“Amazing,” he said as he reached out to touch the red strands, which coiled away from his grimy, split-nail fingers like a nest of snakes.
“Careful, it bites,” she said.
“A most remarkable mutation,” he said. “Although I must admit, it’s adaptive function is puzzling to me. Tell me, is the movement voluntary? Or is it automatic? Is your hair’s retractability produced by a linkage with your other senses, or does it possess some sensory array of its own?”
“Fuck off.”
“I’ll have to cut some of it off for testing when we get to the camp. It could well be the basis for an entire new branch of cybertechnology. Yet another prodigious feather in my cap.” The whitecoat sank back into his seat, a dreamy expression on his face. “This world is full of such mystery and promise,” he said.
“You sorely need killing,” Krysty remarked as the gyroplane banked.
After it landed on the Slake City airstrip, the cargo door opened and a pair of troopers leaned in and unbuckled Krysty from her seat. As they pulled her out, the whitecoat said, “I’ll be by soon for a sample of that hair.”
Krysty didn’t struggle in the troopers’ grasp. There didn’t seem to be much point. She was way outnumbered and with the cuffs on her hands and feet, even if she broke free, she wouldn’t get far. Instead of wasting her energy, she conserved it, letting them half carry her along. The troopers took her through the airlock door of the biggest of the domes and from there down a series of tubular, antiseptic corridors.
As they advanced, Krysty kept her eyes open, looking for the comp that controlled the manacles. As Colonel Gabhart said, it had to somewhere in the Slake City complex. But all the doors they passed were closed and none had visible markings on them. It occurred to her as she was hurried along that she might not even recognize the electronic brain when she saw it. The only comps she had ever seen were the ones the companions had come across in the redoubts—predark government caches of machinery and supplies. Those comps were a century behind what these invaders had. The science of Deathlands had come to a crashing halt in the year 2001.
The troopers took her through a doorway into a small dome that was blindingly lit. Unlike the corridors, the structure had not one, but a half-dozen light strips across the ceiling. From the furnishings, it looked like an operating suite or a dissection room.
Two she-hes stood in the hard light, beside a low black table with blood gutters running down the sides. One wore a battlesuit without a helmet; the other had on a tight fitting, sleeveless gray T-shirt and loose gray pants. Krysty was struck by the size and definition of the second one’s arms. Beneath the smooth, pale skin Krysty could see every jumping sinew. The bulk of the muscle wasn’t feminine, but it wasn’t masculine, either. There was something very different about it. It was more fluid. More supple. Not only powerful, but fast. Very, very fast.
Standing beside the operating table was a small black cubicle on wheels with a plastic hose coming out the top. There were LCD readouts on the side. Krysty didn’t like the looks of it one bit. It reminded her of the tissue sampling apparatus she had seen Gabhart use on a cannie. The cannie had failed the tissue test, and been immediately foamed. Also next to the table were two-wheeled trolleys with instruments under clear plastic domes, and neat rows of injectable medicines in little bottles.
“Don’t be alarmed,” the she-he in the battlesuit told her.
Then she dismissed the pair of troopers. “You can go now,” she said. “We don’t need your help.”
Krysty took in the handsome, androgynous face, the intense eyes, the confident expression. The queen bee of this nasty hive indicated a chair next to the wall. “Please have a seat over there and take off your coat,” she said.
“Do I have a choice?”
“No, of course not. I’m Dredda, by the way. And this is Jann. She’s a medical doctor. She’ll be examining you.”