LITMIR.BIZ

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more nor no less of myself.” Doc bridled.

      “Relax, you old coot, I wasn’t particularly thinking of you,” Mildred answered. “I’m not too sure about myself at the moment, and even more so about Dean.”

      “I’ll be fine,” Dean spit. “You can save your worry.”

      “Don’t be a fool, boy,” Ryan snapped harshly. “Mildred’s right to a degree. You’ve been unconscious and haven’t had a chance to recover. If you’re concussed, then it could be a tricky descent.”

      “I’ll be fine, Dad. What are we going to do, wait here forever ’cause I’ve had a sore head or Jak needs a bandage on a grazed knee or—?”

      “That’s enough,” Krysty said softly. “If you stumble, we all do, remember?”

      Dean stood and stared for a moment, biting his tongue. Then his temper subsided, and he had to agree. “Yeah, you’re right. But I’ll be okay. I just won’t be stupe about it.”

      “Just as a matter of interest, where would you say we were…I mean in general geographic terms?” Doc broke the awkwardness by changing the subject. He knew the cloud cover would prevent J.B. from taking a reading with his minisextant.

      “My guess is to the north, probably more eastern than central, judging by that forest,” Ryan replied, indicating the slope to their rear.

      “I would have thought so, too,” Doc mused. “I wonder if that means the Iluminated Ones had their bases within more than just mat-trans distance to the so-called Erewhon?”

      Ryan pondered on that for a few moments. “You mean like within a fairly easy wag distance, in case they needed to do it over the surface? If the mat-trans failed and they were surface safe?”

      Doc nodded. “It’s a thought, is it not? After all, it would fit with what little we know from the journal and also from the surrounding area.”

      Ryan nodded. “Then we try and head north along that old road when we reach it. Head for the building first, see if there’s anything there to salvage.”

      “Sounds good to me,” J.B. muttered. “Just got to get down there first…” As he spoke, he looked up to the sky. The dark, purple-tinged chem clouds overhead began to discharge a fine spray of rain that began to soak through.

      “Great, that’s all we need,” Dean said, hunching against the rain.

      “Feels fresh after all that dust,” Mildred said absently.

      They all spent a few moments absorbing the rain, resting up with their thoughts before they began the descent.

      It was Doc who first noticed it. After scratching absently at an itch on his cheek, he rubbed the tips of his fingers together with a bemused expression.

      “What is it?” Ryan asked, his sharp eye catching Doc’s gesture.

      “I think it may be time for us to move,” Doc said with a distracted air. “My dear Dr. Wyeth, would you do me the honor of rubbing your fingers together?”

      “What?” Mildred gave Doc a puzzled stare. Then, seeing the seriousness of his expression, she rubbed the index and middle fingers of her left hand together. The texture of the skin on her fingertips was softened, almost soapy. As she rubbed, the skin peeled painlessly away.

      She felt her face, where the rain was gently falling. There was the same soapy texture.

      “A mild acidic solution, if I surmise correctly,” Doc said.

      Mildred nodded, then said to Ryan, “We need to get going. It’s a way to that roadhouse, and we need the shelter. Too much of this rain and it’ll peel our skins off.”

      Ryan nodded, tentatively fingering his own face. “Then we go now,” he said simply.

      The descent down the sheer drop would be difficult for all of them. They had no equipment with which to facilitate the climb, and it would mean going down with nothing to link them together other than a thin nylon rope.

      Looking over the edge, Doc raised an eyebrow. “Well, at least it gets an incline after about thirty feet, so that will be the worst over with,” he said with a grin.

      “That makes me feel a whole lot better,” Mildred said sarcastically.

      Linking themselves together with the rope, they began the descent. Jak went first, as he had an instinctive talent for the climb, and would hunt out the best hand- and footholds he could find for the others. He was followed by J.B. and Mildred. Krysty came next, with Dean following. In both pairings, the former was to keep a close watch on the latter, in case their weakness following the landslide experience was to affect their ability during the descent. And for this reason, Ryan left Doc to bring up the rear, covering the older man. So if Doc stumbled and lost his footing, then Ryan would be able to take the strain.

      The descent began well. Jak found that the surface of the hill, although straight down, was pitted with enough outcrops to provide ample foot- and hand-holds. He crawled down the surface with ease, his hands and feet probing the surface for the largest pieces of jutting rock. Following in his wake, J.B. found the descent easier than he had feared.

      Mildred and Krysty had been wary for different reasons. Mildred was worried that her weariness would take a toll and Krysty had thought about doing the climb without her boots, concerned that they were far from suitable for such a climb. Jak’s choice of footholds took that into account, however. Dean followed behind Krysty with barely a sign that he was exhausted. He marshaled his concentration in a single-minded display worthy of the Cawdor name.

      The one-eyed warrior noted this in his son as he followed on after, but suppressed his pride to concentrate on Doc.

      Doc was finding the climb difficult, and the light rain seemed to be more irritating to him than to the others. He was far more tentative in feeling for the hand- and footholds, and a couple of times Ryan had felt the nylon rope tighten as Doc had either moved away and pulled on it, or else had stumbled and almost fallen, his weight straining against Ryan.

      “Everything okay, Doc?” Ryan called.

      Doc replied with difficulty, his breath coming short and his tone distracted. “I shall get by, my dear Ryan, but I’m not saying it’ll be easy.”

      The rock face was bare of vegetation except for a few small patches of moss and one or two scrub trees that grew at awkward angles from fissures in the rock. One of these scrub trees was covered in sparse green foliage and appeared to house a nest of some kind. Always wary of the possibility of mutie birds, Jak had steered a path away from it, a path followed by the others in their descent.

      But not Doc.

      As he passed within a few feet of the scrub tree, Doc felt his foot slip on the small protrusion he rested it upon. It was his second such stumble in just a couple of moves, and he panicked momentarily. Flailing backward, his weight pulling against Ryan, he fell to his left. The nearest handhold was the scrub tree, and Doc grabbed for it gratefully.

      Below him, Ryan was glad for the strength of the wire-thin nylon rope as he felt it strain along its short length as Doc teetered above him. He wasn’t so pleased as he looked at the scrub tree.

      “Good heavens!” Doc exclaimed as he steadied himself, his feet finding solid purchase beneath him, his balance regained. For the tree bent under his grip to reveal a bird’s nest in the center. And in the nest were four jet-black chicks of a young age, their mouths open automatically for food at the movement of their nest. Their voices broke the quiet of the air with harsh, strident cries that belied their small size. He peered over them, momentarily enchanted and forgetting his precarious position.

      As one, they snapped at his face with strident cries, panic and fear of attack overtaking their desire to feed.

      The loud cries were echoed by a deeper, much more strident call. Doc looked up, and the only impression he received was of a black shape swooping down on him at great speed. He barely had time to raise an arm

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