Deathlands 51-Rat King

by Axler, James

  He pulled himself upright. "Nobody won, you cretin. Everyone lost. There is no world as you know it. There's nothing. Just outposts of mutated idiots trying to take little degrees of power and justify their pathetic existence. Just a few people trying to make their way in the rad-blasted world without being chilled by those of little sense."

  One of the men in suits stepped forward and spoke for the first time. "I'm sorry, Doctor, but that just doesn't make sense. It doesn't fit with any of the models we've used for our simulations over the years. And those models were very carefully planned and plotted to cover any eventuality. There's no chance that anything could have happened outside of that."

  Doc sighed. "I've been outside of this mechanism. Have you?"

  "Of course. Before we were attached—"

  "I'm talking about since," Doc snapped. "You've been in here over a hundred years. How could you possibly know what has happened?"

  "Because the simulations and simulatory models fed into our mainframe covered every possibility."

  It was a circular argument, and Doc could see no way of countering it. He threw up his hands in resignation and exasperation. "Have it your way, gentlemen. Have it your way."

  "Oh, but we will," said the Air Force officer. "After all, there is one flaw in your argument."

  Doc was about to explode in fury and say that it wasn't a debating society, he was talking about reality, when he realized that for these men, the rarefied air of abstract argument and simulation had become the only reality they knew. So he said simply, "What, pray tell, is this flaw?"

  "Simple. If the outside world is so irrevocably changed, then why do we still exist? Who is keeping us maintained?"

  Doc shook his head, refusing to answer, to debate. It didn't matter. Fate had decreed that he be locked inside this machine, perhaps forever. If it came to that, what was forever in a realm where there was no such thing as time?

  "Gentlemen, I acquiesce," Doc said with a bow. "As I am here, you may as well show me where I am to live."

  "Very well. We know you are Dr. Theophilus Tanner, but we have no names. We are one with the mechanism, and something you will have to realize is that you, too, will become one. You will cease to have the trappings of individual ego and meld into the amorphous brain of the rat king. We are one, and you will be one with us. When that happens, then the mechanism will once again be in full working order."

  Doc resisted the urge to ask why the Moebius MkI would need to be in working order when there was nothing for it to do anymore, no world into which it could possibly fit. Instead he merely nodded, and allowed the other members of the rat king to lead him from the chamber.

  As one they filed toward the door into the anteroom, moving in a close mass that seemed to shimmer in Doc's mental vision, so that they—at moments—appeared to meld into one creature, rather than a collection of individuals. Doc followed, wondering what was waiting for him through the door…

  "REALLY, DR. TANNER, this just won't do."

  "Why not? I have nothing to lose, do I? After all, this Alice-in-Wonderland hell of absurdity is not a world that I know. It is not a world that I care to know. My only desire is to return to the bosom of my family… to my own time, to my own world. Is that really so much for a man to ask? If you were in my position, would you not ask the same?"

  The whitecoat scientist blew out his cheeks and scratched at his balding pate. He'd been warned that the only success for Chronos was a problem in the flesh, but he hadn't expected an argument of this sort.

  "Doctor, you aren't a stupid man, are you?"

  "That, my dear man, is possibly my great curse." Doc sighed, settling back on the bench in his cell and hearing the chains on his manacles rattle. It astounded him that, more than a hundred years after his birth, the military was still so unimaginative as to resort to chains when trying to confine one man. He mentioned as much to the whitecoat, who gave a short, barking laugh.

  "I like that. You realize, of course, that we only use these on you because you've been such a problem. We've never had to resort to such measures before."

  "I'll take that as a compliment," Doc replied.

  His captor looked at him with a puzzled frown that was partway between exasperation and admiration before turning on his heel and leaving the room.

  "YOU SEE, we can trawl these memories from you," came the voice of the rat king. Unlike before, it was a sinuous voice that seemed to be all of the men talking as one. It wormed its way into Doc's brain, eating at the corners of his mind and reminding him that he wasn't actually in the 1990s, but over a hundred years ahead, not really in this cell, but strapped to a couch with electrodes connecting him to a mainframe computer.

  "To what end?" Doc asked of them, speaking aloud, even though he knew didn't have to in order to communicate with them.

  "To show you how powerful the mechanism is. To show you what we can do. To show you what you can do, if you join us. Not that you have any choice in the matter. You will be absorbed eventually. We all had our qualms and doubts to begin with, but in the final analysis we became as one. And it is glorious, Dr. Tanner, it is glorious. But allow an indulgence…"

  DOC FOUND HIMSELF back in Baron Teague's hellhole ville, strapped to a table and subject to the attentions of the hideous Cort Strasser.

  Pain racked Doc's body, even though he knew this to be ridiculous. He was inside a computer, and the computer was inside him. He wasn't in any real danger, although it did cross his mind momentarily that the computer could be stimulating his cortex in such a manner as to simulate pain.

  He was unable to detach himself from the searing agony of torture enough to work these thoughts through logically. The memory was too much. Of course they knew that he had ended up in Strasser's hands after being flung forward by the whitecoats at Chronos. Of course they knew that this was where Ryan Cawdor and his band of survivors had entered Doc's life. Of course they knew that this was where he was about to escape, to be set free. They couldn't change that…could they?

  Strasser was silent as he prepared the next torture. He had already burned Doc, and the frail man's limbs were aching where he was stretched out on the torture table, tied so tightly that he felt as though his wrists were about to burst with pent-up pressure, and his fingers were numb where the circulation had been stopped.

  "It's a pity you've lost the sensation in your fingers," Strasser said quietly as he picked up a pair of pliers. "It won't be quite as effective as it would have been if you still had feeling there. Ah, well, it'll just be a delayed torture for you, won't it? You'll just feel the benefit of the pain when you've been untied and left to rot for a few hours…when the feeling returns."

  "What do you want from me?" Doc husked, aware that his throat was dry and sore.

  "Want?" Strasser asked in surprise. "Who says I want anything? I enjoy doing this. That's reason enough."

  "I know, you ugly, stupid fool," Doc whispered hoarsely. "I wasn't talking to you."

  "Not talking to me?" Strasser said, a flicker of a smile crossing his face. "I knew you were crazy, old man, but I didn't think it would amuse me so much."

  "Shut up. You will be overwhelmed soon enough when Ryan and Krysty arrive." And the short, rounded Finnegan, with his tall black friend Hennings—good warriors, long since lost but not in this moment of time. A silent tear left Doc's left eye and trickled down his cheek as he remembered their chilling, and the chilling of Lori, and the others who had traveled with them across the Deathlands but had bought the farm before reaching this stage. Good people.

  Doc was unaware that he had rambled all of this in an undertone the whole while, and that Strasser was looking at him with a bemused expression.

  "You're beyond crazy, old man," he said softly. "I can't enjoy my work if you don't shut the fuck up. So I guess I'll just have to shut you up myself, won't I?"

  He took the pliers, and instead of grasping one of Doc's hands, he used the powerful fingers of his free hand to pry open Doc's jaw. Doc was so
weak that he couldn't resist Strasser's grip, and moaned incoherently as his jaw was held open.

  He felt the cold metal of the tool's nose as it touched his tongue, felt the cool scrape as Strasser opened the nose. The tickle of the metal as it searched for the edge of his tongue, one half of the nose slipping underneath his tongue, the other sliding over the top surface. He felt the pinch as the two halves of the nose started to move together, the pressure on the top of his tongue turn into a cutting edge that drew salty blood as the nose began to bite into the flesh.

  The pain shifted gear, moved into another dimension as the pliers took a firm grip, and Strasser started to exert pressure. He pulled on the pliers, the tongue moving out of Doc's mouth, extended at the root until the pulling was painful to him. Until he felt the flesh and tendon at full stretch.

  Until he felt the tendons start to tear, the flesh start to rend, the pain start to drive him over the edge…

  But this was a false memory. It hadn't happened like this. So why was it occurring now?

  "To show you our power to alter reality—to be reality. We are the rat king, we are God. And you will be a part of us."

  Doc heard the words echo in his head, louder than any outside volume; louder than it would take to rupture his eardrums and make them bleed; louder than his own thoughts, drowning them and overrunning them, blotting out his own self.

  Doc clamped his hands over his ears, screwing up his eyes to shut out all light. Why, he didn't know. It made no sense, as he wasn't a physical body at this moment And how could he cover his ears when his hands had been tied but a moment before?

  Come to that, why was his tongue no longer hurting?

  Doc opened his eyes and let his hands drop. In yet another strange twist, he found he was standing upright instead of lying down.

  And he was in a room full of people.

  "THIS IS OUR TRUE PURPOSE."

  Doc turned, no longer surprised. Behind him was the cabal of men that comprised the rest of the rat king. Doc suddenly thought to ask a question that had been running through his head for some time.

  "Just tell me—before we go any further—what are your names?"

  The Army man clenched his fist and looked troubled. "We don't have names, Dr. Tanner. Not anymore. I used to, but we are Moebius now, and it is us. You will be part of it, part of us."

  "I feared as much," Doc murmured, turning back to the activity behind him. It seemed to be something that he had seen before, in his days as a prisoner of the whitecoats. It was old tech in full flow: banks of terminals, lights winking, phones ringing, answered by men in military uniform or in shirtsleeves, one eye always on the large screen that stood at the front of the room, display rapidly changing.

  The display itself was a map of the world, laid flat, with different-colored lines running from continent to continent. Doc wondered idly what shape the continents would show now on such a map, so long after the events of skydark had reshaped them.

  This display showed no signs of acknowledging any change. Why should it? Moebius had been cut off from the outside world, had never known the changes triggered by the nukecaust.

  The LED display that made up the graphic changed the trajectory of the lines as more information came through. Fresh lines began to spurt from the old USSR and its satellites, traveling toward the U.S.A. Lines from the U.S.A. and some of its European allies began to travel, in different colors, in the opposite direction.

  The virtual staff manning the computer consoles looked alarmed, sweat and fear distorting their faces.

  "This is how you—I mean, we—amuse ourselves, is it?" Doc asked.

  "It's not a matter of amusement. We exist for this purpose, and the simulations are to keep us up to scratch, to keep our minds sharp for every eventuality. The only task we are called upon to perform at present is to keep the redoubt running and in good order. This seems to be harder than previously, and we suspect the technicians are slacking because of the lack of war footing—"

  Doc remembered the inbred and mutie technicians he had seen in the redoubt. Of course Moebius, cut off in its own world, could not know of this.

  "But still, it takes but a fraction of our power to keep the redoubt in working order, waiting for the call. In the meantime we keep sharp by running these simulations."

  Doc held up a finger to silence the collective voice.

  "One point," he said softly. "If you are Moebius, and Moebius sets the simulation, then how can it ever outwit you, since you are it?"

  He was met with silence. The men in front of him exchanged puzzled frowns, muttered the odd word that he couldn't make out, and seemed to take some time to work out the logic of what he was saying.

  Finally the Air Force general turned to speak to Doc.

  "You make a valid point, Dr. Tanner. Our very insularity could, it seems, be a disadvantage. This is no doubt where the hand of chance takes a turn. It has given us you at a most opportune time. Come and be absorbed. Join with us now and you will bring in another intellect, another point of view. A fresh input to the mechanism, making it stronger."

  He held out his hand in a gesture of supplication.

  "Do I have any choice?" Doc asked.

  "Only the choice of making it difficult or easy."

  Would Ryan lead his friends back to rescue him? Were they even still alive? Doc had every confidence in their ability to survive, but not so much in their ability to reach him. Indeed, as there was no time as such inside the rat king, he had no idea how long he had been inside the brain of Moebius, and how long the brain of Moebius had been inside him.

  "I acquiesce," Doc said quietly. "I will join with you, if not willingly then with no resistance. I fail to see what else I can do."

  He moved toward the outstretched hand, and as his fingers touched those of the Air Force general, he felt a charge shoot through his whole body…or his psyche, represented as his body.

  The universe became a blur of color, too fast for him to assimilate detail. Inside his head ideas and images whirled too quickly for him to grab hold of them. It seemed that everything was passing him by, and he was marooned in a sea of thought.

  The blur stopped. A whirling kaleidoscope of color was fixed and fused in front of him, frozen in a moment of time. It stayed for what could have been a fraction of a second, what could have been a month or a year, beautiful and solid. Then it melted, slowly dissolving to reveal a whiteness born of a brilliant light. A light that gradually decreased in intensity, that gradually dimmed until Doc was able to make out details.

  The first thing being that instead of facing the group of men who comprised the rat king, he was now one of them. He stood in the middle of the group and could feel his links to them in this physical representation. It was as though they blurred into one, visually, from the waist down.

  More disturbing was the fact that he could feel them inside his head. He had memories and thoughts bubbling to the surface that weren't his own; a kitchen in Washington, arguing with a beautiful woman who was about to throw a juicer at him, crying and asking why he had to volunteer for a mission that would take him away again; a childhood that wasn't his own, riding a bike through suburban streets, disco music blaring from a radio hanging off the handlebars, people washing cars and trimming lawns shouting greetings to him; a fight in a bar, himself and two other grunts holding a long haired and bearded man over a pool table, taking turns to smash a pool ball into his face, his mouth a bloody mess of broken teeth and pulpy flesh.

  DOC RECOGNIZED the area. It was Washington, D.C., and he rounded the corner with the rest of the rat king, adopting the shuffling walk that kept them all together. They were on Pennsylvania Avenue, heading for the White House.

  The air was still, almost static and charged with lack of motion. Doc listened, but there were no birds singing. A creeping horror made him feel nausea rise from the pit of his stomach. Still he kept moving with the others.

  They turned into the driveway that led up the immaculately manicured
grounds to the White House. There was no sign of guards. The immaculately trimmed lawns were dead and brown, scorched beyond redemption. Looking up, Doc could see that there were no windows left in the White House. Glass and frames were all gone: the building was nothing more than a shell, a faint black-and-brown patina covering the surface of the stone.

  Without having to ask, Doc knew that they were examining the damage caused by an initial nuke hit. He knew without question that the shadows scorched into the ground were all that remained of the sec men who had guarded the White House, a futile gesture in the face of such destruction.

  "As expected. An initial target. Compute follow-up damage from a series of hits at such strategic points. There will be some disturbance of the land—"

  "Some?" Doc interrupted. "Half of the continent is unrecognizable out there. The other half is radically changed. In reality this place is nothing but a huge hole. Do you realize what this means?"

  "It means that we have to strike back. This is the first strike in the chain. The beginning of the simulation. Now we work."

  THEY WERE BACK in the control room, the LED screen winking and changing rapidly as the rat king barked orders to the virtual staff, ordering them to program strikes on East Bloc targets. Doc found himself joining in without thinking, just knowing by some osmotic process what the others were thinking, ideas and strategies flying from mind to mind, altering according to different perspectives and ideas, forming into a single thought that flew to the consoles as an order.

  The rainbow patterns of mutually assured destruction sprang up over the globe, running in lines of brilliant color until the whole LED map was a bright blaze of moving color. It reminded Doc of the kaleidoscope that had formed around him when he was being absorbed, and with horror he realized that was exactly what it was supposed to be—a visual representation of the ultimate purpose.

  "But don't you fools realize what this means?" he screamed, feeling sure that this time he would surely lose whatever fragile grip on sanity he still possessed.

  "This…"

  DOC RECOGNIZED the place. It was Moscow. He remembered too well their attempt to recover the soiled and abused American flag that had hung by the tomb of Lenin, in a glass cage covered with generations of phlegm and spittle. He remembered Major-Commissar Gregori Zimyanin with a shiver. A worthy man in his own way, as honorable in his own cause as Ryan Cawdor in his: a man to have on your side rather than fight against.