Slimer

Six

Paul and Mark decided not to go and tell the others about their grim discovery just yet — the bad news could wait until later — instead they resumed the search for Dr Shelley on Level Two. They spent over an hour without result and then Paul suggested they go and have another look at the TV monitoring centre they’d investigated briefly the previous night.

For a time Paul fiddled with the camera controls, cutting from camera to camera around the platform in the hope that they might spot Shelley, or anyone, on one of the eight monitors but all they got were views of deserted corridors and labs.

By accident they found themselves, finally, watching the other four who had obviously left the kitchen and were in one of the several recreational rooms on the bottom level. The three women were playing cards in a desultory fashion while Alex sat in front of a TV set sorting through a pile of video cassettes.

‘Gives you a feeling of power, doesn’t it, being able to watch someone without them knowing it,’ said Mark, staring at the screen.

‘I guess so,’ said Paul. ‘I just wish there was some kind of “erase” button we could press that would get rid of Alex.’

‘You hate his guts, don’t you?’

‘Sure. Don’t you too?’

‘If there was a Guinness Book of Shits he’d be Number One,’ said Mark, ‘I wish we’d never got involved with him.’

‘Yeah, it was a big mistake all right,’ agreed Paul. ‘Only Linda had the smarts to see through him from the beginning. She warned me against getting mixed up with him but I didn’t listen to her.’ ‘He wants Linda. You realise that, I hope,’ said Mark calmly.

Paul nodded. ‘Yeah. And if he ever so much as touches her I’ll kill him.’

‘You mean that, don’t you?’ said Mark. He sounded impressed.

Paul looked at him with embarrassment. ‘Sounds like something out of a bad movie, but yes, I do mean it.’

‘I wish I had your guts. But I’m weak. I’ve always been weak but now I’m weaker than ever.’

‘Hey, come on Mark. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re not weak.’

‘Oh yes I am.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘And you don’t know the half of it.’ He grimaced suddenly and grabbed the console with both hands to steady himself.

‘You okay?’ asked Paul, alarmed.

‘Yes,’ said Mark shakily, ‘just a dizzy spell. I’ll be fine.’ ‘You should really see a doctor when we get home. I think there’s something wrong with you.’

He laughed again. ‘You can say that again. But don’t worry. I know what it is. I can handle it. But don’t ask me to explain. There’s nothing you can do to help. Okay?’ ‘Okay,’ said Paul reluctantly. ‘At least you’re looking better today than you were yesterday. You looked awful.’

‘I feel better. And I’ve stopped seeing things too. For a time there I thought I was going crazy.’

Paul frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You remember I told you about the stuff I found in the overalls up on the crane. The black slime?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Wei, I never finished telling you the whole story. It moved, Paul. It poured out of one of the sleeves, ran across the floor of the cabin and went out through an air vent in the back. It actually crawled up the back wall of the cabin to reach the vent, like a kind of liquid worm…’

Paul stared at him. ‘Are you having me on?’

‘No, I swear it Paul. That’s what I saw. Or that’s what I Ihoughl I saw. Of course it must have been a hallucination. I know that now but it really shook me at the time.’

‘Yeah,⁵ said Paul, remembering how shaken he’d looked when he’d come down from the crane. ‘But why should you be having hallucinations? Or is that part of what you can’t tell me about?’

Mark nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Okay, have it your way,’ said Paul, a little stiffly. He turned his attention back to the monitors. The girls were still playing cards but Alex was now watching the TV set, obviously having found something he liked among the video cassettes. And knowing him it’s probably pornographic, thought Paul sourly.

But this served to remind him of the racks of video tapes he’d noticed in the control room the day before. He got up and examined them again. ‘We might as well start checking this stuff,’ he told Mark. ‘I just wish they weren’t labelled in code.’

‘Take one tape at random from each rack,’ suggested Mark. ‘We might have some luck.’

Paul picked out a total of ten tapes and put the first one into the VCR unit that had been built into the console. After some trial-and-error pushing of buttons one of the monitor screens went momentarily blank then began displaying the words ‘The Phoenix Project — Data File 22/AX/G89812’. This was followed by a visual read-out of technical information most of which Paul couldn’t make head nor tail of. There were terms he recognised, however, such as ‘recombinant DNA’, and ‘nucleotides’ which confirmed what he had already felt certain was the purpose behind the concealed labs.

‘This proves they were doing genetic engineering experiments here,’ he said to Mark.

‘Yes, but it still doesn’t tell us what kind of experiment. I mean, for all we know they might have been trying to come up with a new sort of oil-slick eating bug. This place is owned by an oil company, after all.’

‘But if it was all innocent and above board then why did they go to so much trouble to camouflage these labs?’ asked Paul.

‘Perhaps they didn’t want their competitors to know about it,’ suggested Mark. ‘They were afraid of industrial espionage or something. There’s big money in this game, you know. They patent these artificial bugs the same way they patent new inventions. And that might explain those armed security guards too. ’

‘Yes,’ said Paul doubtfully, still staring at the screen. Then he pointed at it. ‘There’s that word again — Phoenix. That’s definitely the code name for whatever it was they were trying to make…’

‘Phoenix. The mythical bird of fire that was reborn from its own ashes,’ said Mark, and suddenly grinned. ‘You think maybe they were trying to create a new line in poultry? A chicken that lays square eggs? A chicken that comes automatically covered in a crisp golden batter and in its own cardboard box?’

‘Very funny,’ said Paul, scowling. He pressed the ‘Fast Forward’ button and raced the tape quickly through to its finish. Then he tried another one. It was the same as the first — a visual record of highly specialised scientific data that neither of them could follow.

It wasn’t until they tried the fifth tape that they got something different.

‘Hey, that’s Shelley,’ cried Mark.

It was Dr Shelley, looking much the same as he had the previous night. He was talking directly into the camera and from the background they could see that he had made the tape in this very room. Then Paul noticed, for the first time, a small video camera above the console which was almost directly facing him.

‘Turn it up,’ urged Mark, ‘Let’s hear what he’s saying.’ Paul found the volume control. Suddenly Shelley’s voice filled the room:. ‘and so I must admit that my initial confidence in our resuming control of the situation seems to have been misplaced. Subsequent events have proved correct the misgivings of Doctors Soames, Jameson and Eng-lefields about our ability to subdue “Charlie”. Or should we refer to it as Phoenix?’ He shook his head wearily. ‘In a sense it is the Phoenix unit that is behind all this…’

He paused and groaned as if in pain. Then he closed his eyes and began to rub the sides of his temples. Eventually he continued, ‘I feel so tired. But then we all do. No one has dared to sleep fpr the last forty-eight hours now. It can move so fast… We’ve lost eleven more people since this morning alone. At this rate how much longer will it be before it gets all of us? Durkins, of course, still wants us to call for help but I definitely agree with the others on this — it must be kept isolated at all costs. We cannot risk offering it the means to reach the outside world. Though what will happen if it does destroy us all doesn’t bear thinking about..

‘But so far everything we have tried has failed. It appears to be invulnerable, thanks to us. Fire, bullets, electricity, poison, acid, all have proved futile. We were too successful. We have created the ultimate survivor — and the ultimate destroyer. What was supposed to have been a boon to mankind has become a terrible threat. Possibly the most terrible threat it has ever faced. We must overcome it.’

Then the screen went blank.

Paul and Mark looked at each other. ‘What do you make of that?’ asked Mark.

Paul said slowly, ‘I think we can forget about bugs designed to eat oil-slicks. Whatever they made here was in a different league altogether.’ He thumped his fist on the console top. ‘If only he’d said what it was!’

‘Run the tape on further. There might be something else.’ There was. Shelley reappeared on the screen. He seemed to have aged a great deal during the intervening period. His face was drawn and haggard and there was a bruise over his right eye. He now looked very different to the man they’d seen in the lab last night, which made Paul wonder again just how much time had elapsed since the events Shelley was describing had taken place.

Shelley’s voice was weaker too. ‘This may be the last chance I get to use this machine. There are only a few of us left now. Dr Soames, Durkins, a couple of the guards, and it can only be a matter of time before it achieves complete victory. Durkins was right. We should have tried to send out a warning before it was too late but the transmitter has been destroyed. It is much more intelligent now but that’s not surprising under the circumstances.

He stopped suddenly and looked away from the camera towards, presumably, the door. He had obviously heard something. As he turned they got a brief glimpse of a pistol he was holding.

After a while he relaxed and faced the camera again. ‘I’m determined it won’t take me alive. I’ll use this on myself first…’ He brandished the gun at the camera. ‘But even so I fear that being dead may not be protection against… against…’ He swallowed noisily and didn’t finish the sentence. For a few moments his self-control deserted him and they saw the face of a man who was profoundly terrified. Paul felt a wave of unease sweep over him as he stared at Shelley’s face. What could it be that could scare a man so badly? That scared him even more than dying?

Shelley regained control of himself with a visible effort. ‘My only hope is that someone finds these records before it’s too late. I’ll have to hide them somewhere so that it can’t get them and yet where they’ll be found by whoever comes here next. But where?’

There was a noise ofT-screen and Shelley spun round again. The door had apparently opened. They saw him raise the gun then heard him say, still facing away from the camera ‘Oh, it’sjyou, thank God… for a moment I thought it was…’

The screen went blank again.

Paul kept the tape running but there was nothing else on it. Shelley didn’t reappear.

‘Think there’s any chance of repairing one of those boats?’ asked Mark quietly.

‘Take it easy. We saw Shelley last night so he obviously survived. And he certainly looked in better shape then than he did on that tape. Whatever it was, or is, must have been overcome by Shelley and his pals.’

‘You want to make a bet on that?’ said Mark. ‘And what was all that stuff about being dead not a protection. Protection against what, that’s what I want to know.’

Paul gestured at the racks of tape. ‘The answer has to be there somewhere. We keep searching.’

‘Hey!’ Mark was staring at one of the monitors. ‘Look!’ Paul looked and saw the figure of a woman walking down a corridor withjher back to the camera. He glanced immediately at the screen showing the view of the recreation room and saw that all three girls were still playing cards. His pulse quickened. So there was someone else on the rig apart from Shelley.

‘Which level is that picture coming from?’ he asked excitedly. ‘Can you tell?’

Mark shook his head. ‘They all look alike to me.’

The woman, who was walking with a fast, purposeful stride, reached the end of the corridor and disappeared from view. Paul swore and started pressing buttons on the camera controls, hoping to pick her up on another screen. Finally he succeeded, but again she had her back to them and was rapidly moving away from the camera. This time, however, they could make out a sign on a nearby wall. It read ‘Level Two’.

‘She’s on this floor,’ cried Paul, leaping up. ‘I’m going to find her. You try and keep track of her with the cameras in case I lose her.’

Paul hurried out of the room. Mark opened his mouth to call after him but realised he had no idea what he wanted to say. All he knew was that he didn’t care for suddenly being on his own…

He scanned the bank of monitors for the woman. There was no sign of her so he started punching buttons at random, cutting to new cameras. Then he spotted her again. This time she was walking towards the camera. She was wearing a white lab coat and had short blonde hair but he couldn’t make out her face.

Mark frowned as he stared hard at the screen. The woman was getting closer now but her face remained indistinct. Blurred even. Was there something wrong with the camera? A smear on the lens perhaps?

The woman continued to approach the camera. Then she was directly under it…

Mark screamed.

As the woman had walked by the camera she had looked briefly up at it. There had been no way for Mark to avoid the horrible truth…

She had no face.

She had eyes. The round, staring eyes of a fish. Eyes straight out of a nightmare. But that was all. The rest of her face was completely smooth.

Paul caught a glimpse of her ahead of him as she turned a corner. ‘Hey!’ he called and started walking faster. He hurried round the corner and saw that she was now only ten yards or so in front of him. He called out again but she didn’t give any indication of hearing him. She continued on at her same fast pace.

Paul broke into a run and caught up with her just before she reached the next corner. ‘Hey, I want to speak to you,’ he said, grabbing her by the shoulder and pulling her around.

Then he gave a gasp of surprise.