37
The note had said, “Go to the doors at the end and wait.” Sam walked in the direction the nurse had pointed, the corridor empty and quiet. With its dim lighting and rough, dark cement floor, the place looked far from high-tech. He passed a few doors, most of them large enough to admit a truck though a few were the size of his cell-like recovery room. All the doors were unmarked and the watchful cameras hanging from the ceiling in clear plastic globes discouraged him from trying to open any. His footsteps echoed off the widely spaced walls, marking a steady rhythm. If his pace was slower than usual, it was because his side was still stiff and the muscles weak from lack of use. The rough fabric of the new clothes chafed, and his leg muscles felt mushy. His ankle no longer pained him, but he had walked little in the last few days.
While he lay recovering from his ordeal, Sam’s only visitors had been a doctor and a pair of nurses. He had learned little from them, for they spoke only French and seemed not to understand his English or Japanese. The only sign of Jacqueline had been a note from her bidding him to be patient and recover. Had the words not been on paper, he might have thought her a part of his strange dreams on the mesa.
The first thing he had done on awakening was to get out of bed to try the door controls. That they were inoperable distressed him, but he was too weak to attempt running away. Where would he have gone? Sam didn’t even know where he was. And the only clothing in the room was a hospital gown hardly suitable for traveling.
The doctor and nurses had been efficient and solicitous, but uninformative. Their language was circumstantial evidence that he was in Quebec, but far from definitive. They hadn’t even twitched when he had mentioned Quebec or Genomics, both words that would have been understandable even if all the rest were not. Had Jacqueline lied when saying she would take him to Genomics, claiming it was her employer? Wherever he was, the medical equipment in the room and the attention he received were top-notch. He had rapidly regained his strength.
Sometime during the second day, one of the nurses, brought a tray with a datareader and the few belongings Sam had carried with him in the Little Eagle. These included the Narcoject, which had been cleaned and oiled. The ammunition had been removed. It was distressing to see how poorly his old photographs had fared, but when all this was over he would try to get them restored.
Nothing was missing from the chip case, whose contents were the only alternative to staring at the walls. He reread Bible passages that had comforted him in the past, but now he saw odd interpretations for them and caught himself wondering what Dog would think of them. Thoughts of Dog had turned to thoughts of magic and so he had begun to scan the professor’s instructional chips.
Some descriptions of the astral experience awakened disturbing memories of his dream on the mesa. Cautiously, dreading success, he had tried the exercises for astral projection. His first attempt had brought on an airy feeling while the colors in the room shifted, much as the colors had done on the mesa. From the texts, he expected to be able to pass beyond the walls of the room, but he stayed right there on the bed, unable to move.
In the midst of one exercise, the doctor had entered the room. She had seemed full of a green light that, except for a dimness on her right index finger, glowed brightly through her skin. The apparition had startled Sam back to wakefulness, where he saw that her finger was bandaged. He had husbanded his strength and practiced further, but never again achieved that state while another person was in the room.
Now, as he approached the great double door that sealed the end of the corridor, he wondered if his astral perceptions had been only more hallucinations. If real, they should enable him to see what waited on the other side. What harm in another try?
He composed himself and willed the shift. The light muted and the color shift began, then everything jerked back to normal, with Sam suddenly lying on the floor. The result brought back memories of the Dwarf mage in Laverty’s guardroom and Sato’s magical bodyguard. Both had seemed to slumber, giving Sam the impression they were lackadaisical about their work. Now he realized they might have been working after all, using astral projection while their bodies seemed to sleep. He picked himself up. stepped to the corridor wall, and leaned against it. The exercise text hadn’t warned that he would lose control of his muscles, only recommended lying down to practice. Now he knew why. Braced, he tried again.
Once the colors shifted, he forced his point of reference to the door, hesitating a moment before pressing forward. His vision blackened for a fraction of a second, and then he was perceiving the chamber beyond the doors. Or at least thinking he was.
The immediate area was an antechamber that opened onto a latter space. On the walls hung paintings of great beauty, their emotional content varying wildly. The lure of those images and the pulsing sculptures that stood beneath the paintings at first distracted him, but once his view touched on the prominent occupant, he had eyes for nothing else. Behind a transparent wall of blue and enthroned on a mound of gold, silver, and jewels lay a Dragon.
The beast seemed made of golden crystal that sparked power with every motion. Distortions of light like tiny auroras flickered in the air about its head. The Dragon was in conversation with a tall, hairy figure that Sam recognized at once as Jacqueline, though she looked different. The Sasquatch carried a tasseled shoulder bag and an amulet of intricate design hung around her neck. At her side flashed a smaller aurora. Sam had no time to register more, because the Sasquatch bowed as though receiving orders. With the conversation over, Sam feared the Dragon would somehow see him if its attention turned his way. He dreaded discovery, for his spying would be considered impolite, at best. He knew the stakes had gone up and did not want to compromise his position with his apparent host, whatever that position might be. Besides, his new ability was an asset, all the more potent if kept secret. He retreated.
Sam was standing in the middle of the corridor when the doors swung open and an attractive woman with silver-blonde hair exited the chamber. She wore a business suit, but her necklace pendant was identical to Jacqueline’s amulet.
“Ah, Monsieur Verner,” she said. “You may go right in.”
There was no recognition on her face, and no sign that she had noted his intrusion. He nodded and walked past her, wondering what kind of game this was.
The moment Sam crossed the threshold, his eyes were riveted on the Dragon. Its golden scales glinted brightly, seeming to reflect and merge with the sparkling wealth that made up its bed. Its long neck was arched and its chin rested on a peninsula of treasure near the edge of the mound. It appeared to be asleep.