An hour later they were driving up the foothills. The grass had finally fallen behind them, unable to rise far up the slopes where the air cooled quickly. Ordinary grass reasserted itself, along with trees and bushes. Their road became clear again, two lines of hard-packed stone winding up the banks and following the contour lines cut into valley walls. It wasn’t long before they were level with the first true mountains. On either side of them, sharp rocky peaks smeared with snow protruded into the ice-clear sapphire sky, casting huge shadows down into the valleys as the sun fell.
Twice, Adam saw riders on Charlemagnes high above the road, watching them as they crawled on toward Reithstone Valley. It was becoming difficult to receive radio transmissions amid the mountains. The last they heard of Highway One was a Guardian ambush team engaging a Cruiser patrol at the Kantrian bridge a couple of hours before the Starflyer reached it. After a couple more engagements with Institute troops Bradley had fallen back again and was now trailing the Starflyer by nearly four hours.
Twilight brought them into yet another high valley where the alpine grass was still struggling to establish itself. Trees and bushes were confined to thickets along the side of the fast-flowing stream that cut along the bottom. Kieran was spelling Rosamund behind the wheel. As they started to climb again, he turned the headlights on. Long beams of blue-tinged light exposed the shelf that was now their road. There was no compacted stone here; the soil was a hard grit bound together with tough short grass and ragged moss. Occasional rockfall mounds had been carved away by machines decades ago, but apart from that the track appeared to be natural. Adam wondered if it had originally been formed by the local equivalent of mountain goats in the millennia before the flare. It was a little too convenient to be completely geological. He was also slightly discomforted by how narrow it was in sections. The width fluctuated constantly. There were no crash barriers; and the slope below was steep getting on for vertical. Thankfully, it was getting harder to see the valley floor as the light shrank away out of the sky. Stars began to appear overhead.
Adam went to check on Paula again. The cab’s air-conditioning unit was now blowing warm air through the vents, compensating for the chill of altitude. She moaned when he slid the composite door open, instinctively turning away from the pink twilight that shone in through the windshield.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
A skeletal face peered up at him from a nest of blankets.
Adam sniffed the air, and tried not to grimace in disgust. Paula had been sick; sticky brown fluid stained the blankets she was clutching. He thought there might be specks of blood in it.
“Here.” He handed her a bottle of water. “You’ve got to drink more.”
Just looking at it made her shudder. “Can’t.”
“You’re dehydrating, that just makes this worse.” He began to tug his dark red sweater off over his head. “Give me the top blanket and put this on.”
She said nothing, but released her grip on the blanket. He bundled it away in a polythene bag, then adjusted the vent controls for a quick blast of clear air to rid the little compartment of the rancid smell. Paula took a long time to pull the sweater on. The one time he tried to help, she pushed his hands away, determined to do it herself. He didn’t offer again; if she still had pride there was hope for her personality yet.
“I’ve got some sedatives left,” he said when she fell back down onto the cot, completely exhausted.
“No.” She beckoned at the bottle he was holding. “I’ll try and drink.”
“You need more than that.”
“I’ll try and remember.”
“The Guardians will have a doctor.”
“We’ll stick to the diagnostic array, thank you. I trust that more than any doctor on this world.”
“That’s prejudice.”
“It’s my life.”
“Look, we both know—”
“We’ve got company,” Rosamund sang out. “Trucks up ahead, coming our way.”
Adam gave Paula a long look. “We’ll talk about this later.”
“It’s hard for me to avoid you.”
He went back into the cab, glancing at the radar display. “What have you got?”
Kieran pointed out through the windshield. Several points of light were moving along the side of the mountain ahead of them, shining bright in the deep shadow.
“See if you can contact them,” Adam told Rosamund. He wasn’t particularly worried. If the Institute had by some miracle tracked them down, they wouldn’t be so blatant.
“Answering signal,” Rosamund said. “It’s Samantha all right, she says they need to get started with the equipment straightaway.”
They drove on for another kilometer before finding a broad section of the road shelf where they could all park. Samantha’s vehicles roared in ten minutes later as the sapphire sky finally faded to black, and the stars shone with an intensity Adam rarely got to see on any Commonwealth world. Seven medium-sized trucks and five old Vauxhall jeeps parked around the Volvos, all with tough primitive-looking AS suspension; their engines thundered in the thin air, exhaust pipes blowing out mucky vapor. Twenty Guardians climbed out, giving the new Volvos an inquisitive examination.
Samantha was younger than Adam was expecting, certainly still in her twenties, with an enormous cloud of dark red hair that was wound back into a boisterous tail which hung a long way down her broad back. A face that was eighty percent freckles smiled curiously at him when they met in front of the Volvos, illuminated by the bright blue-tinted headlight.
Adam took out the crystal holding the Martian data and handed it over to her with a flourish.
“Adam Elvin.” She shook his hand. “Pleased to meet you. I’ve heard your name a lot from people who come back.”
There was something in the way she said that, almost like an accusation. “Thanks. We weren’t expecting to see you for a while yet.”
“Yeah, I know. Change of plan. Have you been following the Highway One reports?”
“Yes.”
“The Starflyer’s making better progress than we expected. We really need to get those last manipulator stations up and running. I figured it would be quicker to offload the equipment to my people now, and they’ll disperse from here.”
“Sure, hey this is your field. We’re just the delivery team.”
“You’ve done a good job. With this.”
Again, there was that tone. “Anything the matter?”
“Hey, sorry, pal.” She gripped his arm tightly. “No offense, but I’m Lennox’s mother. I was good friends with Kazimir, too. Real good friends.”
Adam didn’t understand the Lennox reference. “Oh, I didn’t know. I’m sorry. Kazimir was a good man, one of the best.”
Rosamund gave a discreet cough behind him. “Bruce was Lennox’s father.”
Adam looked from Rosamund to Samantha, completely flummoxed. “Christ. Uh, did you know he’s dead, too?”
“Been dead a long time, pal. Just his body been walking around out there.” Another firm squeeze on Adam’s arm. “After this, if you’ve got time, I’d like to hear about it. Be good coming from the horse’s mouth.”
“Of course.”
“For now we need to shift our asses into gear, and sharpish. How much did you bring?”
“Just about everything we said we would. There’s twenty-five tons in each truck. Some got damaged en route, not much.”