Time Nomads

by James Axler

  Ryan could hear the second voice, but he couldn't see who was speaking. He tried to move his head, but the effort was too great. The words came filtering through the gravel beds of his mind, but only a tiny fraction of them made any sense.

  "But he's going to get better now, Mildred, isn't he?"

  "Hope so. I didn't know what I could do to try to save his life. I mixed up every combination of the drugs in the medicine chest, and one of them seems to have worked. Can't honestly say more than 'seems,' Krysty. His pulse has lifted out of the basement, and the stiffness of his muscles isn't quite as severe."

  "But he is…"

  The other voice became sharper. "I don't know! He's certainly not out of the woods yet. Let's leave it at that and keep a careful watch."

  Ryan was aware only of a silence. It was so restful after the confusion of the women's voices that he was happy to relax into it. He closed his eye and fell asleep.

  Over the next thirty hours, his breathing became a little stronger and steadier. His heartbeat was faster, without the faltering that had made Mildred think that his race was nearly run.

  Krysty and Mildred took turns massaging the stiffness from the muscles of his face and throat. Relaxation was slowly and painfully won. At his lowest ebb, it had been as if his sinews and flesh had been cast in bronze.

  Mildred had discovered a way of administering an IV drip to feed him, because he was still not capable of swallowing even the thinnest of liquids. During the days of his illness, in the stale air of the sealed redoubt, he had clearly lost muscle tone.

  Doc Tanner tended to hang around, offering help with cleaning the unconscious man and generally trying to find some way of making himself useful— and rarely succeeding.

  J.B. and Jak roamed the sections of the rambling fortress that they were able to enter, looking for a way to get into the locked gateway or a way to escape from the ruined redoubt.

  The day after Ryan had first showed a glimmering of recovery, the five friends held a council.

  "Jak reckons there could be a way out," J.B. announced.

  "Where would that be?" Doc asked. "From the wretched lack of fresh air, I doubt that there is any contact with the outer world. Indeed, we have lived here so long that I swear I am turning into a cave dweller."

  The albino teenager grinned at the old man. "Love funny words, Doc. You mean think no way out here?"

  "That sums it up admirably, my parchment-haired bird of youth."

  "Found place, far as can go. Roof fall like all passages. But sure way out through fall."

  J.B. nodded. "Jak took me there. I'll swear the air's cleaner. Can't see light or anything, but it just feels right."

  "How about the gateway?" Krysty asked. "Can't you get that sec-door open somehow? Use grens on it?"

  "Boobied. Whole place is. Jak and me've been all around and covered every single yard while we waited for Ryan to come back to us. I'll try it if we decide that's best."

  "I don't understand the danger," Mildred said, frowning. "If we all take cover from the blast, the worst that can happen is that the door won't open."

  "No," J.B. replied. "We've come across a few places during the years me and Ryan have been together. Some still got active booby traps. One redoubt was wired a bit like this one. Linked up to some central control. Break into it and a timer starts. Unless you got the comp-code to stop it, the whole place'll go up. I just worry that this might be the same sort of thing."

  "We'll wait and see what Ryan thinks," Krysty said. "When he comes all the way around."

  Nobody argued with that.

  HIS EYE OPENED.

  It wasn't War Wag One and it wasn't Towse ville. In fact, it wasn't anywhere that he could remember seeing ever in his life before.

  His throat felt like it had been given a twice-over by a maddened stickie. When he tried to swallow, it hurt. Cautiously Ryan attempted to move his hands and feet, and was relieved to feel some sensation of life in the extremities. But a similar try at sitting up got him nowhere. The effort made him tremble, and the breath rasped painfully in his chest.

  By rolling his head sideways, Ryan could make out a little of his surroundings. He was on an iron bunk and covered with gray blankets. It looked like some kind of institution or a dormitory in the deeps of a…

  "Redoubt," he croaked.

  Then, very slowly, it all began to trickle back into his mind.

  Krysty finished her tasteless soup and pushed her chair away from the table. "Guess I'll go check on the patient," she said.

  The heels of her boots clicked on the stone floor of the short corridor. As she entered the sickroom, she saw Ryan lying as he had done for the endless days of the coma, flat on his back, hands at his side, his black hair curling over the pillow. His face was lined and thin and had a deathly pallor.

  As she stared at him, his eye snapped open and his right hand lifted a few inches from the blankets.

  "Hi, Krysty," said a frail, dry voice.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  "BOTULISM?"

  Mildred nodded. "That's what I guess it was. Or something very like it."

  "Never heard of it. You figure it was like a real bad gut rot?"

  "Worse than gut rot. It wasn't ordinary food poisoning, Ryan. That shouldn't have presented any serious threat to someone in your condition. No, botulism can be a stone killer."

  "Neck still feels sore, and my face is still stiff. Like… like I've been smiling for five days solid."

  Krysty grinned at the idea of Ryan smiling even for five minutes solid.

  Jak was leaning against the wall, picking at his nails with the tip of one of his throwing knives. "When we go?" he asked.

  "I suspect that our nearly departed comrade will require a few days of rest and recuperation before embarking on any journey away from this keep perilous," Doc suggested.

  "Means I'm not strong enough yet, Jak," Ryan translated.

  Mildred was sitting on the end of the bunk. "If you were a patient in my ward, Ryan, it'd be a week before you got out of bed, and a month before you ever thought about setting foot outside the hospital. You have to realize what a damned close thing this has been."

  "Felt the wings of the death angel," Ryan agreed. They'd managed to prop him up against a mound of pillows, and he was already looking better. "But Jak's right. We been here too long. Have to try and get into the gateway real soon."

  J.B. had briefed him on the scouting that he and Jak had done, explaining slowly to Ryan that there were only two possible options, and both of them were fraught with potential danger.

  "Try the sec-door first. Mebbe any booby'll be long dead."

  "Maybe not," J.B. said, "but I agree we try that first. We clear out our route to the place Jak found. If there's some sort of autodestruct defense, then it could mean a fast exit."

  "Sure. Now if you'd all like to go find something to do some other place, I want to get on with getting well again."

  "Not too much too soon," Mildred warned. "Your heart and lungs have taken a beating, Ryan. Remember, nobody loves a smart-ass."

  The improvement in Ryan's health was amazing. If he'd been outside with some decent food and the sun on his face, then it could even have shifted up a gear into miraculous.

  Mildred searched the shelves of dried and canned food, trying to find anything that was even vaguely high in protein, and made sure that Ryan took plenty of liquids with extra glucose and fructose to help the muscles rehabilitate.

  Apart from that, it simply took a little hard work: forty minutes' exercise—sit-ups, push-ups and some general loosening, then a ten-minute break. A brisk walk for a mile was next, trying to draw health from the dusty, ailing air of the redoubt. He jogged for a hundred yards, then sprinted a hundred, followed by walking a hundred. Over and over.

  In the first couple of days, Ryan did a whole lot of puking.

  First time he got out of bed, the room went spinning. His head felt like he'd been on a three-day drunk in a pest-hole gaudy, and
he would have fallen if Krysty hadn't been standing by his side.

  Exercise brought instant nausea. After just six pushups he lay flat on the cold floor with clenched fists, as close to tears as he'd been in years. He was angry and frustrated at his own appalling weakness, frightened that he might never get close to his previous level of fitness.

  At the end of the third day Ryan could manage a hundred sit-ups, with Jak holding his ankles. Muscle tone was coming back, with the softness of the sickness being replaced by the beginning of the iron sinews. He could manage to jog a full mile before running out of stamina.

  On the debit side, his throat was still painful, and he found it difficult to keep solid food down. The muscles of his face had relaxed again, and Mildred reported that pulse and respiration were both very nearly normal.

  On the evening of the fifth day the companions sat around the table, the unwashed dishes in front of them. Doc Tanner, to keep himself occupied, had calculated that day how long the supplies of food could last them.

  "Assuming that we each live to something approaching a normal life expectancy," he announced in his best rhetorical, ringing tones, "I estimate that young Jak, as the putative final survivor, would happily still be here in sixty years, thus leaving enough food for another dozen people for at least eighty-seven years. You see, I imagine the possibility of the patter of tiny feet in these dank corridors."

  "Don't bring me into the 'tiny feet' crap, Doc," Krysty snapped. "Not now, and maybe not ever. You got that?"

  She rose to her feet and walked quickly out of the room. They sat in silence for a few moments, hearing her stalking down the passage.

  "Guess the strain's getting to her," Mildred suggested.

  Ryan stood. "I'll go see her. I'm not that much in the way of pattering feet, either, Doc."

  As he went into the corridor, he could hear Krysty's heels, clicking away from him around a corner. He jogged after the sound, seeing her near the next bend of the corridor.

  "Krysty!"

  She paused, half looked around, then walked on out of sight.

  Ryan ran faster, almost bumping into her, where she'd stopped and was waiting for him.

  "Don't say anything, lover," she said.

  "Fireblast, Krysty! Think I don't know why you blew up at Doc back there?"

  "Why?" She was tense, her whole body language radiating hostility.

  "One day you want us to settle down. Start a family someplace it's safe and clean."

  Krysty nodded. "That's right, Ryan. And when's that going to be? Tomorrow? Next day? Next week? Next year? Sometime, never!"

  "Sometime," he said quietly.

  "You want children, lover? Do you really and truly want to stop running, fighting and chilling? Do you?"

  "Sure. Heard a song once about how you get one time around, then they nail the lid down on the box in the ground. One chance, Krysty. Want that to be with you. I want kids. Want to leave some mark on the land. Not just piles of unmarked graves. I'd love to have a child."

  Krysty suddenly shuddered, hugging herself around the middle.

  Ryan reached out and touched her arm, relieved when she didn't pull away from him. "What's the matter, lover?"

  "When you said about wanting a child it… Gaia! Like a feather across the back of my neck. Don't know why."

  "Come back to the others."

  Ryan folded her into his arms, feeling the brittle tension as she resisted him. He kissed her on the cheek and rubbed his hand across her nape. The tightness of the crimson sentient curls brushed against his fingers. Slowly he could feel Krysty relaxing.

  Her mouth was close to his face and he was aware of her breath on his skin. "Thought you were gone, lover," she whispered.

  "Yeah. I didn't know too much about it. I was locked away into another time and another place. Way, way off."

  "Where?"

  He shook his head. "Can't tell you for sure. It was like I was living another life inside my head. But it was real. Real times when that really happened to me."

  "Memories?"

  "Dreams. Nightmares."

  "Good and bad, lover?"

  Ryan took a half step away, holding Krysty at arm's length. He nodded. "Yeah. Some good and some bad, I think. Can't remember all that much. There was a lot of darkness. Thing I know best is that it's great to be here again, with you."

  A half smile touched her lips. "Come on. Let's go back to the others."

  "Right."

  Krysty's smile broadened. "You're looking a touch more like the son of a bitch that I used to know, Ryan."

  "Know and love?"

  "I was coming to that."

  "Guessed you might."

  "Now you got some of your muscles into something like working shape, I was sort of wondering how you felt about some night exercise."

  Ryan matched her smile. "I could manage something if you was to come calling."

  "Were to come calling," she corrected. "Your grammar's been worse since you recovered consciousness."

  "Sorry, love. But I still say I could manage something later on tonight."

  "I'll be there. Hope you can live up to your promise, lover. Talk's cheap—"

  "But action costs. Trader used to say that a lot, you know. Funny but… No, guess it's nothing."

  "I just hope you can deliver tonight, Ryan. Been a long time since you could raise more than a smile."

  Krysty woke first and padded along the corridor to make some coffee-sub, bringing it back to where Ryan was still dozing. There was no sign of life from any of the other four members of the group.

  "Here. Wrap yourself around this, lover, while I go shower."

  "I'll follow you. It's time to try the gateway."

  "Think we'll get out?"

  Ryan pulled the blankets up to his chest. "One way or another, we will. J.B.'s checked out the sec-door and the place where Jak thinks we can do us some digging."

  "You sleep well?"

  "Like a baby. No dreams. No nightmares. Just a long rest. How about you?"

  Krysty threw him a mock curtsy. "Exceeding well, thanks, lover. Eventually."

  "No complaints?"

  Krysty hesitated in the doorway, head on one side, as if the question were peculiarly hard to answer. "With another few weeks' exercise, you might be back to something like normal, lover."

  The mug of coffee-sub missed her head by less than a yard, and Ryan could hear her laughter all the way down the corridor.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  AN HOUR OR SO LATER, Ryan began to feel sick again. He was sweating and his stomach churned. Pains in his lower gut sent him running to the toilets three times in an hour. Krysty immediately called for Mildred, who took Ryan's temperature and checked his pulse against her chron.

  "What is it? Not the botulism back again?" he asked.

  "No. I've been keeping up the daily injections of the antibiotics, just as a sort of precaution. Now that all the toxins have left and you're getting back to health, I think your body's rebelling against the drugs. I'll stop them and see how that goes."

  "Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down," Doc remarked. "I'm sure I once read that in some digest or other."

  "We still going to try and get out?" J.B. asked.

  Ryan sighed. "It's all I can do to keep a tight ass and make it to the toilet without losing all control. Figure we should wait another day. Sorry, friends, to keep you all hanging around."

  J.B. had done a dummy run. Moving as fast as he could, and making allowance for the speed of the rest of the group, he'd gone the shortest way from the damaged sec-door up to the point that offered a chance of escape. They'd discussed whether they should make a trial dig at the rubble, but Ryan had felt that the route was only a last resort. There was a clear risk of a roof collapse, and he didn't think it was worth taking the risk.

  "Best time I made was eighteen minutes. For all of us I reckon we should allow something close to twenty-five."

  "What sort of time would they put on a
booby tinier?" Ryan asked. "Two hours?"

  The Armorer took off his glasses to polish them while he considered his answer. "Got to allow everyone time to evacuate the complex. Plus destroying any of the files and codes and comp-tapes. Can't be less than two hours. Could be three."

  "Not long," Krysty said. "Not if we're digging our way out."

  "No. Any way we can find out if we have triggered a main destruct alarm, J.B.?"

  "Doubt it, Ryan. We set the charge. If it blows the doors then we're in, straight to the gateway and make the jump. If not…" A thought struck him. "I guess there must be some sort of audible warning. Klaxons, or mebbe lights. Mebbe even a recorded message. Yeah. I'd bet there'd be that."

  Ryan nodded. "Makes sense. Well, if everyone's ready? Let's go."

  The huge door was just as it had been when Ryan had last seen it. In fact, he'd never even asked Krysty just how many days had crawled by while he was in the coma. It seemed as if he'd only left the gateway a couple of days ago, yet he guessed it was closer to two weeks.

  Deep down in the bowels of the redoubt the air was cooler and damper. And more stale.

  "I got the grens primed and ready. Put them on a five-minute fuse. No point in risking anything shorter. The blast in a confined space like this is going to be powerful. Farther away we are, the better."

  Jak tugged at J.B.'s sleeve. "Why not longer? Why take fucking chance? Why not half hour?"

  Ryan answered the question. "Farther away we go, then the farther to come back. We need to know if the doors are boobied. Time's going to be real vital, Jak. Five minutes is about right."

  "You all go. I'll set them," J.B. offered.

  "No. Four hands are better than two handling plas-ex and grens and detonators. I'll stay. Rest of you go. Know what to do?"

  Krysty replied for the others. "Course. Flat down. Heads away. Mouth open. Hands over ears."

  Doc tried a joke. "I recollect that one should place one's head between one's legs and then kiss one's ass goodbye."

  "Doc, say 'Good night,' will you?" Mildred grinned.

  The assumption was that the hinges and the main lifting and lowering mechanism had been damaged when the door slammed down. The main problem was in the very nature of armor-plated doors. They were specifically designed so that they wouldn't easily blow. Given enough explosive, there was nothing in the world that couldn't be destroyed.