“Beyond is the control room?”
“Like the one back in New Mexico, you mean?” Ryan nodded. “Yeah.”
“Can we at least step into this room here?”
“Sure, Trader. But don’t touch that other door.”
Dean was looking around. “Doc’s eyes are moving, Dad.”
“Thanks, son.”
Trader, Abe and Dean had stepped from the chamber, followed a moment later by Jak. Ryan, J.B. and Krysty waited, watching Mildred kneeling with Doc’s grizzled head cradled in her lap.
His eyes opened, staring around like a newborn baby’s, not focusing on anything in the glass-walled room. The tip of Doc’s tongue moistened his lips.
“I am feeling better,” he said. His eyes closed, and his head lolled back into Mildred’s arms.
“Shit, “she said.
“We still wait.” Ryan made sure everyone heard him, made sure Trader understood him.
SEVERAL MINUTES LATER Doc made a second attempt to reenter the land of the living.
“I confess that I scarcely felt even the most nugatory pain from the extraction, my dear fellow. Best piece of fang carvery I ever knew.” He smiled broadly. “I will commend you to any of my friends who seek the aid of a dentist.”
Mildred patted him gently on the wrinkled cheek. “Come on, Doc. Nearly back with us. One more step.” She built up the force of the blows a little at a time, until the chamber rang with the slapping sound.
His eyes finally clicked open again.
“Forgive me, Mama, but I truly believed that the bird was a ring ouzel.”
The black woman shook him. “Snap out of it, Doc. We got places to go and things to do.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them for a third time, nodding up into Mildred’s face. “I had wondered whether I had passed into that dark bourn from which no traveler returns. But I would have woken to angel voices and sweet singing. Not to your ill-tempered visage, Dr. Wyeth.”
She moved so quickly away from him that his head rattled on the floor of the gateway chamber. “Glad you appreciate my efforts to help you, Doc,” she snapped.
He sat up, very gingerly, rubbing the back of his skull. “The typical action of a member of the esteemed medical profession whose bill has not been paid.”
She showed him the extended middle finger of her right hand. “And fuck you, too, Doc.”
Ryan grinned at Krysty. It looked like things were already back to normal.
THE ANTEROOM HAD two bare shelves of reinforced plastic, holding only a thin film of fine dust. Apart from that it was completely empty.
“We move into the control area,” Ryan said, “still all on triple red. Ready?”
He opened the door.
Chapter Eight
“Good condition,” J.B. stated.
“Go check the outer door, will you? Make sure the green lever’s pointing”
“Down,” the Armorer completed. “I can remember that much, Ryan.”
There was no trace of any fault or flaw in the main control area to the gateway chamber. Nor was there any sign of any human activity. It was as though it had been built and manned by robotic androids who had completed their set tasks and then quietly and tidily made their exits.
“Not even some fossilized chewing gum under any of the desks,” Mildred said, stooping beneath the nearest row of consoles to check it out.
Binomial eyes clicked. A light film of the thinnest oil eased tumblers. On the control panels, dazzling arrays of changing colorsa rainbow of reaction. Wheels danced and numbers flashed.
The small black loudspeakers set in the corners of the control room suddenly hissed, one of them crackling. The voice that came from them had an oddly dead, automated quality to it as though everything human had been drained away.
“Midnight on fifth tone after message.” A pause. “No message from central. All quiet.” Another pause, then came five spaced tones, thin and metallic. “Midnight. Ends.”
Abe laughed. “That thing been talking to nobody for a hundred years?”
Doc had sat at one of the comp keyboards, looking at the endless flow of data that was scrolling up the screen, like a reversed river of gibberish. “Once programmed, those ‘things’ as you call them, will loyally carry out their preset duties until time ends.”