“You read it all?” the old man asked. His eyes were red and swollen, sore from weeping.
“Sure. Why didn’t you tell us about it?” Ryan replied. “It can’t hurt to tell someone.”
“No. I suppose you are correct in that assumption. But I am so alone, my dear Ryan. A speck of infinity, two centuries old, with my wife and children long dead. Yet, in their world, they are all alive. I still cherish the hope that one day”
“But these parallel streams? Doesn’t that mean you can’t return to that world ever again?”
Tanner sniffed. “It’s a theory, that’s all. It may be right. Until we test it, we shall never know. Traveling with you gives me that tender shoot of hope. One day, in the right gateway, it might”
His voice faded away once more.
Later that evening, somewhere between B and C in Green, Doc came to Ryan, who was lying on his bed alone.
“Will you tell the others, Mr. Cawdor?”
“About where you come from?”
“Yes.”
“You mind if’n I do?”
The old man smiled weakly. “Tell you the honest truth, Ryan, and nothing but the truth, I’m relieved it’s all out in the open. Load off my mind.”
He reached out and shook Ryan firmly by the hand, then went to rejoin Lori.
Chapter Eighteen
“FUCKING LIAR!”
“It’s true.”
“You’re a fucking liar, Ryan Cawdor.”
“It’s true, Finn.”
“You too, Krysty. Couple of fucking liars. You think I’m still wet behind the balls, huh?”
“I said he wouldn’t believe it,” Krysty sighed.
Ryan tried one last time. “Doc Tanner is over two hundred years old.”
“And I’m a swampy’s foreskin. Come on, friend. Just forget it, will you?”
They had better luck with J.B.
“Over two hundred years old?”
“That’s right, J.B., that’s right.”
The Armorer took off his glasses and polished them on the sleeve of his overalls, then squinted up at the ceiling lights through the gleaming lens. “Trawled and then sent on forward to our time? That’s what you’re trying to tell me, Ryan?”
As he spoke, one of the strip lights flickered and went out. Since they’d been in Wizard Island, they’d noticed how much of the technology seemed on the point of failing, or had simply failed. Ryan guessed it was because the scientists, much diminished in numbers, probably lacked the time to deal with such mundane matters. They were too deeply embroiled in Project Eurydice, whatever that was.
“Yeah. Born over two hundred years ago.”
“If he was trawled when he was only around thirty that’s what you said?then he spent only a few years in the time before the long chill. How come he looks around seventy?”
Ryan had wondered that. Krysty had pressed for more information when they’d watched the story scrolling on the computer screen in the library.
The answer had been vague and incomplete. On the most limited data, it appears that chron-jumps can result in speeding or slowing of metabolism, resulting in aging either faster or slower than usual. This was observed in the specimen, Tanner .
J.B nodded as Ryan tried to explain this to him. “So he’s older than the real body time, but a damned sight younger than true elapsed time. I get it. And you figure he might know how to use some gateways for chron as well as mat-trans? Be good.”
They couldn’t tell Jak about Doc’s age until the next morning. The old man told Lori himself. Ryan asked him how it went.
“The child is a caution, Ryan. She smiled as though I was joshing her. Kissed me on the cheek and said it didn’t matter to her if I was one million years old. She is such a sweet dove.”
THEY HAD NO FURTHER VISITS from Dr. Tardy or any of the other scientists. Finn and J.B. had failed to reach the main elevators and the sole exit from the complex, but the Armorer figured it could be done.
“Mean spilling a lot of blood. If’n we can get past a half-dozen sec men, then we can get at where they’re keeping our clothes and blasters. Once we did that, we could clean out the whole place.”