Ryan didn’t say anything, feeling the heat of Donovan’s lantern brushing across his face.
“Once you get what you need, or what you want, you’ll be gone. Won’t matter what anyone else needs or wants. You believe in very little outside yourself.”
“I’ve found that’s the best way to be,” Ryan replied lightly.
“Not up to me to try changing your religion. Just my effort to keep the record square.” Donovan turned and headed on up the grade, following the trail.
“I BELIEVE IN THE WORK the Heimdall Foundation is doing,” Donovan said when they reached the top of the dam. “Whatever future Deathlands has in store, part of it’s going to be guided by institutions like the Foundation, people working hard to look backward so they can look forward again.”
“It was institutions like the Foundation that put the world in the shape it’s in.” Ryan studied the dam. The logs had been hewed to fit, staggered in an alternating double-stacked layer like rounds in an M-16 clip. They’d been bricked up with mud, which helped slow the water’s eventual erosion of the dam.
The blocked water stretched out behind the dam for over two hundred yards, at least half that in diameter. The water was still, eddying smoothly, reflecting the sky overhead.
“How long will this water last?” Ryan asked.
“We get lucky,” Donovan said, “all year.”
“How do you get it to the Foundation?”
“We dam the other end of the cistern before we release the water. When it has nowhere else to go, it flows along the northern channels.”
“And one of them leads to the Foundation?”
“Yeah. Pretty much. There’s more to it. Most folks wouldn’t be able to trail the water. Goes underground in places. It’s no easy process, and it took years for us to figure out a way to get it to the Foundation without being traced or contaminating it. One of these days, you’d have to see the Foundation.”
“Mebbe.” Ryan’s wanderlust had driven him the length and breadth of Deathlands, first as a young man, then as a lieutenant on War Wag One with the Trader. When he’d first heard about the Heimdall Foundation while going to check on Dean at Nicholas Brady’s school, he’d wanted to journey to the Foundation and see it for himself. That inclination was still in him.
But now wasn’t the time. Not with Krysty in the shape she was in.
“How do you release the water?” Ryan asked.
“Same way we close down the other end of the cistern— use explosives. After all these years, we know where to place them.”
Ryan filed that bit of knowledge away.
“Got something else to show you,” Donovan said, “if you’re not too tired.”
“What? I’ve got a feeling morning’s going to come bastard early if we’re going to get at those pirates.”
“You’re right. But I think this is going to interest you. Since you’ve heard of the Totality Concept, I’m certain you’ve also learned they left redoubts scattered around Deathlands.”
Ryan looked at the man.
“We found one here,” Donovan said. “Want to go look?”
IT TOOK Ryan and Donovan almost half an hour to trek back farther upstream along the mountain ridge. By that time, he’d worked off most of the small amount of supper he’d eaten back at the campsite. Seeing Krysty sick as she was had left him without an appetite, but it was making up for lost time now.
“Hungry?” Donovan asked, offering a cloth-wrapped bar.
“What’s that?”
“Trail-mix bar. Kind of like an old-style journeycake, only this has a lot of raisins, nuts and dried fruits in it. Standard Foundation issue, along with self-heats and ring-pulls. Too much work to chew to put any fat on you, but they keep your energy up.”
Ryan took the bar, unwrapping it and smelling it. Satisfied with the odor, his stomach growling in sudden anticipation, he took a bite and began the unexpectedly long task of chewing. It was good, but as Donovan said, it took real work to get it down.
Only a few minutes farther on, they arrived at the redoubt.
The massive steel door was inset in the rock face, sheltered and partially hidden by a low-hanging shelf. Huge boulders and brush around it served to further mask the door’s presence.