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"What is it?" Valentine asked as they pushed up the hill.
"I'm not sure. It looks kind of like a hospital. There were ambulances out front, military and civilian. Big grounds, double-fenced."
They topped a hill; another loomed on the other side of a narrow gully. The road took a hairpin turn at a small stream. "I don't suppose your Corporal Thatcher illuminated you?"
"He said he was just a delivery boy."
A truck blatted through the trees. They pulled their bikes off the road and watched it negotiate the gulley. It was an open-backed truck, filled with an assortment of uniformed men, some in bandages, some just weary-looking.
"Okay, it is a hospital," Valentine said as they remounted their bikes. "Why all the security, then?"
They finally saw it from the top of the next hill.
"This is probably as far as we should go," Duvalier said. "There's a watch post at the end of the trees."
Valentine couldn't see much through the trees, just a few salmon-colored building tops, at least a dozen stories tall. The ground leveled out past the hill, flat ground and a straight road to a guarded gate beyond a half mile or so of open ground. Valentine looked through his minibinoculars. Yes, there was a little watch station, about the size of a lifeguard's house at a beach, near the break in the trees.
"Three layers of fencing, with a road between," Duvalier said. "Outer layer is electrified. Innermost layer is just a polite six feet of glorified chicken wire. He dropped me off at the gate. The gatehouse looks normal enough, but ten yards out to either side there's tenting over something. I'm guessing heavy weapons."
Valentine did some mental math. This place was perhaps twenty minutes from the train tracks, in trucks driving forty miles an hour.
"Oh, Thatcher gave it a name."
"He did?"
"He called it 'Zan-ado.' "
"Xanadu?" Valentine asked.
"Yeah. Mean anything to you?"
"I've heard the word. I don't know what it means. A fairyland or some such. You hanging around for your date?"
"I'm meeting him in Ironton."
"Ahn-Kha and I will check this out. Tonight."
* * * *
They said good-bye to Price while Duvalier biked off to keep her appointment. Valentine decided he could trust Price with a message to Southern Command. Someone needed to know about Xanadu.
If Price was willing to act as courier.
Valentine insisted on a farewell drink. Their supply of Bulletproof had been much reduced in trading, but they still had a few stoppered bottles.
They drank it inside the filthy motel room, windows and doors wide open to admit a little air.
"Price, you ever run into any guerillas?"
"I avoid them if I can. I've had my guns commandeered off me. They've threatened to shoot Bee, too."
"If you could get a message through to the Resistance, you'd really help the Cause."
"The Cause. Not that shit again."
"It's the only-"
"No! You don't tell me about the Cause, boy." Price took a drink. "I know your Cause. I know Everready's Cause."
