"Welcome to a sampling of a civilization of sorts," Mildred said with a chuckle. "Let's just hope there isn't a Freedom Mall sales tax."

THE MALL INTERIOR WAS a queer mix of preservation, restoration and retrofitting. There were two floors, with the second floor having a high ceiling that stretched up to a series of clear sky panels that allowed the sun to provide interior illumination. Half of the upper level was floorless, with open walkways that allowed the sunlight to filter down below, giving room for multiple sets of wide stairwells and narrow, nonfunctioning escalators. An overblown abstract sculpture also dominated in the area they currently were looking at, the "arms" of the piece stretching skyward, graceful and long.

The populace spilled out everywhere, most walking, some on skateboards or inline skates. A rickshaw-styled taxi service seemed to be doing well, manned by weary-looking bare chested men as the two-seater carriages rolled past.

Most of the visible storefronts had kept their original signage, with new additions added below. Others had chosen to strip away or cover the names of original Freedom tenants. Mildred counted several familiar names from her previous life that were still in evidence.

"First thing we do is find a place to stay," Ryan said.

"Well," Mildred said brightly, "any mall this size I ever went into had directories to help out new visitors. Directories were also good promotion for stores. They helped steer you where they wanted you to go, not where you might stumble by accident."

"Comp terminals?" Dean asked.

"No, Dean, not that high-tech, although now that I think about it, some places did feature information banks with computers, in case someone was interested in finding out more about a store or wanted to find a particular brand of merchandise. Pretty slow, primitive stuff, though, and designed to be idiot proof to keep Joe Public from becoming frustrated and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up the system."

"Could just ask somebody. Might be a lot simpler," Krysty said. "Plenty of folks to choose from."

"In a place this size?" Mildred retorted. "By the time they explained where we wanted to go, we could have already been there."

"It was just a suggestion," Krysty replied.

"I must confess to a strange feeling hovering between euphoria at having a roof over my head in a secure environment, and claustrophobia at the number of people crammed alongside us in here," Doc commented after being jostled by a pa.s.sing couple.

"There it is," Mildred said, pointing toward the back of the long hall of shops past the Bank of Freedom. The group peered down at a black monolithic slab that seemed to glow with a hidden radiance from within.

Everyone approached the Slab. From their earlier viewpoint, it had appeared to be rectangular, but now they could see it was triangular. The same information was on all three sides, a carefully lined map of the interior of Freedom with numbers and letters in each box or pa.s.sageway of the grid. The code numbers corresponded to a long list of shops and services stenciled in below, each section with a different heading in alphabetical order.

"Upper level is split into two parts, Section A and Section B," Dean said.

"And the lower level is also divided into Sections C and D," Doc read. "We are currently in D, according to the You Are Here arrow."

"Layout looks pretty basic, and each of the sections is split by a big store. Says here the old JC Penney is the link to either side."

Mildred whistled softly as she looked over the listings. "Impressive. Someone in here has graphic-arts skills, and we all know how unusual that is to come across. This directory appears to be completely up-to-date. At least, there were no chain stores in the 1990s called The Gaudy Boutique or Mike's Meats to my recollection."

"Why glow?" Jak asked, speaking for the first time since they had entered Freedom. The albino had been scanning the visible rail of the level above them, keenly staring at any of the pa.s.sersby who chose to look down. Unlike Doc, Jak found no peace or security in having a roof over his head. A roof could hide many things. The only way in and out of Freedom was crawling with sec men, but it also made a man stay wary.

Ryan felt the same way, but was more inclined to go with what was presented to him in front of his own eyeat least, for the moment.

Mildred answered Jak's question. "The construct we're looking at has fluorescent tubes on the inside with clear gla.s.s walls. I don't know where the power source is. It could be batteries or hooked into the system somehow. All you have to do is make up your color-coded overlay on a plastic sheet of acetate this looks like it was generated by a computer laser printerand attach your listings to the back side of the gla.s.s so no one can get to it, and presto, you've got your very own mall directory."

Dean pointed a finger at one of the headings with the listing Travel-Lodging.

" 'Freedom Center Station,' " he read. " 'One night or one year.' "

"The place looks big," J.B. said. "Takes up a chunk of the far end of the mall."

"And it's close by, too. We've walked long enough today," Krysty added.

Ryan was in total agreement. "Bunks for one night seems about all we can afford right now. I held back part of our jack at the bank. My guess is some of the stores in here will take tender they don't have to worry about reporting or running through the proper channels of exchange. After what we've seen, I'm sure the mall probably hits them up for a ten percent handling charge just like us visitors."

"We've got some bartering power with the antibiotics I found. Medicine is worth a pretty penny, especially in a place like this," Mildred noted.

"We'll see about selling it or swapping it tomorrow," Ryan said. "Tonight I just want to sleep."

"And see about scrubbing that skin dye off," Krysty teased.

Dean wasn't listening to any of that. His attention was still on the inwardly lit mall directory and the maze of attractions and shops it promised. "Hey!" he suddenly yelled. "Look at this!"

"What?" Ryan asked, a little annoyed at Dean's outburst. He'd almost drawn out his side blaster, thinking they were about to be attacked.

"Here, Dad! Dr. Michael Clarke, Eye Specialist."

"By the Three Kennedys," Doc agreed in a hushed tone. "It seems we've found a solution to J.B.'s eye problems in the timely form of this good optician."

"I don't know," Mildred said gently, not wanting to get J.B.'s hopes up until they knew more about the mysterious Dr. Clarke. Besides, a doctor wasn't needed as badly as a new pair of corrective gla.s.ses.

"Guess we can make one detour before bunking down," Ryan agreed. "Think you can find this place, Dean?"

"No prob, Dad."

Ryan gestured for Dean to take the point. "Lead on, then."

"BLUE LIGHT SPECIAL!" a dirty young man with s.h.a.ggy brown hair cried out, waving his scabby arms and dancing around in a circle. As his patched long coat flapped around him like a cloak, he continued to chant, "Blue light! Blue light! Blue light special!"

The words created a surge in the milling crowd. Every man, woman and child dropped what they were doing and followed the mall crier.

"Where?" a man demanded.

"Which front?" a woman added.

"Name the place! Name it!" a couple said, their voices overlapping, matched in strident intensity.

"Where?" was the group cry. "Where is the blue light?"

A strobe suddenly erupted into being, shimmering, flickering, calling out over and over again in a strident on-off pattern from a shop located two dozen storefronts away. The instant the light revealed itself, most of the onlookers took off at a pace between a brisk walk and a fast jog.

"Pardon me, sir," Doc said, addressing a weather-beaten man dressed in a patched red-flannel shirt and threadbare denim jeans, "but what is a 'blue-light special' and why has it caused such excitement from our fellow mall visitors?"

"It's a secret," the man replied mysteriously. "A surprise sale."

"A sale of what?"

"That's the secret. A blue light means you save big on whatever the store chooses to sell dirt cheap. You never know when a store is going to have a blue light, and you never know what is going to go on sale. But the faster you can run and get there, the better selection you'll have. Personally I've never found anything worth a d.a.m.n. I've got a b.u.m knee, so by the time I show up, all the good stuff has already been taken. It's not fair, but then again, nothing in life ever is."

"You don't say," Doc said, stroking his chin.

J.B. STEPPED OUT of the small entrance to Dr. Clarke's office. Clarke had also kept a piece of the past, retaining the Lenscrafters sign his facility originally used.

The visit to the eye doctor took only moments. The prices quoted for the man's services, including a pair of eyegla.s.ses, were well beyond the group's current financial status. Another solution would have to be sought, but not until all had gotten some much needed rest.

Silently the group walked back to the Freedom Center Station. In a former life, the boarding hotel and apartment building had served as a "hub" store, one of the name-brand anchor shops that ensured a large crowd of excited customers would continue to come out to buy on a regular basis. Mildred recognized the logo of the place immediately.

"Sears. Where America Shops For Value," she said dryly.

Once the rate was paid, and three rooms were secured, the companions went their separate ways. Each couple got a room, with Dean, Jak and Doc getting the third.

Usually a room alone meant time for lovemaking for Ryan and Krysty, but exhaustion had combined with the still fresh memories of Pharaoh Akhnaton's mind games to still their pa.s.sions. They mostly succeeded in cleansing themselves in a lukewarm shower, and were asleep within seconds of lying down together, their bodies intertwined tightly.

Chapter Eleven.

J.B., now also cleansed of the skin dye, felt terrible, and his eyes hurt from the constant squinting he was having to engage in to try to bring his surroundings into better focus. The century-old adhesive of the fresh bandages Mildred had applied to his facial lesions itched, but he knew better than to scratch. The last thing he wanted to do was endure a double dose of Doc's aimless chatter before he even had a full cup of coffee sub.

The group of friends had gathered in the late morning for a meal of water and eats from their supply packs. They were sitting in one of the common areas inside the mall. Arriving early due to being awakened at dawn by chronic aches and pains of travel, Doc had scoped out a wide bench and claimed it for his own, and for the use of his companions as they began arriving at the spot at the agreed-upon time.

However, sitting with Doc at your elbow came with a price, as J.B. was reminding himself.

"Alas, friends, but the fates have provided for us while spitting upon our unprotected brows simultaneously," Doc was saying. "Normally the loss of John Barrymore's spectacles would be the cause of dire calamities indeed. Now we are within the protected walls of a virtual village of shops, including that rarest of rarities, a genuine optician."

"What wrong with this picture, Doc?" Mildred asked, her clear voice thick with annoyance.

"I was getting to that, Dr. Wyeth. No, unfortunately, we do not possess the necessary currency to purchase the needed services of the aforementioned ocular physician," Doc said, and added, "So, we are f.u.c.ked. Put succinctly."

"Don't say 'f.u.c.k,' Doc. It sounds all wrong coming out of your mouth," Krysty protested.

"There's always a way," Ryan said. "We're not out of ideas yet."

Krysty squeezed Ryan's knee. "I know that tone, and you know better than to even think of trying to walk in there and take a pair of eyegla.s.ses for J.B."

Ryan a.s.sumed a look of mock hurt. "You don't think I could get away with it?"

"Mebbe, mebbe not. First J.B. would have to take the eye exam so we'll know what kind of lenses he needs. He said the eye doc told him he needed jack up front before doing the examination."

"Makes good sense. Payment in full before you get started, otherwise whoever it is you're examining may decide he doesn't like what you've got to say and bolt."

"Even if you bullied Dr. Clarke into doing the exam, he's got thousands of different kinds of gla.s.ses in his office. No telling which set of lenses J.B. needs," Mildred added. "Besides, I kind of liked the guy."

"s.h.i.t!" J.B. snorted. "The prices he's charging are ridiculous."

"That's a carry-over from the good old days," Mildred interjected. "Us doctors always demanded top pay for our services."

"What we do now?" Jak asked.

"Pay the man what he wants, I guess," Ryan said, polishing off the last of his portion of the powdered-eggs self-heat for his morning meal.

"Still think just go in, take them," Jak muttered. "Take them all. Find a pair that works."

Mildred threw up her hands. "Jak, the going rate is the going rate. Clarke's talentsand his apparent ready supply of gla.s.sesare rarely found. I never met an eye doctor wandering around in Deathlands, have you?"

"Can't say as I ever have," Ryan said. "Where did you get your first pair of specs anyway, J.B.?"

"I was just a kid," the Armorer began to say before a very small man stepped in front of him with an excited look.

"Pardon me, yes, I overhear you have a problem, no?" the unfamiliar voice piped up. "I have the answer, yes!"

Ryan's hand shot out like a steel baton and grabbed the little man by the throat. The fellow was dressed to the nines in a tiny pair of dress shoes, green pants and matching jacket, bow tie and a dramatic black cape draped over his shoulders.

"You listening to our private conversations, runt?" Ryan said as the little man tried to pull away.

"Define listening, uh-huh. Air is free. Mall is open. I pa.s.s by, I hear. You no want people hearing, keep mouth shut, understand?"

J.B. gave a short bark of laughter at the dwarfs logic. "Yeah, Ryan, understand?"

Jak narrowed his ruby red eyes at the struggling dwarf.

"Your white-hair no like Lucas."

"He doesn't like eavesdroppers," Mildred said. "Nor do I."

"Is okay. I no like him, either," the dwarf replied.

Ryan unclenched his hand and released the little man. "You planning on making some kind of point, Lucas? Or are you purposefully trying to p.i.s.s one of us off enough to get yourself chilled?"

"Make you offer. Good money to be had. Mall credits enough to take care of any problems," Lucas replied, adjusting his cape.

"Oh, yeah? How?"

"The pit. Combat in the pit, winner take all."

"What, a fight?"

"In the pit, that's right, yes, fight, yes. One against another. Two go in, one comes out. Beat the champion and the winner gets a shopping spree, up to a thousand mall creds on anything he wants to buy in Freedom. No blasters, blades or other nonprojectile hand weapons, yes. Anything goes."

"Sounds like a bargain-bas.e.m.e.nt version of the Big Game," J.B. mused.

Dean gave a barely noticeable shudder as the Armorer's words triggered the memory of the gladiator-style killing games held in the ruins in the once prosperous Las Vegas, Nevada. Until a few months ago, the youngster had been a student at the Nicholas Brody School in Colorado, where Ryan had left him for a period of proper education.

The kind of learning Ryan had paid for hadn't come cheap in the h.e.l.lish world of Deathlands, but he had known his son would need some formal schooling before returning to the harsh realities of daily survival. Knowledge was just as useful a weapon as a good blaster if a man was educated enough to use it, and Ryan wanted his own flesh and blood to have the opportunity to be as culturally aware as he had been during his own childhood.

Unfortunately things had started to go wrong at the Brody School soon after Ryan left his son.

The school hadn't been able to live up to what its reputation and secure grounds promised. More and more often, Ryan was seeing that so much of anything relied on the strength of a single vision. Sometimes the vision was for the greater good, like the school and the desire to educate, but more often, the vision was yet another nameless, faceless land baron who had grabbed enough power and clout to swing his weight around.