by Brian Lumley
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To say that Trask was astonished would be to belittle the range of emotions which swept over him; indeed, and apart from that same handful of fellow voyagers, his was a new emotion, designed to fit an entirely new experience. Even the Necroscope Harry Keogh (despite that he had been first) and his Necroscope son Nathan had never felt like this. For they had understood at least something of the Mobius Continuum - they had imagined and conjured it — while Trask’s mind was of the world, albeit a world in which Truth was the guide and Truth the gate.
And, if anything, that made it worse, for he understood the Truth of the Mobius Continuum: that it was apart from the world of men, and apart from all human existence and even conjecture, except in the secret minds of long-dead mathematicians and the ‘magic’ of mystics and metaphysicians.
And yet he was here, and he felt it!
There was no air, but neither was there any time, so that Trask didn’t need to breathe. And in the absence of time, space itself was absent. These essential ingredients - these prime constituents of any ordinary universe of matter — had no existence here! Yet Trask remained intact. He didn’t rupture, disintegrate and fly apart, because there was nowhere to fly to.
Trask knew the truth of it: that he was NOWHERE. But that it was also the place where Every-Where and -When had had their beginning. The birthplace of universes! The womb of worlds! The singularity before time began!
He might have shouted his alarm, his shock, his own version of ‘Eureka!’ except Trask was only one discoverer, not the discoverer. But he believed he knew now what men meant when they said they’d ‘seen the light’. For he had seen the darkness.
And in that darkness, suddenly, he was afraid. His grip was tight and growing tighter on Nathan’s unseen arm. Unseen, yes, yet remembered on the photographic negative of his retinae like a slowly fading flash of light. Nathan, his
sole remaining link with Sanity, Reality, Humanity. Trask couldn’t actually see him, but he could feel and sense him there. He knew the truth of the other. And for the moment that was all he knew in this awesome no-space-time.
Exhausted of mundane thoughts (or thoughts that made sense in a nonsense or extramundane environment), Trask’s fear rapidly expanded into a kind of hysteria, but one which lacked the frantic motion of commonplace panic. He simply dared not move, because he couldn’t be sure where motion - even the smallest motion - would take him. Moving .. . from here one might go anywhere if one knew the route, or go nowhere forever. Which might well be Trask’s fate if Nathan deserted him. And to be lost here would mean lost forever; for in this timeless, spaceless non-environment nothing ever changed except it was willed, and there was no will here unless it were brought here by someone who strayed into this place, or someone who came here and knew how to manipulate it. Someone like Nathan.
And at that a new thought occurred to Trask, or new to him at least:
Nathan, we shouldn’t be here. It isn’t our place. Rather, it isn’t mine. His mental whisper was frightened, which Nathan sensed at once.
Easy. His own thoughts were calm, controlled. Take it easy. Weren’t you the one who wanted to do it? Well, and now you’re doing it.
But I’m not meant to be. I shouldn’t be here.
Are you sure of that?
Trask wondered about that. Was he sure of it? But why wonder, when he knew the truth of it at once? Yes, I’m sure. There are forces here. It isn’t such a - what, vacuum? - as you’ve painted it. I feel … currents? And they’re beginning to move me, trying to repulse or expel me. Trask’s ‘voice’ was tremulous with his ever-increasing panic.
Calm down, Nathan told him again. I have you. You’re safe. I’ve wondered about those forces you feel. You know when you’re waiting at a red light? How you feel the energy
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in the throb of the car’s engine, just waiting to thrust you forward? Well, I think this is the same thing. It’s your own power you feel. It must be, because nothing happens here except by force of will.
It wasn’t exactly the truth — only a guess at best — but Trask was in no fit state to repudiate it. Being here, his only desire was to be out of here. Like a small boy riding a rollercoaster. Where are we going?
In a little while, Perchorsk.
That pulled the older man together in a moment. WHAT? But he sensed Nathan’s shrug.
The last place anyone would expect us to turn up. At the core. But only for a moment. In and out again. Let them see us, then not see us. Nathan’s mental voice was cold, grim now, reminding Trask very much of his father. I want Turkur Tzonov to know who he’s been dealing with. After what he’s done to Siggi Dam, and what he would have done to me and Zek, I want him to worry.
But why? You won’t be here.
He doesn’t know that. Anyway, I’m Szgany and I owe him.
But Perchorsk!
In and out, that’s all, Nathan replied, determined. Sufficient that they see us. It can’t do you any harm, either. Turkur will think twice before he tries any more fast ones on you or E-Branch.
Do you know the . .. the way there?
Oh, yes. I was there, remember? But on the way, there’s something else I would like you to see.
Trask was calmer now, but found difficulty in not being able - in not requiring - to breathe. Really? And what would that be?
The past, Nathan answered. And the future! For I’ve discovered Harry’s time-doors, but I haven’t crossed a threshold yet. And don’t worry - I’m not going to. Not yet. I fust want to see it again. And Ben, just think what lan would give to be your shoes right now.
Not a lot, Trask answered, sensing movement. Ion Goodly doesn’t much like the future. It’s just something that happens to him. Come to think of it, it’s something that happens to all of us. It’s inevitable as dying. Maybe that’s what he doesn’t like about it. He’d much prefer to take his chances not knowing . ..
They moved rapidly towards a point of light that expanded in a moment into a shimmering door. And Nathan brought them to a halt close to the threshold. Light sprang forth from beyond the time-door, a pulsing blue light which was yet warm and in no way artificial. The light of life! Trask would have known the truth of it, of course, without being told. But standing or being at the threshold with Nathan, both of them silhouetted in the warm blue glow, he asked anyway:
The future? Our future? Man’s future? And the blue threads?
After a short pause Nathan answered, and his whisper was no less awed than Trask’s. The threads … are men! he said. They are the lives of men . .. And, drawing Trask closer to the threshold - indeed, onto the very threshold -he added, See! That’s you, Ben, the blue thread of your future life!
Beyond the future-time-door, all was a chaos of millions of filaments of blue light, and Trask saw that one of them had its origin in his own being, streaming out from him like some weird ectoplasmic extension and dwindling to a bright blue thread as it hurtled into the future — his future. Another sped out from Nathan, out and away into the ever-widening haze of tomorrow …
For some time they gazed upon the panoply of the future; a minute or an aeon? .. . Trask couldn’t say. But eventually:
Even here, time grows short, Nathan said. At least, I feel it’s so. Anyway, I know well enough where my future is leading me. Back to Sunside/Starside.
Trask made no answer. Suddenly dumbstruck by the beauty (and not least by the knowledge) of what he was
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seeing, he’d become aware of a sound: an almost angelic chorus, an orchestrated, interminable Ahhhhhhhh! It could only be in his mind, for he guessed that time must be as silent as the Mobius Continuum itself. Of course, for if the sound of all the future were present, that would be an unbearable tumult.
And all of those blue life-threads weaving away into tomorrow and tomorrow, sighing in Trask’s mind; and some of the threads growing dim and blinking out as men died, while others burst from no
thing into brilliant neon-blue life as their owners were born. Trask felt he could stand here watching for all time. He was standing here for all time - all future time, at least.
But there’s the past, too, Nathan told him, guiding him to a past-time-door. Except that beyond this new threshold, instead of multiplying, spreading out and away forever as the human race expanded, the neon life-threads narrowed down, condensed, fell back into a well of nebulous light at the dawn of Man’s ascendancy. And now the mystical Ahhhhhhhh sound seemed reversed, fading into the history of humanity .. .
In a little while - or maybe after a long time — Nathan said, And now, Perchorsk.
Before Trask could protest, he found himself mobile again, and experienced what felt like a split-second of intense acceleration as his guide and companion simply went to Perchorsk in the Urals. They were there in a moment, coming to an instantaneous, effortless halt.
Nathan conjured a Mobius door . ..
.. . Which warped and fluttered like the flame of a candle in a draft!
And suddenly Trask remembered. Too close/’ he shouted at the top of his voice, a crushing, deafening, devastating avalanche of sound in the Mobius Continuum! ‘We’re too close to the Gate!’
Numb from the vibratory effect, Nathan hugged Trask close. I know, he said. Everything is wrong here, even the
flux of the numbers vortex. But please, Ben, don’t shout. Don’t even think. I have to get the co-ordinates right, that’s all. Then, letting the door collapse in upon itself, he backed off a little and conjured another. This one was less unstable, but not entirely so. Volatile and slowly consuming itself, it seemed to smoke, drifting a little as Nathan fought to hold it in place. Finally it firmed up; Nathan immediately stepped through and took Trask with him …
Into Perchorsk. Into the complex under the Urals. Into the mighty cavern sphere known as the core!
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The Gates: Perchorsk and Raduj’evac
Trask and Nathan had been here before and knew this nightmare place only too well: this alien cavern, eaten out of the solid rock of a mountain when the Gate was formed in the awesome vacuum of a nuclear implosion, this subterranean terminal or subway station to a parallel world called Sunside/Starside.
It was like being in a cavern, but that was where any similarity ended. The rock had been hollowed into the shape of a perfect sphere, a giant bubble well over a hundred and twenty feet in diameter. The curving shiny-black wall all around was glass-smooth except for the gaping mouths of energy ‘wormholes’ which riddled it everywhere, even in the domed ceiling. And at the centre of the core … the Perchorsk Gate itself, encased in a huge carbon steel shell some thirty feet in diameter, whose three welded sections were supported on massive hydraulic rams. Those rams could apply terrific pressure to hold the fused sections together in one mass, if that were ever necessary. While within this protective (defensive?) shell of steel, the Gate supported itself, floating there dead-centre, right where it had been born in a melting pot ofalien energies.
At least, that was the scene which the two Mobius intruders had expected to see; that was what they had seen the last time they were here. But now:
Around the spherical steel ‘egg’ which contained the Gate, a suspended catwalk ten feet wide had been drawn back in sections to allow for the egg’s hatching. The catwalk was equipped with consoles, computers, viewscreens, but
was empty of people, with the exception of a handful of white-smocked, red-splashed bodies where they lay grotesquely crumpled and lifeless, close to the master console. They had been scientists and were only recently dead, a minute or two at most. Nathan knew this with the sure instinct of a Necroscope; he felt the confusion, disbelief, panic of people who had known that death was a thing that only happens to others … which is what we all believe until it happens to us.
Nathan and Trask had emerged from the Mobius door on the outermost rim of a Saturn’s-ring system of platforms, where a perimeter catwalk encircled the core around its equator. And, as good fortune would have it, they’d emerged behind a shielding plate of aluminium fixed to the walkway’s rail, making it a vantage point where they were hidden from the view of the rest of the core. The shield had smoked-glass windows through which, if ever the Gate should be opened up, it could be viewed without the customary dazzle. But of course the Gate wasn’t likely to be opened up … was it?
Some ten feet higher and sixty feet away, around the gradual curve of the glossy-black wall, a landing fronted the perfectly circular mouth of a shaft running at forty-five degrees upwards into the rock. A railed stairway clung to the wall, with wide steps descending from the landing to the catwalk. Reaching out from the perimeter, a spidery gantry with an overhanging walkway formed a bridge to the inner catwalk with its consoles, computers and corpses - and its glaring white light.
Light, yes: three giant cat’s-eye slits or wedges of light shining out like solid bars from the four-foot gaps in the carbon steel shell, where the mighty rams had drawn back and torn the welded sections apart, leaving strips of weld hanging down like the rind of some strange metal fruit. And the alien light came flooding from the Gate, of course, exposed like the blind, free-floating eye of a gigantic Cyclops. Or the all-seeing orb of some colossal shewstone. Or maybe the seething evil of Pandora’s Box — standing open!
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But this was the static picture, a first impression following the darkness of the Mobius Continuum, as when a light is switched on and the contents of a room print themselves on the viewer’s eyeballs. Static, motionless, soundless . .. until, as Nathan and Trask realized they were actually here, suddenly it erupted into life! Then -
- A veritable chaos of sound, motion and deadly action!
The men on the inner walkway were not the only dead bodies here, and more were being made even now, so that it was immediately apparent what was happening: that Premier Gustav Turchin had done with his softly-softly approach and was going straight for the throat; he was attempting to beard Turkur Tzonov in his den. Beard him? He was trying to kill him!
‘Christ!’ Trask yelped, as automatic gunshots echoed and bullets ricocheted from the metal trim of the catwalk. ‘We’ve walked into a war! And Turchin … not a word of warning from him!’ As more bullets spattered, he grabbed Nathan’s arm. ‘God Almighty! Let’s get out of here.’
But Nathan, crouching down, said, ‘Wait! I have to see.’
‘See what?’ Trask gasped, but in fact he already knew what. Nathan wanted to see Turkur Tzonov, what he was up to, what was going on here. The Perchorsk Gate connected with Nathan’s world in a parallel universe, and the Gate stood open. The Russian’s intention had been to invade Sunside/Starside with a crack infantry platoon loyal to himself; to colonize the vampire world, open it up as a vast new satellite of Mother Russia and sack it for its precious metals, thus financing a resurgence of expansionism and old-style communism here on Earth, in what had become a politically, ecologically and financially bankrupt USSR. During the course of which, Premier Turchin would be assassinated and replaced by a new, ‘democratically elected’ leader of that vast region’s polyglot peoples - Tzonov himself, of course!
That had been the state of play some four months ago. But then, when Nathan had come through the Perchorsk
Gate from Sunside/Starside, Tzonov’s plan had been discovered and passed on through diplomatic channels to the Russian Premier; since when nothing much had appeared to be happening. Now it was becoming apparent that indeed things had been happening. Gustav Turchin had been busy and this was to have been the culmination of the Premier’s efforts, the realization of Turchin’s goal: to catch Turkur Tzonov and his people red-handed and round them up. But it was equally obvious that Tzonov, the head of the Opposition - Russia’s E-Branch - had seen it coming; this firelight in Perchorsk had to be the result of his contingency planning.
There were five uniformed, heavily armed men on the gantry. Under fire from the railed landing abov
e the perimeter walkway, three of them strained to haul a trolley laden with an assortment of weapons and ammunition towards a gap in the steel shell - in fact towards the Gate - while their two colleagues gave them covering fire.
Now that Trask and Nathan’s eyes had grown accustomed to the sudden brightness, the brilliant glare of the Gate itself, which was dazzling even through the smoked-glass window, they could see that these would not be the first of Tzonov’s men to cross the threshold. Others of his soldiers had already passed through the ‘skin’ of the dazzling sphere, its event horizon, and were visible on the other side as glowing slow-motion silhouettes against a uniformly milky backdrop. They were strung out, a straggling line of burdened, luminous figures dwindling into the alien white distance, leaving only a handful of their colleagues in the foreground to beckon eerily, with an agonizingly slow urgency, to those still outside where they crossed the gantry.
A white-smocked technician or scientist emerged from hiding behind the curve of the Gate. With his hands over his head to signify surrender, spreadeagling his body against a section of the steel shell, the frightened man inched his way into view. One of the men on the gantry saw him, turned the ugly, blued-steel snout of a machine-pistol in his
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direction, and let go with a burst of a dozen rounds. It was murder, pure and simple, totally unnecessary; obviously the soldier and his colleagues had been hand-picked by Tzonov. The scientist jerked and shuddered as smoking-hot lead stitched him across and back, passed through him and fragmented against the carbon steel, and then ricocheted from the metal back into his body. His white smock turned scarlet in a moment. And staggering forward, crumpling as he went, he fell to his knees at the rim of the platform, then tilted forward and nosedived into sixty feet of thin air between the stanchions and rams. And his querulous dead-speak voice was added to that of the others near the console.
