[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

to its meaning."
"Meaning?" Doc's voice rose to a screech as he whirled away from Wallace
Page 79
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
toward the glass partition that separated the Moebius MkI from where they
stood.
He flung out an arm. "You really believe that has meaning?"
He stood, not expecting an answer of any coherence and not really listening,
his eyes glued to the monstrosity that he couldn't truly comprehend.
The slack-jawed, moronic tech stood beside him, still tapping in the codes and
keeping the mechanism ticking over. That had to surely be all that it could
do.
What else was there now? The military-industrial complex for which it was
designed had long since crumbled to dust, and any answers it might come up
with were for questions that were no longer asked.
Doc pressed his face against the glass, breath misting and obscuring the image
that seared on his retina. But not enough& no, never enough.
Behind the glass lay the rat king. At last he understood why Wallace and the
hellish whitecoat minds that had conceived the Totality Concept had used the
term.
file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%...-%20Deathlands%2051%20-%20Rat%20Ki
ng.html (141 of 301) [12/29/2004 12:11:52 AM]
file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/James%20Axler%20-%20Deathla
nds%2051%20-%20Rat%20King.html
In the middle of the sterile floor space stood a master computer. Its
terminals were attached to a series of cables that snaked across the floor in
six different directions. The screen attached to the mainframe was constantly
filled with a series of 3-D images and strings of words that Doc's eyes were
unable to translate from blinking lights into coherent sentences. Although,
looking at where the images and words had surely to emanate, coherence was the
last thing that occurred to Doc.
For the six different directions terminated in six padded chairs. In each
chair was something that had once been human, but was no longer six very old
men, their clothes almost perfectly preserved in the sterile atmosphere, but
hanging off them where they had become emaciated. They were fed and watered by
a series of intravenous tubes that coiled away toward a central bank of a
smaller mainframe, located in an antechamber of the room, presumably, Doc
imagined, to try to cut down the amount of outside interference in the sterile
room.
The six once-human men were blank eyed and staring, their mouths fixed in
rictus grins of what could have been agony or ecstasy& or some inhuman mix of
the two. Muscle wastage made it hard to tell, as their faces were little more
than skulls with skin clinging, papery and thin, to them. Their wrists and
hands were painfully thin as they poked from the end of immaculately laundered
and starched sleeves.
Two of the men wore Air Force uniforms, one an Army uniform, another the
attire of a general in the Marines, and the last two were garbed in suits that
were conservatively but tastefully cut in a preskydark fashion. Doc recognized
the style from some of the high-ranking security and government officials who
had visited him during his brief sojourn in the late twentieth century.
The most horrific sight, however, wasn't their emaciated forms, but what had
been done to their skulls above the brow.
Tn his native Vermont, Doc had been familiar with the practice of trepanning,
whereby a Jiole was drilled in the skull, or some portion of the skull
removed, in order to relieve pressure on the brain. It was a medical practice
of dubious worth, and was also used by some cultists and followers of ancient
religions as a path to release the mind and induce euphoric states. Often, it
resulted merely in drooling idiocy, which was, Doc supposed, a euphoria of
sorts.
file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%...-%20Deathlands%2051%20-%20Rat%20Ki
ng.html (142 of 301) [12/29/2004 12:11:52 AM]
Page 80
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/James%20Axler%20-%20Deathla
nds%2051%20-%20Rat%20King.html
What had been done to these men looked like trepanning on a larger scale. The
snaking cables that ran from the mainframe terminals ended in electrodes that
were directly attached to portions of each man's brain. It appeared to Doc
that the cables disappeared into a network of small holes drilled in the
skull.
"And this is what you have in store for me, is it?" he asked, turning back to
Wallace.
The Gen nodded. "Uh-huh. You see Secretary of Defense Sethna?" He indicated a
figure in a suit whose only defining characteristic left was that he was of a
darker skin than the others, possibly an Asiatic origin. "Well," Wallace
continued, "he's dead& basically."
"Are not they all?" Doc queried.
Wallace smiled. "Depends what you mean, Doctor. We try and keep them going, as
it's the interaction of them all that makes the mechanism work. We recycle
body parts, but in this one it just looks like the brain finally gave out.
Now, there's no way we could find any part comparable to that& until you
arrived."
Doc turned back to the glass and looked at the rat king. "Madness," he
muttered.
"Sheer folly and madness."
Whether it was a comment directed toward Wallace's plans, or the minds that
had originally conceived the rat king was lost as Doc felt a needle plunge
into his arm.
He turned to face the drooling, cretinous tech, hypodermic still in hand, as
the blackness and welcoming respite of unconsciousness overwhelmed him.
Chapter Twelve
file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%...-%20Deathlands%2051%20-%20Rat%20Ki
ng.html (143 of 301) [12/29/2004 12:11:52 AM]
file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/James%20Axler%20-%20Deathla
nds%2051%20-%20Rat%20King.html
The two-lane blacktop came to a sudden end where the tarmac rose into the sky [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]