Chapter Five

 

 

 

"There's that big comm dish," Krysty said, standing up in the back of the lurching wag, "the one that saved our lives when the mountain blew out."

 

The afternoon was nearly done, the sun hanging low on the western horizon, the shadows of the Volvo truck stretching far ahead of it down the dusty trail.

 

Ryan was taking a turn at the wheel, and he had already sported the battered, rusting orange hulk of the communications receiver that lay on its side at the bottom of the steep, rugged hillside.

 

"Be inside by dark," he said.

 

"Jump straightaway?" J.B. asked, sitting at his side in the cab.

 

"Why not?"

 

"No reason."

 

"The redoubt got wrecked, didn't it?"

 

The Armorer took off his spectacles and began to polish the lenses. "Yeah. No cooking or sleeping facilities up there. Not now. Yeah, let's just do the climb, then do the jump. The sooner the better."

 

 

 

DEAN LED THE WAY up the sandstone slope, talking animatedly with Jak. Abe and Trader were next, the older man sometimes using the trusty Armalite as a stick to help him over the rougher places. J.B. and Mildred were the third pair, climbing mainly in silence, as were Ryan and Krysty, following immediately behind them.

 

Doc and Sukie were trailing at the back.

 

Ryan overheard some parts of their conversation, realizing that Doc was attempting to explain the inexplicable concept of matter transfer and what making a "jump" would mean. He seemed to be doing his best to try to reassure her, but was generally making things worse.

 

"It is true that there is sometimes a small element of nausea involved."

 

"Bein' sick?"

 

"Just a little. I believe that I have made dozens of such jumps by now, and I have avoided being sick on several of them. So it isn't too unpleasant."

 

"You pass out though?"

 

"Briefly."

 

"I'm getting to think I should go look for my sister in Hope Springs, Doc."

 

"There is the rest of your life to try to do that, my dear lady."

 

"But if something goes wrong on this jump, then I won't have any rest of my life."

 

Ryan climbed a little faster and the conversation faded away behind him.

 

 

 

THE ORIGINAL ENTRANCE to the military complex had been wiped away by the explosion, and the way in now lay through a great scar in the raw rock. It was concealed from below by the angle and gradient of the mountainside and opened into the rubble-strewed remnants of a wide corridor.

 

Ryan wasn't surprised to find, when he reached the top, that there were no signs of anyone having entered the redoubt since their last departure from it. The dust that lay thickly over everything around the inner passage was undisturbed.

 

The rows of concealed lights in the curved ceiling had all been destroyed, and the carved-out interior of the mountain was almost dark.

 

Ryan stepped back to the brink and called out to Doc and Sukie to hurry up. "Time's running out if we're to jump tonight! Getting black."

 

"We are making our best efforts, my friend."

 

"Well, try making some even better ones," Trader shouted, "or you get up here and find we've all gone."

 

Doc said something to Sukie, but they couldn't hear what it was.

 

 

 

"SO THIS IS YOUR BOX of tricks, is it, Ryan?" Trader stood in the small anteroom, the main control consoles whirring and flickering behind him, staring at the door into the mat-trans chamber.

 

"Yeah. Inside, close the door. The metal disks in the floor and ceiling glow. There's a kind of a mist filters down from the top. You become briefly unconscious"

 

J.B. interrupted him. "We figure that's the actual moment of leaving here and being transmitted or transferred, all the way to there."

 

"Wherever that is." Dean grinned.

 

Trader ruffled his hair. "Yeah, that's the most interesting part of all this, son."

 

"What's that panel of numbers and letters by the side of the door?" Sukie asked. Ryan noticed that her voice sounded high and strained.

 

"Control codes," Doc replied. "Sadly, at the time of what is called skydark, all of the relevant documentation and comp disks have been wiped clean or destroyed or have quite simply vanished. So we have no way at all of understanding what any combination might do."

 

"Why not just hit two or three at random?" Trader suggested. "See what happens?"

 

"No." Ryan tried to explain. "Some of the redoubts built at the very end of the twentieth century, before the big fires and the long winters came, were destroyed. Probably a whole lot of them were. We'll never know. And the rest have been mainly hidden since then. We kind of luck into them from inside when we jump. But some have been damaged."

 

"So?"

 

"So, the fact that we've never jumped into a vacuum, or into the middle of a million tons of powdered concrete and crushed steel shows there's a safeguard built in. Hit the buttons at random and not know what you're doing could, for instance, override that safety device."

 

"Oh, yeah. See what you mean, Ryan."

 

"So, is everyone ready?"

 

"You sure that little box of silvery glass will hold us?" Trader asked.

 

"Sure."

 

Sukie raised a hand. "Is there time for me to go back and find some place to take a leak?"

 

Abe cackled with laughter. "Make one of these jumps and you'll probably piss yourself anyway. So why bother?"

 

Doc hefted his sword stick toward the sniggering little gunner. "There's no call for that, Abraham."

 

"Just a small joke, Doc," he protested.

 

"Very small and not much of a joke, either. Rather like yourself." He glowered at Abe. "I would have thought that an apology to the lady might be in order."

 

"Let it be, Doc," Sukie said.

 

Abe shook his head. "No. I'm sorry, Sukie. Stupe of me. Guess I'm strung up and wound over for the jump."

 

One by one they filed into the six-sided chamber, all sitting in a circle, backs against the cool walls of silver armaglass. Here, in the heart of the mat-trans unit, there was ample lighting to see what was happening, powered by the original nuke gen that still worked diligently away somewhere in the bowels of the ancient redoubt.

 

Ryan waited outside, until everyone was comfortable, guns stashed safely. J.B. had taken off his glasses and folded them into one of his pockets, placing his fedora on the floor at his side. Then he locked his fingers with those of Mildred, sitting next to him. He winked up at Ryan.

 

Dean and Krysty had left a gap between them for when he'd closed the door and triggered the mechanism. Ryan noticed that Krysty's sentient hair was now curled defensively and tightly at her nape, its bright flaming color dimmed by anticipation of the jump to come.

 

Nobody liked jumping.

 

Trader had entered as though he half expected to see a panther lying curled in one corner of the chamber. He sat, stretching his legs, settling the Armalite on his lap, his finger ready inside the trigger guard. He looked around him in what Ryan knew, from long memory, as being something as close to nerves as the old man would ever show.

 

Abe perched happily beside him, next in the circle to Mildred, with Doc on his other side.

 

He waited until Sukie had sat, tucking her booted feet beneath her, nervously brushing her fingers over the divided skirt. Doc reached for one of her hands and pressed his lips to it in a gentle honorable gesture.

 

"I promise and vow that no harm shall come to you, my dear lady, as long as I live to be your champion," he said gallantry, receiving a watery smile in return. He sat, his knee joints cracking like firecrackers, and leaned back, closing his eyes.

 

Jak had entered the chamber like a cat, sitting in one corner, between Sukie and Krysty. He ran his long, pale fingers once through the mane of stark white hair and also closed his eyes and relaxed.

 

Ryan glanced behind him, from long habit, seeing that he was now quite alone, except for the banks of desks and tiny multicolored lights.

 

"Everyone ready?" he asked. No one answered. "Well, nobody not ready." He stepped inside the glittering chamber, pausing for a last second, hand on the edge of the heavy door, ready to pull it tightly shut.

 

At the frozen fraction of a second when the lock clicked firmly shut, and he moved to sit down, Ryan's eye caught the look on Sukie Smith's face.

 

He couldn't remember seeing such deep, superstitious terror on a human visage before. It was as though she had been dragged to the brink of the fieriest pit in hell and forced to stare into it.

 

At that moment Ryan knew that something was going to happen, and that he was the only one who could do anything to try to prevent it.

 

But Dean grabbed his one hand, Krysty clasping the other, and the moment had gone.

 

The metal disks above and below him started to glow brightly, and the lights outside seemed to have become much dimmer. There was a distant humming sound that somehow came from both inside and outside the chamber.

 

"No," Sukie said very clearly and distinctly, as if she were rejecting an obscene suggestion from a drunk in a back alley of a frontier pesthole.

 

"What?" Doc blinked his eyes open, struggling to focus, his brain fighting for understanding.

 

The gray-white mist appeared at the top of the silver-walled chamber, writhing lower.

 

Ryan battled hard to keep his one eye open. He wrenched his hand free from his son, who mumbled something in protest. But Krysty had a grip like steel, and he could do nothing to free himself from her. He saw J.B. reacting, but it was all much to little and an eternity too late.

 

Sukie was already up into a crouch, starting to move clumsily toward the chamber door, her mouth working. Odd words broke through the mind-scrambled barrier. "Havesorry HopesisterDoc sorr"

 

Ryan noticed that there was a small pool of liquid where the woman had been sitting, but that made no sense at all to him. "Don't" he said.

 

Or thought he said.

 

Now the familiar black waters of the jump were sucking him down into their whirling center. The last thing Ryan saw was a dark figure, oddly opaque, cross his line of sight. There was the impression of the armaglass door opening and a hideous screaming, roaring noise that filled the universe.

 

Then the blackness became absolute.