BOLTING UPRIGHT in bed, Silas Jamaisvous screamed at the darkness, his hands clawing at empty air.
With a bang, the door to his bedroom slammed open and armed sec men wearing clean blue shirts rushed in, the muzzles of their AK-47 blasters searching for intruders.
“What is it, sir?” a corporal demanded, his face tense with worry. “Are you hurt? Were you attacked?”
Silas tried to speak, but his throat was too dry and sore to do much more than squeak.
“Nobody in the closet,” a blue shirt said, closing the door.
“Window locked tight,” another sec man reported, jiggling the steel lattice that covered the huge window overlooking the Great Project. The tiny dots of torches moved in the blackness on the distant ground, the cool fire of orange moonlight bathing the huge satellite dish that dominated the ville by its sheer size.
“Out of the way, fools,” a major commanded, brushing through the sec men. Going to a humming refrigerator, the officer grabbed a frosty bottle of mineral water and crossed the room to thrust it into the elderly man’s hands. Silas greedily drank the icy water, savoring every drop as the horrible delusions of his nightly dream faded.
“Thank you, Sheffield,” he whispered, placing the empty bottle on his sweaty blankets.
Major William Sheffield merely nodded, and returned to the refrigerator for another bottle. The airtight cap was loose, these bottles refilled from a nearby stream, but it was still mineral water. Only weeks ago, the stream had been polluted with acid rain and tox chems to the point it was gelatinous. Now the stream flowed pure and clean again, thanks to the Great Project.
“Same dream, sir?” Sheffield asked softly, guiding the bottle to the man’s pale lips.
Silas nodded as he drank again, strength and sanity returning with every beat of his heart.
“The same,” he acknowledged as a tremor shook his body and the old wound in his thigh ached deeply. “It has been the same nightmare every night since I tried to force a chron jump! Was I insane? The jump haunts me, chases me through my dreams every night. No escape. There is no escape. How did Tanner survive a chron jump sane? What makes him so special? Was it the redoubt itself? Did the computers malfunction?”
Sheffield gestured. “Everybody out!” he thundered. “Stat!” Stiffly saluting, the guards shuffled into the corridor and closed the door.
“I don’t think it’s wise to be discussing such things in front of the troops, sir,” the major said, drawing a chair closer. He took the seat and glanced about. “The fewer people who know the existence of the redoubts, the better.”
“Yes. You are quite correct,” Silas agreed, mopping the sweat off his face with the edge of his blankets. The bed was moist beneath him, and there was the unmistakable ammonia stink of urine mixed with the sweat. Damn it, the dream was killing him. He awoke feeling weaker at every dawn, another slice of his sanity gone forever.
Back at El Morro in San Juan, the scientist had believed he held the key to controlled jumps through the redoubts, and had attempted to go backward through time to slay Tanner—at least he thought that was why he wanted to go back. He assumed there had been good reasons for the gamble, but they were gone, along with most of his memory. At first, Silas thought he had jumped back to the late 1800s of Vermont. But it became clear rather quickly that he had become mired in a jump nightmare. One that would leave him for a few months, and then return in shocking clarity. First no more than once a month, then once a week, now three or four times a week. Soon it would be every night, and after that who knew? Perhaps it would start claiming him during the day, and his brilliant mind would be gone forever, trapped in an endless fantasy of his own creation. From somewhere deep in his childhood the words “as ye sow, so shall ye reap” came unbidden to his mind. Silas shook off the religious nonsense. The dream was merely a forced feedback loop from the electromagnetic field of the mat-trans chambers, probably augmented by his proximity to the high-voltage transformers of the dish. Yes, of course, that was the answer. Once the Great Project was finished and the Kite was operational, he could leave Tennessee and be free from the dream forever.