"How 'bout Doc?"
"Who knows?"
They talked for another half hour or so. Jak told Ryan he'd been visited by a couple of scientists who had been interested in his highly developed fighting skills.
"Didn't care I chilled two sec men. Just wanted to know why did it. Not even how. Mostly why."
"After their generations of inbreeding, they must find the idea of slaughtering with your bare hands really weird."
"But minds weren't on it. Worried about research. Told me Central'd be pleased. Nearly got Eurydice done. Any day now."
"Any way now," Ryan muttered, vaguely aware he'd quoted from some old song one of the drivers on War Wag One used to sing all the time.
"How 'bout getting me out?"
"They talk about doing any experiments on you?"
Jak nodded. "Sure. Fuckers wanted neural readings. Synaptic reflex results. Motor speed. Muscle response. Plus lotta brain scans and bone samples. Not facing that, Ryan. You read me?"
"Sure. But not yet, you figure?"
"Not yet. Not until got their experiments done. Won't belong, Ryan."
"No. See you later. Any news, tell us. Any real problem, then get out and run for it. Best advice I can give you, kid."
"When you going to move?" he whispered, head very near to Ryan's.
"Soon." Ryan held up three fingers, showing not today, not tomorrow, but maybe the day after.
As he closed the door and walked past the sec man, Ryan realized how much he was coming to dislike the Wizard Island Complex for Scientific Advancement.
Lori stayed in the dormitory all day, nursing her stomach illness. Krysty stayed with her for some of the time. At one point, though, she went back to the library on her own, but this time the sec door was securely closed. J.B. completed his working plan of the redoubt, putting in all the blind corners and potential danger spots, marking elevators and filling in where he knew. But when he showed his completed plan to Ryan that evening, there were huge blank areas he'd marked only as "Research?"
"What do they do there?" he asked. "I just can't figure it out. They got what I guess is around seven-eights of the place out of our sight. If they're doing weapons research, then they could be building missiles to the sun for all we know."
Dr. Tardy appeared around early Bin green. Her whole diminutive body reflected her anger.
"Your colleague and leader, Dr. Tanner, has caused disgrace here."
"How? What's he done?"
Lori heard this and came running out. She was on the edge of tears. "Where is he? How is he? Is he all right? Tell me."
"Terminate noise," the scientist snapped. "For the first occasion in seventy years there has been an incident of a person being drunk here."
"Doc? Drunk!" Ryan exclaimed.
"Yes. And with poor Dr. Avian, who is diminished, health wise."
"How come?"
"He is being brought here now. His stomach has been pumped in the medic wing, and he will recover."
"Sorry 'bout that," Ryan said.
Finnegan, who'd spent most of the day sleeping on his bunk, appeared bleary-eyed in the doorway, grinning as he caught on to what had happened.
"Fucking good for the old man," he said, laughing as he punched his right fist into his left palm with a loud smack.
"Unamused," Dr. Tardy barked. "Our projects here are finely balanced, near to fruition. In the next six or seven daily periods, we shall be ready to test several of our..." She stopped, as if she wanted to say more but couldn't. "That's enough. Our efforts for the peace of the world are nearly done. Soon we can go up to the place beyond to claim our reward in the world we will have reshaped for Central."
Behind the thick lenses of her glasses her eyes glittered and danced. A film of frothy spittle dangled from her coarse lips, running over her chin among the warts.
Behind her, off down the main corridor from the center of Wizard Island, they suddenly heard the raucous sound of someone singing.
"See 'er on the bridge at midnight,
Throwin' snowballs at the moon,
She said, 'Jack, I've never..."
The song broke off, and they all clearly heard the noise of someone throwing up violently.
"In Central's name, shut him up," the little woman whined. "He will ruin our concentration, and as for poor Dr. Avian..."
She spun on her heel and waddled away from them, passing Doc Tanner at the corner of the passage. He was being supported by two stumbling sec men, his long arms drooped over their shoulders as if he were a dying scarecrow. His long jaw fell, and his eyes squinted at the scientist.
"Good morrow to you, Mistress Whateveryourfuckingname. Pax vobiscum. May you... Greetings, Master Cawdor. My dear, dear friends. Mistress Lori, my felicitations to you, above all."
Ryan and Finn took him from the two sec muties, who stood there, staring blankly, as if their orders hadn't gone any farther. They were still there when J.B. shut the door on them.
"Get me to bed," Doc said. "Had a little drink 'bout an hour... Gone right to..." He locked his bony fingers in the top of Ryan's coveralls, pulling the one-eyed man's head down. There was the smell of vomit and the stench of raw alcohol. But when Ryan looked, Doc's eyes were as clear as limpid pools, and his whisper showed no signs of inebriation.
"Ryan. Know all 'bout Project Eurydice. I mean all'bout it."
"Yeah?"
"Think of your worst nightmare, and it's a hundred times worse. By the three Kennedys, but it is truly truly dreadful!"
Chapter Nineteen
Hoisted up by Finnegan, J.B. found it easy to short out the vid camera and sound mikes in half of the dormitory. There were so many pieces of equipment malfunctioning in the Wizard Island Complex that there seemed little risk of any of the scientists becoming at all suspicious. And it gave Doc Tanner the chance to tell them all what he'd found during the day.
"I encountered that halting fellow with the plas-steel fingers, the one who can hardly stammer through his voice box."
"Avian," Krysty said.
"Yeah. Got friendly. One scientist to another. He showed me part of his lab. Near shitting his breeches in case any of the others found out. Had him some pure alcohol. Showed him how to dilute it then mix it with some of that good spring water they've got here. We... Phew, but I fear I have imbibed a little too... I must..."
He pushed them aside and tottered off into the washroom, where they heard him retch. Lori went to follow him, but Ryan shook his head.
"Leave him be, girl. Best thing when you feel like that, with your mouth like a sticky's crotch."
Doc reappeared, looking rather more jaunty, singing some old chant about being born in a dead man's town. The rest became inaudible as he bent double with a coughing fit. His cheeks were almost purple as he fought for breath. Eventually he managed to straighten.
"Upon my soul, I am getting too old for this sort of taradiddle. I shall eschew all alcohol. I swear it."
"Tell us what you found, Doc," Ryan urged.
"Indeed, I will. Dr. Avian and I shared a beverage or two. His capacity was markedly less than my own. After a beaker or two — or three or four, I disremember me how many — well, he stammered out the whole filthy, despicable tale of Wizard's Island. Should be called Devil's Island. How it started. How it's gone on. What they do. What they'd done. And what they will be doing within the next week. We have arrived at what Dr. Avian called a 'nodal point' in the life of the complex. The past hundred years have been research and rehearsal for the next week. And we, ladies and gentlemen, are here. And we must stop it." He coughed again, then looked around at each of them. "There can be no argument. We muststop it."