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DOC AWOKE the next morning to find that the others had risen before him. Despite the unease with which he had first fallen into sleep, it had proved to move from fitful to deep and dreamless, and he now felt refreshed and less apprehensive. He rose and dressed, going in search of the others. In the quiet of the redoubt, the hum of unmaintenanced machinery the only breaks in the silence, it wasn’t difficult to determine where they were.
Doc’s sense took him to the kitchens, where the others were attempting to construct some kind of appetizing and nutritious meal from what they had left in the stores before leaving the last time. Which was very little. But they were in no condition to be fussy about what they would eat. Even the remains of the stores beat charred and burned mule or dog meat when it came to a contest.
‘Doc, I didn’t want to wake you, so I left you,’ Krysty said on catching sight of him. ‘Hope that was okay. How are you feeling?’
‘Do you mean generally? Or are you being more specific—as in, do I feel quite insane today?’ Doc queried with as much of a grin as he could muster.
‘It wasn’t what I meant, but I guess it’s a fair question,’ Krysty mused. ‘I don’t know what you remember, but you kind of lost it for a while there.’
‘I’ll have to take your word for that,’ the old man answered, settling himself among them. ‘I have no recollection of any events after first leaving here and being caught in a blizzard.’
Ryan had been watching Doc carefully and had no doubts that the old man was telling the truth. There was something disingenuous about the old man. It was always easy to see when Doc was entering one of his mentally fragile phases, and equally it was easy to see when he had clarity of thought. Now was one of the latter times and Doc seemed genuinely confused about events. If nothing else, Ryan was glad to see the back of Joseph Jordan, whoever or whatever he may have been.
‘Dark night, there’s a lot that happened since then,’ J.B. said with a degree of wry understatement. ‘Where do we begin?’
Doc sat entranced while the events of the past few days were relayed to him. The trek across the wastelands, followed by their discovery by the Inuit hunting party when Doc tried to escape them. Their captivity in the Inuit settlement and near sacrifice in pagan- and Christian-inspired ritual to insure the fertility of the waning tribe. From this, the sudden emergence from fever of a new personality within Doc—that of the reincarnated Joseph Jordan. When the story reached this point, all watched Doc closely for some flicker of recognition, yet there was none. The only emotion to register on his face was that of astonishment.
From here, the old man’s astonishment mounted as they unfurled his plans to take on the ville of Fairbanks as a large-scale sacrifice to their Lord, and of the war party he had helped to prepare.
By the time that Mildred and Jak were relaying to him the doomed attack on the ville, and the manner in which they had almost been trapped within the burning streets, Doc’s face was ashen. Racing through his mind were thoughts of how his own insanity had nearly doomed his companions. Thoughts that jostled for space within his mind with others, that were darker and more introverted: how fragile was his mind, his personality, that it was able to be submerged so easily into some kind of disguise? How easy was it for him to sink into a kind of oblivion where he was able to threaten the very existence of those he valued most with no impunity?
‘Doc, Doc, are you okay?’
‘Eh?’ The old man shook himself from his reverie to see that the others were studying him closely. He realized that their story had ended and he had seemed not to acknowledge this.
‘I’m sorry,’ he began haltingly. ‘I just find it hard to comprehend. That I could have seemed to have functioned so clearly and yet to be advocating such madness. In fact, actively pursuing it.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘I have no recall of any of the events you have outlined, not even in the sense of a dream from which I was detached, merely the observer. What I recall is so much…less…’ He petered off, not quite sure where to begin.
In the ensuing silence Ryan scanned the companions as they sat around the kitchen of the redoubt. Mildred and Krysty, who seemed to have a better grasp of the complexities of Doc’s psyche than anyone else, were on edge, waiting for the old man to try to explain what had happened to him in his own mind. It was vital information for them, as they would be able to try to assess just where he was coming from…and perhaps where he was going to.
Jak was impassive. His scarred albino features were as grim and unreadable as they always were. Very rarely did any emotion escape the mask that he used to shield himself from the outside world. But he would be taking it in and making his own assessment.
J.B. looked like Ryan felt—as though he wanted to know what was happening with Doc but doubted that he could assimilate it. The two men had been friends for so long that Ryan was sure that J.B. felt the same way as he did. They were men of action and only used their sharp minds when action was called for. This was something beyond that range of experience.
Doc began again. ‘In my mind, I felt as though I were not here. Everything that I experienced on our journey to the Inuit ville was part of some test. I was back in the time from which I originally came. I was insane, locked in a padded room and going through these experiences as a kind of mental exercise. It was as though I were a rat in a maze, running blindly at the behest of some celestial scientist who had a purpose in mind for me, and if I reached the end of the maze I would be rewarded. Not with candy or cheese, but with the truth. A revelation that would explain why I was going through this whole experience…not just since landing here, but in the entire time since you, my dear friends, first saved me from the hands of Cort Strasser.
‘It seemed to me that in order to do this, I had to go through some kind of change, some kind of rebirth. I had to be like the butterfly that emerges from the chrysalis…even if that change meant that I had little or no knowledge of the life that I had experienced before that moment.
‘I suspect that that was the moment at which this man Jordan first made an appearance. I could not tell you who or what he was, only that once he appeared, I receded not just in your eyes, but in my own mind, as well. I have no recall of anything that happened after that, and only one fleeting memory from then until I awoke on the sled as we approached this place once more.
‘If I think about it, I can remember, just for a moment, standing in a log cabin staring at you all, wrapped in furs and skins. I tried to speak, but somehow the words would not come out. It was as though I were watching you through a gauze, as though I could hear you through a fog of white noise. My chest was constrained, making every breath something for which I had to fight, every syllable something that had to be forced from my lips. The words were there, but they would not come out.’
‘But it is fleeting, momentary, and after that there is nothing. Nothing until last evening, when I awoke to find myself on a sled, aware that something had happened, but not what that may be.’
Doc stuttered to a halt and shrugged, not knowing where to go.
‘I think that being here triggered things you didn’t want to remember and made you withdraw into yourself,’ Mildred said slowly. ‘Strange thing is, although it may sound like madness, it’s more a way of clinging on to your sanity.’
‘But at what cost?’ Doc spit bitterly. ‘What does it benefit me if I save sanity at the expense of losing identity? What use is it if I close down whenever things get too much? How does this settle with the notion that I am in some way a useful member of this group. Good heavens, Doctor, if I am to retreat into my own head at the drop of a hat, what possible use could I be to you? In fact, I could be nothing except a complete liability. And this is not a world in which to carry passengers.’
‘That’s for us to decide,’ Ryan cut in.
Doc shook his head firmly. ‘I cannot be responsible for such an eventuality.’
‘Then what do you propose to do about it?’ Krysty asked in a reasonable tone. ‘You want to stay here, alone? How long will you cling to your sanity then? You had a set of circumstances that are unlikely to occur again. I can’t see why you—’
‘But that is not the point,’ Doc shouted over her. ‘It may have been a one-off occurrence, but I cannot know that for sure, any more than you can. I cannot risk it happening again.’
‘Doc, the only way any of us can avoid a risk like that is by buying the farm right here and now, and that’s just stupe,’ J.B. said. ‘It’s this fucking place—it messes with our heads. Let’s just get the hell out and see what we feel like when we land somewhere else.’
It was a view with which all could agree, even Doc, who approached the idea with some trepidation, yet could see through his own fears how the redoubt may be, once more, exerting its pernicious influence.
They effected the quickest evacuation of all their redoubt experiences. In next to no time, they had collected what little they had to take with them, replenished from the few supplies left in the stores and were in the mattrans chamber.
Ryan stood by the door while the others filed into the chamber. As he entered and closed the door, Krysty settled on the disk-inset floor next to an apprehensive-looking Doc. She could feel the oppressive atmosphere that had once again been creeping upon them begin to lift, as if carried on the trails of white mist that began to spiral around them.
Chapter Three
Jak wretched and sent a thin stream of bile across the floor, where it settled at Ryan Cawdor’s feet.
‘Jak’s coming around,’ the one-eyed man muttered, watching the stream of liquid congeal at the toe of his heavy combat boot. He couldn’t think much beyond that, having only just managed to clamber to his feet. His head still spun wildly and it was at times like this that he was almost thankful for monocular vision, as it spared him the worst excesses of vomit-inducing blurred and double vision after a jump.
‘It’s not him I’m worried about,’ Krysty slurred, shaking her head as she tried to clear it. The movement only made things worse and she slumped forward from her kneeling position. She felt terrible. Like the others, she had been concerned that with little opportunity to recuperate after a traumatic firefight and flight, the jump would be too much of a strain. Jak always suffered after a jump, but it was the ever-fragile Doc who was the cause of most concern.
She’d worry about him later, though. Right now, her primary objective was to make sure that she was functioning.
J.B. and Mildred had stirred, and while Ryan tried to make out shapes through the opaque armaglass walls of the chamber, Krysty helped the pair of them to their feet. Jak, as ever, eschewed all help, waving away Krysty’s proffered hand to drag himself upright. He spit out a sour ball of bile and looked over at Doc.
‘He okay?’
Doc lay motionless, on his back.
‘I don’t know,’ Mildred muttered unnecessarily as she made her way over to him. The reflex reply had been necessary to cover her own concern. To all intents and purposes, Doc looked as though the trip might have been one trauma too much. He was so still, looked so peaceful, that at first she suspected that he had bought the farm while being reconstituted. It was only when she was kneeling over him that she could see he was breathing shallowly. There was still some life in the old bastard.
Something he confirmed by suddenly opening his eyes. They were wide, staring and alert, with none of the muzziness that he—or, indeed, any of the others—usually experienced after a jump.
‘Why, hello, my dear Doctor. How pleasant to see you. I must say, you don’t seem to be at all well. I, on the other hand, feel as though I have had a most refreshing rest.’ He propped himself up on one elbow and looked at the others, adding, ‘It’s most strange. Usually I feel terrible after a jump, but I feel as though I could fight an army.’
‘Doc, the way I feel, that might be a good thing,’ Ryan commented wryly. ‘But right now, let’s just get our shit together and secure the immediate area.’
He had seen nothing in the vague shapes lurking beyond the opaque armaglass of the chamber to suggest that there was any kind of life in the redoubt. However, triple red was the only way to approach evacuation. When they were sufficiently recovered to make a move, they exited the chamber one by one, assuming positions of cover.
It was a futile exercise. The room beyond the anteroom was in semidarkness, where some of the fluorescent lighting had failed and the constantly blinking lights of the comp desks were all the life that appeared to exist.
Despite the fact that the air-conditioning and recycling plant should have kept a constant temperature, there was a distinct chill in the air, suggesting that it was more than just the lighting that was failing. The air itself was breathable, but carried a dank undertone, suggesting that areas of the redoubt might have been breached by outside elements. The one reassuring thing it did have, though, was that indefinable air of complete desolation. There seemed to be no human life here.
Still keeping their blasters to hand—instinct told them the redoubt was empty, but intellect still counseled caution—they left the chamber room.
The redoubt was in some disarray, not from any looting or ransacking from outside, but from the gradual breakdown of its own systems. At some time, probably during the immediate aftermath of the nukecaust, a breach had occurred in the walls of the structure. An earth movement strong enough to rupture the reinforced, thick concrete walls had caused enough damage to let outside elements creep in. Wherever this was located—and at present they couldn’t be sure—it was beneath the local water table, as damp had suffused the very atmosphere. Great stretches of corridor were unlit where the lighting had shorted. The same could be said of sec doors that had started to close when the circuits shorted, but had been stayed by warps in the wall and were now jammed half open, half shut, a monument to the breach in supposedly safe defenses.
Rats had infiltrated the cracks, as had insect life. The winged insects buzzed around them, trying to bite. The red eyes of albino rats, almost twice the size of normal, glowered at them before the creatures scuttled for the safety of complete darkness. Here and there were small, stagnant pools where the damp had gathered enough to drip down the walls through the thin cracks that suffused the concrete. There were gatherings of moss and slime on the walls, delineating watermarks where there were occasional floods when the water table rose. Thankfully the mat-trans and anteroom had been just above this level.
As they rose higher, the signs of damage grew less, and there was less insect and rodent life hardy enough to brave the comparatively great distance from dank security. The electrical systems had still suffered, however, and some of the rooms were closed to them, sec doors failing to respond.
Eventually they reached a place where maps were displayed, revealing to them that they had landed on the Eastern Seaboard, beneath what had once been an area known as New Jersey.
‘Not usual to have a redoubt so near a heavily populated area,’ Krysty mused, indicating the above-ground map that revealed an expanse of predark urban growth.
‘It was a heavy industrial area, probably one of the places they would have wanted to land some nukes first of all,’ Mildred commented. ‘I’d guess this redoubt was built so that they could have a base near to a big population, and near to some military factories that were located hereabouts. And you’ve got to say, it looks like it must have been hit really heavy up there for the damage that’s come this far down. But then, there were a lot of nuke power plants along this coast—one not far from here, if my memory serves. You unleash a ton of nukes on top of that, and the only thing I’m surprised about is that this place is still here.’
‘We’ve been along this coast before,’ J.B. said, running his finger along the coastline. ‘Remember? We got ourselves fouled up with that evil bitch captain…’
‘Don’t remind me.’ Ryan shuddered, remembering the whaling queen who had looked like a man and had had designs on the one-eyed warrior. ‘Fireblast, still gives me nightmares.’
‘Nonetheless,’ Doc mused, ‘I see the point John Barrymore is making. Although we have not been in this particular spot before, we have been in the general area, and thus have some idea of the landscape we should encounter. We also know that the area is capable of supporting human life and it is likely that we will be able to come across some groups of survivors. Furthermore, if we find the area somewhat uncongenial, we will have an escape route of some kind planned. If all else fails, we should head for the coast.’
Krysty laughed. ‘Doc, I don’t know what’s happened to you, but Ryan had better watch out. I can’t remember the last time I saw you like this.’
‘I shall take that as the compliment it appeared to be,’ Doc said gravely, with a mock bow. ‘I am, you might say, feeling myself again.’
‘That’s good to hear,’ Ryan agreed. ‘But instead of standing around telling each other how damn good we are, I suggest we see what there’s worth plundering here and then get the hell out. It doesn’t look like there’s an immediate danger, but I don’t feel comfortable underground when I know the mainframe’s falling to pieces.’
Ryan had done little more than voice a concern that had been lurking at the backs of all their minds. When the support systems of a redoubt began to crumble they could take years to fail, or one short could start a chain reaction to close it down in minutes.
Time, then, was of the essence. The upper levels of the redoubt hadn’t been damaged too badly by the earth movements. There were cracks in some of the walls, but nothing like the fissures on the lower level. The main problems were caused by the shorting of electrical circuits that had closed some sec doors and effectively sealed them by refusing to respond to the codes. Many of these were in areas where the companions would seek to plunder: the armory, the kitchens and food stores, and stores for clothing and footwear.
J.B.’s task was to open the doors without risking further damage to the potentially delicate balance of the redoubt. Under any other circumstances the task would have been simple—plas-ex applied to the points of balance, and then retire to a safe distance. But now he had to be careful about the amounts he used, much more so that usual.
Carefully, the Armorer weighed out the plas-ex and attached a detonator, making sure that, at all times, the companions would shelter from the blast in a position that would leave them on the right side of the explosion for the main exit should the need to flee arise.
In the eerie quiet of the deserted redoubt, the tension hung heavy over J.B. as he prepared each explosion. The first two were small—more pops than blasts—but by his careful positioning the charges were enough to bend the doors, giving the companions the leverage they needed to open them manually.
The kitchen and clothing stores came easily. Despite his looks of apprehension at the roof overhead when the charges detonated, J.B.’s judgment proved sound. In the clothing stores they were able to kit themselves out in some fresh clothing, still packed in polyethylene, that replaced the tattered rags they had worn from the north.
Likewise, the kitchen stores hadn’t been raided, although there was some evidence that rats and insects had been able to use the service ducts to get this far up the redoubt levels, driven onward by the scent of foodstuffs. As there was no knowing what may or may not have been contaminated, they stuck to self-heats and some foods where the packaging hadn’t been tampered with in any way or was far from evidence of rats such as gnawing and droppings. The huge walk-in freezer compartments were still stocked and sealed. There were three, and although the power had failed in two, the third still contained some deep-frozen perishables that could safely be eaten when defrosted. They stocked up on as much as possible, preferring to keep the inedible self-heats for emergencies.
The third door J.B. had to open was the one that gave him most concern: the armory. Tricky enough to have to blow the door on an armory at the best of times, lest the explosive materials within be triggered by the explosion. But when they were up against a structure riddled with flaws that may give under such stress, it became a much harder task.
J.B. set the charge and looked nervously up at the ceiling before retiring to cover.
‘If this fucks up, it’s been interesting,’ he said wryly in the moments before the small charge detonated. He closed his eyes and held his breath…nothing. Opening them again, he could see that the door had been blasted away from one side of the portal and that there appeared to be no residual damage within the room itself.
They advanced and opened up the room. It was exactly as it had been left before the nukecaust. At some point, there had to have been an evacuation, as there still lay in one corner an open crate and a clipboard and pen, as though the room had been deserted partway through an inventory of the ordnance.
Wasting little time, they equipped themselves with spare ammo, grens and plas-ex from the stores. J.B. regretfully looked at the crates of unopened and undisturbed blasters. There were rifles, SMGs and handblasters, any of which may have replaced their own favored arms, given time to test them in the ranges.
But time was one thing they couldn’t allow. The redoubt may be fine for another century, or it may start to crumble at any moment.
Equipped, they left the armory—J.B. casting it a backward glance that was part wistful longing and part a hard-headed knowledge that they could have gleaned so much if given time—and headed toward the exit door.
The lighting was erratic along the stretch leading to the exit ramp, and all had cause to wonder what they might find beyond the final sec door. Had the circuits cut out because of the water damage in the lower levels or because there were other stresses operating outside the walls on this upper level? Would the sec door open to reveal that they had been blocked in by a landfall?
The latter was something that Ryan hoped wouldn’t be the case. They needed to get out. The redoubt was too unsafe for them to stay and a jump would be too risky. Out was their only option.
‘Here goes nothing,’ he said to the others as he punched in the sec code, lifted the lever and leveled his Steyr. The chances of anyone lying in wait were next to nothing, but that wasn’t zero.
The door raised slowly to reveal a landscape that was lush but strange. Everything was green, but low-level, as though it were made for small people. The grasses were close to the ground, plants were half size, the trees stunted. But it was a clear day and it was good to breathe fresh air untainted by sulfur as it swept into the musty tunnel mouth.
Ryan stepped cautiously out into a bright, sunny morning, with the sky clear but for a few fluffy white clouds. He looked around. The surrounding area was clear and there were no sounds of bird or animal life within earshot. He beckoned the others to join him.
‘Gaia, it’s like paradise compared to where we’ve just been,’ Krysty said, breathing in deeply to savor the air.
‘Yeah, even if it is a kind of half-pint paradise,’ Mildred muttered.
‘Not fucking cold.’ Jak smiled.
‘So far, so good,’ J.B. agreed. ‘What d’you think, Doc?’
It was when he turned to elicit the old man’s opinion that J.B. was astounded to see Doc retreating backward into the redoubt, with the door closing on him, cutting him off seemingly at his own behest.
Chapter Four
Who am I? Is the real me the man who now posits these questions, or is the real me the man Jordan who they say I became for a short while? It does, does it not, raise many questions as to the nature of identity? Is all of this through which I move an artifice, the mere whim of my own imagination, or is it real? But then, what is reality?
Of all the things I remember, of all the things that have occurred within the confines of my own mind over the past few days, there is only the one constant: the search for some kind of truth. Whatever I am, and wherever I am, there is a part of my mind that is still active and still seeks to find an answer of some kind for what has happened, and what is continuing to happen. If I am to ascertain the truth, then I must follow that course through to the end. That quest is the only one which matters. Wherever that leads.
Am I in a padded cell? Am I here? Am I Theophilus Tanner? Am I Joseph Jordan? There is only the one way in which I can find an answer. I must follow my gut feeling. When the consciousness is confused, then intellect alone cannot be trusted. In order to find the answer, then I must follow what instinct tells me.
And yet what it tells me to do is something that I cannot share with the others. They would not want to go back to Fairbanks. Why should they? They lived that nightmare in a way that I cannot comprehend. By the same token, they could never comprehend the compulsion that drives me onward.
I have said nothing. I shall continue to say nothing. If I hang back in the tunnel, I can slip away while they walk out into the new lands. If I close the door behind me, then by the time they have noticed my absence, reopened the redoubt and tried to find me, I will have traveled back.
Oh, I know only too well that the settings on the mattrans are random, but that is the point. Whatever happens to me next will be a large part of the journey. If fate—or the workings of my own imagination masquerading as fate—decrees that I end up back in the frozen north, then it shall be nothing more than another sign that I have taken the right path.
These are not times for plans. Plans demand intellect; intellect is confused by the workings of insanity; the gut is the only true arbiter.
But I shall miss them. I dimly recall thinking of them as angels at one point in my madness. Perhaps they are, in a sense. Guardians of ideal qualities created by my mind, perhaps based on those I have known at some point. Or mayhap they are real, and this world is my reality. In that case, then they are angels of the best kind: firm friends in the face of adversity.
I salute them…
‘WHAT THE HELL does he think he’s doing?’ Mildred yelled as she turned and ran toward the closing sec door, Doc now nothing more than a darkness in the shadows as he moved out of sight.
‘Millie, wait,’ J.B. yelled. He cast a glance at Ryan, wondering if his friend would want to follow Doc. The old man was still suffering from some kind of psychosis, and the last thing they needed—friend or not—was to become embroiled in more games.
But J.B. need not have wondered. Already, Ryan was catching up to Mildred and passing her on the way to the sec door.
‘Bastard won’t start to open until it’s fully shut, even if you punch the code in,’ he yelled breathlessly. ‘We’ve got to get through it and get him, let the others wait.’
Mildred didn’t bother to answer, saving her breath to try to keep pace with Ryan’s longer stride. Particularly if she was going to make it under the door. They were now about twenty feet from the entrance and the door showed less than a foot of space. It was going to be incredibly tight.
