“Yeah, compadre, it was.” The almost inaudible voice came from the far side of the mat-trans unit, from J. B. Dix, the Armorer, as he’d been known during the years when the two men had ridden together on the war wags of the legendary Trader.
He struggled to sit upright, feeling in one of the deep pockets of his coat for his spectacles. He wiped the lenses on his sleeve and perched them back on his narrow nose, then picked his beloved fedora hat from his lap and jammed it on his head. “Yeah, bad one, bro,” he said.
“Doc looks in a sorry way.”
J.B. nodded. “And the kid doesn’t look like he’s ready for action.”
“Not ‘kid,’ old man.” Jak’s lids peeled back, revealing the ruby eyes of the true albino. His skin, as white as new-fallen snow, was smudged with dirt across the high cheekbones.
Jak Lauren, from West Lowellton in Louisiana, was still only sixteen years of age, as skinny as a lath, with the wiry strength of a self-trained acrobat. His mane of white hair hung across his shoulders, onto his leather-and-canvas camouflage jacket. Like the other companions, he carried a blaster at his hip—a satin-finish Colt Python, with the long, six-inch barrel. But his favorite weapons were the half-dozen leaf-shaped throwing knives that he wore concealed about his person. Jak was able to take the eye out of the jack of diamonds at twenty paces.
Or kill a man at three times that distance.
“Damn it all to hell, Dad. That was a bad one. Worst jump I can ever remember.” Dean Cawdor, at age eleven, was a mirror image of his father. He was the fruit of a brief liaison Ryan had with Sharona Carson, wife of the baron of Towse. Though Dean hadn’t been long in Ryan’s life, the one-eyed man loved him fiercely.
“One of the worst, son, that’s for bastard sure.”
Ryan was aware that Krysty was recovering consciousness. She coughed, then retched, putting her head in her hands.
“Gaia! That was…”
“A bad one,” chorused Ryan, Jak, Dean and J.B.
Krysty managed a wan smile. “Yeah. Had a foul dream, if that’s the right word for what passes dribbling through your skull during a jump.”
Ryan nodded. “I was strapped to a table of polished chrome, and men with white robes and masks were working on me with long tubes and needles. Probing at my arteries, sucking my blood through into a whirling machine.”
“I was crawling through tunnels that were filling with warm mud,” J.B. said.
Jak shook his head. The snowy mane whirling like a torrent of melt water spray. “Can’t remember. Just know was frightening. Old women in it, holding small knives. Pecked like beaks of birds. Blood on snow like petals of roses.”
“What was your dream, Krysty?” Ryan asked, holding her hand in his.
“Only recall bits, lover. I was held captive by a man who stood always in the shadows. I could save myself if I could complete a puzzle. Just one last piece was needed, but I couldn’t find it. Didn’t know what shape and size it was. So it was totally impossible, but I had to keep on searching.” She shuddered and squeezed Ryan’s hand so hard he almost cried out. “Nightmare alley, lover. That’s what it was. One of those black nightmares when you think you’ve actually lost your mind somewhere during the jump. Your brain’s been swirled apart.”
Mildred Wyeth had recovered consciousness while Krysty was talking.
“Know what you mean,” she said, coughing, pressing her hands against her brown eyes to regain control. “My dream was about traveling back in the days of Amtrak, when I was a little girl. Before skydark, I was wandering from platform to platform in a huge station, trying to find the right train. Then I was in a train car but nobody knew where it was going. Just endless and pointless. It was like running and staying still.”
She smiled at J.B. and patted him on the arm, using his help to get upright, staggering a little.
Ryan admired her toughness, knowing that he would almost certainly puke if he didn’t stay sitting a while longer. But he already knew what a tough person Mildred was.