"Watch your mouth, Jak," Ryan warned. "Don't forget there's a lady here."
"Sorry, Krysty. But done bit. Someone else get food."
"Fair enough," Ryan agreed. "There's smoked fish or meat. That's about all."
They held their council after everyone had eaten their fill. During the previous afternoon, before the storm blew in, Krysty had done a little exploring around the grounds of the old mansion and found a large lake, frozen over with ice thick enough to support a convoy of fully laden trade wags. More importantly, in a small courtyard at the rear of the house she'd come across a well. With a little effort she'd succeeded in reconnecting the drawing chain, enabling her to throw down the leaking copper bucket and haul up a supply of sweet, clean water.
"Least we won't go thirsty," she said.
"And there's food enough for a while," Ryan added.
"Can't be far to the ville that those horsemen came from." J.B. rubbed at his chin thoughtfully. "Night raid could top up the food. When we need to do it."
"But what about repairing the damaged gateway?" Rick asked. He'd been moving awkwardly around the building since dawn, trying to keep his ailing muscles in some sort of condition.
"We'll have to find the tools you need," Ryan agreed. "No choice. You can't trigger the system any other way?"
The freezie shook his head. "No way. We stay here or we mend the door. Mending doors makes good neighbors, someone said."
"No, he did not, my dear Rick," Doc argued. "It was walls. Walls, not doors."
"Let it pass, Doc," Ryan said. "Just try and focus on the problem."
Doc brightened. "Surely. And what would that problem be, my dear Ryan?"
"Door's fucked, Doc. Can't jump. Mend door, jump. Don't, stay. Get it?" Jak told him.
"Succinct, but perfectly comprehensible, my snow-haired compatriot. Of course."
Rick coughed. "I just figure I should say that even if I get the tools, you all have to realize I can't guarantee I can patch it up. I can try. I thinkit'll work. But it's no more than that. It's a long shot."
J.B. spoke for all of them. "Rick, it's the only shot we got."
They talked together for a little over an hour. There was general agreement that their best hope was to head in the general direction of where Moscow itself had once been.
Most of the big urban centers in the Deathlands had been razed, but suburbs were often new centers of population.
The only area of disagreement lay in who should go and who should stay.
Rick had to stay, and with his illness and the possibility of further hostile attacks, he needed two to stay with him. The problem was who it would be.
Grudgingly Jak agreed that his hair made him look too distinctive for safety in a foreign land.
"And I am too decrepit, I suppose," Doc said. "But I would dearly have loved to see the Kremlin. The galleries and fine buildings."
J.B. laughed. "C'mon, Doc. Our boys did their jobs, and all you'd get to see in Moscow is a big, big pile of rubble."
Rick described carefully what he wanted, but his inability to communicate some of the finer technical details frustrated him. "Hell's bloody bells!" he exploded. "A bypass multiple cell adaptor! You must know what it is."
Ryan shook his head. "Drop the rads, Rick! You gotta remember that all the technical science and everything folded up one long, dark day a hundred years ago. We'll do what we can. If worse comes to worst you'll have to come hunting with us."
"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.