“Including yours, you four-eyed little prick.” Trader had the Armalite in his hands, trained at Buford.
There was one of those moments when time ceased to exist, the moment when the rocks crumbled away beneath your feet at the edge of the crevasse, the moment when the prairie rattler was poised to strike at your throat, the moment when the finger had tightened on the trigger.
“Insults are the last resort of the intellectually impotent,” Buford said.
Trader laughed. “Well, you sure got some nerve for a four-eyed little prick. I’ll hand you that. Just don’t threaten us again, all right?”
“We shall see.”
He returned his gaze to Ryan. “A sensible answer to my question?”
“Tell me what it is you’re looking for,” Ryan said, keeping calm.
Buford hesitated for a moment, glancing at his companion. “Very well. Have you seen a dog? Or, possibly a pair of dogs? Quite similar to a casual glance, with silver collars?”
Dean’s mouth had opened and the little man spotted it. “Yes, lad? And don’t now try to tell me that you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
Ryan answered him. “Sure we saw them. A long ways off. Yesterday, about five miles or more behind. Near the shores of a real big lake.”
“You didn’t catch them? Or see them close?”
“No. But they did look kind of similar, now that you mention it. Like German shepherds.”
“Yesterday. By the lake. Both of them.” He stood completely still as though he were receiving a secret communication from the Almighty.
Ellison nudged him, whispering, loud enough for the others to hear. “We can come out tomorrow, Professor. Could find them if they haven’t gone far.”
“No. Too labor intensive. The collars would have been useful to us.”
Ryan was conscious of the weight of the two lengths of silver in the pocket of his coat.
Buford reached a decision. “We will all now go back to the institute and break our fasts together. I know that my colleagues will be most interested in such an unusual group of outlanders. Shall we go?”
“Why not?” Ryan said. “Let’s move, people.”
BEFORE LEAVING THE CAMP Ryan used the excuse of wanting to take a leak to throw the two collars far out into the middle of the pool, hoping that the sec men from the institute didn’t come back later in the day to see the heat-broken skeleton of the dead stranger among the ashes.
THERE HAD BEEN six other sec men with the scientist and Ellison, all armed with identical Mossberg scatterguns. Ryan noticed that, oddly, none of them carried either a bolstered handblaster or a rifle of any sort. Nor did any of them show any inclination toward conversation.
They all wore the same uniform of white quilted plastic jackets and black pants tucked into ankle-high boots. Unusual for sec guards, they didn’t wear any kind of ville badge or identifying insignia.
As they walked through the swelling opalescence of the dawning, Ladrow Buford attached himself to Ryan, recognizing him as the leader of the group. He asked him for the names of all the other members, pausing to jot them down in a small notebook of maroon morocco leather.
He had also asked a little about their fishing trip. Ryan had explained that they had come from a tiny settlement way down the coast, called Miskatucket. That seemed to satisfy the little man, who changed the subject.
“We are a closed community at the institute, Ryan. Have been since before the long winters.”
Ryan was taken completely by surprise at the bland statement. “How do you mean, from before the long winters? How can you have done?”
“A lucky chance. Freak of nature, winds and the ground-zero locations of the enemy missiles. We were preserved. Of course there were a number of fatalities in the months that followed, from the radiation-induced cancers. A sad number. We have never recovered from that in terms of our population. Which is, sadly, still shrinking slowly. Fertility has not been our strong point. But with the new” He stopped, giggled and clapped his hand over his prim mouth in a girlish manner. “But I go before my horse to market, Ryan. We should be there in a couple of hours, and you will see what you will see, and hear what you will hear.”