stayed behind them on either side, and he stayed right at the back, calling out
instructions.
“This place is bigger’n most villes,” said Ryan, walking beside Krysty. They
walked another nine or ten minutes, moving into a part of the redoubt with side
rooms, all with closed doors. Twice they reached junctions, taking first the
left fork, and later the right.
“Any ideas, Doc Tanner?” Ryan asked, glancing back over his shoulder.
“Just Doc does fine. No. Biggest I’ve ever seen. I figure there’s maybe a
stockpile linked. I confess that I have never heard of such a monstrous
Gormenghastian pile.”
“Got to be hundreds running it,” suggested Krysty, but Doc shook his head.
“I beg to differ, Miss Wroth. They were designed to last millenia with no
supervision. A child could manage one of these once everything was set and
functioning. I recall the malfunction rate was markedly below one percent of one
percent of one percent.”
Ahead there was yet another barrier.
“Halt. The Keeper commands obedience. Beyond that portal is food and rest for
the weary traveler. Not that we’ve ever had a traveler before, weary or not.”
“We can take ’em,” whispered Finnegan. “We all got knives. Krysty’s got the
three throwers. Take ’em all easy as fartin’.”
“They’ll take half of us. Not good enough,” said J.B.
Ryan watched the doddering old man aim a small black remote control device at
the top of the closed door. It was obviously a simple sonic switch that
activated the opening lock.
“Move forward and enter the demesne of the Keeper of the redoubt.”
They stepped through, beneath another raised barrier, and found themselves in a
great mall of another century. The floor was a patterned mosaic of soft tiles.
At the center of the mall, which was two hundred paces long by a hundred wide,
was a glittering fountain shaped from curves of polished metal, with water
burbling and chirruping from level to level. And on every side were stores. But
stores of a kind that none of them had ever seen even in their wildest dreams.
Ryan looked around, his jaw sagging, his single eye dazzled wherever he stared.
“Blessed Judas Iscariot,” he heard Doc whisper. “We’ve chron-jumped.”
But the words meant nothing to Ryan, and he forgot them in the bewildering
sights all about them.
“I’ll fuck a dead stickie,” said Hunaker in amazement.
“The Keeper will allow you to reconnoiter the parameters of the redoubt once you
have eaten.”
“This must take an army,” said Hennings.
The old man cackled. “You think so, black man?”
“We told you our names,” said Ryan. “How ’bout yours?”
“This my wife, Rachel,” said the old man, pointing to the old woman, who
curtsied. “And this is my other wife, Lori. She don’t say much. Bein’ a dummy,
that’s why.”
“And where are the others?” asked Krysty.
“Others? Ain’t none. We’re everybody.” He and the old woman giggled.
“Then, where’s…who…?” Ryan was lost for words.
The old man had a coughing fit, and it was some seconds before he could speak
clearly. He wiped some drooling spittle from his beard. “Me? I’m Quint the
Keeper, young man. The Keeper of the redoubt, and my word is law, and the law is
death.”
Chapter Four
THE BLIND, MEWING CREATURE tied naked to the bed bore little resemblance to a
human being.
Once it had been a farmer named Ivan Ivanovich. It had struggled broken-nailed
for a pitiful existence in cruel fields of poisonous soil. It had been married
to a wife who had died of a bleeding illness eight years back, leaving three
squabbling children. Two of them were mutants, with grotesque facial
disfigurements. One had a third, soft pineal eye, exposed and raw, weeping
constantly in the center of his forehead.
Now there was only darkness.
Not the comfortable darkness of a cold night, with an iron stove glowing with
heat and he and his family huddled together under blankets all in one huge bed.
“Not day… not night,” he mumbled through his broken teeth. But Ivan Ivanovich
couldn’t hear his own words, because a sharp file had been thrust into his ears,
bursting the delicate eardrums.
There had been no warning. Just the shaggy men, with some devilish women among