by James Axler
After a few moments the leader of the Indians walked his horse close and stopped a few feet away. Silently, Doc flipped the spear over and offered it to the rider, shaft first. The elder accepted the wep, and held it for a few seconds with the wicked barbed head pointed at Doc’s heart. The old man stood still, not moving a muscle. Then the rider flipped the spear over and tucked it into the scabbard.
Trying not to show relief, Doc had the strong feeling he had just passed a very important test.
No longer scowling, the leader of the Indians asked something in a language unknown to the old man. Doc shook his head in reply. The other warriors muttered among themselves, and the leader tried again, in a different tongue. It seemed vaguely familiar to Doc, but still he had to shrug to show his inability to comprehend.
“English?” Doc asked hopefully.
The Indian leader frowned. Shaking his head in annoyance, the chief rider pointed a finger at Doc, then over his shoulder. Doc nodded in agreement, and the dozen riders reined around their mounts to start walking back from where they came. Holstering the Ruger, Doc followed alongside, knowing that to fall behind them would be taken as a sign of submission.
The mixed group moved in silence, pausing for a moment as a howler moved on the horizon, the mutie thrashing the air with its tentacles. As it disappeared, the Indians continued up a sloping rill and around a large sand dune. Straight ahead there were twinkling lights, dancing pinpoints that grew into the campfires of a small settlement as they trudged closer. A tall barricade of thorn bushes tied together made a formidable barrier around the encampment, the only opening guarded by Indian women carrying scatterguns, with large mastiff-like dogs standing obediently by their sides.
Walking through the gate of the ville, Doc studied the area carefully in case he had to leave at a run. There was a knotted-rope corral full of horses off to the side, and numerous tents dotted the camp. The fabric was brightly decorated with highly stylized figures of people, horses, bears, eagles and other animals, none of them muties. Four tents were clustered around each campfire, the burning wood lying in a pit that was several feet deep. Doc knew that trick. The pit helped hide the light of the fire, and made food cook faster. The companions had used the same thing themselves several times.
A crowd of people wrapped in crude blankets watched with marked interest as the horseback riders led Doc directly to a large geodesic dome in the center of the settlement. Just for a moment, Doc thought it was a colossal beaver mound, as crazy as that sounded. Then he could see the dome was a wigwam, a wooden Indian lodge. He knew the process well. Young sapling trees were buried deep into the soil, their tops bent over and lashed together firmly. Then small branches were laced through the supports, and everything was covered with reinforced mud. Actually, it was a form of adobe concrete that Doc knew from experience was extremely strong. The wigwam could stop most blasterfire, and even hold back the acid rains.
At an incomprehensible command from the chief rider, the other Indians reined in their mounts and slid off the horses on the wrong side. Doc gave no reaction to that. But he knew Ryan and J.B. often did the same thing. It was a combat move to use the horse as protection in a battle. The sight wasn’t encouraging.
The chief rider talked to his sec men for a few minutes, and they spread out on different errands. Walking over to the wigwam, the chief rider waved at Doc, then knelt to crawl inside the dome.
Knowing that to refuse would be seen as extremely impolite, and quite possibly fatal, Doc dropped his saddlebags at the entrance and started inside. Soft leather mats decorated with unknown symbols covered the ground, and Doc could see flickering lights at the end of the long tunnel.
Reaching the interior, Doc slowly stood. Tin oil lamps hung from the wooden struts, the yellowish light brightly illuminating the domed enclosure. The floor was an elaborate sand painting of a spiral that centered on a small fire pit filled with glowing red coals, the smoke rising upward to exit the dome through an elaborate vent.
Primitive did not mean stupid, Doc reminded himself strongly. This civilization was much older than his own.
Sitting around the smoky fire pit was a collection of somber elders dressed in loose buckskins covered with more of the cryptic symbols. They formed a solid line around the fire pit, except for a location where there was a gap, as if a person was missing.
Walking with extreme care to not disturb the sand painting, the chief rider approached an old woman sitting on the far side of the circle. Her skin was as wrinkled and dark as a dried riverbed after a hard rain, but her eyes sparkled and her long ebony hair shone with the vigor of youth. A single eagle feather stuck out of her long tresses, the tip dyed an electric-blue. Doc didn’t need to be told this was the leader of the tribe. Or at least, their shaman. Either way, there was no doubt that she was the ruler of the settlement.
Touching his heart, the chief rider spoke to the woman for a few minutes. She nodded in reply, then dismissed him with a curt wave. Walking past Doc as if the old man were invisible, the chief rider entered the tunnel and crawled away.
Left alone with the tribal elders, Doc approached the empty spot in the ring, paused to wait for a rebuke, and when none was forthcoming he carefully sat. The temperature of the coals felt good after the chill night wind, and Doc luxuriated in the soothing heat, feeling his tense muscles slowly relax.
“Greetings, venerable elders,” Doc offered, unsure of what to do next. “I come in peace.”
“Yet violence stalks your path, time walker,” the old shaman intoned, tossing a handful of dried leaves onto the coals. Thick fumes rose to fill the dome. “But the whole world is filled with violence now, so we bid you welcome.”
“Long have we waited for your arrival,” another woman added, almost too softly to be heard.
But Doc nearly didn’t hear the second greeting, his mind was still whirling from the first. What did she call me—“time walker”? The dome seemed to start spinning, and Doc began to feel madness well. But with a concerted effort, he forced himself to stay focused. Trying to choose his next words carefully, Doc just sat for a while breathing in the pungent fumes. Then his thoughts became crystal-clear, and for the first time in recent memory, there were no ghostly images filling the back of his mind. The kaleidoscope of scenes and information vanishing like graffiti washed off a blackboard.
Grunting at the reaction of the outlander, the older woman tossed in another handful of leaves and the smoky fumes intensified. The air was becoming thick, but to Doc it seemed as if his eyes had never been sharper, or seen in greater detail. Everything was in such bright colors, and the sounds of the settlement were as rich as a philharmonic orchestra.
In a soft chorus, the elders began to chant, the words rising and falling like the pulse of a heart. Outside the wigwam, a drum began to beat.
“How do you…” Doc stopped and tried again. “What do you know of me?”
“Only a little,” an old woman answered hesitantly.
“When we walk in the dream time,” the shaman moaned, “we can see your life stretching from the past, into the future and back again, weaving throughout the history of this land like a single red thread in a huge tapestry of colors.”
“You do not belong here,” another woman added, turning the dead-white orbs of her blind eyes directly at him. “Nature has been violated by your passage. The balance is disturbed, all things tremble.”
“They took me,” Doc stated firmly, clenching a fist. “This is not of my doing. I only want to go back home!”
“To your family,” they said in unison.
“Yes!”
The drums beat faster, and the fumes from the coals rose darker, thicker, sweeter, until the air in the lodge was murky with the swirling fog. Doc blinked hard. No, the air was clear. His mind was filled with a mist. Was he being drugged? Or was he finally going insane?
“Would you leave your friends?” a withered old man asked, leaning heavily on a short stick covered with indecipherable marking
s. “The one-eyed man?”
“Yes!”
“No,” the shaman said softly, the word cutting through the music and mists like a blaster shot. “No, you must stay with the one-eyed man. He seeks a lost battle, and that is your way home.”
That really got Doc’s attention. Home? Could it be?
“A doorway will be opened,” she continued, running her hands through a bowl filled with tiny engraved beads. “But it will only be open for a moment, a heartbeat. A double moment of time.”
“Do not hesitate,” the wrinklie next to Doc whispered, resting a frail hand on his shoulder. “Do not pause, time walker, or you will be lost forever.”
“Forever,” they chorused as the drums beat louder.
Another old man added, “When you see the gateway—”
“Jump!” the tribal elders all shouted together.
Jump. Was that a clue? Why did they use that word? Doc felt dizzy, and it seemed that his sanity was cracking. Oh, God, was any of this actually happening? Or had he hit his head on a rock when the horse fell off the cliff, and he was lying unconscious in the desert ground, moaning and twitching like some demented thing?
“We are not doomies,” the shaman stated, touching the symbols on her clothing in an unknown litany. “But we walk the spirit path and can see without mortal eyes.” Reaching into the bowl, she tossed a handful of beads into the fire. Instantly the flame rose from the coals and a blue-tinted smoke rose to swirl about the domed lodge.
“Your mind is broken, but this we will fix,” another elder said, adding a handful of sticks tied into the shape of tall man, a tuft of silvery threads at the top for hair.
“Why would you help me?” Doc whispered, watching his tiny effigy turn dark and burn.
“You are a blessed one,” somebody answered. “You have been tested and found worthy.”
“You are the time walker.”
“One of many.”
What? Impossible! There were other survivors of Operation Chronos? With that thought, lost doors opened in Doc’s mind, and suddenly he saw the cells again as he was dragged into the laboratory for testing. Needles came from every direction, piecing him countless times to check his blood, his heart, his brain. They probed him inside and out, then seemingly sent him through time again, the racking pain reaching unimaginable levels.
Then clarity filled his mind with the grim memory of a smug whitecoat scientist who had foolishly turned his back on the test subject. Moving fast, Doc grabbed an instrument from a nearby tray and slashed the man across the spine. With a shrieking scream, the bloody scientist fell, and Doc cut through his bindings just as sec men poured into the room, burly guards carrying crystal rods that sparked with electricity at the tips. Stun guns, cattle prods, different names for the same thing. Givers of pain.
Remembering his college fencing lessons, Doc killed two of the guards with the stolen scalpel before making his escape from the room. Stark naked, the Vermont school teacher pelted down a shiny white corridor that he could now recognize as the inside of a redoubt. The mat-trans. Were they the key? Could they send people through time, as well as across space? Then all he needed was the formula, the right code sequence to tap into the keypad and he would go back. Home to Emily!
Suddenly doors slammed open in the redoubt, and more guards appeared, leveling stubby rifles. Twin beams of light stabbed out from the muzzle of the weps, and when they both touched him, there was an electric crackle that made Doc’s arm go numb. He dropped the scalpel, then charged the guards, screaming like a wild man.
Stepping out from behind a recessed doorway, a pale man in white fired a gun at the advancing guards, a silenced weapon. The guards fell, red blood on their chests, the rifles falling to the hard floor. Doc grabbed one and turned to face his rescuer. But the man was gone, just a fleeting shadow…always in the background…always hidden…somebody who helped Doc during one of his many failed escapes from the whitecoats of Operation Chronos.
Unable to hold any more knowledge, Doc cut loose with a raw scream as additional memories poured into his beleaguered mind like burning waters. No, the stranger wasn’t a friend. Doc had escaped, and the stranger sent him back! Only it wasn’t one of the guards, or technicians from Chronos, it was somebody else…no, something else…a man? A machine? Marked with a blue ring with a red star on his forehead…the symbol unseen, but always there…a norm who was cold, as cold as dead fire…Coldfire…
“He remembers!” the shaman cried, rattling a rainstick. “Time is healing!”
Then the drums outside stopped, and there was a loud explosion.
“Spirits protect us!” a wrinkled woman yelled, raising both hands as to ward off a blow. “He’s here! Delphi, the dark walker!”
The side of the wigwam exploded as a flaming object punched through the adobe shell to streak across the ring of cringing elders and blow out the other side, closely followed by a violent detonation. The blast shook the dome so hard that bits of adobe sprinkled down in a dirty rain. The glowing coals in the fire pit instantly darkened, the fumes dissipated, the images vanishing completely.
By the Three Kennedys, that had been a military rocket! Doc sluggishly realized. But even as he weakly stood and drew his blasters, people began to scream across the settlement as the hard chattering of large-caliber rapidfires filled the night.
Chapter Fifteen
“Get out of the way!” Doc yelled in warning as hot lead began to pour through the gaping hole in the adobe dome.
Torn apart by the incoming fusillade, several of the old Indians in the ring fell over, clutching their faces, crimson fluids gushing from between their fingers. A man tried to stand, but instead fell into the fire pit, causing a whirlwind explosion of red embers. His screams stopped almost immediately.
A piercing horn sounded from outside, followed by the sound of black-powder blasters. Turning toward the shaman, Doc felt an icy stab to see her sprawled on the ground. There was a dark hole between her sightless eyes, and the back of her skull was missing, pinkish brains splattered on the curved wall behind. Damn, she had almost told him the way home! Ryan was the way, but so were the redoubts, and Coldfire, and a symbol of a blue circle with a red star…
The rapidfire spoke again, and more people shrieked into death.
Shaking the omens and portents from his mind, Doc concentrated on the present and charged for the exit tunnel. He got only halfway when it collapsed. Trapped! But the fresh air coming through the gaping rents in the dome cleared the last tendrils of herbal mist from his mind, and Doc scrambled outside with both of his blasters at the ready.
Everywhere was chaos and confusion. Horses were screaming, people yelling, and the entire thorny barricade around the encampment was on fire, filling the night with hellish light. The dull staccato of big-bore rapidfire filled the darkness, and bloody bodies were toppling everywhere.
A second missile streaked past the flaming bushes to slam into the cook fire in the middle of the ville. The detonation was deafening, and a fireball lifted skyward to form a mushroom cloud of smoke.
Staggering backward, Doc raised an arm to protect himself from the flying debris. Mother of God, who was attacking them? Was it the Rogans, or that Delphi the old shaman had spoke of just before getting aced?
Horses were running wild. A warrior with a broken arm was using her other hand to fire a blaster into the darkness. A shrieking child was kneeling by a lifeless corpse. Somewhere, the mastiffs were barking and howling, and a flurry of arrows arched high into the sky to curve back down and hit something in a metallic patter. Metal? That meant a war wag!
Sprinting that way, Doc went around the burning wigwam and recoiled at the sight of a huge machine dominating the desert settlement.
The vehicle was smooth and egg-shaped, the chassis shiny. Multiple sets of armored treads lined the bottom in flexing sections and, as Doc watched, the top lifted to display a honeycomb of launch tubes. A rocket lanced outward into the billowing smoke, and a tremendous explosion bo
iled upward from the strike.
Leveling his two blasters, Doc unleashed hot lead at the deadly machine, but the rounds only bounced off the smooth side of the armored war wag as if he was throwing gravel. Holstering the LeMat, Doc pulled out a pipe bomb, paused, then stuffed it back into a pocket of his frock coat. Instead, he withdrew a gren, pulled the pin, flipped off the arming handle and expertly rolled the deadly sphere directly under the lumbering death machine.
The thermite blast rocked the wag, chem flames engulfing the armored treads. But as the searing thermal charge dissipated, the strange war wag wasn’t even scratched!
Just then the front of the transport started to fade in color, and Doc ducked behind a canvas tent that was, miraculously, still standing. Sneaking a fast peek, Doc saw the front of the chassis became transparent, and the scowling operator of the wag came into view. Seated in a small cockpit was a pale man with slicked-back blond hair, the flashing lights from the control boards covering his stern features with a twinkling rainbow.
It was him, the man from his vision! That had to be Delphi. Doc’s enemy and benefactor. Leveling the Ruger, Doc fired twice, the booming predark slugs smacking onto the clear material. But they only flattened and stayed where they hit, like squashed bugs on a windshield.
“Impossible,” Doc whispered, lowering the piece. Not even bulletproof glass did that! This was something else, some material as strong as steel but clear as glass.
Armaglass. The word came unbidden to his mind. Clear armaglass. Doc didn’t know how he could be so certain, but the answer felt right. This machine had something to do with the makers of the redoubts and the mat-trans chambers.
Doc could see Delphi reach out a finger to scratch at the lead sticking to the outside of the machine. Delphi frowned and moved a joystick. The top of the globular wag lifted once more and a strident machine gun chattered from the complex weapons pod, the muzzle-flashes strobing the night, but no spent brass fell from the wag.