Axler, James - Deathlands 25 by Axler James

Author:Axler, James
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter Twenty

"It was my dear departed grandmother, Melissa Crichton, who was responsible for the foundingand a deal of the funding." The scientist emitted a fragile, dry chuckle that sounded like the peeling off of a mummy's shroud. "Just my little joke. Many of my colleagues have heard it, I fear, many times in the past sixty years or more. So difficult to calculate the passing of time as one slips into the eighth decade of life."

"I would be the first to drink to that, Professor Crichton," Doc said gallantly, lifting his cut-crystal goblet of elderflower wine.

David Crichton was eighty-three years old, or eighty-three years young as he sometimes declared himself. He sat at the head of the table, with his senior staff ranged on either side, alternating with Ryan and his friends.

Only Krysty was absent from among the visitors, and Dean, who had volunteered he didn't want a formal supper and had offered to stay in the room to keep Krysty company. Ryan had been glad to accept the offer.

The food was terrible, a surprisingly large proportion of it recycled and artificial. Ryan had found himself sitting between Crichton and Ladrow Buford and had commented on the lack of fresh meat and vegetables.

"No need for it," the little scientist explained. "We can process much of what we need. It prevents any necessity for us to go outside the valley more than three or four times a year. Then we mount a large-scale expedition. Stock up. And dry and pulp and freeze and retexture the food to last us another three or four months. Tasty, is it not?"

"Tasty" wasn't the first word that would have occurred to Ryan.

There were printed menus spaced along the table, and the food, already in individual portions on rectangular green plastic dishes, was served by unarmed sec men.

"Soup of the Day" turned out to be a pale green liquid that matched the bowls and had a faint taste of dried peas and too much salt.

"Fish pat and salad." The former was a pinkish gray color, with a watery constitution, and the latter was a single irradiated tomato and three shredded leaves of reconstituted lettuce that had neither flavor nor texture.

The main course was "Meat and three vegetables."

"What kind of meat is it?" Mildred asked.

The elderly woman whitecoat sitting next to her didn't know, but she thought it might once have been pork. The younger man opposite, with a hearing aid, decided after being asked six times that he believed that it was beef. A sec man, who was serving, suggested bone-stripped veal.

In the end, not one of the scientists could answer the question, though Crichton gallantly offered to send a message to the kitchens to try to find out.

"Don't bother," Mildred replied. "I guess it's still going to taste absolutely like nothing, even when I know

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that it's really something."

The vegetables were three dollops of mush, precisely the same size for everyone. Buford pointed out proudly that the machines in the kitchens were accurate to an eighth of a milligram in doling it out.

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