Part 15 (2/2)
”I believe I made my request quite clear. I wished to-”
”Yeah, you wished to examine all the old doc.u.ments that Gloria carries in her personal belongings. Doc, why the h.e.l.l do you want to look at all that now? When we're going to have to work out what the h.e.l.l our next move is going to be? What the fireblasted h.e.l.l could you want-?”
The one-eyed warrior suddenly broke off into silence. Could it be that Doc had dredged something from his memory that tied in with something in the doc.u.ments? He fixed the older man with a penetrating gaze from his icy blue orb.
Doc immediately divined his meaning. ”Exactly, my dear Ryan. It was only when I exchanged some friendly repartee with the young men Jon and Petor that the proverbial penny dropped for me. This building and the way in which it is laid out appear somewhere within the old doc.u.ments that the queen carries with her...presumably for such a moment as this. Perhaps, in times past and when the legends were better remembered, before the inability to read entered the gene pool and swung them away from a straight and true path on their mission, the doc.u.ments were known to be kept for such a purpose.” Ryan looked at Doc, delaying an answer while he added the whole thing up in his mind. Doc's reasoning would make sense, and as for his a.s.sertion that the doc.u.ments held a map of this shadow Pentagon... Well, Doc might have fragile grasp on reality that could, at times, falter into the realms of madness, but he was also capable of mental feats that would leave lesser men grasping at reason.
When Doc had approached Ryan, the one-eyed warrior was sitting apart from the rest of the group, accompanied only by Krysty. They were discussing what they would do if they got through the coming battle without being chilled, and Jak decided to go with the Gate when the two groups parted company. Losing Jak would be a wrench, as he was a good fighter and a good friend, but it wouldn't be the first time, and somehow their paths always seemed to cross again. So it was that, even when Ryan raised his voice in surprise, it didn't attract anything other than idle curiosity from Dean, J.B. or Mildred. Jak- almost as if to prove the point Ryan and Krysty were discussing-was with Gloria, as the Gate and their traveling companions took some much needed R and R, guarded on all sides, before settling on a battle plan. Although on enemy territory, they felt secure as the very thing that made the corridors difficult to negotiate as an attacking force also made them easy to defend.
Krysty broke the silence. ”I think Doc may have a point, lover. If there is something in those papers, then it could change whatever plans Gloria may be making at this moment, or whatever we may be thinking of doing. It won't be hard to get access to them, as Petor always keeps Gloria's things to hand. I think we should ask her.”
Ryan nodded decisively. ”Yeah, of course you're right. I just wish your timing was a little better, Doc,” the one-eyed warrior added with a grin.
Doc returned the favor. ”I do not do it on purpose, my dear boy. I think that sometimes my mind just refuses to work as I would wish.”
Ryan rose to his feet. ”Okay, let's go and ask Gloria if we can see the doc.u.ments, and if you can find the one you remember.”
”Oh, it is there. Rest a.s.sured that it is there,” Doc murmured decisively.
Before approaching Gloria, Ryan went over to where J.B., Mildred and Dean were resting, and told them all that had transpired between himself, Krysty and Doc.
”Then we'd better be with you,” J.B. said as he placed his fedora firmly on his head and pushed his spectacles back up onto the bridge of his nose.
Rising to her feet, Mildred agreed. ”When Doc finds what he's looking for, then I think we need to see it to make up our own minds about what it means.”
Dean also scrambled to his feet. ”Yeah, not just that,” he said with humor, ”but I've just got to see Jon and Petor's faces when they realize that Doc's not as crazy as they think.”
Doc wrinkled his brow. ”It is actually a debatable point, I suspect,” he said distantly.
”What is?” Dean asked, puzzled.
Doc looked at him, wide-eyed. ”Why, whether I really am as crazy as they think,” he answered disarmingly. Then he added, ”By their terms, at least.”
Mildred shook her head, plaits waving wildly around her head. ”I know what my answer would be, you old fool, but crazy is maybe the only way to get by around here these days. If you're right, there's no way they're going to make a fuss about whether you're all there in the head.”
”There is only one way for us to find out,” Doc said brightly. He turned to Ryan.
”Lead on, dear boy, lead on.”
The party made its way through the resting crowd of Amazons and their menfolk. The lobby of the building where they had set up temporary camp was large, but not so large that the combined numbers and bulk of the Gate and their caravan hadn't actually filled the s.p.a.ce to an extent where, while they were at their ease, it was actually hard to move around freely.
So it took a few moments for the companions to cover the short distance to the point where Jak and Tammy were seated with Gloria, discussing possible tactics for attacking the Illuminated Ones-once they could find a way into where their enemy was based. As the companions approached, Krysty could hear Jak trying to explain the concept of the redoubt and how it worked to the two warrior women, but his lack of vocabulary and narrative skill was making it difficult. From the looks on the faces of the two women, they were having more than a little trouble grasping what exactly he meant.
”Jak, Doc's had an idea that could help you out here,” Krysty said as they came near.
The albino looked up, relief in his eyes at this burden being lifted. ”Glad hear. Words not strong point,” he said.
”Everyone has their own ways, sweets,” Gloria added softly. ”Yours are more practical, is all.”
”And so is Doc's suggestion,” Ryan said, hunkering down. ”We really need to go through all those papers that you carry with you.”
Gloria fixed him with a puzzled stare, her own icy blue eyes penetrating Ryan's singular diamond-blue orb. ”My heritage? They're precious, honey, and this is neither the time nor the place to start f.u.c.king with our history.”
”Madam,” Doc cut in softly, but with a tone of authority in his voice that betrayed in its weary edge the experiences of someone who had led a unique and unbelievable existence, ”I realize the sacred importance of the words and pictures you carry with you. They have the weight of your history and destiny in them. But I believe that the history and destiny has arrived. This is the time and place of which those doc.u.ments speak. This is perhaps that for which you have spent so long searching, and within those papers-handed to your forebears so long ago when they embarked on this quest-there is the key to our current situation.”
Gloria grinned her lopsided grin and reached out to Doc, ruffling his mane of white hair with a suddenness that caught him completely by surprise and off guard, so much so that he almost looked embarra.s.sed.
”You, on the other hand-you're very good with words. So good that you almost lose me in them. So you think some of the sacred texts are about here?”
”In the proverbial nutsh.e.l.l, madam, if that old saw is something that makes sense in these times. Yes, I believe that when you showed us those papers some time back I was privy to witness no less than a map of this very place. For reasons that would take too long and would be too, too bizarre to unveil right now, I had heard of such a place as this before. It took some time for my addled and frankly decaying synapses to make the connection, but I believe that- if I am correct- then we will have discovered the way to access the bolt hole of the Illuminated Ones.”
Tammy blew out her breath loudly. ”s.h.i.+t, you can't be that crazy, 'cause I never heard anyone who was use words like that! What do you think, Glo?” the auburn-curled Amazon asked her queen.
”I say that mebbe crazy men aren't as stupidworks as the rest of their kind.”
She smiled, then called out, ”Petor, get over here, honey.”
The gangling youth who was the queen's bearer appeared at her side as if from nowhere, showing that the secret training he and Jon had undertaken to be better warriors than the majority of Gate menfolk had been of some benefit, which Gloria duly noted.
”I'm going to have to watch you,” she murmured with a raised eyebrow, '”cause that was pretty warrior-like for a man. Anyway, get the chest from my things, sweets. We need to look at the sacred writings.”
Petor disappeared into the crowd without a word, reappearing a scant few minutes later with the battered tin trunk in which the writings and maps that were sacred to the Gate were stored. He put it down before Gloria and handed her the key, which he kept secreted away where only he and the Amazon queen knew. It was among the belongings that traveled with the trunk, but inaccessible to anyone else, and he had extracted it before removing the trunk.
Opening the old tin box, which was rusty and battered on the exterior but carefully lined and cleaned on the inside, leading Ryan to the conclusion that the exterior decay was a blind to prevent the box being stolen by anyone who might think it important, Gloria carefully extracted the maps and doc.u.ments, placing them before Doc.
”All yours, sweetie,” she said quietly. ”See if you can find it, but be careful.”
Doc lifted the first piece of rolled paper and gently straightened it on the cold marble floor of the lobby, his eyes scanning its contents. As he did this, he murmured, ”My dear woman, I would not dream of anything else. I shall treat it as I would my own aged, fragile bones.”
A silence descended over the group as they watched Doc. It was almost as if the rest of the camp disappeared and a bubble of complete calm had enveloped the nine people cl.u.s.tered around the hunched figure of Doc Tanner, shutting out the rest of the Gate, the building in which they were situated, the compound, even the very Deathlands itself. Everything was focused on Theophilus Tanner.
And Doc was determined to find the right doc.u.ment. Muttering to himself, he unrolled paper after paper, laying it out flat and examining it carefully. Those that were full of text were immediately rerolled and stored back in the box. Those that were maps or diagrammatical in design were carefully examined, Doc poring over the detail, particularly on those that seemed to be of buildings rather than areas.
Gloria looked across at Jak, questioning in her glance. Had she done the right thing in allowing Doc access to these sacred writings, or was he just as crazy as he seemed? Jak read this in her glance and shook his head. He knew that sometimes the crazier Doc seemed, the more likely he was to be onto something.
”Hot pipe, I wish he'd find it,” Dean murmured softly to Petor, ”because I don't think I can take much more of the suspense.”
Petor resisted the urge to laugh aloud at his new friend's comment. ”Maybe he's not as stupidworks as he seems. Looks to me like he knows what he's after.”
”Oh yeah, he does,” Dean replied offhandedly, ”but the trouble with Doc is he's likely to get sidetracked and then remember that he found it ten minutes ago.”
Doc was oblivious to the stares and muttered commentary. His attention was focused solely on the papers in front of them, his lips moving soundlessly as he ran through his mind the images and words he could recall, trying to match them with each doc.u.ment as it unraveled before him. Had he really seen the map he remembered, or was it just a fevered imagining?
Doubts crept into the corners of his mind, black tendrils of hopelessness that his sanity had once again slipped... No, not now, not when he was so close to finding that which would help so much.
Doc unrolled another scrolled doc.u.ment. It was a map. Peering closely, banis.h.i.+ng the doubts and fears beyond the furthest corners of his mind, Doc concentrated his attention on the paper in front of him.
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