Chapter Twenty-Nine

 

 

 

"Don't work so hard," Ryan said, patiently cutting with his cleaver at the fifteen-foot-high wall of drifted snow. "Take it easy."

 

"But it's nearly dark and the temperature's dropping. We'll all die." Professor Dorothea Gibson was on the ragged edge of mental and physical exhaustion. Using her bare hands, she worked alongside Ryan and Trader.

 

"I'm not going to fucking die, just because of a little snap of cold and dark." Trader laughed. "Fact is, lady, I'm not ever intending to catch that last train to the coast. No, not ever."

 

Ryan paused and straightened. "If you work too hard, you get in a sweat. You get in a sweat and your clothes'll get wet. Make you colder when you settle for the night. So just go slow and easy, all right?"

 

They had been working on making a snow hole for the past half hour.

 

Trader had gone to collect some fallen branches from a nearby grove of spruces, spreading them across the snow to form a binding layer for the roof of their shelter.

 

Now there was a hollow about six feet across and four feet deep, floored with some more green branches that Ryan had hacked down.

 

"Help to insulate us," be said. "Cold can get you from all directions. When you crawl in, try to avoid getting loose snow on your clothes. It could easy turn to ice in the night. Keep dry and keep warm."

 

"What about a fire?"

 

Ryan looked at the scientist. "Still snowing hard. If we had some pyrotabs we could mebbe get something going hot enough to stand against the weather. But we don't. Everything's soaking wet and frozen."

 

Professor Gibson looked mistrustfully at the crude hole in the snow, squinting sideways at him. "You think it'll save our lives, Ryan?"

 

"Yeah, Thea, I do."

 

 

 

"WHOEVER THAT is, keep your hands to yourself."

 

In the total darkness, nobody spoke for a moment until Trader sniggered. "Sorry, lady."

 

"Now, how did I guess that it was you?"

 

"Because I'm the only real, red-blooded man here. Ryan always preferred sheep and young men."

 

Ryan didn't rise to the teasing bait. He'd managed to snatch a few minutes of comforting sleep, secure in the certain knowledge that their snow shelter would keep all of them alive until the morning, when they could set off again on the trail back to the institute.

 

They had left a small hole clear, about three inches in diameter, at the front of the snow wall, for ventilation. With the three of them bundled so tightly together, they generated enough heat to keep the temperature inside the hole only a degree or two below freezing. "What about frostbite?" Thea Gibson asked.

 

Trader laughed. "No danger of that. We're all warm enough. Fact is, we'd be even warmer if we all took off our clothes and got busy."

 

"Is that right, Trader? Sexual congress is the last thing on my mind."

 

"You sure? How about if I wriggled around a bit and you sat on my face?"

 

She laughed. "I suppose that it would, at the least, shut you up for a while."

 

Some time around two in the morning, Ryan slipped out of sleep to find a hand reaching under his clothes, trying to get his fly open. He kept very still, guessing that conditions were too cramped. In a few minutes the effort stopped and everyone got back to sleep.

 

 

 

TRADER GOT UP very early in the morning to relieve himself, breaking through the frozen crust of snow, letting in the first filtered light of the false dawn. Ryan woke immediately but Thea Gibson sighed and pressed her face harder into his shoulder, staying locked into sleep.

 

"That lady could be banged," Trader said, as he returned. "If we had more time, I'd have her falling into my hand like a fine ripe peach."

 

"We getting up?"

 

The older man stamped his feet, kicking up splinters of powdery ice. "Might as well. Snow's stopped. Cold as a baron's charity, but we could get moving. Soon warm up."

 

Ryan nodded. "Agreed." He nudged the woman next to him. "Wake up, Thea."

 

"Turn on the enzyme coolant," she muttered fuzzily. Ryan pushed her harder. "What's the" She seemed alarmed. "Has the grizzly returned?"

 

"No. Just time to get up and moving. Nearly dawn. Sooner we start the better."

 

"Snow stopped?"

 

"Yeah."

 

She sat up. "I can't believe that we're all still alive after the bear and the cold."

 

"Not all alive," Trader said, breathing on the Armalite to get ice off the side of the butt. "There's five of your men back up there won't be eating breakfast today."

 

"Yes, you're right." The scientist managed to get to her feet, nearly slipping on the packed snow. "I owe you both my life for butchering the grizzly and for preventing me from freezing to death last night."

 

Trader shuffled his feet. "Shucks, ma'am, it weren't nothin' at all."

 

"You may turn it into a joke, but I mean it. I would most certainly be back there with Brunner, Cooke and the others if it weren't for you. I owe you everything."

 

Ryan was also on his feet, doing a few exercises to try to restore circulation. "Well, we always try and help each other out when we can."

 

Her cold blue eyes turned to him. The left eye did; the right one was looking out across the snow-masked valley. "I am placed in an impossible situation. One that you can't possibly understand, a dreadful dilemma that woke me several times in the night and which I can't solve."

 

"What is it?"

 

She shook her head. The tight knot of iron gray hair had come unpinned during the night and now it tumbled down over her shoulders, reaching almost to her waist.

 

Trader whistled. "Hey, lovely bunch of hair you got there, lady."

 

She ignored him, concentrating on Ryan. "There are things happening at the institute research of nearly a hundred years coming toward fruition. And the culmination happens to involve you and your party. Particularly" She shook her head. "No. I'm not ready to betray everything that I have been raised to hold dear. But there is danger."

 

Ryan held her arm, considering whether it would be a good idea to spend some time on persuading her to speak, but rejecting the idea for the time being. "What is it?"

 

"No. May the institute forgive me, but I can't tell you. Not yet. I need to think more. The debt is so heavy and I can't bear to carry it."

 

 

 

"IS THERE ANOTHER WAY to the institute," Ryan asked, "save going past the sec barrier?"

 

They had been slogging through the deep snow for three quarters of an hour, stopping every ten minutes or so to recover, their breaths pluming out into the air around them.

 

Thea leaned her hand against the slick trunk of a silver birch. "Why do you ask that, Ryan? Why do you want to go around the barrier?"

 

"Just curiosity, I guess."

 

The truth was, all his instincts were on red alert after her strange, muddled speech. It was clear as crystal that something was wrong at the institute, and it involved them, possibly involved Krysty. So he thought it might be worth a try to get back in without being seen.

 

"There is a narrow hunting trail," she admitted. "We're more or less on course for it here. But the Professor doesn't like anyone to do that."

 

"We won't tell him. There's no reason for him to check us past the sec barrier, is there?"

 

"Perhaps not." She thought about it for several seconds. "I have said how much I owe you. This can be a small part of that debt between us. We can always say, if questioned, that the main track back over the highway was blocked by snow. It's a very small untruth."

 

 

 

THERE WAS A BRIEF MOMENT as they crossed a steep ridge, where they were visible to the men who guarded the barrier across the blacktop into the valley.

 

Trader went first, crouched low to keep his skyline silhouette to a minimum. Thea Gibson went second, stumbling over some loose shards of granite. Ryan was last, running with knees bent, holding the rifle in his right hand.

 

As soon as they were all safe he crawled back and peered carefully around a spur of rock, looking down from the steep hillside at the group of sec guards to check if there was any sign that they'd been spotted.

 

Ryan counted eleven of them, most grouped together, staring down the track toward the outside world. Even at that distance he could read the nervousness among them, and it all added fuel to his own growing worry.

 

 

 

TRADER WAS IN THE LEAD, walking with the woman, talking constantly to her in a low undertone. Occasionally he turned back to Ryan and gave him a wink. Twice it was a grin and a cautious thumbs-up. Ryan doubted whether his old chief would succeed in his obvious aim of seducing the starchy woman scientist.

 

Even so, Trader's ceaseless efforts made Ryan smile as they picked their way along the back entry to the institute.

 

Because there seemed no reason to expect any trouble at that point, it appeared unexpectedly around the next corner of the narrow snow-filled trailthree sec men, hooded and goggled against the cold and the risk of snow-blindness, all carrying Mossbergs, literally bumping into Trader, who was too busy leering at Thea Gibson.

 

There was a moment of intense confusion when startled fingers could easily have found triggers, and blood could have been steaming on the ice.

 

"Don't shoot," the woman yelled, her voice carrying the crack of command.

 

Everyone edged off a little, kicking up a veil of powdery white, behind which Ryan drew the SIG-Sauer, transferring the Steyr rifle to his left hand. He held the 9 mm blaster behind his back.

 

"It's you, Professor Gibson," said the tallest of the three sec men.

 

"Who were you expecting? Santa Claus? Of course it's me. And there are outlanders Cawdor and Trader. What are you doing on this trail?"

 

"Could ask you the same. Not supposed to go around the sec barrier, Professor."

 

"I am aware of that." Her voice was at its most glacial. "We got into serious trouble and the main route back to the institute was snow-blocked."

 

"Where's Brunner and the rest?" one of the other men asked. "Everyone else is back safe."

 

"Chilled."

 

"They found the grizzly?"

 

Ryan answered the man. "It found them."

 

Professor Gibson looked at the patrol. "Why are you here? You never answered that."

 

The scatterguns were all held in a ready position. Ryan had been in more firefights than he could remember, and he recognized the nerves that were showing, knew that Trader would recognize it, as well. The sec men were bracing themselves, ready to make a move against them. He didn't know what it would be, but he could tell that it would be specifically directed against Trader and himself, and it was coming close and fast.

 

"Trouble at the institute."

 

"Who with?"

 

The eyes flicked to Ryan and Trader. "With the outlanders, Professor."

 

"Have they learned more than they should know? Well, have they?"

 

"Yeah, sort of."

 

"Is it under control?"

 

"Oh, sure. Yeah, everything's handled, Professor."

 

Thea turned slowly around and caught Ryan's eye. She was trying to send him a message with her whole tense body language, but be couldn't work out what it was.

 

"Handled," she said, turning back to face the trio of armed guards. "Good." She hunched her shoulders, and the Anschutz Kadett fell off. The woman grabbed it, clumsily, only making it worse, knocking the bolt-action .22 onto the stony trail, where it landed with a tremendous clatter.

 

It attracted the attention of the sec men for a vital, precious second or two.

 

That was all it took.

 

Ryan leveled the powerful automatic, squeezing off the first shot with great care and precision, putting the 9 mm round through the middle of the nearest man's face. The bullet drilled through the center of the right lens of the snow goggles, starring the plas-glass. Blood welled out, flooding over the white thermal jacket.

 

Ryan didn't waste any time in watching the sec guard dying.

 

The next round lay under the hammer.

 

Just before he fired again, Ryan was aware of the waspish crack of the Armalite, seeing a gout of blood fountain from the second guard's ribs, patterning the crisp snow. But the sound was drowned by the boom of the SIG-Sauer. The shock of the 9 mm round jarred his wrist, the force running clear up to his shoulder.

 

The last of the trio was just beginning to react to the horrific danger, lifting the Mossberg toward Trader. Ryan's bullet glanced off the butt of the scattergun, angling upward, through the sec man's right wrist, shattering both radius and ulna, exiting through the elbow joint.

 

The gun dropped and the man began to scream, reaching for the shattered limb with his left hand.

 

Ryan calmly shot him through his open mouth. The bullet sliced his tongue neatly in two, plowing a furrow through the soft palate and driving its lethal path out through the back of the neck, just beneath where the skull was set on the spine. The blood-slick, distorted bullet buried itself in a snowbank.

 

In less than two beats of the heart, all three of the sec men were down and dying, kicking and thrashing in the crimsoned snow, puking up more blood, moaning and gasping.

 

"Think anyone heard?" Trader asked, stepping quickly to check that all three were finished.

 

"Doubt it. Wind's against it and we're in a valley here. Snow'll muffle the sound even more."

 

Thea Gibson had only just finished picking up her fallen blaster and was standing, stricken, at the slaughter about her. "You didn't"

 

"Yeah, we did," Ryan interrupted. "And thanks for distracting them."

 

"I didn't mean you to murder them."

 

Trader laughed and slapped her on the backside. "Thought we'd make them lay down their guns while we tied them up, gagged them and told them to count to one hundred before they tried to escape?"

 

"Something like that."

 

Ryan shook his head, reloading the three spent rounds. "Not the way it works, lady. This isn't fiction. This is living and dying. Us or them."

 

"But what do we do now? The Professor'll find out and what will he say?"

 

She was almost in tears.

 

"He's going to be very seriously pissed at us," Trader told her, "and at you. No more extra helpings of soup for you, Thea. Early to bed for a week with a red ass."

 

"It's not a joke, you cretin!" she screamed. "We're all chilled by this."

 

"Simmer down," Ryan said. "The only people dead are these three. Way I saw it, and I think you saw it, too, they were planning to take us back to your bastard institute. And they didn't care much whether we were still breathing or not."

 

Trader gripped the woman's chin in his steely fingers. "What do you say to that, Thea?"

 

"I can't tell you. I owed you my life. I've settled that debt here, and I'll never forgive myself for being the innocent agent of these men's deaths."

 

Trader glanced at Ryan, and there was an unmistakable question in his eyes. But Ryan shook his head. "No," he said quietly. "Not yet and not here."

 

"Sure?"

 

"Sure, Trader. We got some talking to do first, and the lady is going to help us find a good way into the institute without flags waving and a band playing."

 

"I've done all I will."

 

Ryan stepped in close, staring at her. "One more pays all, Thea. A back way in. Then we leave you. We won't let on you helped us, if the leaves fall against us. You'll be safe, and we can plan what we need to do That a fair, square deal." He offered his hand.

 

After a moment's hesitation, the scientist shook it. "Deal," she agreed.