Motherlode Read Online Free Page A

face. He looked young, not much older than Ricky—a year or two older than Jak, say.
    The mutie shook him up and down furiously. “I’m not a mutie, you diseased buffalo sphincter!” roared the right-hand head in a voice of thunder. It was the better-looking of the two, if such a term was applicable. It had a broad jaw and a shock of black hair.
    “He displays a highly unusual combination of erudition and vulgarity,” Doc said. “Admirable, in its way.”
    “We’re conjoined twins,” the other head said calmly. “It’s a common error. Don’t blame my brother Michael too much. He has a sensitive soul, especially on that subject.”
    That head was much the less presentable, with a balding pate that seemed to come to a point, a furrowed brow and snaggled teeth. Yet its voice was soft.
    “I don’t give a shit, you freak! You got no right to lay your nuking hands on me!”
    The giant carried his uselessly struggling burden into the street. Krysty saw he had apparently done so to give way to a second figure, considerably smaller but possessed of undeniable presence.
    “You violated the rules of my establishment, Chad,” a woman said with a languid wave of her long slim cigarette holder, which Krysty observed held a long, thin black cigarillo. “Actions have consequences. You need to learn that.”
    “What? That gaudy slut had it coming! She talked back to me!”
    The woman’s face, its pallor already marked and accentuated by the chin-length black hair that framed it, went as white as Jak’s.
    “You do not call my people that!” she said.
    Chad had some comeback to that, but it got lost in the general sputtering and gobbling as the giant shook him up and down again, much harder.
    “Nor do you lay hands on them if they tell you not to,” the woman said. She was dressed all in black, from the bow in her hair, down to her pinafore-like dress, elbow-length fingerless lace gauntlets, knee-high stockings and shoes. “That is what you’re being ejected for. The abusive term merely compounds your offense.”
    Chad’s eyes bugged out and he flailed his arms in a hopeless attempt to get at the hand that was shaking him. Finally he managed to choke out, “P-please, sto-oo-oo-p!”
    “Do you promise to behave yourself?” the woman said.
    “Y-y-yes-ss, mumm-umm-am!”
    The balding head had turned to keep one eye on the gaudy owner. The other, Krysty noted, was still positioned to keep watch on the band of newcomers. The better-looking head continued to admire the giant’s handiwork in shaking Chad.
    “You may stop, Mikey-Bob,” the woman said.
    “Mikey-Bob?” Mildred repeated incredulously but quietly.
    Chad hung from the giant’s fist like an unconscious puppy. His jaw hung slack, his tongue lolled out and his eyes had rolled up in his head.
    The woman in black put her hands on her hips. “Well, young man? I hope you’ve learned your lesson.”
    Chad raised his head. He managed to twist his mouth into a leering smile.
    “Why don’t you suck my dick, you bi— Uh! Uh!”
    Mikey-Bob had started shaking him again. This time the giant’s efforts made his earlier exertions seem like playful fooling around. Krysty actually wondered if the unruly customer’s neck might snap.
    “Is it time to smack him, D.L.?” asked the sparse-haired, homelier head.
    “I believe that it is, Bob,” she said.
    With surprising coordination for a guy with two heads, Mikey-Bob let Chad’s shirt go with his right hand while fetching a straight-armed slap to the side of his head with the other. Chad sailed fifteen feet into the middle of the street and landed hard, in a crumple. He had his ass in the air and his face pressed to the hard-packed yellowish dirt, as if he were trying to imitate a plow.
    With an air of immense satisfaction, Mikey-Bob dusted equally immense hands together. “Good riddance,” Mikey said.
    “—to bad rubbish,” Bob finished.
    “Regular stand-up comedian, these two,” Mildred muttered.
    The