Starfall

by neetha Napew

  "Surely there can be no harm in telling him some of what we have found out," Doc said.

  "Another time," Ryan replied. "Man's holding out in­formation on us, we're not going to be doing him any fa­vors real soon."

  Donovan grinned, shifting into a cross-legged position. "So you have the location of Shostakovich's Anvil and more information about the Totality Concept."

  "For trade," Ryan agreed. "Once we get Krysty back on her feet."

  "Ryan said you'd known of two other cases like this," Mildred spoke up.

  "That's right. Both of them involving Chosen who were about a flat minute from being chilled. They put their per­sonality in other people, forced them to do the things they wanted them to."

  "Which was?"

  "Return to the Chosen."

  "But they didn't get there?"

  "No. I saw them both. A family held the first woman, hoping something good would come of it, that mebbe the personality would wither away."

  "But it didn't?" Mildred asked.

  Donovan shook his head. "Gaudy slut was put in jail. Went crazy and chilled the man she's working for. She kept trying to escape."

  "What happened to them?"

  "Not much. Took them a couple weeks, but they both died." He glanced at Krysty. "Glad she was sleeping when you asked that."

  But from the way Krysty moved against him, Ryan knew she hadn't completely been asleep. She'd heard.

  THE GROUP AWAKENED the next morning as the sun started to gray the eastern sky. The Heimdall Foundation people took a long time to rise. Ryan and Donovan had to pass through them, kicking at exposed feet until they got them up and moving. They reluctantly crowded back aboard Ca­lypso until Donovan reminded them that walking back would have been a hell of a lot farther and harder.

  Ryan didn't bother trying to hide the remnants of the campsites. It would have taken too long, and if the pirates followed them they needed all the head start they could manage.

  Breakfast was self-heats and leftover meat from the night before, as well as loaves of bread that had been salvaged from the Heimdall Foundation's stores.

  Ryan put Jak on watch in the crow's nest aboard Ca­lypso. He had the sharpest eyes of all the companions, and Ryan trusted him more than anyone in the Heimdall Foun­dation's ranks.

  With the bilge pumps both operating and crew to use them, Calypso was riding higher in the stream by mid-morning. The wind came in from the west, northwest, and pushed them even faster to the east. Calypso was able to use her sails to lighten the strain, as well, enabling them to achieve greater speed.

  J.B. dropped a bucket into the stream and hauled it up near Ryan. He stuck a hand into it and pulled it back out, tasting the water drops on his fingers. "Fresh," he said, "and good. Can't taste any chems."

  Mildred stood at his side and cupped a hand, drinking from the bucket, as well. "Damn, it's as good tasting as it is pretty. This water's pure, clean and healthy. Not like that sludge pumping through that river we left."

  "Comes down out of the mountains," Donovan said. He'd been consulting area maps, some of them Ryan had noticed from the predark, and some that looked handmade. "Got to catch it early in the spring, when the snows melt."

  "Usually the snows are fouled, as well," Mildred pointed out.

  "I know," Donovan agreed. "Usually has some kind of residue you have to deal with. Some of it around here is tolerable in its own right, but this tributary—and a few others like it—is virgin pure. Problem is if you don't get it early enough, it peters out during the hot part of the sum­mer. There's times in July and August that this streambed isn't more than a foot or two deep."

  Looking at the sixty-foot-wide river, knowing from the depths called out by Morse's sons that they were presently in twenty to twenty-five feet of water at any given time, Ryan had a hard time believing that.

  "Part of this water comes from snowmelt," Donovan went on. "But some of the researchers at the Foundation think it has something to do with a fluctuating water table in this area, as well. Everything has to be working in ac­cordance to get the water this way."

  "An artesian well system," Doc suggested. "Under­ground springs that are fed from the snowmelt, then filter out the impurities through stratum before passing the water on."

  "Mebbe. I'm not much into water. But I do know if we don't get a full ration of water in the spring, the Foundation struggles for the rest of the year."

  "How do you get it?" Doc asked. "We dam up the stream," Donovan answered. "Block it up for two, three months, however long it takes, then release it, forcing it to go in the direction we want it to."

  "You reconfigure this stream?" Doc asked. "Have to."

  "Why not just build the Foundation near the stream?" the old man asked.

  "Logistics," Ryan answered. "They build the Founda­tion on the river, it's more likely to be found. So they build it somewhere it won't be as likely to be found and pull the water in."

  "You dammed this stream?" Mildred asked.

  "As well as we could," Donovan said.

  "What did you use?"

  "Timbers, rock. It's not watertight, but it allows us to build up the water supply."

  "And there's still this much water left over?" Doc asked.

  "Yeah. Gotta be real careful about dam building. Don't try to hold back enough and we run short of water. Try to hold back too much, have it break the dam down, run even shorter of water and mebbe get some folks chilled for their trouble. Seen it work out both ways. Trick is to get it just right."

  "THIS IS BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY, lover."

  Ryan held Krysty in his arms as he sat against the railing. He felt her shake in his embrace as though she had a chill. He wrapped the blanket he'd gotten for her more tightly about her.

  The terrain had turned definitely more mountainous. He couldn't remember reading if it had always been that way, or if the present landscape was the direct result of the nukecaust and all the earth pounders. Spruce and fir dotted the mountaintops, spilling into thick forests below.

  "Nice to look at," Ryan agreed.

  Krysty took his hand. "Make me a promise, lover." She turned, looking with both her emerald eyes into his single ice-blue one.

  "What?"

  "If I die somewhere up in this rough country," she be­gan.

  "You're not going to die."

  "No arguments. Just something I've got to say."

  Ryan swallowed hard but didn't say anything.

  "If I should die up here," Krysty said, "promise me that if you're able, you'll find me a grave site up in those moun­tains and leave me there to rest."

  Ryan couldn't speak around the hard knot lodged in his throat.

  "If you can't say it," Krysty said, knowing him so well, better than anyone ever had or ever would again, "just nod."

  Ryan gave her a single, tight nod. But it was more than an agreement with her; it was an acknowledgment that he might have come this far still only to fail. He cursed himself for ever letting that thought cross his mind.

  THE STREAM GOT increasingly narrow, finally getting down to something less than thirty feet across. It held steady at a depth of fifteen feet, plenty of room for the boats to pass.

  By early evening, they'd entered a canyon area that reached between forty and sixty feet above the stream. Ryan glanced up at the high-walled rock, cool in the shad­ows that stretched out over him.

  Less than a quarter mile in, the canyon rounded out, forming a natural cistern that had to have been a hundred feet across. It was a natural harbor site for boats, protected from the wind and most of the elements.

  Besides the channel they'd followed up from the Jeffer­son River, Ryan noted three other channels on the north side of the cistern. Streams followed each one of those, as well.

  The dam blocked the stream directly in front of them. It was huge, constructed of timbers fifteen feet across and stacked over a hundred feet tall. Groups of men worked near the top, laying in new logs cut to fit.

  "By the Three K
ennedys!" Doc exclaimed, gawking up at the construction.

  "Dark night," J.B. breathed.

  "It can be impressive to look at," Donovan admitted. "I don't think I'll ever get used to them even after all the ones I've built."

  "How many have you built?" Mildred asked.

  "This is my ninth year as construction chief. Worked on the ones before, as well. Saw a lot of bad things happen. Personally I'd rather be out during the months it takes to construct the dam, but I've got a knack for building the things."

  Scanning up the dam, Ryan admitted that Donovan was speaking the truth. Even though it was dammed, the stream leaked water between the timbers, spilling twisting and lunging strings and sprays of water that splattered against the flat surface of the cistern pool below.

  "Still a couple weeks from having it full," Donovan said. "But we're getting there."

  "Pirates not come here?" Jak asked.

  "No. This year they've come farther upriver than I'd ever expected. Area where you found me gets real danger­ous. Lot of tributaries feed into the Jefferson, bringing all kinds of scavenging material. Trouble is, the river's so forceful at times in that area that it can send something through a boat. And you get a lot of chop. The small watercraft the pirates use would break up when the water's really rough."

  "They've never been here?" Ryan asked.

  "No. But they've never all been working with Barbarossa."

  "Who's Barbarossa?"

  "Leader of the pirates," Donovan answered. "Until this spring, I'd never seen so many pirates working together. I saw him today, though, and there was no doubt who was in charge."

  "What changed things?"

  "For the pirates? Barbarossa went after the pocket groups, started with a few groups last spring from what I heard. Took them over, then proved it was worth their time to stay with him. Evidently he's gotten even more aggres­sive about consolidating the other water scavengers around here. Didn't expect what I ran into today."

  "He's got all those gasoline-powered craft," Ryan said. "Where's he getting the fuel?"

  "This is Montana territory," Donovan replied. "Got a lot of mineral resources around here. You know where to look, you can find places where gasoline's been stockpiled. A few other places manufacture their own. There's coal mines in operation, too, and slavers operate those. This is a rough land."

  "And the Chosen live here, too?"

  "Some of them."

  A SHANTYTOWN OF TENTS and semipermanent lean-tos crowded the narrow ledge on the south side of the cistern. Few plants and trees grew along the stony soil where the campsite was, and even fewer sprouted from the steep in­cline leading to the mountains above.

  Morse bawled out orders and cut the sails, aiming both boats into the pier that extended out into the cistern.

  "How deep's the water here?" Morse asked.

  "Forty, fifty feet," Donovan replied. "There's been groups in here before, drawn by the freshwater fish. They dredged the cistern during the hot season when it sank low. Unfortunately they killed the fish they were here to live off."

  "Wrecked the ecology," Mildred said.

  "Yeah. Took years for the fish to come back, but they're here."

  "Hot pipe, Dad," Dean shouted in obvious delight. "Come look at this." He stood near the railing in Junie's prow, looking down into the water.

  Ryan joined him, peering down through the startlingly clear liquid. He recognized the schools of trout, whitefish and grayling as they cut through the water beneath the sail­boat.

  "There's no shortage of game here," Donovan said. "Besides the fishing, there's also moose, goat, elk, deer, bighorn sheep and antelope. You want bird? You got your choice between pheasant, duck and grouse. One thing about this cistern—it attracts wildlife. A man doesn't go hungry unless he's too lazy to go hunt it down or fish for it."

  "How many people do you have here?"

  "Probably about sixty. We lost seven men when the pi­rates boarded Calypso."

  RYAN SAT ON an empty wooden barrel on the cistern ledge. The barrel had once held nails but now only showed the signs of long use as a seat. He gazed out at the piers. Be­sides Calypso, there was one other sailcraft only a little larger than Junie. Then there were nearly a dozen outboard boats.

  "We use the small boats for exploration and supply craft," Donovan explained. "Carry gasoline for them on Calypso and Ariel."

  Ryan glanced at the top of the mountains ringing the canyon. The sun was dipping below the western horizon. Outside the cistern, some of the light was still visible, but in the bowl all light was gone and total darkness had de­scended. Lighted torches ringed the area, creating bubbles of illumination for the group.

  The dam workers had distanced themselves from Morse and the companions, but Elmore circulated freely within them, telling all he knew.

  Jak and Dean were down at the water's edge with their poles in hand. Despite the tension of the situation, they'd been drawn to the fishing with the other dam workers. Their efforts hadn't gone unrewarded.

  "What a wonderful ambrosia!" Doc exclaimed, ap­proaching their group.

  "You talking about the fish stew, Doc?" Donovan asked. Each one of the campfires was festooned by a large stainless-steel pot hanging over the flames.

  "Yes, indeed."

  Donovan snorted. "Not so wonderful after you've been eating it for months."

  "Well, sir, I have not been given that opportunity. Nor, of late, for the pan-fried bread I see in ample supply."

  Grinning, Donovan said, "Feel free to help yourself. There's plenty here, and the crew doesn't mind sharing."

  Doc touched his hat. "Ryan, if I'm not needed here, I think I will sample what there is to be had, in order to fill that growing hollow pit leaching at my backbone. I shall, of course, be ever ready to stand at your side."

  "Enjoy," Ryan said.

  "I'm going to get Millie a plate myself," J.B. said. "Mebbe sit with Krysty awhile to spell her."

  Ryan nodded, waiting until J.B. stepped away. He'd been with the Armorer for years, and J.B. knew how to make himself scarce, giving Ryan time to talk to Donovan on his own.

  "Time for us to get down to the nut cutting," the one-eyed man stated. "What's it going to take for you to help us with Krysty?"

  "That's simple." Donovan spread his hands. "I want you to help me get that chunk of Shostakovich's Anvil back from the pirates."

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Ryan carried a lantern, following Donovan up the rope scaffolding that led to the top of the canyon near the dam. The Heimdall Foundation man carried a lantern, as well, playing his light over the rough-hewn rock.

  "Thought mebbe you'd like to take a look at the dam itself," Donovan said. "Give you more of a perspective of what you'll be fighting for."

  In truth, the view was awe inspiring. The moon hung orange and full in the sable heavens, reflected in the dark pool of the basin below. Stars glittered around the moon, light glass bits embedded in the night.

  "I've got enough to fight for," Ryan answered. "I'd walk through mutie slime pits for that woman back there."

  "Knew you would. I saw it in your eye when you were telling me the story."

  "Something else you should know," Ryan said. "If you lie to me and don't get help for her the way you said you would, I'll chill you. And that's an ace on the line."

  Donovan stopped, meeting Ryan's level gaze without re­serve. "I believe you. If that section of the space station wasn't out there in the hands of Barbarossa and the pirates, if I hadn't been told how important it was, I'd probably still help your woman. Mebbe for nothing at all. But I need your help, and I mean to see you give it. Gonna cost me plenty in getting you that help, though you might not believe that right now. I've seen your kind of man plenty of times before, Ryan."

  Ryan didn't say anything, feeling the heat of Donovan's lantern brushing across his face.

  "Once you get what you need, or what you want, you'll be gone. Won't matter what anyone else needs or wants. You believe
in very little outside yourself."

  "I've found that's the best way to be," Ryan replied lightly.

  "Not up to me to try changing your religion. Just my effort to keep the record square." Donovan turned and headed on up the grade, following the trail.

  "I BELIEVE IN THE WORK the Heimdall Foundation is do­ing," Donovan said when they reached the top of the dam. "Whatever future Deathlands has in store, part of it's going to be guided by institutions like the Foundation, people working hard to look backward so they can look forward again."

  "It was institutions like the Foundation that put the world in the shape it's in." Ryan studied the dam. The logs had been hewed to fit, staggered in an alternating double-stacked layer like rounds in an M-16 clip. They'd been bricked up with mud, which helped slow the water's even­tual erosion of the dam.

  The blocked water stretched out behind the dam for over two hundred yards, at least half that in diameter. The water was still, eddying smoothly, reflecting the sky overhead.

  "How long will this water last?" Ryan asked.

  "We get lucky," Donovan said, "all year."

  "How do you get it to the Foundation?"

  "We dam the other end of the cistern before we release the water. When it has nowhere else to go, it flows along the northern channels."

  "And one of them leads to the Foundation?"

  "Yeah. Pretty much. There's more to it. Most folks wouldn't be able to trail the water. Goes underground in places. It's no easy process, and it took years for us to figure out a way to get it to the Foundation without being traced or contaminating it. One of these days, you'd have to see the Foundation."

  "Mebbe." Ryan's wanderlust had driven him the length and breadth of Deathlands, first as a young man, then as a lieutenant on War Wag One with the Trader. When he'd first heard about the Heimdall Foundation while going to check on Dean at Nicholas Brady's school, he'd wanted to journey to the Foundation and see it for himself. That in­clination was still in him.