Psychosphere (21 page)

“Sure Joe—except it don't look so silly now, eh?”

Maestro's face twitched. “This Garrison, I don't want him brought in anymore. I don't want to know anything about him. I just want him dead. I think he's safer that way.”

De Medici nodded, “This we can do. We bugged his car while he was out of the country. A big silver Mercedes. Our technical boys can tell us where it is whenever we want to know. And Garrison is usually where the car is.”

“Okay, as soon as they cut us loose from this mess, get somebody on it. Somebody reliable.”

“You've got it.”

“In fact, you better get the hell out of here now. Go out the back way and over the roof. Don't let anyone see you. I'll tell the guys to forget you were here, right?”

“Right,” Medici nodded, taking his departure.

Outside, the mechanical
whoop, whoop, whoop
of police sirens was beginning to fill the air. Fists were already knocking on the external doors of the executive office suite, and authoritative voices demanded entrance.

A spider-splash of shadow, Ramon de Medici hurried over the dark roofs…

Garrison/Schroeder came off the M1 at Leicester and found a good hotel. He would have driven on but it was past 11:00
P.M.
and he was weary to death. It was late for eating but he bribed reception to fix a meal for him; and while he was on about it he ordered an extra steak, raw, for Suzy. He took her supper out to the car and she gratefully wolfed it down. Then, leaving one of the Merc's windows open a fraction, he told Suzy to go to sleep and returned to the hotel. The bar was still open for residents.

Halfway through his fourth whisky the weasel-faced receptionist sidled up to him and asked if he would mind eating in his room; there were others here who had been refused food at this late hour. Garrison/Schroeder didn't mind, gulped down the rest of his drink, made his way to his room and ate his fill. Then, having made himself a coffee, he stretched out on his bed and opened up a magazine he'd picked up at Gatwick Airport.

That magazine—an airline throwaway full of advertising, duty-free offers and such, plus a couple of articles to occupy the passenger during his flight—was the principal reason he was here. He had picked it up off a table at the airport, used it for a shield to hide his face while he waited for Joe and Bert Black; but before then, as he had idly skipped through its pages…

Garrison/Schroeder's knowledge of the paranormal—not his experience of it, which was another thing entirely—was second to none. As Thomas Schroeder he had always been interested in parapsychology, especially in the nebulous region of prophetic dreaming. How such dreams worked he did not know, but he did know that he was here today as Garrison/Schroeder
because
they worked. It had been just such a prophetic dream which had helped convince Richard Garrison to accept his offer, his pact, and finally to become the host body and mind to
his
mind. Yes, his very reincarnation could be traced back to just such a dream.

And now…now there was this. This simple photograph in a magazine. Monochrome, not especially interesting, even dull. Dull, too, the text—boastful product of the British Energy Commission—but when Garrison/Schroeder's eyes had first glimpsed the full-page spread, then the paper had seemed illumined with some magical inner light.

The picture showed a valley, a dam, and in the background a range of great gaunt hills. The legend below said that this would be the biggest boost to the grid since the opening of the atomic power station at Dounreay. It also said that the dam, close to Glen O'Dunkillie, was due to go into production on Wednesday, the day after tomorrow, and that the Minister for Energy would be there for the opening ceremony. But Garrison/Schroeder had already determined to be there sooner, by tomorrow at the latest. His reason was simple:

This was that same valley and dam, the self-same wild hills that Garrison had seen in his dream. The Schroeder-facet had engineered that dream, had been “awake” while the Garrison-facet “slept” and had promoted the sleeping facet to probe the future—had even loaned his own natural, not inconsiderable ESP-talent to facilitate that probe—and of course he had shared the dream, he, too, had seen that part of their joint future.

Elements of that dream flickered once more like scenes from an old silent movie through the inner recesses of Garrison/Schroeder's mind. He saw the storm and the lightning, the six sprouting arcs of shining, steaming water, and felt the dampness in the air and spray in his face—and all superimposed over the photograph on the printed page. And down in the bottom right-hand corner of the picture, the bleak gables of an old house in the pines where once…where once had reared a golden dome!

In Xanadu did Garrison a stately pleasure-dome decree
…

A pleasure-dome? Unlikely, unless “pleasure” represented the fulfillment of the ultimate dream, not really Garrison's this time but Schroeder's own: his lifelong dream of immortality. And hadn't that been the very purpose of Garrison's dream-quest? To seek out and seduce the Goddess of Immortality? Well then, the quest might soon be at an end. Garrison/Schroeder could sleep this night knowing that in the morning, no matter which facet took ascendence upon awakening—be it himself, Garrison/Koenig, or just Garrison—his journey would be completed. And that somewhere ahead, in a valley close by Glen O'Dunkillie, destiny waited.

For now he could simply sleep and dream his own dreams, except that he somehow knew they would no longer be filled with terrors. Or rather the One Great Terror: Richard Garrison's death, by natural causes or design, which must of course signal his own, Willy Koenig's, Vicki Maler's, yes, and Suzy's death too.

Vicki…Poor child; he thought of contacting her before sleeping, of finding and touching her mind, just to see if all was well, but—

The battery was leaking its energy into the great boundless Psychosphere. Energy which could not for now be replaced. Another good reason to sleep.

Garrison/Schroeder undressed, put out the light and got into bed…

G
ARRISON'S QUEST MEANWHILE CONTINUED
.
He, too, sought the valley of the dome, but subconsciously, in a world which was grown more real to him now than any waking world
.

Since that terrifying episode in the cave of the Other—the interrogation of the girl-wraith and her escape, aided by the one who wore the Cloak of Secrecy—Garrison had come far. He had skirted great green oceans, millpond calm, because he dared not cross them. Not with the Machine to weigh him down. The weariness was on him continually, and every furlong of the way seemed a mile. Even Suzy was weary—Suzy of the boundless energy—and spent a great deal of her time curled behind him, adding her weight to the general burden; but he would leave neither dog nor Machine behind. He must go on and they must go with him
.

As for the Machine itself:

Psychomech's back was raw rust now, chafing at Garrison's thighs through tattered trousers. Cables trailed behind, their plastic sheaths eaten away, exposing dulled wire cores. Cracks gaped in the plastic body and flanks, and spots of corrosion marred even the gleam of chrome
.

“A junkyard!” Garrison found strength for a feeble curse. “And still I carry you with me. Another folly of a fool upon a fool's quest!” But still he went on
.

And where once he would have soared over the highest mountains, now he sought passes through them, making the way longer and his temper shorter. Forests of giant, twisted trees he would not enter for fear of what might lurk within, but had to skirt them; and remembering the circle of wizards and how they had gloated over their shewstone while he burned in the sand, he steered clear of all deserts
.

Yes, and the memory of those wizards haunted him. He especially remembered the yellow, slant-eyed one. Indeed he could hardly forget him, for now it seemed that the Oriental mage followed him upon his quest, that wherever he turned his head the small yellow man would be there, distantly glimpsed, merging with trees or rocks or skylines the moment he was spotted. Aye, and possibly there were others on Garrison's trail, vague, furtive ghosts who disappeared at once if ever he tried to focus his eyes upon them too keenly
.

Of sleep Garrison had had none, for he wished no more dreams within dreams; but it seemed to him his weariness was such that it transcended mere sleep, so that he could not even if he would. And in this condition, finally he crested a range of low hills and saw spread beneath him the Valley of the Mists
.

Now, whether he actually “saw” it or not (he could not be sure for his senses were no longer reliable; his exhaustion was such that this might simply be an hallucination, a vision) he could not say, but certainly there was something very strange and ethereal about the entire valley. Its expanse lay parallel to and between the hills now behind him and an even lower range of foothills to the fore, and to the right and left the valley or low ground between these ranges stretched away and out of sight. And along its entire length the mists curled and eddied like vapor over a lake or moat of milk. And the silence there might be that silence which will come, one day, at the end of time
.

This time Garrison did not hesitate. This was an obstacle beyond avoidance, which must be crossed. There were at least three good reasons. For one: it might go on forever, this misty valley, and not have a way round at all. Two: time pressed and Garrison grew weaker. Three: a storm seemed to be gathering, a doomful oppression of atmosphere manifesting in dark clouds that boiled in the sky all around and momently closed with the as yet clear patch of sky directly overhead. Also, the temptation to cross the valley was great; it did not seem wide; the foothills beyond seemed to beckon Garrison on
.

And so, as these thoughts passed through his dully aching mind, he rode the maimed Machine down and into the sea of mist, and uncaring of the terrors it might conceal passed forward until the milky stuff closed above him and the external world was shut out beyond eerily drifting walls of white
.

Lulled by the silence and veritable creep of Psychomech through the mist, and by Suzy's slow panting where she sat close behind him, Garrison's initial alertness gradually dissipated and he closed eyes already heavy from lack of rest and from peering ahead in this milky submarine realm—and at that very moment the storm broke
.

Thunder smote like titan hammers and lightnings flickered down, their transient trails hissing through the mist and stabbing the sodden ground to steaming, lighting up the way in glowing, blue-burning phantoms of rocky outcrops and shaly piles. And at any single moment one such bolt might have struck Garrison, or the metal of the Machine. But no, they were spared. Then, in the afterglow of a particularly vicious blast, Garrison saw, or thought he saw
—

But no, in the booming confusion of thunder, the kaleidoscopic flicker of lesser lightnings and the blinding glare of that greater bolt, his eyes had deceived him—must surely have deceived him. He moved forward again, his flesh tingling, and not alone from the static electricity that plucked at his hair and the tatters of his clothing. And there it was again, but closer now and no longer limned by lightning. It was, could only be a Machine like Psychomech…but no such Psychomech as Garrison might ever have imagined!

Huge, gigantic, the thing towered, until its uppermost parts were lost in the ceiling mist. Vast and squat it sat there, pipes and panels and bulkheads sprawling away until, on both sides, their outlines became dim and mist-wreathed. It would take fifty, perhaps a hundred, no, a thousand Psychomechs such as Garrison's Machine to fill the same volume! And deep within lights flashed and power surged, but silently, without the faintest hum of sound; and where the Machine should have had hard edges, they were instead blurred and indistinct; so that Garrison knew that in fact this was a vision, but of what strange place or event he could not say
.

A vision, yes—a mirage such as men see in the desert—the mirror image of some distant thing or occurrence. Except that Garrison knew that the truth of this mirage was not distant in space but in time. It had been sent, or he had willed it, as a sign that he pursued the right path, had not strayed from the course which might yet carry him to quest's end
…

He moved closer still, but carefully, unwilling even to disturb the air or milky mist lest the vision dissolve away. But a moment later he stopped again, this time with a gasp. The incredible
MACHINE
had a platform—a raised central dais or bed beneath a pair of huge copper rods with knobbed ends, like vast electrodes—but it was the thing, the creature lying upon the bed, which caused Garrison to gasp
.

He knew instinctively what the creature was, even found a word for it squirming its way up to the surface of his mind. A word from another place, another world. Frankenstein! The thing on the dais was a monster, composite of corpses, an unnatural creature created by a crazed science. And as the lightning crashed again Garrison moved closer still for there was something here that he must discover, must see for himself. Something to do with this manufactured, composite creature
.

He got down from his Machine, approached the
MACHINE
until he stood in the shadow of its awesomely ethereal bulk, lifted himself up on tiptoe to gaze amazed at the monster spread-eagled upon the dais. It was in the shape of a man, yes, but a massive, powerful man. Garrison gazed along its length between huge, naked, callous-hardened feet, beyond which the trunk formed a horizon of flesh. He took a pace to one side, let his gaze follow the creature's thigh up above the knee to where a great fist lay loosely clenched. Relaxed, that fist, certainly—in sleep or death Garrison could not say—but there was that about it which mutely spoke of deadly dexterity. The hand of a killer
.

Garrison wondered at the sheer size and apparent hardness of the creature's limbs, which were huge even compared to its body. Upright and awake, with arms and legs, fists and feet like these; the monster would be walking death to any ordinary opponent
.

And yet there was also a slyness about it, the suggestion of wily intelligence, like that of a fox. Where this idea sprang from in Garrison's mind was a mystery, but it persisted. This composite creature was made up of a brilliantly clever if morally suspect or even unscrupulous man, and of a simpler but definitely more brutal man—and of one other
.

The thunder and lightning seemed to have moved on a little, lulling Garrison into believing that the storm had passed, but in the next moment he knew that he was mistaken. With a roar and a multiple crashing that near-stunned him, four great bolts, falling almost simultaneously, shredded the milky mist to tatters to strike at the
MACHINE
like hammers of Thor. In that one moment the entire
MACHINE
was bathed in flickering blue energies—Garrison, too, with his own nimbus of eerie fire—and in the next the lights burned brighter in the great engine's guts and a mighty pulse of power rocked its towering structure
.