by Mick Farren
"I wish you wouldn't read my mind."
"It's unavoidable."
"Then just don't read it back to me."
The messenger sighed. "If it makes you happier to pretend."
"I take it that I'm not going to get to be the Master of Men out of all this?"
"You want that?"
Gibson grinned and shoved his thumbs into the pockets of his white pants in a decidedly hoodlum gesture. "Maybe I could handle that."
The messenger shook his head. "I'm afraid that's idimmu romance. Things will be a good deal more complicated this time around."
"So I just drop back into my old life?"
The messenger laughed. "Your old life has gone. You've seen far too much to return to the way you were. Of course, the memories of what you've been through, particularly this current episode, will become blurred and indistinct."
Gibson was outraged. "I'm going to forget all this?"
"Temporarily."
"More drugs?"
"Your own mind will do it. You're not going to rest easily with the memory of talking to a superior being. You're going to suppress and mythologize all of this, and turn it into some symbolic peyote vision, something that you'll be able to handle more easily."
"You said I'd forget temporarily."
"When the time comes for Us to enter your world, We may need you to serve Us. When that time comes, your memories will return."
Gibson looked sideways at the messenger. "I'm going to be your servant?"
"We always reward Our servants, and if it's power you want, We can easily give you power."
"I've really never been that keen on power."
"You make that obvious in your behavior. It may be one of your redeeming features."
An abrupt flash of crimson stained the clouds across the valley. It seemed as though one of the volcanoes was burning red rather than gold. A second volcano belched red flame and purple smoke that spread like a stain across the clouds.
Gibson looked sharply at the messenger. "What is that? Is something wrong?"
The messenger didn't answer right away. He stood staring out across the valley at the angry red intrusion, as though listening to instructions inside his head. "We have been made aware that the Hole in the Void is under attack."
"What?"
"Streamheat forces are attacking the Hole in the Void. They have transported aircraft and heavy weapons across the dimensions and seem to be bent on wiping out the idimmu."
Gibson looked around as though he expected them to come bursting through the cloud cover. "Thank God I'm here and not there."
The messenger was shaking his head. "You cannot remain here. You have to return immediately to the Hole in the Void."
"What the hell would I want to do that for? The streamheat don't like me any more than they like the idimmu. I could be killed."
"You will die for sure if you remain here."
"But you told me…"
"This attack has changed everything. The Hole in the Void is your link. It is the route by which you are connected to your dimension of origin. If that link is broken or that route is severed, you will become a wraith and you will simply wither to nothing."
"I can't stay here?"
"Go, Joe."
The landscape vanished and the Messenger of Necrom along with it. For a fleeting instant, Gibson seemed to be in some gray, indistinct limbo, a place of fog and gloom and visual distortion. He sensed that there were other beings crowded around him, but beings who were not completely there, insubstantial and ghostly, a whisper on his senses rather than something fully real.
And then he was standing on an orange hillside above the valley of the Hole in the Void, right in the middle of a fullblown and very real firefight.
The White Room
BACK AT THE clinic, in the days that immediately followed his short-lived escape bid, they kept him submerged in a sea of pills and injections. It was almost as if they were trying to medicate the will for freedom out of him. He was so doped that he didn't even dream, merely drifted through a gray fog of nonfunctioning responses and dull frustration. Only a handful of what could be classed as clear memories came through that period. He could remember passing John West as they dragged him down a corridor bundled up in a straitjacket. West had been sitting in a wheelchair, and he had treated Gibson to a sad salute. "I told you you shouldn't have tried it."
He also remembered Kooning coming to look at him, staring down at his bed with a look of outraged betrayal.
The worst of the lasting memories was the nasty smile on the face of one of the male nurses who had recaptured him; he suspected it was the one who had used the blackjack on his kidneys while they were in the van. The man had leaned so close to him that Gibson had been able to smell the spearmint gum on his breath. "You were iucky they didn't dust off the ECT for you. Back in the old days they used to cook your brain if you broke out."
It was a constant reminder of the helplessness of anyone who got themselves labeled as a mental patient.
Chapter Fifteen
GIBSON, WHO HAD never in his life been in combat, instantly discovered that it wasn't in the least like the movies or even the TV news. Combat happened all at once, and so fast there wasn't enough time to take it in or even to be specifically frightened, just a dry-mouthed, unfocused terror and a gasping, sobbing need to scramble away, out of the line of fire. Beneath him, in the inhabited valley of the Hole in the Void, buildings and vehicles were burning. As far as he could tell, one of the structures on fire was the Rearing Eagle.
"Bastards."
The sky was a dull gunmetal-blue streaked with rushing parallel lines of gray interference that provided little light by which to see. Two large aircraft, black shapes above the glare of the fires, hovered over the valley, filling it with the high-pitched siren wail of their engines. They were like big helicopter gun-ships, but without rotors, and of a design unlike anything Gibson had ever seen in his own world. They were pouring fire into the village, both conventional tracer and the jagged beam of some advanced energy weapon. Small dark figures were moving around among the flarnes, and Gibson could make out the repeated pinpoint muzzle flashes of weapons. He wasn't, however, allowed the luxury of wondering what was going on in the valley. Other dark figures were coming over the crest of the hill above him. To his relief, he spotted Nephredana, still in her armor, among their number, and he realized that they had to be a group of defenders. The bad news was that they were in full retreat.
Gibson yelled and waved his arms, even though he realized the gesture was probably pointless in the gloom. "Hey, over here!"
Nephredana spotted him. "Gibson?"
She hurried to where he was standing. There were scorch-marks on her armor and her face was streaked with dirt. She smelled of smoke and sweat. "Where the hell did you spring from? What happened?"
"He heard about the attack and sent me back here."
He realized that he wasn't saying the name Necrom any longer.
Nephredana glanced over her shoulder. "We've got to get out of here. They're coming up the other side of the hill."
Her voice was momentarily drowned out by the nearby chatter of automatic weapons. "They Pearl-Harbored us right out of nowhere. We never had a chance to get organized. They've got these fucking weapons…"
In the next second, he was able to see these fucking weapons firsthand. A horde of what Gibson instantly recognized as streamheat assault troops from their helmets and uniforms poured over the top of the hill. A number of them seemed to be armed with what looked a great deal like World War II flamethrowers. Tubes were attached by hoses to heavy backpacks. When they opened fire, though, they proved to be flamethrowers from some future hell. Streams of dazzling light danced and shimmered, now spasming along the ground, now juddering through the air, jumping and twitching like a set of random lines in a flick book. When they reached an obstacle they either arced over it or skittered around. Each streamheat trooper appeared to control the lines of energy
flowing from his weapon by means of a twist grip behind the trigger mechanism.
Gibson stared open-mouthed until Nephredana grabbed him and dragged him to the ground. "Get down, you idiot!"
They pressed themselves flat as one of the streams of light cracked over their heads. "Holy shit! What are those things?"
"The swine have come up with something that can finish us idimmu."
"Kill you?"
Nephredana shook her head. "It can't terminate us, only the Maker or a direct ground-zero nuclear blast can do that, but they can fuck us up good."
"What will they do to me?"
"Turn you into a fucking grease spot."
A defender was caught by the blazing lines of energy, a hulking brute not unlike Rayx. He screamed horribly, became one with the energy stream, retaining his own basic shape as a burning outline for a few seconds and then vanishing.
Nephredana's eyes were an iceburn. "It's some beefed-up version of the regular streamheat return-gun. It's capable of burying each of us at the fucking heart of nickel-iron planetoid and we'd never get out." She was now looking anxiously for an escape route. "We're in deep shit here."
Gibson could only assume that what Nephredana called a streamheat return-gun was the original weapon that he'd seen Smith; Klein, and French use all the way back on the Jersey waterfront, the same one French had turned on himself in Luxor.
The weapons swallowed a second and third of the defenders and Nephredana was off at a crouching run, ducking and dodging the energy streams as they slashed across the hillside like electric whips. Gibson didn't hesitate; he was right behind her. A gully ran down the hillside a little to their left, and Nephredana dived into it, taking advantage of the momentary shelter. Gibson all but rolled in on top of her. He now had orange stains on his white suit and was gasping for breath.
"Where's Slide?"
Nephredana shook her head. "Don't know. We were separated."
She quickly fumbled in a pouch at her belt and pulled out a small metallic object. "Quickly, take this!"
It looked like a small pistol.
"What is it?"
"Don't you recognize it?"
Gibson looked at the multibarreled configuration and realized that it was a pocket version of one of the streamheat return-guns. "What am I supposed to do with it?"
"Use it on yourself."
"I thought these things could bring you out five miles up in the air or a mile under Mont Blanc."
"That's a chance you take. If you stay here you'll be killed for sure, or taken alive and that would be even worse."
Gibson looked at the thing in his hand as though it were a poisonous snake. "I can't do that,"
"Do it, damn you. You have to get out of here, you've been to Him."
Gibson was shaking his head. "I can't do it."
Energy streams danced along the edge of the gully.
"There's no time! Use it!"
"I can't."
"Then give it back to me, damn it, and I'll use it on you."
"What about you and the others?"
"We'll take our chances. Now give me the damned weapon."
Gibson passed the gun back. Nephredana went into her pouch again and tossed something else to him. "These may help."
It was a small leather pouch. He found that it was heavy. "What…?"
A third gunship came over the hill, laying fire. Tracers flashed along a section of the gulley. Nephredana pointed the small streamheat weapon at Gibson and fired.
He was running down a long white corridor. It was tilted over on one side and he had trouble keeping his feet. There was fire behind him and a golden light ahead of him. He had to reach the golden light to be safe, but the white corridor was very long and he was very tired. He wanted to lie down and rest, but, if he did, he would be consumed by the fire. It was then that the thought struck him. A white corridor, a golden light. He looked down at himself and found that he seemed to have vacated his body. If he'd had a physical form to groan with, he would have groaned out loud. "Don't tell me I'm fucking dead!"
The inward groan seemed to trigger something. His body came back with a vengeance. He was falling. He fell about twelve feet, hit the ground, and blacked out.
He opened his eyes but he had no idea where he was. He had been dreaming, a long, intense, and complicated dream, a terrible dream in which he'd constantly been running, a dream full of demons and monsters and death and pain. He had only woken from the dream because he imagined that he was dying. He shivered, he was cold. Had he taken something? What the hell had he taken? He couldn't remember. All he knew was that he was glad to be back in his own bed.
Except, although it was dark, he wasn't in his own bed.
He was sprawled on hard, muddy, cold ground that was littered with garbage and dead leaves, and he could see the lights of what looked like apartment buildings beyond the branches of sooty trees. Rain was falling on him and, worst of all, he was naked. Groggily he raised his head. The question was no longer what the hell had he taken but what the hell had he done? He'd never woken up in a state like this before. A bundle was lying beside him. He reached out. It was his clothes. The moment he touched the sleeve of his jacket, it all came back to him: Nephredana, Yancey Slide, and the saucers. And, before that, Gideon Windemere; Christobelle; Smith, Klein, and French; and the Nine, It hadn't been a dream. It had been an insane reality, and it was still going on. Instantly he was up. Mercifully his suit and shirt had turned black in the trans. It saved him from the added absurdity of running around in the dark dressed like John Travolta. Trying to get into his pants in a half crouch before someone spotted him, and not to get too much mud on them while he was doing it, was no easy trick, but he struggled. The last thing he needed was to be arrested for public lewdness. There were too many questions that he couldn't satisfactorily answer for himself, let alone for a bunch of suspicious cops. Besides, he had seen quite enough of cops in Luxor.
As he slipped on his jacket, something heavy in the pocket bumped against his hip. It was the leather pouch that Nephre-dana had given him. He pulled it out, loosened the drawstring that held it closed, and shook some of the contents into his palm. He could scarcely believe what he was seeing. The pouch was full of large gold coins.
"Fucking Krugerrands."
Nephredana really had taken care of him, if indeed gold had any value where he'd landed. The first problem was to find out exactly where that was. If the streamheat had been telling him the truth back in Jersey, he ought to be in his own dimension. That was supposed to be the function of the weapon and why the idimmu called them return-guns. To his surprise, he accomplished the task of orientation by simply standing up. He instantly recognized where he was. He was back in New York, in Manhattan, back where he'd started or, to be exact, a ten-dollar cab ride from where he'd started. Unless he was badly mistaken, he had fallen out of the void and into the Lower East Side. He'd emerged into the world in, of all places, Tompkins Square Park, behind the bandshell. In some ways it wasn't too bad a place to materialize at random from another dimension. If any of the denizens of the ravaged little park had noticed him suddenly appearing out of thin air and dropping to the ground, they'd probably only have shaken their heads and wondered about the quality-to-quantity ratio of the stuff they were drinking, smoking, or shooting up. On the other hand, it was a bad place to be lying around unconscious. He was damned lucky that someone hadn't stolen his boots, the rest of his clothes, and the bag of Krugerrands, It would have been a cool score for a junkie.
Gibson straightened up and slowly looked around. From the lack of activity in the park, he guessed it had to be four or five in the morning. The homeless were stretched out on the benches or sleeping in makeshift cardboard shelters. Somewhere someone was playing rap music on a boom box. The bars on Avenue A were closed, and he had to assume that it couldn't be all that long till dawn. Even though he wouldn't have chosen the manner of his arrival, it was good to be back somewhere familiar and, by the standards of his rece
nt adventures, relatively normal.
The question was what he should do next. His instinct was to go back to Central Park West, to the seclusion of his apartment to fix himself a drink, take a hot bath, and sleep for three or four days. The kind of prudence that he'd learned in recent days stopped him, however. Maybe he should go to a hotel. He couldn't be sure that there wasn't something unpleasant waiting for him at home. It would be better to hang on until daylight before investigating the apartment, and even then it would pay to be a little circumspect. He started walking toward Avenue A, but after the first couple of steps, he had to stop and stand very still to prevent himself throwing up. His system had taken such a beating in the last couple of dozen hours that it was now in open revolt. Gibson badly wanted a cigarette, but a search of his pockets revealed that he didn't have any. The lack of cigarettes brought his first problem home to him. He might have a pocketful of gold but he didn't actually have any American money. He couldn't very well walk into the Warwick or the St. Regis without even an overnight bag, slap a couple of Krugerrands on the desk, and expect them to give him a room. He doubted that he could even try a stunt like that at the Chelsea. Damn it, the way things were, he couldn't so much as hail a cab.
There were at least six all-night bodegas within easy reach of the park and, in the second of these, he was able, after a great deal of very suspicious negotiating, to sell one of the coins to the Lebanese behind the counter for fifty bucks. He knew that this was only a fraction of its real value, but his need for a little operating cash made it more than worthwhile. As soon as the stores were open he'd make his way over to the jewelry strip in Chinatown and sell the rest of the coins for a much more realistic rate. Now all that remained was to decide what to do for the rest of the night, fifty bucks was by no means enough to get him a room in anything but the most raunchy of flophouses or hot-sheet hotels, and that was almost worse than staying awake. He knew an after-hours joint on Third Avenue just by Fourteenth Street that went by the name of the Candy Box. He'd go there.
