"Sure. It's just that seeing all this stuff from... We'd have said most of this was plain junk. But it's a time warp. Walking down the street here with the houses and the stores... similar but not the same. No, not the same at all."
He took off his spectacles and began to polish them furiously.
Predark wasn't a very large store, but it was crammed with all manner of memorabilia. One corner was filled with childrens' toys and games. Creatures with names like Care Bears and Dumpyloves, and comp-controlled dolls that would do everything except make people love you. There were plastic figurines that you could move and place into stiff poses. They all had incomprehensible names such as Hutch and Fonzy and Indiana and most seemed to come from places with strange, Oriental names.
There were all sorts of souvenirs. Ryan guessed people must once have collected them to remind themselves of places they'd visited. Disneyland was one that he'd heard of. Tuckaluckahootchie Caverns was one that he hadn't.
One table held a dozen different kinds of telephones. Ryan picked up one that was made to look like a droopy white dog. "You got working transceivers in the ville?" he asked.
"No. Few years back my brother tried to get one installed. Not much interest. Folks figured that Snakefish is such a small ville you could lean out on your porch and shout to most everyone that you wanted."
Krysty was fascinated by an intricate metal tool with prongs, spikes and cogwheels. "Gaia! What's this do?"
Rufus Brennan sniggered. "That used to have a little box, but it was all raggedy. But I know what it was for coring an avocado and if you twist that button it will remove the seeds from grapes. Kind of useful, isn't it?"
Krysty laughed, tossing her hair back. Even in the gloom it danced and burned with a living fire. "Useful? I'd rate it about level with a glass scattergun on the useful scale."
"Hell's bloody bells!" Rick exclaimed from the side of the store, where small ornaments and books were piled.
"What've you found?" Ryan asked.
"My past, Ryan. This book. Poems and short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. I had this given to me as a school prize when I was about eleven, around 1981. Scared the shit out of me with its pictures and the creepiness of..."
"Did your friend say he was eleven years old in 1981?"
"No," Ryan said. "He didn't. And if you started talking around about how he did, then it might not be a great idea. Man could get himself hurt with bad hearing. You understand me, Rufus?"
"You can put the blaster back, Mr. Cawdor. I understand you. But if anyone else around the ville misheard when your friend was born it might be harmful. Doyouunderstand me?"
For a moment Ryan considered icing the store owner. Questions about Rick would lead to questions about the rest of them. Where have you come from? Where exactly did you leave your wag? How did you get here?
Not the kind of questions that outlanders welcomed in a small ville, however friendly some of its inhabitants might be.
He looked at Brennan for a dozen heartbeats. "Yeah. I understand. Guess we might both take some real good care."
Krysty tugged at the sleeve of his jacket. "Ryan! Look!"
Rick Ginsberg, the dusty, leatherbound book open in his hands, had sat down on the floor. His eyes were wide and staring, and gobbets of tears coursed down his cheeks. Ryan could see he had been looking at an illustration of a large black bird. Rick's lips were moving and he kept repeating the same word.
"Nevermore," he said. "Nevermore. Nevermore."
Chapter Eighteen
It was a cold evening in Snakefish.
Only Doc and Lori had eaten in the dining room of their boarding house. The others had taken their suppers upstairs on trays, all sharing the room where Rick lay in a frightening, almost catatonic trance. He still held the Edgar Allan Poe book. Ryan had tried once to remove it from his hands, but the freezie had wailed like a lost soul and tried to bite him on the wrist.
There had been little time for Ryan to debrief J.B. and Jak. Rufus Brennan had been the soul of kindness and discretion, helping Krysty and Ryan to carry the weeping man across to the Rentaroom, bustling him up the stairs before too many prying eyes could see him.
There was a log fire laid in the grate, and the Armorer had used a pyrotab to get it blazing, filling the curtained room with bright, crackling heat.
Despite that, Rick didn't seem able to stop himself from shivering. His fingers opened and closed and his teeth chattered together. They'd decided to leave on his newly purchased clothes, piling on a couple of blankets for good measure. Doc had asked Ruby Rainer to send up an enamel pot of hot, sweetened tea, explaining that their friend had suffered something of a shock and needed to be kept warm.
The woman had been eager to help, offering her prayers and wondering whether the accident might prevent poor Mr. Ginsberg from joining everyone at the service the next day.
After she'd been ushered from the room, Ryan turned to J.B. "Find anything out?"
"Sure. Friendly folk. Talk to you about everything. Just as long as it's the weather or are we comfortable with Ma Rainer here. Soon as you ask them anything about how the ville's run and how the gas is produced and processed and traded..."
"And mouths clam like snap trap," Jak concluded, locking his fingers to demonstrate what he meant.
"See the plant?"
"Sure, Ryan. No guards. Drillings are all to the east and north. Brought in tank wags. Pumped and then purified. Stored in all kinds of barrels and tanks. Kind of careless. So much gas there that a single burner gren would set half the country on fire."
"Saw bikers again. Zombie and others," Jak said. "Said could ride with 'em. Mebbe after snake service tomorrow. Seem okay."
Ryan glanced at the Armorer, seeking confirmation of the young boy's judgment of the Last Heroes. But J.B. pursed his lips and said nothing which was as good as saying everything.
At that moment their attention was taken by Rick.
The freezie had begun to talk in a quiet, confidential sort of way, but in a voice quite unlike his natural tones. It was a thin, piping little voice, like a young child's. And there was even the hint of a childish lisp to it.
"I'm eleven years old in three weeks. My full name is Richard Neal Ginsberg and I was born March 22, 1970. I live in New York City, which is in New York State, which is the best of all the United States of America, the land of the free."
There was a peculiarly monotonous quality to the speech, as though Rick had learned it by heart and was pattering through it.
"I have a pet turtle who's real old and lives all the time with his head buried in the mud of his tank, and his name's Tricky Dicky. I guess he's real boring. My Dad's name is Jack Ginsberg, and he worked as an accountant in a big office on Sixth Avenue. Mom's name is Naomi and she doesn't do any work. She's like a housewife."
"Little prick," Krysty whispered. "I read about that sort of male attitude. Doesn't do any work!"
"I play softball and I watch football and I like the New York Giants best of all. When I grow up I'm going to be a quarterback and pitch for the Yankees and maybe also work as an accountant. I haven't decided yet but I'm real good at math."
Doc and Lori came into the room, closing the door behind them. They stood at the foot of the bed, listening to the ramblings of the freezie.
"Looks fucking stupe," Lori said. "Look at his eyes all staring."
"I fear our newly thawed comrade has regressed to his childhood," Doc observed sadly. "It was always something of a gamble. I had been delighted with how well he had coped with his blind leap into our future. But now I see how fragile his hold on our reality is."
"Reality sandwiches," Rick said, a tremulous sickly smile clutching at the corners of his bloodless lips. The fingers of his left hand played with the frayed edge of the gray blankets while his right hand kept its deathly grip on the leather-bound volume of Poe.