Everyone else rested for a few moments while the black woman recovered her composure, blowing her nose noisily on a white handkerchief.
“You feeling all right, Mildred?” J.B. asked. “Want to take five?”
“I’ll be all right. Guess it must be that time of the month again. Always get a little weepy.”
“Wait till you reach my time, madam,” Doc said, baring his startling white teeth. “Someone once said that old age is an island surrounded by death. I vow that there are days when I feel that I am slipping off that island.”
Mildred smiled at him. “Know what you mean, Doc. You and me, we’re the only people in all Deathlands with such long pasts. Gets hard at times, knowing that everyone you ever knew has been dead for years.”
“Well over a hundred years, in my case. I sometimes dream, you know, friends. Dream of my beloved wife. And sometimes of my children. Of Rachel and beaming little Jolyon. Oh, he was such a merry little fellow.” Tears gathered in the corners of Doc’s pale blue eyes, breaking free and trickling through the silvery stubble on his cheeks. “I dream that they are full grown with their own children. And grandchildren.”
“They probably lived good lives, Doc,” Ryan said, trying to cheer up the old man.
“Perhaps. But they are still so long dead.”
THEY FOUND THE PLAN of the redoubt at a junction about 350 yards farther along. It was bolted to the wall, behind a Plexiglas screen.
They gathered around, peering at it in the semi-darkness, as five out of the twelve overhead lights had blown.
“There’s the mat-trans unit,” J.B. said, pointing to the bottom part of the layered map. “And that’s this corridor.”
“And this must be where we are now.” Ryan traced the circling corridor with his finger until he reached the first junction. “Looks like the gateway has its own entrance. Get in and out without having to go through the rest of the redoubt.”
“Doesn’t give us any clue where we are, does it?” Krysty said, scanning the map.
“They never do. Just the number at the top. Redoubt 47.”
“It seems to have had an unusually large laboratory complex,” Doc commented. “I wonder what fresh evils the whitecoats were up to there?”
“Since we can’t seem to get up there, I guess we’ll never know,” Mildred stated.
“Probably stripped bare, anyway.” Krysty looked again at the plan. “This corridor sort of winds upward and around and around, kind of on the perimeter of the main part of the redoubt.”
Dean had wandered off on his own, checking out the side passage, returning with the news that it ended abruptly in a closed sec door.
“Locked shut, Dad. And there’s no kind of control panel or lever or nothing.”
“Anything,” Krysty said, automatically correcting him.
“Mebbe it could only be opened from the inside.” Ryan scratched his chin. “Or they could’ve had some kind of automatic device. Like they used to have on garage doors.”
“Sure there’s no way of opening it?”
Dean turned to Jak. “Go look for yourself. There’s nothing there. Plain walls.”
They stood for a moment, undecided what to do.
Ryan looked ahead of them, referring again to the map. “Well, if we can’t get into the rest of the redoubt, we might as well head straight for the exit. Least we can find out where we’ve ended up.”
THEY WALKED PAST three more side corridors, but each was blocked off by vanadium-steel sec doors, firmly and immovably locked shut.
“Unusual this,” Ryan said as they paused for breath. “Wonder why the gateway section is so carefully isolated from the rest of the redoubt?”
Krysty looked about her. “Has it occurred to you, lover, that it might be the other way around?”
“How do you mean?”
“That it’s the redoubt that’s been isolated from the mat-trans section. That huge laboratory sectionnever seen anything like that in any of the redoubts that we’ve jumped to, have we? It’s a new one.”
“Yeah, could be.”
Doc was entranced with the idea. “Those devilish whitecoats!” he spit. “Their fearsome experiments behind the safety of locked doors and screened units. Highest sec clearance anywhere. Who knows what frightful mischief they might have been up to in those last weeks, before the nukecaust revealed the utter futility of all research.”
“Less we know, less we worry,” Jak commented. “Be good taste fresh air after this weak recycled shit. How much farther?”
J.B. considered the question. “Nor more than another quarter mile,” he replied. “Been climbing all the while, but it’s finally starting to level off some.”
“I’m hungry, Dad.”
“We’re all hungry, Dean. Something about jumping that makes you feel sick and hungered, all at the same time. Long as the main entrance sec door can be opened, we’ll soon be out in the good air and do us some hunting.”
“Right now I could chew on a mutie’s skull and drink a bowl of stickie’s blood.”
Doc shuddered theatrically. “Drink blood, my sweet imp! There is nothing more profane.”
The boy grinned. “Well, better than rat piss.”
Ryan ruffled the boy’s hair. “Let’s get to the entrance first and see what we can see.”
Chapter Five
It was obvious that they hadn’t found the main exit from the whole complex. There were no extra security points, and the passage hardly opened at all. It was just wide enough for a single wag to drive through.
“Got the standard number-code control panel,” called Dean, who’d been given permission by his father to go along ahead of them. There wasn’t any likely danger with the air tasting the way it did, along with Krysty’s strong feeling that there was no kind of life anywhere within the redoubt.
Ryan looked at the others. “Might as well go out straightaway. Nothing to gain by waiting. You agree?” Nobody spoke. “Well, you don’t disagree. On condition red. Dean, punch in the usual code and see what happens.”
“But be ready quick stop,” Jak reminded him.
“Sure,” the boy snapped. “I know I don’t know much about using the right word and all that shit, but I know what to do with redoubt sec doors.”
The albino shrugged, holding out his hands, palms showing. “Back off, Dean,” he said quietly. “Stick your fingers down bear’s throat and get bit off.”
“That a threat, Jak?” Dean stood by the control panel, his body as tense as a drawn bowstring.
Ryan took a half step toward his son. “Enough,” he warned. “Time for fighting among ourselves. But this isn’t one of them. Press in the code.”
“Three, five and two,” Dean said.
“Right.”
Ryan crouched again, ready to peer under the rising sec door and give a warning of danger. The others were ranged in a rough half circle close behind him, everyone with a blaster at the ready.
The buttons clicked loudly in the oppressive stillness. Five. Three. Two.
This time there was no problem.
The monstrous weight began to lift. Ryan squinted into the opening, but didn’t order his son to stop the process, not calling a halt until the door was about eighteen inches off the ground.
Dean pressed the single button that held the sec door in position, waiting for the word from his father to continue.
“Humid again,” Mildred stated, breaking the silence. “Hope we’re not back at the village.”
” It is humid, lover. And got the same kind of green taste as before.”
Jak dropped to one knee beside Ryan and peeked out cautiously. “Smells like swamps to me,” he said. “Smells to me like home.”
Ryan nodded. “Bayou smell. More rotting vegetation than the last jump. Not so hot. Not so wet. Least we can breathe this air all right.”
“Louisiana?” J.B. said. “Think we’re back down in the southeast again?”
“Could be.” Ryan turned back and looked out under the door again. “Can’t see very much. Gray-green trees, dripping with Spanish moss.”
“Always reminds me of the rotting wedding dress of some dead duchess in a Jacobean tragedy,” Doc mused. “A kind of faded decadence.”
Mildred nodded. “Must be getting soft in the head, Doc. Here I am agreeing with you again.”
“Take it up all the way, Dean,” Ryan ordered. “Unless You don’t feel any threat, do you, Krysty?”
“Feel a lot of life, but nothing that close and nothing personally hostile.”
Dean pressed the release, and the mass of dull metal began to ascend again, reaching up to the ceiling before it stopped with a faint hydraulic hissing.
Now everyone could see out past the entrance to the redoubt, see the tall trees, festooned in the Spanish moss. There was an open space of overgrown tarmac, surrounded by the vegetation, but no sign of any kind of trail.
“Air smells wetter than last time. Sort of gray, colder wetness. Kind strikes through to the heart of your bones,” J.B. said. “I’d lay money on the bayous again.”
“We exploring some, lover?” Krysty asked. “Hunt us up some food?”