All the three of them had to do now was rejoin the other trio near the single exit to safety.
They were only a couple of turns in the corridor from their destination when Dr. Ethel Tardy appeared from a side door and waddled into the center of the passage. She was holding a chromed handblaster, which was connected to wires that trailed away out of sight. The muzzle was slightly bell-shaped and was pointed in their direction.
The tiny woman smiled, beaming eyes hugely distorted by her thick spectacles. Her sweet, lisping little voice showed no trace of anger.
“You have been busy, sabotagewise. We lost track of our surveillance mode operation on Dr. Tanner and the others in your party.”
“Tough shit, lady.” Ryan hesitated about trying to blast the diminutive scientist, the short hairs prickling at the back of his neck at the sight of the outlandish weapon she held. What was it, and what might it do?
She answered the unspoken question. “One move from you and I shall use this. It is one of our prize items of research, tested thus far only on our mutant experimental personnel.”
“Bitch,” Krysty muttered, too quietly for Dr. Tardy to hear her.
“It is listed as an emdee. Which stands for a Molecular Destabilizer. I eagerly anticipate using it upon you three and examining the results.”
“What’s it do?” Jak asked.
Ryan was wondering whether he should try to snap the G-12 onto continuous and rip the poisonous dwarf into bloody ribbons of flesh. But she was too far awayand her finger was on a button that had to be a firing trigger.
“Your tissue, bone, blood, skin are all composed of molecules bonded together. This will remove those fragile bonds.” She could have been lecturing to a class of students.
Only Krysty had even an inkling of what she was trying to explain. “But if you do that”
Dr. Ethel Tardy positively twinkled at her. “Yes, you see it! The entire structure dissolves. You melt into a billion, billion particles. Total disintegration.” She smiled broadly. “And it is so painful. The element of consciousness remains surprisingly long. It is one of the best of my own inventions.”
“You death-crazed lunatic,” Ryan said, unable to control his loathing for the insane woman.
“No. Central bless you. We are the saviors of the world. Only through death can you come to a new life. That’s how it’s always been in the rules.”
“You’re sick,” Krysty spat. “Sick and fit for death.”
Dr. Tardy wasn’t to be convinced. “Wrong, wrong, wrong. Quadruple negative. Central has always wanted what we can now give them. Now we can finally destroy it all. The evil will be purged, the land cleansed by fire and by the horsemen of disease and pestilence.”
Now she was beginning to sound like some biblical prophet, drawing on the Book of Revelation.
“You’ll wipe out the few survivors of the madness of the long chill?” Krysty asked.
“They will welcome our redemption.”
“A vile death!”
Dr. Tardy shook her little Buddha-like head. “They are not worth the saving.”
“Some are,” Jak said, hand sliding around toward a concealed dagger.
“Move your fingers another micrometer and you’re instant dusty soup,” the scientist said. “Good. Now we must know what you’ve been doing. We know you’ve terminated our sec men, but we lost you as you came to the research section. What have you done? What can you hope to do? Why check us in our Central-blessed designs? Do you not see how grand is our aim here?”
Ryan took a half step forward. “Me an’ my friends go around the Deathlands and there’s times we do us some chilling. There’s those needs it. And I like to figure the world’s a touch better as we pass on by. I heard someone once talk about the darkness on the land, how he hoped to hold it back some, like carrying a sword into the sunset. Mebbe even carry it on through to a dawn. A new dawn. Sounds fucking stupid to you? Sure it does. But I’m for life. You’re not.”
“I’m for” Dr. Ethel Tardy began, when Dr. Theophilus Tanner appeared like a ragged angel of vengeance and shot her carefully through the back of the head with his two-hundred-year-old Le Mat pistol.