As if that thought were an evocation, Ganzer felt a sudden sharp chill, a stabbing pain, a deep-frozen ice pick gouging at his mind: prelude to a voice that said, Gunter, we are waiting!
That voice—the telepathic voice of the female member of the Three—spurred him to activity as nothing else ever could. And with his twisted, in fact his reversed, left foot dragging, he limped across the concourse to the wicket door, and was let into the complex by the armed guard on duty.
Inside, in keeping with the mighty cavern that housed it, the former administrative area was vast despite that its space was but a fraction of Schloss Zonigen’s total volume. As usual the place was mainly vacant; it echoed like a gothic cathedral, an empty hangar, or disused railway station; but from corridors, chambers, workshops, and various levels buried deep within came the faintly echoing hum and throb that spoke of no small level of industrious activity. And for all Ganzer’s familiarity with every nook and cranny of the place, still he remained ignorant of what was being fashioned here. And not only the “Direktor,” but each and every one of the one hundred eighty plus persons who worked here . . . with the exception of the Three.
They knew, of course, unless they were insane. As to that, Ganzer couldn’t say, but he knew they were evil for a fact—at which he gave a start, wincing in anticipation as again he felt that icy flow of thoughts and heard: Gunter, do not loiter!
From behind the long marble reception and information desk (as it had once been and still was ostensibly, though it served now as a work and quota distribution center) a clerk was beckoning him. Hobbling over, Ganzer asked, “Where are they?”
“In there,” the hollow-eyed man husked, indicating a glass-fronted room or recess in the solid rock wall at the far end of the desk. “The VIP Room. They’ve got some new people with them. A family, the poor bastards!”
Ganzer nodded his acknowledgment and hurried as best as possible in that direction, only pausing at the glass door to throw off his overcoat, adjust his tie, and wipe his sweating hands on a pocket handkerchief. It was strange, but even in Schloss Zonigen’s colder places he was wont to perspire. Or perhaps not so strange, for even his sweat was cold.
Behind the VIP Room’s frosted glass frontage, he saw four seated figures and two standing. The images of the latter were blurred, but from their height and stick-thin outlines he knew who they were: two of the Three; the terrible female and one of the males. Ganzer found it easier to think of them that way: as creatures, not as men and women but as male and female. Indeed, he was by no means certain that they weren’t creatures! But he knew it was the female who had called him.
He knocked, and without waiting for a response entered. He was, after all, the Herr Direktor . . . the role in which She now greeted him:
“Direktor Ganzer!” She smiled at him. “We are so very glad you could make it.” (This entirely in keeping with the scenario and without a touch of sarcasm.) “For as you can see, we’ve had unexpected guests: the Steins.” Very politely, the seated persons stood up; the husband in his early forties, small and slim, wearing thick-lensed spectacles on a thin nose; his wife, seven or eight years younger, pretty, blonde, smiling a little uncertainly; their children, a boy and girl, perhaps seven and nine years old respectively.
“Ah, the Steins!” said Ganzer, extending his now dry right hand toward Herr Stein, who took and firmly shook it. And trying his hardest not to gabble, Ganzer quickly went on, “I am so very sorry I wasn’t here to greet you when you arrived! But . . . am I not correct in believing that your interview was scheduled for tomorrow?” (He took a deep breath . . . he allowed himself to relax a very little . . . he was off the hook, he wasn’t to blame! Thank God! Oh, thank God!) “Indeed,” Ganzer continued, controlling himself more surely now, “I’m quite certain that such was the arrangement.”
“Well, you see—” a slightly concerned Herr Stein commenced to say, only to be interrupted by She, the female member of the Three, who called herself (at least on paper) Frau Lessing:
“It appears there have been complications, Gunter. You are of course correct about the arrangements: we were due to interview Herr Stein—Herr Roberto Stein—tomorrow. And the family have been staying in the village for a few days in anticipation of their visit.”
(Oh, yes, as usual, the entire family! Ganzer knew exactly what that meant. And he wanted to scream, “Run! Get out of here—keep your children safe! Don’t let her—don’t let any of these monsters—so much as touch them!” But he said nothing, and was probably too late even if he’d dared.)
Smiling still and continuing to address Ganzer, Frau Lessing, or “Gerda” when it was deemed necessary, went on: “Gunter, as you are aware from Herr Stein’s excellent references, he was recently employed on experimental high-intensity laser technology in Zurich’s Schröeder Institute. And on that basis, and one of trust—his word that he will make no disclosure on anything he may see here—we’ve already escorted him around certain of the laboratories. But—”
But now it was Herr Stein’s turn to cut in, and to Ganzer he said, “Even though I am not yet familiar with the nature of the work being done here, which is understandably secret, still I find myself amazed at the size of your workshops and laboratories, your excellent equipment, and the advanced technologies which you appear to be developing and employing! But I am also very interested to know how the experiments you are conducting apply to Schloss Zonigen’s original, er, concept. For frankly, the consensus among the most respected scientists of our times is that the cryogenic suspension of bodies, with the intention of eventual revitalization, is, well, how best to put it—?”
“Far-fetched?” Now the male member of the Three—the one who called himself Guyler Schweitzer—spoke up, his voice deep, resonant, but deceptively quiet. And allowing himself a condescending smile, he continued. “Perhaps it was, when this facility first opened. And of course we know the history of Schloss Zonigen and that of the alleged fraud who ran it. But the truth of the matter is that he did succeed, at least in the preservation of his clients. Most certainly he succeeded, for they are still here, still frozen! And the more the future extends itself, the more feasible their resurrection becomes.”
And so back to Gerda Lessing. “Herr Stein,” she addressed the visitor. “One of Schloss Zonigen’s principals—a one-third owner of this facility, along with myself and Herr Schweitzer—is presently engaged upon a routine inspection of the cryogenic units with members of our technical staff. The principal’s name is Simon Salcombe. Perhaps we can take advantage of this coincidence. If you desire to see for yourself what can be achieved, I believe we might arrange it.”
“You mean right now, today?” Stein was eager to accept.
Frau Lessing nodded. “This very minute.”
“But how could I refuse?”
“Except,” she quickly went on, “your family . . . your wife and children . . . certain things are not at all pleasant to look upon. I am sure you will understand . . . ?”
“Oh, indeed!” said Stein at once. “My wife and the children will wait here, certainly.” He turned to his wife, who had once more seated herself upon an upholstered couch. “Mira, you wouldn’t mind, would you, dear? And I shall be as quick as possible.” Mira made no answer.
“You do realize,” said Guyler Schweitzer in that quiet and totally deceptive way of his, “that the same restrictions apply as before? We’re not quite ready to excite the curiosity of the entire scientific community with regard to our successes here.”
Herr Stein, yet more eager, nodded his understanding. “But of course. I would never dream of breaking a trust. I mean—”
“Yes, of course,” said Guyler Schweitzer. And he turned to Ganzer. “In that case we shall persuade Direktor Ganzer here to conduct you to the cryogenic facility. Gunter?”
To which Ganzer could only reply: “Delighted! My pleasure, I assure you.” (His pleasure? A ghastly joke! In truth it could only be an extension of the nightmare. For Simon Salcombe—the ab
sent member of the Three—was already down there in the ice tunnels, down among the frozen dead, doing the monstrous things he did; the things that all three of them could do, whether the flesh they did it to was living or dead!)
Frau Lessing moved to a desk with an intercom, pressed one of two dozen buttons, and spoke into a microphone. “Erik Hauser, attend the VIP Room for escort duty, if you please.” The if-you-please was completely redundant, of course, a small part of the overall subterfuge. As for Erik Hauser: he was a trustee and, from Ganzer’s viewpoint, a collaborator. But then, weren’t they all? Wasn’t anyone who knew what was happening here and yet did nothing about it? No, not really. Because, like Ganzer himself, not one of Schloss Zonigen’s slaves dared do anything about it. The penalties he would have to pay were simply too high. And if not him, then his loved ones. And Ganzer knew all about that.
But so-called trustees, like Hauser . . . well, he enjoyed the imagined position of power that came from his obedience (or his obeisance?) to those who were more powerful yet. And Ganzer knew why She had called him: to watch over himself and Stein on their tour of the frozen tombs. To make absolutely sure nothing untoward was said. For it wasn’t unlikely that Frau Lessing had read something of Ganzer’s thoughts, or she may have seen something in his face when he met the Steins: that pretty wife, and those innocent children.
“The poor bastards,” as the clerk on duty at the reception desk had phrased it . . .
15
The trustee called Erik Hauser was a slab-faced, five-foot-six, arrogant, overweight blimp of a man with narrow eyes, a sloping forehead, and the supercilious attitude of someone who was sure he was something in a world full of nothings. He was trusted by the Three, who treated Hauser and a handful of others just like him as their personal pet sniffer dogs; not to hunt for explosives or drugs, but to seek out would-be troublemakers, rebels, insurgents. It served their purpose to trust such men, because while the Three could be anywhere, they couldn’t be everywhere, and the implementation of mind-taps—mental contact—with all of their workers all of the time just wasn’t feasible; it would be too exhausting, too time-consuming.
And of course there were rewards that men of Erik Hauser’s “caliber” simply couldn’t resist. For example: utterly unappealing to the opposite sex, he had never known a woman in that way except for the ones he’d paid for, and even then he’d sometimes been refused. But in Schloss Zonigen, where there were certain “emoluments” to be earned, this wasn’t a problem. Sex, like an allowance of fish to trained, well-behaved dolphins, was regularly doled out to trustees as a premium, commensurate with the adequate performance of their duties; this on the understanding that anyone who availed himself of this “privilege” wasn’t too fussy about the physical and sometimes mental condition of the imprisoned woman he was effectively raping—which Hauser and a good many others just like him weren’t.
And Gunter Ganzer hated, indeed loathed and could happily kill Erik Hauser, who was wont on occasion to ask him in quiet, private asides: “How’s your missus, Gunter—you old ‘Direktor’ you? Still visit her now and then, do you? I was thinking, perhaps I’ll drop in and see how she’s doing—have a nice little, er, chat, with her—you know? So if you’ve got anything you’d like me to tell her, any little message I could pass on during our, er, conversation . . . ?” And with a suggestive chuckle, whistling a merry little tune, he’d then go waddling off about his dirty duties.
Ganzer had dared approach Guyler Schweitzer with the problem one time. And Schweitzer had told him, “Pay no attention to him. We don’t allow such. He is provoking you, who was once his superior. He would perhaps like you to attack him—would then report you—and we must needs punish you for causing an incident, an unsettling disturbance. I am sure you don’t want that, do you, Gunter?”
“No, sir, of course not. But I—”
“As for your wife: you should see her more frequently; see for yourself that she remains safe. And I shall ensure that she is more . . . lucid, if or when you desire to visit her. Only try to remember, Gunter, that when our work is done here everything shall be as it was, returned to its former condition. If things should go awry, however—if we find our work obstructed in any way—then nothing is guaranteed. Currently your wife is alive and one day she may even be well again, her infirmities mended; everything depends upon your own conduct, Gunter. So do nothing to change the status quo but believe me when I say that however unsatisfactory things may appear, still where you are concerned they are far superior to what they might so easily become.”
“But, sir—”
“And now you are beginning to annoy me, which is a dangerous thing to do!”
A warning that had been followed by a rare and terrifying event, something Ganzer had witnessed only once or twice before in all the five years of the Three’s occupancy of Schloss Zonigen. For as he mumbled his apologies and tried to back off from Schweitzer, so the man—if he was a man, which Ganzer had long doubted—leaned forward, reached out a long arm and claw hand, caught him by the shoulder, and lowered his narrow head with its silvery comb and black eyes seated in crater darkness to stare deep into Ganzer’s eyes. Then:
Schweitzer’s head had jerked in an apparently involuntary spastic movement, and beneath his jaw in the hollow of his long neck something had moved, pulsing and bulging out his skin. His flesh had seemed momentarily to part, splitting open and permitting a sudden eruption—a bubble of greeny-grey matter as big as a child’s head—to swell forth. Detaching itself, the thing had flowed around Schweitzer’s neck, up onto his narrow sloping left shoulder, where it extended a pseudopod of writhing purple matter into his small round ear.
And then his look, scarcely benevolent in the first place, if ever, immediately changed. No sign of any previous tolerance now, his deep-sunken eyes seemed to smoulder as they glared into Ganzer’s. By which time the loathsome thing on Schweitzer’s shoulder had developed features; it, too, had staring eyes and small black nostrils that sniffed, but no ears and no mouth—nothing to speak with—and yet Ganzer could hear it speaking to Guyler Schweitzer:
Will you hurt him now, Mordri?
“No!” Schweitzer (or Mordri) had answered out loud. “Causing him pain would serve no purpose but only waste my energies, wherefore I will not. You must not tempt me, Khiff!”
But it would serve a purpose, Mordri. If only to . . . amuse me? And I have been so bored recently.
(And Ganzer, wincing from Schweitzer’s iron grip and knowing he must be hallucinating, had wondered—“How can an almost featureless, bodiless thing like this contrive such a monstrous look of pure evil on its jelly-blob face?”)
“You shall have your amusement later,” Schweitzer had meanwhile answered the thing. “If I were to leave you awhile with a prisoner, then you could amuse yourself all you wish.”
And as Schweitzer had released Ganzer, thrusting him away, the monster on his shoulder had grown excited, saying: You will leave me with one of the prisoners? With a female? You promise?
“I promise.”
With this one’s female, perhaps?
“Perhaps. For it may yet teach him a lesson: not to bother me with trivialities.”
With which the thing had fashioned a mouth, laughing maniacally before shrivelling down into itself and entering through Schweitzer’s ear into his head!
And Gunter Ganzer had fled gibbering, doubting his sanity, from the tall man’s—the tall creature’s—apartments, with Schweitzer calling after him, “Yes, run Gunter! Run as fast as you can, before I change my mind!”
So much for complaining to one of the Three . . . to any one of them. As he’d fled Gunter Ganzer had wondered: what would be worse? A thing like that with his wife—doing whatever it did—or an animal like Erik Hauser, doing what he would obviously do? It was difficult to know, and far worse to think about.
But at least Hauser was a human animal. Barely, anyway . . .
Fitted out with hooded parkas and overboots, Herr Stein, Ganzer,
and Hauser, led by the latter, had made their way down into the maze of natural caves and tunnels once filled with ice. How the labyrinth had been formed, in what geological age: these things were anybody’s guess. But now the ice formed an inner sheath on translucent ceilings, walls, and floors, where passages had been carved through the glittering, bluely luminescent, once-glacial deposits. The footsteps of the three made muffled, softly thudding echoes where the only other sounds were the slow, far drip of water and those of their muted conversation.
At least, they had started out talking, but Ganzer’s fearful thoughts and memories had been distracting him for the last five minutes or so. Now, vaguely aware that Stein had said something to him, questioned him, he gave a sudden start, came back to earth and said, “Eh?” when the scientist repeated his question:
“I was inquiring about your principals,” said Stein, just a little impatiently. “Why do they insist on meeting the families of prospective employees? It seems odd to me.”
Hauser, having fallen to the rear, now gave Ganzer a prod in the back by way of saying, “Wake up, Gunter, you old ‘Direktor’ you!”
“Ah, yes! I’m sorry!” said Ganzer. “I was miles away!” (He wished that he really had been.) “My principals? I believe it’s a trend out of America, yes. They like to ensure that the prospective employee’s family life is settled, well established. No disrespect intended, you understand, but a happy man is usually a better worker. And in Schloss Zonigen continuity is a necessity. The principals don’t much care for . . . well, disruptions.”
Nodding, Stein answered, “Yes, I believe I understand that well enough. But tell me, what am I to make of it if an unknown person tries to advise me —indeed, to warn me—to stay away from here, and under no circumstance to bring my wife and children here? For you see, that is what has happened.”