by Dark E
Patterns within patterns.
They-Ryan, Doc, J.B., Jak, Krysty, Lori and that other poor unfortunate, Rick Ginsburg-all of them were at the fuel refinery where the gasoline that kept the baron in power was processed. Three large storage tanks were sticking up tall against the backdrop of the mountains. A score of rocking-donkey pumps bobbed up and down in patient, unchanging motion, great metal monstrosities bringing up the thick crude and sending it into a long warehouse-like building where the actual refining and processing of the gas were accomplished.
There were several low walls but only one possible entrance into the complex.
Ryan had chosen this as the locale of their final stand against the new baron and his followers, using the site's allure to bring in their foes, even as they fled out the back. Behind them, a stream of refined gasoline was gaining speed, the oily stench of fuel hanging in the air. Jak had opened all of the main valves on the three oversized fuel containers, and now thousands of gallons of gas were flooding through the complex, along the roadway and toward their murderous pursuers.
The hot exhaust from one of their foes' chrome-and-leather-enhanced Harley-Davidson motorcycles ignited the released fuel into an explosion of cataclysmic proportions.
The wretched ville of Snakefish was burning. The worshippers of the giant sand serpents went up in flames, abandoned by their reptile god to twist in the heated wind.
Time to go. Smoke hung in the air, and Doc felt himself cough as he tried to take in a fresh breath. Thick black smoke billowed around him like a hot fog, an ashen blanket draped around his shoulders.
"Run, dammit!" The cry came out of the fire. Who had issued the order? Ryan? Yes, that was the voice of command the one-eyed leader wielded so well, motivating all of them past death again and again.
And there she was, running as fast as she could across the withered pavement, her blond hair shining like a beacon, glowing brighter in the light of the fires.
Lori Quint, a seventeen-year-old beauty with a body like a newborn colt, all legs and stumbling, running for her life, her high-heeled boots of tooled red leather slapping down on the road. Doc listened. He could hear the tiny silver spurs on her footwear jingle with their trademark thin clear sounds, a fault hint of merry music hi the overheated air. For long months after the tragedy about to occur, he'd heard that very same faint jingle in his nightmares.
Nightmares such as this.
The jingle was coming up fast behind him, reaching out for him, begging him for help, each jingle whispering his name.
A seventeen year old, with a woman's body and the mind of a much younger girl.
Even as a man hi his mid- to late-thirties, and truth be told that was his real biological age, Doc felt a twinge of cradle-robbing when enraptured in the throes of passion with Lori. He was a man who appeared and acted over sixty years old, and she wasn't his lover in appearance, but more of a daughter.
During his earlier lifetime in the late 1800s, one of Doc's wealthier friends from Oxford had arrived at the local men's club on a weekly basis with a new young woman on his crooked arm-his nieces, he called them with a nudge and a wink. "Theophilus! Come over here, you scowling brigand, and meet my niece!"
Doc had smiled, allowing his colleague to present his lie to everyone's amusement. It was harmless enough, since the man's wife had been dead seven years and his children now adults with their own love affairs to conduct.
It wasn't until after Lori was dead, her nubile frame engulfed and turned to ash by the firestorm, that Doc realized that though he grieved for her he hadn't loved the girl. Oh, he'd cared for her, and sought comfort in her arms, in her embrace, in their lovemaking. She'd made him feel alive once more, whispering his name, shuddering with pleasure at his touch...even as she'd later chisel away at his self-esteem by pointing out her own vitality against the damages of time inflicted on his body.
She'd taken the young Joshua Mote as her lover, allowing Doc and Ryan to catch her in the midst of a particularly randy bit of sex. She'd offered no explanation for her illicit affair, no apology to the man she'd wronged. A woman had needs, Doc knew that, but a woman should also have decency and compassion.
And his sexual equipment and plumbing worked just fine, thank you very much.
At that moment in time, his eyes filled with the sight of her betrayal, Doc had never missed his wife so much.
Lori Quint. She'd been headstrong, that one, with the unproved wisdom and brazenness of youth. One moment she was as valuable an ally as could be hoped for in Deathlands, quick to protect herself and her companions by firing off.22-caliber rounds from her pearl-handled PPK.
Other times, however, a darkness revealed itself behind her laughing eyes. She'd back-talk Ryan or pick verbal fights with Krysty. She'd ignore J.B.'s advice and Doc's pleading and plunge headlong without regard for what might be hiding around the corner.
Behind her, the yellow and orange and red petals of the onrush of fire opened like an expectant flower, but this was no inviting garden bud-this was a serpent of flame.
The tall blond girl was silhouetted against the towering wall of yellow-orange fire as it swept toward her, hot tongues of flame licking at her boot heels.
"My sweetness, my lovely fawn," Doc whispered, the pet names cruelly ironic as he watched them engulf the girl, watched helplessly as she fell, and melted, within the fringes of the inferno. Then he could watch no more as his eyes filled with tears of regret and loss.
So close.
How many had died?
First his beloved children, and then Emily, and now his newly found angel, Lori.
Next off, the entire world and almighty man and his loves and hates and accomplishments and regrets, all dead, all dead.
And as for the good Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner? Hell, ol* Doc just kept on living. Perhaps he'd still be doddering around at the end of time, perched on the arid edge of eternity, the tails of his faded frock coat flapping around his legs in the buffeting winds as the universe finally wound to a stop. What good was his regained youth now?
Doc stood above an ocean of time and was amused to discover that the color of temporal fluid and mass was a wickedly shimmering blue.
"Boo hoo, blue hue, toodle loo, to you," he whispered, reaching up with a hand. The age spots had returned. Doc smiled wistfully, pulled the string to the single blue bulb hanging from the ceiling overhead and turned out the light.
Chapter Six
Darkness.
"Without a doubt, that sucked," Mildred said, her voice broken and weak.
Ryan opened his eye. Above, the hexagonal configuration of metallic disks housed in the ceiling fixtures of yet another mat-trans unit shone down impassively on him, the massive amounts of energy sent surging through them mere seconds before now spent and fading away. Ignoring the sensation of nausea, Ryan turned his face to the wall and found himself looking at a new color of armaglass.
The jump had been successful. The dingy gray walls of the North Carolina redoubt were gone, left behind and forgotten.
"Takeoffs aren't the problem. It's the landings," J.B. stated, the jump dream still fresh in his mind as his own pained voice offered up a mirror of Mildred's.
"What color is this, anyway?" Ryan asked, gesturing toward the armaglass wall. He was sitting up now, trying to ease the pounding in his brain. "Blue?" Mildred ventured. J.B. nodded. "Yeah. Blue. Haven't seen this shade of blue before, though."
"I have. In dream," Jak said. The albino was already squatting on his feet, his ruby eyes scanning the walls and his comrades.
"He's right. Saw this shade of blue in my jump dream, too," Ryan replied, squinting his eye and looking at the armaglass.
"I used to wonder if they would ever run out of colors for the armaglass. As many colors of blue we've encountered, I guess they were starting to get desperate," Mildred said.
J.B. shrugged. "Either that, or some higher authority liked blue."
"I recall reading a survey long ago that blue was the mo
st popular choice for favorite color," the physician mused.
"Well, there you go," J.B. answered, checking his weapons to make sure they'd come through safely. "I always liked blue myself."
"Other than seeing similar shades matching the armaglass in our dreams, either of you recognize this chamber?" Ryan asked impatiently.
"No."
"Sorry."
"Okay, then we're in new territory. Everybody awake?" Ryan asked, getting to his feet. He reached down and felt the butt of the SIG-Sauer still holstered and fastened down. He flicked back the strap, freeing the handblaster for when he needed it. His other rifle was still safely strapped around his body, tucked away at his back.
"Define awake, lover." The redhead was on her stomach, her arms tucked beneath her limber body.
"I'll take that as a yes, Krysty," he replied, kneeling to shake his son. "Dearr, you feel okay?"
Dean, who was on his side, rolled over and looked up at his father. A small spot of saliva dotted one of his cheeks. "Sure. Dreamed I was back on The Patch. Fell in the drink. Drowned."
"I am delighted each and every one of you feels so giddy and free. I, on the other hand, feel like something tracked in on the bottom of a shoe. My left hipbone is killing me," Doc told them.
"Roll off that damned Le Mat and you'll be more apt to feel better," Mildred suggested.
"Alas, to roll requires strength I currently do not possess, my good Dr. Wyeth. Perhaps you might assist me?"
"Assist yourself. I've got my own jump sickness to deal with," she retorted, sitting up with her back against one of the blue armaglass walls. Her stomach was cramping, but it had been a while since she or any of the others had eaten, so she suspected her nausea was induced more by hunger than by aftereffects from the mat-trans journey.
"I'm going to take a look and see what's waiting outside the chamber," Ryan said. "Triple red alert for everybody. J.B., watch my back. The rest of you go ahead and get your blasters ready, just in case."
"My dear Ryan, I doubt I currently have the strength to even hold my own pistol aloft to shoot."
"You're excused, then, Doc. But try and keep both eyes open. If the shit starts flying, I bet you'll find the energy to fight back."
"Well said," the old man answered, and got himself into a semierect seated position facing the chamber doorway.
Stepping lightly across the floor, with J.B. close at hand, Ryan stopped and readied himself before trying the handle of the heavy armaglass door. It lifted smoothly in his gloved grip and the door opened a crack.
Drawing his blaster and keeping it held at his side, Ryan's single blue eye peered out carefully. Outside the mat-trans, within his limited field of view, he spotted an array of digital displays and comp monitors. The comps were active, flickering in random patterns of frantic life and colored lights, the secret glowing dance that allowed each of the mat-trans units around the world to operate safely and securely. Their hard-drive bays glowing with tiny yellow dancing lights, their internal drives whirring away, all of the comps outside the chamber appeared to be in full working order.
"No anteroom," he said quietly to his waiting friends. "This mat-trans opens right into the control center. Comps everywhere."
"People?" J.B. asked.
Ryan shook his head no.
"Weird. I thought the engineers usually wanted a buffer zone between the unit and the control computers," Mildred replied, voicing her private opinion that while the mat-trans chambers were self-enclosed, nearly every one of the devices they'd encountered so far seemed to keep a smaller room and wall between master control and the units themselves. These smallish, buffer rooms seemed to offer a protective layer between the forces unleashed within the self-enclosed mat-trans unit and the software kept housed in the memories of the control comps, as well as serving as a simple waiting area before and after a jump.
Ryan slowly continued to take in what he could see from his protected vantage point inside the gateway. Along the far wall, behind twin desks of industrial metal with off-white terminal stations and monitor cabinets, he spied a long series of familiar-looking information storage and retrieval units, as tall as a man, chattering softly to themselves.
The unit data banks didn't hold his eye. The surface of the wall they were leaning against, however, did warrant a second look.
They were stone walls, with mortar slopped in the cracks instead of vanadium steel alloy, and Ryan thought they looked like the interiors of a castle or keep. He found himself scanning the corners, looking for the flames of burning torches. Instead, all he saw were the fluorescent strip lights used as illumination within a redoubt or a mat-trans gateway control area. "I don't like the looks of this," Ryan said softly to his waiting friends, and before he could continue his thought, a new wrench was thrown into the gears of the situation.
"Are you coming out or not?" a commanding voice from outside the mat-trans chamber boomed.
Ryan almost fired a round from the barrel of the SIG-Sauer the moment he heard the unknown speaker, but his honed instincts told him to hold off until he could learn more and determine the situation. If he closed the mat-trans chamber door, the auto mechanism would initiate another jump, and multiple jumps were enough to make a person feel like walking death.
Three figures came out from one side of the mat-trans chamber, their presence previously hidden by one of the thick exterior armaglass walls. A single man, the leader, was now standing in front of Ryan and the partially opened door.
"I promise I won't bite," the man said with a grin, both hands held out, palms open and empty in the so-called universal gesture of friendship.
"I've heard that before," Ryan retorted.
"Yes, I imagine you have. Still, you have nothing to worry about from me."
"I'm not worried about you," the one-eyed man stated, keeping the bore of the SIG-Sauer leveled at the heads of the two sec men, who were on a higher plane than the shorter man standing in front of them.
"You mean my guards? They're here for me, not you," the mystery man said, nodding toward the imposing human presence on his left, then right. "Meet Garcia and Lopez."
The two sec men flanking the speaker were large specimens, heavily muscled and solid, each a few inches taller than Ryan's six feet two inches. They were dressed identically in sleeveless black T-shirts, olive green Army-issue trousers and what appeared to be regulation U.S. Army combat boots. Red headbands circled their heads.
There couldn't have been anyone more different from them than the third man standing between them.
Tall, lean and imposing, with long silver hair coming back off his forehead that gave him a dramatic widow's peak at the center of his hairline, the man looked like royalty, or what Ryan had always thought picture-book royalty should look like. The mystery man's face was long and narrow, with high cheekbones that added a cultured air of elegance to his overall appearance. His eyebrows were bushy and of a stiffer, darker gray than his hair, giving his flashing eyes a shielded, hooded look, like a human bird of prey.
However, it wasn't the fellow's face that gave Ryan pause. What worried him were the clothes the man was wearing. First and foremost, mental alarm bells went off when the one-eyed man spied the long white lab coat. Under the overcoat was a neatly pressed black dress shirt and dark charcoal-gray trousers. Against the fabric of the black shirt was a light gray necktie with a golden lion's head for a tie tack.
Ryan hadn't seen a necktie since he visited the Anthill.
There had been other encounters with men in formal attire, but after the chaos and the degradation of the hidden installation behind the rock faces of
Mount Rushmore, Ryan had decided once and for all that the presence of ties and business suits in Death-lands was never a good sign.
The man was smiling, apparently delighted at the arrival of his new visitors, but his inviting expression wasn't as open and inviting as it might have seemed, since he felt the need for guards. The menacing hulks of the twin sec men on either side of t
he greeter were the deterrents that kept Ryan's gun hand steady, and the muzzle of the SIG-Sauer lowered in a readied, but nonthreatening position. Ryan knew the arma-glass of the chamber would protect him in the event of a gun battle, but he really didn't want to test it under such potentially disastrous conditions.
"How many of you are there inside the gateway?" the man asked.
"About a hundred," Ryan replied, causing Krysty and Dean to exchange grins as they listened from inside the mat-trans chamber. "Mebbe more. I'm lousy at math."
' Tracking comps out here put your number at-'' he paused to step out of Ryan's line of sight to consult a monitor screen "-seven. Seven people."
"Dark night," J.B. murmured from his vantage point near Ryan. "We've stepped in it now."