To THE LAND OF THE ELECTRIC ANGEL: Hugo and Nebula Award Finalist Author (The Frontiers Saga) (13 page)

Nineteen long hard months after Voss and Blake had made their deal, the tomb was finished. A dual fusion plant – heavily shielded against detection – was located in the base of the Inner Chamber and was primarily there to provide power to the cell-conversion and cryogenic equipment. Its second purpose, for almost ninety years in the future, was to power the entire complex after the proper time had elapsed.

Voss looked over his tomb with a curious expression, breathing shallowly. Behind him were Warford and Vogel, the two husky young toughs, wary-eyed and quiet.

Blake Mason watched Rio's face, but she seemed resigned and, almost serene.
No hope there,
he told himself,
she won't stay behind.

With a little start of surprise, he realized that the plan he had been working on, the one he had been thinking of as "the alternate plan," was now the only solution for him. He hadn't planned to use it, and the time he had given to it had been sketchy, stolen from other work. It was a daring and dangerous plan that he had hoped he would never have to use.
Surely she will see that our love cannot end like this?
he had told himself time and again.

But Rio was stepping into the vault. He had only minutes.

He walked out briskly and took a thick document lettercase from the aircar, opened it, signed two papers and thumb-printed them, sealed the packet, and applied the stamps. It was addressed to Elaine. He tossed it onto the seat and walked back into the tomb.

Now that the decision was made, Blake felt a kind of heady exhilaration. He also had butterflies in his stomach.

Granville Franklin was roaming about with a bemused expression on his face, looking over the rich appointments, the stack of gold bars, the weapons cabinets, the stasis cylinders with the medical kits, and the various boxes and tubs and jars. He was a sturdy-looking man in his late forties, with brown hair, a ruddy complexion, and penetrating dark-brown eyes.

Sitting nearby – casually eyeing the furnishings of the tomb and being unobtrusive in their appraisals of the others – were Doreen, one of the full-figured girls from Casa Emperador; and one who was new to Blake,
a
stunning blond beauty named Flower. Blake had spoken earlier to Doreen as they walked in from the hell-car, asking the vivacious young redhead why she was taking the dangerous cryogenic voyage into time.

"What chance? I'm being taken care of, my sister and her two rugrats are taken care of, so why not? Oh, you think it might not work?" She shrugged. "I believe Jean-Michel. He's going, too, isn't he? And it is kind of exciting, isn't it? I'll be able to visit my sister's grandchildren next week. I mean, it will seem like, you know, a sort of overnight sleep. Jean-Michel has set up a little trust to keep a message center going for all of us, for our friends and family to check in, so that we can find them, you know, later."

Blake had shrugged the conversation off. It was
her
life,
her
future. Moreover, it was only Rio he was really concerned about.

Voss spoke now. "I think we're ready," he said. He walked back outside to speak to Ken Bangsund, who was to take care of the final sealing of the tomb, under Blake's direction. When the financier came back
in,
he just said, "Come on," and everyone began to follow him through the Richter space lock into the Inner Chamber.

Sabra Wood and George Engelson were inside, giving the equipment a final check and adjustment. They were professionally calm.

Voss, casually cheerful, chided them. "It must frustrate you, doctor, not to know whether all this will work or not."

"It
will
work," Dr. Wood said firmly, "or I wouldn't be letting you go ahead."

Voss smiled and raised his hand, gesturing each one to his own sarcophagus.

They were all wearing plain, simple tunics made of a special inert material that would not affect their skin – the same material used in the pads and enclosures of the sarcophagi. Voss climbed in first, but did not immediately lie down. He watched each one get into his or her so-called coffin, and then he lay back.

Wood and Engelson began attaching the sensors to his heart and head. He was prepared before the others, but stopped them from closing the lid. "Wait!" he said.

He wants to be certain they are going with him,
Blake thought.

The girls were next – first Doreen, then Rio, then Flower.

With a bleak heart, Blake watched Rio get into her sarcophagus. She looked over at him, smiled rather wanly, and lay down, out of sight.

1 can't let them know,
he thought, and kept his face in that bleak, somber expression he had worn all day.

Blake walked over to Voss and looked down into the vault. The lean, saturnine face was already softening with the drugs that were putting him to sleep.

Dr. Wood gestured him away, and Blake turned to look at Warford. The burly bodyguard was stoically awaiting his turn. He looked at Blake with flat, expressionless eyes as Blake approached. "You have the time," Blake said. He gestured back toward Voss. "He's just gone under, but he wanted you to be certain that they don't dynamite until after the doctors leave."

"The men know that."

Blake shrugged. "Well, Jean-Michel wanted you to double-check. You have time."

Warford's face never changed. He just grunted and turned to walk out of the crypt. Blake quickly looked toward the doctors, but they had not noticed. He went outside after Warford.

He saw the bodyguard speak to the construction boss, Bangsund, then start back. Blake's hand closed on the tiny, one-shot dart gun in his pocket. But Warford stopped, changed direction, and went to the temporary toilet and closed the door.

Blake immediately selected one of the alternatives he had devised, and walked quickly over to Bangsund.

"There's been a change," he said. At Bangsund's expression he smiled a tight, confidential smile. "Not really. Just an option that Mr. Voss is exercising, something he has been thinking about." Before the construction boss could ask questions, Blake continued: "Warlord isn't going.
I
am."

Bangsund's thick eyebrows shot up, but Blake hurried on.

"Just between us, Warlord failed a last-minute test and ... well, Jean-Michel doesn't trust anyone who isn't one-hundred-percent ready and eager." Blake looked around conspiratorially. "He thinks maybe – just maybe, mind you – that Warlord is in the pay of the Raeburn bunch. Voss wants you to ... detain Warlord. I think you can appreciate that the boss wants only the most trusted and loyal people with him."

"Aye," Bangsund said, looking alert. Without another question he gestured toward two of his strongest-looking men.

"Good," Blake said. "I'm certain Jean-Michel will appreciate your discretion in this matter just as he has appreciated your discretion in the entire construction job."

"I'm not paid to gossip," Bangsund said stoutly.

"Right." Blake started back, then stopped to say, "Remember, let the medical team get a good distance away before you blow." He added a bit of mystery by saying, "Double-check your own men. You can never tell about that Raeburn bunch. They've fouled up things before."

Bangsund looked faintly offended, but then the toilet door opened and Warlord came out. Bangsund and his men started toward Warlord as Blake hurried back into the chamber.

He paused outside the inner lock and looked in. Voss's lid was closed and sealed, as was everyone's but Vogel's and Warlord's empty cases. He heard Vogel's voice, sleepily asking, "But what about Johnny?"

"He'll be here in a moment and we'll get him fixed up," Engelson said smoothly. "Don't you worry."

In a moment the lid clicked shut and Sabra Wood said, "Why did he have to go out? Now we'll have to re-sanitize him
and–"

She looked up, expecting to see Warford, but saw the environmentalist-designer. She looked past him, saw no one else, and looked hard at Blake.

Blake tried to look confident. To Engelson's surprised look he said, "Change of plan."

Engelson looked past him, then back to his face. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing now." He spoke briskly and with assurance. "Security matter that Jean-Michel entrusted to me. He was suspicious of Warford for some time, and he betrayed himself outside."

Blake started taking off his clothes as the two doctors exchanged looks. He didn't give them much chance to think. He walked purposefully to the portable sanitizer and removed the rest of his clothing.

"Let's go! Sorry you have to sanitize someone else, but it couldn't be helped. But it's getting dark outside
and
they want as much light
as
possible when they blow the mountain."

Dr. Wood snapped on the machine as Blake stepped into it. There was a scale in the base.

"There's a difference in body weight," Engelson muttered. "We'll have to adjust for that.” He stepped to the portable terminal link and did some computations, then went to the base of Warford's sarcophagus and made the adjustments that would make it Blake's.

Dr. Wood finished a run of her instruments over his body, then tossed him a tunic of inert fabric. "It's
your
funeral," she said grimly. "Maybe literally."

Tugging the garment on, Blake climbed into the big white coffin and lay down. Wood and Engelson exchanged looks, shrugged, and began attaching sensors to his body. He grimaced as they fitted tubes to his penis and anus. "All waste matter will be evacuated this way, but certain nutrients will be dripped in through this one here," Engelson said.

"He really hasn't been properly prepared," Dr. Wood complained.

"There isn't time. I'll take my chances," Blake said. He was acting braver than he felt.

Engelson gave him an injection.

Sleep came slowly. The sight of the open lid, the ceiling, the busy doctors slowly blurred. There was only a slight moment of panic as he saw Engelson reach for the lid. The doctor paused.

"Good-bye," he said.

Blake found he could not reply, so he closed his eyes. He heard, dimly and far away, the lid click shut. There was suddenly complete silence and complete darkness, then he heard his heart beating.

Rio...

His mind drifted – fragmented images skipping and slipping through his awareness, distorted and fractured thoughts rising and falling. He was floating on a sea of light, with a sky of darkness over him, and pain pricks of stars forming and dissolving ... Then there was more pain, and then still more, the level rising until Blake wanted to scream: his whole body was filled with needles, lancing into his bones, tearing at his flesh with tiny swords ...
it wasn't suppose to hurt,
Blake thought.

* * * *

Suddenly the sky ripped open, splitting down the center and flooding flame into his eyes. He screamed, and pain seared his throat.
Fire!
His eyes seemed stuck together, but the pain in them was driving into his brain. He tried to move his hand but found he couldn't. He moaned and then he heard some noises.

Someone was speaking to him. Harsh, loud words were driving nails into his ears, screaming at him in his tomb of silence.

"You son of a bitch!"
Voss said.

Blake opened his eyes.

Voss stood looking down at him. He was thinner, but looking good.

Suddenly Rio looked over the edge of the sarcophagus and Blake thought her hair was very long and unusually unkempt. "Welcome to the future," she said.

Blake sat weakly on the floor by the sarcophagus, leaning back against its sleek side. Voss and Rio had helped him from the cryogenic vault, but the financier had walked away almost at once. Rio was now across the room attending to Doreen, who looked much thinner. The chamber looked about the same, yet somehow different, but Blake could not pin what the difference was.

Blake turned when Vogel entered, and felt a chill as the tough-looking mercenary looked down at him.

"You suckered Warford." It was a statement, not a question.

The bodyguard knelt on one knee and put a hand on Blake's shoulder. Although the pressure was not much, the pain streaked out from his tortured flesh and Blake could not suppress a startled gasp.

"I'll get you for that," Vogel said softly. "The boss says no for now, I’ll              get you."

The pain passed and Blake's eyes cleared. He looked into Vogel's dark eyes and found implacable hatred. It startled and confused him. He had never done anything to Vogel, and Warlord was long gone in the irretrievable past. Then he saw the hatred as something basic to the man: he
hated.
That was what he did best. He hated everything, and perhaps only Warford had been close to him. In the dirty business of guarding bodies, some men had learned the need for trusting a partner. Warlord had been that partner and Blake Mason had taken a part of Vogel away.

Vogel let Blake see the hatred in his eyes, then he rose without a word and left the Inner Chamber.

Blake felt exhausted, not only from the effects of cryogenic time travel but from the intensity of Vogel's hatred. He sighed deeply and watched Rio feed some broth to a very weak Doreen. He felt the first stirrings of hunger himself and was grateful when Rio brought him a bowl and helped him eat.

He felt strength returning, and at last tried to speak. His voice was a croak and his throat hurt, but he managed to get his question out. "Did everyone make it all right?"

Rio shook her head. "Not Flower. I don't know what went wrong, whether it was the equipment or the conditioning or what. We ... we opened the crypt and found her rotting."

Blake tried to speak again, but Rio stopped him with a spoonful of soup. "Don't. Everyone else made it – except, of course, Warford." Her mouth formed a smile, but she did not comment any further on that matter. "Granville is outside. Now that we're all awake, Jean-Michel wants to leave." She hesitated. "He's very angry at your coming. He needs Vogel, and Vogel needs backup. I think Vogel and Warford were very close. No, don't try and talk."

Rio put down the bowl and got up. "Come on, I think you can go into the outer chamber now. You'll be more comfortable there."

Blake let her help him up, swaying dizzily as he rose and grasping the edge of the cryogenic vault to steady himself. Next to his sarcophagus was a closed one, and he shuddered.

Rio helped Blake pass through the lock and into the sumptuous outer chamber, and as they did so Blake recognized what had disturbed him: the Inner Chamber had been a sterile place, in what only seemed like one sleep ago. Now it was finished, its mission had been completed. The room was dead.

Blake sank into a luxurious but musty Life-style chair and it crossed his mind to wonder what sort of furniture was in style now. He smiled faintly, for he had unconsciously shifted his
now
almost a hundred years ahead in time.

After a time, Rio helped Doreen into the room, and she lay weakly on a nearby couch. Rio opened a cabinet and brought out a sealed metal chest. She put it down, and Blake could see Doreen's name in faded letters on a strip of tape fastened to the lid. Rio broke the seal, opened it, took out a hypodermic gun, and shot the contents into Doreen's arm with a muffled hiss. Rio also gave her some pills, and a tube of sterile water to wash them down.

Blake watched dully, still weakened by his ordeal. As Rio reached into the cabinet for a second metal chest, he croaked, coughed, then asked, "How long has it been?"

Rio smiled. "I thought the first words were always `Where am I?' "

"I know
where
I
am,"
Blake said in a creaky voice, "but not
when."

Rio sat down next to him, opened the small chest, and took out the hypogun. "You are one hundred and seven years, eight months, and two days older." She put the hypogun to his arm, and he felt the chill of the spray as it hissed through his skin. "I woke up first. It took me hours to get out of the damned coffin," she said as she put away the hypodermic. "I unsealed the lock and crawled out here to get these chests. Engelson put them out here to give us a little time to adjust. Then I waited three
weeks
before Granville thawed out. For a while there I thought I would be the only one."

Blake touched her arm. Awakening more than one hundred years into an unknown future was bad enough, but alone...

"Jean-Michel awoke fourteen days later, and Vogel about a week or so after that. Then they blasted the entrance open and looked around outside and sort of got things ready. Granville read the hardcopy on Flower and ... we opened her ... her coffin. That was two days ago. Then today the monitors flipped green and we uncorked both you and Doreen. Granny says a seven-or eight-week span when you're over a hundred years is practically zero perfect, even if the estimate for all of us was off nineteen, almost twenty, years."

"Are ... are we all going to ... to make it?"

Rio smiled. "Sure. We'll all live four hundred years at least. Our youth and middle age will be indefinitely prolonged, maybe in excess of three hundred years, three fifty." She smiled wanly. "We'll have fifty
years
of old age, and maybe a couple of decades of senility, but what's the difference? There are black pills and high dives and laser pistols."

"You sound gloomy," Blake said. He felt his strength returning, and when he glanced at Doreen he saw the color back in her cheeks. She was struggling to sit up.

Rio stood up. "Vogel hates you. He says he is going to kill you. Voss hates you, too, but he hasn't said anything."

Blake nodded. "I know. But I couldn't help it. I couldn't lose you." He looked up at her and was pleased with her smile.

"It was flattering," she said. "But dangerous."

Blake sighed wearily. "I know. I didn't think much about what I did, I just did it. It's not like I killed Warford or anything. I don't feel guilty about that. I could have ended up like Flower. The cryogenic program was calculated for Warford's weight and metabolism, not for mine. Engelson's alterations could have been too hasty.”

Rio touched his shoulder. "You look a lot better now. Want to come look at the outside?"

Blake nodded and rose carefully to his feet.

"Come on, Doreen," Rio said. "What about you?"

Doreen made a croaking sound and grasped her throat and made a face, but she got to her feet and followed Rio and Blake as they crossed into and through the big, luxurious outer chamber and passed through the open lock.

The mountains were the same. It was spring, and fleecy white clouds were heading southeast with perceptible movement. There were flowers around the edges of the small clearing. The hidden explosive packages triggered by Voss and Vogel had blown away the tumble of earth and rock that had covered the tomb entrance. The raw earth and split rock was ugly on the green grass of the hillside, but the entrance was clear. One large rock had been lasered into pieces and shoved aside.

Blake noticed a pine tree quite close to the entrance, shading the lockport, but he remembered no tree nearby when they had gone in – yesterday.

He looked out over the forest below and thought there must be differences, but he could detect none. Trees must have grown into maturity, died, were burnt by fire or blasted by lightning. In other areas they would have been logged off and new growth planted, but here was still virginal land.

Blake looked to the right, where Vogel and Jean-Michel were assembling the aircar. It was an eight-passenger Aeroford with an oversized fusion engine, the very latest design.
One hundred years ago,
Blake thought.

Voss turned to Rio after
a
glance at Blake and at Doreen, who had sat down upon a rock. "We can take off tomorrow. I think everyone will be in shape by then."

Rio nodded and asked, "Where's Granville?"

Voss pointed down the mountainside. "He went to look for some detectors be planted. There he is now!"

Blake looked and saw the tiny figure come out of the trees and start up the slope. The trees were just beginning to thin here at the tomb site and the view over the mountains was gorgeous.

"It feels good to be alive," Doreen said with a raspy voice, and Blake turned to her.

"Yes, it does. Can I do anything for you?"

Doreen smiled weakly. "No, I'll be all right." She indicated the aircar with a tilt of her head. "That thing going to be all right after a century of sitting like
a
lump?"

Blake blinked.
There is something about the phrase "a century" that is more staggering than "one hundred years."
He smiled at himself and told Doreen, "Probably. It was double-sealed and first-grade workmanship."

Doreen squinted at the machine. "I don't know. It could have been sabotaged. Not everyone is ... uh, was ... a fan of Jean-Michel Voss, you know."

Blake was a little surprised but made no comment. He patted Doreen's knee, then looked down at himself. He plucked at the thin woven plastic garment. "Care to slip into something more comfortable?" he asked.

Doreen smiled and took his hand to rise. "Anything I have is now a costume, not clothes. But lead on."

Doreen and Blake re-entered the tomb. Blake paused for a second at the lip of the lock and looked back. Vogel was looking after them with an expressionless face. Blake shivered.

Doreen and Blake took showers in adjoining sonic stalls, but the sight of her nude body did nothing for him. It crossed his mind that after a hundred years he should be quite eager.
Maybe my body has ignored the signals for so long that nothing is functioning anymore.
That gave him a moment of pause.
Three or four hundred years of life is an exciting prospect, but not if there will be no sex, not if I've somehow become impotent!

They dried off and found garments in a Vuitton cabinet. Warford's clothes fitted Blake moderately well, though he found the bodyguard's taste somewhat somber.

Doreen chose what was, for her, almost chaste coverings even though the garment exposed much of her ample bosom. She was combing out her hair before a mirror when Rio approached them.

"You look good, both of you. Come and eat. Granville is back and interpreting the detector records."

Doreen and Blake walked around the wall of the Inner Chamber to the dining area, where Rio had laid out an attractive meal from hermetically sealed dried foods.

Granville was there, eating with one hand as his other shuffled rectangles of hardcopy. He looked up and smiled at Blake. "Welcome to Tomorrowland, Mr. Mason." He waved a fistful of thin plastic cards. "No great rise in radiation. About, ur, forty-nine years after we hibernated there was a blip, probably just one bomb somewhere. But for the rest of the time the level has been moderate. Slight rise over norm – norm for our time, that is. So ... no atomic wars, no mutations, no big trouble." He looked at Jean-Michel and Vogel as they sat down. "I checked, and it still holds. No radiation rise of any importance. Civilization is probably still out there."

"We saw a contrail," Vogel said. "Going north."

"Polar route," Granville said, nodding. "Good! Good!"

"We leave at dawn tomorrow," Voss said. He looked around the table. "All of us."

Blake raised a fork of something dark and grainy to his mouth and Rio caught his eye. She was bent over a second food package, turned away from the group, but Blake could see her biting her lower lip.

Later, Blake lay on a
couch trying to sleep. The lights in the outer chamber were turned low. He could hear Vogel's snore, Voss's heavy breathing, and Granville's soft, sighing wheezes. He couldn't understand how they could sleep.
They have traveled in time! A one-way trip, sure, but they're in the future!

Blake wondered what had happened to the world in the nearly eleven decades they had been sleeping like Barbarossas in a mountain. Man didn't seem to have killed himself off in a war.
But he just may have starved to death,
Blake thought.
And my business, my unfinished projects ... what happened to them?

Blake hoped his letter had been posted. A trust should have been established. Elaine, Sebastian, and Aaron had been given the business. Blake had no close relatives, or none he liked, and his parents were dead.
There should be money in a trust, maybe quite a bit, if we can get to Los Angeles...

He stared at the dimly lit ceiling and his thoughts were jagged and chaotic.
Maybe I shouldn't have come ... No! I had to. Don't have any second thoughts now! For one thing, it's too late.