The Source (6 page)
Authors: Brian Lumley
“Do you?” said Khuv, his slightly slanted eyes narrowing a fraction and becoming that much brighter. “Do you indeed?”
He took a key from his pocket, turned to the heavy metal door. It was equipped with a lock set centrally in a steel hand-wheel, like a locking device on a bank vault. As Khuv went to insert his key, so the wheel turned through quarter of a circle and the edges of the door cracked open. Khuv stepped back. Someone was coming through from the other side.
The door opened fully toward the three where they waited, and a handful of technicians and two men dressed in smart civilian clothes came through. One of the two was fat, beaming, jovial: a VIP visitor from Moscow. The other, grave-faced, was small and thin; his face was badly scarred and the hair was absent from the left half of his face and yellow-veined skull. Jazz had seen him before; he was Viktor Luchov, Direktor
of the Perchorsk Projektâa survivor of Perchorsk Incidents One and Two.
of the Perchorsk Projektâa survivor of Perchorsk Incidents One and Two.
Brief greetings were exchanged between Khuv and these two men, and then the larger party went on its way. Then Jazz and his escorts passed through the door and Khuv locked it behind them.
Beyond the door the complex took on an entirely different aspect. By comparison, the damage on the approach to this area had been superficial. Jazz stared and tried to make sense of the chaos he saw there. The evidence of terrific heat was apparent everywhere: stanchions were blackened and in places eaten half-way through; the floor-plates were missing entirely, had been replaced with timbers; the face of the exterior rock wallâliterally the mountain itselfâwas black, dull and lumpy, like lava frozen in its course. A metal chair or deskâdifficult to tell whichâand a steel cabinet projected in twisted ruin half out of a massive nodule of lava which was in turn welded to the wall; and above this anomalous nodule a cylindrical shaft maybe twelve feet in diameter had been drilled through the rock upwards at an angle of forty-five degrees, from the lip of which the lava could be seen in large part to have issued.
Jazz looked again at the dark throat of the shaft, wondered how it could have been cut and where it went. He reached up a hand to touch the side of the rim where the shaft opened into the corridor; the rock was smooth as glass, not lumpy like the volcanic flow from the shaft's lip ⦠Aware that Khuv was watching him, Jazz shot him an inquisitive glance.
“I'm told that used to have a square cross-section, whose sides were something less than two metres,” Khuv informed. “Also that it was lined with a perfect mirror of a very high density glass on impervious ceramic, giving almost 100 per cent reflectivity. After what you have termed the Perchorsk Incident, this is what remained of the shaft. I suppose you might say
that this is what comes of trying to pass a round peg through a square hole, eh?” And before Jazz could answer: “Of course, I wasn't here when this happened. You see, I have my own job, Michaelâyou'll forgive my familiarity?âwith a branch of the Service whose work you would find entirely unbelievable. It is that E-Branch of which we've already spoken.”
that this is what comes of trying to pass a round peg through a square hole, eh?” And before Jazz could answer: “Of course, I wasn't here when this happened. You see, I have my own job, Michaelâyou'll forgive my familiarity?âwith a branch of the Service whose work you would find entirely unbelievable. It is that E-Branch of which we've already spoken.”
Jazz said nothing, continued to glance all about, tried to take in all he was seeing and hearing. What good that would do him, he couldn't say, but it was all part of his training. “E-Branch, yes, Michael,” Khuv went on. “You English have an E-Branch, too, you know-which is why we were so interested to know if you were a member of that organization. If you had beenâ” he shrugged “âthen we would have been obliged to dispose of you from the outset.”
Jazz raised his customary eyebrow.
“Oh, yes,” said Khuv, casually, “for we couldn't allow you to transmitâneither telepathically nor any other wayâknowledge of this place to the outside world. That, too, could be very dangerous; so much so that it might even conceivably bring about World War III!”
“More melodramatics,” Jazz murmured.
Khuv sighed deeply. “You will understandâeventually,” he said. “But first find yourself a place to sit for a while, and I'll tell you everything you were sent here to discover. You see, I actually
want
you to understand everything. You'll know why later.”
want
you to understand everything. You'll know why later.”
Khuv perched himself on a knob of black rock while Jazz found a seat on the side of the steel cabinet where it leaned out of the lava nodule. Vyotsky remained standing, saying nothing, merely watching. The Projekt's air-conditioning whispered faintly, distantly, and apart from this and Khuv's voice, all was silent. Khuv spoke very softly and the effect was eerie: like a whisper echoing in some deeply buried alien vault.
“You must blame all you see here primarily on the USA's SDI or Star Wars scenario,” he began. “Of
course, those terms hadn't been thought of as early as that, but the idea was there sure enough. We knew that much from standard intelligence sources. As for the Perchorsk Projekt: it was little more than a clever theory until America started dreaming up its space defence initiative. But after that it was the same old story: we had to have an even better defence system. As with bigger and better bombs, so with defence systems. If Star Wars could mean the loss of 95 per cent of our nuclear capability, then we had to have something which cancelled out the West's strike capability utterly.
course, those terms hadn't been thought of as early as that, but the idea was there sure enough. We knew that much from standard intelligence sources. As for the Perchorsk Projekt: it was little more than a clever theory until America started dreaming up its space defence initiative. But after that it was the same old story: we had to have an even better defence system. As with bigger and better bombs, so with defence systems. If Star Wars could mean the loss of 95 per cent of our nuclear capability, then we had to have something which cancelled out the West's strike capability utterly.
“Perchorsk was to have been the first step, the proving ground. If it had worked, then similar installations would have been constructed all around Russia's borders. The satellite countries might perhaps have to fend for themselves in any future holocaust, but the Soviet heartland would be defendedâcompletely! Do you follow me so far?”
Jazz cocked his head on one side. “You're telling me that this,” he glanced here and there, all about, “wasn't intended as a weapon, right?”
“Exactly,” Khuv nodded. “It was to have been the opposite of a weapon: a shield. An impenetrable umbrella over the head of the central Soviet Union. Ah! But now I see how interested you are; finally we have a little animation! Well, and should I proceed?”
“By all means,” said Jazz at once. “Do go on.”
Khuv settled into his story:
“Don't ask me about the mechanics of the thing; I'm aâwell, a âpoliceman,' not a physicist! Franz Ayvaz was the brains and driving force behind Perchorsk, and Viktor Luchov was his second-in-command. Ayvaz, as you may already know, was our top man in Particle Beam Acceleration and various associated fields of research; in his younger days he'd been a leading pioneer of laser technology; his credentials were impeccable, and his theoryâon paper at leastâseemed to be exactly what the defence staff was looking for. A dual-purpose
force-field to shut out incoming missiles and render their nuclear capacity entirely harmless.
force-field to shut out incoming missiles and render their nuclear capacity entirely harmless.
“That's how the Perchorsk Projekt was born five years ago, and this is where it died three years later. Ayvaz died with it, and Luchov is still here gathering information, piecing it all together and seeing if there's anything that can be salvaged. As to what happened exactly:
“What was
supposed
to happen was this:
supposed
to happen was this:
“A beam was to be generated down below in the lower levels. That's where most of the hardware used to be. Accelerated to the limits of tolerance and excited by atomic bombardment, it would be released up this shaft and emitted like an enormous laser into the ravine. Where the shaft emerged into the ravine, a nest of mirrors would divide the beam into a fan shape which would be waved across the sky and into space. It was to be a test, that's all. The very first of a series.
“Alas, there was a failure in the motors which governed the movement of the exterior mirrors. They jammed in the worst possible position at the worst possible moment. Also, the scientists here had been under pressure; their work had been hurried and performed in conditions which weren't the best; a full range of failsafe devices had not been incorporated. Do you know what happens, Michael, if you plug the barrel of a gun, load it and pull the trigger? But ridiculous to ask a question like that of a man who is an expert in firearms! Of course you know what happens.
“Well, and that's what happened here. There was a colossal blow-back. Energies sufficient to fill an arc of space covering from Afghanistan to Franz Josef Land were trapped and confined within the shaft and redirected back to their source. There was a collision of awesome forces, the instantaneous generation of incredible temperatures, and in the immediate vicinity of the beam matter itself underwent some radical changes. Now of course that is my non-technical layman's explanation.
You will need to talk to Luchov if you want moreâbut I guarantee you wouldn't understand him. Not unless there's a lot more to you than we've discovered, anyway.
You will need to talk to Luchov if you want moreâbut I guarantee you wouldn't understand him. Not unless there's a lot more to you than we've discovered, anyway.
“So ⦠that was the Perchorsk Incident, or âpi' as your people in the West have christened it. The shambles you see here is not one hundredth part of the devastation which occurred down below, where we'll be going in a moment. And as for loss of life: we paid a terrible toll for our haste, Michael, a terrible toll. But not so terrible as the toll we may still have to pay ⦔
With those enigmatic words still echoing, Khuv abruptly stood up. “Let's go deeper,” his words were clipped, urgent, “right now! Two levels down, where perhaps you'll be able to get the feel of what it was really like.” Jazz got to his feet and followed on, and once again Vyotsky formed their tail along the perimeter a little way, then down wide, heavy-beamed wooden stairs into what could only be termed a region of sheer fantasy.
With one hand lightly on the rail, Jazz stared into the dim recesses of a great disorder, a weird chaos. The lighting was poor here, perhaps deliberately so, for certainly what little could be seen wasâto say the leastâdisconcerting, even frightening. Down through a tangle of warped plastic, fused stone and blistered metal they passed, where on both sides amazingly consistent, smooth-bored tunnels some two or three feet in diameter wound and twisted like wormholes through old timbers, except they cut through solid rock and crumpled girders.
And the thought came to the British agent that something, some vast force, had attempted to bring about a certain homogeneity here, had tried to make every different thing into one similar thing. Or had tried to deform everything beyond recognition. It was not so much that the various materials had been fused by heat and fire, rather that they seemed to have been folded-in,
like the ingredients of dough, or different coloured plasticines in some monstrous child's hands.
like the ingredients of dough, or different coloured plasticines in some monstrous child's hands.
“It gets worse,” said Khuv quietly, leading the way lower still. “Those strange tunnels there were not âcut' through the magmassâthat's what Viktor Luchov calls this jumble of matter, incidentally, a âmagmass'âthey were
eaten
into it by energy shearing off from the blow-back! We can only guess at the extent of the damage if the installation had been built on the surface.”
eaten
into it by energy shearing off from the blow-back! We can only guess at the extent of the damage if the installation had been built on the surface.”
The stairs descended to a veritable bed of magmass, only levelling out when they reached a vertical wall of unbroken rock like the face of a cliff. Here the timbers underfoot formed a walkway which turned to the right through an angle of ninety degrees and ran parallel with the foot of the looming wall of rock. Under the boards the floor was chaotically humped and anomalous, where different materials had so flowed into each other as to become unrecognizable in their original forms. And through all the congealed mass of this earthly and yet unfamiliar material ran those irregular wormhole energy channels, very like the indiscriminate burrows of rock-boring crustaceans in the sea, but on a gigantic scale.
“âEaten,'” Jazz pondered over the word. “You said these holes were âeaten' into this stuffâbut by what?”
“Rather, shall we say, âconverted'?” Khuv glanced at him. “Perhaps that paints a truer picture, to say that the material was converted into energy. But if you'll be patient I can show you a far better example. We are going to the place where the pile used to be. That, too, was eatenâor converted, if you prefer.”
“Pile?” For the moment Khuv's meaning didn't register in Jazz's confused thoughts.
“The atomic pile which was the Projekt's main source of power,” the Russian explained. “The backlash ate itâutterly. Yes, and then it seems it ate itself!”
Jazz might have questioned that statement, too, but now looming on the left of the walkway a huge, perfectly
circular hole appeared in the face of the black wall of rock. Light issued from this tunnel where it angled steeply downward, and Jazz didn't need telling that this was a continuation of the shaft seen in the upper level, which onceâand only onceâhad carried a fearsome beam of energy to the outside world.
circular hole appeared in the face of the black wall of rock. Light issued from this tunnel where it angled steeply downward, and Jazz didn't need telling that this was a continuation of the shaft seen in the upper level, which onceâand only onceâhad carried a fearsome beam of energy to the outside world.
The walkway turned left into the mouth of the shaft, became a stairway once again. Blinding white light was painful after the comparative gloom of the two levels through which the party had descended. Ahead and below, the far end of the shaft was a white disk of glaring brilliance, with its lower rim blacked out by the walkway's platform. Jazz shielded his eyes, saw a young Russian soldier in uniform leaning against the curved wall. The man at once came upright, snapped to attention, slapped the stock of his Kalashnikov rifle in salute.
“At ease,” said Khuv. “We need some glasses.”
The soldier leaned his rifle against the wall, groped in a satchel slung over his shoulder. He produced three pairs of tinted cellophane spectacles with cardboard rims, like the glasses Jazz had once been issued to view a 3-D film.
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