Doc decided he didn’t like the slant this conversation was taking.
‘ ‘Make your boasts or do as you will, Welles. Or get out.” Doc turned his attention away and opened his book to the page he’d been reading before. The words of the paragraph were meaningless now, and he read the same sentence over and over without retaining any of the content. His eyes were on the page, but his ears and his mind were on Welles.
The administrator hadn’t paid any heed to his patient’s request to leave. He was just getting wound up as he continued to speak, his tone even and modulated. The only hint of his rising excitement was a darkening of his facial coloration.
“You weren’t a team player, oh, no, not the mighty Dr. Tanner, owner of two doctoral degrees. No, most men would bow to their betters, acknowledge their masters and beg for whatever crumbs of glory they might be content to pass along. No, not you, bleating about your sainted wife and bratty children. We gave you an out, would have allowed you to return and you spit in our faces, all smug in your limited command of backward faith and knowledge of right and wrong,” Welles said.
“You made your proposition for your masters, Welles,” Doc said softly, turning in the cot and placing his feet on the cell floor, and then resting his hands on his knees. “As their faithful lapdog, I know you were disappointed when I refused your most…generous offer. A man of character would have known then I was not to be blackmailed or bought, and as such, should have been returned to my proper place in time. For time, you see, has checks and balances, and by plucking me away from my particular slot, you have upset the apple cart. My wife has endured a life without a husband, and my children have endured a life without a father.”
“Your children,” Welles said with a snicker. “Life without Daddy.”
Doc gave his keeper a scathing look of contempt. “That is correct.”
Welles continued to chuckle. “Your children are dead, you pathetic fool.”
Tanner wasn’t biting. “Dead now, of course, unless they were incredibly long-lived, and while the Tanners are a hearty bunch, I harbor no illusions of a hundred-and-ten-year-old Jolyon being wheeled through the door to say hello to his father.”
“No, no, not dead now-dead then,” Welles said, his voice starting to rise in tone and volume. “They died within seconds after you were trawled! While you were in flux, held within the temporal contain- ment field, random fluctuations of wild energy escaped, Tanner, escaped crackling and gibbering and killing. Any living tissue it came in contact with resulted in violent cellular disruption.”
“You, sir, are a liar,” Doc said, all pomposity gone from his voice as he struggled to maintain his composure.
“And you, sir, are a trusting, mewling fool. We didn’t lie to you. We told you your children were long dead and the Tanner bloodline had stopped with their demises. All true. What we neglected to inform you of were some of the details.”
Then, Doc was on him, his hands around Welles’s portly throat. In his brain, which was colored now with a killing haze of red, Doc saw his oppressor’s head pop off his neck like a cork from a bottle of champagne and a geyser of blood spurt into the air.
Such a scene remained imaginary, however, locked inside Doc’s mind, for one second after his lunge for Welles, his cell door slid back a second time and a knot of grim-faced security men came rushing into the room, peeling the whip-lean man off his much heavier foe.
“You lie! You are playing mind games, punishing me for my noncompliance! I will not have it! Send me back!” Doc screamed, spittle flying in a spray from his lips.
“Too late,” Welles gasped as he tried to raise himself from where he’d sprawled across a mound of books and papers. “Too late!”
“I-I accept your damnable agreement. Return me to my family!”
“Too late for deals, too late. We no longer need you, Tanner. You have outlived your usefulness by, oh, say a hundred years!” And then Welles unleashed an almost feminine cackle of laughter.