Breakthrough

by James Axler

  "Are you crazy?"

  "Hardly, though what I have endured would have certainly driven lesser spirits mad. In the other reality, I was the wellspring of invention. I helped to postpone the collapse of human civilization by more than a decade. And I discovered a pathway to other universes."

  "You brought the battlesuits here?"

  "That's correct. I met your lover, Ryan Cawdor, in my reality. When I saw him outside the mine this evening, I took cover. I was afraid that even in my current condition he would recognize me. Our last encounter was less than cordial."

  "He would have torn your head off."

  The whitecoat ignored her comment and went on. "It was most amusing to meet your version of Dr. Theophilus Tanner in the flesh. You see, he was an important figure in the history of my world's science. Not because of any discovery he made. He was a pivotal laboratory subject. As in your reality, my whitecoat predecessors trawled Dr. Tanner from the past, then expelled him to the future. However, instead of materializing in Deathlands, which of course never existed in my reality, he reappeared in my era, in the middle of a carniphage alert. He died on the spot."

  "A detailed examination of frozen samples of his tissues taken before his expulsion was the key to my cracking the barrier between dimensions. It's a difficult concept to explain, even to someone with the proper academic credentials. To simplify is to over-simplify, in this case. Suffice it to say that the changes in his cellular structure brought on by the trawling event revealed certain specific physical mechanisms that had up until then not even been hinted at. My research into the nature of these mechanisms produced the miracle of reality transfer."

  Huth leaned closer to her and said, "I opened the door."

  As he spoke, her prehensile hair reacted, visibly shortening as it drew up into ringlets.

  "Amazing," he said as he reached out to touch the red strands, which coiled away from his grimy, split-nail fingers like a nest of snakes.

  "Careful, it bites," she said.

  "A most remarkable mutation," he said. "Although I must admit, it's adaptive function is puzzling to me. Tell me, is the movement voluntary? Or is it automatic? Is your hair's retractability produced by a linkage with your other senses, or does it possess some sensory array of its own?"

  "Fuck off."

  "I'll have to cut some of it off for testing when we get to the camp. It could well be the basis for an entire new branch of cybertechnology. Yet another prodigious feather in my cap." The whitecoat sank back into his seat, a dreamy expression on his face. "This world is full of such mystery and promise," he said.

  "You sorely need killing," Krysty remarked as the gyroplane banked.

  After it landed on the Slake City airstrip, the cargo door opened and a pair of troopers leaned in and unbuckled Krysty from her seat. As they pulled her out, the whitecoat said, "I'll be by soon for a sample of that hair."

  Krysty didn't struggle in the troopers' grasp. There didn't seem to be much point. She was way outnumbered and with the cuffs on her hands and feet, even if she broke free, she wouldn't get far. Instead of wasting her energy, she conserved it, letting them half carry her along. The troopers took her through the airlock door of the biggest of the domes and from there down a series of tubular, antiseptic corridors.

  As they advanced, Krysty kept her eyes open, looking for the comp that controlled the manacles. As Colonel Gabhart said, it had to somewhere in the Slake City complex. But all the doors they passed were closed and none had visible markings on them. It occurred to her as she was hurried along that she might not even recognize the electronic brain when she saw it. The only comps she had ever seen were the ones the companions had come across in the redoubts—predark government caches of machinery and supplies. Those comps were a century behind what these invaders had. The science of Deathlands had come to a crashing halt in the year 2001.

  The troopers took her through a doorway into a small dome that was blindingly lit. Unlike the corridors, the structure had not one, but a half-dozen light strips across the ceiling. From the furnishings, it looked like an operating suite or a dissection room.

  Two she-hes stood in the hard light, beside a low black table with blood gutters running down the sides. One wore a battlesuit without a helmet; the other had on a tight fitting, sleeveless gray T-shirt and loose gray pants. Krysty was struck by the size and definition of the second one's arms. Beneath the smooth, pale skin Krysty could see every jumping sinew. The bulk of the muscle wasn't feminine, but it wasn't masculine, either. There was something very different about it. It was more fluid. More supple. Not only powerful, but fast. Very, very fast.

  Standing beside the operating table was a small black cubicle on wheels with a plastic hose coming out the top. There were LCD readouts on the side. Krysty didn't like the looks of it one bit. It reminded her of the tissue sampling apparatus she had seen Gabhart use on a cannie. The cannie had failed the tissue test, and been immediately foamed. Also next to the table were two-wheeled trolleys with instruments under clear plastic domes, and neat rows of injectable medicines in little bottles.

  "Don't be alarmed," the she-he in the battlesuit told her.

  Then she dismissed the pair of troopers. "You can go now," she said. "We don't need your help."

  Krysty took in the handsome, androgynous face, the intense eyes, the confident expression. The queen bee of this nasty hive indicated a chair next to the wall. "Please have a seat over there and take off your coat," she said.

  "Do I have a choice?"

  "No, of course not. I'm Dredda, by the way. And this is Jann. She's a medical doctor. She'll be examining you."

  As Krysty sat, the other she-he moved to the side and rear of the chair. Before Krysty could react, Jann locked an arm around her neck and plunged a hypodermic needle through her shirt and deep into her shoulder.

  "Yeow!" she cried.

  She couldn't get free of the arm. Jann pushed the plunger home, shooting burning pain into her muscle. Then she jerked out the needle, leaving a spreading patch of red around the tiny hole in the fabric.

  "Sorry to be so rough," Dredda said, "but we don't have time to wrestle with you."

  "What the hell did you shoot into me?" Krysty demanded, rubbing her wound.

  "Don't get upset," Jann told her. "It's perfectly safe. It's just something to relax you."

  It was already becoming apparent to Krysty that she had been drugged. Her head was growing heavy, and her tongue was starting to feel thick. Her fingertips and toes were starting to tingle. She tried to get up from the chair, but the she-he pushed her back down easily. Her legs had no strength.

  "You can't fight the effects of the sedative," Dredda said. "You might as well stop trying."

  Dredda and Jann picked her up under the arms and dragged her limp-legged over to the table.

  Krysty was fully conscious, but paralyzed. She had feeling in her limbs, but she couldn't move them. She could think, but she couldn't talk. The she-hes laid her out on her back on the operating table, then Dredda started pulling off her boots. Jann slipped the jumpsuit from her torso, unzipping it and rolling the fabric down over the points of her hips. Then the two of them pulled off the jumpsuit and her panties.

  Jann took a pair of stirrups from under one of the trolleys and attached them to the either end of the table. The doctor lifted her feet and hooked them inside, spreading her legs wide.

  Unable to raise her head, unable to give voice to the string of curses that filled her head, unable to defend herself, Krysty felt tears of impotent fury slide down her cheeks.

  You bastards, she thought, you filthy bastards.

  "Pick up her head so she can see what's happening," Jann said to Dredda. "It's a quick and painless procedure," the she-he assured Krysty. "The sedation was necessary only because we assumed you would resist."

  Dredda slipped a hand under her neck and gently raised her head from the table. What Krysty saw made her shudder. Below the flat, pale plane of her belly, above the tuft of
red hair atop her pubis, her entire crotch was in full view and easy reach of the muscular creature who stood between her splayed knees. After pulling on a pair of transparent, skintight gloves, Jann attached a long, thin instrument to the hose emanating from the low cube beside the table.

  Gaia, protect me! Krysty thought, shuddering as uninvited fingers deftly opened up her most private place and inserted the hollow, pointed tip of the instrument.

  The box beside the table began to hum and from deep inside her the instrument started making sucking, slurping sounds.

  "Your lover, Shadow Man," Dredda said, "refused to give us his seed for the in vitro fertilization of our eggs. But he couldn't refuse you. You gathered the necessary material for us. A little vacuuming up is all that's required. As Jann said, it will be painless and quick."

  Dredda set Krysty's head back down, leaving the redhead to stare unblinking at the domed ceiling. The extraction procedure took two or three minutes. They were very long minutes for Krysty. She lay there while the doctor probed her inner recesses with the suction tip, her face burning with anger and shame, more humiliated than she had ever been in her life. When it was finally over, Jann gave her another injection, which caused the paralysis to gradually subside. After a few more minutes, she was able to sit up and pull her clothes back on.

  Whereas before Krysty had been speechless due to the drug, now she was speechless due to fury. She looked wildly around the room for a weapon, her green eyes flashing.

  Dredda noticed the way she was staring at the instrument tray. "Maybe you should rethink that. First of all, you'll never reach it before I do. Second, I might accidentally injure you in the process."

  Krysty glared at Dredda. "What are you?" she said. "What kind of thing are you?"

  "You and I are not that different, actually. We have much of the same body chemistry. We have exactly the same emotions. The same yearnings. I just took advantage of an opportunity. I made a conscious choice to never be a victim."

  "That's not something anyone can control," Krysty said. "Turnabout is the nature of the universe. All universes."

  "I realize you think we have done you an injustice, if not an injury," Dredda said. "But we have the need to reproduce. It's biological, it's built-in, and just like you, we can't do it alone. We had to have his seed."

  "You're not really human anymore. The only way you can reproduce is in a jar."

  "We had to have our eggs extracted," Dredda said. "The genetic procedure we underwent would have damaged the eggs. In order to change ourselves, we had to give up motherhood, and the normal way of achieving it. That doesn't mean we can't love our offspring the same way you do, or that we don't want to see them grow and prosper."

  Krysty glowered at her.

  After a pause Dredda said, "How would you like to help us in another way? It could be beneficial to you."

  "I know, you want me to carry the thing you're going to manufacture. No, thanks."

  "It would be half his."

  "It's the other half that turns my stomach. Like I said, no, thanks."

  "There could be rewards."

  Krysty shrugged.

  "For one thing," Dredda continued, "you wouldn't have to go back to the mines. You could avoid that horrible death. And if you are cooperative, there may be another benefit that you haven't considered. You are a remarkable female specimen. Both Jann and I agree on that. You could join us. Become the first sister from Deathlands."

  "You'd adopt me?"

  "Not exactly. You would take a dose of the same virus that we did. You would undergo the same physiological changes. You would come out the other side a force to be reckoned with. No man could ever stand up against you. You would wear the battlesuit and wield its full, awesome power. We sisters are more than female, and you could be, too."

  "More than a woman," Krysty said. "And all I have to do to earn this honor is to bear…how many of your brats? Four? Eight? Twelve? Do you kill the male babies before or after they're born?"

  "You don't understand what we are doing, where we are headed. Sacrifices have to be made. You can't possibly appreciate that until you walk in our shoes, until you become one of us."

  "Just being in the same room with you makes me want to puke," Krysty snarled. "You don't deserve the joy of offspring. You deserve to be made extinct."

  "Have the guards take her to one of the holding cells," Dredda told Jann. "Let her think about it for a while."

  The doctor grabbed Krysty by the arm. She twisted and fought, but she couldn't break Jann's viselike grip unless she called on Gaia. And at that moment, she wasn't prepared to do so. There was no point.

  As Krysty was dragged to the door, Dredda picked up a slim, stoppered vial of pearly fluid and waggled it at her. "Thanks again for the help. There is enough Shadow Man here to make us an army."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Shortly after the gyro took off from Ground Zero, there was another confrontation between the slaves and their battlesuited keepers.

  The cry went up from the doomed miners, "We want water! We want water!"

  To emphasize their point, some of the slaves at the back of the crowd hurled their pickaxes at the trooper standing watch on the water tank. The flying axes clanged harmlessly off the fifteen-by-fifteen-foot metal cylinder and the stout steel framework that raised its bottom four feet above the glass.

  "No ore, no water," the trooper announced.

  This was the normal routine. No one got water in the morning until they returned with a load of ore.

  Emboldened by the troopers recent failure to act, some of the slaves tried to take matters into their own hands. They rushed the water tank.

  "A real bad idea," Ryan said as he and the companions took cover in the dimples.

  This time the troopers opened fire on the troublemakers without hesitation. Obviously, it was a plan worked out well in advance. It wasn't a wholesale slaughter because the workers were needed to mine ore. The guards performed selective mutilations, targeting those who were already showing the effects of the radiation.

  Lasers whistled, their green beams lacing through the charging mob from three sides.

  Slaves dropped here and here, squealing in pain.

  And the smell of burned meat drifted over the compound.

  Those who hadn't been singled out, scattered, abandoning the wounded men flopping about on the glass. Some waved their blackened stump arms. Others, more grievously subdivided, could only lay there and moan. None of those who had been hit were dead. None would die soon. All of them faced horrible suffering.

  "The least you could do is finish them off!" one of the slaves shouted through cupped hands.

  And for his trouble, he got a green beam through the middle of his stomach. It cauterized his bowels and severed his spinal cord, and passed on to drop the man standing behind him, and the man standing behind him. It would have kept on dropping slaves, but the others jumped aside.

  Skirmish over.

  Status quo intact.

  The slaves meekly picked up their axes and started funneling back into the mines. Their first cup of water was hours of toil away.

  As the companions fell into line with the others, Ryan and J.B. gathered up Gabhart and brought him along. The colonel was still unconscious. After they had selected a pair of sledges to use, Ryan and J.B. carefully laid him in one of them.

  "Mildred, what can we do?" Ryan asked. "Gabhart isn't coming around, and we need what's in his head or we're all going to die just like him. Slow and ugly."

  "I don't know what to tell you, Ryan."

  "You're a doctor, we need to wake him up. Give us some options."

  While they talked, the other companions eased the two sledges down the entrance's slope by their ropes.

  "Hard to do that," Mildred said.

  "Why's that?"

  "I took a solemn oath not to injure my patients," she said as they joined the others on the flat of the main tunnel. "Pain can be used to rouse people from this kind of sta
te. But as a physician I'm sworn not to inflict it unnecessarily. As a physician, I know that the colonel's better off unconscious when his body gives out."

  "There are more people to think about here than him," Ryan said. "People who aren't sick yet. Dozens of people. Some of whom are your friends."

  "I know that. I know that."

  "Triage, my dear Mildred," Doc said. "This calls for triage. A sound medical practice since the days of Hippocrates. Treat those with the best chance to survive. Leave the others to the grace of God."

  "Waking him isn't going to kill him," Ryan said, "and if it does, by your reasoning, it would be for the best. Mildred, we can't wait. Krysty can't wait. We need the information now."

  "Trouble is, it isn't just triage. I'm going to have to keep hurting him to keep him awake. It's more like torture. And I don't like it."

  "Just tell us what to do and we'll do it!" J.B. said.

  Mildred shook her head. "No, I know what to do. I know when to stop. I have to be the one to do it."

  When they reached the fork in the tunnel, the pair of guards stationed there split up the companions. This time Mildred, Dean and Ryan took Gabhart into the left-hand passage, and Jak, J.B. and Doc took the right.

  When Ryan's group reached the end of the tunnel, they parked their cart out of the way against the wall.

  "Let's get him out on the ground," Mildred said, gravely.

  She and Ryan lifted the limp man out of the box and stretched him out on the tunnel floor. The other slaves pushing sledges into the tunnel paid them no mind.

  Mildred knelt beside him and took his pulse. "It's fast and thin," she said, putting his hand on his chest. "His breathing is very shallow. We'd better get on with this."

  That said, she put the ball of her thumb against his left eyelid and pressed down hard on the hidden eyeball. Gabhart's legs jerked, and his arms thrashed. His head came up from the floor, his mouth open, gasping. The colonel didn't have the strength to keep his head up. Dean caught the back of it as it dropped, keeping it from hitting the floor.