“So?” Dean prodded, succumbing to the lure.
“So simply this—figuratively, the Illuminated Ones wish to set up a system via their central redoubt that will rule the Deathlands in the way that their forebears did before skydark.”
“They must be pretty stupe, then,” Jak commented. “Don’t notice them ruling anything.”
“Of course not, my dear boy,” Doc replied patiently. “Obviously, in the same way that the Gate have lost sight of some things during the ensuing years, then so have the Illuminated Ones…to what degree, we have yet to find out.”
“Literally, then,” Ryan said. “Shadowing literally?”
“Most ingenious,” Doc muttered, nodding to himself in admiration of the fable’s imagery. “I believe I may have mentioned in passing about the ideas of a second center of command, something I heard the whitecoats talk of during the time when I was held by them. I wonder if the idea of shadowing literally means that there is an identical center of command hidden somewhere in that area, modeled on the way things were so that it could smoothly take over the running of the military and economy when things returned to—shall we say?-—normal.”
“Nice idea, but wouldn’t it have been blown to shit by the nukecaust if it was too close to the old D.C.?” Ryan posited.
Doc nodded appreciatively. “If it was that close, that would be a reasonable assumption. After all, there is little enough there now. But there is still plenty of life around Seattle, as we have found to our cost in the past. And that’s not too far away…and, perhaps more significantly, it would tie in with what we already know.”
Gloria studied the old man intently. “You know as well as I do that we’re headed that way. Do you really think that we could be within sight of our goal?”
Doc shrugged. “I have seen too much, experienced more than you would ever wish to know, to say yea or nay that simply. All I can honestly say is that it is possible that we may be nearing a solution to the many puzzles that beset us.”
Gloria looked at Ryan. “Is that a yes or no?” She laughed.
The one-eyed warrior shrugged. “Don’t expect me to understand everything Doc says—I’ve only known him for years!”
IN THE MORNING, J.B. fixed their position by his mini-sextant and established that their winding path was taking them toward the northwest. It was becoming more obvious, too, in the changes that were occurring in the foliage around them. The plains and jungle were blurring into one more and more, the trees spreading out and the vines and creepers the companions had encountered on an earlier trip to the northwest becoming more plentiful.
There were also larger and more predatory animals, as became evident in a sudden attack that almost took them off guard.
It happened after they had been traversing a thick patch of jungle for several hours. Ryan and Gloria led the way, hacking a path through a dense patch of foliage, where the trees grew in a stunted and twisted thicket so that branches overhung and overlapped, cutting out much of the light—but also, mercifully, the heat. Despite this, it was still oppressively hot beneath the canopy of leaves, and the thick clouds of midges and hoverflies were distracting, making it difficult to breathe.
The initial path through was being cut by the two leaders, with members of the Gate tribe, augmented by Jak, Dean and Krysty, joining them in widening the path to admit the whole tribe and, more significantly, the mules and carts that contained the majority of the equipment that the nomadic tribe carried with them.
In such a patch, the attention needed to stay clear of the insects and also cut the path took up the vast majority of everyone’s concentration. There was also a large degree of noise involved in cutting the path, added to which the birds and small mammals that they knew to populate the jungle were disturbed by the arrival of the Gate, and so were raising hell as they tried to escape the onslaught.
All of which shouldn’t have made it surprising that a larger predator would be able to attack them. Nonetheless, when it happened it came as a shock.