It was Jak who snapped out of this trance first. The albino teen’s hunting and survival instincts kicked in, overriding the shock that had momentarily stopped him dead. Without a word, he sprang forward, plunging himself into the rock.
Why it worked, he had no idea. In fact, the question didn’t even occur to him. Jak didn’t hesitate. And maybe that was the crux of the matter. He didn’t give the construct a thought. Someone put it in his mind, and it wasn’t really there. The logical knot that it was seemingly so solid as to be trapping Doc didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting the old man out.
Jak felt the rock yield against him only with protest. It was like trying to push heavy rocks out of the way, yet these were rocks that had no edges. It was as though the sheet of solid rock in front of him moved and ground around the force of his momentum, yet didn’t break up into rubble. He felt the pressure against his face and chest, closing his nostrils and constricting him. But where Doc had given in to this and accepted it, Jak wouldn’t.
It couldn’t be doing this, as it wasn’t there. Simple as that.
This clear thinking seemed to have an effect on the illusion that the albino youth couldn’t have foreseen. In truth, he didn’t even notice it, so focused was he on his task. Pushing aside the hardness of the rock with what was little more than an effort of will, he reached out until he grasped Doc’s shoulder. He shouldn’t have been able to do that, as the rock was encircling the old man’s form, and yet he felt the soft cloth of Doc’s frock coat beneath his fingers. He clamped them down hard and pulled on the old scholar, to spin him.
Doc felt the hand and was puzzled. A hand through rock? Surely that wasn’t possible. He was shocked more than any other emotion when he felt himself turn in what was, to him, a solid coffin, only to find that Jak’s face was in front of his own. Bizarrely, and in a way that he couldn’t explain, it seemed to merge with the rock that should have been there.
Dr. Theophilus Tanner was a man who was no stranger to madness. He recognized it. In the same way, as strange as this situation was, he knew that it was not insanity. On the contrary, it made perfect sense. His own belief in the power of the intelligence that created this illusion was now helping it to keep up that very thing. As a result, the only way for it to end, and for him to be saved, was…
“Hit me,” he said to Jak. It came out cracked and barely audible, but it was enough. Jak looked into Doc’s eyes, and even if he couldn’t phrase exactly what he saw, he grasped it on an instinctive level. He pulled back his free hand and hit out. Even with the resistance, real or imagined, that the rock provided, he was still able to muster enough power to connect with Doc’s jaw hard enough for it to make the lights go out behind Doc’s eyes. The whites showed as they rolled up into his head, and he slumped toward the ground.
A ground that was now solid and unencumbered by the illusion of a wall of rock. It was as if, without Doc’s belief—a belief that he had tried his hardest to deny but had, paradoxically, only reinforced by so doing—the intelligence that had formed the defense had nothing on which to build.
Ryan whistled softly. He turned and looked around at the other three, who were a few yards behind him. Krysty was still hunkered on the ground, while J.B. and Mildred had huddled together, perhaps unconsciously. Their eyes were fixed at a point beyond him; beyond even where Jak stood over Doc’s inert frame, bending over him in solicitation now that the necessary force had been exerted.
Beyond the area where the rock wall had seemingly been, there was an expanse of bare and arid land, scorched and blasted by the hot winds of the nukecaust and still enough of a hot spot for little other than some shriveled shrub to have prospered in the intervening years. And beyond this, where the land rose slightly in level until it formed a ragged lip, there was another chasm. It was a deep, wide split in the earth that extended for hundreds of yards. The shadowed contour of the rock face forming the far wall of the chasm could be plainly seen. It was a gash in the earth that ran in an irregular line, widening and then narrowing along its path. Unlike the earlier illusion, this had the random look of nature, and didn’t veer off at strange angles from the periphery of vision. Unlike the previous chasm, and the mountainous wall, this had dust disturbed in eddies and whorls by the air currents that were stirred by the depths of what was, Ryan was certain, a canyon.
And, with a sinking feeling in his gut, he could have sworn he knew which one.
“Is that one real?” J.B. asked hesitantly.
Ryan swallowed the bile that rose in his throat and nodded.
“Yeah, that one’s the real deal.”
There was something in his tone that made Mildred look at him askance. “You sound certain,” she murmured.
“Makes sense now,” he said cryptically, shrugging. “I never really believed all those stories, but the look of that…and what’s happened to us.”
“Mancos Canyon,” Krysty said softly. “I’d always figured that those stories were just that…not that there was any truth in them.”
Jak turned back so that he was facing her. His brow was furrowed.
“Stories?” he queried.
“I fear I am with you on this one,” Doc agreed. “You speak of these as though they are common knowledge. Perhaps to you. But not to everyone.”
“Sorry, Doc,” Ryan said absently. “It’s just that they were the kinds of tales that you spin around the fire at night, on watches, to stop yourself falling asleep unless you wanted nightmares.”
J.B. walked past the one-eyed man and looked to the split in the earth that lay in front of them. He took off his fedora and scratched his head, lost for a moment in thought. Then, without looking around, he said, “Mancos, eh? Rumors have always swirled about that place.”
Doc was becoming a little exasperated, and it was reflected in his tone. “This is all very well, but if there is some legend attached to this place that may, perhaps, have some bearing on what we are about to face, then I think that you should tell those of us who are not privy to the knowledge. It would, after all, help.”
“I don’t know if you could dignify it with the word legend,” Krysty began reflectively. “The region got blasted in the nukecaust. So hot that no one could go near it for generations. But along the way there were those who wandered off the tracks and ended up here. Now mebbe you’d think that anyone who did that would end up as shriveled as an old man’s dick that had been left out in the sun too long. If you did, then you’d be wrong. Most who disappeared into this region were never seen again. Those who were, well, when they were seen again, those who knew them said they were…different.”
The way in which she let that last word hang in the air made Mildred shiver. Different in what way? she wondered. More to the point was another thought, to which she gave voice.
“So you’re telling me that we’re headed into an area that is full of nukeshit still, and from which people either don’t come back, or if they do they’re not even recognizable to their friends?”
“Something like that,” Krysty said in a tone that managed to be both flat and grim at the same time.
Mildred whistled. “Sounds like we’re in for a real fun time.”
“Quite,” Doc added quickly. “But I think the real question for me is, in what way changed? Are we to expect that we will become in some way infected by radiation and covered with sores and distortion of the features? Or will we somehow develop some kind of mutation?”
“Like the ones that you think nearly caused you to buy the farm?” Krysty countered. There was an edge of hostility in her voice. “You think that because it’s evil then it must be mutie traits? You think that’s why these people—the ones who were seen again—were so changed?”