Brigid shook her head. "Not one I can see. If he really can operate a temporal dilator, we"d be too stupid to live not to take it away from him."
"Or him away from it," Grant grunted.
The three people fell into step behind Sindri.
Kane sidemouthed to Brigid, "What"s with the sha-dowsuit, Baptiste?"
She looked down at herself distastefully. "He forced me to put it on. He said it was for my own protection."
Kane arched an eyebrow at her but said nothing. The shadowsuit hugged every curve and bulge like a second skin. He could think of plenty of places where wearing such a thing would put her in a position of requiring protection, certainly not the other way around.
They followed Sindri through a door and into a short hallway. To the left, a sign hung above a vanadium alloy door. The faded lettering read, Not An Exit. No Unauthorized Personnel. A red-and-black hourgla.s.s symbol was stamped at the bottom of the sign.
Sindri punched a six-digit sequence into the keypad on the door frame, and the computer-controlled lock clicked open.
The door slid aside, revealing only an empty landing and a stairwell. Painted on the wall was a red down-pointing arrow, and the words To Confinement Section. Sindri led them down the wide concrete steps, fingers tapping out a ditty on the metal banisters.
They reached another landing, another door, another inverted arrow on the wall, but they kept walking down. At the next landing, they came to a heavy bulkhead framed within a recessed niche in a double-baffled wall. The door bore the emblazoned warning Only Operation Chronos Personnel Beyond This Point! Must Have MAJIC-Ultra Clearance To Proceed! Deadly Force Is Authorized!
Sindri tapped in a code on the keypad lock and with a squeak and a hiss, the bulkhead slid into its slots between the double frame.
They faced a narrow, uncarpeted pa.s.sageway, long and low ceilinged. A dim glow filtered from its far end. Cool air fanned their faces, and they heard a rhythmic drone of turbines and generators."Where are you taking us?" Grant demanded gruffly.
Sindri entered the corridor saying cheerily, "That you"ll see in short order...pun intended."
"He knows we"ve come too far to back out now, so we might as well finish out this charade," Brigid murmured.
They moved on, toward the light. Kane"s and Grant"s combat senses were on full alert. The mechanical throb grew louder, a sound that all three recognized. The pa.s.sageway took on a downward slope, and the floor changed from bare concrete to metal plates ridged and flaking with rust.
The pa.s.sage ended abruptly at a door made of gla.s.s. It bore a sign stating, Radiation Danger Beyond This Point! Entry Forbidden To Personnel Not Wearing Intermolecular Uniforms!
Beyond the door was a small booth. From hooks on the wall hung a number of black shadowsuits with hoods and transparent Plexiglas faceplates. Sin-dri held the door open for them and they stepped in. The generator throb grew considerably louder.
"Please do as the sign says," Sindri said. "There are high levels of radiation beyond the door."
Kane and Grant recalled on their prior visit they had seen evidence of deadly electromagnetic radiation pulses, but the two men weren"t convinced.
Grant pinched the sleeve of a black suit, rubbing it between thumb and forefinger, frowning doubtfully.
"They don"t feel like they could protect you from a gnat bite, much less radiation."
"In actuality," Sindri replied, "they can protect you from a number of different dangers, including biological contagions. Each suit is climate controlled for environments up to highs of 150 degrees, and as cold as minus ten degrees Fahrenheit. Microfila-ments control the temperature."
"What are they made of?" Kane wanted to know.
"A weave of spider silk, Monocrys and Spectra fabrics."
All three people turned their heads toward him, faces registering incredulity. "Spider silk?" Brigid echoed.
Sindri nodded. "Nylon has about twice the tensile-strength-to-weight ratio of silk and Kevlar has about three times the tenacity of Nylon. Monocrys is about eleven percent better in its tenacity than Kevlar, and Spectra is about thirty percent better than all three. Natural spider silk has about six times the tenacity of Spectra."
"How do you know so much about it?" Grant asked gruffly.
Sindri fluttered his black-gloved fingers through the air. "All the information was stored in the database.
Apparently, predark genetic engineers succeeded in developing a way to copy spider silk. A compilated weave of all those materials resulted in a two-phase, single-crystal metallic microfiber with a very dense molecular structure. The outer Mono-crys sheathing goes opaque when exposed to most wavelengths of radiation, and the Kevlar and Spectra layers provide protection against blunt trauma. The spider silk allows flexibility, but it trades protection for freedom of movement."Grant knuckled his chin thoughtfully, eyeing the suits. "How did the night-gaunts-the Furies-get hold of them?"
"That"s a story for another time," Sindri replied. He grinned and added, "Once again, pun intended."
Kane uttered a wordless grunt of impatience. "Let"s drop the fashion discussion and just get on with it."
Sindri shrugged. "As you wish. But when your flesh blisters and drops off your skeleton and your teeth fall out and you begin hemorrhaging in a most distressing fashion from your ears, nose and r.e.c.t.u.m, remember how the untrustworthy Sindri tried to save you."
Grant and Kane glared angrily at the dwarf, then with resigned shakes of the head, began disrobing.
They stripped down to their undershorts and pulled on the suits. Both men were surprised how the^fabric molded itself to their bodies, adhering like another layer of epidermis. They smoothed out the wrinkles and folds by running their hands over their limbs. Although they were impressed by how comfortable the garments felt, they kept their comments to themselves.
Following Sindri"s actions, the three people donned the hoods and followed him out the opposite door of the booth. They walked across a steel-grated catwalk. Some twenty feet below a strangely shaped generator droned. It was at least twelve feet tall, and looked like a pair of solid black cubes, the smaller balanced atop the larger. The top cube rotated slowly, producing the steady drone of sound. An odd smell, like ozone blended with antiseptic, pervaded the air.
All of them had seen generators of that type before in various and unlikely places around the world.
Brigid and Lakesh speculated they were fusion reactors, the energy output held in a delicately balanced magnetic matrix. When the matrix was breached, an explosion of apocalyptic proportions resulted.
Sindri led them through an open archway and traversed yet another broad hall lined on either side by niches inset into the walls. The little man looked straight ahead as he strolled past a niche containing two stone tablets engraved with ten sentences in Aramaic. Another niche contained a litter of ancient weaponry, swords, maces and battered shields. One shield bore likenesses of crouching lions.
"What is this, Sindri?" Brigid demanded. "A museum?"
"Something like that," he answered. "An archaeologist"s paradise, the clutter of past ages brought here and stored by the previous tenants of this complex."
They continued walking down the hall, pa.s.sing niche after niche of incredible objects. Skulls, machines, even something that looked like a sheep"s fleece dusted with gold, filled the niches. They were a gathering of relics from fact, fable and even fantasy.
Up ahead a shimmering radiance drove away the shadows, like rays of sunlight as viewed through thick cloud cover. The pa.s.sageway terminated at a railed gallery encircling and overlooking a metal-walled shaft thirty feet across. The cavity was barely fifteen feet deep, but a borealis-like glow exuded from the walls in waves.At first all they saw was the dancing veil of amber light. They felt subtle energies tingling their flesh, like a weak static discharge. Kane, Brigid and Grant looked through the pulsing glow, stared past it, focusing their eyes on the shapes that lay beyond it.
"A stasis field," Brigid announced.
Sindri smiled at her fleetingly, appreciatively. "Exactly. And behind it are selective samplings from many different eras, many different centuries." He swept his arm toward the cavity. "This part is less a museum than a tomb of time."
All three people stared, fascinated. Down below, within a recessed niche behind the glimmer, they saw a man in a starched blue uniform with a yellow neckerchief and gauntlets. On the crown of his broad-brimmed blue hat they could just make out an insignia patch that depicted a pair of crossed sabers. Although he was as immobile as a mannequin, he clutched at one of three arrows jutting from his torso. His right arm was bent at the elbow, his index finger crooked around empty air.
Grant rumbled, "You got the Smith & Wesson from him, didn"t you?"
Sindri nodded, moving along the rail. "Where else?"
They followed the little man, looking down into the shaft at the figures frozen behind the stasis screen.
They saw a bearded man wearing a dented metal breastplate and steel casque from the days of the conquistadors, and a slouching, heavy-jawed brute wearing only a pelt of s.h.a.ggy hide. Then they stiffened as they saw two large creatures crouched motionless in the shadows cloaking the chamber.
Reptilian monsters, their crocodilian heads didn"t move, nor did their ma.s.sive scaled bodies stir. They were like fragments of dreams, s.n.a.t.c.hed from the imagination and encased in amber.
As they circled the gallery, Kane said, "This is all very interesting, Sindri, but we guessed quite some time ago you figured out how to trawl living creatures from the past. Some of them made it to New Edo."
Sindri nodded. "Quite true, although I wasn"t responsible for everything that came tumbling through the time stream. However, it is New Edo I wish to discuss with you."
Grant blinked in surprise behind the transparent faceplate. "Why?"
Sindri stopped at the rail and made a downward gesture. "That"s why."
Grant, Kane and Brigid followed his arm motion. They saw another niche and a dark-haired naked woman standing within it, her back against the wall. What appeared to be steel claws, little more than four curves of metal, held her around the arms and legs.
To their mutual surprise, the woman moved, lifting her head, shaking her hair out of her eyes. The woman gazed up at them, and an expression of mingled fear and joy appeared on her finely sculpted face.
A single word was torn from Grant"s lips, half a snarl of fury, half a groan of horror. "Shizuka!"
Chapter 14
When the world blew out in 2001, more than the face of the Earth changed beneath the soaring fireb.a.l.l.s and mile-high mushroom clouds. The physical world was vastly different. Ruins stood in place of gleaming towers, radioactive wastelands and toxic bogs existed where national parks had once played host to families of tourists. Cities teeming with life were swallowed by desert sands.
All the old cultures were gone, burned down to their foundations, so new societies were formed, with their own laws, their own rules, their own beliefs and even their own dialects.
In North America, the English language remained essentially the same, though the postapocalyptic vocabulary contained new words, combinations of abbreviations created by a new generation accustomed to acting, rather than talking.
Nuclear holocaust was melded into "nukecaust," the nuclear winter was referred to as "skydark" and any time period before January 20, 2001, was spoken of as "predark." Cities and towns and settlements were cla.s.sified as "villes."
Even the definition of the word Cerberus had changed. To cla.s.sicists, Cerberus was the three-headed, dragon-tailed hound who guarded the gateway to Hades, the h.e.l.l of Greek mythology. The monstrous creature permitted the spirits of the dead to enter, but none to return to the land of the living. Only one mortal ever defied Cerberus and that was Hercules.
As part of the bargain he struck with King Eu-rystheus of Mycenae, Hercules was charged with performing twelve labors. His final labor took him down to Hades itself to bring Cerberus to the upper world. He could use no weapons to subdue the terrible beast, but even so he forced the h.e.l.lhound to submit and carried him, growling and snapping, all the way to Mycenae. When King Eurystheses saw the monster, he was so horrified he ordered Hercules to return him to the underworld.
By the midtwentieth century, scientists rather than scholars first redefined the word Cerberus, but it still possessed a tenuous connection to the creature of myth. Project Cerberus was considered to be an appropriate code name for an undertaking devoted to ripping open the gates between heaven and h.e.l.l.
Under the aegis of the Totality Concept, utilizing bits of preexisting technology, Project Cerberus researched and engineered matter transmission. To streamline the ma.s.s production of the quantum in-terphase mat-trans inducers, the project was moved from the Dulce, New Mexico, installation and headquartered in a redoubt on an exceptionally remote mountain plateau in Montana"s Bitterroot Range. The trilevel, thirty-acre facility was built into the side of a mountain peak, and was constructed primarily of vanadium alloy and boasted design and construction specifications that were aimed at making the complex an impenetrable community of at least a hundred people. The redoubt contained two dozen self-contained apartments, a cafeteria, a decontamination center, a medical dispensary, a swimming pool and holding cells on the bottom level.
The plateau holding the redoubt and the road leading up to it were surrounded by an elaborate system of heat-sensing warning devices, night-vision video cameras and motion-trigger alarms. In the unlikely instance of an organized a.s.sault against the installation, an electric force field energized with particles of antimatter could be activated at the touch of a b.u.t.ton. A telemetric communications array was situated at the top of the peak.
The redoubt"s control complex contained five dedicated and eight shared subprocessors, all linked in a mainframe system. The advanced model used experimental error-correcting miniature microchips, whicheven reacted to quantum fluctuations. The biochip technology utilized protein molecules sandwiched between microscopic gla.s.s-and-metal circuits.
Although official designations of all Totality Concept-related redoubts were based on the phonetic alphabet, almost no one stationed in the facility referred to it as Bravo. The mixture of civilian scientists and military personnel simply called it Cerberus.
One of the enlisted men with artistic aspirations went so far as to ill.u.s.trate the door next to the entrance with an image of a three-headed hound. Rather than attempt even a vaguely realistic representation, he used indelible paints to create a slavering h.e.l.lhound with a trio of snarling heads sprouting out of an exaggeratedly muscled neck. The neck was bound by a spiked collar, and the three jaws gaped wide open. In case anyone didn"t grasp the meaning, he emblazoned beneath the image the single word, Cerberus, wrought in ornate Gothic script.
Generations after the nukecaust and some thirty years after his revival from a century and a half spent in cryogenic stasis, Lakesh expanded the definition of Cerberus yet again. It now encompa.s.sed not only the matter-transmission process and the redoubt itself, but also the small group of exiles who lived in the installation as both a home and a sanctuary. It was no longer a manufacturing facility. It was full of shadowed corridors, empty rooms and sepulchral silences, a sanctuary for twelve human beings. It was possible that the handful of people who lived in the installation would be the last who would ever walk its hallways.
A little less than a year before, Cerberus had housed more than a dozen, but there had been casualties since then. First Adrian and Davis in the Black Gobi, murdered by the forces of the Tushe Gun, then Beth-Li Rouch,. killed by one of the redoubt"s own. The most recent casualty was Cotta, dismembered by a mind-controlled sasquatch in the Antarctic.
Since then, and the near death of Domi, the fear the redoubt would suffer more casualties had become almost a phobia. It hadn"t reached a point where operations were crippled, but Reba DeFore could easily envision it happening in the future.
In the hour since she and Domi gated back into Cerberus, DeFore had done little more than shower, change into a white bodysuit, the unofficial uniform of the redoubt"s staff, and stand in the central complex. A long room with high, vaulted ceilings, it was lined by consoles of dials, switches and computer stations. A huge Mercator relief map of the world spanned the far wall. Pinpoints of light glowed in almost every country, and thin phosph.o.r.escent lines networked across the continents, like a web spun by a rad-mad spider. The map delineated all the locations of all functioning, indexed gateway units all over the world.
DeFore paid no attention to the map. Her eyes were fixed on the medical monitor. The telemetry transmitted from Kane"s, Brigid"s and Grant"s bio-link transponders scrolled upward. The computer systems recorded every byte of data sent to the Comsat and directed it down to the redoubt"s hidden antenna array. Sophisticated scanning filters combed through the telemetric signals and precisely isolated the team"s current position in time and s.p.a.ce.
The vital signs of the three people indicated stress, but Grant"s blood pressure and heart-rate readings were nudging the far end of the high scale. The indicators were very unusual for the normally phlegmatic man. DeFore couldn"t help but wonder what was upsetting him so deeply."What the h.e.l.l is going on?" she murmured for the third time in the five minutes. "Where the h.e.l.l are you?"
From behind her, Lakesh said with a touch of asperity, "As I thought I made clear, they"re apparently somewhere in California...in the general vicinity of where Santa Barbara used to be."
She turned toward him, unconsciously crossing her arms over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "I"m just talking to myself. A kid like you wouldn"t know how easily distracted we senior citizens can become."
Lakesh didn"t respond to her sarcasm. Even after nearly five years, DeFore wasn"t sure how she felt about him, particularly over the past couple of months. She attributed his demanding and rather high-handed manner of late to his restored youth- or rather his restored early middle age. She didn"t even pretend to understand how it had happened. The process Lakesh described flew so thoroughly in the face of all her medical training-as limited as it was-that he might as well have relegated the cause to a miracle.
All DeFore really knew was that a couple of months ago she watched Mohandas Lakesh Singh step into the gateway chamber as a hunched-over, spindly old man who appeared to be fighting the grave for every hour he remained on the planet. His hair was so washed-out by time that it was ash-gray. Thick spectacles looked like double-glazed windows over the pale blue eyes that were incongruous with the sallow, liver-spotted skin.
A day later, the gateway chamber activated and when the door opened, Kane, Brigid Baptiste, Grant and Domi emerged. A well-built stranger wearing the white bodysuit of Cerberus duty personnel followed them. DeFore gaped in stunned amazement at the man"s thick, glossy black hair brushed back from a high forehead. His olive complexion was clear, his well-fed face split in a toothy, excited grin, his big blue eyes alight. She recognized only the long, aquiline nose as belonging to the Lakesh she had known these past four years.
Lakesh claimed he had no idea how long his vitality would last. Whether it would vanish overnight and leave him a doddering scarecrow like the fabulous One Horse Shay or whether he would simply begin to age normally from that point onward, he couldn"t be certain. However, he wasn"t about to waste the gift of youth, as transitory as it might be. DeFore didn"t know who One Horse Shay had been or what was so fabulous about him, but she did notice Lakesh surrept.i.tiously eyeing her bosom in a way he had never done before.
She had never felt very comfortable with him, despite the fact he fascinated her. Part of her enchantment with him, though, was a result of his history. Lakesh had been born back before skydark. He"d seen the world before it had died, had memories of times well before the nukecaust. He"d slept in the Anthill, the master center of the redoubts located in Mount Rushmore, for more than a century and been awakened fifty years ago to take his place in the plans of the nine barons. His major organs were replaced upon his resuscitation, including a new heart, a new set of lungs, knee joints made of polyethylene and even a second pair of eyes.
However, everything he"d seen and lived through, everything he remembered from the past, had served to alter Lakesh"s alliances. Instead of remaining a conspirator with the Totality Concept"s aims and goals, he"d become its most dangerous adversary. Over the years he"d put his plans into action. His chief strength lay in the fact that he"d known die Cerberas redoubt was still active when all nine barons believed it was unsalvageable.Despite making it the headquarters for a fledgling resistance movement, in fact the installation hadn"t functioned as much more than a hideout, a bolt-hole for the various exiles from the baronies. Only with the arrival of Kane, Grant, Brigid and Domi had the Cerberus resistance movement initiated action of any sort.
Irritably, DeFore said, "It just galls me that we can"t jump to where they are."
Lakesh indicated the Mercator map with a backward jerk of his head. "The transit lines have been closed off. It"s happened before, once anyway."
She nodded. "I remember. By Sindri. But he"s supposed to be dead."
"And I"m supposed to be pushing three centuries old," Lakesh shot back.
"You are," she said tersely.
He nodded. "The term "supposed to be" is the operative one here. Sometimes events don"t happen in the way we think they"re supposed to."
DeFore suspected he was making an oblique reference to the events of the past few months, the so-called Imperator War. Rather than ask him for clarification and be drawn into a protracted and bewildering discussion about the person, creature or ent.i.ty Lakesh called the irnperator-or depending on his mood, simply Sam-she declared, "Kane and Grant behaved as if they knew who was behind Bri-gid"s abduction."
He smiled sourly. "Another supposition?"
"Yes," she admitted. "But I"m still not clear on why Grant was so adamant that me and Domi-her in particular-didn"t go with them."
Lakesh tugged absently at his nose, a habit that had not changed since his age reversal. " "I can only speculate on his motives, but more than likely friend Grant feared that what Sindri-or whoever-giveth, he could also take away."
DeFore regarded him keenly. " "So you think Sindri trawled Domi and saved her life? From what I"ve heard of him, he doesn"t seem to lean much in the way of altruism."
Lakesh lifted a shoulder in a shrug. "I have no idea if Sindri did it or how he managed it, but he certainly is the most probable culprit."
"Culprit," she echoed. "You make it sound like he committed a crime instead of saved a life."