Axler, James - Deathlands 44 - Crucible of Time

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"Quake! Everybody outside!"

Jak was first to reach the door, hesitating with his fingers gripping the handle.

J.B. held Mildred's hand as they weaved across the heaving floor, looking like a

couple of drunks trying to make a decorous exit from a frontier gaudy.

"Door's jammed," the teenager yelled. There was a ferocious shudder, and the

kerosene lamp crashed onto the floor, rolling under one of the beds and plunging

the room into momentary darkness.

But that lasted for only a few seconds. A flicker of orange flame snaked out of the

blackness as the dust-dry blankets caught fire, followed by the crackling of the

floorboards igniting in the fierce heat.

"Windows are all shuttered and locked from the outside," the Armorer shouted.

Already it was hard to breathe.

Crucible of Time

#44 in the Deathlands series

James Axler

A GOLD EAGLE BOOK FROM WORLDWIDE

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Axler, James - Deathlands 44 - Crucible of Time

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON • AMSTERDAM • PARIS •

SYDNEY • HAMBURG • STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN

MADRID • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is

stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and

neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped

book."

This is for Chef David Mitchell of Florida. Apart from being one of the greatest

Deathlands fans, he is also just about the most remarkable man I've ever had the

privilege of knowing. Despite serious long-term illness and countless operations,

David demonstrates incredible grace under pressure, showing a courage that puts

Ryan Cawdor in the shade, and gives enormous amounts of precious time to his

own charity for sick children. This book is for him with my thanks and all of my

best wishes.

First edition January 1999

ISBN 0-373-62544-8

CRUCIBLE OF TIME

this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other

means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying

and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden

without the written permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan

Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

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Axler, James - Deathlands 44 - Crucible of Time

All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author

and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They

are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author,

and all incidents are pure invention.

® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are

registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade

Marks Office and in other countries.

Printed in U.S.A.

"Belief is exercised through shared thoughts and words of wisdom.

Blind belief can only be exercised along the barrel of a rifle."

-From: Happiness Is the Good Book and a Warm Gun

by Blessed Bob "Bobcat" Bobson,

Apocalypse Press, Waco, Texas

THE DEATHLANDS SAGA

This world is their legacy, a world born in the violent nuclear spasm of 2001 that

was the bitter outcome of a straggle for global dominance.

There is no real escape from this shockscape where life always hangs in the

balance, vulnerable to newly demonic nature, barbarism, lawlessness.

But they are the warrior survivalists, and they endure—in the way of the lion, the

hawk and the tiger, true to nature's heart despite its ruination.

Ryan Cawdor: The privileged son of an East Coast baron. Acquainted with

betrayal from a tender age, he is a master of the hard realities.

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Axler, James - Deathlands 44 - Crucible of Time

Krysty Wroth: Harmony ville's own Titian-haired beauty, a woman with the

strength of tempered steel. Her premonitions and Gaia powers have been fostered

by her Mother Sonja.

J. B. Dix, the Armorer: Weapons master and Ryan's close ally, he, too, honed his

skills traversing the Deathlands with the legendary Trader.

Doctor Theophilus Tanner: Torn from his family and a gentler life in 1896, Doc

has been thrown into a future he couldn't have imagined.

Dr. Mildred Wyeth: Her father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, but her fate is

not much lighter. Restored from predark cryogenic suspension, she brings

twentieth-century healing skills to a nightmare.

Jak Lauren: A true child of the wastelands, reared on adversity, loss and danger,

the albino teenager is a fierce fighter and loyal friend.

Dean Cawdor: Ryan's young son by Sharona accepts the only world he knows,

and yet he is the seedling bearing the promise of tomorrow.

In a world where all was lost, they are humanity's last hope…

Chapter One

Ryan Cawdor moaned and blinked open his eye.

His head felt like someone had been using it to grind flour. He cautiously parted

his lips and swallowed, tasting the bitterness of bile. It seemed as if a gang of

muties had been using his mouth for an outhouse.

"Fireblast!" he whispered, his voice sounding high, thin and cracked.

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Axler, James - Deathlands 44 - Crucible of Time

The flash of dazzling light that had drilled through the optic nerve into the

forepart of his brain had made him close his good right eye immediately. He took

several long, slow breaths, trying to gain a measure of control over mind and

body.

All he knew was that the mat-trans jump had been a bad one. The leap from one

gateway to another was never a pleasant experience, but some jumps were worse

than others.

"Bad one," he muttered to himself.

There was only the briefest memory of starting the jump. All of them had sat

down on the floor with its pattern on steel disks, matched by the ones in the

ceiling. His back settled against the cold armaglass, with Krysty Wroth at his right

and Dean, his son, on his left. Doc Tanner, Mildred Wyeth, J.B. Dix and Jak

Lauren had ranged themselves around the hexagonal chamber.

The door had been slammed, triggering the mechanism that would whisk them

from that location to someplace else in the blighted remnants of the United States,

now known as Deathlands. They had no control over their destination.

Ryan sat still, swallowing hard to avoid throwing up. He eased open his eye again,

squinting to see how his companions had survived the jump.

The first thing he noticed was the color of the armaglass walls of the chamber.

They had been blue; now they were a deep maroon, like venous blood.

As far as Ryan could tell, everyone else was still alive and breathing. Krysty's

head was on her shoulder, mouth open, her fiery scarlet hair coiled tight at her

nape. Her long fingers were clenched tightly into the palms of her hands, and he

could make out a worm of bright blood inching across the pale skin. Her emerald

eyes were clamped shut, and a thread of saliva dangled from a corner of her lips.

"Bad one," Ryan repeated.

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Axler, James - Deathlands 44 - Crucible of Time

"Yeah, compadre, it was." The almost inaudible voice came from the far side of

the mat-trans unit, from J. B. Dix, the Armorer, as he'd been known during the

years when the two men had ridden together on the war wags of the legendary

Trader.

He struggled to sit upright, feeling in one of the deep pockets of his coat for his

spectacles. He wiped the lenses on his sleeve and perched them back on his

narrow nose, then picked his beloved fedora hat from his lap and jammed it on his

head. "Yeah, bad one, bro," he said.

"Doc looks in a sorry way."

J.B. nodded. "And the kid doesn't look like he's ready for action."

"Not 'kid,' old man." Jak's lids peeled back, revealing the ruby eyes of the true

albino. His skin, as white as new-fallen snow, was smudged with dirt across the

high cheekbones.

Jak Lauren, from West Lowellton in Louisiana, was still only sixteen years of age,

as skinny as a lath, with the wiry strength of a self-trained acrobat. His mane of

white hair hung across his shoulders, onto his leather-and-canvas camouflage

jacket. Like the other companions, he carried a blaster at his hip—a satin-finish

Colt Python, with the long, six-inch barrel. But his favorite weapons were the half-

dozen leaf-shaped throwing knives that he wore concealed about his person. Jak

was able to take the eye out of the jack of diamonds at twenty paces.

Or kill a man at three times that distance.

"Damn it all to hell, Dad. That was a bad one. Worst jump I can ever remember."

Dean Cawdor, at age eleven, was a mirror image of his father. He was the fruit of

a brief liaison Ryan had with Sharona Carson, wife of the baron of Towse.

Though Dean hadn't been long in Ryan's life, the one-eyed man loved him

fiercely.

"One of the worst, son, that's for bastard sure."

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Axler, James - Deathlands 44 - Crucible of Time

Ryan was aware that Krysty was recovering consciousness. She coughed, then

retched, putting her head in her hands.

"Gaia! That was…"

"A bad one," chorused Ryan, Jak, Dean and J.B.

Krysty managed a wan smile. "Yeah. Had a foul dream, if that's the right word for

what passes dribbling through your skull during a jump."

Ryan nodded. "I was strapped to a table of polished chrome, and men with white

robes and masks were working on me with long tubes and needles. Probing at my

arteries, sucking my blood through into a whirling machine."

"I was crawling through tunnels that were filling with warm mud," J.B. said.

Jak shook his head. The snowy mane whirling like a torrent of melt water spray.

"Can't remember. Just know was frightening. Old women in it, holding small

knives. Pecked like beaks of birds. Blood on snow like petals of roses."

"What was your dream, Krysty?" Ryan asked, holding her hand in his.

"Only recall bits, lover. I was held captive by a man who stood always in the

shadows. I could save myself if I could complete a puzzle. Just one last piece was

needed, but I couldn't find it. Didn't know what shape and size it was. So it was

totally impossible, but I had to keep on searching." She shuddered and squeezed

Ryan's hand so hard he almost cried out. "Nightmare alley, lover. That's what it

was. One of those black nightmares when you think you've actually lost your

mind somewhere during the jump. Your brain's been swirled apart."

Mildred Wyeth had recovered consciousness while Krysty was talking.

"Know what you mean," she said, coughing, pressing her hands against her brown

eyes to regain control. "My dream was about traveling back in the days of

Amtrak, when I was a little girl. Before skydark, I was wandering from platform

to platform in a huge station, trying to find the right train. Then I was in a train car

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Axler, James - Deathlands 44 - Crucible of Time

but nobody knew where it was going. Just endless and pointless. It was like

running and staying still."

She smiled at J.B. and patted him on the arm, using his help to get upright,

staggering a little.

Ryan admired her toughness, knowing that he would almost certainly puke if he

didn't stay sitting a while longer. But he already knew what a tough person

Mildred was.

She had been born way back, on December 17, 1964. Mildred was black, and a

doctor, and came from Lincoln, Nebraska. Her father, a Baptist minister, had been

burned alive less than a year after her birth by firebombing racists who hid their

cowardice beneath white hoods.

Her beaded plaits rattled and whispered as she shook her head to try to clear it.

Two weeks after her thirty-sixth birthday, she had gone into the hospital for minor

abdominal surgery that had gone badly wrong. Ironically, since cryonics was her

medical specialty, she had been frozen to save her life. Very shortly after that the

world blew apart. But she slept dreamlessly on, her body monitored by a small,

timeless nuke reactor, until she was finally woken by Ryan and the others.

She pulled J.B. to his feet, adjusting her Czech ZKR 551, a 6-shot target revolver,

in its holster. Before being frozen, Mildred had been a silver-medal winner in the

free pistol shooting at the 1996 Olympics. And she was the best shot with a

handgun that Ryan Cawdor had ever seen.

Mildred rubbed her forehead. "I know everyone says the same, but that was a

mother of a bad one." She looked down at the motionless figure of Doc Tanner,

who lay at her feet. "Old-timer looks a lot less than well," she said.

The old man lay flat on his back, gnarled hands down at his sides. His grizzled

hair was matted with sweat, and his breathing was harsh and irregular. Ryan

crawled across the chamber, seeing that Doc had been bleeding from both ears, as

well as from nose and mouth. His pale blue eyes were tight shut. It looked like he

might have had some sort of convulsion, as his massive Le Mat pistol had been

jolted loose from the holster on his hip.

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Axler, James - Deathlands 44 - Crucible of Time

"Doc. Doc?"

There was no response. Mildred moved to join Ryan. She lifted an eyelid, peering

down at Doc. "Seems to be in shock," she said. "Know how delicate the old

bastard's mind is at the best of times? Well, this isn't the best of times. Especially

after what happened in Puerto Rico."

" 'It was the worst of times and it was the best of times.' " The voice was weak, the

eyes still closed. Doc swallowed hard. "A Whale with Two Kitties, or some title.

'A far better rest I come from than was ever known.' Quoting and misquoting.

Hither and thither. Not to mention yon."

"Sounds in bad shape," Krysty said quietly. The old man struggled to a sitting

position, aided by Mildred. He wagged a forefinger at her. "Anoint thee, witch.

Thou rump-fed runyon! There's nothing wrong with my mind that a truly bad

jump won't cure." He hesitated, looking puzzled. "That is not quite what I meant

to say, I think. I mean that it was a poor jump and it has sadly addled my pate for

a few moments. Sadly addled. Badly sadly addled."

"Did you have any dreams while you were in the jump, Doc?" Ryan asked.

"I think that I did."

There was a long pause. Jak had got to his feet and was leaning against the

armaglass wall, eyes closed, sucking in deep breaths. He ran his fingers through

his long hair, bringing a semblance of order to it, then leaned down to help Dean

to his feet. "Well?" Mildred snapped. Doc put his head on one side and peered up

at her, like an inquisitive buzzard. "Well what, madam?"

"You said you had a dream during the jump, Doc. What was the dream about?"

"Ah, yes. Indeed. The dream. By the Three Kennedys, but it was passing strange!

I was visiting an elderly aunt in Boston. It seems that I was betrothed to Emily,

but not yet married. Aunt Alberta lived in a huge, rambling mansion, on Beacon

Hill, looking down toward the Common. A somewhat gloomy building, with

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Axler, James - Deathlands 44 - Crucible of Time

stained glass at every door and window."

"Is this going to take long, Doc?" Mildred asked. "I have a life to get on with."

Doc ignored her. "She had a number of cats. Dozens. Those very furry ones.

Persians, I think they are called. They moved silently through the corridors, like a

great gray wave, rippling up and down the stairs. And their eyes were green gold

in hue, and they always seemed to be watching me. No matter where I went or

what I did."

Ryan coughed. "Mebbe you could finish this story later, Doc, when we settle for

the night. Sounds like it's going to go on for a while."

Doc shook his head. Mopping at his smeared vest with the blue swallow's-eye

kerchief that he always carried with him. "No, my dear Ryan. I am nearly done."

"Really?" J.B. said, disbelievingly.

"Oh, indeed yes. The dream was that I found myself on the upper landing, which

was where the maids' quarters had once been. It was thick with dust, and slates

were gone from the roof, showing the leaden sky. Birds had nested up there, and

the floor was covered in feathers and the brittle bones of dead pigeons. I stood at

the end wall, turned and saw that my way back to the stairs was blocked by this

silent army of cats, gazing at me with an infinite menace."

He closed his eyes and sat quiet. After a few moments of stillness, Krysty nudged

him with the silvered toe of her boot. "And?" she prompted. "What happened

then?"

"I woke up, dear lady. That was what was so strange about the dream. It just

stopped dead like a brougham breaking an axle and losing its rear wheels. I may

never recover from Jamaisvous's damnable manipulations, and I believe I was

fortunate to avoid the depths of an all-consuming nightmare."

"That's it, Doc?" Dean asked. "It just stops? That's not much of a dream."

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Axler,James-Deathlands44-CrucibleofTime"Quake!Everybodyoutside!"Jakwasfirsttoreachthedoor,hesitatingwithhisfingersgrippingth\ehandle.J.B.heldMildred'shandastheyweavedacrosstheheavingfloor,lookin\glikeacoupleofdrunkstryingtomakeadecorousexitfromafrontiergaudy."Door'sjammed,"theteenageryelled.Therewas...

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