by James Axler
“I’m not exactly saying that.” Mildred smiled. “I’m just going to keep my options open on this.”
“Right now, it doesn’t matter which of us is right about who or what Doc’s become,” Ryan interjected. “It’s more a matter of what he’s going to do now that he is someone else. That’s what’s going to shape the next few hours. If he’s had them take down the tables and the cover, then they sure as shit aren’t going to chill us.”
“Which is something to be thankful for,” Krysty added.
“Right,” Ryan agreed. “But the bigger question is, what does he have in mind for us now? And how long before we find out?”
Mildred mused on that. “The longer we have to wait, the longer it gives our systems to clear out the shit they fed us to make us pliable. Assuming that you guys feel the way that I do, I’d say that it’s clearing rapidly. It didn’t need to be long-lasting, as we should have all bought the farm by now.” She paused, noticing from the set of their faces that this previously unspoken thought had not escaped any of them. “And the sooner it’s completely expunged from our bodies, the sooner we’re a hundred percent in terms of thought and reflex. Physically it’s a little different. I’d guess we’re all a little stiff, and mebbe we should work on that. Assuming that they feed and water us soon, so that we don’t lose strength through thirst or hunger—and that the food and water is not tainted by more herbs—then we’ll be as ready for them as we ever could be.”
“So it may benefit us to be caged like this a bit longer?” J.B. questioned, one eye still on the window.
Mildred agreed. “Assuming food and water, then the longer we’re here the sharper we can get, and the more we can work on our physical problems.”
“Biggest problem this,” Jak muttered, proffering a handful of skin and fur.
“Exactly,” Krysty said thoughtfully. “We could be here for weeks, getting stronger, but it doesn’t matter shit if we don’t have clothes and weapons. Clothes alone, even. No way we could fight effectively and try to keep these damn things around us,” she added, gesturing to the skins wrapped around her body.
“Doc’s got his clothes back, mebbe he’ll get us ours,” J.B. mused. “If he does have plans for us, then it figures that he’ll need us covered and able to move about in the cold.”
“Kinda depends on what his new plans are,” Mildred murmured, “and just how we fit into them.”
“CAN’T BE SERIOUS,” Thompson yelled, shaking his head. “Can’t trust them just like that. For the Lord’s sake, we were about to offer them up to the Almighty and chill them. No way would they trust us.”
Doc smiled. To those who knew him, it would seem strange. Rather than the open beam that had been his usual mode of smiling, he now affected a sly grin that tugged at the edges of his mouth in a wolfish fashion.
“Since when did I mention trust?” he asked in a low voice.
“Listen to me, son. There are some advantages to being resurrected in a strange man’s body, no matter how old and frail it may feel to me. I know things—don’t ask me how, ’cause I don’t know how, I just know,” he said to McPhee, before continuing to the chief. “Point is, I know about those people ye got holed up in that hut. I know that they’re hunters and fighters. And, maybe more importantly, they’re survivors. They’ll do what needs to be done. What my old ma used to call pragmatic. Ye offer them the chance to live, and they’ll take that rather than the alternative, no matter what. Maybe ye can’t trust them like ye’d trust your own people, but ye can rely on them not to sign their own death warrant.”
Thompson looked at McPhee, puzzled. The medicine man returned the look twofold, shrugging his own confusion.
Doc sighed. “I mean that they’re not gonna risk their own lives if ye offer them a chance of prolonging them by doing this. It’s what they do anyway.”
Thompson nodded. He still wasn’t too sure of what the Lord’s messenger Joseph Jordan was actually saying some of the time, but he figured that he was getting the general idea.
“Okay, if you say that they’ll go along with this, then we’ll include them. The Lord alone knows that we’ll be outnumbered, so any extra warriors will be useful.”
“But don’t give ’em their blasters until we’re on the trail,” McPhee counseled. “Just to be sure.”
“Do ye not trust what I say, despite it all?” Doc asked, eyes narrowing dangerously.
“I say we shouldn’t trust them,” McPhee said firmly, meeting Doc’s gaze. Their eyes locked for a few moments before the old man nodded and grunted.
“Fair enough, ye may be right at that,” he agreed. “The first thing to do is get them their clothes, and then get across to talk to them.”
“Better to talk first, then give them back their clothes if they agree,” Thompson said.
Doc shook his head. “Would ye agree to anything if ye had to stand naked before those who would ask ye?”
McPhee gave a short, barking laugh. “He’s right about that, all right.” He snorted.
Reluctantly—almost as though he felt he were in some way handing over all his power in acquiescing on just this one small point—Thompson agreed and called for one of his sec guards.
The Inuit warrior, having been thus detailed, hurried to where the one-time sacrifices’ clothes were being stored and retrieved them, hurrying from that hut to the nearby dwelling where they were incarcerated.
As this happened and Doc watched him through the open doorway of the chief’s hut, he consulted the chron he kept on a chain in his vest pocket. Considering the lives these people seemed to lead, he marveled that it was still operational.
“Give them a little time to get dressed, regain their dignity, and then we’ll head over and talk to them,” he said over his shoulder. All the while his eyes were focused on the guarded hut. He caught sight of a man in spectacles staring out at him, and their eyes met over the distance.
Doc grinned. It was completely unlike any gesture he had made in his previous existence.
The face at the window disappeared.
“DARK NIGHT, he scares the shit out of me,” J.B. exclaimed, pulling back from the window.
“What?” Mildred was at his side in an instant. The Armorer was shivering as though they had just pushed him out of the hut with no skins or furs.
“Doc. He’s up to something over there, ordering them about as though he runs the ville. He looked right over at me as I was watching him and his eyes seemed to go right through me. Except that they weren’t Doc’s eyes. It was his face, but a stranger looking at me.”
“But what’s he up to?” Ryan mused. “Does he even know who we are anymore?”
Krysty was about to speak, but held back as she heard the sound of feet approaching the hut before there was a scuffling at the door and it was opened, the lock having been released. An Inuit tribesman stumbled over the threshold, almost obscured by the piles of clothing he carried in his arms, his short stature making it difficult for him to see over the top of the pile. He dumped the clothes in the middle of the hut and backed out warily, little more than this showing in his expression. From the door, he was covered by the guard with the Sharps.
Not wanting to risk anything at this stage, the companions held back until the door had been secured once more. Once they were locked in, Ryan moved forward to poke at the pile of clothes.
“All ours, and all here,” he commented. “But just the clothes. Everything else has been stripped—blasters, ammo, med supplies, food and water. Guess they want us to cover up for something, but they don’t trust us any more than that.”
“Guess we’d do the same if we were them,” Krysty said philosophically. “Might as well go ahead. I reckon we won’t learn anything about their plans—or about just what has happened to Doc—until we’re ready to face them.”
Ryan indicated his agreement and gestured to the others that they should pick their own clothes from the pile and once more get dressed. Jak pulled out his patched camou jacket and slip
ped his hands expertly into all the hidden places where he had secreted his small, leaf-bladed knives. Every last one had been found and removed.
“Fuckers smart for own good,” he mumbled to himself.
“Say that again,” Ryan agreed, overhearing the albino’s muttered imprecation. “They’ve kept my scarf.” This seemingly innocuous item of apparel, made dangerous by the weights sewn into the ends that enabled it to be used for a number of offensive purposes, had been retained by the Inuit along with Jak’s concealed weapons and their more overt hardware.
The Inuit may want them for something, but they were obviously taking no chances until they had obtained agreement.
“So what do we say to them?” Mildred asked.
“Yes,” Ryan replied simply. “Whatever the hell it is, we don’t have a choice at this moment, so short of agreeing to cut our own throats, we just smile and nod and say yes until we figure a way out of it.”
“Trouble is, if Doc is carrying any kind of memory of what he was, then he’ll have already told them that,” Krysty said.
“Yeah, that could be a problem,” Ryan agreed with a wry grin. It was, in many ways, a lose-lose situation no matter what the Inuit wanted from them.
They settled to wait. Once more, the feeling of being in a position where they had to be reactive rather active, almost passive in the face of a potential danger, weighed heavily upon each of them. Krysty and Mildred were better equipped to internalize than Ryan, Jak or J.B., yet even they were finding the waiting hard. What could they expect? Would the Inuit and Doc come to them, or would they be summoned? Was there a chance that their weaponry would be restored? What would their captors now demand of them, or would Doc—even though hidden behind some new persona—have parlayed some kind of freedom for them?
Introspection ill befitted any of them, but it was all they had in the few minutes between finishing reclothing themselves and the beginning of any action. Minutes that hung heavily for that reason, the worst fears and best hopes racing jumbled through each person’s mind, each differing slightly according to their personality and ability to see the best and worst in any situation. To discuss them would have taken forever and would have been fruitless. Instead, a sour silence descended on them and marked the slow passing of the chron.
Then, just when it seemed that the tension of waiting would snap nerves that were already frayed to the point of ultimate tension, they heard footsteps approaching the hut. Deliberately, none had wished to watch from the window. They faced the door, spread out across the floor of the hut, all on their feet: it was a defensive position, making it hard for a single attack to take them out, and something that they had fallen into without having to discuss the matter.
But now there were the footsteps. The moment for action was at its cusp. Should they take the front foot and move on the Inuit as soon as the door opened, or should they take the back foot and wait until the purpose of their captors had been revealed?
From the sounds emanating from the exterior, they could tell that there were three people approaching the hut. The footsteps halted. They heard the scrabbling of the lock and the door was flung open to reveal Thompson, McPhee, and—taking center stage—Doc Tanner.
Yet this impression that it was Doc was soon dispelled. The way the man strode into the center of the room, stopped dead with his hands on his hips and lazily looked around him, revealed that the character of the figure facing them had changed, seemingly irrevocably.
There was a light in the eyes that showed a shrewd, native intelligence that would not be given to the reams of verbiage Doc inflicted upon them. The ways the eyes narrowed as he surveyed the interior of the hut also revealed that here was a man less open, more guarded and dangerous that the Doc they had known. His stance was easy, but held that hint of coiled danger, like a sleeping snake that could strike before there was a chance to move. It was the same shell as Doc, but a man of a very different hue inside.
Which was nothing as to the shock they received when they heard him speak. Although he had declaimed loudly when they were on the sacrificial tables, the herbs had taken the edge off perception, and although they had each known that there was something different about his voice, none had been truly able to take in the change. Now, at closer quarters and in a fully conscious state, the difference in timbre and tone was astounding. The voice seemed almost an octave deeper, and the heavy Scots burr—so hard to understand in the Inuit—was even harder when coming from someone so unexpected.
“I’m expecting ye’ll be a little shocked to hear me talk like this,” he began. “Not, perhaps, as shocked as I was myself to be here.” Briefly he retold for them the tale he had unfolded in front of Thompson and McPhee, noting the looks of incredulity that spread across the expression of both Mildred and Krysty, and the studied inscrutability of J.B. and Jak. Ryan, however, seemed quizzical. When Joseph Jordan had revealed his identity, Ryan spoke up.
“And we’re supposed to believe you? Just like that? And they’re supposed to believe you, too?” he added, indicating the Inuit chief and his medicine man.
“Ye can believe what ye like,” Jordan flashed angrily. “I don’t ask ye to believe anything. I’m telling ye what I know to be true. Ye can either accept it or not…”
“There are things he knows about our history that are known only to the few,” McPhee said softly. “Things that are only passed down to the medicine man…and the chief,” he added as an afterthought, noticing the look Thompson threw at him. “Things that he couldn’t have known unless what he says is the truth.”
Ryan wasn’t so sure. He had heard Doc outline a brief history of migration in the region to the Inuit chief only a few evenings previously. They didn’t know the true history of the man. If they had, they would never believe it over the truth to which they chose to subscribe. The times the man claiming to be Joseph Jordan spoke of were before Doc had been trawled for the first time by the Chronos project; such events could have made the newspapers of the day, been talked of and written about widely. A man of Doc’s erudite nature could easily have come across them during his first lifetime in the predark era.
If this were the case, then given the circumstances it wasn’t impossible to imagine that Doc had retreated so far into his madness that he would construct a new persona that called on things that could defend him in the current situation. The things Mildred had told them about the way men’s minds worked would make this feasible. Certainly, Ryan found it a whole lot more believable than transmigration of the soul.
More importantly, if this were the case, then the real Doc was still in there and could come back to them; was, perhaps, even now finding some hidden way in which to assist them. After all, it didn’t sound as though they were about to buy the farm.
This spun through his mind in the seconds after McPhee had spoken. It was crucial, now, to win the trust of the Inuit.
“Okay,” Ryan said with a brief nod, “I guess that kinda convinces me.”
“Good, good,” Jordan said, nodding in emphasis with the repetition. “Look, will ye all look a little less like we’re gonna gut ye like fish. Relax a little, I’ve got something to say to ye.”
Warily, casting looks to one another, the companions reached an unspoken consensus to uncoil and listen to what the man had to say. Krysty was the first to sit, and Jordan followed suit. Within seconds, they were all seated on the floor and the tension in the atmosphere had eased. Even the two Inuit seemed to be a little less reserved and on edge than before. Correspondingly, Jordan’s tone eased and became more confidential as he began.
“Ye are not to be the sacrifice. There’s something not right about it, and that’s why I was sent to these people. To stop it—”
It seemed to occur to neither Jordan nor the Inuit that this may have been something to do with Doc Tanner, still lurking, a prisoner within his own body. It didn’t, however, escape the listening companions. But now wasn’t the time to raise the matter. Instead they continued to listen in silence
.
“—and to make something better happen. Something that would serve the purpose of these people, and prove to them that the good Lord has not deserted them. He needs a sign from them of their obedience and servitude before he will deign to help, and in an act of good faith for their faith, he has sent me…” Jordan was beginning to ramble; it was, perhaps, a sign of Doc trying to break through. Jordan shook his head violently, as though clearing it of clouded thought, before continuing. “This sacrifice was wrong. It would not have appeased him and would not have brought good fortune to the tribe. He demands of them something greater, something that befits their debt to him as their creator, and he has sent me to guide them on this. It is a great task, and I would ask for your help in fulfilling it, as we will need all those who can fight.”
“Wouldn’t it anger the Almighty if outsiders were to assist?” Krysty asked. “Wouldn’t it sully the purity of the sacrifice?”
Thompson looked across to McPhee. “That’s true,” he said. “Why would the Almighty—”
“Because he would not have sent me in the first place unless he felt ye needed help,” Jordan thundered, punching his fist into the floor of the hut to emphasize his point. It was a sudden explosion, and took the Inuit by surprise.
Not the companions. If this was a soul in possession of Doc Tanner, then it seemed as though Doc were still in there somewhere. If it was an alternate personality created by a shattered Doc, then the real Tanner was still influencing the surrogate.
Jordan continued in a milder tone, seemingly as shocked by his outburst as the two Inuit men.
“I am from the original stock of this village. It was my people who came to this land and brought the Lord to these people, joining with them to make the tribe that we see today. That is why I was sent. In the same way, the Lord has sent ye here so that ye may become one with the tribe and join in the fight. Ye will become servants of the Lord, as we are. Ye—” he turned to McPhee “—will attend to this. It will happen soon. For we must move soon, before the storms worsen and the seasons change once more.”