James Axler – Circle Thrice

“You must know if Trader’s dead or not,” J.B. said, finishing the last spoonful of a steamed jam pudding with a white sauce that was flavored with too little nutmeg. “You were right there in his face.”

Straub shook his head slowly. “I cannot help you. I see two scenes. One where Trader is butchered on that wet, shingled beach, surrounded by a mound of mutie corpses, faithful Abe dying at his feet from a score of wounds. Then I see him running away, wounded perhaps, but alive.” He beamed. “And I do not know which is true. Perhaps neither.”

EVERYONE RETIRED EARLY, exhausted from the rigors of a peculiarly strained dayDoc’s sudden illness after the visit to Graceland and then the operation, followed by the grotesque horrors of the execution of the treacherous sec sergeant.

They all looked in on Doc before going to bed, delighted that the indomitable old-timer was already showing signs of returning to his crazed good health.

Mildred found that he was running a slight fever and gave him some drugs from the ville to try to reduce it. But it pushed his always fragile mind away over the brink.

He reverted to a time when he was living back on a cold winter’s day in the nineteenth century, married to his beloved Emily. Doc was convinced that he had been out sleighing and skating and had caught influenza, which accounted for his temperature and general malaise.

“Keep darling Rachel and dear little Jolyon away from me, my beloved sweetheart,” he said, eyes closed, breathing fast, cheeks flushed.

Krysty sat with him, holding his hand, giving him comfort in his isolation, talking quietly to him, trying to help him maintain a grip on real reality.

“You’re fine, Doc, and you’re with us. Soon be fighting-fit again.”

He nodded, smiling. “Always one to look on the sunny side of the street, Emily my dove. If only I had refused to go on the horse-drawn sleigh with those confounded Ambersons. They think themselves so magnificent!”

IT WAS A LITTLE AFTER NINE when Ryan and Krysty went to their room and slid the bolt, undressed and climbed into their four-poster.

They lay together, side against side, watching the occasional flash of pinkish chem lightning through the mullioned windows on the east side of the room.

“How long before we leave this place, lover?”

Ryan rolled over to face her. “If it hadn’t been for Doc’s sickness, I was planning to move at dawn. Slip out and steal one of their wags and get going back northeast to the redoubt and jump on again.”

“Countess would have come after you.”

“No. She’s arrogant beyond belief, but she isn’t stupid. She knows that a full-scale knock-’em-down firefight would go against her. We got the power.”

There was a long silence. Krysty’s right hand reached out and feathered across Ryan’s chest, touching him lower, waiting, caressing him very gently, waiting.

“No?” she whispered.

“Not tonight, I don’t think. Just not in the right mood for it.”

Krysty withdrew her hand. “Any reason?”

“Keep thinking about that bitch and her demands on me. Can’t she see that if there’s a biological problem, then it must lie with her? It gets to me the way she keeps looking at me. It’s kind of scary.”

“Why not do what she wants?”

Ryan sat up, startled. “How’s that? You greasing my wheels, lover?”

” ‘Course not. You know me better than that, Ryan. Not a teasing matter. I truly wouldn’t mind if you slept with her just the once. Take the pressure off all of us. I have this bad feeling. I can see it, lover. That she’s going to cause some triple-bad trouble to try and get her own way. I see death.”

Ryan sighed, fumbling down her arm until he could grip her hand tightly. “I know all that old-vid shit about a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. I guess it wouldn’t hurt, not in the cosmic scale of things, if I did it. But it would matter, Krysty. It’s wrong. Trying to talk around it and justify it doesn’t alter that. I can’t ride around this one. Sorry. We can hold on for a couple more days. And then we’ll be safe.”