24

Fawkes copied all the research notes onto disks. There were plenty of them around – after all, the Gundersons had planned to spend the rest of their lives doing research. The storage room had turned out to be a lot bigger than it looked, not a match to the kitchen next door to it but a long, narrow room that stretched out for yards and yards of dusty clutter. Massingbird said he'd do a cleaning and inventory for us to look at when we got back. "It will give me something to pass the time," was what he told me as we were on our way out. "Be careful, Madam."

Massingbird was the one who came up with the steel box for us to carry the disks and the two half-liter bottles of serum in. I packed them under Fawkes's careful directions and he stuck the box into his rations bag for the long walk back. I wore the latex gloves out, and I carried two sealed bottles of 200-year-old water with me. It wouldn't last very long, but it would taste good while it did.

I was actually a little sorry to leave the gully. Coming out, the idea of the vault seemed too good to be true – my own room, my own bed, my own bathroom with actual hot water. Cooked food, enough even for Fawkes. And presiding over all of it was Massingbird, with that forever sadness that only robots, with their perfect memories, can really know. Maybe he really would be glad to see us back.

I stopped for a minute by the two grave sites before we left. I wondered if any of the four could have imagined me, a living corpse to their eyes, clearing the weeds and digging the hole with the clone helping me. "They were alive when you were made," I said to Three. "They had their own little Heaven here while you were growing up in Hell. And here we are now, and they've been dead a hundred years. It's a weird thought."

Three looked at me and at the graves. Then he smiled, just a little bit. "I'm alive," he said.

"Yeah," I said. I turned and started up the broad path Fawkes had made on our way in. "Me, too."

It probably hadn't been a Heaven to them. They were used to whatever life people used to live before the bombs fell. And it must've gotten old, living out the rest of their lives underground, afraid to go outside because of the rads in the ground and the water and the air. I looked up at the clear sky up above the gully shadow, bluer than any water I'd ever seen. It's not so bad, being a Ghoul.

We walked. Nothing bothered us in the Metro this time. Either word like Fawkes got around, or we'd killed or scared off everything on our way through last time and nothing had had time to move back in yet. We slept the night in the same spot we had on our way out, the smelly mattresses behind the steel fence. It made the vault seem even further away, even less real.

The next afternoon we stepped out of the stairwell in front of the Museum. I hailed Willow again, and she answered just like last time. I came up the stairs.

"Hi," I said. "Me again."

"Still got your friends with you," said Willow, looking at Three and Fawkes. She seemed a little less disapproving this time, like maybe we were funny.

"Can't have too many," I said, and we went inside. I went to Underworld Outfitters and stuck my head in. Tulip looked up warily from behind the counter.

"Thistle?" she said. "Is that you?"

"It's me," I said. "You got a minute? It's important."

"Okay," she said. I went in. Three and Fawkes waited outside.

"Everyone needs to know this, and you have to tell them," I said. Then I told her about the new serum the BOS had. I left out the fact that they didn't technically have it yet, and that they were going to get it from us. I made sure she knew everything else.

"God," she said when I was done. "Why are you telling me this?"

"You're centrally located," I said. "You can make sure everybody knows. I'm going to tell Carol and Greta, too. Anybody who wants to stay Ghoul had probably better start hitting their water with some rads before they drink it."

"Yeah," she said. "I'll – I'll pass it around." She was too blown away to ask where I'd found it out. That was probably just as well.

"Good. See you around."

I repeated this performance upstairs. Carol nodded seriously.

"I'm so glad you told us. It might be nice to be pretty for a while – I've almost forgotten what that was like – but if it's all the same, I'd rather live longer. Greta will feel the same way about me no matter what. It'll be up to her, but I'll bet she feels the same way."

"I just want to make sure everyone has a chance to choose for themselves," I said. "You know?"

"I know," said Carol. "How did you learn this?"

"Can't tell you that," I said, and grinned across the cash register at her. "But it's the truth."

"I believe you," said Carol.

I went back downstairs, and the three of us went out into the lobby and out onto the Mall.

"Now for the mutants," I said.

"Yes," said Fawkes. "I think it will be best if I handle this. Please watch the bag." He unslung the sack from his shoulder and set it down on the sidewalk beside me.

"Sure," I said. "Be careful, okay? There's a lot more of them than you."

"There always have been," said Fawkes, and he turned and walked out toward the trenches. After a minute he disappeared down into one. Three and I waited. Three watched everything around us, the sky and the ground and the subway entrance and Willow. I watched for Fawkes.

After about ten minutes – it seemed longer – he climbed up out of the diggings the same place he'd gone in. His Vault 87 jacket was dusty, and there was a dark smear around his nose where he'd evidently wiped blood off. As he came closer I saw that there was blood on the knuckles of his right hand, too. He wasn't breathing hard.

"I guess you got the point across," I said.

"Indeed, yes," said Fawkes. He rubbed the knuckles against his pants. The blood evidently wasn't his. "My brethren are not easy to reason with, but it can be done. Given sufficient impetus."

"Impetus mean the same thing as punching?" I said.

"There are parallels," said Fawkes.

"I guess you didn't have to shoot anyone."

"Happily, that was not necessary," said Fawkes. He picked up the sack. "Are we ready to move on?"

"Three?" I said. "Last chance to wait outside."

"Gary," he said scornfully.

"All right then. Here goes."

We went down the sidewalk to the building where we'd met the Paladin before. Sigerson wasn't on duty. The knight in charge was one Fawkes didn't know. He ran back to talk to the Paladin. After a minute he came back out and sent us in.

The Paladin sat in the same chair at the same table. He stood up as we came in, looking at the sack on Fawkes's shoulder.

"Afternoon, Fawkes," he said. "Didn't find anything?"

"Good afternoon, Paladin," said Fawkes. "In fact, I believe we did." He took the steel box out and set it on the table. One finger flicked the catch and the lid. "This is the Drs. Gunderson's life work."

The Paladin looked at the clear plastic bottles with their cloudy white fluid and the neat stacks of disks.

"What is it?"

"The notes are extensive and complex," said Fawkes. Which was true, of course. "I believe it is a cure for cancer. A virus targeting the cells unique to that disease. It is not something with which my kind are afflicted." I thought my kind was laying it on a little thick, but the Paladin evidently bought it. He picked up a small satchel that was lying on the table.

"All right. Here's your pay." He evidently remembered our last conversation, because he handed it to me. He didn't look away from the super mutant. "As always, a pleasure working with you, Fawkes."

"Likewise," said Fawkes. He nodded once. "Goodbye, Paladin."

And then we left. I felt the leathery veteran's eyes on us all the way to the door, but he didn't try to stop us. I didn't take a deep breath until we were out of the building.

"Back down the hole?" I said.

"Back down," Three said. He flicked a wary glance over his shoulder. The doors were still closed.

"Seems to me like that vault might be a good place to wait this one out," I said as we went back down the stairs to the Metro.

"You ggglike it there," said Three.

"I do," I said.

"I am never averse to cooked meals when they are available," said Fawkes.

"What do you say, Three?" I asked. "Think you could get used to it?"

Three shrugged. "You go. I go."

And that was that.

We went a little faster on the return trip than we had on the way down, but nobody followed us the first day or the second. Nobody shot at us from the gully, and only the wind rustled the high weeds in the permanent shadow. The graves were still there. Massingbird was waiting in the entry room when we came in the big round door.

"I'm so pleased to see you alive and well," he said. I think he was.

"You, too," I said. "Any chance we can build a new turret for outside?"

"It is certainly a possibility," he said.

That night, Massingbird dug a radio out of storage, and we listened to it every day for the next week. Everybody knew Three Dog, the only real DJ in the Wasteland, had BOS security and BOS connections. I was betting that if they let anything out official, it would be to him.

Over the course of the week, the skin on my hands grew back. I started to read some of the earlier entries in the Drs. Gunderson's diaries, and I talked to Massingbird about them, how Norman used to chew on his left thumb nail and Yeung Eun loved to play Rook with an old pack of cards that was still in her dresser. I got him to teach me. Sometimes we played, me and Massingbird and Fawkes and Three. (It's funny to see the cards in Fawkes's enormous hands; also, trumps has been "Gary" quite a few times. For some reason this always means red. Three seems to like it.)

Massingbird salvaged a few parts from the slagged turret and dug some more out of storage and started to build a new one. He really is amazing. I've never seen a Mister Handy do so many different things. He doesn't seem to mind us here in this place that is basically his home, using things that were theirs. But then, he may be a person, but he's not a human person. Some of the things he sees and thinks are things Terry made him to see and think; and I think some of them are his own.

On the morning of the seventh or eighth day, while we were sitting around the entry room drinking coffee (at least I was – Fawkes prefers tea and caffeine make Three too twitchy), Three Dog came on and started talking about a Cure. "Come one, come all! The Brotherhood of Steel can make your mutations just disappear. Cure cancer, too, for those of you who've been smoking a few too many cigarettes – I know I have." He didn't say anything about super mutants dying. But then, I didn't think they were probably going to show up and ask for the cure, either.

That night I slept on clean sheets in Jarod Lamont's bed. Three slept in Terry Baring's. There was no discussion of this from either one of us. Three didn't say anything else about sleeping outside, and I didn't ask him to leave. Still haven't.

The new turret was up the day after we heard the announcement. It looked a little funny, but it worked. I know it did, because a couple of nights later I woke up with my rifle in my hand under the pillow and Massingbird silhouetted in the doorway of our room. Three was sitting up in the other bed.

"Sorry to disturb you, Sir and Madam," he said. "It appears that we have uninvited guests."