"Sorry to wake you."

"Sure."

"Mind if I sit down here a spell? Legs aren't that strong yet."

Ryan sat up, gesturing to her. "Sure. Pull up a corner."

"Thanks. Got to talk some. You're leader of this group,"

It wasn't a question, but Ryan nodded anyway. "Yeah. I am."

"And this Deathlands is simply the good old U.S. of A. but reverted to a kind of primitive way of life. Like Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Back to Year Zero and all that crap."

Ryan didn't know what she was talking about, but it sounded like a kind of sense, which was reassuring. He nodded again.

"And you and the others are like... like... I guess like a sort of Magnificent Seven."

"There's only five of us now. Six with you. Not seven."

She laughed. "I guess I've got so much to learn that... No. What I'm trying to get to, Ryan, is that the Deathlands is full of baddies. Black hats. And you are the goodies, the white hats?"

He shook his head this time. "No, Mildred. In Deathlands there isn't much of good or bad. Generally it's just a lot of people, doing the best they can." He was aware that the phrase had a familiar ring to it, but he couldn't just remember where he'd heard it before.

"A place of mean streets. But you and the others walk down them and you aren't mean. Something like that, Ryan?"

This time the question was clearly there. "Yeah. Sounds about right, Mildred."

"Then I might be lucky about being thawed out by you and not by some of the others, I guess." This time she seemed to be almost talking to herself. "Thanks, Ryan. Thanks for unlocking Sleeping Beauty from her ivory tower."

"Sure."

Mildred stood up on wobbly legs, smiling down at him, her teeth showing white in the dimness. "Some charming prince, Ryan. Sorry I woke you. Good night, now. Sleep tight."

"And you."

By morning Mildred had recovered still more of her strength. Jak had scouted around and discovered some sealed packs of food-tabs. Though they tasted much like a compressed mixture of mud and chaff, they provided all the essential proteins and vitamins to get a person through a day.

"Nourishing, they may be," Doc said, "but delicious they are not."

Mildred grinned at him. "Just for once, Doc, you and I are in agreement."

"Then I hope that it will not be the last time, Dr. Wyeth," he replied gallantly.

"And my name is Mildred, if that isn't too familiar for you."

Doc half bowed. "Mildred it shall be."

Krysty caught Ryan's eye and winked at him. The change in Doc was astounding. The arrival of this freezie, with her opinionated manner, had been just what the old man needed to nudge him from the madness of the triple jump.

After the meal the companions headed out. When they reached the doors that opened onto the tropical jungles of Minnesota, Ryan eased cautiously through, then beckoned the others to follow him into the humid sweltering air,

Mildred was third out, and she paused, looking around in amazement. Then she turned angrily and accusingly to Ryan.

"Some damned joke, isn't it?" she snapped.

"What?" Only part his attention was on her. Most was focused on searching for potential threats from the alien landscape.

"Funny, Ryan. If that's your real name. This institute was in Minnesota, near Duluth. I don't know what's going on here, but I know fucking well, if you'll pardon my French, that this is notMinnesota. It could be Hawaii, but Duluth it ain't, Jack!"

"This is the Shelley Cryonic Institute, Mildred," Krysty said. "Sign says so, right there."

"Nuking blew the world apart," Ryan reminded her. "There was a botanical complex here. The hot spots must have changed the weather and scattered some freak mutie seeds. That's our guess."

"Well, I'll shove my vibro through a flying doughnut! When they brought me in here it was bleak midwinter."

"Snow on snow." Doc carried himself a nod of appreciation from the woman.

"Near twenty feet, if I remember right. By God! But this is so wonderful! I always wondered what would happen if... Now I know, and I'm fine. Freezing really works."

J. B. Dix hawked and spit in the lush turf. "Not often, lady," he said, laconic as ever. "We tried thawing out lots, and you and one other guy were the only ones who made it."

"How come you froze?" Jak asked. "Look fucking good me."

"Thanks, son."

Jak opened his mouth, closed it again, opened it and to the amazement of the others, said nothing.

Mildred watched this performance with some surprise. "What's the matter, son?"

"Please, don't call 'son' or 'kid' or nothing like that."

"Sure thing, Jak. Sorry. You asked me why I was frozen. I went into Bethesda for a routine checkup and biopsy, suspecting an ovarian cyst. Surgeon didn't think it was serious."

"But they found it was..." Krysty struggled a moment for the word she wanted. "Malignant? Was that what they found?"

Mildred shook her head. Her black hair was shaped into dozens of tiny, tight plaits, and they glinted in the watery sunlight. "No. Never got that far. I had this totally freak reaction to the anesthesia and the preop, and I went into convulsions. Really far out, like I was up there on the ceiling of the operating room watching my body down below. I went into a coma for a time. All the vital signs were failing. Because I was important in the cryo field, they wanted to keep me if they could, and coptered me up here. Snow was everywhere. I remember that. I could see and hear, but I couldn't move a damned thing. Then they started the cryo-processing, and the rest, as they say, is silence."

"And now you find yourself here, in this wicked, ravaged world," Doc concluded. "Believe me, dear lady, you have my entire sympathy for your grievous predicament."

In his careful introduction, Ryan had touched on the backgrounds of himself and the other members of the group, so Mildred understood the reason behind Doc's kind words. She nodded and smiled at him.

"Thanks. I guess, like you, there'll be times I find all this madness easy to cope with. Other times it'll be harder." She paused, looking out over the rich vegetation and the slow-flowing river. When she spoke again, her voice crackled with emotion. "Knowing that everyone you ever loved... has gone — not just gone, but long, long gone — that's not easy. Ma must have passed away at least eighty years ago. My nieces... all dead."

"You were not married?" Doc asked gently.

"No, no. Work came first for this child, and fighting for rights. My people's rights and the rights of women. You folk can't realize what a shit-world it was, back then."

"Times it's like that here, Mildred," Krysty told her.

"Ma told me that life wasn't just a bowl of damned cherries," Mildred continued, "and, by God, she was surely right."

A dragonfly darted from the trees beyond the water, fully eighteen inches in length, shining with a dazzling, iridescent purple sheen. It hovered for a few moments near the group, then moved away, its wings a shimmering blur.

The freezie watched it in silence, before shaking her head in disbelief. "And now you'll tell me that it isn't just the trees and flowers that have gone extra-freaky! That was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in my life. Are there more of those around the Deathlands?"

Ryan answered. "Beauty and horror. Most species, including humans, have mutated over the past century. You'll see something of both sides of the jack around here, Mildred."

"I can't wait." She looked at the five friends in turn. "Seems to me I've got a fair range here, from what you told me about yourselves. A redheaded medium, an albino street punk, a two-hundred-year-old fart, a gun freak and a one-eyed killer." She laughed. "Ma always used to moan that I made some odd friends. Boy, oh, boy. If she could see me now!"