Crucible of Time Read online

  But some of the redoubts had been infiltrated, and moving into a strange complex was always fraught with danger. There were usually on condition red for much of the time.

  He found himself in a small, square room, about a dozen feet across. Most of the redoubts that he'd visited had been abandoned and stripped bare, but some had obviously been deserted in the prenuke panic the last few hours before the missiles darkened the skies and the United States became Deathlands. In the past they'd found arms, food and beds.

  Sometimes people.

  Muties.

  "Seems safe, lover," Krysty said, following close on his heels.

  J.B. sniffed the air. "Not too bad. Smelled a lot worse."

  The room was painted in a light cream color, with a matte finish. It was totally empty, except for a small rectangular plastic-topped table against the side wall, with four tubular steel legs. There was a single narrow shelf on the opposite flank, but that, too, was empty.

  Occasionally they had come across prenuke graffiti, but these walls were flawless and clean.

  There was another vanadium-steel sec door on the opposite side of the room.

  "Ready?" Ryan asked, finger tight on the trigger of his 9 mm SIG-Sauer P-226 pistol. He reached out with his left hand to depress the cold metal handle and inch the door open.

  "Air tastes better here than in chamber," Jak said. "Fresher."

  Ryan hesitated, taking in a deep breath, as did everyone else.

  "Kind of a pine scent." Mildred sniffed again. "Feel the rush through the sinuses."

  "Yeah," Ryan agreed nodding, still holding the handle. "Must mean we're close to a forest of some kind."

  "Let's go look," J.B. suggested. "Forest means there's game."

  The heavy door swung slowly open, revealing what they'd all expected to see—a large room containing the main control section of the mat-trans unit. Digital displays on more than forty screens were in constant flux, altering every nanosecond, endlessly changing numbers, codes and formulas, monitoring every aspect of what had once been called Project Cerberus, which was a tiny cog in the infinitely complex system known to the selected few as the Totality Concept.

  The far side of the rows of control consoles was dominated by a huge sec steel door. It was in the closed position, sealing off that section of the redoubt against anything short of a full nuke-missile attack.

  "Down to orange," Ryan said, holstering his pistol. If by any amazing chance the sec door started to open, it would give them a good half-minute warning.

  The rest of the group of friends put away then-blasters and wandered around the rows of desks, seeing if anything had been left behind that might give them a clue as to where they were and what had happened.

  "The waste bins are devoid of any contents," Doc declared.

  "No notes or anything like that," Mildred said, perching herself comfortably in a dark gray orthopedic swivel chair, revolving slowly, head back, looking up at the rounded ceiling. "Sec cameras are still functioning. Wonder if anyone's watching us. Probably not, I guess." She lifted a hand in a casual wave to the nearest of the security devices that had a tiny ruby light glowing at its top.

  "Nothing," J.B. said, taking off his glasses and wiping them carefully on his sleeve. "Place swept as clean as this is, likely means no food or weapons in the rest of the redoubt. Might as well move on, Ryan."

  "Sure. Back onto red."

  As was usual, Dean hurried forward to operate the mechanism that opened and closed the sec doors. He moved to the side of the entrance, sticking his blaster in his belt, laying both hands on the green steel lever, ready at his father's word to shift it to the upward position that would start the ponderous door moving slowly, opening the way to the rest of the complex.

  It was a moment of considerable danger.

  Ryan gestured for the others to back away, taking cover behind the control consoles. He moved to the opposite side of the door from Dean, crouching as close to the concrete floor as he could get, his blaster drawn again, ready to squint through the narrow gap that would appear beneath the sec door.

  "Go, Dean. Ready to stop instantly on my word."

  The boy threw his weight against the green lever, heaving it up. There was the familiar faint rumbling sound of buried gears engaging, deep within the walls. Ryan felt the trembling of movement through his knees, seeing the almost imperceptible beginning of action.

  Somewhere, from the far side of the vast door, he could just catch the faint sound of a warning siren. If there was anyone living in the redoubt, it would give them ample warning of the arrival of intruders.

  A narrow gap appeared between the bottom of the door and the floor, and Ryan flattened himself to peer beneath it. He saw the corridor outside, brightly lit, and the wall. There was no sign of any kind of life.

  "Hold it."

  The gap was about seven inches.

  "Krysty, you feel anything?"

  There was a pause while the flame-headed woman closed her eyes and pushed her mind to go questing into the redoubt. "No, lover. Can't feel anything."

  "All the way, Dad?"

  "Sure."

  The lever moved from the horizontal and the great weight of sec steel began to slide slowly upward again. Ryan crouched on hands and knees, watching as more of the passage outside was revealed. He saw concrete, sloping to an arched roof that was illuminated by strip lighting, and he could also see the first of an expected number of sec cameras, fixed high up where the roof and walls ran into one another.

  The door was now almost completely open, leaving a gap of better than six feet. "Stop it right there, Dean. I'll take a look outside in the corridor."

  The barrel of the powerful blaster probed the air in front of him as he glanced around the corner of the opening, checking both ways. Both were empty.

  "Clear," he said, easing down the hammer on the SIG-Sauer.

  The scent of pines was noticeably stronger out in the passage, and he could feel a light draft coming from the right.

  "Everyone ready?"

  Most of the redoubts that they'd visited had the same sort of layout. The gateway chamber and control room were almost always in the deepest part, often far below ground level. Ryan turned to the left, walking only a few paces along the curving passage before coming up against a wall of raw, impenetrable rock, dark granite streaked with bands of silvery quartz. Again, this feature was common to most redoubts.

  "Back the other way," Ryan said.

  He walked past the rest of them, taking the lead. Krysty fell in behind him, followed by Jak, Dean and Doc. Mildred came sixth with J.B. bringing up the rear.

  Now the wide sweep of the passage opened up before him, with sec cameras dotted in the angle between wall and ceiling, about every thirty paces. The tiny ruby lights flickered on and off, under the random control of comp central.

  Ryan paused, looking up at them, wondering whether there was anyone watching the master screens that he knew would be hidden deep in the heart of the redoubt. Anyone? Or anything?

  They continued for about two hundred yards, always curving to the right, the concrete floor of the wide corridor sloping slightly upward.

  "Like being inside the Guggenheim in old New York," Mildred commented.

  "What's a Guggenheim?" Dean asked.

  "An art gallery, Dean. One of the best. The design is sort of based on the shell of a snail, so it winds round and round. Only difference with this place is that you start at the top in the Guggenheim and work your way to the bottom."

  They hadn't passed any side entrances, which wasn't all that unusual. Quite often the section of the redoubt that housed the mat-trans unit was buried in the part of the complex farthest from the center and the entrance.

  "There," Jak said, pointing ahead. The round-roofed passage widened, becoming a clear, steep ramp that stopped abruptly at the single sec-steel door of a large freight elevator.

  "Anything?" Ryan asked, turning toward Krysty.

  She hesitated a moment, c
losing her eyes. Ryan noticed that her sentient red hair was coiled loosely at her nape. It was generally safe to assume that if the hair had been bunched tight then there might have been danger in the air.

  "Nothing." She paused. "Well, there's the faint scent of piñon, floating around from some place outside." She flashed him a brilliant smile, teeth gleaming in the flat overhead lighting. "Wouldn't mind a little time resting among fresh mountain pines, lover."

  "No hostiles? That's good," J.B. said, taking off his fedora and fanning his face with the brim. "Kind of warm. Feels like the air-con's not working properly."

  Jak moved ahead, peering at the controls of the elevator. He turned back to face the others, his snowy hair floating around his narrow face. "Control code's at side," he called, voice dull in the stillness of the concrete vault.

  "Makes life easier." Mildred and the others had all bunched up, close by the elevator.

  "Four and two and six and six and seven," Jak said, peering at the neatly printed card. "Go for it, Ryan?"

  "Seems a most discreditful breach of security to leave the code placed there for everyone to see." Doc made a moue of disapproval, shaking his head and tutting between his perfect teeth. "Heads should roll."

  J.B. replaced his hat, tweaking it into place. "Probably had to do it during the last evac before skydark. Chaos must have reigned, and they had to put the code up to save time. Time must've been real tight with the nukes already up and flying."

  Ryan nodded. "Makes sense. Let's go onto red again, friends. All right, Jak? Press it in."

  The teenager's tongue slipped out to lick his pale lips as he concentrated on entering the correct code, making sure that each button was properly depressed.

  "Moving," he announced.

  They could all hear the faint hum of distant machinery, a sonorous, deep sound, seeming to vibrate through the marrow of their bones. There was a light above the door showing the progress of the elevator.

  The Armorer had his head on one side, listening to the noise. "Like it's kind of high," he said.

  Ryan had been thinking the same. It was taking such a long time, the exit from the shaft had to be a good way off. But that again wasn't unusual.

  "Don't like it." Krysty had a taken a couple of steps away from the others, glancing back over her shoulder.

  The indicator light showed that the cage was three-quarters of the way down.

  "Bad feeling?" Ryan asked, his voice ragged in the sudden tension. "Someone coming?" He looked away down the brightly lit tunnel.

  Krysty's feelings were so often right that they could never, ever be ignored.

  "Can't tell you. Not like muties or…"

  "Nearly here," Jak called. "What we do, Ryan?"

  Apart from Krysty, they were all gathered in a tight knot in front of the sec door.

  There was a faint electronic sound, like a tiny bell, warning of the arrival of the elevator.

  "Danger…close," Krysty stammered.

  The elevator door hissed open, and there was the deafening boom of a blaster.

  Chapter Three

  Ryan felt the hot breath of the lead shot as it sliced by, just over his head.

  Krysty's warning had come just in time. He had shouted out for everyone to get down on the floor a fraction of a second before the dull metal door opened. He took a moment to see that there was nobody in the rectangular cage and, in the same moment, he saw the gaping mouths of a pair of sawed-down scatterguns, jerry-rigged with what looked like fishing line and a crude arrangement of two-by-fours. The whole thing was set to shoot when the door opened.

  "Crude but effective," Ryan said as he stood, brushing cement dust off his pants.

  "Twelve-gauges." The Armorer crouched carefully outside the elevator, holding the door open with his left hand, peering at the smoking barrels of the booby trap.

  Mildred was rubbing her left elbow where she'd gone down awkwardly. "Bitching bastards! Why they want to do that to fellow Americans?"

  "Because, my dear Dr. Wyeth, the long dead assassins imagined that if anyone attempted to come this way, they would probably be of the Russian persuasion."

  The woman nodded. "Guess that you might be right…for once, Doc."

  He made her a low bow, the ferrule of his ebony swordstick scraping on the stone floor.

  "Good job you felt the danger, lover," Ryan said.

  Krysty gave him a tremulous half smile, waving away the fumes from the quadruple shotgun. "Yeah. Just about have taken us off at the shoulders."

  "Reckon that it's safe to use the elevator?" J.B. asked, staring into the empty cage, holding the Uzi at the ready in his right hand.

  Ryan sniffed, rubbing the side of his nose with his index finger. "Fireblast! I don't know."

  "After my experience at the hands of that madman in Puerto Rico, I am somewhat averse to making another jump quite so soon." Doc ran a hand through his grizzled locks. "Mayhap we could take the ride to the top and then exercise especial care once we arrive up there."

  "Why not?" Ryan said.

  He led the way into the elevator, bouncing up and down a couple of times to test the springiness of the main support cables, half expecting them to suddenly give way and plunge the cage the rest of the way to the bottom of the shaft.

  But everything felt right.

  He beckoned to the others, waiting until they were all inside before releasing the door mechanism. "When we reach the top, everyone get down on the floor before the doors slide open. Press the control, Jak."

  The door hissed shut, and the albino teenager pressed the recessed button that carried the illuminated symbol of an arrow pointing upward.

  Ryan flexed his knees to absorb the movement, watching the lighted panel above the door that showed their progress up the deep shaft. His index finger was tight on the trigger of the powerful SIG-Sauer. Everyone was on full condition red, blasters cocked and ready for instant use.

  The humming of the predark machinery sounded smooth and fluid, taking them steadily toward the top part of the old redoubt. Nobody spoke.

  "Right," Ryan said finally, as the orange light gleamed close to the top.

  There was a slight jolting as the cage came to a halt. A moment's pause, then the steel sec door slid open, revealing a brightly lit corridor.

  Ryan relaxed. No shooting. No mines. No trap waiting for them.

  "Let's go take a look," he said, standing and stepping warily out of the cage, glancing both ways and seeing that there was no sign of anyone or anything.

  "There's a notice." Krysty walked across the far side of the passage, to where a large multicolored plan of the redoubt was fixed to the wall. A hand-lettered piece of faded, pale blue paper was tacked next to it.

  "What say?" asked Jak, last out of the elevator, allowing the door to slide shut behind him.

  "Gaia! Give me a chance."

  They gathered around the tall flame-haired woman as she read the notice, following the clumsy writing with her long index finger.

  It was short and to the point.

  "To anyone it concerns. This redoubt is now fully emptied on orders of Washington. Emergency quarters available only on limited basis in Section JA 33."

  Beneath it, in a different hand, someone had scrawled in pencil: "And put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye."

  J.B. shook his head. "Means there won't likely be any armament anywhere. Shame."

  "But it might mean some food and beds." Ryan looked up at the map. "Section JA 33. Where the…? The green box up close to the main entrance is marked JA."

  "There it is," Mildred said. "Right by the entrance. Same level as we're on here."

  "Wouldn't mind a good night's sleep in a decent bed before we tackle the outside world." Krysty glanced at Ryan. "What do you think, lover?"

  "Sounds good to me. Let's go find this section. Best stay on orange."

  FOLLOWING THE COLOR-CODED wall markings, it was easy to find their way through the maze of deserted corridors to Section
JA 33. The whole complex was completely cleansed, with the majority of the side doors locked tight. Those few that responded to Jak's eager hands were echoing vaults of empty darkness.

  "Here we are," J.B. said, pointing with the muzzle of the Uzi at the letters and numbers, painted in green. "Must be through that door."

  "Watch out for boobies," Ryan warned. "Open it real careful."

  But there was no wired gren or cocked scattergun behind the sec door, just the same kind of setup that they'd seen on earlier occasions. Four white-walled rooms each contained a dozen metal-framed beds, each with a rolled, plastic-covered mattress and neatly folded gray blankets. An olive green metal locker stood alongside each bed.

  There was a pair of identical bathrooms. When Mildred turned on the chromed faucets, nothing happened for several long seconds, then there was a distant gurgling sound, rushing closer. The water that gushed out was initially rust colored and cold, but it quickly cleared and began to warm up, eventually pouring out, steaming.

  Jak had immediately headed straight for the dining and kitchen section.

  "Ace on line!" he called. "Plenty food."

  "CURRIED KING-CRAB gumbo," Doc said, allowing the words to roll off his tongue. "Succulent is the word that springs to my mind."

  The white dish bore an Army stamp. It sat on the table in front of Doc, brimming with a variegated sludge, his spoon settled on one side.

  "You mean it actually tastes like something?" Mildred asked. "The label on the cans I'm eating claimed that it was tender chunks of pan-fried boneless chicken, tenderized for my dining pleasure, in a flavorsome sauce with handpicked herbs and spices. With smoked beans on the side."

  "And?"

  She smiled at Doc. "And it tastes like different sorts of shit."

  "My can said it was a lobster bisque with assorted spring vegetables." Krysty took another hesitant mouthful, blowing to try to cool it, running it around her mouth, shaking her head. "I can taste plenty of chemical additives. Salt. Lot of sugar. Not much lobster."

  "I'll finish what you don't want," offered Dean, who had polished off his bowl of food and was sitting back, watching the others.