Crater Lake

Chapter Ten

All five of them had picked up stones and were waiting.

"Now!" Mayor Sissy snapped.

"It were well done quickly," Doc Tanner said, surprisingly taking the lead. He threw his rock with a clumsy roundhouse motion, like a young girl attempting to pitch for the first time. The stone bounced yards short.

"Go closer," the cracking voice from the loudspeakers urged.

Ryan threw next, aiming at the man. The stone hissed through the chilled evening air, hitting Jolyon Manscomb high on the right side of his chest. He cried out, more in surprise than protest or pain, and staggered a little. His head remained bowed. The woman looked across at Ryan and his friends, shouting something flavored with disgust and anger.

J.B. and Finnegan threw together, both aiming at the man. Both their rocks struck home, one on the thigh, the other gashing Manscomb's cheek, sending blood flowing over his neck to dapple the yellow robe. In the brightness of the artificial light, the blood was almost black. There was a murmur of excitement from the watchers, like the sound Ryan had heard in gaudy houses when a pesthole slut was stripping, the moment when she would ease her satin skirt down over her hips, showing the dark vee of hair, revealing the spread lips of her sex.

The sound was the same — a tongue-smacking anticipation of what had been glimpsed, coupled with the knowledge there was much more to be seen.

Jak Lauren threw his stone underhand, like a child playing ducks and drakes on a town pool. It hit the woman on the forearm, just above the binding of the ropes. There was the clear, brittle crack of a bone snapping, and she screamed very loudly once, which brought a wave of laughter from the watchers.

"Mutie bastard," she cried at the boy.

"More," the little man insisted, leaning forward on the platform to see better. "More and faster and harder. It is not enough to cast only the first stones."

They threw a second volley of rocks, then another. Several of them were accurately aimed, one knocking the man clear off his feet. The whore was hit three times, one stone drawing blood from her leg, a hand's span below the right knee.

"Thirty seconds gone, thirty to go," the sec commander called out in a stentorian voice.

When they were felled, both of them struggled patiently to their feet, standing where they had before, waiting for more stones.

Above all, Ryan was a realist. He had sensed that the hunched figure in the wheelchair had been waiting for him to refuse, for one of them to refuse to take part in the obscene rites.

Now, all around the quarry, men and boys stooped, filling their hands with stones. Even the youngest lads picked up round pebbles, hopping from foot to foot in their eagerness to begin.

"Into Thy hands we commend their spirits," Doc Tanner said in a subdued, conversational voice.

One of them — Ryan thought it was probably Jak — hit the man in the lower belly, producing a shrill, womanish scream. The woman was knocked to her knees, but she rose again almost at once, her eyes locked on Ryan's face as if he were the sole aggressor.

"Fifteen seconds. Make ready."

Ryan took aim and threw. They were only about twenty-five feet from the yellow-clad victims, and it was hard to miss. Also, to miss accidentally might be spotted and treated as deliberate by the bright-eyed cripple above them. Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan noticed with a wave of revulsion that Sissy's stubby little fingers were busy in his lap, rubbing at a massive erection that distended the front of the tailored pants.

Since time was nearly up, he knew this could be the last rock he needed to throw. Then his part in the butchery could cease. He aimed at the woman's body, hoping only to strike her a glancing blow. But a clumsy throw from Doc Tanner came wheeling wildly in, hitting her on the foot at a second bounce. She fell to her knees at the very moment that Ryan released his own last rock.

Almost in slow motion he watched it wheeling toward the whore. His own lips began to shape the word no, as if it might change the flight of the missile.

The woman turned, dirt on her slender throat, hair streaked with mud. The bright lights made her eyes look glassy, as though she were blind. The sharp-edged hunk of granite, the quartz glittering like diamonds, hit her on the right side of her face between nose and ear. It found its target with such venomous precision that it cracked her cheekbone, smashing her right eye to a weeping pulp. Blood, mingling with the aqueous humors, poured over her face, soaking the shift she wore. The blow was so savage that it sent her spinning over, unable with hands bound to do anything to save herself.

The crowd whooped and cheered, and the thin little voice over the speakers congratulated him.

"Wonderful throw, Outworlder Cawdor. You will do well here in Ginnsburg Falls."

"Time," came the command from the sec man.

"You killed them!"

Ryan nodded. "No choice, lover. If we hadn't, we'd have been butchered. They were just waiting for it. And the man and woman would have died anyway. What the fuck would the point have been in that? Seven deaths instead of two. Five friends as well as two total strangers."

"There wasn't anything you could have done? You couldn't have argued?"

"With Mayor Theodore Sissy? I tell you, Krysty, if you'd been there..."

They were back at their dormitory. The men had been reluctant to talk about what they'd seen and done, but both Lori and Krysty were eager to hear about it. Both had been shocked into silence at first when they had heard the horrible story.

"Like raining," Jak said.

"I feared for our lives," Doc Tanner added. His face was lined with fatigue, and he sat slumped in a smart armchair.

"Fucking murderous. Only thing I figure is that they died fucking fast. I seen mebbe two hundred rocks hit 'em in the first ten seconds," Finnegan said.

J.B. nodded. "I guess so. Man's skull was soft when he hit the dirt. Like a bag of beans, so many breaks in it."

"What happened after it was over?" Lori asked, holding on to Doc's arm.

"Nothing. Sec men led us back here. Everyone was rolling high in the street. Talking and talking, like they'd been to a great show." Ryan shook his head in disgust. "I feel fucking dirty, I tell you. I killed me a lot of folks in my time, but never because some fucking gimp with a squeaking voice tells me to."

"You couldn't help it," Krysty said.

"Sure. But the way those sick bastards loved it! Nothing like a public killing. Surprised more barons don't liven their villes with 'em. I know some do, but never with fucking stones. Fireblast! I just want t'get to bed now."

But the day wasn't over quite yet.

Without knocking, the sec commander came marching into the long room, stopping in his tracks when he saw Krysty and Lori sitting on the beds with the rest of the group.

"Outworlder Cawdor. The home-keeps don't sleep or eat with men. Only whores. You said?.."

"No, they're not whores."

"Then they go."

"What?"

"You walk the line and you'll be fine. They can stay tonight. Past nonperson's curfew on street. They'd be in the quarry at dusk tomorrow if they were caught out now. This letter from the mayor tells you what's going to happen."

It was short and to the point, written in a neat, italic, sloping script on rough-edged handmade paper: "Outworlders report to me at nine in the forenoon. Then to militia induction. All passes and food creds will then be issued and accommodation arranged separately. Home-keeps to Arthur Sissy wing of workhouse for acceptance into general pool. First sight makes me reckon both could be whores if I decide suitable." It was signed "Theodore J. Sissy, Mayor."

There was also a postscript, obviously added as an afterthought: "Outworlder Lauren is a suss-mutie. He will be taken to the lake for rogation and nondesirable rating."

After the sec man had left, Ryan silently passed the note around. Finnegan read last. "Welcome to Ginnsburg Falls," he said. "Friendliest fucking little town in the West."