Dimension Of Horror

Chapter 3

London that morning was gray under the diffuse light from the featureless overcast sky. The pavements were wet and hissed as the motorcars and lorries passed. Colors were muted; even the normally bright red of the double-decker buses. A cold unfriendly wind sent skirts whipping and hats flying.

J stood at the second floor window of Lord Leighton's ancestral home at 391/2 Prince's Gate, Kensington, puffing morosely on one of his beloved pipes-in defiance of his doctor's orders-and staring down at the leafless trees in Prince's Gate Crescent. From where he stood he could see hardly anything that had not been there when he was young, yet he knew Kensington had changed. Little by little its quiet residential streets had been invaded by a ragtag army of tradesmen; their antique markets and garish mod «boutiques» were everywhere, particularly along the once-respectable High Street and Kensington Church Street.

The antiques, in J's opinion, were mostly trash, but it was the human trash attracted by the boutiques that depressed him. Boys who dressed like girls, girls who looked like boys, shadowy vague androgynous young people who cowered in doorways, sucking on marijuana cigarettes like babies sucking pacifiers. They'd been called different things at different times. Teddy Boys. Mods and Rockers. Even, borrowing a term from the Yanks, Hippies. Their names changed, yes, but always there were more of them, and with numbers they grew steadily bolder until now armed children in packs hunted through the streets day and night, hunted women, hunted the old, the handicapped, the helpless. The crimes of Jack the Ripper had horrified Victorian England; now they would probably pass unnoticed, too commonplace even for journals like The Sun.

On Tower Hill, across from the Tower of London, J had sometimes paused of late to listen to ranting apocalyptic evangelists call London a new Gomorrah, and in certain moods he'd slowly nodded agreement, thinking, Yes, we're ripe for destruction, the whole bloody gang of us.

At such times Armageddon had seemed, if not inevitable, at least dreadfully desirable. The only question remaining to be debated was, «What form will the avenging angels of destruction take?»

Standing at the window, J thought, Will they be the ghosts of little girls who killed themselves? Or will they be invisible giants who throw the furniture around?

Behind him, in the dim interior of the old house, Lord Leighton was on the phone to Number Ten Downing Street.

«No more experiments? But sir, don't be a damned idiot!» The hunchback's voice was outraged, irascible.

In spite of his depression, J smiled. Few indeed were men with the gall to call the Prime Minister of England a damned idiot as openly as that. Lord Leighton had never been the sort to vent his spleen in anonymous letters to the Times, and the older he got the less he seemed to care about etiquette and «The Proper Forms.»

Leighton managed somehow to calm himself, though his mottled face turned dull red with the effort. «Yes, sir. I understand perfectly. It is you who hold the purse strings.» He paused, then, «Be good enough to save your platitudinous political slogans for the electorate, sir. It is they who hold your purse strings.» Another pause. «As always, your merest whim is my most imperious command, sir.» The sarcasm was harsh and unconcealed. «And good day to you, too, sir.»

Leighton hung up, banging down the receiver.

J, who had turned away from the window, said mildly, «I gather the PM is unhappy.»

Leighton flung himself into a tall-backed Chippendale chair. «We should never have told him what happened to Blade.»

«He would have found out sooner or later, and he would have been even more miffed if we'd kept it from him.»

Leighton glared up through his heavy glasses. «Things were different when Harry was PM.»

J sighed. «Quite.» The man they called Harry had held the reins of power when the project had begun, and had been behind it wholeheartedly, laying out the seed money with a marvelously open hand. His successors had been harder to please, each one more «economy-minded» than the last, particularly since the project, after years of work, seemed no nearer than at the beginning to reaching any firm conclusions about the nature of the X dimensions.

Leighton regarded his own blurred reflection in the polished surface of his desk, grimacing with distaste. «We don't look very attractive to these young chaps that try to fill the Prime Minister's shoes these days. Tell me, J, are they getting younger or are we getting older?»

«A bit of both, I expect.»

A brooding silence fell, during which the only sounds were the distant rumble and beep of the traffic and the faint pop and crackle of the low-burning coals in the grate. Leighton's gaze turned moodily toward the tall narrow window that looked out on Prince's Gate Crescent.

Finally Leighton said quietly, «He gave us an ultimatum.»

J answered lightly, «Either we shape up or he trims our budget. I know that story by heart by now.»

«This time he's not talking about trimming. This time he's talking about shutting up shop altogether.»

«Good Lord,» J whispered.

«Yes, he's talking about putting an end to Project Dimension X, once and for all. If we can't bring Richard Blade back to normal within two weeks, he'll lock us out of the Tower of London complex and throw away the key.»

J felt a curious numbness. A thousand times he'd hoped, he'd almost prayed-and he was not a praying man-that something would happen to terminate the project that put Richard, the nearest thing to a friend J had ever had, repeatedly into danger. Now it seemed J would get his wish. Why wasn't he happy? He shuffled over to the grate, picked up a poker and began aimlessly rooting around in the fire. He muttered tonelessly, «All that time, energy and money wasted. All Richard's risks gone for nothing.» He looked up suddenly. «But we still have two weeks, you say. We can bring in one of those boys we've been training and send him through the machine. Maybe he'll make it through. Whatever happened to Richard, it happened over there, in that other world. That's where the secret lies, so…»

Leighton raised a restraining hand. «The PM thought of that. He has forbidden us to send anyone else through.»

«The devil you say! How in the bloody blazes are we supposed to cure Richard if we can't find out what happened to him? The answer is there, on the other side, and we have to be able to go looking for it!»

«So you think the PM is a fool?»

«Worse than a fool! I can't find a word…»

«It may surprise you, but I can see his logic. That's the curse of imagination! One can see the opponent's logic every time. Damn near paralyzes a man! Here's how he reasons. Blade is the only chap who ever went through into the X dimensions and returned alive and sane. Now Blade is out of the picture. Ergo we have no one we can safely send through, and moreover if we have no one we can safely send through, we actually have no project. We're all done and we might as well go home.»

«Did you tell the PM about the flying dresser? About what happened to poor Dexter?» J demanded.

«Heavens no! If he believed me he'd shut us down as a public menace this very day. If he didn't believe me, he'd send me up to Scotland to act as Dexter's replacement in the giggle factory. Thank God I managed to keep my mouth shut about that part of it at least.» He laughed nervously. «I haven't even told you everything that's been happening.»

J carefully replaced the poker in its stand and straightened up. «Then tell me, Leighton, damn you.»

«Better sit down first, old chap,» the scientist advised dryly, tobacco-stained teeth showing in an unpleasant grin.

J took a chair and waited expectantly.

Not looking at him, Leighton said awkwardly, «The fact is that since you've been gone, a lot has happened in the underground lab and in our little hospital. To begin with, Blade shows no improvement whatsoever. Dr. Ferguson has been doing as much as anyone could, which is almost nothing, and all he can tell us about the cause of Blade's amnesia is that it's caused by fear. Blade saw something on the other side so awful his conscious mind cannot accept it, something that's trapped in his subconscious and trying to get out. You could say Blade can't remember it with one part of his mind, but can't forget it with another.»

J was annoyed. «That's nothing new, is it? I'm no psychiatrist, but I could have told you all that.»

«There's more. From the moment of Blade's return until now the project has been harassed by a veritable plague of poltergeist phenomena.»

«Poltergeist?»

«It's a German word for «playful ghost,» and indeed it would appear that a full battalion of playful ghosts has been running amuck in the installation. We've had more furniture tossed around. The VIP lounge is a ruin! Unexplained markings have appeared on the walls, looking for all the world like the scratches of gigantic claws. Mysterious fires have been starting all over the hospital complex. One started right before the eyes of one of the nurses, and scared her half to death. Another started in a chemical storeroom. Thank God the fire alarm sounded before there was an explosion. We put that one out not a moment too soon. We've been hearing odd noises, too. Thumpings. Bumpings. Whooshings. And at all hours of the day and night. I myself have heard what sounded like someone whispering to me in a foreign language, but when I looked around there was nobody there. The oddest thing of all was when one of the nurses met a little girl in one of the passageways. They exchanged greetings and it was a moment before the nurse stopped to ask herself how a little girl could get into such a closely guarded place, deep underground. The nurse searched high and low, but the little girl was nowhere to be found.»

J mused, «Too bad we don't have a photograph of Dr. Saxton Colby's daughter.»

Lord Leighton squinted. «How's that? Oh, I see what you mean. Do you think those two little girls might be one and the same?»

«I'd be surprised if they weren't, the way our luck has been running.»

Leighton continued, «I've fed all the data on the poltergeists into the computer, and they've detected a pattern.»

«A pattern? What sort of a pattern?»

«There seems to be a kind of sphere of energy in the complex. Everything that requires a great deal of force, such as the moving of heavy furniture, happens near the center of the sphere. A little further out we find lower-energy phenomena, such as fires and scratches and odd noises. Everything that happens at the outer edge of the sphere could be accounted for as strictly mental; voices, the little girl and so on.»

«The little girl was strictly mental?»

«She could have been. Remember, nobody actually touched her. She could have been an illusion. The computer also detected a definite trend in all these happenings.»

«What kind of a trend?»

«The sphere is growing, slowly but steadily. In fact, this morning, quite early, we began to hear the whispering for the first time in the computer section. The computers, as you know, are a good hundred feet closer to the surface than the hospital. This thing, whatever it is, is gradually working its way upward. Unless it changes its rate of growth, it should start to manifest its presence in the streets of London some time late the day after tomorrow, at least in the neighborhood of the Tower. What we do then I have no idea.»

«At least we have some data to work with.»

«You like data? There's one thing more, and I don't think you'll care for it. At the exact center of the sphere-the exact center, mind you-is our friend Richard Blade.» He added softly, «I think we should face the possibility that Blade is the source of the trouble.»

«And what then?»

«To protect London, we may have to kill him.»

J put down his pipe, which had gone out unnoticed. It toppled over in the ashtray on the desk, spilling cold ashes. J had anticipated the direction Leighton's logic would take, but now that the conclusion had been reached, he felt sick with horror. His voice shaking, he said hoarsely, «I cannot accept that.»

«Better one man than hundreds.»

«The thing has killed no one yet, Leighton. It has damaged property, but it has killed no one. Before we take a human life, we must be certain human life is in danger, particularly-«He hesitated.

«Particularly if the life is Blade's,» Leighton finished. «The thought of a poltergeist frisking about in the computer rooms like a bull in a china shop cannot help but appall me, but of course you're right.» These words were uttered in such a faint gloomy voice they were almost inaudible. J realized with a chill that it had been his beloved computers Leighton had been worried about all along, not the people of London.

J stood up and began pacing the floor, head lowered and hands clutched together behind his back. «If Richard were sane, all this nonsense might stop. Let's suppose it's a kind of demonic possession.»

«Demonic possession!» Leighton snorted with contempt. «There's no such thing as a demon!»

«Need I remind you, sir, that something came through KALI with Blade. Didn't you see it? A kind of blue glowing cloud?»

Leighton nodded reluctantly. «I saw it.»

«That cloud may be our enemy. Perhaps it somehow draws its energy from Richard, and that's why it clings so close to him. If Richard came to his senses, the thing might no longer be able to maintain its hold on him. At worst we'd have Richard's help against it, and he's been to the thing's home territory. He may know its weaknesses, if it has any.»

«Dr. Ferguson has tried every treatment known to psychiatry. Nothing seems to help.»

J halted before the hunchback and frowned down at him. «But has he tried the resources of simple humanity, my dear Leighton?»

«What resources?»

At the moment he had asked his question, J had had no idea, at least on the conscious level, of what «resources of simple humanity» he was going to suggest, but now a plan leaped full-grown into his mind. «Remember Zoe Cornwall?»

Leighton frowned. «I seem to have heard the name somewhere.»

«Dash it, man! She was the woman Richard was engaged to, around the time our experiments first began. He had to break off with her because of our damned official security.»

«Yes, I think it's coming to me. She got married, as I recall, to some accountant.»

J began pacing again. «That's right. Reginald Smythe-Evans C.P.A. That's the chap. A decent enough fellow, though of course Richard never could stomach him. Richard and I and a few other lads from MI6A were playing hide and seek with the Russians at her wedding. Damn poor form on our part, but we were desperate. She forgave him, and in fact made him second-godfather of her third child.»

Leighton said wistfully, «Her third child. God, how the years fly by.»

J pressed on with growing excitement. «Richard has had many women since then, both here in England and in various X dimensions, but it has always been my impression that Zoe has remained for him the woman, as Conan Doyle might have put it. With all the others Richard has held something back, knowing that the relationship could not last. Only with Zoe had he even the illusion that a life-long proper Church-of-England marriage was possible.»

«Come to the point, man,» Leighton snapped.

«The point is this: Zoe may be the one thing in the whole world Richard has not forgotten. If he could see her again, it could jog his memory, start him on the road to recovery.»

Leighton stroked his chin thoughtfully with a small hand. «Hmm. You may have something there, but if she's a happily married woman, would it be wise to, as it were, blow on the fading embers?»

«I won't ask her to divorce her husband or anything like that, of course. What's done is done. I only want Richard to see her, to speak to her if he can speak, or listen to her if he can't. How can she refuse a request for a single visit? For a few hours of her time? Once Richard meant a great deal to her, you know. He still does, if I'm any judge.»

«Do you know where she is?»

«No, but I can find her. MI6 can find anyone it really wants to find.»

The scientist nodded slowly. «I'd forgotten you were the original Great Octopus, but before you pick up the telephone and start slithering your tentacles out through the wires, perhaps you should consider that you may be placing this lady in grave danger.»

«Danger? What do you mean?» J had started toward the telephone on the desk, but now he paused.

«Nobody knows the limits of this creature's powers, this thing from who knows where. If Richard's old flame can actually threaten our Mr. Thing in any way, as we certainly hope she can, Mr. Thing may take steps to defend himself. For all we know Mr. Thing is in this room listening to us at this very moment «

J glanced uneasily around. «Nonsense. You told me yourself the thing was still contained within the hospital and computer complex.» He picked up the receiver of the old-fashioned desk phone and dialed Copra House.

Ten minutes later, his call completed, J hung up and turned to face Lord Leighton.

«You'll like a happy man,» Leighton commented, smiling. «It does your soul good, doesn't it, to do something, anything, even if it's the wrong thing?»

«It's not the wrong thing.» J walked slowly to the window and looked out. It may have been imagination, but the overcast sky seemed markedly brighter. Was that a touch of green on the branch of one of the leafless trees in Prince's Gate Crescent?

J glanced down.

On the sidewalk, gazing up at him with an expression that was, at one and the same time, shy and bold, innocent and challenging, stood a girl, not more than ten years old. Her clothing-a short skirt, sweater, bobby socks and saddle shoes — was curiously out of style, and she wore her blonde hair in a pony tail.

At first J was about to grin at her with the vacant grin he reserved for all small children who insisted on being noticed by him, then the thought entered his mind, Are you Dane Colby?

The girl answered his unspoken question with a teasing nod.

«Leighton,» said J softly. «Come here, quickly.»

Before the hunchback could limp to the window, Jane Colby had skipped on down the sidewalk and out of sight.