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Miss Wroth and her powers. Do you think that might be possible?"
Trader took the little man by the scruff of the neck. "You don't take to
telling, do you?" he snarled. "You come with me and we'll sit quiet together,
and I'll tell you about the time I chilled eighteen swampies with a plastic
spoon and six ounces of plas-ex I'd hid up my ass."
Ryan watched them go off, Buford's feet barely trailing the ground.
"Pulse is growing stronger," said Mildred, who'd totally ignored the brief
altercation.
Krysty's eyes moved, life returning to them. With a struggle she concentrated
on Ryan's worried face.
"Did I do it?" she whispered.
"Sure. He's fine."
"That's good," she said, and slipped back into darkness.
DESPITE THE FUSSING of Buford, aided by the repeated concern of Ellison, his
sec boss, it wasn't possible to move Krysty for three hours.
She lay in a semi coma, Mildred constantly checking pulse and respiration.
Dean, fully recovered from his ordeal, kept scampering to a nearby stream for
supplies of fresh water to bathe her forehead.
Every now and again she would briefly surface from the deep sleep. Twice she
asked whether the boy was safe. Once she called out to her mother, Sonja.
Ryan sat on the grass beside her as the day wore on, holding her hand,
occasionally talking to her in a quiet voice about small, personal thingsabout
how he was missing her, how she'd saved his son's life, how be wanted her well
again.
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It was just over three hours by his wrist chron, when she finally opened her
eyes, yawned and stretched, managing a weak smile for him.
"You look terrible," Krysty said. She coughed and cleared her throat. "I'm as
dry as the bottom of the driest well in Drytown."
"Dean, bring us some more water," he called.
The boy was at Ryan's side almost before the words were out of his mouth. He
knelt and held the beaker for the woman to sip at. "Thanks, Krysty," he said.
"I owe you."
"Do the same for me one day, Dean. Thanks for the water. Feel better now."
She pulled herself up into a sitting position with Ryan's help. But her eyes
clouded and her head lolled to one side. He patted her cheek.
"Take it easy awhile longer."
Buford had broken away from Trader's glittering eyes and his endless tales of
heroism past, and paced up and down nervously. "We must get back to the
institute. We should have returned by noon at the very latest. There will be
concern at the highest levels, Mr. Cawdor."
"They can piss their pants at the highest level for all we care," Abe called,
overhearing the scientist. "We move when Krysty's well and not before."
"Triple-well said, Abe," Trader added.
"Could carry her. Two men linking hands. Be like a chair." Ellison rubbed a
hand over his mustache, just touching the deep scar beneath it.
Ryan glanced at J.B., who shrugged. "What do you think, Krysty?"
"Normally I'd like to stay right here and sleep for three or four days, lover.
But if this place he talked about isn't too far off, then a clean bed might
just be the next best thing to paradise."
"How far, Buford?"
"Be at the sec barrier at the neck of the pass in about an hour. Longer if we
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move slow for the mu the woman. Steep uphill. After that it'll be all
downhill. Another half an hour or so. No longer."
"Krysty, you feel up to this? Being carried the rest of the way?"
"Long as I don't get too shaken around, lover. Might just throw up if I did."
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THE BARRIER WAS heavily guarded.
The installation obviously dated from before sky-dark, backed at unthinkable
cost in money and labor from living rock on either side of the highway. There
were slits in the defenses for rifles and machine guns, and turrets on the top
that would have raked the entire area, up and down the hill.
A number of oil drums had been rolled into the middle, with room for a man to
walk by but no space for horses or any other sort of transport.
Ellison had gone on ahead of the rest of the group, giving a shout of warning.
Immediately they were covered by at least a dozen uniformed men, all carrying
either the ubiquitous Mossberg or M-16 A-1s.
"Boy, they look like they got a fuckin' army up there," Trader said
grudgingly. "Them's some real smart and well-trained sec men, you got,
Professor."
"We pride ourselves on the record that nobody has gotten into and out of the
grounds of the inner institute unbidden, through the last hundred years or so
that it has been functioning. Not a single soul."
"Into and out?" Ryan said. "You mean one or two got inside the place?"
"One or two. We counted them in and we never counted them out again, Cawdor."
"Only way to do it," Trader agreed in the first sign of friendliness that he'd
shown to the little man.
"How many men you got, Buford?" Ryan asked. "Must be a regular predark army if
you can put this many onto every entrance and exit."
The scientist covered his hand with his mouth and sniggered. "This is our only
way in and out of the institute. Once we are over the ridge you will see that
Nature herself has provided us with total security."
"IT PUTS ME WONDERFULLY in mind of the grandeur of Yosemite Park," Doc said.
"Looks like the biggest wag trap ever built." Abe cleared his throat and spit.
Past the barrier, the road continued as a two-lane blacktop, down an incline
for about a half mile between walls of sheer rock. Walls carried on all the
way around through three hundred and sixty degrees, forming a perfect bowl of
unscalable cliffs. At the bottom was a thickly wooded valley roughly
three-quarters of a mile across with a river flowing through it, the water
cascading off a feathery fall to the east side.
And at the very heart of the valley was the group of buildings known as the
institute.
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There were two more levels of sec barriers down the road, both manned by half
a dozen sec guards, all in the white quilted plastic jackets. There was a
metal sign by the last of the barriers, its supports rusted through, leaning
against the wall of quartz-silvered granite.
The words were still legible, despite a century of chem storm fallout and
weathering The Melissa
Crichton Institute of Medical Research. Cryology and Gene Sculpturing.
"Cryology!" Mildred exclaimed. "Do I believe my eyes?"
"You know the word?" Buford asked. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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