Chapter Six

 

 

 

Ryan blinked his eye open and promptly closed it again, unable to bear the instant lancing pain that drove through the optic nerve into the heartland of his brain.

 

The one-eyed man slowly took stock of his body, not risking any sort of sudden movement. He lay on his right side, knees drawn up to his chest in a fetal position, hands clasping each other for comfort. Apart from the ferocious headache, there was also a gut-roiling sickness and a faint tremor running through all his limbs.

 

"Better never to have jumped at all," Ryan muttered through clenched teeth.

 

Though he knew that wasn't true.

 

He risked another glance, wanting to check on the color of the armaglass walls. Pale yellow would mean a return to Florida, which wasn't something that he contemplated with any pleasure. Purple would mean he was back in that strangely alien gateway that had seemed like some sort of museum.

 

The walls were a cheery cherry red.

 

It was so positive and bright that Ryan groaned, taking in plenty of shallow breaths to hold away the nausea that threatened to erupt.

 

While lying very still, he tried to taste the air. It had the familiar flat, recirculated flavor, though maybe a tad less arid and dull than usual.

 

Moving in extreme slow motion, Ryan sat up, shuffling sideways until he could rest his back against the nearest wall. Like someone squinting into the brightness of the rising sun, he eased open his eye again.

 

He took stock of his possessions, beginning with the blasters and the two knives. He'd always had the irrational fear that making a jump would, one day, land him in a foreign place, completely naked.

 

But this one was all right. Apart from feeling that a day-old lamb would take him over five rounds.

 

Ryan stretched, forcing the variety of cramping kinks from his muscles. The threat of vomiting was fast receding and he risked standing up, swaying a little, steadying himself with one hand on the cool glass of the wall. Using some of the basic remedial skills that Krysty had taught him, he powered himself along the road to recovery.

 

In less than three minutes he began to feel that he could at least give that day-old lamb a run for its money.

 

 

 

THE DOOR HISSED OPEN with a hydraulic perfection, revealing the small room that led through to the usual main control area of the mat-trans unit.

 

Ryan stepped out of the chamber, SIG-Sauer preceding him, the barrel of the blaster moving from side to side. Other than the usual faint sounds of the comp controls clicking and whirring, the place was as silent as the grave.

 

He noticed some boxes on nearby shelves, padded brown cardboard, dried and brittle. Their contents were announced in watery-blue stenciled letters that ran diagonally across each box Surgical Gloves Twelve Dozen PairsGreen; Sterile Face Masks Surgical/PathologyTwenty-four Gross; Op Room/ Morgue/Laboratory BootsMidcalfPlastic WhiteM/F-Sizes L amp; XL.

 

For several long seconds Ryan stood and stared at the boxes, puzzled. He'd never come across anything remotely like this in any of the other hidden redoubts that he'd visited.

 

His guess was that this particular military complex had been used mainly for medical purposes, perhaps as some sort of secret hospital.

 

It crossed his mind to wonder whether there might still be some stores of predark pharmaceutical drugs. Vacuum-sealed and often still usable, they were one of the most sought-after commodities in all Deathlands. When he'd ridden with the Trader they'd almost always had stocks of drugs on board the war wags.

 

The rectangular digital clock on the opposite wall of the control room was showing 0805. Ryan checked his wrist chron and corrected it. The only person who would be able to find out where they were with any accuracy would be J. B. Dix, who always carried a miniature sextant in one of the capacious pockets of his coat.

 

From the apparent time change, Ryan could only guess that he was probably somewhere in what had once been called the Central Time Zone. But that could mean anywhere from the Canadian Arctic clear down to the Gulf of Mexico.

 

Thinking of J.B. made Ryan realize once more the isolation of his position.

 

There might well be clues if he moved out from the mat-trans unit into the remainder of the complex, clues that would tell him precisely where he was.

 

But there was no possible way of finding out where Krysty and Dean and the others had gone.

 

Alive or dead?

 

Now that he'd made the fresh jump, Ryan hadn't really done that much to improve his position. He could either try a third jump or he could cut his losses and go out to explore the redoubt.

 

On balance, that seemed the only viable option.

 

So he took it.

 

 

 

THERE WAS NO TRACE of any human activity within the whole of the mat-trans section, no sign that anyone had been there since the first fatal weeks of 2001.

 

Ryan reached the control lever for the sec doors. Finding it in the down, "closed" mode. He had the Steyr slung over his shoulder, the SIG-Sauer in his hand. Cautiously he eased the green lever upward, stopping the doors when they'd moved only a couple of inches toward the ceiling.

 

He flattened himself and peered through the gap, sniffing the faint draft that seeped in from the corridor beyond. There was no sign of freshness that might indicate the redoubt had been broken into. At least the immediate area seemed to be secure, though Ryan could detect an odd, vaguely chemical scent, which he figured could have something to do with the building having once been used as a hospital.

 

He pushed the lever again, lifting the doors another eight or nine inches, alert to drop them if he caught any hint of danger. But the passage beyond was silent and seemed to be completely deserted.

 

Finally the gap was wide enough for him to slide through, checking both ways. As was often the case, the mat-trans unit was placed at the farthest extremity of the redoubt, with a blank wall beyond it. To the right he looked along a fairly narrow passage, slightly curving, with the usual overhead strip lighting and the occasional ruby gleam of sec cameras.

 

Confident he was in no immediate danger, Ryan stood and closed the locking lever on the outside, watching as the dark green vanadium-steel doors slid smoothly down. The last thing he saw was the clock on the wall, showing 0819.

 

 

 

THE DIGITAL CHRON clicked over to 0820. The arma-glass door of the jump chamber trembled as though an invisible hand had been laid on it, then began to close slowly and silently.

 

Outside, high in one of the corners above the rows of unmanned comp consoles, a crimson warning light flashed while a voice crackled through the speakers, inaudible beyond the double sec doors.

 

"Matter transfer in progress. Any personnel with a sec rating below B19 must leave immediately, repeat immediately. Matter transfer in progress."

 

The metal disks in the top and bottom of the chamber were beginning to glow, and a faint mist was beginning to appear like ectoplasm emanating from a successful medium. The cherry-red color of the walls seemed to be fading.

 

"Matter transfer completing. Matter transfer completing. Do not open chamber door."

 

Inside the armaglass, someone was appearing. Someone or something.

 

 

 

RYAN WALKED along the center of the passage, oblivious to what was happening behind him.

 

It was a familiar experience, following the broad curve, all his nerves on double-red alert. But there was a massive difference to other times.

 

Now he was a man alone, on the edge.

 

The scent of chemicals, both tart and sweet, was definitely stronger. It seemed that the place was in excellent condition, with all of the lights functioning and every camera swiveling to follow his progress. The walls were flawless, the smooth concrete showing no sign of any cracking or deterioration. The floor was virtually dust-free, and Ryan could just detect the faint vibration of the hidden, distant nuke generator still faithfully keeping the redoubt serviced.

 

He passed only three or four side doors, all locked and comp coded. The likelihood was that they were service quarters for the personnel who maintained the mat-trans section. In some of the redoubts that they'd discovered, the gateways had been completely self-contained.

 

Ryan glanced down at his chron, seeing that it was a few seconds shy of 0825, less than half an hour since he'd completed the jump.

 

 

 

J.B. SIGHED, rolling back his sleeve to check the time on his wrist chron. Twenty-five minutes past the hour. And the hour didn't much matter as that would only be resolved by finding where he was.

 

By and large he'd found that Deathlands still conformed to the old tradition of time zones, though many of the frontier villes either operated their own eccentric time scale or, sometimes, had no real time at all.

 

The Armorer stood, clutching his fedora, and placed it carefully on his head, wincing with the effort. The walls of the gateway were an unrelenting cherry red, a color that appeared to pulse and throb in time with the beats of the heart.

 

He opened the door and sniffed, peering through his spectacles at the boxes on the shelves.

 

"Hospital," he said quietly.

 

J.B. dropped to his knees, staring closely at the floor. There was something that almost looked like the print of a boot in the fragile layer of fine dust, but it was impossible to be sure. In an unchanging environment the mark could easily have been made the best part of a hundred years ago, when the redoubt was finally being evacuated.

 

He moved into the main control area, glancing around him and checking the time on the wall, which now showed 0831. J.B. altered his chron accordingly.

 

There was no sign of any human life around, so he immediately and unhesitatingly made his way toward the main sec doors into the mat-trans section of the redoubt.

 

He paused by the green lever, sniffing the air. "Some sort of chemicals. Yeah, definitely like a hospital." For a moment J.B. considered leaving a note in case anyone else came after him, but decided that it would be pointless.

 

There wasn't much doubt that he was now on his own, cut off from Ryan and Mildred and the rest of the group by some fault in the jump mechanism back in Florida.

 

All he could do was to emerge from this vault and work out where in all Deathlands he was, then begin the near-impossible task of tracking down the others.

 

He pushed the control up, kneeling with the Uzi on full-auto, ready to spray a burst of lead at any threat from outside. But the rising door revealed only an empty expanse of corridor, slightly less wide than the usual, closed off to the left, curving away to the right.

 

Once outside, J.B. threw the lever down to close the doors again, sealing the complex, and set off at a brisk walk to his right, heels clicking on the barren stone.

 

His wrist chron showed him a time of precisely 0837.

 

Behind him the control area was still and quiet, with only the dancing lights on the comp screens moving, and the wall clock inexorably ticking around to 0840.

 

The gateway began to run through its mat-trans cycle all over again.