The Company of the Dead (62 page)

Kennedy said, “You’ve come this far. Your answer’s almost in sight.”

Malcolm shook her head and murmured, “It had better be good, Joseph.”

Her path wandered slightly away from them now, an unconscious expression of the gulf that widened and narrowed between her and Kennedy with each new revelation and mystery.

Fresh sounds reached them: the clang of a hammer ringing somewhere against rock, the stutter of an engine struggling to come to life. Voices chanting an unknown hymn, the words manifesting seemingly out of the desert sand itself.

The singers, a group of men in bright shirts of blue, appeared out of the night. They stood to either side of the trail, which widened into the dry bed of a vanished lake. They beamed smiles at Kennedy, and nodded greetings to the rest of the party without missing a note.

A man stepped out from their ranks. He was slender by comparison with the indians. A mop of thick, curly black hair hung over his brow. He surveyed the party with an easy smile and said, “Welcome back, Major.” Spying Lightholler, he extended a hand. “You must be the good captain.”

Lightholler met the stranger’s grip evenly.

“Folks around here call me Doc.”

Seeing Malcolm, he made what amounted to a clumsy bow. He greeted Morgan with a wave.

So this is the much vaunted Doc, the medico turned physicist, recruited by Kennedy to fix his time machine.
Either that or the elaborate charade was drawing to a close, Lightholler mused. Standing amongst the ghost dancers and the rest of Kennedy’s motley band, Lightholler was willing to hedge his bets. At this moment in time, he’d give the arrival of the men in white coats or the blessed advent of the time machine itself even odds.

His wounded arm throbbed beneath his tightened bandages to remind him that there was more to misery than just plain old hunger and exhaustion.

The sands stretched far and wide. He made out the low shapes of buildings in the distance, the mountains beyond; everything was a sundry shade of red. He had yet to see the goddamned rock that gave this goddamned wasteland its name. He looked across at the prisoners and felt a moment’s kinship that was swiftly dispelled by the expressions of bitter hatred stamped upon their faces.

I’m allowed this
, Lightholler thought.
I’m allowed my doubts. Stranger in a strange land, welcome to Red Rock.

They were given warm clothing, and a medic tended to Lightholler’s arm. He offered to examine Malcolm’s face but she waved him away.

Once she had scrubbed off the filthy blend of camouflage and grime, there wasn’t much left to treat. She ran a finger gingerly along the line of her wound. It might scar, but then again it might not.

Joseph told them he had to confine the other agents, and to debrief a squad of ghost dancers who’d skirmished with a Japanese patrol on the western outskirts of the base. He noted that forwards elements of a mechanised division had been sighted not fifteen miles away, their tanks and trucks disabled by the blast, bogged down in the sandstorm’s wake.

He said he had to talk to Doc.

He left them seated around an oil heater in one of the prefabs that ringed the camp grounds.

She’d never seen him so shaken. Not even at Morning Star.

Morgan and Lightholler seemed untroubled by—or beyond reacting to—Joseph’s words. Lightholler was assembling a cigarette from the loose tobacco leaves in a spent packet, rolling it carefully. He licked the edge to secure it and lit up. He drew back and passed it across to Morgan.

There were no windows. The smoke, thin and fetid, curled its way towards a narrow outlet in the walls.

A ghost dancer, leaning against a wall by the entrance, followed their movements impassively. He appeared to reserve the lion’s share of his attention for her. Perhaps she was under guard; perhaps he thought she was Big Chief Joseph’s squaw. It really didn’t matter.

Lightholler broke the silence. “What are we waiting for?”

Morgan shook his head dolefully. “Got a bad feeling that the blast threw a spanner in the works.”

She’d noticed that the base was poorly lit and had ascribed it to secrecy. “Trouble in paradise?” she ventured.

Morgan’s look was scornful. Lightholler just rolled his eyes.

“It’s not too late to turn back,” she said.

Their looks turned incredulous. Morgan said, “Lady, you haven’t got a clue.”

“Then why don’t you enlighten me.” Her tone was acid.

The historian appeared oddly uncomfortable. Lightholler’s look was roguish.
Boys caught out of their depth.
Morgan reached for the makeshift cigarette and smoked it to the stub. He coughed.

“Fine,” she said.

She got to her feet and began to pace the room. There were ten bunk beds, their mattresses stacked at intervals between them along the walls. A row of lockers covered the far wall. There were no posters or pictures to remind anyone of anywhere else. There was a rustic heater in the centre of the room; a doorway opened into a bathroom and shower cubicle.

“This is where the rotating trainees would stay,” Morgan said after a while, his tone placatory.

“Rotating from where?” she said shortly. “Alpha? Bravo? The Moon?”

Lightholler chuckled.

“We never knew where we were,” the ghost dancer said, his voice low and surprisingly reverent.

They all looked across at him.

“We knew in our hearts, of course. But up here...” He tapped his temple and shrugged.

“So where
are
we?” she probed gently.

Morgan opened his mouth to speak but something stopped him. Lightholler stared with unconcealed interest.

“This is the
other
place.” The indian’s smile was enigmatic. He wasn’t being facetious. His look suggested that his answer was complete.

“What happens here?” She cast a swift challenging look at her companions. They held their silence.

If the indian was surprised by her ignorance he kept it well hidden. “Change,” he said. He nodded sagely but offered nothing more.

Lightholler’s face registered total surprise. “They know?” he blurted to

Morgan in disbelief. “All of them?”

“They don’t know,” Morgan replied wearily. He looked over to the indian. “They believe. It’s an entirely different thing.”

“I don’t get it.”

“How else are you going to keep a secret this big?”

The handle turning in the door gave her a sudden start. Joseph stood at the entrance.

“Let’s go,” he said grimly. “There’s something I want to show you.”

“It’s about time,” Lightholler said.

They rose to their feet.

They headed towards an isolated structure that stood at a distance from the shadows of the main compound. The stars above twinkled faintly through the russet penumbra of falling sand. It fell softly, insidious, announcing itself at the palm’s crease, the lip’s crust, the eyelid’s edge.
This
, Morgan thought,
is what comes of sundering eternal bonds
.
The inexorable meets the unyielding and actuality is found wanting.

He peered ahead. Kennedy and Malcolm had almost reached the building’s entrance. They walked in close conversation. Was he her Virgil or she his Beatrice? Morgan’s own guide pricked his thoughts with a sharp reprimand.
Save that shit for later, pal
.

A torch sputtered nearby; a sentry watching the hazy perimeter. Other ghost dancers were scattered near and far across the grounds. He felt every eye inspecting their staggered march.

Doc’s oasis glimmered feebly where a guard smoked a cigarette under the pale glow of his lantern. The encrusted water was a still membrane of red sand; the palms, leaning at odd angles, a gateway fallen to ruin.

“Nice set-up you have here,” Lightholler remarked offhandedly.

Morgan replied, “We run a kids’ camp here each summer.”

Lightholler sniggered. It was another example of the churlish attitude he’d displayed at the Lone Star, but there was a twist; some fresh warp in his weave that wasn’t anger and wasn’t fear but something altogether less wholesome. When planning his recruitment, they’d envisioned an ally sworn to their task. Now Morgan couldn’t picture the man beside him commanding an ocean liner, much less the fate of the world.

They were only a few feet away from the entrance now.

Lightholler, perhaps reading something in Morgan’s expression, said, “Your trail of breadcrumbs ... back on my ship. You were tossing them from the stern.”

Faced with the memory, Morgan reddened.

Lightholler laughed with surprising warmth. “I’d give anything to retrace those steps.”

“That’s why we’re here, Captain.”

Kennedy and Malcolm stood at the entrance. He held a ghost dancer’s torch, unlit, before him. Her silhouette traced the lines that nature had generously sculpted there, while hiding the scars of recent travails. Confederate Gothic. She offered Morgan a look that bordered on apologetic. She’d never know what those days of captivity had done to him.

His answering smile was a worn mask. “I guess it’s time to go down to the dragon’s lair.”

Kennedy gave the darkened base a final sweep. Torches dotted the terrain. The rock formation that gave its name to the installation seemed a reprimand to the heavens.

Lightholler cocked an ear at a strange sound and, tracing it to his feet, examined the sparkling sheets of molten sand. “Well, how do you like that?” He cast a sceptical eye over the small building but made no further comment.

Shafts had been excavated and caverns hollowed out and the adobe had been finally replaced by this unobtrusive lean-to, but this was where Hardas, Morgan, Shine and Kennedy had listened to Doc’s lessons. Here they’d puzzled out the workings of the time machine, and journeyed forwards and witnessed the fruits of their labour: sand-picked bones floating on a radioactive tide. It may have been Patricia’s unforeseen presence, or a phenomenon born of the scarlet glow—faint now in the western skies—but Kennedy was struck by how much the view recalled his vision from the carapace. Not so much the sights, but the attendant feeling of perfect despair.

I’m not going to make it.

He hid the dread behind the rampart of his face.

“We’ll skip the fanfare,” he said, and knocked sharply on the door.

It swung open on sturdy hinges to reveal the soot-grimed features of Hayes, a ghost dancer, his sweat-stained blue shirt open to the navel. Wisps of smoke escaped from behind him and wafted into the night air. He gave Kennedy’s entourage the once-over and stepped aside. They descended the stairs. Doc may have forewarned him, but hearing was one thing and seeing another. The antechamber was filled with fumes. Torches tilted at odd angles, hung from improvised receptacles on the chamber’s walls. A single lantern hung suspended above the elevator. Two technicians studied a tangle of cables by the elevator doors as they attempted to wire the system to a battery array.

“I’ve been using the service duct,” Hayes said.

Avoiding their eyes, Kennedy directed his companions to a circular iron door near the room’s hub. From without, the structure might have passed for a derelict shack, tacked on to the main installation as an afterthought. Within, however, concrete slab walls curved inwards to an arced dome whose apex fused with the central elevator shaft. The walls themselves were scored with an incongruous blend of computer monitors and indian glyphs. The monitor readouts were blank or sizzled white-grey in silence. The ancient symbols, thrown into relief by the torchlight, were an arcane prelude to the possibilities that dwelt below.

Kennedy approached the duct. The technicians stole furtive glances, their awed faces cowed by Hayes’ stern reproach. The indian helped him raise the thick casing of the service door. Tendrils of black smoke curled around the raised edges and spewed out in a noxious cloud as the door clanged open.

“We’re working on the ventilation,” Hayes offered contritely.

Kennedy nodded in faint acknowledgment. The duct was lit by lanterns, fixed at regular intervals along the ladder’s rungs. “Will you be okay getting down?” he asked Morgan.

“Should be fine.” The historian’s face was bright with anticipation, in stark contrast to the others who eyed the shaft dubiously.

Lightholler spoke up. “After you,” he said, and bowed to Kennedy with mock deference.

“Let them know we’re coming down,” Kennedy called across to Hayes.

Hayes picked up a hammer and tapped a lead pipe that accompanied the duct, giving the signal. Kennedy grasped the top rung and lowered himself into the opening. He’d negotiated twenty feet before glancing up to check the others’ progress. Little light made its way down the shaft. Below, a weak red glow flickered. He had to squint against the rising vapours.

Patricia was a few feet above him. He continued the descent. The rungs chimed with their steps, the duct echoed their ragged breaths, and indistinct murmurs floated up from below. The encouraging thrum of the auxiliary generator rose steadily. He dropped the last few feet to the metal floor below.

A red lantern swung by the ladder on the unnatural draughts that swept the chamber. An elaborate blanket flapped over the entrance that led to the cavern beyond. A map of the night skies had been worked into the weaving. Its filigree of cerulean and emerald luminaries rippled portentously.

He reached out a hand to support Patricia’s waist and helped her gain the ground. He watched, slightly bemused, as she fussed with the oversized uniform she’d been given earlier.

“I need a shower,” she said. Her tone was almost an accusation.

“You look fine.”

Lightholler dropped to the ground between them. He landed lightly and began making a rapid survey of the room. Kennedy followed his eyes as they scanned across the walls. There were fewer markings here. The glyphs, where present, were subtle arrangements. Rather than the miscellany of workmanship found above, they clearly demonstrated the craft of a single hand: Tecumseh’s guidelines for that other world.

Carve the dream here; forge the reality there.