of breath, she took a flying leap at the ever-narrowing gap, feeling the edge of the door bite as it closed the gap uncomfortably. She threw herself with as much force and momentum as possible, the foot-long thickness of the tunnel almost catching and trapping the toes of her boots as she slid past, ironically just enough to kill her speed and insure that she didn’t hit the floor as hard as Ryan.
The one-eyed man was already on his feet and headed down the tunnel as she picked herself up.
‘That damn fool old buzzard. We should just leave the old bastard to do what the hell he wants,’ she muttered darkly as she hauled herself to her feet and set off in pursuit.
They knew exactly where they were headed, and as they were stronger and faster than Doc, they might just have time to catch him before he entered the mat-trans unit. Once the chamber door closed, it would be impossible to open it until the process had been completed.
Neither of them wasted time looking to their rear. They knew that the others would follow as soon as they could get the sec door opened once more. It was more of an imperative to reach Doc.
Their choices were justified. As they thundered down the lower corridor, heavy footfalls echoing around the dank and scarred walls of the lowest levels, they knew Doc could hear them. But it didn’t matter. Speed was more important than stealth. Something that was proved when they entered the comp room to find Doc about to grab the lever to the unit’s door. He was almost crying with frustration as his shaking hands and trembling fingers, fraught with anxiety, seemingly refused to grasp the lever.
He looked up as they approached.
‘Please. I did not want you to follow me. Allow me to do this.’
‘To do what, Doc? To send yourself off into God knows where?’ Mildred asked.
‘It’s something I must do,’ he replied as firmly as he could.
‘The hell it is,’ Ryan snapped.
Doc looked at him, momentarily distracted. ‘How the hell would you know?’ he retorted angrily. ‘You have no idea what I am trying to do, or why.’
‘Then why don’t you tell us?’ Mildred questioned in as reasonable a tone as she could muster.
Doc sighed. ‘It would take too long, and you would not want me to do it. I do not think you could understand—’
‘Too stupid, is that it?’ Mildred countered.
‘No, it is not that. What’s the point, you’ll only stop me anyway,’ he added with a resigned sigh, standing back from the door.
In the distance, they could hear the others approaching.
‘C’mon, Doc, I really don’t want to talk about it in here,’ Ryan said softly. ‘Let’s go topside, and then you can explain. Mebbe we’ll understand, after all.’
‘I somehow doubt that that very much,’ Doc murmured, ‘but I suppose I should give you the chance.’
If nothing else, Mildred could treasure the confused looks on the faces of J.B. and Krysty when she, Doc and Ryan calmly walked out of the mat-trans anteroom. There was even a flicker of confusion crossing Jak’s albino visage.
For the second time, they exited the redoubt and stood in the glorious morning. But there was little attention to be paid to the landscape or the blazing clear sky. The first thing was to try to sort out the problem with which Doc now presented them.
A few hundred yards from the entry to the redoubt was a small clump of trees, twisted and stunted with thick growth on their boles, but enough canopy to provide shelter from the heat and brightness of the sun. They took refuge beneath these and Doc started to explain what had caused him to turn back.
It was a long, rambling tale. Sometimes he had to stop and go back on the story, as though there were parts that he even had to explain for himself. Which was no surprise, as what had made so much sense when mulled over within the confines of his own head now seemed to be disjointed and absurd when spilled out loud. He could see from the faces around him that they were having trouble understanding the questions he had to ask himself and the non sequitur answers that had caused him to take his instinct-led course of action.
He finished up weakly, shrugging and telling them that he didn’t expect them to understand, but that it was something that he had to do.
‘Doc,’ Ryan said softly after a long silence, ‘you weren’t with us when that ville went up. Well, you were, but you were this other person. And then you were unconscious. You didn’t see what happened to it. There was no way anyone could have got out of there. The whole tribe, except for mebbe those who stayed behind at the ville, were wiped out. There is no one for you to go back to, even supposing that, by some miracle, the mat-trans took you back to the right redoubt and you could find your way on foot from there without freezing. We only made it as a group because we could support one another. You’d have no one to lean on if you had to.’
‘Yes, I understand completely what you’re saying,’ Doc stated, ‘but can you not see that it makes no difference? This is not about being rational. This is about following an instinct because I cannot trust that which I see and hear around me. As far as I know—in an empirical sense—you may not even exist.’
‘A what?’ Krysty asked. ‘Mother Sonja told me about some old ideas from before nukecaust, but that’s a new one on me.’
‘Doc,’ Mildred said, deciding to try her luck, ‘I’ve listened to what you’ve said, and although I can’t totally understand, I ask you to trust me on one thing. As far as I’m concerned, I know I’m here. And knowing that, I trust my senses. And what they tell me, as a trained physician, is that you’ve been through an immense trauma from fever, followed by a concussion. From my perspective, this is real, and the things in your head that make you doubt yourself are the symptomatic results of a definite medical cause. It would be wrong of me as a doctor to let you follow your instinct at the risk of your own safety. I would recommend that we take you with us, even if we have to, at this stage, do it by force.’
Doc’s face hardened as he looked around. He was met with features as determined as his own.
‘I have no doubt that you would do that. I am outnumbered, and I have little choice but to acquiesce. Be warned, if I have the chance, I will try to get back to the redoubt and jump.’
‘Mebbe so,’ Krysty said softly. ‘But consider this—mebbe part of your journey is to find another way back, and that is why we were allowed to catch up with you and stop you.’
Doc’s face cracked into a wry grin. ‘That’s very good, my dear. In truth I have no answer to that. I am not allayed, but you have, nonetheless, set me a logical quandary that I must ponder.’
‘That mean we get fuck out here?’ Jak asked, disgruntled and a little lost.
J.B. rose, stretched and yawned. ‘Soon as we find which way’s the best way, then, yeah, I guess so. Right, Ryan?’
Ryan shrugged. He felt uneasy that he hadn’t quite grasped where Doc now stood, somehow angry with himself for not understanding; but action would force any issues that remained.
‘Yeah. Sooner the better,’ he growled.
USING HIS MINISEXTANT, J.B. got their bearings.
