ACrucible of Time

by neetha Napew

  Dean, as well, had fallen asleep quickly, his blaster on top of the neat pile of clothing beside his cot.

  Doc had peeled off his cracked knee boots and the ancient frock coat and breeches, then stretched out on a bed. His swordstick and the ponderous Le Mat blaster were on the floor at his side.

  Though he felt very tired, partly due to his recent experiences in Puerto Rico, sleep refused to come gently to him from out of the good night. He found himself slipping into that uneasy land that dwelled part in light and part in dark, where gibbering specters came unbidden and restful slumber was an eternity away, where madness waited in the shadows.

  Doc lay on his back, staring sightlessly up at the white ceiling, trying to steady his breathing, but he was all too conscious of the blood pounding in his ears.

  He carried a silver half-hunter watch in one of the pockets of his frock coat and he finally sat up, leaned down and fumbled for it. Angling it toward the dim light, he tried to catch the reflection off the slender hands. "Five and twenty minutes past two," he muttered.

  A nagging headache pounded behind his temple, and his stomach was still churning from the predark soup, a churning that was becoming more insistent.

  "It would be wise to go to the toilet," Doc said, standing, knees creaking and cracking. He stooped to pull on his pants, then padded barefoot toward the door.

  Jak stirred at the movement, blinking open a ruby eye, his hair spilling across the pillow like frozen spray. "Where goin', Doc?" he mumbled, still half-asleep.

  "I must worship at the shrine of Thomas Crapper," Doc replied. "Back in a jiffy, or less."

  As he left the room, his head was spinning, and he began to fear that he was about to lose control of his lower bodily functions. He moved fast along the short stretch of corridor, past several other doors, until he reached the white-tiled washroom.

  Doc sighed with relief as he sat on the flush. "Welcome to the cloacal throne, Theophilus," he said quietly. "For which relief, much, much thanks."

  HE WAS RUNNING after a steaming locomotive, along a deserted platform. The train seemed to be empty, apart from the last car, where the window was down and an attractive young woman was peeking out, her arms around the shoulders of two little children. A boy and a girl.

  "Run faster, my dear one," she called. "And we can be safe together."

  "I am trying, sweet Emily. Before God, I am trying my very best!"

  But the train was pulling away, smoke billowing from the stack, floating along the platform, covering the last car, hiding the dream vision of Doc's wife and children.

  "No," he said so loudly that he woke himself up, finding he was still sitting in the bathroom, trousers crumpled around his ankles.

  Doc sighed, then cleaned himself and pulled up his pants. He washed his hands, then left the bathroom section, emerging again into the passage. He was still half-asleep and he turned right instead of left, so tired he was barely able to keep his eyes open, stumbling along toward the dormitory.

  He reached what he thought was the correct door, turned the chromed handle and pushed it open. Part of his waking mind was aware that the room was unexpectedly cold. The opening of the door triggered stark overhead lighting, showing him three metal tables, with a sluice drain at the foot of each, and eight rows of labeled steel cabinets. One of them stood partly open, showing Doc that it was big enough to conceal a fully grown man.

  It was bitterly cold, his breath pluming out around him like fog.

  "By the Three Kennedys!" he exclaimed. "But this is not our sleeping quarters."

  Behind him, the entrance door had been hissing silently closed, shutting with a solid click. Doc spun and found that some kind of internal lock had operated, and he couldn't open the door from the inside.

  At the same moment, he saw the notice above the entrance and the single word Morgue.

  Doc began to bang on the door, yelling for help at the top of his voice, feeling the first feather touch of panic.

  Chapter Four

  Ryan slid the SIG-Sauer into the greased holster, stooping to lace up his steel-toed combat boots. "You're sure about the sec lock out of this section?"

  Jak nodded. "Soon as saw Doc gone, Dean and me went looking. Still locked and bolted from inside. No sign Doc anywhere. Sure would've heard if attacked."

  "We've got to find him, Dad. There's no telling what could happen in here!"

  Ryan straightened. J.B., Mildred and Krysty were all fully dressed, sitting on beds in the dormitory. By his wrist chron it was nearly five in the morning.

  "Don't worry, son. We'll find him. He couldn't get far." The one-eyed man turned to Krysty.

  "You feel him, lover?" he asked.

  She shook her head. "Not really. You know I can't properly distinguish one person from another. Not when there's several of us around."

  "You check the bathroom, Jak?" J.B. asked. "Didn't have a stroke or heart attack on the John, did he?"

  "First place looked. Clean as knife blade in there. Shouted for him. No answer."

  "Are there some locked rooms?" Mildred bit her lip worriedly. "Old fart's got to be someplace."

  Ryan stood a moment, locked in thought, nibbling at a ragged edge of a torn nail. "Best we stay together," he decided. "If he hasn't gotten outside of the section, then there aren't many places he can be."

  "MORTUARY," MILDRED SAID, trying the handle. "And the lock's engaged."

  The friends stood in a silent half circle. They'd checked the outside sec bolts to Section JA 33, confirming what Jak had said. And they'd gone all through the whole section, calling out for Doc, waiting together in the oppressive stillness to try to catch the sound of a possible reply, filtering through the thick concrete walls.

  But there was nothing.

  Now there was only this one locked door.

  Ryan rapped on it with the butt of his blaster, pausing to listen for any noise from behind the gray sec door. He knocked again, shouting out, "Doc! You in there, Doc?"

  "Silent as a grave," Mildred muttered. "Likely to be cold in there, if the power system's still working. Yeah, likely to be real cold."

  "Best shoot out the lock." Ryan gestured for the others to move back out of the way. "Shouldn't be triple vanadium steel, just for a mortuary."

  "Doc used to sing that song," J.B. said. "Why build a wall around a graveyard, 'cause nobody wants to get in? Why build a wall round a graveyard, 'cause nobody wants to get out?"

  Ryan nodded. "Yeah."

  He positioned the four-and-a-half-inch barrel within a couple of inches of the lock, turned his head away and squeezed the trigger three times.

  There was an eruption of orange sparks, and the high-powered rounds shattered the fastening on the morgue's door, the shock of the triple explosion jolting clear up his arm to the shoulder. Ryan holstered the blaster and reached out, turning the handle, pushing the door open.

  Cold air rushed into the passage, like white spray, all of them feeling the biting chill.

  "Doc!" Mildred called, her voice ragged with the first edge of panic, pushing past Ryan, running into the disinfected, freezing room.

  "Here." The voice in reply came whispering from the deep shadows at the very rear of the mortuary, near the rows of deep cabinets.

  Doc was sitting, arms huddled around himself, ice frosted in his hair, his face as white as polished ivory. Only his pale blue eyes showed any sign of life.

  Mildred knelt at his side, finger going to the angle of neck and shoulder, feeling for a pulse. "Very slow," she said urgently. "Got to move him and warm him up."

  Ryan and J.B. bent down, locking their hands beneath the old man's thighs, steadying him as they lifted. Doc's head lolled to the right, his eyes closing.

  "What about the hot water in the showers?" Krysty suggested. "Raise his temperature."

  "Yeah. Make a bed ready for him with plenty of blankets. Get him stripped off."

  Now that the first shock of finding Doc so close to his unexpected date with the Grim Rea
per had passed, Mildred had assumed her calm, professional demeanor.

  DOCS BODY FELT FROZEN, the skin like parchment. The flesh was white, blotted with patches of blue and a deeper purple. Veins stood out on the back of his hands like dark whipcord. The frost melted away once they got him out of the freezing mortuary into the rest of the complex.

  "Strip him off," Mildred ordered. "One of you should…maybe both of you should get in the shower with him to support him. Jak, you and Dean and Krysty get the bed ready for him." Ryan and J.B. carefully laid the motionless body on the tiled floor, peeling quickly out of their clothes, modestly keeping on their underwears, while Mildred had turned the chrome faucets, releasing a steady stream of warm water.

  "Don't have it too hot for starters," Ryan said. "Shock could kill him."

  "Why don't you go teach your grandma to suck eggs," Mildred snapped.

  Ryan didn't respond to the gibe, taking one arm and lifting, while the Armorer took the other side. They eased Doc into a sitting position under the shower, kneeling alongside to hold him steady.

  "He could mebbe take it just a little hotter," J.B. suggested.

  Mildred adjusted the thermostat control. "How about that, John?"

  "Better."

  The water was now hot enough to steam, condensation streaming down the white tiles. All three men were soaked, huddled close together.

  "How's he doing?" Mildred asked, peering through the fog. "How's the pulse?"

  Ryan checked it at Doc's right wrist, closing his good eye to keep out the torrent of hot water. "Still a tad slow. But not far off normal."

  "Maybe we should get him straight into a bed," Mildred said thoughtfully.

  Doc's eyes blinked open and he gazed around, his expression blankly puzzled as he took in Ryan and J.B. on either side of him on the floor of the shower. Then he became aware of his own nakedness. Finally he turned his head and saw Mildred staring down at him.

  "By the…" he began, coughing as water gushed into his open mouth.

  "Shut it, Doc," Mildred hissed. "Not the time for your humor."

  "Where…? I was freezing in a desperately cold place. What…?" His fine set of perfect teeth were chattering like someone with an ague.

  "Get him up and out of there, guys." Mildred had found an armful of large white towels, made from a thick, fluffy material, in a closet. The water was turned off, the last drops streaming down the sluice, vanishing through the chromed drain cover. Ryan and J.B. helped Doc out, almost carrying him between them along the short stretch of corridor to the dormitory.

  "Here," Mildred said, giving J.B. and Ryan a towel each, giving a third one to Krysty, keeping the fourth towel for herself.

  Both women started to rub the old man dry, scrubbing at his pallid skin until it glowed with the friction. Doc moaned, opening his eyes for a moment.

  "Where is your sense of dignity, ladies?" he asked softly. "I am shamed."

  "You'd have been dead, Doc, if we hadn't got to you in time. That morgue was Arctic cold."

  He swallowed hard and nodded at Mildred. "For once I cannot find the means to argue with you, madam. Except—" his hands dropped to cover his groin "—I think that I can dry myself in the private parts."

  "Sure, help yourself, Doc." Mildred handed him the towel. "Scrub well, then we'll get you under the blankets for an hour or so. You'll be fine."

  MILDRED'S JUDGEMENT was dead-on. Just the single hour had drifted by when the long shape under the heaped blankets began to stir. Coughing, the tangled head appearing into the stark lights of the dormitory.

  "By the Three Kennedys! That place was cold as death itself. But now I am myself."

  "Thought we might eat some more of them stored cans, Doc," Ryan said.

  " 'Those' stored cans, lover," Krysty corrected. "Sounds like a good idea. Then we can mebbe get outside and see where we've ended up."

  "Smelled that pine scent again," Dean said, sitting cross-legged on the bed next to Doc.

  "Me, too," Ryan agreed. "One of the nicest smells I've ever smelled."

  Doc's teeth had stopped chattering, and some color had returned to his seamed cheeks. He ran his long fingers through his mane of silvery hair. "I would not be averse to spending some time in the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines." He laughed. "And I'll shiver the whole night through."

  AFTER THEY'D FINISHED EATING and disposed of the dirty dishes and cans in the clattering garbage dispenser, Ryan called them all together. "Make sure you got all of your clothes and weapons," he said. Everyone went through the motions of checking their blasters, though Ryan knew it was hardly likely that any of them, even absentminded Doc, would walk out into Deathlands unarmed.

  He then led the way out of the living quarters, with J.B. carefully closing the sec door behind them. The main entrance was only about three hundred yards away, past a number of locked side doors. One of them was labeled on the central map as being the armory, and J.B. spent a little time there trying to work it open. But it blankly resisted all of his efforts.

  "Wish we'd gotten some plas-ex," he muttered, finally giving up. "Though from what we've seen, they'd likely have stripped it bare before the final vac."

  "USUAL CODE, DAD?" Dean asked, pausing by the control pad at the side of the enormous double sec doors.

  "Try it."

  "How about the risk of a booby?" Krysty queried. "Though I don't feel anything."

  "Doubt they'd put one on the outer doors." Ryan shook his head. "No. Their only worry was obviously of someone coming in the back door, through the mat-trans. Try the 3-5-2 code, son. See what it brings us."

  It brought success, and the familiar sound of gears, muffled and distant, as the hidden machinery began to open the double doors, shifting hundreds of tons of vanadium steel strong enough to withstand anything except a direct nuke hit.

  Ryan had positioned himself at the center of the gates, the SIG-Sauer drawn and cocked. He squinted through the widening gap, watching for any sign of danger, ready to warn Dean to instantly reverse the number code and close the sec doors at the first hint of a threat.

  But he kept silent, watching as the doors slid wider and wider, revealing forty or fifty feet of the ground outside. There was bright sun, throwing stark shadows, and the smell of pines flooded into the redoubt.

  "Oh, that is wonderful," Krysty said, sighing, throwing back her head and drawing in a great lungful of the scented air. "Just smell the green."

  Dean moved away as the doors hissed and shuddered to their full width.

  There was a wide plateau of bare rock just outside, then the fringes of what looked like a solid wall of green pines towering skyward.

  Ryan stepped into the opening, glancing toward the blue sky, noting the streaks of white clouds, with some swelling thunderheads away to the north. A bird of prey, looking like a bald eagle, was riding a thermal a thousand feet above him, scanning the forest below for signs of potential food.

  The blaster slid back into its holster as Ryan stood, feet apart, taking in a deep breath of the fresh, bright air. "Fireblast! But that's good."

  He turned toward the Armorer, who'd taken the tiny comp sextant out of one of his capacious pockets.

  "Where do you put us?" he asked.

  "Just a minute."

  Jak had been scanning the ground outside the sec doors for any signs of life, animal, human or mutie. "See nothing. Looks like nobody found place."

  Ryan nodded. "That forest seems solid as a wall. Must've grown fast and sealed off any road there might have been way back around the long winters."

  "What's that?" Mildred had shaded her eyes against the brightness of the sun, peering out toward the west, over the tops of the trees.

  "What?" Ryan and the others looked to where she was pointing—all except J.B., who was still fiddling with the controls of the minisextant.

  "Silvery," she said. "Big lake. Or…or maybe even a sea of some kind."

  "Cific Ocean," J.B. said, putting the instrument back in one o
f his pockets. "Near as I can make it, we're in the middle of California."

  "Really!" Ryan looked across at his old friend. "Bit more specific?"

  J.B. had an amazing memory for the topography of the old, long-gone United States of America.

  "I'd say that the closest of the old villes to where we are now would be Fresno."

  "I took part in a free-pistol competition there, back in '99." Mildred smiled at the memory. "Beat everyone in the Pan-American Games. Scored 996 if I remember right. Four more than a skinny little guy from Brooklyn."

  "Fresno would've been around fifty miles west of us, over yonder." J.B. pointed to where there was the glint of distant water, the sun flickering off the lenses of his spectacles. "That's the Cific, all right."

  "But it only looks to be a scant forty or so leagues away," Doc said. "Surely the coast should be closer to 150 good miles off?"

  Ryan squinted down, running the gray dust through his fingers. "You're forgetting skydark, Doc. Word from the old ones who lived through it was that most all of western California simply slipped into the sea. Hundred percent death toll. The San Andreas Fault went at hour one, and the whole maze of seismic lines opened up like wet string. Dumped the land into the sea, bringing the coast way up into the foothills of the Sierras."

  "I forgot that!" Doc exclaimed. "What a fuzzy-minded old fool I am, to be sure, to be sure. So, we could be close to that part of California where the tall trees used to be."

  J.B. nodded. "National parks in this region, and we know that redoubts often got themselves built in such places. Sequoia and King's Canyon." He shaded his eyes with the brim of his fedora. "The tall trees, Doc."

  Ryan had walked across the plateau, looking down at the clearly man-made surface of impacted gravel, still showing the century-old marks of deeply ridged tires. As he closed on the fringe of sky-scraping pines, he noticed that there were the remains of some stubby stone bollards circling the edge of the roadway. At one point there were the traces of a two-lane blacktop running toward the northwest. But the greening had enveloped the road, and it vanished under the shadowy branches.