“I’m not so sure that the Gen will see it that way,” Tricks warned.
“Screw him.”
“Brave words when he’s not here.”
“Screw him. Although I’d rather screw you.”
Tricks sighed as Baker moved toward her, and she reached for the small,
palm-sized stun gun she’d taken from the R&D repository some time back for just
such an occasion. But despite this distraction, she still kept an eye on Doc,
who had started to make small whining noises in the back of his throat.
THE WIND HAD BUFFETED Doc until he was huddled into a corner of the cavern,
hunched into a fetal position, trying to protect as much of his aching body as
was possible from the sheer force of the air and the myriad small pebbles and
specks of dust and dirt that whipped and stung against exposed skin. His
eardrums hurt where the roar of the wind drove pressure against them until he
felt that they would burst.
And yet he could still hear Lori screaming over the roar of the wind. It was so
plaintive, so helpless, that it overrode Doc’s desire to protect his eyes and
ears. He looked up, screwing up his eyes to try to cut down on the amount of
dust that could tear at them. The force of the wind was such that his eyes dried
almost immediately, and he blinked painfully.
The phosphorescence provided enough light for him to see that Lori had been
blown along almost to a point where she was hidden by the encroaching maw of
darkness. She was clinging to the rocks, her clothes almost torn from her body,
dark flecks on her skin showing where the flesh had been ripped, raising bloody
weals.
Perhaps it was his imagination. Perhaps it was his conscience. Whatever, Doc was
sure that he could see a pleading light in her eyes, despite the fact that
logically he shouldn’t be able to tell from this distance, in these conditions.
He knew that if he didn’t go to help her, then she would surely die.
And yet she was already dead. Doc knew that. He could recall with an awful
clarity the nightmares he still suffered where he saw her consumed by flames.
Lori was dead. She couldn’t be here. Yet she was.
And he couldn’t fail her again.
AS BAKER ADVANCED on Tricks, Doc gave a loud yell and almost lifted himself off
the couch.
“I really think you’d better get the Gen,” Tricks said softly as Baker turned in
shock. “I think he’s ready.”
IT WAS ALMOST impossible to describe the sensation of moving against that
implacable gale. It was like drowning in air, yet the stones and dirt that
whipped against him made it at times seem like fighting against a moving, living
wall of rock. And still Doc pressed on, his wiry frame pushing every ounce of
strength he had into forward progress.
He got to within a few yards of Lori before he looked up again. What he saw made
his dry eyes fill with tears, caused him to pull up dead.
There were now three figures being blown into the maw of the tunnel. Lori wasn’t
one of them.
“Emily?” he whispered. Doc felt as though any sanity he might be clinging to was
about to be severed, driven from him by the vision that was now before his eyes:
his wife and children being thrown into the darkness by the roar of the gale.
And then the greatest contradiction of all hit him: how could he be fighting
against a howling wind that was blowing his family in the opposite direction?
Many things in nature had changed since skydark, but not something as
fundamental as this.
Doc dropped to his knees and howled.
MILDRED SHOOK her head, her beaded plaits swaying about her shoulders.
“No way. It just can’t be.”
The doctor sitting opposite her smiled sadly. “You know something, Mildred? If
you were sitting here right now, where I am, you wouldn’t be in the slightest
surprised by what you’re doing.”
Mildred fixed him with a stare. “Come on, you’re not telling me that I haven’t
got a valid point. More than anyone else you have sitting here, I know that an