Chapter Twenty-One
"They've been living here in this secluded valley for the better part of a hundred years?"
Krysty was making progress on the slow road toward total recovery.
After the meal, once they were back in their own wing, there had been a brief strategy meeting with everyone present. There had been no need for long talks and complex planning. They all agreed that the institute didn't seem to present any serious threat to them, either individually or collectively, and that they would follow Ryan's lead the next day.
"Must be inbred." Ryan had pushed the two beds together and slipped a small sec lock across the inside of the door, giving them a fragile privacy.
"They seem like crazies or stupes?"
"No, and they aren't really like those weird white-coats we ran into up at Crater Lake."
"So, what are they doing, lover? What's their big special secret?"
"Yeah, that's the rusty nail in the lumber pile. I keep thinking about those days."
Krysty lay back, sighing. "Sorry, lover. Wave of tiredness came over me. Yeah, the dogs. And don't forget that poor bastard who looked like he'd been gone over by a mad surgeon."
"Might not be any connection."
She nodded, looking steadily into his face. "But there was the last words he said. Dean heard them."
"Twins."
"And 'coning,' remember? Dean said that the last word of all sounded like 'coming,' didn't he?"
"Moaning? Someone's name? Going? Could've been that. He was trying to say that he was going."
"Still doesn't explain him talking about twins, does it? And Dean was certain on that." She paused. "The dogs were so similar they looked like identical twins, didn't they?"
"Yeah, that's true." Krysty smiled as she yawned.
"Talk can wait. You need some more sleep."
"I reckon I'll be back up to about ninety percent by morning, though their mushy food didn't help. I'd kill for eggs over easy with back bacon and a pile of hash browns in the morning along with a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice. And good coffee, hot and strong enough to float a horseshoe."
"Promise you it won't be that, lover." He stood and started to get undressed.
"You turning in this early?"
"I think my own batteries could do with a little recharging, as well. Trader always said that you should take sleep when you want it and you can get it. Or you'll want it another time and you won't be able to get it."
Krysty watched him, seeing the lean, scarred body, with bands of muscle hard across the strong bones, waiting until he was peeling off his dark blue pants, laying them on a chair in the corner, where the Steyr rifle was resting.
"Lover," she said very quietly.
"Yeah."
"I'm tired."
"I know."
"But not that tired."
BREAKFAST WAS A GRUEL of watery yellow that the sec man claimed was made from real eggs but had some added goodies, and some white gunge, slightly browned, that he told them was radiated and constituted potatoes, better than they were when they came out of the earth.
The orange juice was nonexistent. Fresh fruit was difficult to keep in the institute for very long. To drink he offered some truly bizarre nut-roast coffee with vile soya milk that stayed in long, circular streaks around the mug.
"Professor Crichton said to tell you that someone would call for you in about a half hour and to ask how the lady was." He addressed the statement to Ryan.
"She's sitting right in front of you. Why not ask her yourself?"
"Because they all said she was she had You know what I mean?"
"You mean I'm a mutie?" Krysty sat up in bed, her long flame-colored hair rumbling free over her shoulders. Ryan had noticed how dulled and limp it had become immediately after she'd used the Gaia power and how it was now returned, almost, to its full brightness and glory.
"Yeah, I mean They said you lifted a whole tree that weighed ten tons."
"Very nearly," the woman agreed. "And you can go and tell your baron or boss or professor or whatever he calls himself that the mutie lady is feeling herself..." She glanced at Ryan and grinned impishly.
"Cut that. Just report back to him that she is feeling a great deal better and should be able to meet anyone at anytime, anyplace."
The man nodded and lifted an index finger to his forehead in a salute. Then he turned on his heel and marched out of the room, closing the door quietly behind him.
IT WAS THE EVER-PRESENT Ladrow Buford who appointed himself as the guide to the party, greeting them out in the atrium at three minutes after nine in the morning, the time checked with a large four-faced digital clock whose numbers had been clicking remorselessly over for the entire life of the Melissa Crichton institute.
"Greetings to all of you outlanders, ladies and gentlemen and children." He stooped forward to peer at Dean. "Sadly we have few children here in the institute these days. The records show a far higher birth rate back in the early days of the long winters, after skydark."
"Probably nothing else for them to do," Abe said in a stage whisper.
"Sample of outlander humor?" the scientist asked, wiping his hands down the sides of his long lab coat as though they'd suddenly become infected.
"Good sample, too. You want some more?"
Buford shook his head, wincing as though someone had wafted a foul-smelling rag under his nose. "No, thank you. I believe not."
"Can we see all around?"
He looked at Mildred and pasted a lopsided smile across his face. "Why, of course you can." He paused. "Eventually. But not today."
"Why? What the fuck do you have to hide from us?" Trader snapped.
Buford glanced around, checking that there were half a dozen sec men within easy call. "You must not be so violent. It will benefit you nothing. Today we'll have a look around the outline of our project, give you an idea of what we do. Then, perhaps tomorrow, Professor Crichton wishes to talk with you. Specially with you," he said, turning to face Krysty.
"Me?"
"It's obvious already that you are not the common, run-of-the-mill outsiders who have stumbled into our lands in the past. We believe you have not told us the truth about where you come from and who you are. Perhaps you have been utilizing some terminological inexactitudes. We think you might have skills we do not yet understand. But we will. Obviously Miss Wroth's supernatural skill has attracted our interest, and we would like the opportunity to carry out some tests. No harm will come, either to her or to any of you. I promise you that."
"That's fair," Ryan said. "You lay your cards on the gaming table. Something in what you say. You don't get to make old bones in Deathlands if you go around blabbing off to everyone about who you are and what you've done. Mebbe we don't come from a little fishing village. But that falls under the heading of being our business, the way we see it."
"You admit to being liars?"
Ryan considered the question. "Yeah. I'll put my hands up to that charge, whitecoat."
Buford pulled out his notebook and quickly wrote several lines in it. Ryan glanced sideways but couldn't read the crabbed, angular hand.
He put the book away in a pocket and smiled brightly. "Very well. The tour begins here."
IT DIDN'T TAKE LONG to check out the atrium, which the short, balding man explained had once been filled with a variety of rare and exotic plants. But they had all died. Sleeping and eating quarters opened immediately off it, with the security section on the second floor. Buford also took them into the other story of their own wing.
The rooms were mainly filled with laboratories of differing sizes, manned by the men and women who'd shared their supper the previous night. But there was nothing to give an obvious clue as to what work they were doing there. One of the things that Ryan noticed immediately was the almost-total absence of anyone under the age of thirty in the whole of the institute.
Doc had been walking briskly alongside the diminutive scientist, his sword stick rapping away on the plastic tiles of the corridors.
"Elegant," Buford commented.
"Thank you kindly."
"It looks a true antique." He peered at it. "That beautiful animal's head in silver."
"Toledo steel blade within the ebony case, and it supports me in my frail old age."
"I sometimes use a stick myself," Buford said, "as you probably noticed when we were outside. Rough ground is hardship to me with my knee and hip joints."
Mildred overheard the end of the conversation. "Why can't you carry out replacement operations? Place like this must've once been geared up for prosthetic installations."
"Prosthetic? You use a word like that! A woman shouldn't have knowledge from predark times on such medical matters. May Hippocrates himself preserve us, but I think that you are all muties!"
Mildred smiled. "Like Ryan told your chief, we don't always tell everyone everything about ourselves. Not too wise. But I give you my word that I don't suffer from any kind of genetic mutation."
Buford stopped in his tracks, so quickly that Abe bumped into him and Dean bumped into Abe.
"Genetics! You read it!"
"Where?"
"Sign on the outside, coming in."
"Gene sculpturing was what that said. Didn't actually mention the word 'genetics' at all."
Buford's eyes protruded behind the magnifying lenses of his polished spectacles. "Mystery on mystery."
"Ossa piled upon mighty Pelion," Doc added, grinning slyly at Mildred. "As you might say."
"You speak gibberish. Total rubbish. It makes no sense at all to me. What is Ossa and who was Pelion? I am considered one of the brightest and best of the workers, here, but I have never heard of such talk."
Doc put his hands behind his back, like someone delivering a lecture. "In the world of the famous myths of ancient Greecein Europethe Titans wished to attack the mighty gods in their heavenly home. In their stupidity they piled the mountain called Ossa upon the one called Pelion and then both upon Mouth Olympus. And still they failed. Because the gods will always remain untouchable, just beyond our reach."
"You made that story up, Doc," Trader mocked. "Good one, though."
Buford clapped his hands to his shining pate. "This is madness. Ragged outlanders filled with knowledge that not even the best minds here know about."
He turned to Ryan. "You!"
"What is it?"
"The one-eyed man from the country of the blind. You see, I, too, have wisdom. You are some sort of shaman. You are bewitching us all with magic."
"We have knowledge," Ryan said. "We all have different skills. Doesn't make us muties."
Buford pointed at Jak. "What about him? He is a pure albino. We know about that from our research. There is a team already working on pigmentation problems. We know what causes it, but none of us had ever seen such a person before. He, too, could help us with our work."
Jak took a single long step so that his face was close to the scientist's, almost at the same level, the red eyes reflected in the glasses like tiny fire rubies. He lifted a long white finger and touched it to Buford's lips.
"Shh," he whispered, and took a single long step away again.
Buford swallowed hard, licking his lips, sighing. "I guess we know where we stand on that one, don't we?" He nodded so hard that the wisps of hair pasted across his scalp trembled as if a tornado were passing by. "Yep, we sure all know where we stand on that one."
Trader nudged Abe. "Whitecoat'll likely have to go back to his room and change his pants after that."
Mildred touched Buford on the arm, making him jump again. "Sorry, I forgot you said you don't like being touched."
"We have what we call a PHZ."
She smiled. "A personal hostility zone. Common psychobabble back in the 1960s. I understand. You didn't answer my question."
"What was it? So many rivers have been crossed in the last minute or so that"
"This was a huge hospital and research institute, massively financed. I realize that times have changed and the wheels have sure turned. But you still call yourselves professors and wear white coats and have labs and all that. So, how come you can't perform a simple operation like replacing a diseased knee or hip joint?"
"After the nukecaust, there was a dark period here, as in the rest of the world. Though we were miraculously sheltered and a significant proportion of us survived, many clinical skills were lost at this time."
"Many?"
He nodded, shuffling his feet. "We can look in a part of the main research wing, now, if you wish."
Trader led the group in following the little scientist, but Mildred wasn't done with him, yet.
"Hold on just a moment. When you said that many of the clinical skills were lost What sort of range of operations can you carry out now? I've seen the operating theaters and they look ready to rumba."
"Ready to"
"Never mind, Buford. Can you carry out, say, a mastectomy here?"
"No, not quite."
"You mean you could cut off the nipple but not the rest? What does that mean, man?" She was becoming very angry. "Appendectomy? No? Tonsillectomy? You mean you can't even take out someone's tonsils anymore?"
"It would be difficult."
Ryan interrupted the argument. "You've lost all of the basic medical skills, Buford?"
"Not precisely lost, outlander Cawdor. More that they have been rather mislaid."
Mildred closed her eyes for a moment, struggling for self-control in the face of this staggering confession. "Can you explain what 'mislaid' means?"
"There were records of all sorts. Vids and machines to play them on. Demos of every operation ever known, taken step by step. We still have most of the equipment. Books and micros and disks. It was one of the finest medical libraries in the whole world."
"And?"
He sniffed. "An electrical fault. Fire. All gone."
"When?"
Buford scratched his cheek thoughtfully. "Can't say precisely. About thirty years ago. Maybe nearer to fifty. Nobody who's alive here now remembers it, except for the great Professor Crichton himself."
Krysty spoke. "So, all you do here now is what you call your research? That right?"
"Yes," he replied miserably.
"No surgical or medical skills left at all? Not a single one?" Mildred probed.
Buford's face brightened for a moment. "Not quite. Last year, after some experiments, we rediscovered how to pull out a diseased tooth."