[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

dummy1
"I'm beginning to find all this endless meteorological perfection just a
little tedious," Doc complained. "My heart weeps for a November morning in
Vermont, with drizzling rain and clouds that cling dripping to the topmost
branches of the dank conifers." He laughed, showing his perfect teeth. "Well,
perhaps I can wait until tomorrow for that."
Michael was standing by him in the doorway of their building, staring out over
the strip of scrub, past the beach toward the dock.
"Should be pushing off straight after we've had breakfast," he commented.
"You coming in the big boat with us?" Mildred asked, appearing behind him.
He hesitated. "Miranda asked me if I wanted to go along with her in the small
outrigger."
J.B. laughed. "Outrigger. Getting very nautical all of a sudden, Michael."
"Watch she doesn't try and push you over the side and hold you under!" Dean
cackled with laughter, poking the teenager in the ribs and scampering past him
into the bright morning sunshine.
Ryan and Krysty joined the others. "Haven't been fishing for sport in a long,
long while." He grinned. "Most times I fished for food I wasn't that great at
it."
"I have the happiest memories of trolling the wild white rivers of Oregon with
my dear wife, Emily," Doc said. "Camping beneath the stars and eating over an
open fire." He hesitated. "Truth to tell, Emily was not the finest of
ourdoorswomen and found an iron skillet over a beech fire was not conducive to
producing a cordon bleu repast."
"Burned offering, huh, Doc?"
"I could not have put it better myself, Mildred."
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Ja...%20Deathlands%20019%20-%20Deep%
20Empire.html (105 of 279) [1/5/2005 11:12:06 PM]
dummy1
"Here they come," Krysty announced, as the fishing party approached, led by
Tomwun.
He waved a hand and hallooed a greeting. "It's such a perfect day, my friends.
Let us get afloat. To the boats, to the boats!" He pointed the way with a long
steel-
pointed gaff.
There were eight or nine members of the institute with him, all wearing casual
clothes. Miranda Thorson had on the skimpiest pair of shorts that Ryan had
ever seen. From the front they looked like a tiny kerchief and from the back
there was just a narrow strip of material that almost vanished into the cleft
between her buttocks. She and Michael walked close together, apart from the
rest of the party.
"WHERE DO YOU GET the gas from?" J.B. had jammed his fedora low on his head to
avoid the risk of losing it over the side of the speeding boat.
Tomwun was at the helm, standing up, the wind peeling his grin of delight even
wider. A white bone foamed under the prow of the eighteen-footer, their wake
lengthening behind them toward the distant blur of the institute.
"Trade for it, John. Like everything else."
The Armorer glanced across at Ryan, who was sitting on the starboard side
between Krysty and his son. They'd talked briefly the previous night about
this
"trading," trying to work out just what it was that Tomwun had to offer that
was so valuable to the inhabitants of the scattered villes to the north.
And nobody had been able to come up with a satisfactory answer to the
question.
The rattle of the engine, combined with the rushing wind and the kick of the
boat against the choppy swell, made conversation impossible, and J.B. didn't
bother to pursue the subject of the trading.
The little outrigger, propelled by a square of stained and patched canvas, was
Page 53
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
bowling along a quarter mile away from them, tacking away from land. The
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Ja...%20Deathlands%20019%20-%20Deep%
20Empire.html (106 of 279) [1/5/2005 11:12:07 PM]
dummy1
young woman was at the tiller, with Michael barely visible, scuttling about,
hauling on sheets and trying to avoid the swinging boom.
"Good clean air," said Thorund, one of the older men from the institute. He
had a long, thin face, rather like a bewildered sheep, with a short-cropped
thatch of thinning hair. His eyes were a piercing blue.
"Not so clean as when we started off first thing this morning." Mildred
sniffed, head on one side. "Sulfur. You smell it, John?"
"What?" He leaned closer to her. "Can't hear you over the engine noise."
"Said I could smell sulfur."
The Armorer dutifully took in several lungfuls of air. "Yeah. Something& "
"Like eggy farts," Dean squeaked. "Comin' from over that way."
They all followed the eager, pointing finger, toward the north and east.
"Cloud there," Krysty said. "Right down near the surface of the Lantic."
"Yellow cloud," Ryan agreed, moving carefully toward the stern of the boat,
attracting the attention of Tomwun. "Look over that way. Cloud."
The professor nodded, the sunlight flashing off his spectacles. "We get plenty
of them, Ryan. There are still all manner of undersea explosions and movements
of the tectonic plates. Don't worry about the scientific details. All
seismological. Bit beyond you, I expect."
"Like a volcano?" Ryan shouted, steadying himself with a hand on the smaller
man's shoulder.
"Possibly. No danger."
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Ja...%20Deathlands%20019%20-%20Deep%
20Empire.html (107 of 279) [1/5/2005 11:12:07 PM]
dummy1
"What if we get closer to it?"
"What?" Tomwun threw Ryan a slightly blank look of vague amusement. "You want
us to go closer to it?"
"No. What if we do?"
"Ah, reading you scale ten now. Well, it would be a little like standing on
top of a volcano as the vent blows and the magma strikes the fan."
"I seen eruptions." Now Ryan could catch the smell of sulfur more strongly.
"Indeed?"
"Yeah."
"Yet you've lived to tell about it? So it obviously isn't too fearful." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]