“Sit over there,” Buford directed her. “Professor Crichton has to go and rest a little. His health is far from excellent. But he has delegated to me the responsibility for continuing. And” he paused for effect, throwing out his chest like a pouter pigeon, “he has allowed me the honor of telling you of the work we have done here. The work which is now near to its conclusion.”
“So, tell me.”
It took the better part of an hour, with his narrative constantly being interrupted by Krysty’s questions.
At the end, she sat back, fighting to mask her emotions, trying to recount what she’d learned.
“You have nearly mastered the skill of duplicating living creatures while removing or controlling their worse aspects? Is that it?”
Buford nodded, his glasses glinting, his bald skull shining under the harsh overhead lights. “That really is a massive oversimplification, but yes. It will mean a Deathlands free from genetic mutations. As we copy, so we improve. That was the maxim of our beloved founder. Simple genetic engineering that will rearrange the DNA of our specimens. Any kinks in the chain can be removed and tweaked sideways.” He demonstrated with a delicate gesture of his hands.
“A cleaner world.” Krysty rubbed the side of her nose. “Uncle Tyas McCann, back when I was a girl, had plenty of old books. There was one from the Nazi times. Talked about something called eugenics. Racial cleansing. Rid the world of undesirables. Stop any kind of physical or social deviation from the norm.” She paused. “They called it their ‘final solution,’ back then.”
“Yes, yes!” He clapped his bony hands together. “You see, don’t you? Oh, Krysty, I am so glad you do both see and understand.”
“I understand real well. Though I’m not sure I believe it. I heard it took years and years to try to reproduce even the simplest organism.”
“Not now.” He looked around, then limped over to a cage of silvered wire on a bench, leaning heavily on his cane. “This rat, for instance.”
It was white, with a pattern of black spots and patches, including one that looked amazingly like a spoon with a curved handle. Its eyes were pink, and its nostrils twitched as it peered out of its prison.
“You see its markings, Krysty?”
“Yeah.”
“The bit here, like a ladle? Good. Now, I shall take it beyond the doors and return with it in less than five minutes. Sit quiet and wait.”
THE SEC MEN STARED at her with a studied indifference, except for Ellison, who came and stood by her. “Having fun, Red?” he asked. “Better than watching paint dry, ain’t it?”
“You can say that,” she replied, “but you can’t really expect me to comment, can you?”
“They tell you about their twinning?”
“Ah.” She sighed, nodding, suddenly making the connection in her mind. “Of course. The hounds that went missing. They were identical, weren’t they?” Krysty thought of the dying man they’d encountered who had been cruelly subjected to hideous medical experimentation, but decided it was wiser not to let on that she had seen him.
Ellison wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Sure were. Like as two peas in the pod, Red.”
Buford appeared from a small door set in the side of the large door.
In each hand he held a cage, and in each cage there crouched a rat, each a perfect copy of the other, down to the last detail of their complex markings.
“There. Now do you believe?”
Krysty sniffed. “I’ve seen better tricks done by a medicine-show conjurer with a rabbit.”
“Trick? Trick!” His face flushed, and be nearly dropped the cages in his temper. “It’s not a trick, you mutie triple-stupe bitch!”
“I’m not stupid. There isn’t any growth accelerator in the history of the world that could copy like that. Has to be a chautauqua trick.”
“Right.” He handed the rats to Ellison.
Raising his voice, he commanded, “Open the main doors.”
A sec guard pressed a recessed button to the right of the room, and Krysty heard a faint grinding of machinery, a sound almost identical to the opening of the heavy sec doors in a gateway. The lab door began to lift.
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