“And that’s just where we are,” Ryan added. “Stuck.”
The one-eyed man took a step back and surveyed the sec door. There was nothing else they could do now except wait. If their enemies on the other side wanted to attack them, they would have to operate the door and so give the companions the opportunity to take their covering positions and pick them off as the door opened. But they couldn’t go forward without risking the same. Their defensive position was secured, but at the expense of moving farther up the redoubt. Their only option would be retreat to the mat-trans.
An uneasy few minutes ensued on both sides of the sec door, as the leader of the opposing force was having similar thoughts to those of Ryan. Except for one extra fact that was bothering him intensely. How the hell had these people gotten into the old place that was his camp? For his people occupied the upper levels and didn’t risk coming too far down because of the giant worms and the damage they caused. It made the lower levels too unstable to live in safely. So mebbe there was some other way into the tunnels from the outside that they didn’t know about.
“Hey! You on the other side! Only one of you I’ve seen is One-eye, but I guess from the blasterfire that there’s more of you back there—you wanna talk?”
Ryan exchanged glances with the other companions. J.B. shrugged. Krysty gave a noncommittal shrug, but her hair hadn’t tensed any more. Dean and Jak wore skeptical expressions. Mildred shook her head gently, muttering, “See what the guy has to say. We don’t have to open the door to hear it, right?”
Doc smiled broadly. “I would say it was an excellent sign, my dear Ryan,” he whispered urgently. “After all, the fact that the gentleman is willing to exchange in dialogue suggests a certain intelligence, does it not?”
“Guess so,” the one-eyed warrior said quietly. Then, more loudly, “Okay, what you got to say? You started, so you go first.”
“Strikes me that we’ve got ourselves in a stupid situation,” the drawling, low voice said. “See, we live here, and when we hear a firelight going on, we’ve got to look after our territory, see that we’re safe. And you? Well, way I see it is that you don’t know who the hell we are and you’ve gotta see you’re safe. So we had a firelight and you chilled Janny and Ken. Cy, he’s probably gonna be okay eventually…time’ll tell. But that don’t mean we need to chill you to get our pride back, y’see that?”
“Fine words, but how can we trust you? How can you trust us?” Ryan queried.
“Fair point, my friend,” the voice said.
“I’m not your friend yet,” Ryan countered. “I don’t like shouting through this bastard thick door, so let’s get to it.”
“Okay,” came the response. Yet, despite the thickness of the metal sec door, the man on the other side didn’t seem to have to shout for his voice to be heard clearly. “Let me ask you something, stranger. I don’t think you came in through some tunnel that we don’t know about.”
“That’s not a question,” Ryan countered.
“No. So how about if I ask you if you got into the tunnels through that place where all the colored lights flicker and change all the time?”
Ryan was momentarily stunned to silence. Had this man guessed the secret of the mat-trans that they were among the few to know?
“Why do you say that?” Ryan asked slowly.
“Because it’s old tech and it still works…must, otherwise the lights wouldn’t be working. We’ve got some idea of how bits work, but the rest of it is still a mystery.”
Ryan paused before answering. A lot would hinge on his next few words. He obviously paused a little too long, as his opposing number was spurred to speech, perhaps making Ryan’s decision easier.
“Hell, don’t clam up on me now,” the low drawl said with a vaguely sardonic undercurrent. “Listen, I’m kind of like the baron around here, though we’re too small to be a ville. The name’s Joe Correll, and I’ll tell you as much as this. We know all this stuff comes from before skydark, and we can tell that a lot of it here still works…but how to work it, and what it does? Well, we sure as shit don’t know that. But we know where we can get what we need to know, and I’m figuring that mebbe you know something, if you came here by using some of it. But mebbe you need to know more. See, I can’t see any reason you’d come to this shithole unless it was an accident. So mebbe we can help each other. Sure gotta be better than this or a chilling, and it’ll come to that if we go on this way.”