Chapter Fourteen

Ryan awakened to the sound of his own voice screaming, to terrible pain and pressure below his good right eye. He tried to twist away from the hurt, but he couldn't move his arms or legs.
"Leave the rad-blasted eye alone," someone above him growled.
After a second, the horrible pressure lifted. Blinking away tears, Ryan opened his eye and saw a cal-lused thumb with a filthy jagged nail pulling back from his right cheek.
The owner of the thumb, a man with a round face and dirt-caked black stubble of beard, smiled down at him. There was fresh blood smeared on his cracked yellow teeth.
"Leave the eye, so he can watch," the voice said. "We'll eat that for dessert."
Ryan twisted against his bonds, throwing his head back in a vain attempt to locate the speaker. He did see that the room was smoky and low-ceilinged with heavy wooden cross beams. A fire raged in the stone hearth a few feet away. Another look around told Ryan he was lying on a crude wooden table, and that he had no clothes on.
Beneath his bare back, the tabletop was sticky and wet.
It smelled of blood, and worse.
"The trick, you see," the voice continued, "is to keep him alive and conscious right up until the end. Right up to the moment when one of us takes a big bite out of his beating heart."
A murmur of approval stirred in the hazy, overheated room. There were others along the walls, many others just out of sight. Ryan strained harder against the ropes that held his wrists and ankles, and felt them give a little. At the edge of his vision, tankards of ale were being passed around. Refreshments for the party.
Then a shadowy form leaned over him. The face was upside-down, the silhouetted hair wild and stiff with grease. "I claim the honor of the first taste," said the now familiar voice.
Breath from the grave gusted over Ryan's face, and something slimy and warm splattered his neck drool, swaying from the upside-down face.
Clenched in a grubby fist, a long knife reflected dancing firelight. Its blade had been sharpened so many times that it had been reduced to a mere sliver of steel.
Ryan slipped his right hand free of the rope and lunged up from the table, grabbing hold of the can-nie's wrist before he could strike. The sensation of grasping a solid form lasted only an instant, then it gave way. As if he had seized a rotten fruit held together by the thinnest of skins, the wrist collapsed with a wet pop under his fingertips.
The cannie squealed and jerked back as the severed hand and knife dropped onto Ryan's heaving stomach. Fat worms crawled out of the hand's gooey stump, white, segmented worms with shiny, blind heads. They wriggled excitedly on his skin.
"Get him back down!" the cannie cried.
Before Ryan could get hold of the knife, a dozen cannies rushed in, grabbed him and pinned his shoulders to the tabletop. The cannie wildman loomed over him again. Undaunted by his injury, he picked up his severed hand and, using his bare teeth, unclenched one by one the dead fingers locked around the blade's handle. When the dead claw dropped to the floor, he took hold of the knife in his surviving hand.
"A bit of thigh for starters," he told the others, "a juicy medallion just here, I think"
Ryan bucked against the weight that held him down. He couldn't escape the knife. He felt a searing pain inside his left leg, but refused to give his torturers the pleasure of hearing him cry out, biting his tongue to keep from screaming. Above him, the leader of the pack chewed noisily and with obvious relish.
"A most agreeable flavor," the cannie announced to his band. "Just a hint of gaminess that is not at all unpleasant."
Ryan didn't want to die spread-eagled on some cannie's buffet table. Summoning all his remaining strength, he threw himself against his captors. It accomplished nothing. With both ankles and a wrist still tied down, there was very little he could do. They waited until he had exhausted himself before they began to feed.
Securely pinned to the tabletop, Ryan felt pressure and pain from all sides as here and there knife points trimmed away select, bite-sized pieces of him. Even so, he wouldn't surrender his dignity. He chomped down on his tongue until his mouth filled with blood.
Over the guttural, lip-smacking sounds of cannies feasting, he could hear the party music start up. Fiddle and squeezebox played a sprightly jig.
As the blades dug deeper and deeper into him, steel scraping bone, Ryan bit off his tongue. After that, there was no way to hold in the agony. He arched his spine, opened his throat and, spewing blood mist to the ceiling, screamed for all he was worth.
The cannies began to clap and stomp their boots.
The ghastly duet had become a trio.

RYAN CAME TO on his hands and knees, retching.
Jump dream, he thought, as a gray-on-gray world spun madly around him. The same thing happened every time they used the mat-trans gatewaysthe bad nightmares and horrible nausea.
Only this time it was worse.
It felt as if he were vomiting from the soles of his boots. Just when he thought the wrenching spasms were over, the odor of melted plastic made him dry-heave some more.
When he could open his eye, he looked up from the stinking puddle he'd made on the polished concrete floor. A green bulb in a metal cage overhead blinked on and off; it was the brightest light source in the chamber. The woman Nara stood beside him. Inside her black armor, his keeper showed no signs of postjump distress.
"Are you all right?" she asked with concern.
When he nodded that he was, she used a soft towel to wipe at his mouth.
Only then did Ryan realize he was drenched. Not with puke, not with sweat, but with clear oil. It felt like machine oil. It matted his dark curling hair, soaked through his clothes onto his skin. The corded muscles of his bare arms gleamed, as did his chest at the gap at the throat of his shirt.
"Fireblast!" he groaned and tried to take the towel from her.
"No, let me wipe it off," Nara said.
He gave her a questioning look.
"I want to."
Ryan let the woman mop his face and arms. There was nothing she could do about the rest.
"Where did we jump to?" he asked as he rose to his feet.
"You'll find out in a minute," she said. "But before we go any further and things start to get crazy, I want you to know that I'd like to be your friend. You're going to need someone you can count on from here on out. I'm afraid what you've gone through so far is the easy part."
The nature of her request took Ryan by surprise. He didn't know whether to be irritated or amused. "Either I'm your hostage, or I'm not. Which is it?" he said.
"That was in Shadow World," she told him. "Water under the bridge. Now that we're here on Earth, things are different. Much different."
"You're not making any sense."
"I'm called Nara. What's your name?"
"Ryan. Ryan Cawdor."
"Wait here, Ryan. Try to relax if you can. And don't worry, I'll be back."
She walked away from him, heading for a metal catwalk that bridged a gap in the floor's concrete. On the far side of the bridge, Ryan saw a bulkhead door with a small window in it. Behind the window there was more light, and a press of human faces, fighting for a look inside. Nara opened this door and slipped through it. When the door closed, the faces returned to the window and resumed their wide-eyed gawking.
Ryan pointedly turned his back to them and looked around. Definitely not a gateway, he decided. There was no armaglass, and the distant gray walls were covered with gray pipes, hoses and conduit. Because the huge room was too wide for its height, there was a crushing oppressiveness to it. He stood in the center of a large rectangle painted on the concrete floor. A matching rectangle was in the flat, concrete ceiling just overhead, and it made Ryan feel as if he were about to be smashed flat.
He walked to the foot of the catwalk, where the concrete ended, and looked down. The chasm he faced was hundreds of feet deep, maybe even thousands; Ryan couldn't see the bottom. The concrete pad on which he stood was poised above it, a towering platform. He could see that the man-made canyon's walls were covered with more pipe, hose and conduit. Miles and miles of the stuff.
Standing there, looking over the abyss, Ryan had a momentary lapse of confidence. In his heart, he sensed the truth, that home and loved ones were impossibly far away, a distance beyond his comprehension. Perhaps he would never see them again. Perhaps there was no way home. Perhaps he was forever lost. He tasted his own rising panic, as bitter as gall at the back of his throat. With sheer willpower, he forced the torrent of negative thoughts from his mind. He had taken many hazardous journeys to unknown places; he had countless times allowed himself to be deconstructed and hurled forward at the whim of century-old machines; he had faced dangers larger than life, and no matter where he'd ended up, or what enemies awaited, he had always managed to battle through them and find his way home. Ryan vowed to take this strange twist of fate not as tragedy, but as challenge.
The bulkhead door reopened behind him. When he turned, he saw a jam of people in white lab coats on the other side. He recognized Nara in the front of the pack. No longer in black armor, like the others she wore the uniform of a scientist. However, she wore the military insignia of captain on her breast pocket, just above a badge bearing the word FIVE.
Nara didn't step forward. A tall, lanky whitecoat walked through the door, instead, and advanced onto the catwalk. He had a high forehead, thick brown hair and very long legs.
"Mr. Cawdor, my name is Dr. Huth," he said. "I'm in charge here. I want to make your adjustment to these new circumstances as quick and painless as possible."
"I'm all for that."
Huth waved at the door, and it was pulled closed and sealed. They were alone.
"I will take a moment and answer some of your questions now."
"Where is this place?"
Huth smiled. "You started off with a good one," he said. "No simple answer there, I'm afraid. Do you have any scientific training?"
"I thought I was going to be the one asking the questions."
"I have to know how much to explain. Where to start."
"I know a little of predark science."
"By 'predark' do you mean before the apocalypse on your world?"
Ryan nodded.
"Ever hear of something called the Totality Concept?"
Ryan considered whether to admit his knowledge and decided that it didn't matter.
"I've heard of it."
"The time-trawling mission?"
"Yes."
"That's excellent. Then what I'm about to tell you won't come out of the blue. Please feel free to stop me if any part of my explanation isn't clear." After a pause Huth said, "Where we are at this moment is not the Earth you know. It's another Earth."
"There's only one Earth."
"That's what we thought," Huth said, "until we made a freak discovery while experimenting with time-trawling technology. We uncovered the existence of parallel universes, and with that revelation came the possibility of constructing a corridor between your apocalyptic Earth and our own."
"I don't understand."
"It turns out that both your world and ours exist simultaneously in real time and space. In our world there was no nuclear holocaust. No end of civilization, of science, of humanity. Our world lived on, progressed and thrived."
Ryan scratched his chin, but said nothing. For the first time he noticed the cuffs of the man's coat, how frayed they were. A button was missing, too. Curious, if he was the bigwig scientist he claimed to be. Huth went on, "We believe that our parallel existences were virtually indistinguishable, exact duplicates until the moment of divergence, which we calculate occurred on January 20, 2001. The day of your nuclear holocaust. After that date, our realitiesand futuresveered apart."
"Sounds to me like a great big load of bullshit," Ryan said.
"If you have a question, I'd be glad"
"My question is, why are you bothering to make up this crap?"
"Ryan, if I may call you that, to convince you of the truth of my words, all I have to do is take you out of this chamber. The proof is there. It is absolute. I just want to prepare you for what you will see. To minimize the shock. Believe me, this is not your Earth."
"Not Deathlands, but somewhere else?" Huth shook his head. "In this place, the Earth you know is the faintest of faint shadows, only visible under the most intense light imaginable."
"I want to talk to your baron."
"Baron?" Huth repeated, momentarily puzzled by the term. Then he smiled. "Oh, I see. After the holocaust your democratic society devolved into feudal associations. I'm sorry, Ryan. We have no such single authority figure here."
"Assuming for the moment that what you say about this place is true, that it isn't Earth, what do you want from Deathlands? Why have you sent your people there?"
"We want to help you recover from the disaster."
Huth told him. "To use our century of progress to bring light back to your Earth."
Ryan regarded the man skeptically. "All I've seen of your progress is some ugly new ways to chill. We don't need that. We've got plenty of ways to die already."
"What about those ways of dying?" Huth said. "What about disease? We can put an end to that. And radiation sickness? We can decontaminate your environment. Rebuild your cities. Raise your people up from the mud. You have no idea what our science can do." He looked at Ryan's face. "That lost eye of yours, for instance."
"Yeah, what about it?"
"Surely you would prefer to have stereoscopic vision again. I can make you a replacement eye. The process will take about three hours, and another hour to implant and connect the new organ."
"Why would you do any of that? What's in it for you?"
"In a real way, we have a common ancestry and heritage. You are our flesh and blood. Our Lost Tribe. Ryan, think of it like this. If it hadn't been for the holocaust, you would have a double here on our Earth, an identical twin. We can't desert you now that we've found you. Especially now that we know what desperate straits your world is in. We owe it to you to help, so we can rejoin our futures."
Ryan considered the man's offer in light of the fact that the lives of his companions were being held as leverage to force him to cooperate. Coercion and compassion seemed a highly untrustworthy combination, but he really had no choice but to play along. For now.
From the pocket of his lab coat, Huth produced a cutting tool similar to the one Nara had used on him earlier. "Let me take a bit of skin and I can get started on the eye at once."
"So you can really clone me a new one?" Ryan said as he held out his open palm.
"No, not clone," Huth said. "That is a very inefficient and outdated technique. I'm going to use the DNA code from your skin sample to modify all the cells in an already existing eye. When the process is complete, it'll be as much yours as the one you still have."
"Won't the eye's original owner mind my using it?"
"The owner's dead. Donated his body parts to science."
The doctor took his sample and placed it in a vial, then he gave Ryan a sterile pad to stanch the flow of blood from the nick. After he placed the tube in his lab coat's breast pocket, Huth said, "When we leave this chamber, we will move to another facility for a full debriefing and further medical and psychological testing. As I've tried to explain, our world is different from yours. Much more prolific. Perhaps alarmingly so. If it makes you feel uneasy, I can provide you with a drug to make you more comfortable."
"I'm fine," Ryan said.
Huth signaled and the bulkhead door opened. "Follow me, please," he said, then started back across the catwalk.
Ryan caught sight of Nara in the doorway ahead. She smiled, then turned her back to him, and along with a crew of heavily armed and armored nonscientists, apparently sec men, began to push the crowd of whitecoats out of the way.
The windowless hall beyond the door was jam-packed with scientists, all of them cheering, waving their hands, yelling at him. In the frenzy of enthusiasm, their words were a jumble of ecstatic nonsense. Ryan found himself jostled and pushed through a sea of bobbing heads and outstretched arms. The furor combined with the low ceiling to make the quarters feel smotheringly close. The contingent of sec men kept the whitecoats back with batons, plowing through them in wedge formation. Those knocked to the floor by the sec men were unceremoniously kicked and trampled by then- excited colleagues, who seized the opportunity to get a little closer to Ryan.
Following the wedge, with Nara on one side and Huth on the other, Ryan was rushed around a corner and into a waiting, open elevator. Half of the sec men remained outside to keep the whitecoats from pushing into the car. Ryan, Nara and Huth moved to the back wall, their protectors crushing in behind them. The interior of the car was gray, like the concrete walls outside, and well-worn. There was even less airspace to the ceiling. As the elevator doors slowly closed, Ryan noticed the grittiness underfoot.
"Better get used to this kind of attention," Nara told him. "You are a celebrity now."
"Don't know that word," Ryan admitted.
"Means you are famous. Important. People will want to know you, to know all about you."
The elevator started to drop.
"Of course we will have to control the flow of information," Huth said, "and the access. In your initial interview you will only speak to a small, select group, representatives drawn from each of the FIVE. Then we will to see to your medical needs."
"FIVE, like your insignia?"
"That's right."
"What does it stand for?"
"Five global conglomerates," Huth said. "After the Big Shakedowns of the nineties, the controlling international economic powers were reduced to just fiveas it turned out, the perfect number for efficient management of Earth's resources. The FIVE are linked by treaties to compete peacefully and provide troops to protect mutual interests and defend individual freedom. This reorganization has allowed us to put an end to war."
Ryan looked around the packed car as it plummeted. "Lot of blasters in here for such a peaceful place."
"Your safety is paramount to us. You've seen how excited people get at the sight of you. I assure you their affection is genuine, but we can't take any chances of your being accidentally injured."
Nara nodded in agreement, but there was something behind her eyes, something cloaked, as if Huth were leaving something important unsaid. When she realized that Ryan was reading her expression, or attempting to, she turned her face away.
Ryan noticed that there was no floor indicator above the doors. "Long way down," he said. "No stops in between."
"That's right," Huth said. "This is an express. It will let us out at road level."
Even without stops, the trip took six or seven minutes.
When the car doors finally opened, it was onto a narrow, apparently dead-end corridor that was practically filled with a black war wag. The fit between wag and hall was so tight that entry to the vehicle's red-lit interior had to be made through its rear double doors.
Ryan was directed to one of the small jump seats spaced along the passenger compartment's side walls. The seats were jammed between the wag's girders. Behind them, the walls were a solid mass of gray pipe and wiring conduit. Inside the compartment, the odor of burned plastic was as sharp as a razor. There were no windows, in either the passenger or driver areas, and it soon became clear there were not enough seats to go around. Some of the sec men had to sit on the floor by the rear doors. They were packed shoulder to shoulder, and shoulder to knee with those who'd found seats.
In the front of the vehicle two men sat facing forward in what looked like much more comfortable chairs. Ryan watched as the one on the left pulled on an opaque visor.
He turned to Nara and gestured with a thumb. "What's that for?"
"So the driver can see outside," Nara said. "It connects him via computer to the vehicle's sensory array."
When the sec man on the right donned a visor, too, Ryan said, "Okay, if that one's the wag's driver, then who's the other guy?"
"Weapons system engineer. That whine you hear is the laser battery powering up."
The engine started with more of a baritone rumble. After a moment there was a loud, grating noise.
"Security gates opening," Huth explained, buckling up his cross-shoulder, webbed harness. He indicated that Ryan should do likewise.
After the one-eyed man had strapped in, the driver called out from the front of the wag, ' 'Brace yourselves, everybody. We are go."
He gunned the engine a few times, then the vehicle shot forward. Almost at once something slammed into the right side of the passenger compartment, metal grinding on metal. Despite the safety harness, the impact twisted Ryan half out of his seat. The wag swerved hard left, then accelerated. A halfsecond later there was an even more powerful impact from the rear, which jolted the vehicle ahead sickeningly.
"Just merging into the traffic flow," Huth assured Ryan. "Nothing to worry about."
Outside the hull of the wag, engines roared, sirens wailed, horns bleated, metal plowed into metal. Never in his life had Ryan been caught in this kind of man-made stampede; to him the chaos and tumult was unimaginable. And everything inside the passenger compartment was rattling loose, as if they were hurtling down a washboard road at an insane rate of speed.
Ryan stared across the compartment at the blurred faces of their armed escort, reading the simple brutality in then big, doughy faces. Their body armor looked like what he'd seen Nara and her friends wear in Deathlands, but it was much more abbreviated. The overlapping black plates protected only the most vital areas, chests front and back, the sides of their necks and their groins. They wore gauntlets made of the same material. Their hairy arms were bare to the shoulder, likewise big and doughy. The red glow of the interior light tinted their pale skins pink, and their battle scars an angry crimson. Their helmets had flanges that protected the backs of their necks and their cheekbones. They also wore armored shin guards above their black boots.
Ryan noticed that each of them carried the same model of tribarreled blaster, and at their belts was a short, double-edged knife with what looked like a knuckle-duster grip.
When he glanced up from the blade, Ryan saw that its owner was staring back at him with a vicious smirk on his face. The sec man leaned forward, puckered up and blew him a big juicy kiss.
The sec men who saw it broke out laughing. They were still laughing when Ryan leaned his face close to the kisser, and, looking straight into his eyes, responded with another universal human gesture. He drew his stiffened index finger across his throat from ear to ear.
The laughter died away.
The kisser pulled back with a snarl, but Ryan could see that his Deathlands sign language had had the desired effect. Behind the little pig eyes there was hesitation, and behind that was fear.
Sec men were sec men, he decided, no matter what world they were on.
Time passed, punctuated only by the occasional sideswipe collision. Ryan had no idea how far they'd traveled when the driver shouted something unintelligible at them over his shoulder.
Braking, it turned out, was also an intense experience.
Tires screeched, and Ryan was hurled forward against his seat harness. He smelled burning rubber, then the wag smashed into something on the left side. Whatever it was, it crunched and gave ground. The impact, coupled with locked brakes, put the wag in a squealing, sideways, four-wheel drift that seemed to stretch on and on. After another grazing impact at the wag's rear left corner, the driver got the machine back under control and gradually slowed to a crawl. He turned left, moved the vehicle ahead carefully, then brought it to a full stop.
Ryan heard the gate sound again, this time barely audible over the howl of traffic. The wag moved forward a bit, then the traffic noise shut off as the gate closed behind them. The engine stopped, but no one made a move to get out. There was a lurch and the vehicle started to rise.
"We're in another, bigger elevator," Nara explained. "It will take us to the top level."
Lingering fumes from the wag's exhaust filtered into the compartment. Evidently the hull wasn't airtight. It took so long for the elevator to reach its destination, Ryan figured that had the driver left the engine running, they'd all have turned purple and suffocated.
Shortly after the upward motion ceased, the sec men cracked the wag's rear exit. Between the back bumper and the elevator doors, there was a distance of about two yards. Huth, Nara and Ryan climbed out of the vehicle, but the sec crew remained inside.
"We don't need protection here?" Ryan asked.
"They have their own," Huth said.
When the elevator doors slid back, they revealed wall-to-wall sec men. The situation was similar to what Ryan had faced outside the transport chamber.
The hall was low-ceilinged, windowless and lined on both sides with very excited people. Men and women cheered and waved, pressing against the barrier of sec men as they attempted to reach out and touch him. The people at this location wore different uniforms. Dark blue jackets and slacks for the men, the same jackets and short, tight skirts for the women. All of the garments looked threadbare and shabby.
"Who are all these people?" Ryan asked Nara. "They're not wearing white coats."
"Upper-level management," she replied. The sec men treated the managers with the same courtesy as their counterparts had treated the white-coats. Using batons and armor-clad elbows, they beat back the throng.
To Ryan's right, a sec man's straight-arm sent a tall woman with brown hair flying back into her colleagues. As she slid off them and hit the floor, her long legs spread wide. The woman wore nothing underneath the tattered miniskirt, and she made no attempt to close her thighs. Ryan couldn't help but stop and stare at what was on offer. Before he turned away, she scrambled to her feet and jerked open the lapels of her worn navy-blue blazer, treating Ryan to an even more startling sight.
Under the jacket she wore a flimsy white plastic bib. On the front of the bib was a full-color likeness of a man with a black eye patch, longish dark hair and a dark shadow of beard. Under the photo were the words Hope Lives.
"That's me!" Ryan said in astonishment. How the image had been produced seemed much less important to him than why it had been produced. "What's going on?" he asked Nara.
"Like I said, you're a celebrity now. The first man from Shadow World. You've stimulated the imagination of everyone who knows about you. You'll be seeing a lot more of this kind of thing as time goes on. Word hasn't gotten out to the general public yet."
He noticed many others in the hallway were wearing the Hope Lives shirts. Still others had buttons with his likeness on them clipped to their lapels. It gave him an odd feeling to see his own face looking back at him, affixed to the clothes of strangers.
The sec men cleared their access to a doorway, then escorted them through to an anteroom that ended in another door. Huth ushered Ryan into the room beyond. Inside, there was no crush of people. There were no people at all. Ryan could actually see the four walls, which were gray, unfinished concrete. The room wasn't overly large, and it was made to feel even smaller by the size of the conference table that dominated it, and by the low ceiling and lack of windows. The sense of physical oppression that Ryan had felt since his arrival persisted.
As he stepped farther into the room, a video camera mounted near the ceiling panned along with him. Inset on one wall were five big video screens, and under each screen was a plaque with a name on it. Invecta, Mitsuki, Hutton-Byrum-Kobe, Questar, Omnico.
The screens winked on simultaneously. Four men and a woman looked down at him, each from his or her own monitor. They all wore gold blazers and white turtlenecks.
"Good afternoon, Ryan," said the man whose screen was marked Hutton-Byrum-Kobe. He had a kindly face and a leonine mane of white hair. "I hope you don't mind our getting together in this impersonal and disembodied way. But it really isn't necessary that we all meet you in person today. There will be plenty of time for that later. Right now, we want you to take a seat and relax." He pointed at the chair at the head of the table.
As Ryan walked in the narrow space between the backs of the chairs and the wall, he saw that there were panels set in the tabletop in front of all the places, including his. He also saw that the table wasn't new. There were scars on its surface and its edges were chipped. The chair he sat in had an odd but not unpleasant covering, pebbled like animal hide only much thicker. The stuffing was leaking out of one of the arms.
"We only have a few initial questions," the white-haired man said, "then we will let the doctors have a look at you."
It was the woman who addressed him first. Her plaque said Omnico. Of all the screens, hers was the only one that seemed slightly out of focus, as if she were being videoed through gauze. Her collar-length, auburn hair had been ratted into a bubble shape on top of her head, and it flipped up at the ends. Her lips were exceptionally thin, and the expression they wore was impatient.
"Ryan," she said, "on the table in front of you is a video screen. Please look at it. Good. What you see there is a map of our world. Until a century ago, the major features of your Earth and ours looked exactly alike. We would like to know if the nuclear holocaust you suffered has altered the major land masses. We'd also like to know what areas you have visited on your world. Would you please touch the screen with your fingertip on any places you think you recognize."
There was only one shape that looked at all familiar. Ryan knew the outline because Trader had shown it to him on a predark map. When he touched the shape with his finger, that part of the screen turned red.
"And you call that?" the Omnico woman prompted.
"Deathlands," he said.
"The former United States of America," Huth added.
"Any others?"
"I've been outside of Deathlands a few times, but I don't know the places on a map. Russia. Amazon. Japan. I didn't go overland or by sea. Too dangerous. Used the mat-trans system, instead. None of these others look familiar to me." Deathlands suddenly filled the screen. "Would you please touch the screen where you know there are cities," the woman continued. "We're interested in locating your largest existing cities. Touch the spots where they are first."
Ryan hesitated. If they did have an eye in the sky, they could do all this by themselves, with whitecoat technology. Why were they bothering to ask him? Was it some kind of test? "Mr. Cawdor?"
Slightly irked, he put his finger on the screen. "D.C.," he said. "Newyork, and here, Norleans."
"How many people in each?" This question came from the man in the screen marked Mitsuki. He had graying hair, clipped short, and the color of his eyes matched the blazer.
"Couldn't say for sure. A few thousands, mebbe."
"Where are most of the people, then?" the man followed up.
"Scattered around. Outposts and barons' villes."
"Is there much commerce between these villes?"
"A little. Only if they're close enough. Travel is almost always by foot. Roads are bad and dangerous.
The people are mostly on their own, grow their own food."
"And is there any industry? Manufacturing?" asked the man whose plaque said Invecta. He was gaunt-faced and dour. The hair that remained to him was shaved down to a horseshoe-shaped shadow that wrapped around the back of his head.
"Scavenging, that's what people do," Ryan told him. "Working over the ruins for things they can use."
"What sort of communication is there between these small, isolated villages?" This question came from the last interviewer, a round-faced man with small close-set brown eyes. His screen said Questar.
"Word of mouth, passed by travelers. There's no other way."
The Mitsuki man asked, "And the military organization is based on these barons, this primitive feudal system?"
"There isn't much of what you'd call military organization. Just the sec men hired by the barons. They're the ones who maintain control around villes and in the barons' outlying territories."
"How do they manage this?" the woman said. When Ryan gave her a blank look, she rephrased the question. "What are these sec men armed with?"
"Blasters. Cased-cartridge models, mostly. Some grens. Mebbe even some light artillery. Sec men also have knives, clubs, fists, boots. Use all of them to keep people scared. That's how they keep everyone in line."
"What about the people who aren't part of the security force? Do they have projectile weapons?"
"Mostly black-powder guns in the hands of the regular folk. The other kind are worth a lot of jack. And can be trouble to keep. The barons don't like military blasters outside the hands of their sec men."
"No nuclear weapons?" the white-haired man asked.
"There could be some left in the redoubts, but I don't know where they might be or who controls them."
"How do you think the Deathlands nobility would react if more of our people crossed over?" the Mitsuki man asked. "Would they welcome our help?" Ryan laughed out loud. "You've got the wrong idea there. Nothing noble about the barons. Most of them are snakes on two legs. Slavemasters. Double-crossers. Rapists. If you send more of your folks across, I think they'd do their best to rob them naked, then chill them for sport."
The sound from the screens went dead as the five interviewers conferred among themselves. Ryan watched their lips move and the shifting play of expression on their faces. The golden-eyed Mitsuki man appeared the most animated; the others seemed to be trying to calm him, which took some doing.
To Ryan, the last few questions they'd asked him seemed much more to the point. They required answers that a satellite recon couldn't supply. He wasn't surprised that these people would be interested in Deathlands' defenses, or the lack of same. From what they had seen of his world so far, they had gotten the impression that its inhabitants were hostile, aggressive and generally murderous.
An impression that was right on the money.
When the sound returned, the white-haired man said, "Thank you for talking to us, Ryan. We appreciate your cooperation and truthfulness. And we hope to spend more time with you in the near future."
With that, the screens winked out.
"You did just fine, for a first go," Huth said as Ryan got up from the table. "I think the CEOs were pleased. You've got to understand that we're all feeling around in the dark at this early stage. Once we have our satellite database to refer to, we can ask you much more detailed questions."
"Sounds like you're planning an invasion," Ryan said.
Huth smiled. "You have to forgive our curiosity and eagerness about the world you come from. You probably feel the same way about this place."
"Haven't seen much of it so far," Ryan said. "Is it all indoors?"
"No, I assure you it isn't. We'll head over to the medical complex now, and get you thoroughly checked out."
Six minutes later, Ryan was once again staring into the pink-tinted, scowling face of his pal, the kisser sec man. Once again they were traveling at a high rate of speed on an unseen road. Though he tried to keep track of the turns, it was impossible for Ryan to maintain his bearings. The occasional collisions that sent his head slamming into the seat back didn't help, either. He had no idea what the world outside the wag looked like, and the only way back to Deathlands was lost in a maze of twists and doublebacks.
Nara read the growing concern on his face and misread the cause.
"Don't worry about the medical tests we've scheduled," she told him. "They aren't invasive, and there's no anesthesia. You'll be awake the whole time. We can do everything we need to do with full body scans. We just want to make sure your health is good."
"Ever get to see the sun?" Ryan asked her. The kisser glared at him as if he were insane. Nara opened her mouth to answer but before she could get a word out, sirens started to wail. It sounded as if they were reverberating down a long tunnel. And they were so blisteringly loud that Ryan clapped his hands over his ears.
The driver immediately took his foot off the accelerator and feathered the wag's brakes.
The sec men around Ryan removed their helmets and opened the snap flaps of pouches on their combat belts. They moved deliberately, but in no real hurry. Each took out a green canister the size of a soda can, which had a large, translucent, yellow-tinted plastic bag attached to one end and a metal cap on the other. Nara handed him one of the devices. "You put it on like this," she said. She removed the end cap from the canister and pulled the yellow hood over her head. Then she cinched the throat strap tight. "Breathe through the mouthpiece, like this," she told him, "and you'll be fine."
Ryan donned the plastic hood as she had showed him. The mouthpiece tasted like rubber and charcoal, and it took some effort to draw air through it, which created an unpleasant, dry sensation all down his throat. The colored plastic distorted his vision. It made things look wavy, and the tint turned everything inside the wag a sickly orange. Across from him, Kisser had a face like a two-week-old corpse.
"What's this for?" he asked Nara.
"I'll explain everything after the all clear," she told him. "Too hard to talk with hood on. The inside always fogs up."
In the wag's front compartment, the gunner was helping the driver on with his hood as he continued to slow. Ryan felt a tingling sensation on his bare arms and the backs of his hands, like thousands of tiny pinpricks. The sirens were still howling as the wag came to a halt.
Ryan leaned forward for a better look at Kisser, whose head had slumped to one side. The sec man had his eyes shut. With his lips wrapped around the mouthpiece, he was trying to catch a catnap. Whatever was going on, Ryan figured it had to be fairly routine.
Then something crashed into the right side of the wag, snapping him hard against his shoulder restraints. With the screech of metal on metal still ringing in his ears, there came another collision, same place. Then the wag was being forced to the left by a grinding sideways pressure. Up front, the driver gestured wildly for the gunner to do something.
The head-on impact that came next nearly separated Ryan's neck from his shoulders. Battened-down gear sprang loose, filling the inside of the compartment with missiles. A small metal box fell on Kisser's head, tearing a foot-long rip in the front of his plastic hood.
Eyes wide with shock and panic, the sec man desperately and futilely tried to hold the lips of the tear together.
"Don't breathe!" Huth shouted at him. "Just don't breathe! I'll get another unit!"
Kisser's panicked expression said it was already too late. His face turned purple and his eyes bulged out as he fought to keep from coughing. He lasted no more than a few seconds before his jaws gaped, his throat opened, and in a single horrendous paroxym his insides came flying out his mouth. Hot blood mixed with shredded lung tissue splattered against Ryan's hood and chest.
Other sec men ignored Kisser's final spasms. They frantically unbuckled their safety harnesses and charged their weapons.
Again the wag rocked, this time by a deafening explosion that lifted the vehicle high into the air. The wave of intense heat that slammed them said only one thing to Ryan thermite.