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  “Doesn’t mean you’re not some killer.” Neck Scar moved forward, his breath hot as if something inside of him boiled, its odor strangely sugary. “Probably means you just go after women, little kids. Yeah, I heard about you, man.”

  Aksel held his ground. “And what did you hear?”

  “I heard you ate a man’s heart, psycho.”

  “What could I do? It was a dare.”

  Despite their allegiance to Neck Scar, the shirtless men behind their leader gave a braying round of laughter. One glare from Neck Scar snuffed it.

  It was the only opening the brute was going to give, Aksel knew, and he took it. He flipped his eye patch up and away, as the cannon hatch on the flank of an old maritime war vessel would be readied. Half a second later, Neck Scar looked back, aghast at the ungainly, yawning hole in Aksel’s face.

  “What the hell are you doing?” the fat man muttered. When from Aksel’s eye socket a telescoping metal shaft slid out, Neck Scar grimaced. Neck Scar and each of his men took a full step back, turned partly from the strange sight. Their resolve began to steel within a moment; their eyebrows dropped, and their fists rose.

  “I don’t want to do this,” Aksel said, the gun barrel ejecting from his right eye socket reaching its maximum length and clicking metallically as it locked into place. The springs inside his neck positioned next, and then came the hollow snap as the round was loaded with a mere flex of his jaw.

  “You are a Bullet Eater. I knew it.”

  “Leave me and my friend alone.”

  “You ain’t s-supposed to have g-guns in here. I’m going to get a guard right now and tell him what you got. They’ll cut your head open to get that thing out of there, Bullet Eater.”

  Neck Scar and his friends backed off. Now it was just the departing exchange of barks, promises, threats.

  Aksel knew he had won, so he gave no reply, just kept the barrel trained until the men were out of sight. With a twitch of his head, a sideways flick, the barrel shot back in and the springs released in his neck.

  He turned back to Ricky, dropping the eye patch with a flick of his finger.

  Ricky shook his head. “See what I mean? Knucklehead behavior right there.”

  “What else could I do? Clearly they weren’t going to back down. They heard us talking about money.”

  “Look in my eyes when I say this, Aksel. You looking? Right here. Okay? Now listen. You’re an idiot.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know.” He turned to watch Neck Scar and his friends make toward the nearest guard tower. He hoisted his soda and drained its dregs. It would probably be the last drink he’d have for some time once the guards got the cuffs on him. Sure, he could try to run and hide, but in a four-hundred-square-foot camp with razor wire fences all around, it’d be only a matter of time. “He called me a Bullet Eater.”

  “But you are one.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not a pirate. And to them, it’s one and the same.”

  “Hey, I didn’t say it.”

  “I know. Forget it. Anyway, my place tonight. I’ll pay you.”

  “I know you will,” Ricky said. “See you then.”

  Aksel turned and plodded away. Halfway back to his shack, he pitched the soda can over the fence, just to watch the auto turrets stationed along the guard towers turn precisely and blast it out of the air.

  Chapter 8

  Roadblock

  The palace had seventeen bathrooms, twenty-eight bedrooms, three armories, barracks in the basement, and one royal chamber where the king could sleep without worry. The walls were three-feet-thick galvanized steel. The doors, with a simple uttering of the word secure could be locked eight times over, air sealed, and filled with a quick-hardening liquid metal that, once cooled, could never be cracked.

  This is where Pitka Gorett found he was most comfortable doing his daily duties: keeping an eye on the monitors and watching his men run their circuits about the palace grounds, endlessly training. Of course, the irregularity in the electrical flow of Geyser kept things hair-pullingly vexing. His monitors would die out, come on a moment later, stay lit for a handful of seconds, only to black out again. Gorett had taken to looking out the master chamber’s windows instead to watch the men train. He liked seeing them all lined up, in four-by-four squares of armor and guns, ready for anything. They looked like mechanical armadillos from this high up, a funny notion. Just armadillos that were organized, trained, and willing to kill at the drop of a hat. A stalwart army ideally suited to the situation.

  Geyser was dead, and there were no citizens to keep in line anymore. The Patrol could work as a genuine army now and keep the city safe not from itself, as a police force would, but from interlopers who would try to knock Gorett’s plans off course.

  They had put up the walls surrounding the palace grounds, and Gorett liked it better that way. The previous king had been a fool and always kept the front gardens open, like a park for peasants to picnic in, letting their insipid children run, shout, and play.

  The guardsmen filed up the ramp and into the back of their armored auto, the massive black thing with six nubby wheels, slot windows, wholly impregnable. The gunner popped out the top through a hatch and gripped the handles of the turret’s machine gun. The gates were lowered, and the auto rolled through right on schedule for its morning rounds. The few that remained behind began a game of catch ball, using the forward walls of the fortress as the bouncing board. Normally this would aggravate Gorett, but he had to be honest with himself: things had gotten mundane in Geyser since the populous had been evicted.

  Six months ago, there was screaming in the streets, panic roused from toxic gossip about a Blatta infestation: insects the size of large dogs right under everyone’s feet, wanting to devour everyone.

  Gorett enjoyed the news, as if he were watching broadcasts. Everyone was scared, fleeing to sea level, boarding ships set for the refugee camps, “for your own good,” as he’d said in his address to the city. “Let us stay behind to take care of this problem for you, my beloved people,” he’d said.

  Soon, Geyser was vacant. Of course, none of them knew it was all orchestrated. Certainly, the Blatta would be taken care of, but the deposit of wendal stone could also be dredged up from below and sent off to a moneychanger. Something that couldn’t be done with so many still in the citizen registry.

  As refugees camped out in and around Adeshka, Geyser’s sister city, they’d be temporary citizens of that city instead.

  Why go to such lengths? That pesky law about any sudden windfall that came to Geyser had to be evenly distributed. Yes, the law could be changed, but the people wouldn’t forget it so fast. If they knew about the deposit, they’d all want their even piece, leaving damn near nil for Gorett. Better they were gone so the transaction could be made without them knowing it ever happened.

  A few had suggested letting the Odium wipe the city out entirely, but dead men can’t work, can’t make a city run. Killing them was not an option. A king couldn’t be king if there was no one to be a king for, and Gorett liked his title. And while he knew he had an incurable avarice, he didn’t want his hands bloody. So long as those who knew the secret of his true intentions—the Stitcher and the Executioner—remained securely detained and gagged, all would be fine. The Stitcher was in no position to talk to anyone; before long, with any luck, her mind would go.

  A rapping at the door startled Gorett, and he spun away from the window as well as his daydream. What could possibly be the trouble this early in the morning?

  A guardsman stood in his doorway. Pleated armor covered his chest, and ribbed panels of metal protected his shoulders, forearms, and legs. The only spot of flesh visible on the guardsman was his face when he lifted the dark-tinted visor. “Sir, we just got word from the Patrol alpha squad. The south elevator has been broken.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The car fell sometime in the night.”

  “All your men were accounted for last night?”

  There had been a
few deserters at first, but that had tapered off in the first few months. Bandits, sabotage? The machine falling into disrepair on its own seemed most likely. The salty wind from Jagged Bay could rust anything to uselessness. He suggested the possibility.

  “No, it appears it was broken when someone tried to use it late last night. The surveillance cameras caught very little, only a couple seconds’ worth of footage because of the electrical problems we’re having, but it clearly shows a man and an armed Mouflon. But there may’ve been more.”

  Gorett turned toward the window and looked south. Straggling ticks requiring a tweezing. “Come to Geyser to kick her while she’s down and rifle through her pockets, have they?”

  “Perhaps we should apprehend them, ask them to work for us.” The guard said the word ask like the joke it was. Sure, they’d ask—with pistol in hand. No sane person would go underground willingly.

  “Apprehending them is a must,” Gorett stated, “but as far as getting them to work for us, I’m not so sure. Sending them into the mines could be a problem. They could tamper with things and make an even worse mess for us.” He took a deep breath and let it out through his considerable nose, the sound like a broken steam valve letting off pressure. The wendal stone deposit was so close yet so far away.

  “I agree, sir.”

  “If the elevator in the south ward is broken, that means they’re either dead at the bottom of the shaft or still in the city. Find them and take care of it. We have enough mouths to feed without taking on prisoners as well.”

  “Sir.” The guardsman bowed.

  Gorett looked to the geyser. In his high chambers, he was nearly at eye level with its summit. He watched it sometimes during the day, waiting for the top to boil over with a horde of insects. It had never happened, but he never stopped expecting it.

  The guardsman cleared his throat courteously. “Anything else, sir?”

  Gorett muttered, “Any progress?”

  “We lost another three,” the guardsman reported gravely. “They don’t want us down there.”

  Gorett chewed on that. “Give it a couple of days, then try again. Send some of the privates, some of the more expendable.” He paused. “How many of us do we still have?” He referred to the guardsman as us, as if he considered himself one of them, but he didn’t.

  “Fifty-six men.”

  “Then send two. Two privates. Yes, that’ll do. Leave me.”

  “Very good, sir,” the guardsman replied, clicked his heels together, bowed again but deeper this time, and left the king to his work. The guardsman thumbed the receiver of his radio before he had even left the main chambers, issuing the order. “Look for the bandits if they’re still in the city, and start a lottery to choose the privates who’ll head underground.”

  Alone again, Gorett took up a set of antique binoculars. The elevator station was all the way on the other side. He would’ve seen it if not for the bulwarks around the palace grounds. He spied the top of the skyscrapers in the easterly ward and, of course, the geyser again. He lowered the binoculars and dragged a hand through his silver-streaked hair.

  At least this was a different problem from that of the regular workweek morning: managing an abandoned city. Some action—a harrowing chase and a consequent kill for reward—might just keep some of the men on their toes. Even Gorett livened up at the prospect. Getting a foot on the throat of the city had been exciting, but holding it there and waiting had become a bore. Warriors need an enemy, and who better than a corpse-picking set of bandits? For the sake of his men’s waning blood thirst, Gorett hoped the bandits remained inside the city so his men could remember how good it felt to drink.

  Flam found it suspicious that the pale man didn’t ever need to drink anything, eat anything, or, as he’d learned the previous tonight, sleep. He wondered what burned inside the man to keep his gears turning. He watched him move about the haberdashery, reading, looking, delicately picking items up and checking their underside for the price tag. He was childlike in the quiet way he explored and took things in. There were no wrinkles or signs of age upon him anywhere. His attire gave him a stately air, with the tails of his suit coat hanging nearly to the backs of his knees, his shiny black hair always in a neat pile atop his head. He trod about in his scuffed-up loafers that made his feet appear clownish. Odd duck, this one.

  Flam had just pulled the bedroll blanket over himself and let the ashen man explore the haberdashery as he would. Flam quickly fell asleep and had nightmares of tumbling into the plummets, into the red maw of the geyser.

  When he awoke, several parts of his stocky frame ached as if he had spent the entire night running. He sat up and saw Clyde still up, seated behind the counter, going through a heavy gilt-leafed tome he’d found sometime in the night.

  “Still up, huh?”

  Clyde kept studying the book. “That I am.”

  Still sore about last night, apparently. Maybe I was a little too harsh about his friend, Flam thought. Think about how you felt when your uncle Greenspire died. What if someone said mean things about him? You would’ve knocked their block off.

  But apologizing was tough for Flam. Always had been. So he decided to just be a little nicer to Clyde. “What have you got there?” he asked, getting to his feet and fastening on his segments of armor.

  “I’m looking to see if Mr. Wilkshire ever shopped here.” Clyde held the book aloft, the cover inscribed by hand with the word Purchases. “There are so many signatures, and many of them are illegible. Sadly, I don’t see it in here.”

  “Your friend was a rich bloke, Pasty. I really doubt he ever shopped at this junky place.”

  Clyde shut the ledger, and a defeated look formed on his face. He spun on the stool and peered through the window shutters. Gingerly, he hopped down, dodged the counter, and approached the front door, fully intending to open it and spring through, when Flam caught him by the crook of his elbow.

  Flam shook his horned head. “It’s fine to go roaming about in the night, but walking the streets of Geyser during the day is a bad idea. The Patrol has morning routes they take, up and down every boulevard.” He checked his multidialed watch, set to various planets’ times, focusing on Gleese’s, specifically Geyser’s. “Surely they’ll be by any minute. The elevator across the street is, without a doubt, on their list of places to check. Their interest will be doubly piqued when they see it’s been broken.”

  “So what are we going to do? Wait here?”

  “No, we’ll go out the back. There are some alleys we can take to the street on the other side of this ward. I have an idea how we can get out of Geyser and be on our way.”

  “You do? That’s fantastic. Did you dream it up in the night? Mr. Wilkshire used to tell me he got his best ideas in dreams. Of course, I wouldn’t know anything of that, never having slept a wink in my entire life.”

  “Okay, okay. Settle down.” Flam gazed past Clyde to the windows.

  Ducking, he squeezed his fingers between the shutters to get a better look at the street. The suns were bright, the sky cloudless for the first time since he had been in Geyser. The thunderheads appeared to have moved on, Geyser illuminated as if under a spotlight. They were more vulnerable than ever now.

  Behind him, Clyde whispered, “What’s your idea?”

  Across the street, the chain-link gate of the elevator didn’t appear to have been disturbed since they’d broken in the night before. The Patrol weren’t engineers; most didn’t know how to fix anything outside of their autos and firearms. But if they saw it broken, they would throw down pylons and yellow tape and put it on a checklist of places to attend to in the future. They may even post a robot as watchdog, since no Patrol guardsman wasted his day standing about. Especially on a sunny morning when there was plenty of sitting around to accomplish before the day was through . . .

  A rigid finger poked Flam’s side. “I asked you a question.”

  Flam straightened, jolted out of his trance. For a big brute, he was still ticklish. He steppe
d out of arm’s reach so Clyde couldn’t do that again.

  Pulling out his pipe for the first smoke of the day, he said, “In the medical ward hospital there’s an elevator that may go out of Geyser, used strictly for emergency care. Of course, that’s just a rumor. My uncle was sent there once to tinker with one of the hospital lifts, but that may have just been for the hospital itself and not to go out the bottom of Geyser. Either way, it’s worth checking on.”

  “Certainly is. Are we going right this instant?”

  “Don’t jump out of your skin. Let me get my things,” Flam set to bundling his bedding, bending the sausage-shaped roll in half and stuffing it into his satchel. He fastened its clips to his belt of pouches. He picked up his blunderbuss, which had been at easy reach while he was sleeping, looped its strap over his shoulder, and hopped in place while the strap found a purchase on his armored shoulder. Everything on the shelves clattered and danced as he did.

  Clyde looked around, mystified at the small earthquake.

  “Don’t say a word. I’ll go on a diet when I feel like it.”

  Clyde made no remark but caught the blunderbuss in the sights of his beady black eyes.

  It was a rather funny-looking weapon, Flam knew, because it wasn’t clean and streamlined like most weapons sold at stores or in vending machines. It was a clunky thing, much like its owner, industrious and nothing more than it needed to be. A sturdy hodgepodge of various mechanical things, the most evident being the brand name of a vacuum cleaner still readable upon the barrel. The stock was made from wood pilfered from an old butter churn. The trigger mechanism was the spring and arm set from a typewriter, the trigger’s finger pad the F key. F for Flam, he always told anyone who dared ask. But it could also mean a great deal of other things, depending on his mood.