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“Fox Farm,” Mildred read the sign over the double steel gate that served as the farm’s front entrance. There was a kiosk just inside the gate where a sec man was on duty. The mobile sec man pulled up to the gate. He was joined by several others, all carrying blasters of different makes and models, but presumably all in good working order and fully loaded.
“Greetings, outlanders,” the sec man said, climbing out of the small white wag. “What brings you to Fox Farm?”
“Just passing through,” Ryan said.
“You’re welcome to spend the night here if you like. We have some excellent accommodations.”
That was out of the question. The electrified fence was probably just as good at keeping people in as it was at keeping things out. If they stepped through the gate, they might never leave.
“How much?” Mildred asked when Ryan said nothing in response to the sec man’s offer.
The sec man smiled. “One of your blasters perhaps, or mebbe some ammunition.”
“Thanks for the offer,” Ryan said. “But we need our blasters and ammo.” He turned to leave.
“Fair enough,” the sec man said, “but I can’t let you go—”
The friends all made subtle moves for their blasters.
“—without making some sort of trade. How about some food? Apples, pears, grapes, beans…I’m sure you have something of value we could exchange.”
Dean was first, producing an extra pocketknife. Jak searched his pockets and came up with a few rounds that didn’t fit any of the friends’ blasters. Krysty offered up one of her two combs, and Mildred decided she could part with a pair of socks.
“We travel light,” Ryan said as the others held up the goods for inspection.
“Not to worry,” the sec man responded. “These are all things we can make use of.” He turned to one of the sec men behind him. “Three bags.”
The sec man hopped into the white miniwag and drove up to a large building to the left of the gate. In less than a minute he came back with three bags filled with fresh fruit and vegetables.
“By the horn of the goat Amalthaea,” Doc gasped. “I never thought I’d live to see such a cornucopia such as this.”
“Fair trade?” the sec man asked.
It was more than fair, Ryan thought, which made him suspicious. In his experience, all traders always wanted to come out on top in a deal. These people either had far more food than they needed, even for trade, or they were after something else. But judging by how prosperous the farm looked, Ryan decided they could probably afford to be generous with their food—as a sign of goodwill, with an eye toward future trades of more valuable commodities. “Fair trade,” Ryan answered.
A sec man opened a small door in the gate at chest height, and the goods were passed through the opening.
“It’s been a pleasure,” the sec man said.
Ryan nodded. J.B., Doc and Krysty each took a bag, but no one grabbed a fruit, knowing they should keep their hands as free as possible in case something went wrong and they had to grab their blasters.
The small door closed and the deal was done.
“How far is the ville from here?” Ryan asked.
“Just down the road,” the sec man said, pointing south. “Hardly any people there, but plenty of places to spend the night.”
“Thanks,” Ryan said.
They were about to leave when J.B. stepped forward. “If you don’t mind me asking, where are you getting your electricity?”
“No secret,” the sec man said. “Power station at the falls has been making juice for more than two hundred years.”
“The falls,” Mildred said. “Niagara Falls?”
“That’s them.”
“Thanks for the trade,” Ryan said, “but we best get moving if we want to get to this ville by dark.”
“Mebbe we’ll see you again sometime,” the sec man said.
Ryan nodded. “Mebbe.”
The friends headed for the falls, Mildred and Dean covering the rear until they were out of range of the sec men’s longblasters.
Chapter Five
When the outlanders were almost out of sight, Baron Fox came down from his office and strolled out to the main gate to meet with Grundwold.
The sec chief had ordered the others in his team to continue trailing the outlanders while he made his report to the baron. He would catch up to them later.
The baron arrived at the gate wearing his familiar silk bathrobe, but now had a heavy pair of black leather boots on his feet. He took a pipe from a pocket in his bathrobe, filled it with some of the tobacco grown on the farm and lit it with a shiny chrome Zippo lighter, which had cost him a breeder. As always, Norman Bauer was several paces behind the baron, his ledger tucked neatly up under his right arm.
“The one-eyed man’s their leader,” Grundwold stated.
Fox chugged a few times on his pipe. When it was lit, he clenched it between his teeth and said, “Yes, he seemed to do all the talking for the group.”
“He’s good with a blaster, too,” Grundwold said.
“As they all are, no doubt.”
“It would make it hard for me to take them without losing a lot of my men.”
Fox grew angry with the sec chief. The redheaded one was exotic, and her hair was the most beautiful he’d ever seen. Even if she never got heavy, he knew a rich baron or two living outside the eastern villes who’d pay big jack to make a wig or weave out of hair like that. And the dark woman had the best set of breeding hips he’d seen in months. “Sec men I can get anywhere,” Fox spit. “I need breeders.”
“Yes, sir,” Grundwold barked. “What do you want me to do, then?”
“I want you to bring them here,” Fox said, blowing a plume of gray smoke just under Grundwold’s nose. “Bring me the women…whatever it takes.”
Grundwold nodded and looked down the road toward the falls. “What did you give them?” he asked.
“Three bags of fruit in exchange for some trinkets.”
“Ripe?”
“Most of the fruit is laced with sedatives. We didn’t have time to prepare the fruit in all three bags, but there’s a good mix. Should be enough to put a few of them off guard,” Grundwold stated. “That’s all the advantage we’ll need.”
“I’ll send the wag to the tower after dark.”
Normally the sec chief would have a wag at his disposal, but a slave had recently stolen one in an escape and they hadn’t been able to trade for a replacement yet. That made the second wag even more valuable, and the baron only wanted to let it outside the complex long enough to collect the new breeders and bring them back to the farm.
The sec chief nodded and said, “We’ll bring them back.” He started down the road at double-time to catch up with the rest of his men.
“Of course you will,” Baron Fox said. “Of course you will.”
“IT MAKES SENSE NOW,” Mildred said as the friends walked along the road toward the ville that was now less than a mile away. “The region around Niagara Falls was all farmland. Apple orchards, pears, plums, peaches and plenty of grapes for making some really good wine.”
“No more,” Jak stated.
“Not after the blast. The whole area was wiped out, except for that one farm.”
“In my day,” Doc offered, “Niagara Falls was the site of some of the most exciting theoretical discussion about the possibilities of electricity. Not to mention the incredible feat of engineering that would be required to make it possible.”
“Electricity would sure give the baron or whoever owns the farm one hell of an advantage,” J.B. commented.
“Like fuel,” Jak said.
“Better than fuel,” J.B. replied. “It’s harder to steal. No one can blow it up. And it doesn’t have to be refined. It could give them lights, even the power to pump fresh water.”
“So why hasn’t the rest of the area prospered?” Ryan asked. “If there’s power here, why is the ville empty?”
“After two hundred years the power station can’t be producing all that much electricity,” Krysty reasoned.
“He probably takes everything the station produces,” J.B. stated. “Or destroyed all the power lines, except for those running to his farm.”
“I must say the people working on the farm looked healthy enough,” Doc suggested. “They must all be doing well for themselves.”
“And for other traders,” Jak said, lifting the bag of fruit.
Ryan had to admit that the farm looked like a well-run operation. But there was still something about it that bothered him. The electrified fence was a logical defense system considering the type of muties that lurked in the area and the amount of electricity that was available. Still, it seemed to be run a little too smoothly for it to be just a farm, and he’d never seen a farm that was so well armed.
“You know,” Mildred said, “there’s another thing that Niagara Falls was known for in predark times.”
“What’s that?” J.B. asked.
“It was the honeymoon capital of North America.”
“What’s that mean?” Dean asked.
“It means that after people got married, they’d come here to, uh, celebrate by spending a lot of time in bed together.”
“Oh.”
“So that’s why the sec man said there were plenty of places to spend the night here,” Krysty said.
J.B. smiled. “Good. I could use a good night’s rest.”
“Not up to a little honeymoon, John?” Mildred chided.
“Oh, I’ll be up for it,” J.B. responded dryly.
At that moment they crested a rise in the road and suddenly Falls ville and the lake beyond it stretched out before them. There were dozens of buildings around the ville that had been destroyed by the shock waves from the initial nuke blasts, or the aftershocks that followed. But despite the damage, there were still several structures intact, such as the one that looked like a saucer set upon a knife that overlooked the water, and a cluster of buildings huddled together in the center of the ville.
The lake to the south was as big as an ocean, but was spotted by sandbars and dry patches along the shore. Water flowed over a horseshoe-shaped ridge, but it flowed only over two sections in the center of the horseshoe. The rest of the curve was dry and home to several large water birds.
“The falls have almost run dry,” Mildred said. “In predark times you’d be able to hear the water roaring from here. Millions of gallons of fresh water every minute, day and night, 365 days a year.”
“Now falls like rain,” Jak commented.
“Producing enough electricity to operate one farm, but not enough for an entire ville,” J.B. said.
“There’s something else I just realized,” Mildred said.
“What is it?” Ryan asked.
“If that’s Niagara Falls,” she said, taking a look at the geography around her, “then we’re on the Canadian side of what used to be the border.”
Chapter Six
“Being located in Canada would explain a lot about the construction of the gateway,” Ryan said.
“Anyone using it would be looking to get out of the country in a hurry,” J.B. surmised. “So it probably served as an escape hatch, mebbe for military commanders or politicians.”
“But there’s such a large underground system of redoubts and installations,” Krysty said. “Why would a one-way escape gateway be needed?”
“Things go wrong,” J.B. suggested. “Even underground fortresses can be infiltrated, especially from the inside. That gateway could get someone out of one hot spot without the risk of them landing in another one.”
Krysty considered J.B.’s reasoning. “So the trip through the gateway was meant to be one-way.”
“Someone going through that gateway likely wasn’t welcome back in the United States, probably wouldn’t want to go back to it, either.”
“All this talk of travel has made me rather famished,” Doc interjected. “Might it be possible to have one of those delectable fruits we are carrying?”
Ryan took a good look around. He hadn’t seen a mutie for some time. Although he had noticed a few of the creatures following the friends earlier on, they had dropped away now that the ville was near. They had another half hour before they reached it, and the route looked like fairly easy going. They had time to snack now while they walked, but when they entered the ville, they would need to be on the alert. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to eat something now.”
“I’ll have a peach, then,” Doc said, quickly pulling one of the fuzzy fruit from the bag he was carrying.
“Me, too,” Dean said.
Doc tossed Dean the peach he was about to eat, then pulled a second one from the bag for himself.
“I’ve got apples and pears in this bag,” J.B. said.
“Apricots and plums in mine,” Krysty added.
“I’ll have a few of each,” Mildred said. “My father used to make the best plum sauce in three counties. We’d have it on pancakes every Sunday after church.”
Krysty handed Mildred a handful of deep purple and golden-yellow fruits.
