“I remember falling asleep in a forest and waking with my eyes frozen shut. Got them clear and stood up in the snow to take a leak. I started to piss, and it began to freeze from the ground up, turning into a golden ladder of pure ice.”
“Not very pure, Trader,” Ryan commented.
“It’s what they call a figure of speech, beyond your poor understanding.”
“Go on,” Dean urged.
Trader sniffed, wiping away a bead of moisture from the end of his nose. “Well, kid, the freezing ice was getting nearer and nearer to my you know”
“To your dick?”
“Yeah. I knew that it would freeze right the way inside me, until my bladder froze, then my heart and lungs would’ve turned to ice.”
“What did you do?”
“Pulled out my knife and slashed down at the stream of piss, and I cut clear through it just in time.”
THE WIDE, HIDDEN VALLEY seemed to exaggerate the force of the weather, trapping the wind and snow and whirling it around like a huge mixing bowl.
The group plodded back up the trail, passing the barrier, where the sec men were sheltering in their huts, over the ridge and into the more open country, where the wind wasn’t as severe and the snow eased.
Ellison, who was running the hunting expedition, gathered everyone around him in the lee of a granite outcrop that was dusted with frozen snow.
“Grizzly and her cub were sighted around this area. In the past four or five yearsin winterthey’ve sometimes come over the high land to the north of us, making their way across what’s left of the causeway, particularly if there’s been a very hard winter in old Canada.”
Buford raised a hand. “I remember we killed two in the same month, not all that far from here. It was a long day’s expedition, near Witch Hole Pond.”
A frosty smile appeared on Thea Gibson’s face. “We were able to try out a cub in the labs that time. Didn’t work out too well. Adrenaline was an unexpected problem. But we’ve made such progress in the last couple of years.”
Buford nodded. “But remember that we have been told by Crichton to take care about risking exposure of any element of our work to the outlanders.” His glasses flashed toward Ryan. “However undeniably pleasant they might be.”
“Of course, Ladrow. You were right to reprove me. My enthusiasm for my work sometimes carries me along just that few steps too far. Forgive me.”
Ellison rubbed his gloved hands together. “You know that I’m more interested in your work, professors, than most anyone around the institute. But we should be moving. Want to get this over and back again before dark. Weather could turn real nasty.”
Ryan agreed with that. The sky that had seemed the darkest gray at breakfast time had cleared and lightened a little, but over to the north it was now nearly black and the snow was already falling a little faster again.
“How’re we doing this?” Trader asked. “There’s twenty or so of us in this party.”
Ellison looked at him, lifting a finger to rub the scar. The bitter cold had made it darker against the pallor of his face. “We’ll split up is best. Three groups, I think. There’s several trails to bring us to Witch Hole Pond. We can cover them all. I’ll lead one group, Professor Buford can guide the second and Professor Gibson the third.”
Ryan caught J.B.’s eye, getting a cautious nod in return. Dividing into three meant splitting their own party, and with a dozen sec men around that could prove risky.
But, there still hadn’t been any kind of direct threat to any of them.
ELLISON TOOK four sec men, plus Jak and Abe.
Buford had four more sec men, along with Doc, J.B. and Dean, who had wanted to go with his father. But Ryan had persuaded him that it would be better to be separate. “If anything goes wrong, one of us has to be there for Krysty,” he’d said to the boy.
Professor Gibson had five sec men, Ryan and Trader with her.
She took her party to one side before they all divided up. “Just one thing gentlemen,” she said crisply. “I know that you two outlanders are not used to taking orders from a mere frail woman.” One eye appeared to be glaring at Trader and the other directly at Ryan. Neither of them spoke, while the sec men remained silent and sullen in the background. “I know this land. I have hunted all game from bears to cougar. I am in charge of this group. Is that absolutely clear?”
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