Pony Soldiers Read online

  "Cheer up, child."

  "I'm not too pretty, like I am before. But I keep my boots on."

  "Keep them on and welcome, my dearest child. And you still look pretty."

  "Don't," she sulked.

  "You look delicious, my darling little captivator, even when you wear nothing at all."

  "Doc!" Krysty exclaimed, pretending to be shocked. "I'm surprised at you talking like that. I really am!"

  The old man stammered, shuffling his feet. "By the three Kennedys, Miss Wroth… I'm… I swear that I had no intention of giving… of offending anyone by speaking…"

  "You're blushing, you old bastard." Ryan laughed. "Good to see you can show some shame!"

  The six companions finally made their cautious way through the silent corridors toward the entrance to the gateway. Since they'd been inside the redoubt they hadn't seen any sign of intruders. Ryan wondered whether the group they'd managed to chill had been the only ones who'd penetrated the defenses.

  With her new clothes, Lori seemed to have taken on a new confidence. She insisted on leading the way, with Jak at her elbow. Although the girl wasn't good with words, she had an almost uncanny sense of direction, which might have been the result of being born and raised in a similar, rambling redoubt up in the bitter cold of Alaska.

  At one point she cut off from the main passage and took them through a series of interconnecting rooms, all of them stripped and empty. J.B. called out that he thought they'd gone the wrong way, but she shook her head.

  "No. Quickest this directions."

  There was a narrow staircase, dust gathered on the treads, and she led them down, then through what seemed to have been some sort of scientific labora­tory.

  One section of the corridor had completely lost its lighting, and they picked their way cautiously through the blackness. Krysty whispered to Ryan that she thought she'd heard someone moving, somewhere behind and above them.

  There was a door open ahead of them, where the lights were working. They walked through it and into a short passageway, with several open doors on either side. Jak stopped in front of one and darted in, com­ing out with something in his hand.

  "What's that?" Ryan asked.

  "Glove. On table in there. Got something inside." The albino bent over, his fiercely white hair obscur­ing the glove from their view.

  "What…?" J.B.began.

  "Damn!" the boy exclaimed, dropping the old gray gauntlet to the floor, where it landed with a peculiar dry whisper of sound.

  "What was it, Jak?" Ryan asked.

  "Inside it! Bones. Fingers. Hand. All bones."

  THE GATEWAY HAD THE SAME CODING as the main en­trance to the redoubt. Ryan pressed the buttons and nothing happened. When he tried it again, the sec-steel double doors remained stubbornly shut.

  "Fireblast! That tears up the contract, doesn't it? What do we do now? Doc, any ideas?"

  The old man frowned. "It would take a load of ex­plosives to blow them open, Ryan, and the risk of damage to the main mat-trans controls is very seri­ous."

  "Figured that." He looked up at the sign over the doors, the same sign that appeared on every gateway he'd ever seen. It bore the same black lettering, com­pact and neat: Entry Absolutely Forbidden to All but B12 Cleared Personnel. Mat-Trans.

  "Think muties broke it?" Jak suggested, hand on the butt of his pistol.

  "No sign of damage," Ryan replied, examining the clear-plas panel, with its small, illuminated numbers and letters. It seemed to be untouched.

  "Moving's stopped above us," Krysty said. "Could be coming closer on this level. Lot of turns and walls. We might not hear them."

  The prospects if the gateway was locked off from them were difficult to evaluate. It would mean head­ing back out into the inhospitable valley and taking their chances on breaking free of any muties in the mountains around them.

  "Try again," Lori said.

  "Why not?" Ryan carefully pressed the three digit code. The glowing yellow light behind the number two flickered and went out. He tapped it firmly, like a man checking a barometer for the next day's weather. The light steadied, so he tried the numbers once more.

  "Eureka!" Doc shouted, punching a fist into the air as the doors hissed apart, revealing the main control room inside, with its chattering tape decks and banks of switches, buttons and multicolored light display.

  "Better close it, lover," Krysty suggested.

  But the lamp beneath the number two was intrac­tably dark, and Ryan couldn't make the closing mechanism function at all.

  "Never mind," J.B. said. "Let's get in the gateway chamber and move on out of here."

  Beyond the electronics-packed room was a smaller chamber, containing only a rectangular table and a steel cupboard. Someone had carved his initials on the plas-top of the table, the letters FM. In passing, Ryan wondered what kind of person FM had been and how he'd faced up to the chilling.

  Krysty looked like she was about to say something, then she shook her head. Ryan raised an eyebrow. "What's up, lover?"

  "It doesn't feel right. Can't hear anything, but it just doesn't feel clean."

  "Muties?"

  "Got to be. But I don't know where, or how close they are."

  "Then let's go in."

  As they went into the actual gateway room, Ryan noticed that there was an extra set of controls by the armored glass door, with a linked console. He hadn't noticed it while on the way out of the chamber all those months ago.

  "What's that, Doc?"

  "What's what, my dear Ryan?" Seeing where the one-eyed man was pointing, he said, "Ah, those are chron-trans repeater panels."

  "Time jump? What d'you mean 'repeater panels,' Doc?"

  "Part of Project Cerberus." He laughed, totally without humor. "I should know better than most. Better than any man living, I should say. I don't be­lieve that there were ever any other successful experi­ments with trawling, though there were stories of… But I dismissed them as the most arrant taradiddle."

  "Can't we try it, Doc?" Jak asked.

  The old man shook his head vehemently. "No, my dear young fellow. No! This is only part of the con­trol unit. A repeater. Somewhere, very well hidden and sec-locked, will be the main console for the time-travel section of the gateway."

  "Can't it be worked from here?" Krysty asked. "Do you have to set the main controls as well, Doc?"

  "Yes."

  "You're lying, Doc," J.B. said quietly. "I know it, and you know it."

  Ryan had also picked up on the old man's hesita­tion and the slight change of pitch in the voice. "And I know it, Doc. Can't do that to us."

  "I apologize, my friends. Yes, you can work the gateway on chron-set from here. But to do so is to tamper with the works of God."

  "Fireblast, Doc!" Ryan exploded. "That's a load of crap! What do you think the mat-trans is? Isn't that against the works of your God? And how come your God's so terrific if he lets the world blow up in his face? And—"

  "Calm it, lover," Krysty soothed, touching him on the arm.

  "Yeah, yeah… All right, Doc. I shouldn't have held down on the trigger like that. But what's the differ­ence between mat-trans and chron-trans? Tell me that, Doc. Come on."

  Doc looked more serious than anyone had ever seen him before. "There isn't any difference, Ryan. You're absolutely correct, my friend. Both are against the laws of nature. But there is a difference. The transfer of material, or of people, generally works. But to push through time isn't the same. You know that it worked for me."

  "Then it can work for us, Doc," Lori said, one hand resting on the old man's sleeve.

  "You don't… When I was trawled and then pushed forward, it was still at the needle end of experiments. If it came to a choice between certain death and risk­ing the chron-trans, then I'd risk it. But only then!" His voice raised in anger. "I will not be a party to a foolish and unspeakably hazardous flirtation with what I know to be a dreadful danger. And that is all I'll say."

  There was a long silence.
Krysty, uneasy, glanced behind her, past the main control area and out be­tween the open doors into the endless winding corri­dor.

  "How d'you set it, Doc? For chron?" Ryan asked. "To override mat-trans?"

  "There's the single main cutout that bypasses the ordinary controls. Then press in the vectors on the panel for when you want to go. But I don't know the coding, so even if we went, there's no knowing when we might finish up. Past or future? It would be in the lap of the gods."

  "Yeah, I see that." Ryan moved across and stared intently at the chron-controls, seeing what Doc had meant.

  There was a double sec lock that had to be flipped back in two separate movements, then two buttons, white and black. Beyond them was the intricate set of dials and switches marked Chron Control. Ryan flicked up the cover and pressed first the white and then the black button. The gateway chamber began to hum softly, and the circular metal plates in floor and ceiling started to glow fitfully. All six of them turned to look at it.

  Suddenly a lone mutie came rushing among them, lashing out with the jagged blade of its knife.

  Chapter Four

  JAK SPUN LIKE A DERVISH, trying to dodge the attack, but the mutie had the enormous advantage of sur­prise. The crude knife lashed out and Ryan, a little to one side, saw blood spurt from the arm of the albino boy, high, close to the shoulder.

  Krysty was nearest to the open door of the gate­way, and the mutie's eyes were caught by the dazzling crimson of her hair. It diverted itself from Jak, diving toward the girl. But she was too quick for it, side­stepping neatly. The creature, shrieking its hatred, stumbled on the threshold and fell inside, onto the glowing metal plates of the floor.

  Ryan hesitated a second, about to draw his SIG-Sauer P-226 9 mm blaster, but realized, instantly, that to fire it could destroy the gateway and leave them stranded in the redoubt. So he went instead for the panga.

  As the mutie pulled himself upright, Ryan noticed that the left hand was a mass of frondlike fingers, dozens of little pink tendrils, waving like a sea anem­one. The hand holding the knife appeared to have only two fingers, like the pincers of a great crab, and as hard as horn.

  "You're dead," Ryan spit, starting into the cham­ber, panga raised.

  "No!" Doc shouted, reaching out and grabbing Ryan by the back of his long coat, yanking him back­ward out of the entrance. "Slam the door, Lori! Quick! Slam it!"

  The girl darted forward and pushed the opaque glass door so that it slammed shut, the lock clicking home.

  Jak was kneeling on the floor, cursing in a low un­dertone, the words trickling out in a steady stream of obscenity. J.B. was at his side, using a strip of whip­cord to tie off the arm above the cut, stopping the bleeding. The rest of the group were watching the walls of the gateway, which were pulsing with light, red and a deep orange. Ryan could hear a faint crackling noise, and he could taste a bitter mix of ozone and cold iron.

  "Doc. It's set on chron—"

  "I know, I know," the old man interrupted irrita­bly. "We'll see, won't we?"

  "The arm, Jak?" Ryan asked, half turning to look at the boy.

  "Hard traveling, Ryan," the boy answered, heav­ing himself to his feet, flexing his fingers to make sure the wound hadn't harmed any important tendons or muscles. He seemed satisfied with the results.

  The lights danced faster and faster, strobing. The walls were vibrating steadily, and Ryan wondered whether they were in any danger. The equipment was, after all, the best part of a century old. Judging from the noise and the smell, it was in some peril of a ma­jor dysfunction.

  "Doc…"he began.

  "No problems, Ryan. Relax. It's nearly…"

  The scream drowned out his words, drowned out every other sound in the gateway room.

  The six friends had, between them, seen and heard a lot of dying. But none of them had ever heard a tearing cry of such utter anguish.

  It started with a low, almost puzzled note, as if something were happening to the mutie that it couldn't properly understand, but was causing pain. Pain that grew worse, blanking over the bewilderment. The scream rose and fell, sharply, like the panting breath of an exhausted runner. Oddly it seemed to be mov­ing, both close up and distant, all at the same time.

  "The same time?" Ryan said to nobody in partic­ular.

  The shriek rose a couple of octaves, so piercing it felt like it was scraping at the inside of your skull with a hooked scalpel. It bubbled for a moment as if the mutie were choking on molten molasses, louder and harsher than any voice should be able to go. Until it suddenly… stopped.

  There was a time-lapse control on the chamber door, so that they had to wait before opening it to see what had happened.

  While they waited, J.B. went out and kept watch on the corridor, making sure there weren't any other muties creeping up on them. Ryan checked Jak's wound. The knife had cut across the top of the right arm, missing the biceps, slicing open the flesh in a gash nearly four inches long. It looked clean, and Lori was able to bandage it with a strip of cloth torn off the bottom of her skirt.

  "Good job not old skirt." Jak grinned, pushing the coils of white hair out of his crimson eyes.

  "Why?"

  "Not 'nough for bandage."

  Doc was leaning against the walls of the gateway, head cocked to one side as if trying to listen to some barely audible whispering.

  "What d'you figure happened, Doc?" Ryan asked, reaching out and touching the heavy glass, finding to his surprise that it was as cold as an Arctic sarcopha­gus.

  "Could guess, but I won't. I saw and heard some of the Cerberus experiments, and they all went sadly awry. Time travel is so hazardous, Ryan. Yet they were on the brink of success. If the bombs hadn't dark­ened the skies…"

  The time lock clicked loudly, indicating that the door of the gateway's inner chamber could now be opened.

  The metal panels on the ceiling and floor had ceased glowing. The smell of burned meat, overlaid with sul­fur, wafted through the area.

  "He's gone," Krysty said, standing beside Ryan.

  All that remained of the mutie was a small pool of congealing blood and some scorched rags, lying at the center of a scattering of very fine grains of silver sand.

  Nothing else remained.

  Nothing.

  Chapter Five

  THE JUMP WAS OVER.

  Ryan Cawdor opened his eye, wincing at the surg­ing swell of sickness from the mat-trans journey. The walls of the gateway chamber were pale blue, streaked with a darker gray. The colors were familiar, but his brains were scrambled and he sat still, back against the cool armored glass, taking several slow, deep breaths.

  After the horror of the mutie's disappearance in the Mohawk gateway, they'd swiftly made their arrange­ments to leave. It had taken J.B. a couple of minutes to kick the sticky mess off the floor, wiping it away with some crumbling dried rags from the anteroom. Doc had reset the main controls from chron to mat and covered the dual sec locks again. But with the main doors open into the gateway chamber and muties penetrating the complex, it could only be a matter of time before the whole place was totally and irre­vocably wrecked.

  They'd all taken their places, sitting in a circle around the hexagonal chamber, most bringing knees up to chins, resting their heads on their arms. A mat-trans jump wasn't a pleasant experience.

  "Everyone ready?" Ryan asked.

  "Sure thing, lover."

  "Damn right."

  "Yes, I is."

  "Affirmative."

  "Indeed, Ryan, my dear fellow. I think that I can say without any fear of contradiction that I'm ready as I ever will be."

  The door closed firmly, the lights began to flicker and the metal plates began to glow, ever more brightly. Ryan closed his eye tightly, swallowing hard as the now familiar feeling began to close him down. The inside of his head swirled and his stomach pitched like a war wag going over a ripple road.

  But, at last, the jump was over.

  The gateway was bitterly cold. Ryan could see hi
s breath streaming out like smoke, and there was al­ready condensation on the chilly walls of armored glass around the six-sided chamber.

  "Fireblast!"

  Out of long habit Ryan checked the tiny rad count­er pinned inside the lapel of his long coat. It was barely into the orange, showing no hot spots in the immedi­ate vicinity.

  "Where are we?" Krysty asked, stretching her long legs in front of her. Her face was pale and her sen­tient hair had coiled itself protectively about her throat. "Gaia! It's freezing here! Let's go back again."

  It took nearly twenty minutes before everyone was ready to leave the chamber. Doc Tanner was, as ever, the last to recover from the jangling effects of the jump. He leaned heavily on Lori, his face as white as a sheet, his hands trembling.

  The room beyond the hissing hydraulic doors was the same in nearly every redoubt they'd visited, roughly five paces by three with a plastic table on one side and four shelves lining the far wall. A copper bowl was on the table.

  Jak picked it up and looked inside it. "Dried blood. Something like." He put it down hard on the table, and the bowl rang out like a bell.

  Ryan looked at him angrily. "Keep the… Wait."

  "What?" Jak looked surprised at the snap in Ryan's voice.

  "That bowl. Krysty, remember it? J.B., does it come back to you?"

  The Armorer nodded. "Seen it before somewhere, but…"

  Krysty pointed. "I remember that. Unless there's one somewhere else, we've jumped back to—"

  "Alaska," Ryan concluded.

  "My home?" Lori squeaked, eyes wide with shock. "Don't want to came home. Not see Keeper and Mother Rachel and all of they."

  "They're dead, Lori," Ryan said reassuringly. "Don't worry about that. But there's not much point in coming here. The place was frozen hard for hundreds of miles around."

  Ryan, J.B., Krysty and Doc had visited the part of the country that had once been called Alaska many months earlier, but their time there had been filled with cold and violence. It had been there that they first met up with Lori Quint and her murderous kin.