"What? What did you tell me this time?"

"California. Western islands. I said that was probably where we landed up."

"So?"

"So, you said Yellowstone and the hot springs and stinking fountains up there."

Trader shook his head. "No, I didn't."

"You did."

The older man shook his head, pointing his finger at Ryan. "Times I wish that What's his name? Abe?

Yeah, Abe. Times I wish he'd never tracked me down like he did."

"It was 'cause he cared," Ryan said quietly.

Trader gave a strange, grunting laugh. "Cared. Think that means shit to me, Ryan? After all the long years we rode the blacktops together, you think that caring means anything? Caring means weakness." Ryan shook his head. "I thought that, when I lived and fought with you. I believed it, because you said it.

Like I believed most everything you told me. Since I've been awayaway from your shadow, I realize that not everything in Deathlands is like you said."

"Like what?" Anger lay across the words.

Ryan shook his head. "I don't want this to turn to a falling out. I owe you too much for that. Just that your view of the world is your view. Now I see that a man has to have his own view, or he's not a man at all."

Trader bit his lip. "Yeah," he conceded. "I guess there's something in that all right. Thing I find hard is that you're in charge here. Not me."

"Wheel turns," Ryan said.

Trader grinned, patting him on the arm. "Now you'll tell me that what goes around comes around."

"I thought about it."

IT WAS TIME to move on.

Dean had most of his hearing back, but Krysty noticed that the boy was tending to keep a little closer to Ryan than usual.

They gathered together near the main entrance.

J.B. had been with Abe to check out the ruined remnants of the games room, making sure that the small fires started by the implode grens hadn't caused any damage. Now he stood with his hand poised over the control panel by the side of the big sec door that would open onto the outside world.

The stench of sulfur was much stronger, as was the salt smell of the sea.

"Ready?" he asked.

Ryan nodded. "Full red, everyone."

The Armorer pressed 352 on the coded set of buttons. After the usual momentary delay, there was the familiar rumbling of the powerful machinery behind the thick concrete walls, followed by the first movement of the dark green doors. Ryan waited until they had rolled a few inches apart, then he gestured for J.B. to stop them.

He peered out through the narrow gap, while the others waited silently.

"What?" Trader asked, breaking the stillness. "Anything out there?"

"Lot of sea. Looks like we might be on the remains of an island. I can see a blacktop that runs clear into

the ocean. No sign of life. Open her all the way up."

J.B. pressed the triple-digit sequence again, and the sec doors finally rolled all the way open. And everyone could see what Ryan had glimpsed.

THE INRUSH of the Cific Ocean along the coast of California had been devastating. In places it had rolled in for well over a hundred miles, right up to the foothills of the Sierras. In others, where the cliffs were higher, the effect had been less intense. But the quakes and volcanic action that had followed, both during and after the long winters, had changed the shape of the Golden State beyond all modern recognition.

A map of what remained of California now would bear little resemblance to what had been there before.

Ryan and his friends emerged, blinking, into bright sunshine. The blacktop, which must once have

provided the route in and out of the secret redoubt, wound down the side of a broken cliff for about three hundred and fifty feet before disappearing beneath the rolling white breakers of the ocean.

It wasn't possible to see how big the island was, if indeed it really was an island. The crest of the rocks

above them towered another two hundred feet high.

"Someone should go up there and take a look around," Trader suggested. "Find out the lie of the land all the way about us." He looked at Ryan. "I'll go do it."

"I'll come," Abe said eagerly.

"Rather go on my own." He paused. "But thanks, Abe. No, a good stiff climb'll shake some of the jelly

out of my old legs after sitting around."

Ryan nodded. "Sure. We'll wait here. No point in going down to the water if there's a better way."

Trader set off, Armalite slung over his shoulder, climbing nimbly among the sharp crags, watched by the

others. He made good progress for the first hundred and fifty feet, then began to slow.

"Should've let me go," Abe muttered. "Old bastard won't face up to being older than he thinks he is."

Nobody else spoke.

Doc sat down, leaning his back against a guano-smeared rock, fanning himself with his hand. "Upon my

soul, gentles all, but the odor of sulfur is devilish overwhelming. Would that I had me a pomander, studded with cloves, to remove the stench. It is worse than the jakes of Eastcheap in the midst of a visit to the court of good King Cholera."

"You talk some nonsense, Doc," Mildred protested. "I swear I can't tell how much of it's under your control and how much is plain gibbering madness."

He bowed to her, the wind tugging at his silvery locks. "If it is difficult for your perception from outside, madam, imagine how impossible it is for me from within."

TRADER REACHED THE CREST, waving both hands above his head. Dean responded to the old man, jumping up and down, waving energetically. "Made it, Dad," he said.

"Yeah. So I see. Now all we have to do is wait for him to get all the way back again and report what he's seen."

"Don't be bad-tempered, lover." Krysty sat next to him, her head on his shoulder. "I know the air smells like someone just cut the cheese, but we've landed somewhere fresh. We've pulled through some dangerous narrows, and we should try to relax and enjoy things. Come on."

He shrugged. "Yeah. Guess you're right. Too many close calls for my liking. Be good if we really could relax awhile." He looked up. "Trader's making better time downhill. We'll see what good news he brings."

"ISLAND." TRADER WAS out of breath. Mildred studied him, without letting him notice her attention. She noted that he was unnaturally pale, sweating profusely, his fingers trembling. He kept swallowing hard and coughing. Several times he rubbed hard at his left arm with his right hand. His respiration was too fast and too shallow. She guessed that he'd pushed himself a little too hard proving he was as capable as he used to be.

"Big?" Ryan asked.

"No. Mile across at the biggest. Can see what looks like the mainland, but it's" He broke off as another coughing fit doubled him over. Jak passed across a water canteen, and Trader drank deeply before carrying on. "Thanks. Where was I?"

"Mainland," Dean prompted.

"Right. Can only just see it through a lot of smoke and fog and stuff. Must be around three quarters of a mile from the nearest point of this place."

"Any sign of life here or out there?" J.B. asked.

Trader shook his head. "No. Thought I saw seals to the north. Some pelicans. Nothing much else. No trees or nothing."

"Then how do we get over to the mainland?" Abe asked.

"We don't," Trader said. "No way to go, so here we fucking stay. Looks like it'll soon be jump time again, friends."

Chapter Nine.

Ryan took a chance and split their force in two, taking Dean, Krysty and Jak with him, down to the bottom of the old blacktop, until they reached the point where it vanished under the waves. Then they headed around the small, craggy island in an easterly direction. J.B. went with Mildred, Doc, Trader and Abe, in a westerly direction.

The intention was to meet once again directly opposite the bottom of the old road.

The sun was hotwith a temperature up in the high eightiesand the atmosphere fetid and sticky. A light breeze was blowing, but it came from the far side, where Trader said the mainland lay, bringing the oppressively bitter smells.

The going was very hard.

Jagged rocks, some of them volcanic, were smothered in sickly orange-and-green lichens that were slippery to tread on.

"Like treading in dead man's guts," Jak commented.

"You do have a way with words, don't you." Krysty grinned, gritting her teeth as she nearly fell into a deep rock pool fringed with enormous anemones.

"Don't like the look of those," she said. "I reckon they've probably got strong enough poison to see off even Trader."

Ryan didn't join the smiles from Jak and his son. He stopped and stood still on a flat-topped boulder. "Because Trader and I come close to fighting, it doesn't mean I don't have incredible respect for him and for everything he did. In his own way he brought a measure of order out of the chaos that was Deathlands, twenty or thirty years ago. Barons had to toe the line or he'd drive them under. Trader was truly a great power for good. Despite parts of him, like his cruelty and violence. If there was ever to be written a history of Deathlands, then Trader's name should lead all of the rest."

"What is Trader's name, Dad? I mean, his real name," Dean asked.

Ryan smiled. "Lot of people asked that, over the years, son. And not one of them ever got an answer."

"You know it?" Jak asked, staring up at a black-capped albatross sailing far above them.

"I don't even answer that question. Whether I do or not. It don't matter, Jak." He caught Krysty's glance at him. "I mean it doesn't matter," he amended.

"It doesn't look like there's ever been any kind of life on this place," Dean said. "Not a harbor or anything. Just dry, dead rock."

Ryan looked higher up, behind them. As he'd guessed, there was no sign at all of the concealed entrance to the redoubt. There wouldn't be any reason for anyone to come to the island and trudge up the old roadway.

And it was an island.

They could see that as soon as they clambered over a flat shelf, where a slice of rock weighing thousands of tons had sheared off and fallen from near the top of the peak.

The far side was a little less steep, making it easier to move along the shoreline, watching out for the occasional wave that came crashing in, larger than its fellows.

"Seals," Jak said, pointing out across the sun-dappled water. "About dozen."

They all stopped to watch the elegant creatures, cavorting and gamboling in the ocean. One of them had caught a glistening silver-scaled fish and kept tossing its limp body high in the air, in a rainbow of scattered spots of spray, like the sparks from a dying fire, then catching it again.