The Shadow Project (10 page)

T
he pain was gone now, but the memory of it lingered. Opal was still panting, still gasping, still feeling the racing of her heart. Yet how could she gasp in an energy body that needed no air? How could she feel the racing of a heart that was safely tucked inside her chest nearly four thousand miles away?

Farrakhan and the Skull were gone too. The old man who'd done this to her had told her they were leaving her to
consider her position,
but she knew they had left her purely to increase her fear. It was impossible to work for MI6 without picking up some information about torture techniques—all spies got the basic schooling.

Despite what many people believed, pain was not the most effective way to extract accurate information: the best tool was
fear
of pain. An agent subjected to intense, relentless pain would say anything—anything—to make it stop, would tell his torturers what he thought they
wanted to hear, but would not necessarily tell the truth. If the pain went on too long, he would pass out. If he was forced to remain conscious—and there were drugs that would do
that
trick—he would eventually go mad.

But fear was different. Fear gnawed away at your defenses. Fear was what broke you, given time enough. And there was no more potent fear than fear of pain. A good interrogator began by hurting you, badly, but always briefly, then left you so the fear of the unknown would build. Opal was feeling the fear now. It crept like liquid ice into her stomach, causing a tightness in her phantom chest, setting her heart pounding again. But she used the techniques she'd been taught, the careful visualizations, the deep slow breathing, and even though they should not have succeeded while she was in her second body, somehow they did. As the fear receded, she turned her mind to ways of escape.

It was necessary to tackle the problem methodically. She was trapped in a wicker cage. How did you escape from a wicker cage? It struck her abruptly that it was a mistake to think she was
physically
imprisoned. It might
feel
that way, but in reality she wasn't here at all. In normal circumstances the electrical field of her energy body could pass through anything solid. Why couldn't she move it now? What would contain an electrical field?

She began to examine the cage more closely, but
that proved a dead end. She pushed down a mounting feeling of despair and tried another tack—how they'd put her in the cage in the first place. She tried to recall exactly what had happened. The old man Farrakhan had opened his hand and shown her something that looked like a medallion, and—

She stopped. She had to be careful to examine what had really happened, not what she
thought
had happened. Farrakhan had opened his hand, and there was a metal disc in it. She'd assumed he was showing her something because that's what it looked like. But suppose he wasn't. Suppose the disc was a device, some sort of control, like a television remote. Suppose he'd opened his hand in order to operate it….

The instant he'd pointed it at her, she found she couldn't move. A moment after that, she blacked out. When she came to, she was in the cage.

Now she was getting somewhere. The mystery was no longer a
complete
mystery. Farrakhan could see her second body, a natural talent perhaps, some sort of…psychism. But far more importantly, Farrakhan possessed a device that could affect her energy body. Not a medallion, not a remote control—a weapon!

She put it all in context, and suddenly the truth fell on her like an avalanche. The Skull must know about the RV program! It was the only thing that made sense.
How he knew didn't matter. The important thing was that terrorists obviously knew all about the most secret spy program ever mounted by his two main enemies, the British and Americans. More to the point, he had developed the means to counteract it. No wonder he'd never been captured.

With mounting excitement, Opal turned her attention back to the wicker cage. Now that she was no longer distracted, she found what she was looking for almost at once. Woven through the wicker, almost totally invisible in this light, were hair-thin strands of copper filament. And twisted around the rope that hung the cage to the ceiling hook was a thin electric cable.

So now she'd found the lattice and the electrical supply. It could only mean one thing. Her second body was trapped inside a modified Faraday shield! Technology so simple, it actually dated back to the first half of the nineteenth century—she'd learned all about it in science class at school. The original Faraday shield was designed to protect sensitive equipment from electrostatic charges, to keep external electrical fields
out
. The modified shield was clearly designed to keep electrical fields, including her own second body,
in.

Farrakhan's medallion probably worked on much the same principle. Perhaps it generated an electrical field of its own, short-circuiting her energy body and
causing her the excruciating pain. This was information just as vital as the Skull's whereabouts. She had to bring it back to her father without delay.

But first she had to get out of the cage.

S
he could move!

It wasn't just a little, and it wasn't gradual, either. One minute Dorothy was lying there, wide awake, bit bored, bit uncomfortable, waiting for Nurse Cathleen to come and plump her up so she wouldn't get bedsores. Next thing you knew, she'd shifted of her own accord. Just turned on her side without thinking about it, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, which it was, of course, except she hadn't been able to do it since the stroke. Hadn't been able to do a thing, except blink her eyes.

She was so excited, she turned back again, just for the hell of it. Now she was lying there a bit dizzy, a bit breathless. But she could move again! Couple of days, she could be out of here! Well, maybe not so soon, but it was a start, wasn't it?

She tried moving again, just to make sure. She
straightened her leg, then bent it at the knee. And it worked! Legs worked, arms worked, fingers worked. Everything was stiff and funny, but nothing was sore. Stroke was no joke. But this was good news. She was getting better!

Dorothy looked at the nurse's bell next to her bed, wondering whether to push it, then decided against it. The clock on the wall showed just a few minutes before nine, and Cathleen would be here at nine on the dot—said so, hadn't she? You could set your watch by her. Be a nice surprise to find Dorothy sitting up in bed, grinning.

Dorothy sat up in bed as she watched the minute hand of the electric clock. It hit the hour with a faint click and sure enough, in bustled Cathleen—nice girl, Irish by the sound of her—and Dorothy gave a little wave and said, “Argh, ooh argh argh.”

Well, strap that for a game of soldiers, she still couldn't talk!

N
othing happened, not at first. He was sitting in the chair with his metal cap on, still half waiting to be executed…still waiting for anything, really. Then an insect flew at him, one of those big leathery things he'd seen flying near Opal that first time. He swatted it without thinking, and his arm came right out of the restraints, and before he knew it he was standing up, facing the control panel, lurking so close behind Fran that he could have reached out and tapped her on the shoulder if he'd had a mind to.

Then he glanced back and saw a boy strapped into the chair where he had been, slumped a bit like the girl Opal in the second chair. Danny wondered where the boy had come from, how he hadn't heard him. Something familiar about him too, couldn't quite place it for a minute.

Then it hit Danny. The boy was him! It didn't look like him, not really, but he had the same messy hair and
the clothes he was wearing and the same beat-up sneakers. It had to be him, couldn't be anybody else but Danny Lipman, large as life. Except Danny Lipman was standing up beside the controls, watching what was going on.

Carradine murmured, frowning, “You did program the coordinates, didn't you, Fran?”

They were both staring at a digital read-out flanked by flickering needle dials.

“What's the problem?” Fran asked quietly.

I'm in two places at once,
Danny thought. It made him feel sort of creepy, but in a good way. Then he wondered how his Nan was doing, and the good feeling disappeared.

“I'm not—” Carradine began, then stopped himself. “Oh, no, it's okay—I forgot to compensate for body weight. It's still set for Opal.” He made an adjustment, then hit the switch a second time.

All of a sudden Danny was tumbling through darkness. It was disorientating, but not all that unpleasant, like whirling around until you got dizzy when you were a kid. Used to do it with his Nan when she was younger. Then the lights came on again, a blaze of light.

He had a glimpse of sky and mountains before swooping to earth. Then a moment of gloom, then fluorescent brightness—and he was standing at the bottom of a bed, looking at his Nan, who was lying there asleep.

First thing struck him was how small she was, tucked up in the hospital bed—it had to be, since the place had the look and smell and feel of a hospital, you could spot them a mile away. Only she looked like she'd shrunk and got older and thinner, and her skin was wrinkling like a prune and her color didn't look great. Nice sheets, though. Classy bedclothes, all tucked in hospital style so you couldn't fall out. Nice bedside table, nice TV, nice carpet on the floor, and everywhere was spotless. Which meant they'd put her into a private clinic like they promised. Thing was, how had Danny gotten here?

“I'm behind you,” said his Nan without moving her lips.

The voice really did sound like it was coming from behind him—like his Nan had taken up ventriloquism. It sounded so real that he actually turned around, but there was no one there, of course.

“I'm up here,” his Nan said. “But don't you worry none: I've done this before and it's safe enough.”

Danny looked. Nan was floating near a corner of the ceiling, wearing her nightie and nothing on her feet. “What you doing up there, Nan?” he asked.

“Keeps happening to me,” Nan said. “Mind you, after the stroke, I thought I was dead, honest to God. I fell down, then I floated up and I thought I'd given up the ghost. But it was just more of this stuff. One minute
you're lying there not able to move, next thing you're floating up by the ceiling.” She grinned suddenly. “Here, it's nice to see you, Danny.”

“Nice to see
you
, Nan,” Danny told her, beaming.

“I'm glad you can, Danny,” Nan said warmly. “See me, that is. I'm glad you can hear me and I can talk to you. Can't talk at all when I'm in that thing—” She gave a disgruntled nod in the direction of the body in the bed. “When I try, all that comes out is little farty noises, couldn't even make those for a while. But I can move a bit now. You don't think I'm dreaming this, do you, Danny?”

“Nah, I'm here all right,” Danny said. “Do you have to stay up there?”

“Shouldn't think so.”

“Why don't you come down, then,” Danny said, “and we can talk properly without me getting a crick in my neck.”

Nan floated down to the floor, graceful as a ballerina. When she landed, she laughed and made a little curtsy. “What you think of
that?
” she asked. “Been a while since I've been able to move that easy, I can tell you. Let alone fly.”

Danny hugged her and she felt okay, skinny, but warm and smelling of disinfectant. He hugged her again, just to show how much he'd missed her, and she hugged
him back, mumbling something like
good boy
into his hair.

Then they sat down side by side on the bed, their backs to Nan's body tucked up sleeping underneath the sheets. “What happened, Nan?” Danny asked.

“They tell you I had a stroke?”

Danny nodded. “They told me that, but they didn't give me any details.”

“Not much more to tell,” his Nan said. “I was coming down the stairs when I had the stroke. Aggie next door found me.”

“You were lucky, Nan.”

“I was.” She shook her head. “Brought me to Saint Luke's. Don't remember much about anything, tell the truth, except it was a bit of a dump. But I didn't have to stay long. They shifted me to this place, don't know why. Wondered if it might have been—” She stopped abruptly as if she'd been about to say something she shouldn't.

“That was me, Nan,” Danny said.

She glanced at him sideways with that familiar look of disbelief. “Win the lottery, did you?”

Danny grinned. “Friends in high places, Nan.” He decided not to go into it any more just now: would only worry her. Instead he said, “I want to know how you are—how you are really. Doctor said you were paralyzed, but that was a while ago.”

“Well, I can move now, like I told you,” Nan said. “So don't you worry none. I'm not going to die or nothing. Tough as old boots. But the doctor was right: I couldn't move, not a bit of me. Then all of a sudden I could, just like that. Makes me tired, but moving has to be an improvement, hasn't it? Be right as rain in no time, mark my words. Only thing is, it's no fun not being able to talk. Can't even ask for a bedpan when you need one.” She looked at him severely. “You can laugh all you like, Danny Lipman. Still, I suppose the talking will come back eventually.”

She shifted on the bed, maybe trying to reach out to him, and the strangest thing happened. Nan, who looked rock solid and real as could be, went into the body in the bed,
her
body in the bed, like a genie going into its lamp. Weirdest thing he'd ever seen. One minute she was leaning forward, reaching out to him, next minute it looked as if she was being
sucked
into the body. Went in through the top of the head, distorting and stretching and disappearing,
whoosh,
just like that.

“Nan,” Danny gasped. He stared at the little old body on the bed, then looked around the room wildly, but she wasn't by the ceiling, wasn't anywhere. “Nan!” he said again, louder this time.

The body in the bed opened its eyes, then struggled to sit up. She was right: she could certainly move. She was
sitting up now, looking around her like she was looking for something. “Any err aargh ooo,” she said. She looked directly at him but didn't register, like she couldn't see him. Her face took on a look of panic. “Any!” she said loudly. “Any-any-any!” Like she was calling for a cat. “Oharrk us aben ar odneem.” She looked crestfallen, like disappointed, worse than he'd ever seen her. Looked a bit scared too, not at all like the Nan he knew. “Any!” she shouted, almost a scream.

Danny said quickly, “I'm here, Nan. I'm right in front of you.” But it was like talking to a blind woman because she kept looking around the room with the panic in her eyes. A blind deaf woman because she couldn't hear him, either. “Oh, Nan….” Danny reached out to touch her face.

His hand passed through her. It was like she wasn't there at all. He could see her, he could hear her, everything seemed normal, but he couldn't touch her: no sensation at all—and his hand was pushed through her jaw, into her mouth, into her throat like a special effect in a movie. Danny stared in horror.

Something gripped his shoulders and tried to pull him back and away, but he fought against it. No way did he want to leave his Nan now, not with his hand down her throat, not without saying
sorry
and
good-bye.

“Stop hiding on me, Danny,” said his Nan. “I know
you're still there, you little—”

Danny drew his hand away and felt the tears begin to stream down both his cheeks. Because his Nan was speaking clearly. He could understand every word.