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really thought much about that. I think it is. Often we don't find exactly
where we are until we get outside the redoubt. That sometimes takes days."
Dean tried again, this time managing to stand unaided. His face was frost
pale, and his eyes didn't look too secure in their sockets. But he was
upright.
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"Will there be a place we can rest and eat?"
"Doubt it. The fact that the mat-trans unit is still here and functioning is a
real double ace on the line for us."
"Jak Lauren? Will he" Ryan lifted a warning finger. Dean managed a wan smile.
"Sorry. Too many questions. I'm ready, as long as we don't go too fast."
Ryan pushed at the door, and immediately outside he checked the control panel,
making sure that it also carried the L and the D buttons.
"Get your blaster out," he said.
"Why?"
"There's a lot of golden dust around the floor. Don't remember that from last
time. Could mean someone else has been using the gateway, or that it's open to
the outside. Either way it's dangerous."
"If Krysty was here she'd feel if there was danger, wouldn't she?"
Ryan nodded, his finger on the trigger of the P-226 9 mm pistol. "Most times.
But not always."
The boy drew his Smith amp; Wesson 425, eyes narrowing. "I'm ready for them,
Dad."
"Trader used to reckon that the man who survived was the man who was readyeven
when he wasn't ready.
Get it?"
"Think so." Dean sounded doubtful.
They exited the small room, then the main control section for the gateway,
into the passage beyond.
Ryan stopped. "Shit," he muttered.
He remembered that Krysty sometimes quoted a saying of her mother's that good
luck and bad luck were often tangled together. You might fall down and break a
leg, yet just avoid going over a thousand-foot cliff.
The autodestruct devices that had been laid throughout the complex had done
most of their work with devastating efficiency. Ryan and his companions had
been the reluctant witnesses of that.
The good luck was that the gateway hadn't been damaged. The bad luck was what
he saw at the end of the passagesky, a circle of vinyl black, sprinkled with a
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myriad stars.
"Keep back while I take a look. Could be undercut and dangerous."
He moved forward very cautiously. All the lights were out in the corridor, and
his feet slid through a thick
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By the time he came close to the brink of the opening, Ryan was already aware
of a sighing wind in the night and the sense of a vast space beckoning him on.
"I'm coming back," he called.
"What is it?"
"Don't like it. Can't see a hand in front of my face, and I have a feeling
there's a big chasm out there.
Tackle it better in the light. Right now we'll get some sleep."
"We could try it, or we waste a lot of time, don't we?"
"No. We'll need sleep. Need to be alert for the walk across open desert to
Jak's place."
"How do you know he's still there?"
It was a fair question, one that Ryan had been repeatedly pushing away into a
locked room at the back of his mind. In Deathlands nothing was certain. And
the Southwest was an unusually hostile environment for survival.
"Dad?" Dean's voice came from the pool of light that spilled out from the open
doors of the mat-trans control area.
"I'm here. It could be that something's happened to Jak and his woman. But you
have to take risks in life, or you're deader than a spent round. Find out in
the morning."
For safety they went back inside the chamber, curling up together on the
floor. Ryan had his blaster in his hand all the time.
"DAD!"
Ryan came awake immediately, instantly aware of where he was.
"What?"
"Look."
A small bird was perched in the doorway, head on one side, looking curiously
at the two figures on the floor. It had a bright crimson beak and a splash of
gold on its head.
As Ryan sat up, it turned and flew away, the whirring of its tiny wings
vanishing into the morning.
Dean went out for a piss, calling his father from the passage. "There's
footmarks here."
"Mine?"
"Yeah. And others. Different patterns of boots in the sand. A lot of them,
Dad."
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That wasn't good news.
Ryan joined the boy, nodding his head in agreement. "Yeah. Looks like a dozen
of them. Not too recent.
See the way the blown dirt's drifted in on some of the boot-marks."
"Hey, look out there! You can see for a million miles."
In daylight the end of the passage was now clear. The side of the mountain
that had contained the redoubt had been sliced open as the plas-ex exploited a
major geological fault. Half of the hill had vanished as though a gigantic
machete had carved through it.
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Moving carefully, father and son made their way to the edge of the gulf.
Ahead the whole countryside lay open before them like a scorched paradise.
It was still only a little after dawn, and that flank of the mountain was
still in darkness. Far below, the floor of the desert was littered with
patches of shadow from frost-riven boulders.
A maze of narrow arroyos seamed the land, and farther away there was already
enough heat to cause the distant ranges of hills to shimmer. It might not have
been a million miles, but Ryan's guess was that it was possible to see more
than a hundred.
"Can't see nobody. Nothing. No houses. No ville. Nothing."
At the bottom of the slope Ryan could just make out the rusted remains of the
battered comm dish that had sheltered them from the blowout. He leaned out and
was able, to his relief, to spot a narrow, winding track.
It wandered to the right, then cut sharply in a series of break-back turns,
eventually reaching the flatter land below. It wasn't possible to tell whether
it was man or animal that had originally broken the trail.
Now boot prints appeared along it, as well as the spoor of a number of
medium-sized animals.
It took them nearly half an hour to negotiate the steep twists and reach level
ground. Dean wiped sweat off his face, staring up above them.
"Must've been double-thrilling."
Ryan was breathing hard from the exertion. The temperature was already up into
the eighties, but it was baking, dry heat. "What?"
"When you all escaped the mountain blowing up like that."
"Thrilling? One of the closest times I ever came to shitting my pants."
"Really?" Dean smiled at his father.
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But Ryan wasn't amused. "Not a joke, Dean. That dish over there was the only
thing that saved our lives. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]