James Axler: Dectra Chain

But that didn't mean it was possible to escape from the redoubt that contained the gateway, nor even to use the gateway to escape again.

And when the gateway door was opened, no one had any idea of what dangers or horrors might be waiting on the other side.

Ryan set his finger on the curved trigger of the G-12 and reached for the handle of the chamber door. "Ready? Then let's go."

The light that had filtered through the turquoise walls had been dimmed, like a far-off lamp glimpsed underwater. As soon as the door began to ease silently open, the light flooded in, dazzlingly bright.

"Fireblast!" Ryan cursed, shading his eye. "There's some special kind of power source working here, Doc, giving out this much energy."

Like the others, Doc had at first also turned his head away, then squinted through watering eyes into the room beyond the gateway chamber. "Upon my soul, friends! The power of many a candle here. I have not seen... nor can I imagine why. Unless this gateway had some special function."

"Like what?" Krysty asked.

"I fear that I can't even make what one might call an educated guess, my dear Miss Wroth. There were some special sections that I could not, on a need-to-know basis, involve myself with."

"But you were on Cerberus, Doc?" J.B. queried.

"Indeed. But you must recall the concept of the Russian doll, my dear fellow. There is a huge doll, and when you open it there is a large doll within, and when you open that one, there is a medium-size doll within, and when you open that one there is a smaller doll within and..."

"We get the picture, Doc," Ryan said, fearing that the old man's mind was going to slide off into one of its lateral spirals that brought him perilously close to madness.

"Yeah, we see," the Armorer added. "Russian dolls. What's that got to do with Project Cerberus?"

"What's what got to do with what?" Doc asked, his forehead furrowed with confusion.

"You said about special gateways not being part of Project Cerberus," Ryan explained, barely managing to keep his patience.

"Correct," Doc beamed. "Give that customer a large coconut. Cerberus was the doll within Overproject Whisper. In its own turn, Overproject Whisper was concealed from the eyes of the public and the media beneath the accommodating skirts of our country's Totality Concept. You understand?"

"Yeah. Double-clear, Doc. Some things you knew, and some you didn't."

Ryan turned and pushed the door open farther, his eye becoming accustomed to the brightness. Every single mat-trans chamber he'd seen had been part of an identical setup, though the shrouding redoubts were all different in design.

There was the small anteroom opening off the glass-paneled chamber, which measured about five long paces by three and contained an empty table against one wall.

Beyond that Ryan knew there would be a main control area, all whirling comp-wheels, disks, dials and flickering lights.

"Look." Lori pointed. "What's it saying, Doc? Can't read loopy words."

"Called graffiti, it was. Some poor devil scrawled this generations back, my dear, lovely child. It says, "I don't have a drinking problem, except when I can't get a drink. It's a joke."

Nobody laughed.

The words had been scrawled on the pale cream wall just at the side of a row of bare shelves. It was the only decoration in the room.

"Ready, Ryan?" J.B. asked, the mini-Uzi braced against his hip.

"Go."

It was just as Ryan expected, but the room was much bigger and brighter than any of the others they'd come across. The chamber measured a good hundred paces long by forty wide.

"By the three Kennedys!" Doc exclaimed, pointing at one side of the doorway they'd all just stepped through.

There was a second gateway chamber.

The usual message had been printed above it in stark black lettering on a white ground: Entry Absolutely Forbidden to All but B19 Cleared Personnel. Mat-Trans.

"Not quite the same, Ryan," Krysty said. "The gateway we came from says B12. That one says B19. What's the difference, Doc? Any idea?"

"Nineteen's a much higher classification. Nabobs from the Pentagon personnel privy to Whisper would have been 19s. I wasn't ever leaked that high. Couldn't be trusted."

"So, what is it?" Lori asked.

"Something new that they were working on?" J.B. suggested.

Doc shook his head. "I confess myself utterly bewildered by this. I never heard of any such development in any redoubt. Ryan, my dear friend, have you ever heard of anything like this?"

"I never even heard of one gateway, Doc, never mind two."

"One way find out," Jak said softly.

The anteroom connecting the control chamber to the actual gateway was larger than usual. Unlike any others they'd seen, it was split in two, with a separate section to the left that contained a number of benches with hooks above for clothes, as well as dark green sec-plas lockers with slatted doors.

Jak led the way, his blaster gleaming brightly in the harsh, metallic glare of the lights. J.B. came second, followed by Doc and Lori. Donfil More padded along on his bare feet, eyes darting from side to side. Krysty and Ryan brought up the rear. All of them had their guns up and ready.

The girl hesitated, catching Ryan by the sleeve. "Hold it, lover," she said, with a quiet intensity in her voice,

"What?"

"Hold up," she called, halting the others.

Ryan knew from his months with Krysty that her mutie powers came and went, sometimes strong and sometimes weak. From the look on her face, he knew that this feeling was a strong one.

"Yeah?"

"Someone's been here. Recent. So recent I can almost taste their sweat."

"I feel the scent of men," the stooping Indian announced. "Close and yet far away. Cold deserts away from here."

Ryan didn't have any mutie extra sense, but he had all the instincts of a hunting killer wolf. As he stood in the doorway, he knew that Krysty and Donfil were both right. The faint prickling at his nape told him the same damned story. The redoubt wasn't empty.

"Shall check lockers?" Jak asked, almost dancing on the balls of his feet with the sudden tension.

"Later, mebbe," Ryan replied. "Doc, you seen anything like this?"

"Indeed, I have not. All gateway complexes were built, as far as I know, to an identical pattern. Every one."

"Check the mat-trans chamber itself?" J.B. suggested.

Ryan nodded.

Just to the right of the doorway there was another scrawled piece of graffiti, in what looked like the same hand.

"The large print giveth and the small print taketh away," it read. Beneath it, in a different hand, someone had neatly added "Tom Waits said that."

Ryan wondered who Tom Waits had been, guessing it was probably the name of one of the men who'd been working in the redoubt when infinity had beckoned.

The shaman paused and turned around, mirrored glasses reflecting the doorway and the main control behind them. He looked at Ryan.

"You think of infinity, my brother." It was a statement, not a question. "Do you know what infinity truly is?"

Ryan nodded. "I read it once, years back, when I was a kid, 'bout the age of Jak here. I read that to understand infinity you have to imagine that the whole damned planet is a sphere of polished vanadium steel. Once every thousand years a butterfly comes by and brushes the metal ball with its wing. Very gently. Imagine Earth wearing away, and you get a kind of glimpse of infinity."

"That's fucking loveliest!" Lori exclaimed, shaking her long blond hair in wonderment. "Fucking loveliest, Ryan."

"Watch the bad-mouthing language, my sweet little enchantress," Doc warned.

"Sorry." She grinned. "Mebbe you'll spank my buns for it tonight, huh?"

"Yeah, you do that, Doc," Jak cackled, hopping around from foot to foot like a snow-headed dervish.