Red Equinox

Chapter Ten

The fire crackled merrily, the wood blazing and spitting sparks. Steam rose from the fur coats of Ryan, J.B. and Jak.

The boy stretched out and rubbed at his swollen stomach, belching his delight at the surfeit of food that they'd all enjoyed. "Eaten. Warm. Good times. Good."

Krysty smiled. She was lying on the floor, resting on the gray fur coat she'd picked out for herself. "You're right," she agreed, looking around the large room, watching the shadows that danced into the corners and alcoves. Outside the windows the storm still raged, well into the late afternoon, rattling the broken glass and breathing drafts along the bare boards.

"We got enough food to keep us all going for a few days," J.B. said, loosening the brass buckle on his belt by a single notch.

"Or a few of us for a couple of weeks." Ryan leaned back against the wall, picking at his teeth where shreds of the venison had lodged. The discomfort from his cavity had eased away again.

Rick was dozing. While the three had been out hunting, the others had climbed down into the hidden staircase to check the damage to the gateway. The freezie's report had been a whole lot less than encouraging.

"It can be mended. Krysty surely doesn't know her own strength."

She'd shaken her head and whispered, "You're dead wrong about that, Rick."

"If I had access to my laboratory then I could have it fixed in a half hour. If I had stores facilities I could simply order up the new parts and change them over. If I..."

"If the little dog hadn't stopped for a piss, then he would most surely have caught the little rabbit," Doc finished.

"How long without anything, Rick?" Ryan had asked him.

"Without anything? No tools or..." He shook his head. "No. I need some basic tools. Hammers, wrenches, stuff like that. Then — maybe then — it could be fixed in a week or so. But it's a bastard hard job. You have to realize I'm..."

"We'll get tools," Ryan said. "Don't worry, Rick. Just don't worry about it."

"It's not just that, Ryan. My sickness... I've been through a sort of period of remission since you thawed me out. I've got a feeling that's over now, baby blue. Over."

Bleak tidings indeed.

But now that had been pushed to one side while the companions ate and grew warm. The wood for the fire came from the less damaged timbers of the attic floors, which had been broken up and piled high in the open hearth.

Now was a time for relaxing.

Doc, who sat beside Rick, sang quietly to himself.

Western wind, when wilt thou blow,

That small rain down can rain?

Oh, if my lover were in my arms,

And I in my bed again.

"That's nice, Doc," Krysty said. "This is definitely one of the good times."

"Reminds me of Christmas at Granny Laczinczca's, feeling stuffed with food. All we need is some of those wafer-thin chocolate peppermints and some orange-and-cinnamon punch. Oh, those were..."

Rick's words faded away and Krysty leaned forward. "Go on. Tell us. I know. A game we used to play back at Harmony ville. You think what's the best ever moment you can remember. Let's do it. Who'll go first? Doc? Rick?"

The freezie thought for a moment. "Yeah. January, late nineties. My sickness hadn't begun to bite all the way, and I had some furlough owing to me. I'd watched the final two games in the World Series. Last time it was played at the old Yankee Stadium up in the Bronx. Guys calling 'Yo, beer,' all around. A three-run homer in the top of the sixth clinched it. But then it was the Superbowl. Don't remember where. West Coast. San Diego?" He shook his head, "I can't be sure. But it was the Giants. MyGiants, following on the win of myYankees. They were playing against the Anaheim Colts. Used to... can't recall. But we won it, and I was there, a young man full of living and the sun and all those people. That was the best I can remember."

The room had been quiet during his memory.

A length of joist, burning clear through, broke in two in a noisy rustle and a burst of bright orange sparks.

"How about you, Jak?" Krysty asked.

"Me? Best time ever? Seeing Tourment fucking die. Best."

Rick had closed his eyes, exhausted with the effort of visiting the perilous land of Nostalgia. Now he opened them again. "What?" he said. "Did I miss something? Who is?.."

"Before your time," Ryan said. "Man called Tourment chilled Jak's old man. Got himself chilled. End of story."

"Short and sweet. Krysty? What's your best moment ever?"

She considered the freezie's question for many long heartbeats, her hand across Ryan's arm.

Finally, "Mother Sonja was still alive. I was... I can't remember how old I was. I know it was summer. It was always summer then. Harmony lay amid a bowl of gentle hills, heather-covered, sweet and protective to me as a young girl. I broke fast early on fresh wild strawberries and cream and new-baked bread. Walked alone up to a high waterfall, closed in a narrow valley with polished boulders clustered together at its foot. The purple-and-pink chem clouds were gone that day. I often used to go there when I was on my own. There was a pool, deep and clear and pure as crystal. I peeled off and plunged in. It was... was so good. I swam around for a while and then pulled myself out on a flat rock, sun-warmed. I slept — rested and slept and cleaned my mind of all the... what Uncle Tyas McCann used to call excess baggage. I always remember that day because I thought a lot about the earth force and Gaia. There were some odd little black flowers up there, soft and delicate."

She stopped, her mind turning inward with the memory. Jak threw a couple of pieces of fresh wood onto the fire, bringing a new burst of flame that highlighted Krysty's flaming hair.

The young woman continued.

"The day trickled past me, filled with the distillation of peace. I have never felt so calm and so sure of myself. Not ever before..." she looked at Ryan, "...and not ever since. There've been some good times... course there have. But nothing like that. When I walked back, barefoot, to Harmony ville, Mother Sonja met me and hugged me to her. She said that I had gone out that day as her little girl, and I'd come back to her as a woman, grown."

Doc nodded and clapped his hands quietly. "A good tale, my dear. Oh, yes. So sweet a time, so gently recalled. It does you the greatest of credit."

"Thanks, Doc."

"I got a question, Krysty."

"Yeah, J.B.?"

"We known each other now for a good while, haven't we?"

"Sure."

"You talk some about your mother."

"I don't..." she began, trying to interrupt him. But he continued.

"What about your father, Krysty? How come we never get to hear anything about him? You never speak about him. Never."

"And I never will. That's the end of it, J.B., understand? Right. Doc, how about you? Best moment of your life."

"The best. The happiest. Though I confess that my memory is sometimes a little errant, that is one of the easiest questions that I have ever been posed. The happiest moment of my entire long and seemingly endless life was when my beloved Emily said 'I do.' The seventeenth day of the month of June in the year of Our Lord 1891. Oh, much the happiest."

He turned away from the brightness of the fire, but the sudden choking to his voice and the glistening of tears in his pale eyes told their own unmistakable tale.

Krysty picked up the moment. "How about you, J.B.? Best moment of your life. And don't tell us it was when you got given your first blaster at the age of eighteen months! Or whenever it was."

He shifted his feet, the toes of his combat boots scraping on the splintered floor. The red flames danced off his glasses, hiding his eyes. His beloved fedora was at his side, and he ran his fingers through the cropped stubble of his pale blond hair as he stared thoughtfully into the fire.

"A ball game. A chilling. A kind of growing. And a marrying. Four big moments. I don't think I got anything to match any of those."

"Quit dodging the question," Ryan teased, relishing the warmth and the feeling of a full stomach. And Krysty close by him.

"Best?" J.B. mused, biting his lip. "Guess it was the time — you recall this, Ryan — out near the rad lakes on the lower Miss. Got myself in a hole in a corner. Rock on one side and a damned hard place the other. For reasons that don't concern here, I hadn't got any of my usual weapons, but I had a beautiful Colt Navy. A .36, redrilled so's it'd take a .44. Still cap and ball. Up against five redneck drunks. All got Saturday night specials. Little .32s and the like. Killed four with six shots. Never got a scratch myself."

"Knew it'd have something to do with blasters," Krysty whispered loudly.

"I'll ignore that. Problem was, there was still one of the shit-eaters left. Figured I was out of ammo. Colt Navy holds six. I fired six. He still had three or four in his pocket Beretta. One door in the place and he was in front of it. Didn't even have a nail file on me. No blade at all. Fat son of a bitch, he was. Stood up, grinning. I can still see him. Patches of sweat rotting under his arms. Fat hand like a side of mutton, and this stupid toy popgun. He was going to chill me."

"Did he?" Jak asked.

"Course he..." J.B. began until he saw the joke. He grinned coldly at the teenager. "Nice one, kid. I chilled him."

"How?" the boy asked.

"With the Colt Navy."

"You said out ammo. Can't reload quick cap and ball."

"Right, Jak. But I killed him with it. Stood up slow. He was coming across the room, oozing delight that he got the ace on the line for me. No place to run. I was holding the pistol, down, by the barrel."

Ryan remembered the occasion. He'd gotten to the drinker too late, but he could still feel the stickiness of all the blood on the soles of his boots.

"Threw it at him underarm, real hard. Lovely gun. Best balance of any. One and a half turns in the air. Butt clubbed him across the top of the nose. Noise like a ripe apple under the heel. Down he went, pistol flying any which way. I walked over, picked up my blaster and hit him twice, just behind the right ear. Skull went soft after the first blow. Softer after the second."

He stopped speaking as abruptly as he'd begun. The room was silent until Rick Ginsberg spoke. "And that's it?"

J.B. nodded.

Ryan was conscious of everyone waiting for him to speak. He knew that the cup would eventually pass its way around the circle and reach him, and he'd been thinking of what to say.

"Lover?" Krysty prompted.

"Been thinking about the best time. I can think of a lot of good times. Think of plenty of bad times, as well. Plenty."

"I do not believe that you can wriggle away, my dear fellow," Doc said. "Not good enough."

Ryan looked around the circle of waiting faces — old friends, new and newer friends.

"Good fire. We're secure with the storm out there. My gut's filled with meat, and I'm with people I know and trust." Ryan squeezed Krysty's hand. "And I have love. This moment's about as good as any I ever knew."