James Axler: Dectra Chain

Ryan Cawdor opened his eye, then closed it again, feeling the certainty that to try to move would make him throw up. He took several rapid, shallow breaths, fighting the nausea, swallowing hard. Sweat beaded his forehead, and his stomach was cramping. A mat-trans jump through one of the gateways always resulted in unconsciousness and a gut-churning sickness as every molecule was sucked into infinity and then reassembled in another gateway.

Ryan had never made an attempt to understand the technology of the hidden mat-trans chambers. Indeed, virtually all knowledge of anything technical or scientific had vanished on that January morning when the world disappeared under a nuclear haze, about a hundred years ago.

He could hear someone moaning and retching on the far side of the hexagonal room, which was protected with thick walls of colored, armored glass. Ryan still didn't feel confident enough to risk opening his eye again. All but one of the six people with him had made several jumps before and they knew what to expect.

But for one it was the first time.

Man Whose Eyes See More had been until very recently the wise man, or shaman, to a subtribe of the Mescalero Apaches, who lived among the jagged red canyons of the land that had once been called New Mexico. He'd never been more than fifty miles from his birthplace in Drowned Squaw Canyon, but now he didn't know where he was. All he knew was that his head was spinning, as though Ysun, giver of all life, had scooped out the pink-gray mush that filled his skull and taken it into its mouth only to spit it out again.

His mirrored sunglasses had fallen from his face, and he fumbled for them, not wanting to risk opening his eyes in case he saw... What? Nothing? Death? An endless darkness beyond all time? The shaman didn't know.

Very, very cautiously, he eased open his dark brown eyes.

"Nothing," he said to himself, conscious of how harsh and dry his voice sounded, as though it hadn't been used for several days. "Nothing has happened here at all."

They were exactly where they'd been when Ryan Cawdor, known to the Indian's people as One Eye Chills, had closed the ponderous door. His new companions sat or lay just where they'd been before the swooping raven of blackness had come and plucked away his mind for a while.

The metal disks in the floor and the ceiling were no longer glowing, and the tendrils of pale mist had long evaporated. The shaman recalled a distant humming that had seemed to come simultaneously from inside and outside the chamber and had hurt the head.

He sighed, swallowing to clear the pressure on his ears. Then he noticed that something was different. Even though the six-sided room looked precisely the same, the walls had changed color. When they'd entered the gateway in New Mexico, the glass walls had been a rich golden hue. Now they were a deep turquoise, tinted like old Navaho jewelry.

"All right?" someone asked from his left. Man Whose Eyes See More nodded, regretting the sharp movement and the pain it caused him.

"I am not yet dead," he said carefully.

"Good."

The Apache knew that the speaker, John Barrymore Dix, was a man of very few words, never using two when one would be enough. Short and wiry, J.B. was the Armorer of the traveling group of friends that the shaman had joined. His sallow face rarely showed any emotion unless he was talking about blasters — about weapons of any sort. His blue eyes would glitter behind his wire-rimmed spectacles, and he would push back the brim of the battered fedora he habitually wore. He could tell you all there was to know about rifles, carbines, automatics, revolvers and muskets.

Next to J.B., whom the Indians had christened Weapons Strike Fear, was the slumped and unconscious figure of a boy. Eyes of Wolf had been his name, but the Mescalero knew his proper name was Jak Lauren. He was only three inches over five feet in height, nearly two feet below Man Whose Eyes See More's towering seven feet, and weighed in at 105 pounds.

The boy's eyes were ruby red, and his hair was as pure white as the snow that dappled the high peaks of the distant Sierras. In his lap, Jak was clenching a massive .357 Magnum with a six-inch barrel. He was a brilliant hand-to-hand fighter who the Indian knew had killed an amazing number of men.

He also knew that Jak Lauren was just fourteen years old.

Feeling a little better, the shaman stretched out his long legs, bare feet scraping on the floor of the chamber. He was wearing his favorite pair of pants — seersucker, with one leg missing. His brocade vest had a cherry-red kerchief dangling from it, and he sported a silver stickpin in a scarlet cravat, its claw setting empty of a stone. The shaman's own decorated .50-caliber Sharps buffalo rifle lay at his side.

Next around the chamber, lying together, both showing the first signs of recovery, were the two women in the group. Man Whose Eyes See More came from a warrior society where women came third— or fourth-best — if they came anywhere at all.

One of the women moaned, clenching her fingers. Her name was Krysty Wroth, called Fire Hair Woman by the Mescalero. Man Whose Eyes See More was a priest of the Apache, with a mutie power of seeing a little into the future, of sensing things that others couldn't see. He knew that this woman with the bizarre, fiery crimson hair also had something of that doomie power.

She was tall, close to six feet, and was dressed in khaki coveralls. Her feet, pointed toward the shaman, were shod in dark blue leather cowboy boots that had chiseled heels and were ornamented with silver spread-wing falcons. The sharp toes were also silver. Her pistol was plated and polished — a Heckler & Koch P7A-13 9 mm blaster that fired thirteen rounds. And the Apache had firsthand knowledge that the girl knew how to use her gun.

He was a little scared of Krysty Wroth.

As he looked at her she blinked, opening the startling green eyes, managing a smile.

"Hey," she said quietly. "Enjoy your first jump with us?"

"No," he replied honestly.

"Mebbe you should have stayed where you were, shaman," she whispered.

Jak sat up, coughing, a thin string of bile dribbling from his slack lips, and dripping onto the front of his canvas camouflage jacket.

"Bastard jump makes feel ill every time," he said, shaking his head, the long white hair floating around his narrow skull like winter smoke.

The other girl also sat up, burying her face in her hands. She was one of the most beautiful women the Apache had ever seen. Indeed, on the strength of that she had been gifted by the Apache with the name of Keeps Night Warm. Her Anglo name was Lori Quint, and she was in her sixteenth year of life. She was even taller than Krysty Wroth, topping the six-foot mark by close to an inch. Lori was a startling blonde with blue eyes.

"I want to feel best, but I always feel badder than best," she said, smoothing her dark navy cotton skirt over her long thighs. As she shifted her position the shaman heard the silvery tinkling of the tiny spurs on her crimson high-heeled boots.

"How you feeling?" came a voice from the shaman's right. It was the leader of the small group, Ryan Cawdor. He was an imposing sight, built like the killing machine that he was. The man stretched two inches above six feet, weighing just on two hundred pounds. His right eye was a deathly, melt-ice blue, the left hidden beneath a patch of black leather. A savage scar furrowed his face from his right eye to the corner of his mouth. Both injuries, the Indian knew, were the result of a deadly fight between Ryan and an older brother.