“I did not care. Death would have been one escape, and perhaps the ultimate way to be reunited with my wife and children,” Doc replied, and then held up two fingers in a peace sign. “I made two attempts. The first was easily thwarted-they’d been waiting for me to slip. The second one came much closer, since I had my own allies in the corridors of that antiseptic hellhole, but still I failed. As for a third try, well, suffice to say, I was not given the opportunity to make a third attempt.”
“Going back to Chicago, what was the status of the redoubt?”
“When I and my friends discovered the lair, the central annex was crawling with spiders. Great albino arachnids,” Doc said, waggling the fingers of both his hands like scrawny, jointed legs. “Hundreds of the overstuffed web spinners, with long spiny appendages and eight hooked toes. The chamber was festooned with spun silk as white and powdery as freshly fallen snow. The only colors to be seen were their hideously glowing yellow eyes.”
Jamaisvous tilted his head and gave Doc a look. “Giant spiders? Don’t be ridiculous. Such mutations aren’t logical.”
Doc laid a hand across his heart and assumed a solemn look. “Upon my honor, sir, what I say is gospel. After all, logic has no place in Deathlands. Although, I might add in the interest of fairness that the largest of the creatures was only a foot and a half in height, with legs spread three feet in length.” “See? That isn’t all that large.” Doc smiled dangerously, showing his fine teeth. “When you have faced hundreds, Silas, they are as big as mountains, and as legion as grains of sand.” Jamaisvous stood, a half smile on his handsome face. “I think you’re prone to exaggeration in the interest of a good story, Dr. Tanner, but I’ll let it pass. Would you like another drink?”
“No, thank you.” Doc also began to stand, but his host waved him back down before crossing over to the bar and refilling his own glass.
“I bow to your firsthand experience, Dr. Tanner. But what happened after the giant spider invasion?”
“After retrieving the young Cawdor child, who had run into the spiders-”
“Yet another good reason to leave the children at home,” Jamaisvous said dryly.
“-and sealing off that section,” Doc continued, “we went in through an exterior air lock into the Chron-Temp mat-trans chamber, where I was fascinated to see a trio of materialization tubes linked to the standard gateway.”
“Tubes?”
“Modules, about the size of hospital beds. A clear plastic cover was over each one, awaiting the arrival of the dolphins.”
“Dolphins being code for…?”
“For the trawl subjects.”
“Hmm. Chicago was primitive. Lacking in many of the later refinements to come. At that particular point, they were still using cryonics hi conjunction with the tune-trawling process, a combination that was later abandoned from what I’ve read. Subjects were phased into their own individual cold canisters made of vanadium and armaglass.”
“Oh, bullshit,” Mildred interjected from the doorway. She had decided to join the conversation, while J.B. had elected to remain behind hi the living-quarters area, relieving Jak of having to join the undefeated Dean hi a challenging match of the Cootie game.
Jamaisvous laughed. “Such language, and from an educated lady.”
Mildred grinned back. “I never said I was a lady.”
“My mistake. Would you like some refreshment?”
“A small one.”
“What will you have?”
“Same as you two. Brandy. With a bit of water, please.”
“I was frozen after my trawl?” Doc said in disbelief, reaching up with his fingers to stroke the cheeks of his long face. “I have no memory of that, sir.”
“How could you?” Jamaisvous replied from the bar. “You were snatched from your time line and taken into the realm of null time via the gateway. For all intents and purposes, you ceased to exist-not here, not there. Nowhere. The problem the engineers of Chronos kept running into was their subjects reappearing during the current time serving as the original source of the trawl. This was totally unlike jumping from one mat-trans unit to another, where your destination was waiting and prepped. When living tissue was trawled, it tended to disintegrate upon re-materialization. ”