Perception Fault (22 page)

“J.B., you said I was out two days, then another one in the bed—it wasn’t fun, let me tell you—and this morning they let me out of the frame that had been holding me in place and said I could walk around.”

“And you feel fine?”

Ryan raised both arms above his head, then lowered them, then stretched them both out to either side. “Occasional twinge now and then, but otherwise I feel fine.”

“That’s unbelievable, is what it is. Okay, so they have incredible weaponry and medical tech that’s beyond anything we know. Anything else we’ve found out about them?”

“Yeah.” Ryan motioned everyone closer around him. “Apparently, they need women.” He detailed the encounter he’d had in the middle of the night with the mysterious person who had warned him about the whitecoats and their true goals.

“Did you believe him?” Krysty asked when he’d finished.

“I’m not sure. The administrator isn’t coming off like a guy who’s keeping us prisoner so they can impregnate both of you and Rachel, although mebbe he’s trying to get on our good side to lull us into a false sense of security.”

“Doubtful,” J.B. chimed in. “If that was the case,
why heal us? Could have chilled us, tossed our bodies in the desert and had you women all to themselves.”

“Exactly. They want us alive for a reason. I’m just not sure what that is right now.”

“So what do we do?” Mildred asked.

Ryan stroked his chin as he thought about what could happen next. “No doubt Administrator Carr took what I told him about Denver, Carrington and Tellen to the rest of his buddies, and they’re figuring out what to do with this information. Once they’ve chewed it over for a while, I figure they’ll probably come back to us and inform us if and how we fit into their plans. If we do fit in somehow, that doesn’t involve being kept here for some kind of experimentation, then we’ll go along until we decide otherwise. If not, then we’ve got to figure out a way out of here, which isn’t going to be easy from what we’ve seen so far.”

“Yeah,” J.B. said, “the sec here is some of the best I’ve ever seen, almost airtight, with well-trained men armed and ready at a moment’s notice.” He lowered his voice to a near whisper. “Our only choice may be allying with this rebel group, assuming it actually exists, and using its force to fight our way out.”

Ryan frowned. “Let’s see if it actually comes to that first. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Carr seems to be on the level, and until he makes a move, I don’t see a lot we can do except keep our ears and eyes open and mouths shut. Try to find out as much as you can about the base and the people in it.

“We don’t have much choice. They’ve had the upper hand from the start, stripping us of our gear and keeping us separated so we can’t plan. They know what they’re doing. Carr and Waltrop know we won’t leave here, assuming we could find our way out of this maze
in the first place, without the others. The main thing we have to do right now is to keep them from figuring out who Rachel is. If they learn that, all the leverage goes to them.” Ryan stretched again and headed to the door. “Let’s see if I can talk to Doc and Jak, then we’ll try to get an audience with the administrator.”

As he finished talking, the door opened, and Waltrop appeared in the entryway. “Mr. Cawdor, Administrator Carr would like a word with you—privately.”

Ryan rose slowly off the bed, squeezing Krysty’s hand as he did. “Will anything be done about Jak?”

“The best I could arrange was to let your friends see him, in hopes of calming him down. An escort is ready to take them to him, so if you would accompany me…”

“What about the other two members of our group— Rachel and Sergeant Caddeus?” Mildred interrupted. “We’d like to see them, as well.”

“I cannot speak to that right now, but perhaps after you talk with Administrator Carr and the others, something can be arranged.”

That sounded familiar—the exchange of a favor for a favor. Behind his back, Ryan released Krysty’s hand, then gave everyone the signal to stay alert, but not to try anything against their captors until he returned. The understanding was that the rest of the group would give him twenty-four hours, then, if he didn’t come back in that time, they were to try to escape any way they could. If they could find him along the way, great, but they all knew they weren’t supposed to make any effort that would put them in danger. Ryan hoped it wouldn’t come to that. They had all been through so much together that to lose anyone would be like losing his own limb.

“Lead the way.” He followed Waltrop into the corridor, where the sec man motioned for him to walk in
front. “Any progress on finding out who broke into my room last night?”

Waltrop grunted. “Not yet.”

Ryan glanced at the sec man out of the corner of his eye. “Whoever it was had to have a pretty high sec clearance to get inside. My jack’s on one of the men in your department.”

“Plenty of doctors in the wing with access, as well. Don’t worry about it, we’ll find out who’s responsible soon enough.”

Ryan considered upping his interrogation in the elevator, but decided against it. Waltrop could stonewall him all day, and if the sec leader wasn’t part of the rebel group, saying anything about it would just put him on guard.

They walked down the corridor to the elevator. Ryan tried to figure out if they were ascending or descending, but the metal box traveled so smoothly that he couldn’t tell. After a thirty-count, the elevator stopped and the doors slid open, revealing another hallway, this one featureless except for the lone door at the other end.

“Only one way to go.”

Ryan twitched his shoulders, then his biceps, then his wrists and hands, listening all the while for the telltale sound of Waltrop’s blaster clearing its holster. This would be the perfect spot for an execution, but he wasn’t about to give the other man the satisfaction, or the chance. When he checked the sec man out of the corner of his eye again, he saw him relaxed and walking a pace back, his arms loose at his sides.

This whole thing just gets weirder and weirder, he thought as they reached the door, which slid open when he was a step away. The room inside was brightly lit and held a long table at the far end, with places for six
men sitting behind it. Five of those places were occupied, with Dr. Agathem and Administrator Carr in two seats, next to three men Ryan didn’t recognize. Upon his entry, the murmur of conversation between the men died away.

Waltrop passed Ryan, walked over to the sixth seat and sat down. Carr closed a manila folder in front of him and regarded Ryan with that same scrutinizing, magnified stare. “Mr. Cawdor, thank you for joining us. No doubt you’re wondering why I’ve asked you here.”

“It crossed my mind.” Ryan noticed the empty chair in front of the table, and sat in it.

“Let me introduce the rest of the administrators who oversee the Bunker. You already know Dr. Agathem and Commander Waltrop. The man to my far right is Kenneth Galbrait, head of research and development, the man next to him is Arnold Mayweather, chief of internal operations, and the man on my far left is Charles Kilenny, head of agriculture and food production.”

Ryan eyed the last man, a tall, thin redhead with a prominent Adam’s apple. “Should have a word with you. Your menu needs some work.”

“We do the best we can with what we have, Mr. Cawdor,” Kilenny replied. “Although I would be open to hearing any suggestions you may have on the matter.” His tone straddled the line between subtle sarcasm and outright dismissal, but Ryan let it go. That wasn’t why he was here. Instead, he focused on Carr as the small man ended the subtle hostility simply by clearing his throat.

“By now I expect you have a lot of questions about this facility and its overall purpose. Yet, at the same time, I get the distinct impression that this place isn’t all that unfamiliar to you. Neither you nor any of your
group has reacted even remotely similarly to other people who have stumbled upon us. To what do you attribute this indifferent response?”

Ryan leaned back in the chair and stretched out his legs, crossing them as he replied. “I’ve been almost everywhere on this rad-blasted continent ever since I could walk. I’ve seen everything from mutie animals and people of every size and stripe to even weirder things, from the mountains to the deserts and everywhere in between. Not much surprises me anymore. The point is, I’m not a slack-jawed dirt farmer who shits his pants when he first sees something he doesn’t understand, so if this little get-together has a point, I’d prefer you get to it right quick, otherwise, we’re just wasting each other’s time.”

As Ryan spoke, the expressions on some of the men’s faces shifted from neutral to surprised or angry. Carr’s, Agathem’s and Waltrop’s, however, didn’t change; the administrator even cracked a brief smile. “Very well, I can appreciate that.”

He leaned back in his chair. “I won’t go into the history of this site in any great detail. Suffice it to say that before what you people living on the outside call ‘skydark,’ this facility, along with several others created at various points around the continent, were created as fallback points in the event of a nuclear or other worldwide disaster. Our instructions were explicit and precise—stay concealed until the original staff, or its descendents, felt the time was right to reemerge and begin rebuilding civilization.”

Ryan’s expression and posture didn’t change. He’d heard this speech many times before, most often out of the mouths of crazed psychotics whose idea of rebuilding meant bringing everyone they could conquer
under their iron-shod heel. Other times it was from even-crazier muties with delusions of grandeur who felt that the age of humankind had passed, and a new era was emerging, with them—no matter what kind of freak they were—now being the rightful inheritors of the blasted planet. Whenever anyone began talking like this within his earshot, he figured sooner or later there was only one thing to do—put a bullet between their eyes, sparing both them and the land whatever insane plan they had concocted to ensure their domination. He resisted an urge to blow air through his teeth as he waited for the small man to finish.

“I must say that, according to the records of the first generation, it was very doubtful that this point would ever be reached. Exposing ourselves too soon could lead to outside forces attempting to overwhelm us for the technology and skills we possess. In that regard, the Indian tribe that took up residence in the nearby area served as excellent cover for many years, since they would keep anyone who might be interested in the ruins of the airport above us away. We also needed to make sure that we knew how to survive in this new world ourselves. It wouldn’t do to open our doors and be laid low by a new pathogen or mutated virus.”

“No, I suppose not, although it seems to me that you all took your sweet time if it took more than a hundred years for you to start looking past the ends of your noses.”

Ryan’s verbal barb didn’t ruffle Carr one bit. “I won’t overstate the hazards of premature exposure. Suffice it to say that previous generations took the precautions they thought necessary, and so did we. Those few outsiders who did stumble upon our perimeter were either taken in for interrogation, then mind-wiped—just so
any memory of us was gone, not making them a drooling vegetable, you understand—and released, or, if they had promise, were invited to stay. The latter, sadly, have been few and far between.”

Even as he prepared to dismiss Carr’s words as the usual overblown rhetoric, Ryan found himself actually listening to the man, since his talk wasn’t filled with the typical inflated boasts and threats so many others had made. Instead, this man’s speech seemed to be governed by something that often seemed to be in short supply in the Deathlands—logic.

“However, there have been glimmerings of progress on the horizon, most notably in the city that has been created out of the ruins of suburban Denver to the west of here. We have been keeping the area under surveillance for the past four years, and have seen much to be hopeful about. On the other hand, recently the city has come under siege by an outside force, and our intelligence operatives have told us that the man leading the attacking force used to be a member of the city itself.”

Ryan kept his eyebrow down with an effort; so Tellen
had
been telling the truth about that. “Okay, I’m still not seeing where me and my people fit into all of this.” He was fibbing. He had a very good idea of what Carr was about to say, but Ryan had found that playing dumb often got better information than busting fingers with a hammer.

“I doubt that very much, however, it is of no consequence. You and your people are, quite simply, the perfect go-betweens for us to make our presence known. You have managed to ingratiate yourself with leaders on both sides of the conflict in short order, despite—or perhaps because of—your outsider status. I don’t know what sort of bargain you’ve made with either group,
nor do I care. However, since they apparently trust you, that makes you the perfect person to introduce us to the principals on both sides of the conflict.”

“And what’s the plan once that happens?” Ryan asked.

“We invite both sides to sit down and take stock of the situation. A third player in the area, particularly one with the resources that we have to offer, changes the dynamics considerably. It is our hope that we can bring both sides to the negotiating table to work out a compromise that will benefit everyone. Denver’s location—relatively isolated, yet the gateway to both sides of what remains of the nation—makes it a perfect place to begin rebuilding a society that stands a chance of establishing law and order as it once existed.”

Ryan frowned. “With your group reigning over everyone else? I’ve seen far too many places where that sort of power corrupted anyone who tried to wield it for too long.”

Administrator Mayweather spoke for the first time. “Sadly, history is filled with those who attempted to force change upon a world that wasn’t ready for it, or, having done so, were loath to give up the power that allowed them to enact that change. One of the first things an effective system of government needs is a system of checks and balances, like an advisory panel that ensures the single leader doesn’t gain too much power. This would be addressed if—and when—a cease-fire agreement is brokered.”

Ryan’s mouth quirked in what might have passed for a brief smile. “Yeah, you realize that there’s a strong chance that one or both sides would use this meeting to try and blow you all straight to hell, just on general principle.”

Carr’s genial expression vanished, replaced by a cool look of complete, almost ruthless efficiency. “I think they’ll be willing to talk when they see what we bring to the table. So, will you set up a meeting between the various sides?”

Ryan’s gaze swept the six men as he drew out the silence before replying. “On the other hand, why do I have any reason to trust you, either? I’ve already heard rumors that you folks are short on women, and plan on obtaining them by any means necessary. What would stop you all from chilling the leaders once they arrived, then rolling in and taking over the entire city yourself?” He’d been watching all of them as he spoke, particularly Carr, and wasn’t surprised to see the head whitecoat evince absolutely no trace of a reaction to the accusation.

In fact, the man smiled again, while Dr. Agathem spoke up. “Tales of our gender imbalance, while somewhat accurate, are also a misnomer. Certain elements of our personnel aren’t altogether happy either with the situation as it has evolved or the steps we have taken to correct the problem, and are advocating a more immediate remedy. However, if that situation were in effect, why would we have kept you here, treated your injuries, fed you, housed you, clothed you, when there was no guarantee that you would be of any use to us? If that were the case, we would have simply terminated you and left you in the hole where we first found you.”

Carr leaned forward, steepling his hands on the table. “While we believe in the sanctity of human life, we’ll take whatever measures necessary to defend our way of living. Past experience has taught us that, if nothing else. You aren’t a threat to us, but you have something that we can use here. Therefore, we treated you in the
hopes that you would be able to help us in turn. Now, will you do this for us?”

Ryan rose from his chair and slowly paced the room, aware of the six pairs of eyes on him. “Do I have a choice?”

“There are always choices, Mr. Cawdor. An intelligent man evaluates the ones open to him at any time and selects the best option available. In this situation, it is you who has the power here, not us. We need you to broker this introduction, rather than us risking a, shall we say, overzealous reaction from the other parties.”

Ryan turned to stare him directly in the eyes. “Sounds like a polite way of saying no to me. I don’t appreciate being forced into making my decision. We ‘outsiders’ call that a baron’s choice—one that looks like you have a decision to make on your own, but he’s really making it for you.”

“It is possible that other members of your group may feel differently when presented with this opportunity. Besides, are we really asking that much of you? In return, as the person who made this all possible, you would have a high position in the new government, or we could outfit you with just about anything you may need, and see you on your way to wherever you wish.”

Ryan certainly had his doubts about that. After all, Carr had just said they’d mind-wiped the others before releasing them. But for now…