“Me, neither. Here it is. Hope the sec door’s open.”
“If not, then we’ll just carry on north toward Wolfram’s headquarters.”
The heavy sec door opened easily, and they walked cautiously inside to be greeted by automatic strip lighting that threw a stark white glow over the interior of the old warehouse.
And its contents.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Ryan had seen pictures of old galleries and museums in ancient, crumbling mags, walls lined with delicate paintings in beautiful colors. He’d even seen originals in a few of the wealthier villes, owned by barons with a taste for excess and splendor.
The Paul Burgess collection wasn’t like anything he’d seen before. There were no pictures. None at all.
And nothing that resembled any kind of statue or sculpture that Ryan recognized.
“What the fuck is this?” J.B. whispered, his voice sibilant, echoing off the dusty walls.
“Damned if I know,” Ryan replied.
They were in a large single room, at least a hundred feet long and about forty feet in width. The walls were painted a matt white that had faded to a muddy cream. The ceiling was the same color.
And the room was filled with scattered rows of boxes, all precisely the same size. Ryan’s guess put them at regular cubes with each side close to four and a half feet. Some were dull metal, looking like aluminum. Some were partly of wood and partly of clear perspex. Some were a mix of all three materials with an occasional cube with an empty side to it.
“This is art?” Ryan asked. “I’ve seen better art on shithouse walls in frontier gaudies.”
J.B. began to walk around, examining the boxes. “I don’t know. They’re real well built, Ryan. Precise. Engineered to a thou, I’d guess.” He pressed down firmly on the top of one of the metal cubes. “Solid.”
“But they’re the same. Deadly boring. What’s the point of them?” Ryan cleared his throat, tasting age-old dust, brackish and antique. “I know what I like in art, and it’s not this. This isn’t art.”
The Armorer had walked to a small white notice tacked to the wall. “Says that Paul Burgess was the greatest minimalist artist of the twentieth century. Took minimalist to new heights.”
“Depths,” Ryan grunted. “I guess minimalist means there’s almost nothing there.”
“There’s other rooms out back,” J.B. said, threading his way through the irregular rows of cubes.
Ryan followed him reluctantly. “If it gets more minimalist than this, it’ll vanish up its own ass.”
The next room had a long table at its center, made from the same smooth metal as most of the cubes. Ryan noticed that it tapered about six inches along its total length of around twenty feet. On it were bolted a number of pyramids of chromed steel. All the same size, at regular intervals.
“I know,” Ryan said quickly. “You reckon it’s nicely made. Sure is.”
“Well, it is,” the Armorer protested.
“Does it have a name?”
J.B. read another of the neat little notices. “Called ‘Construct XLVII, 1995. For Rabin.’ Wasn’t he the Israeli baron who got chilled?”
Ryan ignored the question, walking through into another room. The building was totally without windows, a single door appearing at the farther end.
The next section had yet more of the minimalist exhibits from Paul Burgess. A partition wall of hard-board had weathered and warped over the decades, inset with a row of identical doors with a peephole at its center and brass handles stained green with age. Ryan tried the first one and found it locked. As were all the others. The printed card on the wall said that it was called Alpha Particles Reversed CLVII.
J.B. followed him, whistling under his breath. “They open or closed?” he asked.
“Guess.”
“Closed?”
Ryan nodded. “Right. I think I’ve seen what I need to see. How about we get going north, J.B.?”
“Sure.”
“What’s that?”
“Main door opening. Real quiet. Feel the draft coming in from it?”
Both of them were instantly alert.
In Deathlands the only people who tried to approach you silently were enemies.
Ryan glanced around. Apart from the row of locked doors, there was no cover. The back exit might be locked or open, but whoever was coming after them had likely got it covered.