Steele didn’t reply, half turning to stare out through the open doorway.
Ryan pressed him. “I’ve seen about four or five little ones since we arrived. There’s no school…nothing like that. Is there, Steele?”
“No. No school. Not for years. Not enough children to make it worthwhile.”
Doc cleared his throat, coughed and tried again. “Might I be permitted a small observation, ladies and gentlemen? On the subject of infants.”
“Go ahead, Doc.”
A half bow of the leonine head. “My thanks, Master Cawdor, for your courtesy. It is just that I have a great affection for children, having so tragically lost my own two dear little doves. They were so tender and so…but let that pass. The milk is spilled and spilled forever. You cannot ever go back, when you are always moving on. They were only cities, but they’re—”
“Doc!”
The old man jumped at Mildred’s interruption. “I was wandering, was I not?”
“You was. I mean, you were, Doc. You’d been talking about children…”
“Yes. Have any of you noticed that the majority of inhabitants of the settlement are what one might once have called white Anglo-Saxon Protestants?”
“Sure are,” Steele said, not hiding his irritation. “Where’s this leading to, Doc?”
“The children all looked remarkably to me as though they came originally from Native American stock.” He sneezed violently. “Bless me!”
Ryan blinked. “Fireblast! That’s right, Doc.”
“Mescalero.” Jak punched his right fist into his left palm.
“Is that right?” Krysty took half a dozen steps across the cabin to confront Steele. “Gaia! That’s it, isn’t it? You’re all sterile from the rad hot spot. You can’t have your own little ones, so you steal them!”
Without a word the sec man stalked quickly out of the cabin, vanishing into the heart of the ville.
BEFORE GOING OUT to share the noon meal with the rest of the Children of the Rock, Ryan and friends had a long discussion about their situation.
The first problem to face up to was Brother Joshua Wolfe. Could he be trusted?
“Mebbe we should just up and get out,” J.B. said. “Out of sight’s out of range.”
Ryan was in favor of staying. “Keep our eyes open. Course. But I reckon that if Wolfe had wanted us chilled, he could have simply raised his hand and that would have been it. I’m kind of interested in the setup here.”
“How about the rad hot spot?” Mildred shook her head, the beaded plaits chinking against one another. “Remember that guy, Owsley, with his skin? Nasty complexion. More spots than a leopard. I would lay money that it’s a lupus-linked condition. Got its roots in a rad cancer. I wouldn’t want to stay here longer than two or three days.”
At that moment there was a hesitant knock on the door. Jak was nearest and opened it, revealing a couple of women holding buckets, brushes and mops.
“Can we come and clean?” asked the older of the pair, a skinny woman with sparse gray hair.
“Sure. We’ll move out of your way.” Ryan got up from the bed where he’d been resting, leading the way from the cabin. Doc was the only one who didn’t move. He had suffered another dreadful coughing fit that had racked his body. Now he slept, uneasily, tossing and turning, muttering to himself, hands opening and closing like claws.
“Can leave him there,” said the other woman, a pretty, washed-out blonde, who looked painfully anemic. “Won’t bother us none. Need to rest up for testing.”
Ryan nodded. “Sure. Not long until the meal. Rouse him for that.”
Krysty paused in the doorway. “How long since there was a child born here in the ville?” she asked.
“Child?” The women looked at each other doubtfully. “Born here?”
The older one wiped the back of her hand across her face. “You mean a norm?”
“Sure. Why? You had some mutie births?”
“Don’t say anything,” the younger one urged. “Brother Wolfe doesn’t like blabbing.”
“No, won’t hurt none. Not a secret, is it? Half the folk of the Sierras know about our problem.”
Doc coughed and stirred in his sleep, rolling over onto his right side.
“Go on,” Krysty prompted.
The woman hesitated, reluctantly proceeding as though the words had been drawn from her heart. “Last natural-born baby here was a good four years back, and that was a weak sideling. Lived a scant brace of months. Been others.” She pulled a grimace of disgust. “Been others.”