“So we was there and here at same time?” asked Lori, in her slow, almost tranquilized voice.
Doc smiled paternally at her, but the hand that squeezed the top of her thigh, where skirt nearly met boots, was far from paternal.
The old man turned his smile on Ryan Cawdor. But it was quickly replaced with a taut expression of horror. The eyes bulged wide at Ryan. Doc’s grip on sanity gradually seemed to be returning, but it was still frail.
“The men of science, Ryan. Upon my soul, ladies and gentlemen, but they are such inhumane scum. They seek better and better ways of slaughter. Oh, the sights I saw when I was oh, the horrors!” He closed his eyes, swaying like an aspen in a summer wind. “A young man, a taxi driver from Minneapolis, a petty thief nothing vicious in him. Seen him used as a guinea pig for one of their nerve toxins. Seen him trying to bite his hand off, gnawing to the bloody bone. Children, from Asia, experiments for the agency that rubbing their own excrement in great ulcerated sores that they had torn in their own flesh. Oh”
He began to weep. Lori put her arms around him, hugging his frail body as he sobbed uncontrollably.
For a moment, everyone avoided eye contact. It was Ryan who broke the silence.
“Best we move.”
“Yeah,” said J. B. Dix.
THE DOOR TO THE GATEWAY opened smoothly. The anteroom was filled with chattering banks of computers and ranged equipment that hummed and whirred. Red and green and amber lights flickered. This was the cleanest and apparently best-preserved gateway control room that Ryan had seen.
Above the small panel of numbered and lettered buttons by the side of the chamber door, there was a notice that Ryan had seen before. Up in the Darks, where it had all begun for them.
“Entry Absolutely Forbidden to All but B12 Cleared Personnel. Mat-trans.”
This time there was no small room between the controls and the actual gateway. There was a massive door of vanadium-steel at the far side of the room.
“Blasters ready,” ordered Ryan, taking out the SIG-Sauer pistol, steadying it, his finger firm on the trigger.
Everyone drew rifles or pistols and ranged around Cawdor as he reached for the door. In the humid heat it felt cool to the touch. To the right was a green lever, pointing to the floor, with the word Closed printed on it. Ryan grasped it and tugged it upward, toward the Open position.
When the door was only a couple of inches ajar, Ryan eased the lever back to the neutral position, pressing his good eye to the slit and squinting both ways along the corridor that ran outside.
“Anything?” asked J. B. Dix.
“No. Pass the rad counter.”
The Armorer handed him a small device, like a pocket chron, that measured the radioactivity. It cheeped and muttered quietly, showing no more than a minor surface level. There were places scattered throughout the country where it would have howled out the danger. These hot spots were often near cities or towns where there had been either missile complexes or communication centers.
“Safe?”
“Yeah.”
Hennings was at his elbow as the door hissed open the rest of the way.
“Fucking hot, Ryan. Help sweat some of Finn’s fat.”
“Careful the sun don’t fucking burn you blacker, Henn,” replied the stout little man.
“Cut it, you two,” snapped Ryan. “Come on. Keep tight and careful.”
Nobody needed telling where to go.
Ryan led the way, as always. Then came Krysty, light on her feet, two paces behind. Hennings was third in line. Doc, with an arm around Lori, was in the middle of the group. Finn was last but one, with J.B. bringing up the rear, about ten paces behind everyone, constantly turning to check that nobody was trying to come up behind to cold-cock them.
The corridors were a pale cream stone, seamless, curving slightly to the right. About four paces wide, and about twelve feet high. Lighting was contained in recessed strips. There were no doors on either side.
“This a redoubt, Doc?” Ryan asked.
“Perchance not, Mr. Cawdor. Not all of the gateways were built within the large storage redoubts.”