Страница 35 из 42
The other person turned and she was a woman-a plain, but forceful face, sixty maybe, perhaps more than that, an old face and yet in many ways an ageless face, calm and confident. She wore her hair ski
"What is wrong with him?" she asked.
"Snakebit. I found him, alone, in a camp down on the river road."
She picked up the candle and'came across the room to hand it to him.
"You hold this," she said, "so I have some light to work by."
She bent above the man on the cot.
"It's his leg," said Frost.
"I can see," she said.
She reached out her hands and laid hold of the tattered bottoms of the trouser leg. Her hands jerked apart and the fabric ripped with a screeching sound. She took hold of the edges of the torn cloth and jerked them again and the cloth fell away, leaving the leg exposed.
"Hold the light lower," she told him.
"Yes, ma'am," said Frost.
The flesh of the leg was splotched, black with angry red spots here and there. The skin, stretched tight by the swelling, glistened in the candlelight. A few open sores seeped pus. "How long has he been like this?" "I don't know. I found him this afternoon." "You packed him up the hill? In this storm?" "There was no way out of it," he said. "I had to." "There's not much I can do," she said. "We can get him cleaned up. Some hot soup into him. Keep him comfortable."
"There's no medical aid available, of course." "There's a rescue and monitor station about ten miles from here," she said, "and I have a car. We can take him there when the storm stops. But the road is too bad to try it while it still is storming. There's too much danger of washouts and there are apt to be some bad mud-holes. If we can get him there, they'll fly him into Chicago with a helicopter."
She turned about and started for the kitchen. "I'll poke up the fire," she said, "and heat some water. You can try to get him cleaned up a bit while I cook some soup. We'll try to get some down him."
"He talked to me a bit," said Frost. "Not much. Something crazy about a lot of jade. It was like carrying a dead man. I think he was out cold most of the time I carried him. But I knew he was still alive because of the body heat."
"It would be a bad time," she said, "for a man to die. And a bad place. Even more so down there in the valley. In a storm like this, the rescue unit would never get to him in time." "I thought of that," said Frost.
"You came straight here. You knew there was a house?" "Many years ago," he said, "I knew about the house. I did not expect to find it occupied."
"I've been using it," she said. "I didn't think anyone would mind."
"I'm sure no one will," he said.
"You look as if you could use some food yourself," she told him, "and some rest."
"There is something, ma'am," he said, "that I have to tell you. I'm an osty. I've been ostracized and I'm not supposed to talk with anyone and no one is supposed…"
She lifted a hand. "I know what ostracism is. There's no need to explain."
"What I mean to say is, it's only fair to tell you. You can't tell in bad light. I let my beard grow and it hides the worst of the marks. I'll stick around and help you with the man if you want me to and then I'll get out I don't want to get you into any sort of trouble."
"Young man," she said, "ostracism doesn't mean a thing to me.-I doubt it does to anyone out here in the wilderness." "But I don't want…"
"And if you're ostracized and not supposed to have anything to do with anyone, why did you bother with this man?"
"I couldn't leave him there. I couldn't let him die." "You could," she said. "Ostracized, he was no concern of yours." "But ma'am…"
"I've seen you somewhere before," she said. "Without the beard. I thought so the first time I saw your face in the candlelight, but…"
"I don't think you did," he said. "My name is Daniel Frost and…"
"Daniel Frost, of Forever Center?" "That is right. But how…"
"The radio," she told him. "I have a radio and I listen to the news. They said you'd disappeared. They said there'd been some sort of scandal. They never said you'd been ostracized. Later there was an item about some murder and… but I know now where I saw you. It was at the New Year's party just a year ago." "The New Year's party?" "The one at Forever Center in New York. You may not remember me. We were not introduced. I was with the Timesearch project."
"Timesearch!" he almost shouted. For he knew now who this woman was. The one who B.J. said must be found, the one who'd disappeared.
"I'm glad to finally meet you, Daniel Frost," she said. "My name is Mona Campbell."
33
A
Once, long ago, the roads had been numbered and well marked and there had been maps available at any service station. But now the road markers had mostly disappeared and there were no service stations. With cars powered by longlife storage batteries, there was no longer any need of service stations.
Out here in the wilderness it was a matter of making out the best one could, ferreting out the roads that would take one where he wished to go, making many wrong turnings, backtracking to find another way-some days making only a few miles on one's route and seldom being sure of where one really was. Occasionally there were people who could be asked, occasionally there were towns that could be identified. But other than this, it was a matter of good guessing.
The day was warm and the heavy growth that grew close against the road to make a tu
The road had grown narrower in the last mile or so and now was little more than a dugout sliced into the hillside. To the right the hill rose steeply, dense and thick with trees and underbrush, with gray boulders, splotched with moss, poking from the leaf-covered earth beneath the trees. To the left the ground sloped sharply away, studded with boulders and with trees.
A
Ahead of the car tree branches arched and met to make the road a tu
She saw the nest too late, and even seeing it, did not recognize it for what it was. It was a gray ball that looked like a wad of dirty paper hanging from one of the branches that scraped, at windshield height, against the side of the car.
It scraped around the windshield post and bounced suddenly into the open window and as it swung it erupted in a blur of buzzing insects.
And in that instant A
The insects exploded in her face and swarmed into her hair. She screamed and threw up her hands to fight them off. The car lurched and seemed to stagger, then plunged off the road. It smashed into one tree, bounced off, slammed into a boulder and caromed around it, finally came to rest, still upright, its rear end wedged between two trees.
A