She looked at Happy; and after a moment or two, so did everyone else. Happy straightened up and scowled back at them.
“I’m really not going to like this, am I?”
“Do you ever?” said JC. “What do you have in mind, Melody?”
“We need what’s in his mind,” said Melody. “Sufficiently refocused and boosted . . . My scanners have been picking up tachyon emissions for some time. Yes, I know, they’re not really, but let’s all pretend they are . . . They’re still here, along with the unnatural energies that produced them. I am pretty sure I can get my machines to lock on to these energies and reproduce the conditions that made contact with the future possible. Establish a sort of bridge, or tunnel, between Here and Now and whatever lies ahead. And then you, Happy, will blast a tightly focused telepathic bellow along this bridge to whoever’s listening in the future.”
“I can see a problem already,” said Happy. “Even if I could shout that loudly, without all my little grey cells leaking out my ears, I won’t only be attracting the attention of our future selves. That kind of telepathic volume would be heard by all kinds of nasty things from Outside. The kinds of things we really don’t want to notice us.”
“That’s why I said tightly focused,” said Melody.
“You really believe I can generate a telepathic voice loud enough to reach the future?” said Happy. “I’d be hard-pressed to reach London from here. On a good day! And good days seem to be in increasingly short supply as I get older.”
“We can boost your signal,” Melody said carefully. “With the right chemical support and inducements.”
“The drugs do work,” said Happy. “It’s the after-effects . . .”
The radio staff looked at each other. It was clear they weren’t following any of this. The Ghost Finders ignored them, intent on their own business.
“I don’t want to do this,” said Happy. “I really don’t, JC. I’m already so full of pills that different parts of my brain are beating each other up. There’s a limit to what even my system will put up with. I haven’t found it yet, but logic says there has to be one.”
JC frowned thoughtfully. “Do you think this is a good idea, Melody?”
“I think it’s necessary,” said Melody. “It’s dangerous, yes. We have no idea what kind of dosage Happy will need. I’ll help work it out, but . . .”
“But the world is going to end,” said JC. “Tomorrow.”
“All right!” said Happy. “I get it . . .”
“No you don’t,” said Melody. “You can’t properly appreciate all the risks involved because you’ve never tried anything like this before. JC . . . I need time to work this through. To calculate the proper dosages and the best combinations . . . Put in some safeguards! To give him the best possible chance of surviving this.”
“We don’t have time,” said JC.
“I won’t let you force him into this!” said Melody.
“It was your idea,” said JC.
Melody glared at him. “We can’t . . . mess with his head without taking proper precautions!”
“Yes we can,” said Happy. “Remember; I saw what the future did to you. I swore I would put my life on the line, put my death on the line, to make sure that future you would never happen. And I meant it. I will do anything, risk anything, to save you from that. So, no more talk, Mel. Let’s do it.”
Melody came forward and stood before him, staring into his eyes. And then she took him in her arms and held him. Happy let her do it. He patted her back comfortingly. Melody hadn’t realised how much he was shaking until she held him. After a while, she let him go and stepped back. They shared a small smile, then she took him by the hand and led him over to the reception desk. Once again, they sat down together, and Happy took out all his pill boxes and bottles. He set them out before him, and Melody began sorting through them.
“What the hell is going on there?” Felicity said loudly. “Are those drugs?”
“Far too small a word, for what these little beauties can do,” said Happy, not looking up from what he was doing. “Call them medicines, if that helps you feel more comfortable.”
“I get it,” said Captain Sunshine. “I have been here before . . . Feed your head, expand you consciousness, right? Like injecting rocket fuel into the motor of your mind. What my generation used to call the mind’s true liberation.”
He wandered over to the reception desk and watched, fascinated, as a massive collection of pills slowly assembled in front of Happy. The Captain leaned right over the table for a better look at the discarded empty boxes and bottles, his lips moving slowly as he worked out the handwritten labels. And then he straightened up again and looked doubtfully at Happy.
“Damn, man, I thought I’d seen pretty much everything in my time; but I don’t recognise half this shit. Mandrake Root? St. John the Conqueror’s Elixir? Red Death, Green Wyrm, Blue Meanies. In my day, it was all brown acid and purple hearts . . .”
“I could provide you with the chemical formulae,” said Melody, not looking up.
“It would all be wasted on me,” the Captain said cheerfully. “You don’t need to know how a television set works to turn it on. I have to ask, though . . . some of those pills are seriously dangerous, right?”
“Right,” said Melody.
The Captain nodded ruefully and moved away from the desk. “If the medicine didn’t taste bad, you wouldn’t know it was doing you good . . .”
Melody pushed a few last pills forward, her lips moving quickly as she added up dosages in her head. She considered adding a few more, decided against it, then she and Happy quietly considered the huge assortment of multi-coloured pills. Happy smiled, briefly.
“I am seriously impressed! Even a few years ago, I would never have dared attempt some of these dosages, never mind all of them together. A rainbow collection, a chemical cornucopia. Boys and girls, just say, Fuck no!”
“You don’t have to do this,” said Melody.
“Yes I do,” said Happy.
“You don’t have to do it for me, Happy!”
“Yes I do, Mel. For you; and the world. Perhaps because I wouldn’t want to live in a world that didn’t have you in it. You as you. The future will make you into a monstrous thing, Mel. A thing, made to kill other things. I was dead in that future world; and the Beast made you kill me again and again. Can you think of a better definition of Hell, for you and for me?”
Melody shook her head slowly. “How did we come to this?”
“Comes with the job,” said Happy. “I’ve always known that.”
They both looked at the piled-up pills. Happy reached out and pushed a few pills around with a fingertip. As though he still couldn’t quite believe what he was contemplating doing.
“Think this is enough?” said Melody, trying to smile. “Think this will do it?”
“I think there’s enough chemical dynamite here to blow the Doors of Perception right off their hinges and into next door’s garden,” said Happy. “Enough medical mayhem to let me see God and make me brave enough to spit in her eye. With all this blasting through my head, I could make anyone hear me. But there’s no way I can drop this much shit into my system, and not suffer the consequences. The pills will send my mind up and out; but there’s a more than reasonable chance that I won’t be coming back, afterwards. So I need you to promise me, Mel. Don’t let me linger. In some hospital back room, with only machines to keep me going. Promise me. If you have to, you’ll do what’s necessary.”
“Don’t talk like that,” said Melody.
“I have to. Who else can I trust?”
“I promise,” said Melody. “Now take your damned pills.”
“I am going to need a really big glass of water for this,” said Happy.
“I’ll get you one.”
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
While all that was going on, Jonathan and Felicity joined forces to interrogate JC. Not an easy task, given that they didn’t properly understand
what was happening or what the proper questions were to ask. JC nodded and smiled politely, gave them as much truth as he thought they could handle, and remained properly evasive over everything else. On the grounds that even if he could make them understand all the consequences and implications of what they were about try, they almost certainly wouldn’t thank him for it.
“So this is your big idea?” Felicity said finally, after JC had walked them through it for the third time. “You’re going to feed your pet junkie mind-reader a massive overdose, so he can shout at the future?”
“Got it in one!” JC said happily. “I knew we’d get there eventually.”
“And you really think this is going to work?” said Jonathan.
“The theory seems sound,” JC said carefully. “If you have any other ideas, I am definitely willing to listen . . . No? Well, colour me surprised. Look, people, we’re going to do this because we don’t have anything else. And a really awful future is heading straight for us like a racing train with really big horns on the front. Let us hope that when we finally do place our call to the future, someone will be there at the other end of the line. Someone who can tell us whatever the hell it is we need to do.”
He broke off. They all looked round, at the sound of someone sobbing. Captain Sunshine was holding Sally in his arms and doing his best to comfort her, as she cried like a hurt child. The young receptionist had her face buried in the Captain’s chest, tears streaming down her face, cutting tracks in her make-up. She clung to Captain Sunshine like a small child hanging on to a parent because something had come out of the dark to frighten her.
“I want to go home,” she said miserably, forcing the words past her ragged sobbing. “I don’t want to be here . . . It’s horrid here.”
“Hush, hush,” said the Captain. “Hang in there, girl. It’ll all be over soon.”
He shot a look at JC, who nodded. All be over soon. Yes. One way or another.
Captain Sunshine got Sally settled onto a nearby chair and stood protectively over her. He was still holding one of her hands because she wouldn’t let go of it. She was still crying.
Jonathan and Tom moved off together, talking quietly. Felicity glared around at everyone but had run out of things to say. JC watched silently as Melody fed Happy his pills, one at a time, with a lot of water. The telepath’s throat worked convulsively, as he struggled to get some of them down. Melody held on to his free hand, doing her best to be quietly supportive. Her mouth was firm, her eyes bright with tears she refused to shed in front of Happy. She didn’t say anything. There was nothing left to say.
She was feeding him poison, death in small doses, and they both knew it.
All the colour dropped out of Happy’s face as he forced down the pills. Sweat broke out in heavy beads all across his forehead, then coursed down his face, to drip off his nose and his chin. His hand shook inside Melody’s. But he got them all down; and then sat back in his chair, breathing hard. Like a runner before a race; like a warrior before a battle; like a man scared out of his mind by what he was doing but doing it anyway.
Not for the world, or even for the future. For the woman he loved.
“How are you feeling, Happy?” said Melody.
“I don’t know . . . Hot. Sick. Exhilarated and enlightened. Everything seems so far away from me. Including me. Better do this soon, Mel. While I still remember what it is I’m supposed to be doing.”
“I have to talk to JC for a moment,” said Melody. “I won’t be far.”
“That’s what you think,” said Happy.
“Man,” Captain Sunshine said respectfully. “That was what the blessed Timothy Leary would have called a properly Heroic Dose. Are you sure you can find your way back from the trip you’re going on?”
Happy didn’t answer him. He didn’t look as though he’d even heard the Captain. His face was flushed and twitching and running with sweat. His gaze was fixed on something far away, something he didn’t like looking at. JC moved in beside the Captain.
“Happy will have a life-line,” said JC. “Melody’s building it right now.”
Melody worked hard behind her machines, ripping bits out from here and there, improvising wildly as she cobbled together something she hoped would do the job. The others wanted to watch, but JC knew Melody didn’t take kindly to being observed, so he chivvied everyone into taking seats around the reception desk, setting them in a rough semicircle facing Happy. One look at his strained face, and his wide staring eyes, was enough to make them all distinctly uneasy. Sally didn’t want to be there at all, but the Captain persuaded her, and made a point of sitting next to her. Jonathan and Tom kept looking at JC, hoping for some sign of reassurance. Felicity scowled at him, making it clear that as far as she was concerned, whatever happened next was all his fault.
“The machines are working,” Melody said finally. “Renewing the necessary conditions for a controlled temporal break, a direct link between the Present and the future, cutting out the middleman and slamming the edges together.”
“How?” said Tom, desperately trying to understand. “How is any of that even possible?”
“It wouldn’t mean anything to you if I did explain, which I probably couldn’t anyway, so what’s the point?” Melody said reasonably. “I’m making this shit up as I go along. What amazes me is how often that works . . . Hello; we’re getting something.”
They all looked at her. Her array of instruments shook and juddered, rattling on their supports and bouncing up and down. Strange lights blasted out of the monitor screens, and dark, crackling energies danced on the air above the array, like fuzzy ink-blots staining the air. Melody carefully withdrew her hands from the keyboards.
“Okay, that’s interesting. The computers seem to be doing the rest of the work on their own, programming themselves. Crafty little beggars; they’ve been holding out on me. Ah well, time for phase two. Work your worry beads if you’ve got them.”
She grabbed her cobbled-together piece of tech and carried it out from behind the array, holding it out before her as though it was both very fragile and very dangerous. She knelt and placed it carefully on the motorised trolley, which hummed loudly and importantly to itself. Melody then unrolled a length of heavy cable, plugged one end into her shaking array and the other into the back of the machine on the trolley. She went back to her array, slapped at one of the jumpier computers until it settled down, then studied her readouts for a long moment. She nodded to herself in a satisfied but still-uneasy way, and tapped a series of cautious commands into her main keyboard. The trolley chugged steadily away, out into the open centre of the reception area, the heavy cable unravelling behind it. The trolley reached its destination, a carefully judged distance away from everything else, and stopped.
“Right,” said Melody. “That particular piece of tech should act as a homing signal, or beacon, for Happy’s mind to hang on to. So he can find his way home. Not a particularly pretty piece of tech but not bad for something I knocked together in a hurry. In fact, I’m not at all sure I understand how it works . . . I get the feeling I may have picked up the necessary information from this room. Happy said the aether here was saturated with information. I think . . . our future selves sent back the necessary information, along with their voices, and we’re only picking it up now we need it. Clever future selves . . . Anyway, once we’re ready, I’ll goose the array, and it should establish our bridging tunnel. Then it’s up to Happy to shout his head off. Happy . . . Happy! Are you listening to me?”
“Yes, I can hear you,” said Happy. His voice seemed as distant as his eyes. He didn’t look at her.
“The tech is your anchor, Happy! Don’t lose hold of it, no matter how far you send your thoughts. It’s your way home.”
“How are you feeling, Happy?” said JC.
“I wish people would stop asking me that,” said Happy. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“Not really, no,” said Melody.
He looked like shit. They could all see that.
But none of them wanted to say it.
“I am large,” said the telepath. “I contain multitudes. And they’re all running round and round in my head, fighting to get out.” He turned his head slowly back and forth, seeming to finally take in the people seated before him. His eyes were large and dark and unblinking. “I can See you all . . . shining, so very brightly. If you could only see how wonderfully you all shine, in the dark of the world . . . Let’s do it.”
Melody’s hands moved quickly across her keyboards. The motorised trolley trundled forward a few yards, went round and round for a bit, then stopped as it found exactly the right place. It beeped self-importantly, and the mechanism it carried glowed suddenly, in a series of brisk pulses.
Everyone sitting around the reception desk sat up straight in their chairs and looked quickly about them. They could all feel something forming in the room, gathering strength and purpose. A growing presence, as though another person had appeared in the room. Happy’s chemically augmented mind reached out in some new direction that they could all sense but not name. Happy, they all thought. It’s Happy. He’s doing it. He’s really doing it.
Melody’s machines roared and chattered as they blasted all kinds of light around the room. She had to turn her head and look away from some of them, they were so bright. Deep, impenetrable shadows gathered, at the furthest edges of the reception area, as though something were closing in. The trolley jumped up and down in place, but the piece of tech it was carrying didn’t seem to be doing anything at all. The conditions weren’t right yet. Happy sat very still in his chair, his face empty, but they could all feel the power gathering around him. Nothing they could see or hope to understand; but they knew it was there. There was a sense . . . of a gulf forming. Like staring down into a deep, deep well, with something at the bottom, staring back.