VI
Outside the ancient car park the sky had clouded over. “Are you two quite sure you’re right for each other?” Big Jon Lamon inquired of Garth and Layla as they reached the exit ramp. “If not, now would be a good time to speak up. Emotions were more than a bit heated back there, and when people are under pressure mistakes are easily made—not so easily corrected.”
The pair looked at each other, Garth with his heart in his mouth; but Layla only smiled and nodded. “We’re sure.” And with an audible sigh Garth said:
“Oh, yes. We’re sure. I think we have been for quite a long time, but…things got in the way.”
“Things like Ned Singer?”
“Yes, sir. Singer, and—well, just events.”
Big Jon nodded. “Yes, it’s been a very rough time, and probably a lot more to come. Which you’ll face together, right?”
“Yes, sir.” But Garth couldn’t hide a frown, and the leader had noticed.
“Is there something, anything?”
“No, not really,” Garth answered as they set out across the rubble toward the battered church. “Just the way Ned Singer was acting. His mood is always unpleasant, but this time—”
“Ned was thwarted,” said Zach. “He was bested, made to look foolish and didn’t much like it. But we brought him down a peg, so maybe he’ll be more reasonable from now on.”
“I expect he will,” said the leader. “Anyway, he was drunk. That’s why he was worse than usual—worse for drink, that is, and worse for wear.” He grinned a wolfish grin. “Ned’ll wake up later with a badly bruised ego, likewise a bruised forehead, and a sore head in general—which serves him right. And as for his scavenged booze—”
“He had five bottles!” said head tech Andrew Fielding. “Big Jon and me, we were out by the well in what used to be a garden in front of that old church, when we saw one of Ned’s team—”
“Dan Coulter, it was,” said Big Jon, nodding.
“—And he was reeling about in his radiation suit as if he was smitten!” Fielding went on. “For a minute we were concerned for him, until we saw he had a bottle in his hand.”
Again the leader’s nod, and his wolf’s grin. “Aye, so after we had words with Dan, we not only, er, ‘rescued’ his stash but Peder Halbstein’s and Ned Singer’s, too! Twelve bottles in all. Would have been thirteen if that one back there hadn’t smashed. Unlucky for some, so it’s said—namely those three damn fools! That booze might well be hot, tainted with something other than alcohol and much, much harder!” But:
“No, I think that’s unlikely,” said the head tech, sounding excited, suddenly energized, as if he had just remembered something important. Which indeed he had.
“Oh?” Big Jon frowned at him.
“Well, that’s what I was about to tell you at the old well! I was carrying out a radiation test on the water when we bumped into each other and saw Dan Coulter staggering about like that. Following which you were in such a hurry to, er, ‘rescue’ their liquor—which should have been handed over in the first place, for the good of the clan—that I became distracted; since when we’ve been busy. Anyway, that’s a very deep well, and its water seems fairly clean and…and even potable!”
That pulled the others up short, and together Zach Slattery and Big Jon said: “Clean?” And they stared at Fielding as if he had two heads.
Then, grabbing the head tech and drawing him close, Big Jon said: “Clean—and potable? Surely your instruments are on the fritz, Andrew?”
“Not a bit of it,” said Fielding, blinking rapidly and trying to free himself from the leader’s grasp. “My instruments are just fine, and so is the water…almost.”
“Almost?” said Big Jon, his eyes narrowing. “How, almost?”
“Well,” the other shrugged, “the background radiation is a tad high, but that’s about all…except it’s not all, not by a long shot! See, this entire area, at least in the half-dozen or so spots that I’ve tested, shows only a fraction of the residual radiation that I’d expect. Which makes this the cleanest place we’ve visited since leaving the Southern Refuge!” The leader’s mouth had fallen open; the others’ mouths, too.
“You’re saying we can actually drink that well water?” said Zach.
“And that we can maybe refill the bowser?” said Big Jon. “I mean, God only knows we need to! Last time I checked, the gauge was two thirds of the way down to the dregs!”
“Can we wash?” Layla sighed. “And cook, and perhaps launder some clothing, too?”
The head tech laughed excitedly and did a little jig as Big Jon released him. “What’s that?” he asked Layla. “You only want to wash? Why girl, there’s thirty-five feet or more of water in that well, so you can bathe in it if that’s your desire!”
The leader laughed, roared out loud, almost joined the head tech in his dance…then stopped abruptly and said, “But how? Explain, Andrew, for I just don’t understand.”
And as they set off again toward the church, but with so much more energy in their steps now, Fielding said: “Well, it’s possible that I do understand. Just look around and tell me: do you see any signs of terrific heat, calcined glass or metal and drifts of dust? No, nothing of the sort. A few burned-out buildings perhaps, but nothing special. Evidence of bombs, of blast, definitely: shell-shocked masonry, and a good many craters scattered here and there. But no real evidence of a nuclear attack. This place was bombed, that’s obvious, but I don’t think it was nuked. And—oh, I don’t know—perhaps it was simply fortunate to lie outside any major fallout zone; or then again, maybe down all the decades nature and the weather have worked in combination to clean the place up. That can sometimes happen quite quickly. In the world as was the very first nuclear weapon destroyed a city—whose survivors almost at once rebuilt it!”
“I’ve read something about that,” said Garth, “in a book in the library in the Southern Refuge. But there was only one bomb that first time—or maybe two?”
“Garth’s right,” said the leader. “And this time there were dozens, maybe hundreds! Enough to bring about a so-called ‘nuclear winter,’ anyway, and who knows what else?”
“A half-dead planet, that’s what else!” said Zach, spitting into the dirt. “Not to mention the rise of the fly-by-nights!”
As they approached the broken church’s walled garden, where the shattered steeple lay in crumpled sections, Andrew Fielding paused. Frowning, he narrowed his eyes to squint up at the slowly drifting cloud cover, and muttering quietly to himself said:
“And then…then there’s the sunlight…and that’s also hard to figure.” He gave his head a small, bewildered shake. But the leader had overheard his quiet, introspective remarks.
“Eh?” Big Jon caught Fielding’s arm. “What’s that about the sunlight? Something else to puzzle over, Andrew? And perhaps to worry about, too?”
The nervous little man blinked, shook himself and came back to earth. “Hmm? Something to puzzle over?” He repeated Big Jon. “Well, yes: to me it’s a puzzle, certainly. But worry about it? No, not at all! On the contrary!”
“Well then?” The leader’s impatience was surfacing.
And as the five made their way across the overgrown, rubble strewn area toward the open-sided well, whose slumping pantiled roof was missing most of its tiles, the head tech explained his new enigma. “Even when the sun’s out—blazing in a clear blue sky, as it was earlier—it barely affects the radiation level. Which might mean that…that…” But as they reached the well he paused, and once again shook his head undecidedly.
“Oh, do go on!” Big Jon exploded. “Get it told, can’t you?”