He didn’t care where they might end up when they made the mat-trans jump. Anywhere had to be better than this…although, he realized with bitterness it was probably how he’d felt before they ended up in these icy wastes.
J.B. motioned them to change direction and a familiar outcropping came into view. The end of their quest was in sight.
It was almost as if Doc knew. He surprised Mildred by raising himself up on one elbow and looking at her with a quizzical air that was at once all too familiar to her.
A suspicion confirmed when he opened his mouth and said, in a voice that was distinctly his own, ‘My dear Doctor, what on earth are we doing out here in these appalling conditions? And why, pray tell, do you look as though you’ve been on the losing side of a fight?’
Chapter Two
Although nothing had changed within the confines of the redoubt since they had last set foot there a few days before, the atmosphere that greeted them was totally different. Where there had previously been an air of gloom and foreboding, now there was nothing but a sense of relief. Despite the memories that had been stirred by their last incursion, there was no trace of remorse or remembrance. The strange atmosphere that had seemed to drape itself over them, penetrating to their very souls and painting their emotional world a darker shade of black, had now lifted.
Perhaps those ghosts that had been stirred had now dissipated, blown away by the experiences of the past few days. Perhaps those ghosts had never really existed and were just random memories that had fed a deeper malaise triggered by the act of a mat-trans jump. Or perhaps they were still here, but were now kept at bay by the fatigue that ate into their very bones, deadening all thought and all feeling in the effort just to keep moving until they were in a position to fall unconscious with exhaustion.
Ryan punched in the sec code once they were on the inside of the heavy entry doors. The remaining beasts had been freed from the sleds and driven away from the entrance. They lurked at a distance, unsure of what to do and where to go. Born into service, they were wild but with muted survival instincts, wanting to stick close to humans they saw as a source of food. There was only a slim chance that they would survive in the harsh environment, finding their way back to the remaining Inuit if they were lucky. It might have been kinder to have chilled them all, putting them out of their misery quickly and efficiently, yet it would have required an effort that none would have felt they had the energy to discharge.
As the door closed on the lurking beasts, on the snow and ice carried on chill winds and on the barren rock landscape, they felt a collective relief. The slightly musty recycled air, heated to a bearable temperature, kicked in, driving the cold from their bones. It was all they could do to keep from collapsing in the tunnel.
Except, perhaps, for Doc, who seemed filled with a new vitality.
‘By the Three Kennedys, I don’t know what’s been going on—nor, come to that, why I am still with you when I appear to have been in some sort of coma all this time—but I do know that whatever it is, it appears to have taken a hefty toll upon you all.’
‘Hefty toll,’ Mildred repeated with a short, barking laugh. ‘Doc, you mad old freak of nature, I don’t think you even know how funny that is.’
‘Funny would appear to be a strange word for it, given the condition in which you find yourselves,’ Doc replied, a little perplexed.
‘You know, it kind of depends on what you mean by funny, I guess,’ Mildred answered him. ‘I mean, do you see me laughing?’
‘That would seem to be the last thing that you are capable of doing right now,’ Doc threw back at her with all seriousness.
Mildred fixed him with a shrewd look. ‘I don’t think you’ve got the slightest idea what’s been going on, have you?’
Doc opened his mouth, but no words came forth. Only Mildred now stood at the end of the corridor with him. The others had wordlessly made their way down the corridor, headed for the showers and the dorms. They moved slowly and with the grim determination of those only kept awake by sheer willpower, a dogged one-foot-in-front-of-the-other approach all that kept them going. Mildred followed the direction of his gaze, read the complete confusion in his eyes.
‘No, I don’t suppose you have,’ she murmured more to herself than to the bewildered old man. Then, in a louder voice, she added, ‘Doc, I can’t tell you everything now. I’m just too damn tired and aching. Another few hours aren’t going to hurt. We just need to rest and clean up before we jump.’
‘We’re using the mat-trans again, so soon? But surely we should be looking for—’
‘Doc, just don’t,’ she interrupted, holding up a hand to silence him, then turning away to follow the others. She threw a parting shot over her shoulder. ‘Just wait, keep it all in until tomorrow, then you’ll understand.’
Doc stood watching her, a frown furrowing his brow. Whatever had happened out there—whatever it was that he couldn’t remember—it had some kind of effect on those people he called his friends. The only friends he had in this godforsaken land in which he had been forced to strive for survival. Even in the few short minutes that he had been conscious he had noticed that there was some kind of distance that had arisen between them.
Why? He could recall being here and leaving to strike out toward Ank Ridge. But then? He could recall depression, and he could recall a storm that mirrored his mood, a blizzard that obscured the landscape in the same way that his feelings had obscured his ability to observe and function what was happening around him…and after that? A blur of ideas, images and emotions that he couldn’t grasp.
The distance he felt was mirrored by the way in which they had left him at the head of the tunnel. As Mildred disappeared around a dog-leg bend, leaving him isolated by the entrance, he felt that the physical distance was nothing more than a mirror.
Reluctantly—for he had no idea what he would face when the others had rested—he followed on from them. By the time that he had reached the showers, they were stripped and washing the filth, ice and blood from their battered bodies.
Doc sat quietly as they finished and dried themselves. Only the barest necessity of communication took place, no more than a few words in each exchange. It was almost as though they were too tired to even acknowledge one another’s existence. Certainly, none seemed to acknowledge Doc’s presence.
Before too long he was left alone in the shower room, the others having gone in search of washing machines. Automatically, he stripped and washed himself, noting with an almost detached bemusement the signs of combat, the scars of recent wounds and the discoloration of contusion on his body. How he came to have these, he had no idea.
Frankly, he didn’t care. It was with no little sense of foreboding that he eventually joined the others in the dorms, where he tried to settle to sleep.
The redoubt was silent and still. Doc tried to will himself to sleep, but his mind was racing. Fragments of what might have occurred, and of the thoughts that had plagued what, to him, seemed like a distant dream, ran through his mind, tripping over each other in the race to assume order and to make some kind of sense.
Eventually the effort of trying to make sense from chaos was enough to tire him and he fell into a fitful, uneasy sleep.
DOC AWOKE the next morning to find that the others had risen before him. Despite the unease with which he had first fallen into sleep, it had proved to move from fitful to deep and dreamless, and he now felt refreshed and less apprehensive. He rose and dressed, going in search of the others. In the quiet of the redoubt, the hum of unmaintenanced machinery the only breaks in the silence, it wasn’t difficult to determine where they were.
Doc’s sense took him to the kitchens, where the others were attempting to construct some kind of appetizing and nutritious meal from what they had left in the