Arcadian's Asylum (12 page)

If the rooms weren’t in use, then why was this passage alone used secretly to move from one sector of the ville to another? It was puzzling. Only one way to find out, Doc decided as, with a shrug, he spun the wheel and unlocked the trap.

It was heavy, but not so much that he was unable to heave it upward. It slammed back onto an earthen floor, and Doc cautiously emerged to find himself in a darkened courtyard, surrounded on all four sides by four-
story buildings, blank windows looking down on him. Distant lights within cast a glow into the otherwise black rooms, showing them to be empty while allowing him to see that the courtyard was empty, apart from the open trap and himself.

He heaved himself out, looked around and bent to close the trap.

That was when the courtyard became flooded with light and Doc found himself exposed and defenseless.

“Oh, dear. I feared this might happen.”

Chapter Nine

Jak knew there was something wrong even before he was awake. Somewhere in his subconscious he had detected Doc’s departure, and he had filed it away. So when his red albino eyes opened and were almost instantly attuned to the low level of light, he knew that Doc was not in the next bed.

“Stupe,” he whispered. Jak didn’t like Arcadian, and thought that Ryan was playing a tough game in sticking around. Doc’s curiosity made the chances of the baron turning on them even greater. Okay, so they had their weapons. This meant that the baron knew of ways in which he could easily break them. No one would be stupe enough to let them keep their blasters unless they had the utmost confidence in being able to best the companions regardless.

This would play right into his hands.

Jak rose and went to the door. The situation might be redeemed if they could drag Doc back before the baron discovered his actions. As no alarm had been raised, it was doubtful he had breached the building’s exits. He had to be somewhere inside. Maybe they could get him back.

The unguarded corridor didn’t surprise Jak. Doc would have been easily discovered otherwise. The thing
to do now would be to rouse Ryan and then decide on a course of action that could drag back the old man.

Always assuming he didn’t get himself caught in the meantime.

“KEEP YOUR HANDS out in the open and move out of the tunnel slowly.”

“Of course. You have the advantage on me,” Doc said deliberately, placing his hands on the gravel of the courtyard and hauling himself out so that he was on his knees, before rising slowly to his feet.

“Replace the cover. Slowly.”

Doc bent slowly to flip the cover back into place before spinning the wheel to lock it. He straightened, then raised a hand to shield his eyes, looking around. The courtyard was bathed in a brilliant light, illuminated from all four sides. The ground-level lights were angled up, which was presumably why he had missed them at an initial glance. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen such a brilliant white light. The source of the voice was hidden to him by their luminescence.

“You have the advantage of me,” he said clearly. “I cannot see you.”

“That is, of course, the point. You’re the one they call Doc, aren’t you?”

“A further advantage,” Doc demurred. “You have the upper hand, by a long way. Would it be too much to ask that you cease blinding me?”

The voice behind the lights now took on an amused tone.

“You have an admirable grasp of the situation. If you keep your arms away from your body—I know
you have weapons on your person—then I’ll make the light a little more bearable.”

“Of course,” Doc said, complying with the wishes of the voice.

The lights blinked out, leaving a red-glow afterimage both on Doc’s retina and in front of the dimmed bulbs. Everything else was momentarily black as Doc’s pupils reacted to the sudden change. Within a few moments he was able to see once more, aided by the ambient light that bled from the ground floor of the buildings on one side. Presumably where the owner of the voice had emerged.

And now Doc was able to see him—a small, slight man in a long white coat, his hands clasped behind his back. He was unarmed, but any fleeting thoughts Doc may have had about his own weapons were stilled by the two thickset men in black fatigues that lurked at the slight man’s rear, well-preserved submachine guns clutched in fists so large the blasters seemed like toys.

“You must excuse my caution,” the slight man said, stepping forward. “We weren’t expecting any of you to show such initiative at this stage. But since you’re here—” he indicated that Doc follow him “—I may as well explain it to you. You have the brain to grasp it, after all.”

Doc had absolutely no idea what the man was talking about, but figured that if he just kept quiet, then his captor would let it all out without needing to be questioned.

“Very well,” he said simply, walking slowly toward the lit building and the two menacing sec men. After all, he seemed to have little choice.

R YAN WOKE SUDDENLY. He tried to rise, but found himself restrained by a wiry arm across his chest, a
hand clamped across his mouth like an iron band. He tensed and prepared to fight.

“Ryan, me. Triple red.”

Jak had spoken before Krysty had roused herself, and before Ryan had even had a chance to flex the muscles that lay under the albino youth’s restraining arm. Jak removed his hand as he felt Ryan relax.

“Fireblast, Jak, what the fuck are you doing?” Ryan whispered hoarsely.

“Not have choice,” Jak said tersely, before outlining to Ryan and the now awake Krysty the situation they faced. He was able to tell them the sec setup in their part of the building as he had made a brief recce after finding Doc missing and before coming to them.

“One could search, more than one be found.” Jak shrugged.

Ryan nodded. He could see the albino’s point. The sec could be evaded singly—Doc’s continued absence proved this if little else—but the group as a whole would be too much of a risk. But he didn’t want to risk another of his people going missing.

“You come here first?” he asked.

Jak nodded. “Leave J.B., Mildred till spoke to you.”

“Okay…” Ryan ran the possibilities through his mind. “There’s only one way we can play this.” He swung himself out of bed and dressed quickly, strapping on his weapons. Krysty followed his lead, watching him all the while.

“No way we’re going all out on this,” she said shrewdly. “Just what have you got in mind, lover?”

“You’ll see soon enough.” He moved to the door. “Let’s get Mildred and J.B.” He tugged at the door and
stepped out into the hall with no attempt to disguise his actions. Looking back, he could see the bemusement on Jak’s face, although he noted that his intent was dawning on Krysty. “C’mon,” he said loudly, “J.B. and Mildred need to hear this.”

“OF COURSE, you know that the baron is an advocate of exploring many social systems and experiments that were performed before skydark set back the cause of civilization by several centuries, thrusting us back into a dark age,” the slight man said as he ushered Doc into the building. One of the sec men had preceded them, while the other lurked at their rear. Their proximity caused Doc to do little except nod sagely at this juncture.

Inside, the building was cleaner than many Doc had seen during his time in this age. It also carried with it a smell that was alien outside a redoubt: bleaches and disinfectants, chemicals, the sterility of cleaned and recycled air…its olfactory impression was of nothing more or less than a medical clinic. Whatever happened in here, it was of a nature that made his flesh crawl. An impression that was only magnified by the white lab coat worn by the slight man.

Long corridors, lit at regular intervals, resembled nothing so much as the tunnel he had recently vacated, the blandly closed doors only reinforcing this impression. The only real difference between above- and belowground that he could see was the row of windows that peppered the corridor in both directions, facing the courtyard.

The slight man piloted him along the corridor as he spoke.

“What we do here is to try to advance some of the old theories about the enhancement of the physical. Grafting, stem-cell therapy and so forth. Of course, we’re hampered by the fact that our facilities are of a poorer quality than those of our predecessors before the nukecaust. And information about their results and their methods have been—how shall I put it—patchy in some particulars. Papers were particularly susceptible to the vicissitudes of a nuclear winter. Perversely, the comp records have survived a little better. The baron has put a lot of time and effort into finding as much old equipment as possible. We’ve even managed to find some audiovisual documentation that has been preserved. This, as you can imagine, has been invaluable.”

“Quite,” Doc murmured. The man in the lab coat babbled on, and sounded more and more to Doc like the kind of whitecoat who had prodded and poked him on his arrival in the late twentieth century. He found himself seized by the insane desire to take the man and repeatedly smash his head against the wall; to push it through the nearest window and rip out his throat on the jagged edges of the glass. Insane not because he felt that the man didn’t deserve it. Insane because the two sec thugs in front and behind him would riddle him with shells before his grip had even tightened on the whitecoat’s throat.

Still, the whitecoat prattled on.

“You know, when I look back, I find it odd that the kind of work that we’re doing now was once considered bad. And so soon after it was hailed as the salvation of humankind. It seems very odd, the manner in which opinions were subject to the moral worldview of the day,
without once it being questioned as to whether those fashions in themselves were the transient option, and not the thing on which those opinions were focused being the transient thing…as it were. Am I making sense to you?”

The whitecoat turned and fixed Doc with a beady glare that was almost myopic in its intensity. Doc was quite unsure as to what would be the best way to answer him. He wanted him to reveal more, even though he felt nauseous at the direction they were headed.

As it happened, Doc needed to say nothing. The whitecoat, it would appear, welcomed the chance to exercise his garrulous nature.

“Of course I’m making sense,” he affirmed. “You are an intelligent man. I know that. The intel reports from the palace are circulated to all section heads, to fully appraise them of what is going on. Your group aroused no little interest from all of us, I’ll have you know. Quite the subject of debate among us,” he added with a small smile. “I dare say it’s chance that you ended up here first, although the connection to the palace is something only my section has directly. However, your alacrity at making a move isn’t something we could have easily forecast. And on your own, too.”

“I like to keep people on their toes,” Doc demurred.

The whitecoat stopped and turned to him. “Ah, the ever-questing mind that seeks the same from others. I like that.” He stuck out a hand.

Doc hadn’t seen a gesture like that for many a day. Part of him wondered if it were some kind of test, perhaps even a trap. Certainly, the sec men loomed in
a little close, their faces betraying nothing but their body language yelling alarm and alert.

Doc’s eyes met those of the whitecoat. Was that sincerity he saw in those orbs? Did this man not realize that Doc wanted little more than to hit and run? Oh, well, at least he might find out more this way.

Mindful of the sec men and their possibly anxious trigger fingers, Doc extended his hand with caution. As their palms met, he suppressed a shudder at the cold, clammy flesh that pressed on his.

“You, of course, are Dr. Tanner. But allow me to introduce myself. I, too, am a doctor. No diplomas here, of course, but I grace myself with that title considering the work I do. Andower. Dr. Harold Andower at your service.”

“Charmed,” Doc murmured in a voice that was anything but.

MILLIE AND J.B. woke at the same moment, coming alive and apart in a tangle of limbs. They had drifted into an easy sleep after making love, a sleep that was dark, deep and dreamless.

As they pulled themselves apart and tumbled from the bed, unthinking hands grasped for weapons, and before the hammering had ceased they had their blasters to hand.

“J.B., Mildred, wake up. We need to talk.”

Both were now completely awake, but were baffled by this turn of events. They looked from the door to each other, J.B. a little myopically as his spectacles were where he had left them a few hours previous.

Ryan’s voice? That loud?

“Come in,” J.B. said in a level voice, but without lowering his blaster. He peered across at Mildred, who nodded her understanding. Ryan wouldn’t normally do this in such a situation. Coercion was a possibility.

“No, come out here,” Ryan replied. “We need to talk. Krysty and Jak are with me.”

Again, a look passed between them. No mention of Doc.

“Think it’s just them?” J.B. asked.

“Ryan would use the code if it wasn’t,” Mildred replied. “He was particular about who was out there. There’s something wrong, and he wants Arcadian to know about it.”

“Figure you’re right,” J.B. said, lowering his blaster. “Guess we should get out there.”

“John,” Mildred said quietly as he started toward the door.

“What?” He stopped, puzzled.

She looked him up and down.

“Might be better if we put some clothes on.”

K RYSTY AND J AK had looked at each other and shrugged as Ryan hammered on the door. He had made no effort at concealment, and was now making a hell of a lot of noise. As he yelled through the bedroom door, a patrolling sec man appeared at the end of the corridor, his subgun held across his chest, pointing down. But despite the passive stance, there was little doubt that he was ready to move into action if necessary. Behind him, the lights came on in darkened library as Ryan’s actions were noted.

When he had finished, the one-eyed man stepped
back, taking a look at the sec man before turning his back and winking at them. It seemed this was exactly the reaction he had expected and hoped for. A glimmer of his game plan became apparent to both of them.