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  Krysty laughed. “Oh, they know, for double sure,” she said, standing up. “You don’t think that much gets by Ryan or J.B., do you?”

  “I guess not.”

  Suddenly she wrapped both arms around Krysty’s waist and pressed her cheek between Krysty’s breasts in a fervent hug.

  “Thank you so much,” the girl said. “You’ve helped me change the way I look at myself. And—everything!”

  “I’m glad, honey,” Krysty murmured, stroking the back of the child’s head and feeling actually kind of awkward. The pigtailed, black-clad girl—whom she had settled on believing was about twelve or thirteen—might have been tweaking her maternal instincts, as Ryan had more than half hinted at on more than one occasion. That didn’t mean Krysty felt comfortable playing the role of mother. Even a little.

  But that wasn’t what made her frown pensively as she gazed over the top of Mariah’s head at her lover and friends gathered laughing around the little fire.

  She was thinking, But have we done you any favors by making you see things differently?

  And have we done us any favors?

  * * *

  HAMMERHAND STOPPED THE buckskin mare thirty yards short of the outskirts of the Lakota camp.

  “What do you want here, Blackfoot?” challenged the chief, who stood waiting for him with his senior warriors flanking him. All cradled longblasters and looked grim.

  The tall, spare man with the gray braids hanging down to either side of a breastplate made of linked bones was Marion, chief of an important Oglala band. He had clearly gotten word of the young renegade Blood’s approach, as Hammerhand had known he would. His own scouts had enabled him and the small group he had led into the Pine Ridge area to evade observation most of the way, but the last couple miles he had known that wouldn’t work.

  You told me what I want to know by being here and ready, old man, Hammerhand thought.

  Marion’s black eyes bored into his. His posse was openly staring at the decorated horse. They might not know the name of every kid in the cluster of tepees on the low, sloping hilltop behind them—kids who were notably absent from view, as were the normal late-morning activities of the women—but they nuking well knew every horse claimed by their band on sight. Plains-riding nomads were all the same.

  “I’ve got something that belongs to you,” he called back.

  “And what is that?”

  For answer Hammerhand half turned on the horse’s bare back, lifting the stubby-barreled blaster he’d stuffed under his camo-clad right buttock before riding into view of the camp and thrusting it skyward with a fluid motion and firing a flare into the sky.

  Before turning back he ostentatiously stuck the empty break-action flare pistol back between the bare skin of his side and the waistband of his trousers.

  “Now we wait,” he said with a smile.

  He let the buckskin drop her head to grass in the long grass of the natural ramp up the side of the hill. Then he crossed his hands on the point of his horse’s neck where it met its back and sat there smiling at the Lakota elders.

  The stoic act was a sham, mostly. He knew that; he was a Plains warrior himself. The people of the nations could be as outgoing as any random bunch of white-eyes, but they never wanted to give anything away in dealing with outlanders. Even ones with whom they nominally had no beef—the way the Oglala had none with Hammerhand’s bunch, wild men and women though they were.

  Ah, but you were looking, Hammerhand thought as the elder warriors behind Marion began to surreptitiously fidget. The big boss stayed a statue. It’s why you’re here.

  Patience was not a core element of Hammerhand’s nature. In large part that was why he was here, instead of being a good little warrior drone back among the Blood Nation of his elders. But it was a skill he had learned, being brought up a hunter. It served him well, too.

  Gradually a crowd began to gather, respectfully ten yards or more back from the senior delegation. They were mostly fighters, men and women, none too young to carry a blaster, none too old. They had been told to expect shooting to happen once Hammerhand’s approach was signaled by their pickets. Now curiosity was getting the better of them: why wasn’t anybody blasting this upstart renegade?

  It took ten whole minutes to find out, during much of which Hammerhand was laughing inside. Sometimes deferring gratification was totally worth it.

  Then here they came, stumbling around the blunt nose of the Badlands mesa Hammerhand had ridden past not long before: the remnants of the “renegade” raiding party, hands tied in front of them with buckskin thongs, led by a pair of Bloods on their very own captured horses.

  A gasp ran through the now-crowd, and one or two titters.

  The “remnants” were every last one of the youngsters who had set out. Although they were bruised up some, and one or two sported broken arms in slings, they were all breathing and—by Plains fighter standards—intact. They had been so disoriented by the sudden hailstorm of flash-bang grens launched by Hammerhand’s ambush from all sides of them that for most, even controlling their freaked-out horses was impossible. All had put up some sort of a fight and had been quickly and efficiently beaten down.

  Now here they were, a sorry line of captives being brought home to their kin. Every one was birth naked, and every one had face, genitals and asses—and breasts, in the case of the four young women—painted a bright pink.

  Marion’s eyes stood out from his impassive stone face at that sight, and a couple of the prisoners’ less old compatriots broke into outright laughter at their plight.

  “I rounded up these strays and brought them back for you,” Hammerhand called. The chief’s expression went from surprise to thunderhead fury. “All safe and accounted for. You can thank us later.”

  I wonder if these stupe kids even realize yet that they were set up and sent out to die? he thought. Tripwire, my grandma said they called it in the old days. An excuse to start a fight—or get stuck into one that wasn’t rightly yours.

  His grandma was different from the rest of his band in a lot of ways, not least that she wanted to teach young Hammerhand about the past mistakes the white-eyes made, not just the People. Of course, her skin was as black as crow’s wing, and the long, near-white braids were frizzy and thick. Since skydark the Plains nations had defined themselves as who was willing to ride with whom and what tribal ways they chose to live by. And “pure blood” meant lacking the mutie taint.

  Another pair of Blood riders appeared, herding the shuffling, nude captives from behind. They held captured repeaters, a Marlin .44 Mag lever longblaster and a Ruger Mini-14. Nice blasters.

  “Better ride closer herd on them till the wet dries out from behind their ears,” Hammerhand said. “And best make sure they know what they’re doing before you let them get their hands on weapons and good mounts again. Mighta got their stupe selves chilled.”

  The Blood escorts dropped their leashes and turned to ride back the way they had come.

  “You all have yourselves a nice day,” Hammerhand said. He turned his buckskin’s head about and followed them at a leisurely walk.

  He half expected to feel the impact of a bullet from Marion’s big M14 longblaster hitting him right between the bare shoulder blades. He stayed riding slow and tall.

  And then he heard the old man start to laugh, until his guffaw outshouted the wind that whistled through the narrow, twisted gulleys.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Dr. Sandler, I must protest!”

  Not bothering to conceal his scowl, Dr. Sandler turned away from the large digital map, which had its yellow crosshairs centered and was zooming in on a point in what, for convenience’s sake, was delineated as the state of South Dakota. The target lay in the fertile central portion of the now-defunct state, several miles east of the James River.

  Dr. Sandle
r did not reply to his associate’s unseemly outburst. Instead he nodded toward the hush field.

  “What do you protest, Dr. Oates?” he asked once they were screened from the prying ears of techs, who, regardless of clearance, belonged to the lower orders. Consequently they could not be expected to have the mental equipment to deal with deeper truths. Even in a shadowy section of a shadow organization.

  “I understand it is your intent to examine the scene of the latest anomalous incident directly, Dr. Sandler,” she said.

  “You heard it as well as I did, Dr. Oates. Our instruments did not deceive us as to its magnitude. If anything, to judge by Dr. Trager’s reports, they may have understated its severity. And of course only we are in position to assess the possible ramifications of it.”

  “But the risks entailed,” the woman protested. She actually allowed her voice to rise.

  How like a woman, Dr. Sandler thought.

  “Isn’t that why we choose to deal with our current prime subject indirectly, by means of Dr. Trager? That we need to minimize our own exposure to reactionary elements within Overproject Whisper?” she queried.

  “To be sure,” he said. “But these are extraordinary circumstances. Perhaps you don’t understand the possible ramifications of power such as our instruments detect—or at least appear to?”

  “I do,” she said, and sadly it surprised him very little that she sounded a touch sulky. “It could disrupt everything we’re trying to achieve. Even force us to abandon this timeline altogether.”

  That’s part of it, yes, he thought. He said nothing to enlighten her as to the new trend his thoughts were taking. Information was power, after all, and even with his ostensible partner in this clandestine work, he was reluctant to share that.

  “But we already have the report Dr. Trager garnered from our prime subject’s reconnaissance,” Dr. Oates persisted.

  “And even though the prime subject devoted relatively scant time to his investigation, being impatient to embark upon the active conquest phase of his plans to dominate the Plains—” exactly according to our projected timeline, he did not find it necessary to say “—do the details of that report not alarm you, Dr. Oates?”

  “Will it alarm you any less if we see for ourselves what the prime subject describes?”

  “I do not presume to know that, Dr. Oates. That is why we do science, after all, is it not? In order to find out what is true?”

  She frowned as deeply as she dared. Granted they were partners, but she was at least perceptive enough to know that this was not an equal partnership, nor could it ever be; evolution itself dictated the facts, not he or she.

  “Yes,” she finally said.

  “Very well. Let’s have no more of this nonsense, then, shall we?”

  Without awaiting her response, which could only be redundant at this point anyway, he stepped out of the hush field, feeling a slight prickle on his skin as he broke through its invisible electromagnetic membrane.

  “Are we locked on to the target location?” he demanded of the techs.

  “We are, Doctor,” one replied.

  “Open the portal, then.”

  Dr. Oates walked to stand beside him as the techs duly manipulated their controls. He waited a few heartbeats before glancing at his colleague to confirm that she had regained her poise. He had no wish to be seen by Dr. Oates as validating her emotionalism. Fortunately, she had once again assumed a demeanor of scientific detachment.

  An oval two meters in height shimmered into being between the two scientists and the main board. When it had fully resolved itself, its mirror effect vanished, to be replaced by a ground-level view of a furrowed field full of broken stakes and trampled green plants. Small craters dotted the target area, as if it had been subjected to light artillery bombardment.

  The bodies of the anomalous creatures of which their prime subject’s informants had spoken had been removed. Dr. Sandler felt a certain regret; he was confident they were either deliberate releases or, better, inadvertent escapees from some other secret division of Overproject Whisper. Had he been able to obtain a specimen, or at least photographic evidence, it could very well have translated into leverage he could use to improve their status and funding at the expense of someone else.

  That he might be victimizing a project that posed no direct threat to his and Dr. Oates’s joint venture, and which was more than possibly working on some aspect of the Overproject’s greater aims, troubled him not at all. Nothing could be more vital than the work he and Dr. Oates were engaged in. Anything that hindered them was intolerable and had to be removed; anything that advanced their aims was not simply justified but necessary, in the interests of science and, of course, the greater good.

  But if he had to settle for achieving their primary objective—it was, after all, the prime objective. And most imperative.

  “Life signs?” he said.

  “No life form larger than a meadowlark detected within a radius of one hundred meters, Dr. Sandler,” a tech reported.

  “It would appear the primevals are reluctant to return to work their fields,” Dr. Oates observed, “even though they have disposed of the carrion.”

  “So much is obvious. We shall now pass through the portal.”

  “Would you care to have us summon a security team, Dr. Sandler?” asked a senior tech. “Either to accompany you into the target zone, or to stand by?”

  “Not necessary,” he said curtly. “We shall not venture far from the aperture.”

  “Understood, Dr. Sandler.”

  He stepped forward. Unlike leaving the hush field, there was no physical sensation at all to the transition. The matter-transfer units scattered about the globe, many of which remained operational, were ridiculously primitive by comparison to the portal—scarcely more advanced than the hand tools the primeval agriculturalists who worked these field were forced to rely upon to scratch their subsistence out of the dirt. They had been scarcely less outmoded at the time of their inspiration. After all, they had been meant to facilitate the work of the Overproject’s servitors in the outer world, who knew a very great deal less of the truth than they convinced themselves they did—and to help to both buy their loyalty and discretion, and to overawe them.

  Dr. Oates stepped through with him. She was unable to stop herself wrinkling her nose at the assault of the many stinks of the exterior surface world.

  “I can still smell the decomposition,” she complained. “And it would appear the primevals use animal excrement as fertilizer.”

  Dr. Sandler did not deign to respond. If she was worried about filth adhering to her shoes, she was displaying her susceptibility to female hormones yet again. Of course the portal would permit only themselves and such garments and appurtenances as they had originally transitioned with to pass back through. Everything that might have adhered to them, down to the atomic level—even inhaled impurities in their nasal passages and lungs—would remain here. Unless they invoked certain override procedures to allow them to bring samples back with them.

  Instead he began to walk forward with measured paces toward what appeared to be a hole in the soil, fifteen feet from their entry point. The two of them reached the lip of the pit and peered within.

  “Great Teller’s Ghost!” he exclaimed.

  The face Dr. Oates turned toward his was strained and pallid even by the standards of her icy northern European perfection.

  “You were right to insist on seeing this ourselves, Dr. Sandler,” she said. “If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I would never have conceived how momentous this is!”

  He nodded, allowing himself to savor a moment of triumph at her capitulation. Only briefly, of course. Because he was a scientist, and the soul of science was objectivity.

  “Clearly,” he declared, “we must take action on this directly.”

 
“I concur, Dr. Sandler,” Dr. Oates said.

  “Satisfactory,” he said. “Let us return. We have work to do. And a specimen to obtain.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “That doesn’t look good,” Mildred said from the passenger seat of the wag.

  Ryan braked the vehicle.

  “Fireblast!” he said, staring with his one eye at the mirrorlike ellipse that had suddenly appeared forty yards ahead of them. It lay on its side, fully as wide as the badly frost-heavy, two-lane blacktop road they were driving along through slow-rolling, spring-green prairie.

  He felt a rare instant of indecision: Better to get out of the wags? Or keep everyone inside and ready for a full-throttle bug out?

  He hit his palm against the steering wheel hub three times quickly. The trio of short horn blasts was the agreed-upon signal for everybody to exit the vehicles in a hurry.

  “This is some serious whitecoat shit,” he said, yanking his own door open. “If they cut loose on us with some kind of energy weapon, we don’t want to be sitting on top of ten gallons of fuel.”

  Jak already had his right-hand rear door open and was gone. Behind Ryan, Ricky made an unhappy sound as he fumbled with the door handle. He got it open before Ryan felt obliged to intervene.

  Ryan brought his longblaster with him. Ricky and Mildred emerged with handblasters at the ready. Behind him Ryan heard J.B., Krysty, Doc and Mariah climbing out of their wag.

  It was late afternoon. Clouds were rushing overhead from the southwest with a speed that would have set off alarm bells in Ryan’s head about an acid-rain storm coming on, except these were slate gray, not orange green. Precipitation was coming—he could feel and smell it in the breeze—but it was likely to come in the form of regular rain, if likely in double-heavy doses, with mebbe a violent electric storm thrown in.

  Cautiously, Scout held leveled before him, Ryan advanced to the nose of the pickup wag. Across the black hood he saw Jak vanish into the tall grass in the ditch on the right side of the road with barely a rustle. Ryan knew the albino would keep watch from there and be ready to flank any enemies if they appeared, as the one-eyed man expected they would directly.