ACrucible of Time

by neetha Napew

  Chapter One

  Ryan Cawdor moaned and blinked open his eye.

  His head felt like someone had been using it to grind flour. He cautiously parted his lips and swallowed, tasting the bitterness of bile. It seemed as if a gang of muties had been using his mouth for an outhouse.

  "Fireblast!" he whispered, his voice sounding high, thin and cracked.

  The flash of dazzling light that had drilled through the optic nerve into the forepart of his brain had made him close his good right eye immediately. He took several long, slow breaths, trying to gain a measure of control over mind and body.

  All he knew was that the mat-trans jump had been a bad one. The leap from one gateway to another was never a pleasant experience, but some jumps were worse than others.

  "Bad one," he muttered to himself.

  There was only the briefest memory of starting the jump. All of them had sat down on the floor with its pattern on steel disks, matched by the ones in the ceiling. His back settled against the cold armaglass, with Krysty Wroth at his right and Dean, his son, on his left. Doc Tanner, Mildred Wyeth, J.B. Dix and Jak Lauren had ranged themselves around the hexagonal chamber.

  The door had been slammed, triggering the mechanism that would whisk them from that location to someplace else in the blighted remnants of the United States, now known as Deathlands. They had no control over their destination.

  Ryan sat still, swallowing hard to avoid throwing up. He eased open his eye again, squinting to see how his companions had survived the jump.

  The first thing he noticed was the color of the armaglass walls of the chamber. They had been blue; now they were a deep maroon, like venous blood.

  As far as Ryan could tell, everyone else was still alive and breathing. Krysty's head was on her shoulder, mouth open, her fiery scarlet hair coiled tight at her nape. Her long fingers were clenched tightly into the palms of her hands, and he could make out a worm of bright blood inching across the pale skin. Her emerald eyes were clamped shut, and a thread of saliva dangled from a corner of her lips.

  "Bad one," Ryan repeated.

  "Yeah, compadre, it was." The almost inaudible voice came from the far side of the mat-trans unit, from J. B. Dix, the Armorer, as he'd been known during the years when the two men had ridden together on the war wags of the legendary Trader.

  He struggled to sit upright, feeling in one of the deep pockets of his coat for his spectacles. He wiped the lenses on his sleeve and perched them back on his narrow nose, then picked his beloved fedora hat from his lap and jammed it on his head. "Yeah, bad one, bro," he said.

  "Doc looks in a sorry way."

  J.B. nodded. "And the kid doesn't look like he's ready for action."

  "Not 'kid,' old man." Jak's lids peeled back, revealing the ruby eyes of the true albino. His skin, as white as new-fallen snow, was smudged with dirt across the high cheekbones.

  Jak Lauren, from West Lowellton in Louisiana, was still only sixteen years of age, as skinny as a lath, with the wiry strength of a self-trained acrobat. His mane of white hair hung across his shoulders, onto his leather-and-canvas camouflage jacket. Like the other companions, he carried a blaster at his hip—a satin-finish Colt Python, with the long, six-inch barrel. But his favorite weapons were the half-dozen leaf-shaped throwing knives that he wore concealed about his person. Jak was able to take the eye out of the jack of diamonds at twenty paces.

  Or kill a man at three times that distance.

  "Damn it all to hell, Dad. That was a bad one. Worst jump I can ever remember." Dean Cawdor, at age eleven, was a mirror image of his father. He was the fruit of a brief liaison Ryan had with Sharona Carson, wife of the baron of Towse. Though Dean hadn't been long in Ryan's life, the one-eyed man loved him fiercely.

  "One of the worst, son, that's for bastard sure."

  Ryan was aware that Krysty was recovering consciousness. She coughed, then retched, putting her head in her hands.

  "Gaia! That was…"

  "A bad one," chorused Ryan, Jak, Dean and J.B.

  Krysty managed a wan smile. "Yeah. Had a foul dream, if that's the right word for what passes dribbling through your skull during a jump."

  Ryan nodded. "I was strapped to a table of polished chrome, and men with white robes and masks were working on me with long tubes and needles. Probing at my arteries, sucking my blood through into a whirling machine."

  "I was crawling through tunnels that were filling with warm mud," J.B. said.

  Jak shook his head. The snowy mane whirling like a torrent of melt water spray. "Can't remember. Just know was frightening. Old women in it, holding small knives. Pecked like beaks of birds. Blood on snow like petals of roses."

  "What was your dream, Krysty?" Ryan asked, holding her hand in his.

  "Only recall bits, lover. I was held captive by a man who stood always in the shadows. I could save myself if I could complete a puzzle. Just one last piece was needed, but I couldn't find it. Didn't know what shape and size it was. So it was totally impossible, but I had to keep on searching." She shuddered and squeezed Ryan's hand so hard he almost cried out. "Nightmare alley, lover. That's what it was. One of those black nightmares when you think you've actually lost your mind somewhere during the jump. Your brain's been swirled apart."

  Mildred Wyeth had recovered consciousness while Krysty was talking.

  "Know what you mean," she said, coughing, pressing her hands against her brown eyes to regain control. "My dream was about traveling back in the days of Amtrak, when I was a little girl. Before skydark, I was wandering from platform to platform in a huge station, trying to find the right train. Then I was in a train car but nobody knew where it was going. Just endless and pointless. It was like running and staying still."

  She smiled at J.B. and patted him on the arm, using his help to get upright, staggering a little.

  Ryan admired her toughness, knowing that he would almost certainly puke if he didn't stay sitting a while longer. But he already knew what a tough person Mildred was.

  She had been born way back, on December 17, 1964. Mildred was black, and a doctor, and came from Lincoln, Nebraska. Her father, a Baptist minister, had been burned alive less than a year after her birth by firebombing racists who hid their cowardice beneath white hoods.

  Her beaded plaits rattled and whispered as she shook her head to try to clear it. Two weeks after her thirty-sixth birthday, she had gone into the hospital for minor abdominal surgery that had gone badly wrong. Ironically, since cryonics was her medical specialty, she had been frozen to save her life. Very shortly after that the world blew apart. But she slept dreamlessly on, her body monitored by a small, timeless nuke reactor, until she was finally woken by Ryan and the others.

  She pulled J.B. to his feet, adjusting her Czech ZKR 551, a 6-shot target revolver, in its holster. Before being frozen, Mildred had been a silver-medal winner in the free pistol shooting at the 1996 Olympics. And she was the best shot with a handgun that Ryan Cawdor had ever seen.

  Mildred rubbed her forehead. "I know everyone says the same, but that was a mother of a bad one." She looked down at the motionless figure of Doc Tanner, who lay at her feet. "Old-timer looks a lot less than well," she said.

  The old man lay flat on his back, gnarled hands down at his sides. His grizzled hair was matted with sweat, and his breathing was harsh and irregular. Ryan crawled across the chamber, seeing that Doc had been bleeding from both ears, as well as from nose and mouth. His pale blue eyes were tight shut. It looked like he might have had some sort of convulsion, as his massive Le Mat pistol had been jolted loose from the holster on his hip.

  "Doc. Doc?"

  There was no response. Mildred moved to join Ryan. She lifted an eyelid, peering down at Doc. "Seems to be in shock," she
said. "Know how delicate the old bastard's mind is at the best of times? Well, this isn't the best of times. Especially after what happened in Puerto Rico."

  " 'It was the worst of times and it was the best of times.' " The voice was weak, the eyes still closed. Doc swallowed hard. "A Whale with Two Kitties, or some title. 'A far better rest I come from than was ever known.' Quoting and misquoting. Hither and thither. Not to mention yon."

  "Sounds in bad shape," Krysty said quietly. The old man struggled to a sitting position, aided by Mildred. He wagged a forefinger at her. "Anoint thee, witch. Thou rump-fed runyon! There's nothing wrong with my mind that a truly bad jump won't cure." He hesitated, looking puzzled. "That is not quite what I meant to say, I think. I mean that it was a poor jump and it has sadly addled my pate for a few moments. Sadly addled. Badly sadly addled."

  "Did you have any dreams while you were in the jump, Doc?" Ryan asked.

  "I think that I did."

  There was a long pause. Jak had got to his feet and was leaning against the armaglass wall, eyes closed, sucking in deep breaths. He ran his fingers through his long hair, bringing a semblance of order to it, then leaned down to help Dean to his feet. "Well?" Mildred snapped. Doc put his head on one side and peered up at her, like an inquisitive buzzard. "Well what, madam?"

  "You said you had a dream during the jump, Doc. What was the dream about?"

  "Ah, yes. Indeed. The dream. By the Three Kennedys, but it was passing strange! I was visiting an elderly aunt in Boston. It seems that I was betrothed to Emily, but not yet married. Aunt Alberta lived in a huge, rambling mansion, on Beacon Hill, looking down toward the Common. A somewhat gloomy building, with stained glass at every door and window."

  "Is this going to take long, Doc?" Mildred asked. "I have a life to get on with."

  Doc ignored her. "She had a number of cats. Dozens. Those very furry ones. Persians, I think they are called. They moved silently through the corridors, like a great gray wave, rippling up and down the stairs. And their eyes were green gold in hue, and they always seemed to be watching me. No matter where I went or what I did."

  Ryan coughed. "Mebbe you could finish this story later, Doc, when we settle for the night. Sounds like it's going to go on for a while."

  Doc shook his head. Mopping at his smeared vest with the blue swallow's-eye kerchief that he always carried with him. "No, my dear Ryan. I am nearly done."

  "Really?" J.B. said, disbelievingly.

  "Oh, indeed yes. The dream was that I found myself on the upper landing, which was where the maids' quarters had once been. It was thick with dust, and slates were gone from the roof, showing the leaden sky. Birds had nested up there, and the floor was covered in feathers and the brittle bones of dead pigeons. I stood at the end wall, turned and saw that my way back to the stairs was blocked by this silent army of cats, gazing at me with an infinite menace."

  He closed his eyes and sat quiet. After a few moments of stillness, Krysty nudged him with the silvered toe of her boot. "And?" she prompted. "What happened then?"

  "I woke up, dear lady. That was what was so strange about the dream. It just stopped dead like a brougham breaking an axle and losing its rear wheels. I may never recover from Jamaisvous's damnable manipulations, and I believe I was fortunate to avoid the depths of an all-consuming nightmare."

  "That's it, Doc?" Dean asked. "It just stops? That's not much of a dream."

  "I can tell you it prickled the short hairs at my nape, dear boy."

  Ryan moved to stand by the door. "Now we've finished with dream telling, I reckon we might do well to get going. See what sort of a redoubt we've ended up in."

  Everyone got ready for moving to condition red, without Ryan even having to remind them. Blasters were drawn and checked quickly, cocked and held firm.

  The one-eyed man put his left hand onto the cold metal of the handle of the armaglass door, looking around at his companions. "Here we go," he said quietly.

  "Do it, lover," Krysty said with a smile.

  "Got any kind of feeling?"

  She hesitated a moment, using her inherited mutie powers, trying to locate any imminent danger to them. "No. Nothing close by here."

  Ryan opened the door of the mat-trans chamber.

  Chapter Two

  At first the air seemed to have the familiar stale, flat taste to it.

  The redoubts were generally vast military complexes, built during the intense second cold war that dominated life in the period immediately before the horrors of skydark and the following long winters. Many were hastily erected in wilderness areas, often using swathes of national parks, causing great bitterness from liberals and conservationists. A number of bloody confrontations had erupted between the National Guard and outraged citizens.

  The total number of redoubts was unknown. Some were scattered throughout the world, and a few in the old United States were on a much more modest scale, concealed in isolated houses.

  As Ryan led the way out of the gateway, he wondered what kind of place they'd find. The fact that everything was still functioning meant that the master reactor control was still working: keeping the place secure; checking the lights and air quality; operating a tight and sometimes lethal security system; working as it had been designed to do around a hundred years earlier.

  But some of the redoubts had been infiltrated, and moving into a strange complex was always fraught with danger. There were usually on condition red for much of the time.

  He found himself in a small, square room, about a dozen feet across. Most of the redoubts that he'd visited had been abandoned and stripped bare, but some had obviously been deserted in the prenuke panic the last few hours before the missiles darkened the skies and the United States became Deathlands. In the past they'd found arms, food and beds.

  Sometimes people.

  Muties.

  "Seems safe, lover," Krysty said, following close on his heels.

  J.B. sniffed the air. "Not too bad. Smelled a lot worse."

  The room was painted in a light cream color, with a matte finish. It was totally empty, except for a small rectangular plastic-topped table against the side wall, with four tubular steel legs. There was a single narrow shelf on the opposite flank, but that, too, was empty.

  Occasionally they had come across prenuke graffiti, but these walls were flawless and clean.

  There was another vanadium-steel sec door on the opposite side of the room.

  "Ready?" Ryan asked, finger tight on the trigger of his 9 mm SIG-Sauer P-226 pistol. He reached out with his left hand to depress the cold metal handle and inch the door open.

  "Air tastes better here than in chamber," Jak said. "Fresher."

  Ryan hesitated, taking in a deep breath, as did everyone else.

  "Kind of a pine scent." Mildred sniffed again. "Feel the rush through the sinuses."

  "Yeah," Ryan agreed nodding, still holding the handle. "Must mean we're close to a forest of some kind."

  "Let's go look," J.B. suggested. "Forest means there's game."

  The heavy door swung slowly open, revealing what they'd all expected to see—a large room containing the main control section of the mat-trans unit. Digital displays on more than forty screens were in constant flux, altering every nanosecond, endlessly changing numbers, codes and formulas, monitoring every aspect of what had once been called Project Cerberus, which was a tiny cog in the infinitely complex system known to the selected few as the Totality Concept.

  The far side of the rows of control consoles was dominated by a huge sec steel door. It was in the closed position, sealing off that section of the redoubt against anything short of a full nuke-missile attack.

  "Down to orange," Ryan said, holstering his pistol. If by any amazing chance the sec door started to open, it would give them a good half-minute warning.

  The rest of the group of friends put away then-blasters and wandered around the rows of desks, seeing if anything had been left behind that might give them a clue as to where they were and wha
t had happened.

  "The waste bins are devoid of any contents," Doc declared.

  "No notes or anything like that," Mildred said, perching herself comfortably in a dark gray orthopedic swivel chair, revolving slowly, head back, looking up at the rounded ceiling. "Sec cameras are still functioning. Wonder if anyone's watching us. Probably not, I guess." She lifted a hand in a casual wave to the nearest of the security devices that had a tiny ruby light glowing at its top.

  "Nothing," J.B. said, taking off his glasses and wiping them carefully on his sleeve. "Place swept as clean as this is, likely means no food or weapons in the rest of the redoubt. Might as well move on, Ryan."

  "Sure. Back onto red."

  As was usual, Dean hurried forward to operate the mechanism that opened and closed the sec doors. He moved to the side of the entrance, sticking his blaster in his belt, laying both hands on the green steel lever, ready at his father's word to shift it to the upward position that would start the ponderous door moving slowly, opening the way to the rest of the complex.

  It was a moment of considerable danger.

  Ryan gestured for the others to back away, taking cover behind the control consoles. He moved to the opposite side of the door from Dean, crouching as close to the concrete floor as he could get, his blaster drawn again, ready to squint through the narrow gap that would appear beneath the sec door.

  "Go, Dean. Ready to stop instantly on my word."

  The boy threw his weight against the green lever, heaving it up. There was the familiar faint rumbling sound of buried gears engaging, deep within the walls. Ryan felt the trembling of movement through his knees, seeing the almost imperceptible beginning of action.

  Somewhere, from the far side of the vast door, he could just catch the faint sound of a warning siren. If there was anyone living in the redoubt, it would give them ample warning of the arrival of intruders.

  A narrow gap appeared between the bottom of the door and the floor, and Ryan flattened himself to peer beneath it. He saw the corridor outside, brightly lit, and the wall. There was no sign of any kind of life.