by James Axler
The water seemed to call to him then, drawing him toward its rippling surface, and Doc dipped lower, feeling it wash around his legs, and then begin to lap at his body. He sank into the bubbling pool, feeling the water both support his weight and also add that familiar heaviness to his movements. It felt wonderful, a giant’s hand wrapping around him, comforting his aching, weary, ancient body. Drifting there in the bubbling water, as it held him, supported him, clamored around him and kissed at his skin, he felt the ache of the journey begin to dissipate. And more; he felt the ache of his life’s journey dissipating, too, and without realizing it, he expelled a long, deep breath, as though he was utterly satiated.
The limbs of a tree hung over the far end of the pool, rufous leaves falling from its branches every now and then, wending their way on the breeze to carpet the ground around its trunk. Some of the leaves, Doc saw, fell into the water, and some floated away while others sank to the bottom to join the bubbling rocks.
Beside Doc, two other old-timers were in the pool, a man and a woman, smiling tentatively as they felt the water wash over their naked bodies. The man was so emaciated as to appear to be nothing more than a skeleton with skin draped over it like pink silk. Doc watched them for a moment, feeling the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. They looked relieved, happy. Like him, they had traveled miles to get here, probably handed over everything that they owned to try this miraculous gift. Now, the old couple were waist-deep in water, their ruddy, pink skin so wrinkled and fragile, bruised and scarred. They stood close, gently splashing the water up their bodies, watching it wash back to the pool in clear rivulets. As the water washed over them, the old man and woman gazed at each other, and Doc saw a look pass between them, something he recognized but thought he had forgotten—love. They were happy here, probably as happy as they had ever been.
Next to the bathing couple, Jeremiah Croxton was swimming away across where the inlet was at its widest, just nine feet in all, his patchy white beard dangling in the water. Croxton looked to the others who remained on the shore. “Come on,” he told them. “It feels fantastic.”
Standing along the shoreline, other members of the crowd were discarding their clothes as Michelle and Eddie egged them on. Even Mary Foster, the woman in her thirties who had traveled in Charles Torino’s wag, now pulled off her skirt and grimy blouse with her free hand, revealing the bandage along her shoulder and neck where the mutie wolf had wounded her, eyeing the pool with delight. She passed her baby to Krysty with a grateful smile. “Please hold on to her,” she requested. “I just want to see what it feels like.”
Krysty and Mildred watched as Mary sat on the side of the pool and lowered herself in, both feet at once. She smiled as she felt it, giving out a barklike laugh. “It’s warm,” she said as tears welled in her eyes. “It’s…beautiful.”
Carefully stepping along the shingle at the bottom of the inlet, Doc worked his way to the center of the pool. The bubbles were more profuse there, blurting from below the surface in a continuous flurry of activity, and he presumed that this had something to do with the rejuvenation process. The bubbles were, after all, the only thing Doc could see that made the pool any different from the rush of the stream. The pool wasn’t very deep, and it was hardly big enough to swim, but it had enough room to splash about in, and to cover a full-grown man if he bent his knees a little.
At the center, the smell of sulfur was more intense, making Doc wince a little as he adjusted to it. The bubbles filtered up to the surface all about him. He felt them pressing against his body, clinging to it and walking their way up his planes and curves in their slow, insistent march to the surface. Doc swept his arms around him, twirling in place, brushing at the bubbles and making them pop, and he smiled. Whatever it was, it felt good running up his body. Finally, something good in a world of bad.
Doc glanced to the shore for a moment, barely aware that his companions were still waiting up there. Others were disrobing, lowering themselves into the pool; already there were ten people in there, feeling the rejuvenating power of the stream.
Taking a deep breath, Doc closed his eyes. Then, in an instant, he had bent his knees and submerged himself entirely, dropping under the surface, feeling the water wash over his head. Warm, yet it felt cool against the skin there, cool and refreshing. With eyes still closed, Doc felt the water press against his skin, sealing him inside its grip like a mother’s womb, making him feel safe. The bubbles tickled as they ran past him, worked up his body and beyond, up to the surface.
This is it, he thought. My baptism. A baptism of wonder.
Standing at the edge of the pool, Ryan made his way across to where Krysty was rocking baby Holly in her arms. “Are you going in?” he inquired.
Krysty cooed at the baby for a moment before she answered him. “What do you think?” she said. “We’ve come all this way, and Daisy sure seemed healthy enough, right?”
Ryan tapped a fingernail against his lapel pin rad counter. “Radiation’s at normal,” he said. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”
Beside Krysty, Mildred looked at Ryan, concern furrowing her coffee-colored brow. “Radiation isn’t the only thing that can hurt you,” she said, drawing on her medical knowledge. “You could easily catch something from the water. Ringworm, say. Or you could just slip on a rock. Hey, it happens.”
Krysty glared at Mildred. “I thought you wanted to try this,” she chastised, though her concern was friendly, her anger just show.
Mildred looked at the pool where a dozen people now bobbed. “Aw, heck—I wish they’d installed changing rooms,” she admitted.
WITH THE WALL on his left-hand side, and scrubland on his right, Jak ran the length of the ville’s boundary wall, parallel with the dirt track that he had seen the cart following. The sun was higher now, and cover was becoming harder to find.
As he got closer to the curving corner of the ville wall, Jak slowed, glancing this way and that, searching for a hiding place. He was surprised to find that the wall here was unfinished, running only a few feet high. Presumably, most visitors never got this far. Why should they?
Moving out of the shadow cast by the wall, Jak ran across the scrubland and into the nearest field. Root vegetables grew in the field, their bushy clumps of leaves running in jumbled rows across the soil. To his right, Jak could see the dirt path, and up ahead he spotted the cart of blankets that had been hauled by the mule. The cart was stopped at the next field, and Jak could see several figures working there, digging at the land. As Jak got closer, he realized that the cart stood in a fallow field of dirt.
Jak paused, dropping to the ground and watching the proceedings in the fallow field from behind the masking leaves of the crops.
STANDING AMID THE thinning crowd, J.B.’s eyes glazed over as he half watched the oldsters stripping down and getting into the pool. To J.B., they looked like flies rushing to a day-old corpse.
Doc had been one of the first to go in, J.B. saw, brave or stupe or whatever you call that combination of the two that leads to discovery or death. Curious, perhaps.
Behind his wire-framed spectacles, J.B.’s eyes flicked to Eddie and Michelle, their tour guides. The pair was smiling and laughing, encouraging the old folks to dip in the pool. Beside them, Charles Torino had removed his shirt to reveal a tattooed eagle that swooped across the entirety of his back. The locals were all very willing to share, now that they had got their cut of their visitors’ loot, J.B. realized. Willing to share this miracle that the girl had attributed to God.
J.B. didn’t have much time for that talk, any mystical mumbo jumbo he had encountered had generally served only to obscure the facts. But what were the facts here? What was the pool? How did it work? How could it work?
The Armorer felt his legs aching from the long journey in the back of the wag, and his throat felt dry. And he hated to say it, even in his own mind, but he was feeling old. His muscles that never got enough rest, the dull ache across his shoulders from the weight of his jacket and i
ts hidden cache of weapons and ammo, his eyes. Yes, that was the real issue, wasn’t it? His eyes felt dry and exhausted, and took longer and longer to adjust each time he removed his eyeglasses to sleep. Age was catching up with J.B., no matter how much he ignored it.
No matter how much you tried to avoid it, J.B. thought, age did frightful things to a man. Every person on the planet was dying from that slow disease called mortality.
But the pool…?
JAK COULD SEE THREE youngsters working the soil of the fallow field, the oldest no more than fifteen, and each of them looked exhausted and malnourished. A fourth figure, the one who had led the cart, was a tall man in his twenties, strong muscles bulging along his upper arms. He was talking to the children, barking instructions at them, removing things from the cart, the items themselves obscured by it.
Jak watched for a long while, keeping himself hidden in the shadows until the youngsters finished digging or sowing whatever it had been that they were working at, and the man indicated the back of the cart. Two of the children jumped on the back with their shovels, while the third followed but left his shovel on the ground. The man pointed at the dropped tool, grabbed the girl and threw her to the ground. The girl was forced to pick up the shovel as the man led mule and cart away, back to the dirt road that led to the ville gate. Shovel in hand, the girl ran to catch up with the cart.
After that, there was no further activity in the fallow field. People were working in the other fields, youngsters mostly, like the ones Jak had witnessed, teens and kids. Jak waited patiently, and slowly the winter sun passed its zenith and began its slow death in the west.
WITH A LITTLE GENTLE coaxing and teasing, Ryan and Krysty had done a pretty good job of talking each other into trying the pool. Krysty stripped off and got in quickly, sinking down so that only her head was above the bubbling surface, her prehensile hair floating on the surface around her, a bright red cloud in the shimmering silver of the pool.
“Come on, lover,” she called encouragingly as Ryan discarded his own clothes, revealing a strong body, pitted with scars and scratches, old wounds from other days.
There were fifteen folks in the pool now, and Eddie and Michelle kept watch and spoke to the bathers in a friendly manner, answering their inquiries and generally making sure they felt relaxed. The group parted, giving Ryan space to join them.
“See?” Krysty said as Ryan lowered himself into the water. “It’s not too cold, just nice.”
“I feel like a horse’s ass,” Ryan muttered as Krysty stroked his scarred shoulder where it poked from the surface. “These people, they need this. I don’t.”
Krysty leaned forward and kissed Ryan quickly, just brushing his lips with her own. She moved fractionally away from him to look him in the eye. “You’ve earned this just as much as they have,” she told him. “I’ll bet you’ve lived three lifetimes to their one, and I’ll bet you’ll live six more before you reach their age.”
“I don’t need to be younger,” Ryan said, keeping his voice low as the other bathers swam about them. “Nor do you,” he added.
“You won’t lose your memory,” Krysty told him. “You’ll still be the same Ryan on the inside. Just younger. Mebbe it’ll heal some of these,” she said, indicating the scars on his arms and chest.
Ryan closed his single eye, letting out a long breath. He was thinking about his missing eye and something Jeremiah Croxton had said when they had first met. Could the supernatural waters here be capable of repairing his eye in the same way that they had restored Daisy’s youth? When it worked its magic, did the pool repair and replace what an individual had lost, no matter how permanent the loss had seemed?
Mildred sat on the edge of the pool, fully clothed but with her boots off, her feel dangling in the water. From a medical standpoint, the phenomenon was fascinating, and yet she was still wary. What was she waiting for? The whole of Babyville was monument to this fantastic discovery, a whole society built around regained youth and vitality. Eddie, Michelle, Daisy and the others—they were the litmus test; they were the proof.
As Mildred sat there, feeling the lukewarm water running through her toes, cooling her tired ankles, the blonde girl, Michelle, came over and crouched beside her. “Aren’t you going in, new friend?” Michelle asked, a bright smile on her pretty face.
Mildred smiled back. “Not just yet,” she said. “Maybe tomorrow, when it’s emptier. There’ll be time, right?”
Michelle assured her that there would. “Our friends are welcome to remain as long as they wish,” she explained. “That goes for you and all of your party.” As if that was her cue, Michelle looked about at the few people still waiting uncertainly on the shore. “Where is your other friend, the one with the white hair?”
Mildred thought immediately of Doc, then realized that the woman was speaking about Jak. Yes, where was Jak? “I think he…” she began, wondering what to say.
“He felt ill,” J.B. announced, suddenly standing beside the two women, his shadow falling over them. “Been getting that a lot, that’s why he came here. I think he went to lie down, back in the room.”
Michelle nodded in understanding. “I did notice that he was looking very pale,” she agreed.
“Nothing a little rest and some food won’t fix,” J.B. said with forced joviality. Wherever Jak was, J.B. knew he had to cover for him lest they arouse suspicion in their newfound hosts.
HIDDEN BY THE FALLOW field, Jak remained as the afternoon sun painted the sky with a pinkish-orange glow and dwindled toward the horizon. He had an idea what was in that field, what it was that the children had been burying, but he needed to confirm his suspicion. It made him feel tense just considering it.
Convinced that there was no one watching, Jak crept out from behind the leaves and crouch-walked into the field. The earth was churned up, holding a little moisture but not really muddy.
Jak made his way over to the spot where he estimated he had seen the children digging. He checked around for a moment, making sure he hadn’t drawn any particular attention. Then, standing, he toed the ground, scraping aside clods of loose soil with his boot. Nothing.
Jak looked down, eyeing the soil carefully, running his boot back and forth. There was nothing there. He needed to go deeper, get a shovel or a pick.
He looked up, peering around the field, hoping to spot a spade or pick or other utensil that might have been left behind by the farming children. There was nothing there, just the expanse of naked soil, an occasional green speck where weeds or grass struggled to establish themselves.
Cursing his luck, Jak crouched and began working at the soil with his hands. Perhaps he was in the wrong spot, perhaps there wasn’t anything to be found anyway.
Or mebbe, he thought as he reached into the ground and felt something solid there, wrapping his fingers around it, he was holding the wrist of another human being, buried beneath the soil.
He pulled at the wrist and found it wasn’t a wrist at all. It was an ankle attached to a wrinkled old foot on one end and a leg that disappeared beneath the soil on the other.
Jak stared at it, wondering what to do.
FLOATING TOGETHER, Ryan and Krysty watched as Doc drifted in the center of the now-crowded pool. His eyes were closed and he had a broad smile on his face.
“You know,” said Krysty, her mouth close to Ryan’s ear, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Doc look so happy.”
“It’s certainly been a while,” Ryan agreed.
As they spoke, Doc’s eyes opened and he began to push through the water toward Ryan and Krysty, almost as though he knew he was being spoken about. “Is it not marvelous?” he asked, his face dominated by his beaming smile. “No, not marvelous,” he corrected with thoughtfulness, “incredible, that’s the word for it. Utterly, utterly incredible. I never would have believed if I had not seen it with my own eyes, felt these fabulous effects.”
Ryan smiled noncommittally. “So you think it’s working then, Doc?”
“I can fee
l it working,” Doc said happily. “Deep down inside me, things are feeling stronger and healthier and altogether better than they did when we arrived. It is this pool. I do not know what it is that is in it, but it is like being dipped in a cure-all. Why, I feel ten years younger.”
“I’m glad,” Krysty said, touching her hand to Doc’s shoulder above the surface of the pool. “You deserve it.”
At the side of the inlet, Mildred gave J.B. a significant look. “Did you hear that?” she asked. “Doc’s feeling younger.”
“He doesn’t look younger to me,” J.B. growled. “I think he’s probably feeling delusional, same as he ever did.”
Mildred shook her head, chuckling at the Armorer’s typically gruff response. “You really don’t want to believe, do you, John?”
“If it’s true,” J.B. replied, “I’ll believe it. And I want this to be true as much as that old fool paddling out there in the middle of it, trust me I do.”
“Perhaps it’s like Krysty said, back in the trading post,” Mildred suggested. “We’ve seen so much that is bad and wrong with this world, why can’t there be this one thing that’s good?”
J.B. closed his eyes, feeling their tiredness behind the spectacle lenses he habitually wore. “Because long odds rarely work out in your favor,” he replied, listening to the bubbling water beside them.
CROUCHING IN THE DIRT, Jak pulled his hand back and looked at the foot that he had dragged up from the soil. The foot was wrinkled and pale, with rough, callused skin on its heel, ball and toes. It was attached to an ankle that, in turn, appeared to be attached to a leg and, presumably, a whole body, hidden down there, under the earth. Right now, it looked strange to Jak, almost comical had it not been so horrifying—a foot plant growing in the field, the ankle and bone-thin leg its stem, the toes its leaves.
