"Sure. Let's all play 'catch the gimp,' huh?" Rick's eyes behind the thick-lensed glasses blinked rapidly. "It's all I can do to... Oh, let it go, Ryan. Get what you can and I'll give it my best shot. When d'you go?"
"Later, around noon. Give us some good traveling time. Trouble is, anyone looking for those guys on horses'll see us easy."
"Like a hog on ice," the freezie said. "Like a tarantula in a peach melba. Like a pile of buffalo chips on a bridal gown. Like..."
Ryan interrupted him. "I get the picture, Rick."
"Yes, we see. Sorry. Me, the kid and the old-timer'll hold Fort Apache for you. To the last round, mon colonel. We die, but we do not surrender. We'll never give up the ship." Ryan walked slowly away, leaving Rick to babble to himself and laugh at his own private jokes. And wondering about the stability of the freezie's mind.
Major-Commissar Gregori Zimyanin was taking his midday break. A sour-faced woman in a stained pink overall pushed around a dented iron food cart, and people were able to buy items from her wide selection of culinary goodies.
"What is it today, Nadia? Any of those spiced herrings?"
"Red cabbage and green cabbage. With vinegar and pickle." She delved into one of the containers on her trolley. "No, no pickles. That young cretin with the harelip in Child Registration took the last one."
"Not an egg?" He knew it was a long shot. The last egg seen around the office of Internal Security had been back before the first snows of winter. But now the thaw was beginning should be beginning, despite last night's heavy snowfall.
"You want an egg, Comrade Major-Commissar?"
He experienced a moment of unexpected, bright hope. "Yes. Yes, I do."
"Then drop your breeches, squat and see if you can lay one. Because I sure as gold angels have none."
"Then I'll have red cabbage, Nadia."
She softened a little at the expression of disappointment on his face. She rather fancied the new major from out in the ultimate east where they had no gas and everyone rode a horse. Despite his pocked face and totally bald head, he was still a fine, muscular figure of a man.
"I have kept two slices of sugared bread for you, Major-Commissar Zimyanin." The woman offered it to him with what she thought was a pleasant simper.
For one blinding second he looked up and thought the miserable bitch was about to tear out his throat with her remaining teeth. Then, fortunately, he recognized it for an attempt at a smile and relaxed.
"Thank you, Nadia. Most kind."
"Always a delight to please you, Major-Commissar. I would do anything you wanted, as you know."
A phrase from his book came to the mind of the officer. "I am most grateful, but I do not think that I shall be taking you up on your kind offer." He smiled at the woman. He'd been warned about her as soon as he came into the office: "Lifts her skirt and drops her drawers for any man."
After she'd left him with a bowl of cooling cabbage and the promised slices of sugary bread, Zimyanin began his exercises. Out on the Kamchatka it hadn't been necessary. The bleak life kept you fit. Here he resented the softness he saw everywhere, and he was determined not to fall into the same trap.
Three times a day he did one hundred sit-ups, feet hooked beneath the rail of his desk. He lowered himself slowly back until the muscles of his stomach began to cry out for relief, then fifty press-ups on fingertips, bouncing and clapping his hands off the floor between each of the last ten.
Every other day he worked out with weights in the basement of the Internal Security building, knowing that it gained him some odd, sideways looks from some of the other desk pilots. Why did you need to get so superfit, Major-Commissar?
Because he wanted to, was the answer. A man must always be ready, be at his best. Though he had to admit that life in and around the capital of The Party seemed quiet enough.
"Too quiet," he panted, leaning on the wall after finishing his press-ups, looking with distaste at the congealing dish of vegetables. The knock on the door made him start.
"Come in, Alicia Andreyinichna."
"A note from southwestern region sec patrols, Major-Commissar. You did ask..."
"For anything out of the ordinary," he finished. "Indeed I did. Go on."
"Probably a tribal matter, or some illicit liquor still at the center of... Three men from a ville out near Peredelkino."
His eyes went instinctively to the crudely inked map of the city and its sprawling maze of trails to dotted villes. He located Peredelkino and nodded for her to proceed.
"They disappeared. Can't be found. They were on horseback." His eyes brightened momentarily at that. "And there's talk of an old crone and her giant son also having vanished. Or killed. The line from the southwest wasn't that clear this morning."
"There was all the snow. Drunks caught in it. Witches and ogres! Really, Alicia Andreyinichna, that wasn't what I meant by interesting." When he saw the look of disappointment on her face, he relented. "But it may prove of some interest if they don't return at all. Keep me informed. I can send out Aliev to try and help them."
"Yes." The syllable held a wealth of meaning. When Zimyanin had come to the city he'd brought a reputation for extreme toughness. He also brought his Dragunov rifle and a 9 mm Makarov pistol. And Aliev, who was under five feet tall and had the slanted eyes that betrayed his Mongolian ancestry. He also showed some of the typical facial mutie malformations that Zimyanin had seen often out in the country. Gross and hideous. And the office workers of Internal Security had never seen anything like Aliev's face. Most stepped aside when they heard his hoglike snuffling breath approaching them. Girls who saw him burying his nuzzling face, which had no lower jaw, in a platter of minced meat and gravy-sodden bread, had sometimes been sick. Sometimes fainted.
So had some of the men.
But Aliev was unmistakably the finest tracker in all of Mother Russia. His skills had made him shunned by other sec men, whose inbred superstitions told them the mutie was a warlock. Nobody could be so miraculous at tracking.
Yes, Zimyanin decided. If there should be any more talk of missing horsemen out at he checked the map out at Peredelkino, he would send Aliev and a patrol.
It was a pleasing thought. Zimyanin took up the bowl of cold cabbage and began to grimly pick his way through it.
Just before Ryan left the house with Krysty and J.B., the freezie caught him by the sleeve and pulled him to one side.
"Yeah?"
"A private word, Ryan."
"What?"
"Not for the others."
"Sure."
Rick shook his head. "I mean it, Ryan. Not a word. Not even to Krysty. You have to give me your word of honor."
"Honor? Oh, yeah. Honor. You got it, Rick. What's the problem?"
"The problem is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, friend."
"I know it. Lou Gehrig's disease. Why you were frozen in the first place. We all know you got the illness."
"When you get sick, Ryan, real sick, one of the things a lot of folks do is sort of immerse themselves in their disease. Read up everything you can. Look desperately for any oddball, freakish miracle cures. I did that. I knew there wasn't. That was why I agreed to be a cryo guinea pig. And you thawed me out. And here we are."
"So, what's the point, Rick? We have to make some miles before dark."
Behind the freezie Ryan could see a pallid sun breaking through and bouncing off the immaculate spread of snow.
"The point is I've been in remission. Now the disease is entering another phase. I can feel it. Recognize it."
"What phase?"
"Terminal, Ryan. Very definitely terminal."
"When?"
"Soon."
Chapter Twelve
"Did he say how long he meant by 'soon,' lover?" Krysty asked.
"Mebbe weeks."
"Months? Could be more remission."