“But nothing has happened to us!” The Frenchman’s frustration was getting the better of him.
“Yet,” said Gill coldly. “Nothing has happened to us yet. But less than half an hour ago Clayborne was disfigured and murdered hideously—I said murdered!—and if we wait long enough, events will shape themselves in representation of the supernatural forces and powers of evil in which he believed. Forces which will turn themselves on us.”
“You know this?” Varre snapped.
“Can you hear your watch ticking?”
“Eh? When it’s working, of course!”
Gill nodded towards the House of Doors. “That place is ticking,” he said. “Like a bomb!”
Varre felt reality slipping—felt the terror of his cynic’s worldview being erased with giant strokes—and fought against it. “Proof!” He blurted the word out. “There’s no proof. You can show us nothing!”
“Clayborne feared two things worse than all others put together.” Gill was relentless. “The devil and all his works, and falling. Hell and high places. Hellfire burned him, and he fell into space forever.”
For long moments there was silence. The dusk was eerie, with only a handful of nondescript stars to light it. And now to the east the rim of a lesser moon was rising, its light a faint, pastel yellow tinged with red. Finally Anderson asked, “So what are you suggesting? Surely we aren’t simply going to wait here for something else—something even more monstrous—to happen to us? Where do we go from here, Spencer?”
“I’ve told you how things are,” Gill answered. “I could be wrong but I don’t think so. I felt that machine working with Clayborne, and working against him. Now I suggest we each think it through. Five heads have to be better than one. Any ideas—all ideas—are welcome.”
“And meanwhile, if something does … come up?” This from Angela.
“Then we’ll be obliged to use a door,” Gill answered. “And maybe that’s a good starting point: figuring out which door to use. Now I suggest you all get on with it. And if anyone comes up with anything at all, well, for God’s sake don’t keep it to yourself! Me”—he looked at Varre—“I’m just going to sit here and listen to that thing tick. If you choose not to believe me, that’s your problem. Do your own thing.” He walked off some little distance and found a boulder to sit against.
After a while Turnbull came to him. “We still haven’t told them about Bannerman,” he said, keeping his voice low.
“No,” said Gill, “and I don’t think we should, not right now. Hell, there’s enough confusion! Anyway”—he shrugged helplessly—“I’m not even sure about Bannerman.”
“What!”
“It might have been machine static. I mean, we’re inside a machine! My mind’s confused no less than anyone else’s—maybe more so. Christ, if I’m to believe everything my senses are telling me right now, then you’re not entirely human either, Jack! You’re giving off the same kind of half-machine aura I sensed around Bannerman. And so are the others. And I just know that girl’s the most human creature I ever met!”
Turnbull grunted, perhaps disappointedly. “But there was still that business at your flat,” he said, “and I’m fairly certain it was him. And where did he vanish to, eh? So he saved my life, and Claybome’s—but where’s Clayborne now? Jesus, someone has to be playing a game with us, and Bannerman fits the—”
Gill held up a hand. “Shh!” he said. And a moment later: “It’s building again, preparing itself. Arranging … something.”
Breaking his conversation, Angela came slipping and sliding across the scree slope. She had Anderson and Varre in tow. “Spencer!” she called out excitedly. “An idea.”
He looked at her blankly.
“Numerology!” she said.
“What?”
“Clayborne would have been interested in numbers, wouldn’t he?” She was breathless. “Their occult meaning and application?”
“So?”
“The numbers on the doors: he knew the number of the beast in Revelations.”
Gill’s expression didn’t change. “I should think that just about everyone knows the number of the beast in Revelations.”
“But it was his number, too!” she said. “Clayborne’s.” And she quickly went on to explain the Hebrew system of numerology, where numbers are substituted for the letters of a name to divine a person’s destiny or affinities. She broke down the alphabetical values in the following manner:
“Miles Clayborne adds up like this,” she said: “Four, one, three, five, three, three, three, one, one, two, seven, two, five, five. Which equals forty-five. And four plus five is nine. Six-six-six equals eighteen, and one and eight makes nine. He and the door had the same number. It was his door and he couldn’t avoid it. That’s where that old saying comes from: his number was on it! Also, in various types or ‘states’ of numerology, nine is the death number—as in the nine of spades … .”
Gill shook his head, looked mystified; but the action of the House of Doors had steadied again, enabling him to give her his attention. “So where do we go from there?” he asked.
“We need to work out our numbers,” she answered, “to discover which door is most applicable—most propitious—to whom! For instance, I’m a six. My door would be two-two-two. That’s a good one: the number two stands for peace and harmony, tranquility and sincerity. And if it’s good for me, it should be good for all of us.”
Gill frowned. “That was damn quick reckoning!” he said. “How come you know all of this, anyway? I mean … Hebrew?”
“I’ve always been interested in numerology, astrology and the like,” she explained. “The Hebrew system’s the one I know best, that’s all.”
Gill nodded. “So what’s my number?”
“You’re a five,” she answered with certainty. “I already worked it out. You occasionally live on your nerves, but you’re also resourceful, resilient, multifaceted—just like the crystal. You can be sexy, too, and irresistible”—Varre snorted—“and clever. Sometimes you’re not too considerate, but you are well meaning. And you love travel.”
Dryly, Varre said, “World-hopping, for instance?”
Gill looked sideways at him, said, “What about him?”
“His number?” She worked it out. “Fifty-one! He’s a six, like me. Door number two-twenty-two—again. But he has three names. The three tempers the two: ambitious, proud, sometimes overbearing.”
Jack Turnbull totalled thirty-eight, which equalled eleven, or two—yet again. And David Anderson was a three.
“If we were to take this seriously,” Gill said, “door number two-twenty-two would seem the best choice.”
“You don’t take it seriously?” She seemed to be disappointed.
But Gill surprised her. “Yes, I do!” He grinned.
“You do?” Her excitement was back again.
Anderson. and Varre couldn’t believe their ears. They looked at Gill as if he were raving mad. “What?” said Anderson flatly. “You actually believe all of this rubbish we’ve just been subjected to? Gill, I begin to have serious—”
“Hold it,” Gill cut him off. “It’s not what we believe, it’s what he believed, Clayborne. The machine—crystal, House of Doors, whatever it is—shaped things to his way of thinking, his beliefs. And if it’s still working along the same lines—if it’s now tuned in to what we believe—”
“Two-twenty-two’s our door,” said Turnbull.
They moved as a body, stepping carefully in the dark, around the curve of the great crystal. And as they went, so doors number 444, 333, and 222 came into view.
“Incidentally,” Gill said as they came to a halt at a safe distance from the crystal, “what would Jon Bannerman’s number have been?”
Angela worked it out. “He was a seven,” she said. “But like threes and fives it won’t split down. Door number seven-seventy-seven would have been his door. Seven is the number of the scholar, the philosopher, the thinker. They’re reclusive and keep themselves a
part—which he did. They’re reserved and self-controlled, and powerfully intelligent. Seven’s aren’t quite of this world—of Earth, I mean—and they generally consider the great mass of humanity in a poor light.”
“All of a sudden I’m interested in numerology!” said Turnbull. He glanced at Gill’s dark silhouette. “So Bannerman was a seven, eh?”
His remark was like an invocation. Gill sensed it coming just half a second before it happened … .
CHAPTER THIRTY
Sith of the Thone had made several mistakes, was guilty of certain omissions. One mistake had been the loss of a surgical tool on the night he’d tried to kill Spencer Gill; another had been not to worry about it. He hadn’t because he’d known that no human being could ever understand it, divine its purpose, put it to use. He had omitted to credit Gill with that ability. Or perhaps in the back of his mind he had so credited him, only to put such thoughts aside because the chances were astronomically against Gill’s understanding. What—a simple rod of silver metal, dented, useless? Even if it were found, it would be tossed aside, buried in some scrap pile, lost. The human race was as negligent in its use of metals as in its misuse of liquids!
Another omission had been his failure to check on the progress of the test group. If he had—or if he’d checked the synthesizer’s recordings—then he might have hit upon one of those moments when Gill produced the tool to study it, perhaps even that moment when it had self-repaired. He would know that Gill had it, and might guess that he knew how to use it. Similarly he had failed to note the fact that the correction construct had lost its hypodermic; again, Sith might have checked the recordings to discover just how it was lost. But having done none of these things, he’d placed himself at a slight disadvantage—of which as yet he was completely unaware.
The one mistake he did know about, to which he must regrettably admit, had been a quite deliberate act at the time: to leave the Bannerman construct undisguised, in its original form, following that clash with Gill and Turnbull in Killin. Sith had been satisfied that merely restructuring the hand would suffice to disconnect him from that event. That had been sheer arrogance, an exuberant gesture of his superior psyche and entirely un-Thone. But he’d been bested by them once and so had desired to taunt them, almost to defy them to recognise him—which he believed Turnbull might finally have done. Well, what was done must now be undone. Sith must try to convince Turnbull that he was mistaken, and as soon as possible after reinserting himself into the game. The way he planned it, it shouldn’t prove too difficult. He’d already made his arrangements and inflicted a little necessary damage on the construct.
But to Sith’s great annoyance and just as he was about to vacate the control room through a duct into the synthesised world of the crystal, Miles Clayborne arrived. He was very badly burned, bursting out of his skin, and rimed with the hoar of deep space. In short, he was quite “dead”. Sith was not only annoyed but also surprised—and very curious. Obviously the synthesizer had been active to an extraordinary degree! What in the universe had Gill and the others—and especially Claybome—been up to? Eager to find out, Sith sealed Clayborne’s disgusting remains in a storage web and at last entered the duct … .
The House of Doors had nine sides at ground level, with doors numbered 111 to 999. Since Gill and the others stood back a little way from door number 444, number 777 was just out of sight, hidden by the curve of the great crystal. Therefore no one actually saw Bannerman emerge from 777—but they did all hear Gill’s hoarse cry of alarm in the instant before he grabbed Angela to him and carried her bruisingly to the hard, cutting scree.
After that there had sounded the reverberations of a great door slammed, its echoes bouncing off the mountains, and in the weirdness of the ensuing, ringing silence human cries of terror—cries for assistance—from around the crystal’s curve.
Shaken and trembling, Gill was on his feet again, helping Angela up and urging her away from the crystal, when Bannerman appeared. He came staggering from behind the House of Doors, his clothes in tatters and feet a bloody mess inside flopping, shattered shoes. He held his arms out wide before him, claw hands groping at the air, feeling his way like a man in total darkness—or like a blind man.
“Help!” he called again, hoarsely, croakingly. “For God’s sake—is anyone there?”
Paralysed with shock and horror, they could only watch as he stumbled on sharp stones, collided with a corner of the crystal and fell. But as he climbed painfully, groaningly to his feet. again, they moved towards him in a body and began to understand something of his condition. His hair had been scorched to stubble on his head and his hands were blistered, raw and bleeding. He looked like he’d crashed headlong through a burning thorn tree. And his eyes … were the colour of sour milk and quite blank, reflecting only the pale yellow pulse of the freshly risen moon.
“Blind!” Anderson gasped—and Bannerman heard him.
“Anderson?” His voice was almost childlike, pleading, wanting to hope but scarcely daring to. “Is that you? Why don’t you speak to me?” He came stumbling towards them.
Angela flew to him, a sob in her voice as she said, “Oh, you poor man! Yes, it’s us, Jon. All of us—except Haggie and Miles Clayborne. They’re … not with us.”
“Angela? And … the rest of you?” Now he believed.
“We’re here, Jon,” said Anderson as Angela took Bannerman’s hand.
He grasped her, clasped her to him, cried, “Then it’s a … a miracle! God, I was never much of a believer, but I believe in you now!”
Gill and Turnbull swapped glances, Turnbull’s a little sheepish. But Gill still wasn’t quite sure. Here in the vicinity of the House of Doors—especially now, with the crystal still active, if temporarily stable—alien machine presence was just too great to distinguish between Bannerman and the major source of activity. Gill’s sixth sense was swamped by his awareness of the crystal.
“Sit down before you fall again.” Angela found Bannerman a seat on a flat stone. “Here, let me help you. There.” She had to crouch beside him, because he wouldn’t let go of her hand.
“What happened to you?” Varre was over his astonishment. “The last time we saw you was in that cave on the escarpment, when we settled down to sleep.”
“What happened to me?” Bannerman’s voice was a little deeper now, more the voice they would normally associate with him. His terror and hysteria were ebbing, relief and exhaustion flooding in to replace them.
And Gill thought: If this is an act, it’s a good one. And: Would he really go so far as to blind himself?
“I’ll tell you what happened,” Bannerman continued. “I thought I heard something. Whatever it was, it woke me up. I left the cave and went to the rim of the escarpment. Down there in the forests, things were on the move, shrieking and fighting. Then I saw something—an impossibly huge insect thing—climbing up the cliff towards me. It had reached an overhang and was having difficulty bypassing it. I thought it might have smelled us out and was on its way up to get us!”
Gill asked, “Can you describe this thing you saw?”
Bannerman nodded and gave the description of the hunting machine. “I found a loose boulder and rolled it to the rim,” he continued. “The thing had just about manoeuvred itself up over the obstruction when I toppled the boulder down on it. I knocked it loose, thought I’d done for it. But … it fell only a little way, onto a ledge. And it clung there. It looked up at me with its faceted eyes, and they shone on me like powerful beams—like lasers! They blinded me in a moment, and the pain was so terrific that I … I must have blacked out. Since then … God, you tell me where I’ve been!” His voice had started to break.
Angela tried to comfort him, and in a little while he went on. “I’ve been in deserts where the sun burned me, swamps where things like flatfish clung to my thighs, a place where everything I touched was sharp as broken glass. Finally I was finished, had given up hope. Then … I found myself in a place of fires and terrific heat; and
when I was just about ready to lie down and die, then I heard a voice.” He turned towards Angela where she crouched beside him. “I think it was your voice. I forced myself to move in your direction, and—” He paused, shrugged, blinked his blind eyes in the bland moonlight. “Here I am.”
“She spoke your number,” Turnbull told him. “She … called you through a door? Door number seven-seventy-seven.”
Gill said, “Jack, will you come with me?” As Turnbull joined him, Gill looked at the others. “Stay here. Take care of Bannerman. We’ll be back.”
They walked round to the front of the crystal, to door number 777. At its base the scree had been disturbed. Several slabs of loose stone had been sliced through like blocks of cheese; their flat faces lay flush against the door’s obsidian panel. Next door, 666 was the same. Both doors had been activated; since they knew about 666, obviously Bannerman had emerged from 777. Gill shook his head in blank astonishment. “If Clayborne’s mind really did help fashion this place,” he said, “then it was a weirder mind than even we suspected. What bothers me especially is that he’s still influencing things. Damn it, this was his world! We’re not just inside a machine, but a machine programmed by a madman!”
Turnbull looked at Gill’s moon-yellowed silhouette. “And Bannerman? What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Gill answered. “Part of me is inclined to say he’s okay, but there’s another part—”
Both men gave massive starts, felt their hearts start to race in their chests. From far away along the ridge of the mountains, a bloodcurdling sound had reached down to them, a sound awesome enough in its rightful place, but one which should never be heard in a place like this. It was a howling—but very different from that howling they’d heard in the world of the great escarpment. This one was a deep, throbbing, ululant baying. And it seemed entirely familiar.