Ryan carefully closed the door into the redoubt. His knowledge of prenuke America wasn't vast, but there were still enough old books to be found around the Deathlands for him to be certain of one thing — Minnesota hadn't been a state that was filled with a wild profusion of tropical plants set amid a luxuriant forest.
J.B. had checked his sextant a fourth time, then a fifth time and had shown the reading to anyone who would look at it. "Yeah, Ryan," he finally admitted. "It's Minnesota. North, right up close to where the border with Canada used to be. But it's not supposed to be like this. It's supposed to be..."
"Bleak," Krysty concluded. "And look at these flowers."
"And that butterfly," Doc said, reviving his interest for a moment. "It must be the size of a soup plate." The insect's wings were a good two feet across, and fluttered lazily in the afternoon sunshine. Two tips trailed from the back of the orange-and-brown-dappled wings.
"Giant Yellow Swallowtail," the old man said admiringly. "Habitat's all over South America, right up to Mexico and into Texas. But the suggestion that such a beautiful creature could survive as far north as Minnesota is obviously absurd. Therefore we are not in Minnesota. Quod erat demonstrandum."He smirked in a foxy way at the others. "Which means that which was to be proved."
"Great, Doc," Ryan said. "So we're in Minnesota, but we're not in Minnesota."
"Who gives fuck?" Jak asked. "We going look around, or not?"
"Okay," Ryan agreed, "let's go."
As they moved away from the entrance and down through the clinging vegetation, they saw that the hill was very short. Effectively the whole place was set in a shallow bowl of similar low mountains, making a flat-bottomed valley. Ryan guessed that it was this particular sheltered formation that kept the air so still and warm. But it didn't explain how such rare tropical trees and flowers came to be in Minnesota.
At the back of Ryan's mind, though he hadn't mentioned it to any of the others, was Rick Ginsberg's information about other freezie centers. One was near Big Bend, down in south Texas, and the other was somewhere close to the old city of Duluth, in northern Minnesota.
One of Krysty's areas of specialized knowledge was botany. In her birthplace of Harmony there had been a number of men and women with arcane skills. Dulcie Harrison had encouraged the flame-haired young girl to read in the ville's surprisingly extensive library on all aspects of horticulture and agriculture, pointing out to her that Deathlands was never likely to become industrialized again.
"The land, Krysty, my dear," she used to say, spluttering around her ill-fitting false teeth in her vehemence, "there has always been the land. And there will always be the land."
"Silver oaks and begonias," Krysty said now. "And that's a huge eucalyptus. No idea what that is, but I know that's a giant nasturtium climbing all over it."
They were following what had at first looked like the main trail down from the redoubt. But the many years' growth of lush foliage had obliterated almost all trace of what must once have been a well-kept two-lane blacktop. In the end Ryan was forced to draw his panga and hack away at the dense foliage with the hissing eighteen-inch blade.
"What are those wondrous blooms?" Doc asked.
"Hibiscus, Doc," Krysty replied.
"Thank you, young lady. I am much indebted to you. Hibiscus. It puts me somewhat in mind of the flowers that one might see strewn across a funeral bier. Now, what a dismal thought is that!"
The smell of the vegetation was overwhelming, and Ryan paused to draw breath and wipe the sticky mulch from the edge of the steel cleaver. Sweat streaked his face and body, and the hot shower seemed a millenium away.
Doc's voice floated to him again, but with a whining, querulous tone that was quite unlike his usual way of speaking. "Pardon me, young lady."
"What is it, Doc?"
"I would prefer a more formal response than 'Doc.' It makes me sound like a stock character in a cheap melodrama. But that is not what I was about to remark upon. You are wearing breeches, young woman, are you not?"
Ryan turned around at that and caught Krysty's expression of amused bewilderment.
"Yes, I am, Dr. Tanner. What of it? You want I should take them off?"
"Of course not! What a wanton and brazen reply!"
"You figure a woman should only wear pretty dimity dresses. Is that it?"
"I have no objection to working clothes for working women. But not breeches."
"And women shouldn't have the right to vote, either, Doc?"
He shook his head, and for a moment Ryan glimpsed a dreadful uncertainty in the old man's eyes. A spasm of doubt. "I thought they already... But not back when I've been... If it comes, then I shall support it, my dear. You have the word of Theophilus A. Tanner upon it."
Ryan grinned at that, and turned once more to resume his battle with the clinging, suffocating walls of undergrowth.
The sun had clawed its way through the layers of ragged cloud until it was nearly overhead. The companions had stopped three times for a rest and a drink from their supply of water. It seemed to Ryan, looking behind them, that the vegetation was growing faster than they could cut it down. Their beaten path was already becoming invisible. Fortunately J.B. had been taking bearings every two or three hundred yards to make sure they'd eventually be able to track their way back.
"How much farther are we going to go?" J.B. asked.
"Another hour, I figure. If there's no sign of getting out of this jungle by then, we can head back to the redoubt. Rest up some and then make another jump to get out of here."
"Terrific." Krysty sighed. "Just what I always wanted, lover. Another wonderful jump. It'll kill Doc."
"You know a better hole to go to?" Ryan asked. "Any of you? I don't know what this place has for mutie life, but I don't take to the idea of spending a night out in the middle of it."
"Go on longer," was Jak's terse comment.
"How about you, Doc?" Ryan asked. "You want to go on or go back?" He knew immediately that it was a mistake to use the word backto the befuddled old man.
"Back? I am already 'back,' as you call it, Mr. Cawdor. How can I return whither I am already bound? Quo vadis?as the classics have it. Whither goest thou? Where do we come from and where do we go? The eternal enigma."
He continued to mutter to himself, making little sense. Ryan glanced at the other three. "Guess that's a vote from Doc for going on a ways," he said quietly.
Jak was breaking trail, swinging Ryan's heavy panga with incredible speed and delicacy. A litter of hacked branches and broken plants marked the track of his passing.
"Houses," he announced suddenly, dropping to his knees behind a screen of reddish-purple bougain-villea.
Ryan gestured to J.B. and Krysty to keep Doc to the rear, while he wriggled forward on hands and knees to join the boy.
"Where?"
"There," Jak replied, pointing with the green-slobbered tip of the panga.
A small river flowed silently from left to right, behind the flowering shrub. Beyond it was a clearer area of long grass. A group of single-story concrete buildings lay behind the remains of a rusting sec fence that was topped with razored wire. As elsewhere in this peculiar region, the harshness of the concrete blocks was softened by a coating of pale green moss.
At first glance the installation looked like the ruins of a federal prison. Ryan had seen enough of them in his life. Not many places had survived a century after dark day, but prisons were the grim exceptions.
The friends crouched in total stillness for a long fifteen minutes, watching for any sign of human habitation. Or inhuman habitation.
Other than a swarm of myriad tiny golden insects, darting above the sullen, oily surface of the river, there was no sign of life. Ryan heard a muted clicking and glanced down at his shirt, where he kept a miniature rad counter pinned — as did most of the norm population of Deathlands. It had changed color from safe-green to somewhere between yellow and red, showing that there was a medium-hot spot not too far from them.
Jak looked at his own counter, which had remained stubbornly green. He tapped it, but nothing happened.
"Could be missile silos around here," Ryan whispered.
"Cross?" Jak asked.
"Wait a while longer. Don't like the feel of all this."
The buildings all showed signs of serious damage, either from the big nuking or from earth-shakes, or from the extremes of weather and rad storms that still raged around Deathlands. The windows were gone, as well as parts of some walls and several sections of the roofs.
While they watched there was a rippling in the thick grass beyond the river and a long, copper-colored snake emerged, holding a paralyzed bundle of fur in its gaping jaws. It slid silently into the dark water, head high, swimming downstream in long undulating coils of power. Ryan's guess put the reptile at twenty-five to thirty feet.
"Big bastard," Jak hissed.
"Swallow you in one." Ryan grinned.
A noisy, chattering flock of bright-plumaged birds was perched on the corner of the roof of the nearest building. At a distance they looked to Ryan like parrots or macaws, but their presence told him that there were, probably, no hidden blasters covering them from the shadows.
He turned and beckoned the others forward, motioning Doc to keep low.
"Why? Is this some sort of sport, Mr. Cawdor? Or are we under threat from hostile Indians? I speak something of the tongue of the Mescalero Apaches, you know. I spent time among them only... only the other... once."
"Krysty. You and me go across the river. Get to the buildings and have a quick recce. We'll call the rest of you over when it's safe. Keep us covered. Questions? No? Let's do it."
J. B. Dix unslung his Heckler & Koch rifle and steadied it in a notch of the bougainvillea. He switched on the laser-optic sight and scanned the silent buildings across the water. Jak drew his Magnum and waited alongside the Armorer. Doc had lost interest again in what was happening, and he sat down with cracking knees. He picked a tiny orange flower and inhaled the scent with his eyes squeezed shut.
Ryan led the way.
There was no way of knowing how deep the river was from its murky surface, nor what kind of vicious life it might contain. Ryan could still conjure up the sight of a man called Bob Duvall, who'd been a relief driver on War Wag Three. He'd bathed in a similar river up near the Darks despite Trader's warnings about caution.
A shoal of tiny fishes had taken him. The creatures were no more than three inches in length, but two and a half inches of that was teeth. They'd stripped old Bob to the bone before he could make the bank and safety. Ryan could still recall the sight: the whiteness of washed bone and the dangling strips of mauled sinew; the fish still biting at torn slabs of flesh, while the river filled with blood.
The screams hadn't lasted more than fifteen seconds.
"Could try to wade it," Krysty suggested.
"You never knew Bob Duvall, lover," Ryan replied. "We'll go upstream and find a safe place to get us across."
They eventually came to the tumbled remains of a stone bridge, with decorative little arches, some fallen, some still standing. It wasn't difficult to jump over the gaps, though Krysty stumbled as a piece of loose rock rolled from under her boot heel.
They followed a track winding near the edge of the forest. Between the grass and the nearest of the buildings they passed something that looked like a gigantic anthill. If the area held ants at least nine inches in length...
Ryan didn't let his mind dwell too long on that.
Krysty waved an all clear to the hiding trio across the river, receiving a clenched-fist signal in return from J.B.
"Want to go inside?" she asked Ryan.
He shook his head. "Nope. Wait for the others. Scouting ruins like this without taking all the care can bring a load of bloody grief."
They looked around, checking the blind windows and the hidden angles, but nothing moved. The birds had disappeared, as well as the insects.
"Look." Krysty pointed with the muzzle of her blaster.
Ryan took a cautious few steps toward the rectangular stone block that barely protruded above the lush meadow grass. "It's a sign," he called.
"From the Almighty?"
"Come again, lover?"
Krysty grinned. "Let it pass. What kind of sign is it?"
Ryan had knelt in the grass and was cutting vegetation away with his panga. "Looks like the name of the place. Got a shit-lot of moss all over the letters. I'll scrape some of it... Yeah."
The others had crossed the wrecked bridge and stood in a half ring around Ryan, J.B.'s eyes constantly raking the buildings ahead of them and the river and forest behind. Gradually Ryan cleared the top half of the sign: "Wendigo Institute of Botanical Research."
"That's where all of these weird flowers and plants have come from," Krysty said excitedly. "When the nuking came, it must've blown seeds and stuff everywhere. And it's changed the climate in this big valley."
"There's more," Ryan told them. "Incorporating the Blackwood Center for Chemical and Neurological Research, Military Division."
"Germ warfare," Doc spit, anger and contempt fighting in his voice. "Swines. Gas and poisons, and blindness and madness. I've seen the vids. Volunteers that tore out their own eyes and devoured their own ripped genitals. Devils!"
"Sounds like a real good place to move away from," J.B. said finally. "That sort of stuff can hang around a thousand years."
"Make triple-muties," Jake said uneasily, looking around.
"There's another line of letters. Below the rest. Smaller. Grass is hiding them."
Ryan looked where Krysty was pointing. He etched at the lichen with the point of his panga, the steel making a harsh, scratching sound. He sat back on his heels to read the last line.
"With the Shelley Cryonic Institute — Private. This is it! The place Rick mentioned. More freezies are inside there."