“You think it’s possible, Jak?” he asked after spinning the spinner and selecting a piece of his Cootie.
“What, build bug? Sure.” Jak took his own turn with the spinner and picked up another plastic leg. “Got two legs. Need a head.”
“No, not that you dope,” Dean retorted. “Do you think it’s possible to go back in time?” “Doc did.”
“No, Doc came forward and then was pushed ahead a second time,” Dean corrected.
Jak shot him a look, then pondered what the younger boy was saying.
“Hmm,” the albino mused as he considered the implications of what his friend had brought up. “Two-way street.” “That’s what I’m wondering. Is it a two-way street or not?” Dean said excitedly, pausing in the game. “And if it is, mebbe we should all go back to another time, way back before the nukecaust. Back when everything in the world still worked.”
“Not me,” Jak replied, tapping one of the yellow insectoid legs against the front of his teeth. “Like here. Take what we got, not what we might get.”
“Not worth a gamble?” Dean asked easily.
“Not to me.”
Having become quickly bored with the construction of his cartoon insect, Jak tossed the gathered pieces back in the pile with a snort. “You win.”
“Aw, come on Jak, there’s nothing else to do right now,” Dean remarked as he absently ran a hand through his black curly hair. “Dad said for all of us to stick close tonight until we know more about this Jam-ass-voo guy.”
“Ask Doc. He knows. Spending lots of time with him.”
“Tms LIQUOR is…well, words escape me, sir.”
Doc was standing near a stone wall adorned with various black-and-white photographs of the grounds and surrounding area of El Morro, a brandy snifter in one long-fingered hand like it had been designed to be held there.
Seated in a black leather recliner across from Doc, Jamaisvous held a second glass in a nearly identical fashion. “Then, I shall take that as high compliment, Dr. Tanner.” “Please do.”
Jamaisvous took a sip of his drink before speaking. “What do you remember about the time-trawl technology?”
“Bits and pieces. Fits and starts. While parts of my stay with my captors remain in vivid focus, most has blurred due to what I can only describe as damage to my shorter-term memory after they shipped me into this bleak future world.”
“I knew more about how the mat-trans units worked as means of transport from place to place,” Jamaisvous remarked. “Other esoteric uses, such as cloning or duplication of living tissue or the fantastic notion of time trawling seemed to be bastardization of the process. The damn things weren’t designed for some of the hoops the higher-ups were making the tech boys try and jump through.”
“There were different methods for the trawling,” Doc revealed. “That much I do know.”
“How so?”
“We came upon the Chron-Temp portal in Chicago,” Doc said. “The original site.”
“Ah, yes. Chicago. They were still attempting to use cryonics as a part of the process then. Were the pods and mat-trans inside the Chicago redoubt still functioning?” Jamaisvous asked.
“Yes,” Doc said cryptically. “And no.”
“Well, I’d wondered. If the Chicago gateway was indeed working, I thought you would have attempted to return to your own time and place without hesitation. From what I remember about your particular case-”
“What do you mean remember?” Doc asked sharply, giving Jamaisvous a queer look.
Jamaisvous caught himself, taking back up the thread of conversation as if Doc had never interrupted him and finishing the sentence. “It refers to what I remember from reading about you in the old Chronos data banks, which portray you as quite the single-minded individual.”
Doc accepted the breezy explanation and didn’t press the matter, since his focus was upon his own convoluted memories. “Single-minded? More like relentless, sir. The Tanner clan has never been known for bending. Stubbornness is a family trait, and by God, I wanted my family back. The bastards would not cooperate with my wishes, so I decided I would be just as unyielding. My captors, well, they did not like that.”
“You could have been killed for your dogged pursuit of an impossible goal. Eliminated instead of studied,” Jamaisvous mused.