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"You had trouble with stickles before?" Dean asked the young man called Bob.
"Not often. Used to be some outlanders coming down from old Canada."
"You got good discipline here," J.B. said approvingly. "I'm impressed."
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Bob looked at him and shook his head. "What would an oldie like you know about
things like that?"
J.B. stared at him, completely without any expression on his sallow face,
until the younger man finally dropped his eyes and looked away.
Now Dorothy was walking quickly back toward them, along the main track that
wound into the ville.
The one thing that Ryan hadn't yet seen was the ville itself. Because of the
lay of the land, it wasn't possible to be sure, but the pathway looked like it
cut sharply to the left, over a narrow promontory that jutted into the lake.
"The brothers and sisters are deeply moved," she said to the three young men.
"Isaac has gone on to tell Moses about the outlanders."
"You got the best-kept ville I ever saw," Ryan said.
"Thanks." She looked at the others, but seemed to concentrate on Dean and
Michael. "The rest of you can come into Quindley and eat and stay a night if
you want."
"Sounds good." Mildred smiled at the woman, who turned blankly away.
THE VILLE, as Ryan had figured, lay just beyond the piece of land that reached
out into the lake.
There was another, similar causeway, about fifty paces in length, with the
ville on what had once obviously been a small offshore island at its end.
"Good place to defend," Ryan said to J.B., as they followed the young woman
through the cultivated fields.
"Long as you don't get attacked by a mess of men in boats," the Armorer
replied.
Everyone in the ville looked amazingly healthy. Not one of them seemed to have
any physical imperfections at all, and every one of them was younger than the
mid-twenties.
The blue shirts and jeans were almost a uniform.
As Ryan and the others walked along, every head turned toward them. The big
maroon John Deere coughed into silence, and its driver leaned out to get a
better look at the strangers. Once again, there was the odd feeling that Doc
was some kind of leper. The young people's faces showed something close to a
disbelieving revulsion at him.
"Is there something wrong with me, Dr. Wyeth? Some indiscretion of my attire?"
he whispered, "They're all staring at me like I have my dick sticking out. If
you'll pardon my French."
"Course I'll pardon it, Doc," she replied. "And if s hanging out, not sticking
out."
"Very amusing, madam." He snorted and strode on, ignoring the silent
spectators.
A HIGH WALL of sharpened stakes surrounded the perimeter of the ville, right
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at the edge of the water, so any potential enemy would find no land for a
footing. There appeared to be about twenty or thirty buildings, many of than
obviously storage barns, with roofs of closely thatched reeds.
"Not many small houses," Michael observed, walking close beside Dorothy.
"We live in dorms," she replied. "Men in one and women in the other, over
there." She pointed toward two of the biggest buildings in the ville.
"No privacy?" Krysty asked, overhearing the conversation. "No married
couples?"
Dorothy stopped so quickly that Krysty nearly stepped on her heels.
"Marriage?" She laughed. "All of us who live here in Quindley have set that
oldie idea behind us. Moses pointed out the total stupidity of it."
"Look forward to meeting this Moses," Mildred said. "Sounds like quite a guy."
Dorothy opened her mouth, then hesitated and closed it again. She stood
looking down at her feet,
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counsel from an inner voice.
"I know you are old and an outlander, but you will not speak of Moses like
that."
"Listen, kid, I'm getting seriously pissed about all this 'old* shit. I'm
still a good few years the right side of forty, so just ice it, will you?"
"Forty!"
"That's when life begins." Mildred laughed, uneasy at the younger woman's
expression. "Just how do you treat all the old people you got here hi the
ville? Your own mothers and fathers, for instance?"
"Moses tells us that..." Dorothy stopped. "No, you're right. It is rude of me
to show you how we..."
Again she hesitated. "Food and rest should come before talk."
"I'll go along with that," Doc said. "I confess that I would not be averse to
a good long rest."
"Oh, you will have that," Frank stated.
Ryan looked around them. "You got no animals. How's that?"
"We have no need of them, outlander," Ray replied. "Moses teaches us that the
exploitation of cattle or horses or any other creature is wrong."
"Vegetarians?" Mildred asked.
"Yes."
Ryan smiled at the young blonde. "Then I guess a juicy steak with all the
trimmings is out of the question."
His joke was ignored. Dorothy turned on her heel and continued toward the
causeway to the ville.
"Uke Uncle Tyas McCann used to say back in Harmony, lover. That went over like
a lead balloon."
THE WATER WAS COLD and very clear. The shore shelved steeply, but even halfway
toward the entrance gate to Quindley it was easy to see the speckled fish
moving sinuously near the weeds on the lake's bottom.
"How deep is it here?" Dean asked.
"On the far side of the ville it drops away to well over a hundred feet,"
Frank replied.
"And you don't eat no fish?"
"Yes, we do eat no fish." Frank smiled at Dean. "While in our home you will
eat no fish, also."
An armed guard on the fortified gates watched suspiciously as Dorothy led the
seven outlanders into the ville. Ryan paused a moment before entering, looking
back across the water, the immaculately tilled fields, toward the shadowed
bank of the sweeping forest.
Every bright young face was turned toward him.
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But he also caught a glimpse of something else, right at the edge of the pine
trees. It was a blurred flash of white. A face? Maybe an animal. By the time
Ryan had focused his eye on it, there was nothing there.
ONCE THEY WERE inside the ville, they were able to see that it was laid out on
a sort of grid pattern. The streets were packed earth, laid over interlocked
logs, the whole of the place locked together with massive cross-members, made
from whole trees. Though it was actually floating, tethered to the land by the
causeway, there was no sensation of movement.
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