“There are plenty of men out here, much closer to home, who want a piece of what we’re doing. Especially since business has boomed so big.” Rector wanted to jump in and ask again, Why? but Harry was too fast for him. “Yaozu’s no dummy, but he’s only one man. Half the dealers and distributors on the West Coast are thinking about coming up here and taking the operation away from him.”

“You think that could happen?”

Halfway under his breath, he said, “It’s happening already.” Then he bent over a wooden crate stacked on the floor with others of its kind, looking for something. “They’re already coming, already circling like sharks. It won’t be long before I have to head inside the wall myself, much as I don’t like the prospect of it. I’m not defenseless, but I’ll be outdone by the kind of men coming up from Mexico, California, and the Oregon Territory.”

“How do you know they’re coming, Harry? Who tells you anything, except me and maybe Bishop? And he’s inside the wall. He don’t know nothing.”

Harry looked back at Rector with a chilly, unhappy frown clamped down on his face. “I hear things. I heard the thunder last week—did you? It wasn’t natural.”

“You’re going ’round the bend, old man.”

“Maybe, but soon the last of us here—the last of us original makers, I mean—will need a fortress.”

“You could do worse than Seattle,” Rector noted.

“I agree, but the thought of a life spent in a gas mask doesn’t agree with me much. I may have to find some other line of work.”

“You could go east, if that’s where the demand is.”

Harry found whatever he was fishing for. His knees popped when he stood back up to his full height. “True. Inside the wall with the rotters and gas, or back East into the war. If it weren’t for shitty options, I’d have no options at all. Anyway, here,” he said, offering up a very small packet.

Rector tried to keep his eyes from lighting up. He tried to stop himself from gliding across the rough-hewn floors and snatching the small fold of waxed paper right out of Harry’s outstretched hands. But there he was, eager as a dog at the prospect of a bone. Some small part of him had the grace to be embarrassed.

“What’s this?” he asked coolly. “A birthday present?”

“It’s what you came here for, and the only thing you want. You don’t want to learn anything, and you don’t want to work if you can help it. I’ve watched you run and burn for what now … a couple of years?”

“Something like that,” Rector muttered, taking the packet and stuffing it into his pocket while pretending not to care.