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eyes.”
    “Ah, glory…” Doc said absently.
    From the slightly glazed expression, which puzzled Crabbe, Mildred could tell that the old man was still slightly concussed.
    “But not gold?” Doc added.
    Crabbe’s brow furrowed. “Gold? Well, yeah, of course I mean that, too. Hell, I’d be stupe if I didn’t. Ain’t that what everyone wants? Ain’t that the same thing as glory? Glory gets you respect, and so does jack, gold. Goes hand in hand, I’d say.”
    “If it’s the way to glory and jack, then why didn’t Trader take that? Why haven’t we? Suppose we are the people you say. Ask yourself why we were doing shitty jobs in Hawknose waiting for the next convoy out,” Ryan said.
    Crabbe eyed him shrewdly. “Fair point, Brian. But this is the only place like this around these parts. I know that ’cause I read that there map.” He indicated the area behind them. On the wall over a row of comps lining one side of the room was a clear glass screen, outlined with a map of the predark United States. On it were marked the locations of redoubts across the continent. “The way I see it is this—somehow you wandered away from one of these places. I bet you’ve been to lots of them. Mebbe that’s what you do. Go to one of these, see what you can pick up, then move to the next. Mebbe you got a stockpile in one of them, mebbe you’re looking for the next big stockpile. Whatever, I reckon you left one of them, got into a fight and ended up stranded in the middle of nowhere. Fact is, you ending up at Hawknose may have been no accident, now that I think about it. Mebbe the reason you landed thereis because you were headed for the nearest one you knew…here.”
    He finished with a triumphant flourish. In the silence that followed, Ryan was unsure as to whether the baron expected them to cave in and admit that he was right. The demonstration of reasoning that had got Crabbe to this point was disturbing. What other assumptions had he made about Trader? About them? And what, as a result, would he expect from them?
    Ryan decided that the only way to find out would be to play him at his own game.
    “Okay, so you got us. And you’re right. Question is, where does that get you?”
    Crabbe looked at Ryan closely, studying him as though to somehow discern whether he was being deceived. Ryan held the baron’s gaze, steady, impassive.
    The baron’s weathered features creased. “Knew it. I fucking knew it. Didn’t I tell you, Sal?” he asked, turning to the tall, thin man.
    Sal simply nodded, his face unreadable.
    “So where does that leave us then, Baron? All cards on the table.”
    “Huh?” The baron looked confused for a moment. “Ah, you mean everything out in the open, right? ‘Cards on the table’—what kind of a stupe expression is that? Something you’ve picked up from the old ways in your travels?”
    “Yeah, must be,” Ryan answered blandly. In truth, he’d heard it all over Deathlands, and had no idea where he’d first started using it. But if that was what Crabbe wanted to believe, then that was just fine.
    Crabbe shook his head, laughing. “There is just somuch that I need to find out, but first, we need to get down to basics. Am I right? There’s a whole network of these underground bases, like on that map. Was that Trader’s secret?”
    “Not exactly,” Ryan began carefully. “There are a number of these places, like you’ve worked out. Getting from one to the other is difficult, and some of them have been looted or are damaged in some way.”
    “What ways?” Crabbe snapped, as though suspicious of anything that may deviate from his own ideas.
    Ryan knew that was worth bearing in mind. “Well,” he said, “you saw how this place was exposed. Sometimes quakes bear down deep, cause cracks in the tunnels. Some places just collapse in on themselves.”
    Crabbe nodded slowly. “Right…and looted, you say. So there are places where others have got into these bases.” He looked at Ryan, who