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through the open door to the mat-trans section.
Miss it and they were doomed.
It seemed as though they fell down, and he lost contact with Doc. For a
paralyzed moment he reached out and found nothing, nobody.
Then the fingers were in his again.
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Brighter light.
"Nearly there," someone said.
But the air was gone.
As Ryan fought to breathe, his lungs resisted, finding nothing to draw on, no
sustenance.
The brighter light grew dimmer.
He saw the rows of desks, meaning they were so very close now to safety.
"Come on, Doc. Last fucking mile." The croaking voice was dragged from gods
knew where.
A small part of Ryan's memory knew that it was already over and done.
The others would have closed the door to the gateway chamber and would have
jumped away to safety.
Knowing that made it easier to bear dyingand made him angry at the thought of
being abandoned by his lover, son and friends.
At least they would
Then the lines went down, and Ryan Cawdor became involved with the enigma of
his own passing.
Chapter Eleven
It was a pleasant sensation, floating in a lake of dark water so saline that
his body lay effortlessly on the surface, unmoving.
The temperature was so close to Ryan's blood heat that it was almost like
floating inside his own body.
Everything was calmness. A gentle, placid glow suffused him, filling him with
well-being.
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Whatever else he might have done in some previous, bleak existence, this was
all that Ryan now wanted to do for the next hours, days, weeks, months, years.
For the whole remainder of infinity.
"Stop fucking smiling."
He had a vague, satisfied smile on his face as be floated on and on.
There was a tunnel around him, just visible if he opened both his eyes, walls
and ceiling of slick, black marble, moving quietly by him.
"He's slipping away, Krysty. I don't It's like he's stopped fighting."
The walls were coming closer. The ceiling was lowering, drawing nearer to him.
But none of that mattered to Ryan, not compared to the wonderful lethargy that
wrapped itself around him like a grinning serpent.
"Dean. You try. Speak to him. Loud. He's not hearing us. If we don't bring him
back right now, then I'm afraid he's gone from us forever."
Ryan drifted faster down the shrinking tunnel. Some old predark song filtered
into the parts of his brain that hadn't closed down, about having no regrets
and, mostly, about having done everything his own way.
Drifting faster.
"Quick, Dean. Pulse is still going down. He's drifting faster away."
Faces. Faces from old photographs. What had happened to them all?
Mother and father. Brother. The smile eased away from Ryan's face. Tumbling
hair, burnished and brighter than the most heavenly sunrise.
A young boy. Dark, curly hair, serious eyes. Himself when he was about eleven
years old?
"Dad?"
For a brief moment the water that bore Ryan along seemed to ripple, and the
walls of the passageway retreated.
"Dad, you gotta fight. Gotta come back to us, Dad. Don't just give up."
Ryan swallowed, closing and opening his eye. The temperature of the water
around him seemed to have dropped a little, making him less snug and
comfortable.
"Pulse steadied."
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"Come on, lover. For me."
"Dad"
Ryan swallowed and opened his eye.
He was lying flat on his back, feeling cold, with a circle of faces staring
down at him. "Yeah, "he whispered.
"I GATHER from our preeminent medical authority, as Dr. Wyeth likes to see
herself, that I had passed out from oxygen deprivation rather more quickly
than you did. As my body had, effectively, closed itself down on all fronts,
the damage from the air being sucked away was, consequently, rather less for
me than for you."
Ryan nodded. "They dragged us in and started the jump and we got away just in
time?"
Doc lay on the bed next to him, still looking pale and shaken. "Indeed, yes.
It rather seems that you had somehow pulled me that last hundred yards or so,
despite having zero oxygen in your lungs." He coughed.
"Yet again, my dear friend, I find that I must thank you for saving"
Ryan held up a hand. "Forget it, Doc. You'd have done the same for me. The
others did the same for us.
You go out on the edge when you have to."
He had a ferocious headache and kept fighting back swimming waves of gut-deep
nausea. But it was only an hour since he'd been heaved back from the wrong
side of the grave.
"I confess," Doc continued, "to having felt a great deal less than well when I
eventually recovered from the jump. Now, having a bed to lie on, I am a man
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new-made. Fresh made. Dairy maid. Sorry. Tongue running away without first
contacting the brain. Awfully sorry."
Krysty walked across the room, joining them. "How are the two invalids?"
Doc grinned. "The agony, madam, has somewhat abated. That is a quote from
someone like the philosopher, John Stuart Mill, who fell as a two-year-old and
bumped his knee. A lady said 'Has little chappy hurty-wurty oozleself then?'
To which the infant prodigy is alleged to have replied "Thank you, madam, the
agony has somewhat abated." Jolly, good, eh?"
Krysty and Ryan both laughed.
She sat on the bed and took his hand in hers. "Getting better, lover?"
"Sure."
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"Close call."
He nodded. "I know it. I had an ace on the line for the last train to the
coast."
"Seat booked and paid for and almost occupied. It was Dean who brought you
back from the brink. You responded to his voice. Saved you, lover."
"I heard you, as well."
She looked at him gravely, head to one side. "That the truth, lover?"
"Yeah. Yeah, it is."
She smiled at him. "Glad."
"Where are we?"
"Somewhere else. Gateway chamber walls were a kind of dark gray color. That's
all we know."
"Big redoubt?"
"Looks it. We found this dorm with all facilities. A lot like the last stop we
made."
His eye turned to the closed door with the word Bathroom above it.
Krysty laughed. "You can go and piss in complete safety. J.B. checked it out
and reported back that it's a completely spider-free zone."
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