She set off alone, down a winding side street. Ryan beckoned to the other two. "There goes our jack. Come on."

The russian woman never knew what hit her. Krysty walked quickly past, overtaking her, then turned suddenly with a bright and friendly smile. The girl returned her smile, head slightly to one side as she waited to see what Krysty wanted.

Moving soft as a midnight shadow, Ryan glanced around once, making sure the road was deserted. He stepped in and hit her a clubbing blow with the edge of his clenched fist, just beneath the left ear. He caught her as she dropped like a rock to the uneven sidewalk.

"Jesus, Ryan!" Rick protested. "You really have to?.."

"Yes, friend," Ryan snarled, suddenly angered. "Yeah, I did have to."

"She'll be fine in a few minutes," Krysty said reassuringly. "Ache in the head and empty in the pockets. Better than being dead."

Rick didn't reply. He hobbled down the street, leaning on his bamboo cane, not looking back at the other two.

"It's like being with a dumb kid," Ryan muttered. "A big dumb kid."

Zimyanin returned to his office and worked late that afternoon. Reports of street muggings rarely came to his desk, since they were a matter for Highway Incidents. But an alert officer had seen Zimyanin's circulated memo and had phoned in the report.

"How pleasant to again make your acquaintance," the pockmarked man said, tugging absently at his drooping mustache. He shook his head as he returned The English Tongue for the Benefit of the Russian Gentleman Abroadto his drawer.

The assailants were "a mean-looking man, with only one eye, a tall, attractive woman with very red hair and a shambling, crippled man wearing thick eyeglasses." They were the same people he was seeking. Now they were closer to the sensitive center of the ville.

Chapter Nineteen

"Read it back to me, Alicia Andreyinichna, if you would?"

"Are you sure that?.."

"I am sure. I am also sure that it will be many long winter's days before you rise to Clerk First Class, Alicia Andreyinichna, unless you learn quickly to do what you're told." Seeing the way the girl's face dropped, sensing her disappointment, Zimyanin pasted on his best smile. "I am sorry, child. I had a brief falling-out with my wife, Anya. By the hammer and the anvil! She has a mouth sharper than the best polar bear trap! I should not take it out on you."

"I only worried in case Comrade Marshal Siraksi reproved you for stepping beyond your commission. That was all."

"Perhaps he will. Let us send the letter to him and find out, with copies to all members of the Internal Security Presidium."

She cleared her throat. "Having noted your last communication, I respectfully point out to the Comrade Marshal that there have been new sightings of the three mysterious outlanders. Now there is definite crime, proved: an assault on a decent and honest citizen of Ramenki, and theft. Who are they, Comrade Marshal? Why do they come here? Only one speaks our tongue, and that badly and with an accent that nobody can place with any surety. I repeat my request for the condition to move from yellow to orange at once, and that condition-red reserves be warned. He might agree... Gregori," she said, blushing at her boldness in using his first name.

"Add one more line, Alicia, which may cause him to foul his breeches."

"What?" Her pencil was paused over her ring-bound notepad.

"I have reason to believe that these three strangers might be American terrorists, bound on violence and sabotage. Go on, girl. Write that."

For a moment he genuinely thought that Clerk Second Class Alicia Andreyinichna was going to faint dead away.

Jak went out alone the next morning to scout for food, only to find that the small ville had taken some precautions: a deadfall trap had been cleverly concealed among the woods, as well as a couple of spring traps that fired sharpened lengths of pine at anything that triggered them. There was even a massive old iron bear trap with jagged, broken teeth. If Doc had been with the boy, there was every chance that he would have stumbled over one of the devices.

The villagers had a guard out, though the middle-aged man playing the part had fallen asleep against the wall of a hut, near the smoldering remains of a banked fire. Now that they knew that someone from the outside was stealing from the ville, there was no point in planting any more red herrings. Jak went in, lifted as much food as he could possibly carry and left the place in the opposite direction. He splashed through the stream and then doubled back to throw off any potential pursuers.

He reported the change to J.B., who agreed it was an ominous development. They decided that they would now have to keep a constant and careful watch, splitting shifts with Doc. The old-timer would do two hours at a time, and Jak and J.B. would alternate four hours each. "Closing in," J.B. said.

It was a bleak day, with low clouds scudding on the teeth of a biting easterly wind. Flakes of snow mingled with pattering hailstones, making walking a bitterly unpleasant chore.

Rick Ginsberg had suffered from a kind of fit during the night, crying out so loudly that Ryan had considered knocking him out. He eventually settled for pressing his hand down over the gaping mouth to muffle the sounds.

The freezie's wasted muscles had jerked and twitched, sending him thrashing about on the dusty boards of the third-story room in the abandoned house.

They had managed to get across the Moscow River the previous evening, over a bridge that seemed to have collapsed and been rebuilt a dozen times. The river itself was a ponderous gray snake, swollen with the spring meltwater. It surged at the piles of the bridge, carrying all manner of detritus. Tree trunks, scoured of their branches and bark, gleaming like huge skinned eels, rolled their way toward the distant ocean. A dead cow drifted past them, legs stiffly in the air, its bloated belly keeping it afloat.

The house they'd found was more ravaged than any of those a mile farther out in the 'burbs.

As Ryan had suspected, the sec patrols were thicker on the ground. Some traveled in open-topped multiwheel wags and some on foot in groups of three or four. By keeping a careful watch around, the three friends had managed to avoid any more direct confrontations with the sec men.

Rick's seizure lasted nearly ten minutes and left him drained of energy. It was obvious to both Ryan and Krysty that he wasn't going to be able to keep moving for very much longer. Already Ryan had decided that they would have to steal a wag to transport the freezie and any tools to their hiding place out in the wastelands.

"Better leave me here, Ryan. You and Krysty go look for what we want."

"It's no go, Rick," she replied. "Once we got the stuff we can high-gear it out of the ville back to the others. Until then we have to keep you with us. One question from a sec man and we could all be on the first wag to prison. You have to really try, Rick."

"Sound like my gran. Best foot forward. Shoulder to the wheel. Chest out. Feet together. Take it on the chin. Pick up the beat. And don't forget your fog, your amphetamines and your pearls!" He started to cry. "Oh, this is such bullshit, isn't it? I didn't want to... I'm sorry, guys. Real sorry. I'll be fine when I get..."

Ryan laid a hand on the sobbing man's shoulder. "Let it out, Rick. You have to keep on. That's what makes the difference. It's going on when you don't reckon you can. Come on. Let's go."

Once they got outside, huddling into their furs against the dreadful weather, Rick had another brief crisis when he couldn't recall the woman's instructions to find the places selling tools. He took several deep breaths, turned away from the others then faced them again with a broad smile. "It's okay," he said. "I remember now. Past the ruins of the sports stadium, then hang a right past a gas depot. On by a market and there's a line of white buildings."