“There,” Lori said, pointing to a piece of paper that lay on the floor under the table. Even through the layer of dirt, the red writing, faded to a dull pink, was visible.
“Evac Nine Hundred,” Finn read. “What the fuck’s that mean?”
Ryan answered him. “Evacuate at nine in the morning. Story is that the last whistle got blown around noon that day. Where would they have gone?”
Nobody replied. Not one of the other redoubts had shown signs of life like this. For some reason that nobody would ever know, this mountain hideaway in Oregon had been left longer than most.
Most of the gateways had a small anteroom like this one. If this one was like the others then the master control room would be beyond the locked door, with its banks of electrical equipment, powered by either a solar or nuke generator, still ticking more than four generations after the last human had been there.
Ryan opened the door, flattening himself against the wall, ready for trouble. Trader used to say that if you kept ready for trouble, then it would never happen. Relax for a moment and you might get to be dead.
The air tasted less flat. Ryan exhaled, watching his breath as it misted in front of him. His guess was that the temperature throughout the complex must be close to freezing. Maybe well below in parts. The computers and control equipment wouldn’t function once it dropped below zero.
Apart from a few sheets of paper and a pen, which had evidently been dropped on the floor during the evacuation, everything looked normal. He glanced across at Krysty, raising an eyebrow. “Empty, you guess?”
“Yeah. Think I can hear No, it’s gone. If it was there at all.”
A piece of paper crinkled next to his boot, and Ryan stooped to peer at it. It was torn, showing only the words, “Host Twin”
It looked as if it had been some kind of food tab.
There was the background whirring and humming of the electrics. One of the overhead lights had shorted out, and it was spitting erratically, tiny sparks showering from the broken fitting. Wheels moved and lights of different color blinked.
Ryan entered the room, feeling the soft dust stirring under his feet. He wondered where so much dust had come from. None of the other gateways had had so much. The others followed. There was the familiar double armored door on the far side, which would probably open onto a large, wide corridor. If it was like the other redoubts
J. B. Dix looked back at the mat-trans chamber. “Sure is a shame we can’t control that bastard,” he said musingly. “Be good to try and get back.”
“Back?” Ryan echoed. “Back where?”
“To War Wag One. Back to Cohn an’ Hovak. O’Mara, Lint, Hooley, Loz, Cathy Where are they now? Dead or living?”
Ryan shook his head. “Actually, I guess only a few weeks have passed since we left ’em. But they could be anywhere now.”
“We can’t go back,” Doc said. “I told you. The controls are random if you don’t know the codes. We could try making jumps for years and never find the right gateway. And we’d probably hit on one that’s damaged, and I swear I don’t know what that would mean.”
“If we got to a chamber that no longer existed, you figure we wouldn’t exist either, Doc?” Krysty asked.
The old man shrugged his narrow shoulders.
“Somebody must know how they work.” Finnegan muttered. “Just gotta keep asking, I guess.”
The green lever on the outer portal was depressed to the closed position. Ryan moved across, eyeing the banks of disks and chattering contacts. There was a vaguely unpleasant, sticky smear on one of the consoles, as though some piece of fruit had been left there at the time of the evacuation and had rotted silently away into nothingness.
“They leave books of rules if in hurry, Doc?” Lori asked.
“I fear not, my dearest child,” the old man replied. “I rather believe that there is no way anyone will ever be able to use the gateways as they were intended. And that may be no bad thing.”