“I beg you, Dr. Jamaisvous, do not hurt my friends,” he implored.
“That’s entirely up to them, isn’t it? Now go. Fly.”
Doc did as ordered, stepping into the gateway and closing the door with a soft click.
Mildred, her racing heartbeat belying the fine sheen of sweat on her face and forehead, stepped over briskly, not caring if she was shot, and began to pound on the blue armaglass of the gateway chamber with both fists. From within, if he skewed his eyes, Doc could make out her faint, shadowy outline.
“Doc! Don’t do it! Doc!” she screamed, even as the tendrils of mist began to form and collect inside the chamber like a damp embrace from an old friend. “He’s using you! Using you as a test subject, you crazy old fart! He doesn’t care if you live or die! Doc!”
There was an incredibly bright light from inside the sheltered chamber, filtered by the colored armaglass but still as bright as the noonday sun. All of the secondary lights and comp banks in the room dimmed in intensity as the light within the mat-trans unit reached blinding levels. Mildred closed her eyes and still was blinded, finally having to turn her back to the light to save her overloaded visual receptors.
Then, he was gone again. There was no fading or even the sudden violent changes in the air and gravitation fabric as the last time he’d been taken by time trawl.
He just ceased to be.
Doc Tanner…wasn’t.
“The chron jump is now in progress,” Jamaisvous announced calmly. “First stop-tomorrow.”
Mocsin, Montana, 2095
Doc TANNER STARED UP toward the voice that had just threatened to kill him, his eyes falling on a kind of stepped pyramid, approximately twelve feet high, wide at the bottom and tapering off to a smaller, flat top, upon which rested a wide, high-backed wing chair draped in the stars and stripes of an American
Sitting in the chair and on the flag was a man, dressed in a dingy robe of purple silk, with a dirty white fur collar. Purple silken pajamas could be glimpsed beneath the folds of the half-open robe. The man was wearing black knee-length riding boots whose sheen caught the reflection of many candles. He was fat, but not grotesque, although the potential for obesity of an incapacitating manner was present in his fleshy face and build. A white scarf, brighter and cleaner than the fur collar of the gown, was wrapped around his throat.
Short, white hair topped the man’s head, which craned down as he peered intently at the kneeling figure of Doc Tanner with mild curiosity. The room was silent as he stared Doc down. Pausing only to take out and light up a ridiculously large cigar with an odor even more cloying and sweet that the burning pots of incense, he finally decided to speak.
“Who the fuck are you?” the fat man asked, blowing out a plume of smoke.
“Tanner. Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner,” Doc replied, getting enough of a whiff to note the cigar wasn’t made of tobacco, but could be traced instead to the cannabis plant.
The revelation made the baron’s ears perk up. “Doctor? Medical doc?” Teague asked eagerly, looking past Doc to his right-hand man, Cort Strasser. Strasser made no overt movement to indicate yea or nay, allowing the kneeling man as much rope as required to hang himself.
“No, my friend. Philosophy. Philosophy and…” Tanner discovered the years of scientific training he’d taken had vanished from his mind, vanished to such a degree he was having trouble even recalling what his second major in university might have been.
“Sounds like a bullshitter to me. He come into Mocsin with tribute?”
“Nothing on him, Baron, except for these.” The bearded sec man reached into a canvas shoulder bag and held out a pair of perfect metal spheres, each about the size of a baseball. Strasser took the offered globes and walked up the steps to the top of Teague’s bizarre indoor pyramid. The overweight baron had ordered the pyramid built as his throne, having been advised that a pyramid was a power object, and by sitting atop one he could harness the latent energies and become a stronger leader.