Brian Lumley - Psychomech 03, page 38
Stone squinted up at him. 'You know, Jimmy, old pal, I only ever saw one bastard sick as you before - and he was the one who did this to you!'
'What?' Craig's eyebrows went up. 'You continue with your stupid riddles? Don't you know you can't win?'
'Jimmy, a while ago I heard voices in my head. They laughed and tittered while I screamed. They threatened and tortured me. Now they've gone - but I know they'll come again. One way or the other I'm going to' die, and pretty quickly, I guess. Why should I lie to you or try to confuse you with riddles now?'
'Your master, Satan, will fight to the bitter end.'
'My master? And what of your master, Jimmy. Don't you hear voices in your head, too? Doesn't someone come to you in your sleep? And is this the one you call your master?'
Craig's face seemed to go very thin. His eyebrows drew together and his eyes became dark, tiny highlights in the flesh of his pale face. 'Only the Lord my God comes to me in dreams, Phillip,' he husked. 'What are you trying to suggest?'
Stone rolled his head to and fro on the floor. The left side of his face was one enormous bruise split by a raw red gash. He laughed mirthlessly, coughed up phlegm and spat it out. 'The lord your god? Jimmy, the one who comes to you in your dreams was an obese, crazy, slug-grey Negro bastard with hypnotic and telepathic powers! Hey! - and did he tell you to build an "oracle", Jimmy? An even bigger, better Psychomech than the one you prettied up for Garrison?'
Craig flopped down on the floor, sat with his knees apart, his pistol in both hands, pointing it at Stone's battered face. His own face was like a blob,of white putty, with two pieces of coal stuck in it for eyes. 'What?' he croaked.
'And does he come to you still, Jimmy-even though he's been dead for twenty years? Hey - didn't ^you ever hear of post-hypnotic suggestion?'
'What?' Craig's hands trembled feverishly and the gun shook with them. Sweat oozed from every pore of his body.
'And does he tell you you'll be a power in the world, second only to him? And you think he's a god - the God? Jimmy, he was a flabby hermaphrodite freak! He was a mental mutation!'
'What?' Craig straightened his arms, pointed the muzzle of the gun straight into Stone's left eye.
'Go on, you poor dumb shit - pull it!' Stone croaked. 'Pull the fucking trigger!'
Through the open door there came the unmistakable chop-chop-chop of a jet-copter coming in to land. Stone stared up at Craig and grinned hideously. 'Did you get my tapes, Jimmy? Did you listen to them? No, I can see you didn't. You can't hear anything but that crazy dead man's voice in your head, can you? Well then, do me a favour - make me one promise - before you kill me. Promise me you'll get those tapes and listen to them.'
'Why should I do that?'
'So that I'll know that if you're not mad now, you will be when you realize what you've done!'
'What I've done . . .' Craig repeated him, his voice flat and dead.
The jet-copter was nearly down; a blast of pressured air banged the storeroom's door to and fro.
'Yes, what you've done,' Stone answered. 'I have it all figured out - most of it, anyway. You see, Psychomech's not just a machine, Jimmy - it's a monster!'
Now the whine of the aircraft's engine was changing its pitch, shrilling lower as it landed. Craig put his gun away. A semblance of normalcy had come back into his face. He stood up. 'That's my daughter,' he said. 'God has given her back to me. Can you deny me that, too, Phillip? Anyway, I wouldn't want her to know I killed you.'
'Killed me?' Stone's grin was vacuous, awful to see. 'Man, I think you've killed the world! What was it you did ten years ago that started the mind-plague going, Jimmy? What did you ask Psychomech to do for you?'
Craig's eyes: bulged. He clapped his hands to his ears to shut out Stone's words, backed away, turned and staggered to the door. He went out, slamming the door shut behind him . . .
The jet-copter was down on the playing-field where it had landed before. Craig arrived to find two of his men, Hill and Bellamy, already there. As they lifted Lynn down he ran to her, hugged and kissed her. She was warm - she lived - his daughter was alive and well!
She opened her eyes and grinned at him - grinned, not smiled - and patted his drawn cheek. 'Daddy,' she said, froth dribbling from the corner of her mouth. 'Daddy, I have hair growing on my brain! Ropes and ropes and ropes of it
Craig jerked back from her, staggered and would have fallen if Bellamy had not reached out a steadying hand. He stood swaying and staring at his daughter in utmost horror, his mouth working like the mouth of a fish, unable to form words. And all the while she looked at him where she lay like a doll in the arms of his men, looked at him and grinned and dribbled.
He found his voice, said, 'Bring her . . . bring her to Psychomech.' And to Stafford where he stood in the open door of the aircraft: 'Wait here. I have another job for you. Keep the motor running. I'll be as quick as possible.'
In the garage area under the Dome, Craig lifted his daughter from the arms of the two men and sent them away. Then he carried her into the room of the machine. Ten minutes later he came out alone, made his way dazedly back to where the jet-copter waited.
At the sports field, Stafford came forward to meet him. 'Sir?'
'Take another man with you and go to Stone's house,' Craig whispered. 'Do you know where it is?'
'Yes, sir - I've been there once or twice.'
'You'll find tapes there, cassettes. Bring them to me. They may be ... important.'
'Right away, sir.'
'And Stafford - take machine-pistols and be careful. The Gibbering is going through the ceiling.'
'Right, sir.'
A short while later the jet-copter took off again. Craig stood and watched it go until its beacons were green and red fireflies flickering in the flame-tinged sky . . .
At 3:30 a.m. Hans the Caretaker (the staff of the Klinger-man Krankenhaus had never known him by any other name, for all that he had worked part-time at the hospital for over forty years) woke Klingerman up and told him about Frau Gussel's condition. Actually Klingerman had not been asleep but merely lying in his bed and turning things over in his mind. He was an old man now and his wife long dead, but he had children and grandchildren in all parts of the world and he worried for them. These were strange, terrible times.
Hans had a tiny cottage in Raron; he had himself been shocked from sleep by riotous singing, crazed laughter, shrieks of horror and death screams. In the village streets, mind-plaguers were raping and murdering. Looking out of his window, Hans had seen a large party of madmen smashing windows and breaking down doors, shooting people and dragging women and girls out into the street to rape and murder them. And sometimes' they murdered them before violating them . . .
Eventually two uniformed policemen had come on the scene in a car. They had automatic weapons and there had been a lot of shooting. Hans had ducked down out of sight until it was all over, and when finally things seemed to have quietened down he had dared to take another look. He had been in time to see one of the policemen kill the other, then put his weapon to his own head and shoot himself. For Hans, that had been the last straw. Reckoning he would be safer in the Krankenhaus on the slopes where they overlooked the village, he had hurriedly dressed himself and crept out of town, sticking close to the shadows and hurrying as best he could.
And in the hospital's conservatory, now its morgue -there he had found Frau Gussel dancing with a little boy corpse! She had held the small, naked body tightly to her bosom, its little dead feet stiff and dangling above the floor, whirling it round and round amongst the other bodies where they lay; and all the while she had hummed an old Strauss waltz to herself and to her partner. She should have gone home after the 1:00 a.m. collection, but...
When Dr Klingerman went to see her she laughed at first and talked a great deal of many things - nonsense talk, scenes from some real or imagined girlhood - but when she saw his needle she had grown calm, had known it was for the best. One really must not dance with little dead boys. And now she lay with the rest of them, and Hans had tied a tag to her great right toe.
Klingerman sat beside her, holding her dead hand. He had held it while she died and continued to do so, paying his last respects. Also, he had cried a little for her, cried for the whole world . . .
From where he sat, he was able to look down on Raron through the glass wall. There were fires down there now; half the town seemed to be in flames. Klingerman sensed some kind of grim climax, was keenly aware of a looming fertig, a Schluss.
'Hans,' he said, 'I do not think there will be a five o'clock collection. There are only a dozen bodies here, and they were all brought in before two o'clock. I think it is much worse now, and people are doing whatever they can for themselves - whatever they have to do.'
'Herr Doktor,' said Hans the Caretaker from across the room, where he had been only half-listening. 'This one's eyes are open.'
'Then close them, Hans,' Klingerman tiredly told him.
"They will not stay closed, Herr Doktor. And they are very strange eyes. Also, he is not stiff, this one.'
'Oh?' Klingerman got up, left Frau Gussel and went to where Hans stood beside a trolley. Upon the narrow, wheeled table, a young man's naked body lay cold as clay. But Hans was right: his eyes were open, and when Klingerman pressed their lids down over them they slowly opened again. The doctor looked at those strange yellow eyes and for a moment it seemed that frozen fingers stroked his spine. He quickly took a frigid arm, bent it at the elbow, gasped his concern.
'Hans, I believe he is alive! Quick now, go to the operating theatre and bring me a de-fibrilator.'
Hans hurried off and Klingerman wheeled the trolley to an electrical supply socket. He put his ear to the cold chest and listened; he sought a pulse high in the column of the pallid neck. And . . . yes, there was HfiThere still, a heartbeat. Weak and fluttering - very intermittent - but definitely a heartbeat!
Klingerman took the tag from the man's right toe and read it. A simple epitaph, it said: 'Found in the river · · ·' But nothing to say he was a gibberer.
Hans came back wheeling a machine before him. He plugged it in, handed the pads to the doctor, who took them by their rubber handles. Hans switched on the power. They were lucky to have a supply, but it came direct from a hydroelectric source higher up the valley.
Klingerman leaned forward, applied the pads to the young man's chest, squeezed the grips. The jolting current smashed into the body on the trolley like blows from a great hammer. Klingerman felt the shocks of it in his arms: once, twice, three times . . .
The lights in the conservatory dimmed, went out.
In the sudden darkness, the body on the trolley began to glow blue.
Hans and the doctor backed away, clinging to each other as the naked, blue-glowing figure floated free of the narrow table and turned stiffly vertical through an angle of ninety degrees. The entire conservatory was limned in the figure's blue light, its weird St Elmo's fire, which now began to pulse like some sinister strobe. The eyes in the gaunt blue-glowing face were very much alive now, and they were golden. Golden beams of light scanned the gaping faces of Hans and the doctor . . . and then the eyes closed.
Faster pulsed the blue light, and faster still.
The figure standing in mid-air vanished, disappeared.
It was there . . . and it was gone!
The two .terrified men felt themselves sucked towards where the figure had been. The windows came crashing in; chairs and tables were overturned, bodies strewn everywhere; a great wind howled. But in another moment all was still again and the lights flickered back into life.
Huddled together on the floor, the two old men looked at each other. Hans spoke first, tremulously, in a whisper: 'Herr Doktor, are we also mad?'
Klingerman gulped, forced spittle down his dry throat. 'Possibly,' he whispered back. 'Yes, Hans, it is just possible that we are. But I hope not.' And then: 'Hans, do you take a drink?'
The other nodded. 'Oh, yes, when I can afford it.'
They continued to stare at each other. Though shards of glass and splinters of wood from the windows lay all around, they had suffered not a single scratch between them. 'Tonight we can both afford it,' said Klingerman eventually, carefully lifting a long splinter from Hans the Caretaker's grey hair. 'I have some very good stuff in my study. Come, let's you and I go and drink some of it.'
He stood up, dusted himself down, helped Hans to his feet. 'Yes,' he nodded, 'that seems to me a good idea. In fact, let's go and drink all of it!'
Over the bank of the River Rhdne, appearing out of nowhere, the other Richard stood naked in the air and gazed down with golden eyes on the sprawling, frost-rimed shape of Suzy the Dobermann pinscher. She looked dead, would seem so to any other eyes, but the other Richard knew differently. For in Suzy, too, there was something of Garrison, and it was something which clung to life with an incredible tenacity. For hours she had lain there, but still that spark burned in her, however falter-ingly. She lacked only warmth, strength, the physical ability to carry on; and these were things of which, for the moment at least, the other Richard had more than sufficient . . .
The beams of his golden eyes played upon her still form and the frost steamed away. Blackly glistening, she lay there. Still the golden beams poured down, solid bars of brilliant yellow fire now, and slowly the mass of Suzy's body turned into 3 drifting golden mist. Then the other Richard opened his mouth and breathed her in, a cloud of golden vapour, inhaling her like smoke into himself. For a moment longer he stood there on the night air above the empty riverbank -
Then dematerialized . . .
Richard Stone/Garrison had communed with the spirit (the soul, the essence, the memory) of his mother and she had told him to go to Wyatt's house. Now he went there: the merest nudge through the ether of the Psychosphere.
He materialized above a rectangle of empty earth where once Wyatt's house had stood - in gardens running wild on an untended, untenanted estate - and steeped himself in the essence of the place, discovering many of its secrets. He learned of a Machine: a device conceived in the mind of a madman, built to cure madmen, and corruptly employed to drive men mad. And he knew that this was the Machine which had 'created' the Richard Garrison supermind.
Now he must go to the place he had called home, to the man he had mistakenly - but lovingly - called father.
He dematerialized and went there . . .
* * *
At the Stone estate in Sussex, Craig's commandeered jet-copter had landed inside the wall and barbed wire fortifications, on the large lawn in front of Phillip Stone's house. Ready at its controls, the pilot now waited. His name was Gavin Campbell and he had been George Blewett's private air-chauffeur for three years - three years too many! But Blewett was dead now, and as the night had progressed Campbell had watched the world go mad - and he had made his decision. J. C. Craig seemed to have found himself an answer, and if it kept you alive and well in a world which was sick and dying, that was good enough for Gavin Campbell.
While he sat waiting, Hill and Stafford had entered the house and one by one the lights had been switched on. Campbell was not sure what they were doing in there, but that was not his business; he was a pilot and they were what they were: J. C. Craig's soldiers, or his 'disciples' as he seemed to prefer it.
Campbell sat in his carboglass cockpit and smoked a cigarette, the rotors gently fanning overhead as the engine ticked over, making shadows which flitted over him like ripples of darkness. He was nervous, not unnaturally, and his face was pale in the multihued glow from the instrument panel. On every black horizon, fires cast their ruddy glow on the underside of a heavy screen of cloud and smoke. From here it looked like England was burning. Towards London the sky was literally lurid, like a scene shot in some remote hinterland of hell.
Campbell shuddered. He was not physically cold, but he turned up the collar of his flying jacket anyway . . .
Inside the house, Hill and Stafford had already checked out all the upstairs rooms and had now come downstairs again. There was a lot of valuable stuff here but they were not interested; the world would be packed full of valuable stuff, later. Mainly they wanted to be sure there was no one here who might come on them by surprise. As they explored the place, so they had switched on the lights.
These still worked, however flickeringly, showing that at least one local power station was still operational. Or perhaps this was simply the last drop at the bottom of the bucket.
In Stone's study they found the tapes they were looking for scattered across the floor where Stone had hurled them. The broken recorder was also there. Stafford picked it up and set it on the desk, pressed the 'eject' button and snatched the rapidly coughed up cassette from the air like a piece of toast from a toaster. He glanced at the cassette, shrugged, pocketed it with the rest of the tapes. He turned to Hill:
'These must be what J. C. was talking about. There may be other tapes somewhere about, but these are the most obvious.'
'Good,' Hill nodded, licking his lips. 'So let's get out of here. This place gives me the creeps! It doesn't seem right that a house as big as this should be so ... empty.' He put a hand to his head, touched his headset, gained a little comfort and confidence from it.
'You'd better get used to that,' Stafford said curtly. 'From now on there's going to be a hell of a lot of emptiness. A world full of it, if you get my meaning. But I know how you feel. Okay, let's go.'
As they left Stone's study and went out into the hall, the lights dipped and almost failed entirely. Hill froze, drew air in a startled gasp. He pointed the snout of his stubby, ugly machine-pistol upstairs. 'Look!'
In the upper rooms of the house, the lights were going out one by one. On the spacious railed landing, a blue luminosity replaced the electrical light with its own eerie glow. 'What the hell - ?' said Stafford. 'We checked up there!'
