He looked at Turnbull, then Angela, and grimaced. Either the puzzle would crack him or he’d crack the puzzle. He forced himself to offer them another grin, and nodded. “That’s what’s up ahead,” he said. “A Russian doll within a Russian doll within … et cetera. With no apparent rhyme or reason to it.”
“Well, I know one thing.” Turnbull took up the lead, striding out as the ground became firmer underfoot. “I may not be clued up on Russian dolls, but I once played Russian roulette. And each time we use one of these doors, that’s what it feels like. So far the hammer keeps falling on empty chambers, more or less. But what happens when we reach the loaded one? That’s what I’d like to know.”
Gill had no answer to that, just another question. What I’d like to know, he kept it to himself, is who loaded the bloody thing?
Sith saw them on his screen, toiling up the mountainside, and for the moment delayed his reentry into the game. Nightfall would be soon enough. Human eyes weren’t equipped for night, for which reason they tended to fear it. And because they were true primitives, night in an alien place would be that much more fearful.
So far there had been no manifestations; that, too, was because it was still daylight, and Clayborne was comparatively happy with the situation. But as night fell and his hagridden, half-crazed mind got to work—and the darkness expanded his mind’s terrors larger than life—so, too, the synthesizer would get to work.
Perhaps Sith-Bannerman’s sudden eruption onto the scene might also trigger things. Sith was anxious to obtain the best results possible … .
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
With Gill and Angela close behind him, and having overtaken all the others, Turnbull was the first of the party to get a good look at the shining object. Having taken what had seemed the most accessible route up the flank of the mountain, they’d eventually been obliged to traverse in order not to overshoot. Even so, they had in fact gone a little higher than was necessary, so that when Turnbull reached the jagged crest of that last spur, he found himself looking slightly down on the thing. It lay bedded in rubble, in the shadows of a scree-filled reentry between twin spurs, and it was not what had been expected. The climb down to it looked easy enough, but for the moment Turnbull found it difficult to tear his eyes from the object itself.
Gill had been quite right, it was a House of Doors—of sorts. But it was also the weirdest one they’d come across so far.
Giving Angela a hand, Gill hauled and pushed her up alongside the big man, then climbed up to stand with them. And they all three stared at the—crystal?—together. Now that the sun was off it, the thing was a dull, slaty colour, like a gigantic, polished, many-faceted jewel with a heart of stone. It might simply have grown there, except it was more perfect than nature would have made it, and there were aspects she could never have incorporated. It was a magnificent alien crystal on an alien world; but it was also, unmistakably, a House of Doors. Its facets, around the perimeter where it was bedded in the scree, were oblongs; and central in each oblong was a black, obsidian door. Even from here they could see the knockers—shaped like gargoyles?—set in large, skull-shaped panels of veined quartz, themselves set high in the otherwise blank obsidian slabs.
The effect was beautiful in its simplicity, ugly in its implications, frightening in its clear purpose—which was to frighten. Like the warning hieroglyphs on some ancient pharaoh’s tomb, the skull and gargoyle motifs cried out: Don’t touch! Or perhaps, Gill thought, abandon hope all ye who enter here.
“Well?” said Clayborne, panting under his burden as he clambered up level with them. “Well?”
Gill shook his head. “Sorry, Miles,” he said. “No burning bush, I’m afraid.” But his voice held no trace of sarcasm.
“Of course not.” Clayborne’s eyes opened wide as they spied the giant crystal House of Doors. “The Lord works in mysterious ways. Did you really think to find a burning bush as such, on a … world with … no vegetation?” He paused and the colour drained from his face. He had become aware of the ominous aspect of the thing. “But this—”
“Is no work of the Lord.” Anderson finished it for him as he joined them.
Varre was last up. “A House of Doors,” he said quietly. “But where the others were merely awesome, this one is … menacing.”
“What now?” Turnbull looked at Gill.
“I should have thought that was obvious.” Anderson puffed himself up, became “leader” again. “We proceed!”
Gill looked at him and in an even tone said, “Off you go then, boss. Me, I’m proceeding nowhere.”
“What?” Anderson frowned. “You intend to stay here?”
“For now, yes,” Gill answered. He looked from face to face and they waited for him to continue. “Look, right now we don’t seem threatened in any way—unless it’s by that,” and he nodded down the incline towards the House of Doors. “Apart from a few birds and a strange-looking lizard or two in the desert, we’ve seen nothing of local life-forms. If there were any, and if they were unpleasant, they’d probably have found us before now. We must have stuck out like sore thumbs coming across those dunes. So it appears that we’re safe for the moment. We’re nowhere, but we are safe.”
Turnbull said, “You don’t think we should be quite so eager this time, right?”
Gill nodded. “I think we’d be wise if we rested up for a couple of hours—maybe until morning—before taking the next step. Let’s face it, if we are threatened during the night, we can always try our luck then. Personally, I’d like to take the opportunity to feel this thing out. I’d like to just take it easy, give my mind and body a break, and … see what happens.”
The others had taken in what he’d said and he saw from their faces that they agreed—all except Clayborne. He probably hadn’t even heard him. “We should worship,” the American said. “You must give me your clothes—all of them! I am commanded to make a burnt offering to my God, and this shall be your personal sacrifice, that you give up your clothes that I may burn them.” He pointed a shaking finger at the giant crystal. “That is the devil’s work! There are devils in the very air of this place—can’t you feel them? But we shall drive them away with a fire and the sacrificial offering of this lamb.” He stroked the beast lying stiff on his shoulder.
Turnbull looked at him with narrowed eyes, knotted a huge fist and gritted his teeth. It was obvious that he intended to knock the other cold. But Gill caught his eye, shook his head. Clayborne saw the look that passed between them. “What? Do you plot against me? Do you dare deny the Lord God His—”
Gill had drawn out the thorn stinger from its holster. Now he jabbed Clayborne in the thigh and gave the bulb in the root of the thorn a gentle squeeze. Clayborne’s eyes stood out like marbles. He coughed once, sighed, and simply crumpled down into himself. The centaur thing slid from his back, went cartwheeling all the way down the scree slide to the jumbled depression between the spurs.
“Okay,” said Gill, “let’s get him down there as gently as possible. Maybe when he wakes up, he’ll be over it. If not”—he shrugged, sighed—“then I really don’t know what the answer is.”
“There is an answer,” said Varre, avoiding their eyes, scowling at his cracked, dirty fingernails. “Clayborne is a liability, useless to us. Why should we allow him to jeopardize our lives? That place down there—that House of Doors—is clearly different from the others, possibly dangerous. It bears the skull and crossbones of the poison bottle. I suggest we simply go along with whatever Clayborne says; except, of course, we do not give him our clothes. But when the time comes, and if he desires to use one of those menacing doors, then we … put no obstacle in his way. At least that way he will have contributed something.” He looked up from the examination of his fingers.
Blank-faced, Turnbull and Angela looked away. Anderson said nothing but raised a speculative eyebrow. Gill said, “You’re a cold-blooded bastard, aren’t you, Jean-Pierre? Thanks for your … suggestion, anyway. But from now on I step very carefully
.”
“You?” Varre looked surprised. “But why?”
“In case I should accidentally break a leg,” said Gill. “That’s why … .”
Gill came awake knowing that something was happening or about to happen. He sat with his back to a depression in a sloping slab of rock, his feet shoved down into loose scree which formed a brake against any sliding. His arms were round Angela where she snoozed beside him, with her head on his chest and one arm thrown carelessly across him. He remembered very little of their settling down in that position, and nothing of conversation.
Turnbull was close by, chattering gibberish to himself in his sleep. In the east the first stars were coming out in a palid sky, a small scattering of them that threw their reflections into the great crystal’s many facets; far to the south the tiny secondary sun was setting, leaving a floating ring of bright light like a halo to mark its passing; a lone kite wheeled over the highest crags.
Anderson and Varre were already awake, yawning where they got to their feet a little distance away. A nine-inch grey lizard with a yellow frill along its back went streaking down the slope, taking a tiny avalanche of dust and pebbles with it. Fifty feet away, Clayborne was standing in front of the House of Doors. He was quite naked and raving again, which was what had disturbed Anderson and Varre. But Gill had been awakened by something else. He could sense the House of Doors stirring. It, too, was coming awake.
Clayborne’s clothing was piled a short distance from the giant crystal, and the madman had put the dead centaur on the pile and set fire to the lot. Flames were licking up, and black belches of rolling, stinking smoke.
Turnbull woke up and saw what was going on. He looked around and saw Gill where he gently shook Angela awake. “Where’d he get the makings?” the big man mumbled. Then he patted his jacket pocket and gave a snort. “He stole my matches!” he said. “Well, no, actually they were his.”
Angela was awake now and Gill could move her and get to his feet. “So much for not needing sleep,” she said, stretching. “Our bodies mightn’t, but out brains certainly do.”
“Miles,” Gill called out, stiffly making his way towards the American. “Clayborne, you should get away from there right now. It’s not safe there.” He tried to make his advice sound urgent without causing Clayborne to panic. He spoke quietly, as if he feared that the House of Doors itself was listening. And maybe it was, for certainly it was gearing itself towards something.
Clayborne turned to face him. “Keep back, Gill!” he thundered. “I know what I’m doing—and I know what you would do, too! Put me to sleep, would you? Fool—that way lies eternal damnation! Don’t you know we tread the rim of the very pit? I make obeisance. Man, it will be the saving of our souls!”
He stood between his fire and the crystal. Gill was close now but something warned him to go no closer. For the first time he noticed that the doors were numbered, and how they were numbered: in multiples of one hundred and eleven. Those which were within view bore the numbers 888, 777, 666, and 555, left to right in an anticlockwise direction. Clayborne stood before door number 666, and Gill couldn’t help but wonder if it was significant.
In fact it was, for now Clayborne turned towards the door and pointed at it, shouting, “See? The devil is revealed. The Lord my God has shown me his number, which is the number of the beast! Now I turn my back on him”—he did, and facing the fire threw his arms wide—“saying, get thee behind me, Satan!”
“Clayborne!” Gill hissed, aware of the vast crystal crouched there like something about to spring. “For Christ’s sake, man!”
“For Christ’s sake?” Clayborne howled across smoke and flames. “Yes, and for yours, and for mine. Great merciful God, now hear this sinner and show to him a sign, that he shall know he is forgiven and made welcome to Thy bosom … .”
It was coming—now! Gill threw himself flat.
Door number 666 slid swiftly, silently down out of sight—and hell itself was visible behind it. Red and orange fires rumbled and roared in there—and now roared out of there! A great shaft of fire belched out like a thick, dripping tongue, and licked Clayborne for long seconds head to heel. He disappeared screaming in liquid light and heat, and Gill felt his own hair and eyebrows singeing as he scuttled frantically away on belly, knees and elbows. Then the tongue of fire was retracted and the door hissed shut to contain it, and for a few brief moments splashes of fire dripped sparks from the rim of the obsidian panel.
Amazingly, horrifyingly, Clayborne still stood there—but only for a few seconds. Then he crumpled. He was like a plastic doll tossed on a bonfire by some spoiled child, and dragged back out again as the child felt something of the doll’s agony. He was a candle that dripped its wax and slumped under the blast of a blowtorch. He was a dying thing that screamed a bubbling, boiling lobster scream as he fell in a smoking, steaming pile on the scorched scree.
And the House of Doors stood there as before, an alien evil under alien stars … .
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Gill felt unbearable horror, and more than horror. It was as if Clayborne and the House of Doors were connected, but by much more than the fire which had reduced him to red and black ruin. Gill felt it, was on the point of grasping it, when Turnbull came running.
“Oh, shit!” The big man was gasping, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Oh my God! What the hell happened?” He had seen everything but hadn’t taken it in. He ran to Clayborne, went down on one knee. His huge hands fluttered helplessly. “I can’t … don’t … where can I touch him?”
But he was now within range of door number 666, and the thing was still working; Gill could feel it. “Jack!” he called out warningly.
Clayborne had lifted his smoking head and opened his eyes. His back had been to the blaze. When the tongue of fire had engulfed him, he’d closed his eyes and so saved them. But they were all that had been saved. And perhaps something of his mind, too. “I … I’ve been a bloody fool,” he gurgled. “But I believed. I believed. I should have known. How could there be a God in a … godless place like this, eh? Hell is the devil’s domain.”
“Don’t speak,” Turnbull told him, aghast. But Clayborne wasn’t only speaking, he was trying to get to his feet.
“H-help me … up,” he said, his agony reaching such a crescendo that it became nothing. “Let me do it, before everything welds together, seizes up.”
The House of Doors did nothing, it waited as Turnbull somehow got Clayborne to his feet. Gill felt it waiting. He stood up, ran forward, helped Turnbull guide the staggering, dripping thing that had been a man. Huge blisters burst and released their contents; fluids fell from the roasted body like rain; barbecued, blackened ribs were visible in the steaming mass of Clayborne’s back.
“Six, six, six,” Clayborne mumbled, his face a molten mask. And between Turnbull and Gill he staggered like a crippled robot, aiming himself at the door. “Let it … finish what it started!”
Gill could feel the affinity. The House of Doors waited for Clayborne. More than that: he was its guideline! “Jack!” Gill hissed. “We have to leave him now—right now—or we’re dead men, too!”
They released Clayborne but he continued to shuffle forward. “Finish it,” he told door number 666 as Gill and Turnbull backed off. “Put … an end to it.” This time the door slid to one side, and there was no fire. Instead there was the vacuum of space. Stars like jewels hung in the vast, unending void of it. And Clayborne was sucked in.
They saw him go tumbling head over heels, a blackened thing falling forever into his own ultimate nightmare of vertigo. And this time when the door slammed shut, its rim was rimed with frost … .
“He was controlling it,” Gill told the others. “Inadvertently. He didn’t know, had no idea. But that machine was in tune with him. It still is in tune with his line of thought. Its programming is based on his worldview.”
“His netherworld-view,” said Turnbull, and Gill nodded.
Varre looked sceptical. “And just like that??
?—he snapped his fingers—“all of a sudden, you ‘know’ these things. Is that what we’re to believe?”
Anderson said, “Jean-Pierre, you haven’t seen Gill’s talent in action. I have, so I’d advise you to hear him out. Please go on, Spencer.”
“I don’t know why he was chosen for the pattern, for copying,” Gill continued, “but he was. It could be because his mind was the most chaotic, the best suited to produce horrific results. But—”
“Could it be,” Angela cut in, “that it was simply a question of whoever was first through that door from the forest world? You’ll remember, he was first.” She shrank a very little as all eyes turned in her direction.
“That’s a distinct possibility,” said Gill at last. “That point had escaped me. It’s definitely worth keeping in mind.”
“I’m sorry,” she said apologetically. “I broke your chain of thought. You said ‘but’?”
“But”—Gill gathered his thoughts—“to accept the idea that Clayborne was chosen because he was unhinged, because his perception of things would produce monstrous effects, is to accept that we are being deliberately misused, manipulated—”
“But we are being manipulated!” Anderson snorted. “Surely that’s obvious.”
Gill nodded. “By whatever alien intelligence controls the House of Doors. The question is, to what end? I mean, why torment us?”
“To see what kind of stuff we’re made of?” Turnbull raised his customary eyebrow.
“The Castle has stood on Ben Lawers for some considerable time,” said Gill. “Given that it’s a device that’s come across light-years of space, its builders or controllers aren’t stupid. They know what we’re made of.”
Varre remained unconvinced about something. “This thing about Clayborne having shaped this world with his mad mind,” he began.
“Not this world,” Gill cut him off. “Just what happens in it. Or specifically, what happened to himself, and what happens to us.”