Quantrill did as he was told, prickles of fear and anticipation on his spine. From the tail of his eye he saw an armed man approach the gate from the van. The man said nothing, only thrust a pocket comm set through the gate slit to Abby.
Her talk with the new administration was short and not particularly sweet. Perry Ellis was in custody; Jane Osborne would verify the stranger's identity when she returned from a work detail; and what made a grounds keeper think she was vital to the center?
Abby's reply was a brilliant bit of temporizing. The center would need expert maintenance of its grounds equipment for latrine trenches and protective earth ramps, and someone to coordinate it with the computer. She and her cousin, Ted Quantrill, could operate heavy equipment and the diagnostic machines that made breakdowns few and far between. She and her cousin would wait in the camper for Ms. Osborne's return.
Sliding back into the Chevy's cab, they rolled up the windows and exchanged a quick handsqueeze. 'I hope you know how to operate heavy equipment, 'cause I can't even drive. You sure you want to go in there?'
Drumming fingertips on the doorsill: 'All I know is, a lot of people can stay alive there. It used to be a center for civil defense studies. I suspect they aren't overcrowded, and they don't intend to be. Ellis in custody, hm? It takes a decision from the Governor to initiate martial law, Ted, and we haven't heard anything about that. I think it's a scam — but a damned effective one. Once we get inside we're going to be like prison inmates. But we can still stick together. It's got all the advantages of organization, and all the disadvantages too.'
A swatch of Ray Kenney's sarcasm, invented to spite a scout leader, popped into Quantrill's head. 'Every hour is a sixty-minute asskiss,' he quoted.
'It beats radiation poisoning,' she said. 'If you know a better place to go, tell me.'
Until that moment Quantrill had thought of himself as an uncomplicated risk-taker; the sort of loner who would always gamble against long odds rather than submit to regimentation. Suddenly and with startling clarity he saw that, when the risk was not a bloody nose but life itself, he could be downright conservative. 'I'll go with you,' he said, adding with sudden concern, 'if they'll let me.'
'Why wouldn't they? Gorgeous young specimen like you,' she grinned. She learned why they wouldn't, five minutes later.
Without preamble the bullhorn crackled: 'ABIGAIL DRUMMOND, YOU ARE VERIFIED AS A SEASONAL EMPLOYEE. YOUR SKILLS ARE USEFUL, IF NOT VITAL. IF YOU'RE AN IMPOSTOR YOU WILL BE SHOT, LADY, DON'T THINK WE WON'T. SEND YOUR COUSIN AWAY; WE ALREADY HAVE TOO MANY MEN.'
Abby and Quantrill exchanged a long stare. Abby got out of the Chevy, called toward the van: 'I'll drive him back to town.'
After a long pause the bullhorn said, 'GOOD DECISION.'
Cursing, Abby drove back toward town. 'Already have too many men, do they? I don't like the sound of that. And they have my personnel records so they know my age and what I look like. Now where do we go?'
Quan trill stroked her hair. 'I go away, and you go in there.'
'You're kidding. I'd be petrified in there if you weren't with me. Janie's the fainting type; no help in a tight spot.'
They passed an all-hours market. Behind a shattered glass front they could see a man cradling a deer rifle. “At least I'll have a few days' food,' he went on as if he hadn't heard. “If you don't like it there it should be easy to get out.'
'That's an idea,' she said, and turned onto a secondary road, talking quickly. Minutes later she drove the Chevy off the road toward a copse of wilting trees and coasted to a stop. 'Just past here is the perimeter fence, Ted. They may have sentries, but we have eyes, too. There's a drainage ditch from the maintenance shops that'd hide me almost to the fence. We could set up rendezvous, say at dark, and toss some blankets over the barbed wire to get you in. You could hide for weeks in the tunnels, maybe mix with the others. Or we could get me out, depending how it looks inside.'
They spent a half-hour going over alternatives. Whether it took Abby a half-day or three days to make rendezvous, they were faced with the fact that Quantrill could not drive. Their last half-hour was spent teaching him, a cram session that left them both irritable.
'At least you're not slamming the brakes anymore,' she said as he drove, overcorrecting, toward the gate. 'Wait.
Stop here and turn around, Ted; sure as hell they'll demand the Chevy as an entrance fee. I'll walk from here.'
Sweating with concentration, Quantrill got the vehicle pointed back toward town. “Abby,' he said as she slid out. She paused, managed a wan smile. 'Abby, I never said I love you, did I?'
Airily, misunderstanding: 'I'd never ask you to tell such a whopper for a one-night stand, Ted. Cheers.' She turned away.
In the distance the bullhorn was blustering. Quantrill ignored it. 'But it's not a lie,' he shouted, protesting.
'Don't say it, Ted,' she said, not turning. 'It wouldn't help.'
He watched her retreat, holding herself unnaturally erect, and realized that she was compensating for simple terror. He drove away quickly, aware that in another moment he would have called her back in panic. Whatever happened, he told himself, at least Abby had reached her sanctuary.
Quantrill took two wrong turns before finding the bungalow, let himself in with Abby's key, assured himself that the telephone line was still active even without house current. It had been Abby's idea that she might be able to phone him. He spent an hour taping seams in Abby's bedroom, stacking books and magazines against the outside wall, listening to his radio quantify the gradual rise in radiation in the area. He found a certain satisfaction in anger over their decision, the night before, to sleep in the garage. It would have been so much better, infinitely more voluptuous, to writhe with Abby between sheets. On impulse he pulled back her coverlet, thrust his face against her pillow; inhaled. It did not smell of her presence, but mustily of her absence.
Quantrill did not understand how much the human organism is sexually provoked by sudden social change. He knew only an enormous need, and lying in Abby's bed his daydream led him to assuage that need. He felt guilty afterward, as always — but felt relieved as well.
Sundown found Quantrill piling blankets on the Chevy's seat. This time he ran over only a few curbs and took only one wrong turn before parking the little camper near their rendezvous point. He had moved stealthily on foot into the grove of small trees, was estimating where he could most easily drive up to the chain-link fence, when he first heard the delta approaching.
It came as a faint hiss, then a whirr, then the susurrus often billion sopranos whispering in the dusk. When he finally looked to the west the tiling was nearly overhead. The yellow delta slid down its invisible glidepath like a sharply defined cloud, rocking very slightly in warm evening breezes, a rigid polymer-skinned dirigible the length of two football fields, powered by external multiblade propellers. Quantrill had seen the fat spade-shaped cargo craft many times, but always at great distance. Even with its elevons canted and its engine pods gimbaling for thrust vector control, a delta did not look like a steerable craft; certainly not like one that could winch sixty thousand kilos of cargo into its belly and skate away into the sky at the speed of a fast monorail.
A trapezoid of lights flickered across the meadow inside the museum perimeter, making Quantrill squint. It seemed to throw the drainage ditch into deeper shadow. The ponderous delicacy of the delta's mooring held Quantrill's attention for long minutes. Finally anchored by rigid struts, the great helium-filled airship stilled its propellers. The air-cushion cargo pallet rose to meet the section of shell that scissored down with cargo. Quantrill could hear faint shouts of the handlers five hundred meters away and wondered if the commotion would help Abby.
A part of him hoped that Abby would want out, for whatever reason; he did not want to go over that fence. Yet if Abby said to come, he would do it. When had she made a poor decision?
He would not know the answer for many hours.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
While Quantrill roved the perimeter in search of sentries, peering through the last light of a blood and saffron
