Chapter Fifteen

 

 

 

Once they were past the straggly line of gaudy tents, with their ragged crimson banners and ragged whores parading in their tawdry finery, the crowds thinned fast.

 

There was an occasional stall or small tent, holding a tattoo artist or a mutie seer or teller. A lean, hungry-looking man offered a strange selection of rings, bracelets and necklaces. Krysty picked one up to look at it and dropped it with an expression of disgust. "They're all human bones."

 

"Yeah." The man grinned wolfishly, showing a mouth filled with jumbled yellow teeth. "And I knowed 'em all."

 

 

 

"THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN Fifth Avenue, would it not, my dear Mildred?"

 

"Guess so, Doc."

 

"Look upon my works, ye mighty This part has been devilishly hard hit. I can recallbut what is the point of all that? What is the point of all that? Yesterday is gone. One day we will all die. In life, my friends, there is but that one great certainty. Dust, brothers and sisters. Dust."

 

His shoulders started to shake, and tears ran through the grizzled furrows of his cheeks. Mildred went toward him, but Retha was quicker.

 

"Hey, don't cry, old Doc. You said, least I think that's what you was saying, about us all dying, and yeah, we will. But you do the best while you can. That's all."

 

"Out of the mouths of babes, Doc," Mildred said.

 

"What's that weird place?" J.B. asked.

 

"Where?" Mildred and the others looked a couple of blocks north, following the Armorer's pointing finger.

 

"Like a kind of broken seashell."

 

The haze from the cooking fires was drifting eastward across the ruined buildings, making it hard to see more than a hundred yards in that direction. But they could all see what he meant.

 

"Like a sort of small redoubt," Ryan said. "But I guess it can't be that, right smack in the center of the ville."

 

The smoke thickened and the building vanished. J.B. asked Dred and Retha if they knew what it had been, but they both shook their heads.

 

"Let's go see," Krysty suggested.

 

Ryan wasn't happy at that. "Day's wearing on, lover. If we want to get south and find some place for the night, we need to move on."

 

The wind gusted and the smoke cleared, showing the peculiar building more clearly. Doc and Mildred spoke in unison. "The Guggenheim," they chorused.

 

"How's that?" Ryan asked.

 

Mildred got in first. "Classic art gallery. One of the best in the world. Architect called Frank Lloyd Wright designed it. It's like being inside the shell of a great snail. I saw a wonderful exhibition of Georgia O'Keeffe. Let's go and look at it."

 

Ryan glanced at the sky. It was darkening from the northwest, with the promise of more rain, though the falling temperatures threatened snow. "Could we hole up there for the night, Dred?"

 

"Don't know. Yeah. Sure. Why not? Yeah."

 

 

 

THE BUILDINGS around the Guggenheim were totally wrecked. Nothing stood more than a single story. But the stained white concrete museum was remarkably untouched. Ryan guessed that its peculiar shape and structure must have protected it from the blast that had demolished everything around it.

 

"Anything worthwhile inside?" he asked Mildred.

 

"Used to be some of the finest pictures the world ever saw. Renoir, Picasso, Mondrian, Klee, Van Gogh names go on forever, Ryan."

 

"I fear that little will remain of that collection now," Doc said.

 

Sadly he was right.

 

The outer doors and windows were smashed, and the lobby was filled with piles of rotting leaves. The air smelled cold and damp, unused. It was, oddly, very much like the smell they'd encountered in many of the hidden redoubts they'd entered.

 

Ryan glanced across at Krysty. "Anything?"

 

"No. Feels like nobody's been in here for a hundred years."

 

Doc had wandered across the floor and was looking up at the enormous winding ramp that went clear to the roof. "Suppose there's nothing here for anyone. It's so damnably cold in here, and there's nothing to burn for a fire."

 

Typically J.B. saw the situation from his own, personal direction. "More than that, Doc. Way it's built, there's no way of defending it. You get trapped up that ramp and you're dead meat. No way of establishing cross fire or any defensive positions."

 

Doc smiled, his perfect white teeth showing up with an almost fluorescent whiteness in the dimness. "I'm sure you're correct, my dear fellow. If I had access to a temporal transporter, I would hasten back and ask Mr. Lloyd Wright to redesign it so that it could be defended in the event of a firefight. I'm sure he'd be most happy to oblige."

 

The Armorer didn't smile, throwing a finger at the old man.

 

"Enough," Ryan snapped. "We going to stay here for the night?"

 

"Not much heat here." Mildred looked around. "Some of those leaves might burn." But she sounded as doubtful as she felt.

 

Behind what had once been some sort of sales section, J.B. had rummaged out a pile of white plastic strips. "These'll go. Keep away from the fumes, and they'll do. Them and some of the leaves. Once they dry out."

 

Dred nodded. "Why don't me and Retha go hunt the park for branches and stuff? This far south there aren't many gangs, so's there could be some. What d'you say, Ryan?"

 

"Sure. Good as anywhere. We've got enough to keep a watch. Solid roof. Worth something. But don't take long."

 

"Can we borrow your blasters?" The question was asked very casually.

 

"Nobody ever borrows anyone's blaster," J.B. replied curtly. "Never."

 

 

 

AN HOUR AFTER DARK they had a good fire going. Ryan had decided to light it to one side of the bottom floor, where the smoke would be sucked away out of some of the broken windows. The plastic sent out a thick cloud of noxious black fumes, but it served to ignite the pile of twigs and branches that the teenagers had dragged in, as well as drying out the big piles of leaves collected around the building.

 

Before full dark came Doc and Mildred climbed up the winding, circular ramp, clear to the top of the building. The woman laughed quietly as they reached the haunted, shadowed level, with the floor sweeping gently away from them, around and around and down toward the lobby.

 

"What is so risible, my dear doctor?"

 

"Take me an hour or more to answer that one, Doc. But if you mean right now Well, I just had a thought."

 

"I'm all attention and quivering eagerness, madam. Tell me."

 

"Just looking around here. Masses of rubbish and dead leaves and rags and all kinds of windblown and human shit. If this was a book or a moviewell, we'd burrow around and find a buried masterpiece by Van Gogh or someone."

 

Doc nodded, his silvery mane luminous in the evening gloom. "Yes, yes. And we would look at it, and then one of us would say that we wondered what the old picture was. But it would"

 

"Sure burn well," Mildred completed, and they both laughed loud and long.

 

They made so much noise that they didn't hear the light-footed approach of the Armorer. His quiet voice made them both jump. "Private joke?"

 

Doc shook his head. "No, but it would take a frightfully long time to try to explain it."

 

J.B. shrugged. The last feeble glow from beyond some broken windows bounced off the metal-rimmed glasses. "Fire's going well down there, and there's some food readied."

 

"I think my belly and backbone are getting used to being stuck together," Doc said. "I shall go and force down a little something. What do you say to a little something, Mildred?"

 

"I probably say, 'Hello, little something.' Sorry. Wasn't that good a joke a hundred years ago, and it hasn't improved with age."

 

"You going down?" J.B. asked.

 

"Not yet. But you go ahead, Doc, and if you find any Renoirs, put them on the fire."

 

They watched the old man pick his careful way down and out of sight. J.B. moved a few steps to stand by the window, looking down across Fifth Avenue. "Cold night."

 

"It is."

 

She joined him, standing so close that their bodies brushed together. They stared as a figure moved past, heading north. It was difficult to make out, but it looked like the stunted little creature they'd passed earlier as they'd made their way to the Guggenheim.

 

"J.B." She grabbed his arm.

 

"I seen them."

 

There were two more shadows skulking against the tumbled wall of the park. They were closing in on the solitary figure that marched stolidly up the center of the road.

 

Mildred started to draw her ZKR 551, but J.B. laid a hand on her wrist. "No. Not our fight, Mildred. And it'll attract attention to us."

 

They watched the tiny drama of life and death. The victim only became aware of the threat at the very last moment, whirling around and drawing some sort of blade. But it was way too late, and the two attackers closed in.

 

A soundless scuffle, then the street was suddenly empty again. Except for the small, huddled corpse at its center.

 

"I could've chilled them both," Mildred said softly.

 

"Not the way."

 

She sighed. "Guess not." She looked over her shoulder across the landing at what had been some kind of administrative suite. There were a couple of seat cushions in the dark room. "John Barrymore?"

 

"Yeah."

 

"If we went in there, we could lie down for a few minutes."

 

"We could." He was as laconic as ever, no surprise or question hiding in his voice.

 

"And you could make love to me."

 

"I could."

 

"Would you like that?"

 

She saw the specter of his narrow smile in the darkness and felt his lips brush against hers.

 

"I would."