“And a normal-looking one might have some unnoticeable quirk, or a characteristic that won’t show up for years. Or even a normal one might be carrying recessives, and pass them on—God!” The exclamation was half blasphemy, half prayer. “But how’d it happen? People weren’t all near atom-hit areas.”

“Maybe not, though a lot of survivors escaped from the outskirts. But there was that first year, with everybody on the move. One could pass near enough to a blasted region to be affected, without knowing it. And that damnable radiodust, blowing on the wind. It’s got a long half-life. It’ll be active for decades. Then, as in any collapsing culture, promiscuity was common. Still is. Oh, it’d spread itself, all right.”

“I still don’t see why it spread itself so much. Even here—”

“Well, I don’t know why it shows up here. I suppose a lot of the local flora and fauna came in from elsewhere. This place is safe. The nearest dusted region is three hundred miles off, with mountains between. There must be many such islands of comparatively normal conditions. We have to find them too. But elsewhere—”

“Soup’s on,” announced Elaine, and went from the kitchen to the dining room with a loaded tray.

The men rose; Grayly, Drummond looked at Robinson and said tonelessly: “O.K. I’ll get your information for you. We’ll map mutation areas and safe areas, we’ll check on our population and resources, we’ll eventually get all the facts you want. But—what are you going to do then?”

“I wish I knew,” said Robinson haggardly. “I wish I knew.”

* * *

Winter lay heavily on the north, a vast gray sky seeming frozen solid over the rolling white plains. The last three winters had come early and stayed long. Dust, colloidal dust of the bombs, suspended in the atmosphere and cutting down the solar constant by a deadly percent or two. There had even been a few earthquakes, set off in geologically unstable parts of the world by bombs planted right. Half of California had been ruined when a sabotage bomb started the San Andreas Fault on a major slip. And that kicked up still more dust.

Fimbulwinter, thought Drummond bleakly. The doom of the prophecy. But no, we’re surviving. Though maybe not as men—

Most people had gone south, and there overcrowding had made starvation and disease and internecine struggle the normal aspects of life. Those who’d stuck it out up here, and had luck with their pest-ridden crops, were better off.

Drummond’s jet slid above the cratered black ruin of the Twin Cities. There was still enough radioactivity to melt the snow, and the pit was like a skull’s empty eye socket. The man sighed, but he was becoming calloused to the sight of death. There was so much of it. Only the struggling agony of life mattered anymore.

He strained through the sinister twilight, swooping low over the unending fields. Burned-out hulks of farmhouses, bones of ghost towns, sere deadness of dusted land—but he’d heard travelers speak of a fairly powerful community up near the Canadian border, and it was up to him to find it.