There was something inherently ugly and unpleasant about the pattern of their names, something that echoed the clicking heels of their captors.
"Death camps. Bastard Nazis."
One of the sec guards moved in closer, and Lori tugged warningly at Doc's arm, shutting him up. Ahead loomed the door of what looked like some kind of elevator.
"Place is like a redoubt," Ryan said to Krysty. "Can't be any normal kind of ville."
She shook her head as a command from the sec leader brought them to a halt. "I can feel some real bad chills from this place, lover. By Gaia, but the air's filled with the cold, flat taste of death! We must step careful."
The heavy mesh gates slid across, and they walked into a massive elevator. "Big enough for a dozen war wags," he said.
"Look." Jak pointed at a tiny notice, less than three inches across, pinned to the far wall.
J.B. was nearest, and he stepped closer, peering at it through narrowed eyes. He took off his rimless glasses and polished them on the sleeve of his coat, then put them back on his bony nose and read the notice.
"What's it say?" Ryan asked.
"Welcome to Wizard Island."
They descended in the elevator, with only eight of the visored guards keeping them company. With its walls and ceiling of dulled steel, it wasn't possible to judge how far down they went, but Ryan counted eighty-five seconds before they stopped moving. At that reasonably fast speed, it meant they were way below the surface of Crater Lake. Once again he wondered what kind of complex they'd allowed themselves to be lured into.
The door slid back to reveal another dozen or more identical sec men. They all seemed much the same height, and Ryan wondered again whether it was possible that someone in the Deathlands had mastered the arcane skill of creating working androids.
"Go into doors numbered five through ten. Take off all weapons and clothes. Wash and put on fresh clothes. Wait there for orders."
The lack of any human inflection was disquieting. So was the idea of giving up all their weapons. Several of them, notably J.B. and Jak, had blades and even some residual pieces of plas-ex hidden in their coats.
"Why can't we keep our own clothes?" the Armorer asked, addressing himself to the apparent leader of the sec patrol, who stood as though locked in silent communion with himself, the strip lights along the ceiling reflected in his visor. Ryan noticed the many small remote vid cameras that were set high in corners of the corridor and over doorways, constantly blinking on and off, moving ceaselessly, like some hydra-headed techno-beast.
"I asked why..." J.B. began again, but the guard replied.
"Interdict."
"What?"
"Negative request refused. Comply now."
As though a single brain were controlling them all, the sec guards raised the muzzles of their unusual blasters.
"Fine," Ryan said. "We're doing it. What do we do after the shower and change of clothes?"
The mirrored plastic turned in his direction. Once more there was the curious delay, and Ryan imagined he could hear minute cogs and wheels whirring and connecting somewhere inside the helmet.
"Compliance positive then wait in numbered rooms for further orders."
"Let's do it, people," Ryan said, leading the way toward the door marked with a neat black 5. He could feel his body tense as he thought about what might lie behind it.
In the neat cubicle, the omnipresent vid focused on him as he laid his range of weapons on a square white table: the H&K G-12, the SIG-Sauer pistol, the steel panga with the gleaming eighteen-inch blade, and finally, a small dagger. His coat held plastic explosive, primers and detonators, but he laid it on the table with everything else.
"Concealment of any weapon will be regarded as treason against the Wizard Island Complex for Scientific Advancement and a mandatory termination will result."
The clicks at the beginning and end of the message indicated to Ryan that it was probably a recording. He began to strip, placing his boots, socks, pants and shirt on a bench that ran down one side of the eight-foot-long cubicle. But he kept his white scarf to one side.
Very casually he put the scarf on top of a pile of dark blue coveralls, which had the monogram WICSA sewn on the left breast.
On the wall the vid camera watched him with a blank, glassy stare. There was no comment from the tiny speaker below it, so Ryan guessed that keeping his scarf might work.
"Go through the sliding door into the sanitary and hygiene facility, which is completely private. After your shower, please pass through the body scanner built into the doorway. You are warned not to attempt to conceal any item in mouth, armpit, ears, vagina or rectal orifice."
Ryan tried to think of some snappy reply, but decided silence was probably safest.
He pushed open the door and found himself in a shower stall, four feet across, with a chrome drain set in the floor. There was a circular control for the power and temperature of the water and a vent in the ceiling. He remembered the ravings of Doc Tanner and peered up at the meshed hole, wondering if some toxic gas would be pumped through to asphyxiate him.
"They'd have chilled us with their blasters," he said to himself. "They wouldn't have bothered with this devious scheme." He reached out and turned the handle, wincing at the power of the steaming water that gushed out, and had one of the best washes he'd had in a long time.
The supply of water was endless, controlled to the most subtle degree by the metal handle. A trim rectangular dish held two kinds of soap, each with the rich scent of summer flowers. When he finally came out, Ryan saw a pair of fluffy linen towels draped over the table where his weapons had been. His clothes were also gone.
But the long white scarf remained on top of the newly supplied coveralls, apparently left by an oversight. It was the first scintilla of hope that the baron who ran this ultrasophisticated ville might be fallible and have a weakness after all.
"What's happened to our blasters and clothes and all that fucking stuff?" Finnegan asked the leader of the sec patrol, waving an angry finger at the sheen of the visitor.
"All stored main entrance gate. Will be returned if... when you leave complex."
Krysty turned to Ryan at the long delay between "if" and "when," but he simply raised an eyebrow and shook his head.
"When do we get to meet the people who run this institution?" Doc Tanner asked, his damp gray hair pasted flat to his long skull, making him look like an unusually intelligent goat.
"Induction from Human Resources Section Wizard Island. Soon," the sec guard told him.
The seven of them, in their snug-fitting coveralls and white sneakers, were led along more corridors and past more prying vid cameras. Ryan had tucked his scarf carefully into the neck of the coverall so that it didn't show.
"Them fucking blasters can sting you," Finnegan whispered, raising his sleeve to reveal a nasty burn, like a red zigzag, across his forearm. "Just tried to keep a fucking blade behind, and one of 'em saw it. Said it was a warning and next time'd be for keeps."
"That the worst they can set them on?" J.B. asked.
"No. Looked at that dial on the butt. Bastard had it set at two. Scale goes up to twenty."
As they continued walking, Ryan got the impression that the building rambled over a vast area beneath the surface of Crater Lake. It was decidedly functional in design, with raw concrete, weeping a little from the damp, lining all the walls.
"Stop here," the sec leader commanded suddenly.
Ryan noticed another body scanner was built into the trim doorway ahead. He reached up casually and tucked his hands inside his coveralls, as if they were chilly, then grabbed the metal weights at each end of the silk scarf and folded his fingers around them, hoping that it might just be enough to mask them from the detectors.