He led the pony through a gaping door in the side of a slate-sided gymnasium, and tethered the animal behind a fold-down stand of bleachers. Gordon dropped a pile of oats near the animal, but left the saddle in place and cinched.

Now what? Do we wait it out? Or do we check it out?

Gordon unwrapped his bow and quiver and set the string. In the rain they were probably more reliable, and certainly quieter than his carbine or revolver.

He stuffed one of the bulging mail sacks into a ventilation shaft, well out of sight. As he was searching for a place to hide the other, he suddenly realized what he was doing.

He grinned ironically at his momentary foolishness and left the second bag lying on the floor as he set off to find the trouble.

The sounds came from a brick building just ahead, one whose long bank of glass windows still gleamed. Apparently looters hadn’t even thought the place worth bothering with. Now Gordon could hear faint, muttered voices, the soft nickering of horses, and the creaking of tack. Seeing no watchers at the roofs or windows, he dashed across the overgrown lawn and up a broad flight of concrete steps, flattening against a doorway around the corner of the building. He breathed open-mouthed for silence.

The door bore an ancient, rusted padlock and an engraved plastic sign.

The voices came from just within… though too muffled to make out anything distinct. An outside stairway led up to several floors overhead. He stepped back and saw that a door lay ajar three flights up.

Gordon knew he was being a fool once again. Now that he had the trouble located, he really should go collect his pony and get the hell out of there, as quickly as possible.

The voices within grew angry. Through the crack in the door he heard a blow being struck. A woman’s cry of pain was followed by coarse male laughter.

Sighing softly at the flaw in his character that kept him there — instead of running away as anyone with any brains would do — Gordon started climbing the concrete stair, careful not to make a sound.

Rot and mold covered an area just within the half-open doorway. But beyond that the fourth floor of the student center looked untouched. Miraculously, none of the glass panes in the great skylight had been smashed, though the copper frame wore a patina of verdigris. Under the atrium’s pale glow a carpeted ramp spiraled downward, connecting each floor.

As Gordon cautiously approached the open center of the building, it felt momentarily as if he had stepped backward in time. Looters had left the student organization offices — with their passionate tornadoes of paper — completely untouched. Bulletin boards were still plastered with age-dimmed announcements of sporting events, variety shows, political rallies.

Only at the far end were there a few notices in bright red, having to do with the emergency — the final crisis that had struck almost without warning, bringing it all to an end. Otherwise, the clutter was homey, radical, enthusiastic …

Young …

Gordon hurried past and skirted down the spiraling ramp toward the voices below.

A second floor balcony extended out over the main lobby. He got down on his hands and knees and crawled the rest of the way.

On the north side of the building, to the right, part of the two-story glass facing had been shattered to make room for a pair of large wagons. Steam rose from six horses tethered over by the west wall, behind a row of dark pinball machines.

Outside, amid the broken glass shards, the sulking rain created spreading pink pools around four sprawled bodies, recently cut down by automatic weapons fire. Only one of the victims had even managed to draw a sidearm during the ambush. His pistol lay in a puddle, inches from a motionless hand.

The voices came from his left, where the balcony made a turn. Gordon crawled cautiously forward and looked out over the other part of the L-shaped room.

Several ceiling-high mirrors remained along the west wall, giving Gordon a wide view of the floor below. A blaze of smashed furniture crackled in a large fireplace between the reflecting panes.

He hugged the moldy carpet and lifted his head just enough to see four heavily-armed men arguing by the fire. A fifth lounged on a couch over to the left, his automatic rifle aimed idly at a pair of prisoners — a boy of about nine years and a young woman.

Red weals on her face matched the pattern of a man’s hand. Her brown hair was matted and she held the boy close, watching her captors warily. Neither prisoner seemed to have any energy left for tears.

The bearded men were all garbed in, one-piece prewar army surplus outfits in green, brown, and gray-speckled camouflage. Each wore one or more gold earrings in his left ear lobe.

Survivalists. Gordon felt a wave of revulsion.

Once upon a time, before the War, the word had had several meanings, ranging from common sense, community-conscious preparedness all the way to antisocial paranoid gun nuts. By one way of looking at things, perhaps Gordon himself could be called a “survivalist.” But it was the latter connotation that had stuck, after the ruin the worst sort had caused.

Everywhere he had gone in his travels, folk shared this reaction. More than the Enemy, whose bombs and germs had wrought such destruction during the One-Week War, the people in nearly every wrecked county and hamlet blamed these macho outlaws for the terrible troubles that led to the final Fall.

And worst of all had been the followers of Nathan Holn, may he rot in Hell.

But there weren’t supposed to be any survivalists anymore in the valley of the Willamette! In Cottage Grove, Gordon had been told that the last big bunch had been driven south of Roseburg years ago, into the wilderness of the Rogue River country!

What were these devils doing here, then? He moved a little closer and listened.

“I dunno, Strike Leader. I don’t think we oughta go any deeper on this recon. We’ve already had enough surprises with this ‘Cyclops’ thing the bird here let slip about, before she clammed up. I say we oughta head back to the boats at Site Bravo and report what we found.”

The speaker was a short, bald man with a wiry frame. He warmed his hands over the fire, his back to Gordon. A SAW assault gun equipped with a flash suppressor was slung muzzle-down over his back.

The big man he addressed as “Strike Leader” wore a scar from one ear to his chin, only partly hidden by a gray-flecked black beard. He grinned, displaying several gaps in his teeth.

“You don’t really believe that bull the broad was spewing, do you? All that crap about a big computer that talks? What a crock! She’s just feedin’ it to us to give us a stall!”

“Oh yeah? Well how do you explain all that?”

The little man gestured back to the wagons. In the mirror, Gordon could see a corner of the nearest. It was loaded down with odds and ends, no doubt collected here on the University campus. The haul seemed to consist mostly of electronic equipment.

Not farm tools, not clothes or jewelry — but electronics.

It was the first time Gordon had ever seen a gleaner’s wagon filled with salvage like this. The implication caused Gordon’s pulse to pound in his ears. In his excitement, he barely ducked down in time as the little man turned to pick up something from a nearby table.

“And what about this?” the small survivalist asked. In his hand was a toy — a small video game like the one Gordon had seen in Cottage Grove.

Lights flashed and the little box gave out a high, cheerful melody. The Strike Leader stared at it for a long moment. Finally he shrugged. “Don’t mean shit.”