ACrucible of Time

by neetha Napew

  "Hold it."

  The gap was about seven inches.

  "Krysty, you feel anything?"

  There was a pause while the flame-headed woman closed her eyes and pushed her mind to go questing into the redoubt. "No, lover. Can't feel anything."

  "All the way, Dad?"

  "Sure."

  The lever moved from the horizontal and the great weight of sec steel began to slide slowly upward again. Ryan crouched on hands and knees, watching as more of the passage outside was revealed. He saw concrete, sloping to an arched roof that was illuminated by strip lighting, and he could also see the first of an expected number of sec cameras, fixed high up where the roof and walls ran into one another.

  The door was now almost completely open, leaving a gap of better than six feet. "Stop it right there, Dean. I'll take a look outside in the corridor."

  The barrel of the powerful blaster probed the air in front of him as he glanced around the corner of the opening, checking both ways. Both were empty.

  "Clear," he said, easing down the hammer on the SIG-Sauer.

  The scent of pines was noticeably stronger out in the passage, and he could feel a light draft coming from the right.

  "Everyone ready?"

  Most of the redoubts that they'd visited had the same sort of layout. The gateway chamber and control room were almost always in the deepest part, often far below ground level. Ryan turned to the left, walking only a few paces along the curving passage before coming up against a wall of raw, impenetrable rock, dark granite streaked with bands of silvery quartz. Again, this feature was common to most redoubts.

  "Back the other way," Ryan said.

  He walked past the rest of them, taking the lead. Krysty fell in behind him, followed by Jak, Dean and Doc. Mildred came sixth with J.B. bringing up the rear.

  Now the wide sweep of the passage opened up before him, with sec cameras dotted in the angle between wall and ceiling, about every thirty paces. The tiny ruby lights flickered on and off, under the random control of comp central.

  Ryan paused, looking up at them, wondering whether there was anyone watching the master screens that he knew would be hidden deep in the heart of the redoubt. Anyone? Or anything?

  They continued for about two hundred yards, always curving to the right, the concrete floor of the wide corridor sloping slightly upward.

  "Like being inside the Guggenheim in old New York," Mildred commented.

  "What's a Guggenheim?" Dean asked.

  "An art gallery, Dean. One of the best. The design is sort of based on the shell of a snail, so it winds round and round. Only difference with this place is that you start at the top in the Guggenheim and work your way to the bottom."

  They hadn't passed any side entrances, which wasn't all that unusual. Quite often the section of the redoubt that housed the mat-trans unit was buried in the part of the complex farthest from the center and the entrance.

  "There," Jak said, pointing ahead. The round-roofed passage widened, becoming a clear, steep ramp that stopped abruptly at the single sec-steel door of a large freight elevator.

  "Anything?" Ryan asked, turning toward Krysty.

  She hesitated a moment, closing her eyes. Ryan noticed that her sentient red hair was coiled loosely at her nape. It was generally safe to assume that if the hair had been bunched tight then there might have been danger in the air.

  "Nothing." She paused. "Well, there's the faint scent of piñon, floating around from some place outside." She flashed him a brilliant smile, teeth gleaming in the flat overhead lighting. "Wouldn't mind a little time resting among fresh mountain pines, lover."

  "No hostiles? That's good," J.B. said, taking off his fedora and fanning his face with the brim. "Kind of warm. Feels like the air-con's not working properly."

  Jak moved ahead, peering at the controls of the elevator. He turned back to face the others, his snowy hair floating around his narrow face. "Control code's at side," he called, voice dull in the stillness of the concrete vault.

  "Makes life easier." Mildred and the others had all bunched up, close by the elevator.

  "Four and two and six and six and seven," Jak said, peering at the neatly printed card. "Go for it, Ryan?"

  "Seems a most discreditful breach of security to leave the code placed there for everyone to see." Doc made a moue of disapproval, shaking his head and tutting between his perfect teeth. "Heads should roll."

  J.B. replaced his hat, tweaking it into place. "Probably had to do it during the last evac before skydark. Chaos must have reigned, and they had to put the code up to save time. Time must've been real tight with the nukes already up and flying."

  Ryan nodded. "Makes sense. Let's go onto red again, friends. All right, Jak? Press it in."

  The teenager's tongue slipped out to lick his pale lips as he concentrated on entering the correct code, making sure that each button was properly depressed.

  "Moving," he announced.

  They could all hear the faint hum of distant machinery, a sonorous, deep sound, seeming to vibrate through the marrow of their bones. There was a light above the door showing the progress of the elevator.

  The Armorer had his head on one side, listening to the noise. "Like it's kind of high," he said.

  Ryan had been thinking the same. It was taking such a long time, the exit from the shaft had to be a good way off. But that again wasn't unusual.

  "Don't like it." Krysty had a taken a couple of steps away from the others, glancing back over her shoulder.

  The indicator light showed that the cage was three-quarters of the way down.

  "Bad feeling?" Ryan asked, his voice ragged in the sudden tension. "Someone coming?" He looked away down the brightly lit tunnel.

  Krysty's feelings were so often right that they could never, ever be ignored.

  "Can't tell you. Not like muties or…"

  "Nearly here," Jak called. "What we do, Ryan?"

  Apart from Krysty, they were all gathered in a tight knot in front of the sec door.

  There was a faint electronic sound, like a tiny bell, warning of the arrival of the elevator.

  "Danger…close," Krysty stammered.

  The elevator door hissed open, and there was the deafening boom of a blaster.

  Chapter Three

  Ryan felt the hot breath of the lead shot as it sliced by, just over his head.

  Krysty's warning had come just in time. He had shouted out for everyone to get down on the floor a fraction of a second before the dull metal door opened. He took a moment to see that there was nobody in the rectangular cage and, in the same moment, he saw the gaping mouths of a pair of sawed-down scatterguns, jerry-rigged with what looked like fishing line and a crude arrangement of two-by-fours. The whole thing was set to shoot when the door opened.

  "Crude but effective," Ryan said as he stood, brushing cement dust off his pants.

  "Twelve-gauges." The Armorer crouched carefully outside the elevator, holding the door open with his left hand, peering at the smoking barrels of the booby trap.

  Mildred was rubbing her left elbow where she'd gone down awkwardly. "Bitching bastards! Why they want to do that to fellow Americans?"

  "Because, my dear Dr. Wyeth, the long dead assassins imagined that if anyone attempted to come this way, they would probably be of the Russian persuasion."

  The woman nodded. "Guess that you might be right…for once, Doc."

  He made her a low bow, the ferrule of his ebony swordstick scraping on the stone floor.

  "Good job you felt the danger, lover," Ryan said.

  Krysty gave him a tremulous half smile, waving away the fumes from the quadruple shotgun. "Yeah. Just about have taken us off at the shoulders."

  "Reckon that it's safe to use the elevator?" J.B. asked, staring into the empty cage, holding the Uzi at the ready in his right hand.

  Ryan sniffed, rubbing the side of his nose with his index finger. "Fireblast! I don't know."

  "After my experience at the hands of that
madman in Puerto Rico, I am somewhat averse to making another jump quite so soon." Doc ran a hand through his grizzled locks. "Mayhap we could take the ride to the top and then exercise especial care once we arrive up there."

  "Why not?" Ryan said.

  He led the way into the elevator, bouncing up and down a couple of times to test the springiness of the main support cables, half expecting them to suddenly give way and plunge the cage the rest of the way to the bottom of the shaft.

  But everything felt right.

  He beckoned to the others, waiting until they were all inside before releasing the door mechanism. "When we reach the top, everyone get down on the floor before the doors slide open. Press the control, Jak."

  The door hissed shut, and the albino teenager pressed the recessed button that carried the illuminated symbol of an arrow pointing upward.

  Ryan flexed his knees to absorb the movement, watching the lighted panel above the door that showed their progress up the deep shaft. His index finger was tight on the trigger of the powerful SIG-Sauer. Everyone was on full condition red, blasters cocked and ready for instant use.

  The humming of the predark machinery sounded smooth and fluid, taking them steadily toward the top part of the old redoubt. Nobody spoke.

  "Right," Ryan said finally, as the orange light gleamed close to the top.

  There was a slight jolting as the cage came to a halt. A moment's pause, then the steel sec door slid open, revealing a brightly lit corridor.

  Ryan relaxed. No shooting. No mines. No trap waiting for them.

  "Let's go take a look," he said, standing and stepping warily out of the cage, glancing both ways and seeing that there was no sign of anyone or anything.

  "There's a notice." Krysty walked across the far side of the passage, to where a large multicolored plan of the redoubt was fixed to the wall. A hand-lettered piece of faded, pale blue paper was tacked next to it.

  "What say?" asked Jak, last out of the elevator, allowing the door to slide shut behind him.

  "Gaia! Give me a chance."

  They gathered around the tall flame-haired woman as she read the notice, following the clumsy writing with her long index finger.

  It was short and to the point.

  "To anyone it concerns. This redoubt is now fully emptied on orders of Washington. Emergency quarters available only on limited basis in Section JA 33."

  Beneath it, in a different hand, someone had scrawled in pencil: "And put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye."

  J.B. shook his head. "Means there won't likely be any armament anywhere. Shame."

  "But it might mean some food and beds." Ryan looked up at the map. "Section JA 33. Where the…? The green box up close to the main entrance is marked JA."

  "There it is," Mildred said. "Right by the entrance. Same level as we're on here."

  "Wouldn't mind a good night's sleep in a decent bed before we tackle the outside world." Krysty glanced at Ryan. "What do you think, lover?"

  "Sounds good to me. Let's go find this section. Best stay on orange."

  FOLLOWING THE COLOR-CODED wall markings, it was easy to find their way through the maze of deserted corridors to Section JA 33. The whole complex was completely cleansed, with the majority of the side doors locked tight. Those few that responded to Jak's eager hands were echoing vaults of empty darkness.

  "Here we are," J.B. said, pointing with the muzzle of the Uzi at the letters and numbers, painted in green. "Must be through that door."

  "Watch out for boobies," Ryan warned. "Open it real careful."

  But there was no wired gren or cocked scattergun behind the sec door, just the same kind of setup that they'd seen on earlier occasions. Four white-walled rooms each contained a dozen metal-framed beds, each with a rolled, plastic-covered mattress and neatly folded gray blankets. An olive green metal locker stood alongside each bed.

  There was a pair of identical bathrooms. When Mildred turned on the chromed faucets, nothing happened for several long seconds, then there was a distant gurgling sound, rushing closer. The water that gushed out was initially rust colored and cold, but it quickly cleared and began to warm up, eventually pouring out, steaming.

  Jak had immediately headed straight for the dining and kitchen section.

  "Ace on line!" he called. "Plenty food."

  "CURRIED KING-CRAB gumbo," Doc said, allowing the words to roll off his tongue. "Succulent is the word that springs to my mind."

  The white dish bore an Army stamp. It sat on the table in front of Doc, brimming with a variegated sludge, his spoon settled on one side.

  "You mean it actually tastes like something?" Mildred asked. "The label on the cans I'm eating claimed that it was tender chunks of pan-fried boneless chicken, tenderized for my dining pleasure, in a flavorsome sauce with handpicked herbs and spices. With smoked beans on the side."

  "And?"

  She smiled at Doc. "And it tastes like different sorts of shit."

  "My can said it was a lobster bisque with assorted spring vegetables." Krysty took another hesitant mouthful, blowing to try to cool it, running it around her mouth, shaking her head. "I can taste plenty of chemical additives. Salt. Lot of sugar. Not much lobster."

  "I'll finish what you don't want," offered Dean, who had polished off his bowl of food and was sitting back, watching the others.

  "Go open another can for yourself," J.B. said. "My beef stew's better than a lot of things I've eaten. Things like dead rat and road-killed toad."

  "I confess that my soup is passingly adequate." Doc slurped another mouthful, a thread of the orange liquid running over his stubbled chin.

  "How about you, lover?" Krysty asked, glancing sideways at Ryan. "What wonderful blue-ribbon delicacy did you pick off the shelves?"

  Ryan stirred the bowl with his spoon, peering down at the speckled liquid, picking up a lump of something green and staring at it. "I think this is a pea. The strands of yellow are probably cheese."

  "Cheesy peas," Doc said, smiling toothily. "Or is it peasy cheese? Greasy and freezy. Easy on the palate with a hint of teasy."

  "Yeah, we get the idea, Doc," Mildred told him, dabbing at her lips with one of the paper napkins she'd discovered in a drawer in the kitchen.

  "My apologies. That tendentious old habit of mine of thoughtlessly engaging my mouth before I have allowed my poor, tired brain to operate."

  They carried on eating in silence, broken only by Jak's slurping and the rattle of spoons on dishes. The albino teenager went out into the kitchen and after several minutes reappeared with a fresh bowl of food.

  "Gaia! What is that?"

  "Chicken rice ginger lemon-grass. Want some? Big can. Plenty left."

  She shook her head. "Thanks a lot, Jak, but no thanks. Think what I've eaten should charge up the battery for a day or so." Krysty yawned, laying down her spoon. "Right now I think I might head for bed."

  Everyone seemed to feel the same, and in a minute Jak was left alone at the Formica-topped table, busily finishing off his Thai chicken.

  RYAN AND KRYSTY took one of the rooms, pushing a pair of beds together and overlaying some of the blankets. The dormitory, like the rest of the redoubt, was kept at a constant seventy degrees, the air dry and slightly dusty. The faint scent of pines seemed to have disappeared. J.B. and Mildred took the second of the rooms, leaving Doc, Dean and Jak to share a third. The old man was complaining loudly that his stomach felt a little disturbed, blaming it on the curried king-crab gumbo. "Best fasten up your seat belt, dear boy," he said to Dean. "I fear that we are all in for a somewhat bumpy evening."

  IT WAS RELATIVELY RARE for them to be able to spend a night feeling completely safe and relaxed. The outer doors of the redoubt were undeniably closed and sec locked, and Ryan had personally slipped the double bolts that sealed off the JA 33 section of the complex.

  Ryan and Krysty went to bed naked, which was unusual. Her Smith & Wesson Model 640 double-action blaster, with the snub-nose barrel, was tucked unde
r the pillow. Ryan had laid his long blaster— the 7.62 mm SSG-70 Steyr bolt-action rifle—on the floor on his side of the makeshift double bed. The SIG-Sauer P-226 pistol was beside it.

  He worked the dimmer switch, reducing the room to near darkness before padding across to climb in next to Krysty, feeling the warmth of her body.

  "Hi, lover," she whispered, reaching out to him, allowing her fingers to trail down across the scarred chest, over the flat, muscular wall of his stomach, lower, finding him instantly hard, ready for her. They teased and touched each other with the tender, sure knowledge of longtime lovers.

  "Quickie to start?" he asked quietly, his fingers caressing the soft flesh between her slightly parted thighs.

  "Mmm… Quicker the better, lover."

  Ryan rolled on top of her, guiding himself with his right hand, starting the steady, rhythmic pressure. He supported some of his weight on his elbows, kissing her mouth, sliding a little way up the bed to make the contact deeper.

  He could feel her amazing control, her body seeming to shrink about him, squeezing him tight, waves of pressure gripping him and sucking him deeper. Her body rose to meet him on every thrust, her mouth open, eyes closed.

  "Not yet…" she whispered.

  He held back, trying to set his mind onto something else, slowing himself to meet her readiness, aware of her muscles butterflying around him, sensing her breath coming faster.

  Krysty moaned, her fingers digging into his back. "Yes, lover, yes."

  Ryan closed his eye, biting his lip so hard with the intensity of his orgasm that he was vaguely aware of a thread of hot blood trickling down his chin. Krysty's back arched under him and she was motionless for a frozen moment, then she bucked and heaved, crying out in her passion.

  For several long, soft moments, they clung to each other, letting their breath return to normal, feeling each other's heartbeat.

  "Another?" Ryan asked.

  "Why not?"

  JAK HAD FALLEN instantly into a deep sleep, on his back, snoring quietly. He had stripped off to a T-shirt and pants, using only a single blanket to cover his skinny body. The taped hilt of one of his throwing knives protruded from beneath the Army-issue pillow.