Timothy Zahn: Cascade Point

The sun was barely up as I left the cabin that morning, but it was already promising to be a beautiful day. Some freak of nature had blown away the usual cloud cover and was treating the world—or at least the middle Appalachians—to an absolutely clear blue sky, the first I'd seen in months. I admired the sky and the budding April greenery around me as I made my way down the wooded slope, long practice enabling me to avoid trees and other obstructions with minimal effort. It was finally spring, I decided, smiling my half-smile at the blazing sun which was already starting to drive the chill from the morning air. Had it not been for the oppressive silence in the forest, it would almost be possible to convince myself that the Last War had been only a bad dream. But the absence of birds, which for some reason had been particularly hard hit by the Soviet nuke bac barrage, was a continual reminder to me. I had hoped that, by now, nearly five years after the holocaust, they would have made a comeback. Clearly, they had not, and I could only hope that enough had survived the missiles to eventually repopulate the continent. Somehow, it seemed the height of injustice for birds to die in a war over oil.

I had reached the weed-overgrown gravel road that lay southwest of my cabin and had started to cross it when a bit of color caught my eye. About fifty yards down the road, off to the side, was something that looked like a pile of old laundry. But I knew better; no one threw away clothes these days. Almost undoubtedly it was a body. I regarded it, feeling my jaw tightening. I'd looked at far too many bodies in my lifetime, and my natural impulse was to continue across the road and forget what I'd seen. But someone had to check this out—find out whether it was a stranger or someone local, find out whether it had been a natural death or otherwise—and that someone might just as well be me. Aside from anything else, if there was a murderer running around loose, I wanted to know about it. I took a step toward the form, and as I did so my foot hit a small pile of gravel, scattering it noisily.

The "body" twitched and sat up abruptly, and I suddenly found myself looking at a strikingly lovely woman wrapped up to her chin in a blanket. "Who's there?" she called timidly, staring in my direction.

I froze in panic, waiting for her inevitable reaction to my face, and silently cursed myself for being so careless. It was far too late to run or even turn my head; she was looking straight at me.

But the expected look of horror never materialized. "Who's there?" she repeated, and only then did I notice that her gaze was actually a little to my right. Then I understood.

She was blind.

It says a lot for my sense of priorities that my first reaction was one of relief that she couldn't see me. Only then did it occur to me how cruelly rough postwar life must be for her with such a handicap. "It's all right," I called out, starting forward again. "I won't hurt you."

She turned slightly so that she was facing me—keying on my voice and footsteps, I presume—and waited until I had reached her before speaking again. "Can you tell me where I am? I'm trying to find a town called Hemlock."

"You've got another five miles to go," I told her. Up close, she wasn't as beautiful as I'd first thought. Her nose was a little too long and her face too angular; her figure—what I could see of it beneath the blanket and mismatched clothing—was thin instead of slender. But she was still nice-looking, and I felt emotions stirring within me which I thought had died years ago.

"Are there any doctors there?"

"Only a vet, but he does reasonably well with people, too." I frowned, studying the fatigue in her face, something I'd assumed was just from her journey. Now I wasn't so sure. "Do you feel sick?"

"A little, maybe. But I mostly need the doctor for a friend who's up the road a few miles. We were traveling from Chilhowie and he came down with something." A chill shook her body and she tightened her grip on the blanket.

I touched her forehead. She felt a little warm. "What were his symptoms?" "Headache, fever, and a little nausea at first. That lasted about a day. Then his muscles started to hurt and he began to get dizzy spells. It wasn't more than an hour before he couldn't even stand up anymore. He told me to keep on going and see if I could find a doctor in Hemlock."

"When did you leave him?"

"Yesterday afternoon. I walked most of the night, I think."

I nodded grimly. "I'm afraid your friend is probably dead by now. I'm sorry."

She looked stricken. "How do you know?"

"It sounds like a variant of one of the bacterial diseases the Russians hit us with in the war. It's kind of rare now, but it's still possible to catch it. And it works fast."

Her whole body seemed to sag, and she closed her eyes. "I have to be sure. You might be wrong."

"I'll go and check on him after we get you settled," I assured her. "Come on."

She let me help her to her feet, draping the blanket sari-style around her head and torso and retrieving the small satchel that seemed to be her only luggage. "Where are you taking me?"

That was a very good question, come to think of it. She wasn't going to make it to Hemlock without a lot more rest, and I sure wasn't going to carry her there. Besides, if she was carrying a Russian bug, I didn't want her going into the town anyway. Theoretically, she could wipe the place out. That left me exactly one alternative. "My cabin."

"I see."

I had never realized that two words, spoken in such a neutral tone, could hold that much information. "It's not what you think," I assured her hastily, feeling an irrational urge to explain my motives. "If you're contagious, I can't let you go into town."

"What about you?"

"I've already been exposed to you, so I've got nothing to lose. But I'm probably not in danger anyway—I've been immunized against a lot of these diseases."

"Very handy. How'd you manage it?"

"I was in the second wave into Iran," I explained, gently pulling her toward the slope leading to my cabin. She came passively. "They had us pretty well doped up against the stuff the Russians had hit the first wave with."

We reached the edge of the road and started up. "Is it uphill all the way?" she asked tiredly.

"It's only a quarter mile," I told her. "You can make it."

We did, but just barely, and I had to half-carry her the last few yards. I put her on the old couch in the living room and then went and got the medical kit I'd taken when I cleared out of Atlanta just hours before the missiles started falling. She had a slight fever and a rapid pulse, but I couldn't tell whether or not that was from our climb. But if she'd really been exposed to one of those Sidewinder strains, I couldn't take any chances, so I gave her one of my last few broad-spectrum pills and told her to get some rest. She was obviously more fatigued than I'd realized, and was asleep almost before the pill reached her stomach.

I covered her with her blanket and then stood there looking at her for a moment, wondering why I was doing all this. I had long ago made the decision to isolate myself as much as possible from what was left of humanity, and up till now I'd done a pretty good job of it. I wasn't about to change that policy, either. This was only a temporary aberration, I told myself firmly; get her well and then send her to Hemlock where she could get a job. Picking up the medical kit, I went quietly out.

It was late afternoon when I returned with the single rabbit my assorted snares had caught. The girl was still asleep, but as I passed her on my way to the kitchen she stirred. "Hello?"

"It's just me," I called back to her. I tossed the rabbit on the kitchen counter and returned through the swinging door to the living room. "How do you feel?"