Psychosphere

  “Oh, but I have tried, I have tried. It had seemed to me that recently, within the last six months, Garrison’s strength was waning. When chance permitted, I actually found and entered Vicki Maler’s mind. There were several such occasions, and I was always lucky. Or perhaps it was not simple luck. Perhaps my ESP told me the best times. But in any case the contact was always brief—never long enough to learn much, no time to be discovered. The last time was only a matter of days ago, while she and Garrison were still in Rhodes—since when he has performed these ‘miracles’ we’ve spoken of, proving that he’s as powerful as ever. Or at least powerful enough to constitute a real threat.”

  Stone frowned. “So how will you do it? If you can’t get at her, how will—”

  “I can’t ‘get at her’ as you have it, while she’s out there, beyond these walls. But in here there are ways! Here I am the master, and I am not without protection.”

  Stone saw it coming. “I’m to bring her here?”

  Gubwa smiled, nodded. “Indeed you are.”

  “So you really are crazy after all! If what you’ve told me of Garrison is only half-true—why, he’ll mince me!”

  “That is a distinct possibility,” Gubwa blandly agreed. “And one to be avoided.” He smiled again.

  “And through me he’ll find you, and—”

  “No,” the other snapped, his smile disappearing in an instant. “He will not find me. If you are discovered your mind will simply self-destruct. It will burn itself out before telling anything about me. Oh, yes, Mr. secret agent Stone—you would die before talking, or before having the facts extracted.”

  “—And in any case, I won’t do it.”

  Gubwa’s smile was back, growing wider by the minute. He began to nod his great white head. “Oh, yes, you will.” He took Stone’s chair and wheeled it across the floor. Doors hissed open at their approach. “I’m now going to show you my mind laboratory, Mr. Stone. Being as you are a secret agent, you’ll be familiar with the term brainwashing. Yes, I’m sure you are. Well, my mind-lab is a veritable laundry. And of course I’ve already mentioned my expertise in the field of mesmerism? Yes…”

  Along the corridor the great albino paused for a moment. “Dear, oh, dear, Mr. Stone! Why, I’m really quite surprised at you! Those are not very kind thoughts at all, now are they?”

  WHILE CHARON GUBWA WORKED ON STONE IN THE MIND-LAB, Vicki Maler sat by Garrison’s bedside in a small whitewashed hospital room in Haslemere, Surrey.

  It was an austere place by any standards, but Garrison’s private doctor—a much respected man, whose patients were extremely rich and/or very important persons all—liked austerity. To him sparseness was synonymous with cleanliness, and cleanliness was the basic necessity of all good medicine. At the moment Vicki was alone with Garrison, indeed at present he was the only resident patient, but Dr. Jamieson was about somewhere.

  The room’s window look out under the branches of willows across a close-cropped, fenced garden. Beyond the fence a stream or beck sparkled in early morning sunlight. In fact the place was not a hospital at all in the accepted sense of the word but Jamieson’s home. It was very expensive but not at all an easy place to find, and Vicki was satisfied that Garrison was safe here. Safe from what she could not say. From his own waking fears, maybe. From killers—such as the would-be killers who had sabotaged the plane—that remained to be seen.

  Until now their personal security had not been a problem to concern her. Safety usually went hand in hand with Garrison; to be with him was to be safe. Or had used to be. She looked at him; sedated, he slept. And he needed it. His face was drawn, his forehead lined. His hands twitched occasionally, however faintly, on top of the bedclothes…

  VICKI HAD ARRIVED AN HOUR EARLIER. She had been greeted by the doctor and his nurse-assistant, probably his wife. Richard (they had told her) would not be up and about until Monday morning. Since today was Friday, that would give him three more full days and nights of rest, and Dr. Jamieson would ensure that they were three full days.

  The police had been on the telephone twice, requesting a statement from Garrison in respect of the bombed plane, but the doctor had put them off. His patient could not be disturbed, he had told them. Garrison was physically and mentally run-down, teetering upon a nervous brink, and the only sure way he could be revitalized was by resting.

  There had also been the matter of the contact lenses, which had arrived while Garrison and Vicki were in Rhodes. She did not know what Richard had done to Dr. Jamieson, but the business of her own and Garrison’s eyes didn’t seem to be at all problematic. He had already fitted Garrison’s lenses (in accordance with previous orders, apparently), and upon Vicki’s arrival he had worn a pair of tinted spectacles to fit hers. After a few minutes she hadn’t even known she was wearing them. Then she had been taken to Richard’s room and left there, since when she had simply sat here at his bedside.

  Very carefully, she now took one of his hands in hers. His flesh was cool, seemed somehow fragile, almost brittle. A plastic hand. She squeezed it, just to reassure herself. But of what? To confirm that Garrison was real? That she was real? Vicki found herself trembling. Was she real?

  The fact that she no longer loved Garrison suddenly bloated in her mind like some strange orchid. One minute it was absent, the next it had opened, hybrid and scentless. It was not beautiful, but strangely it was not ugly. It was merely there: a fact, not even a hard one to assimilate. For how can one love a constant threat? The axe that hangs over one’s head…the fraying threads of rope by which one hangs from the cliff…the clock relentlessly ticking away one’s final hour.

  You cannot love that which you don’t know. She had once known Garrison, briefly, and through her long illness his remembered beauty had remained with her, buoyed her up; the joy of having had him sustained her to the end. And she had thought that she could have loved him. And she had loved—adored him—in the new beginning. Then…the rope had started to fray. The axe had seemed so heavy hanging over her. The ticking of the clock had grown incredibly loud, a roar of sound in her ears.

  If Garrison died, she died—and this time she would stay dead. Vicki had been there once. It was a fearful place. She couldn’t remember the limbo of it and didn’t want to, but she had hated it. She hated the thought of it, the threat of it. Garrison was that threat. Him she did not hate, but she was even more certain that she did not love him. And how long before she did hate him, and how shortly after that must he know it?

  Being Garrison, perhaps he had already seen it coming…

  SHE STAYED WITH GARRISON FOR A FURTHER HALF-HOUR. Suzy, Garrison’s black Doberman pinscher bitch whom Vicki had left waiting patiently in the car, sat still until she had the door half-open, then squeezed out. The dog’s tail wagged and she lolled her tongue at her mistress but no amount of persuasion, cajoling or threatening could get her back inside the car again. Angry, Vicki followed Suzy back to the door of the doctor’s house. Dr. Jamieson stood upon the step, smiling a little awkwardly, waiting for her to leave.

  He was a stocky, moon-faced man in a very old tweed suit. “It’s all right, my dear, she can stay,” he reassured Vicki. “Richard said she’d probably be along.”

  “Oh!” said Vicki. “Yes, she doesn’t like to be too far away from him.”

  Suzy wagged her tail, came and licked Vicki’s hand. She was aware now that she could stay. But her head kept turning in towards the house; she wanted to be with Garrison.

  As Vicki finally drove away, both Jamieson and Suzy came down to the gate at the bottom of the drive to see her off; but as soon as the car cornered out of the leafy lane, Suzy left the doctor’s side and ran back to the house. In she went and straight to Garrison’s room, where she waited until Jamieson opened the door for her. Then she entered and jumped up on the chair beside her master’s bed.

  She sat there straight-backed, her head slightly forward, ears erect, eyes fixed firmly upon him where he lay. She watched him intently, listened with twitc
hes of her ears to his steady breathing. Then she settled down a little, gave one small whine, lay back her ears and made herself a little more comfortable.

  Jamieson left the door open for her. She would come to him when she was hungry…

  GARRISON HAD REACHED A JUNCTION IN THE DRIED-OUT BED OF THE stream he followed. Here where it split, the walls which miles back had been mere banks were now cliffs of red stone, rising sharp and sheer for hundreds of feet. The bed of the stream had seemed the easiest trail to follow, but now Garrison shook his head in disgust. It seemed unthinkable that the lie of the land could have changed so swiftly.

  There had been green banks, a little water gurgling below, a gently winding, watery way to follow. Then the grass had become scrub as the banks grew boulder-strewn and steep, and finally the water had petered out. Then Garrison might have left the stream and headed for higher ground, but he had been tired or lazy or both, had failed to make the effort but simply allowed himself to drift on. And the banks had grown even steeper and craggier above a narrowing river gorge, until now at last the way divided, a cleft in the shade of the towering cliffs.

  And now which way to go? Right or left?

  Left would be the wizard’s way, of course: the left-hand path. That would seem Garrison’s natural choice, but…

  The way seemed narrower to the left. He would hate to find the trail narrowed suddenly to an impassible crack in solid rock, and then have to come back all this way. The right-hand path seemed fairly wide; its dusky veil of gloom was parted here and there with shafts of light from above; there should be no baleful magics there to blight his course.

  Suzy crouched closer to his back and whined ominously. Garrison frowned—edged the Machine forward right, then left, and paused—cursed and set Psychomech down upon the cracked bed of the stream. He climbed down from the broad, now rust-tainted back of the Machine, Suzy jumping down beside him. Where its base stood upon hard earth the Machine’s metal was actually scabbed with rust, some of it already flaking, and its hard plastic casing was showing cracks. Within, fraying cables were visible behind blistered tubes and blackened piping.

  Garrison grunted. Better to leave the thing here and go forward on foot. Except that that would be like shooting an old horse just because he’d lost a shoe. Garrison grunted again and shook his head. No, it was worse than that and he knew it. A horse with a broken leg…or even a broken back!

  But in any case he could not simply leave the Machine behind. No, for it had been there with him in his vision of the future, that agonizing vision of the parched desert glimpsed in the shewstone of the circle of wizards. And so the Machine must go on with him, but along which path? If only he might glimpse the future again, see his way clear ahead…

  “Richard…oh, Richard!” came the merest whisper of a soft female voice, fast on the heels of his fleeting thought.

  “What…?” Garrison fell into a crouch, gazed all about, first at the left-hand path, then the right. “Where? Who?” But Suzy, her coat bristling, knew no such indecision. No, the bitch stared straight into that well of shadows which was the left-hand path, and her growl was all the answer Garrison needed—for now.

  “So that’s the way, is it, girl?” he said, his eyes narrowing. “And you heard it, too, did you?” Suzy whined in answer, pressed closer to his knee.

  “Richard, please!” came that woman’s sigh again. “Please help me! Oh, please, please let me go!”

  Help her? Let her go? What did it mean? Garrison’s flesh crept. Wizardry? Witchcraft? A very black magic, certainly. And yet he knew, or had known, that voice. In some other place, some other time. He grasped at that last thought: some other time. Could it be, he wondered? A voice from his future, auguring some event yet to come? He had, after all, expressed his desire to glance once more beyond the veil of the present and into future time. And was this his answer?

  He strained forward, his limbs shaking, his eyes already stinging from fathoming or attempting to fathom the vault of shadows which lay behind the entrance to the left-hand path. Did something move there? The figure of a girl, seen fleetingly, a wraith amongst the shadows? A girl, hiding, fleeing from shaded place to shaded place? Fleeing from whom? From Garrison? Possibly, for she had begged to be let go. Why, then, had she called on him for help? And if not fleeing from him, fleeing from—what?

  Something else moved in there! Garrison’s flesh crept again, violently, rippling on his limbs and body like the ripples on a pool. Cold sweat started from his forehead. Something moved, hanging from above, drifting, swaying along the zig-zag, flitting route taken by the girl. Several somethings. Trailing somethings—like tentacles.

  The Other! That diseased evil insidious as cancer, gray as leprosy, warped as insanity. That vast octopus of evil from Garrison’s dream within a dream! His enemy of enemies!

  He waited no longer but clambered back onto the Machine. Suzy made no effect to mount behind him but raced beneath as he rode Psychomech into the gap of the left-hand path. In there was a deeper gloom than had been expected, a chill gloom and clammy as fog, but Garrison knew it for a psychic thing. The depression was in his mind, its external oppression springing from the heaviness of spirit within.

  But now, too, he found that he must go cautiously; for here, where overhead the cliffs actually met in places—or rather where the upper strata remained but had been undercut by ancient waters—great stalactites depended to bar his way with their looming mass, forming columns where upthrusting spires had long ages since cojoined. And between and around these limestone relics he must drive the Machine, never knowing what lurked beyond or when it would strike, but ever aware that terror was here, breathing in the centuried stone.

  Then, far down the cleft where the way grew narrower still—another movement!—a fleeting inkblot amongst the shadows, pressed low to the ground. “Suzy!” cried Garrison. “Wait, girl!” And her bark coming back to him, echoing with his own voice and dying into chill silence. But no, he must not call her back. She scouted the way for him and that was good.

  He urged a little more speed from the Machine (in truth he merely exerted himself the more, for Psychomech was now worse than useless), and as his eyes grew more accustomed to the ever-deepening darkness bore along the old watercourse, whose walls continued to close in on him. And thus, suddenly, from a claustrophobic realm into a wide, expansive elf-land! Or perhaps a place of ogres…

  So it seemed to Garrison as, bursting from the now completely arched-over tunnel, he entered through a portal into a huge irregular cavern of strange beauty and even stranger horror; and here he brought his Machine to a halt. Perhaps it was the sight of Suzy, cowering, that caused him to apply mental brakes; perhaps the sure knowledge that this was the subterranean lair of Evil itself. Oh, of shimmering beauty the cavern had its share, but so does the web of a spider.

  The place had a domed, stone dagger-festooned ceiling, irregular perimeter columns of stalagmitic rock, a fairly even floor, though dotted here and there with weird mushrooms of dripstone, and the ghostly luminescence of the long-entombed: a firefly glitter that lent illumination and wonder to an otherwise lightless hole. Garrison skirted a column of massive girth which obstructed his way and his view, and came to where Suzy crouched, panted and whined. She immediately scrabbled up behind him, pressing to his back and shuddering as from a drenching in icy water.

  And now Garrison saw the reason for Suzy’s dread and understood his own. For without a doubt the Being which sat upon or floated over its stalagmitic throne at the far side of the cavern was that same Other of his inmost dream, the many-tentacled blasphemy whose nature was neither male nor female, neither black nor white, neither truly sane and human nor insane and inhuman but Other than these things.

  Red-eyed, that horror, and glaring intently, searchingly—but not in Garrison’s direction. No, for at the foot of that Being’s throne here lay the phantom girl, whose sobbing was audible only as a distant sighing, whose shape and form were hidden in an ethereal glow or neb
ulosity from beyond the grave. And though Garrison could swear he knew or had known this creature, now he saw that she was indeed a wraith, a ghost; and knowing this he knew the Other for a necromancer, a wizard who raises up and questions the dead! But to what end, and how and why should it concern Garrison? In what way might the dead instruct the living, and how might Garrison possibly be endangered by such instruction?

  With his flesh freshly acrawl, still he urged the Machine forward across the open floor of the cavern, and emerging from the shadows of encircling columns…was checked. He found himself shut out…beyond a certain point, roughly halfway, the Machine would not go, had seemed to come up against some invisible wall or impenetrable barrier. Garrison had met with such before and knew their breaking was impossible or at best most difficult. Weary and debilitated as he was through his fear, he could not summon the strength even to attempt such a breaking. How then might he help the ghost-girl or in any way interfere with the wizard’s necromancies?

  It seemed that he could not; moreover, slowly it was dawning on him that what he saw was not real, or at best some symbolic vision from an as yet inchoate future. Else why had the Other failed to detect him? The answer seemed simple: he had asked to see the future, the Other in that future had not asked to see the past. Garrison could observe but could not interfere.

  His frustration knew no bounds. He must help the poor, shrinking luminescence, the ghost-girl of whom no single detail could be gleaned beneath her ethereal glimmer but whose whispered pleas had raised ghosts of their own, the ghosts of Garrison’s memory. But how might he help? Too weary now even to think clearly, he could only look on as the tableau enacted itself beyond his and the Machine’s and Suzy’s range—but in another moment he held his breath at something else he saw.

  For within the impenetrable area were not two figures but three, the third emerging with some stealth from behind a row of thin stalactites that arrased the upward curving far wall like a curtain—and Garrison knew the intruder. It was the Secret One, also from his dream within a dream, and clad in his Robe of Secrecy. An acolyte of the Other? Perhaps. But that did not explain the way he glided, silent and stealthy, now darting to place himself between ghost-girl and monster and drag her up and out of the clutches of that dread Being.