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them down a stairway to a basement with damp concrete walls, faintly lit by a single kerosene lantern hanging halfway down its short length. At the far end of the basement was a double swing door.
    “For reasons unknown, the American boat broke off the attack. Kostroma did not sink—at least, not right away. But with her titanium pressure hull breached, Captain Andreyev managed to ground her in shallow water not far from this very cliff, at a place where the land descends to the sea. Most of the crew got ashore alive. They even managed to offload most of her supplies, including her surgery and medical gear. And, speaking of which—” he pushed open the double doors “—we are here.”
    Katerina stepped into the glare of light, then to one side. Ryan strode into a basement room with walls painted glaring white and a drain in the brown tile floor.
    But unlike most such rooms in baronial basements, this was not a torture chamber. Or, if it was, it was a sophisticated one.
    The walls were lined with cabinets and sinks, like a predark infirmary. Ryan had seen plenty in his time, buried deep in the lost redoubts, that contained valuable salvage—and the secret mat-trans network.
    In the center of the room stood a table, gleaming chrome like the vanadium-steel doors of a redoubt. J.B. lay prone on a pallet atop the table. His head was back, with a roll of cloth to support his neck, and a mask covered his mouth. An olive-drab Army blanket, evidently American, covered his body to the rib cage. The top of a bandage was visible above it.
    Mildred uttered a little gasp. But when she walked by Ryan she was upright and in full command of herself. She was a professional, in a way almost no one was in this desperate and decaying age.
    She bent to examine J.B. His color didn’t look promising to Ryan: his skin looked as if it was dusted in double-fine wood ash. But Mildred did some gingerly probing, then nodded.
    “He seems stable,” she said, looking up. “For the moment. He’s feverish, just by touch.”
    “Because we have been unable to fully clean out the foreign material, including cloth, injected by the bullet,” a crisp female voice said, “we expect that infection has set in. I have given him antibiotics, and I believe we can contain the infection.”
    Everyone had turned to face the speaker. A door stood open to a side room. Ryan, who was in the habit of taking in every detail of his surroundings at a glance, had noticed it the instant he walked through the doorway. He frowned; he hadn’t taken adequate account of the fact that someone might be in that other room.
    He frowned at his lapse.
    The person in question wasn’t threatening at first glance. She was a tiny woman, shorter even than Jak. Ryan would be amazed if she was a hair over five-nothing, and she might not be that tall. Her skin was darker than Mildred’s, though of a different color-blend. Her eyes were big and black in a squarish yet undeniably pretty face. She wore a pale green lab coat over a dark T-shirt and jeans, and she carried a clipboard.
    Mildred stepped back and glared at her. The other woman put her head to one side and peered at her like a large, quizzical bird.
    “This is Lindy Rao, our healer,” Katerina said. “She has earned our complete trust with her skill and knowledge.”
    “Is that oxygen?” Mildred demanded, gesturing at the mask.
    The Stormbreak healer shook her head. “We generate and store emergency electricity by various means, largely windmills and batteries. It is insufficient to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen electrically. But enough to allow us to run a low-power air pump. That is merely air under moderate pressure to help him breathe.”
    “Is that a good idea? He has a pneumothorax.” Mildred glanced at Ryan and her friends. “That’s, uh, a collapsed lung. Sucking chest wounds usually cause that.”
    Ryan gestured for her to continue her discussion with the local healer.
    “I’m aware of that,”