Mom was, as they used to say at the turn of the century, one tough broad. She was the most respected member of the Blue Angels, and even after her falling out with Romy and her flight from Cavern City, her name was adopted by only those riders who shot for the narrows, and scrawled on many a wall.
Maria Bartley-Rand, Flower of Life: Journey Beyond Protoculture
It wasn’t much of a town—strictly main-street frontier, run-down and dirty—and it wasn’t much of a bar, but at least the place offered cold beer (even if it was locally brewed and bitter-tasting), shade, and a singer backed by a decent pickup band.
After all of the battles are over
After all of the fighting is done
Will you be the one
To find yourself alone with your heart
Looking for the answer?
Rook Bartley lifted her glass and toasted the singer. The song was soft and downbeat, just what she needed to ease herself into the blues, trip through memories she couldn’t do anything about.
Rook took a look around the place over the rim of her mug. It was dimly lit and poorly ventilated but surprisingly clean and tidy for a joint in the wastes. There was the usual assortment of types, Foragers mostly, keeping to themselves in the corners, nursing drinks and private thoughts. A couple or two wrapped around each other on the cleared space that passed for a dance floor. And several bad boys on the upper tier, boots up on the table, midnight shades. Rook judged they were locals from the way they were scanning the room for action, your basic rough trade feeling safe on the barren piece of turf they had secured for themselves. Rook returned to her drink, unimpressed.
She was a petite and shapely eighteen-year-old with a mane of strawberry-blond hair and a face that more than one man had fallen in love with. She was wearing a red and white short-sleeved bodysuit that hugged her in all the right places. It was set off by forearm sheaths, a blue utility belt, and boots, an outfit styled to match the mecha she rode, a red Cyclone she had liberated from an armory just after her split from the Blue Angels, the assault by the Snakes.…
When it feels like tomorrow will never come
When it seems like the night will not end
Can you pretend
That you’re really not alone?
You’re out here on your own
(Lonely soldier boy)
You’re out here on your own
(Lonely soldier boy)
Rook settled back in her chair to study the group’s lead singer, a rocker well known in the wastes who called herself Yellow Dancer. The song had taken an unanticipated leap to four-four, guitar and keyboards wailing, and Yellow was off to one side of the low stage, clapping in time and allowing the band their moment in the spots. She was tall and rather broad-shouldered, Rook thought, but attractive in a way that appealed to men and women both. Her hair was long but shagged, tinted slightly lavender and held by a green leather band that chevroned in the center of her forehead. Yellow’s stage clothes were not at all elaborate—pumps, tight-fitting slacks, and a strapless top trimmed in purple—but were well suited to her tall frame and flattering to her figure.
Yellow stepped back to the mike to acknowledge the applause. She was modest and smiling until one of the bad boys decided to change the tempo somewhat.
“Hey, baby face!” he called out, getting up from the table and approaching the stage. “Me and my friends don’t like your music. It stinks, y’ hear?”
Rook had expected as much. It was the one with the pointed chin and wraparound sunglasses, the apparent gang leader. He was wearing tight jeans tucked into suede shin boots and a short-sleeve shirt left unbuttoned.
“It’s garbage, it ain’t music,” he insulted the singer.
Rook wondered how Yellow would handle it; the pickup band were locals, as was most of the room. No one was exactly rising to her defense, but neither was she showing signs of concern.
“Well, why don’t you just give these people a sample of what you consider music?” she taunted back.
Some of the crowd found the comeback amusing, which only managed to put Yellow’s critic on the spot. Rather than risk making a fool of himself, he decided to teach her a quick lesson and stepped forward swinging a lightning right.
“I’ll give ’em a sample,” he said at the same time.
But Yellow was even faster; still maintaining her place, she ducked to the left, leaving vacuum in her wake. The rogue’s arm sailed clean through nothingness, wrapping itself around the mike stand, and threw him completely off balance. The crowd howled, and Yellow smiled. But in that instant, her assailant recollected himself, turned, and caught her across the face with an open-hand left.
Yellow’s head snapped back, but not for long. She countered with a right, open-hand also but hooked a bit to bring her nails into play. The man took the blow full force to his temple and cheek; his glasses were knocked askew, and blood had been drawn.
“Now we’re even,” she said to the leader, whose back was still turned to her. But she now had the rest of the gang to answer to as well; they had left their tables and were approaching her threateningly. “How about calling it quits, fellahs?” she told them. “Tag-team wrestling isn’t scheduled until Saturday night, and we wouldn’t want to mess up the program, would we?”
Rook had to laugh; either she knew what she was doing or she was one of those who got her kicks facedown. Rook had reason to believe it was the former, however. Yellow was set like an upsprung trap, her legs slightly bent, her fists clawed. At the same time, she was keeping an eye on the one she had already wounded and was more than ready for him when he pounced.
“You little witch!” the man snarled. “I’ll kill you!”
He moved in and swung a roundhouse left with little of the lightning that had characterized his first swing and none of the ambivalence of the second. But once again, Yellow was left untouched, and the momentum carried the man off the stage, practically into the arms of his henchmen.
“I’ve enjoyed our little dancing lesson,” Yellow joked, backing away somewhat. “But if it’s all the same to you, this place is paying me to sing” Her eyes darted right and left, plotting an escape if needed. “Of course, we can pick up where we left off after the show—you could sure use some work on your fox-trot, you know—and if you’re all nice boys, I’ll teach you to rumba.…”
The gang was closing in on her, and Rook was beginning to rethink her earlier evaluation of Yellow Dancer. Whatever happened now, she had some of it coming. Meanwhile the club owner had appeared on the stage to intercede. But Rook had to laugh again, grog making it up into her nose: Not only was the dude pushing seventy, but he began his little speech by referring to Yellow’s opponents as gentlemen!
“If you can’t control yourselves,” he continued, his white mustache twitching, “I’m going to have to ask you all to leave!”
You and what army, Rook said to herself, quoting the punch line of an old T’sentrati joke.
One of the toughs, a mean-looking little guy in a muscle shirt, had whipped out a throwing knife during the old man’s attempted reprimand. He gave the knife a backhand toss now, sending it whizzing past the owner’s head and straight into the plywood wall behind the stage.
“Mind your manners, Gramps!” the youth cautioned.
Rook sighed tiredly, swallowed the last two drops of her drink, and stood up from the table.
“Boy, you guys sure have guts,” she told the gathered gang members. They turned slowly toward her as she knew they would, looks of disbelief on their faces. “Think you can handle her all by yourselves?”
This brought immediate catcalls and challenges from the rest of the room. Rook smiled for the audience’s benefit and winked at the gang leader. She had been through scenes like this too often to count, and she knew the leader’s type as well as she knew herself. She was confident she could take him, and that would eliminate the need to go one on one with the others. All she had to do was go after the leader’s pride, and she had already made a good start in that direction.…
“Blondie, take my advice and stay out of this or you’ll be next,” he warned her.
Rook looked away nonchalantly. “Maybe if two of you held her down while the others ran for reinforcements … Then you might have a chance.”
The catcalls increased in volume and originality. Even the leader cracked an appreciative smile. He steadied his shades and gave Rook the once-over. “A comedian.” He sneered. “Too bad for you I’ve got such a poor sense of humor, ’cause I’m gonna make you sorry you ever walked in here.”
The nasty little knife thrower produced a second shiv, but the leader motioned him back. “She’s mine,” he told his boys, and launched himself into a charge.
Rook had plenty of time to prepare and position herself; plus she had already sized up the guy’s strengths and weaknesses. He was coming at her full force, yelling at the top of his lungs, his hands at shoulder height slightly out front. On the balls of her feet now, Rook dropped herself into a crouch and brought her right arm in front of her face, elbow pointed outward. When the leader was within range, she twisted back, then sprang up and took her shot, catching the man square in the larynx.
Instantly, he went down on his knees, hands clutching his throat. “You almost killed me,” he managed to rasp.
“Well, come at me again and let’s see if I can get it right this time,” Rook answered him.
The room was full of applause and cheers by now; even some of the gang members were laughing.
Rook heard Yellow Dancer say, “I think the baboon’s overmatched,” just before the leader growled and shouted, “Stop laughing!”
Then the knife wielder started to move in …
Outside the bar, two Cyclones were added to the long row of cycles and various hybrid vehicles that lined the town’s main street. Scott and Rand glanced at the cycles and at the bar and traded questioning looks.
“Shall we go in?” Rand asked.
Scott shrugged and removed his helmet. “What’ve we got to lose?”
“That’s not what I wanted to hear,” Rand started to say, but Annie was already off the Cyclone and heading for the door.
“Come on, Rand. I’m dry enough to spit cotton.”
Rand exhaled forcibly and dismounted wondering just how he had let things get so out of hand. Just one more town, he had told himself. A place where he could feel all right about leaving Annie and saying a final farewell to Scott. Then it was going to be back to solo riding and the open road. But that had been three days and several towns ago, not one of which suited his needs. Nor did he have especially good feelings about this one. Two rows of ruined high-tech prefabs split by the northern highway and squeezed between the stone walls of an arid canyon, the place had a filthy, forlorn look to it. It seemed as though the town had surrendered long before the Invid’s arrival.
“They could at least clean the place up,” Rand said to Scott now. “Bunch of lazy slobs.…”
“You country boys do things differently, I suppose,” Scott said in a patronizing way.
Rand scowled. “At least we have enough self-respect to keep our homes from becoming pigsties. You wonder why I’d rather live off the land, Scott? Well, look around.”
“Oh, quit arguing, you two,” Annie said, stepping through the barroom’s swinging doors. “This dump isn’t so bad. What do you think they do for fun around here?”
Inside, the first thing that greeted their eyes was a knife fight.
An attractive young woman in a red bodysuit was squaring off against a mean-looking youth wielding what looked like a hunting knife. Onlookers were cheering and offering words of encouragement to both parties. On the room’s stage, a tall, lean female and a white-haired old man yelled for the fight to stop.
Scott stopped short. “It’s her!?”
“Who?” said Annie.
“She’s the one who helped us out the other day—the girl on the Cyclone!”
Rand’s eyes went wide. “The girl on the Cyclone? Now you tell me!… Well what are we waiting for? Let’s go—”
“No, hold up a minute.” Scott put his arm out to restrain Rand. “I’m sure she can handle herself all right.”
“But they’ll kill her,” said Annie.
Scott shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”
Rand decided that Scott might be right. The woman moved like a dancer, dodging the youth’s every thrust and overhand, her blond hair twirling about her face. One of the other men in the crowd was urging the knifer on with threats of his own.
“Stop your prancin’ around! Stick her, man! Stick her!”
But the woman wasn’t about to let that happen. She backed away with calculated deliberation, turning and folding at just the right moments. Rand could see that the rogue was losing patience and getting sloppy with his cover; he also noted that this was not lost on the woman in red. She set herself, legs wide, and waited for him to come in. Sure enough, the youth tried an over-the-top reverse and left himself wide open; the woman spun out from under it and completed her turn with a roundhouse kick that nailed him across the face, throwing him against one of the tables. The knifer went down as the table collapsed under him, but a second man, a large, dark-skinned tough wearing an earflapped cap, caught the woman from behind in a full nelson. She tried to struggle free but found herself overpowered. At the same time a third member of the gang sauntered in and took the knife from his fallen comrade. He tapped the tip of the blade menacingly against the woman’s cheek.
“You can say good-bye to that pretty face of yours, sister,” Rand heard the man say.
Scott was already stepping in, as was the female singer, who had started to grab for the knife stuck in the wall behind the stage. But Rand moved quicker than both of them: He swept up a heavy half-empty goblet from a nearby table and hurled it, knocking the knife from the gang leader’s hand. As the youth screamed and dropped, holding his struck hand, Rand yelled, “Duck!” and launched a second glass.
Rook saw this one headed her way and stretched herself thin in the larger man’s hold, arms fully extended as she slithered down. The glass hit the man in the face, and his hold on her collapsed; he was holding his nose and moaning when Rook brought her boot down onto his instep and turned away out of reach.
“I’m gonna kill you for that!” the man yelled. But when he took his hands away from his face, he found himself staring at Scott’s drawn blaster.
“Get moving—all of you!” Scott told them.
Weapons were a common enough sight in the waste, but a blaster was seldom seen. Taken by surprise, the gang members began to back toward the swinging doors. “You win this one, soldier,” the leader threw over his shoulder. “But the war’s not over yet.”
In a moment the sounds of revving and departing cycles filled the bar.
Rook looked disdainfully at her rescuers; she recognized them as the three she had saved from an Invid setup in Laako three days before. The redheaded one named Rand was eyeing her appreciatively.
“Why’d you have to butt in?” Rook said harshly, and left the bar.
“Guess there’s no pleasing some people,” Rand threw after her.
“Swelled head!” said Annie, making a face and gesturing.
“Well, I’m grateful for your help,” said a lilting voice.
Rand turned and nearly fell over: It was Yellow Dancer! He hadn’t recognized her before and could hardly believe his eyes now. “It can’t be,” he stammered, unable to control his excitement. “I’ve seen you at least twenty times, but I never thought I’d get the chance.…” He turned and made a desperate lunge for a napkin and shoved it toward Yellow. “I know it’s silly, but … it’s for my kid sister, you know?”
Yellow smiled knowingly. The bar owner took a pen from his jacket pocket and passed it to her. “To your kid sister,” said Yellow, chuckling. “As always …”
Annie saw Scott’s look of bewilderment and said, “It’s Yellow Dancer. Haven’t you ever heard of her?”
Scott smiled thinly and shook his head.
“Boy, you’re really out of it, Scott.”
Scott ignored the comment and turned to the owner. “That gang, who are they?”
The man shrugged. “The usual riffraff. Their kind seem to be just about everywhere nowadays.”
“Yes, but what about the local authorities—have you thought of asking them to do something?”
Rand raised his eyes to the ceiling in a dramatic gesture and turned away embarrassed.
The manager stared at Scott a moment, then said, “Mister, those are the local authorities.”