James Axler - Breakthrough

The blind woman sniffed at the air like a rabbit, homing in on the exact location of Ryan’s son.

“I’ve had visions about you, young man,” Sirena said to Dean. “You and your six fine friends. Come sit here, and I’ll tell you all about them….” She spread her thin legs and patted her sagging lap.

Dean wrinkled his nose. “Not bastard likely,” he said, crossing his arms over his still narrow boy’s chest.

“If you’ve got something to say to us,” Ryan told her, “let’s hear it.”

“There’s doubt in your voice,” she said. “Looking for proof, are we? Well, how about I tell you something you already know? Your names? Your mothers’ names? Their mothers’ names?”

“Madam,” Doc said, “if you could, as you suggest, pronounce the names of all our maternal grandmothers, it would certainly be evidence in your favor.”

The old woman dismissed her own idea with a wave of her hand. “Nah, the back sight is too easy,” she said. “And it proves nothing. There’s other ways I could’ve found out the names. I didn’t, but that’s beside the point. It’s the foresight, the telling of what’s to come, that’s the real test of doomie power. How about this for proof? There’s a new kind of human being prowling the Deathlands. Not mutie spawned. These folks come from elsewhen.”

“You mean elsewhere?” Ryan said.

Sirena turned her head, following the sound of his voice. “No, Master Cawdor, I mean what I said, else when. Another stretch of time in another place altogether. Our time and place and this other one started out identical, as alike a pair of fish eggs, but oh how different they grew. Nightmare different. These new people are a cross between us and a cockroach.”

Expressions of surprise flickered over the companions’ faces.

“My, my, it’s gotten mighty quiet all of a sudden,” Sirena said, returning to her pipe.

In the hut’s golden gloom, Ryan watched her rock and blow smoke for a minute, then said, “That’s the past, dead and buried. You said you were going to tell us the future.”

The old woman chuckled. “It is the future. Your future, Master Half-Blind. I don’t create it. I can’t change it. I only see it with these….” With the tip of the pipe stem, she indicated the pale, hard-cooked eggs that were her eyes.

“Evidence, madam,” Doc interjected, emphasizing the point by rapping the hut’s dirt floor with his walking stick. “We require substantial and convincing evidence of your claims.”

“Oh, I’ll give you all the evidence you need,” Sirena replied. “There’s a brand-new star in the sky. Hasn’t been a new star like that in more than a hundred years.”

Ryan didn’t get her drift, right off. He wasn’t alone. The companions exchanged impatient looks. “We wouldn’t know anything about that,” he said. “We haven’t seen the night sky for almost two weeks now.”

“Well, you’ll all see it tonight, over the river,” the blind woman told him. “It’s not a proper star, mind you. It doesn’t twinkle like it should. And it sails from one side of the horizon to the other in the span of twenty heartbeats. This star was planted in the heavens by a roaring, flaming spear taller than the tallest tree in the forest.”

Mildred leaned close to Ryan and whispered, “She means a goddamn guided missile. It’s not a star she’s talking about. It’s a recon satellite!”

The one-eyed man had already figured that out. If what the old woman said was true, then he and the companions had failed to permanently close the passageway between realities.

“Master Cawdor,” the doomie said, “the cockroaches are already here, they are many, and there will be hell to pay.”

“If you really can see into the future,” Ryan said, leaning close to her, “then explain it to us in detail.”

Sirena shook her head. “Even if I went over it minute by minute, it wouldn’t help you. Preparations are a waste of precious time. I’ve lived with the doomie sight since I was your boy’s age, and I know this for a certain fact—no one can change the course of what will be. My advice to all of you is to enjoy each passing moment as if it were your last.”

“In other words,” Mildred said, “we’re going to suffer and die, but be sure and have a nice day. That’s all she’s going to tell us? Why are we listening to this hogwash?”

“I heartily agree,” Doc said. “Might I suggest that our ‘passing moments’ might be more enjoyably spent away from the confines of this cramped and stinking hovel.”

“You got that right, Doc,” J.B. agreed.

As they began filing from the hut, Sirena called out, “Wait, young Cawdor! Before you go, I have a gift for you.”

From under the translucent cape, she produced a slim six-inch bone dagger in a skin sheath.

Dean immediately glanced at his father, who indicated his permission with a curt nod of his head. The boy approached the old woman and took the dagger from her. There was no cross guard or pommel. The handle was wrapped with strips of scratchy fish skin. Unsheathing the blade, he carefully tested its serrated edge on the back of his thumbnail. “Demon sharp!” he said.

“It’s made from the tip of a catfish dorsal spine,” Sirena said. “It will fit nicely into the top of your right boot.”

Dean tried it. The blade and sheath disappeared completely. “I can hardly feel it’s there,” he said. “Thanks.”

Sirena reached out and seized his wrist in a grip that was amazingly strong. “I could have told you your future,” she said, “and your children’s future, too, if you’d just sat on my lap.”

“Mebbe you could,” the boy said, jerking his hand away. “And mebbe I don’t want to know that bad.”

As Ryan and Dean left the hut, waves of the doomie’s shrill, hoarse laughter crashed against their backs.

IT WAS NEARLY midnight when Ryan saw it, in the tree break over the dark river. The single point of bright light appeared in the west, above the blackness of the canopy, and swept across the starry field of sky. He and the others watched the satellite arc overhead and vanish in the east.

“Fireblast!” Ryan’s curse echoed off the surrounding forest.

“Couldn’t it be something else?” Dean asked him. “Something real old…from before skydark?”

“It isn’t old, son. All the space junk fell to earth and burned up a long time ago. It has to be new. The fish hag spoke the truth. People from the other Earth had to have put it up there. No one else could have done it.”

“We should’ve chilled those four bastards,” J.B. said. “Should’ve buried them along with all their fancy chilling gear.”

Ryan grimaced. J.B. was talking about the turncoats, the members of the first scouting expedition to cross over from the parallel Earth. With success within their grasp, the warrior-whitecoats had decided not just to abandon, but to sabotage their primary mission, which was to lay the groundwork for the invasion and conquest of Deathlands by the armies of FIVE. Instead of firing the guided missile they had trucked with them into the sky, they launched it through the reality portal in the hope of sealing the gateway forever. That done, the alternate world conquistadors went native. They stripped off the segmented black battlesuits that made them immune to blasterfire, and they dumped the tribarreled laser rifles that cut through plate steel like so much tissue paper. Ryan and the others helped them dismantle their gyroplane and they buried it deep in a sandy arroyo along with the rest of their gear.

“Colonel Gabhart and the others might not have had anything to do with this,” Mildred said.

“They could’ve changed their minds about bringing the armies across, too,” J.B. countered. “Mebbe they had blood relatives starving to death on the other side. Blood being thicker than water, they decided to reopen the passageway and save them.”