Chapter Fourteen - History
'Me? Help you?'
'Yes, Mr Fenton,' continued Paize, 'but first you need to know what's been happening here. We know Dr Dezlin advised you of the nature of Hell, that his calculations had made this installation possible and he left Gadder to pursue further research here as Station Director. That was four years ago. Have you had any contact with him since?'
'Hasn't Graeme told you? Isn't he here?'
'Dr Dezlin is unaccounted for, Mr Fenton.'
It was a shock to have a straight answer.
'So he's missing.' A sudden thought. 'We were attacked. Could that have been him? And what about those other people we saw?'
'Mr Fenton, patience. Answer the question. Have you had any contact with him in the last four years?'
'No, nothing.'
'We have to check,' said Julia, 'because your record goes a little fuzzy. We have you suddenly leaving Gadder a year later just before your final exams, for no obvious reason. There's a call to your ex-guardian requesting the sale of your corporate holdings. He says you seemed very agitated. He tried to arrange a meeting but you never got back to him and he couldn't trace you. He's been worried about you. Traffic records show you headed off to a planet outside The System called Zarros. After that it's a blank. You disappear for over two years before turning up in Karnos eight months ago. What were you doing in all that time?'
'Is that any of your business?'
'Yes, Mr Fenton,' said Paize, in exasperation as if talking to a child, 'it is our business and yours too. The clock, remember, is ticking.'
Fenton drew in a deep breath. This was going to sound pathetic.
'I left Gadder because there didn't seem any point in staying. I wanted to sell up because I didn't want to be implicated in all this,' he waved his hand dismissively. Paize shot him a quizzical look. 'The establishment, the status quo, The System. I joined an outsider colony on Zarros, it's an independent self-sufficient commune. They only have dealings with Central in emergencies so I was effectively incognito. I was involved in some amateur archaeology and historical research while I was there for a book I was thinking of writing about the Great Collapse. I was at Karnos because I wanted peace and quiet to write. Happy?'
'You drop out of university but then you spend your time doing academic research and writing?' Brozmam's jeering was incredulous. He was right. It didn't sound very convincing.
'I like academic research. I like history. I like writing. I had personal reasons for leaving Gadder.'
There was a pause. Why should they believe him? Had he just confirmed he was a decadent subversive? If they were out to frame him then he had given them the ammunition. There was a big enough hole in his history for them to invent a far more dangerous CV, to transform him from a harmless hippie into an anarchist saboteur. But his scapegoat theory didn't make sense if Central was going to destroy this place and remove all the evidence anyway.
'So, you know nothing of recent developments here? You've not left K5 in those eight months?' asked Paize.
'If you've got access to the Karnos traffic systems you'll know that.'
'Computer records,' said Brozmam, 'can be falsified if you have the necessary skills.' He looked at Fenton with disdain, as if he couldn't imagine him having the skill to fasten his shoes.
Fenton smiled: 'Take a look at my file, I'm incompetent with technology. I can't even….' He stopped. It was a self-defeating argument. If he was a computer genius he could easily have amended the records to say he was a dunce. And even if the data had been correct when he left Gadder he could have since been schooled in the black arts by the insurgents of Zarros. Was that why he'd wanted the money? So he could bankroll the whole operation?
'I don't think there's anything to be gained at this stage by doubting Mr Fenton,' said Paize, 'but we do need to show him the evidence. Julia, the screens please.'
She stood up and walked gracefully to a console.
'You'll need these.' Paize reached down and passed a pair of black goggles to Fenton and Brozmam before reaching for his own. Fenton cautiously donned them. The circular lenses completely enclosed each eye blocking out all light. The room vanished into total darkness.
'Integrity confirmed. Everyone's goggles on?' Julia's voice. She waited for confirmation then: 'opening screens.'
There was a mechanical hum, the disconcerting hiss of a pressurised seal opening and then a crack of blinding light, searing even through the lenses, as behind her two heavy bulkheads separated, sliding open to reveal an octagonal screen, no, not a screen, a window, a window overlooking Hell.
Through the transparency great shards of white lightning blazed and arced in silence, flashing tendrils of energy bursting and surging brilliantly into vivid light, vanishing just as abruptly into darkness to be replaced almost instantly by another and then another flaring, burning bolt. It took only seconds to realise they were radiating outwards from a central point. It was a maelstrom, a whirlpool, a vortex.
It was awesome, a terrifyingly primeval vision of chaos.
Fenton stood in amazement, bathed in furious white light. 'Graeme told me about this place but, but, he never described it like….., like that,' he concluded lamely. His voice echoed hollowly in the empty air, the absence of sound from the pyrotechnics beyond the glass was disturbingly eerie.
'He couldn't have done,' said Julia, her slim form suddenly and repeatedly illuminated in stark silhouette against the window by each flash, her skin glowing alabaster, reflected light glittering off her opaque black goggles. 'That didn't exist until about a day ago.'
'What is it?'
'We're not entirely sure,' she admitted, 'but Dr Dezlin seems to have caused it. We think it's what's responsible for the communications interference and the power drain. The sensory data we've got is extremely limited, but the information we have suggests it's a fracture in the fabric of space.'
'Here ends your fractured little life,' whispered Fenton automatically.
Even in the savage flickering light there was an odd look of recognition on Julia's face. She was trying to place the quotation. Paul Javer had been a fan of Breen so she'd probably heard the song. Paul and Jemmie Peerman were dead. Fenton suddenly realised not only the pointlessness of quoting anything but the crassness of that particular line. 'Sorry,' he mumbled sheepishly.
'Dr Dezlin's theory,' began Paize, a few metres away in the jagged, angry darkness, 'was the disturbances in Hell were not natural phenomena but the result of some artefact or object.'
'Yes, that's what he told me.'
'He identified an area of Hell, a zone where he thought the disturbances arose. It seemed to be shielded in some way. He's spent the last few years investigating it, probing it with a variety of techniques. Recently he began to communicate with it.'
'Communicate?' Beyond the armoured window the firestorm continued to rage.
'Yes, the zone responded to some of his signals. At first he thought they were just reflections but then he detected a pattern. He thought it was some kind of code, symbolic logic or mathematics or something like that. Not really my field I'm afraid. But Dr Dezlin was convinced he was dealing with some kind of intelligence.'
Julia took up the story: 'He thought at first it might be an automated response, that it was a programmed device, a satellite or a computer. But as he went on he picked up idiosyncrasies in the signals suggesting to him it might be an intelligence, that it was sentient.'
'His last attempt to communicate with it was about twenty-seven hours ago,' said Paize, 'and that,' white lightning drowned the room, 'was the result.'
'Hang on, why didn't I see that when we spacewalked?' demanded Fenton, suspicious again.
'It was behind us,' Brozmam's bulk was shrouded in shimmering darkness, his goggled head casting monstrous shadows, 'Sprite was between it and Pandemonium, you'd have seen it if you'd looked back. You must have noticed the discharges. But, Darvad, it wasn't on that scale when Paul and I arrived.'
Julia answered: 'Its intensity fluctuates considerably. It had calmed down a lot, it only recently got excited again, more or less as soon as you broke in. It was the most intense we've seen it then. Believe it or not it's actually subsided a bit from that.'
Fenton nodded softly. He did remember the flashes and he'd had his eyes shut for most of the spacewalk.
Harsh light zig-zagged across the room. There was an ominous creaking noise from the window. For the first time his attention was drawn to the glass itself rather than the scene behind it. There was a strange scratching scrawled across it.
'Close the screens, Julia. I think it's time Mr Fenton saw the recording.'
Julia flicked switches. The servos wheezed as the shutters slid together obscuring the inferno blazing outside, her body vanishing into the blackness as the room plunged back into darkness. There was a soft reassuring sigh as the hermetic seal re-engaged. Fenton tore off the goggles and brushed back his long hair. He blinked as his eyes readjusted to the half-light.
'What recording?'
'All activities are monitored here, Mr Fenton.' Paize replied. 'This is a recording of the last experiment on Pandemonium, our last sighting of Dr Dezlin.'
A wall started to glow, transforming into a large screen. They were looking into the room they were standing in but now it was brightly lit, an insistent hum of machinery throbbing in the background, displays switched on, apparatus moving, coloured lights flickering in equipment, figures in pale green tunics bustling around. They all wore black goggles. Graeme Dezlin was standing at the console where Julia now stood, slightly older, slightly tidier than he remembered him with shorter hair. He still though had the same unmistakable imperious air. The shutters behind him were open. The tract of space beyond them appeared calm and peaceful.
'Epsilon-nine-five,' Dezlin boomed. He revelled in his authority.
A female figure worked controls. Within the main image there was an inset picture that Fenton realised was the view screen wall he was now watching. It was focussed on the empty area of space beyond the window, the zone.
'I'm getting a response,' one of the other figures, a male. 'It translates as gamma-five-one.'
Dezlin held up his hand, a conductor leading an orchestra. 'We must need a theta. I'd say a four-nine. That translates at about four hundred cycles. Check it, Stev.'
A pause. 'Computer confirms, Graeme,' another man.
'Lyn, transmit.'
The woman worked controls again. On the screen within the screen there was a sudden flare, an electrical discharge, the miniature of the tumult Fenton had just witnessed. It was visible too in the window behind Dezlin, wreathing his head with an unearthly white glow.
'Good God,' breathed one of the men.
'Calmly, calmly, Jon,' ordered Dezlin. 'Sara what's the navigation computer's response.'
Of course, any disturbance in space could upset Pandemonium's equilibrium.
A woman's voice off camera: 'The computer has absorbed the variation. The motive units are responding. We have surplus navigational capacity of forty five per cent.'
'Let's be clear about this. Another burst could provoke a more violent response. The navigation computer may not be able to deal with the new parameters. I'm prepared to take the risk. Does anyone here object?' Dezlin's face had a look of controlled messianic zeal about it. Despite the danger Fenton could not imagine anyone attempting to stop him. But then they were all probably as dedicated, as committed as he was. There was a pause, long enough to be interpreted as tacit agreement.
'So be it. Jon, what did the response translate as?'
'Beta-seven-one.'
A look of ecstasy crossed Dezlin's face as if something had finally fallen into place.
'Of course. Omega-zero-zero. Seven hundred cycles. Check it, Stev.'
'Computer confirms.'
'Lyn,' an almost sexual pause as Dezlin savoured the moment: 'transmit.'
The woman worked controls.
On the screen and in the window lightning blossomed and flared.
'Navigation?'
'Absorbing variations, twelve per cent surplus capacity remaining.'
Dezlin stepped down from the console walking right up to the window, rapt, his back to the camera, his body embraced by a halo of rippling, incandescent white light.
'Yes, yes, yes,' he hoarsely whispered.
'NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!' A scream of anguish, a scream of despair.
The picture blurred abruptly, moving jerkily as the camera spun towards the source of the new sound.
On the screen, Mark Fenton stood in the doorway: dishevelled, wild eyed and screaming, a bulky handgun clutched to his chest.
Off camera Graeme Dezlin howled in triumph.
Fenton fired. The gun burst into flame.
The image dissolved into static.
The monitor went dark.