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  "What's this about you being out of bed?" Doctor Milton asked as he entered, a clipboard in his left hand.

  "I stretched my legs," Berwin responded. "What's the big deal?"

  Milton stepped to the side of the bed and wagged the clipboard at his patient. "The big deal is that you could cause a relapse if you overdo it. "I'll be the judge of what you can and can't do until I'm satisfied you're fully recovered."

  "I feel fine," Berwin said defensively.

  "Is all the weakness gone?"

  "Yes."

  "Completely?"

  "Yes."

  Doctor Milton's eyes narrowed. "Perhaps you are recuperating faster than anticipated, but that doesn't give you the right to defy my instructions. Why are you giving me such a hard time, anyway? Do you think you know more about medicine than I do?"

  The question embarrassed Berwin and he fidgeted. "No. Of course not."

  "Would you prefer another physician?" Milton asked bluntly.

  "No. You're doing a fine job."

  "Then let me do my job, please, without having to post a baby-sitter in your room."

  "I'll try to not give you any more trouble."

  Doctor Milton smiled. "Thank you. I think."

  Hoping to change the subject, Berwin nodded at the clipboard. "Did you get the test results?"

  "Yes," the doctor replied, and looked at the yellow sheet secured by the metal clip. "I have good news and some not so good news. Which do you want first?"

  "Good news would be a nice change of pace."

  "Okay. The good news is that there doesn't appear to be any organic damage. Your inability to remember doesn't stem from any contusions in your brain or scarred tissue."

  "And the not-so-good news?"

  "Is a confirmation of what I originally surmised. The shock of your accident induced your amnesia. Fortunately, the condition is reversible.

  You could recall every aspect of your life in five minutes, two days, or next month."

  "Or next year?" Berwin said.

  Doctor Milton nodded. "Or next year. Although personally I believe you'll recover your memory much sooner than that. But rest assured that we will do everything in our power to help you overcome the amnesia."

  "What can be done?"

  "Association with your family and friends will be of immense help,"

  Doctor Milton said. "Amnesia can also be treated by hypnosis and with drugs."

  "Drugs?"

  "Yes. Sodium amytal and sodium penthothal are sometimes effective in correcting the condition, but I should advise you that the drugs can cause unpleasant side effects," Doctor Milton stated.

  "Do you recommend using hypnosis or drugs?" Berwin asked.

  "Only as a last resort. I would rather try to jar your memory naturally.

  We must proceed cautiously. When would you like to begin?"

  "How about right now?" Berwin requested.

  "Very well. What would you like to know?" the physician asked.

  "Everything. Those technicians who administered the tests wouldn't answer any of my questions. They told me to ask you. And Nurse Krittenbauer has revealed very little."

  Doctor Milton nodded. "They are performing their jobs properly. I prefer to impart information in a controlled environment, face to face, so I can gauge your reaction. Ask me any question and I'll answer it."

  "Where in the world am I?"

  "Boston."

  Berwin did a double take. "Massachusetts?"

  "Is there a Boston somewhere else? You appear to be stunned," Milton remarked.

  "I am," Berwin admitted.

  "Do you remember anything about Boston?"

  "No."

  "Give it time," Doctor Milton said. "You were born and raised right here in Boston, Massachusetts, in the good old United States of America—"

  "The United States?" Berwin said, interrupting in surprise.

  "What about it?"

  "Didn't you say something about a war? World War Three?"

  "The United States won the war. You're an American citizen. Quite patriotic too, I understand."

  "I am?" Berwin said skeptically. He pressed his hands to his temples as a headache began to bother him.

  "What's wrong?"

  "I'm not sure. I seem to recall something about the war, but it's vague. I can't put my finger on it."

  "Are you experiencing any discomfort?"

  "I'm beginning to get a headache," Berwin disclosed.

  "Then we'll stop for a while."

  "But I want to learn all about my family. I want to see my parents and my sister."

  "And I'll arrange for them to visit you in several hours. For now, why don't you lay down and rest," Doctor Milton recommended.

  "I'm not tired," Berwin said.

  "Rest anyway," Doctor Milton directed. He regarded the giant patient critically as the man reclined. "And under no circumstances are you to get out of bed."

  "What if I want to tinkle?"

  "Use the urinal bottle under the bed. If you have to go number two, use the bedpan."

  "I'm capable of using a bathroom," Berwin stated.

  "What do you have against bedpans?" Doctor Milton joked, and chuckled. "Very well. I'll instruct Nurse Krittenbauer to escort you to the bathroom if you have to go."

  "Thanks, Doc."

  Milton nodded and left the room, insured the door was shut tight, and walked to the right, to the junction where Krittenbauer awaited him. "I was wrong," he informed her. "We do need to worry. His aggressive personality is beginning to assert itself. The damn drug isn't as effective as we'd hoped."

  "Or perhaps his will is simply too strong," Krittenbauer speculated.

  "What do we do now?"

  "We expedite the process," Milton said. "You know what will happen to us if we fail."

  "Yes," she responded grimly, "and I've never been very fond of firing squads."

  Chapter Four

  "This is a friggin' waste of time!"

  "We're not giving up until we've gone over every foot of ground between the field where the helicopter landed and the road."

  "Blade is our friend, yes? We owe him a lot, no?"

  The first speaker placed his hands on his hips and glared at his two companions. "Yeah, Blade is our friend and he's done a lot for us," he snapped in a high-pitched, lisping voice. "But that doesn't change the fact we're still wastin' our time. We'll never find a clue." His slanted green eyes were alight with anger. He stood under four feet in height and weighed only 60 pounds, and his entire body was covered with short, grayish-brown fur. His facial features were more like those of a feline than a human; a small mouth sporting wicked teeth, a short nose, a curved forehead, and pointed ears gave him the aspect of a two-legged cat. His only clothing was a gray loincloth.

  "We might find a clue if there was less talking and more looking,"

  commented the second member of the threesome. Brown hair three inches long coated his lean frame, which was an inch taller than the cat-man's. A black loincloth covered his privates. An extended nose, tiny brown eyes, and curved ears gave him a weasel-like appearance. "So get looking, Lynx," he added.

  "Who died and appointed you our leader, Ferret?" the cat-man retorted.

  "Ferret is right, yes?" chimed in the third person. The tallest of the trio, he was five feet ten. His skin was a leathery gray in hue, and he wore a brown loincloth. Unlike his associates, he was hairless. His ears, small circles of flesh, served as counterpoints to his bald pate. A slit of a mouth, bizarre eyes with bright red pupils, and a pointed nose gave him a hawklike visage.

  "Who asked you, Gremlin?" Lynx demanded testily.

  "No one, no," Gremlin conceded.

  "Get off Gremlin's case," Ferret stated. "You're wrong, as usual, and you're too stubborn to admit it."

  " I'm stubborn!" Lynx declared.

  Ferret made a show of gazing all around them at the surrounding forest. "There must be an echo around here."

  "You're the stubborn ones," Lynx
said. "You two bozos make me look wishy-washy."

  "What's the real reason you're upset?" Ferret asked.

  "Figures. All I do is make a point and you're ready to psychoanalyze me," Lynx muttered.

  "You didn't answer my question," Ferret noted.

  "You know what you can do with your question," Lynx said, and began walking northward along the faint trail they'd been following.

  "But Ferret is right again, yes?" Gremlin interjected, walking on the cat-man's heels.

  "Is he payin' you to agree with every word he says?" Lynx cracked, glancing over his left shoulder.

  "Of course not, no," Gremlin replied.

  "What's your beef this time?" Ferret asked, bringing up the rear, his eyes sweeping the ground for anything unusual.

  "What do you mean by 'this time'?" Lynx responded. "Are you implying I gripe a lot?"

  "I'm not implying you gripe a lot. I'm flat out telling you that you gripe a lot," Ferret clarified for him. "In fact, I don't know anyone who does as much complaining as you do. You're never satisfied."

  "Listen to Mister Perfect," Lynx countered. He spied a partial print in the soft soil and halted.

  "Did you find a track, yes?" Gremlin asked.

  "Yeah," Lynx said, and knelt to examine the imprint. A sigh of frustration escaped his lips. "It's a damn bear track." He stood and continued their trek to the north.

  "I wish you would tell us what's eating you," Ferret persisted.

  "Why don't you drop the subject?" Lynx suggested.

  "Because if we don't get you to spill the beans now, we'll have to put up with your crabby puss until you do."

  "I ain't about to waste my breath tryin' to explain to you two morons,"

  Lynx snapped.

  "You shouldn't call us names, no," Gremlin said, his tone conveying his hurt feelings at being insulted.

  "Now don't go gettin' misty-eyed on me," Lynx stated. "The three of us are best buddies. I call you a moron because I like you."

  "I'd hate to think of what he'd call us if he didn't like us," Ferret quipped.

  "You know what I mean," Lynx said.

  "No, as usual, we don't," Ferret disputed. "You're talking in circles again."

  "Do you want me to give it to you straight?"

  "I don't know if we could take the shock," Ferret replied.

  Gremlin snickered.

  "Okay, you turkeys. I'll lay it on the line," Lynx said, stopping and facing them. "The three of us have been through thick and thin together, right?

  We were all created in a laboratory by a wacko scientist. Each of us is the product of the ultimate in genetic engineering."

  "Uh-oh. I feel one of his spiels coming on," Ferret observed.

  "Deja vu, yes?" Gremlin agreed.

  "Make fun all you want, but you're hearin' me out," Lynx told them.

  "We all got our start in a rotten test tube. We're all the result of takin'

  ordinary human embryos and splicing them somehow with animal genes.

  Each of us is a hybrid."

  Ferret yawned loudly. "Yep. Definitely a spiel."

  "All three of us rebelled against the Doktor and joined the Family,"

  Lynx said, ignoring the barb. "All three of us have been livin' at the Home for years."

  "We should be searching for clues, no?" Gremlin asked.

  "We were bored, remember?" Lynx said. "The Family is the nicest bunch of sicky-sweet do-gooders you'd ever want to meet, but we were going stir-crazy."

  "Correction. You were going stir-crazy," Ferret said, then thought better of his comment. "Correction again. You're crazy anyway, so who could tell the difference?"

  "I mean, we were bred to be fighters. We were genetically engineered to be assassins for the lousy Doktor. So it was only natural that we got tired of playin' with the kiddies and huntin' game for the Family to eat. It was only natural we decided to become Warriors so we could add a little excitement to our lives," Lynx stated.

  "There you go again," Ferret said. "Where do you dig up these fairy tales? We didn't want to become Warriors. You were the one with the brainstorm. You were the one who wanted to be a Warrior, and you were the one who nagged us for months until we finally agreed to go along with your insane scheme."

  Lynx frowned. "Some brainstorm I had. We've been Warriors for how long now?"

  "Oh, about two years," Ferret answered.

  "Exactly. And how much action have we seen in the past two years?"

  Ferret and Gremlin exchanged glances.

  "Double uh-oh. I suddenly have this sinking feeling that Lynx is about to propose another of his bright ideas," Ferret said.

  "Should we run now or later, yes?" Gremlin asked.

  "Go ahead. Make fun of me all you want. Get it out of your systems,"

  Lynx commented. "I want your undivided attention when I reveal my next stroke of genius."

  "Did he say genius, no?" Gremlin responded, addressing Ferret.

  "I can never get over the fact that his ego and the solar system are both the same size, yes?" Ferret replied, and immediately regretted imitating Gremlin's unique pattern of speech. When Gremlin had been quite young, the genetic engineer who'd created them, the vile Doktor, had performed an exploratory operation on Gremlin's brain. The Doktor had continually striven to improve his medical knowledge and expertise, and as part of one of his experiments he'd removed a portion of Gremlin's brain and preserved the piece in a jar. As a result. Gremlin always spoke in a bizarre manner.

  "My ego has nothing to do with this," Lynx declared. "Fairness is the issue here."

  "Fairness?" Ferret repeated skeptically.

  "Yeah. What have we been doing for the past two years?" Lynx asked, and expounded in the next breath. "I'll tell you. We've spent most of our time on guard duty, walkin' the ramparts of the walls enclosing the Home.

  Every now and then we get to waste a wild animal, like that wolverine we ripped to shreds last month, or we get to tangle with one of those feral mutations, like the black bear with six legs that tried to eat a Tiller. But for the most part we twiddle our thumbs while the other Warriors get to hog all the action." He paused and looked at his companions. "Why should they have all the fun?"

  "What are you babbling about?" Ferret responded. "The other Warriors spend as much time on wall duty as we do. Every Triad pulls equal eight-hour shifts, and we all get the same number of days off. So how do they hog all the action?"

  Lynx beamed, about to disclose the cornerstone of his argument. "It's simple, Vacuum Head. They get to go on all the runs."

  Ferret and Gremlin looked at one another again.

  "This isn't leading up to what I think it's leading up to, is it?" Ferret asked.

  "I think so, yes," Gremlin confirmed.

  "I was afraid of that," Ferret said.

  "I'm right and both of you know it," Lynx declared. "Who got to go to California? Blade and Hickok. Who went to Seattle? Blade, Hickok, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, and Yama. Who took the run to Nevada? Blade, Hickok, Geronimo, and Helen. Who went to Florida? Blade, Hickok, and Rikki.

  Sundance and Bertha have been to Philadelphia. I could go on and on, but you got my point. The other Warriors are allowed to go on extended missions away from the Home, but not us. The other Warriors get to take all the runs, to have all the fun."

  "Fun!" Ferret said, and snorted. "Where's the fun in accepting an assignment that could well get you killed? Where's the fun in traveling hundreds of miles from those you love, never knowing if you'll see them again? Where's the fun in finding yourself in a life-threatening situation time and again? Where's the fun in going up against mutations, raiders, scavengers, cannibals, and run-of-the-mill psychopaths?"

  "It beats wall duty," Lynx remarked.

  "You want us to go on one of the runs, yes?" Gremlin inquired, sounding astounded by the very notion.

  Lynx grinned and nodded vigorously. "Bingo. What a great idea, huh?"

  "You're pulling our legs, no?" Gremlin wanted to know.


  "I'm serious. Just think of how terrific it would be to get away from the Home for a while. What better way to put a little spice into our life?"

  "What better way to wind up dead?" Ferret rejoined.

  "A trip away from the Home would break the monotony, alleviate our boredom," Lynx maintained.

  "But you're the only who who is bored," Ferret stated.

  "Does this mean you don't like my idea?"

  "Like it? I think it's the craziest, stupidest, most feeble-witted, insipid, blockheaded idea you've ever had, and that's saying a lot."

  "Does that mean no?"

  " No!" Ferret shouted, practically exploding.

  Lynx studied his irate friend for several seconds. "I expected you to act this way."

  "You did?"

  "Sure. You're a pessimist."

  "At least I'm a live pessimist."

  "There ain't no need for you to make up your mind today. Think about the idea for a while. You'll come around to my way of thinking," Lynx predicted.

  "Now there's a scary thought, yes?" Gremlin interjected.

  "Lynx, there's no way I'll ever agree to this asinine plan of yours," Ferret stated. "I let you talk me into becoming a Warrior against my better judgment, but I'm not giving in this time. We have a good life at the Home. The Family treats us with respect and has accepted us as members, and in return we use our hybrid abilities to protect those who have been so kind to us. We do our fair share of work, and we face our fair share of danger. There's no reason to rock the boat by demanding to be taken on the next run. Gremlin and I aren't bored, and we want to leave well enough alone."

  "Party poopers."

  "Besides, how can you want to travel far from the Home when you have Melody?" Ferret asked.

  "She won't object if I go on a run."

  "Of course she won't. She loves you too much to stand in your way. For her sake you should think twice about your idiotic ideas," Ferret said.

  "You have the most to lose, and you can cause the woman who loves you tremendous grief. Think about how lucky you are. Lynx. You're the only one of us who has a mate, a woman endowed with feline attributes exactly like yours. You're the only one who has someone to go home to when your work is done for the day. Do you know how much Gremlin and I envy you?