by Paul Kenyon
She took a long stride, swinging the strap. The brass buckle snaked through the air toward the softness of Penelope's breasts. Penelope jackknifed upward and caught the strap easily in her hand. She pulled and the nurse toppled toward her, an astonished expression on her face.
Penelope hit her with a balled fist in the pit of the stomach. The nurse doubled over. Penelope raised both fists and gave her a sledgehammer blow on the nape of the neck. The nurse crumpled.
Quickly Penelope stripped her. She buttoned herself into the white uniform. It was tight across the bust, loose everywhere else. But it would have to do.
The white sneakers, fortunately, were too big rather than too small. She stuffed the toes with a corner of satin sheet. She tucked her long black hair up under the white cap. There was a surgical mask in the pocket. She tied it over her face.
The nurse was still breathing. Penelope debated killing her, then, against her better judgment, she tied the woman's hands with the leather strap, bound her ankles with her bra and stuffed her panties in her mouth as a gag. She rolled her under the bed with Happy.
She stepped boldly out into the corridor. Nobody paid her any attention.
She gambled that the operating room would adjoin the chamber with the giant brain. The operation was going to be one of Dr. Jolly's masterpieces. He'd want all the input he could get from the brain's twinkling position lights and the computer that was wired to the system.
She avoided the fur-lined elevator and took the spiral ramp instead. The sight of a nurse with a surgical mask hurrying somewhere didn't seem to surprise anybody. Penelope found the big circular bank-vault door to the brain chamber. A red light burned above it. She'd been right! Dr. Jolly was using it as an operating room!
She spun the brass wheel. The door opened with ponderous silence. She stepped inside and spun the inside wheel, locking it.
The operation was in progress.
Pickering was strapped to a stainless steel table under a battery of lights. The lights were what kept the whiteclad people around the table from noticing her.
There were six of them. She recognized Dr. Jolly despite his mask. A nurse had just handed him something that looked like an electric drill.
There was another nurse near a tray of instruments. And a man monitoring a solution that dripped into Pickering's veins through a rubber tube. There was a man whose eyes looked Chinese over his mask — Dr. Lee, she decided. And a technician sitting at a computer terminal, checking the confettilike readouts that were spewing forth.
Pickering's head was clamped in a metal cage whose bars offered a precise guide to the layout inside his skull. The tiny metal probes would be guided entirely by computer once Dr. Jolly got Pickering's skull open.
Penelope took a cautious step forward. Pickering's head had been shaved. They'd already made the incision in his scalp, holding back the flaps of skin with some things that looked like little fish hooks. His eyes were open. He was watching the operation through a mirror above him. He was smiling.
"Now, Major Pickering," Dr. Jolly said, "I want you to tell me exactly what you feel." He pressed a button and the drill whined into life.
Penelope walked briskly forward, toward the nurse with the tray of instruments. Dr. Jolly squinted at her through the operating lights. "Nurse Jenkins, is that you? I hope you're sterile."
Penelope took a scalpel from the startled nurse. "Quite sterile," she said. "Germicidal, in fact."
She plunged the scalpel deep into Dr. Lee's belly. The nurse screamed. Penelope pulled the scalpel out of Dr. Lee and sliced the nurse's throat. A quick leap took her over to the computer technician. He scrambled to his feet, knocking over his chair, and started backing away.
The anesthesiologist started to get up to help. Dr. Jolly said, "Stay where you are, you fool! Keep the patient alive!"
He circled toward Penelope, the buzzing bone drill in his hand. The computer man took the opportunity to grab for Penelope's scalpel. Penelope stepped back and delivered a mighty kick between the legs that lifted the technician off the floor. He fell to the floor whimpering, holding his ruined testicles, his knees drawn up under his chin.
The other nurse was screaming. Penelope said, "Shut up, you, or I'll cut your silly throat. Get over there and sit down." The nurse shut up. She sat down.
Dr. Jolly came toward her in a crouch, trailing electrical cable. The bone drill whined. He made a feint toward the Baroness. She backed away. The drill would go through bone as easily as butter.
"The Baroness, isn't it? How did you get away?"
"It was easy. The people around here seem to be short of brains."
He stabbed again with the drill. She backed away another step. The drill was longer than her scalpel, and Dr. Jolly had longer arms than she did. Combined, they gave him a good two feet of extra reach. He herded her backward. Her back pressed against something with a cold and crinkly texture. It was the giant brain.
She could tell from Dr. Jolly's eyes that he was smiling under the mask. "That's as far as you go," he said.
His eyes roved over her body, evidently picking the spot he'd plunge the whirring bone drill into. He seemed to have settled on her left breast. Penelope curled her lip in contempt; it was about what she would have expected from a sexual cripple like Dr. Jolly.
The defense against the bone drill would be the same as the karate defense against a knife, she decided. She refused to let herself be impressed by the whirring bit.
His eyes warned her a split second in advance. She flashed the scalpel from side to side just as he struck. The hand movement distracted him. His eyes followed it, spoiling his aim with the drill. She leaped to one side, making herself invulnerable to a straight thrust, and kicked sideways at his knee. His leg buckled. She let the scalpel clatter to the floor and grabbed for the handle of the drill and the wrist of the hand holding it.
If he could have borne letting go of the drill at that moment, he would have had a free hand to attack her while both her hands were occupied. But instead he brought up his other hand and tried to wrestle the drill away from her.
They staggered back and forth, struggling for possession of the drill. Penelope's hand was jammed on top of his thumb pushing the button, and the drill buzzed away like a swarm of angry hornets. They wrestled silently. Dr. Jolly's mask fell off, and she could see his mouth contorted with effort.
He was trying to push the point of the bit into her belly. She swiveled her hip and the drill whined past her. He tried again, and this time the drill went between her legs, ripping an instant hole in the skirt only inches from her groin.
But she was stronger than he was. Tall as he was, he was a sedentary type. Inch by inch, she forced the drill upward.
"Naismith!" he screamed. "Never mind the patient! Help me!"
Penelope gave a final push. She watched the point of the drill disappear into the precise center of his forehead. He looked surprised. There was a moment of resistance as the drill chewed through bone, then it suddenly plunged all the way into his head, sinking through the soft jelly of the brain.
Dr. Jolly gave a prolonged sigh and fell backward, brain tissue oozing through the hole in the middle of his forehead. Penelope dropped the drill and whirled, scooping the scalpel up from the floor where she'd dropped it.
The nurse was still sitting where she'd been told, her eyes bright with horror. But Naismith, the anesthesiologist, was tiptoeing toward the door.
She brought him down in a flying tackle. She held the scalpel at his throat. His frightened eyes stared at her.
"Dr. Jolly told you to keep the patient alive," she said through tight lips. "You're going to do just that. Do you understand?"
He nodded eagerly. She let him go back to his drip bottle and monitoring instruments.
The giant brain, deprived of computer control and Dr. Jolly's input, had gone wild. Great ripples of colored light were bubbling up from its depths, illuminating the entire chamber with an eerie flickering light.
P
enelope moved toward the metal cage that held Pickering's head. She bent over the shaved scalp. His eyes looked at her from the overhead mirror.
"Hullo, Penny," he said. "This seems to be my day for seeing you in a mirror on the ceiling."
19
The Baroness stared coldly at Naismith, the anesthesiologist. "Can he feel pain?"
"No. There's a local anesthetic in his scalp. When it wears off…" Naismith was a pudgy young man with sallow skin. His voice trembled with fear.
The Baroness pulled the nurse over. "The two of you are going to close that incision. Now."
The nurse began whimpering. "I can't, I can't! I'm not a doctor…"
The Baroness pulled back her arm and slapped the nurse across the face, hard. "Don't try my patience! And God help you if you do anything wrong!"
Naismith and the girl glanced at the sprawled bodies of Dr. Jolly, Dr. Lee, the nurse with the cut throat. The computer technician was still writhing on the floor, crying with pain. They shivered and went to work.
The fish hooks came out, and Naismith carefully lined up the flaps of scalp. They stitched the edges together and sprayed it with antiseptic. A big square of gauze was taped in place. Pickering didn't make a sound all through it.
The Baroness studied the bottle dripping fluid into Pickering's veins. "Now I want you to pipe a stimulant into him. I want him on his feet for at least a couple of hours."
Naismith looked fearful. "This man's full of tranquilizers. There's a fresh incision in his head. I can't be responsible…"
"Do it!" the Baroness said.
Five minutes later Pickering's head was out of the cage. He swung hairy legs over the side of the operating table and stood up shakily.
"How do you feel, darling?" Penelope said.
"Terrible. And I've got a bloody pounding headache."
"We've got to get Skytop and Wharton out. Can you walk?"
He grimaced. "I'll manage."
Penelope turned to Naismith and gestured at the moaning computer man. "Put him out," she ordered.
Naismith looked grateful at the chance to be useful. He filled a syringe and injected the technician. The man lapsed into unconsciousness.
"Now her."
The nurse burst into tears when Naismith approached her with the needle. A moment later she slumped like a sack of potatoes. The pudgy anesthesiologist propped her against the wall of the flickering brain.
"Now yourself."
Naismith looked startled. The Baroness lifted the scalpel. "It's the needle or this. Put yourself out for a couple of hours. I'm going to check your pulse and pupils. Any tricks and you'll never wake up."
Naismith sat down in a chair and rolled up his sleeve. A few moments later he was snoring.
"Let's go," Penelope said.
Pickering hobbled after her in his hospital gown, managing to look unflappably British even with his bare bottom peeking out at every step. Though they'd shaved his head, they'd left him his mustache. The stimulant was putting color back into his face. On the way out he picked up a pair of surgical shears.
"Oh, for a gun!" he sighed.
"We'll get ourselves one," she said.
They left the brain chamber, a uniformed nurse and the tottering patient she was supporting. They didn't seem to be attracting any attention in the corridors. Pickering's gown and bandage were a passport.
There was a guard ahead, where the corridor branched. He was a wiry, alert-looking man with Nepalese features. He was standing at parade with an M68 semiauto carbine that Penelope was willing to bet had been illegally converted to full automatic.
He narrowed his eyes as they approached. He seemed to be staring at Penelope's chest, but not with any particular enjoyment. Penelope thought she knew why; she wasn't wearing a bra — she'd left it tangled around Happy's feet. Nurses always wear bras.
When she was within a couple of yards, he swung the carbine up. She let go of Pickering and got inside the barrel, making it impossible for him to shoot. Her hand darted into her pocket and came out with the scalpel. He caught her wrist. She twisted, but he knew the karate countermove and twisted with her. She went off-balance.
And then the guard grunted in surprise and sank to his knees. There was a pair of surgical shears sticking out of his belly.
"Thanks, darling," Penelope said.
Pickering smiled thinly. "Glad to be of service."
The guard was still alive but unable to talk. He looked up at them mutely, his eyes pleading.
"I know; it isn't fair," Penelope said.
They dragged him to a linen closet and stuffed him inside. He died on the way. Pickering picked up the M68 and looked inquiring at her.
"You take it, love," she said. "You're less mobile than I am."
He concealed it under his hospital gown. Nobody had been around to see the incident; they'd been lucky. As they started off again, two chattering orderlies turned the corner.
She found the door to the big chamber that resembled a gym. It was the best place to start.
"We go in fast," she said. "Don't be put off by what you see. Pick your targets. Only staff personnel. Don't waste your bullets on the poor things with wires in their heads. They're just experimental animals."
He nodded and she flung the door open. She was in the antechamber of hell again. She shut the door behind them.
There was the man with the legs of a giant frog, pedaling insanely on his exercise machine. There was the pretty little girl, her torso deformed by huge slabs of muscle, lifting her barbells twenty times a minute. There was a naked man jumping again and again over a twelve-foot crossbar, breaking an electric eye beam every time he did it. There was a man running on a treadmill, his legs a blur. There was an incredibly fat woman, round as a beach ball, with great watermelon dugs, sitting in front of a wooden tub full of steaming gruel and spooning it into herself as fast as she could. A smiling girl methodically stuck pins into herself while an attendant nodded encouragement.
"Dear Jesus!" Pickering gasped. "It's a scene out of Hieronymus Bosch!"
There were perhaps a dozen white-uniformed attendants moving about the beds and the naked people on their exercise devices. Nobody looked toward them until Pickering began shooting. He picked off five of them before the rest started to scurry for cover.
By that time Penelope was among them, her scalpel flashing. She slid the blade into the liver of the attendant with the pincushion girl, then whirled and sliced the throat of a middle-aged man with a stethoscope sticking out of his pocket. There was a deafening explosion to her left. It was an orderly with a snub-nosed Colt Police Python, taking a shot at Pickering. She dived for his gun arm, grasped it with both hands and broke his arm over the steel edge of a surgical table. He screamed and she kicked him in the head.
The Python in her hand, she fired at two men who were trying to sneak up on Pickering from either side. The Python went off with a tremendous kick. But the .357 Magnum slug ripped off the side of one man's head. She'd been aiming at his chest. Pickering, pro that he was, didn't waste a look at the man she'd shot. Instead, he whirled and caught the other one at close range with a short burst.
There were two more fleeing for the door. Pickering coolly took aim and brought them down with shots to the spine.
It was all over. The bodies lay strewn about. The smell of cordite mingled with the sour-sweat gymnasium odor. Pickering staggered and leaned against a wall.
The naked people hadn't even looked up. Nothing that went on around them was as important as the wires in their heads. The frogman went on pedaling; the muscle girl went on hoisting her weights; the fat woman went on eating. There was no sound except the rhythmical animal grunts and the creaking of exercise machines.
Penelope picked her way among the sea of beds. She found Skytop and Wharton over near one wall.
They were lying on their backs, nude, breathing peacefully. There were electrodes taped to their eyelids and behind each ear. Wires led to a small device with glowing tubes and a
blinking blue light.
She shook them and got no response. She could see that they were in a long row of unconscious people, all with the electrodes over their eyes.
Pickering was beside her. "What have they done to them?" she said.
"It's all right, Baroness. I've seen this before. It's used in England. It's an electric sleep machine. A very weak pulse goes through the eyes into the sleep center of the brain. Very restful. And very harmless."
Penelope felt a tremendous wave of relief. Pickering was right. Wharton and Skytop hadn't been damaged. There were no surgical wounds, no metal sockets in their skulls.
She found something that looked like a master switch and pulled on it. The effect was startling.
Wharton and Skytop came awake instantly. They sat up, their fingers automatically pulling away the tape that held the electrodes to their eyes. All around them, other sleeping people were doing the same.
A low, wailing moan filled the room like a howling wind. The people on the exercise machines had stopped what they were doing. They were feeling for the wires in their heads, their faces studies in stark tragedy.
There was restless movement all around the enormous room. The fat woman was weeping over the tub of gruel. The man with the frog's legs had climbed off his bicycle and ripped the wire out of his head. The muscle girl was frozen, the barbells held motionless above her head.
"You turned the whole bloody place off!" Pickering said.
Skytop said, "What happened? Baroness, is that you?"
The frog man came over, attracted by Penelope's nurse's uniform. He had a queer high-stepping gait, like a walking horse trained with weights on the ankles.
"Please," he said, tears running down his face. "Can't you make them turn it on again?"
Wharton was alert, clear-eyed. He had taken in the situation instantly. He said, "Baroness, it's going to be a hell of a job getting out of here. There are guards…"
"We're not getting out. We're going after Mr. Sim."
"But…"
The frog-legged man clutched her arm. "Mr. Sim, Mr. Sim! He'll know how to turn the current back on." She looked at him with pity. She wondered how much of his brain he had left.