“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 Hamp;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.