Ryan watched them go off, Buford’s feet barely trailing the ground.
“Pulse is growing stronger,” said Mildred, who’d totally ignored the brief altercation.
Krysty’s eyes moved, life returning to them. With a struggle she concentrated on Ryan’s worried face. “Did I do it?” she whispered.
“Sure. He’s fine.”
“That’s good,” she said, and slipped back into darkness.
DESPITE THE FUSSING of Buford, aided by the repeated concern of Ellison, his sec boss, it wasn’t possible to move Krysty for three hours.
She lay in a semi coma, Mildred constantly checking pulse and respiration. Dean, fully recovered from his ordeal, kept scampering to a nearby stream for supplies of fresh water to bathe her forehead.
Every now and again she would briefly surface from the deep sleep. Twice she asked whether the boy was safe. Once she called out to her mother, Sonja.
Ryan sat on the grass beside her as the day wore on, holding her hand, occasionally talking to her in a quiet voice about small, personal thingsabout how he was missing her, how she’d saved his son’s life, how be wanted her well again.
It was just over three hours by his wrist chron, when she finally opened her eyes, yawned and stretched, managing a weak smile for him.
“You look terrible,” Krysty said. She coughed and cleared her throat. “I’m as dry as the bottom of the driest well in Drytown.”
“Dean, bring us some more water,” he called.
The boy was at Ryan’s side almost before the words were out of his mouth. He knelt and held the beaker for the woman to sip at. “Thanks, Krysty,” he said. “I owe you.”
“Do the same for me one day, Dean. Thanks for the water. Feel better now.”
She pulled herself up into a sitting position with Ryan’s help. But her eyes clouded and her head lolled to one side. He patted her cheek.
“Take it easy awhile longer.”
Buford had broken away from Trader’s glittering eyes and his endless tales of heroism past, and paced up and down nervously. “We must get back to the institute. We should have returned by noon at the very latest. There will be concern at the highest levels, Mr. Cawdor.”
“They can piss their pants at the highest level for all we care,” Abe called, overhearing the scientist. “We move when Krysty’s well and not before.”
“Triple-well said, Abe,” Trader added.
“Could carry her. Two men linking hands. Be like a chair.” Ellison rubbed a hand over his mustache, just touching the deep scar beneath it.
Ryan glanced at J.B., who shrugged. “What do you think, Krysty?”
“Normally I’d like to stay right here and sleep for three or four days, lover. But if this place he talked about isn’t too far off, then a clean bed might just be the next best thing to paradise.”
“How far, Buford?”
“Be at the sec barrier at the neck of the pass in about an hour. Longer if we move slow for the mu the woman. Steep uphill. After that it’ll be all downhill. Another half an hour or so. No longer.”
“Krysty, you feel up to this? Being carried the rest of the way?”
“Long as I don’t get too shaken around, lover. Might just throw up if I did.”
THE BARRIER WAS heavily guarded.
The installation obviously dated from before sky-dark, backed at unthinkable cost in money and labor from living rock on either side of the highway. There were slits in the defenses for rifles and machine guns, and turrets on the top that would have raked the entire area, up and down the hill.
A number of oil drums had been rolled into the middle, with room for a man to walk by but no space for horses or any other sort of transport.
Ellison had gone on ahead of the rest of the group, giving a shout of warning. Immediately they were covered by at least a dozen uniformed men, all carrying either the ubiquitous Mossberg or M-16 A-1s.
“Boy, they look like they got a fuckin’ army up there,” Trader said grudgingly. “Them’s some real smart and well-trained sec men, you got, Professor.”
“We pride ourselves on the record that nobody has gotten into and out of the grounds of the inner institute unbidden, through the last hundred years or so that it has been functioning. Not a single soul.”