The Dweller - The Problem at Perchorsk - In the Garden
Perhaps inspired by the reaction of the sphere-cave's ossified inhabitants, Harry's first reflex was to panic. Instinctively, he came close to conjuring - almost attempted to fashion - a Mobius door, and only just retreated from that action in time to avert a disaster. God alone knew where, or how, he would end up if he tried to use Mobius mathematics here, inside the grey hole!
And so he floated, drawn irresistibly upward - or passed - through the Gate; and almost before he knew it ...
... His resurgence was almost as big a shock as his entry: he passed through the skin of the sphere, then slid down its curve crashingly onto a jumble of stony debris between the sphere and the crater wall. For indeed he saw that the sphere was inside a crater, and directly overhead - a second sphere!
So that now Harry could see almost all of the picture. The jigsaw was very nearly complete. The Gate he had just traversed was the original. The one above, seated in the mouth of the crater, had appeared here simultaneous with the creation of its twin - its other 'end' - in Perchorsk. Perhaps the presence of the first had somehow influenced the location of the second, Harry couldn't say. Maybe Mobius would know.
Except -
If that decapitated corpse in the cave had come through comparatively recently, and also the walkie-talkie... were the Wamphyri now using the original sphere as a dumping site? And why dump a radio? But one thing was certain: they had passed through. They had entered the sphere - this sphere - from this side. And if they had found their way down here, then he could make his way up. No sooner had the thought occurred than he saw the magmass wormholes running through the rock. They were everywhere, cutting smoothly through the solid rock at all angles.
Under his duffle-coat, Harry still had his torch clipped to his belt. He took the torch out, chose a horizontal shaft and wriggled in. In a little while the hole turned to the right, then bent sharply into a descent. Harry abandoned it, came out backwards. Other holes were no better. But then, at his fifth attempt...
... He found a hole which climbed gently, not so steeply as to cause him to slide back. In a little while it, too, bent to one side, the left, following which it rose marginally more steeply. Then it levelled out and swung right. But beyond the level bend it shot almost vertically upward. Harry stood up, switched off his torch. After the claustrophobia of the hole this was a little better; for now it was as though he stood at the bottom of a shallow well. Up there, strange constellations of stars glittered brightly in a black, jewelled sky. He reached up a hand... the rim of the hole was at least twenty-four inches beyond his grasp.
He bent his knees, jumped. A hard thing to spring upright and make any height in the confined space of a hole two and a half feet across! Especially in a duffle-coat, carrying a heavy machine-gun, with a spare magazine and two hundred rounds in your pockets.
The gun!
Harry took the weapon from his shoulder, extended the sling to its full extent. Taking the gun by the barrel, he pushed its stock up the smooth bore of the wormhole, hooked its pistol-grip over the rim. Then, wedging himself against the wall, he used elbows and knees to gain enough height to get his foot into the loop of the dangling sling. And after that it was easy. Gradually straightening up, he dragged himself out of the wormhole and hauled the gun up after him.
Panting a little from his exertions, he scanned the terrain. And just as it had affected Zek Foener, Jazz Simmons and others before them, so it affected Harry. Starside at sundown was - weird!
But while Harry observed Starside, so too was he observed. Keen-eyed shapes moved in the shadows of boulders to the west, and a flitting thing high overhead squeaked a cry beyond the range of Harry's ears to detect. Then the great bat, Desmodus, sped east, making for a distant stack, while on the ground a trog set off to lope westward, cupping horny hands to his Neanderthal face and sending a cry ringing ahead of him. The cry was heard, picked up, passed on. A straggled scattering of trogs spread out over many miles passed the eerie message down the line.
Almost at the same time the messages were received both in the stack and in the Dweller's garden. But where Lord Shaithis of the Wamphyri must order a flyer readied and descend to the launching bays, the Dweller was not dependent upon that sort of conveyance; he simply inclined his head and listened for a moment, turned his eyes eastward and sighed. The newcomer's identity could not be doubted; the Dweller would have known that mind anywhere, any time.
So, after all these years, finally he had come. And at such a time. Well, nothing for it but to welcome him; and who could say but that shortly he might be sorely needed? And so the Dweller simply went to Harry, where for long minutes he had stood, close to the glaring sphere, gazing on the world of the Wamphyri...
Harry was staring at the distantly rearing stacks, wondering about them just as Zek, Jazz and others had wondered before him. Suddenly ... he was aware that someone watched him. He spun round and fell into a crouch, swung his gun up and cocked it. Some forty yards north of the sphere, out on the boulder plain, there stood a figure, motionless, watching. It was a slim figure, male from what Harry could see of it, and its face was golden, burning in the reflected glare of the sphere.
'Don't shoot!' the other called out in a young-old voice, holding up a hand. 'There's no danger. Not yet.'
There was something about the voice. Harry relaxed a very little, tilted his head on one side enquiringly. 'Not yet?'
'No,' said the other. 'But soon. Look!' And he pointed at the sky to the east. Harry looked.
Dark blots were growing large in the sky. Two of them, with others mere dots far behind. They came from the direction of the stacks. One was winged, shaped something like a manta. The other was ... a nightmare shape! Gigantic, it squirted through the sky like a squid. 'I should think that's Shaithis,' said the Dweller, pointing. 'And the other thing, that'll be one of his warriors. And see behind them? More flyers, carrying a couple of his lieutenants.'
'Wamphyri?' Harry guessed.
'Oh, yes. You'd better come over here.'
Go over there? Harry believed he knew why: to be away from the gate. He knew the voice, too. He didn't know it - couldn't possibly know it - but he knew it. He moved to obey, and the flying shapes came closer.
The two leading shapes, Shaithis aboard a flyer, and a riderless warrior, swooped down out of the sky. They began to circle, and Shaithis's beast sank lower, the wind of its great wings blasting dust and grit up from the plain into Harry's and the Dweller's faces. Its shadow fell on them as it shut out the stars, and Shaithis's booming voice called:
'Surrender! Surrender now, to the Lord Shaithis!'
'Are you ready, father?' said The Dweller. He held up one wing of his cloak.
Harry believed. No, he knew. The child he had searched for was eight years old, and this young man was at least twenty, but the two were one and the same. How didn't matter, not right now. Harry's whole world, his entire life, had been filled with things just as strange as this. Stranger.
'I'm ready, son,' he answered, his voice catching a little. 'But... does it work here?'
'Oh, it works. Except you mustn't use it too close to a Gate.'
'I know,' said Harry. 'I tried it once.'
Shaithis settled his beast to earth to the west, his warrior crunched down to the east. Other shapes loomed in the sky, almost directly overhead. 'Ho, Dweller,' Shaithis called, dismounting. 'It seems I have you!'
'Let me take you to our garden,' said Harry Jnr to his father.
Harry stepped forward, took him in his arms and hugged him. He felt his son's cloak close around him.
Shaithis, striding forward, jerked to a halt. Dust leaped up from the plain, formed itself into a devil that swirled in the vacuum that the two men had left behind. They were no longer there.
For long moments Shaithis stood, his flattened, convoluted snout sniffing the air. Then his great nostrils flared and his eyes blazed their fury. He threw back his head and roared. And as the plain echoed his cry, so he began to curse. And then he made his vow:
'Dweller, I shall have you!' he snarled. 'You and your garden and all you possess. I shall have your magic, your weapons, your cloak of invisibility, your every secret. Do you hear? I shall have you, and the hell-landers, and everything. And when I have these things, then I shall use them to make myself the most powerful Lord there ever has been or ever will be. So speaks Shaithis of the Wamphyri. So let it be!'
The echoes of his cry, his cursing and his vow died away, and for a long time Shaithis stood there alone with his dark Wamphyri thoughts...
Ten days later:
At Perchorsk, Chingiz Khuz paraded, inspected and briefed his troops, 'Khuv's Kommandos', as he had named them: a platoon of top-quality infantrymen from the famous Moskva Volunteers. Thirty armed men and machines, specially uniformed (or painted) in the colours of their task: black combat suits with white discs on the upper arms, plus the usual badges of rank with the hammer and sickle sigil blazoned over. Their vehicles -five light-weight, jeep-like trucks and trailers, plus three outrider motorcycles, all for the moment waiting in the Projekt's loading! unloading bays - were likewise black, marked on their doors and panniers with the white disc of the Gate. They bore no number plates, carried no documentation. No requirement for such encumbrances where they were going.
For the next ten days these men would sleep in a converted Projekt warehouse here 'on the premises'; they'd be briefed, given all available details of what they could expect, shown films of the same, and intensively trained in the use of one-man flame-throwers and three larger, trailer-transported units. Their mission: go into the sphere, through the Gate, and set up a base camp on the other side. They were in short an expeditionary force.
Each man was hand-picked; they left no loved ones behind, had few friends or relatives, were all volunteers as befitted the history and traditions of their parent regiment. And they were as hard as foot-soldiers come.
From the landing at the top of the wooden stairs Viktor Luchov watched Khuv strut, listened to his voice echoing up as he paraded before the platoon on the boards of the Saturn's-rings circumference, saw the goggled faces of the thirty where they stood at ease turning to follow him up and down, up and down, as he delivered his welcoming address.
Welcome - hah!
And would the hostile new world they were invading welcome them, too? - Luchov wondered. With what would it welcome them?
Finally the initial introduction to Perchorsk was over; Khuv handed over to his Sergeant-Major 2I/C; the men were fallen out, told to leave the core in an orderly fashion and return to their billets. They came up the steps single-file, passed Luchov and disappeared through the magmass levels. Khuv himself was the last to leave, and looking ahead up the steps he saw Luchov waiting for him. 'Well,' he said, as he came up the stairs to the landing, 'and what do you think of them?'
'I heard what you said to them.' Luchov's voice was cold, almost distant. 'What difference does it make what I think of them? I know where they're going, and therefore that they're dead men!'
Khuv's dark eyes were bright, less than inscrutable. There was a fever in them, which while it told of excitement refused to hint at the source. So perhaps they were inscrutable after all. 'No,' he shook his head, 'they'll survive. They are the best. Men of steel against entirely flesh-and-blood monsters. Self-supporting, working as a perfectly co-ordinated team, equipped with the best personal weapons we can given them... they'll do much better than just survive. Against the primitives we know exist through there - ' he glanced down on the shining Gate, ' - they'll appear as supermen! They're a bridgehead, Direktor, into a new world. Oh, a military bridgehead, I agree - but that's only temporary. One day soon,' (and here his eyes narrowed a little, Luchov thought) 'you, too, shall visit that other world, when they've made it safe for you. And who can say what resources will be found there? Who knows what wealth, eh? Don't you understand? They'll claim and tame that world for the USSR!'
'Pioneers?' Luchov hardly seemed impressed. They're soldiers, Major, not settlers. Their prime function isn't to farm or explore, it's to kill!'
Again Khuv shook his head. 'No, their prime function is to protect themselves and the Gate. To open it up, keep anything else from breaking through to us. From the time they go in, this Gate becomes literally - one-way. From here to there. That's what I call security.'
'And what about them?' Luchov's voice was colder than ever. 'Do they know they can't come back?'
'No, they don't,' Khuv's response was immediate, 'and they can't be told. You'd better understand that: they can't be told. I have instructions for you on that matter, and on other matters...'
'Instructions for - ' Luchov sucked in air implosively. 'You have instructions for me?'
Khuv was impassive. 'From the very highest authority. The very highest! Where those soldiers are concerned, Direktor, I am in charge.' He produced and handed Luchov a sealed envelope stamped with the Kremlin crest. 'As for not coming back: no, they won't, not immediately. But eventually...'
'Eventually?' Luchov glanced at the envelope, put it away. 'Eventually?' he snorted. 'How long do we need, man? This Gate has been here for over two years - and what have we learned about the world on the other side? Nothing! Except that it's home for ... monsters! We've never even communicated with the other side.'
'That comes first,' said Khuv. 'Field telephones.'
'What?'
'We know sound travels through the sphere,' said the other, 'and light - both ways! However warped the effect, men can talk and communicate with each other in there. These men will lay a cable as they go. It can be tested after they've travelled no more than a few paces! And if that doesn't work they'll set up temporary semaphore stations. At least we'll get to know what it's like through there. What it's like on the other side.'
Luchov shook his head. 'That still won't get them back,' he said.
'Not yet, not now,' Khuv grated, losing his patience. 'But if there is a way back we'll find it. Even if it means building another Perchorsk!'
Luchov took a pace backwards, was brought up short when the small of his back met the handrail. 'Another Per - ?' His jaw fell open. 'Why, I hadn't even considered - '
'I didn't think you had, Direktor.' Now Khuv grinned, his face a grim, emotionless mask. 'So now consider it. And stop worrying about these men. If you must worry, then worry for yourself, and for your staff. You'll find that in those orders, too. Once the bridgehead is established - you're next!'
Luchov tottered where he stood grasping the rail. He was furious, but shock had made him impotent as Khuv turned away. Then he found his voice, called out: 'But oh how neatly you've escaped the net yourself, eh, Major?'
Khuv paused, slowly turned to face him. He was as pale as Luchov had ever seen him. 'No,' he shook his head, and Luchov saw his Adam's apple working, 'for that, too, is in the orders. You'll be happy to know that in just ten days' time we part company, Viktor. For when they go through, I go with them!'
At the other end of the shaft to the magmass levels, out of sight round the corner, Vasily Agursky had been privy to all their conversation. Now, as Khuv's footsteps sounded on the boards, he turned and ran silently for the upper levels. He wore rubber-soled shoes, moved with the litheness of a cat. No, like a wolf! He loped, and revelled in the strength of his thighs as they effortlessly propelled him. Strong? Even in his youth he'd never known such strength! Nor such passions, desires, hungers...
But for all Agursky's speed and stealth, still Khuv caught a glimpse of him before he could pass out of sight. It was only that, a glimpse, but it caused the KGB Major to frown. On top of all his other worries, now there was this thing with Agursky - whatever it was. Khuv hadn't seen much of him lately, but whenever he had ... he couldn't put his finger on it but something was wrong. And there he went, swift as a deer, head forward, silent as a ghost and just as weird.
Khuv shook his head and wondered what was ailing the strange little scientist. Wondered what had got into him ...
The next morning, early, Khuv jerked awake to the clamour of alarms. In the moment of waking his heart almost stopped - tried to tear itself free and leap up into his throat - until he realized that these were only the general alert alarms, not Luchov's damned failsafe. Thank God - whom Khuv didn't really have any faith in, anyway -for that!
A moment later, as he hurriedly dressed, came the hammering on his door. He opened it to let in the unctuous Paul Savinkov; except that apart from the sweat on his fat, shining, frightened face, there was nothing at all slimy about him now. He smelled now not of grease but fear!
'Major!' he gasped. 'Comrade! My God, my God.r
Khuv shook him. 'What is it, man?' he snarled. 'Here, sit down before you fall down.' He shoved Savinkov into a chair.
The fat esper was trembling, wobbling like a jelly. 'I... I'm sorry,' he said. 'It's just... just...'
Khuv slapped him, backhanded him, deliberately slapped him again. 'Now perhaps you'll tell me what's wrong!' he growled.
The white burn of Khuv's slim fingers came up like long blisters on Savinkov's face. His eyes lost their glaze and he shook his head, as if he was the one who had just woken up and not Khuv. Then - Khuv thought the man was about to burst into tears. If he did, Khuv knew he would hit him right in the teeth! 'Well?' he rasped.
'It's Roborov and Rublev,' Savinkov gasped. 'Dead, both of them!'
'What?' Khuv knew he must be imagining this; it had to be some crazy dream. 'Dead? How, for the love of - ? An accident?' He finished dressing, slipped into his shoes.
'Accident?' Savinkov grinned like an idiot, but his features quickly melted into a sob. 'Oh, no - no, it wasn't an accident. When it happened, their thoughts woke me up. Their thoughts were - awful!'
Thoughts?' Khuv's mind, still not fully awake, sought for an explanation. Of course: Savinkov was a telepath. 'What about their thoughts?' -v
'Something... something was attacking them. In Roborov's room. I think they'd been playing cards, gambling, and that Roborov was a heavy loser. He'd been to the toilet. When he came out... Rublev was nearly dead! Something had him by the throat! Roborov tried to pull it off, and ... it turned on him! Oh, God - 1 felt him die! Huh... huh... he...'
'Go on, man!' Khuv gasped.
'He grabbed the thing and turned it around, and he saw it. He was thinking: "I don't believe this! Oh, mother, help me! Sweet God, you know I've always loved you! Don't let this happen!"'
'Those were his thoughts?'
'Yes,' Savinkov sobbed. 'The rest of it was just background stuff, but it was Roborov's thoughts that really woke me up. And as he died - I saw it too.r
'What did you see?' Khuv took Savinkov's face between the flats of his palms.
'God, I don't know! It wasn't human - or maybe it was? It was a nightmare. It was ... its shape was all wrong! It was like... like that thing in the glass tank!'
Khuv's blood ran cold. He gulped air into his lungs, released Savinkov's face. He grabbed his lapels and dragged him to his feet. 'Take me there,' he snapped. 'Roborov's room? I know it. Were you there? No? Then who is there? You don't know? Fool! Well, we're going there right now!'
On their way, the alarms stopped clamouring. 'Well, let's be thankful for that, anyway,' Khuv grunted. He jostled Savinkov ahead of him. 'At least I can hear myself think! Now, are you sure you can't remember who you told? I mean, did you simply forget all the procedures and come running straight to me? God, but if this is a wild-goose chase I'll -!'
But it wasn't.
Outside the door of Roborov's room a sleepy, nervous soldier stood on guard. He saluted sloppily as Khuv and Savinkov came into view. They rushed by him. Inside were two more espers, and a KGB man named Gustav Litve. All were whey-faced, shaken to their roots. Crumpled on the floor, there lay the reason. Or reasons.
Nikolai Rublev could be Savinkov's twin! thought Khuv, grimacing at what he saw. They were, or had been, much of a kind. But now there were differences, the main one being that Savinkov was still alive. And he was also intact.
Whatever it was that had killed Rublev, it had taken half his face from him. The fleshy part of the left side of his face was missing, flensed from the bone, from his ear to his nose and down to his chin. But it wasn't the work of a scalpel or knife. The flesh had been ripped off. In addition his throat was torn - torn, as by an animal - with the main arteries severed and exposed. Khuv thought: where's all the blood?
Perhaps he'd said something out loud, for his underling Litve said: 'Sir?'
'Eh?' Khuv looked up. 'Oh, nothing. Fetch Vasily Agursky, will you, Gustav? Bring him here. I want to know what kind of an animal could do this, and he might be able to tell me.'
Litve gratefully made for the door, called back: 'The other's not much better, sir.'
'Other?' Khuv's mind still wasn't on business.
'Roborov.'
Khuv realized he'd been wandering. To make up for it he snapped, 'He was your colleague, wasn't he?'
'Was, sir, yes,' Litve answered. He went out.
Behind an overturned table, amidst a litter of bloodied paper money and cards, lay 'the other', Andrei Roborov. The two espers were standing looking down on him. Khuv shoved them aside, took a look for himself. Roborov's face was a mask of sheer horror. His dead eyes bulged; his jaws gaped in a frozen rictus of terror; his tongue projected, blue and glistening. Mainly cadaverous in life, he was totally grotesque in death. His thin head from the ears up looked like it had been trapped in a toothed vise and crushed. The skull had caved in, and blood and brain fluid seeped from the cracks and the deep punctures of... teeth marks?
'Good Lord!' said Khuv; to which one of the espers added: