Crater Lake

by James Axler

  Ryan woke next, his one good eye opening. He too looked around while keeping very still.

  "Fourteen," he said to himself. And if he could see that many, then he was almost certain that there were more in the trees around the camp.

  Lori woke next, sitting up, her hands going to her mouth in shock when she saw the ring of silent figures in identical uniforms of black plastic that reflected the silver moonlight.

  J.B. reacted like Jak and Ryan, simply opening his eyes, taking in what was happening, not taking any risks on getting shot. Squinting in the darkness, his eyes locked on the intruders' weapons. Their blasters were stubby, like machine pistols, with a narrow barrel above the firing muzzle. They probably had some kind of laser-controlled firing system, he thought, but the magazine seemed to hold ammunition unlike anything the Armorer had ever seen.

  Krysty, awake now too, looked calmly at the silent enemy. Her long, brilliantly red hair curled softly and defensively around the nape of her neck, the tendrils brushing her skin. She found it unnerving that it wasn't possible to see the faces of their antagonists, or even determine their sex.

  Apart from the gleaming black uniforms, they wore long boots with flat heels made of the same plastic material, and their domed helmets had visors that totally concealed their eyes.

  Finnegan was snoring on his back, but Jak's voice finally penetrated. His first reaction was to reach for his blaster, but at his movement, every one of the strange weapons veered in his direction. He shrugged his shoulders at the inevitability of it and grinned at the nearest person. "No problem, brother. No fucking problem. Am I right, or am I fucking right?"

  There was no reply.

  Dr. Theophilus Tanner was the last one in the group to fumble his way back to consciousness, and only when Lori shoved his shoulder.

  "Too early for Communion, Emily, my dear," he muttered as he gathered some shreds of control and sat up. Then, rubbing the sleep from his rheumy eyes, he looked at the silent circle around them. "By the three Kennedys! We are attacked by Death Vader." He glanced at his puzzled companions. "A famous character from the popular fictions of… I disremember me when it was."

  The nearest of the encircling group, with a small crimson flash on the carapace of its helmet, finally spoke. The voice was flat and unaccented, lacking any kind of emotion, or humanity. Each word was measured and weighed before being delivered. Each word stood on its own and seemed more the product of a machine than a man.

  "Come with us. Hostile reactions will be met with ultimate force."

  Finnegan looked across at Ryan. "Ultimate force? Do that mean what I think it mean?"

  "It do," Ryan replied. "Let's go."

  The sec guards herded their six prisoners into a tight circle, allowing them to pick up all their arms and possessions, which greatly surprised Ryan. He walked with Krysty, looking at the curious creatures that had captured them.

  "What d'you figure?" he whispered.

  "Andies?"

  Ryan shook his head. He'd seen androids, and read about them, but he knew that nobody around the Deathlands had the skill to make humanoid robots that truly worked.

  "Could be adapted muties."

  "Retards?"

  "Mebbe, lover, with some kinda electronic voice activators."

  The figure with the red stripe on its helmet turned, its blank visor angled toward Ryan and the girl. "Do not speak with no permission to speak."

  At first they walked parallel to the crumbling blacktop that circled Crater Lake, then they were led down an increasingly steep slope toward the water. The path was extremely treacherous and slippery, but the guards picked their way at high speed, without a single slip.

  "Ultrascope enhancers in the visors," J.B. whispered to Ryan.

  The moon was hidden by the surrounding trees as they drew nearer to the lake, and several times one or another of Ryan's group stumbled and slipped. Each time it happened the sec patrol stopped and watched. It was a singular and creepy experience, since they all stopped at precisely the same millisecond.

  Eventually they had all picked their way between the trees and boulders to the water's edge, where five dark green inflatable boats waited. It struck Ryan as a further oddity that not one of the guards had been left behind with the boats. It showed an amazing confidence in their control over the area. Whatever had sent out the patrol clearly ruled the region with total power. Ryan wondered what kind of baron could run a ville like that.

  The boats had small, compact engines that pushed them through the water at an incredible rate in total silence. Apart from the bubbling of the water as it churned under their bows, they could hear nothing.

  "Heading for island," Jak said, his white hair almost luminous in the fading moonlight.

  A fanciful person might have been tempted to pinch himself to see if he was dreaming this bizarre experience. Ryan trusted himself and his own reflexes. However strange and new things seemed, he knew they had to have an explanation. His main concern was to watch and learn as much as he could. As far as he could judge, they were not being threatened, just so long as they did what they were told. The fact that they'd been allowed to keep their weapons was a reassuring sign.

  They landed with a faint jarring sound, and several of the guards climbed out and waited for their captives. Their movements were peculiar. Neither fluid nor clumsy, yet not quite human either. The moon had edged behind a bank of scudding cloud, and it was very dark. Ryan could make out a concrete slope that rose thirty yards to a large doorway concealed beneath an overhang of jagged rock. He guessed that it would be difficult to spot even in daylight. One of the green inflatables was hauled up out of the water, and he noticed to his surprise that it had wheels slung beneath it, making it also usable as a road vehicle.

  "Follow yellow lines strip to skin leave clothes weapons check all fresh clothes will be issued. Do you read?"

  Ryan nodded. "Yes, we read you." He turned to the others. "We got coldcocked by these mutie bastards back there. No point in trying to break for it. Do what they say and try and keep your eyes and ears on overdrive."

  "Second warning unspeak. Third offense leads to termination."

  Against the threat of such overwhelming force, they really had no choice but to obey. There was a line seared into the stone, glittering golden, and Ryan led the way along it. A small door within the large doorway swung open with a hiss of hydraulics, and they passed through it, accompanied by the sec guards.

  Doc Tanner trembled like a willow in a stiff breeze, and Lori had to take his arm to steady him. His eyes rolled, and his teeth chattered. "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate," he said.

  Apart from the local dialect gabble of muties, Ryan had never heard much talk that wasn't in American. "How's that again, Doc?" he whispered.

  The sec patrol had fallen a few paces behind them, content to shadow and keep the six covered with their strange weapons.

  "Means abandon all hope, all ye who enter this place," the old man replied.

  "Fucking cheerful, Doc," Finnegan sneered.

  "Don't mock, my portly companion. Oh, mock not, ye of little knowledge. Strip off your clothing. Follow the yellow lines. Not yellow stars. Lines. Follow them. Through the door. Into the bunkers. Poison gas showers for all. Line up to be freed of lice. Into the chambers.

  Close and bolt the doors. Marks of nails, gouged in the stone. Screams. Blood and excrement. The stench."

  Ryan was worried that Doc Tanner had finally lost what was often a fragile hold on sanity and reality. As they walked, the old man began to chant names in time with their steps. A litany of names. People? Places? Foreign words with harsh syllables. None of them sounding like any names that Ryan had ever heard.

  "Belsen… Treblinka… Mauthausen… Ravensbruck… Vught… Sobibor… Dachau… Theresienstadt… Auschwitz."

  There was something inherently ugly and unpleasant about the pattern of their names, something that echoed the clicking heels of their captors.

  "Death camps. Ba
stard Nazis."

  One of the sec guards moved in closer, and Lori tugged warningly at Doc's arm, shutting him up. Ahead loomed the door of what looked like some kind of elevator.

  "Place is like a redoubt," Ryan said to Krysty. "Can't be any normal kind of ville."

  She shook her head as a command from the sec leader brought them to a halt. "I can feel some real bad chills from this place, lover. By Gaia, but the air's filled with the cold, flat taste of death! We must step careful."

  The heavy mesh gates slid across, and they walked into a massive elevator. "Big enough for a dozen war wags," he said.

  "Look." Jak pointed at a tiny notice, less than three inches across, pinned to the far wall.

  J.B. was nearest, and he stepped closer, peering at it through narrowed eyes. He took off his rimless glasses and polished them on the sleeve of his coat, then put them back on his bony nose and read the notice.

  "What's it say?" Ryan asked.

  "Welcome to Wizard Island."

  They descended in the elevator, with only eight of the visored guards keeping them company. With its walls and ceiling of dulled steel, it wasn't possible to judge how far down they went, but Ryan counted eighty-five seconds before they stopped moving. At that reasonably fast speed, it meant they were way below the surface of Crater Lake. Once again he wondered what kind of complex they'd allowed themselves to be lured into.

  The door slid back to reveal another dozen or more identical sec men. They all seemed much the same height, and Ryan wondered again whether it was possible that someone in the Deathlands had mastered the arcane skill of creating working androids.

  "Go into doors numbered five through ten. Take off all weapons and clothes. Wash and put on fresh clothes. Wait there for orders."

  The lack of any human inflection was disquieting. So was the idea of giving up all their weapons. Several of them, notably J.B. and Jak, had blades and even some residual pieces of plas-ex hidden in their coats.

  "Why can't we keep our own clothes?" the Armorer asked, addressing himself to the apparent leader of the sec patrol, who stood as though locked in silent communion with himself, the strip lights along the ceiling reflected in his visor. Ryan noticed the many small remote vid cameras that were set high in corners of the corridor and over doorways, constantly blinking on and off, moving ceaselessly, like some hydra-headed techno-beast.

  "I asked why—" J.B. began again, but the guard replied.

  "Interdict."

  "What?"

  "Negative request refused. Comply now."

  As though a single brain were controlling them all, the sec guards raised the muzzles of their unusual blasters.

  "Fine," Ryan said. "We're doing it. What do we do after the shower and change of clothes?"

  The mirrored plastic turned in his direction. Once more there was the curious delay, and Ryan imagined he could hear minute cogs and wheels whirring and connecting somewhere inside the helmet.

  "Compliance positive then wait in numbered rooms for further orders."

  "Let's do it, people," Ryan said, leading the way toward the door marked with a neat black 5. He could feel his body tense as he thought about what might lie behind it.

  In the neat cubicle, the omnipresent vid focused on him as he laid his range of weapons on a square white table: the H&K G-12, the SIG-Sauer pistol, the steel panga with the gleaming eighteen-inch blade, and finally, a small dagger. His coat held plastic explosive, primers and detonators, but he laid it on the table with everything else.

  "Concealment of any weapon will be regarded as treason against the Wizard Island Complex for Scientific Advancement and a mandatory termination will result."

  The clicks at the beginning and end of the message indicated to Ryan that it was probably a recording. He began to strip, placing his boots, socks, pants and shirt on a bench that ran down one side of the eight-foot-long cubicle. But he kept his white scarf to one side.

  Very casually he put the scarf on top of a pile of dark blue coveralls, which had the monogram WICSA sewn on the left breast.

  On the wall the vid camera watched him with a blank, glassy stare. There was no comment from the tiny speaker below it, so Ryan guessed that keeping his scarf might work.

  "Go through the sliding door into the sanitary and hygiene facility, which is completely private. After your shower, please pass through the body scanner built into the doorway. You are warned not to attempt to conceal any item in mouth, armpit, ears, vagina or rectal orifice."

  Ryan tried to think of some snappy reply, but decided silence was probably safest.

  He pushed open the door and found himself in a shower stall, four feet across, with a chrome drain set in the floor. There was a circular control for the power and temperature of the water and a vent in the ceiling. He remembered the ravings of Doc Tanner and peered up at the meshed hole, wondering if some toxic gas would be pumped through to asphyxiate him.

  "They'd have chilled us with their blasters," he said to himself. "They wouldn't have bothered with this devious scheme." He reached out and turned the handle, wincing at the power of the steaming water that gushed out, and had one of the best washes he'd had in a long time.

  The supply of water was endless, controlled to the most subtle degree by the metal handle. A trim rectangular dish held two kinds of soap, each with the rich scent of summer flowers. When he finally came out, Ryan saw a pair of fluffy linen towels draped over the table where his weapons had been. His clothes were also gone.

  But the long white scarf remained on top of the newly supplied coveralls, apparently left by an oversight. It was the first scintilla of hope that the baron who ran this ultrasophisticated ville might be fallible and have a weakness after all.

  "WHAT'S HAPPENED TO OUR BLASTERS and clothes and all that fucking stuff?" Finnegan asked the leader of the sec patrol, waving an angry finger at the sheen of the visitor.

  "All stored main entrance gate. Will be returned if… when you leave complex."

  Krysty turned to Ryan at the long delay between "if" and "when," but he simply raised an eyebrow and shook his head.

  "When do we get to meet the people who run this institution?" Doc Tanner asked, his damp gray hair pasted flat to his long skull, making him look like an unusually intelligent goat.

  "Induction from Human Resources Section Wizard Island. Soon," the sec guard told him.

  The seven of them, in their snug-fitting coveralls and white sneakers, were led along more corridors and past more prying vid cameras. Ryan had tucked his scarf carefully into the neck of the coverall so that it didn't show.

  "Them fucking blasters can sting you," Finnegan whispered, raising his sleeve to reveal a nasty burn, like a red zigzag, across his forearm. "Just tried to keep a fucking blade behind, and one of 'em saw it. Said it was a warning and next time'd be for keeps."

  "That the worst they can set them on?" J.B. asked.

  "No. Looked at that dial on the butt. Bastard had it set at two. Scale goes up to twenty."

  As they continued walking, Ryan got the impression that the building rambled over a vast area beneath the surface of Crater Lake. It was decidedly functional in design, with raw concrete, weeping a little from the damp, lining all the walls.

  "Stop here," the sec leader commanded suddenly.

  Ryan noticed another body scanner was built into the trim doorway ahead. He reached up casually and tucked his hands inside his coveralls, as if they were chilly, then grabbed the metal weights at each end of the silk scarf and folded his fingers around them, hoping that it might just be enough to mask them from the detectors.

  "Induction will follow food. Through this door is non-sec area. Go in peace." There was a pause. "And have a nice day."

  None of the guards followed them through. The door swung gently shut behind them, and they stood, gasping, finding themselves in a totally different world from the harsh cubism of the concrete. Here there were pastel wall hangings and soft carpets of nonstatic acrylics. Music played from conce
aled speakers in gentle swaying cadences that lacked any distinctive tune.

  The lighting was muted, with pink and cream shades over the naked bulbs. Several doors, all closed, were covered in teak veneer. And the voice that came floating to their ears was totally different from the artificial speech of the mutie guards.

  It lisped softly. "Welcome, outworlders, to Wizard Island. Induction will follow shortly after you have been fed in the eatery in room 18 to your left. For now, welcome from everyone here on Wizard island. All of your questions will be answered just as we hope you will cooperate with our own interrogation."

  Ryan wasn't sure he liked the sound of the word "interrogation." He'd been interrogated before and had never found it much of a pleasure. It was always associated in his mind with broken fingernails, drilled teeth and electric terminals attached to genitals.

  "Come on," Finnegan said, attracted by the sound of the words "fed in the eatery." He moved briskly along, checking the numbers of the rooms. Doc and Lori followed, then J.B., while Jak walked with Ryan and Krysty at the rear.

  "Don't like it," the boy hissed. "Bad taste. Bad air."

  "Seems fine," Ryan said.

  But Krysty disagreed. "No, lover. The kid's right. If ever I met somewhere to take care, it's here. Gives me the creeping."

  "Here's eighteen!" Finn yelled.

  "Enjoy your nourishment. Here on Wizard Island it is always the present. But we are also our own past. And we shall soon be the future."

  Ryan thought the voice sounded like an extremely reasonable and balanced lunatic.

  Chapter Fifteen

  KRYSTY WROTH PULLED A FACE, spit the first mouthful of food back on the cream plastic plate and dropped the cream plastic spoon alongside it.

  "By Gaia!" She shook her head in disgust. "That's the worst food I've ever tasted. Grade alpha mutie dreck. It's…" Words failed her, and she sat in silence, looking at the small pile of light brown goo that rested smugly in the center of the plate.

  "It even looks like shit," J.B. said, pushing his plate away from him.