by Brian Lumley
After Vyotsky had gone, Khuv continued to watch the sphere until his eyes began to hurt. Then he turned and crossed the walkway to the Saturn's-rings platform, and started up the wooden stairs to the shaft through the magmass. There on the landing at the mouth of the shaft Viktor Luchov was waiting for him. Khuv came to a halt, said:
'Direktor Luchov, I notice you distanced yourself from this experiment. Indeed you were conspicuous by your absence!' His tone was neutral, or if anything even a little defensive.
'As I shall continue to absent myself from such… acts!' Luchov answered. 'You are the KGB here, Major, and I am a scientist. You call it an experiment, and I call it an execution. Two executions, it would seem! I thought it would be over by now else I'd not have been here, but unfortunately I was in time to see that lout Vyotsky take his departure. A brutal man, yes, and yet now I pity him. And how will you explain this to your superiors in Moscow, eh?'
Khuv's nostrils flared a little and he grew slightly paler, but his voice remained even as he replied: 'My reporting procedures are my business, Direktor. You are right: you are a scientist and I am KGB. But you will note that when I say "scientist" I do not make it sound like pig-swill. I would advise caution how you emphasize your use of the term KGB. Does the fact that I am able to perform certain thankless tasks better than you make me any less useful? I should have thought the very opposite. And can you truthfully tell me that as a scientist you are not fascinated by the opportunity we have here?'
'You perform these "tasks" better than me because I would not perform them!' Luchov almost shouted. 'My God, I… I-!'
'Direktor?' Khuv raised an eyebrow; the line of his mouth was tight, thin and ugly now.
'Some people never learn!' Luchov stormed. 'Man, have you forgotten the trials at Nuremberg? Don't you know we're still bringing people to justice for — ' He saw the look on Khuv's face and stopped.
'You compare me with Nazi war criminals?' Khuv was now deathly white.
'That man,' Luchov pointed a trembling finger at the sphere, 'was one of our own!'
'Yes, he was,' Khuv snapped. 'He was also psychotically brutal, devious, insubordinate and dangerous to the point of being a downright liability! But haven't you wondered why I never reprimanded him? You think you know it all, don't you, Direktor? Well, you don't. Do you know who Vyotsky worked for before me? He was a bodyguard to Yuri Andropov himself — and we still don't know exactly how he died! But it's a fact they didn't get on, and that Andropov intended to demote him. Oh yes, you can believe it — Karl Vyotsky was implicated! Very well, and now I'll tell you why he was sent here — '
'I… I don't think that's necessary,' Luchov grasped the landing's handrail to steady himself. All of the blood had drained from his face until he was as white as Khuv. 'I think I already know.'
Khuv lowered his voice. 'I'll tell you anyway,' he whispered. 'But for his misadventure tonight, Karl Vyotsky was to have been our next "volunteer"! So don't cry for him, Direktor — he had only a month left anyway!'
Luchov gazed aghast at Khuv where he turned away and climbed the steps through the shaft. 'And he didn't know?' he said.
'Of course not,' Khuv answered without looking back. 'If you were in my shoes, would you have told him?'
Jazz plodded on.
No use hurrying and wasting energy needlessly, and it wasn't as if anyone or thing was going to sneak up on him. Not here. But certainly he must try to conserve his strength. He didn't know how far he had to go, another mile or ten or a hundred. He felt like a man crossing a vast lake of salt, whom the sun had already blinded. Yes, it was like that: as if he marched blindly, endlessly under a blazing sun, but one which held no heat. Only light. He sweated, yes, but purely from his efforts and not from any external source of heat. It was neither hot nor cold in this white tunnel between the worlds; the temperature seemed constant and was no problem; one might actually live here, except one couldn't possibly live here. No one could ever really live here; not in a place where he was the only reality and everything else was… white!
Twice he'd taken a swig from his water bottle, replacing lost moisture, and twice he'd thought to himself: is this all there is, this emptiness? What if it doesn't go anywhere?
But then, where had the bat and the wolf come from, and the magmass creatures, and the warrior? No, it had to go somewhere.
He had also paused to take the rusty magazine off his SMG and throw it away, and fit a good one from his packs. If he had to use the weapon, the last thing he wanted to happen was for a duff round to jam itself in the breach.
It was then, just after he'd fitted the new magazine, that he learned something else about this weird Gate place. Fastening the straps of his pack, he'd looked up — and discovered that he didn't know which direction was which. He had a compass on his wrist, but it was a little late for that; he should have checked it immediately after entering the sphere. He'd looked at it anyway — and seen the hand circling aimlessly, just as lost as he was! And then again he'd looked all about him, slowly turning in a full circle, or what he believed was a full circle. But he couldn't even be sure of that.
It was all the same everywhere he looked: whiteness stretching as far as the eye could see in every direction. Even a white floor and a white sky, making no distinction anywhere, no horizon, nothing but himself. Himself and gravity. And thank God for gravity, for without the sensation that there was something solid underneath him — he knew he would have very quickly gone mad. With it… at least he knew which way was up!
Then he'd looked back over his shoulder. Had he really come from over there? Or from over there? Difficult to tell. How did he know he was still heading in the right direction? What the hell was 'direction' in this Godforsaken place?
But when he'd tried to move off again there had been resistance, a wall of invisible foam that pushed him back with a force equal to that which he mustered against it. To the right it wasn't so bad, but still difficult, and to the left likewise. There was only one way to go, which meant that that had to be the right way. That was why he hadn't noticed it before; because he'd automatically chosen, or been guided, along the path of least resistance. And after that there'd been more plodding, more sweating, until now — time for another swig at his bottle. Staring ahead, and as he pulled at the bottle and let the water cool his mouth, Jazz suddenly realized that things were no longer pure white. That came as a shock, so that he almost choked on his water. Now what the hell…? There in the distance… mountains? Silhouettes of crags? A dark-blue sky and… stars? It was like looking through a sea-fret; better, like looking down a tunnel at a misty morning. Or at a scene faintly etched on a white silk screen. But how far away?
Jazz plodded on, more eagerly now — and at the same time somewhat more apprehensively. The scene came closer, growing brighter as the stars blinked out and were replaced by weak beams of sunlight seeming to strike through the mountains to the right of the picture's frame. And that was when Jazz heard the sound.
At first he associated it with the emerging scene, but then he realized that it came from behind him. And no sooner that than he recognized it for what it really was: a motorcycle! He turned and looked back.
Karl Vyotsky rode with the sling of his SMG across his right shoulder, the gun itself hanging under his arm, muzzle forward. As yet he couldn't see the distant scene that Jazz had spotted, but he could see Jazz. The big Russian gritted his teeth into a snarling grin, guided the bike with his left hand and his knees and took the handgrip of the gun in his right fist. He laid his index finger along the trigger-guard, turned up the throttle and felt the bike surge forward. 'British,' he grunted to himself, 'your time's up. Kiss it all goodbye!'
For a moment Jazz was stunned. A motorcycle! And here he'd been knocking himself out walking it! The problem was, how to turn Vyotsky's advantage into a disadvantage? But as he'd walked, so Jazz had been giving the Gate's weird physics a thought or two. Now he believed he had the answer. 'OK, Ivan,' he murmured to himself, 'so let's s
ee if you're as smart as you think you are.'
Vyotsky rode closer, revved up until sixty showed on his clock and the bike throbbed under him. The ride was smooth as silk, but even so, aiming the SMG would not be easy. It would be, literally, hit or miss. But he did have the element of surprise, or if not surprise, shock at least. What must the Englishman be thinking now, he wondered, to see this powerful machine bearing down on him?
He's a little less than half a mile away, Jazz was thinking. Thirty seconds. He got down on one knee, turned his body side-on so as to decrease his target silhouette, turned his gun in Vyotsky's direction. Not that he intended to shoot at him, just make him a little nervous.
A quarter-mile to go, and Vyotsky's face a mask of hatred where he thundered to the attack. But… suddenly his quarry had grown smaller, he'd gone down on one knee. And at the same time Vyotsky saw the scene on the other side of the Gate. For a moment it threw him, but then he returned his concentration to what he was doing, namely: hunting down this British bastard to the death! He began to move his knees, shift his body-weight, give the bike something of a slow wobble; and at the same time he commenced firing single shots in Jazz's direction.
One hundred and fifty yards, and Jazz held his fire. He hadn't even released the safety-catch, hadn't cocked the weapon. It seemed obvious that the crazy Russian intended to run him down; Vyotsky was relying on Jazz losing his nerve and making a run for it, trying to get out of the way. But Jazz had some ideas of his own. Finally he clicked off the safety-catch, cocked the weapon, re-sighted and… waited. For if he was correct it would be useless to fire anyway.
Fifty yards, and Vyotsky firing on automatic, a stream of lead that buzzed and plucked at the air all about Jazz, too close for comfort. And at the last possible moment he hurled himself to one side. Vyotsky's bike careened by him; its rider threw it into a steep, banking turn; the bike stood on its nose and hurled him out of the saddle!
Then machine and rider were somersaulting in different directions, and Jazz walked carefully forward toward them, and toward the scene looming on the other side of the Gate. Miraculously, Vyotsky came to the end of his skidding and tumbling and found himself virtually unharmed. The 'ground' here was obviously different. He had bruises and one sleeve of his combat suit was torn where he'd put his elbow through it, but that was all. He climbed shakily to his feet, stared unbelievingly at the Englishman maybe fifteen paces away where he walked toward him. 'Hello there, Ivan!' Jazz called out. 'I see you got here the easy way.'
Vyotsky grabbed up his weapon, checked it was undamaged, aimed at his oncoming enemy. Why was the stupid bastard grinning like that? Because of the accident? He'd found it amusing? The bike must have blown a tyre or something; but Simmons, he must have blown his mind! He wasn't even defending himself; he merely cradled his gun in his arms, came forward at a casual stroll.
'British, you're dead!' said Vyotsky. He deliberately lowered his aim — to chew up the other's thighs, groin and belly — and squeezed the trigger. The weapon was on automatic. It fired three stuttering shots before Vyotsky's finger was jerked from the trigger, which happened when the gun slammed into his chest and sent him crashing backwards to sprawl on the floor. Vyotsky felt as if his chest had caved in, as if his ribs were broken; possibly one or two of them were.
Lying there hugging himself, gritting his teeth and murmuring, 'Ah! Ah.r from the pain, he looked at Jazz. In the distance between them, three bullets were plainly visible lying on the floor. The SMG had 'fired' them insofar as they'd escaped from its barrel, but only just. And that had resulted in three mighty mule-kicks coming in rapid succession, blows which even the huge Russian's bulk hadn't been fully able to absorb.
Vyotsky made an effort to reach the smoking gun where it lay, but that was in Jazz's direction, which was the wrong way. He tried harder, and of course failed. The SMG was all of fifteen inches beyond his straining fingertips — hardly a great distance — but it might as well have been a mile, or not there at all. The motorcycle, too, lay in the wrong direction.
Jazz reached the bike, hauled it upright, stood astride the front wheel and wrenched the handlebars back into position from where they'd been knocked slightly askew. He ignored Vyotsky's groaning. Then he wheeled the bike forward and picked up the Russian's gun. And at last he spoke:
'Sound and light are the only things that seem to work in both directions here,' he said. 'We can hear each other, talk to each other, and even though you're ahead of me — toward the other end of the Gate, I mean — your words get back to me. Likewise your picture, for I can see you. But while we're standing like this, nothing solid can ever come from you to me. Reverse our positions, and sure enough I'd be dead, except that isn't the case. So there's no way you could have harmed me, Ivan: no bullets, no sticks or stones, nothing. These three rounds — ' he kicked the three spent projectiles aside, ' — they fired the gun! If you weren't so burned-up with hate, you'd have worked it out for yourself.'
It all sank in, and finally Vyotsky scowled and nodded.
Then, still holding his chest, he sat up. 'So get it over with,' he said. 'What are you waiting for?'
Jazz looked at the other and grimaced. 'God, what a wanker you are! Hasn't it dawned on you yet that we may be the only human beings this side of Earth? You and me? Not that I'm much for male companionship, but I can't see myself killing off half the human population just for the fun of it. Last time that happened it was Cain and Abel!'
Vyotsky was finding it hard to follow Jazz's logic. He wasn't even sure it was logic. 'What are you saying?' he said.
'I'm saying that, against my better judgement, I'm giving you your life,' Jazz told him. 'See, I'm not the sort of murderous lunatic that you appear to be. Yesterday, in my cell — if I'd had you then in this position — things might be different. And your own fault because you worked me up to it. But I'm damned if I can kill you here and now.'
Vyotsky tried to sneer, managed only a wince. 'Lily-livered chickenshit son of a — ' He jerked himself to his feet.
Jazz lowered his own SMG and put a single round between Vyotsky's feet. It whupped where it ricochetted off the ground. 'Sticks and stones,' he reminded, 'can't hurt my bones, but names can certainly do yours a hell of a lot of damage!' He got on the bike and kicked it into life.
'You're leaving me here, without my gun?' Vyotsky was suddenly alarmed. 'Then you might as well kill me after all!'
'You'll find your gun waiting for you when you come through the Gate,' Jazz told him. 'But remember this: if I ever catch you on my trail again, it'll be a story with a different ending. I don't know how big that world is up front, but from here at least it looks big enough for the two of us. It's your decision. So that's all from me, Comrade. Here's hoping I won't be seeing you.'
He put the bike in gear and rolled forward past Vyotsky, upped the gear and picked up a little speed, looked back once, briefly. The big Russian was watching him go. It was hard to say what sort of an expression he was wearing. Jazz sighed, climbed through the remaining gears and headed for the sunlit scene ahead. But in the back of his mind something kept telling him he'd made a bad mistake…
Another mistake was this: failing to recognize where the Gate ended and the strange world beyond it began!
Jazz had been riding only three or four minutes, had kept his speed even at maybe twenty, twenty-five miles per hour, when without warning he breached the sphere's outer skin. For it was a sphere on this side, too, he realized as he tumbled in mid-air. The trouble was that on this side the sphere seemed parked in the throat of what looked like a crater, and the crater's rim was three feet higher than the surrounding terrain.
The bike fell, Jazz too, managing somehow to kick himself free of the rotating machine, and both of them collided jarringly with hard earth and scattered rocks. Winded, Jazz lay there for a moment and let his senses stop reeling. Then he sat up and looked all about. And then he knew how lucky he'd been.
The dazzling white sphere was perhaps thirty feet acro
ss, and all around its perimeter, penetrating the earth and the crater walls alike to a radius of maybe seventy feet, magmass wormholes gaped everywhere. Jazz had landed between two such holes, and he knew it was only a matter of good fortune that he'd not been pitched headlong down the throat of either one of them. Their walls were glass smooth and very nearly perpendicular, and their depth entirely conjectural; once in, it would be one hell of a job to climb out again.
Jazz glanced at the sphere, turned his face away before the dazzle blinded him. A giant, illuminated golf ball plopped down in wet mortar and left to dry out. That's what it looked like. 'But who in hell drove it here?' Jazz muttered to himself. 'And why didn't he shout "fore"?'
He stood up and checked himself over, finding only bumps and bruises. Then (and despite the fact that he felt almost compelled to stand still and simply gape at the weird world he'd entered) he went to the bike and examined it for damage. Its front forks were badly twisted and the wheel jammed immovably between them. If he had a spanner and could get the wheel off, then he might be able to straighten the forks one at a time using brute strength. But… he had no spanner.
So… what about tools in general?
He released catches on the bike's seat and tilted it back… the tool compartment underneath was empty. Now the machine was doomed to lie here until it rusted. So much for transport…
Now Jazz gave a thought to Karl Vyotsky. The Russian was maybe one-and-a-half to two miles behind him. Forty minutes at the outside, even weighed down with equipment. The last thing Jazz wanted was still to be here when Vyotsky arrived. But he must do one more thing before he moved off.
