by James Axler
Heart soaring, he stepped out of the doorway, out of the great eye of Chronos, and knelt with arms outstretched.
“Oh my darlings,” he said. “My dearest, most precious darlings.”
The faces of his wife and daughter radiated shock, absolute white-faced shock.
“Where’s my daddy?” Rachel cried.
“It’s all right, Rachel,” he said. “Daddy’s here. He’s back with you and safe.”
Rachel started screaming over and over again, “Where’s my daddy? Where’s my daddy?”
Emily drew her closer with a protective arm, her dark eyes full of anger and dread. “How do you know my daughter’s name?” she demanded. “Who are you, old man? What do you want? Where’s my husband? What have you done with him?”
Before he could frame an answer, Emily grabbed the little girl by the hand and, clutching Jolyon to her breast, took off in the opposite direction. As she ran she shouted, “Police! Help! Police!”
“Wait, Emily, dearest!” he cried.
Doc raced after her, but his legs had no strength left in them. He couldn’t catch her. Emily and Rachel vanished into the fog ahead. Doc took a few more steps, then stumbled and fell. The ache in his stomach suddenly became unbearable. His entire body convulsed. He vomited until he had nothing left, until he tasted blood.
When he raised his head, he saw that nothing was as it seemed. He was in a mat-trans chamber. Sitting on the floor across from him was Dr. Antoine Kirby. His tall topknot of dreads had completely flopped over to one side. Puke stained the lap of his BDU pants.
“God, that was awful,” the black man groaned. “Got to get some air or I’m gonna dry heave again.” He crawled to the door, opened it from his knees, then crawled out of the unit.
Doc looked around the chamber floor for his swordstick, then remembered he’d lost it at Magus’s redoubt. Without the help of the cane to get to his feet, Doc had to crawl out, too.
The gateway control room was one of the largest he had ever seen. It had three times the normal number of workstations. One wall was made up of massive, tape-drive computers, and another wall was line with what looked like power transformers and boosters. Everything was humming and clicking; the air smelled of ozone and warm plastic.
On the fourth wall were a pair of gasketed vanadium steel doors, side by side.
Doc pointed at them and asked, “Are those gateways, as well?”
Kirby looked over. “No, those are temporal transfer chambers.”
“Two of them?”
“You and I will be transferring simultaneously.”
“Why is that necessary?”
“It conserves energy. It takes a tremendous amount of power to get the system online. In fact, it will pretty much use up all of this redoubt’s nuclear reserves. We have to jump simultaneously. There won’t be enough energy left for another power-up. When the system’s operational energy level is reached, two jumps, perhaps even a hundred jumps are possible if they take place in the same instant. There’s another reason for simultaneous transfer, too. For us both to slip back into same time line, our jumps must be coordinated to a fraction of a nanosecond.”
Doc couldn’t help but notice that the mathematician’s grief over the loss of his colleague seemed to be under control.
On the verge of a great experiment, the culmination of a life’s work, the salvation of the known world, there was much to occupy and distract Kirby’s mind. “How do you know any of this for a fact?”
“It’s not fact. It’s predictions derived from our computer models of supra-time/space.”
“Do your models tell you what we will experience when we go back in time?”
“No. That’s something impossible to predict. We assume it will be similar to the mat-trans experience. Disorientation. Unconsciousness. Vivid dreaming. Nausea after the fact. What was it like when you traveled forward in time?”
“The lower depths of hell.”
“We can hope for better than that.”
Remembering a fragment of his mat-trans jump nightmare, Doc asked, “Will I see myself?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. The door you are about to exit through is not the same one you were drawn into two hundred years ago. It will be close, but the locations will not overlap.”
“What must I do?”
“All that’s required is that you open the door and step out of the chamber. You won’t be home until you leave it. You must exit within a minute or so of reaching the terminus.”
Doc had sudden awful suspicion, also fueled by his nightmare. “Will my family even recognize me? I am older than when I left. The trawling has aged me, too.”
“Say you were struck by lightning.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“A joke. Pretend to be taken gravely ill. As far as they’re concerned you won’t have left at all, you will just have disappeared for a moment. Trust me, they will accept you with open arms.”
“But I am different,” Doc said. “It is going to be like stepping out of a room and returning a minute later scarred physically, and perhaps mentally. My young Emily will be suddenly be married to a sixty-year-old man.”
“Your teeth are still fine.”
For the first time, Tanner got the distinct impression that Dr. Kirby didn’t care what happened to him, as long as he stepped out of the time chamber on cue. Perhaps that was understandable. It wasn’t his problem.
“I have a lot of preparations to make,” Kirby said. “It will take twice as long to set up the computers without Graydon’s help. Why don’t you go have a wash? The showers are through the door and down the hall to the right. There are some clean clothes laid out for you.”
Doc found the washroom, stripped out of his clothes and got into the white-tiled stall. It was the first hot shower he had had in a long time. Using plenty of soap and a small brush he found, he scrubbed out the ground-in filth of Deathlands. When he toweled the steam off the mirror afterward and looked at himself, he decided that without the dirt, he looked even older. Late sixties, perhaps. The grime had plugged the seams in his face like Pancake makeup. There was a light in his haggard face, though. He was to be released from prison after serving an unjust, two-hundred-year sentence.
He thought better of changing his clothes. Appearing in a light blue, Air Force-issue jumpsuit would have been yet another shock for his loved ones. He pulled on the threadbare coat and trousers, the worn, patched knee boots.
When he returned to the control room, he saw that Kirby had washed and spruced up, too. Gone were the massive dreads. He had shaved and waxed his head and discarded his Deathlands’ clothing. He wore a sparkling white lab coat. Clipped to the pocket was a plastic photo ID from Livermore Labs.
“I’m still running system diagnostics,” Kirby told him. “We have time to eat.”
“My last meal in Deathlands.”
“The redoubt is well-stocked, equipped with subzero freezers. Government money paid for it all. Our tax dollars at work. What’s your pleasure, Dr. Tanner?”
He didn’t have to think about it. “A well-aged T-bone steak. Scalloped potatoes. Steamed, buttered asparagus. And an appropriate wine.”
“Been a long time, huh?”
“I have to admit, it has been a while.”
“I can provide everything but the wine. Colonel Bell popped a bottle of predark Cabernet Sauvignon after we came out of cryogenesis. There was stuff floating around in it that you wouldn’t believe. The cork had failed. All the corks have failed. I do have some interesting Scotch. One hundred fifteen years’ mellow.”
They retired to the redoubt’s fully automated mess hall. While the dinner was cooking itself, they drank liquid amber silk from crystal tumblers.
“Are you trying to get me lubricated?” Doc asked as the mathematician refilled his glass for the third time.
“Relaxed,” Kirby said. “And I’m drinking as much as you. A mat-trans and a time jump in the same day could be rough.”
“Is all that
fine food I smell going to come out my nostrils?”
“Live for the moment, Tanner,” Kirby said. Then he raised his glass. “Here’s to Colonel Graydon Bell.”
For a second, Doc thought the man was going to lose control again, but he recovered, wiping his eyes with the back of his lab coat sleeve.
“To Colonel Bell,” Doc said. “And to my companions.”
“Salute,” Kirby said, downing his drink. He reached into his side pocket. “I have something I want you to take with you. It’s more important than you can imagine. The survival of our world depends on it.”
He put a tiny metal capsule and a neck chain onto Doc’s open palm. “Inside the capsule is information that must fall into the hands of the heads of Operation Chronos before the first time-trawl is performed,” he said. “You must find a way to insure that this happens, and that the contents remain intact.”
Doc slipped the chain over his head. “I will do my best to honor that request,” he said.
As they began to eat the food, Doc changed the subject to the trainers and their unique attributes and peculiarities. “How could a creature have evolved on this Earth?” he said. “Nothing about them makes sense.”
Although Kirby’s grasp of evolution was less than perfect, he saw the problem. “If they didn’t come from here, then where?”
“Precisely,” Doc said. “Rumor has it that Magus time travels.”
“No, that’s bullshit. He can’t be jumping back and forth in time. S-t/s says reality would fall to pieces.”
“Time is a dimension, correct?”
“Of course, the fourth dimension.”
“What if some other kind of dimensional travel is involved? Beyond the fourth, I mean. If there are four, might not there be ten or a hundred?”
“Or a million.”
“If the travel in this case was between parallel universes, would there be catastrophic disruption to the current existence?”
“There’s no way to tell. Our experience with consequences of temporal transfer is limited to what happened to you. A single case. Certainly parallel universes have been predicted, theoretically.”
Doc could verify those theories, but chose not to.
“Is it conceivable that he could be looting parallel worlds and returning to this one?”
“No. The kind of dimensional travel you are talking about is impossible. No such technology existed prior to the Apocalypse, and I seriously doubt it could have been developed since. There are fundamental insurmountable problems. Even if Magus could move between universes, how would he ever find his way back? How would he know where he would end up when he stepped across? There is no up or down in what you are describing. Just a vast otherscape. We’re not talking about a map of Georgia here. It’s a random number crapshoot. One universe is just as likely to be next door at one moment as any another. And the consequences of travel would be just as destructive. Bringing things into a time line from elsewhere…”
“Elsewhen…”
“Sure, whatever. It would have the same destabilizing effect.”
“So, where did the trainers come from?”
“They could have come from outer space,” Kirby said. “That’s an easier sell than parallel worlds. But it doesn’t still speak to a larger issue.”
“Which is?”
“If Magus could go anywhere in a million universes, why would he come back to this hellhole? Even for a visit?”
Doc sipped at his Scotch whiskey. It was very, very smooth. “Touché, Dr. Kirby,” he said. “Why indeed.”
“It’s time to get back to the control room,” the black man said. “Under the circumstances, I think we’ll leave the dishes.”
Doc pushed up from his chair and fell in behind.
Clearly there were some things that Kirby wasn’t taking into account. Doc had seen matériel from another world, seen beings from that world arrive here not once, but twice, with his own eyes. And despite that double intrusion, the fabric of existence seemed as whole as it ever had. None of Kirby’s supposed, disastrous effects had taken place.
Perhaps it was a problem of specialization, he thought. When Doc had gone to university it hadn’t been an issue, but in the last part of the twentieth century whitecoats only worked in limited fields. They didn’t know the rules or operating procedures of other disciplines. And moreover, they didn’t give a damn. Perhaps if Colonel Bell had survived, he might have gotten a more satisfactory answer to his question about the trainers. Physicists in his experience were voluble and interesting conversationalists, less grounded in the purely rational than other whitecoats. Freer, more liberal thinkers. Not that Kirby wasn’t personable enough, but he was a mathematician by training and inclination.
Somewhat tipsy from the whiskey, and sleepy from all the food, Doc felt a sudden rush of sentimentality. He was about to say goodbye to Deathlands after all these years. The actuality of his leaving had finally begun to sink in. It was no longer an abstract desire, a wistful longing. He was really going, forever.
He thought about the memories he would be taking back to Nebraska. Of the battles. Of the dangers. Of the triumphs. Of Lori Quint. Truly he was not the same man who was stolen away. He had changed into a hardbitten warrior.
Could he actually return to his own peaceful time, to domesticity, to academia?
Could he live as he should have lived?
Could he slip into the ease and safety of Victorian America as if none of this had ever happened?
To have seen so much death and suffering. To have caused death and suffering in order to survive, answering bullet for bullet, blade thrust for blade thrust. What kind of a father would such a man be in a world where violence was not a virtue, but the act of a psychopath, a serial criminal. Would he be the kind of father children would run from screaming?
Doc slumped into a control room chair, feeling the full weight and sum of his years.
Kirby tinkered with the computers and gradually the room started to get very warm. The generators’ hum had become a shrill whine. They were nearly at peak power.
“It won’t be long now,” the mathematician assured him. “The grid is just coming online.”
Doc let his gaze turn inward. Instead of joy, he felt excruciating pain over what he was about to give up. It was something he hadn’t expected to feel at this moment, something he had to put aside.
What I have prayed for so long, he told himself, I will humbly accept as God’s true gift. The path that lies straight ahead is the path I will not waver from.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ryan had already made his decision before the grating music paused and the doors banged back for the fourth time. It was a decision forced upon him by circumstances, a decision of last resort. The army of freebooters that had sailed south from Morro Bay had dwindled to thirteen souls.
Eight islanders. Five companions.
If the survivors of the Taniwha tea remained where they were, in the middle of the islet, the combined attacks of large and small foes were going to grind them into stew meat.
Ryan smacked an oncoming scagworm in the side of its domed head with the flat of the panga. It made a clanking sound, like he’d swatted a steel ingot. He’d already learned that striking these muties with the sharp edge did nothing but dull the blade. The panga blow knocked the scagworm off course, and diverted its attention long enough for it to acquire another target. Instead of rejoining the attack on him, it slithered off to assault an islander who was stomping a rat devil to pulp while two more chewed the backs of his calves.
“Back to the beach!” he told the companions. He repeated himself to Eng, shouting, “Into the water! We’ve got to get into the water.”
The captain waved his men after them.
They formed another flying wedge of sword and knife and tomahawk, and ducking under the swoops of the Wazls, fought their way through the stickies and swampies. There were fewer to deal with now, and the ones that remained seemed warier, a tad less suicidal.<
br />
As they broke through the thin mutie ranks and charged for the shore, the uniforms in the boats stood and shouldered their autorifles, but in a very relaxed, lackadaisical sort of way. Their expressions said, “This is going to be good.”
“Ryan, what the rad blazes are you doing?” J.B. asked.
“Just leveling the playing field.”
“But the fuckers in the rowboats—”
“If they shoot, they shoot,” Ryan said as the companions joined them, splashing into the warm water. “Would you rather check out from a bullet, or die with a stickie peeling off your face?”
“A bullet, most definitely.”
“Deeper!” Ryan shouted to the others. “Wade out deeper!”
The thirteen survivors trudged out until the water came up to their hips, then they turned toward shore to face the coming onslaught.
“Yes!” Ryan exclaimed as the fastest and most agile of their pursuers jumped into the water after them. The rat devils could swim, all right. They dogpaddled, their heads held above water, little legs kicking. But they swam in straight lines at a tenth of their speed on land. And they couldn’t jump around to evade the falling blades.
No one needed instructions on what to do next.
Cursing and snarling, the survivors hacked and whacked the surface-swimming rat devils. The glancing blows stunned them; the well-aimed swings bisected them. Their toy-poodle-size bodies drifted by, leaking red. Some of the stunned muties came to between the shore and the boats, struggling with broken legs and broken backs to stay afloat, to keep their heads above the water. Their frantic efforts created bubbles and splash, ripples and wavelets on the smooth gray sea.
Sensing that dinner might soon be out of reach, the two Wazls grew more frantic in their attacks. The down drafts of their swoops and dives buffeted the companions’ faces, and the gusts of wind propelled the floating rat devils even farther off shore.
The scagworms reached the finish line next. A half-dozen of them snaked right up to the waterline, but stopped short of getting their thousand or so feet wet. They either could no longer sense the presence of their prey, or they refused to enter the water to chase it.