Doc bolstered his Le Mat and shuffled off, the tip of his sword stick rapping on the floor. Ryan followed J.B. through a smaller arch into yet another gallery of weapons.
There it was, complete with ammo of all sorts, including rounds of tracer. And a thin booklet giving a full account of the gun and how to strip and service it.
"In the big fire," said Ryan, whistling his surprise. "That's for me! What about the others?"
"No time," replied J.B. "They got what they got. You take this. I'll carry as much ammo as I can. Let's go."
It was a rectangle of metal with a night scope on the top and a pistol-grip butt and trigger on the bottom and was unlike any other weapon that Ryan had ever seen. The name was on the side, just below the sight. Heckler & Koch, Model G-12 recoilless rifle.
The outside of the book gave the main facts, and they were amazing. It fired single shot like any ordinary rifle. On continuous fire it worked at six hundred rounds per minute. But in three-shot bursts it fired at over two thousand rounds a minute: a staggering rate. The other innovation was that the 4.7 mm cartridges were caseless, which meant that he could carry a much greater supply of ammo than with a conventional weapon.
Flicking through the manual, Ryan's eye was caught by several facts he wanted to study at greater leisure. But right now, with the vids recording his every move, it would be smart to leave. He snatched the gun nearly dropping it because of the film of oil that still covered it filled his coat pockets with mixed ammo and quickly followed the disappearing figure of J.B. Dix.
"The big hunk called Joe just gotten himself iced," said Okie through a mouthful of doughnut. She was watching yet another old police serial, Hill Street Blues.
Ryan was lying on his narrow bed, perusing the arms manual for his new gun, occasionally helping himself from a bag of mutlicolored sugary sweets called Jelly beansthat Krysty had found.
Finn and Hennings were playing a noisy vid game called "Klingon Blasters." Hun was stretched out on her bed, running her fingers through her green hair, listening to some music called soulon her cans.
Doc was lying on his own bed, eyes closed, chest moving regularly in sleep. J.B. was muttering to himself as he tried to persuade one of the microwaves to disgorge several cheese-filled portions of chicken breast.
"I'm the Klingon expert, you stupe," yelped Finn, excitedly.
Henn walked away disgustedly. "Fuckin' Klingons. Next time we'll play for creds."
"What'll you spend it on?" asked Krysty, sitting by Ryan, brushing her long, flaming hair, allowing it to spread in fiery waves across her shoulders.
"A fifty-shot mag on this beauty, J.B.," called Ryan, cradling his new toy.
"Doesn't tumble like the five-fifty-six does. Won't mebbe do the damage, but I figure it's better for well, look who we got here."
Everyone turned, except Hun, who was deafened by her own music. Standing at the door was the Keeper, paying them a visit.
Quint was flanked by his two wives, Rachel grinning toothlessly on his left, Lori a couple of paces behind on the right. All three of them were holding their MP-5 SD-2 silenced submachine guns under their arms, in a casual, unthreatening way.
Ryan immediately began to feel concern. Not one of them actually had easy access to a loaded blaster. Indeed, Hun, eyes closed, humming away to herself, still hadn't seen them.
His deep-set eyes were rheumy, red-rimmed and his straggly beard was stained with some sort of sticky oil, but Quint was nodding and smiling. He stopped about twenty paces from them.
"Keeper says greetings to our guests. First guests in a long day. Savin' those as sleeps down below. Sleeps the long sleep as ordered by the Keeper, don't they, my dear?" he asked Rachel, who nodded like a child's doll.
"Glad you've come, Keeper Quint," said Ryan, standing by his bed, signaling behind his back with his fingers, warning the others that he didn't like the course things were taking warning them to be as ready as they could without actually taking any provocative action.
"The Keeper comes and goes when he wishes. When are you goin'?" he snapped, the colored ribbons fluttering in his beard.
"Day after tomorrow," replied Ryan.
"Eh?"
"He said they're goin' day after next, Quint," said Rachel.
"Keeper says mebbe. Mebbe they will and mebbe they won't."
Ryan Cawdor's eye was caught by the young girl, Lori. Standing just behind the old man, her husband, her mouth kept opening and closing, as though she was about to faint. In the quiet, Ryan heard her spurs tinkling.
"We go when we please, old man," J.B. said.
"Don't you speak to my brother like that, you glass-eyed shitter!" spat Rachel.
"Brother!" exclaimed Finnegan. "Thought he was your husband."
"Ah, you clever fat prick, he is. Brother. Husband. I'm his wife."
"Then?.." said Ryan, pointing to Lori.
"Oh, the dummy. She's his daughter's daughter. Don't have the brains of a frozen piss hole."
For a few moments everyone was silent, trying to assess the situation. Hun broke the stillness by getting up from her bed, starting to dance to the music. But she suddenly saw Quint and the others in their frozen tableau.
"What the fuck does?.." She pulled off the earphones, and they could all hear the shrill, tinny music.
"Keeper says you been wicked. Keeper says you been to see the place where death lives."
His voice was becoming louder and more querulous, with spittle spraying from his lips, dangling in his beard. Ryan noticed that the knuckles of the old man's right hand were whitening on the trigger of the Heckler & Koch. The sequins on his jacket shimmered in the overhead lights.
"Keeper says the law is set on them as breaks it. Keeper's word runs like the law of maintenance. To venture without is to die. To break..."
There was no warning.
Lori suddenly moved, pushing past Quint, sending him staggering into Rachel, running toward Ryan, dropping her own gun. Mouth open. Talking.
Screaming!
"It's trap! They kill! Kill 'em, Ryan!"
The room exploded with violence.
Chapter Ten
Britva had amputated three toes from his right foot, using the open cutthroat razor that had given him his nickname. After his fall into a pool a few days earlier it hadn't been possible to stop and light a pyrotab to dry out his socks and boots not without running the risk of being abandoned as the unlamented Nul had been. So he'd waited and hoped. But eventually the blackness had come and the swelling. The toes had bled very little.
Uchitel had watched him closely for any sign of weakness, but the little man with the trimmed beard had kept up well.
The invasion was going better than he'd hoped. The one disappointment was that Alaska was just as poor as Russia.
The two communities they'd found and destroyed so far were even smaller than those across the ice river. One had consisted of only three wretched hovels containing seven human beings, four of them with strong mutie traits. Three of the locals had killed themselves as soon as they saw the invaders looming out of the driven snow.
Bet one of them had been kept alive: a lad of around eighteen in surprisingly good health, despite being riddled with lice.
Uchitel prodded his stallion to move faster. The temperature was dropping fast as night approached, and shelter was yet another couple of miles away, in the lee of a low ridge. Since arriving in America, Uchitel no longer felt the need to keep checking behind him. Those horseback soldiers, if they really did exist, would have given up days back, not daring to leave their own terrain.
The American boy had given them hope of better days to come.
Pechal had taken the lad, helped by Urach, watched carefully by Uchitel, who had held his phrase book open on his lap. The boy was stripped and tied to a skinning frame outside the hut where his mother lay raped, sodomized and dead.