As she padded barefoot down the stone hallway toward the washroom of this section of the fortress, she strode past Doc’s room.
The door to the old man’s quarters was hanging open. Curious, Mildred looked inside, and immediately realized from the taut bedspread and perfectly centered pillow the bed hadn’t yet been slept in, nor had someone lain on top for a quick nap.
Unlike herself, Mildred knew from the many times they’d shared a campsite together that Doc was a man who could sleep through anything.
So where was he now? Worried, she took a moment to retrieve her clothing, shrugging into the blue dress Jamaisvous had given her the previous morning, since it was close at hand. She also picked up her blaster, holding it at her side as she started looking. Her search led her to the control room of the oddly configured mat-trans unit that Silas Jamaisvous had modified in the bowels of the mighty fortress.
Her eyes went first to Doc, who was standing next to the mat-trans chamber, the door of the booth open and the handle gripped in one hand as if he were saying a silent prayer before entering. Doc wore a guilty hangdog look, like a naughty pet caught in the midst of shredding a favorite sock or shoe. He twisted his swordstick in his other hand.
Mildred then directed her intense gaze at Jamaisvous, who was sitting at a control center with his back to her. Various comps, vid screens and readouts were actively chattering and blinking away in front of him.
“What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” Mildred demanded loudly.
He turned and gave his unexpected guest a quick smile. “What am I doing, Dr. Wyeth? What I’ve been doing for two long years now. I am conducting an experiment. You were not expected nor invited for this final phase, but you are more than welcome to watch.”
Mildred took one step forward, and a sec man in green pants and black T-shirt stepped into view from his hidden vantage point next to a tall comp data bank.
“Garcia?”
“Lopez.”
“Sorry, I get you two confused.”
“That’s okay, Dr. Wyeth. I have trouble telling your people apart, too.”
Mildred started to stride forward once more, and the sec man lowered his weapon in reply.
“Uh-uh. You may watch, but don’t think of interfering,” Jamaisvous said easily.
“What are you going to do, Doc?” Mildred asked.
Jamaisvous spoke instead. “Dr. Tanner is going to add the final piece to the puzzle of chron-jumping. I’ve given him a series of medical injections to counter some of the temporal side effects, and now we’re going to try to trawl him forward and back in tune. If this works, everybody wins.”
“And if it doesn’t, Doc ends up dead. Or worse.”
“I do not think my life could get much worse, Dr. Wyeth,” Doc replied sadly. “This is my decision.”
“Uh-uh,” Mildred replied. “You need to think this out.”
“He has made his decision,” Jamaisvous snarled, spinning toward the woman. “Imagine waking up, Mildred, and discovering you had no human companionship to welcome you into the future. I wish I had been a freezie instead of a trawl. I had to shoot myself forward just to survive the coming war, only unlike Dr. Tanner, I used another mat-trans chamber as a destination point. Chamber-to-chamber time trawls are a hell of a lot safer in case anything goes wrong.”
“You lied.”
Jamaisvous continued to speak, paying no attention to Mildred’s accusations. “I made it there alive, but I was the only one, and when I checked the rest of the redoubt, I discovered all of my fellow sleepers were mutants, ugly little demons waiting, sleeping and dreaming their dark thoughts.”
“The chupacabras…1” Mildred asked with dawning realization.
“Yes. I sent some of them back, you know. Back in time, right from the source of the first redoubt in El Yunque,” Jamaisvous said with a smirk. “I was only able to do this six times before the power fluctuations from the failing nuke generator started to create massive problems.”
“What kinds of problems?” Mildred asked, her mind racing as she tried to think of a way out of the situation in which she now found herself and Doc trapped.