Blood Harvest by James Axler Page B

was familiar with as well as many predark books well after his time. Just looking at the books and tomes and touching them gave him great pleasure. The baron watched with benevolent malice, like a cat watching a mouse move around a closed room. Doc stalled. He wasn’t particularly afraid of dying, indeed being slaughtered in a well-stocked library while drinking Madeira, smoking a cigar and having an educated conversation was a far better fate than anything the Deathlands was likely to offer him. Most important, Doc had seen Ryan Cawdor escape from worse dungeons than Jorge-Teo’s well-buttressed but primitive establishment, and Doc was prepared to buy Ryan every second of the baron’s attention he could, whatever the cost. Doc suddenly smiled and stopped by a volume for several long moments.
    The baron raised a mocking eyebrow. “Something intrigues you, Doctor?”
    Doc pulled forth an ancient copy of The Time Machine .
    Barat smiled at the choice. “Ah, H. G. Wells…a true classic. I whiled away many happy hours in my youth reading his works.”
    Doc absently ran his finger down the spine of the book. Despite its advanced age it had been lovingly preserved, far more lovingly than he had. He sighed in memory. “Yes, Herbert was an interesting man. I met him when he was studying biology at the Royal College of Science under T. H. Huxley.”
    Baron Barat stared. “You…met him?”
    â€œYes, well, we all thought young Herbert had quite a bright future ahead of him in either the natural sciences or philosophy. You might well imagine my surprise when I learned in later years that he had bent his talents to writing scientific romances.”
    Barat had begun to suspect his guest might be mad, but now he was sure of it.
    Doc shrugged guiltily. “Nevertheless, I must admit I had never before been able to claim the privilege of having known a successful novelist, and curiosity compelled me to peruse a few volumes of his speculative fiction.” Doc turned and tossed the book to the desk between them. “The Eloi, innocent and childlike, living in bucolic idyll beneath the sun, while the technologically advanced, cannibalistic Morlock dwell in their dark catacombs beneath, rising up at night to shear them like sheep.” Doc gazed coldly upon the baron. “The longer I live in these dark times the more truly amazing, and may I say regretful, it is to learn how many things poor Herbert succeeded in predicting correctly.”
    One of the greatest ironies of Doc’s life was that it had been a twentieth-century man by the name of Wells who had torn him from his time, ripped him from the bosom of his family, experimented upon him, and then flung him like garbage into a future horrible beyond his imagining. Doc was a man always walking the thin edge of madness, but sometimes he became calmer before he snapped rather than the other way around; and sometimes rather than leaving him gibbering, hallucinating and dwelling in the past his madness was a glorious relaxation of all safeguards. Doc felt the wine relaxing him and bringing color to his cheeks. The strongtobacco stimulated him. He knew that he would very likely die in the next few moments. He decided to give himself over to violence, enjoy it, and take the baron with him.
    The baron laughed. All he saw was an old man, possibly mad, disarmed, separated from his sec man and leaning upon a cane. Barat was blissfully unaware of the danger he was in. He leaned back in his chair shaking his head. “Come now, Doctor. You accuse me of being a Morlock? Surely as a man of science you realize that cannibalism is a woefully inefficient method of food production.” The baron waved expansively toward the window. “You have seen our fishing boats, our fields of grain, our laden vines.”
    Doc found himself in a more lucid state than he could remember. He was relishing the educated discourse even as bloodlust welled