Dark Of The Woods

little?"
    "I'm tired. But I can manage," she said.
    "The arm?"
    "It doesn't hurt anymore."
    "Let's hurry then."
    She took time to kiss him, once, long and languidly, then they began rounding up compact food products, concentrates, thermos jugs for water, portable electric torches, everything it seemed likely they might find use for and be able to carry without much trouble. Once, she paused to try to persuade him that he should turn her back to them, try to make amends. He convinced her that such a suggestion not only insulted him and underrated his feelings about her but was totally fanciful since the Alliance rep was now out for blood and revenge and would never accept anything less. The packing resumed at the same furious pace.
    "But where are we going?" she asked as they worked the last of the items Davis felt they needed into the rucksacks and the single suitcase.
    He started to answer, then only packed more quickly. Several minutes later, he said, "If we can get to the woods, buy some time, maybe they'll think we died in the mountains during the winter. Maybe we will. But we'll try like the devil not to. And if we make it, maybe, in the spring, I'll be able to go into the port city without any trouble, unrecognized."
    "It's no good," she said.
    He shrugged. He knew it was unworkable as well as she. But what else had been left open to them? They were nothing now but two scurrying creatures caught in the web of the megalomaniacs, the power seekers, mice in the walls of an inconceivably vast social order. Their only chance was to act exactly like mice, living off that order, in the fringes of that order, without being discovered and eradicated. Not the best of lives. But better than being dead.
    "I may have a suggestion," she said.
    He continued to pack, stuffing the last few items into the bulging rucksack. "What's that?"
    "A fortress."
    He looked up as he strapped the flap of the sack down, not quite grasping what she was trying to tell him. "What?"
    "A fortress. Remember my telling you about them, about how they were supposed to be the thing that would turn the course of the war in the favor of my people?"
    The word clicked into place then, and all the notes he had taken on the subject and studied in detail appeared before his mind with the almost total recall he possessed. According to Leah, the Demosian government had constructed, during the tail end of the war when the sterilizing gases had had their effect and there was a grave shortage of fighters, four fortresses deep within the earth, scattered over this one large continent on which most of the winged people had made their homes. The fortresses were deep, impregnable shelters against every sort of attack and were equipped with, according to rumors, experimental laboratories for the development of new weapons—and experimental genetics labs which were to find some method of producing more Demosians without the need of fertile men and women. The great push by the Alliance forces had come just as the fortresses were completed, and the men who would have staffed them were needed in the last desperate attempt to stave off the Earthmen—which, of course, failed. The fortresses, if they ever had existed, were never discovered. Leah's grandfather had been an engineer in charge of the heavy construction workers in the building of the nearest of these fortresses and had been assigned, with his family, to occupy quarters there to take charge of the maintenance once the structure was in operation. But he died in the last battle.
    "Could these fortresses be myths?" he asked. "A desperate people will evolve all sorts of ethereal fantasies to give them hope."
    "My grandfather was a realist," she said. "It was no myth."
    "And you know the location?"
    "Not exactly. But from listening to my grandfather and analyzing what I can remember, I've since decided it has to be inside the mountain we call Tooth, which is a good ways from here, but not so far that we cannot make it on these provisions."
    He thought a moment, then stood, grabbed the rucksacks. "It's worth a try. We don't have anything better in mind. Don't get your hopes up, love. Even if there is a fortress, it might very well be crumbling and uninhabitable."
    "They were not built to crumble."
    "Perhaps," he said, smiling. "I'll take these out to the car and come back for the suitcase. You think you can wear that coat without hurting your wings?"
    She looked at the two coats he had laid out for them, picked up a