Red Equinox

by James Axler

  In the 1990s, scientists working on Overproject Whisper were researching the possibility of time travel—"chron-jumps" as they were known. The gateways hidden within max-sec redoubts were part of Project Cerberus, and the scientists working in that area of the project were devel­oping matter-transmission.

  Several experiments were carried out in "trawling" someone from the past. The failures were indescribably horrific. There was, as far as was known, only one suc­cessful trawl—Doctor Theophilus Tanner, a young mar­ried scientist from 1896.

  But Doc proved to be a damnably difficult and uncoop­erative guinea pig. After several attempts to chron-jump himself back to his wife and family, the men and women working on Overproject Whisper finally jumped him for­ward, only weeks before sky-dark. Nearly a century into the future, he arrived in the ville of Mocsin, up in the Darks, where Ryan Cawdor had helped to rescue him. Two chron-jumps and two hundred years of disorientation had physi­cally aged the man and reduced his brain to a mixture of oatmeal and pearls. When Ryan had first met him, there hadn't been that many pearls.

  And now?

  Rick was taking deep breaths, swaying on his feet. "Bastard things, these jumps. They always bad as this?"

  Doc gave a croaking laugh. "Upon my soul, Master Ginsberg! Mostly they are much worse than this!"

  The freezie shook his head. "I'm not sure I can live with this kind of traveling. I'm so shook up it feels like my guts are in tomorrow and my brain's in yesterday. Or the day before."

  "Where are we?" Jak asked. "Room's smaller than most."

  Ryan hadn't noticed it, but the teenager was right. The chamber was slightly smaller than any of the others they'd jumped from. Not by a lot, maybe three-quarters the size.

  J.B. nodded. "Yeah, and the air's not that good, either. Stale. Like the conditioners not working properly."

  Krysty licked her lips, tasting. "It's like old air. And the light's weaker than in the other redoubts we've been in."

  "How about it, Rick? You're the gateway expert in the group."

  "Don't know, Ryan. I can give you the batting stats for the Yankees back to the Second World War and the rush­ing stats for the Giants for the same period. But I don't know squat about where all the gateways were or if any of them deviated from the standard norm."

  "One way find out," Jak said, moving to the heavy door of the chamber. The albino began to heave at the control handle.

  Nothing happened.

  Chapter Three

  "FUCKER'S JAMMED!"

  Everyone had tried it, pushing, heaving and lifting. Even Rick had leaned against the armored door, ear pressed to the lock, fumbling at the handle while everyone else kept silent and waited to see what happened.

  "Nothing," he pronounced.

  It was only then that the grim reality of their position struck Ryan Cawdor.

  The controls of a gateway were triggered in one simple way. After the numerals and letter coordinates had been set on the coded panel in the outer room, the closing of the door initiated the technical process of the jump. If you couldn't open the door, you couldn't start a jump.

  "We're trapped here," J.B. said quietly, reaching the same conclusion as Ryan.

  "Looks that way."

  Rick sat on the floor with a sigh. "This is all my fault, isn't it?"

  "How d'you figure that?" Krysty asked.

  "I worked on these goddamned gateways, didn't I? I knew about how they functioned."

  "But you never knew all the transmit codes, did you?" Doc asked.

  "No, but I knew the codes to make sure you didn't hit a damaged gateway, and the thirty-minute automatic recall code." Rick shook his head, lips trembling, on the edge of tears. "And now I forgot them. All that bullshit I put up with for years about sec clearance. If I could've remem­bered that, we'd be on our way out of here real soon. But I can't… can't remember it. I think it started with a… No, I can't recall any of it."

  "No point talking," Ryan said. "Wastes breath. Wastes time. Mebbe you'll remember it one day. Mebbe not. Either way, it doesn't help us any stuck in here now."

  "Blasters?" Jak asked.

  "Ricochet," J.B. replied.

  It was true. The armaglass walls of the chamber would bounce back bullets from their blasters with lethal effect.

  "Got some plas-ex," suggested J.B, the armorer of the group, just as he'd been the armorer to the Trader during the years that he and Ryan had ridden the war wags to­gether.

  Ryan shook his head. "Last resort time. Same as bul­lets. Any kind of explosion in here and we'd be picking bits of wall out of our bellies. Gotta be a better way."

  "Over, under or around," Krysty said. "Isn't that what Trader used to say when there was a real serious prob­lem?"

  "Yeah. Trouble is, lover, we got the same kinda stuff all around us. And over and under, too. It's the door or it's nothing."

  "I could use the Earth Mother's force," she said after a long pause.

  Nobody said anything. Rick looked up at her. "Earth Mother? What's that, Krysty? Sounds like something out of San Francisco in the good old flowery sixties."

  "You know what it does to you," Ryan warned, ignor­ing the freezie's question.

  "Got a better idea, lover?" she replied, smiling at him. "I'll be all right. Just need a rest after I've done it."

  "Take no notice of Richard Ginsberg. Pretend he's not there. Bloody invisible man, that's what I am," Rick com­plained.

  "Sorry. From when I was a skinny sprat, back in the ville of Harmony, I was being trained. Taught certain… well, powers, I guess. My mother, Sonja, always told me to strive for life. Now, if I go inside myself, I can sometimes… get the power. I can't describe it any other way, Rick."

  "Let me try the door one more time," Ryan suggested. He'd only seen Krysty use the mysterious power on a few occasions, but he'd seen how his woman was devastated by the aftereffects.

  The handle moved an inch or so, then it stopped solid. The doorframe looked as if it had been twisted and warped, probably the result of the earth-shifts caused by the mas­sive nuking.

  "No," he said, "not going to move."

  "I'll try it. Might as well sit down a while. It takes a lit­tle time."

  Ryan hunkered down next to Rick, while the other three ranged themselves around the six-sided gateway. Doc managed a half smile in Ryan's direction, then folded his arms on his bony knees and lowered his head onto them.

  Krysty turned away and leaned against the cool glass wall, closing her eyes, relaxing her whole body. Her arms hung loosely at her sides and her lips moved as she began to psych herself into the mystic depths of her arcane power.

  "Gaia, aid me! Send me the blessed strength of your power. Draw it from the earth, and the sea. From the mountain and the valley. From the sky, the sun and the moon. From the cold stars. From the desert and the lake. From the chem storm and from the tumbling wind."

  Her voice was becoming dulled and flat. She swayed back and forth, fists clenching. Ryan watched her closely, seeing the trickle of crimson blood from her hands, where her own nails were gouging half-moons from her skin. Krysty moved a few steps to her left, until she was pressed against the door. Her flaming mane of hair shifted uneasily, coil­ing at the nape of her slender neck.

  "Gaia! Gaia, help me. For Mother Sonja and all her wisdom. For nail and skin. For eye and tooth. And for the blessing of the blood. Gaia, help me for the blessing of blood!"

  She was trembling as though a fever possessed her. Through the thin material of her shirt, Ryan could see that her nipples had hardened. She was breathing faster, the words coming more harshly. The climax was close.

  "Gaia! Oh, Gaia, help me! Give me the power, the power, the power! Now!"

  She seized the lever in both hands, putting all her strength against it. Ryan could actually hear her muscles cracking with the enormous strain. The soles of her boots creaked against the floor. Veins stood out across her tem­ples like throbbing cords, the sinews in her jaw tightened.

  "J
udas H. Priest!" Rick breathed with an almost rev­erential awe.

  "Gaia…" she moaned. The door handle still hadn't moved.

  "Can't do it," Jak whispered.

  "I thought it… No, wrong I guess," J.B. muttered.

  Doc yelled out loud, making them all jump. "Yes, yes, Miss Wroth. Epur si muove. Galileo was right. Yes, it does move!"

  "ONLY PROBLEM IS, Krysty bent the handle and ripped the lock apart. Could be difficult to get the little booger patched up ready for when we want to jump out of here."

  Wherever 'here' is," Rick concluded as he finished his examination of the broken lock on the chamber door.

  Krysty lay on the smooth floor, her head cradled in Ryan's lap. The sentient hair had gone limp, seeming to lose its bright color. Her eyes were closed and her skin was parchment pale. Ryan was chafing her hands between his.

  The supernatural effort of wrenching the jammed door open had carried her over the brink of total exhaustion. Her pulse was fluttering and irregular, her breathing shallow. As soon as the metal had crunched apart and the chamber en­trance had begun to swing open, she had let go her hold and slumped semiconscious to the floor, where Ryan had been just in time to catch her.

  "How long before the sweet child has recovered suffi­ciently for us to continue with our perilous voyage of ex­ploration?" Doc asked.

  "Hour or so," Ryan replied, smoothing Krysty's fore­head with his long, muscular fingers.

  "Make that a day or so, lover," she said, opening one eye and managing a weak smile. Krysty licked her lips. "Could do with a drink. Anyone got any prenuke brandy? Uncle Tyas McCann back in Harmony had a dozen bottles. Used to have a sip on special occasions. Best I ever had."

  "I guess that means you're feeling a whole lot better." J.B. grinned.

  "I feel like I might not die after all," she replied. "But I'd surely like some eats and some drink. Calling on the Earth Mother always drains me right down."

  Ryan glanced at J.B. questioningly. "Ready to move?"

  The armorer nodded. "Why not?"

  Everyone was standing, except Krysty. She shrugged off Ryan's hand and pulled herself to her feet, with a little help from the gray wall. She shook her head. "Something's not right. Don't know what, but I can feel it. The air or… Don't know."

  "Let's go," Ryan said, leading the way, blaster cocked and ready. Everyone else had their handguns drawn, ex­cept Rick. Despite all of Ryan's efforts, and the urging of the others in the group, he'd steadfastly kept to his old nineties peacenik beliefs. Shortly before they'd left Snakefish, Rick had been forced by circumstances to finally use a blaster against another human being. But he'd hated the experience and hated his new friends who had compelled him to pick up a loaded gun and squeeze the trigger.

  He was unarmed now, except for the heavy bamboo cane.

  Ryan knew what to expect beyond the damaged door to the gateway. There would be a small room about twelve feet square, probably completely empty. Most of the buried and hidden redoubts that they'd discovered so far had been de­serted and abandoned.

  Beyond the antechamber would be the main control room for the mat-trans unit, filled with flickering lights and humming computers. All of the massive fortress complexes had been run by independent nuke-power plants. Most of them still functioned even after a hundred years of ne­glect.

  And beyond that control room would be the locked sec doors that sealed the gateway off from the rest of the re­doubt. Normally, if there was danger, it came when those doors were opened.

  Ryan stepped outside the chamber, pausing and glanc­ing quickly around.

  "Not the same," he announced.

  There was no small anteroom. The armaglass door swung back to reveal a control room, but it was tiny com­pared to the others that they'd seen—barely twenty feet across, with a single, simplified master console. Ryan rec­ognized some of the basic command units from other re­doubts.

  "Why so small?" Jak asked wonderingly.

  "Experimental?" J.B. suggested. "Or a real small re­doubt."

  "There's some state-of-the-art technology in here," Rick said, limping heavy-footed around the comp-displays. "A lot of real costly miniaturization and laser-tech boards. Not experimental, J.B. No way, Jose."

  "This place is inordinately clean, is it not?" Doc ob­served, running a finger along the top of one of the desks, showing it untouched by dust. "And I do believe… Yes." He stooped and peered underneath. "I think we should exercise a little care in what we touch in this place."

  "Why?" Krysty asked.

  Ryan knelt down and looked where the old man pointed, straightening slowly. "See what you mean, Doc."

  "What is it?" the woman repeated.

  "Place is boobied. Nice little packets of plas-ex, some shiny detonators and plenty of red wire and green wire and even some blue wires."

  "Sabotaged, you mean?" Rick said, puzzled. "Who would do that? And why? It isn't as if the good old U.S. of A. was in any danger of being invaded. Who were they hoping to catch?"

  "Could be demolition charges. Could be they were just taking precautions." J.B. scratched the side of his nose, looking carefully at the wiring, but not touching anything. "No. Definitely antipersonnel. Not big enough to blow the building. Take your head off in a messy kind of way."

  "Cut 'em?" Ryan asked.

  "Not a lot of point. Nothing on the deck here we need."

  "We have to repair that door," Krysty reminded them, "or we don't get out of here again."

  Rick had been looking at the damaged portal to the gateway. "Not easy, lady. Not easy at all. The main con­tacts need some serious electrical work."

  "Can you do it?"

  "Sure, Ryan. I might be dying and my memory's got more holes than the Jets' defense, but I can still do me some wiring." He paused. "But it'll take some time, Ryan. A couple of days heavy work, the way it looks to me."

  "We'll take a look around first. Then make a decision on what you do. And when. First thing's to get us some food and drink."

  "Leave this?" J.B. asked, gesturing to the wired-up ex­plosives.

  "Yeah. Plas-ex that old might blow if you look at it wrong."

  "Do you suppose trying to use the gateway again trig­gers the boobies? Then I fear that we would find ourselves in the deepest ordure."

  "We all gotta go sometime, Doc." Ryan grinned. "Let's cross that overpass when we come to it."

  Krysty was standing still, staring vacantly into space across the control room. She shook her head. "Something bad here. It doesn't feel like any redoubt I've ever been in."

  "Danger?" Jak asked.

  "Not immediate. But… Can't find the handle for it."

  "No point sticking around. We'll worry about that bro­ken lock when we're ready to leave, Rick. At least the main doors don't look like they've been tampered with."

  The hugely strong sec doors were painted a very light shade of green. The control lever was a darker green.

  And it was in the Open position.

  "Think it's mined?" J.B. asked.

  "Probably," Ryan guessed.

  Chapter Four

  JAK SPOTTED the wire.

  "Look!"

  A thin pale blue length of wire ran into the crack in the wall, behind the massive sec-steel hinges. J.B. traced it with a cautious finger, watchful for any mercury tremblers or prox-fuses. But it was a very straightforward piece of plas-ex plus detonator. The actual explosive was concealed on a ridge above the top of the doors.

  "Nobody been in here since sky-dark," the Armorer said.

  "Could be recent."

  J.B. shook his head at Ryan's suggestion. "No. Not stuff wired this way. It's crude, and it's also old. Besides, it would've blown if anyone had tried to enter."

  "Cut it?"

  "Yeah." J.B. dragged over a wooden chair and stood on it, drawing his Tekna knife and easing the needle point be­hind the wire.

  "Everyone take cover," Ryan ordered, crouching be­hind one of the consoles in the corner of the strangely
cramped room. Krysty knelt beside him, with Jak, Doc and Rick farther along, near the wall.

  "What if it blows?" the freezie asked.

  "Keep tight and small on the floor, hands over your ears, eyes shut. And keep your mouth open. That way you keep the blast damage to a minimum."

  "Thanks, Ryan. Thanks a lot."

  "Stick head between knees and kiss ass goodbye,", Jak sniggered.

  "Everyone ready?" J.B. yelled. "Then here we go."

  The snick of the knife cutting through the wire was fol­lowed immediately by the deafening boom of the explo­sion.

  Despite having followed his own instructions, Ryan felt the pressure against his eardrums, the plas-ex blowing and filling the room with noise and fine white dust.

  "Fireblast!" he coughed. "J.B.! Hey, you all right there?"

  Jak moved first, darting toward the entrance doors, ducking under the blinding cloud. "He's here, out cold. Blood on him."

  Ryan was the second one there, stooping alongside the white-haired boy, seeing the slight figure of John Barrymore Dix lying like a child's discarded doll, one arm crooked, legs doubled under him. His glasses were hang­ing on one ear and his beloved fedora had vanished. Blood oozed from J.B.'s ears, nostrils and open mouth. The Tekna was still gripped firmly in his right hand.

  "Breathing," Jak pronounced, feeling for the pulse be­neath J.B.'s right ear. "Strong beat."

  "Roll him onto his side so that he doesn't risk chok­ing," Doc suggested.

  "Leave him be!" Krysty demanded, leaning over Ryan to look at J.B.

  "Shoulder's out," Jak observed. "Put back now or big problem. See it 'fore."

  J.B.'s eyes flickered open and rolled in their sockets. "Kid's right. Put back now, Ryan. Do it for me." His eyes closed again and his body tensed, anticipating the pain to come.

  "Could be he's snapped a rib or two," Rick said wor­riedly. "Try anything and you could hurt him real bad."

  "Already hurting real bad, freezie," J.B. muttered, keeping his eyes shut. "Listen, Ryan, before you do it. There was a second charge. Never seen it. Cut the wire and it blew. Must've lost most of its power. Should have taken me off at the shoulders. Okay. Now do it."