"But these parallel streams? Doesn't that mean you can't return to that world ever again?"

Tanner sniffed. "It's a theory, that's all. It may be right. Until we test it, we shall never know. Traveling with you gives me that tender shoot of hope. One day, in the right gateway, it might..."

His voice faded away once more.

Later that evening, somewhere between Band Cin Green, Doc came to Ryan, who was lying on his bed alone.

"Will you tell the others, Mr. Cawdor?"

"About where you come from?"

"Yes."

"You mind if'n I do?"

The old man smiled weakly. "Tell you the honest truth, Ryan, and nothing but the truth, I'm relieved it's all out in the open. Load off my mind."

He reached out and shook Ryan firmly by the hand, then went to rejoin Lori.

Chapter Eighteen

"Fucking liar!"

"It's true."

"You're a fucking liar, Ryan Cawdor."

"It's true, Finn."

"You too, Krysty. Couple of fucking liars. You think I'm still wet behind the balls, huh?"

"I said he wouldn't believe it," Krysty sighed.

Ryan tried one last time. "Doc Tanner is over two hundred years old."

"And I'm a swampy's foreskin. Come on, friend. Just forget it, will you?"

They had better luck with J.B.

"Over two hundred years old?"

"That's right, J.B., that's right."

The Armorer took off his glasses and polished them on the sleeve of his overalls, then squinted up at the ceiling lights through the gleaming lens. "Trawled and then sent on forward to our time? That's what you're trying to tell me, Ryan?"

As he spoke, one of the strip lights flickered and went out. Since they'd been in Wizard Island, they'd noticed how much of the technology seemed on the point of failing, or had simply failed. Ryan guessed it was because the scientists, much diminished in numbers, probably lacked the time to deal with such mundane matters. They were too deeply embroiled in Project Eurydice, whatever that was.

"Yeah. Born over two hundred years ago."

"If he was trawled when he was only around thirty — that's what you said? — then he spent only a few years in the time before the long chill. How come he looks around seventy?"

Ryan had wondered that. Krysty had pressed for more information when they'd watched the story scrolling on the computer screen in the library.

The answer had been vague and incomplete. On the most limited data, it appears that chron-jumps can result in speeding or slowing of metabolism, resulting in aging either faster or slower than usual. This was observed in the specimen, Tanner.

J.B nodded as Ryan tried to explain this to him. "So he's older than the real body time, but a damned sight younger than true elapsed time. I get it. And you figure he might know how to use some gateways for chron as well as mat-trans? Be good."

They couldn't tell Jak about Doc's age until the next morning. The old man told Lori himself. Ryan asked him how it went.

"The child is a caution, Ryan. She smiled as though I was joshing her. Kissed me on the cheek and said it didn't matter to her if I was one million years old. She is such a sweet dove."

They had no further visits from Dr. Tardy or any of the other scientists. Finn and J.B. had failed to reach the main elevators and the sole exit from the complex, but the Armorer figured it could be done.

"Mean spilling a lot of blood. If'n we can get past a half-dozen sec men, then we can get at where they're keeping our clothes and blasters. Once we did that, we could clean out the whole place."

Finnegan had managed to persuade one of the scientists to take him to where the sec men exercised and practiced shooting their stubby blasters.

"Down another level. Lots of blaster stores. Locked tight. I see them shooting at comp targets. Nearly every fucking time they put them dials up to twenty, the fuckers misfired. I reckon it... a blind mutie could do better 'gainst them than those blasters. Odds must be hundred to one they won't work."

"Sounds like good odds," Ryan said.

After they'd plowed their way through the stodge that served as food in the Wizard Island Complex for Scientific Advancement, Ryan and Krysty retired to their section of the dormitory. With something of a struggle, they'd managed to move one of the single beds off its mounting, snapping the rusting screws and pushing it alongside Ryan's bed to make it possible for them to sleep together.

Though it wasn't just sleep that was on Ryan's mind at the moment.

He lay pressed tightly against her, his erection poking into the warmth of her buttocks, his arms enfolding her. Pushing back against him, Krysty reached around to caress his penis, squeezing her fingers hard around the shaft and making him moan softly.

"That's nice, lover," she whispered.

The lights had failed in his section of the big dormitory. Since the vid cameras weren't infrascanners, he was fairly confident their lovemaking wasn't being witnessed and recorded.

His right hand cupped her breast, the nipple wriggling into hardness against his palm. Ryan nibbled at the back of Krysty's neck, nipping with his front teeth. The girl drew in a slow breath, pushing harder against him. Her sentient red hair shifted against Ryan's face, touching his skin with an electrifying arousal.

Knowing what she most liked, Ryan slid slowly down the bed, until his cheek was pressed against the muscular curve of her hip. He reached over with his hand and touched the coils of hair between her thighs. She opened to him, warm and moist, as his fingers found the trigger to her own deep arousal.

By shifting a little he was able to bring his penis against her ankles. Krysty felt him, laughed very quietly, then took him between her feet, rubbing him gently.

He probed at her with two and then three fingers, readying her. The girl tangled her own strong fingers in the long hair at the back of his head, pulling insistently at him, making him know what she wanted.

What she needed.

Her thighs clamped on either side of his face, drawing him into her body, and his tongue flicked out, tasting her, lapping at her softness. Krysty locked her heels together between her lover's shoulder blades, keeping him in place, pumping her hips against his lips and tongue. She felt the familiar, delicious fluttering of her stomach muscles as her orgasm rushed forward.

Ryan could judge how far she'd gone along the road, licking and sucking at her, centering on the core of her love, feeling her finally gasp and shudder, her thighs so tight around him he could hardly breathe.

At last she relaxed, and he was free.

"One day I'll break your neck doing that, lover," she sighed.

"I can't think of a better way to go," he replied, grinning up at her in the darkness.

"Your turn," she said, sliding down the bed, kneeling over him, her hair brushing now over his groin and lower stomach. The fiery tendrils actually curled around his cock, bringing him instantly to the edge of losing control.

"No," he managed to gasp. "Be too fucking quick."

"Can't have that," she teased.

Her head lowered over him, and he felt himself swallowed, sucked into her mouth. Krysty was the best Ryan Cawdor had ever known. He'd once, many years back, spent too much jack on a gaudy whore out Missouri way. She'd had ways with ice and with a length of knotted, waxed twine that had made his head spin.

But Krysty was undeniably the very, very best ever.

After she'd brought him moaning to the edge of a shattering orgasm, she withdrew her mouth, knelt astride him and lowered herself on the thrusting erection. Ryan pushed up to meet her, his eyes tightly shut, mouth sagging open. The gaudy whore used to promise two ups for every down, but it hadn't been like this.