“Not good. Not bad. Food’s terrible. Bread and milk’d be better. How the others?”
“All fine. We found out the truth about Doc Tanner. Where he came from. How old he is. That kind of stuff.”
“Yeah. How come?”
Ryan told him quickly, knowing it didn’t matter much if the room was bugged. What they knew was already known to the scientists anyway.
Jak sat silent, occasionally asking a question. He wanted to know whether the date of Doc’s trawling was linked with the date of the deaths of his two children and was puzzled about Doc’s real age. But he never questioned the truthfulness of the story.
“So we could go time traveling? Yeah?”
Ryan nodded. “That’s the theory, kid. All we have to do is find a redoubt with the right controls. And find someone who knows how to operate it.”
“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 B in 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.