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.
After his failure with the trapper, the leader of the Narodniki had spent time studying the book, gradually learning how to choose his words with greater care. Now, he felt ready.
"Where are big house and store?" he asked, trying to pronounce each word the way the book said.
"What?"
Pechal laid a thumb on the boy's right eye and pressed; the boy screamed and tensed his skinny white body against the cords. Blood trickled from his burst nails, and his ribs stood out like a line of picket fencing. The pain was so severe that the boy lost control of both bladder and bowels simultaneously, making Pechal curse and step hastily away from him.
"Don't hurt him, Pechal. Not yet. I have read how America was a place of great riches. Everyone owned several houses and trucks and guns. It cannot be far to such places. I will ask him again."
Bizabraznia, the Ugly One, came swaggering by, clutching an earthenware beaker of zubrovka. From her walk, it was obvious she had drunk several mugs of the spirit already. She looked at the naked boy, reaching out and grabbing him by the genitals.
"If he won't fucking talk, Uchitel, then I'll fucking rip off his fucking balls. Hear him sing then."
"Leave him be."
All three of Uchitel's followers looked at him, hearing the familiar crack of command. The woman staggered unsteadily off toward the others, who were cooking a stew of root vegetables. Urach backed away from the helpless boy, resheathing one of his surgical-steel knives. Pechal pulled the gray hood of his long cloak over his head, bowing slightly. But Uchitel noticed how Sorrow's long curved nails were driven so hard against the palms of his hands that crescents of blood showed brightly.
"We would like to visit some reputable stores. Which do you recommend?" asked Uchitel, moving closer to the helpless youth, careful to avoid the fouled snow.