“There was an immortal comic hero called Superman, wasn’t there?”
“Clark Kentlived in Gotham City. Or was it Metropolis? I remember him. A fighter for justice.” The old man grinned. “You think that Superman still lives and runs this place? We shall soon see, Ryan. For, unless I miss my guess, I believe I can make out a sign on yonder door that reads Induction, does it not?”
“It does, Doc. It does.”
“SIT DOWN, one to each desk, and wait. The complex leader will be here soon. Stand in the presence of the complex leader.”
All the guards had waited outside, stopping and standing quite still, like children’s toys discarded suddenly in midgame. The room they were in was stepped like a theater. It contained at least a hundred desks, each with a pen and a notepad. Ryan and his six companions took the entire front row.
“Stand now for the leader,” boomed the speaker, which was situated above a pale green light screen.
“Here comes Superman,” Doc Tanner whispered.
The speaker coughed and whistled. Lights dimmed, then flickered and flared brighter. Music came from the corners of the large room, hesitantly at first, then swelling to a rather tremulous mezzo-soprano.
“Oh, say, can you see, by the by the by the by the by the”
It was switched off.
A door began to slowly open, and Ryan signaled to the others to stand, pushing back his chair, the legs scraping along the floor.
“The leader of the Wizard Island Complex for Scientific Advancement!”
“Holy fuck!” Finnegan breathed, two places along from Ryan.
The leader was barely four feet tall. A pudgy, dumpy little woman, she had pink jowls of fat, like the dewlaps on a bloodhound, dangling on her shoulders. She was wearing a fawn-colored lab coat buttoned up to her throat. Immensely thick spectacles turned her tiny eyes into great goggling orbs of blue and white. Her hair was so thin that her scalp gleamed through the screwed-back mousy locks. She had an enormous bosom, which was out of proportion with the rest of her body, and forced her to lean back as she strutted in on stumpy legs like miniature tree trunks. One arm, the left, hung withered at her side, while the other fiddled with a hearing aid pinned to her lapel. She stopped at the desk at the front of the room and heaved herself slowly onto a box so that she could see the seven strangers who were staring openmouthed at her.
“Assume the seated mode,” she said. Though she looked to be about fifty years old, her voice had the soft lisp of an eight-year-old girl.
Ryan sat down, followed by the others. He leaned forward and stared intently through his one good eye at the woman. If she ran a place of this size, then her appearance had to be deceptive.
“My name is Doctor Ethel Tardy,” she said. “I function as leader of this complex. You are our first guests for a considerable temporal period. Why did you come here, journey wise?”
“We picked up a message on a trans,” Ryan replied. “We’re a group of friends, traveling this way. We were visiting Ginnsburg Falls.”
“We monitor all communications. You closed the life window of their leader.”
Ryan was shaken that they knew about the killing. He nodded. “Yes. It was”
Dr. Ethel Tardy held up her right hand. “It means nothing, concernwise. Since your arrival in the complex you have all been measured and checked in all ways. All are healthy, though one has an incipient carcinoma, which may result in closure some years future.”
Doc Tanner raised a hand. “May I ask a question, Doctor?”
“Indeed, Dr. Tanner, you may.”
Ryan could feel ground slipping away beneath his feet. What in the long chill was going on here? How could they know all this? Names, illnesses?
“This has nothing to do with Project Cerberus, does it?”
The answer was some time coming. “Not precisely, Dr. Tanner. Project Cerberus was limited on a need-to-know Grades Delta and up only. We are the descendants of the initiators of Project Eurydice, the project from which there shall never be a looking-back situation.”