by Brian Lumley
'And what about them?' Luchov's voice was colder than ever. 'Do they know they can't come back?'
'No, they don't,' Khuv's response was immediate, 'and they can't be told. You'd better understand that: they can't be told. I have instructions for you on that matter, and on other matters…'
'Instructions for — ' Luchov sucked in air implosively. 'You have instructions for me?'
Khuv was impassive. 'From the very highest authority. The very highest! Where those soldiers are concerned, Direktor, I am in charge.' He produced and handed Luchov a sealed envelope stamped with the Kremlin crest. 'As for not coming back: no, they won't, not immediately. But eventually…'
'Eventually?' Luchov glanced at the envelope, put it away. 'Eventually?' he snorted. 'How long do we need, man? This Gate has been here for over two years — and what have we learned about the world on the other side? Nothing! Except that it's home for… monsters! We've never even communicated with the other side.'
'That comes first,' said Khuv. 'Field telephones.'
'What?'
'We know sound travels through the sphere,' said the other, 'and light — both ways! However warped the effect, men can talk and communicate with each other in there. These men will lay a cable as they go. It can be tested after they've travelled no more than a few paces! And if that doesn't work they'll set up temporary semaphore stations. At least we'll get to know what it's like through there. What it's like on the other side.'
Luchov shook his head. 'That still won't get them back,' he said.
'Not yet, not now,' Khuv grated, losing his patience. 'But if there is a way back we'll find it. Even if it means building another Perchorsk!'
Luchov took a pace backwards, was brought up short when the small of his back met the handrail. 'Another Per — ?' His jaw fell open. 'Why, I hadn't even considered — '
'I didn't think you had, Direktor.' Now Khuv grinned, his face a grim, emotionless mask. 'So now consider it. And stop worrying about these men. If you must worry, then worry for yourself, and for your staff. You'll find that in those orders, too. Once the bridgehead is established — you're next!'
Luchov tottered where he stood grasping the rail. He was furious, but shock had made him impotent as Khuv turned away. Then he found his voice, called out: 'But oh how neatly you've escaped the net yourself, eh, Major?'
Khuv paused, slowly turned to face him. He was as pale as Luchov had ever seen him. 'No,' he shook his head, and Luchov saw his Adam's apple working, 'for that, too, is in the orders. You'll be happy to know that in just ten days' time we part company, Viktor. For when they go through, I go with them!'
At the other end of the shaft to the magmass levels, out of sight round the corner, Vasily Agursky had been privy to all their conversation. Now, as Khuv's footsteps sounded on the boards, he turned and ran silently for the upper levels. He wore rubber-soled shoes, moved with the litheness of a cat. No, like a wolf! He loped, and revelled in the strength of his thighs as they effortlessly propelled him. Strong? Even in his youth he'd never known such strength! Nor such passions, desires, hungers…
But for all Agursky's speed and stealth, still Khuv caught a glimpse of him before he could pass out of sight. It was only that, a glimpse, but it caused the KGB Major to frown. On top of all his other worries, now there was this thing with Agursky — whatever it was. Khuv hadn't seen much of him lately, but whenever he had… he couldn't put his finger on it but something was wrong. And there he went, swift as a deer, head forward, silent as a ghost and just as weird.
Khuv shook his head and wondered what was ailing the strange little scientist. Wondered what had got into him…
The next morning, early, Khuv jerked awake to the clamour of alarms. In the moment of waking his heart almost stopped — tried to tear itself free and leap up into his throat — until he realized that these were only the general alert alarms, not Luchov's damned failsafe. Thank God — whom Khuv didn't really have any faith in, anyway — for that!
A moment later, as he hurriedly dressed, came the hammering on his door. He opened it to let in the unctuous Paul Savinkov; except that apart from the sweat on his fat, shining, frightened face, there was nothing at all slimy about him now. He smelled now not of grease but fear!
'Major!' he gasped. 'Comrade! My God, my God.r
Khuv shook him. 'What is it, man?' he snarled. 'Here, sit down before you fall down.' He shoved Savinkov into a chair.
The fat esper was trembling, wobbling like a jelly. 'I… I'm sorry,' he said. 'It's just… just…'
Khuv slapped him, backhanded him, deliberately slapped him again. 'Now perhaps you'll tell me what's wrong!' he growled.
The white burn of Khuv's slim fingers came up like long blisters on Savinkov's face. His eyes lost their glaze and he shook his head, as if he was the one who had just woken up and not Khuv. Then — Khuv thought the man was about to burst into tears. If he did, Khuv knew he would hit him right in the teeth! 'Well?' he rasped.
'It's Roborov and Rublev,' Savinkov gasped. 'Dead, both of them!'
'What?' Khuv knew he must be imagining this; it had to be some crazy dream. 'Dead? How, for the love of — ? An accident?' He finished dressing, slipped into his shoes.
'Accident?' Savinkov grinned like an idiot, but his features quickly melted into a sob. 'Oh, no — no, it wasn't an accident. When it happened, their thoughts woke me up. Their thoughts were — awful!'
Thoughts?' Khuv's mind, still not fully awake, sought for an explanation. Of course: Savinkov was a telepath. 'What about their thoughts?' — v
'Something… something was attacking them. In Roborov's room. I think they'd been playing cards, gambling, and that Roborov was a heavy loser. He'd been to the toilet. When he came out… Rublev was nearly dead! Something had him by the throat! Roborov tried to pull it off, and… it turned on him! Oh, God — 1 felt him die! Huh… huh… he…'
'Go on, man!' Khuv gasped.
'He grabbed the thing and turned it around, and he saw it. He was thinking: "I don't believe this! Oh, mother, help me! Sweet God, you know I've always loved you! Don't let this happen!"'
'Those were his thoughts?'
'Yes,' Savinkov sobbed. 'The rest of it was just background stuff, but it was Roborov's thoughts that really woke me up. And as he died — I saw it too.r
'What did you see?' Khuv took Savinkov's face between the flats of his palms.
'God, I don't know! It wasn't human — or maybe it was? It was a nightmare. It was… its shape was all wrong! It was like… like that thing in the glass tank!'
Khuv's blood ran cold. He gulped air into his lungs, released Savinkov's face. He grabbed his lapels and dragged him to his feet. 'Take me there,' he snapped. 'Roborov's room? I know it. Were you there? No? Then who is there? You don't know? Fool! Well, we're going there right now!'
On their way, the alarms stopped clamouring. 'Well, let's be thankful for that, anyway,' Khuv grunted. He jostled Savinkov ahead of him. 'At least I can hear myself think! Now, are you sure you can't remember who you told? I mean, did you simply forget all the procedures and come running straight to me? God, but if this is a wild-goose chase I'll — !'
But it wasn't.
Outside the door of Roborov's room a sleepy, nervous soldier stood on guard. He saluted sloppily as Khuv and Savinkov came into view. They rushed by him. Inside were two more espers, and a KGB man named Gustav Litve. All were whey-faced, shaken to their roots. Crumpled on the floor, there lay the reason. Or reasons.
Nikolai Rublev could be Savinkov's twin! thought Khuv, grimacing at what he saw. They were, or had been, much of a kind. But now there were differences, the main one being that Savinkov was still alive. And he was also intact.
Whatever it was that had killed Rublev, it had taken half his face from him. The fleshy part of the left side of his face was missing, flensed from the bone, from his ear to his nose and down to his chin. But it wasn't the work of a scalpel or knife. The flesh had been ripped off. In addition his throat was tor
n — torn, as by an animal — with the main arteries severed and exposed. Khuv thought: where's all the blood?
Perhaps he'd said something out loud, for his underling Litve said: 'Sir?'
'Eh?' Khuv looked up. 'Oh, nothing. Fetch Vasily Agursky, will you, Gustav? Bring him here. I want to know what kind of an animal could do this, and he might be able to tell me.'
Litve gratefully made for the door, called back: 'The other's not much better, sir.'
'Other?' Khuv's mind still wasn't on business.
'Roborov.'
Khuv realized he'd been wandering. To make up for it he snapped, 'He was your colleague, wasn't he?'
'Was, sir, yes,' Litve answered. He went out.
Behind an overturned table, amidst a litter of bloodied paper money and cards, lay 'the other', Andrei Roborov. The two espers were standing looking down on him. Khuv shoved them aside, took a look for himself. Roborov's face was a mask of sheer horror. His dead eyes bulged; his jaws gaped in a frozen rictus of terror; his tongue projected, blue and glistening. Mainly cadaverous in life, he was totally grotesque in death. His thin head from the ears up looked like it had been trapped in a toothed vise and crushed. The skull had caved in, and blood and brain fluid seeped from the cracks and the deep punctures of… teeth marks?
'Good Lord!' said Khuv; to which one of the espers added:
'Something bit his head like it was a plum! Major, look at his arms.'
Khuv looked. Both arms were broken at the elbows, bent back on themselves until the bones had parted at the sockets. Whatever it was, it had found a simple and effective way of stopping Roborov from fighting back.
Khuv shook his head, felt his gorge rising. He could almost feel the pulse of the Projekt quickening as morning came and the place started to wake up. There was a faint throbbing underfoot, like the heart of a great beast. And within the beast, a lesser beast: the one that had done this. Or perhaps, a greater beast? What sort of beast? Not human, surely. But if not human…
There was a telephone out in the corridor. Khuv ran to it and called the Duty Officer at Failsafe Concen. He didn't let the man speak but rasped: 'Have you been sleeping? Have you been asleep on duty?'
'Who is this?' came a wide-awake, alert voice from the other end. Khuv recognized the voice: a senior scientist on Luchov's team. A very responsible person.
'This is Major Khuv,' he lowered his voice. 'It seems we may have an intruder. Certainly we have a murderer in the place.'
'An intruder?' the voice on the other end hardened. 'Where are you, Major?'
'I'm in the corridor close to KGB quarters. Why?'
'Do you mean an intruder from outside, or from the Gate?'
'Well, obviously that's why I'm on the phone!' Khuv snapped. 'To find out!'
Now the other came back just as venomously: 'In which case it should also be obvious that your intruder is from outside! If it was anything else — by now you'd be burning, Khuv!'
'I-'
'Listen, I've got the screens right here in front of me. Everything is normal down there, except they're all a bit nervous because of those bloody alarms. Nothing, repeat nothing, has come through that Gate!'
Khuv slammed the phone down. He stood glaring at it. Something was loose in here. Maybe it had been let loose in here. By whom? British E-Branch?
He ran back into Roborov's room, told the two espers: 'Out, leave all this. If you come up with something let me know. But until then leave this to my investigators.'
Savinkov was making himself as small and insignificant as he could in a corner. 'You,' Khuv said. 'There are three more KGB men stinking in their beds just down the corridor, a stone's throw from the scene of a double murder. Go wake the idle bastards up. Wake them all up! Tell them I want them here, now.'
Savinkov went.
Khuv ushered the espers out into the corridor and closed Roborov's door. Viktor Luchov had just arrived, looked bewildered, only half-awake. 'Don't go in there,' Khuv warned him, shaking his head. Luchov took one look at the KGB officer's face and was sensible enough to take heed.
'But what's happened?'
'Murder — at least I think so.'
'But don't you know?' Luchov gaped.
'I know two people are dead, and if their killer is human, then it's murder.'
Luchov was waking up quickly. 'Is it that bad? Have you checked with Fail — '
'Yes,' Khuv cut him short. To both questions.'
'But — '
'No buts,' Khuv interrupted again. 'If it's something from the Gate, then it's invisible.'
At that moment Litve returned with Agursky. Khuv's eyes went straight to the tiny scientist. Except… Agursky hardly seemed that small any more. He slumped a little, yes, but if he were to stand up straight…
Agursky had on his night things with a dressing-gown thrown over them. And he was wearing dark spectacles. 'Something wrong with your eyes?' Khuv frowned.
'Eh?' Agursky squinted, peered at the Major through tinted lenses. 'Oh, yes. It comes on now and then. Photophobia. It's with being down here, out of the natural light. All this artificial lighting.'
Khuv nodded. He had more than enough with which to concern himself without worrying about Agursky's weird-ness. 'In there,' he nodded, indicating the door to Roborov's room. 'Two dead men.'
Agursky seemed hardly concerned. He opened the door, made to go in. Khuv caught his arm, felt the tension in him. Strange, because it hadn't shown in his movements or his mannerisms. 'I want you to tell me what killed them, if you can. Give me some sort of idea, anyway. Gustav, go in there with him.'
While they were inside the room, Khuv told Luchov all he knew. Impossible to work if the Projekt Direktor was going to be prying into everything. Better to put him firmly in the picture right now, from square one. By the time he was through, Litve and Agursky had come back out of the room. Litve was still very pale; Agursky seemed his usual self.
'Any ideas?' Khuv asked him.
The other shook his head, averted his eyes. 'Something terrifically strong. Immensely strong. A beast, certainly.'
'Beast?' Luchov blurted.
Agursky glanced at him. 'In a way of speaking, Direktor, yes. A human beast. A murderer. But as I said, a very large, very strong man.'
Khuv said: 'And the teeth marks in Roborov's skull?'
'No,' Agursky shook his head. 'His skull was smashed in with a hammer or something very similar. Yes, something like a small-pane hammer. But wielded with considerable force.'
Remembering that garbage Savinkov had spewed out, Khuv scowled. 'But I have an esper,' he said, 'Paul Savinkov, who says he "saw" the killer. And he says it was something nightmarish!'
Agursky had started to turn away, but now he slowly turned back. 'He saw this happen, you say?'
'In his mind, yes.'
'Ah!' Agursky nodded his understanding. Then he smiled, shrugged half-apologetically. 'Well, my science takes note of physical evidence only, Major. Metaphysics isn't my scene. Will you be requiring me any more? I have many things to do now, and — '
'Only one more thing,' said Khuv. 'Tell me, what did you do with the corpse of the dead creature from the tank?'
'Do with it? I photographed it, studied it to the point of stripping it down to cartilage and bone, finally destroyed, burned it.'
'Burned it?'
Agursky shrugged again. 'Of course. It was from the Gate, after all. There was nothing else to be learned from it. And… best not to take chances with things like that, don't you agree?'
Luchov patted him on the shoulder. 'Of course, Vasily, of course we do. Thank you very much.'
'If we do want you,' Khuv called after him, 'you'll be hearing from me. But with any luck we won't.' To Luchov he said, 'God, he gives me the creeps!'
"This whole place,' Luchov muttered, 'gives me the creeps!'
As Agursky went off, so Savinkov returned with Khuv's KGB operatives. They'd had civil police training, and since this now appeared to be a case of routine murder…
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Khuv scowled at them. They looked ruffled, unshaven. He dressed them down, told them what had happened and what he wanted. They went into Roborov's room. By now Savinkov had disappeared, probably sneaked off before Khuv could find more work for him.
But as Khuv and Luchov made to return to the upper levels, so the telepath came back. He was reeling, sobbing, seemed totally uncoordinated. 'Major — help! I… I… oh, God!'
Khuv pounced on him, grated: 'What now, Paul?'
'It's Leo!' he gasped.
'Leo Grenzel?' The locator! 'What is it with Leo?'
'I wondered why he hadn't picked up the presence of the intruder,' Savinkov babbled, 'and so I went to his room. The door was… it was open. I went in, and… and…'
Khuv and Luchov looked at each other. Their expressions were much the same: shock, disbelief, horror! Savinkov's reasoning was faultless, of course: Grenzel, if he was awake and well, should have appeared on the scene long before now.
Leaving Savinkov leaning against the metal wall, sobbing, Khuv and Luchov set off down the corridor at a run.
Khuv called back: 'No alarms, Paul! Only set them off one more time and the entire Projekt will take flight!'
In Grenzel's room it was a repeat of the same story. His spine had been broken, looked bitten through to the marrow and spinal cord. His sharp features seemed even sharper in death, and his huge, bulging eyes an even deeper shade of grey.
What had those esper's eyes of his seen before he died, Khuv wondered? And then he stilled the bobbing of his Adam's apple and staggered out of the room, until he was no longer able to hear Luchov's throwing up into Grenzel's toilet…
The Dweller's garden was a marvellous place.
It was a miniature valley, a gently hollowed 'pocket' at the rear of a saddle in the mid-western reach of the mountains. In extent the garden was something a little more than three acres in a row, with the length of its rear boundary against the final rise of the saddle, and its frontage where the saddle started to dip toward frowning cliffs. A low wall had been built there, to keep people from moving too close. In between there were small fields or allotments, greenhouses and a scattering of clearwater ponds. One of the ponds swarmed with rainbow trout, while some of the others bubbled with heat from thermal activity deep in the ground; hot springs, in fact.
