Which meant that things surfaced in jump dreams.
Ugly things the conscious mind refused to face.
The companions rarely discussed the details of their dreams, other than to say, “Whew, that was a bad one!” These were private horrors better left to private contemplation, or even better still, plain forgotten. None of them had ever shared the fear that they each felt, that one of these times they wouldn’t wake up. That they would get stuck between gateways, existing only as streams of charged particles, forever trapped in their own worst nightmare.
There was nothing subtle about the meaning of Ryan’s jump dream. His unconscious and conscious minds were on the same page: he not only faced his own death, but the death of hope for his world. All that he loved, all that he valued, was on the verge of being smothered.
Ryan started to feel queasy again—the smell of vomit, the smell of the smoked catfish they carried in their day packs and the sharpish, unpleasant odor of mat-trans by-product chemicals was getting to him. He stepped carefully over Krysty’s legs and found the chamber’s exit door.
Outside was a rectangular floor of poured concrete surrounded by rough hewned red rock walls and a very high rock ceiling. In the light of a caged electric bulb over the door of the chamber, he could see the spiral metal staircase leading up. Ryan checked his weapons, adjusted his pack, then climbed the stairs. At the top was another level of cave and more concrete floor, which narrowed at its far end and led him through switchbacked walls of rock.
As he rounded a turn, bright sunlight from the cave’s opening stabbed into his eye. He let his vision adjust before he stepped out. In front of him, the bone dry Utah desert stretched off in all directions; behind him was a towering red mesa.
Though the creators of this gateway had tried to match the bedrock around the artificial entrance they had constructed, they hadn’t figured on the effects of the chem rain, which had aged the synthetic and natural materials differently. Jak Lauren had been the first to notice the strange discoloration in the rock formation. When he had checked it more closely, he had found the man made cave.
Ryan sat down inside the shade of the entry and waited there for the others, grateful for a few moments alone to think. He figured that the companions’ best chance of winning the fight, and perhaps their only chance, was to find a way to confront the enemy from the parallel Earth head on, and the sooner the better. If the invaders were distracted or confused by the strange new environment, they might make tactical mistakes, and therefore be vulnerable. It was a long shot, and he knew it. From what Ryan had seen, both on this world and its near twin, the opposition was whitecoat efficient and bastard ruthless. If the invaders had already gotten used to their new home, there would be no escape for those who resisted.
For the thousandth time, Ryan asked himself whether he should send Dean away with Krysty or Jak. Or with both. That way the boy could avoid what was looking more and more like a suicide mission, and perhaps enjoy whatever remaining life fate offered him. It seemed a simple, straightforward decision, but it wasn’t. Ryan knew Dean’s heart as well as he knew his own. Dean wanted more than anything to prove his worth to the group, to be valued as his own person by his father and the others, all of whom he hero worshiped. Under the circumstances, Ryan knew his son would take being sent away as the ultimate rejection, the most terrible event in his life. It was like telling him, “Boy, you aren’t fit company to die with, so go off and die by yourself.”
For a father who loved his son, that was the ultimate lie.
In the end, Ryan concluded that it wasn’t his place to force his son to go or to stay. When the time came that the decision couldn’t be put off, he would offer Dean a man’s choice: die now, fighting at your father’s side. Or die later, without him.