she would prefer to keep buried, and for the others they were reminders only of the previous visit and the disasters that had ensued.
Mildred, tired of being reminded of the world before the nukecaust, asked what had happened.
She listened while they told her and Jak of their previous visit to this redoubt and their encounter with the Keeper. How he had been desperate for new blood to provide for another Keeper to succeed him, and how he and his sister-wife Rachel had clung to the companions to give them that new blood, wanting to keep them here. About how, when they had then left the redoubt they had encountered the Russian bandits who had made their way across the wastelands separating the old United States from the old USSR in the snow-filled lands that had once been Alaska.
Jak nodded recognition when they spoke of the Russian Major, Zimyanin, who had led the Russian sec in pursuit of the bandits. The name was familiar to him from the time when the mat-trans had sent them to the old capital of the USSR, Moscow, and they had once more encountered the granite-faced sec man.
But even though he may have expected to have heard all about their previous encounter, he was astonished when the facts unfolded. The fact that they had broken a dam with an old missile and flooded part of the land in escaping from Zimyanin’s arbitrary justice was something that had been unknown to him. Ryan’s description of the expression on the Russian’s face when the dam broke made Jak laugh, a short, loud bark that broke the silence. A noise he doubled when he heard how the man had been duped by another missile, this one a dummy.
It should have broken the tension, but it didn’t. They were all still uneasy. There was little in the way of useful food supplies left from their previous stopover, so they would have to move soon anyway: jump to another location or walk out into a hostile and frozen environment that had been changed by the dam burst. If they jumped, it was possible that the new redoubt and its environs would be just as hostile.
As Ryan had once read in a predark book, better the devil you knew… They’d attempt to find more supplies in the frozen wasteland before attempting a jump.
“RECKON WE SHOULD MOVE as soon as possible,” Ryan said to Krysty as they settled into the whirlpool bath that was still working perfectly. “Could make the food last a few days, but…”
Krysty shook her head, the long red tresses flowing freely over her shoulders. Despite the air of unease about the redoubt, there was no danger, and so her sentient hair remained at ease, despite the swirl of worry that surrounded her heart.
“It’s going to be hard out there. Real hard. I remember what it was like from before. But it’s got to be better than in here. It’s like there are ghosts watching us, coming down and pressing us into the ground.”
Ryan said nothing for a moment. Finally he broke the silence. “Shouldn’t be that way. We’ve chilled our share—had to, before they chilled us. Quint and Rachel were just another two. No reason they should come back, not something stupe like ghosts, but the memory…”
Krysty reached out and stroked his face, tracing the line of his scar from the empty eye socket down to his jaw. “It isn’t them,” she said simply. “It’s Hunnaker. It’s Lori. It’s being back where so much really started. And it’s being able to relax for once. We know what’s out there—more or less—and we know what’s in here. There’s nothing to keep on edge about. And when you do that, that’s when the ghosts start to creep back and you have the time to think about all the things that you don’t really want to think about.”
“So mebbe the sooner we get on the move, the sooner we have things to deal with and the sooner this feeling will go.”
“You got that, lover.” She pulled him toward her. “But while we are here, do you remember what we did the last time we used this bath?” Her hands probed beneath the surface of the water, reaching for him. “Oh, yeah, I reckon you do.” She smiled.
“Right…” Ryan moved in close, his hands reaching down under the water for her.
It wasn’t just sex, it was making love, connecting in a way that they hadn’t been able to for too long. They had the space, the privacy and the time. What was more, the intensity drove away the demons, banishing them to some area far away where they could no longer disturb or intrude.
It was only afterward, when they had finished, and had left the bath, that Ryan wandered into the gym that led off the bathroom. While the bath drained as noisily as it had on their previous visit, and Krysty dried herself off, there was some memory that had come back to Ryan and was bugging him. It was only when he looked over at the closed door and expected to see a length of green ribbon that he remembered: Quint had watched them when they were here before and had left the ribbon by accident. He wore it in his long, tangled beard. Krysty had found the length that time. And now Ryan had expected to see it once again, even though he knew that was impossible.
He was still standing naked, staring at the door, when she came out to him. Following the line of his gaze, she knew what he was seeing in his mind’s eye.
“Do you think Doc’s right?” he asked simply. Then, when he noticed Krysty’s puzzled stare, he added: “What he was saying in the chamber, about us repeating ourselves time and time again. Back here, waiting for it to start over just like last time…”
“But it’s not the same, is it? There’s no Quint, no Zimyanin, and the landscape outside is different after the dam broke. We’ve got Jak and Mildred. So it’s different. But there are some things that are the same, that are always the same. There’s always some bastard who wants to stand in our way, or pick a fight with us. So we fight. Either that or let them chill us, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to buy the farm yet.”
“True enough,” Ryan agreed, putting his arm around her and pulling her close so that he could feel her warmth, reassure himself that she was real even if his fears weren’t. “But don’t you remember that one time we wanted to head to where Trader said there was a place we could settle and build a life without having to fight?”
“Yeah, and look how much we had to fight when we were looking. No more or less than we have to fight now. Mebbe it doesn’t even exist. Mebbe it’s like that place Mildred told us about once, that was in an old book. Erewhon. Even heard of that myself, back in Harmony. Supposed to be where everything was perfect.”
“So where was it?”
Krysty fixed him with a stare. “Know what you get if you take the letters in Erewhon and put them in a reverse order? Nowhere, Ryan. And mebbe that’s what Trader’s place is—just somewhere in your head that you can try and make.”
“But the disk. If we could ever have cracked that comp code, then—”
“Then mebbe it was only the plans for some so-called perfect place, like all the ideas that those stupes who started the nukecaust ever had. Plans, not a real place. And if it was a real place, mebbe it was standing then but not now.”
“So there was no point in searching?”
She shrugged. “Depends what for. If it’s for something solid and tangible, then mebbe not. But if it was for somewhere we could settle and make that place ourselves, then mebbe.”
“Then every time we land somewhere, there’s always a chance. If only it wasn’t for those stupe bastards who just don’t get it…”
IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN an opportunity for them to get some valuable sleep before they stepped out into the frozen wastes, but no one
