The battering on the door of their dormitory sent Ryan's hand scrabbling for the butt of the SIG-Sauer Waster, feeling the chill of the metal against the warmth of his palm.
But the voice outside was Doc's and he relaxed again, Krysty cuddling up against him under the blankets.
"For gentlemen in England now a'bed will think themselves accursed they were not here and hold their manhood cheap... Upon my soul, friend Cawdor, friend Glamis, are you in there with yon wanton maiden, holding your manhood?"
"If Doc knew I washolding it, he'd go fire-red with embarrassment," Krysty whispered.
"He sounds in good voice." He called out to the old man. "You got first food cooked and waiting for us, Doc?"
"Of course. Eggs fresher than tomorrow's sunrise done just the way you like 'em. Fluffy and full of get-up-and-go goodness. Rashers of orange-cured ham so thick you need a forklift to get them to your mouth. Honey-roasted chicken pieces and crisp link patties. Peaches and melons that fell off the trees five minutes ago. Coffee strong enough and black enough to float a six-shooter. Bread that hasn't even finished being baked yet awhile. And butter that was in the cow less than a half hour since."
"Doc," Ryan said, swinging his long legs out of the bed and starting to pull on his pants, "you got yourself a couple of hungry customers. It really is good as you say?"
"Sure! Come and get it! Come and get it!"
A few minutes later Ryan cautiously lifted the brittle off-white plastic spoon to his lips, grimacing at the familiar gray texture and stodgy consistency of the dull mess resting like a sullen reproach in the middle of the plate.
"You lying old bastard!" he shouted. "It's just fucking self-heat, like it always is."
Doc cackled with merriment, eyes glinting at the success of his small joke. "Yes, dear Ryan, yes. But you had a good couple of minutes there anticipating it, didn't you?"
A decent, uninterrupted night's sleep was such a rarity in the Deathlands that all seven of them were in high spirits as they ate their breakfast, with the possible exception of Donfil More, who was tenderly rubbing the lower part of his back, complaining that the bed was a foot too short for him.
"Every bed too short f'you," Jak sniggered.
Apart from Donfil's Smith & Wesson, there didn't seem to be any worthwhile armament sections in the vast, rambling redoubt. Even the first superficial survey of the morning made it clear that the land, wherever they were, had definitely been subject to a major shift and drop. Whole sections of the complex had totally disappeared, corridors ending in blank walls of smeared earth, as though a gigantic knife had hacked through them.
Some of the redoubts that had been totally abandoned at the time of the long winters had been scoured clear with fine combs; every single artifact, notice, instruction or plan had been removed. But that wasn't the case here, as they found when they finished their dreary breakfast and set out to explore.
Every main passage and junction area had its own 3-D holo map of the entire redoubt that showed where they were at any given moment, as well as tappable info about how to move around both inside and outside.
Since there was no sign of any danger, Ryan agreed that they should split up. Doc and Lori were accompanied by Jak, and J.B. went on a recce with the Mescalero shaman. Ryan went with Krysty.
After studying one of the plans, Ryan realized that the gateway section could be totally cut off from the rest of the redoubt, only accessible now down the tottering ladder at the lowest turning of the tide. Once again there came the nagging doubt that he'd closed the outer sealing doors to the mat-trans section.
The map also showed, at the highest floor level near something marked as Main Entrance, a rectangular building called Visitor Center and Initial Indoctrination Module.
"Sounds worth a look, lover?" Krysty suggested.
"Yeah. Doesn't sound like there's all that much around this place worth a look. It's kind of funny in away."
"What is?"
"We've seen redoubts cleared right out, and yet you still can find something mebbe useful around the place. You know?"
"Yeah."
"This looks like it was in use right up till the nukes started falling..."
Krysty shook her head. "More than that, lover. We already saw that there's somebody around somewhere who's stillusing the redoubt — least the gateways — to jump."
"I know. But apart from the big landslide, this place is filled with food and everything. We could live here the rest of our lives and never need to go outside again."
"Call that living?"
"No. Call it existing. Once saw some old vid, back around bloody Kansas, with some friends who got holed up in a kind of ville. Muties all around them trying to get in. They sort of existed."
"What happened to them?"
Ryan shook his head. "No idea. Vid player broke before we got to the end of the story. I guess they all died."
Krysty reached in her pocket and drew out the small, gleaming black Apache tear, the smooth stone she'd brought with her from the wilderness of the Southwest. She threw it up in the air and caught it, bringing it to her lips for a gentle kiss. "How 'bout we all go up and get us some fresh air. What do you say to that?"
"Yeah," Ryan said with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. "Why not?"
None of the others had found anything of great interest in the parts of the redoubt they'd been exploring. Donfil had been fascinated by a room packed from floor-to-ceiling with boxes of tablets.
"They were called... What was their name, again, J.B.?"
"Tranks and sleepers," the Armorer replied.
"Yes." The shaman nodded. "Pills to make you sleep and pills to stop you worrying. It is not the way of my people to take such things. There is wrong in the balance if such 'pills' are needed."
Doc laughed, still sounding a little weak after his ordeal of the previous day. "One pill to make you larger and one to make you small," he chanted. "Go ask Alice, but I think she doesn't live hereabouts anymore."
Ryan didn't take much notice, figuring the old man's skull was still a couple of rounds short of a full mag.
The dead mutie had obviously been an old loner, a packie, hanging around the corpses of old buildings for what he could suck out of the ruins. By far the greater threat to their safety was the mysterious, unseen stranger who'd been able to manipulate the controls of the gateway with such apparent ease. Hecouldbe dangerous.
So Ryan led them along in full firefight order, blasters at the ready, fingers on triggers, nerves drawn as tight as bowstrings. J.B. brought up the rear of their patrol, with the rest of them strung out between.
The journey up toward the surface was trouble-free and uneventful, and they followed the explicit maps at every turn and junction. The walls were gently curved, with the overbright lighting fading to normal as they climbed into the highest levels. It crossed Ryan's mind that it was odd the redoubt contained no corpses. Where were all the dead? The atomic generators had been built and programmed to provide air, heat and light for a thousand years. But they weren't programmed to shift what must have been several hundred iced bodies.
"This is it." Ryan held up his clenched fist in the signal for them to stop and beckoned them all forward into the large open space. Oil stains marked the concrete floor.
"Usual control," Jak commented, pointing to the green lever.
Unusually it was pointing in the up position, meaning that the main outer doors had been opened from the inside, which was probably the handiwork of the deceased mutie.
"Ready to go out, friends?" Ryan asked, glancing around.
"Let's do it," Krysty said.
The door swung open with a greased silence, letting in a wave of cool, fresh air, which was such a contrast to the dull recirculated air of the redoubt that it tasted like a heady, sparkling wine.
"My word," Doc breathed, stepping through the entrance. "That is just so beautiful it makes you..." He shook his head in mute wonderment at the scene.
They stood near the crest of the hill, a rounded slope that was at the center of a small island. The sea was spread around it in a dark gray expanse, touched with dappled weals of bright silver. It looked as if the island was about four miles across and barely two miles wide, the flanks of the hill speckled with stands of larch, pine and fir.
Down to the left they could see the flash of a waterfall, among an expanse of aspen, maple and live oaks. Ryan had never seen anything quite so brilliant as the magnificent show of color from the trees. Every imaginable shade from dark green, through dull brown, to fiery reds and startling orange. It was almost as if the mountain was ablaze from sea's edge to the beginnings of bare, gray rock.
"New England fall," Doc told them.
"It's beautiful," Lori said, kneeling down on a bank of soft, cropped turf.
"Road there." Jak pointed to where the blacktop, partly overgrown, wound across the flank of the hill toward the shattered remains of a stone harbor.
"Never saw anything so bright and strong as those trees," J.B. said quietly, taking off his glasses and polishing them on his sleeve.
"What makes them that color, Doc?" Ryan asked.
"The bright reds and golds? I recall reading in some... some time back. The soil and the season brings it on. All that brave array of brilliant hues and tints is simply the last scene of death. The leaves die back for the winter, and before they die they display all their rich panoply. That is what we see here, my friends. The brightness of death."
There was an infinite calm about the morning. Away to the north they could make out either the mainland or more islands. Around the granite headland below them they could see great circling clouds of cormorants, rising like smoke from the sea. Farther out, Ryan thought for a moment that he spotted some vast creature moving through the sullen waves, broaching for a moment, then disappearing. But he couldn't be certain, and it didn't reappear.
Donfil joined Lori, sitting cross-legged and gazing around him, eyes hidden by the mirrored sunglasses. He looked like some skeletal hunting bird, waiting patiently for its prey by a quiet forest pool.
"This is the first place I have seen in many, many moons," he said. "There is a word in the tongue of the lost Navaho people. They speak of hozroin their language."
"What's it mean? Hozro?" Krysty asked the shaman.
He paused as he considered the question. "Hozrois to be as one with your world. With your... what is the Anglo word?"
"Environment?" Doc offered. "Big buzzword way back when."
"Environment. Good word, Dr. Tanner. Yes, it is to be free from all worry and anger. To relish the day and all in it for what it is. If it is a day of rain, then hozromeans to enjoy the day for its rain and not moan about the wet."
"Sounds good to me," Ryan said. "Lotta times I could've done with some hozromyself."
"You must seek it within yourself, Ryan Cawdor," the Apache said solemnly. "Seek within and you shall find it."
They could see from immense fault lines in the granite slopes of the mountain that concealed the redoubt where major earth slippage had occurred during the nukings of the war. No more buildings were visible.
From high above Ryan thought he could detect the remains of a long causeway stretching out toward the distant land, but some earth shift seemed to have dropped it below sea level. For the first time it came to him that they might have serious problems in trying to get off the island.
Halfway down the rippled roadway they found a stone shelter, roofless, at an overlook.
Acadia National Park. Scenic View, said a wooden notice, deeply carved, set into the landmark wall.
"You might be interested, Jak," Doc said. "The Acadians, or Arcadians, were what became the Cajuns from down around your part."
The boy nodded, the light breeze tugging at the white froth of hair that tumbled over his narrow shoulders.
"Look at burn bits." Lori pointed at the sill of the great open window. The wood was charred and scorched, rotting where a hundred years of rain had penetrated it.
"Must have been some heavy hot spots around here," J.B. said.
"One of the bad parts, if we're truly in New England, here," Krysty replied. "Uncle Tyas McCann was real wise. Said the west and southerly-west got burned badly by the missiles. But the long winter came hardest up this way."
"Let's settle it." The Armorer reached into one of his capacious pockets and pulled out the tiny, folding sextant. He took a sight at the sun and then busied himself with his creased maps and calculations. "Yeah," he said finally. "Nearest big ville I can work is Boston."
"Acadia was up in Maine," Doc said. "As near as I can recall."
"Look." Krysty pointed to the back of the rough shelter. There was a silvery metal plaque, around five feet long and eighteen inches deep. It had an etched map of the coastline across from the harbor, with names on it, and a few lines of text.
"It's called Ile au Haut," Ryan told them. "This island we're on."
Ryan scanned the lines of text about the national park. "Says here that there's a mountain over there on the big island. Cadillac Mountain. The first rays of sunlight to touch the old United States used to brush the top of it. Talks about all the hiking trails there are around this island."
"Looks like someone tried to chisel this last bit away," Krysty commented, stooping to peer at it. "You can still read it, though."
"Where?" Doc asked.
"There." She indicated the last section of the incised text.
"Ah, yes."
All of them could read it, though Lori and Jak had problems with some of the longer words on the inscription.
Ile au Haut was once part of Acadia National Park. Founded in 1919, it was the first such park in the east and remained the only one in all of New England. For nearly eighty years the forty thousand acres of Acadia provided a haven for all lovers of nature. In 1996 the government — in its wisdom — pushed through the bill that took He au Haut away from the national park system and handed it to the military for the building of a massive, secret establishment.
"They mean the redoubt," Lori said.
"Yes," Doc sighed. "Right, child. They surely do."
There was nationwide outrage at this decision and protests by environmental groups from all over the world. An attempt by Greenpeace to thwart the plans ended in tragedy and the deaths of dozens of protestors. This taking of Acadia was followed in the next months by the government's assuming control, through the Pentagon, of all national parks. Be warned all who come after... This is only the beginning.
Doc Tanner rubbed absently at the scratched metal. "The times were changing, friends," he said quietly. "Wasn't any use to block up the hall. The wheel was in spin."
"No success like failure, Doc," Krysty said. "And failure's no damned success at all."
Doc nodded. "He had it right, ma'am, and no mistake. And here's all that's left. Nature coming back and covering it all up."
"Surprised the military left this here," Ryan said, pointing at the plaque.
The old man sniffed despondently. "They'd got what they wanted here. Why bother anymore?"
J.B. moved outside the rained shelter, peering down towards the water. "If we're getting off this island today, we'd best start."
Ryan joined him. "Looks like it might not be that easy."