Chapter Fifteen

Krysty Wroth pulled a face, spit the first mouthful of food back on the cream plastic plate and dropped the cream plastic spoon alongside it.

"By Gaia!" She shook her head in disgust. "That's the worst food I've ever tasted. Grade alpha mutie dreck. It's..." Words failed her, and she sat in silence, looking at the small pile of light brown goo that rested smugly in the center of the plate.

"It even lookslike shit," J.B. said, pushing his plate away from him.

Jak Lauren, on the other hand, savored the food. "Had worse. Ate a cottonmouth once. Been dead weeks. Melted in mouth. Like jelly. Bits like rice." He paused as everyone waited for the explanation of the bits that seemed like rice. "Maggots," he explained as he grinned and took another spoonful of the soft mix on his plate.

Doc Tanner cautiously dipped the end of his spoon into the substance. Raising it to his lips, his tongue flicking like a sun-warmed lizard's, he said, "I swear that it puts me in mind of...of what? Ah, I believe I have it." He sucked in his lined cheeks like a wine taster. "Yes, the pap they used to serve on airliners. Bland, and yet with an awful, lingering aftertaste. Loaded with vitamins and preservatives."

"I likethe flavor of some addies," Finnegan said, taking another large mouthful. "There's some in this fucking stuff I've never tried."

Doc Tanner laid down his spoon. "Anyone who has two bites of this must be a glutton, my dear Finnegan. When they first began to mix chems in with good food to try to maintain it longer, they found one odd side effect."

"What was that, Doc?" Ryan, who still hadn't tried the food, asked.

"Didn't just keep food longer. It also made human corpses last longer without decomposing. Morticians were the great beneficiaries of it."

"Horrid," Lori said, following Krysty's example and spitting her mouthful back on the plate.

"How 'bout you, Ryan?" J.B. asked.

Ryan sniffed at the food, trying to decide what might be in it. One thing was certain: there was nothing in the mixture that had ever lived, nothing that was either animal or vegetable. But there was a whole lot that was mineral in it. In some places in the Deathlands, the main source of food was chemicals, processed, colored and flavored to make them smell like normal food.

He spooned up a little, transferring it to his mouth and rolling it around his palate. The others were right. It was dreadful — a horrid mingling of dull and sharp flavors overlaid with a bitter aftertaste.

"I guess the folks that run this ville must eat this as well," Ryan said finally. "They seem to do fine on it. Guess we ought to try and finish it up."

Finnegan was the only one who seemed to actually relish the pallid sludge as he wiped his plate, and slurped from the plastic beaker of water.

"Hey! Least the drink's fucking good. Clean and fresh as Sierra meltwater."

"Probably what it is," Ryan commented.

Then the loudspeaker clicked on. "Now that nourishment has taken place, you will be taken to induction. Do not attempt to move within the complex here without orders. Security operatives are waiting outside the door to escort you. Go now."

Finnegan eased himself sideways on the bench and let out a rasping fart, making Jak giggle in a high-pitched voice. "My fucking guts aren't used to such rich food," the blaster said, grinning.

When they got outside the room, they found eighteen black-uniformed sec guards, each one holding a gun at the hip. The helmets were still in place, the visors locked down over their eyes. Ryan began to wonder whether these muties actually had normal eyes, or whether they'd been surgically replaced with comp-vid scanners. He'd once heard of it being done with guard dogs. And if it could be done with hounds, then why not with muties?

"Induction with complex leader is now. All follow. Talk is allowed here."

It was either the same sec man with the scarlet flash on the helmet, or another man, absolutely identical. Ryan studied them, watching their peculiar halting gait. Six walked at the front in three columns of two, with six more at the rear. The other six kept pace with the prisoners, three on each side.

Ryan came up beside Doc Tanner, gesturing for Lori to walk with Krysty. It was strange that they had been in the huge building for well over an hour and still hadn't seen an actual person.

"You sure this isn't a redoubt, like some of the others, Doc?"

"Still functioning? After nearly a hundred years, Ryan? You've visited a mess of these places, have you not? Ever seen any that showed life?"

"Sure. One up in the Rockies had a nest of stickies in it. But I know what you're getting at. So who runs this?"

"Some big-wheel baron. To hold this together for a century means a kind of power I didn't believe could have existed."

"There was an immortal comic hero called Superman, wasn't there?"

"Clark Kent — lived in Gotham City. Or was it Metropolis? I remember him. A fighter for justice." The old man grinned. "You think that Superman still lives and runs this place? We shall soon see, Ryan. For, unless I miss my guess, I believe I can make out a sign on yonder door that reads Induction, does it not?"

"It does, Doc. It does."

"Sit down, one to each desk, and wait. The complex leader will be here soon. Stand in the presence of the complex leader."

All the guards had waited outside, stopping and standing quite still, like children's toys discarded suddenly in midgame. The room they were in was stepped like a theater. It contained at least a hundred desks, each with a pen and a notepad. Ryan and his six companions took the entire front row.

"Stand now for the leader," boomed the speaker, which was situated above a pale green light screen.

"Here comes Superman," Doc Tanner whispered.

The speaker coughed and whistled. Lights dimmed, then flickered and flared brighter. Music came from the corners of the large room, hesitantly at first, then swelling to a rather tremulous mezzo-soprano.

"Oh, say, can you see, by the... by the... by the... by the... by the..."

It was switched off.

A door began to slowly open, and Ryan signaled to the others to stand, pushing back his chair, the legs scraping along the floor.

"The leader of the Wizard Island Complex for Scientific Advancement!"

"Holy fuck!" Finnegan breathed, two places along from Ryan.

The leader was barely four feet tall. A pudgy, dumpy little woman, she had pink jowls of fat, like the dewlaps on a bloodhound, dangling on her shoulders. She was wearing a fawn-colored lab coat buttoned up to her throat. Immensely thick spectacles turned her tiny eyes into great goggling orbs of blue and white. Her hair was so thin that her scalp gleamed through the screwed-back mousy locks. She had an enormous bosom, which was out of proportion with the rest of her body, and forced her to lean back as she strutted in on stumpy legs like miniature tree trunks. One arm, the left, hung withered at her side, while the other fiddled with a hearing aid pinned to her lapel. She stopped at the desk at the front of the room and heaved herself slowly onto a box so that she could see the seven strangers who were staring openmouthed at her.

"Assume the seated mode," she said. Though she looked to be about fifty years old, her voice had the soft lisp of an eight-year-old girl.

Ryan sat down, followed by the others. He leaned forward and stared intently through his one good eye at the woman. If she ran a place of this size, then her appearance had to be deceptive.

"My name is Doctor Ethel Tardy," she said. "I function as leader of this complex. You are our first guests for a considerable temporal period. Why did you come here, journey wise?"