Part 4 (1/2)
”Mighty generous,” J.B. said with a poker face. To his friends, his satirical intent was obvious. But such was his ability to deadpan that Gloria merely acknowledged him gracefully.
”You seem to have earned it, Four-eyes. And now for you, medicine woman,” she said, turning to Mildred. ”Before we travel on and leave these sc.u.m to return to the earth and slime that birthed them, do you still want to examine them?”
”I certainly do,” Mildred muttered, taking a few paces to a fallen and chilled stickie and dropping to her knees to examine the corpse. She had chosen one that still had its head intact, and was examining the skull area minutely.
”May I?” Doc asked Gloria, indicating with his stick where Mildred was kneeling. When the warrior queen granted her a.s.sent, Doc moved forward and joined the doctor.
”Guessed what I'm looking for, Doc?” Mildred murmured to Tanner.
”I suspect that you are in search of some sign of surgery around the area of the brainpan.”
Mildred nodded. ”Got it in one, Doc. It'd be a cold day in h.e.l.l before a stickie ever learned how to fight tactically and arrange an ambush, unless it was some kind of superstickie, with enhanced brain power.”
”And somehow I do not think Darwin's theories ever held much of a council with the notion of such a rapid development, even taking mutations into account. If anything, I would expect it to go in reverse in such a case as this,” Doc muttered.
”Exactly,” Mildred replied, her hands stretching the repulsive and elastic skin searching for outward signs and also probing the area beneath the skin for signs of surgery, such as sudden ridges of bone. She grimaced with disgust at the feel of the chilled mutie in her hands, but the grimace turned to a small grin of triumph as her fingers traced a small growth of bone at the base of the skull. Pulling the skin tighter, and turning the heavy head in her hands to better examine the area in question, she found a small, puckered scar.
”I believe that answers that question,” Doc said quietly.
”Sophisticated technique, too,” Mildred said with a touch of professional admiration creeping into her voice, an all too rare reminder of her past before the days of being a freezie and of skydark. ”This is keyhole surgery, probably laser. Whoever did this had access to some pretty d.a.m.n good equipment, and what's more, equipment that was in good working order.”
”I suggest we examine a few more of the corpses, if we can find any with heads undamaged enough,” Doc said quietly.
Mildred nodded. ”Check as many as possible.” Both she and Doc rose to their feet and, disregarding the puzzled or interested stares of those around them, examined as many of the chilled stickies as they could find with enough skull intact to warrant investigation.
When they were done, they conferred briefly before Mildred addressed Ryan and Gloria.
”It's just as I suspected. These are no ordinary stickies. All of those who still have enough skull left to examine have shown signs of surgery. I suspect that their brains have been tampered with in some way-perhaps a smart drug slowly released into the cerebellum, perhaps some kind of laser modification or direct genetic engineering. They were talking about that kind of activity before skydark, so maybe whoever is left...”
She let the sentence tail off. Ryan understood immediately. Anyone capable of doing this has to have some d.a.m.n good tech, and in the best of repair. That suggested a stockpile or redoubt that was near, and in working order.
Gloria, not having the experience of the one-eyed warrior, was a little slower on the uptake, and she quizzed Mildred. ”You mean the old ones of legend may have done this, and that we may finally be nearing them?”
”I wouldn't say that exactly,” Mildred replied, choosing her words carefully, ”but it is highly possible that a fully equipped surgery is relatively near, which would suggest a redoubt or installation of some kind-” she noted the blank look from the warrior queen and clarified ”-a secret site, as you call it. Perhaps even the one we're all searching for.”
Gloria's eyes lit up. ”Could it be that finally, after all this time, we're within sight of our goal?”
Krysty spoke gently. ”Don't get too excited yet. It could just be another marker on the way.”
”When such wonders are being performed as to make stickies smart?” Gloria shook her head, her flaming hair swaying gently around her finely boned features. ”Na, na, na, this is the place. We are finally near.”
”So need be triple red,” Jak blurted, finally speaking. All through the exchanges, he had been staring at Gloria, trying to reconcile reality with his mat-trans dream. If it was a doomie precognition, then he needed to get clear in his own head exactly what it all meant. But seeing the beautiful woman of his dream standing before him as flesh was perplexing. He had been frozen until one thought had stabbed through into his brain, one thought that saw his instincts for danger show through even the deepest confusion.
All turned to look at him, but it was Gloria who spoke first, in a voice that was edged both with concern and fascination.
”Why would that be, honey?” she whispered, as though he were a frightened child.
Jak looked directly at her. There was no recognition in her eyes, but something else-a light that he couldn't define.
He spoke slowly. ”Remember whitecoat things from past. Always like watch experiments. How they know where stickies go out here? Also remember hunting herds, stalk for long time before go for kill. Mebbe...”
Doc smote his forehead with the palm of his free hand, the knuckles of the other turning white as he gripped the silver lion's-head cane.
”By the Three Kennedys! How could I have been so stupid as to not see it! The lad is, of course, right.”
”Right about what, Doc?” Ryan questioned with an urgency in his voice. An agitated Doc was always inclined to take the long way around to the point, and yet the very fact that he was agitated suggested that there was little time for a long ramble through Doc's mind.
”My dear Ryan, let me take you back to the early days of my youth, when I attempted to study the migratory and hunting patterns of small mammals near my home in the beautiful hamlet of South Strafford, in what we used to call Vermont in those halcyon days-”
”Skip the travelog, Doc,” Mildred snapped.
The old man shook his head as though to clear it. ”Of course, of course. I apologize for my distress. It is just that I feel like a fool for not seeing it before. I used to tag animals of different species and then follow them, to see where they went. I could always spot them by the tag.”
”I don't get it, Doc. What's this got to do with the stickies?” Dean asked in a puzzled tone.
”Simply this, young Cawdor-the stickies have been altered and then released. Why, if not to track them and see what they do?”
”Fireblast! In which case they'll be marked in some way, and whoever performed the surgery will be out for them soon enough,” Ryan finished.
The warrior queen had been listening intently to them, all the while keeping one of her piercing blue eyes on the albino. Although some of their speech had pa.s.sed her by, she had grasped the gist of it and said hurriedly, ”If we're under threat here, then we move now and get back to camp. That's far enough away to give us time and shelter, and we have numbers there.”
Ryan nodded. ”That's good, but it doesn't account for what you want to do with us. We coming with you or making our own way?”
Gloria flashed him a smile that showed strong white teeth that reflected the sparkle in her wild eyes. ”I thought that was settled, sugar. You come with us and we look together. I'm not leaving you behind now.”
Both Krysty and Mildred noticed that the woman's eyes strayed to Jak when she spoke the latter sentence.
”Then we can relax and get the h.e.l.l out?” Ryan asked.
”What are you waiting for, sweets?” Gloria said before turning to her warriors and speaking once more in the singsong ”eh-la, eh-la” chant that was obviously a signal.
This time there was a different intonation to the chant, an emphasis on the second syllable rather than the first, and it was this that gave the cue for the warrior women of the Gate to holster their blasters in the small leather pouches they kept in the small of their backs.
Jak looked across at Ryan, who was puzzled by the expression on the albino's face. There was something there that Ryan couldn't recall having ever been part of Jak Lauren in all the time that he had known and fought with him. It wasn't fear, neither was it apprehension. It was something that fell into the gray area between the two.
Jak recognized the question in Ryan's steely blue eye. ”Why go with them?” he asked simply.
”Makes sense,” Ryan replied carefully, aware that Gloria could hear every word.
”Better on own. Something go wrong when people strange.”
”Mebbe. But mebbe not this time,” Ryan said guardedly. ”This could help both of us, and this is land where we may need help.”