Dimension Of Horror Part 20

Steadying himself against the wall, Lord Leighton shambled toward the Program Stop b.u.t.ton. Richard could see the sweat break out, glistening, on Leighton's high wrinkled forehead.

Eight. Seven. The numbers were flickering.

On the count of six the heavy curved door of the launch case swung shut, plunging Richard into darkness. A low hum began. Richard thought, What's Leighton doing? If only I could see him . . . Imagination supplied an image of Leighton's bony finger extending toward the Program Stop b.u.t.ton.

Then darkness turned into blazing golden light.

Chapter 14.

Each voyage into Dimension X was different, yet all had certain features in common. There would be a period of wild imagery, dreamlike, but with an urgency unmatched by any except the worst of nightmares, then there would be sensations of motion, of incredible speed. Then there would be physical sensations experienced with a curious detachment. Cold. Heat. Unbearable pain that somehow did not really hurt. Always before Richard had taken these things pa.s.sively, letting them happen.

He could no longer afford that luxury.

It had been because of a failure of critical judgment that the Ngaa had trapped him. The Ngaa, master of illusion, had made him believe he was still between dimensions for some time after he had arrived on the "other side." It had taken advantage of his pa.s.sive att.i.tude to establish a hypnotic control Richard had not been able to break until that night in the plane over London when he had been commanded to kill J and had resisted, a control that even then had only gradually faded, a control that-Who knows?-might still exert some influence on Blade's subconscious mind.

Richard thought, I must distinguish illusion from reality, or the Ngaa will win.

Sometimes Richard landed in a new universe fully conscious, but more often he blacked out for some undetermined period before awakening in an unfamiliar and usually dangerous environment. This time he must not black out! The Ngaa knew he was coming.

Richard thought, I am awake now. I will stay awake.

The golden light was rus.h.i.+ng past all the while in total silence, as if he were falling faster and faster into clouds of bright gas or dust. Falling. A terrible vertigo threatened to possess him, but he pushed it away with the thought, This is illusion.

The light seemed to hold faces, naked bodies. They flashed by like streaks of flame, gazing at him with gaunt anguish. Illusion, Richard thought again.

But their eyes were so haunted, their bodies so wasted with disease, starvation and age, their heads so skull-like. Could there be concentration camps here in the void between universes? Could there be Spanish Inquisitions? Plagues? Witch hunts? Illusion! Illusion!

But now he could begin to hear their voices, their wails of wordless agony.

Nothing but illusion!

Wordless? It seemed to Richard he could begin to understand them.

"Help!" they were crying. "Help! Help us!"

The golden light was s.h.i.+fting to a dull, dim blue, and Richard felt cold, an infinite cold that made his swim in the Thames seem summery.

"Help!" they called out again and again.

How could he refuse them? He was a human being, and so were they.

Or were they? An instant before he stretched out his hand to one of the pa.s.sing figures, he noticed the teeth.

The teeth! Long, stained with brownish red.

These were not humans at all, but vampires.

"Help!" they howled, grinning, leering, mocking.

Illusion! Yet here between one s.p.a.ce-time continuum and another, could illusions kill? Perhaps, if you believed in them.

I must not believe. I must not sleep.

Sleep!

At the thought he became suddenly weary, suddenly like an old man who can go no further, who must lie down and rest even if he never gets up again.

The light grew dimmer, redder. The headlong rush of the vampires slowed. Were they watching him with their glowing red eyes? Were they waiting for him to sleep?

I don't care. If only I can get a little rest.

Consciousness was fading. Time itself seemed to be coming to a stop.

Richard shook himself awake.

No! It's illusion! All illusion!

The vampires drew back, hissing with fury. There were so many of them! Thousands. Millions!

As Richard drifted through s.p.a.ce, the vampires spread their wings and began wheeling about him in great flocks, great batlike clouds. The light was almost gone. Richard could not see them, only hear their immense and infinite flapping, their birdlike cries of hunger. One flew so close its wing brushed his arm.

Light returned, slowly, this time a soft amber glow. The swirling cloud of vampires retreated, gathered together, formed into the shape of a giant looming head. The head leaned toward him. Its eyes opened.

His nostrils were filled with a familiar perfume. The face was familiar too, a face he had never hoped to see again though he sometimes dreamed of it. And the soft soothing womanly voice was familiar: "Hush, d.i.c.kie baby. Don't be afraid."

"Mama . . "

"Everything's all right. Go to sleep, darling."

Something within him wanted to believe, did believe. Sleep. Yes. Why not? But then his conscious mind jerked him awake.

He shouted, "Illusion! Illusion! You're nothing but an illusion!"

With an expression of infinite sadness, the face began to fade.

Chapter 15.

Richard Blade materialized in the air and dropped to the floor of the vast egg-shaped room. He staggered, almost fell, then stood swaying as the intense pain in his head gradually subsided. He was in a fighting crouch, but he knew he could not fight, at least not yet. He thought, Where is the Ngaa?

He recognized the room he was in, though when he had been here last he had seen it through a veil of hypnotic illusion. The illusions had never been perfect. He had always been aware, in some part of his mind, of the reality that lay hidden behind each mirage, and now the sight of this room brought back to him the pattern of impressions he had gathered on his first visit. Most importantly, he knew where the Ngaa was, and what it was.

Ahead of him gaped a circular doorway and beyond that a long, dimly lit corridor. At the end of that corridor, in the exact center of this alien city, was a high-ceilinged inner chamber, bathed in a s.h.i.+mmering shadowless blue light. In the center of this chamber towered a delicate structure of colored gla.s.s, complex as a nautilus, ten times as tall as a man, glowing and pulsating, feeding off the limitless energies of the matter-antimatter engines beneath the floor.

This was the mind of the Ngaa, or minds, since it contained in electronically encoded form the united consciousness of all the creatures who lived on the Ngaa's planet when, eons ago, the sun was bright and the forests green. This mind, like a coral reef, was neither dead nor alive, but inhabited a shadow realm between life and death. It was conscious, yet at the same time only a kind of machine, a machine so much more complex than any machine man had yet built-more complex even than KALI-that it transcended the usual limitations of a machine and, in its way, thought and had something we might call a personality.

Blade remembered . . .

Blade remembered the gleaming, everchanging haze that drifted around this tower of gla.s.s, the haze that was an electromagnetic field, an almost-living cloud of energy. This cloud could move far from the brain, but could not exist without it. This cloud could shape itself into the semblance of anything, even a human being. This cloud could manifest itself in the world of mankind wherever it could find a human brain stimulated enough to serve as a gateway. The rituals of ancient half-forgotten religions could open a gateway, the fear and tension of war could open a gateway, the anger of a rejected child could open a gateway, but nothing could open a gateway as wide as KALI.

Blade remembered . . .

Blade remembered blank-eyed humans, the sons and daughters of those who had been s.n.a.t.c.hed here by the Ngaa to serve as hypnotic slaves. He remembered the children of Ambrose Bierce and Amelia Earhart, born in the subbas.e.m.e.nts of the city, doomed to spend their entire lives there laboring for the Ngaa, hypnotic slaves who would never know normal consciousness. Were they still human? Or were they zombies who, never having developed minds of their own, would die without the Ngaa to tell them to eat and sleep and breathe?

Blade turned to the right, to the left, crouching, growing stronger, recovering from the shock of transition from one universe to another, his headache almost gone.

He thought, Why doesn't the Ngaa attack?

He glanced behind him.

There was nothing there but an immense window running from the floor to the peak of the dome. Beyond the window hung the dull red oval of the sun in a sky of dim violet, pink and dirty orange. Far below lay the black bulk of the planet. Between stretched the bright dust of an unfamiliar spiral nebula seen almost edge on. Through the soles of his bare feet Richard could detect the throbbing of the mighty force fields that kept this flying city suspended above the planet's surface. The faint rumble of these force fields was the only sound, except for his tense breathing.

His glance traveled swiftly around the room, but found no sign of his enemy. The huge circular doorway continued to yawn open, unprotected. He wondered if he had, by some miracle, caught the Ngaa by surprise.

He took a step forward.

The floor was not pleasant to walk upon, being composed of living bone covered with a thin layer of flesh, but the expected attack still did not come. Though it was cool in the room, Blade began to sweat. Then, abruptly, his nostrils detected a trace of the sharp smell of ozone.

He ventured yet another step, and another. The smell grew stronger.

The salt taste of his own sweat was on his lips.

Another step he took.

Then it came, the whispering voice that was many voices in one, the voice he heard not with his ears but with his mind.

"Richard Blade!" said the Ngaa, and there was amus.e.m.e.nt in its silent voices.

"Yes," Blade responded softly.

"We see in your mind that you come not as our friend, but as our a.s.sa.s.sin."

"Obviously I cannot conceal that from you."

"You can conceal nothing from us. Whatever you plan we will know, and we will stop you. Cease your futile struggle. We have already won! Your planet is ours."

"Not yet!" Richard's shout echoed in the vastness of the room.

"Don't you understand? You are here because we lured you here. We will keep you here until KALI transports you home, then we will accompany you, but in greater force than ever before, and take control of your computer installation. We will enslave those of your friends whose wills can be bent, and kill the others. We will meld ourselves to your KALI, make ourselves at one with her, for in spite of superficial differences, KALI is much like us. With the aid of KALI and you we will transfer our innermost mind to your world and make our home there, ruling humanity from the secret and secure citadel you have provided us under the Tower of London. Can't you see that you have lost the game, Richard Blade, and that the prize is as good as ours?"

Richard stood a moment, then said, "What about Zoe? Is she still alive?"

"She is alive and close to us. We will show her to you."

A vision came unbidden to Richard's mind. He saw Zoe lying on an altar of polished bone, wearing the same nurse's uniform in which he had seen her last. She was breathing as if asleep, but her eyes were open and staring into s.p.a.ce. He recognized the closed door behind her as the one that led into the central room of the city, the chamber of the Ngaa's inner self.

The voice that was many voices said gently, "As you see, she is safe."

"I'm coming for her." Richard advanced another step.

"But why? We will give her to you when you have served our purposes. Until then . . ."

Suddenly the circular exit irised shut with a swish and a click of bone on bone.

Richard raised his voice to his unseen enemy, though a whisper would have been heard, or a thought. "You are a fool, Ngaa! Do you think that will stop me? I remember how thin and fragile it is, how fragile everything is in your city. You made everything light so your force fields could easily support it, and depended on your ability to control minds for your defense. You cannot control my mind! I learned that in the plane over London. You should never have let me learn you were not omnipotent, Ngaa. That was your fatal error. And you should never have let me learn the route to your innermost brain, or that your brain was made of thinnest gla.s.s. You should have realized, Ngaa, that I would remember all these things when your spell wore off, and use them." The echo was a long time fading.

"One step more, Richard Blade, and we will kill you."

Richard laughed outright, then shouted, "You're bluffing, Ngaa! If you kill me you can't use me as a gateway!"

He ran, hurled himself against the door, and exploded into the pa.s.sageway beyond in a shower of bone splinters.

The pa.s.sageway was high-ceilinged as a cathedral and as wide. The walls gave off a subdued diffuse blue-green light that s.h.i.+mmered and pulsed with a rhythm like a heartbeat. Richard knew what the walls were made of Fles.h.!.+ Living flesh that was transparent at the surface so he could see the intricate network of veins and arteries, translucent in its deeper layers, and its deepest part dark and black with oozing viscous shadows.

His bare feet drummed on the bone floor as he settled into a steady distance-eating lope, penetrating deeper and deeper into the city, breathing in, breathing out, setting a pace that would leave him fresh and ready for anything when he arrived at his destination.

The voice that was many voices whispered again in his mind, "We cannot kill you." The tone was as calm, complacent and superior as ever. "Very well. We will merely . . . beguile you."

To his horror, Richard saw the pa.s.sageway grow blurred and begin to fade away. A terrible weariness came over him...

Blade awoke, head aching, as powerful fingers gripped his shoulder and shook him. He opened his eyes to look up into the face of a man he knew well, King Rikard of Tharn. King Rikard's face was so similar to Blade's that he had, as he had had many times before, the bizarre sensation of looking at himself-not his mirror image, but his real self. The face was Blade's, yes, but the long wild red-gold hair was from his mother.

King Rikard was Blade's son.

"Awake! Awake quickly!" the young man cried, eyes glowing with the reflected gleam of the nearby campfire. Dazed, confused, Blade stared up into a cloudless starry sky. He had been dreaming. Something about a nightmare creature called a Ngaa . . . But he had no time for dreams.

"What's wrong?" Blade demanded, sitting up and throwing aside the animal pelt that served him as a blanket. The night was cold and Blade was naked, but he could spare no thought for that.

King Rikard stood up, a giant in a green tunic with a faming golden sword embroidered on the chest and two swords slung from a wide leather belt. "The Looters have returned!"

Blade sprang to his feet. "But how can that be?"

His son handed him one of the swords. "They must have another dimensional gateway machine."

Blade hefted the weapon, noting that it was not made of metal but of some strange kind of plastic. As his mind cleared he remembered the name of the plastic. Teksin! Of course! Made from the mani plant. He knew it as well as his own name. The world of dreams faded still more. Why did he think now of Zoe? For no special reason probably. He often dreamed about her. Yes, that must be it. She'd been in his dream.

A squad of men on horseback galloped past. Everywhere there was confusion, horses rearing, men running. A beautiful woman rode into the firelight, leading a riderless but saddled horse. "Mazda!" she called.