted servitor.”

Long Tom shot her a pained look. “Isis, we’ve been through all this—”

“There’s still time to come to our senses.”

“But, Ice,” Katie said, “it’s Baron Tobias.”

She cocked a thin-plucked brow at the other woman. “And that matters how?”

“Well, he’s hardly a typical baron. He really tries to help his people.”