Test of Fire

Chapter 19

It was pleasantly cool among the trees. The Sun still felt hot, falling in mottled patches through the swaying branches and lighting up the grassy glades of clearings among the trees. The breeze had a tang to it as it gusted in from the northwest.

The leaves were already falling, their colors fantastic.

Alec had never seen such a profusion of reds and golds before.

But he was not paying attention to the autumn foliage now. He lay on his belly atop a carpeting of soft leaves at the rim of a hill, under the cover of the maples and birches. Out in the cleared valley below stood a walled village. A cluster of little huts with thin plumes of smoke curling from a few chimneys.

Ron Jameson lay beside Alec. “They picked a good location. Couple of klicks out in the open. Nobody can get to them without them seeing him first and closing their gates.”

Nodding, Alec raised his binoculars to inspect the village’s wall. Old cinderblock, mostly. Some newly made brick. Wooden gates, probably scavenged from one of the abandoned cities nearby.

He noticed a few men working in the cornfield between the woods and the village. No women were in sight, although they might have been in among the rows of two-meter-high stalks.

“They’re greedy,” Alec said quietly. “They’ve planted cornfields all the way from the edge of their wall to the edge of the trees. And they’re trying to get a second crop in before the frosts come.”

Jameson grinned. Perfect coyer.

On Alec’s other side, Ferret jabbed an excited finger. “Road,” he said. “Carts. Wagons.”

“They must be carrying on trade with other villages,”

Alec said. “That’s too much corn for them to eat all by themselves.”

“Maybe they supply Douglas’s people?”

Jameson suggested. “If he’s got a sizable army and an organized base near here, he’d need supplies from villages like this.”

Alec scanned the area again. A cloud of dust caught his attention, far down the road toward the horizon. “Truck,” he murmured. “No, it’s a wagon, pulled by horses.”

“Wagon,” Ferret agreed, nodding happily.

He handed the binoculars to Jameson. “Empty, heading in toward the village. Driver and two gunners.”

“Wasn’t there another one yesterday?” Jameson asked, adjusting the focus as he peered through the glasses.

“That’s right. Gianelli spotted it.”

“Just about this time, too.”

Alec smiled. “We can make a Trojan Horse out of the next one.”

“A what?”

“You’ll see,” Alec said.

All through the summer Alec had driven his tiny band northward, toward the area of Douglas’s headquarters. Not that he knew where it was. Only that it was north, toward the lakes.

When he had first reported on meeting Douglas to his mother, she mused, “He was born up in the lake country. It would be just like him to make his home territory into the center of his empire.”

She assigned the satellite observers to scan the area carefully and, sure enough, they reported extensive networks of roads, villages, farms in the area. It all appeared quite settled and serene, with no sign of marauding raider packs molesting the farmers or villagers.

Alec headed for the lake country.

The laser trucks ran out of fuel after the first few days. Alec burned them, rather than let them fall into barbarian hands. But with the loss of the trucks they also lost their only link with home, the truck radios which were capable of reaching the satellite station and, through relay, the Moon. Alec had one of the radio transceivers taken from a truck and carried along.

“Whenever we find a power source for it, we can make contact again,” he told the men.

Gianelli grumbled at the extra few pounds.

Jameson ordered the men to take turns carrying it. Alec talked with Kobol or Lisa or one of the other Council members whenever they could surprise a village or an armed outpost that had a suitable electric power supply. Lisa had supplies dropped for them, with zero success. The supply vehicles were unmanned and virtually unguided, catapulted from the Moon to the satellite station and then nudged into a re-entry trajectory by the satellite crew. They flamed to Earth like great meteors, either missing Alec’s position by enormous margins or being reached first by barbarians who plundered the food, ammunition and supplies inside them long before Alec’s men could reach them.

So they lived off the land. Ferret became invaluable, bringing in food where the lunar invaders could find nothing, slowly teaching them how to hunt, trap, see the landscape and the living creatures who dwelled in it. Ecology became a lifesaving study for Alec and his men. And they stopped thinking of Ferret as a halfwitted spy in their midst.

They also raided villages and took what they needed. Alec tried to do it peacefully whenever he could, but it was seldom possible to take the food people had grown for themselves, their ammunition, boots, or medicine, and do it peacefully.

Especially when Alec had nothing to exchange for the goods he took except his thanks.

They lost three men on such raids. In one of them the seemingly indestructable Jameson took an arrow in his thigh that left a wound that infected badly. He still favored that leg.

Twice they tangled with other raider bands and fled for their lives. The raiders were bigger and knew the territory better. Like primitive tribes, each band had staked out a territory for itself and drove off trespassers.

Feudalism, Alec realized. They protect the villages and in return the villagers supply them with food. He shrugged to himself. Well, it’s a step up from barbarism.

Alec himself was wounded slightly in the arm, and they lost a fourth man the one and only time they went into a city.

Their sporadic contacts with the satellite had at least provided them with information about the radioactivity levels of the cities. Many of the urban areas had not been bombed, and fallout levels had diminished over the quarter-century since the sky burned, although the eastern seaboard from Boston to Norfolk was still a glowing tangle of devastation for fifty kilometers inland.

They had reached the Ohio River, travelling mostly on foot since the trucks had failed. The summer heat was like a weight pressing on them, although they had adapted to the sunshine by tanning darkly. They commandeered trucks or cars wherever they could find them, abandoning them when they ran out of fuel. Once in a while they would find a few horses, but such animals were usually guarded more passionately than food or women by the farmers in the villages. And Alec found it very strange and difficult to ride a vehicle that had a mind of its own. It wasn’t merely a ’201 matter of steering it; he had to fight a battle of wills to make the beast do anything at all.

Cincinnati was to their west and still dangerously radioactive, the satellite sensors showed, from the bombing of the big U.S. Air Force base in nearby Dayton. The cities along the Ohio River were mostly abandoned, emptied because the surviving people could not feed themselves inside their cities. And the diseases that had scourged the survivors had been at their worst in the cities.

But empty or not, the cities were treasure houses of canned food, ammunition, clothing, maps, compasses, vehicles, and even fast fuel dumps that still held usable gasoline. But even after twenty-five years, most of the earthlings shunned all the cities with superstitious dread.

Most of them. The satellite sensors could not warn Alec about the few crazed, ghoulish lunatics who haunted the dead, empty buildings. Nor of the rats and diseases that lingered there with them.

Alec’s band numbered twenty-three when they reached Pittsburgh. The newcomers were youngsters, several still in their teens, with only the faintest fuzz on their chins. They had joined Alec’s band from the villages, for adventure, for safety, for loot or women or to get away from parents or for any of the ancient reasons that turn a boy into a would-be warrior.

When they staggered away from Pittsburgh only nine of them were left. The city was teeming with rats and ferocious, feral dogs—and with wild-eyed, half-starved ragged screaming things that could barely be recognized as human. They fought as madmen fight, swarming into Alec’s men by the hundreds, oblivious to the murderous fire that mowed them down, piling up their dead on the broken filthy streets and still coming, clawing over the corpses to get at the living.

It took two days to get out of the city, and they had never penetrated close to the heart of it. Constant fighting, night and day, until the men and their ammunition were both exhausted. The only way they got out at all was to torch the buildings on all sides with the precious fuel they had discovered in a cargo truck. They built a wall of fire between themselves and the attacking barbarians, retreating slowly back toward the hilly countryside behind a curtain of flame and smoke.

They left Pittsburgh on foot, nearly unarmed, limping, bleeding, smoke-blackened, totally exhausted.

Of the fifteen men who had stayed with Alec at Oak Ridge, only six still lived. The three other members of his gaunt-faced band were newcomers: Ferret and two farm boys.

They moved northward again. They stole or bluffed or bartered meager possessions for guns and ammunition. Ferret kept them well-fed, by his own standards. There was no extra fat on any of them. When Alec felt strong enough, they raided a few small villages, mostly at night. They even picked up a few more recruits.

Alec learned from a woman in one village that the local raider band had been trailing them for several days and planned to destroy them. He retreated from the village hurriedly, leaving a plain trail for the raiders to follow. They walked into his forest ambush. Alec’s fourteen men, using a mixture of weapons from automatic rifles to crossbows, killed eighteen and took the weapons from their bodies as their comrades fled in panic. Then he returned to the village and took what he needed.

Now Alec travelled with a heavy automatic rifle either slung over his shoulder or cradled in his arms. Its weight was his comfort. He nurtured the weapon, kept it carefully oiled and working smoothly. It protected his life. He slept with it at his side, like a woman.

Now it was autumn. They were in the lake country, the area where Douglas had been born and to which he had returned to carve out his primitive empire.

Alec lay on the damp leaves with his rifle comfortably tucked beside him, watching the village down in the valley through his binoculars. He was convinced the village supplied Douglas with corn.

“We’ll hit them tomorrow,” Alec told Jameson.

“Take the village and hold it long enough to replenish our supplies, get fresh horses, and question them about Douglas’ headquarters.”

“Maybe they’ve got a truck,” Jameson said, almost wistfully. It was such a difference from his usual matter-of-fact tone that it startled Alec. He doesn’t like riding horses any more than I do!

“Maybe,” Alec said, keeping his smile inward.

“Tonight,” Ferret hissed. “Go when it’s dark, huh?”

Shifting slightly in his prone position, enough to make the leaves crinkle under him, Alec disagreed.

“No. Tonight they’ll bottle themselves up inside their wall. Probably they’ll have dogs out among the huts that would set up a yowl as soon as we approached. I wouldn’t want to try to climb over that wall while the villagers are shooting at me.”

Ferret’s narrow, pinched face pulled into a scowl.

“We’ll hit them tomorrow, when the men are out in the fields working. We can work our way through the corn right up to their gate.”

Jameson added, “We’d better also take that supply wagon while it’s on the way into the village. Don’t want anybody riding off to spread an alarm.”

“Good thinking,” Alec agreed.

The Sun was high in the early afternoon sky. The day was warm and drowsy with the buzz of insects. An old man, paunchy, mustacheoed, sat on a chair in the open gate of the village wall, his head on his chest, snoozing gently. An ancient shotgun lay across his lap.

Alec lay prone at the edge of the cornfield, watching the old man, giving his other men time to work their way through the tall rows of corn. It had taken nearly an hour, inching through the field slowly, crawling on their stomachs, avoiding the men picking the corn down at the far end of the field.

Now they were ready. Alec got to his feet and stepped out quickly, head ducked low, and snatched the shotgun from the old man’s hands.

“Huh… wha…”

Alec handed the gun to Ferret, on his left, as he hissed, “Not a sound, grandfather. We don’t want to hurt anyone.”

They stood him up and marched him inside the gate. “Close it,” Alec ordered. The old man did it, with help from one of Alec’s men. Alec left the youngster there to watch the old man and marched the rest of his troop past the quiet huts toward the center of the village. He could hear the horse-drawn wagon clattering and creaking up ahead, but could not see it because the narrow village street twisted between rows of huts. Then a man’s deep voice rumbled, “Hey, what the hell’s going on here?”

Quickening his pace, Alec made his way to the cleared area at the center of the village. Jameson was standing atop the wagon, an automatic rifle resting casually on his hip, its muzzle pointing at the handful of villagers who stood in the clearing, looking shocked and alarmed. Gianelli and the other men whom Alec had sent out to capture the wagon were already fanning around the edges of the clearing. Down the lane by which the wagon had come, Alec could see two of his young bowmen swinging shut the village’s other gate.

Most of the villagers in the clearing were women. A few small children clung to their mothers, already frightened. A couple of older men were easing back away from the wagon, their eyes on Jameson and his gun.

From behind them, Alec said, “You’d better stand still, all of you.”

They jumped with surprise, then froze. Alec walked past them, up to the horses that pulled the wagon. They stood stolidly, placid-eyed, neither knowing nor caring about the games the humans played.

“We don’t want anyone hurt,” Alec said loudly enough for everyone to hear. “We don’t intend to hurt any of you.”

Standing under Jameson’s protective gun, Alec ordered, “Gianelli, take your men and search every hut. I want everyone out here in the open. If there’s any trouble,” he pointed to the three men who now stood glaring at him, “these three will be shot immediately. Then the others.” Alec said it without looking at the women and children.

“There won’t be any trouble ’less you make it,” one of the women spat. She was lean and hard and splintery-looking as the logs from which the huts were made.

“Good,” Alec said. “Then we’ll get along fine.”

They secured the village quickly, Gianelli’s men rousting out another half-dozen old men and women and a few more children. Plus a fair-sized array of guns, including a carbine and a submachine gun. And many crates of ammunition, all new-looking. Made in the past year, Alec thought.

Then Alec had his men reopen the gates and stay out of sight behind the wall, awaiting the return of the village men from their fields. The villagers were returned to their huts and ordered to stay quietly inside them.

Jameson, satisfied that everything was under control, jumped down from the wagon. “Not bad,” he said. “Twenty minutes to seize, search, and settle the prisoners.”

Alec relaxed enough to grin at him.

“Got a surprise for you,” Jameson told him, starting for the back of the wagon.

“Did you have any trouble taking the wagon?”

Alec asked.

“No. Driver and two gunners, same as the past few days. Coming in for corn and hay. They didn’t put up a fight, they saw they were covered; Got them in here…”

He dropped the wagon’s rear panel and pulled a ragged covering off the three lumpy shapes back there.

“Angela!”

She was lying on the wagon’s floor with two young men, all of them bound with their wrists behind their backs, their ankles tied together.

Gags stuffed their mouths. She looked furious.

“She was one of the gunners. Tried to shoot me, too, before the driver convinced her she’d only get all three of them killed,” Jameson said, a respectful smile on his face. “I thought you’d want to talk to her.”

Alec jumped up on the wagon and pulled the gag from her mouth.

“I should’ve shot you,” she snarled at Jameson.

“If I’d thought you’d do this to me…”

“Quiet,” Alec snapped. “Ron acted under my orders. We didn’t want the wagon crew to give the villagers an alarm.” He started to untie her wrists.

“I would have, too!” She yanked her hands free of the loosened cords and sat up, reaching for her ankles.

“What are you doing on a job like this?” Alec wondered.

“What’s wrong with a woman on guard detail?” she raged. “I was the only one with guts enough to fight.” She glared at the other two prisoners, still helplessly bound and gagged.

“That would have caused a lot of shooting. Here in the village and out in the fields, too. A lot of people would’ve gotten hurt. We’re not trying to hurt these people.”

“Not much!” She pushed him away and scrambled to her feet. “You’re just trying to steal their food and weapons. Leave them hungry and defenseless.”

“No,” Alec said firmly. “What I want is what I came to Earth for: the fissionables. We’ve fought our way across the country all summer to get here. I know he’s not far from here, and the fissionables are here too.” He took her by the arm.

“Where is he?”

She looked at him. There was a silly scrap of straw clinging to her cheek. She brushed it away.

“He’s not far,” Angela said. “And when he finds out what you’ve done he’ll find you.”

“That’s fine,” Alec said. “One way or the other, it doesn’t matter. But I still want to know where he is now and where the fissionables are stored.”

Angela shook her head. “It wouldn’t do any good, even if I told you. You’d just get yourself killed. You can’t storm the base with a dozen men.”

“I can get more.”

She turned away.

“All right.” Alec hopped off the wagon, then turned to help her down. She jumped down on her own. Frowning, he turned to Jameson. “Find an empty hut and lock her into it.”

Chapter 20

The Sun swung down and touched the western hills. In small groups the village men came back from their fields, to be taken and disarmed—their faces slack with shock—by Alec’s men. By nightfall the entire village was safely under guard.

“Hey!” Gianelli shouted in the flickering light of the fire they built in the center of the village square. “We found the wine!” He waved a wicker-covered jug over his head, then put it to his lips.

Alec was sitting by the fire, eating with Jameson. “Better make certain that no more than a couple of those jugs are opened,” he said. “Put the rest under guard or break them. And keep the villagers inside their huts. I don’t want any of our men grabbing their women. I want to stay as friendly with these people as we can.”

Jameson nodded, finished scraping his plate clean, then moved off into the shadows.

Alec spent a fruitless couple of hours questioning the village men. None of them admitted to knowing where Douglas’ headquarters were, except that it was west of their valley. For years they had been sending grain over the western road in exchange for protection.

They spoke seriously and politely. They shared the wine from several jugs together. They would reveal nothing. They spoke of Alec’s father as “the Douglas,” like “the Lord.”

“You can see,” Alec said, being careful to allow a long time between sips of wine, “that he isn’t keeping his end of the bargain. Where is your protection?”

“It will come,” one of the elders said sullenly.

“Protection should protect,” Alec countered, “not revenge. My men could have burned your village, raped your women, murdered all of you.”

“Ahhh…” said the old man who had been napping by the gate. “The Douglas knew that you were no ordinary raiding band.”

“What?”

“He told us weeks ago that his son might pass this way.”

“Shut up, you old fool!” a younger man snapped.

But Alec waved him down. “Douglas came here and warned you that his son might raid your village?”

The old man looked troubled now, uncertain.

“Eh… it was something like that… perhaps I’ve got it wrong… I forget a lot nowadays…”

So he’s expecting us, Alec thought.

They changed the subject, or tried to. Alec steered it back to the location of Douglas’s headquarters.

Jameson joined the circle around the fire, but still the villagers would admit nothing.

Finally Alec bade them goodnight; they got up and returned to their huts.

Watching them drift into the darkness, Jameson murmured, “Be easier to guard them if we packed them all into one or two huts.”

“Let them sleep in their own beds,” Alec said.

“We have their weapons, and they don’t want any trouble.”

Shrugging, Jameson said, “They didn’t tell you much, did they?”

“Not much,” Alec admitted.

“We have the wagon crew. They know where Douglas’ headquarters is.”

“Yes.”

“And they know that we know. A little persuasion would open them up.”

Alec said nothing.

“I could… um, talk with them. The two men, that is. I wouldn’t bother the girl.”

“ ’Til talk to her,” Alec said, “Maybe I can convince her…” He let the thought trail off.

“Alec,” Jameson said, his lean face hidden in the shadows, “What do we do if she tells us where he is? We can’t just walk up to Douglas and expect him to hand us the fissionables.”

“No—but we can call down as many men as the settlement can provide. And I think we can recruit some of the people around here. They can’t all be totally loyal to Douglas. They’ll join our side for a share of the loot, especially when they see the army we can put together.”

“You really think Kobol’s going to bring down an army for you?”

“Not for me,” Alec said. “For the fissionables. They’ll have to.” And he added silently, to himself, Even if Kobol’s gained complete control of the Council he’ll have to come here for the fissionables.

In the dwindling firelight, it was impossible to see the expression on Jameson’s face. He said slowly, “Listen, Alec… some of the men don’t think we’ll ever get back to the settlement. They think we’ve been written off.”

“That’s not true!”

“It’s what they think,” Jameson said. “And… well, they’re not all that unhappy about it. This is a big world here. We could carve ourselves a nice chunk of it, if we wanted to. Some of the men have even been wondering why we don’t join up with Douglas…”

Alec almost swung at him. At the last instant he managed to check himself, already leaning toward Jameson with his fists clenched and ready.

Forcing his voice to remain calm, Alec asked, “Join the traitor? Let the settlement die?”

“They’ve left us to die.”

“They’ll send all the help we need, when we’re ready for it.”

Jameson made a low, sighing sound. “It better be soon, if you expect to have any of these men following you.”

“It will be,” Alec snapped. He was blazing hotter than the fire now, not trusting himself to say any more. He started to walk away.

“Wait,” Jameson called. He unbuckled his gunbelt as he walked up to Alec. “If you’re going to go strolling in the dark, you’d better have at least a pistol. Don’t trust anybody.”

Alec’s anger softened. “All right,” he said.

“Thanks.” He strapped the gun to his hip.

Walking down a crooked lane between two rows of huts, Alec saw that the stars were gleaming brightly. He recognized Orion rising sideways above the southern horizon. It’ll be winter soon, he thought. We’ve got to get the job done before the snows start.

He paced along the bare dirt path slowly, thinking, planning, trying not to think of confronting Angela and questioning her. I’ve got to find a power source for the radios. Douglas must have a few tucked away here and there, this close to his headquarters. Find one, make a raid, stay long enough to get a message off to the satellite.

A sound pulled him up short. A gasp, scuffling, heavy breathing. He flattened himself against the rough logs of the nearest hut and slid the pistol from its holster.

Again. A muffled sound, almost a groan, but stifled.

Carefully, Alec edged along the log wall. A dim light glowed faintly from a doorway in the next hut. He tiptoed for it. More gasps, whispers, then a low voice saying:

“C’mon cutey… come across… you won’t look too good if you don’t…”

Alec stepped into the hut, gun level at his waist.

In the wavering light of a single candle, he saw one of his own youngsters holding Angela’s arms pinned tightly behind her back with one brawny arm, his other meaty hand over her mouth.

Gianelli stood in front of her with a long, slim knife. Her shirt was torn away and three long welling red slashes streaked down one breast to the nipple. Her eyes were wide with pain and terror.

“Gianelli!”

He wheeled around. The knife blade was red.

“You want to find out where your father is, I’ll find out for you,” Gianelli said, his voice low and shaking with excitement. “I’ll get a lot more out of her, besides.”

“Get away from her.”

The kid let his hand drop from Angela’s mouth, but still held her arms.

“Listen,” Gianelli said. “I’ve had a bellyfull of your orders. I’ll get what you want from her and then I’ll get what I want.”

The gun’s blast was deafening in the tiny hut.

Gianelli slammed back against the wall, his mouth open in a silent “Ooohhh…” He dropped the knife and slid to the floor.

The kid stepped away from Angela, toward Gianelli’s crumpled body. “I… he told me…”

Alec fired once more and the kid’s face dissolved in an explosion of blood. Angela screamed and Alec grabbed her, pulled her out of the hut into the clean night air, leaving the stench of gunsmoke and blood behind them.

“They… they…” she gulped.

“They’re dead,” Alec said. He still held the gun.

His hand was trembling so badly that it took three tries to slide it back into his holster.

Jameson was the first to reach them, a carbine in one hand. Half a dozen other men pounded up right behind him.

“What happened?”

“I just killed two men who couldn’t follow orders. Drag them out into the village square and leave them there.”

They were a quiet and subdued group when they left the village the next morning. The villagers stood mutely around the two corpses as Alec lined his men together and marched them out the gate, down the westward road. Angela rode on the captured wagon beside Alec. Douglas’ man, unarmed, drove the horses.

She still seemed dazed. “You’re just going to… leave the bodies there?”

Alec had not slept all night. His head throbbed.

“Let the villagers bury them in the fields. Make good use of them.”

“Why…? You didn’t have to kill them.”

He turned on the hard wooden seat to stare at her. She looked as bleak as he felt. “Did you want me to leave them with you?”

“I…” Angela ran a hand through her blonde hair. “In some crazy way I feel like it’s my fault. Partially, at least.”

“I shot them. They deserved it. If I had to do it all over again, I’d do it exactly the same way.”

She shuddered visibly. “Because it was me.”

“Because they were acting like scum!”

“With me. If it had been one of the village women…”

“I’d have done the same thing,” Alec said coldly.

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

They rode in silence for most of the morning, heading for the hills that bordered the western edge of the valley, under a sky of rolling fat cumulus clouds that checkered the landscape with warm sunlight and sudden cool shadow.

“Jameson found out last night that there’s a relay station for the horses over the first row of hills,” Alec said to her. “Is that true?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. And it’s built like a little fortress.”

“Can you talk the people there into giving us fresh horses peacefully, or will we have to fight ?”

“Why should I help you?”

“You’ve got a damned short memory.”

“No. A long one.”

“All right, be tough. We’ll get the horses anyway.”

Which Alec did, by the simple expedient of threatening to shoot Angela if the men holding the station didn’t give them all the horses in their fortified corral. Alec held Angela on a knoll, far enough from the station so that the men could see her plainly enough. Jameson did the negotiating.

Angela fumed, “You’re using me!”

“That’s right,” Alec replied, smiling. “But that’s better than killing people, isn’t it?”

She was too angry to answer.

Toward sunset, as they rode together on the wagon, he asked her, “Still angry with me?”

“Yes.” But she looked more sullen than angry.

“Are you in pain?”

“No.”

“There’s no soreness?”

“Of course it’s sore! But it hasn’t bled anymore. And the bandage is still in place. Want to inspect it for yourself?”

“Dammit, I didn’t do it to you!”

“You killed them. You shot that boy.”

“You ought to be glad that I did.”

“You’re a murderer and you expect me to love you for it?”

“You wanted me to leave you alone with them so they could carve you into little pieces?”

“So it’s my fault!”

He knew he was red-faced; he could feel his cheeks burning. The driver kept his eyes strictly forward, not daring to show any expression at all on his face.

Lowering his voice, Alec said, “Yes, it was your fault. You were right this morning. If it hadn’t been you I wouldn’t have killed them. I lost control. I couldn’t stand to see them with their hands on you. I…”

“All right,” Angela said soothingly. “It’s all right. I’ve been a terrible bitch. I’m sorry.”

They rode together in silence, Alec’s mind whirling in confusion, until it grew too dark to ride further.

Chapter 21

Alec slept with her that night. Without a word of prearrangement they walked off together from the campfire and took their blankets from the back of the wagon. Side by side, still unspeaking, they moved off into the darkness.

He made love to Angela gently, tenderly, trying to avoid hurting her. She held him, touched him, kissed him, moved with him until they both forgot about her injury.

In the morning they bathed together in an excruciatingly cold lake that stretched several kilometers wide. Alec still could not feel at ease using water so lavishly. This world is so rich!

By the time they were dressed and heading back to the camp again, Angela said, “You’ll have to go back to the Moon, won’t you?”

He couldn’t take his eyes from her gold-framed face: lovely, troubled, serious.

“Not without you,” he said.

Nodding, she answered, “I know. I’ll have to leave him…”

“Who?”

“Father.”

“You mean my father.”

She almost smiled. “Is there such a thing as foster-incest?”

“Will you come with me?” Alec asked.

She did not hesitate at all. “Yes,” she answered.

But her voice was so low that he could barely hear her.

They reached the camp by the side of the rutted road. The men were milling through their morning routine, cooking eggs from the village, grooming the horses, cleaning guns.

Alec said to Angela, “I’ll need a power source for our radio. Not for very long, an hour or two.”

Angela thought for a moment. “You won’t be able to get one without a fight. The closest power source I know of is at a perimeter firebase, about twenty klicks from here… up in the hills, off the road.”

A horse neighed somewhere behind them. The Sun was up over the distant hills now, burning away the fog that hung over the lake. The valley floor was still lushly green, the wooded shoulders of the hills an unbelievable pallette of reds, golds, oranges, browns, set off here and there by the somber deep greens of pines and hemlocks.

Angela said, “If I help you get a radio for a few hours, you’ll go back to the Moon?”

“With you?”

“You’ll give up the idea of trying to get the fissionables and go back?”

He hesitated, then lied, “Yes. I will.” She’s only trying to protect him, he told himself, although a deeper voice insisted, She’s trying to protect you!

Reluctantly, as if she knew she was doing the wrong thing no matter what she did, Angela said, “All right, I’ll show you where the firebase is. They have a radio there that can reach headquarters, and that’s about fifty klicks away.”

“That should be plenty of power for our radio,”

Alec said, trying to keep his voice even.

“I don’t like it,” Jameson said, staring off into the distant hills, sniffing the air for danger.

He and Alec stood at the edge of a gently rising meadow that ended in a thickly wooded hillside.

The road they had travelled was farther down the slope. The Sun was high overhead but the wind was cold enough to make Jameson push his hands deep into the pockets of his worn, tattered trousers.

“We’re deep inside their territory. They’ve got to know we’re here, they’re not fools. Now we’re going in even deeper.”

Alec disagreed. “You’re missing the point, Ron. This is their territory, all right. But look how big it is. They don’t have enough men to patrol every hectare. We can stay in the woods, keep on the move, until we rendezvous with the reinforcements.”

Still scanning the distances, Jameson countered, “And you think he’s going to let a few shuttles land within fifty klicks of his home base without opposition?”

“By the time he can get some opposition mounted we’ll have seized enough territory so that the shuttles can land and take off safely. Before they can organize a big-enough counterattack we’ll have reached his headquarters and found the fissionables.”

“Maybe,” James said. “With a large scoop of luck.”

“Not luck! We don’t need luck. Just enough men and good timing.”

“Well…” Jameson looked at Alec at last, then stuck out his hand. “Good luck anyway. You’re marching yourself right into the bear’s cave.”

Alec let his hand be engulfed by Jameson’s. “I’ll be back tomorrow. And inside of a week or two we’ll be home.”

“Yeah.” Jameson’s voice went dead flat, as if the word home was starting to take on a different meaning.

Alec thought about that as he and Angela rode through the woods that afternoon, heading up the gentle slopes of the hills toward the firebase.

Home is the settlement. The Moon. Where it’s safe and clean. Where Mother is. But another part of his mind added, Where it’s cramped and small.

Where life is rigidly determined by the amount of air and water available. Where the colors are whites and grays or pastels. Where you speak with polite restraint and wait your turn in the hierarchy that governs all.

Twisting around in his saddle, looking over the glorious autumn plumage of Mother Earth and the even wilder grandeur of the flaming sunset, Alec could understand why some of the men might be tempted to remain here. A flight of birds sped far overhead in a ragged vee formation and Alec’s heart leaped at the sight of them. Their queer honking sounds drifted across the landscape.

“Winter’s coming,” Angela said.

Alec nodded. The birds were heading roughly southward. He took another look at them as they faded into the distant purple-reds of the dying day.

It took an effort to force his thoughts back to the settlement. No winter there. No seasons at all.

How is Mother holding out? Can she still handle Kobol? Is the Council still loyal to her?

But as he asked himself these questions Alec found that he was watching Angela riding beside him, swaying softly and crooning to her horse as it plodded up the leaf-littered hillside.

They reached the crest of the final hill and Alec saw the firebase. It was small; it couldn’t hold more than twenty men. A wooden fence topped with metal spikes ringed it. The gate was open, but guarded by two alert youngsters with carbines slung over their shoulders.

Even in the twilight, they recognized Angela as she rode up.

“Angie! We thought you’d been taken prisoner down in the village. There’s some raider scum in the area…”

“I’m all right.” She smiled at them as she got down off her horse. “The raiders have left the village. This is Alec… he’s from the village. He came along with me, for protection.”

The two boys shook Alec’s hand. They were boys, no more than fifteen. But they carried their guns well and eyed Alec carefully, despite Angela’s lie.

Inside the pallisade, two ancient artillery pieces stood mounted on wooden wheels, their heavy snouts poking skyward. Alec had such weapons on history tapes. They fired lumbering inert projectiles that contained high explosives. Sure enough, there was a neat pile of shells next to each piece. It must take a pair of men just to lift one of them, Alec thought. He also noted that there were only six shells per gun. They must be as ancient as the guns themselves, or damned difficult to manufacture properly. There were plenty of smaller weapons in sight: machine guns mounted on the wall, small rocket launchers, cannisters crudely marked FLAMMABLE with hoses that ended in pistol-grip nozzles.

They unsaddled their horses and slung their bags over their shoulders. Alec’s bag had the extra weight of the radio transceiver. One of the boys led the horses to a roofed shelter that was already stocked with hay.

The other boy escorted them down narrow earthen steps that went into a complex of bunkers that honey-combed the ground under the firebase.

The firebase commander was an older man, graying at the temples. “Your father’s putting together dozens of search patrols to find you,” he told Angela sternly, as if she were a little girl who had wandered off into the woods.

“I’d better radio him right away and let him know I’m all right,” she said.

The commander nodded curtly and took them to the radio room. The equipment looked old and impossibly bulky to Alec. He stood at the doorway beside the glowering commander and looked over the power generator and its connections while Angela got the radio operator to put her in touch with headquarters.

At last she pulled off the headphones and looked up to Alec and the commander. “He’s already out in the field with Will Russo. They’ll send a rider out to tell him that I’m okay.”

“Good,” the commander said. “I suppose you’ll be spending the night here.” He made it sound like a cross between a challenge and a complaint.

“Yes, I’d rather not travel in the dark.”

The commander gave Angela his own bunk, set into a curtained niche cut into one end of the bunker’s main room. He showed Alec a cot among a dozen others in a separate room, connected to the main room by a low, narrow tunnel some two dozen paces long.

They ate in the main room with the commander and six other men. Everyone seemed to know Angela well, but no one questioned her in the slightest about what had happened in the village.

After the meal they went their separate ways. Alec stretched out on his bunk and actually fell asleep, almost at once. His last thought was that this bunker was like home, in the settlement.

He awoke to the sound of snoring. The room was dark. Slowly his eyes adjusted to the faint glow coming from the tunnel entrance. Most of the cots were occupied now by sleeping men, and in the darkness Alec thought that the form next to him was the commander himself.

Carefully, noiselessly, Alec got up and reached into the bag he had slipped under the cot. The radio felt solid and reassuring in his hands. He ducked into the tunnel and went slowly to the main room. It was empty and lit only by a single bare electric bulb hanging from a wire overhead.

The power generator hummed softly, bringing a smile to Alec’s lips. Pulling a wrinkled, weathered, hand-scribbled timetable from his shirt pocket, he checked the numbers carefully. Another half hour before the satellite could possibly be above the horizon.

After a moment’s hesitation, Alec quickly climbed the earthen steps and poked his head out of the bunker’s only entrance. Four men were standing by the pallisade, slumped with boredom or hunched against the cold, looking outward into the night. Two more sat by the fire, talking to each other in low, serious tones.

Alec ducked back inside. Angela was sleeping behind the curtain that partitioned off the commander’s cubicle. He nodded. Everything’s as good as it’s going to be.

He went swiftly to the unattended radio room and jammed the makeshift wooden door shut, as tightly as he could. There was no way to lock it. He put the transceiver down on the operator’s desk and spent the next few minutes connecting it properly to the antiquated power supply. Then he sat at the desk, slipped the single earphone over his head and swung the tiny microphone next to his lips. He waited an eternity to hear the satellite’s automatic beacon beep out against the steady hiss and sputter of cosmic static.

The eternity ended at last.

“Hello, hello,” he called as loudly as he dared.

“Come in satellite station. Answer. This is Alec Douglas.”

Another eternity, seconds long, and then, “Alec… Alec! Is it really you?”

“Yes. Can you hear me all right?”

“Faint but clear. Go ahead.”

Alec gave his approximate position, then said, “Get the Council to send the strongest force they can put together down here as soon as possible. Within the week, at most. We can locate the fissionables and take them if we move quickly. Tell my mother that one quick, decisive stroke can win everything for us. Airdrop me electric power supplies, weapons and ammunition. I’ll find it if you can drop it within ten kilometers of me.”

“All right, but…”

“No buts! I want a strong force down here as fast as the Council can put it together. Men, weapons, trucks…”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” said the voice from the satellite. “Kobol’s already landed a force of a hundred men—almost two weeks ago. Trucks, lasers, rockets, everything. It took five shuttle flights to get them all on the ground!”

“Kobol! Two weeks ago? Where? Where did he land?”

“Far south of you…”

“Oak Ridge?”

“No, further south. Someplace called Florida, I think.”

Alec sat in the harsh light of the overhead bulb, stunned.

“Hey, Alec… you still there?”

He nodded, then realized that it was a meaningless gesture. “Yes… Listen. Get this message through to my mother. Tell her I’m within a few hours’ striking distance of Douglas’ headquarters and the fissionables. Tell her to shuttle Kobol’s forces here. Order him here! Remind him that I’m still the commander of this mission, by order of the Council.”

“Yes sir.” The voice went formal.

“All right. And get a power supply to me right away. Tear one out of the bulkheads up there if you have to; but it’s vital that I re-establish communications within twenty-four hours and I can’t do it without a power supply.”

“Will do!”

Alec signed off. For many long minutes he sat there, his mind whirling, wondering what Kobol was doing and why. But he was too tired to think straight. Slowly he disconnected the transceiver, then stealthily edged the door back to its open position and stepped into the bunker’s main room.

Douglas was sitting at the table in the center of the room, making the bunker look crowded with his bulk. Angela stood beside him, staring at Alec in cold fury.

“You made it through the summer, I see,”

Douglas said. He was smiling, but there was no humor in his voice.

Chapter 22

For a stunned moment Alec didn’t know what to say or do.

Douglas seemed to enjoy his surprise. “Do you really think you’ve been out of my sight for one minute since you landed on Earth?” He spread his massive hands in an all-inclusive gesture. “From the minute you touched down at Oak Ridge you’ve been under surveillance. I’ve been impressed. You learn very quickly. There were only three or four times when I was tempted to step in and help you.”

“You haven’t lifted a finger,” Alec snapped. “We fought our way here on our own.”

“That’s right,” Douglas agreed. “You spent the summer working out an experiment—in survival.

The experiment was a success. You survived. You even helped us to polish off some of those raider bands.” He laughed, and the underground bunker seemed to shake with it. “Lord, they’d get their attention all focused on your pitiful little gang and start licking their chops. Then Will would swoop in and clobber them. It was sweet.”

“Glad to have been of help to you.”

Douglas’s laugh faded to a cocky grin. “I’ve never turned down help from any quarter. I’m not too proud to accept your help.”

“As long as you can have things your way.”

“Of course.”

Still standing at the doorway to the radio room, Alec asked, “And what do you plan to do with my pitiful little gang now?”

“Will’s going to speak to them in the morning. Offer them a chance to join us. Most of them will, I expect. The rest will be escorted out of my territory, politely but firmly. Maybe they can work their way south again and link up with Kobol.”

Douglas scratched at his iron-gray beard. “We, ah… overheard your radio conversation on the monitor in my jeep.”

“We,” Alec echoed, looking at Angela. She refused to meet his gaze. For the first time, anger began to seep in and replace the shock that had numbed him.

“Get yourself some sleep,” Douglas said, hauling himself to his feet. “We travel at sunup.”

He went to the stairs and started up. Angela followed him. She glanced over her shoulder at Alec for a fleeting instant, but said nothing.

Bitch! he snarled at her, silently.

Strangely enough, Alec slept deeply through the remainder of the night. Dreamlessly. He awoke with a slight sense of guilt at feeling so rested.

Douglas’s jeep was parked just outside the pallisade.

Alec was marched to it by an armed man as soon as he got up. No breakfast, no formalities; none of the firebase crew said a word to him. The morning was raw and chill. Thick gray clouds covered the sky from horizon to horizon, making the rolling hills seem somber and grim, muting even the wild colors of the autumn trees.

Douglas was already at the wheel of the jeep, a dark blue windbreaker over his nondescript clothes. Angela was talking with him, very seriously.

A blanket was wrapped over her shoulders.

The guard sat Alec in the back seat of the jeep.

Angela started to go around to sit beside him. The guard looked questioningly at Douglas.

“It’s all right,” Douglas said, his big hands gripping the jeep’s steering wheel. “Let her sit back there with him. You ride shotgun up front. He won’t try to run away. He’s been waiting all summer to see our base. Right, son?”

Alec said nothing.

With a shrug, Douglas added, “Maybe, if you behave yourself, I’ll even let you see where the fissionables are stored.”

Angela climbed in beside him, the guard swung into the right front seat beside Douglas and laid his heavy black pistol on his lap: Douglas glanced at the threatening sky, then started the engine.

The electric motor purred to life and the jeep started slowly, gathering speed as it jounced down the hillside, down the narrow trail.

The wind was raw and it sliced right through Alec’s thin shirt.

“Here,” Angela said. She pulled a thermos bottle from under the seat and took the top off.

Steam wafted from its innards. Alec accepted it wordlessly and took a small sip of hot broth. Then a gulping mouthful. He handed it back to her.

“Thanks.”

She nodded and pulled the blanket closer around her shoulders. For several kilometers they rode that way, side by side, silent and angry.

Finally, Angela shook her head as if she had been arguing with herself, then unwrapped the blanket and offered part of it to Alec.

“Before you freeze,” was all she said.

He hesitated a moment, then pulled the warm fabric across his shoulders. Automatically they slid closer together, huddling together under the blanket.

“You told Douglas where he could get me,” Alec said to her.

Her face set into a stubborn frown. “You used me, didn’t you? You had no intention of going back to the Moon without the fissionables. Did you think I fell for your lies?”

I fell for yours, he answered silently. Then he shook his head and said to her, “I guess I’ve been outsmarted all along.”

“You’ve outsmarted yourself.”

“We’ll see.”

“Why did you lie to me?” she asked, her tone more hurt than angry. “Was it just to screw me or to get the radio? Which one?”

“I wasn’t lying,” he said. Before she could reply, he added, “I didn’t tell you the whole truth… but I wasn’t lying when I said I want you to come back to the Moon with me.”

Angela’s frown softened, but her eyes were still wary, searching. “You mean, after you’ve taken the uranium.”

He nodded.

“You knew that wasn’t what I meant when I offered to get you to the power supply.”

“Yes, I knew.”

“Then you were lying to me.”

“And so were you,” he countered, “when you offered to help me. You knew you were going to call Douglas and trap me.”

“I know you’ll have to kill him before you can get your hands on the fissionables.”

“And you’re protecting him,”

“I’m trying to protect both of you,” she said earnestly, urgently.

“And that’s why you lied to me.”

She almost smiled. “All right, I lied too. Feel better?”

“Yes.” It was almost funny. They had both been sneaking around each other.

“But he needs you, Alec. What he’s trying to do…”

He stiffened. “Douglas? He doesn’t need anybody. He’s got enough ego to cover the world all by himself.”

“And you’re blind!” she snapped.

Douglas’ base was a shock. They drove up to a well-maintained wire mesh fence that seemed to wind clear across the landscape, over the rolling hills and as far as the eye could see. Where the road penetrated the fence stood a sentry tower, wooden beams weathered by sun and rain. Two men lounging at the base of the tower straightened the guns on their shoulders and opened the gate wide enough for one of them to step through.

Douglas brought the jeep to a full halt and exchanged a few words with him.

They swung the gate wide. Alec saw that there were at least two more men up at the top of the tower. The grim snout of a heavy machine gun poked out over the railing up there.

After another chilly fifteen minutes of driving, with nothing to be seen but open countryside, they came to the first buildings.

“This used to be a base for the United States Air Force,” Douglas called back from the driver’s seat.

“Makes an ideal headquarters for us—ready made. They used to call this area Rome. Appropriate name, don’t you think?” He laughed; Alec did not.

They drove past row after row of neat wooden buildings, most of them looking as if they had been freshly painted. Barracks, machine shops, warehouses, mess halls, even a building marked BASE THEATER in barely readable faded lettering.

The airfield itself was immense, huge swaths of concrete runways and ramps, hangars and maintenance buildings and office towers built of brick and stone. All in excellent condition. But not an aircraft in sight.

“The missile assigned to this base must’ve missed its target or been shot down,” Douglas said. “It went untouched.”

We could land the shuttles right here, Alec was thinking.

People were everywhere. Throngs of people, more than Alec had ever seen in his life. Walking, working, laughing; many of them waved to Douglas as he drove past. Hardly any of them carried weapons. Like the history tapes of the old cities, Alec saw.

They drove past the airfield, out to a more deserted sector of little knolls topped by small clumps of vividly colored trees. No buildings in sight out here, except one solitary concrete blockhouse standing on a bare grassy hill. Douglas drove straight to the blockhouse.

“This is where the fissionables are,” he said, turning in the too-small bucket seat to face Alec.

“Want to see ’em?”

Alec supressed an impulse to lick his lips. “Yes.”

Douglas hauled himself out of the jeep and headed for the blockhouse door. The guard stepped out of his seat and turned toward Alec. He slid the pistol back into its holster, but kept his hand on its butt. Alec climbed out and turned to help Angela, but she had already jumped out on the other side.

Douglas had the heavy metal door open already, and Alec frowned inwardly at the realization that he hadn’t seen if it had been locked or not. Doesn’t matter, he told himself. We can blow it open if we have to.

Inside, the blockhouse was musty and damp. It was a small room, completely empty and dark except for the light sneaking in through the gun slits in each wall.

“Eh, would you mind?” Douglas gestured toward a metal trapdoor set into the cement floor.

“I can’t bend as easily as you can.”

Alec reached down and grabbed at the metal catch at one end of the steel door. He tugged, then heaved. Nothing.

“It slides,” Douglas said.

“Thanks for telling me before I ruptured myself.” The door slid back smoothly. It’s been oiled recently, Alec realized.

They clattered down a long metal stairway into utter darkness, groping along the wall and railing until Douglas said, “Wait a minute… the generator switch should be… here…”

A click, and then from somewhere in the darkness below them a rumble and whine from a diesel generator set. Alec smelled a whiff of machine oil.

Then lights glowed into life.

He could see that the stairs went down another twenty meters and ended in a huge storehouse room. Spread across the floor were heavy, dull gray metal cylinders, each bearing the blood-red three-sided emblem of danger and the printed words RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL. There were dozens of the cylinders, Alec saw, scores of them.

A hundred, maybe more.

Enough to power the processing plants for a century, at least.

As if reading his thoughts, Alec said, “There’s enough fissionable material here to blow up everything between the Great Lakes and Cape Cod.”

Alec turned to his father, standing two steps above him. “We need this… some of it, at least. We need it to live.”

But Douglas shook his head. “No. If I let you take even some of this back to the Moon, we’d be killing them. You can kill people with kindness, you know. The wrong sort of kindness.”

Alec could feel himself going tense, the skin on his face stretching taut. “In another year we won’t have the energy to process the water and medicines we need. You can’t…”

“Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” Douglas’s voice boomed off the cement walls and metal stairs.

“Those people can’t survive up there by themselves no matter how much fissionable fuel they have. They can’t live cooped up in their underground rats’ nest. They’ve got to re-establish contact with Earth. Not just a raid every few years, but real contact—genetically meaningful contact!”

“So you can rule them!” Alec lashed back at his father.

Douglas’s mouth opened, but no words came out. He broke out into a roar of laughter, instead.

They quartered Alec in a room of his own, in what had once been the Air Base’s bachelor officers’ quarters. The two-story brick building was an efficient but drab set of dormitory rooms. They were spacious, compared to what Alec had grown up with. His room was on the second floor, in a corner, so that he had two windows. There was a real bed, a desk, and a chest of drawers. Alec smiled at the furniture. He had nothing to put in the drawers, nothing to hang in the closet.

But there was a shower, and it worked! For a slothful long hour Alec luxuriated in the unbelievable pleasure of having actual water, steaming hot, sluicing over his naked body. Two large pieces of fuzzy cloth hung on a rack next to the shower; Alec used them to rub himself dry.

Someone tapped at his door. Wrapping one of the cloths around his waist, he yelled, “Come in,” as he stepped from the bathroom in time to see Angela open the hall door, carrying an armful of clothes.

“Oh…” They said it together.

She simply stood there gaping at him. Alec clutched at the towel, holding it tightly around his middle, feeling foolish about it but embarrassed to let it slip.

“I was cleaning myself…” he said lamely.

She grinned at him, making his face redden. “So I see.” She wore a pale blue dress that complemented her eyes and golden hair. The skirt was short enough to show that her legs were fine and graceful.

“You look very pretty,” he said.

“So do you,” she replied, with a giggle.

Flustered, he stood tongue-tied.

“I brought some fresh clothes for you from the supply shop,” Angela said. “I hope they fit okay. If they don’t, I can fix them for you.”

“Thanks.”

She dropped the clothes on the bed. Looking around the room she asked, “Is everything okay? Do you need shaving things?”

“No,” he answered. “I won’t need another depilatory treatment for six months or so.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Is there someplace to eat around here? Have you had dinner?”

“The mess hall will be open in an hour. If you’re really hungry I can fix you something at my place. It’s not far from here.”

“Uh, no, that’s all right. Guess I’d better get dressed.”

“Okay.” She started for the door.

“No, wait.” For Christ’s sake, this is idiotic.

We’ve made love together! “Don’t go… Let’s have dinner together.”

She nodded and smiled at him.

Feeling utterly silly, Alec took the clothes into the bathroom and tried them on. Turtleneck shirt, dark blue and thickly ribbed. Gray slacks that were too large in the waist and so long that he had to turn the cuffs up twice. A pair of solid boots, good size. A belt to pull the pants tight. And they all smelled clean, felt soft.

“How do I look?” he asked as he came out of the bathroom.

She smiled and frowned at the same time. “I wasn’t too good about the sizes, was I?”

“Only the pants. The rest fits fine.”

They had dinner in the noisy, crowded, clattering mess hall, sitting on benches at long wooden tables surrounded by steam and pungent odors and other people who chattered their conversations, oblivious of Alec and Angela. They sat side by side, saying almost nothing to each other. The food was hot and solid, nothing fancy, but more of it than Alec had been able to get since leaving the Moon.

Outside afterward, it was dark and their frosty breaths hung in the air before them. The buildings were all alight. Why not? Alec thought. He’s probably got nuclear generators buried underground somewhere, using the fuel we need.

They walked under the chilled stars to Angela’s home, a separate little house at the head of a curved row of white wooden houses.

“I have some wine,” she said. “The villagers make it.”

Inside, the house was a combination of warmth and utilitarianism. Furniture was sparse. The front room was completely empty except for a single old wooden chair with a high straight back and a rug made from some sort of animal fur, rolled up in a corner. The fireplace looked cold and empty. Angela led Alec back to the kitchen, which had a table and three mismatched chairs, as well as a small refrigerator, stove and sink, all lined against one wall. Through another doorway Alec could see the bedroom. There was nothing in it except a mattress on the floor with a sleeping bag half unrolled atop it.

“You have this place all to yourself?”

“Yes,” she said, reaching down to a cabinet under the sink and pulling out a dusty green bottle. “I just moved in a few weeks ago. Da… uh, Douglas said it was time for me to have a place of my own. He lives in the house down at the other end of the row. Will and most of the other leaders live here… or really, their families do. Most of the time the men are out in the countryside somewhere.”

“Will has a family?”

She set the bottle on the table next to Alec and took two glasses from a cabinet. “He was going to marry a girl from one of the villages west of here. But she was taken by one of the raider gangs. No-one’s been able to find her since.”

Somehow that hit Alec like a physical blow.

Angela brought the glasses to the table. Sitting next to Alec, she said softly. “It happened years ago… he got over it.”

“Did he?”

She shrugged. “He functions. He lives. He even sings, sometimes.”

Alec let his breath out in a pent-up sigh. “It’s a lousy world.”

“It’s the only one we’ve got.”

No, it isn’t, he answered silently.

Eyeing the wine bottle, Angela asked, “Will you pour, or shall I?”

He took the bottle and pulled the stopper out of it. Funny, spongy thing. Cork? he wondered.

Somewhere he had heard about the substance.

Very carefully, conscious for the first time in months of Earth’s six-fold gravity pull, he half filled the two glasses with bright red wine.

It tasted marvelous. Smooth and warm and warming.

He put the glass down firmly on the table. “It’s not the only world we’ve got, Angela. There’s an entirely different world, where all this insanity of raiders and killing doesn’t exist.”

“The lunar settlement,” she said.

“Right. Civilization. Where you don’t have to carry weapons all the time and worry if you’ll make it through the night.”

“But we have that here!” Angela said. “That’s what Douglas has built for us here.”

“Yes… by force, by war, by betraying the people who trusted him.”

Her eyes flashed, but she caught herself and changed the subject. “Tell me more about the lunar colony. What’s it like up there?”

With an effort, Alec pushed his own smoldering anger aside. “It’s peaceful. Polite. People can be ! human beings instead of jungle animals. You don’t have this heavy gravity pulling on you all the time. You can sail in the aerogymn and dance all the ballets ever written.”

“Ballets?” Angela looked puzzled.

Never heard of them, he realized. “Up on the surface,” Alec went on, “you can see real beauty. I mean, it’s beautiful here on Earth, of course, wild and unpredictable and all… but on the Moon, watching the sunrise takes a whole day. And the stars… and Earth itself, hanging there blue and beautiful. You can go for a thousand klicks in any direction and never see another person, alone, just by yourself, with the whole universe hanging up there and watching you…”

“It sounds lonely.”

“No, it’s beautiful. Watching the ice vents outgas right after the perigee quakes. There’s just enough sulfur dioxide in the rocks to tint the’ vapor pink—the stuff puffs up and out like a ghost escaping from its grave.”

Angela shuddered. “That doesn’t sound beautiful to me.”

“Wait ’till you see it.”

“I’ll never see it,” she said. Sadly.

“Yes you will. I’m taking you there, remember?”

“No…”

He hunched forward in his chair. “God, you’re beautiful. Let’s go to bed.”

She didn’t look surprised. “There’s more to it than that, Alec.”

“What?”

“If Douglas finds out…”

He pulled back from her. “He means more to you than I do.”

“No, it’s not that,” she said. “Alec… I don’t mean anything to you. Not really. You can screw me one minute and try to trick me the next.”

“You did the same damned thing!”

“Because I knew that’s what you were doing! You didn’t fool me, not for one minute.”

“Then why did you go to bed with me?”

Her voice rising, “Because you saved me and I was scared and you were kind—no, you killed those two… oh, hell! I don’t know. I did it because I wanted to.”

“And you don’t want to now.”

“Yes, I do want to.”

It took a moment for Alec to realize what she had said. Then, leaning back in his chair, he wondered aloud, “Then what are we arguing about?”

Angela shook her head. “You don’t understand any of it, do you? Not a bit of it.”

But she got up from the table and took him by the hand and led him into the bedroom.

The first light of dawn woke Alec. He lay with Angela’s soft warmth beside him, her head cradled in his arm, and watched the day slowly brighten through the bedroom window. The sleeping bag was spread lumpily over them.

“Are you going to stay?” Angela asked very quietly.

“Huh? I thought you were sleeping.”

She smiled at him. “I’ve been thinking for the past couple of hours.”

“With your eyes closed?”

“Are you going to stay here… at the base, I mean?”

“Do I have a choice? I’m a prisoner.”

Pushing away from him slightly, she said, “Oh, that. You don’t have to worry. Douglas just wanted you to come here without any fuss. He wouldn’t stop you from leaving. He does love you, you know.”

“The hell he does.”

“Don’t be a fool. Of course he does.”

Then why did he leave us? Alec demanded silently. What kind of love is that?

“Well?” she asked.

“What?”

“Are you going to stay here?”

“Would you come with me if I left?” he countered.

“No. I couldn’t.”

“Because he needs you more than I do.”

She laughed. “Don’t be silly. Douglas doesn’t need me. He doesn’t need anybody except one person.”

“Who’s that?”

“You.”

He huffed. “Don’t be funny.”

Angela sat up and pulled her knees up to her chin. The cover slid down to her ankles, and Alec shivered; not from the room’s chill, but from the curve of her smoothly fleshed back and hip.

“Look,” she said, “What you don’t…”

“I’m looking,” he murmured.

She intercepted his reaching hand. “Not now. You’ve got to realize a few things. Douglas is an old man…”

“Fifty-five. That’s not old.”

“It is when you’ve lived the way he has,” Angela said, completely serious. “He needs help. Your help. That’s why he brought you here. He was overjoyed that you made it all the way here from Oak Ridge. He bragged about how you got through the summer on your own.”

“I’ll bet.”

“He wants you to join with him, help him bring the lunar settlement and his own territory here together. If the two of you can work together you can build a real civilization that links the Earth and the Moon. But if you fight…”

“Listen to me,” Alec snapped. “He ran out on us. Not just on my mother and me, but on hundreds of men, women and children who depended on him, trusted him. He’s stolen the fissionables that we need. Without them we’ll all die. He won’t let us have them.”

“Yes he will!” Angela insisted. “If only you’ll agree to help him.”

“Help him make himself into another Genghis Khan? He can rot first.”

“You just don’t understand!”

“Wrong! I understand far more than you do. Far more.”

She shook her head. “No, Alec, you’re wrong. You’re all wrong about so many things.”

Instead of answering, he got to his feet. The bare floor was cold.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Back to my own quarters.”

“Not yet.” She slid one hand up the side of his leg. He turned and sank to his knees on the mattress.

“You don’t have to go now,” Angela said, almost in a whisper. “And stop pouting. What’s going on between you and your father has nothing to do with what’s going on between you and me.”

Doesn’t it? he demanded in his mind. Aren’t you doing this to make me stay here, to get me to join forces with him?

But although he thought it, Alec did not say anything as Angela pulled him back into the warmth of the bed again.

Chapter 23

It was easy to slide into the routine of daily life at the base.

The leaves fell steadily from the trees, the grass turned brown and brittle. The wind came always from the north or west, cold and sharp enough to cut through the heaviest of coats. The sky turned gray as the days shortened. The Sun did not climb far above the horizon and the Moon seemed to have disappeared from the cloudy night skies. One titanic rainstorm stripped away the last of the leaves, blew off roofs and tore limbs from the bare trees. Alec’s quarters stayed dry, although the heat and electricity went out for several days.

Angela’s house was flooded to a depth of ten centimeters in the cellar.

Then the weather turned fine and dry. Days were cold, invigorating. Nights were arctic. More and more, Alec slept with Angela. If Douglas knew about it, he said nothing, even though they dined together frequently in his house with Will Russo and others of Douglas’s aides.

It was an easy time. The summer’s fighting was over and everyone was preparing for the long winter. Trucks and wagons came in every day from the outlying villages, heaped with produce from the harvest. They went out with tools, guns, and ammunition that had been manufactured in the base’s shops.

Troops of warriors came in from the hinterlands, reunited with families and friends that they had not seen all summer. There were parties, celebrations, even dramatic offerings by self-styled actors and singers in the base’s mammoth, bare auditorium.

Alec found their efforts amateurish, but he attended every performance, sitting with Angela next to him. Douglas always sat front row center and it always appeared to Alec as if the performers were playing especially to him. He appeared to enjoy himself hugely, guffawing at the jokes and applauding every effort lustily.

Will had brought in a cache of whisky, “liberated” from a long-deserted city that his troop had detoured through. He rationed the stuff carefully, except for one long night when he gave a party and they all—even Alec—sang drunkenly until the Sun rose.

All except Douglas, who left early in the evening after a few drinks. And by the time they started singing “The Frigging Bird” for the fourth time, Angela slipped quietly away, too.

“I wanted to check on Douglas,” she explained the next morning. “He didn’t look too well when he left.”

Through his thundering hangover, Alec said, “So you had to nursemaid him.”

“You seemed to be having fun,” she answered, smiling.

But I don’t want you with him, Alec said to himself.

I want you with me. And suddenly he realized that he loved her.

A few nights later they were walking arm in arm from the mess hall to her house, heavily bundled in thick coats and wool hats and gloves. The water in the nearby lake had a thin layer of ice over it, and the only birds still remaining around the base were hardy brown sparrows who puffed up their feathers and hopped over the dead grass looking for seeds or crumbs.

For the first time in weeks, Alec noticed the Moon. It was only a sliver sailing eerily among the clouds scuttling by.

“I wonder how my men are doing?” he mused aloud.

“Have you asked…”

“I’ve tried to get to them, but Will said it’s better if I don’t. He told me they’re all okay, but I shouldn’t ask anything more about them.”

“Will wouldn’t lie to you,” she said.

Gazing at the thin slice of a Moon, he wondered, “Do you think Kobol’s still in Florida? Or has he returned to the settlement? What’s he up to? What’s his game?”

Angela said nothing.

“He’ll be back in the spring,” Alec went on. “I’ll bet he heads this way, next spring.”

“Then there’ll be fighting,” she said.

“Plenty of it.”

They had reached Angela’s house. “And when the fighting begins, which side will you be on, Alec?”

He thought about it. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “I just don’t know.”

The first snowfall came early and caught everyone by surprise, Alec most of all.

He walked out into the howling wind, turning dizzily round and round to watch the strange white flakes bury the world in their clean coldness.

They spattered against his face and hands as drifts built up against the buildings. He trudged to Angela’s and dragged her out into the snow. She taught him how to make a snowball and they pelted each other until they laughed themselves into wet exhaustion.

Then they spent the rest of the day by her fireplace, not thinking of food or anything else except each other.

It was Will Russo who pulled Alec away for a few days.

After more than a week of steadily heavier hints, Will finally asked Alec if he would go with him into the woods on a hunting trip. Something in the way he asked implied that he had more on his mind than simply hunting. Alec agreed.

They set off across the solidly frozen lake early one morning, as the Sun was just starting to brighten the eastern sky. Alec felt plainly nervous about walking on ice, even though the snow atop it made the going easy. All that water below, he kept thinking. But Will chattered happily, even hummed to himself occasionally, perfectly at ease.

So Alec shifted the heavy pack on his shoulder harness and tried to forget what would happen to them if the ice broke.

They spent the whole day up in the hills, moving straight ahead, following some inner sense of direction or purpose known only to Will. The snow was thinner up under the fir trees, barely a dusting on the ground.

“Will,” Alec asked, pulling up alongside his long-striding companion, “what are we hunting for?”

“Three men,” he replied, trying to replace his happy grin with a serious look. He was only partly successful.

“What? Men? With these?” Alec hefted the long-barrelled rifle Will had given him. It fired only one shot at a time.

“Well, maybe we won’t have to use the guns. They might come peacefully.”

“I thought we were going for meat… to eat.”

With a swipe at his nose, Will answered, “Nope. Trappers bring in plenty game for the table. Oh, we might bag a deer or something on our way back. But only after we deal with the thieves.”

“Thieves?”

Still striding along fast enough to force Alec to trot every few moments to catch up, Will answered, “They joined one of our scout parties late summer. I thought all they wanted was a safe, warm place to spend the cold months. But a couple weeks ago they took off with a wagonload of food, guns, and ammo.”

“A couple of weeks ago? They could be in Asia by now!”

“Nope, they’re not. They had to shoot their way past the gate guards, and one of ’em was wounded. Killed two of our guards, by the way. Other guards followed them for a while, and we’ve had relays of scouts trailing them—at a distance. Don’t want anybody hurt unnecessarily.”

That made sense to Alec. But now, “We’re going to take them in?”

“Right. They’re holed up in a cave, out of food. One of them’s still in bad shape from his wounds, I imagine. The other two might listen to reason.”

“And if they don’t?”

Will hiked his eyebrows. “That’s why we’re carrying the rifles.”

They camped in the woods overnight and ate from the food they had carried with them. Only a small fire. They slept in sleeping bags. Alec was shivering when he woke up next dawn.

By midmorning they were halfway up a barren hill. Underneath its coating of snow, where the wind had blown bare patches, it looked as if the ground had been scorched black. No trees grew on the hillside, and only a few stunted, gnarled bushes stuck their tortured bare limbs out of the snow.

“There’s the cave,” Will said, pointing with his rifle.

Up near the top of the rocky hill was a black fissure between two large boulders.

A clatter of pebbles behind them made Alec whirl around, rifle cocked and levelled. He saw a man, old and gnarled as the nearby bushes, whiplash thin, with a cold-whitened face that was mostly bones and eyes. His mouth was sunken, toothless, and his heavy fur hat was jammed down until it merged with the bulky collar of his rough coat.

“They’re still in there,” the old man said to Will as he advanced carefully toward them. “Haven’t seen any signs of smoke or a fire for three days now.” He said fie-yuh for fire, an accent Alec hadn’t heard before.

“Not much firewood to be had around here, that’s for sure,” Will said.

“Eh-yup,” said the scout.

“Okay. Good.” Will wriggled out of his shoulder harness, reached inside the pack and took out two oblate metal objects. Grenades, Alec realized.

Pushing one grenade into each of his coat pockets, Will said to them, “You two stay here and cover me. I’m gonna see if they’ll listen to some sense.” He picked up his rifle and started scrambling toward the top of the hill.

Alec kneeled in the snow and clamped his rifle under his arm, pointing it in the general direction of the cave.

“They’re bad poison,” the scout muttered in his strange accent. “Caught Johnny Fullah last week and shot him through both knees. Left him crippled to bleed to death in the snow. Lucky I found him before the wolves did.”

Alec glanced at the old man, then put the rifle to his shoulder and aimed it dead at the cave opening.

Will was nearly at the edge of the big boulder on the left of the cave.

“Hello the cave!” he shouted.

No reply.

“We know you’re in there. We know you’re cold and hungry and your friend needs medical help, if he’s not dead already. Come on out and we’ll take you back to the base. I’m a medic, I can help your wounded man.”

“And then hang us!” a voice shouted back. It sounded young and trembly to Alec.

“That’s up to the jury. You’ll get a fair trial.”

“We ain’t comin’ out!” It was definitely a young voice, cracking with fear.

Will talked with them for half an hour, patiently, almost pleasantly. He pointed out to them the hopelessness of their situation, urged them to come out peacefully.

Finally the voice said, “Okay… okay, you win Will grinned back down toward Alec, then rose to his feet. “Good,” he said toward the cave. “I knew…”

The shot exploded, echoed by the cave walls, and knocked Will completely off his feet. He tumbled, flailing legs and arms, down the rough hillside. A yellow-haired figure darted from the cave mouth and dashed off toward the right.

Alec had let his rifle rest on his knee, but without thinking about it he snapped it to his shoulder and fired. The rock chipped in front of the fleeing blond. He skidded to a stop, pawing at his eyes. Alec fired again, slamming him back against the rock. Again, and the figure jerked once more and crumpled to the ground.

Alec swung his rifle back to the cave’s mouth.

Another shot boomed out, and the snow puffed a few centimeters in front of Will’s sprawled body.

Alec emptied the rest of his clip at the cave’s entrance. The firing stopped. He scrambled up the few steep meters to Will’s side. There was a spreading red stain across his coat front. His eyes were open, but hazy.

“Don’t… don’t…” Will mumbled. Alec heard more shots, from behind. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that the scout was aiming a smoking pistol rock-steady at the cave’s mouth.

“Give them a chance… they’re scared…”

Will said weakly.

“I’ll give them a chance,” Alec said. He pulled the two grenades from Will’s pockets. One of them was slippery with blood. Hooking a finger through their firing rings, Alec grabbed Will’s rifle with his free hand and made his way, doubled over, toward the entrance to the cave.

There was no more firing. Flattening himself along the boulder beside the cave entrance, Alec yelled, “You’ve got five seconds. Come out with your hands up or I’ll blow you all to hell.”

The same high, cracking voice shrieked. “Wait! Gimme a chance… he’s out cold… I gotta drag him…”

But Alec was counting, not listening. He reached five, glanced at Will still sprawled on his back in the snow halfway down the slope, then pulled the pin from one grenade and tossed it into the cave.

“Hey… wh… no… wait!”

The explosion sounded strangely muffled.

Smoke poured from the cave and Alec heard a high, keening screech, long and raw and agonized.

He yanked the pin and threw in the second grenade. The explosion blotted out all other sounds, and by the time the smoke had wafted out of the cave, all was silent inside.

Alec edged into the cave carefully, rifle cocked.

It took half a minute for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. There was enough left of the two bodies to recognize that they had once been human. Barely enough.

He walked out and went to the blond he had shot. The kid could not have been more than fourteen.

He lay where he had fallen. There was no gun or any other weapon near him.

The wind gusted. Alec looked up and saw that the scout was at Will’s side.

“Don’t look too good,” the old man said as Alec joined them. “Think they got a rib. Mighta punctured th’ lung.”

“Can we move him?”

“Got to. Can’t leave him hee-yuh.”

They bound Will’s chest as tightly as they dared, Alec tearing strips from his own shirt. Then Alec sent the scout on ahead to get help as he wedged himself under Will’s arm, on his good side, and started to help him to his feet.

“What about…” Will sagged, nearly dragging Alec to his knees, “…those kids.”

“Don’t worry about them.”

It wasn’t as bad as Alec had feared. Although they barely made two klicks by sundown, trudging along with most of Will’s weight on Alec’s shoulders, just before it got truly dark a trio of scouts met them. They had a stretcher and the four of them carried Will to an overnight camp that the old man had set up. It was only a lean-to, but it sheltered them from the wind. They slept next to a big, hot fire.

The next morning a wagon came up and took Will and Alec back to the base. Douglas and Angela and half the base’s people were at the first gate to meet them.

Two nights later, Douglas banged open the door to Angela’s house, She and Alec had eaten dinner in the mess hall, then walked the snow-banked paths to her house. They were sitting in front of the fire, drawing a charcoal sketch on a piece of fabric together, when Douglas strode in without warning. Suddenly the little room was overcrowded.

“Well, at least you’re dressed,” Douglas said.

The two of them scrambled to their feet.

“Of course we’re dressed,” Angela replied cooly.

“Now close that door or it’ll be freezing in here.”

Douglas nudged the door shut. “You’re wanted over at Will’s place, right away.”

“What’s happened?” Alec demanded.

“No time for explanations. Come right now.”

Alec took Angela by the hand and the three of them trotted through the icy darkness down three houses to Will’s place, while Alec’s mind raced. An infection. Something’s happened to Will. Maybe the wound was worse than they thought.

They burst into Will’s house, and there was the big oversized puppy dog, sitting on the sofa in the main room of the house with half a dozen half-drunk men and women sitting on the floor around him. A merry fire roared in the fireplace and they were all laughing and waving glasses.

“Oh-ho!” Will called as the three of them stepped into the house. “He’s here! Give them all glasses and let’s drink a toast to my companion-in-arms and rescuer.”

Someone shoved a glass into Alec’s hand. Someone else filled it eight centimeters deep with whisky.

Everyone except Will stood and faced Alec as the big redhead intoned, with enormous seriousness:

“To Alec, who brought me back alive.”

“To Alec,” they all repeated.

The whisky was beautiful, smooth as free-fall and warmer than sunshine. But then, “What is all this?” Alec asked, slightly dazed. Angela looked puzzled too, but happy.

Will sat there grinning happily. He was fully dressed, but Alec could see the bulk of the bandaging under his shirt.

He said, “My medical colleagues have finally admitted that I’m out of danger and can be up and about…”

“In a few days,” said one of the older men, trying hard to look dour. “In a few days, Will.”

“Right. In a few days,” Will agreed. “So I thought to myself, if I can be up and about in a few days, that means I can go back to Utica and hunt for more whisky. So why don’t we celebrate my miraculous recovery with the bottles we already have on hand?”

“Sound strategic thinking,” Douglas boomed, and the party was officially launched.

It went on all night. Toward dawn a few of the women disappeared, murmuring about getting breakfast together and hot, black coffee. Douglas was slouched on the sofa beside Will. Most of the others had bunched into little knots of conversation in corners of the rooms. Douglas pounded the empty space on the sofa alongside him and said to Alec, “Come here, son. Sit down.” It was a command.

They were all drunk enough to drop most of the pretenses that people live with. So Alec, knowing that his grin was as unsteady as his walk, made his way past a quartet of men sitting cross-legged by the dying fire and dropped onto the sofa next to his father.

“Well,” Douglas said, in the nearest thing to a quiet conversational tone that he could muster, “you’ve been with us for almost three months now. Still think I’m an ogre?”

Alec could see Will watching him, beyond Douglas’ bulky form, grinning hugely as if he’d arranged a reconciliation between David and Absalom.

“No,” Alec admitted, “I guess you’re not a monster. I still don’t agree with you, but I think I can see why you did what you did.”

“Good!” Douglas raised both hands in the air, like a victorious gladiator. One of them held an empty glass instead of a sword.

“Now then,” he went on, letting his hands drop, “there are a few things to be settled. First, I think you ought to marry the girl. She’s like my very own daughter, and I’ll admit I had mixed feelings…”

“Wait a minute,” Alec said. “Marry Angela?”

“Of course.”

“That’s between her and me. You don’t have anything to say about it.”

“The hell I don’t!” Douglas exploded. “She’s practically my daughter. You are my son. If you think you’re going to go fucking around and leave her pregnant, you goddamned better well think again.”

“Now wait…”

“No, you wait,” Douglas insisted. “You’re going to marry her, and then head a delegation to meet Kobol. There are a few things I want you to make clear to him.”

“I’m not sure I want to!”

“Not sure? What the hell do you mean, not sure? You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. You’re either with us or against us. There aren’t any neutrals around here. You just said you’re on our side.”

“I didn’t say that!”

“Then you’re against us!” Douglas roared.

Will put a hand on his shoulder. “Hold on, Doug… just a…”

But Douglas shrugged him off and lumbered to his feet. Alec stood up beside him, barely coming up to his father’s shoulder.

“Now you listen to me, son,” Douglas said, his voice low and threatening. “I’ve let you sit around here and have your fill of food and warmth and shelter for three months. You’ve sneaked around behind my back to make it with my virtual daughter. And what have I asked from in return? Nothing! Not a goddamned thing. Except loyalty. And you refuse?”

Trembling white hot inside, Alec answered in a voice so choked and low that he himself could barely hear it, “That’s right. I refuse.”

“Then get out!” Douglas roared, pointing to the door. “Take whatever you own and get the hell out of here!”

“That’s just what I’m going to do.”

Alec started for the door. Everyone else in the house was staring at him now, all pretense of polite disinterest vanished. Will looked worse than when he had been shot.

“Just a minute,” Douglas snapped as Alec reached the door. “You can take whatever you please from this base. But you leave Angela alone. You’re not good enough for her, no matter how cleverly you’ve tricked her.”

“I’ll take what I want,” Alec said.

“Try taking her and I’ll have you hunted down like an animal and killed. I promise you!”