Wallace grunted. "Seven warm bodies during a norther? My wife and I would have froze to death without you. Like poor Jed and his friends."
Alex glanced at the coffins. "Yeah."
Enoch had been waiting for the handyman and his friends to come to his huddling place when Thor appeared on his front porch. After the storm had subsided, they had all gone out looking and found the bodies only a few hundred meters from the farmhouse. Judging from the tracks that had not filled in with snow it appeared that the three had been walking in a circle. "It happens," Enoch had said. "When the wind blows the snow up, everything whites out and you lose all your sense of direction. Thor, who had known the handyman, had insisted on staying for the funeral.
"What next?" asked Alex.
"On to Chicago," Bob told him.
Wallace shook his head. "That deputy copied down your license plate. Just routine, I suppose. But, if I were engaged in anything a shade less than perfectly normal--not that I am, mind you, or that I suggest that anyone else is--I might be a touch wary of driving that vehicle over the roads. Folks don't travel so much these days, what with fuel so hard to get. So anyone far enough from home might strike the government as suspicious."
Bob frowned and ran a hand though his beard. "You're right." He looked at Sherrine, then back at Wallace. "What should we do?"
Wallace smiled. "Why don't you folks follow me over to Hiram's shop. We'll see if he can tinker something up.
They followed him outside into the brut, frozen sunlight. Alex found himself walking beside Wallace. Sherri supported him on one side, but mostly he carried his own mass. He walked like a two-year old and felt like two hundred; but he was moving under his own power. "Hiram's shop," he said. "Your friend is not a farmer, then?"
"Heh. No, he's a tinker. He fixes things. It's a knack he has. Snowblowers, radios, TV's." He gave Alex a sly wink. "Maybe even a computer or two, if anyone owned such a thing, which I'm not saying they do."
Alex raised his eyebrows. He exchanged glances with Sherri. "You don't tally like a technophobe," he ventured.
Wallace laughed without humor. "You ever try farming without technology? It's a lot more charming in those old woodcuts than it is in the flesh. In a good year, we get nothing to eat but cheese and beef. Cook the beef good. No antibiotics. If you could lay your hands on a supply of good medicine for cows it would be worth its weight in cheese."
Alex chuckled politely. But why would cheese be valuable in Wisconsin? He would have felt stupid asking. Instead he asked, "What do you do in a bad year?"
Wallace grunted and his voice hardened. "In a bad year we starve."
Sherrine found she could not let go of her suspicions. Granted, Wallace had saved them from the storm, and he had helped them fool the sheriff's deputies, too; but that might have been from a sense of duty. After all, their body heat had helped save Wallace and his wife, as well; and the country folk had no great love for a government that had effectively abandoned them. Still…
They followed Wallace's pickup down the country lanes behind Millville. Sherrine sat in the back with Alex and the others. The road undulated through the rumpled hills, whose trees, fooled by the glaciers, were rusted and yellow. An oddly disorienting layer of fallen leaves lay atop the snow, as if the seasons had gotten jumbled by the storm. Some trees stood blizzard-stripped, stark and wintry against the sky. They came out onto a high bluff from which she could see the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi. The rivers sparkled in the sunlight. They flowed sluggishly, with so many of their sources locked into ice.
It was only when Wallace honked and pointed to the driveway of the ramshackle building that Sherrine relaxed. There was a hand-painted sign nailed to a post by the roadside. Bright red letters on a large plywood paneclass="underline"
BIG FRONT YARD SALE
HIRAM TAINE, TINKER
Of course, she thought. Ofcourse. They were among friends. She saw Fang grin and nudge Thor with his elbow. Thor smiled quietly, as if at a well-orchestrated surprise. Sherrine started to laugh, earning an odd glance from Alex.
All that time she had been worried about being in Proxmire country. She had forgotten they were in Clifford Simak country, too.
CHAPTER TWELVE
"The Best of All Physicians…"
The van was dark and cold and stank with a stale pungency Alex MacLeod could never get used to. Worse than a spaceship! He sat huddled under blankets with the others in the back of the van, sharing his warmth. The only light was the feeble glow of a flashlight. Alex took a breath of damp, moldy air. He wished Bob could start the engine so they could warm up; but, of course, that was impossible.
Sherrine was a goblin face half-lit by the weary flashlight. "This is cozy," she said. "I used to read science fiction books like this--under my blankets with a light. Always with an ear cocked for the sound of my parents coming."
"Did they ever catch you?" asked Gordon.
"Oh, sure. I got a lecture the first time. The second time, they spanked me. They never caught me again. Maybe they got tired of watching. I always looked forward to the summers, though, when they'd send me to Gram's farm. Pop-pop kept two cartons full of old paperbacks hidden in a corner of the root cellar. I could read them in daylight."
Gordon laughed. "It sounds like fun."
"Yeah, lots of fun," said Alex. "How long are we going to be stuck here?"
Bob shrugged and the blankets shrugged with him. "I don't know."
"Relax," said Fang. "Here. It's cheddar."
It was a half-found wedge. Alex felt his throat close. "No thanks," he said. I'm going to be heartily sick of cheese by the time we get to Chicago."
"Cheese is fermented milk curd," Fang volunteered. "The Orientals think of it as 'rotten milk.' "
Sherrine turned to him. "Thank you for sharing that thought with us."
"Well," said Thor. "Where there's a curd, there's a whey."
"Seriously," Alex insisted. "How long will we be stuck inside this trailer?" Surrounded by cheese. Encastled by cheesy ramparts. Breathing cheese with every breath. Sure, it saved gas on the van; sure, it hid them from the sheriffs deputies; but it seemed as if he had been buried in a tomb of… of fermented curds.
Fang nibbled on the wedge, looking for all the world like an oversized mouse. "How long?" he said. "Hard to say. The trailer takes the back roads to avoid the monties."
"The Mounties?"
"Monties… Montereys. They high jack cheese."
Gordon cocked his head. "High-jack cheese? Poche--Why would anyone do that?"
Fang held his wedge up and turned it so it caught the pale light. "Supply and demand," he said. "South and east of Chicago this stuff is rare. Infrastructure collapsing. Bridges, culverts, embankments. Roads are near impassible. Can't hardly get gas anywhere in Wisconsin. So not much cheese ever gets out of the state. Not until the farmers can hoard enough fuel to make a run like this one. Naturally, the monties are on the lookout. One cheese truck taken to… oh, Pittsburgh or St. Louis, could set you up for life."
"I've heard," said Sherrine, "that in some places they stamp the cheese wheels with official seals and use them for money."
Thor laughed. "I've heard that. What would you do for a wallet?"
"No, no," said Fang. "You put the cheese in a larder--"
"Fort Cheddar!"
"--and issue certificates-"
"Backed by the full faith and credit of--"
"Issue certificates," Fang repeated more loudly. "Pay to the bearer on demand, so many pounds of cheese. Pound notes!"