Ryan, eye blazing, turned to help his friend, but found the muzzle of a laser blaster jammed into his face.
“Children, children, desist from this stupidity,” the fat man said wearily. “I really do not wish to have my chambers destroyed by anything as sordid and petty as a fight. I have wanted you to be kept alive thus far, but believe me, I would have no compunction in having you chilled where you stand rather than risk any of my belongings. They’ve survived a nuclear winter, so I’m sure they can survive you.”
J.B. pulled himself to his feet and rejoined his companions while the sec squad stood off.
“You okay, John?” Mildred asked. He nodded, but stayed silent. Instead, it was Krysty who spoke.
“This is all very pretty,” she said with barely disguised sarcasm, “but what does it all mean? What point is there in keeping it all hidden down here, safe and warm, and never daring to venture even out of the room?” The woman chose her words carefully, watching the fat face as it reacted to her words.
Unless her intuition had let her down, she had hit unerringly on a sore point. It would seem that the fat man was indeed confined to this room by something. Looking at the desk, she could see that there was a comp terminal and a sec monitor built in to the ancient wood. There also had to be a microphone with the terminal.
Why would he never set foot outside the room?
“Madam,” the fat man began in even, measured tones that were all the more suspicious for being such, “your petty jibes may be intended to wound, but they will have no effect on me. I have greater matters to concern me.”
“So tell us about them,” Krysty replied simply. “They must be something incredible if they confine you here.”
“They do not confine me,” the fat man barked. “I stay here by choice, until such time as the world is fit for me to enter once more.”
Suddenly, Ryan realized what had made Krysty dig at their captor in such a manner. For whatever reason—either physical or psychological, the fat man who was the Illuminated Ones’ leader was unable to leave this room, which would account for why it was crammed with all his accumulated treasures. He had to bring them to himself as he was unable to go to them elsewhere. It also explained why the companions had been separated from the Gate. He had to have them brought to him, as he was unable to go to the chamber.
And then it hit him: the fat man’s words had been “until such time as the world is fit for me to enter once more.” But if the fat man was unable to leave the room, then he would never be able to leave the room. And the world would never be fit.
Was this why he was intent on spreading the foul disease across the land? If he could never go out into the world, then he had to eradicate it, make it fit for himself by destroying it?
Psychology was a dead form in the postnukecaust world. Virtually all written records of the science had been eradicated, and it lived on only in those few enclaves where the predark sciences and disciplines were kept alive…and in most of those the sciences were perverted and distorted by insanity and mutation. But as a practical form that had no name, it was still very much alive. The art of judging a man and second guessing his intent and action were the very things that kept the companions—and many like them—alive as they tried to exist in the world above the redoubt. And the longer you survived, the better you became at this unspoken and unnamed psychology.
Looking at Mildred and J.B., Ryan could see that they had also guessed or half guessed the reasoning behind the spread of the disease. It did have a certain twisted logic: in a country that was hollow and empty, then the man confined to one room could truly be king of all, not just of what he surveyed, but of the emptiness that lay beyond.