Psychlone (24 page)

“Nervous, Fritz?” Burnford asked. The agent smirked and looked out the window.

“I saw it,” Williams said. “I can't deny that. But attaching any religious significance to it grates on me."

“I agree,” Jacobs said. “Mr. Burnford's attitude is best now. But Mr. Williams, we are here as experts, and if we don't offer our theories, what use are we?"

“I don't know,” Williams said. “I wouldn't have called you in."

Trumbauer raised his hand like a conductor about to start his orchestra. The gesture was so patently dramatic that Fowler was about to laugh.

Then the ground trembled.

“Sunset,” Jacobs said. The driver's face was pale.

“Feel it, Arnold?” Miss Unamuno asked. Trumbauer nodded. “So can I. It can't get across the river, but it can affect us out here, all the same."

“How much?” Burnford asked.

“Not strongly, I think,” Trumbauer said. “It's very mild now. Just a hint. My ... pardon the expression ... my guide is very sensitive."

“Who is your guide, John Kennedy? Shakespeare?” Williams’ voice was almost a snarl.

“Mr. Williams, that is enough!” Jacobs commanded. “Are you feeling all right?"

“This truck,” Williams said. He was sweating. “It's so damned small. You people are all senseless. Even you, Burnford. This is a crock of shit."

“Settle down, Fritz,” Burnford said. The agent was squirming on his seat.

“When is it going to start?” Williams asked.

Miss Unamuno reached across the aisle and took one of his hands, stroking it. “Be calm,” she said. “It's trying to irritate us.” He cursed under his breath.

Fowler's eyes met the driver's and they nodded simultaneously. The driver opened the cab door and stepped out. “Where's he going?” Williams asked.

Jacobs fixed his attention on the bulge in the agent's coat pocket. He tapped Burnford on the shoulder and walked down the narrow aisle to Williams’ seat. Burnford saw what he was up to.

“Fritz, listen,” he began. Williams looked at him wildly. Jacobs locked the agent's arm across the back of the seat and flapped the jacket open. Burnford grabbed the gun and quickly emptied the clip into his palm. Three soldiers approached the side door with Silvera following a few steps behind. The Colonel produced a key and swung the door open. Williams went limp and laughed as they pulled him out of the van.

“Jesus, what's going on here?” he asked, his voice high. “I was just talking. What in hell is all this?” The soldiers led him away. Silvera took his place and glanced at Jacobs, Burnford and Fowler, his expression demanding an explanation.

“Can it get us even across the river?” he asked.

“We can feel it,” Trumbauer said. “It's weak. I don't think it could make us do anything drastic, but it's here, yes."

“Mr. Burnford, we're going to prompt the thing with a pulse and see how long it displays,” Silvera said. He pulled six steno pads from a canvas bag and handed them around with pencils. “Record your impressions, please. This van is wired for recording on tape, too. Your reactions are important. Don't hold them back."

“Watch your soldiers carefully,” Jacobs warned.

“We are. All weapons are being stored under lock. There was some irritation and nervousness last night. Nothing like Mr. Williams, though."

“Everybody's so damned polite,” Fowler said.

“You feeling irritable now, Mr. Fowler?” Silvera asked, looking back at him. Fowler shook his head.

“I'm not feeling possessed. I know what that's like."

“I hope you do. The driver will relay any messages to me. Please stay in the truck. A heater will be on to keep you warm. Here are penlights to write notes by.” The small tubes were passed around. Jacobs stuck his in a pocket and put the notebook aside. Silvera shut the door.

Trumbauer raised his hand again.

Something darker than the night was coalescing above the cabin's small hill. Threads of pale-green luminosity shot through the mass.

“Recorder on,” the driver said. Fowler trembled.

“My body's more scared than I am,” Prohaska murmured.

The dark mass flickered with an oily sheen of rainbow colors. Burnford whistled appreciatively.

“I'm getting a headache,” Jacobs said.

“It's in pain,” Miss Unamuno said. “Whatever they're doing to it, it's in pain."

“I can't feel too sorry for it,” Prohaska said.

“Nor should you,” Trumbauer said. “It feels no sorrow for us."

The cloud began to writhe and take shape. A giant sparrow flashed in its depths, then wavered and vanished. Spots of fire flared up.

The van's occupants gasped in unison. A naked woman appeared in the cloud. She looked remarkably like Dorothy, Fowler thought. Jacobs saw a clear resemblance to Millicent. The form was split up the middle and disemboweled. The illusion began a ragged, bloody dance and then dissolved. A succession of animals were handled in a similar manner. The ground shook as if giant feet were stamping. Fowler wanted to vomit and was barely able to control himself. With each stomp, he could feel the horror he had known in the cabin returning with greater strength. The thing was mindlessly evoking terror, hatred. The smell of fear in the bus became acute. The parade of images was getting more and more obscene.

“It's drawing the images from us,” Miss Unamuno said. “From the soldiers, the men around the streams. All the worst in our heads."

The mutations were horrible and fascinating. Fowler categorized them to subdue their physical impact on him. Blood and genitalia, he wrote. Destruction of fetus-like forms. Combining insects with children. Things decaying. Monstrous animals. Crows with human eyes. “Hatred,” he said. “God, how it hates."

“We're less limited than it is,” Jacobs said. “Something has gone wrong. It shouldn't be here. It knows that. It's been stunted in some way, while we are whole, complete. It's a natural force, but it doesn't belong here. It's trapped."

“Put it out of its misery, then,” Prohaska said.

Its power was limited, Jacobs thought, but its perception was not. It knew these people—knew him—through and through. At times the depravity was so blatant it lost all effect, but for each of them there was a moment of dark revelation, of something reacting within them which appreciated the display. They were all contributing to the horror. He was breathing heavily.

A depression settled over Fowler. How could anything be worth the existence of so much horror? He turned away, choking. The implications were more than he could bear. There was no hope, no beauty, nothing in life worth having if behind all things lay a foundation of such hopelessness.

“It's a mindless master,” Miss Unamuno said. Fowler nodded. Goya and Bosch had looked deep inside themselves, and seen only the tip of what the thing was showing them now.

Corpses having sex with infants. Infants giving birth to hags, and the hags devouring them, an ouroubouros out of hell. And the boar.

The van rocked as a wind blew across the levelled meadow. The boar was screaming soundlessly, its lips curled back displaying slaver-flecked gums and humanoid teeth. The tusks flashed. The eye was red as a dying sun, but cast no light on them or the trees. The hair was made of worms. Blood fountained from its mouth.

“Oh, Jesus, Jesus!” Miss Unamuno screamed. “Take us away from here!"

The driver was rigid in his seat, mouth hanging open. Fowler winced. With Miss Unamuno's cries, a tiny figure had formed in the cloud, as if seen from some infinite perspective. This display, he knew, was for him alone. It was an upside-down crucifixion, limned in bloody purple. The figure on the cross had the body of a pig and the head of Henry Taggart. The head fell away and dissolved. Blood poured from the neck in an incandescent ribbon into the trees. He shut his eyes.

“There's the first test,” Burnford said. A truck behind them had opened a hatch in its side and a large, rectangular box had emerged. A pale-green line of light shot from it and pierced the cloud, making the figure writhe. “There are receptors up in the hills. We're going to analyze the spectrum and see what—"

“Are they hurting it?” Fowler asked.

“I doubt it,” Burnford said. “Just for analysis."

As quickly as it began, the display vanished. The images tumbled like bricks of dream and the air over the hill stopped shimmering. Trumbauer held on to Miss Unamuno, who was sobbing. Fowler blinked.

The driver started the van's engine. All the other trucks roared to life together. In a line, they pulled out of the meadow onto the asphalt road and drove from the valley. Nobody in the van spoke. Burnford broke the silence when they went by the lookout point.

“It can't be the thing that took Lorobu,” he said.

“Obviously,” Jacobs said.

“But it must work the same way."

They passed six large semis hauling flatbed trailers, going into the valley. Fowler turned to look out the rear window. Something large and bulky was on each trailer, covered by roped canvas tarps. “What are those?” he asked.

“I'm not sure,” Burnford said. “They haven't told me everything. I'd guess they're part of an experiment."

“To hurt it?” Prohaska asked.

“This time, I think so, yes."

Corporal S.K. Percher's home was now occupied by the northern quadrangle of Haverstock University, a small private school. The grass on the quad was sere between thin patches of snow. The trees were bent and distorted, bark wrinkled like plastic dipped in acetone.

Two hundred yards south, the silver dome of the university's small observatory glittered in the sun. Tim stood in the middle of the quad, with Thesiger a few steps away, and tried to concentrate.

“I'm taking away the shields now,” Thesiger said. “Are you ready?"

Tim nodded. He was afraid, but Thesiger had told him it was best to be afraid. Thesiger had faith in him, that he was strong enough to withstand the experiences, that he could help solve the problem.

Thesiger raised his hand. “Now."

For a moment Tim felt dizzy. He had expected a flood of voices, like leaning into a stiff, bitter wind, but there was almost complete peace. Almost—there was an undertone, a hint of pain and terror, but not the blast he had expected.

“Well?” Thesiger asked.

Then they struck him. Beseeching, commanding, cursing, trying to tear at his mind. Tim clapped his hands to his ears. “They're with me,” he said. “They're mad at me."

Thesiger put up the shield again. Tim opened his eyes and wobbled unsteadily on his feet.

“Are they close?"

Tim scrunched his face, trying to think. “I don't think so,” he said. “It didn't hurt like when they were close."

“Then they're on their way to Dayton."

“You feeling anything?” Tim asked.

“Yes,” Thesiger said. He pointed across the quad to the houses and apartment buildings outside the university grounds. “Shall we go over there?"

Tim shrugged his shoulders. “Are the dead people still there?"

“Not their bodies. We should see whether anything else is left of them, don't you think?"

Their ghosts, Tim thought. He straightened his shoulders and nodded. “Can we have lunch after that?"

“Certainly.” Thesiger gestured to the four agents waiting on the edge of the quadrangle. As they all walked to the car, Thesiger pointed to the university observatory. “They had equipment working when it happened,” he said. “They were measuring radiation from the sky, from the distant stars. TV screens and telescopes and antennae. So now we know what it's like—on the level of our universe."

“Oh,” Tim said. Thesiger smiled and patted him on the shoulder.

“You're a brave lad, Timothy,” the old man said. “I'm proud to have you helping me."

“Is it going to kill people in Dayton next?” Tim asked. Voltaire Simons opened the car door and shook his head.

“Not if we can help it, Tim. Mr. Thesiger and you are the bloodhounds, but the hunter hasn't showed yet. Wait and see."

Thesiger took Tim's hand. The shield was up again and Tim felt safe. But he was still scared. He had been scared now for a month, ever since Lorobu. It was hard to remember what it was like to not be scared. He looked forward to it being over just as he had once looked forward to Christmas.

Christmas was four days away.

Psychlone

Still sleepy, Fowler was the first to step out of the van, shielding his eyes against the bright late-morning light. Jacobs followed him, and then the rest.

Miss Unamuno was last. She frowned and put her foot on the chewed dirt of the meadow. Silvera and General Machen stood by a staff car at the beginning of the gravel road. “Let's go,” Burnford said.

Machen was about fifty-five years old, Jacobs decided—a little younger than himself—with graying red hair and a scar across one lip which gave him a permanent, dolphinlike grin. He greeted them in a pleasant baritone. “Would you all follow me?"

Four corrugated metal plates had been thrown over the creek. Their feet made the iron ring dully as they crossed. Fowler hesitated, but Silvera prompted him forward. Jacobs walked beside Machen, trying to take his measure with occasional glances.

The road to the cabin was pitted as though great chunks of dirt and gravel had been dug out with shovels. Trees had been clawed bare, branches broken off, leaving pale white trunks. Some had been knocked over, blocking the path.

Where the priest had fallen, only a spray-painted white outline remained. The separate circle for the head was grotesque. Fowler turned away and looked at the cars. They had been flattened into lumpy sheets, like stepped-on cans. Piles of gravel and splintered wood were everywhere. The cabin was almost untouched. The only apparent damage was from a tree that had fallen across the rear roof, crunching a portion of the overhang.

“It's gone,” Trumbauer said.

“No trace at all?” Silvera asked. Trumbauer shook his head. “How about you, Miss Unamuno?"

She shut her eyes and clenched her fists. She opened them and looked around, surprised. “Nothing! Where did it go?"

Silvera looked at Burnford and nodded. “It worked on this one."