31 January 2013

Einar was silent for a moment, trying to make sense of it.  “Down where?”

“With Kilgore, when he goes.  I want to take Will and go down, and I want you to come with us.”

“We can’t go down.  The search…”

“We can find ways to do it safely.”

“Can’t talk about this in here, with everybody.  Come with me.”

On his feet then, leading her to the door, and Liz barely had time to grab her parka before he hustled them both out into the tunnel, where they stopped, as it was still not safe to venture outside.  He said nothing, waiting for her, giving her the chance to speak first, which she did not want to do.  But finally had to.  He, she was quite sure, could have waited all night.

“Will you come with us?”

“You’ve decided this for sure, then?”

“I want to talk it over with you.”

“Talk.”

“The things Kilgore’s offering…they’re sensible.   A month or two hidden away where they don’t expect us to be, all that distance between us and the active search, and it would solve the problem of what to do with Juni.  Right now, if we let her go down we’ll never feel secure here again, will we?  Just knowing that someone else has been here and knows how to get here again, or lead people to us…  This way, only Kilgore knows where we’ve gone, and he’s known where we were for a long time, anyway.”

“Doesn’t solve the problem of Juni though, because in that situation, she knows that Kilgore knows, and could potentially pass that information along to someone, if things went really wrong…”

“Oh, Kilgore would never give us away!”

A moment of grim silence, and she could feel him stiffening, pulling away from her.  “You’d be surprised.”

“I still think it’s the best plan right now.”

“And just leave everything behind, everything we’ve built up here?”

“We were going to have to do that anyway, at some point.  You’ve said so yourself, more often than I have.  That we’d probably have to leave someday at a moment’s notice or even less, and that’s why we need so much of our stuff cached.  This would just be…planning ahead.  Doing it before we were forced to, and probably really increasing our chances of making it.”

“We’ve talked about this before.  You’ve always said there was no way you wanted to go down, never to take you down, even if something went really wrong…remember, we talked about it before Will was born, and you said you would rather take your chances with all of that, than risk capture?  What’s changed all of a sudden?”

“It hasn’t been sudden.”

“Then what’s changed over time?”

“Nothing.  That’s just the problem.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know.”

“So?”

“There’s a lot of winter left, up here.”

“We’ll get through it.  Got a lot of meat left.  You’ve got plenty to eat, Will is growing, thriving…”

“But you’re not.”

“This again?  We talked about this.   I agreed to…”

“I know.  And I can see that you’re trying so hard, but you keep getting trapped in this…this…trapped in your own head, and ending up right where you started from, only a little weaker, physically, a little closer to the edge each time, and it looks like if that’s ever going to change, we need to do something different.  Something big.”

“Prison would be real big.”

“I’m not talking about prison!”

“You might as well be…”

“Kilgore knows what he’s doing.  You’ve said so yourself.”

“Doesn’t mean he can’t mess up, or that we’re not dramatically increasing our risk just by going down where there are other people, chances for contact…that’s how it all ends, with these sorts of things.”

“Sometimes.  But not every time.  I seem to remember that you came down, a time or two.  Never would have met me if you hadn’t come down.  What made you decide it was worth the risk?”

“First time had no choice.  They were chasing me, dogs, choppers, it was just where I ended up.”

“And the second time, that winter?”

“Rough winter.  Hadn’t had any time to prepare for it, because of the search.  I was starving to death up there.  Had to try something.”

“You’re starving to death now.  That winter you took a risk, and it worked out.  Try it again.  Please.”

“That’s your reason for wanting to do this?  So I won’t starve?”

“That is my reason.”

“Lizzie, we’ve got plenty to eat.  Things wouldn’t be any different for me down at Susan’s, or wherever we ended up.  Really wouldn’t make any difference.”

It would have to.  Something has to…