But they couldn’t afford to risk losing the fuel tank, attached to an old jeep. The twelve hundred gallons it had held when they’d fled the far northeast was down to something under four hundred gallons. The third vehicle in their convoy was an elderly European four-by-four that Paul and his dead brother John had worked on for weeks, souping it up until it was capable of nearly one-thirty on a flat highway.
Pamela turned in her seat and pulled back the strip of orange curtain. “Still snowing,” she said.
There was a good eighteen inches lying everywhere, and they all knew there weren’t going to be any lifesaving plows coming out of the darkness to sweep the way clear for them.
Mac wasn’t that worried, though he wished they’d been able to get a little closer to the coast, where the salt air would keep snowfall to a minimum.
He’d found that he was suffering from mood shifts over the past few weeks, something that had never happened before in his life. Since the landing of the Aquila and the appalling shock of finding that the United States of America that he’d left was no longer in existence, Mac had realized that he was no longer the man he’d once been.
He never used to doubt himself or find it tough to make decisions in moments of crises. And anyone who suffered from depression had needed, in his simplistic view, a good kick in the ass.
Not now.
Since the space vessel’s crash, particularly after he’d completed the odyssey to New England that had resulted in the death of his friend Pete Turner, Mac had become aware that he’d slowed down.
At forty-six he’d been used to working with his brain as a top astrophysicist. And with his body as a relaxation, concentrating on keeping superfit.
After Earthblood it was hard to come to terms with the fact that his mental skills were utterly obsolete and that he had already lost the top edge of his fitness.
And in moments of mortal danger he’d frozen, leaving the saving of his family to his wives and his children.
“Mac.” A hand touched his sleeve.
“Sorry,” he said, struggling to retrieve a smile for Angel, who was sitting next to him.
“You drifted away from us,” she said. “Looked like you’d stared into your own grave.”
“Yeah. Something like that. Guess I got a touch of the sads.” He shook his head. “Don’t worry. Gone now.” Looking around at the faces of his wives and his four children, he said, “We got skis with us on the roof here. If it stops snowing tomorrow morning, why don’t we go out and get us some pre-Christmas winter sporting?”
The suggestion was greeted with general delight, and Henderson McGill felt much better as he eventually slipped into sleep in his narrow bunk that night.
IT WAS TRULY a heaven of sunrise.
The turnoff overlooked a broad valley, dotted with the blackened corpses of ten thousand trees. But the steady fall of snow had gentled their stark outlines, softening the grim landscape.
It looked as though the vid special-effects men and women had labored to produce an unbelievable view of classical beauty.
Most of the hills were gentle, but a quarter mile to their left there was a much steeper slope, banked with deep, drifted snow, bare rock showing through, glittering with outcrops of quartz.
“Isn’t it marvelous, Dad?” said Jocelyn, her small gloved fingers in his.
Yeah, and have you ever thought, honey, that we’re all going to die? The words had appeared all unbidden in his brain, but Mac had just enough presence of mind to censor them before they reached his lips.
Instead, he said, “Yeah, and it’s all free and ours. No lining up for lifts or equipment hire.”
That was much better.
One by one the rest of the family emerged, boots crunching in the frozen, powdery snow, exclaiming at the untouched dome of cloudless blue and the bright sun.
“No chance of hitting the road,” said Paul, shaking his head at the blocked highway.
“Not today, son. But there’s tomorrow. If Jim and the rest are in Muir Woods, they’ll likely wait a couple of days. And they’ll manage to leave us a message about where they’ve gone. Don’t worry—” he punched his son lightly on the arm. “—not a day for doing any worrying.”