by Brian Lumley
“And Haggie?” Turnbull was still trying to find a starting place.
“Haggie’s different—the poor bastard,” said Gill, but with nothing of emotion. “He’s here by mistake. It may have been him that came out of door number. one-eleven with the hunting machine after him, and it may have been something else. It all depends.”
“On what, for God’s sake?”.
“On the controller’s sense of humour,” said Gill.
“What about my sense of humour?” said Anderson, causing all three to start. “Believe me, I don’t find it funny being tied up in a place and at a time like this!” They’d forgotten him where he lay with his hands tied behind him and his feet lashed together.
Gill went to him where he lay in the shadows close by. “Are you okay?”
Jack Turnbull said; “Whatever he says, don’t trust him.”
“I’m fine … now,” said Anderson. “I … I acted crazy because I thought I was crazy. And I probably was, until Jack hit me. But just before I passed out, I realised that I’d been hit by something very solid and very sane. And everything became real again. Even this unthinkable situation, real. So … I’m okay now. I’m sure I’ll be able to face anything else that happens to me here. It was just that I couldn’t face what happened to me … there.”
“There?”
“In my nightmare world, in London.”
Gill took a chance, tugged at Anderson’s bindings until they shredded and came loose. Groaning, Anderson lay where he was, gingerly moving his hands and feet to get the circulation going again. “You see,” he began to explain, “my nightmare was to lose—”
Door 777 banged open, and a moment later slammed shut—and Bannerman stepped out of the great crystal’s darkest shadows.
The Bannerman construct was naked, more than “entire” in its own right, and entirely alien. Sith had given his vehicle extra “arms,” snake-like appendages one to each side of the trunk, midway between hips and shoulders; and these were tipped with bone or chitin scythes. Sexless, his groin was simply smooth, hairless synthetic flesh where the thighs met the body. His “blind” eyes had been removed so that deep-seated scanners glowed premanently red in their otherwise empty sockets. The sound of his breathing, which was not breathing at all but the roar of alien hydraulics geared for maximum exertion, was a whooshing such as bellows make. In his right hand he carried a silver metal cylinder, which had the dull gleam of lead in the light of the moon and stars. It was similar to the one Gill had already snatched from his pocket—but where Gill’s was like a fat fountain pen, Sith’s might be a walking stick!
He advanced upon Gill, Angela and Turnbull, and they found themselves caught in a triangle: between Sith, and Clayborne, and the wolves. Despite Gill’s assurances, instinct made them steer clear of the wolves—even Gill himself—and around the mad, ruptured Clayborne; and in this manner Sith herded them back towards the House of Doors. Gill’s alien instrument whirred, but its sound was almost drowned out by the angry buzz of Sith’s.
“Jesus!” Turnbull breathed. “He grows new limbs like a bloody starfish!”
“No,” said Gill, “he synthesises them. In fact he synthesises everything.”
The Bannerman construct’s mouth opened wide in a soulless laugh. “You are a clever man, Mr. Gill,” he boomed. “Possibly the cleverest of your race. And indeed under different circumstances you might well have been the saviour of your race. But events have determined otherwise.”.
“You came to test us,” Gill answered, slowly backing away. “I’ve confirmed that much. But there were limits which you’ve exceeded. Your synthesizer had a built-in code of conduct, which you’ve seen fit to overrule. Why?”
Again Sith laughed. “Amazing! I am interrogated on ‘equal’ terms by a life-form so low in the scale of things that I find it almost contemptible! But I’ll answer your questions. Why am I intent upon the destruction of you and your entire race? To make way for a superior, more worthy race, the Thone; and also because the needs of my destiny are greater than those of a planetful of primitives, that is why.”
“And am I such a primitive?” said Gill, again backing off as his inhuman adversary stepped a little too close. “I’ve learned how to communicate with your machines. How to control them. Given a little time, I might even do it better than you.”
“Because you are unique of your kind,” said Sith. “A freak or mutant. In my race, when errant strains appear, they are put down. I see no reason to make any exception in your case.”
“So you’ll kill us,” said Gill, aware of the crystal’s facets—and their doors—so close behind. “But why have you prolonged it? Did you enjoy torturing us? Is that the measure of your ‘superiority?’”
The Bannerman construct paused and its weapon buzzed with redoubled energy. Gill and his two companions backed off a further pace. “You yourself are responsible for that,” Sith finally answered. “You and Turnbull—you brought it on yourselves. Because of your … skills, which might prove troublesome, I came to kill you. You damaged my construct and fought me off. I am not one to be thwarted by inferior creatures! And again, in Varre’s tunnel world, where you discovered my real identity, you dared to employ a Thone tool to injure both my construct and myself! When you did that, what had been a mere amusement became a duel in earnest—albeit one which you couldn’t win.” He lifted his arms a little, his coiled tentacles, too, and inched forward.
“You’re a coward—not to mention a black-hearted, slimy jellyfish bastard!” Gill accused, standing his ground. “You sent constructs to do your dirty work. The Clayborne-thing to frighten and weaken us; likewise the Varre changeling; and a likeness of the girl’s husband to menace her. Only when all else failed have you yourself come on the scene.”
Bannerman bared his teeth, said, “Well, you most certainly are no coward, Mr. Gill.” His voice was soft now, and very menacing.
“Very few human beings are,” said Gill. “Given a fair trial, we’d come through it every time. But you? Even now you make yourself unbeatable by use of a hybrid form and a superior weapon. What a small, wretched thing you really are, if the truth’s to be told!” Gill sneered these last few words, crouched down a little and indicated to the others that they should spread themselves out. “And do you really think we’ll die so easily, even now? Haven’t you learned even that much about us?”
Bannerman’s appendages uncoiled, fell to the ground and writhed like snakes to his rear, lethal whips ready to be called into action. “Keep talking, Mr. Gill,” he said. “For you’re talking yourself to death. Oh, I admit you’ve exerted a certain influence over this region’s node: the synthesised crystal behind you. But what I do by instinct is to you still something of an effort. And you can’t talk and think and exercise your talent at the same time. But I can. And already I’ve untied most of the knots which you so cleverly put in my system.”
Gill knew it was so. He could feel his contact with the crystal slipping. The wolves were creeping forward again. Clayborne had stopped examining his innards and had turned his hideous face towards the tableau now in its ultimate stages of enactment. Even the Denholm construct, seriously damaged by Jack Turnbull’s powerhouse of a blow, was stirring and trying to rise to its feet, calling: “A-a-angel-aaa!”
“The House of Doors is waiting, Mr. Gill,” said Sith-Bannerman, “and I shall have the pleasure of ushering you in across the very last threshold that you shall ever cross. Only look behind you and see what I mean.”
The oldest ploy in the world and Gill fell for it. He stole a glance—and even as he knew that he’d been duped, he saw that all the doors now bore the same number: 666!
“Gill!” Turnbull yelled his warning. Gill ducked, held up his weapon protectively before his face. One of Bannerman’s tentacles whipped overhead, brushing his hair, and Gill’s Thone weapon sliced through it like a strand of mist. The severed chitin scythe went clattering and Sith-Bannerman howled. He pointed his own weapon and Gill’s turned red-hot in
his hand! He dropped it and it spattered and flowed like a blob of mercury where it hit the scree, completely deenergized.
Sith-Bannerman coiled up his wounded, dripping extension and advanced. “You first,” he hissed. “The door is behind you. Knock now, at once, or I finish it right here.”
“Spencer!” Angela cried, but Gill shook his head. He knew it was all over.
“He has control.” He ground the words out. “And he’s lifted the limits right off the top. The sky’s the only limit now. Behind these doors lies death for any—for all—of us!”
“Correct,” said Sith. “No one—no sentient creature—may pass through one of those doors now without experiencing his own worst nightmare all the way to the end. No escape, no mercy, just the inevitable end.” He pointed his buzzing weapon at Gill’s chest and stepped forward—
—And Anderson hit him from behind!
On his own, Sith would have known—his sensors would have alerted him—but encased in the Bannerman construct he was restricted by its limitations. He could only “see” to the front.
In the last split-second Gill had seen the dark blot of Anderson’s figure erupt from even darker shadows, had seen it hurtling forwards. Struck with all Anderson’s weight, the monstrous construct was lifted up and thrown forward; Gill hurled himself sprawling to one side; Bannerman toppled and, turning as he fell, struck Anderson through the waist with his weapon. And the Minister’s death scream coincided precisely with the back of Bannerman’s head striking the knocker!
There came a hiss-ss as the door opened like the sucking snout of some immense vacuum cleaner, following which …
Bundled head over heels like a page of newsprint down a windy, early-morning city street, Gill prayed: A soft landing, God—that’s all. And while he’d never been much of a believer, still his prayer was answered. He came down in knee-deep snow in a howling blizzard. The landscape was white as far as the eyes could see (which was maybe twenty-five feet in any direction), the sky grey, and the cold as biting as a razor-edged knife.
Still disoriented, Gill got groggily to his knees—and was immediately knocked down again as Angela piled on top of him. In the same moment, Turnbull crashed down in a drift close by. Then everything stopped spinning and Gill stood up. He looked all around through eyes slitted against the blinding snow and let his machine consciousness—his alien machine awareness—reach out. Something was there, quite close but slowly moving away, and Gill knew it for the only thing it could be. Dimly glimpsed, a bulky figure lurched through slanting lances of snow at the very edge of vision.
“This way!” Gill howled above the frantic shrieking of the storm. And plunging through the drifts like a madman, he went after Sith-Bannerman.
We have maybe ten minutes in this, Gill thought. Fifteen if we’re lucky. Following which they’d be part of the permafrost.
Gill lunged after the lurching figure—which already had stopped moving and stood swaying, leaning into the icy blast—and wondered why his body felt made of lead. And a moment later knew why as the whole truth of the situation hit him. For this was a cold world and a world of high gravity.
And as Gill had supposed it would be, it was indeed his enemy—the enemy of his entire race—who leaned like the stump of some strange lone tree out of the deep snow and against the blast. The Bannerman construct and what was inside it: a murderous alien intelligence who had been first through the door, triggering the synthesizer’s automatic and inexorable response. And here he was trapped in his own version of hell, his own worst nightmare: a cold, high-gravity world.
No escape, he’d said; and who would know better, for he was the one who’d programmed it. What was more, the House of Doors had improvised: it denied Sith the use of his antigravity harness, refused to beam power to it. Likewise his Thone instrument, which was now useless to him. To allow these things would have been to provide an escape route, and Sith’s instructions had been explicit. To top it off he faced the ignominy, the ultimate irony, of dying before the very eyes of the one he’d most desired to destroy.
But … no mercy. The stored power in the construct’s battery was almost expended and the cold was seeping in, and the one thing above all others in the entire universe which was guaranteed to terrify any member of the Thone was to freeze. To lie undead forever, turned to ice, and to know the gradual petrifaction of the aeons!
Gill stumbled up to him, saw the fading red glow of his eyes, and knew the truth. Got you, bastard!
Sith forced the last ounce of energy from his construct, lifted his death-wand. It was merely warm where its tip prodded Gill’s chest. He knocked it aside, out of the construct’s unresisting fingers. And: “Which way?” Gill shouted into Bannerman’s almost immobile face. “If you want to live, tell me where’s the node?”
For answer Sith tried to lift the construct’s arm again and point. The arm came up like a rusted robotic lever, stuck, and overbalanced he fell facedown in the snow.
Turnbull and Angela came stumbling out of the blizzard. “Spencer, we’re done for!” Turnbull yelled, his words blowing away in streaming white plumes.
“Not yet,” Gill shouted back. “Help me with this bastard.”
“What? There’s somewhere to go? So why take him along?” But still Turnbull grabbed one of Bannerman’s arms.
“Because he has the last of the answers, and I want them. Without him we can’t solve the puzzle. And there’s a hell of a lot hanging on it. Anyway, save your breath and work, you big sod!” Angela helped, too; with one arm crooked round Bannerman’s thick neck, she shared the load as they hauled him over the snow. And in her other hand she carried his walking-stick weapon.
It was maybe a hundred yards to the node, but it felt more like a thousand. Ten more yards and they wouldn’t have made it. Later Gill would think back on it and wonder why the node was so handy, and he’d reason that in a place like that Sith would naturally want exits placed at frequent intervals; even under normal conditions, with all of his support systems working, he’d feel uncomfortable in that sort of Thone hell.
But eventually the node did loom up out of the storm: a House of Doors in the shape of a block of ice! It was simply that, an ice cube of nine-foot sides, a crystal-clear cube containing nothing but ice—apparently. And it didn’t seem to have any doors.
Frustrated, all in, unable to concentrate his new, alien knowledge, and almost willing now to accept death in any form, Gill hammered with his naked fists on the cube’s nearest face—and the ice caved in! It was a quarter-inch thick, no more. They dragged Bannerman across the shattering threshold, and—
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
“F rostbite!” said Turnbull, when at last he could speak again. “We should at least be frostbitten.” He examined his hands with an almost. childlike astonishment. “Nothing! Not even a chilblain! But what the hell … another five minutes of that and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. God, do you know how lucky we are to be alive?”
“Are we lucky, Spencer?” Angela wanted to know. “I mean, is it over, or is there more still to come?” She looked all around and most of what she saw made her feel sick, so that she half-shuttered her eyes to diminish its confusion. “In a way I almost hope there is more to come—or at least something different to this!”
“A hothouse,” said Turnbull, his voice gaining strength. “One extreme to the other. Where the hell are we, anyway? Inside one of those screens we saw on the world of mad machines—on your world, Spencer?”
“Something like that, yes,” Gill answered. “In fact we’re at the nerve centre. This is the control room. Part of it, anyway. It’s just like Haggie described it, remember? You’ll find it easier to take if you ignore the ‘walls’ and concentrate on the floor. The walls are screens, of a sort. Scanners. The swirling colours are unformed scenes, that’s all. They are memories of worlds, some of them. The House of Doors doesn’t keep its records on tape but as frozen actualities which can be recalled, synthesised, down to the smallest detail. But so
me of these scanners are focused on our world, too. When I’ve dealt with this bloke, I’ll try to show you what I mean.”
“Dealt with him?” Turnbull repeated him. “You mean put an end to him?” Now his voice hardened. “Just a few minutes ago we saw him ‘deal’ with Anderson. You know what mercy we could expect from him, so what are you waiting for?”
Gill shook his head. “No,” he said, “I’m not going to kill him—unless I have to. Indeed I’m keeping my fingers crossed that he’s still alive. But if he is, I intend to disable him. Power is flowing back into this weapon of his, this tool, even now; and it’s doubtless flowing back into the construct, too. This human—or’inhuman—figure is the alien’s exoskeleton, his vehicle. The controller’s inside. And he also controls the House of Doors. But not anymore, because I’m not going to give him the chance.”
Angela barely had time to avert her eyes as Gill used the Thone instrument to shear through the construct’s tentacles where they joined with the body. And at that Bannerman rolled over onto his back and sat up. Turnbull gasped and Gill bared his teeth and stepped back a pace; but as the construct’s empty eye sockets began to glow again with a red life, Gill took a grip on himself. This wasn’t mayhem; he was slashing the alien’s tyres, that was all. Removing his rotor head, immobilising him.
He struck through both of the construct’s legs at the knees and kicked the bleeding pieces aside. At which Sith-Bannerman shuddered violently, balanced himself with one hand on the floor, and held up the other in a sort of horror, as if to hold Gill back. “No more!” he croaked. “If you cut the construct any deeper, then you also cut me. My fluids are already more than sufficiently depleted. Or … if you’re intent upon destroying me, then at least do it quickly: simply strike the construct through the chest.”
“We didn’t save your life out in that frozen hell just to kill you here, Bannerman—or whatever your name is,” Gill told him. “We saved it because there are things only you can tell us. But first, snail, I want to winkle you out of that shell of yours.”
