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 damn 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.