“Of course, my dear fellow,” Doc said unctuously, “but having some interests in the scientific research area myself, I find myself intensely curious.”
“Mebbe someday you’ll get up to the Foundation and have a look yourself.”
“Mayhap I will. Ryan has told me you’re aware of some of the ramifications of the Totality Concept.”
“Sure. What areas were you most interested in?” Donovan asked.
“Why the experiments regarding—”
“No,” Ryan interrupted, not wanting to give Donovan any more information than he already had.
Doc ceased speaking, glancing at Ryan in owl-eyed curiosity. “Have I spoken out of turn?”
“Man’s leading you on, Doc, wanting to find out how much you know,” Ryan commented. He stroked Krysty’s hair. She’d insisted on coming to sit by the campfire with him but hadn’t been able to remain awake. He missed talking to her, missed the way she was able to help him keep his thoughts all untangled. It felt as though he had knots in his head now.
“Surely there can be no harm in telling him some of what we have found out,” Doc said.
“Another time,” Ryan replied. “Man’s holding out information on us, we’re not going to be doing him any favors real soon.”
Donovan grinned, shifting into a cross-legged position. “So you have the location of Shostakovich’s Anvil and more information about the Totality Concept.”
“For trade,” Ryan agreed. “Once we get Krysty back on her feet.”
“Ryan said you’d known of two other cases like this,” Mildred spoke up.
“That’s right. Both of them involving Chosen who were about a flat minute from being chilled. They put their personality in other people, forced them to do the things they wanted them to.”
“Which was?”
“Return to the Chosen.”
“But they didn’t get there?”
“No. I saw them both. A family held the first woman, hoping something good would come of it, that mebbe the personality would wither away.”
“But it didn’t?” Mildred asked.
Donovan shook his head. “Gaudy slut was put in jail. Went crazy and chilled the man she’s working for. She kept trying to escape.”
“What happened to them?”
“Not much. Took them a couple weeks, but they both died.” He glanced at Krysty. “Glad she was sleeping when you asked that.”
But from the way Krysty moved against him, Ryan knew she hadn’t completely been asleep. She’d heard.
THE GROUP AWAKENED the next morning as the sun started to gray the eastern sky. The Heimdall Foundation people took a long time to rise. Ryan and Donovan had to pass through them, kicking at exposed feet until they got them up and moving. They reluctantly crowded back aboard Calypso until Donovan reminded them that walking back would have been a hell of a lot farther and harder.
Ryan didn’t bother trying to hide the remnants of the campsites. It would have taken too long, and if the pirates followed them they needed all the head start they could manage.
Breakfast was self-heats and leftover meat from the night before, as well as loaves of bread that had been salvaged from the Heimdall Foundation’s stores.
Ryan put Jak on watch in the crow’s nest aboard Calypso. He had the sharpest eyes of all the companions, and Ryan trusted him more than anyone in the Heimdall Foundation’s ranks.
With the bilge pumps both operating and crew to use them, Calypso was riding higher in the stream by mid-morning. The wind came in from the west, northwest, and pushed them even faster to the east. Calypso was able to use her sails to lighten the strain, as well, enabling them to achieve greater speed.
J.B. dropped a bucket into the stream and hauled it up near Ryan. He stuck a hand into it and pulled it back out, tasting the water drops on his fingers. “Fresh,” he said, “and good. Can’t taste any chems.”
Mildred stood at his side and cupped a hand, drinking from the bucket, as well. “Damn, it’s as good tasting as it is pretty. This water’s pure, clean and healthy. Not like that sludge pumping through that river we left.”
“Comes down out of the mountains,” Donovan said. He’d been consulting area maps, some of them Ryan had noticed from the predark, and some that looked handmade. “Got to catch it early in the spring, when the snows melt.”