by Dark E
The meat was served with a hot stuffed pepper on the side and a dollop of strong-smelling garlic sauce called ajilimojili that most of the group didn't eat, except for Doc who was glad to partake of both Dean's and Mildred's helpings.
Asopao, a thick rice soup with more of the native herbs, accompanied the meat. Pepper and fresh asparagus tips were mixed into the thick liquids, causing Ryan to reflect that the soup alone was more of a meal than most of them were used to eating.
A pineapple cake with coconut shavings feathering its cream-cheese icing was presented for dessert and even though their stomachs were full, no one could resist taking a slice of the sweet offering. The edges of the dessert plates were lipped slightly, helping to keep the sweet pineapple juice from escaping as forks cut into the delicious confection.
"Keep feeding me like this and I'll never leave," Krysty joked.
"My dear woman, you may stay with me as long as you like," Jamaisvous replied. "All of you. Puerto Rico is my own private paradise on earth, and I'm more than willing to share."
THAT NIGHT, safe and snug in bed, Ryan and Krysty took time out in their private fortress room to make long passionate love, allowing themselves release time and again between the cool sheets. J.B. and Mildred did the same in then" own room across the hall, each of them savoring the privacy, since J.B. had never been comfortable with displays of overt emotion or passion in front of others.
The- other two rooms in the guest section of El Morro were currently empty. The one belonging to Doc was vacant, since the elder member of the group of survivalists was elsewhere within the majestic fortress. He had chosen to forgo bed and sleep in order to stay behind with a snifter of brandy and continue his discussion with Dr. Jamaisvous.
Dean and Jak agreed to serve as the eyes and ears for the rest of the group. To pass the late-night hours before they were relieved of guard duty, Dean suggested they amuse themselves by playing an old children's game.
He had found the box in a parlor cabinet off the dining room where all had retired after the dessert for drinks. Chuckling over the discovery, Jamaisvous had told Dean to take the game with his blessing, and do with it as he wished.
"What the hell is a 'Cootie' anyway?" Dean remarked, turning the worn cardboard box in his hands to look at the words printed on the back.
"Looks like big bug. Hate bugs," Jak replied with a frown, his red eyes narrowed into dusky rubies as he stared at the photograph on the front.
Dean silently read the instructions that had been conveniently printed on the back of the game box, along with cartoons illustrating proper play. "Seems triple simple to me," he finally declared, opening the lid and taking out a flat numerical spinner.
"See, we spin this thing here, this spinner, and when it stops it points to a color and a body part. We pick one and start building the Cootie. Whoever gets his Cootie built first is the winner," Dean told the watching Jak.
"Stupe game," the albino said, rolling his eyes as he held up a yellow segmented insect leg made of soft plastic. "Making big bug. No need make. Go out find plenty."
Dean dumped the contents of the brightly colored box onto the surface of the wooden table they had pulled into the hall, right outside the doors leading to the individual bedrooms. Red thoraxes, orange bodies and blue heads joined a scramble of yellow insect legs on the tabletop.
"You think it's possible, Jak?" he asked after spinning the spinner and selecting a piece of his Cootie.
"What, build bug? Sure." Jak took his own turn with the spinner and picked up another plastic leg. "Got two legs. Need a head."
"No, not that you dope," Dean retorted. "Do you think it's possible to go back in time?" "Doc did."
"No, Doc came forward and then was pushed ahead a second time," Dean corrected.
Jak shot him a look, then pondered what the younger boy was saying.
"Hmm," the albino mused as he considered the implications of what his friend had brought up. "Two-way street." "That's what I'm wondering. Is it a two-way street or not?" Dean said excitedly, pausing in the game. "And if it is, mebbe we should all go back to another time, way back before the nukecaust. Back when everything in the world still worked."
"Not me," Jak replied, tapping one of the yellow insectoid legs against the front of his teeth. "Like here. Take what we got, not what we might get."
"Not worth a gamble?" Dean asked easily.
"Not to me."
Having become quickly bored with the construction of his cartoon insect, Jak tossed the gathered pieces back in the pile with a snort. "You win."
"Aw, come on Jak, there's nothing else to do right now," Dean remarked as he absently ran a hand through his black curly hair. "Dad said for all of us to stick close tonight until we know more about this Jam-ass-voo guy."
"Ask Doc. He knows. Spending lots of time with him."
"Tms LIQUOR is...well, words escape me, sir."
Doc was standing near a stone wall adorned with various black-and-white photographs of the grounds and surrounding area of El Morro, a brandy snifter in one long-fingered hand like it had been designed to be held there.
Seated in a black leather recliner across from Doc, Jamaisvous held a second glass in a nearly identical fashion. "Then, I shall take that as high compliment, Dr. Tanner." "Please do."
Jamaisvous took a sip of his drink before speaking. "What do you remember about the time-trawl technology?"
"Bits and pieces. Fits and starts. While parts of my stay with my captors remain in vivid focus, most has blurred due to what I can only describe as damage to my shorter-term memory after they shipped me into this bleak future world."
"I knew more about how the mat-trans units worked as means of transport from place to place," Jamaisvous remarked. "Other esoteric uses, such as cloning or duplication of living tissue or the fantastic notion of time trawling seemed to be bastardization of the process. The damn things weren't designed for some of the hoops the higher-ups were making the tech boys try and jump through."
"There were different methods for the trawling," Doc revealed. "That much I do know."
"How so?"
"We came upon the Chron-Temp portal in Chicago," Doc said. "The original site."
"Ah, yes. Chicago. They were still attempting to use cryonics as a part of the process then. Were the pods and mat-trans inside the Chicago redoubt still functioning?" Jamaisvous asked.
"Yes," Doc said cryptically. "And no."
"Well, I'd wondered. If the Chicago gateway was indeed working, I thought you would have attempted to return to your own time and place without hesitation. From what I remember about your particular case-"
"What do you mean remember?" Doc asked sharply, giving Jamaisvous a queer look.
Jamaisvous caught himself, taking back up the thread of conversation as if Doc had never interrupted him and finishing the sentence. "It refers to what I remember from reading about you in the old Chronos data banks, which portray you as quite the single-minded individual."
Doc accepted the breezy explanation and didn't press the matter, since his focus was upon his own convoluted memories. "Single-minded? More like relentless, sir. The Tanner clan has never been known for bending. Stubbornness is a family trait, and by God, I wanted my family back. The bastards would not cooperate with my wishes, so I decided I would be just as unyielding. My captors, well, they did not like that."
"You could have been killed for your dogged pursuit of an impossible goal. Eliminated instead of studied," Jamaisvous mused.
"I did not care. Death would have been one escape, and perhaps the ultimate way to be reunited with my wife and children," Doc replied, and then held up two fingers in a peace sign. "I made two attempts. The first was easily thwarted-they'd been waiting for me to slip. The second one came much closer, since I had my own allies in the corridors of that antiseptic hellhole, but still I failed. As for a third try, well, suffice to say, I was not given the opportunity to make a third attempt."
"Going back to Chicago, what
was the status of the redoubt?"
"When I and my friends discovered the lair, the central annex was crawling with spiders. Great albino arachnids," Doc said, waggling the fingers of both his hands like scrawny, jointed legs. "Hundreds of the overstuffed web spinners, with long spiny appendages and eight hooked toes. The chamber was festooned with spun silk as white and powdery as freshly fallen snow. The only colors to be seen were their hideously glowing yellow eyes."
Jamaisvous tilted his head and gave Doc a look. "Giant spiders? Don't be ridiculous. Such mutations aren't logical."
Doc laid a hand across his heart and assumed a solemn look. "Upon my honor, sir, what I say is gospel. After all, logic has no place in Deathlands. Although, I might add in the interest of fairness that the largest of the creatures was only a foot and a half in height, with legs spread three feet in length." "See? That isn't all that large." Doc smiled dangerously, showing his fine teeth. "When you have faced hundreds, Silas, they are as big as mountains, and as legion as grains of sand." Jamaisvous stood, a half smile on his handsome face. "I think you're prone to exaggeration in the interest of a good story, Dr. Tanner, but I'll let it pass. Would you like another drink?''
"No, thank you." Doc also began to stand, but his host waved him back down before crossing over to the bar and refilling his own glass.
"I bow to your firsthand experience, Dr. Tanner. But what happened after the giant spider invasion?"
"After retrieving the young Cawdor child, who had run into the spiders-"
"Yet another good reason to leave the children at home," Jamaisvous said dryly.
"-and sealing off that section," Doc continued, "we went in through an exterior air lock into the Chron-Temp mat-trans chamber, where I was fascinated to see a trio of materialization tubes linked to the standard gateway."
"Tubes?"
"Modules, about the size of hospital beds. A clear plastic cover was over each one, awaiting the arrival of the dolphins."
"Dolphins being code for...?"
"For the trawl subjects."
"Hmm. Chicago was primitive. Lacking in many of the later refinements to come. At that particular point, they were still using cryonics hi conjunction with the tune-trawling process, a combination that was later abandoned from what I've read. Subjects were phased into their own individual cold canisters made of vanadium and armaglass."
"Oh, bullshit," Mildred interjected from the doorway. She had decided to join the conversation, while J.B. had elected to remain behind hi the living-quarters area, relieving Jak of having to join the undefeated Dean hi a challenging match of the Cootie game.
Jamaisvous laughed. "Such language, and from an educated lady."
Mildred grinned back. "I never said I was a lady."
"My mistake. Would you like some refreshment?"
"A small one."
"What will you have?"
"Same as you two. Brandy. With a bit of water, please."
"I was frozen after my trawl?" Doc said in disbelief, reaching up with his fingers to stroke the cheeks of his long face. "I have no memory of that, sir."
"How could you?" Jamaisvous replied from the bar. "You were snatched from your time line and taken into the realm of null time via the gateway. For all intents and purposes, you ceased to exist-not here, not there. Nowhere. The problem the engineers of Chronos kept running into was their subjects reappearing during the current time serving as the original source of the trawl. This was totally unlike jumping from one mat-trans unit to another, where your destination was waiting and prepped. When living tissue was trawled, it tended to disintegrate upon re-materialization. ''
"Thanks," Mildred said as Jamaisvous crossed back to his recliner, handing her the drink before sitting down.
"You're welcome, Dr. Wyeth. Please, be seated."
Mildred took up a position next to Doc on the edge of a small sofa.
"What's the first thing you remember when you arrived in 1998, Dr. Tanner?"
"Shadowy shapes. Masked faces."
"Sounds typical. You would have been disoriented. But you became conscious-fully awake-in a hospital bed."
"If my memory is to be believed, that is correct, yes. However, I find my memory to be seriously lacking in detail and sharpness since I began my travels in time. I used to believe after I was abducted by those madmen in Chronos that I was placed within the confines of a glass coffin, like a refugee from a Grimm's Fairy Tale."
"Cryo pod," Jamaisvous corrected.
Mildred snorted a second time.
Jamaisvous pressed on. "In Chicago, when you were trawled, you arrived through one of the waiting cryo pods-you know, the canisters made of alloy and armaglass. When you appeared inside, you were then immobilized until they could be sure you had arrived whole and intact. Then, over an extended period, your body temperature was brought down and-"
"Please-his entire body would have exploded," Mildred retorted, interrupting the narrative. "The very blood in his veins would've frozen. There would be cellular disruption on a massive and incapacitating level. There is no instant freeze except in bad science fiction. Putting subjects in cryo sleep and then reviving them is a tedious, dangerous process."
Jamaisvous gave Mildred a doubting look. "What makes you an expert, Dr. Wyeth?"
"I was-I am-a pioneer in cryonics, Dr. Jamaisvous." Mildred replied, accenting the word "doctor" as she spoke.
"Really? Got to experience your subject firsthand, did you?"
Mildred frowned. "As did you. We seem to be no worse for wear."
"Right, right," he said dismissively. "Still, as a pioneer in the public sector without military clearances, you know nothing at all of the true nature of cryonics. If you'll pardon the pun, what you and your so-called colleagues were allowed to see was merely the tip of the iceberg."
"And I suppose you're an expert?"
"Not by any means. I can't explain some of what I know of the utilized cryonic techniques. I just know it works. Rather, worked."
Mildred held her tongue, choosing to take another sip of the potent brandy. What Jamaisvous was saying made sense when you factored in some of the advanced technology she'd seen for herself in the redoubts equipped with cryonic sleep chambers. The basics from her past studies were there, but some of the processes were well beyond what she could have accomplished herself using late 1990s technology. The advanced leap of science that had created the matter-transfer gateways also could have been easily involved with cryonics.
"Okay, I give you the possibility. You don't have to be such a jerk about it," Mildred finally said.
"And you don't have to be so damned all-knowing, Dr. Wyeth."
"I am afraid her self-assurance is one of her less endearing qualities," Doc said.
' 'Well, not to me. I like a woman who speaks her mind."
"How long do you think I was in suspended sleep?'' Doc asked, turning back to Jamaisvous.
"A few days, I'd say. Long enough so they could be sure you were intact and whole. The cryo pods served another function, you know. They protected you against any unexpected diseases or exposure. After all, you were in a fragile state, and there were germs and bugs floating around in 1998 you had never dreamed of a hundred and two years ago in the past."
"So, is that how trawling has to be carried out to work, with cryonics involved on the receiving end?"
' 'No. As far as I know, a year or so after you made the trip into 1998, a modification was discovered that allowed the mat-trans chambers themselves to serve as collector and containment fields for living subjects minus the earlier subzero temperatures needed until the trawled subject was whole and intact. Besides, if cryonic pods were a necessity, than temporal passage into the future would be an impossibility, and you wouldn't be here talking with me."
Mildred yawned in the seconds of silence after Jamaisvous spoke. "I'm sorry," she apologized. "Be- tween my drink and the meal, I'm asleep on my feet, and this sort of technobabble makes my mind ache. I think I'll go back to bed for the ni
ght."
Jamaisvous stood and took her hand, kissing it as he had kissed Krysty's earlier. "Good night, Dr. Wy-eth."
"Good night, to both of you."
The stocky physician exited, and the den was silent for several moments before Doc spoke. "The gateway you have in this fortress-you are trying to go back, are you not?"
"Of course."
"Even though by your own admission, time trawling was never perfected."
"Until now."
"How so?"
"I am at the final part of the secret. Tell me, Dr. Tanner. Man-to-man. No pressure," Jamaisvous said, his voice becoming faster as he spoke, and the pronunciation of each word more clipped. "Wouldn't you risk it all to go back home to your own time? To pop in seconds before your original disappearance?"