James Axler - Deathlands 43 - Dark Emblem

by Dark Emblem [lit]

  "Not long enough," Doc protested in a murmur. "I could not alter the flow of history's river in a matter of seconds."

  "Minutes then. An hour. Long enough to warn yourself-or, better yet, appear at the same time, replacing yourself in the confusion as your other self vanishes into the temporal doorway. Other than a freak storm front that blew up on a dusty Omaha street, no one ever need know you disappeared. You could alter your future. You could save your destiny."

  Doc paced, talking as he walked, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his frock coat. "To reclaim the life I should have lived...yes, damn you, yes, yes! Of course, I would!"

  Jamaisvous smiled. "That's what I thought you'd say. I'd do the same, and in fact, I plan to. I have no love of being trapped in a world such as this. No cable television. No pizza delivery. No world wide web. I am luckier than most, but I am also bored out of my mind. Screw fresh coffee, pretty sunsets and sweet-smelling flowers, Dr. Tanner. I want to go home."

  "But what of your disease?" Doc asked.

  Jamaisvous gave Doc a baffled look. "Disease? What disease?"

  "Why were you placed in the cryo suspension plan if not due to illness?"

  Jamaisvous gaped at Doc for a long moment, before an explosion of grim laughter erupted from his chest. "Oh. That. I was placed in the freezer for my brain. Those in the know were aware of the impending holocaust. They also knew they would need men of vision after the bombs fell, and as such, I was put on ice until needed."

  "You agreed to this?"

  "Like your own experiences with the Totality Concept, I wasn't given much choice," Jamaisvous replied. "I wasn't conscious to experience the ex- citement, but from what I can tell, once the war began, it hit with ten times the destructive force expected. The new civilization they expected me and my brain to be a part of was wiped from the map, along with rest of the world."

  Doc sat back, his brow furrowed, staring across the candlelit room at his host.

  "So why am I needed? What knowledge I held of how time trawling was accomplished has been long lost."

  Jamaisvous looked Doc in the eye. "I need a man who's been exposed to trawling before and lived to tell about it, Dr. Tanner. Lesser intellects have no way of comprehending what they are exposed to in the temporal annex between past, present and future. Their puerile brains can't handle it and once the mind goes, the body quickly follows. You have survived two trips. That's two more than anybody else. While I have no explanation for what caused your physical deterioration in the forward trawl other than to say it might have been done purposely-"

  "On purpose?" Doc replied, his face pale in the yellow light of the den.

  "Yes. That is my theory. You should have arrived here in the future either intact or not at all. Instead, you made it safely, but with more than thirty years stolen. I think an acceleration process was used."

  Doc took a deep breath. "Could such a process be reversed?"

  "I don't know. To do so would take research that dovetails nicely with my own plans for trawling.

  Like yourself, Dr. Tanner, I also want to go back. Unlike yourself, I have never faced a trawl. I need to know more about the process before I can face stepping into that chamber. For I will get only one chance."

  "The matter is settled, then." Doc stood. "I will assist you in any manner I can."

  "Excellent. I make one request of you."

  "And that is?"

  "Your companions. Most of them would not approve, I think, of some of my experiments. You may tell them you are assisting me, but I ask you keep the notion of your personally enduring another time trawl to yourself until we are closer to the time of the actual event."

  "Of course. There is no need to cause them worry for my well-being."

  "Goodnight, then."

  "Good night," Doc replied, and walked out of the den.

  Jamaisvous remained sitting, his left index finger idly stroking the rim of his glass over and over in a circle. "The time has come," he whispered softly. "Time enough, at last."

  THE MOON ROSE over the walls of El Morro. Far off, in the quiet distance, the unique sound of the coqui could be heard, and for each single cry the little tree frog sent out, a dozen more came singing back in reply from his brothers. For hundreds of years, the native Puerto Rican tree frog had endured, proving that perhaps, things didn't always have to change.

  A brief spot of flickering illumination flared into being, only to be extinguished and replaced by a tiny glowing dot of red. J.B. puffed on his cigar, exhaling aromatic tobacco smoke into the night air of the fortress garden.

  "Good evening, John Barrymore," a familiar resonant voice said from behind.

  "Doc," the Armorer replied in greeting. He wasn't surprised, since he'd heard the older man's footsteps coming up from behind and recognized the sound and pattern of Doc's peculiar gait.

  Doc stood silently for a few moments, then turned to his friend. "I wonder, might I avail you of a smoke?"

  J.B. blew a plume of the pungent smoke through both nostrils. "You sure? This tobacco has a hell of a kick."

  "I am not a lad in short pants, John Barrymore, and I was smoking long before you were born," Doc retorted. "I think I can handle a twist of tobacco."

  "Got a point," J.B. replied, taking out the denim pouch of smokes and handing it over to the second figure.

  "I'm surprised to find you out here alone at such a late hour," Doc remarked as he rummaged through the pouch and removed one of the sticky black cig-arillos.

  "Couldn't sleep." J.B. held out his lit cheroot, allowing Doc to use it to ignite his own chosen cigar.

  "And I can't light up in the room or Millie starts complaining about secondary smoke."

  "I see," Doc replied after exhaling a perfect smoke ring.

  "Nice trick," J.B. said, watching the ring elongate and slowly dissipate in the night air. "I guess you have lit up a few cancer sticks in your time."

  "Cancer stick?" Doc asked with a frown. "I do not get your meaning."

  The Armorer nodded. "That's what Millie calls them. Old predark slang. Said they were supposed to cause lung cancer."

  Doc pondered this. "I suppose she would know. Still, I confess I suspect there are many more overt dangers presenting us with cancer-causing radiation on a daily basis than these slender tubes of tobacco."

  "Damn straight."

  The conversation between the men trailed off, and the sounds of the night seemed to grow louder.

  "So, what's your excuse?" J.B. finally asked.

  "For smoking?" Doc asked.

  The Armorer frowned. Doc could be annoyingly obtuse when he chose. "For coming out here to the top of the fortress so late tonight."

  Doc shook his head and his flowing white hair shifted around his skinny shoulders. "My mind, good fellow. I cannot stop thinking long enough to allow Morpheus to bring down his soothing, slumbering touch."

  "About trying to go back to the 1800s, you mean."

  "I beg your pardon?" Doc said, trying to cover his surprise and doing a lousy job.

  "The year 1896, to be exact. This guy with the fancy name, he might have something going with time trawling, otherwise you wouldn't be so worked up."

  "John Barrymore, I have to say I'm surprised. You are more of a student of human nature than I ever surmised," Doc stammered. "If such a possibility exists...I have to see it though. Dr. Jamais-vous's work here hints that I might indeed be able to return home someday."

  J.B. took off his fedora and adjusted the brim. ' 'Hell, Doc, from what little I know about time trawling, it's a triple-risky proposition with a bastard-poor chance of succeeding. You've cheated the odds twice, which puts you ahead of the reaper double time. Not to mention the second time you crawled into one of those things and got your ass pushed forward you came out on the other side an old man."

  "What would you do, John Barrymore?"

  "I honestly don't know, Doc. I guess I'm a lucky son of a bitch in that all the people I care about travel with me."


  Doc fell silent after that, and stayed with J.B., smoking the cigar down to a stub before leaving the way he came, his thoughts elsewhere.

  Maryland, Virginia, 1999

  DR. THEOPHILUS TANNER had been moved once more, this time from the caverns of Dulce, New Mex- ico, to a more civilized facade for a redoubt, with an outer shell of a beautiful white house. With the change in scenery came an ultimatum.

  "Have you reexamined our offer, Dr. Tanner?" Welles asked.

  Tanner smiled, and his smile was a wonderful thing to behold. "I have."

  "What do you say?"

  "I say, who am I to challenge the tides of time?"

  "We must have your full cooperation in order for the programming to be effective."

  "I give it to you, freely."

  "Then preparations must be made. And you must understand your place within the machine. Your intelligence makes you worthy. Your future is assured. You will be a great man, a leader in your own time once you are returned with the knowledge we intend to share."

  "How will I be readied?"

  "Patience. Time is irrelevant. Against my own better judgment, I have been told you must be properly informed."

  "Informed?"

  "We here at Chronos have temporal windows into the past and into the future. All is not lost Steps must be taken to influence that the proper chain of events are followed."

  "How important is my place?" Tanner asked uneasily.

  "You are but one plan," Welles said. "And one outcome. The right outcome. To assure this of happening, you will be given privileges and taught the future."

  So, as a more active part of his eventual acclimation into the Chronos project, Tanner found he was now being treated less as a curiosity in a cage and more as an equal. Many of those involved in the day-to-day operations of the Chronos project were eager to discuss their work with such an avid listener. Knowing that the elegantly dressed man from the past was an essential piece in the overall puzzle of time trawling, they welcomed his insights and deductions. Tanner gave them new eyes, with a decidedly different point of view, since he was a man of the 1800s.

  Women, in particular, seemed to flock to his lean form. Whether they found something appealing in his florid gestures and attentive manner was open to interpretation, but he soon found himself always in their company-either in the laboratories or during the meal breaks or even after-hours and socially. Most of the men liked Tanner's company too, seeing a father figure or an older brother in the smiling man's verbal musings.

  After correcting a few of the staff members who tried to call him "Theo," and rejecting the more formal "Dr. Tanner," one soul simply dubbed him "Doc." The nickname stuck, and even though his brain burned with wanting to know everything Chronos had to offer in order to devise his own individual escape, Tanner was quietly touched.

  In his lifetime, he'd never been a recipient of the signs of affection shown by a fond nickname, and he took quiet reassurance and pride in the familiarity of the abbreviation of his title.

  "Not all of those in this future world are black and evil," he mused to himself one night, wishing for a journal to keep his thoughts and impressions in, yet knowing such documentation would never be truly private. "Many of those here seem to be as much prisoners as I, held captive by their insecurities and fears over the highly classified nature of the project they are involved in. I can only hope my studies in philosophy give solace to those who speak to me in hushed tones as they debate the humanity and the morality of what they continue to try to accomplish."

  Months passed in this fashion, with the time approaching when Doc would have to allow the hypnotic orders and suggestions to be implanted in his brain, orders he knew in his heart he would never be able to accept, thereby tipping his hand that he had no intention of aiding these madmen in their schemes to alter the fabric of time and space.

  Before that day arrived, he knew he would have to escape.

  Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner made two attempts to flee his keepers.

  The first came after a year and a half of his participation in the various machinations of Project Chronos. By this time, Doc was a familiar staple among the staff. His natural charm had won over many of them to his side, on a private one-to-one basis. None of the scientists or engineers felt secure enough in their positions to publicly take Doc's side in his continuing debate to be allowed to return home a free man, but he knew he had many allies.

  And there were so many other projects in various stages of completion within the redoubt.

  One of these involved genetics. Doc was prevented from seeing much of the work in this sector, but as was his wont, he listened and he learned.

  Among the scientists on this project was an individual who seemed impossibly old and seemed to be suspended in a perpetual case of what Doc used to call "the shakes." The man, whose name was Pennyworth, spoke with a thick English accent that the years he'd spent among his fellows, all of whom appeared to be American or Japanese, hadn't blunted. His day over, Pennyworth would fold his white lab coat, look back at the sealed sec door of his laboratory and announce to his fellows, "And that, gentlemen, concludes the entertainment for today."

  Doc agreed. He'd seen enough, and was no longer entertained in the slightest.

  "WHY ME?" he asked after being captured outside the redoubt's gateway mat-trans chamber. Doc hadn't even made it into the control room before his attempt to leave was foiled. He had been betrayed by one of his fellow scientists, but by who Doc could not be sure. "The truth, this time, if you please."

  Welles placed both of his hands on his paunch and gave Doc a pitying look. "You weren't the first choice. We tried trawling a noted judge from the United States Supreme Court, but after the judge was picked up in the temporal annex, he didn't survive the retrieval process. How can I put this? Judge Crater arrived here in 1997, yes, but he arrived... incomplete. We might have saved his life, but he wouldn't acquiesce."

  "Which explains his disappearance-a mystery never solved."

  "Oh, Operation Chronos has been responsible for a deluge of urban legends and unexplained cases, Dr. Tanner. There are entire books written on the subject of strange disappearances and miraculous reappearances. Some, like our good judge, have been famous. Others, less so. Take, for instance, the case of Dr. Geraldo Vidal. On June 3, 1968, Vidal and his wife were traveling in Argentina late one night when they drove right into what they later described as a cloud of swirling mists. Sound familiar?"

  "I imagine this was the same sort of mist or fog I encountered during my own time trawl,'' Doc said.

  "Correct. Upon entering the mists, the Vidals were rendered unconscious. When they awoke the very next morning, they discovered their car was in Mexico. The time trawl failed, but at the same time, succeeded! We didn't bring them into the future, but we did manage a successful mat-trans jump on two living subjects thirty years in the past. Can you comprehend the implications of such a weapon?"

  "Yes, I am afraid I can," Doc replied.

  "In an earlier attempt, we trawled a limousine off the Fujishrio Bypass in Japan with driver and passenger, a woman of ill repute in transit from a whorehouse to a wealthy client. Our aim was to bring back living matter, not automobiles, but in this case what appeared in the mat-trans chamber here was an amalgam of both parties. Suffice to say, neither man nor woman survived."

  Welles got up from his desk and walked over to where Doc was seated, bending to whisper in his ear. "Do you want to survive?" "Yes."

  "I don't think so. You have damaged your credibility with such a foolish escape attempt, and you are now under arrest. All of your B12 access privileges to Chronos are revoked. You are not to be anywhere without a guard."

  "When am I to begin your treatments for reverse trawl?"

  "Soon, Dr. Tanner, soon. After all, the millennium is fast approaching."

  As WAS HIS ROUTINE in Chicago, then Dulce, and now Virginia, Allan Harvey paused in front of Doc's holding quarters to talk. His security team had been transf
erred each time with Tanner and Welles, all of them traveling across the country together. He'd seen less and less of Doc once the doctor had been allowed access to Chronos, but now, after the escape attempt, Tanner had been returned to the holding area.

  The room was spare, but complete with bed, desk, television set and other amenities. As was his habit, Doc had the television on with the sound off, allowing him to read without intruding noises and yet able to look up from time to time to see what was unfolding on the screen. If it looked interesting, he merely hit the mute button and brought back the sound.