Lifeforce (7 page)

He asked the policewoman: “Where are we going?”

“The Psychosexual Institute, sir.” She seemed surprised that he didn’t know.

“Is that run by the police?”

“No, it’s independent. But there’s a great deal of cooperation.”

As he stepped out onto the roof, he was surprised by the coolness. Above him, the sky looked as distant and blue as it had from the ground. He walked to the parapet; this was surmounted by a steel fence. From where he was standing, he could follow the curves of the Thames, down through Lambeth and Putney to Mortlake and Richmond. If Jelka used the astronomical telescope, she could probably see him standing there.

The policewoman said: “I expect this is Mr Fallada.”

Another Grasshopper was hovering above the roof; it dropped silently, landing as gently as a moth within six inches of the other vehicle. Fallada climbed out and waved to him.

“Good, it was kind of you to come so promptly. How are you feeling now?”

“Fine, thank you. Never better in my life.”

“Good. Because I need some help from you. I need it urgently. Come on down.”

He led the way down a flight of stairs. “Excuse me one moment. I must speak to my assistant.” He pushed open a door labelled Lab C. They were met by a smell of chemicals and iodoform. Carlsen was startled to find himself looking at the naked body of a middle-aged man; it lay on a metal trolley near the door. A white-coated assistant was bent over a microscope. Fallada said: “I’m back now. Sometime over the next half-hour, the Yard will be sending another body. I want you to drop everything to work on it. Call me as soon as it arrives.”

“Yes, sir.”

He closed the door. “This way, Mr Carlsen.” He led the way into an office on the other side of the corridor; the card on the door read: “H. Fallada, Director.”

Carlsen said: “Who was the man?”

“My assistant, Norman Grey.”

“No, I mean the dead man.”

“Oh, some idiot who hanged himself. He may be the Bexley rapist. We have to find out.” He opened the drink cupboard. “Is it too early to offer you a whisky?”

“No, I think I’d like one.”

“Please sit down.” Carlsen took the reclining chair near the immense bow window; it moulded itself to his body. From up here, the world looked sunlit and uncomplicated. He could see clear to the Thames estuary and Southend. It was difficult to believe in violence and evil.

On the metal bookcase a few yards away, Fallada’s face stared at him from the jacket of a book called A Primer of Sexual Criminology. The thick lips and drooping eyelids gave it a curiously sinister appearance in photographs; in fact, there was something humorous, almost clownish, about Fallada’s face. Behind the thick lenses, the eyes looked as if he was enjoying some secret joke. “Your health.” The ice clinked as he drank. Fallada sat on the edge of the desk. He said: “I have just been examining a body.”

“Yes?”

“A dead girl. She was found on a railway line near Putney Bridge.” He reached into his pocket, and handed Carlsen a folded paper.

It was a typewritten sheet, headed Deposition of Albert Smithers; address, 12 Foskett Place, Putney : “At about 3.30, I realised my wife had forgotten to pack my tea flask, so I asked the foreman’s permission to return home for it. I took the shortcut along the line, a matter of about five hundred yards. About a quarter of an hour later, at ten minutes to four, I made my way back along the same stretch of line. As I approached the bridge I saw something on the tracks. It had definitely not been there twenty minutes earlier. Approaching closely, I saw that it appeared to be the body of a young woman lying face downward. Her head was across the inner line. I was about to run for help when I heard the approach of the goods train from Farnham. So I grabbed the body by the ankles and pulled it onto the side of the track. My reason for doing this was that I thought she might be alive, but on feeling her pulse I realised she was dead…”

He looked up. “How was she killed?”

“Strangled.”

“I see.” He waited.

Fallada said: “Her lambda count was only .004.”

“Yes, but… but surely that doesn’t mean much? I thought that anyone who died by violence —”

“Oh, yes. It could be a coincidence.” He looked at his watch. “We should know for certain in less than an hour.”

“How?”

“By means of a test that we have developed.”

“Is it a secret?”

“It is a secret. But not from you.”

“Thank you.”

“In fact, that is why I asked you here today. This is something that you have to know about.” He opened the drawer of his desk and took out a small tin box. He opened the lid and placed it on the desk. “Can you guess what they are?”

Carlsen bent down and peered at the tiny red globules, each the size of a pinhead.

“Electronic bugging devices?”

Fallada laughed. “Right the first time. But not the kind you’ve ever come across.” He closed the tin and dropped it into his pocket. “Would you like to come this way?”

He led the way through an inner door and switched on a light. They were in another small laboratory. The benches were lined with cages and glass fish tanks. The cages contained rabbits, hamsters and albino rats. In the tanks, Carlsen recognised goldfish, eels and octopuses.

Fallada said: “What I am going to tell you now is known to no one outside this institute. I know I can rely on your discretion.” He stopped in front of a cage that contained two tame rabbits. “One of these is a buck, the other a doe. The doe is now in heat.” He reached out and pressed a switch. A television screen above the cage was illuminated with a green glow. He pressed another button, and a wavy black line began to undulate across the screen; it might have been the path of a bouncing rubber ball.

“That is the lambda reading of the buck.” He pressed another button; a second, white line appeared, this one achieving higher peaks than the first. “That is the doe’s.”

“I don’t quite understand. What is it measuring?”

“The life field of the rabbits. Those small red objects were tiny lambda meters. They not only measure the intensity of the animal’s life field; they also emit a radio signal, which is picked up and amplified on this screen. What do you notice about these two signals?”

Carlsen stared at the wavering lines. “They seem to run more or less parallel.”

“Precisely. You notice an interesting kind of counterpoint — here, and here.” He pointed. “You have heard the phrase. ‘Two hearts beating as one.’ This shows that it is more than a piece of literary sentimentality.”

Carlsen said: “Let me make sure I understand you. You’ve planted these tiny red bugging devices inside the rabbits, and we’re now watching their heartbeats?”

“No, no. Not their heartbeats. The pulse of the life force in them. You could say that these creatures are in perfect sympathy. They can sense one another’s moods.”

“Telepathy?”

“Yes, a kind of telepathy. Now observe this doe.” He moved to the next cage, in which a solitary rabbit was listlessly gnawing a cabbage leaf. He switched on the monitor above the cage. The white line appeared, but this time it had fewer peaks, and its movement seemed sluggish.

“The doe is on her own, and she is probably bored. So her lambda reading is much lower.”

“In other words, their lambda reading is increased by the intensity of their sex drive?”

“Quite. And you ask if the meters are placed near the hearts. No. They are placed close to the sexual organs.”

“Interesting.”

Falladt smiled. “It is more interesting than you realise. You see” — he switched off the monitor — “not only does the rabbit’s life field intensify when it is in a state of sexual excitement. As you can see, their life fields interact. And I will tell you another interesting thing. At the moment, as you see, the buck’s field is weaker than the doe’s. That is because the doe is in heat. But when the buck mounts the doe, its life field becomes stronger than the doe’s. And now the doe’s peaks move in obedience to the buck’s, instead of vice versa.” Fallada laid a hand on his arm. “Now I am going to show you something else.” He led the way to the far end of the room, to a bench that contained only glass tanks. He rapped on the side of one of these. A small octopus, whose total width was about eighteen inches, started up from the rocks at the bottom of the tank and glided gracefully towards the surface, turning gently with a movement that made it resemble drifting smoke. Fallada pointed. “If you look carefully, you can see where we have planted the meter.” He switched on the monitor above the tank; the line that appeared had a slow, undulatory motion, without the sharp peaks that characterised the rabbits’ graph.

Fallada moved to the next tank. “This is a moray eel, one of the most unpleasant creatures in the sea. They regard the Mediterranean octopus as a rare delicacy.” Carlsen peered in at the devilish face that looked out from a gap between rocks; the mouth was open, showing rows of needle-sharp teeth. “This one is hungry — he hasn’t been fed for several days.” He switched on the monitor; the graph of the eel was also sluggish, but it had a surging forward motion that suggested reserves of power. Fallada said: “I am going to introduce the moray into the octopus’s tank.”

Carlsen grimaced. “Is that necessary? Couldn’t you just tell me what happens?”

Fallada chuckled. “I could, but it wouldn’t convey much.” He slid back a bolt on the metal lid that covered the octopus tank. “Octopuses love freedom, and they’re adepts in the art of escape. That’s why they have to be kept in closed tanks.” From under the bench he took a pair of transparent plastic pincers; they resembled coal tongs, but the handles were longer. He dipped them cautiously into the eel’s tank, reached down cautiously, then suddenly made a lunge. The water churned as the eel lashed violently, trying to bite the invisible jaws that gripped it.

Carlsen said: “I’m glad that’s not my hand.”

With a swift movement, Fallada raised the moray clear of the water and dropped it into the octopus tank. It swam down like an arrow through the green water. Fallada gestured at the monitor. “Now watch.”

Both graphs were visible: the octopus’s, still sluggish but intensified by alarm; the moray’s, surging now into peaks of anger. As Carlsen peered into the tank, Fallada said: “Watch the graphs.”

For the next five minutes, nothing seemed to change. In the tank, the moray had blundered around for a moment, blinded by the mud and vegetable particles churned up by its movements. The octopus had vanished completely; Carlsen had seen it slide between the rocks. The moray swam in the far corner of the tank, apparently unaware of its presence. “Do you see what is happening?”

Carlsen stared at the graphs. He now observed a certain similarity in their patterns. It would have been difficult to put into words, but there was a sense of counterpoint, as if the graphs were bars of music. The octopus’s graph was no longer sluggish; it was moving with a jerky movement.

Slowly, as if taking a stroll, the moray idled its way across the tank. There could now be no doubt about it; the two graphs were beginning to resemble each other in a way that reminded Carlsen of the courting rabbits. Suddenly the moray slashed sideways, driving into a crack in the rocks. A cloud of black ink darkened the water in the tank; the moray brushed the glass, its cold eyes staring out for a moment at Carlsen’s face. There was a lump of the flesh of the octopus in its jaws. He looked up again at the graphs. The moray’s had surged upwards: it moved forward with a series of peaks, like a rough sea. But the octopus’s graph had now changed completely. Once again, it had subsided into gentle undulations.

Carlsen asked: “Is it dying?”

“No. It has only lost the end of a tentacle.”

“Then what has happened?”

“I am not certain. But I think it has accepted the inevitability of death. It senses that nothing can save it. That graph is actually characteristic of pleasure.”

“You mean it’s enjoying being eaten?”

“I don’t know. I suspect the moray is exercising some kind of hypnotic power. Its will is dominating the will of the octopus, ordering it to cease to resist. But of course I could be wrong. My chief assistant thinks that it is an example of what he calls ‘the death trance.’ I once talked to a native who had been seized by a man-eating tiger. He said he experienced a strange sense of calm as he lay there waiting to be killed. Then someone shot the tiger, and he became aware that it had torn off most of his arm.”

The moray had returned to the attack. This time it gripped the octopus, trying to tear it away from the rock; the octopus was clinging with all its tentacles. The moray made a half turn then dived in to attack. This time it went for the head. There was more ink. On the monitor screen, the octopus’s graph suddenly leapt upwards, wavered and then vanished. The moray’s graph showed an upward sweep of triumph.

Fallada said: “That shows that the moray is very hungry. Otherwise, it would have eaten the octopus tentacle by tentacle, perhaps keeping it alive for days.” He turned away from the tank. “But you have still not seen the most interesting part.”

“God, don’t tell me there’s more!”

Fallada pointed to a grey box between the tanks. “This is an ordinary computer. It has been registering the fluctuations in the life fields of both creatures. Let’s have a look at the eel’s.” He touched several buttons in guide succession; a slip of paper emerged from a slot in the computer. Fallada said: “You see, the average is 4.8573.” He handed Carlsen the paper. “Now the octopus’s.” He pulled out the slip of paper. “This is only 2.956. It has little more than half the vitality of the eel.” He handed Carlsen a pen. “Would you add those figures together?”

After a moment, Carlsen said: “It’s 7.8133.”

“Good. Now let us check the reading of the moray during the past few minutes.”

He pressed more buttons, and handed Carlsen the paper without even looking at it. Carlsen read the figure aloud: “Seven point eight one three three. That’s astonishing. You mean the moray’s actually absorbed the life field of the… Christ…” He felt the hair on his scalp prickle as he understood. He stared down at Fallada, who was smiling happily.