“That’s my call.” She turned to look at me. “See that curtain over there? Go through it. Bring back whatever you find behind it.”
“You cannot intrude on my privacy like this,” Poppa Poppy protested as I moved to obey. I couldn’t imagine not doing as she asked.
“Shut up. If I want any shit from you, I’ll squeeze your head.”
There was a doorway hung with tattered fabric. One of the ever-present bullyboys moved to bar my way. I forced myself to stare the man straight in the eye, hoping Trub’s mojo extended to me. The guy was big enough to chew me up like a fifty-cent burrito and spit out the rat bones before burping.
The guard scowled and bared his teeth.
“Better move,” I said. After a few long seconds he did.
I pushed through the curtain into the room beyond.
“Aw shit,” I mumbled. There were two children in the room. Naked children in a crude wooden cage. A girl about nine, so skinny I could see every rib, and a boy about four just as thin. A chunky woman in ragged nurse’s scrubs slouched in a chair by the door, presumably to watch them. She stared at me with blank glassy eyes as I came in, looking unsure whether I was real or a pipe dream.
I turned my attention back to the kids. They stared at me with the wide frightened eyes of animals in a trap.
“Hi, guys,” I said as I approached the cage. I squatted down in front of the door, dredging up a smile that made my face hurt. “My name is Glyph.”
They didn’t respond, watching me like I was a closet monster that had come to get them. I realized they were probably drugged. The fumes alone were enough to waste anyone who breathed them.
I took a quick look around the gloomy, dirty room, then turned my attention to the inside of the cage. There were no toys, no books. Just a pile of rags to sleep on and a bucket for a bathroom. They were in a holding pen. I didn’t want to think about what they were being held for.
“This place is pretty gross, isn’t it?” I said gently.
The girl whispered, “Yes.” The boy nodded soberly.
“Want me to get you out of here?” While my impulse was to just break them loose and drag them away, I couldn’t begin to guess what they’d gone through on the way to ending up in a cage. So I wanted them to have a say in what happened to them.
“Can we go home?” the girl asked.
“You sure can,” I said. I didn’t know whether that was true or not, but was going to do my damnedest to make it so. I stood up, taking hold of the heavy wooden bar across the cage door. One of the big thugs must have put it there; it was all I could do to get it up and out of the way. Once the door was unbarred I opened it. “Come on, kids, let’s get out of here.”
The girl had begun huddling in on herself, self-conscious about her nudity. I took off my coat and emptied its pockets into my vest. I held it up, offering it to her.
The girl crept out, and I helped her into the coat. It hung to her ankles. She hugged it to herself gratefully. The boy only came as far as the door. Scared. I didn’t blame him.
“Would it be all right if I carried you, big guy?”
After a moment the boy nodded. He bolted to me, holding up thin arms.
“One piggy ride coming up.” I hoisted the boy up and settled him on one hip, then took the girl’s small hand. I led them back toward where Trub waited. The woman watched us go by, smiling dreamily and drooling.
Trub glanced in our direction when we came through the curtained door, her scarred face hard and cold. The girl froze and the boy whimpered when they saw her.
“It’s all right,” I said soothingly. “She’s our friend, like a pirate superhero. She came here to help get you away from this bad man.”
Trub met my gaze for a moment, her face impassive, then turned her attention back to Poppa Poppy. “You have been warned,” she said. “If I have to come back here again I will break you.”
The drug lord regarded her though heavy-lidded eyes. “If you come back again I will have an army waiting to meet you.”
She smiled, pleased by the threat. “Go for it, smokebrain. You take the gloves off, so will I. Nothing would make me happier.”
This warning delivered, she came over to where I waited with the children. She called for transport, then the four of us went through the door that appeared, away from the dark and dreadful lair of Poppa Poppy.
Bright light smacked me in the face, making me squint, and fresh air washed over me. I sucked it in greedily, trying to clear my head of the narcotic fumes I’d breathed, and the nastiness that had crawled into my lungs. The boy on my hip hid his face against my shoulder, and the girl mumbled something I didn’t quite catch.
Trub had transported us to a wide spot on a path leading through a lightly wooded area. This time the vegetation looked, to my untutored eye, more like what you’d see in Central Park than in a travelogue. Ahead of us, on a low rise, was a cluster of the low round buildings that seemed to be standard on the Hoop. The largest of them had a crude wooden scaffold built over it, and atop that framework was a big wooden cross. The idea of a church on Venus seemed pretty strange, but then again the whole idea of churches had never particularly resonated with me.
Nearby was a sign reading NO ADMITTANCE TO PURITY WITHOUT PERMISSION, and beside it a crude ceramic bell.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Edge of a hamlet called Purity. Same segment, toward the opposite end, about six klicks away,” Trub said, studying the village with the frown of someone contemplating trash on their lawn.
“So who was Jabba the Hut?”
My reference earned a faint smile that faded quickly. “His real name is Jamal Papadopoulos. He’s half Greek, half Turkish, all dirtbag. He’s got himself a sleazy little poppy growing and processing operation going, trading what he produces for what he needs—” A glance at the kids, who were still clinging tightly to me. “Or wants.”
“Who the hell would trade children for drugs?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer to that terrible question. There were always willing participants for both ends of such a dark bargain. I’d postoed about a gang doing just that a few months before, raising such a stink that the cops finally moved in and stopped the trade.
She jerked her chin. “You’re about to find out.”
I looked up the path toward the village. Four people were approaching.
“You didn’t ring the bell.”
Trub snorted. “I didn’t need to. I don’t need to play their little keep-out game either, but this is me being nice.”
The man in the lead was big—football player big—with the stiff authoritarian bearing of someone with a fetish for spit-shined jackboots. Set jaw, smile-proof face, eyes as soft as the buttons on a uniform. He was wearing a heavy black jumpsuit, macho black boots a gangie would be proud to street, and on a chain around his neck was a big wooden cross. He reminded me of General Jack D. Ripper from Dr. Strangelove.
“Who’s the big guy?”
“Calls himself Pastor Pureway.”
Two women and a man trailed behind him, dressed in shapeless gray robes. Their thin faces all wore the same guarded mix of hope and fear. When they saw the children their expressions brightened, and they started to rush forward. Pureway stopped them with a single word.
I looked to Trub for some clue as to what was supposed to happen. She was staring at the General Ripper rip-off. It was obvious that she wasn’t any fonder of him than Poppa Poppy, and I had a feeling that her being nice wasn’t going to last long.
“What is your business here?” the big man demanded, planting himself in front of Trub. His tone was brusque and challenging, and he looked down at her like a half-naked pole dancer who’d snuck into his choir.