Looking across at Doc, generally the last to recover from the rigors of a jump, Ryan noticed that the old man was still unconscious. Like Jak, he was bleeding from his nose. Only in Doc’s case there looked to be about a pint and a half staining his grizzled cheek and coagulating on the floor.
As if he felt Ryan staring at him, Doc coughed and opened his pale blue eyes, gazing sightlessly at the ceiling. “Give me a few more seconds, gentlemen of the fancy, and I shall soon be up to scratch.” He touched his nose and peered at the red smears on his fingers. “I perceive that the redoubtable John L. Sullivan has tapped my claret.”
“What’s he droning on about now?” Trader asked.
Mildred shook her head. “John L. Sullivan was the world heavyweight boxing champion back around Doc’s time. Looks like the old goat imagines he’s just been knocked down by him.”
Doc struggled into a sitting position. “Imagined! Did I hear you right, Dr. Wyeth?”
“Yeah, you did, Doctor of Philosophy Tanner.”
“I will have you know that I once had the honor” He reconsidered. “The dubious honor of testing my pugilistic skills against the great man himself. Though truth forces me to admit that he was a little the worse for imbibing of the grain and was in a bullying, hectoring mode.”
“And he beat the shit out of you,” J.B. concluded.
Doc considered the question. “I managed a few shrewd blows that caused him to blink. Then he hammered home seventy or eighty lucky blows, and I measured my length on the floor of the restaurant where the altercation had taken place.”
J.B. grinned, adjusting his fedora to a more jaunty angle. “Like I said, Doc. He beat the shit out of you.”
BY THE TIME EVERYONE in the group felt ready to stand without the world spinning around their ears, about ten minutes or so had passed.
“Usual red alert,” Ryan said, the SIG-Sauer drawn in his right hand, the Steyr rifle across his shoulder. “Everyone ready to go?”
They all had their blasters out, lining up behind Ryan as he reached to ease open the door of the gateway.
The lock clicked, and he pushed gently at the counterbalanced weight of reinforced armaglass.
It swung open, revealing the familiar sight of a small, cramped anteroom, barely eight feet square, totally bare of any furniture.
The first thing Ryan noticed was that the floor of the room was surprisingly dusty.
Most of the redoubts that they’d visited had been in near-perfect running order, with just an occasional failed light or a small malfunction in the circuitry. The original comp-controlled nuke power sources had been working reliably for close to a century, maintaining temperature and humidity as well as circulating the air and keeping all the rooms and corridors of the complex relatively free from dust.
“Dirty,” J.B. observed from over Ryan’s shoulder. “And there’s marks in it.”
“Yeah. Everyone just wait a minute. Jak, can you come take a look?”
The young man ghosted past, stepping carefully from the chamber. He squatted, head on one side, staring at the marks, reaching out after a few seconds with delicate finger and thumb, like surgical pincers.
“Here.” He held a frail shred of material to Ryan, who took it and held it to the bright overhead light. “Silk,” he pronounced after examining it carefully.
It was only a dozen threads, but each seemed to be of a different colorturquoise, scarlet, aquamarine, cobalt and amethyst.
“Beautiful,” Mildred said, taking it from Ryan’s hand. “Looks foreign.”
“Foreign?”
“Oriental. Japanese or Chinese. Funny thing to find here in the middle of a redoubt.”
Doc took it from the woman. “It is beautiful. You know what it reminds me of?” He shook his head. “Silly, though.”
“What, Doc?” J.B. asked.
“Well, an old friend of mine who lived up in the Pacific Northwest was a collector of militaria. Specifically he was most interested in Oriental armor and swords. You know, the samurai swords with a narrow, very slightly curved blade to them. Lovely things.”
J.B. nodded. “I know what you mean, Doc. Always thought I’d like to own one, but you don’t see many of them lying around in Deathlands.”