by James Axler
Taking a deep, determined breath, O'Brien continued. "And that is our present situation. Even though Alpha is immune to the toxins and radiation outside the installation, he will not find the mate he seeks out there, at least not for a very long time. Eighty-odd years, I estimate."
A cold, triumphant smile played over her face. "I received your transmission to abort the mission. I will not obey it. I will not accept that all my work is for nothing and that Mission Invictus, with its hopes for a sane world, is forever aborted, as well."
A flinty hardness came into her green eyes. "Mission Invictus was conceived by you as the penultimate plan to produce a superior human. I admit that I failed you on that point. I produced a god, an entity whose mutated antibodies and immune system will not succumb to the poisonous postwar environment. Whether you impotent bastards care to acknowledge it, Overproject Excalibur has been the instrument of fate in this epochal hour of humanity's bloody history."
O'Brien smiled mirthlessly as she declared, "Within seconds of transmitting this recording to you, I will deactivate the gateway. There will be no way in or out of this installation, except overland. Then, Alpha has agreed to be placed in stasis, but not in a cryonics canister."
"He will continue to grow, his development will proceed, but at a vastly reduced rate. He will slow his metabolism to a crawl, his need for oxygen curtailed to what exists within his…sarcophagus. His heart might pump once a month. When he is ready, he will revive on his own."
"After that, my staff and I will take a long walk outside, our first in many years. With no way to receive food and other provisions, staying here simply delays the inevitable. Alpha will need what remains in the stores when he awakens. Besides, I'm curious to tour this brave new world your machinations have created. Yes, Alpha altered the personnel's perceptions so they will faithfully follow me. Cold-blooded to an extent, I cannot deny. However, considering my audience, that is the novice speaking to the masters of the art."
O'Brien's eyes suddenly glimmered with tears. Her lips worked, then twisted into a contemptuous smile. "If any of you are still alive when Alpha emerges from this…tomb, know that you will be instantly rendered obsolete. All of your plans, schemes and grand dreams to control mankind under one whip will come to nothing. You will inherit the slag heap. Alpha will ascend to the throne of eternity and spit upon you."
Her face smoothed itself into a clinical, impersonal mask again. "Dr. Connaught O'Brien, final report."
WHEN THE HAND FELL upon her shoulder, it required all of Mildred's self-control to keep from screaming. As it was, she twisted in her chair, pushing it away from the desk on squeaking casters, whipping her elbow backward.
J.B. grunted in pained surprise, half doubling over. "Dark night, Millie!"
Laughing in nervous relief, Mildred stood and hugged him. "I'm sorry, John, but you really shouldn't sneak up on people who are preoccupied."
Scowling, J.B. rubbed his midriff. "I wasn't sneaking," he said defensively. "It's not my fault you weren't watching your back."
He gestured to the image of Connaught O'Brien frozen on the screen. "Did she preoccupy you? Who is she?"
"A very brilliant, very disturbed woman," Mildred replied, reaching out to turn off the machine. "The mother and lover of a god."
J.B. squinted at her from behind the lenses of his spectacles. "What?"
Mildred shook her head. "I'll explain later. Where's everybody else?"
"Asleep, I guess. Except for Ryan. He's taking a shower."
"Good." She moved toward the door. "Let's go."
J.B. hung back. "To watch him take a shower?"
"To the lab. There's a story I have to confirm."
"We've had this discussion, Millie."
"We had it before I knew the back story about this place."
"Well, I don't know it."
"And I'll tell you. But checking on the details will determine how long or how short our stay here will be."
He still didn't move.
Mildred reached for his hand. "Trust me, John. Or humor me. We can always use that Medisterile unit to decontaminate ourselves."
J.B. took her hand, and they went through the office and out into the corridor. A dozen yards to their right, they saw Krysty walking toward them. The expression on her finely chiseled face was strangely fixed, her eyes wide but unblinking.
Gesturing to her, J.B. called in a loud whisper, "Krysty! You all right?"
The Titian-haired woman's deliberate, measured stride didn't falter. Her eyes didn't flick toward them. Without a word or a sign of acknowledgment, she turned into the open door of the shower room.
"What's wrong with her?" J.B. demanded. "She sleepwalking or what?"
Mildred pulled at his sleeve. "Ryan'll look after her. Come on."
J.B. and Mildred walked quickly down the corridor to the disk-shaped steel portal. She tapped in the entry code, and the hatch rolled aside. Beyond it, the maze of sterile equipment glittered beneath the cold fluorescent tubes on the ceiling. The big room was broodingly silent and lifeless.
J.B. followed Mildred in, his sallow complexion worsening under the harsh, unflattering lights. He and Mildred walked down the aisle between two long trestle tables bearing large-scale fermentation tanks, a purification system and petri dishes.
A massive electron microscope stood on a separate table. In one corner, Mildred saw an oscilloscope, a fluoroscope and a stainless-steel liquid-nitrogen tank. The lid was open, revealing the honeycomb pattern of individual containers that had once held fertilized human embryos. J.B. followed her around the scientific labyrinth. She paused to examine much of the equipment, muttering beneath her breath.
Mildred stooped in front of a small refrigerator and twisted the latch. Cool air spilled out. "It still works."
Looking over her shoulder, J.B. saw dozens of small capped bottles resting on wire shelves. Mildred picked up a few, excitedly reading the labels aloud. "Penicillin, Aureomycin, Terramycin, streptomycin… tetracyclines!"
"What are all those?" J.B. asked.
Mildred stood, shutting the door of the refrigerator. "Broad-spectrum antibiotics. Before we leave this place, we're taking as many of the nonperishable ones as we can carry. I'll look around for syringes."
J.B. nodded. "Okay. And what else are we looking for?"
Mildred walked to the far, armaglass-covered wall. Peering through a pane, she saw a cylindrical hyperbaric chamber and other instruments and pieces of equipment that were unfamiliar to her. She found a door set between a pair of armagiass slabs and opened it.
"Now what?" J.B. demanded anxiously.
On the wall were six rectangular metal panels. Only two bore small, burnished plates beneath toggle switches. Mildred bent, peering at one of the plates. Aloud, she read, "Epsilon Subject, Female. Three Months. Phase Three."
She thumbed the toggle. The panel swung open on oiled pivots, and an oblong, transparent canister slid out upon a steel frame. Inside the tube, covered by a sheet of plastic, lay the skeletal remains of an infant.
"Dark night," J.B. breathed. "A baby."
"Yeah," Mildred replied sadly. "A baby born to serve a specific function in a world she never made."
She pushed the tube back, closed the panel and stepped to the next one. The ID plate read Alpha Subject, Male. 2.2 Years. Phase Three.
Flipping the toggle, the door popped open and another canister slid out. It contained nothing but air.
"This is what I was afraid of," Mildred said grimly. "He awakened."
"Who awakened?" J.B.'s tone mirrored her tension, though it was heavy with exasperation.
She pushed the canister back, slamming the panel shut. "Get everybody up. Things want us to talk about them."
Chapter Seven
Krysty and Ryan stepped out of the shower room just as J.B. and Mildred came swiftly down the corridor. Their postures telegraphed their anxiety to Ryan, and he snapped instantly to an alert mode.
> "Strategy-session time," Mildred said.
"Why?"
"Get everybody together." Her dark, pretty face was set in tense lines. "I only want to tell this story once. That might be all we have time for."
It took a few minutes to rouse Dean, Jak and Doc. Yawning, they stumbled into the kitchen, knuckling sleep sand from their eyes, and took places around the table.
"I was having the most wonderful dream," Doc said wistfully. "I was at Charles Rector's restaurant on Broadway, just about to dig into a nine-course meal with Diamond Jim Brady—"
Mildred cut him off with a brusque gesture. "None of us are interested in your culinary fantasies about a nineteenth-century glutton, Doc. This is real and it's important."
Doc glared at her. "Then pray proceed, Dr. Wyeth."
The woman linked her fingers together on the tabletop. "At one time or another, I've bored all of you with my theories about the muties running rampant over the face of Deathlands."
"Yeah," Jak said, trying to work the tangles out of his shock of white hair. "Radiation not account for different types. Muties too varied and too numerous. So?"
"So, my theories have been confirmed, at least up to a point. Though I can't be positive, I'm fairly sure Overproject Excalibur was a subdivision of the Totality Concept. The purpose of this installation was devoted not just to creating mutants, but to the birthing of the missing link, the biological bridge between predark and postdark man, a superhuman designed to thrive in the world created by the nuclear Armageddon."
With that preamble, Mildred told her companions everything she had learned from Connaught O'Brien's recording. She soft-pedaled the hard science, placing her emphasis on the fact that the Alpha subject was more than likely alive and afoot, even after fifteen-plus years.
"It's a rad-blasted wasteland out there." Ryan argued. "Even a supermutie like Lord Kaa would have a problem surviving."
"A supermutie, maybe," Mildred responded, "but not a god."
Krysty swung her head sharply toward her. The weariness in her eyes was replaced by the bright gleam of a sudden fear. Her hair shifted, twisting and knotting. "A god?"
Mildred gazed at her keenly. "O'Brien might have been overstating his abilities a trifle, but she was a stiff-spined scientist, too. If she believed Hell Eyes could—"
"Hell Eyes?" Ryan repeated.
"A nickname for the Alpha subject, because of his red eyes."
"Gaia!" Krysty's exclamation came out in a gusty whisper. "That explains—" She bit off the rest of her words.
"Explains what?" J.B. demanded.
After exchanging a quick, furtive glance with Ryan, Krysty told her companions about the jump nightmare, saying she had suspected it was something else. Ryan related his own hallucinatory experiences.
Clearing his throat uncomfortably, Doc said, "I, too, underwent a brief waking dream. For a few minutes after making the transit, I thought I saw stone walls bearing Egyptian art."
"Lord Kaa, indeed," Mildred muttered.
All but Dean understood her oblique reference to the traumatic mind alteration they had suffered during a mat-trans jump that later resulted in their collision with the self-proclaimed mutant lord.
"That was some kind of glitch in the gateway system," Ryan said. "An accident. What me and Krysty went through was psionic, not mechanical."
"Still and all," Mildred said flatly, "Hell Eyes knows we're here, wherever he might be. With his psi-abilities, he sensed our arrival. For all we know, he might have planned it, since O'Brien claimed to have deactivated the gateway."
"Mebbe he turned it back on when he woke up," Dean suggested, "then jumped someplace else."
"Maybe," Mildred admitted. "But if we can believe O'Brien, Hell Eyes woke up at least fifteen years ago. Even if he made a few transits elsewhere, he'd return here."
"Why do you make that assertion?" Doc asked.
"O'Brien indicated that some sort of breeding instinct was bred into him. Like a salmon, he probably has the urge to return here, where he was spawned, to mate."
Krysty ducked her head.
Jak snorted derisively. "Not fish."
"No," Mildred replied. "Nor is he a human. Whatever he is, we need to distance ourselves from his sphere of influence. Let's not think that just because he's not here in front of us, he doesn't represent a threat."
Silence draped the room for a long, tense moment. Then Ryan asked, "Should I say it, or does somebody else want the honor?"
Dean cocked his head quizzically. "Say what, Dad?"
Ryan rose swiftly from the table. "Let's get the fuck out of here."
IT TOOK THE FRIENDS only a few minutes to collect their belongings and troop down the corridor to the mat-trans chamber. Dean had stowed a few of the sealed ration packs in his duffel, and Jak carried freshly filled canteens. Mildred ducked into the laboratory to retrieve the bottles of antibiotics. After a quick search, she also found a sealed package of disposable syringes. J.B. uneasily mentioned that they might want to visit the Medisterile unit before they went on their way.
"O'Brien made no reference to any infectious organisms," Mildred assured him. "I think we're safe. Besides, we've got the medicines, right?"
"Right," he replied, but his tone was dubious.
Inside the mat-trans unit, the seven people found places on the interlocking pattern of raised floor disks. Ryan stood by the door, waiting for his friends to position themselves before he pulled it shut to initiate the automatic jump mechanism.
"Ready?"
His party responded in affirmatives, and Ryan swung the door to. He quickly crossed the chamber and sat down between Dean and Krysty. He waited for the subsonic hum to begin, for the hexagonal disks to exude their familiar glow. He waited. And waited. And nothing happened.
Everyone's eyes darted back and forth, first in puzzlement, then in a growing fear. Ryan returned to the armaglass door, opened it and pulled it firmly shut. Nothing happened—no whine, no glow, no spark-shot mist.
He pushed open the door again, carefully inspecting the circuitry actuator on the lock, making certain full contact was achieved. He slammed it closed and stood silently in baffled anger.
With a sigh, Mildred pushed herself to her feet. "I think we get the idea. We can't leave this place by the gateway."
"Thing worked before," J.B. grunted, moving to the door and shouldering it open. He examined the circuitry carefully, running his fingers over it. "Damned if I can find anything wrong."
"Hell Eyes," Krysty said, a strange calm in her voice. "He's interfering with the machinery."
Ryan turned toward her. Despite her tone of placid acceptance, her eyes were green pools of dread. He felt that dread, too, and the vision of a crimson-eyed skull flashed into his mind. He fought it back.
"Hell Eyes, my ass," he rasped fiercely. "However the bastard was made, he's just another mutie."
Swinging the door wide, Ryan stamped out of the chamber. "It's probably daylight by now. Let's take a look-see outside."
He stalked through the anteroom, the control room, past the hatches and down the corridor in a fast, angry stride. Reaching the sec door before the others, he threw up the lever, his emotions making him reckless.
The door creaked and squeaked upward. Ryan fisted his SIG-Sauer, ready to trigger it at anything with legs, no matter how few or how many. A flood of brilliant sunlight all but blinded him.
Shielding his eye from the sun's assault, he stepped cautiously out of the recessed doorway. As his vision adjusted to the glare, he saw a dead land stretching away in drifting dunes of ocher and saffron. Judging by the position of the sun, he figured it was only a few hours after dawn. The air was already parched and hot.
The heat was deceptive, almost comfortable at first. Then Ryan began to sweat profusely, globes of perspiration springing to his brow and body. Within moments, he felt like a walking swamp.
His companions joined him, blinking and grimacing at the high temper
ature. Ryan turned around to study the exterior of the redoubt. It was a gray half dome, nearly buried on all sides by sand drifts.
"Where is this place?" Krysty asked.
J.B. took the compact sextant from the pocket of his coat. Pushing back the brim of his hat, he squinted into the eyepiece and took the necessary sighting. Then, from another pocket, he withdrew a crumpled chart and consulted it.
"Near as I can figure," he said, "we're in California, near Guadalupe, a town a good ways inland and about 150 miles north of what used to be Los Angeles."
"I thought California sank into the sea," Dean said.
"Most of it did," Ryan said. "At least, a lot of it to the south of the San Andreas Fault took a permanent dip. What was left became the Western Islands, remember?"
Dean nodded. "Yeah. Place stunk of sulfur, like rotten eggs. Place where we last saw Trader."
J.B. stowed the sextant and chart back into his coat. "If it's any consolation, we're not on one of those bastard islands. Best as I recollect, folks call this region the Barrens. Nothing and nobody around for a hundred square miles." He checked his lapel rad counter. "Midrange yellow. Tolerable."
Jak, his sensitive ruby eyes slitted against the bright blast of light, pointed to the northwest. "Something been out here. Look."
It took everyone a few seconds to discern what the teenager was pointing at. Two narrow, parallel grooves, nearly obscured by the breeze-driven sand, cut through the desert, disappearing into the distance and the heat shimmer.
"Wheels," Jak said.
"Yeah," Ryan agreed, eyeing the four-foot width between the narrow tracks. "Wooden wheels, like a cart. Broad axle base, too."
"Not a gasoline-powered wag," J.B. observed. "No horse or mule tracks around, either."
Jak knelt, pinching a few grains of sand from one of the shallow gouges. "Week old. Mebbe ten days."
Doc said, "Then it appears the so-called Barrens are inhabited in some fashion. It also appears our only option is strike off on foot. It is a small comfort, but at least we have a semblance of a path to follow."
