The walls were coming closer. The ceiling was lowering, drawing nearer to him.
But none of that mattered to Ryan, not compared to the wonderful lethargy that wrapped itself around him like a grinning serpent.
“Dean. You try. Speak to him. Loud. He’s not hearing us. If we don’t bring him back right now, then I’m afraid he’s gone from us forever.”
Ryan drifted faster down the shrinking tunnel. Some old predark song filtered into the parts of his brain that hadn’t closed down, about having no regrets and, mostly, about having done everything his own way.
Drifting faster.
“Quick, Dean. Pulse is still going down. He’s drifting faster away.”
Faces. Faces from old photographs. What had happened to them all?
Mother and father. Brother. The smile eased away from Ryan’s face. Tumbling hair, burnished and brighter than the most heavenly sunrise.
A young boy. Dark, curly hair, serious eyes. Himself when he was about eleven years old?
“Dad?”
For a brief moment the water that bore Ryan along seemed to ripple, and the walls of the passageway retreated.
“Dad, you gotta fight. Gotta come back to us, Dad. Don’t just give up.”
Ryan swallowed, closing and opening his eye. The temperature of the water around him seemed to have dropped a little, making him less snug and comfortable.
“Pulse steadied.”
“Come on, lover. For me.”
“Dad”
Ryan swallowed and opened his eye.
He was lying flat on his back, feeling cold, with a circle of faces staring down at him. “Yeah, “he whispered.
“I GATHER from our preeminent medical authority, as Dr. Wyeth likes to see herself, that I had passed out from oxygen deprivation rather more quickly than you did. As my body had, effectively, closed itself down on all fronts, the damage from the air being sucked away was, consequently, rather less for me than for you.”
Ryan nodded. “They dragged us in and started the jump and we got away just in time?”
Doc lay on the bed next to him, still looking pale and shaken. “Indeed, yes. It rather seems that you had somehow pulled me that last hundred yards or so, despite having zero oxygen in your lungs.” He coughed. “Yet again, my dear friend, I find that I must thank you for saving”
Ryan held up a hand. “Forget it, Doc. You’d have done the same for me. The others did the same for us. You go out on the edge when you have to.”
He had a ferocious headache and kept fighting back swimming waves of gut-deep nausea. But it was only an hour since he’d been heaved back from the wrong side of the grave.
“I confess,” Doc continued, “to having felt a great deal less than well when I eventually recovered from the jump. Now, having a bed to lie on, I am a man new-made. Fresh made. Dairy maid. Sorry. Tongue running away without first contacting the brain. Awfully sorry.”
Krysty walked across the room, joining them. “How are the two invalids?”
Doc grinned. “The agony, madam, has somewhat abated. That is a quote from someone like the philosopher, John Stuart Mill, who fell as a two-year-old and bumped his knee. A lady said ‘Has little chappy hurty-wurty oozleself then?’ To which the infant prodigy is alleged to have replied “Thank you, madam, the agony has somewhat abated.” Jolly, good, eh?”
Krysty and Ryan both laughed.
She sat on the bed and took his hand in hers. “Getting better, lover?”
“Sure.”
“Close call.”
He nodded. “I know it. I had an ace on the line for the last train to the coast.”
“Seat booked and paid for and almost occupied. It was Dean who brought you back from the brink. You responded to his voice. Saved you, lover.”
“I heard you, as well.”
She looked at him gravely, head to one side. “That the truth, lover?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
She smiled at him. “Glad.”
“Where are we?”
“Somewhere else. Gateway chamber walls were a kind of dark gray color. That’s all we know.”
“Big redoubt?”
“Looks it. We found this dorm with all facilities. A lot like the last stop we made.”
His eye turned to the closed door with the word Bathroom above it.