Chapter Twenty-Eight

 

 

Ryan could only judge the direction of the small elevator by the rising and falling sensation in the pit of his stomach.

 

First it descended, then smoothly switched to travel along a horizontal plane. Doug maintained a smug smile throughout, as if he expected Ryan to be impressed to the point of awe. The one-eyed man kept his face impassive, once sighing with impatience.

 

"Don't try anything, Cawdor," Doug warned. He touched his mastoid bone behind his right ear, then a spot on the base of his throat. "I'm wired for sound. Got a communic implanted in me. Mess with me and I'll h an armed squad waiting to blow your head off."

 

"Why did you let something like that be sewn up inside of you?"

 

Doug frowned, as if he had never contemplated the question before. "So I can be contacted when the Commander needs me. Why else?"

 

"Yeah, right," Ryan muttered. "Why else."

 

The doors slid open on yet another stretch of alloy-paneled corridor. The Commander was there to meet them. He greeted Ryan with a bleak smile that didn't indicate friendliness. He looked at the man's gray eyes and thought again of ice. There was no malice in them, but nothing else either. The Commander had gone beyond emotions; either they were frozen out of him, or he had never had them. There was no human warmth about him, probably not even in his blood.

 

In the brighter light of the corridor, Ryan saw faint pink lines on the smooth-skinned face that looked like old surgical scars.

 

"Continue the search for Mr. Cawdor's companion," the Commander ordered. "She somehow escaped the city. Your identification badge was found attached to a firearm. A check on the model, make and serial number showed it was one traded to Helskel over a year ago. So far, the woman has misled the search teams. They're very annoyed about it, so go and take charge of the operation."

 

Doug hesitated. "Sir, I shouldn't leave you alone with this renegade."

 

The Commander draped a paternal arm around Ryan's shoulders. The arm felt like a beam of steel. "Nonsense. We're going to have a talk, that's all, and your presence will inhibit our discussions. Be off with you now."

 

Doug scowled at Ryan, then turned toward the elevator. The Commander led Ryan down the corridor.

 

"Do you know who I am?" he asked in a conspiratorial whisper.

 

"The Commander."

 

"Short for commander in chief. A euphemism for President."

 

Ryan managed to keep his surprise from showing on his face. "President of what?"

 

Gesturing to the corridor, the man said, "This. The United States. You went through Washington and visited me in the Oval Office, didn't you?"

 

Ryan knew a bit about predark history, and this man didn't resemble pictures he had seen of the presidents whose terms preceded the nukecaust.

 

The arm tightened around Ryan's shoulders, and his shoulder wound screamed in pain. "Didn't you?"

 

"Yeah," Ryan said quickly. "When were you elected?"

 

The arm relaxed. "I wasn't elected. It was an office I assumed after the chain of command had been broken. This complex became the seat of government. It wasn't easy, making this place the nerve center of the country. But careful design, meticulous attention to detail and good, sound American craftsmanship paid off."

 

Nodding in agreement, Ryan asked, "How large is the complex?"

 

"The tunnels run all through the mountain, leading down beneath it. We have fifteen levels aboveground. I have lived here for" the Commander frowned slightly, as though he were dredging his memory. "for many years. I still find it inspiring."

 

"An installation this size must require a lot of care, a lot of maintenance to keep it in operating condition."

 

"Oh, quite. The problems are many, and we devote a great deal of time to repair and improvement. But the topic is far too technical to go into now."

 

"Why did you retreat here in the first place?"

 

"I did not 'retreat,' young man. My reasons aren't open for discussion at present."

 

The Commander turned toward a doorway, still leading Ryan. The door slid aside at their approach. The room was very large, alloy-plated and was obviously a laboratory. It was staffed by men wearing white smocks, reading clipboards, checking gauges and thermometers.

 

Inside glass cases and fluid-filled jars were human internal organs floating livers, pumping hearts, eyeballs, loops of intestines, and in one large cubicle was the naked body of a man. A metal framework extended from where the right arm should have been.

 

Ryan was both repulsed and fascinated. In glass-paneled cabinets were arms and legs, hands and feet and torsos, wires extending from the blood-rimmed stumps of necks, arms and thighs.

 

"Before your trade agreement with Helskel," Ryan ventured, "how did you acquire the organs and body parts you needed?"

 

"We managed to stockpile quite a number, primarily from personnel in nonessential positions. Spouses and children of staff members provided us with what we needed, at least for several decades. We began to deplete our supply over the last few years."

 

If Ryan's mouth hadn't been so dry, he would have spit. "Was it worth it, just so you could exist in this frozen prison?"

 

The Commander waved a hand around the room. "Hardly a prison, Mr. Cawdor. This installation is my gift to the country of my birth. It is devoted to bestowing order upon chaos. You have no idea how many years I have worked toward this. It's been a long life, a full life, a rewarding life."

 

Nauseated and angry, Ryan said, "You're a cyborg, a droid that never grows old."

 

"Not precisely," the Commander replied. "I have a new heartmy thirda few joints are prosthetic replacements, my face has undergone surgery to replace radiation-ravaged flesh, but I'm hardly a cyborg. Nor am I immortal."

 

"But if you can replace every body part that wears out"

 

"We can't replace the brain, Mr. Cawdor, and liver transplants are sometimes successful and sometimes aren't. As you pointed out, the low temperature we must live in has definite drawbacks. We haven't conquered every vagary that preys on organic matter, though we've made a great leap in that direction."

 

As they progressed deeper into the laboratory, they passed more dismembered bodies in glass cabinets, then came to another door that opened onto a long, bare corridor. Their footsteps rang hollowly on the alloy-sheathed floor, and the lights were dim. They passed several doors.

 

"I don't come here often," the Commander said. "It tends to depress me."

 

They stepped through a tall, narrow doorway at the end of the corridor, and Ryan saw why the man didn't care to visit here. The cold was overwhelming, like a physical assault. It bit at his nostrils, his lips, his eyes, anywhere there was moisture. He raised the fur collar of his coat and lifted his scarf over his nose and mouth to protect them from the numbing cold. His eyeballs ached, and he was forced to take short, shallow breaths, worried the air would freeze his lungs.

 

The gloomy room was a crypt, where the living dead were entombed, frozen in time. There were over a hundred of them. They stood in orderly rows, each one upright inside a transparent armaglass canister, arms crossed sedately over their chests. With a twinge of surprise, Ryan noticed that not all of the encased people were men. There were a few women mixed in, mostly young. They wore only a simple drapery, and their bodies had the appearance of pale turquoise, not only in color but substance. The eyes were wide open and they seemed to stare, all one-hundred-plus pairs of them, straight into Ryan's mind.

 

"Who are they?" he asked. His teeth were chattering so violently, he was surprised his words were comprehensible.

 

Even the Commander seemed affected by the deep cold, tucking his hands into his pockets and slightly hunching his shoulders. "My people, the ones who contracted incurable diseases or went mad, or who refused to participate in the cybernetic implant program. They are scientists, engineers, military officers, doctors."

 

"This is a punishment, a prison?"

 

"No, only a rest stop. They are in cryogenic stasis and require no air, no food, no interaction with others. I doubt they even dream. But, as you can see, we take care of our own."

 

Ryan now understood what Doug had meant about over a hundred Anthill personnel being inactive. "Why not just shoot them and be done with it?"

 

"They have valuable skills, important information, abilities crucial to our survival. They held key supervisory and design positions during the construction of our complex and have much knowledge that we can draw upon."

 

"When you need to ask them something, you thaw them out long enough to ask a question, then refreeze them."

 

"Yes."

 

"I think they'd be better off dead."

 

The Commander nodded sadly. "Many of them think the same thing."

 

They went back along the corridor, and it took Ryan a long while to stop shivering. His teeth were still chattering intermittently when they stopped before a door. The Commander stepped aside, inclined his head in a short bow and waved one hand. Ryan walked across the threshold and was dazzled by bright light reflecting from plate glass and chromium fixtures.

 

They were in a long hexagonal room. The left wall was composed of sheets of frosty glass. Ryan glanced through one, down into a room below. It took his mind a moment to identify what his eye was seeing, and when it did, he instinctively recoiled. His hand grabbed at his empty holster. If he had been a wolf, he would have snarled and tucked his tail under his belly.

 

Ryan felt a great fear welling up within him, but not a natural, rational survival mechanism type of fear. It was a mindless, xenophobic cringing from a sight that was terrifyingly alien.

 

Below him, sloshing and floating in metal vats filled with a semiliquid gel were figures of horror. One resembled a young boy, about Dean's age. Judging by his lack of ears and the series of suction pads on the fingers, Ryan knew he was a stickie. However, he was malformed beyond the limits of a nightmare. He seemed to have neither joints nor muscles, and his flailing arms terminated in tentacles that suggested an octopus. The tentacles were disproportionate, far too short for his size, and the lower half of the stickie was a quaking, quivering mass of fatty tissue covered with undulating suction cups. The sight made him feel physically ill, bile working its way up his throat. He tried to back away, but the Commander put a hand against his back to keep him in place.

 

"Nothing to fear, Mr. Cawdor." The gray-eyed man's quiet voice purred with amusement. "They can't see you. They're kept in a constant state of sedation."

 

There were other figures in other vats, anthropomorphic, bloated bulks that bore no true resemblance to humanity. In one, a froglike head reared from the gelid contents. There were breathing slits at the sides of the head, and an inhumanly wide mouth was creased in a constant half-smile. Its round eyes were dull and fathomless.

 

Another gel-filled tank held a human figure, or the exact likeness of one. But the face was covered with coarsely matted hair, huge apish nostrils and snapping black eyes. It didn't move, but gazed up at the ceiling, as though lost in thought. There were many more, some so nauseating he couldn't bear to even glance at them.

 

"Genetic engineering is a program we began over a century ago," the Commander said quietly. "Have you ever heard of pantropic science?"

 

Ryan shook his head, too sickened to speak.

 

"Pantropy is a form of bioengineering, primarily theoretical, to reproduce a strain of humanity designed to live in different environments. After the bombs fell, the science took on a new meaning. It was no longer theoretical or impractical. The challenge was to adapt and modify humanity to survive in the new environment shaped by the holocaust. We experimented with human and animal subjects to create entities that could thrive in any physical condition, immune to radiation and other adverse environmental factors."

 

"You're making muties."

 

"Muties? You mean mutants, I take it. In a way you're correct. The subjects you see below were born with mutated characteristics. They were brought here and exposed to a mutagenic biochemical process in an effort to direct and control their altered DNA. You see, it makes little difference whether we get good raw material to start with. Let them be mutants or normals, we'll have our successes in the end."

 

Not bothering to hide his disgust, Ryan turned to face the Commander. "Why show me this?"

 

The Commander fixed his icy gaze on Ryan. "To prove to you beyond a shadow of a doubt that your perverted, primitive kingdom of Helskel cannot hope to trick us, cannot hope to break our trade agreement and cannot hope to overcome us. We hold all of the power in this new world. Helskel exists only at our sufferance, at our whims. We can create new life. Helskel can only take lives."

 

"Yet you rely on that perverted kingdom to supply you with human organs," Ryan snapped. "Without Helskel, you probably would have died long ago, gone the way of all the other predark power-mad tyrants."

 

Not responding to the comment, the Commander asked, "What is the population of Helskel?"

 

"I don't know."

 

"How high are you placed in its hierarchy?"

 

"I'm not placed at all. I'm here against my will. Hellstrom is holding friends of mine hostage. I don't want to be here any more than you want me to be here."

 

"I don't mind your visit, Mr. Cawdor, despite the damage and disruption you have caused. A minor crisis, easily contained, can sometimes be stimulating. Did Lars Hellstrom send you to assassinate me?"

 

"Not exactly." Ryan sighed. "Though after meeting you and seeing this place, I don't find it such a bad idea. You've outlived your time."

 

The Commander regarded him blankly, then shook his head. "How can I possibly make you understand? You, a landless, lawless renegade."

 

Ryan looked at him keenly. "As far as I know, a renegade is someone who betrays a cause or a faith or a group of people who trusted him. From what I've been told, you held a high position of trust in the predark government. You and a few othersand not just your generation, eitherare responsible for a war that destroyed most of the world and most of its population. You prey on your people in this installation, refusing to grant them a dignified death. I don't think I'm the renegade here."

 

The Commander didn't react, didn't reply, didn't respond. He pointed to a door at the end of the hexagonal room, and Ryan moved on. The door slid open on a gangway that bridged a twenty-foot gap of empty darkness. At the end of the gangway was a transverse corridor running to the left and right, as far as Ryan could see in both directions. Overhead lights shed a cold glare over the vanadium-sheathed flooring and walls.

 

The inward wall was pierced by an elevator stand, and the Commander directed him toward it. They got into the nearest lift and it propelled them smoothly upward, but only for a short distance. It stopped, and the door panel opened onto a vast dome-shaped chamber.

 

The Commander led him into it, past workers manning computer consoles, consulting printouts, all of them looking very industrious and intent. The room was crammed with the most advanced electronic instruments and equipment that Ryan had ever seen. Circuits hummed, and console and panel lights blinked. A bank of closed-circuit monitor screens ran the length of one wall. Most of them were dark, and as they drew closer to them, Ryan saw that each set bore a label that identified redoubts and their locations. With a start, he realized that though most of the screens were dark, the Anthill had at one time been plugged into all of the redoubts all over the continental United States. There were only a couple of screens that displayed imagesdim, flickering black-and-white scenes of empty rooms and corridors.

 

"This complex was intended to be the nexus point of the Totality Concept," the Commander said, a faint hint of pride in his voice. "All the different spin-off projects like Whisper, Cerberus and even Chronos were to be centralized here. The departments were all to be controlled from here, from this colony."

 

His voice dropped to a whisper as he added, almost to himself, "Of course, the situation changed."

 

Turning to look at Ryan, he asked, "You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you, Mr. Cawdor?"

 

Ryan knew exactly what he was referring to, but he figured his best tactic was to play dumb. "Not a word."

 

"A pity. You would be exceptionally impressed by the elaborate technological marvels we managed to achieve during the last few decades of the twentieth century. But you don't have a frame of reference to understand even a fraction of what you're seeing."

 

As they walked farther into the room, Ryan saw a six-sided chamber, the armaglass walls tinted a greenish blue. The chamber was huge, the biggest mat-trans gateway he had ever seen. It looked large enough to accommodate a herd of mutie buffalo.

 

As they drew closer to it, Ryan saw a freestanding control console, facing the gateway's massive door. He managed to stroll near it, his eye flicking over the dials and buttons studding its surface. A small vid screen was placed directly in its center and it displayed the interior of a cave, looking out toward an irregularly shaped entrance. Beyond the opening was rock-littered ground. Because the image was in black-and-white, Ryan couldn't tell the time of day. However, since the illumination was so dim, he assumed it was moonlight, and probably sometime after midnight, maybe close to dawn.

 

A keyboard was attached to the edge of the console, and certain keys bore certain symbols. One key was inscribed with a triangle cut by three straight lines. It was the same symbol they had seen in the installation back in Dulce.

 

The Commander beckoned to him. "This way, Mr. Cawdor. The tour has come to an end."

 

Ryan was led across the room to a door. A red button was on the frame, and the Commander pushed it. The door hissed open, and the man waved Ryan in. They stood together in a very small elevator as the door closed behind them. The lift fell very quietly, and for only a short distance.

 

The door opened, and they stepped out between a pair of bookcases and into the "Oval office." The Commander didn't say a word. He went to his desk and sat down, staring at his prisoner with detachment. Ryan stood in front of the desk, staring back.

 

"Have you nothing to say, Mr. Cawdor?"

 

"What would you like me to say?"

 

"That you are impressed, intimidated even. That you have met your master."

 

"Is that what you are?"

 

"I am, but I'm interested in hearing you say it."

 

"Why? Will that save my life?"

 

The Commander shrugged. "I am afraid not. I toyed with the notion of simply releasing you, so you could carry the tale of your experiences back to Helskel, but I doubt Hellstrom would believe you. Once we locate your companion, she will fill that function adequately. No, I believe I will have you remain here with us."

 

"As a subject for your genetics experiments?"

 

"Perhaps."

 

"Or as an organ donor?"

 

"Again, perhaps."

 

"Or someone you can turn into a cyborg? Another one of your tools?"

 

"What else is man but a tool?" the Commander asked. "He has no other value. Humanity is self-destructive, suffering from an anarchy of mind and spirit. Free of the moral deterioration that paves the road to decadence, can you imagine the marvels humanity could accomplish?"

 

"I've seen some of your marvels," Ryan said grimly. "Shiny toys and freak shows."

 

The Commander affected not to have heard him. "In another century, maybe less, this world will cease to be a planet of strife and disorder, wallowing in bloodshed. It will be secure."

 

"The security of the grave," Ryan replied with bitterness. "A century ago you and your kind screwed humanity and left us to pick up the pieces." As he spoke, his right hand tugged at the hanging end of his scarf.

 

"The nuclear holocaust was actually a blessing," the Commander continued. "You have no idea of what it was like a century ago. The world before the holocaust was totally out of control, populations of useless people were expanding, chaos overwhelmed all the old political systems."

 

Ryan slowly wound the slack of the scarf around his hand. "So you don't care about all the suffering, the horrors, the destruction. It was best for the world to be destroyed, especially since you survived it."

 

"Visionaries are needed. And there are things far beyond your understanding. The seeds planted a long time before are getting ready to take hold of the earth, getting ready for a new future."

 

"Hellstrom says that Charlie Manson's vision of the future was very much like this one. Like your own. How can you feel superior when you share your philosophy with a criminal maniac?"

 

The Commander's eyes were devoid of any emotional reaction to Ryan's question. He said, "The old world was ending anyway. It couldn't have continued."

 

Ryan slid the scarf across the back of his neck. The weighted end nestled just below his collarbone. He was ready, and he waited for his chance.

 

"Now, every action that affects the course of humanity will be dictated by us. Now, in a hundred years or less all the rules of the world will be my rules."

 

The Commander lifted his face and his eyes bored into Ryan's own. "A world," he continued smoothly, "you will never see. I am done being your host."

 

He reached across the desk toward a row of inset buttons. Ryan gave the scarf a jerk and whiplashed it across the intervening yards between him and the Commander. He had accurately gauged the length he would need. The weighted end of the scarf struck against the man's right temple with a loud cracking of bone, spinning him away from the buttons and hurling him heavily to the floor.

 

Ryan was around the desk before the body had settled, rewinding the scarf around his hand. The Commander lay on his left side on the carpet, one arm beneath him. An ugly, blood-oozing indentation interrupted the unlined smoothness of his forehead. He lay as Ryan had seen many corpses lieboneless, mouth partly open, eyes wide and glazing over, an expression of shock frozen on his face.

 

Surveying the office in a sweeping, searching glance, Ryan saw his blasters, his grens and ammo clips stacked in a corner behind the desk. He snorted and muttered, "Stupes."

 

The arrogance of power never failed to astonish him. Those who wielded control always seemed to lose their objectivity, rigidly believing that their authority could never be challenged. They grew blind to other possibilities, to random factors, to wild cards. The Commander and Lars Hellstrom were so alike it was nearly comical. Or sickening.

 

Stepping over the body, he grabbed the Walther MPL, jammed a new clip into the SIG-Sauer and attached the grens to the combat harness he still wore beneath his coat. Jacking a round into the pistol, he decided to put a bullet into the Commander's ear just to make certain. Though the man had said they couldn't transplant the brain, it was remotely possible they could resuscitate him and repair a fractured skull.

 

He bent over, inserting the end of the baffle silencer into the man's ear. Over a century had passed since the crazy bastard should have been welcomed by Father Death, but it was better late than never to force him to accept the invitation.

 

Just as Ryan's finger tightened on the trigger, the Commander moved. He convulsed beneath him, his hand streaking up, closing tightly around the barrel of the SIG-Sauer and yanking it to one side. Ryan tried to wrest it away, but it was like wrestling with an iron vise.

 

The Commander's expression was calm, almost serene, his icy eyes placid. "Killing me will serve little purpose. My death will not affect this place. The work will go on."

 

For an instant Ryan believed him, and he almost stopped trying to free the blaster from the man's grasp. Then a boiling anger came fountaining up out of him, and he erupted in a flaming, murderous fury.

 

His left fist smashed with all his weight behind it into the pale, unlined face below him. The head bounced against the floor, the nose flattening, blood splattering bright against the white skin. He kicked him in the groin, and as the Commander curled around his foot, he loosened his grip on the blaster.

 

Ryan snatched the pistol away, slashed sideways at the groping hand with the barrel, stooped over and shot the Commander through the forehead.

 

The man shivered, spasmed and went limp, hands dropping lifelessly to the carpet. The fingers scrabbled at the nap for a moment, then froze, curved like talons.

 

Breathing hard, Ryan stepped away from the corpse. His lips were dry and his face was damp. When he wiped away crimson droplets on the baffle silencer, he saw his hand was trembling.

 

He rubbed a drop of the Commander's blood between thumb and forefinger. It wasn't hot, warm or even tepid. Ryan grinned savagely and said, "Doesn't that just figure."

 

From the corner of his eye, he caught a shifting movement behind him. He whirled, the blaster leading the way. One of the tall double doors was opening, pushed from the outside.