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  Jak staggered back a couple of paces, wiping the gore from his face with his sleeve so that he could see again, despite the remnants of the stickie's head that dripped from the ends of his hair. He looked from the corpse of the chilled stickie, lying prone with nothing that could be recognized as a head, to the slim and beautiful warrior woman who stood in front of him, a Vortak precision pistol in her hand. As he had seen in his mat-trans dream, it was a perfect example of the art of Fred Craig, the designer whose predark handblasters J.B. sometimes spoke of in hushed tones. It had a unique look, but was obviously based on an update of the John Browning 1911 design that had set the tone for such blasters. The gas-buffered recoil system had allowed the woman to shoot at such close range and know that she could have maximum accuracy at a range where even the slightest recoil could have altered the trajectory of the shell and also taken out the albino.

  Jak was only aware that he was standing and staring at her when she holstered the blaster in the small of her back, arching her hips for ease. She smiled, slow and easy, with a lopsided grin.

  "I know I'm beautiful, sweets, but looking at me like that is liable to get you chilled one day…just like it nearly did."

  Jak looked away. She didn't seem to recognize him—why should she?—but he was confused by her turning up in such a manner. Even more bewildering, did this mean that they would somehow come across the Illuminated Ones? They knew that the secret group, who still seemed to survive in some underground form, had been based toward the northwest of the Deathlands. Had that been part of the meaning of his doomie dream?

  He was unable to ponder that, as the flame-haired warrior woman took several steps away and then turned. Glancing around, he could see that all the Amazon women had moved away from his companions.

  Ryan also noticed that and said, "Thanks for the assist. We were in serious trouble, there. Mebbe we should all introduce ourselves." He held his hands well away from his weapons as he spoke, only too aware that he wouldn't have the time to draw.

  Seemingly ignoring him, the warrior woman turned to her tribe, yelling, "Eh-la, eh-la," in a singsong tone.

  It was a signal that the other women took immediately. All drew their blasters, training them on the group in the middle. Glancing around like his companions, Jak could see that the women surrounded them, standing among the slaughtered stickies.

  "Told you," the blonde said to Doc with a smile that was almost as white as his had been earlier, and almost as cold.

  "Shut it, Margia," the flame-haired warrior woman snapped, before returning her attention to Ryan. "Now then, honey, I think it mebbe would be nice if you told us just a little bit about yourselves, before we have to chill you."

  Chapter Five

  Ryan shot a glance across the line. At the far end, J.B. was frozen in a half-inclined attitude, his eyes fixed on the Amazons directly in front of him. They were both holding handblasters. The smaller woman with wiry blond hair had a 9 mm Hi-Point Comp blaster with four-inch barrel and 10-round mag with muzzle-break compensator. The taller of the two, who had long, curling auburn hair and was younger than most of her compatriots, clutched a 9 mm Kahr Mk 9 7-round pistol with a three-inch barrel.

  The Armorer took in the condition of the blasters and the manner in which the Amazons were holding them. He slowly and carefully turned his head toward Ryan, and almost imperceptibly indicated with a shake that he believed the women to be well equipped and too good to take on from their current position. The sinking sun glinted off the wire frames of his spectacles as he confirmed for the one-eyed man all that he had suspected.

  The exchange was noted by Doc, Dean, Krysty and Mildred, all aware that the new arrivals currently had the upper hand but willing to follow Ryan's word if he decided to attempt resistance. Jak alone didn't notice the exchange, as his gaze was still on the Amazon leader.

  But if Jak didn't notice it, others did.

  "I'd follow what Four-eyes there says," murmured the blonde who had been addressed as Margia, her voice loud in the sudden silence. "I look after the blasters, and I can assure you that anyone who doesn't take the best care of their own personal store gets fucked hard."

  "I believe you…and I admire your dedication," J.B. said quietly to her, touching his fedora.

  The blonde smiled smugly. "Thank you, sweetie."

  The red-haired Amazon leader sighed. "Shut it, Margia…you're too easily taken in by this shit—and don't you dare fucking say it isn't," she added, noticing that J.B. was about to speak. She continued, "I've been friendly about this so far, but I may not be much longer."

  "You call this friendly?" Mildred questioned with a raised eyebrow.

  The Amazon leader smiled her lopsided grin. "I didn't let the bastard stickies get you, did I? And I haven't blasted you to hell…yet."

  Ryan raised his hands. "Okay, point taken. But you've got to understand that we're as wary of you as you are of us, but we are grateful for your help with the stickies. We were seriously outnumbered there. What's more worrying is that I've never come across stickies that could think tactics like that before."

  The Amazon fixed him with an appraising look. "Funny you should say that, boy, because we've traveled across this foul little land, and we've never seen them behave that way before. Have we?" She directed the question toward the surrounding Amazons.

  Amid the chorus of agreement for their leader's words, Mildred raised her voice. "Can I take a look at some of the bodies? It may tell us something."

  "You some kind of medicine woman?" the flame-haired woman asked. When Mildred nodded, the leader pursed her lips. "So you've traveled, and you've got a wide range of backgrounds." Seeing Ryan's look of wry surprise, she continued, "You've got a boy, a mutie, two soldiers, a medicine woman and a wise man… Oh, and a warrior woman who really needs to lose some of those rags and loosen up to fight," she added, indicating Krysty. "On top of that, you've obviously traveled like us, because you know stickies aren't always like these."

  "Very impressive, but not the whole story," Krysty broke in. "By the way, I'm quite happy with the clothes I've got, thanks. Some of the places we've been are too cold to wear as little as you."

  "Fair point," the leader conceded. "So, what is the whole story?"

  Ryan paused before speaking. Would it be wise to give away what they were doing to these people? On the other hand, what did they have to lose at this stage?

  Finally he spoke. "We've been traveling for quite a while. How we came together is neither here nor there, but I guess we aren't a tribe like yours. Mebbe we're just people who don't fit in elsewhere. Me and J.B. there used to travel with Trader across the Deathlands, until things began to fall apart and it was time to look elsewhere. We've heard stories about a land to the north where there's a stockpile, and where there might be a chance to build a life in peace. If that's true, then there's chance there to escape this life that we might just want to take. Guess we find out little bits here and there, but not enough to really get there yet."

  The Amazon leader nodded. "That sounds fair enough to me, honey. I don't think that you'll be too much danger to us, as you're on a quest like we are. You're not out to take anything from us. I guess you can be easy—we won't chill you if you don't fuck with us."

  Ryan smiled, his hard jaw broken by the grin. "If I wasn't so sure you could do it, I'd be tempted to laugh at that, be a bastard and say how generous you were."

  His smile was returned by the Amazon leader's lopsided grin. "If you weren't so bastard cheeky as to say it like that, I'd chill you where you stand," she said.

  Krysty, vaguely irritated by the woman's attitude in a way she couldn't explain, broke in once more. "So you know something about us, but you haven't told us anything about yourselves. I'd say a fair exchange of information was called for here."

  The Amazon leader nodded, taking the chance to introduce herself. "Guess that's fair enough. They call me Gloria, and I'm the queen of the Gate. That's us—" she indicated the other women, none of whom h
ad as yet lowered their blasters "—and also the backup who are on the other side of the clearing by now, heading for camp. They knew we'd either bring you back or leave you here chilled with this scum—" she indicated the chilled stickies "—so they followed their orders to the letter and returned to camp, where our men are waiting. They know better than to fuck around. It's only by being strong that we've survived and thrived."

  "You are a nomadic tribe then?" Doc asked, leaning forward on his cane, which he sheathed before their actions had been halted.

  "If you mean that we're travelers, then yes," Gloria answered.

  Doc indicated assent. "My apologies, dear lady, for using terms that are unfamiliar to you. I shall endeavor to speak more plainly in future."

  Gloria laughed. "I like you, old man. You make me laugh. Guess it might be fun to have you around. But yes, we are travelers, and we have our own quest. As leader of the tribe, and hereditary queen, I carry with me the gift of far-seeing. A seer by birth, it's my duty and privilege to carry with me the legends and purpose of the Gate people. Since the days of skydark, we have known that there is a gateway to the future, to a world beyond the one we know and is yet not of the realms of the chilling. This land will be free from the disease and hurt of the Deathlands, and from this our people will build a new and better life."

  "This gateway," Doc prompted, "do you know what it is and where?"

  Ryan watched the old man and also the warrior queen to try to work out what Doc was getting at: he could see that there was a light shining in the old man's eyes, and wondered if he was sharing Doc's thoughts.

  What if the gateway to the future of which the woman spoke was a remnant of Operation Chronos? And if this was the case, then what else could possibly be waiting in this mythical place?

  Could it, in fact, be the place in the north of which they had learned fragments? Gloria's next statement left Ryan in little doubt that was a strong possibility. "The legends say that it comes from the predark times and is left over from the evils that were perpetrated by the white men of the secret orders. Some of these white men and those who held dominion over them are still in control, but they are small in number and our righteousness shall overcome them. They are in the great pit to the north, and the gateway to them is in the shape of a pentacle. It was the greatest of all old symbols of power, and it is the symbol that they still carry with them."

  Doc, noting that the sudden change of tone in her voice, from her normal husky tones to a slightly higher, singsong pitch, meant that she was almost trancing herself to recite the legend that had been passed down to her as seer of the tribe.

  "Do you know how you must get there?"

  Gloria looked at him. Her piercing blue eyes seemed to cut through him like cutters made of ice-blue polished diamonds.

  "We must follow the markers. The old ones left a trail of secret sites that we cannot enter until we reach the final gateway, and yet these sites tell us all we need to know. They give us the direction we need to follow."

  Ryan tried to contain his excitement, and took a long and steady look at his friends to see if they had drawn the same conclusions. From the expression on their faces, he could see that they had: the secret sites that Gloria had spoken of had to be the redoubts, and although the Gate tribe never actually used the mat-trans units, they somehow had some way of knowing the manner in which the mat-trans network linked all the redoubts, and they had been following these lines for generations in search of the last refuge of the predark authorities. Ryan had read in some old scraps of books about whitecoat theories on how birds were able to migrate from continent to continent in the days when there were still recognizable continents. These theories suggested that there were lines of energy— the magnetic fields, they called them—that crisscrossed the earth, and the birds followed them, using them as guides.

  What if there was some mutie trait in the Gate tribe—or at least in the line of queens to which Gloria belonged—that allowed them to see the lines of energy that linked the mat-trans devices in the redoubts? Knowing from their own bitter experience how screwed-up these lines of communication were, it came as no surprise to Ryan that it had taken them several generations to come this far north.

  "Thank you, my dear. You have told me much, although you may not realize it," Doc said quietly. He didn't look to his companions, for he knew that they had all drawn the same conclusions as himself.

  Gloria looked askance at Doc, and when she spoke again her voice had returned to its normal timbre.

  "I get the impression that mebbe you people now know more than I do. That won't last for long. I'll make you an offer. It seems to me that we're both searching for something, and that mebbe that something is the same thing. So mebbe it would be good for us to join together, at least for a while, and see if our goal is the same."

  "And if we don't agree?" Ryan asked as neutrally as he could.

  Gloria shrugged. "You don't seem to mean us harm. And so what if you do? We outnumber you and you're mostly men. You—" she added, addressing Mildred and Krysty "—shouldn't let the one-eyed man here lead you. Sisters are better suited to go in the front, and so it has always been. If you come with us, then that's more or less the way it will be. Though I will, out of deference, let the men travel with us instead of manning the supplies as is their place."

  "Mighty generous," J.B. said with a poker face. To his friends, his satirical intent was obvious. But such was his ability to deadpan that Gloria merely acknowledged him gracefully.

  "You seem to have earned it, Four-eyes. And now for you, medicine woman," she said, turning to Mildred. "Before we travel on and leave these scum to return to the earth and slime that birthed them, do you still want to examine them?"

  "I certainly do," Mildred muttered, taking a few paces to a fallen and chilled stickie and dropping to her knees to examine the corpse. She had chosen one that still had its head intact, and was examining the skull area minutely.

  "May I?" Doc asked Gloria, indicating with his stick where Mildred was kneeling. When the warrior queen granted her assent, Doc moved forward and joined the doctor.

  "Guessed what I'm looking for, Doc?" Mildred murmured to Tanner.

  "I suspect that you are in search of some sign of surgery around the area of the brainpan."

  Mildred nodded. "Got it in one, Doc. It'd be a cold day in hell before a stickie ever learned how to fight tactically and arrange an ambush, unless it was some kind of superstickie, with enhanced brain power."

  "And somehow I do not think Darwin's theories ever held much of a council with the notion of such a rapid development, even taking mutations into account. If anything, I would expect it to go in reverse in such a case as this," Doc muttered.

  "Exactly," Mildred replied, her hands stretching the repulsive and elastic skin searching for outward signs and also probing the area beneath the skin for signs of surgery, such as sudden ridges of bone. She grimaced with disgust at the feel of the chilled mutie in her hands, but the grimace turned to a small grin of triumph as her fingers traced a small growth of bone at the base of the skull. Pulling the skin tighter, and turning the heavy head in her hands to better examine the area in question, she found a small, puckered scar.

  "I believe that answers that question," Doc said quietly.

  "Sophisticated technique, too," Mildred said with a touch of professional admiration creeping into her voice, an all too rare reminder of her past before the days of being a freezie and of skydark. "This is keyhole surgery, probably laser. Whoever did this had access to some pretty damn good equipment, and what's more, equipment that was in good working order."

  "I suggest we examine a few more of the corpses, if we can find any with heads undamaged enough," Doc said quietly.

  Mildred nodded. "Check as many as possible." Both she and Doc rose to their feet and, disregarding the puzzled or interested stares of those around them, examined as many of the chilled stickies as they could find with enough skull intact to warrant investigation.
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br />   When they were done, they conferred briefly before Mildred addressed Ryan and Gloria.

  "It's just as I suspected. These are no ordinary stickies. All of those who still have enough skull left to examine have shown signs of surgery. I suspect that their brains have been tampered with in some way—perhaps a smart drug slowly released into the cerebellum, perhaps some kind of laser modification or direct genetic engineering. They were talking about that kind of activity before skydark, so maybe whoever is left…"

  She let the sentence tail off. Ryan understood immediately. Anyone capable of doing this has to have some damn good tech, and in the best of repair. That suggested a stockpile or redoubt that was near, and in working order.

  Gloria, not having the experience of the one-eyed warrior, was a little slower on the uptake, and she quizzed Mildred. "You mean the old ones of legend may have done this, and that we may finally be nearing them?"

  "I wouldn't say that exactly," Mildred replied, choosing her words carefully, "but it is highly possible that a fully equipped surgery is relatively near, which would suggest a redoubt or installation of some kind—" she noted the blank look from the warrior queen and clarified "—a secret site, as you call it. Perhaps even the one we're all searching for."

  Gloria's eyes lit up. "Could it be that finally, after all this time, we're within sight of our goal?"

  Krysty spoke gently. "Don't get too excited yet. It could just be another marker on the way."

  "When such wonders are being performed as to make stickies smart?" Gloria shook her head, her flaming hair swaying gently around her finely boned features. "Na, na, na, this is the place. We are finally near."

  "So need be triple red," Jak blurted, finally speaking. All through the exchanges, he had been staring at Gloria, trying to reconcile reality with his mat-trans dream. If it was a doomie precognition, then he needed to get clear in his own head exactly what it all meant. But seeing the beautiful woman of his dream standing before him as flesh was perplexing. He had been frozen until one thought had stabbed through into his brain, one thought that saw his instincts for danger show through even the deepest confusion.