Lloyd returned from a nightmare. All was dark. All was still, except for the steady throb and thrum from his carotid. He tasted his own blood (he guessed) and the vestige of some horror that clung like frigid tendrils to his throat. He performed a few tests.
He could not feel his arms or his legs, his back or his buttocks. He could not see.
There was only that relentless pressure against his face. It soon reached the threshold of pain, and with it - panic. His fear availed him nothing, for he found no strength for a struggle. Giving reason its chance, he remembered the skullcap and sleep mask of the dream chamber. Lloyd awkwardly pryed them away with fingers seemingly not his own. The rapid hammer of his pulse subsided. Fresh air seeped into his lungs.
Once unmasked he had hoped for better things. But tired, old eyes responded poorly in the dim light - the dull-red blurr of the isocell. It was possible the eyes and muscles were poisoned by the powerful lucidity drug. In lieu of illumination and coordination Lloyd explored his memories, but found only stagnant waters.
It was disconcerting that the CIC absorbed the mind, but it was the only way to use the paracube, to communicate with the past. Considering his symptoms, his cluster headache and the lack of sensation, he was lucky there was no serious amnesia - no paradementia.
He remembered that his rescue had failed. An icy wave of disappointment washed over him. Was all his effort reduced to this dull and dark moment? He feared what Nicolaus would say. Perhaps the fault lay in his own poor health or in the excessive dose of Mercolidine Sulfate.
There were other possibilities. He carefully probed a languid mind for the last thing he had seen before waking, but this only added to the darkness that grew worse, that descended like rolls of black crepe.
Lloyd detected some tingling, some feeling in the lower limbs. He moved his legs a few inches, no more. He balled his hands into fists and raised his arms with only the greatest effort, then let them drop like rocks.
What obstacles lay ahead? His memory of the dream slowly returned. He recalled the darkling woman, her haunting blue-black robes, her necklace of round stones - like twinkling, red-black beacons - like fiery coals in the dark of night. And peace came with knowing that the worst of it was over.
And though relieved, Lloyd remained perplexed by the sluggish recovery of his senses. He opened and closed his eyes with little or no improvement. The dream residue prevailed - her blackened robes and her fiery red beacons. They reminded him of the stars inside the Coalsack nebula. His mind wandered as if gripped by high fever.
Lloyd twisted his neck, turned his head from side to side. With a throbbing headache any attempt to sit would have to wait. But for what? He must get up.
He shivered, cold to the quick. What had happened to the wool blanket? More important, why did Owen or Max not come to his immediate assistance? His dark stars held fast - a memory rolling gently in space like the surf, enough to return him to sleep. But he would not be lulled to sleep, for his couch grew hard and cold. It hit him like a fist in the stomach - the sudden and disquieting realization. Lloyd lay not on the couch, but on the cold, hard floor. He reached and touched the tile, then verified the dream couch lying on its side.
His dark nebula acquired rich texture and more stars. It occurred to him: Why were these stars red and not green like his quarvine? Then it clicked. If more than a memory, if inside the red room and not merely inside his head, they would not be green at all. They would be anti-green. They would indeed be red or red-black.
He concentrated on the stars. Their rhythmic rise and fall reminded him of something commonplace. It also reminded him of something uncommonly misplaced. The simple answer came to him - the flow of air to and from lungs - a gentle breathing, but not his own. Something passed before his eyes, then brushed his cold, damp face, a soft caress from above.
He screamed with all his might, "Owen, by god, help me!"
With all his might he willed his feeble eyes into focus. More cold orbs emerged from the dark recesses. But unlike the black rubies, they were discoids relatively large and oddly arranged - about eight in number. They appeared as lifeless as any eyes he had ever seen, cold and black as if wrought from the deepest caldera. Near him, surrounding him, rose swaying legs or timbers acting as staunch supporting pillars for his darkly spangled universe. With a heave the darkness expanded and contracted, seemed to grow and seemed to shrink. His ears popped as if the pressure rose or fell. He opened his mouth. The air had taste.
"Owen ... Max ... goddamnit! Where are you?"
What was the sense of this - these orbs, these pillars to be joined by two, frenetic wigglers, then smelly, oily drippage, falling like a mustard gas mist?
A light exploded like a phosphorus incendiary. His eyes adjusted slowly to the offense. Eventually, they received a wealth of information, though the mind was slow to believe what the eyes had to say. Lloyd took the ultimate Rorschach test, one that ultimately unfolded into long fangs and rows of cutting teeth.
With these implements she spoke: Mankind awake. Awake from your deep slumber.
But not in the dark, never in the dark. She had come in the brilliant light. His nyct-mistress had a name, more than one, so many and for so long a time.
Lloyd looked deeply into the sapphire blue face of his weaver, his fabled Nrczxa in cold, hard flesh, no longer a dream, no longer a creature deceptively human.
He thought of shutting down - to let what would happen happen. This was too much to bear. He closed, then reopened his eyes, but the Weaver would not retreat. She danced, pausing now and then to taste his face with nasty wigglers perched alongside swordlike fangs. The sight of her drove stakes through both body and brain. Every cell and fiber seemed griped by seizure, soon to take full possession of his mind or whatever was left.
But he had not come this far just to die on the floor. He concentrated. He had to dash fear and deal with what he had. It wasn't much. Then he remembered his ring. She only wanted its quar green stone.
Lloyd tugged, but nothing happened. His fingers were by now too severely swollen. He gave the band an incredible twist and yank, but it would not release its cutting grip in spite of its natural lubrication.
Nrczxa lowered her bristling head, extended her fangs enough to brush, but not cut his face. Small, serrated teeth came within inches. He took the measure of both. Her fangs were nine-inch daggers, protruding from toothy jaws dripping rank venom.
He could smell and taste his own fear. And so apparently could she. Nrczxa made a little chortle and pumped more foul oil covering his face. Nausea finally won over him. He added his own sour eruption to hers.
No matter, for he worked frantically on the ring as she danced her devilish dance. Unfortunately, the harder he worked, the harder the ring maintained its grip. His finger continued to swell, locking the gold securely against his raw and bleeding flesh.
Without the ring there seemed one last chance, though a slim one. He must work fast and lucky. He placed his right hand in his pocket, searched it, then brought the beloved object close to his chest, to his heart. He gripped the gold to feign its removal, then flung the brass imposter as far as possible. Flashing green and metallic, the ring traveled not far, landing after one bounce by the wool blanket a few yards away. It was a pathetic ruse. But it was all he had. Would she take the bait?
It did not appear she would, for Nrczxa held her ground like stone. But neither did she attack. His carotid recommenced its knell. He waited, right hand clasped over left, as she held firm her menacing stance.
It all happened like in a dream, like in slow motion. She silently retracted her fangs, stretched, then strode for the blanket as if balancing on stilts.
With no time to waste he made the critical test. But where were his legs? Somehow he had to find them, get them quickly underneath, but they responded like limp noodles. He seemed paralyzed by fear, by the drug, or perhaps he had been numbed by her poison. Driven by his adrenalin and his implacable will to live, Lloyd tottered to feet as stiff as cloven hooves.
The door to the 'con was only yards away. For the first time he noticed them beyond the glass - three men screaming without producing the slightest sound - their eerie pantomime of surreal horror. He could not bear to look.
He aimed for the door and gave it all he had. It seemed he could ambulate well-enough. But by all that was warm and tender, sweet and holy, he knew from that pall over his friends that he must never look back. It was all crazy. He was losing his mind. Lloyd could not help himself. He had to quote that immortal line, just a bit altered, just to keep from turning back to look. "Don't look back ... space-time may be ... thickening." This thought was insane, but it seemed to help. He was finally able to concentrate on his legs.
Yard by yard he approached the isocon door with its slim promise of safety. He felt he would make it. He looked up at Max, a face as frozen as the glass, a face like none he had ever seen, a face that he would never forget. He dropped his eyes. Lloyd concentrated on his only hope - on what was left in old, arthritic legs.
His bad knee gave out. He fell brushing the door handle with his forefinger, bashing his chin as he hit the tile. He rose on his better knee, but went down again. He could only crawl for the door. Something told him he would not have time - something that expelled a foul, chill wind against his bristling neck. He clutched the gold ring, closed his eyes and waited for her oily kiss.
As if by some miracle Nrczxa's flux had seeped under the tight-fitting ring, loosening the band when his own perspiration had failed. It now slipped easily from his swollen and bruised finger. The isocon door opened. Lloyd tossed the ring over his shoulder as the large, rough hand pulled him roughly through.
There was not a hand alive that would have been too rough. "Inside ... 'n' hurry!" boomed the voice.
The hand, the voice was Hagerty's. Shed of his frock coat and brandishing his blue-steel pistol, Bill had started to enter the isocell, but with a stagger, a lunge, Lloyd persuaded him back into the control room.
Its three inmates had created a pandemonium - too much for ears used to the silence of the dream chamber. Lloyd grimaced for quiet, but the others figured it for more pain and turned their decibels up another notch.
Max fired lip scorchers like tracer bullets, clutching his neck as if he was trying to lift himself by his vocal cords - a good effort doomed by objective physics to fail.
Lloyd aimed his strength and attention at Bill as he held weakly to the man's flailing arm. "Wait!" he cried, "We don't want to kill it ... not if we don't ... "
"No ... kill it!" Owen roared. "Kill it now!"
Lloyd warbled, "Nnn ... no!"
Bill, red-faced and panting like a sprinter, screamed within inches of Lloyd's ear: "You're freakin' nuts!"
"Then shut it ... shut it ... you crazy fool," roared Max. Men were moving in the isocon with no place to go.
"Please," Lloyd barked, "stay out of there. No reason in Hell for going in." Bill hesitated along enough for him to grasp the inescapable logic on their side of the wall.
"Hurry!" rose a shrill voice from behind him. It pleaded over and over: "Shut that damned door!"
Bill holstered the automatic, closed and locked the isocell door. He fumblingly tested the latch and stepped back as if its cold metal was blistering hot.
Max, of ghoulish pallor, had by now collapsed upon the isocon's cot, his bifocles cocked comically across his face. He held desperately to his chest which pounded out his fear with no discernable rhythm.
"Max ... you okay?" cried Owen with less than his normal volume. He seemed uncertain whether to move first for Max or first for Lloyd. As a result the Doc danced helplessly between the two, his fingers flexing, splaying, his eyes bulging as though he was deranged.
"I'm pickled pink!" Max exclaimed. "Practice your nostrums on someone else. Leave me die of a nice heart attack before I'm made a peel and eat by that thing in there." It had become increasingly difficult for Max to breathe. Either the air was now too heavy or his lungs were now too light. He expected his heart to leap from his chest and bounce like a rubber ball across the floor.
"Steady ... " chirped Owen as he seized precariously Lloyd's sagging shoulders, more by fabric than by flesh.
"My head!" Lloyd complained as he tottered on one leg too frail to support his weight. Bill's eyes were glued to the absurdity that watched them through the glass. His attentions drifted or were taken hostage.
All the while Owen was babbling: "We thought ... Christ ... we thought you were done. We were afraid to try ... to try with it so close ... afraid to ... "
Lloyd, overcome by his pain, could not to hear.
A new flurry of 'cell activity had Bill mesmerized. He rationalized, "I couldn't risk a shot. Didn't know what to shoot at. Could I stop that battlepod? Might only piss him bad." Bill's eyes followed Nrczxa as she teetered grotesquely across the isochamber. The black light from which she had stepped clung to her like an episode of retinal fatigue. She let herself down gently over the discarded, quarvine ring with a motherly chirp.
"Bill," spat Max, "save the excuses for later."
At this moment Lloyd's eyes rolled, his legs buckled. Slipping from Owen's grasp, he slid like a potato sack to the floor. Max struggled to his feet, but lost his traction to the oil Lloyd had tracked across the floor.
Max recovered and helped carry Lloyd to the cot. The Doc broke a capsule, waved it under Lloyd's nose, but its smelling salts failed to revive him.
"Jesus ... we forgot the gurney. It's in there," blathered Bill. His point (whatever it was) was ignored.
Max rifled the Doc's brown bag then tossed Owen the bottle. The Doc inserted one nitro tablet under Lloyd's tongue. "His heart's not going to take this."
Nothing happened as they waited - two men bent like cranes over the cot, the other man distracted by other matters - perhaps the uncertain barrier between 'con and 'cell, perhaps the sudden need to care when he had never cared before.
Several minutes passed. More from the hope than from the fact, Owen proclaimed, "He'll be okay. Give him air." He spoke softly, "Lloyd ... can you hear me?"
Lloyd opened his eyes, then turned cyanotic. He gasped, "Can't breathe ... "
Max repeated, "Owen ... he can't ... "
"Yes ... I can see that." Owen cleared fluid from his trachea, though his condition deteriorated. Pulse and respiration plummeted. Max circled both man and flimsy cot near to collapse.
"Max, try to remain calm." Then Owen ordered, "Sit!" But there was no place to sit but the floor or consoles.
Max whispered, "You ... you think ... hives?"
"Yes ... Max ... blocking the windpipe."
The Doc selected the proper ampule and injected a high-powered cocktail of antihistamine and epinephrine.
"Don't wanna do this. No choice."
Nrczxa was active again and circling the quarvine. Bill mumbled something about "four betangled drunks". His "drunks" staggered, each using the other to avoid landing on their heads or whatever they carried. The "drunks" seemed to be performing some kind of ritual. Bill exclaimed, "I think it's popped that stone right out of your friggin' ring. Why would it do that?"
For the moment the others did not care. Owen made a space for surgery and prepared to cut into Lloyd's throat. But he did not need the knife. Color and respiration returned quickly enough. Doc Klein released the bright scalpel, unclenched his fists, shrugged the tension out of his shoulders. He spoke softly. "He's back. Thank the merciful Dreamer Himself."
Perspiring, Doc Klein took Lloyd's pulse and blood pressure. He mumbled, "Too low." The patient sat up with help and requested, "Some water." For Owen Klein it was a bad case of deja vu - an Ivan Kovrani replay.
"Boss, drink slow." Max handed Lloyd a glass half full of water. He handed him a towel. "Here ... and you'll need this too. You look and smell pretty bad."
Lloyd took a drink, wet the towel and attempted to clean up. His hair looked like the brush that had been dipped in nearly dry, black paint. In contact with the air, Nrczxa's spittle turned as thick as epoxy glue.
Bill remarked, "The man looks and smells like he's birthed a whale ... or the nightmare of one."
Each man took their brief turn with the towel.
Max asked crankily, "Is this the best we can do?"
Bill preferred his sleeve to the towel. He seemed to have an itch with no place to scratch. "Who'd have figured on this. We're gonna need a strong solvent ... some paint thinner to dissolve this gunk off."
He looked queerly at his hands. "Nothing is gonna work. Wippin' only thickens it." Looking at Max, he opened his mouth to speak, but was struck suddenly dumb - the man finally connected with his predicament.
Max shivered, licked parched lips. His fixed and anxious eyes provoked an anxious question from the Doc. "Max ... you sick? You look as if you're gonna puke."
Max swallowed his urge to heave. He lowered himself to the technician's desk, leaned over with his hands on his knees. He did not tell them he could not feel his hands, his feet, or that he felt squeezed like a rubber ball. He did not tell them of the lump in his stomach like a clenched fist - a fist not his. The Doc, though concerned by Max's color, did not press the point.
Afterall, Owen Klein was a trifle miffed, a trifle hurt. In Max's implusive words, he practiced his nostrums on Lloyd. He asked the man, "Any broken skin other than those mangled fingers and dinged up chin?"
"Hard to tell with all this black snot. Head and knee are the worst," complained the physicist. "Think the knee's finished ... no strength ... nothing left."
"We'll order you a new one." Owen checked Lloyd's arms, neck and face for puncture wounds. "Don't always bleed. I really need to know if you were bitten."
Lloyd croaked, "You saw those sabers. Think I wouldn't know if I was shiskebab ... think you'd have to ask?"
Max remained mute, though his agony had not eased in the least. The odd distortion of his space he attributed to the shock of what they had done, of what they had seen. It was like gazing at the isocon through the wrong end of a kaleidoscope. Its walls and corners were too many and too distant. There must have been hundreds of facets to the room as if the 'cell was a cut gem or a compound eye. He was seeing dimensions unseeable to man. He was somehow inside the queth of Lloyd's quex - the dyad formed from two quins or 5d cubes. The lights of the panels rotated like comets around the sun. If the others noticed distortion of their space or comets in the consoles they kept it to themselves.
Owen wrapped Lloyd's knee. Bill remarked over his shoulder, "Doc ... you can't actually see what you're doing." Doc Klein looked up, and not intending it, he chirped in a manner suggestive of the thing in the next room. The others noticed, but kept it to themselves.
Owen's only light was provided by the twinkling navcon and biocon consoles. Compared to the brilliance of the isocell the control room was as dark as a movie house.
Reminded of the explosion of the floodlights, Bill apologized, "Sorry about the floods. We thought they'd blind the thing long enough to ... to get you out."
Lloyd interrupted, "Good idea," he nodded sadly. "Worked on me. Still can't see. Good thing, I think."
Bill remarked, "You dodged the big one. I guess we're waiting to hear inspirational words ... something that scraps our eyebrows off the ceiling."
"Not now," cautioned Owen. He helped the man to his feet. "Lloyd ... how does that feel? Tape too tight? You capable of walking? I think you should."
Lloyd hobbled as the doctor held on, as Lloyd held on. He walked with a parkinsonian sway. His face could not conceal the pain. "Feeling bad," he finally admitted. He answered Owen, "I'm going to need a minute. I must sit down. I'm going to be sick."
Bill consoled, "Not to worry, boss. None of us are feeling so good either. No apology needed."
Lloyd collapsed in a heap on the cot then curled into a ball. "We'll let him rest," said Owen, "but not too long. It doesn't feel right in here." He had to laugh at what he had said in spite of the situation.
Bill stood with his back to the large pane of thick glass that separated the rooms. He said, "Agree with that," as he bumped into the glass, then turned to stare into the dream chamber. Bill instinctively retreated as his eyes registered the sight. But he collected himself, reapproached the window seemingly transfixed.
Max watched Bill, a man totally absorbed by what he saw - displacing to some other world, dreaming of some other world, and like a dreamer becoming the dream itself. For Max, Bill was a disturbing, chilling sight, enough to ice the liver of the most devoted rationalist. This effect was perhaps the creature's most disturbing manifestation.
Bill kept muttering, "Maybe you should see ... "
"I can't look," Max replied. "I'm fine right here."
Bill added, "Lloyd, I don't think this is what you wanted ... is exactly it. But exactly what is it?"
Lloyd replied self-pityingly, "Failure."
"You'll try again," predicted Max. "We may not, but you will. I know you'll try again ... and again ... and again ... until ... until the end is reached."
Owen blurted, "We really okay in here?"
Bill clasped his hand around his forty-five. "The wall, glass and the doors were designed to stand a five hurricane. I'd never understood the sense of it till now. You guys, I think, should come here for a look."
Owen reluctantly joined Bill standing near the glass partition. Standing bent but balanced, they looked like sprinters poised at the starting blocks.
Owen said with disbelief, "It's preening like a cat."
Bill noted seriously, "That thing would dewart my Aunt Martha."
"What d'you suppose it weighs?"
"More'n a big man ... more'n me ... I'd guess."
Max cleared his throat. He contemplated the improbable sight beyond the barrier of intervening glass. In the dark he found it possible to convince himself that he sat safely in a theater gazing at a larger-than-life motion picture screen, pretending that it was only make-believe, the best in cinemagraphic effects and anything but real. Because his view was limited, was constrained and not the panoptoscope, this was not so hard. Safely behind the barrier, images could be received but repressed.
Owen wondered out loud, "Could we ... stop it?"
Bill grunted. He hardly knew. No one could know such things. Such things had not been tested.
The isocell was illuminated by four 1000-watt floods. The racks of electronic equipment were undisturbed. The dream couch and gurney had been overturned near the center of the room. Draped over the couch was a tangle of wires, Lloyd's connectors and facemask. In a corner near the anteroom door lay the brass key ring, the jade shamrock, the remote control device. Not far away lay the gold ring with its quarvine crystal and a once green, once clean, woolen blanket.
Their attention was captured by what rested quietly by the blanket, by the quarvine, casually attending to its unfathomable necessities, an inscrutable tangle of pods and armaments suitable for Max's make-believe.
Max's reaction to the creature was visceral. If describable in any terms, it might be said to strike a brittle rapture. It felt like the cold, marble slab or the rigor in the neck, the rope tightly bound. It was like tripping over a ripe corpse in the dark, a new one every night, and then finding out that you had reached the end of the line with no place to go but down.
Max counted what might be its legs - four, six, then finally, he reached the number eight. Eight? What did it mean - the corners of a cube - the number of normal cubes in a quar - or the legs of the group Arachnida?
Each leg ended in claws, multi-pronged and bright red. Much of its body was layered with fur, bluish or black, but almost any color was possible. The areas of fur were dotted with numerous, bald tubercles.
Given some scrutiny its body parts were familiar. Nrczxa possessed a large cephalothorax attached to a segmented and flexible abdomen. Her cephalothorax was protected with a heavy, horned carapace that seemed to render her invulnerable.
Supposing correct identification of her face, it held myriad parts - a mouth and beak, an extra set of small legs and impressive mandibles fitted with many saw teeth. Last and certainly not the least of which were her two, nine-inch, serrated sabers.
Bill made what was a reasonable assessment: "A gigantic, armored blackwidow? The mother of 'em all."
Owen offered, "Something between a spider and a scorpion. I've seen pictures ... in books, but ... "
"It hardly matters," said Max. "It's deciding on a late night snack. Which one of us looks tasty?"
Owen made a medical observation. "It's female and clearly pregnant."
Their octapod carried a turgid and transparent egg sack beneath the abdomen, replete with a hundred or more green eggs. She sat back on her hind legs proudly displaying her green necklace.
Perhaps it was the widow's jewels that hypnotized them. Max's rational self did not comprehend why they remained, why they did not bolt for relative safety outside the Dome. But they did not bolt. He did not bolt. And though it was clear to him why they did not, it did not matter. It would not have mattered if it had mattered, for these men had no will they could call their own. Max's brain knew this even if his legs did not. He was inexplicably immobilized, just like the others, hypnotized just like the others.
Bill mumbled, "I feel like I should sit down, but can't. I feel like I should leave but can't. It's kind of like I'm here and not here at the same time. Strange."
"She almost seems intelligent," pondered Owen.
"I wonder what she thinks of us," said Bill. He absentmindedly leaned against the window pane and was startled almost to falling as though the glass had momentarily disappeared. He anxiously pressed his palm against the pane. It pressed back like he knew it should. So what gave? Had anything but his nerve?
Owen noticed and asked, "You okay, Bill?"
"No worse than you," he lied.
"It's Lloyd's Panarachne Baumeri," offered Owen. You guys probably took no note, but I did. It's like those Megarachne Servinei they found some time back ... those big fossils, but not nearly so big as this."
Lloyd's had closed his eyes. He managed, "She has names enough. No more. Make no more names for her."
"What should we do?" asked Bill blankly. "Does anyone know?"
"That's the good question. We'd better feed her before she feeds herself," advised Owen.
"Feed her!" exclaimed Bill. "What? With what?"
"Bill, that's your department. Please don't screw up. Don't want that on my conscience."
"Doc ... you can't be serious. What if her little darlings decide to hatch out?"
Owen prepared to leave. He thought he could do it, though there was an odd inertia of the mind. But could the others? They seemed inordinantly weighted down. Owen attributed it to shock, a kind of psychic trauma. He thought it might work to get Lloyd going, the others moving, with a question, anything to distract them from the spell cast by P. Baumeri. "Lloyd, you feel like talking? Any idea where you were and why?"
"In Hell. Don't know why. Maybe a case of ... oh ... forget it. Too tired. Won't know more till after some rest. Maybe tomorrow I'll have an answer."
"Lloyd, I admit I'm pretty dumb when it comes to natural history," droned Bill. "You know ... dodos and dinosaurs ... all that stuff. Never believed in any of it. But from what Max and I saw in the 'scope, you had to be scanning ancient history ... a million years ago ... at least. How could that happen? Max said the course vector was right on ... was okay."
Surprised, Owen asked, "Can our Machine take us so far that we'd see dinosaurs? If I'm not mistaken dinosaurs died out around 65 million years ago."
The old physicist answered plainly, "Our computer hasn't the mnemonic capacity. You can forget that."
"But four CICs were engaged for your scan at full power. That right, guys?"
Max nodded vigorously that Bill Hagerty was right.
Lloyd sat up, opened his eyes. "Four? Hmm? But that's not possible. You make some mistake. Four CICs and I'd wouldn't just be seeing ancient history, I'd be ancient history in a heartbeat."
The lump in Max's belly grew progressively larger. It was moving up the alimentary canal. It was a hand soon to lift him up by his scruff. He kept this to himself.
Lloyd expertized, "Well ... even if the span of years is true, if it was millions of years, even four CICs couldn't have contained that kind of paracube."
"Then what did?" queried Owen. "Bill said they saw it. I know something about the Lens. I know we can increase our penetration of time for any parangle in one of two ways. We can add more CIC memory which enlarges our receiving window. Or we can provide more OnNet memory ... more Nettie. It's the amplification by the latter which increases the aperture of space. I think I'm right. Perhaps both together might have done it ... provided sufficient focusing power."
"Doc ... that's as true as the spot we're in. But even with both, we would not have had enough mnemonic power. We'd need a thousand Machines. We don't have a thousand Machines."
"Then who does? Where'd we get that sort of power? What's the answer? There's got to be an answer."
"Pines' Roost and some sleep. Worry plenty tomorrow."
Bill remembered, and said with as much humor as he had left: "Boss, you should be worrying about your house key. It's inside the 'cell ... with her. You goin' in for it?"
"My house key wasn't on Joy's (nearly inaudible) ring."
"Then please say it wasn't mine you tossed in with her."
"It was Joy's jade and my master remote ... the one that let's me in my office ... plus opens the compulab ... and all the isochambers."
Max looked at Lloyd incredulously. "So that's it," he exclaimed. "I knew there was something else."
Bill turned toward Nrczxa resting peacefully. He sputtered, "Those damned buttons can open every door in the place ... and from either side. So why are we here jawing and standing around like four, old ladies?"
"For 'cell four," explained Owen, "she'd have to depress the button four times. There's no chance that bug, smart or not, could manage a trick like that."
Lloyd struggled to his feet. "I wouldn't want to bet what's left of us. And we can't change the codes without Larry or Julia. It might be a good idea to padlock the outer door and get out of here ... fast."
Bill reported, "I'll need a real lock. That piece of shit on chamber one is only for show. It wouldn't hold back a gentle breeze much less a ... Don't have another handy ... and at this hour it could take some time." He added despondently, "You think we have it?"
Max asked sourly, "So what's the verdict now, Mr. Hagerty? Pinch yourself. Is this a bad dream or just a real bad case of reality?"
"I know one thing. Once that door is locked I'm not coming back to feed, to coddle, or to change her friggin' blanket."
"Bill ... I'll tell you what I think," shouted Max. "I think that creature in there could give a shit about what you think ... could give less than an old lady's fart about all of our gadgets. Why do you think ... " He stopped. Suddenly red-faced, he grabbed his chest.
Bill blurted, "What's happened to the air in here? I can't get m'breath. The HVAC must be shutting down."
It was as if all the air had been sucked out.
The computers winked out. The consoles - both the navcon and biocon went dim. The already weak isocon lights followed the computers to their fate. Oddly, the isocell floodlights remained lit at full power.
As the four men gawked, the intervening wall and window of the isocell shimmered like it was a mirage, faded, then recovered a few times before it disappeared altogether. Every molecule of their glass and stone barrier, a wall strong enough to withstand a force-five hurricane, had suddenly and completely vanished before their eyes.
Bad knees, CICs, locks and keys were just as instantly forgotten. The four men stood and stared at the Weaver across that empty space. It was like gazing through the right end of a very powerful telescope.
The Time Weaver, Nrczxa, grew larger, thickening her possibility space. She multiplied her size many-fold revealing a Juggernaut - an air breathing, earth-treading monster dripping from the mouth. She soon towered over them, swaying from side to side as if measuring them for a pine box.
Their machines were as puny as their minds. The biped's cumbersome receiver should have been more help. It had taken all her strength to punch through. For a moment she had considered making a quick meal of old Whitehair, but the frail beast would have tasted like parched pozzlehorn or possibly much worse.
Luckily, she had ingested several, young tussels before undertaking her long and arduous journey. The tussels, dried and dipped, she had taken from her waning stores. The few remaining Sorel that dined on fresh flesh would regret it. It was too late for them.
But it was not too late for her, or for her seeds. She had rested long enough. It was now time for work.
Nrczxa rose. She stretched. She thickened. She tested her kinetic Kyrpower for the long ordeal ahead.
©Copyright by Edward John Darenkamp