Chapter Five

"It's a myth," said Ryan. "Will-o'-the-wisp."

"A land of lost happiness," said Krysty.

"Crap. Ain't no such thing."

"That's what Uncle Tyas used to call a double negative. What you just said is, there is not no such thing. And that means, there issuch a thing."

Ryan leaned back in the swivel chair, his fingers frozen in the act of lining tobacco along a paper, and gazed at the young woman seated opposite him. Almost unconsciously he let his single eye drift across her eyes — large, profoundly green, slightly almond shaped — down to high cheekbones that curved softly around to a firm chin, the nose long, the mouth full-lipped and generous. There were laugh lines there, an imp dancing in those emerald eyes. He thought it would be delightful to dive into their depths, sink slowly down, drift. Still staring, he slicked his tongue the length of the paper and deftly twirled the result.

"Finished?" There was a definitely a sardonic edge to her voice.

"Yeah." He firmed up the cigarette, the best he could do with such crude materials long ago dug up from a buried warehouse site, though the packages had at least been airtight, and he tapped an end against his thumbnail, then fished around in a top pocket, pulled out a lighter tube and flicked it. A flame sprang up, quivering slightly in the draft. Ryan grinned and pointed at the lighter. "A miracle. You know, we got maybe about a million of these little bastards. A billion. Maybe — what's the next one up? — trillion? Found 'em in a military dump down south. Crates and crates and crates of the suckers. Guys who found 'em didn't know what the hell they were to begin with, couldn't figure out how to use 'em. Thought they were antipersonnel booby bombs." He grinned again, shot a glance across the war wag's swaying cabin at J. B. Dix, who was busy greasing one of his pieces — one of his many pieces. "That's not to say that some of them aren't booby bombs," he added. "The ingenuity of man in the causing of destruction to his fellows is boundless. I read that somewhere, or something akin to it. Education, you see. Like you. Dub-ull neg-a-tive." He rolled the words out slowly, frowning mildly as though judging them. "Yeah, that surely is education. It's still a crock of shit, though, this land of lost happiness."

"A paradise beyond the Deathlands," said Krysty. She was rolling her own cigarette from the tobacco supply, her long fingers dealing nimbly with its creation. She was so fast that they seemed almost to flicker. Ryan watched, fascinated.

She had cleaned herself up, now wore a green jump suit taken from Stores. It fitted her in all the right places yet was loose and comfortable looking. She had even polished her boots; the interior lights reflected off the buffed leather. Her hair was just as lustrous, a shining flame-red cascade over her shoulders and halfway down her back. To Ryan, when she moved her head, even if gently, her hair seemed to be wildly alive, to shimmer with a restless motion.

"There is no paradise beyond the Deathlands," he intoned mock-judiciously, sucking smoke. The ancient, preserved tobacco was faintly sweet-smelling as it burned. He wasn't entirely sure what it was, although it wasn't a relaxant like happyweed. Ryan left that kind of thing for off-duty periods. "Only death. This is a world of death. There is no other world."

"Too pessimistic," she said.

"I'm a realist. It's the way it is, the way it'll always be. There's no escape. They screwed us a century ago, and we're left with the pieces. That's it. You make the best of what you've got."

"But wouldn't you like to escape?"

He stared at her, smoke from the cigarette drifting across his blind eye so it did not cause him discomfort, and he thought to himself, very odd question.

"Escape what?" he said. "What else is there? We know a little of what's going on..." he made a vague gesture that took in the entire world, "...though not that much, communications being what they are. Even so, it seems that out there is much the same as it is around here. Pretty shitty. Listen." He leaned forward, jabbing the tip of his cigarette in her direction. "I'll tell you. A person gets around with the Trader. I've been with him for maybe ten years, and we've been all over. We've been as far west as you can get without falling off the edge, up through the mountains and down to the Hot Seas. There used to be a wide coastal plain there — cities, highways, millions of people, but it sank. Plain sank. Seems there was a fault or something in the earth and it was a number-one target and they hit it and it just tore the earth's crust apart and the whole deal just slid into the sea. Goodbye, that particular part of civilization."

She said, "California. That's what it was, that's what they called it."

"Well, there's no such place anymore. Hasn't been for a hundred years or more. Not since the Nuke. We thought of trying to salvage something from the seabed — there must be riches down there! A lost world! But it's too far and we don't have the gear. And the sea is hot and bubbling and scummy, and there's things down there only a crazy man would dream up."

"You could say that about everywhere."

"Sure. Doesn't alter my argument, though. Which is — the West? Forget it. Okay..." he warmed to his theme, "...the Southwest. Maybe you know this, maybe you don't. There used to be desert down there, out of everyone's way. They were doing things they didn't want people to know about. Only snag was, the other side didknow about it — they must have known about it because they pounded it, flattened it. Took it out. There's only the wind there now, and sometimes that just literally sears what's left. And where there's no wind, there's nuclear garbage floating in the sky in great clouds as thick as mountains. Sometimes it flares up and sets the night on fire. I've seen it. The sky burns." His voice was softer now, his eye unfocused. "Burns for days and nights on end. And then..." he snapped his fingers, "...it stops. Just like that. You don't know why, and you'll never know why. But it just stops, the fire dies, and all you have left is floating nuclear junk." He cocked an eyebrow at her. "You figure that's paradise?"

"No, that's not what I'm..."

"So what about the North? It's cold up there. Hellish cold. There's guys up there, they don't take their furs off more than once a year. If that. Didn't used to be so all-fired warm before, so it's said, except for plains where wheat grew, but it's cold all over now. It could be that the ice from the far north has shifted south, and maybe it's still on the move, maybe it won't stop until the whole world is covered with it — a new ice age. Not in our lifetime, I guess. But it's a frozen hell up there, believe me. I've seen it, I've tried to trek through it. The guys who live there, the Franchies, they'd love to trade, but we don't have the means, the proper equipment. You go up there and your gas freezes in the tanks and gets like jelly."

"So let's try South. I'm easy. Like this, just you and me, we can go anywhere. So — South. Deep down south." His tone darkened. "Now that's a place, let me tell you. A dark locale. Far as I can tell it used to be an area of mainly grasslands, woodlands, all over. But now it's jungle, swamp and rot. There's more mutants per acre down there than any place I've seen. I don't know why. Maybe the chem stuff got out of hand, maybe the opposition went over the top, dumped too many toxins down there. Or maybe it just got hotter anyhow, the climate — something to do with the sea. Who the nuke knows. All I can tell you is that it's a poisoned land and I can do without it. Paradise it ain't."

"Hey, now. You don't seem to..."

"And then we shift to the East. Well, sure. That's civilized, I guess. Parts of it." He paused, took a final drag on the cigarette, butted it. "I guess it's civilized because everyone there says it is. And sure, they got industry of a kind, and they know how to produce electric power better than anywhere else I know, and they got lines of communication that don't break down every three hours, and they can grow their own food, and they read and write, and..." He stopped, stared down at the floor as though a memory had twitched at the outer edges of his mind. He looked up again, his one eye suddenly bleak. "But it's uncoordinated, lady. And beneath a thin skin of culture it's as much of a hell as it is out here. There's maybe a dozen families in the Southern Enclave in an uneasy truce, all secretly lusting after what the others have got, all about ready to swoop in and grab any territory that looks to be weaker than they are."