by James Axler
"It's true, Finn."
"You too, Krysty. Couple of fucking liars. You think I'm still wet behind the balls, huh?"
"I said he wouldn't believe it," Krysty sighed.
Ryan tried one last time. "Doc Tanner is over two hundred years old."
"And I'm a swampy's foreskin. Come on, friend. Just forget it, will you?"
They had better luck with J.B.
"Over two hundred years old?"
"That's right, J.B., that's right."
The Armorer took off his glasses and polished them on the sleeve of his overalls, then squinted up at the ceiling lights through the gleaming lens. "Trawled and then sent on forward to our time? That's what you're trying to tell me, Ryan?"
As he spoke, one of the strip lights flickered and went out. Since they'd been in Wizard Island, they'd noticed how much of the technology seemed on the point of failing, or had simply failed. Ryan guessed it was because the scientists, much diminished in numbers, probably lacked the time to deal with such mundane matters. They were too deeply embroiled in Project Eurydice, whatever that was.
"Yeah. Born over two hundred years ago."
"If he was trawled when he was only around thirty— that's what you said?—then he spent only a few years in the time before the long chill. How come he looks around seventy?"
Ryan had wondered that. Krysty had pressed for more information when they'd watched the story scrolling on the computer screen in the library.
The answer had been vague and incomplete. On the most limited data, it appears that chron-jumps can result in speeding or slowing of metabolism, resulting in aging either faster or slower than usual. This was observed in the specimen, Tanner.
J.B nodded as Ryan tried to explain this to him. "So he's older than the real body time, but a damned sight younger than true elapsed time. I get it. And you figure he might know how to use some gateways for chron as well as mat-trans? Be good."
They couldn't tell Jak about Doc's age until the next morning. The old man told Lori himself. Ryan asked him how it went.
"The child is a caution, Ryan. She smiled as though I was joshing her. Kissed me on the cheek and said it didn't matter to her if I was one million years old. She is such a sweet dove."
THEY HAD NO FURTHER VISITS from Dr. Tardy or any of the other scientists. Finn and J.B. had failed to reach the main elevators and the sole exit from the complex, but the Armorer figured it could be done.
"Mean spilling a lot of blood. If'n we can get past a half-dozen sec men, then we can get at where they're keeping our clothes and blasters. Once we did that, we could clean out the whole place."
Finnegan had managed to persuade one of the scientists to take him to where the sec men exercised and practiced shooting their stubby blasters.
"Down another level. Lots of blaster stores. Locked tight. I see them shooting at comp targets. Nearly every fucking time they put them dials up to twenty, the fuckers misfired. I reckon it…a blind mutie could do better 'gainst them than those blasters. Odds must be hundred to one they won't work."
"Sounds like good odds," Ryan said.
AFTER THEY'D PLOWED their way through the stodge that served as food in the Wizard Island Complex for Scientific Advancement, Ryan and Krysty retired to their section of the dormitory. With something of a struggle, they'd managed to move one of the single beds off its mounting, snapping the rusting screws and pushing it alongside Ryan's bed to make it possible for them to sleep together.
Though it wasn't just sleep that was on Ryan's mind at the moment.
He lay pressed tightly against her, his erection poking into the warmth of her buttocks, his arms enfolding her. Pushing back against him, Krysty reached around to caress his penis, squeezing her fingers hard around the shaft and making him moan softly.
"That's nice, lover," she whispered.
The lights had failed in his section of the big dormitory. Since the vid cameras weren't infrascanners, he was fairly confident their lovemaking wasn't being witnessed and recorded.
His right hand cupped her breast, the nipple wriggling into hardness against his palm. Ryan nibbled at the back of Krysty's neck, nipping with his front teeth. The girl drew in a slow breath, pushing harder against him. Her sentient red hair shifted against Ryan's face, touching his skin with an electrifying arousal.
Knowing what she most liked, Ryan slid slowly down the bed, until his cheek was pressed against the muscular curve of her hip. He reached over with his hand and touched the coils of hair between her thighs. She opened to him, warm and moist, as his fingers found the trigger to her own deep arousal.
By shifting a little he was able to bring his penis against her ankles. Krysty felt him, laughed very quietly, then took him between her feet, rubbing him gently.
He probed at her with two and then three fingers, readying her. The girl tangled her own strong fingers in the long hair at the back of his head, pulling insistently at him, making him know what she wanted.
What she needed.
Her thighs clamped on either side of his face, drawing him into her body, and his tongue flicked out, tasting her, lapping at her softness. Krysty locked her heels together between her lover's shoulder blades, keeping him in place, pumping her hips against his lips and tongue. She felt the familiar, delicious fluttering of her stomach muscles as her orgasm rushed forward.
Ryan could judge how far she'd gone along the road, licking and sucking at her, centering on the core of her love, feeling her finally gasp and shudder, her thighs so tight around him he could hardly breathe.
At last she relaxed, and he was free.
"One day I'll break your neck doing that, lover," she sighed.
"I can't think of a better way to go," he replied, grinning up at her in the darkness.
"Your turn," she said, sliding down the bed, kneeling over him, her hair brushing now over his groin and lower stomach. The fiery tendrils actually curled around his cock, bringing him instantly to the edge of losing control.
"No," he managed to gasp. "Be too fucking quick."
"Can't have that," she teased.
Her head lowered over him, and he felt himself swallowed, sucked into her mouth. Krysty was the best Ryan Cawdor had ever known. He'd once, many years back, spent too much jack on a gaudy whore out Missouri way. She'd had ways with ice and with a length of knotted, waxed twine that had made his head spin.
But Krysty was undeniably the very, very best ever.
After she'd brought him moaning to the edge of a shattering orgasm, she withdrew her mouth, knelt astride him and lowered herself on the thrusting erection. Ryan pushed up to meet her, his eyes tightly shut, mouth sagging open. The gaudy whore used to promise two ups for every down, but it hadn't been like this.
When he came, he felt as though his entire body were gushing out through his penis. His back arched, and he cried out, pulling her down on him, his fingers digging so hard into her shoulders that they left vivid bruises for days. Krysty collapsed on him, kissing him tenderly around the face, her lips brushing him with the softness of a moth's wings.
"That was good, lover," she whispered.
"Yeah," Ryan said. "It was."
They made love twice more during that long night. They did it the second time with infinite slowness during the quiet hours of early morning when normally the blood flows at its most sluggish and the elderly and ailing are nearest to death.
The third time was around D in the red. Ryan woke, nestled against Krysty, and he was immediately possessed of a desperate need for her body. He rolled on her and took her quickly, almost brutally, while she was still barely awake.
Afterward, they held each other tightly, slipping back into sleep until they'd had their fill of sleep and were ready for another day.
RYAN WENT ALONE to visit Jak Lauren.
The corridors were patrolled by the helmeted sec men, marching in clumsy unison in pairs, none of them even turning to watch the stranger walk by. Ryan tucked his scarf into the neck of his coveralls, pausing at a corner
with an attack of painful gas from the turgid food they'd been given. There had been no word from any of the scientists on what they should do that day.
"Go where you can and find out what you can," he'd told the others.
The security units were at the end of one of the corridors farthest away from the center of the Wizard Island complex. Once upon a time they might have been considered unbreakable, but now some of the comp bolts and locks had ceased to work, and there were ordinary bolts rusting on a couple of the doors. One single guard stood outside the main cell where the albino was being kept.
Ryan stopped in front of the sec mutie. "Can I go on through?"
The vid camera above their heads turned and whirred. After a delay of several seconds, Ryan heard a human voice answering him.
"Permission granted, visitwise."
But the sec man didn't move. He stood foursquare, blocking the doorway. Ryan looked up at the camera again, hoping for intervention, but nothing happened. He took a half step forward, and the sec man's blaster shifted, its narrow muzzle centering on his stomach.
"Fireblast! Move out of the fucking way, you stupe bastard!"
The speaker crackled again. "Regret signals not being received. Please go away and return in one-half letter. May the peace of Central go with you."
"Thanks," Ryan muttered.
When he returned, he found Dr. Ethel Tardy waiting for him, pacing up and down the narrow passage outside the security section.
"Apologies for delay," she snapped. "We are most busy and normal operational repairs have been put on the back burners for too many years. Soon, it will all change. You and your companions may work with us, involvementwise, and share Central's rewards."
"Sure. Can I see the kid?"
The tiny woman nodded, waving her withered arm in a sort of salute. The sec man had disappeared, and all Ryan had to do was slide the bolt at the top and bottom of the door and pull it open. Jak was sitting on a narrow bunk bed. As the door opened, he stood up, his body tensing, but he relaxed as soon as he saw Ryan.
"Hi," he said.
Ryan glanced around and saw Dr. Tardy waddling off. But the dark figure of the sec man had mysteriously reappeared and now stood with his back to them. Ryan pushed the door closed and glanced around the cell. Then he looked closely at the boy's face for any sign of ill treatment. But Jak looked just as he always did—a narrow foxy face devoid of color, the eyes like distant rubies in sockets of wind-scoured bone, the familiar scar across the left cheek that tugged the mouth up into a simulacrum of a smile.
"How ya doing?" he asked.
"Not good. Not bad. Food's terrible. Bread and milk'd be better. How the others?"
"All fine. We found out the truth about Doc Tanner. Where he came from. How old he is. That kind of stuff."
"Yeah. How come?"
Ryan told him quickly, knowing it didn't matter much if the room was bugged. What they knew was already known to the scientists anyway.
Jak sat silent, occasionally asking a question. He wanted to know whether the date of Doc's trawling was linked with the date of the deaths of his two children and was puzzled about Doc's real age. But he never questioned the truthfulness of the story.
"So we could go time traveling? Yeah?"
Ryan nodded. "That's the theory, kid. All we have to do is find a redoubt with the right controls. And find someone who knows how to operate it."
"How 'bout Doc?"
"Who knows?"
They talked for another half hour or so. Jak told Ryan he'd been visited by a couple of scientists who had been interested in his highly developed fighting skills.
"Didn't care I chilled two sec men. Just wanted to know why did it. Not even how. Mostly why."
"After their generations of inbreeding, they must find the idea of slaughtering with your bare hands really weird."
"But minds weren't on it. Worried about research. Told me Central'd be pleased. Nearly got Eurydice done. Any day now."
"Any way now," Ryan muttered, vaguely aware he'd quoted from some old song one of the drivers on War Wag One used to sing all the time.
"How 'bout getting me out?"
"They talk about doing any experiments on you?"
Jak nodded. "Sure. Fuckers wanted neural readings. Synaptic reflex results. Motor speed. Muscle response. Plus lotta brain scans and bone samples. Not facing that, Ryan. You read me?"
"Sure. But not yet, you figure?"
"Not yet. Not until got their experiments done. Won't belong, Ryan."
"No. See you later. Any news, tell us. Any real problem, then get out and run for it. Best advice I can give you, kid."
"When you going to move?" he whispered, head very near to Ryan's.
"Soon." Ryan held up three fingers, showing not today, not tomorrow, but maybe the day after.
As he closed the door and walked past the sec man, Ryan realized how much he was coming to dislike the Wizard Island Complex for Scientific Advancement.
LORI STAYED IN THE DORMITORY all day, nursing her stomach illness. Krysty stayed with her for some of the time. At one point, though, she went back to the library on her own, but this time the sec door was securely closed. J.B. completed his working plan of the redoubt, putting in all the blind corners and potential danger spots, marking elevators and filling in where he knew. But when he showed his completed plan to Ryan that evening, there were huge blank areas he'd marked only as "Research?"
"What do they do there?" he asked. "I just can't figure it out. They got what I guess is around seven-eights of the place out of our sight. If they're doing weapons research, then they could be building missiles to the sun for all we know."
DR. TARDY APPEARED around early B in green. Her whole diminutive body reflected her anger.
"Your colleague and leader, Dr. Tanner, has caused disgrace here."
"How? What's he done?"
Lori heard this and came running out. She was on the edge of tears. "Where is he? How is he? Is he all right? Tell me."
"Terminate noise," the scientist snapped. "For the first occasion in seventy years there has been an incident of a person being drunk here."
"Doc? Drunk!" Ryan exclaimed.
"Yes. And with poor Dr. Avian, who is diminished, health wise."
"How come?"
"He is being brought here now. His stomach has been pumped in the medic wing, and he will recover."
"Sorry 'bout that," Ryan said.
Finnegan, who'd spent most of the day sleeping on his bunk, appeared bleary-eyed in the doorway, grinning as he caught on to what had happened.
"Fucking good for the old man," he said, laughing as he punched his right fist into his left palm with a loud smack.
"Unamused," Dr. Tardy barked. "Our projects here are finely balanced, near to fruition. In the next six or seven daily periods, we shall be ready to test several of our…" She stopped, as if she wanted to say more but couldn't. "That's enough. Our efforts for the peace of the world are nearly done. Soon we can go up to the place beyond to claim our reward in the world we will have reshaped for Central."
Behind the thick lenses of her glasses her eyes glittered and danced. A film of frothy spittle dangled from her coarse lips, running over her chin among the warts.
Behind her, off down the main corridor from the center of Wizard Island, they suddenly heard the raucous sound of someone singing.
"See 'er on the bridge at midnight,
Throwin' snowballs at the moon,
She said, 'Jack, I've never—'"
The song broke off, and they all clearly heard the noise of someone throwing up violently.
"In Central's name, shut him up," the little woman whined. "He will ruin our concentration, and as for poor Dr. Avian…"
She spun on her heel and waddled away from them, passing Doc Tanner at the corner of the passage. He was being supported by two stumbling sec men, his long arms drooped over their shoulders as if he were a dying scarecrow. His long jaw fell, and his eyes squinted at the scient
ist.
"Good morrow to you, Mistress Whateveryourfuckingname. Pax vobiscum. May you… Greetings, Master Cawdor. My dear, dear friends. Mistress Lori, my felicitations to you, above all."
Ryan and Finn took him from the two sec muties, who stood there, staring blankly, as if their orders hadn't gone any farther. They were still there when J.B. shut the door on them.
"Get me to bed," Doc said. "Had a little drink 'bout an hour… Gone right to…" He locked his bony fingers in the top of Ryan's coveralls, pulling the one-eyed man's head down. There was the smell of vomit and the stench of raw alcohol. But when Ryan looked, Doc's eyes were as clear as limpid pools, and his whisper showed no signs of inebriation.
"Ryan. Know all 'bout Project Eurydice. I mean all 'bout it."
"Yeah?"
"Think of your worst nightmare, and it's a hundred times worse. By the three Kennedys, but it is truly truly dreadful!"
Chapter Nineteen
HOISTED UP BY FINNEGAN, J.B. found it easy to short out the vid camera and sound mikes in half of the dormitory. There were so many pieces of equipment malfunctioning in the Wizard Island Complex that there seemed little risk of any of the scientists becoming at all suspicious. And it gave Doc Tanner the chance to tell them all what he'd found during the day.
"I encountered that halting fellow with the plas-steel fingers, the one who can hardly stammer through his voice box."
"Avian," Krysty said.
"Yeah. Got friendly. One scientist to another. He showed me part of his lab. Near shitting his breeches in case any of the others found out. Had him some pure alcohol. Showed him how to dilute it then mix it with some of that good spring water they've got here. We… Phew, but I fear I have imbibed a little too… I must…"
He pushed them aside and tottered off into the washroom, where they heard him retch. Lori went to follow him, but Ryan shook his head.
"Leave him be, girl. Best thing when you feel like that, with your mouth like a sticky's crotch."
Doc reappeared, looking rather more jaunty, singing some old chant about being born in a dead man's town. The rest became inaudible as he bent double with a coughing fit. His cheeks were almost purple as he fought for breath. Eventually he managed to straighten.