Chapter Two

"Doing to us what we did to those bastard ants! They're hoping to drive us out."
Life was measured in seconds.
There was no point now in trying to close the exterior sec door. The gas could be ignited in a heartbeat.
"Have to jump," Ryan said. "Now."
Keeping low, almost on hands and knees, the men splashed through the gasoline that had gushed into the area, reaching the closed door of the gateway chamber.
"Use the LD button," J.B. said.
"I know," Ryan replied irritably.
The one thing they'd been able to learn about mat-trans units was that their control panels contained small black buttons marked with the trim white letters L and D , which stood for last destination .
It worked two ways. If you'd made a bad jump, you could press the LD control and you would be back where you were before. Or, in this case, if you used the button within thirty minutes of a previous jump, then you would go to the same place.
That was the theory.
If Ryan and J.B. could make it safely and trigger the jump mechanism, then they should arrive at the same destination as the others.
The Trader always used to say that when it was time to move, the breadth of a human hair could make the difference between living and dying.
Ryan looked behind him. The rifle was across his shoulder and the handblaster in his fist. Their movement hadn't been followed by a shower of arrows or spears, as he'd feared, which meant the natives out in the dense, sweating greenery were about to light the fire.
He reached up and threw open the door, gesturing for J.B. to roll into the chamber.
Now the natives saw that they were in danger of losing their prey.
There was a scream of rage, and an arrow struck the watery green armaglass only inches from Ryan's shoulder, bouncing off and landing with a splash in the gasoline.
The control panel was set at chest height in the frame of the door, and Ryan lunged for it, left-handed, aiming for the LD button, hitting it.
Simultaneously, almost in slow motion, a burning branch was thrown into the gateway from outside, whirling in the air above the chattering consoles, the oxygen making the flames roar brightly.
It seemed to take forever for the fire to ignite the lake of gasoline.
Ryan grabbed the edge of the door and started to pull its great counterbalanced weight shut to trigger the mat-trans mechanism, his eye watching the torch.
The jagged branch landed, a ripple of blue fire running from it across the surface of the gasoline, turning it into a sea of fire.
"Dark night!" J.B. gasped, on hands and knees behind Ryan, holding the Uzi, ready to open up if the berserk natives came after them.
Ryan recoiled from the flaring heat that seared up at him, the hot yellow flames cut off by the closing armaglass door. The lock clicked shut and the mat-trans mechanism was activated.
The walls of the hexagonal chamber were immensely thick and powerful, but there was no way of locking or bolting the chamber to make it secure against an external attack. No doubt its original manufacturers, a century earlier, had never envisaged a time that it might be needed.
"Fire might keep them away," Ryan said, sitting quickly on the floor, avoiding the metal disks, leaning his back against the cool armaglass. He noticed in passing how all the smooth walls were smeared with patches of lichen and moss, laid there in the extreme humidity of the jungle since they'd first arrived a few days earlier.
The fire was visible beyond the armaglass, the smell of smoke filtering through. But there was no sign of any of the natives daring the heat to try to get to them.
J.B. sat opposite Ryan, the scattergun across his lap. He snatched a moment to take off the fedora and place his spectacles safely in one of his pockets.
The air at the top of the chamber was already filling with tendrils of whirling gray-white mist, and the disks in floor and ceiling were glowing brightly.
Ryan could feel the familiar nauseous feeling of his brain being swirled around inside his skull, as though the bony walls were expanding and the pinkish tissue was shrinking, smaller and smaller toward infinity.
"Here we go," he said, his voice thick, echoing inside his own head.
The darkness was birthing, spreading out from the depths of his own mind, swallowing all of his senses. Hearing went first, followed by speech.
At the last moment of sentience, Ryan thought he saw a dark group of figures, silhouetted against the bright fire, struggling to open the door of the chamber.
"Too"he muttered.


IT WAS A BAD JUMP. There were times when the transfer from here to there was made with nothing worse than a sick headache and, occasionally a nosebleed, but with no sensation that every molecule and atom of your body had been dissolved and projected through space and reassembled at some distant point. Other times, the jump fucked your head.


J.B. FOUND HIMSELF walking along a beach. The stones beneath his combat boots were of differing sizes, from duck egg to basketball. A thick mist drifted in from the gray sea to his right, which lapped at the edge of the beach with small, monotonous rollers, sucking at the shingle, rising and falling, advancing and withdrawing.
To his left he could just make out vast cliffs of smooth, polished granite, rising vertically, their tops out of sight in the lowering clouds.
The beach stretched ahead of him for about two hundred yards until it merged with the grayness. Behind him, the dreary vista was exactly the same.
Despite the chill, the Armorer was dressed only in a thin shirt and a torn pair of camouflage cotton pants. The air was bitterly cold and damp, and he shivered as he walked along. The sky was completely overcast, and he had no clue which direction he was taking.
The stretch of beach was completely deserted, with no seabirds wheeling above his head, no sign of life out to sea and not even the smallest crab clicking among the stones.
J.B. became aware that it was beginning to drizzle.
Suddenly, and seamlessly, he was inside the ruins of some vast building, filled with huge rusting pieces of machinery so archaic and corroded that it was impossible to tell what they might once have been.
Water dripped from the rotting ends of the roof timbers, splashing sonorously into great, dark weed-fronded pools that almost covered the stone floor.
And he was not alone.
Every time that J.B. took a few steps forward he caught the sound of someoneor somethingfollowing him. But when he stopped there was silence. And when he spun there was nothing to be seen.
The way forward led him deeper into the maw of the ancient building. His glasses were covered in condensation, but when J.B. tried to wipe them clean he found that it formed a sticky film, like spilled honey.
A strange, bitter smell hung in the cold air, like blood poured over molten iron.
The passage ahead of J.B. became more narrow, the ceiling dropping lower.
A rusted iron door with a massive handle blocked the passage. J.B. hesitated, glancing behind him. Above the slapping noise of the waves outside the building, he could hear steps moving closer, stumbling and unsteady, sounding like a recently revived corpse. A pale sun broke through holes in the roof and walls of the passage, penetrating in spears of jagged light.
Unarmed, J.B. had to go on.
The handle wouldn't move, though he thrust at it with all of his strength. The red-orange corrosion was sharp and jagged, and blood began to flow from his palms, dripping from the ends of his fingers onto the concrete floor.
The steps were closer, so close that the Armorer no longer dared to turn to face what was pursuing him, in case the sight of it drove him staring mad.
At last the handle moved, creaking open.
J.B. darted through the narrow gap and pulled the door shut behind him, slamming home a pair of well-oiled bolts. He glanced around to make sure he was safe and found himself in a box of stone, six feet high, five feet lengthwise and four feet across. Solid concrete with no window, yet there was an odd filtered, phosphorescent light inside the chamber that enabled him to see a polished steel grille set in the center of the floor.
The room was filled with the scent of the ocean.
Water began to rise through the grille, slowly and silently, icy cold. It had a thick consistency, more like molasses than water, and was flooding inexorably into the small cube of stone.
Whatever the horror waiting outside, it couldn't be worse than a hideous and lonely death by drowning.
J.B. tried to open the bolts on the door, but they were utterly immovable.
The liquid had reached above his knees.
He reached down, locking his fingers in the bars of the grille, using all his strength to try to pry it open. He realized he'd have a glimmer of a chance if he could force himself down into the oily water and swim out against the advancing tide.
But the grille didn't move.
J.B. straightened, panting for breath, fighting against crippling panic.
The liquid was above his waist.
He stood as tall as he could, rising on the tips of his toes, pressing his head into the angle between ceiling and wall.
Rising higher, the water was to his shoulders, then brushing his chin.
J.B., hanging stubbornly on to the last shreds of survival, lifted his mouth and nose into the tiny pocket of air that still remained.
The liquid covered his mouth, filling his nose as he took a long, deep breath.
A long, last breath.
There wasn't even a chance to scream.


IT WAS A BAD JUMP.
Ryan lay in a hammock, stretched between a pair of sturdy old oaks. Around him were all the sights and scents of the fall in New England.
Beyond the bottom of the flowering garden he could see the rolling hills, dappled with the fiery hues of red, yellow and burning orange, the startling beauty of death in life, as he'd once read.
Dean knelt on the cropped turf a few yards away, puzzling over a chessboard. "Black to play and mate in three, Father?" he asked.
Krysty was there, wearing a long print dress, her feet bare. She lay on a pile of Turkish cushions, the material decorated with tiny shards of mirror that caught and reflected the brightness of the noon sun.
"Don't ask your father," she said. "You know the only way to learn is by solving problems yourself."
The boy grinned. "Sure. Think I'm going in for a spell. Practice my viola."
He walked across the lawn toward the half-timbered house, past the mullioned windows and in through a heavy iron-studded door, moving with an easy coltish grace.
Ryan watched him go, his heart swelling with pride at the beauty of his son.
Krysty stood to join him, pushing the hammock so that it swung gently from side to side. She leaned over him, her right hand brushing over his naked chest, lower, caressing him through the thin material of his cotton pants, smiling at his instant reaction to her.
"Seems like you have a diamond cutter down there, lover," she whispered. "Perhaps we should do something about it."
Ryan glanced toward the house, worried in case they were being watched. But a massive purple buddleia, its fronds attracting dozens of beautiful butterflies, kept them safely concealed from prying eyes.
"Why not?" he said.
Though he wasn't aware of either of them taking off their clothes, they were both naked. Krysty had gently tied his hands to one end of the hammock, his ankles to the other.
"Heighten the pleasure, lover," she whispered, dropping her head and feathering his erection with a long, slow kiss.
She sat firmly astride him, his penis jutting from the flames of her brilliant crimson pubic hair, while she leaned forward and kissed him sweetly on the lips, gripping his thighs with her heels.
"Put it in," he said hoarsely as she straightened, the movement making the hammock sway again.
"Soon, lover," Krysty replied, throwing her head back and laughing. Her mane of sentient hair was tumbled across her shoulders, her teeth showing white in the sunshine, her nipples peaking with desire, hard and firm.
"Now," he insisted, pushing his hips up against her. "Now, lover."
Krysty laughed. "Be patient. Have to take my own special pleasure first."
The sun went in, and a cold wind blew up the valley from the sheer walls of Queechee Gorge.
Ryan shivered.
Leaves fluttered from the trees, landing silently on the dead grass.
Krysty reached into her flame-bright hair and plucked out a number of long steel needles, their points glittering coldly. They were about six inches long, each tipped with a perfect pink pearl.
"Have to take my own special pleasure first."
"No pain," Ryan said, tugging at the silken bonds, unable to shift them.
The red-haired beauty laughed in delight at his futile efforts to escape her.
She lifted herself up, then lowered onto him, building him inside her with her left hand, giving a sigh of contentment and wriggling from side to side.
Despite the horror of the situation, Ryan found that he was still rock hard inside her.
"Where shall we start with the acupuncture?" she whispered, leaning over him, her breath on his face, rotten with the stench of corruption. As she opened her mouth, a small white maggot wriggled from between her lips and dropped onto Ryan's chest, close to his left nipple.
"Please," he breathed.
"Naughty little worm," she said with a giggle, lifting one of the needles and poking it through the maggot, pinning it to Ryan's chest. She worked the end of the needle until the point slid sideways, piercing the nipple in an explosion of pain.
"Just starters, lover," she said. As Krysty spoke, she used her internal muscles on him, keeping him erect, milking him, bringing him racing toward a climax.
The needles darted in front of him, sticking into the other side of his chest, so deep that he felt the point grating off one of the ribs. Another ran into the angle of the elbow, exquisitely painful, and a fourth went in and out and in and out across his stomach, as though the woman were doing invisible embroidery.
Ryan bit his lip until he felt blood flowing warm over his chin.
Krysty saw it and dropped her head again, licking at the fresh-flowing crimson. "Good."
The woman carefully worked two of the needles through both his lips, one of them from the bottom and one from the top, quieting his moaning. Another slender sliver of steel pierced his nose from side to side.
She rubbed her hand over the pearls, sending waves of white pain through him. "Pain is good, lover," she breathed.
Krysty's skin was like parchment, her eyes a milky, scumming green.
He blinked his good eye, aware of tears streaming from it, across his stubbled cheeks.
"Oh, does my hero weep? I see that he does. And I have only used about a quarter of my needles. I have to find amusing places for all the others." She was moving quicker, rising and falling, and he knew, through the fog of agony, that he was nearing a climax.
Her gnarled hand, gripping a long steel needle, rested on his salt-slick cheek. The point, blurred in his vision, moved back and forth across his eye.
"One eye good. No eyes better," she murmured. "You move into darkness, so you need only see darkness."
Ryan blinked his good eye shut, feeling a tiny prickling as the point of the needle probed at the closed eyelid.
"Open up, lover," Krysty said. "Want to get the timing just right. Feel you come inside me at the same moment that I stab out your eye."
But it was no longer Krysty who straddled him in the wildly swinging hammock. The woman was unbelievably old, her skin sweating with ancient evil, her rheumy eyes glistening down at Ryan's agony, her straggling, matted hair lying lank across the yellowed, goatlike skull.
"Not her, lover. Never was her. That flame-haired bitch with her Gaia powers and her fucking Mother Sonja!"
Ryan closed his eye again, but the crone was pinching at his face, squeezing his good eye between finger and thumb, forcing it open.
He was forced to look up at the needle as he sped the last seconds toward a pounding orgasm. Ryan didn't even have time to scream. It was a bad jump. Bad.