don’t have much, but what we do have we hold to.”
“Okay, okay. Joke’s over. We’ll go with you and no trouble, all right?” Mildred
said hurriedly as she went over to examine Jak.
“Too slow.” Jak grinned ruefully as he picked himself up.
He glared at Mac. “Thought just fat. Won’t make mistake again.”
Mac returned the glare with a grudging respect. “You’re fast. I’ll make damn
sure you don’t get the chance.”
Jak, Mildred and J.B. were now grouped together under Mac’s watchful eye. The
ragged bundle that was called Tilly now stood at the back of the group, keeping
a watchful eye on their rear. Krysty and Dean were covered by the giant, while
Ryan had the dubious pleasure of having two of their captors covering him,
although, in truth, neither seemed to be taking too much care about how he was
covered.
They followed a two-lane blacktop across the valley, the tarmac distorted and
warped by the shift of the earth underneath, so that whorls and dips caused them
to stumble. Their captors, however, seemed to know every little dip.
Which was why they thought they could be slack with their prisoners, Ryan
thought. But it didn’t explain why they weren’t bothered about attackers.
“Mind if I ask a question?” he said laconically over his shoulder.
“You can ask, One-eye. Doesn’t mean you’ll get an answer, mind.”
“Seems fair. I was just wondering why you’re not keeping watch for an ambush.”
The question was met with a degree of laughter that Ryan hadn’t met anywhere
else in the Deathlands.
“Excuse me my impoliteness,” Mac, who seemed to vie with Tilly as unofficial
leader of the group, said through the tears of humor that rolled down his cheek.
“Seems to me that you don’t know this place at all. Mebbe we were wrong about
you.”
“Mebbe you were,” Ryan replied. “Still haven’t answered my question, though.”
“True, true. See, this place is a pesthole. No one much comes here. No one would
want to. Mebbe we get some traders once in a purple moon, but mostly that’s by
mistake. There’s only us and the insiders live here. No one else wants to settle
here.”
“Then why are you still here?” Dean asked, the first time he’d been moved to
speak.
Mac shrugged. “Born here. Live here. Die here. That’s the way of things.”
“We get by,” Tilly said. “We’d get by a whole lot better if the mother insiders
would leave us alone.”
“Why don’t they leave you alone?” Krysty asked.
“You tell me, you’re one of them,” Tilly spit.
Krysty sighed. “If we were one of them, then why were they shooting at us? Why
did they want us dead?”
Tilly moved in what might have been a shrug. “Everyone falls out with everyone
else. People fight.”
“For no reason?”
“There are ‘no reasons,’ ” Mac snapped. “Now cut out the talking and let’s move
it.” He scanned the skies. “I think we’re in for another bad one, and I want to
get back before it starts.”
TRULY, DOC BELIEVED that reason had deserted him this time, perhaps for good.
“You realize that you are in that state that most people ascribe to me? The
state of insanity, I mean?” he asked Wallace in a soft, almost disbelieving
tone.
Wallace looked genuinely puzzled. “But, Doctor, even with your record of
awkwardness and dissent, I would have believed that you would be astounded in
these postskydark times that the Totality Concept still operated, still clung to
its meaning.”
“Meaning?” Doc’s voice rose to a screech as he whirled away from Wallace toward
the glass partition that separated the Moebius MkI from where they stood. He
flung out an arm. “You really believe that has meaning?”
He stood, not expecting an answer of any coherence and not really listening, his
eyes glued to the monstrosity that he couldn’t truly comprehend.
The slack-jawed, moronic tech stood beside him, still tapping in the codes and
keeping the mechanism ticking over. That had to surely be all that it could do.
What else was there now? The military-industrial complex for which it was
designed had long since crumbled to dust, and any answers it might come up with