Chapter Eighteen

 

 

 

"No." Ryan looked down into the lifeless eyes of the woman that he loved above all else in the world. "No, Mildred."

 

"There's no pulse, Ryan. I can try artificial respiration and chest massage. I could even open up"

 

"I've seen her before. The Gaia power takes all her life force. Sucks everything from her. I don't know how she does it, Mildred, nor does she. Krysty learned it from her mother, and she only uses it in the direst emergency."

 

"Like now," Trader said.

 

"Yeah. Like now."

 

"But the pulse. All the life functions are"

 

"Take it again, please."

 

The woman reached and laid a hand below the angle of Krysty's jaw, feeling for the carotid artery. She shook her head, the beads rattling, loud in the stillness. "No, I told" Her eyes widened.

 

"It's there," Ryan said flatly. It was a statement, not a question.

 

"Yes. Not as strong as I'd like, but it's surely there. But it was gone. I'd have certified Krysty as clinically dead. How does she do that?"

 

"She doesn't know. Nor do I."

 

Ladrow Buford was standing just behind the one-eyed man, nudging him with a bony elbow. "Was that some kind of magic trick?" he asked.

 

"What? Why don't you just fuck off out of the way and I'll come tell you when we're ready to move on again."

 

The scientist persisted. "It was a miracle, Cawdor. I don't want to cause you trouble, but the work we are doing at the institute would benefit unbelievably! Unbelievably if we could secure the cooperation of Miss Wroth and her powers. Do you think that might be possible?"

 

Trader took the little man by the scruff of the neck. "You don't take to telling, do you?" he snarled. "You come with me and we'll sit quiet together, and I'll tell you about the time I chilled eighteen swampies with a plastic spoon and six ounces of plas-ex I'd hid up my ass."

 

Ryan watched them go off, Buford's feet barely trailing the ground.

 

"Pulse is growing stronger," said Mildred, who'd totally ignored the brief altercation.

 

Krysty's eyes moved, life returning to them. With a struggle she concentrated on Ryan's worried face. "Did I do it?" she whispered.

 

"Sure. He's fine."

 

"That's good," she said, and slipped back into darkness.

 

 

 

DESPITE THE FUSSING of Buford, aided by the repeated concern of Ellison, his sec boss, it wasn't possible to move Krysty for three hours.

 

She lay in a semi coma, Mildred constantly checking pulse and respiration. Dean, fully recovered from his ordeal, kept scampering to a nearby stream for supplies of fresh water to bathe her forehead.

 

Every now and again she would briefly surface from the deep sleep. Twice she asked whether the boy was safe. Once she called out to her mother, Sonja.

 

Ryan sat on the grass beside her as the day wore on, holding her hand, occasionally talking to her in a quiet voice about small, personal thingsabout how he was missing her, how she'd saved his son's life, how be wanted her well again.

 

It was just over three hours by his wrist chron, when she finally opened her eyes, yawned and stretched, managing a weak smile for him.

 

"You look terrible," Krysty said. She coughed and cleared her throat. "I'm as dry as the bottom of the driest well in Drytown."

 

"Dean, bring us some more water," he called.

 

The boy was at Ryan's side almost before the words were out of his mouth. He knelt and held the beaker for the woman to sip at. "Thanks, Krysty," he said. "I owe you."

 

"Do the same for me one day, Dean. Thanks for the water. Feel better now."

 

She pulled herself up into a sitting position with Ryan's help. But her eyes clouded and her head lolled to one side. He patted her cheek.

 

"Take it easy awhile longer."

 

Buford had broken away from Trader's glittering eyes and his endless tales of heroism past, and paced up and down nervously. "We must get back to the institute. We should have returned by noon at the very latest. There will be concern at the highest levels, Mr. Cawdor."

 

"They can piss their pants at the highest level for all we care," Abe called, overhearing the scientist. "We move when Krysty's well and not before."

 

"Triple-well said, Abe," Trader added.

 

"Could carry her. Two men linking hands. Be like a chair." Ellison rubbed a hand over his mustache, just touching the deep scar beneath it.

 

Ryan glanced at J.B., who shrugged. "What do you think, Krysty?"

 

"Normally I'd like to stay right here and sleep for three or four days, lover. But if this place he talked about isn't too far off, then a clean bed might just be the next best thing to paradise."

 

"How far, Buford?"

 

"Be at the sec barrier at the neck of the pass in about an hour. Longer if we move slow for the mu the woman. Steep uphill. After that it'll be all downhill. Another half an hour or so. No longer."

 

"Krysty, you feel up to this? Being carried the rest of the way?"

 

"Long as I don't get too shaken around, lover. Might just throw up if I did."

 

 

 

THE BARRIER WAS heavily guarded.

 

The installation obviously dated from before sky-dark, backed at unthinkable cost in money and labor from living rock on either side of the highway. There were slits in the defenses for rifles and machine guns, and turrets on the top that would have raked the entire area, up and down the hill.

 

A number of oil drums had been rolled into the middle, with room for a man to walk by but no space for horses or any other sort of transport.

 

Ellison had gone on ahead of the rest of the group, giving a shout of warning. Immediately they were covered by at least a dozen uniformed men, all carrying either the ubiquitous Mossberg or M-16 A-1s.

 

"Boy, they look like they got a fuckin' army up there," Trader said grudgingly. "Them's some real smart and well-trained sec men, you got, Professor."

 

"We pride ourselves on the record that nobody has gotten into and out of the grounds of the inner institute unbidden, through the last hundred years or so that it has been functioning. Not a single soul."

 

"Into and out?" Ryan said. "You mean one or two got inside the place?"

 

"One or two. We counted them in and we never counted them out again, Cawdor."

 

"Only way to do it," Trader agreed in the first sign of friendliness that he'd shown to the little man.

 

"How many men you got, Buford?" Ryan asked. "Must be a regular predark army if you can put this many onto every entrance and exit."

 

The scientist covered his hand with his mouth and sniggered. "This is our only way in and out of the institute. Once we are over the ridge you will see that Nature herself has provided us with total security."

 

 

 

"IT PUTS ME WONDERFULLY in mind of the grandeur of Yosemite Park," Doc said.

 

"Looks like the biggest wag trap ever built." Abe cleared his throat and spit.

 

Past the barrier, the road continued as a two-lane blacktop, down an incline for about a half mile between walls of sheer rock. Walls carried on all the way around through three hundred and sixty degrees, forming a perfect bowl of unscalable cliffs. At the bottom was a thickly wooded valley roughly three-quarters of a mile across with a river flowing through it, the water cascading off a feathery fall to the east side.

 

And at the very heart of the valley was the group of buildings known as the institute.

 

There were two more levels of sec barriers down the road, both manned by half a dozen sec guards, all in the white quilted plastic jackets. There was a metal sign by the last of the barriers, its supports rusted through, leaning against the wall of quartz-silvered granite.

 

The words were still legible, despite a century of chem storm fallout and weathering The Melissa Crichton Institute of Medical Research. Cryology and Gene Sculpturing.

 

"Cryology!" Mildred exclaimed. "Do I believe my eyes?"

 

"You know the word?" Buford asked.

 

"Sure I used to" She caught the simultaneous warning cough from Ryan, Krysty and J.B. "I mean I read about it. Freezing and stuff, wasn't it?"

 

"It was, I believe. Sadly that is one of the main wings of the hospital complex that has been long closed down and abandoned to the ghosts of yesteryear."

 

"So, what do you do down there, then?" Ryan asked, turning the conversation from the potentially difficult one of the bizarre past of Dr. Mildred Winonia Wyeth.

 

Once again there was the irritatingly girlish giggle, partly hidden by the soft palm of his hand. "What don't we do? Much of our work has been undertaken over a long period of time, the research being handed on down the line from father to son and from mother to daughter."

 

"And from father to daughter and from mother to son," Mildred said.

 

"Yes, of I see that's supposed to be some sort of a joke, isn't it?"

 

"Very nearly, Professor. Very nearly."

 

Krysty had fallen asleep, and Ryan went to where she sat in the arms of two of the bigger sec men. Only then did Ryan notice how alike the pair of guards looked.

 

"You two brothers?" he asked.

 

"No."

 

"Yes."

 

Neither offered any explanation of their answers. Ryan shook his head, checked that Krysty was as well as could be expected and turned to rejoin the others.

 

"Have your magical mystery princess safe snuggled in beddy-byes within the hour now," Buford said.

 

 

 

FROM THE BROW OF THE HILL that overlooked the secret valley of the Crichton Institute it appeared that the buildings were all in pristine condition.

 

But as they gradually made their way closer, the damage of the turning years became more apparent. The complex had originally been shaped like a star, with wings running off in five directions from a central area. This atrium seemed relatively untouched, though Abe pointed out that parts of the roof looked like they could do with some repair.

 

Three of the five main wings had clearly suffered serious structural damage. One had collapsed in its entirety, the one that Buford pointed out had once housed the finest cryology unit in the northeast.

 

Another had folded in like a pack of cards, with the end wall subsiding and knocking down all the interior sections, one after another.

 

The third one had a tilted, kinked roof, and all of the exterior glass was gone.

 

"Earth slip," the scientist commented, "about forty-five years ago."

 

"Earth's lip," Doc said. "Lip o'suction pump and never give up the ship boys and girls come out to plays the thing." He slapped himself on the wrist. "My deep apologies, ladies and gentlemen. I think my brain has become fevered at the thought of entering the demesne of those wonderful breed, the scientists. I can scarcely contain my excitement at the prospect."

 

Buford stared hard at Doc. "You seem a person of some education, outlander Tanner."

 

"Down in our friendly little ville of Miskatucket we were blessed with a marvelous library. Preserved in all of its predark wonder, where I misspent so much of my halcyon salad days. Housed in the spooky old Arkham house on Innsmouth Avenue; Including a rare copy of the Necronomicon , by the mad Arab, Alhazred." He smiled. "Though not of course that notorious edition bound in human skin with the erratum on page 116."

 

Ryan turned to him. "Doc?"

 

"You are about to suggest that I shut up, are you not, old friend."

 

"I am."

 

"Then I will."

 

Mildred touched Ladrow Buford on the arm. He jumped sideways as though a hot golden scarab had fallen onto his hand. "We are My people are not used to sudden and unexpected physical contact like that."

 

"Sorry. Just wanted to know what the surviving sections were being used for?"

 

"They have been united for the core research that goes on in the institute."

 

"And what's that?"

 

He giggled. "Soon," be said. "All in good time."