“I was having the most wonderful dream,” Doc said wistfully. “I was at Charles Rector’s restaurant on Broadway, just about to dig into a nine-course meal with Diamond Jim Brady—”
Mildred cut him off with a brusque gesture. “None of us are interested in your culinary fantasies about a nineteenth-century glutton, Doc. This is real and it’s important.”
Doc glared at her. “Then pray proceed, Dr. Wyeth.”
The woman linked her fingers together on the tabletop. “At one time or another, I’ve bored all of you with my theories about the muties running rampant over the face of Deathlands.”
“Yeah,” Jak said, trying to work the tangles out of his shock of white hair. “Radiation not account for different types. Muties too varied and too numerous. So?”
“So, my theories have been confirmed, at least up to a point. Though I can’t be positive, I’m fairly sure Overproject Excalibur was a subdivision of the Totality Concept. The purpose of this installation was devoted not just to creating mutants, but to the birthing of the missing link, the biological bridge between predark and postdark man, a superhuman designed to thrive in the world created by the nuclear Armageddon.”
With that preamble, Mildred told her companions everything she had learned from Connaught O’Brien’s recording. She soft-pedaled the hard science, placing her emphasis on the fact that the Alpha subject was more than likely alive and afoot, even after fifteen-plus years.
“It’s a rad-blasted wasteland out there.” Ryan argued. “Even a supermutie like Lord Kaa would have a problem surviving.”
“A supermutie, maybe,” Mildred responded, “but not a god.”
Krysty swung her head sharply toward her. The weariness in her eyes was replaced by the bright gleam of a sudden fear. Her hair shifted, twisting and knotting. “A god?”
Mildred gazed at her keenly. “O’Brien might have been overstating his abilities a trifle, but she was a stiff-spined scientist, too. If she believed Hell Eyes could—”
“Hell Eyes?” Ryan repeated.
“A nickname for the Alpha subject, because of his red eyes.”
“Gaia!” Krysty’s exclamation came out in a gusty whisper. “That explains—” She bit off the rest of her words.
“Explains what?” J.B. demanded.
After exchanging a quick, furtive glance with Ryan, Krysty told her companions about the jump nightmare, saying she had suspected it was something else. Ryan related his own hallucinatory experiences.
Clearing his throat uncomfortably, Doc said, “I, too, underwent a brief waking dream. For a few minutes after making the transit, I thought I saw stone walls bearing Egyptian art.”
“Lord Kaa, indeed,” Mildred muttered.
All but Dean understood her oblique reference to the traumatic mind alteration they had suffered during a mat-trans jump that later resulted in their collision with the self-proclaimed mutant lord.
“That was some kind of glitch in the gateway system,” Ryan said. “An accident. What me and Krysty went through was psionic, not mechanical.”
“Still and all,” Mildred said flatly, “Hell Eyes knows we’re here, wherever he might be. With his psi-abilities, he sensed our arrival. For all we know, he might have planned it, since O’Brien claimed to have deactivated the gateway.”
“Mebbe he turned it back on when he woke up,” Dean suggested, “then jumped someplace else.”
“Maybe,” Mildred admitted. “But if we can believe O’Brien, Hell Eyes woke up at least fifteen years ago. Even if he made a few transits elsewhere, he’d return here.”
“Why do you make that assertion?” Doc asked.
“O’Brien indicated that some sort of breeding instinct was bred into him. Like a salmon, he probably has the urge to return here, where he was spawned, to mate.”
Krysty ducked her head.
Jak snorted derisively. “Not fish.”
“No,” Mildred replied. “Nor is he a human. Whatever he is, we need to distance ourselves from his sphere of influence. Let’s not think that just because he’s not here in front of us, he doesn’t represent a threat.”
Silence draped the room for a long, tense moment. Then Ryan asked, “Should I say it, or does somebody else want the honor?”
Dean cocked his head quizzically. “Say what, Dad?”
Ryan rose swiftly from the table. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
IT TOOK THE FRIENDS only a few minutes to collect their belongings and troop down the corridor to the mat-trans chamber. Dean had stowed a few of the sealed ration packs in his duffel, and Jak carried freshly filled canteens. Mildred ducked into the laboratory to retrieve the bottles of antibiotics. After a quick search, she also found a sealed package of disposable syringes. J.B. uneasily mentioned that they might want to visit the Medisterile unit before they went on their way.