Deathstalker 06 - Deathstalker Legacy

them pulsing with the many-colored liquids streaming through them. Tables groaned under the weight of the very latest in scientific equipment, some of it straight from some poor fool's development benches, who probably didn't even know it was missing yet. Dr. Happy never had any trouble getting what he needed, whether the price for it was credits or in kind. There were computers, gene splicers, recombinant chambers, and a huge walk-in refrigerator absolutely packed with alchemical magic.
    The man himself was almost impossibly tall and willowy, a spindly scarecrow figure in his stained and battered white lab coat, topped by a long thin face with bulging eyes and a frankly disturbing toothy grin, under a shock of white hair that seemed to stick out sideways from his head. He giggled a lot, and bit his fingernails when he got excited. His eyeballs were as yellow as urine, and his teeth weren't much better.
    He smelled strongly of something. Brett wasn't sure of what, but did his best to keep upwind, just in case.
    The good doctor bobbed happily along beside Finn as they strolled through the chamber, pointing out his various wares and processes like a proud father.
    "Such a pleasure to have you here, sir Durandal! Such a pleasure, yes! I've heard so much about you.
    One does hear things, you know, even this far underground. Don't touch that, Brett. I knew you'd come to me eventually, sir Durandal. Everyone does, you know. Everyone! Oh, you'd be surprised who I've entertained down here, in my time ... I have it all here, you see. Such stuff as dreams are made of ... in pill and liquid form. Don't touch that, Brett. I have potions here to drive a man mad with lust, or grow hair on an elephant. I can drive sane men out of their minds or cure the crazy. Make the blind see and the deaf hear, and make a cripple take up his bed and walk even if he didn't have a bed when he came in here! I have potions to give you emotions they don't even have names for yet, to show you heaven and hell and everything in between. Every day I think the unthinkable, and nothing is ever too extreme! Brett, if I have to speak to you again I will spray you with something really amusing."
    "Brett, behave yourself," said Finn. "Or I'll let him do it."
    Brett thrust both his hands deep into his pockets, and did his best to look innocent. He wasn't particularly successful. Rose had found a table to lean against, her arms loosely folded across her chest.
    She looked bored.
    Dr. Happy sneered at them both, sniffed moistly, and turned his toothy smile on Finn Durandal again, his bony hands clasped tightly together over his sunken chest.
    "So; what sweet and sour miracle can I perform for you, sir Durandal? Hmm? Something to make a
    corpse sit up in his coffin, or make his widow dance? Something to make an angel curse or a demon repent? Just name your needs, sir Durandal, and I will supply them in an instant! Yes!"
    Finn waited patiently, letting Dr. Happy witter on until he ran down. "They tell me you are a collector as well as a creator," he said finally. "A connoisseur, of the rare and strange. That you have access to drugs that no one else has. Old drugs, from the days before the Rebellion. They say, in fact, that you have drugs from the private collection of the infamous Valentine Wolfe himself."
    Dr. Happy's hands flew to his mouth, his eyes appallingly wide, and he stamped a foot, all but squeaking with excitement. "Yes! Oh yes! Oh sir Durandal, you have come to the right man indeed! I have them, I have them all, even the lost sex drug that mutates a man's flesh . . . rare and wondrous substances, some so potent even the smell of them would unravel your DNA or tie knots in your chromosomes. What, exactly, did you have your heart set on, sir Durandal?"
    "The esper drug," said Finn. "That's what I want. The drug that can make a man more than a man."
    Brett looked around, startled. Even Rose looked interested. The esper drug had been banned for almost two centuries. As well as being permanently addictive, the fatality rate had proved to be a hell of a lot higher than previously believed, killing or maddening over 80 percent of those who took it. There were still a few scientists studying it, of course, under very strict conditions. It was far too potentially useful a drug to be just abandoned. But there was an understandable shortage of volunteers willing to test it. You had to be really desperate to buck those kind of odds. Brett looked curiously at