Chapter Twenty-Five

 

 

Out in the city, someone coughed and cursed. Ryan pushed against one of the tall doors with a shoulder, and it swung open silently on oiled hinges. Stepping over the dim threshold, he pulled the door back into place. He stood there, surveying the gloomy interior of the big, high-ceilinged room.

 

It was about sixty feet long, lined on three sides with bookshelves to the ceiling. There were comfortable armchairs, upholstered in red leather, scattered about, and a huge globe of the earth stood in one corner. At first glance the room appeared to be a combined library and office. The carpet was a medium blue, and a replica of the seals emblazoned on the doors was embroidered in thick gold thread. The lighting, from shaded lamps, was subdued. The only odd feature was a fireplace, logs glowing cheerily in the hearth.

 

An immense circular desk dominated the fourth wall. It was strewn with papers. Blinking in the semigloom, Ryan saw a man sitting at the desk. He was as motionless as a statue, not even reacting when the huge door had opened and closed.

 

He was dressed all in black, with a thatch of cropped white hair and a neatly trimmed gray mustache. His deep-set slitted eyes, in shadowed sockets, were without movement or the spark of life.

 

Ryan stared at him, not speaking, a little demoralized by the hush and vastness of the room. The man stared back. Finally Ryan raised both blasters and barked, "To your feet. Hands where I can see them. Quick!"

 

The man complied, silently and smoothly, without so much as a squeak of leather or wood. Ryan started to step toward him when the wall on his left seemed to explode like a grenade.

 

Splintery fragments flew in every direction, and something clipped him a stunning blow on the left temple. The whole side of his head went numb, and he reeled drunkenly, lurching to one knee. He stopped himself from falling, but he dropped the SIG-Sauer in the process.

 

His eyeball felt like it was spinning, and bits of dirt and pain-haze clouded his vision. He brought up the Walther MPL, lifting his head, searching for a target, tasting the coppery salt of blood at the corner of his mouth. He felt it crawling down the side of his face. Something heavy and metallic swung down from his right side, smashing across his wrist with nerve-numbing force. The blaster skidded quietly across the carpet.

 

Ryan sprang to his feet, reaching for his panga, and found himself face-to-face with Doug. Behind him he saw a man-sized recess between the bookcases. The man held a sawed-off Browning B-80 autoshotgun, and he snapped the bright brass out of the blaster's receiver. The shot had blasted a hole in the wall next to Ryan's head, and he had caught a spray of splinters.

 

The one-eyed man wiped his face on a coat sleeve and slowly dropped his hands to his sides. Doug stared at him impassively and said, "You asked about the Commander's location. You've found it."

 

The man behind the desk said, "Come here." His voice was very soft and completely flat. It was the voice of a man with few feelings and a lot of authority.

 

Ryan did as he was told, measuring each step. He didn't seem to have much choice, with Doug marching behind him. He noticed as he passed it that the fireplace was a fake, colored lights shining through molded plastic logs, strictly a decorative item. It cast no heat at all.

 

Facing the Commander across the desk, Ryan got a better look at him. He wasn't particularly tall, but his shoulders were very broad. His chin was squared, his jawline blocky. His eyes were a pale gray, like chunks of old ice. Thickish brows rose outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his short white hair grew down from high temples to a point on his forehead. He had unnaturally smooth white skin, with very few lines or wrinkles.

 

The shadowed depths of the Commander's eyes regarded him with an impersonal impassivity. "Who are you?"

 

"Ryan Cawdor."

 

"A citizen of Helskel?"

 

"No. I came from there, though. Against my will."

 

"Doug tells me you have a companion, a woman."

 

"Yes." Ryan didn't ask if Mildred had been captured or chilled. He kept his face and tone composed.

 

"How did you get in here?"

 

"The nose."

 

"Of course." The Commander's eyes opened a bit wider, then narrowed to slits again. "An unforgivable security oversight on the part of my aides. It has always been so." The words were delivered without heat, without change in timbre. "Why are you here?"

 

Ryan took a deep breath, wondering how much to tell him. "It's about your relics. Your artifacts."

 

"Indeed. What about them?"

 

"Lars Hellstrom wants them all to himself."

 

The Commander nodded, his expression vague and preoccupied. "I am aware of that."

 

He moved around the desk and extended his hands toward the fireplace, as if to warm them by the cold, colored light. "Why did he send emissaries such as you and your companion? Are you negotiators or are you assassins?"

 

Ryan sidestepped the question. "Hellstrom feels that you should share more of your bounty, and not hoard it all up here."

 

"No. Impossible."

 

"I'll convey that message to him, then."

 

"No, I'm afraid that's impossible, too. Your friends at Helskel will never receive word of the goings-on in this office. Not during my administration."

 

The Commander no longer looked vague or preoccupied. "You anarchist scum. You filth. You maggot. How dare you profane the sanctity of this high office with your person? I've dealt with prying busybodies like you before."

 

Ryan made a move to step backward, and the slide mechanism of the shotgun clanked loudly. He lifted conciliatory hands. "Look, I mean you no harm. I have nothing but admiration for you and your high office."

 

The Commander looked at him closely, with the detachment of a scientist examining an unfamiliar germ strain beneath a microscope. He gazed at Ryan steadily for what felt like a very long time.

 

Finally he smiled as if amused. "Perhaps I've been a trifle hasty. I am curious as to why Lars Hellstrom took such extreme measures to alter the terms of our trade agreement, and you may be able to advise me. After all it's not as if you're a journalist."

 

He reached up and pressed his ice-cold fingers to the left side of Ryan's head. He brought the hand away and studied the blood. "You've sustained an injury. Several, in fact. You appear to be losing a considerable amount of blood."

 

"It's not as serious as it looks," Ryan replied.

 

"Losing any of the precious fluids of the body is serious, Mr. Cawdor. Go with Doug and he will see to your wounds. In the interim, we will try to locate your companion."

 

Ryan managed to keep the surge of relief from showing on his face. Mildred hadn't been apprehended or chilled and was still loose somewhere in the enclave.

 

With the hollow bore of the Browning staring him in the face, Ryan divested the combat harness of the remaining grens and ammo clips. Then Doug prodded him toward the door with the shotgun barrel. He marched Ryan out of the office and back into the miniature Washington, D.C. The smoke and dust had dissipated. A few armed men were in view, but when they approached, Doug waved them away.

 

"You fucked up this place and our personnel pretty good, Cawdor," Doug said petulantly. "You made a big mess that your elected officials will have to clean up. Same as it ever was."

 

"I liked it better when you spoke corporatese," Ryan replied. "As long as we're on the subject of gibberish, what does Novus Or do Secolorum mean?"

 

Doug laughed derisively. "I can see that the educational level hasn't risen in America. It's Latin, meaning the beginning of a new order of the ages.'"

 

"Like this place?"

 

"Exactly like this place, Cawdor," Doug declared pridefully.

 

He directed Ryan away from the perimeter of the city, stepping over the Beltway. A beetle appeared, hovering silently behind and above Doug, following them like a bird dog. Ryan noticed that Doug was wearing another ID badge, identical to the one he had lifted.

 

When they reached a vanadium alloy wall, Doug aimed a small remote-control device at it. It was a simple sonic lock switch, of a type Ryan had seen before. There was a muffled, hissing sound. A large section of the wall moved forward, tilting back from its bottom edge. It slid out on pneumatic hinges, turning into an up-slanted ramp. Ryan was herded up the ramp and into a wide metal-walled tunnel. It was fairly long and obviously ran into the bowels of the mountain.

 

They walked for what seemed like a long time. Ryan saw that one section of wall to his left consisted of a glassy, smoke-tinted panel. He glanced into it, then halted. Doug didn't object; in fact, he snickered. Frightful life flapped behind the transparent panel. Within a darkened chamber recessed deep in the wall flitted a swarm of screamwings. The chamber was a specially designed habitat, with branches to roost upon and prey to pursue and kill.

 

However, these screamwings were larger than the creatures he had seen a few days earlier. Their scaled black bodies were nearly a foot long, and their wing-spreads were more than three feet. They looked like depictions of demons he had seen in an old predark religious text. He couldn't understand why such dangerous animals were kept inside the facilitywere they curios, conversation pieces, or something worse?

 

Turning to Doug, he asked, "What's up with the screamwings? The Commander's pets?"

 

"In a way. More like a project. We're working on a way to increase their size and reduce their birth mortality rate. The mothers tend to eat their young. That's one reason they're rare."

 

"Damn good thing. They're some of the most vicious predators in Deathlands."

 

Smiling a superior smile, Doug said, "We wouldn't be interested in them otherwise. Many of the mutations that veered toward polyploidism"

 

"Polywhat?" Ryan asked.

 

A sneer lifted Doug's upper lip. "Polyploidism. Gigantism. Anyway, they were evolutionary dead ends, examples of a spontaneous doubling of the chromosomes. Most of the giant mutants aren't healthy, with extremely limited life spans. The screamwings, on the other hand, are perfectly adapted to their environment. They're a purer breed of killer."

 

"That's my point. Why make them larger and more numerous?"

 

"Microcircuitry, Cawdor, introduced into their brains, connected to the visual neural system. We'll be able to control specific behavior and they'll make an excellent offensive-defensive measure. They'll be completely expendable, too, since we'll always be able to breed more."

 

He gestured impatiently with the shotgun. "All of this is way beyond you. If the Commander wants to give you a tour of our bioengineering facility, that's up to him. Let's go."

 

They continued another hundred yards down the tunnel, then took a hard right turn and crossed a short catwalk that stretched over a cavernous workshop. Ryan saw jigs, tooling machines, drill presses and equipment he couldn't easily identify. Men handled pieces of metal of all shapes that were spread out on tables. Many of the metal pieces were frameworks that resembled the skeletons of human arms and legs. A number of others looked like the molds and casings of the beetles.

 

Ryan stopped to survey them, but was pushed forward by Doug's shotgun. They reached the end of the catwalk, walked into another stretch of tunnel and entered a room. The doorframe bore a square-armed red cross.

 

The room was occupied by a white-coated man. He had a kindly, smiling face, and he appeared to have been expecting them. He looked to be about Doc's age, and he asked Ryan to strip. He hesitated, and Doug pushed the shotgun against his spine. The beetle hovered before the open doorway.

 

Ryan took off his clothes, standing naked and shivering. His bones felt bruised, his flesh numb, his head light. The man examined him closely, without voicing any curiosity about his wounds or his old scars. Removing Ryan's eyepatch, he peered closely at the puckered socket, but he didn't touch it. With remarkably gentle fingers, he probed each injury carefully, tsk-tsking at the stitches on his shoulder blade. With a tiny pair of scissors he snipped them and removed them. While he endured the pain and the cold, Ryan looked around the room and saw very little except for an enclosed shower-like stall that was shaped like a bullet. The top was a translucent semipointed dome.

 

The man said, "You are ready for the medisterile unit, Mr. Cawdor. Would you like me to investigate the availability of a new eye for you?"

 

Ryan couldn't disguise his surprise, or even his eager interest. "A new eye? You can give me a new eye?"

 

Frowning, the doctor said, "Why, of course. I'll have to see if there's one that we can match with the color of your left eye, but it shouldn't be too difficult."

 

"Never mind," Doug said sharply. "The Commander wants to see him PDQ. New eye, my ass."

 

The doctor sneered at Doug, curling his lip in disdain, and then directed Ryan to enter the bullet-shaped stall. The walls were tiled, and when the door was shut behind him, hissing sprays of warm disinfectant jetted from tiny nozzles on all sides. It was the first time in hours Ryan hadn't been cold, so he luxuriated in the welcomed heat. The fine streams of fluid scoured his body from the chin down, the churning spray of atomized liquid penetrating every pore, every cut, every wound.

 

Ryan felt his fatigue ebbing, as well as the pain. He assumed there was some sort of analgesic mixed in with the spray, and perhaps even a mood elevator, for his spirit lightened the longer he stayed under the streams. It was hard to believe he'd ever been hurt, considering the euphoric feeling rising within him.

 

The jets cut off and warm air whipped around him, all but making him break into a sweat. The heat dried him, and the doctor opened the door of the stall. Stepping out into the cold room was a distinct shock.

 

His teeth chattering, Ryan allowed the white-coated man to use an aerosol-can spray on his bullet and knife wounds. Wherever the spray touched, a film like a thin skin formed, adhering to his body.

 

"This liquid bandage contains nutrients and antibiotics and will nip any infection, Mr. Cawdor. It's composition is very similar to real flesh, and your body will absorb it as your injuries heal."

 

"Is that what you guys are made of?" Ryan asked. "Skin from a can?"

 

"Of course not! Our technique is far more sophisticated, far more"

 

"That's enough," Doug interrupted coldly. "Get dressed, Cawdor."

 

Ryan did as he was told, noting that his knife and sheath had been removed from the belt. At least the transceiver was still tucked safely in his coat's inner pocket, and his weighted scarf hadn't been tampered with. As he replaced his eye patch, he asked, "Now what?"

 

Doug opened his mouth to reply, then cocked his head slightly, as though he were listening to whispered instructions. He pressed a spot at the base of his throat, just beneath his larynx, and said, "Acknowledged."

 

Ryan eyed him suspiciously, wondering if he was responding to ghostly voices only he could hear. "You didn't answer my question, Doug."

 

Doug grinned and squeezed the stock of the shotgun affectionately. "Now, despite your combat acumen, we'll find out if you can take it as well as you dish it up."