by James Axler
Ryan felt an instant pang of guilt that he hadn't checked out his son. The boy looked as though he were asleep, both hands thrust between his thighs, mouth open. Like most of them, Dean had been bleeding from the mouth and nose.
Doc looked less than well.
The old man had an arm thrown across his face, and his mouth was working as if he were trying to rid himself of something unpleasant. Both hands were trembling, and his legs were twitching. He'd been sick, and threads of bloodied spittle dangled from his parted lips.
Dean moved first. He uttered a little cry, then his eyes flicked open and looked around, revealing the blind fear of someone who didn't know where he was.
"It's all right, son," Ryan soothed, managing to kneel beside the boy and put an arm around his narrow shoulders. He smoothed the child's dark matted hair.
At first Dean pulled away, then recognition flooded in and his face cleared.
"Hi, Dad," he said, coughing. "We there?"
"Yeah."
"Where's here?"
"Don't know yet, Dean. You feel all right?"
The boy hopped to his feet. "Sure. Bit sick. Can we go?"
"Got to wait for Doc."
"He don't look good."
"Doesn't," Krysty corrected.
The boy looked at her. "What?"
"He doesn't look good. Not don't look good. You should try to speak properly, Dean."
"Yeah, sure."
But it was true. Doc didn't look good at all.
Mildred got down on her knees by the old man, gripping his wrist between finger and thumb. She put her head on one side to listen to his breathing.
"Fast and shallow," she commented. "Pulse and respiration both."
"What's the matter with him?" Ryan asked, realizing that it was unusually warm inside the chamber. He wiped sweat from his forehead.
"That first jump was a real bitch," she said as she stood looking down at the old man. "Maybe we should cover him and try and keep him warm. He's gone into a kind of shock."
J.B. looked at Ryan. "Hope it hasn't turned his brain again."
Ryan picked up the G-12 and slung it over his shoulder. The worry over Doc's mental balance was a constant running sore. The time-trawling that he'd undergone had certainly done permanent damage to the old man, and he sometimes seemed to find it hard to hang on to exactly "when" it was. Was it the late 1890s? Or the end of the twentieth century? Or was it closing in on the year 2100, the real present?
If the jump had been too terrifying for Doc, then it might have leaped on the fingernails that clawed at the edge of reality and plunged him deep into some abyss of confusion.
One that might hold him for whatever remained of his life.
"What if he's lost it, lover?" Krysty asked.
"Have to leave him."
"Wait a minute, Ryan…" Mildred began, her eyes narrowed in anger.
"Let's see," he interrupted. "Depends. But we can't split up for long. Maybe he'll be fine. Maybe not. We've seen Doc when he didn't know which way was up." He shook his head. "Get into a double-red situation with someone like that, and you all go off on the last train west. But let's see."
"He's coming around, Dad," Dean said. "Saw his eyes flicker."
"Should we get him on his feet, Mildred?" J.B. asked.
"Not yet, John. Lift his head and prop him up against the wall."
Ryan helped the Armorer ease the old man into a sitting position. Doc gave a long, breathy sigh, his lids clicking up like blinds. His eyes looked out vaguely, a faded blue, like a shirt that'd been left too long in the sun.
"Lushington," he said, pronouncing the word very carefully.
"How's that, Doc?" Ryan asked.
"I'm a famous lushington, my dear fellow. Too much of the major's best port."
Dean nudged Ryan. "What's he saying?"
"He's a bit confused about where he is right now. He'll be fine soon." But in his heart Ryan felt a feather touch of fear.
The old man gazed down, seeing the pool of vomit on the floor. "That looks sadly like the remnants of one of Mother Payne's delicious veal-and-pork pies. Such a waste. That bowwow sauce quite snapped at the end of a fellow's tongue." He gave the watching circle of faces a lopsided smile. "And the plum duff with cloves… All gone. Finished. Left. Departed with the captains and the kings."
Mildred wiped blood from under his hawklike nose. "There," she said. "Feel like getting up on your feet, Doc?"
He looked at her, shaking his head in confusion. "You are not one of those quadroon women working in that sporting house on Vine, are you?"
"No, Doc, I'm not."
"I thought that you were not what I thought that… I fear I have lost my thread of words."
J.B. leaned in and patted the old man on the arm. "Don't worry about it, Doc."
"Did you call me 'Doc,' my good man?"
"Sure."
"Never eat at any places called 'Mom's' or play cards with anyone called 'Doc.' Is that not what they say? Is that my name?"
"Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner," Krysty told him. "Remember?"
"What truly wonderful hair, you have, child." He stroked it with his right hand, "Like sparks from the very chariot of Phoebus. But beware the sad fate of Icarus who flirted with the sun and melted his wings of wax." He closed his eyes and swayed a little on his feet. "More water with it," he whispered.
Ryan looked at the others, seeing his own concern mirrored in their faces.
"Let's move out of here," he said quietly. "See how he is in a while."
J.B. and Mildred helped Doc between them, supporting him while Ryan eased open the lock on the gateway door.
"I'm tired and I want to go to… Go where?" A note of panic had crept into the old man's voice. "Where is Emily? And where are my dear children? Oh, Jolyon, Rachel, come to Papa! Where are all the snows of my yesteryears? Gone to graveyards every one."
Tears had overflowed the corner of his left eye and coursed through the stubble on his cheeks, touched the edge of his lips and rolled off his chin to plop onto the floor.
"Bad one, lover," Krysty whispered.
"Yeah. Been like it before and he's snapped out of it."
He pushed the door open a little farther, his SIG-Sauer cocked and ready in his right hand. A slow wave of moist warmth coiled out, making him take a deep breath.
"Feels like swamp country," he observed.
The small room beyond was much like the others in previously visited redoubts.
This one was about fifteen feet square with a table upended in one corner. A double row of shelves was empty. On the floor was a layer of smeared mud and a baseball cap with a torn fastener.
The second door was closed.
"I have nothing to say, Officer. I shall plead the Fifth Amendment. But spare the gray hairs of my poor old mother."
"Shut up, Doc," Ryan hissed.
The old man succeeded in making a bow toward him, despite the efforts of Mildred and J.B. to hold him steady.
Ryan eased the door open a quarter inch and pressed his right eye to the narrow crack. He opened it a touch farther, then pushed it wide.
The control area of the mat-trans gateway was much like the others. Row upon row of desks, each with a comp console, with a constant flow of information dancing across each screen. Run by timeless nuke-gens, these sections would carry on for eternity, relaying and sifting information as they'd been programmed a century before.
"I believe that I was once the proud owner of a malacca cane with a hidden blade of steel and the carved head of a silver lion," Doc said. "Perhaps one of you servants would be good enough to find it for me? I shall reward you with a union card and a wedding coat."
"His swordstick," Ryan said. "I'll get it. Sit him down then recce the place. Check the sec doors."
He went back into antechamber, seeing the long black weapon lying on the floor of the main chamber. As he picked it up and walked out again, his eye was caught by a crumpled scrap of paper almost buried in the dust. It
looked as if it had been hidden by the discarded baseball cap.
Ryan's insatiable curiosity couldn't let him just walk by it. He bolstered his blaster and stooped, picking it up in his right hand. The swordstick got in the way, and he tucked it under his arm, carefully unfolding the fragile, dust-dry piece of paper.
It had been torn out of a ring-bound notebook, and the writing on it was faded to the point of illegibility. Ryan angled the paper toward the light to try to make out the words. It crackled between his fingers as though it were about to disintegrate. He could see that there were a few words, each with some numbers alongside them. The sheet had been torn raggedly across the middle and obviously dropped by accident.
Ryan screwed up his eye, but the writing was too faint.
"Come on, lover," Krysty called. "You all right in there?"
He'd been about to throw the shred of paper onto the floor again, but he stuffed it into one of the pockets of his coat.
"Here's your swordstick, Doc," he said, walking into the control room.
"I am most grateful. One needs some sort of protection against the sturdy rogues, buggers and muggers, thugs and punks that infect the gutters of our fair city."
A faint smile puckered the corners of the old man's lips as he took the cane from Ryan, but his pale eyes still seemed to be focusing a thousand mornings away.
"At least he's up and walking good," Mildred said quietly.
"We going to all try outside?" J.B. asked from where he stood by the main entrance doors to the gateway complex.
Ryan thought about the question for a few moments. If they left Doc here, then someone had to stay with him. Mildred didn't have the combat skills if there was serious trouble. They needed Krysty's "seeing" for any exploration, which meant either Ryan or J.B. had to remain behind. And now there was the added complication of the young boy.
"Let's stick together. Mildred, you and J.B. keep an eye on Doc. If…" He hesitated. "If things look condition-red, then get him out. Fast as you can."
"Want me to open the sec doors?"
Ryan nodded. "Yeah."
The green lever that was present in almost all of the gateways was in the down position, showing the doors were locked shut. The Armorer paused, lifting a hand to the barely healed wound on his neck, looking at his fingers for signs of blood.
"Nothing," he said. "Thought it hurt some. Must've been the jump."
He grabbed the lever and began to heave it upward. There was the familiar sound of hydraulics, and the door began to open.
"No! "Doc shouted.
Chapter Eleven
THE OLD MAN jerked back from Mildred's helping hand, throwing himself flat on the floor, hands spread, legs wide apart.
"Close the door again, J.B., quickly," Ryan ordered.
There was the hissing of the locking mechanism as the green lever was pulled down.
"What is it, Doc?" Krysty asked, kneeling by the weeping man.
"Speeding away."
"What?"
"Such speed, my friends."
Dean tapped his forehead, grinning at Ryan. "Old man got a spent round in the chamber."
"Shut up." Ryan turned to Doc. "Tell us the problem, so we can help."
The tearstained face looked up at him. The tendons in the back of Doc's hands were straining like bowstrings with the effort of hanging on to the floor. "We'll all be thrown off. Earth moves. It does. Oh, it does. One thousand and fifty miles an hour in rotation and sixty-two thousand miles an hour around Father Sun. By the three Kennedys! My burning feet of fire! Save me."
Ryan could feel his own anger starting to smolder along its short fuse. Unless Doc snapped out of his present dementia—at least enough to function—then it might be better to tie him up and leave him safe. That way he wouldn't endanger anyone else's life. Or his own.
Mildred and J.B. pulled Doc to his feet, stopping him from slumping back to the floor.
"Can't you help him, Krysty?" Mildred asked urgently. "You have the power. Use it for him. Or he'll sink."
"I am not waving, my dear companions, but I fear me that I'm drowning." There was a shuddering void of horror in Doc's melodious voice. "I shall grow not old, as you who are left will grow old. I shall not turn to the path that was not taken."
Krysty stood in front of him, lifting her hands to touch him on either cheek. The old man cringed from her fingers. "I won't hurt you, Doc. Want to try and help."
"Where we live is the end of the long, winding road. Deathlands… Truly the lands of death. I once met a very old and wise man who told me what the American dream had become."
"What?" J.B. asked. "I always wondered about that."
"Old Bull Lee, he was sometimes called. Said that the American dream had become to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lie shines through."
Doc said it very slowly, his voice becoming grating and harsh. Nobody spoke, the only sound the whirring and clicking of all the control consoles around them.
Krysty closed her hands, holding him tightly. She shut her eyes and put her face closer to Doc. "May the force of Gaia cleanse you of this darkness and make you whole again."
He blinked, eyes rolling upward until only the bloodshot whites showed.
"Hang on to him," Krysty whispered. J.B. and Mildred tightened their grip.
"Why does…?" Dean began, stopping as his father's angry face glowered at him.
"Come on back to us, Doc. Back to your friends who care for you and love you. Come back and walk again in the shining of the sun and the turning of the tides. Come back, Doc."
His head rolled, and he seemed suddenly to become weightless. Words started to pour from him like yards of cheesecloth being regurgitated by a phony medium. Doc's hands opened and the swordstick clattered on the floor.
"My yesterdays are ever-present, tomorrow is another now. We all know that our life must end, but no one can know how. I was once lost in a rainstorm in Juarez, Eastertime it was. All I had to sustain me in that dire fog was my pearls and my amphetamines. Speeding away like James Dean. I see a young man, sorely wounded, hiding among row upon row of snowy sheets, his blood crimsoning them. My head, it pains me, my dear Emily. A physic might…sucked forward, like a cork from a temporal bottle."
The words were coming more slowly, and his head had straightened, his eyes opening and looking at the faces all around him.
"It's getting better, Doc," Krysty said, still holding his face in her palms.
"It's getting better all the while," he said, half smiling. "A friend once blew his mind out while sitting in a car, waiting for a set of lights to change. Better, all the time. I think that I know you. The horror, yes, the horror recedes."
"Do you know us, Doc?" Ryan asked.
"You are my trusty friend, Ryan of Cawdor, in whom I am well pleased. In the land of death, it is said, the one-eyed man is king."
"How about me?" Krysty asked, letting go of him.
"Beware the wrath of Wroth. Krysty Wroth. A lady who is perfect and gentle, yet fiery and armed against the lords of chaos. Thank you for your laying on of healing hands, my dear."
"You're welcome, Doc. Think you can stand without any help? Yeah?" She nodded to J.B. and Mildred. "Try him out."
Doc looked at his two supporters as they moved away from him. "The young lovers. And they said it wouldn't last. John Barrymore Dix, weapons expert extraordinaire and man of few words. A chevalier without fear and without reproach. A man could not choose better company to die in. And Mildred Winonia Wyeth." He smiled broadly at her, showing his oddly perfect teeth.
"You go taking a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut, you doped-up old bastard," she said, tempering her words with a grin.
"Yes, I remember you, Mildred. But this young man here…?"
"My name's—"
"No, pray don't tell me. No clues, my dear young man. Let us see if this poor befuddled old brain of mine can string together a fact or two and deduce from it. Now, what did the dog do in the night? Nothing. Precisely."
"One day, as we travel through this vale of tears, this valley of darkness, this land that once was Avalon, I shall explain all. Now, you have a determined chin. Black curling hair. Blue eyes that speak of courage. Broad shoulders and a deep chest. A knife on your hip that tells me that you are a person not unacquainted with the lists of combat."
"Doc, why not just—" Ryan began, but the old man waved a dismissive hand at him.
"I am nearly there. A boy who is the son of his father. And there I see the man who is undoubtedly the father to that son. You are the son of Ryan Cawdor and your name is Dean."
"You're right," the boy replied with a grin. "You remembered."
Doc patted him on the head. "I once was lost, but now I'm found. We are together again, my friends. Doc Tanner is himself once more."
"Fine," Ryan said. "Now let's get that bitching sec door open again."
Chapter Twelve
"CORRIDOR'S CLEAR," J.B. reported.
Ryan and the others joined him, finding themselves in a wide, curving passage with an arched roof. It was about twenty feet across, and the ceiling was about fifteen feet at its highest. There was concealed strip lighting that cast a steady glow on the dusty floor. Ryan noticed several sec cameras dotted along the roof, but none seemed to be activated.
To their left the corridor terminated in a blank wall of solid rock. They couldn't see much because of the long bend, but there were no side doorways or passages in sight.
Ryan looked at Krysty. "Feel anything? Apart from hot and wet?"
She grinned. "Certainly warmer than Newyork was. Considering this is recirculated air, it must be rad-blast hot outside. But no, I don't feel anyone around here."
"The control area looked like it had been cleared out carefully," J.B. said.
Ryan nodded. "Right. Seemed to have been a planned withdrawal."
"What is this?" Dean asked cautiously. "We still in the ville?"
"No. Feels like we're a long ways off, but you never can tell. Believe half of what you see, son, and nothing of what you hear."
"Skirmish line," Ryan ordered. "Me first this time. Then Krysty, Dean, Doc, Mildred and J.B. last."
