14

The rest of the trip was more or less uneventful. There aren't a lot of big crossings to get through between Metro Central and the Museum Station, and Museum Station gets enough traffic through it that hostiles don't settle down there for long. Among other things, if it starts to hurt business in Underworld Ahzrukhal has been known to send his manservant down there to clean out the beasties.

Which reminded me. As we came up the main tunnel to the station I told the others, "If you see a big Ghoul in leather armor, carrying a rifle, leave him alone."

"Ah," grunted Fawkes. "You refer to Charon."

"Charon?" asked Three, after working his jaw silently for a few seconds. The big platform up ahead of us seemed empty, a big dim space with dust motes swirling through it. It looks pretty much like every other Metro subway platform, except that it might be a little cleaner.

"He's, well, it's hard to explain," I said. "He works for the guy who tends bar at the Ninth Circle in Underworld. Sort of. He's not exactly a slave but to call him a freeman would be a stretch. He's got some kind of weird mental thing going on."

But Charon wasn't down there that day. The platform was empty, and the hallway after it was empty. I stopped to give the Nuka-Cola machine a kick out of habit, but it was empty, too. I like a bottle of the regular stuff once in a while, when I get dry and I'm tired of water.

Somebody always seems to come down and shove the chain-link gates shut again when they get left open. I looked out through them at the dark stairwell outside. "Let me go first," I said. "Everybody here knows me." I shoved at the rusty gate and it screeched open.

"Willow?" I called.

Footsteps crunched toward us, then stopped. I'd been this way a few times now. I knew she'd be waiting just past where a super mutant would be able to see her from the doorway. "Yes?" said Willow's voice. (Now, depending on who's reading this, you might or might not be able to tell Ghoul voices apart, but believe me, Ghouls can. Fawkes says he can recognize mine, but he's been around me a lot. I can pretty much tell his voice from another mutant's by this point.)

"It's Thistle," I said. "I'm with a smoothskin and Fawkes."

"Fawkes?" she said. "You mean Fawkes, the super mutant who used to hang around with the Vault Dweller?" She didn't say the one who let him get killed, but it was there in her tone.

"Hrm?" said Gary. He looked at Fawkes, then at me. I guess he hadn't made the connection before. That wasn't too surprising. He couldn't have been out of the Vault for too long when I met him. He probably hadn't even heard of the Vault Dweller until last month sometime.

"This a problem?" I asked.

"I guess not," said Willow. "As long as they behave themselves. Come on up."

I looked at Fawkes. "Not too late to change your mind," I said.

"It does not matter," he said, quietly for him (although I'm sure Willow heard it).

"If you say so," I said, and went up the stairs. The other two followed.

Willow stood back from the stairwell as we came up, gun in hand. She put it away as she recognized me. "Hey," she said, a little friendlier than before. "How are things out there?"

"Just like always," I said.

"Did you make it to Girder Shade?" said Willow. She was wearing a leather jacket and jeans now, ignoring the humid heat of D.C. in the springtime. But then, she never had much skin on when I saw her, and if that's the case, staying warm is harder than staying cool.

"Yeah," I said. "You know something about that?"

She looked around. We were in the shadow of the Museum's huge front, chipped pillars looming. The sidewalk went out for a few yards beyond the Metro station entrance before it trailed off into the dirt and rock. The main Mall is full of trenches and diggings, and the trenches and diggings are full of super mutants. I saw some of them in the distance, pacing behind barbed wire. All of them wore bits of rubber tires or armor made from car parts. And, I realized, that must be another reason why Fawkes kept the Vault 87 suit on. It made him easy to tell apart from the others. (My commentator here says I am completely correct. He says that otherwise, going without armor has been something of an inconvenience, which I think is what you'd call an understatement.)

"I heard about it," said Willow, apparently satisfied there was no one in earshot. "Tulip told me Dahlia was getting something for her. I'd guess it's something she wants really bad. And she said you were going with her. And then I found out it's something Ahzrukhal wants, too."

"Bad enough to send Charon?" I asked, with sort of a sinking feeling.

"Nah," said Willow, waving a dismissive hand. "He wouldn't let Charon off the leash for that long, from what I hear."

"So he hired an out-of-towner," I said. "Did you know about this before I left?"

"No," said Willow. Something about the tone of my voice warned her. One hand fingered the strap of her rifle. "I just heard this week. Why?"

"Never mind," I said. "I'll take it up with Tulip." I turned and went to haul the big front door open, and then we were in the Museum's main lobby. Fawkes had to duck and turn to get through the door, but there was plenty of clearance inside. The lobby is very wide and high, and there's a clear path from the front door to the entrance to Underworld in between the fallen exhibits. Nobody's taken time to clean out the old mammoth yet. It's falling to bits.

"See that?" I said to Three, jerking a thumb at the enormous fake-stone skull over the doors. "Underworld. I guess somebody thought it would be funny to move in here after the War."

There are no guards in the lobby. Anybody who makes it past Willow still has to get through the Underworld main doors. And right behind those doors is Cerberus, who knows a non-Ghoul is coming when they're a hundred yards away. Don't ask me how. But he was waiting right inside when I walked in. He was hovering above the floor with all four arms' worth of armaments aimed at the door, humming with active power cells. If you're reading this, you've probably seen the Mister Handy and Mister Gutsy bots around. Cerberus is just another one of the old octopus-shaped Robco models that somebody slapped a combat inhibitor on and tweaked a little in the programming.

"Hi, Cerberus," I said. "They're with me."

"Whatever you say," said Cerberus in the movie-drill-sergeant voice that apparently came with his AI. He rotated around and glided off, grumbling under his breath.

I looked around. There are always people on the main concourse in Underworld, day or night. There are no windows, and time doesn't have quite the same meaning in there. The floor is a shiny tan marble and there are stairwells up each side as you go in. They go up to the balconies and the upper rooms where Carol's Place and the Ninth Circle are. Here it's obvious that Ghouls really don't look alike. Every different shade and shape and size is on display, and every degree of skin loss. Most are like me, with recurring patches that come and go. Most are also dry and flaky, not much like an actual corpse. A few of the unlucky ones ooze from the surface under their outer skin, and they smell. (So I'm told, anyway. It must not be strong enough to bother somebody with as little nose as I've got.)

Almost everybody had stopped to stare at Fawkes and Three. Fawkes looked around slowly, arms at his sides, radiating warmth and calm. Three looked quickly around him and up and to each side, like he was memorizing it all in case there was going to be a test later. He looked nervous. But then, smoothskins in Underworld usually do. Outside that place, it's rare to see non-Feral Ghouls (Fawkes says perhaps I mean sapient Ghouls, which is another word he had to spell for me) more than one at a time. Suddenly having the tables turned on you will make anybody nervous.

I was pretty sure that wasn't why Three was bothered, but of course nobody else knew that. I've since heard it described as a target saturation problem (probably by Fawkes, being as how he's the only person I now who talks like that). Three was trying to figure out who he would kill in what order if we were attacked. I felt a little cold as I realized this. Underworld was the closest thing to a home I'd had for a long time.

"Let's go find Tulip," I said. The spell was broken. People went on about their business or went back to lounging on the benches chatting, although there were plenty of glances our way as we went past. The doors to left and right looked exactly alike. I went straight to Underworld Outfitters without looking at the sign. Tulip is the only one in town who sells much in the way of ammo. That's how I happened to be in her store when she was looking for an escort for the older lady (I guess her name was Dahlia, funny what you remember) on her way out to Girder Shade. She didn't tell me anything about any package then, though. And definitely nothing about Jay. I felt a little burn when I thought about that.

Tulip was behind the counter when I came in. She's pretty pale for a Ghoul; she was probably Caucasian before she changed. Her eyes got big as she watched Fawkes duck and squeeze himself through the doorway. He didn't scrape the gatling laser on anything, which I thought was doing pretty well. He could stand up inside the room, but only just. Underworld Outfitters consists of basically one medium-sized room, with the old fake pillars still standing up against the walls and a nice rug on the floor. There's a clutter of guns and ammo and clothes on shelves around the room, and a prewar cash register and computer terminal on the counter.

Tulip looked at Three for a long time. He looked back warily. "Hi there," she said.

"Tulip," I said. Her eyes came back to me with a jerk. "I got something of a bone to pick with you."

"Thistle!" she said, maybe a little guiltily. "Is Dahlia all right? It took you a long time to get back."

"She was fine, last I saw," I said. I leaned forward with my two palms on the counter. "Whereas I got shot through the gut. Which is why I was late getting back. And no, I don't have your package."

"Why not?" She was more worried about this than me getting shot, I noticed. "You mean he got it?"

"No," I said. "I blew it up before he got the chance. Why didn't you tell me someone else wanted it? For that matter, why didn't you tell me about the package to begin with?"

"I told you Dahlia needed protection," said Tulip. She stiffened her spine and narrowed her eyes, trying to regain some composure. "That's all you really needed to know."

"Apparently it was not," rumbled Fawkes behind me. His voice was quite calm, without a trace of berserker snarl, but Tulip apparently couldn't tell that. One hand strayed below the countertop, where I knew there would be a gun. I unshouldered the plasma rifle and powered it up in one movement, and Tulip froze with it aimed between her eyes.

"Hands on the counter," I said. "Me having to shoot you would interfere with your ability to tell me what the Hell is going on."

From the corner of my eye, I saw Three standing beside the door. He watched the main concourse outside with no apparent interest in what we were doing, holding the door open a crack. Tulip had undoubtedly registered that he was unarmed, but that didn't much matter. If she called for help Cerberus might come in after us, but a Mister Gutsy is no match for a super mutant with a gatling laser. That went double when that super mutant was Fawkes.

"Take it easy, Thistle," said Tulip. She set her hands slowly on top of the wooden surface. "No need to get hostile. I'll tell you all about it."