by Brian Hodge
She became aware that he had won. She had been destroyed forever, had been captured body and soul. She knew it with absolute clarity.
There was about him something so deeply, fundamentally wrong that she almost felt she could taste the evil of him.
He’d been covered by the depths of time, crushed and obliterated and extinguished with all his voracious kind. Their memory lived on only in the hungry cruelty and endless variety of the insect world.
She tried to get away from the hatred he was blasting into her, to return to Brian. She turned—but her body didn’t work right. Her body—she saw complicated, stick-like legs flailing, felt herself fall to one side.
But she arose, righting herself as if by magic. To her horror, she leaped at Brian. He skittered away but she was faster, in an instant she was on him again.
She didn’t want to, but there was nothing she could do, nothing at all. His pistol flashed.
With a long, long arm she swept the weapon out of his hand.
2
Brian’s candle was snuffed by the onslaught of the thing that had been Ellen.
The fear made him struggle like a man in flames, the sorrow felt as if it might drown his heart.
Something came sweeping up his leg. Kicking as hard as he could, he leaped back, found the sphincter they’d come through to get here, began pressing his arms against it, trying to break the grip of the muscle.
Behind him claws began snapping, at first in a confused clatter, then with more control, then with authority.
He could not return the way he had come. But the undulating floor sloped down and away. Feeling ahead, his body coated with slime, his nose and lungs burning from the acid-cut air, he slithered and slipped away as fast as he could. Blundering helplessly, unable to tell where he was, how close she was, he cried out his rage and terror.
There was an answer, echoing from somewhere ahead.
He knew Loi’s voice. Also, that it was a cruel hallucination.
He saw light… soft, delicate, purple.
A ruby eye was staring at him from a distance of three feet. It began sizzling smartly.
He threw himself down, rolled away, flailing helplessly.
Then he was falling.
An instant later there was an impact. His confusion was such that he took freezing cold to be blazing heat and breathed in enough water to start himself choking. Forcing himself to clamp his jaws shut, he struggled in the water. His lungs began to ache, then to burn, then to scream for air.
A little water came down his throat. He breathed it, coughed. Another breath came in—more water.
Then he coughed, he knew he was going to gasp this time, to gag, and he was going to start drowning.
His chest heaved, his mouth opened—and he sucked in air. Air! He gobbled, retching, gasping, throat distended, mouth gaping.
Splashing, flailing, dragging himself away from the water, he choked and gagged, then forced calm to his striving muscles, fought down the panic. Treading water, he opened his eyes.
Darkness and silence—but no purple light. He tried to find bearings of some sort. There were none. He swam, throwing one arm in front of the other, paddled aimlessly until his shins hit something hard. Then he felt a steel loop and grabbed it. Hauling himself up, he came onto a sort of shore, which consisted of a floor, an ordinary floor. He felt what seemed to be a broken chair, another beside it.
He realized that he lay on the dark shore of a ruined office.
From off in the gloom there came a droning sound. He listened.
There was something in flight, which meant that it could see in the dark. It was coming closer.
His pistol was gone.
He fumbled about, trying to find something to use as a weapon. The metal chairs were twisted but couldn’t be broken. He threw open the drawers of a steel desk, feeling frantically through the paper clips and other debris.
All he found was a letter opener, which he hurled to the floor in frustration.
He began to explore, touching along the walls. He felt steel…a door, a locker door. He opened it. Empty. Then a file cabinet. This he also opened. The drawer was heavy, it was jammed with papers. There was what felt like a computer screen on the floor, wires everywhere.
Files, computers—dare he hope he’d reached the control point?
He felt around the jumble—and found something that made him stifle a cry of joy. Frantically he felt for a switch—but what kind of a flashlight was this, what were all these little belts?
It came on, the beam dim. It was a headlamp, the kind miners wore, thus the straps. He put it on, looked around, avid to see. The first thing he laid eyes on was a row of lockers. He threw them all open.
In the last was a Kevlar safety vest and a hardhat. On its floor was a beeper. Dead, of course. He threw the beeper against a wall.
The drone of wings began again, got louder.
This light was insane, what had he been thinking? He reached up to flip the switch, but then his eyes fell on a thick Manila-backed document. He grabbed it, read the title: “Superluminal Violation Repair Program Structures Integrity Handbook.” Another rattling buzz, this one closer. He flicked the light out, shrank back toward the cabinets.
He was right, they’d been trying to fix an earlier break! The problem must have occurred at Ludlum, the first break from the other side. They’d covered that over with concrete, but it obviously hadn’t worked.
When the buzzing didn’t recur, he turned on his light again. He had to find out more. But the document in his hands wasn’t going to tell him, it was just a series of construction protocols designed for engineers and inspectors.
He found a file called “Causality Violations: Kelly Report.”
The file was empty. Information about exactly how his work had violated the flow of cause and effect would have been priceless to him right now. As it was, he had to keep guessing, hoping he was right.
Brian threw himself on the files, not noticing the thick black feeler that slipped along the floor behind him, moving swiftly and quietly.
Some of the files were filled, others empty, as if somebody had sorted them, presumably removing the secret material as the facility was abandoned.
A second long, thin cord slipped in beside the first. They curled about, touching furniture with their delicate tips, seeking, searching.
He read file names, “Causality and Extra-temporal Physical Emergence,” “Ancient Life Forms in Interaction with Extra-temporal Absorbers,” “Temporal Flags and Kelly Factor Attacks from Extra-temporal Entities.”
They had been engaged in a desperate secret war down here, trying to throw back demons called forth from the depths of time.
From the signs of violence all around him, it must have been a near thing, maybe a matter of minutes. The things that had come here were forming a beach head of bloated forests and acidic air. Hordes would come to fill those forests, to breathe that air.
Something brushed his ankle. In the intensity of his thought, he hardly noticed.
But out in the dark water beyond the tilted door there was large movement, very quiet.
Swiftly, easily, eight long arms now uncoiled into the small room. They came across the floor. Their claws opened.
Brian read. This was all quite fantastic. They’d broken into time, not space. It wasn’t a parallel universe, but an unknown past that they had unleashed.
When they came, the hands came swiftly and quietly. They closed on his arms, his legs. One of the black arms looped itself around his neck, tightened.
From the depths of the chamber there arose a furious droning buzz.
Brian began to be dragged away. Although he struggled hard, he couldn’t even begin to resist. It was like being captured by living steel.
His cries ripped the air, but cries can’t overcome steel.
In the blackness, something started sizzling and popping, cooking hot and hard.
He’d waited too long, now he was going to end up like Ellen, he
was going to endure that horror, live like that—
He shrieked like a child.
3
Loi heard the cries clearly, the sounds of a man in gravest anguish. Often enough before she’d heard such sounds. Somebody else had been captured, was being changed.
She held her baby close to her, letting him nurse.
He was her strength, because of the astonishing thing that had happened when the attempt had been made to change him.
Because the demon had been frustrated, he now chased her with unbridled fury, terrible buzzing roars that exploded from him every time he failed to catch this desperate but tunnel-wise mother. She was filthy, steeped in the mucus-like substance that seemed to ooze from the walls. But she would not stop, could not, must not.
While mother rat scuttled along baby rat nursed, then slept on her breast. But she could not run forever, because she was so exhausted that her feet felt like stones and Brian like an ingot of lead. Her throat was burning for water and her hungry baby was eating her alive.
There was a purple flicker in the air, like a storm nearby. The demon was running, the demon was furious, and when it caught her she knew what it would do. It would not try to change her baby again, it would tear him to pieces with those long claws.
Another scream went echoing through the darkness, and she was reminded of the first night on the mound, how lost and forlorn that voice had been. But this was a man’s voice, and closer than before, and there was a tone in it that pierced her very heart.
Oh, Brian. Brian, if only it was you.
She had not reconciled herself to the possibility that she would never see him again, couldn’t even begin to do that. But these screams might be another trick of the demon, to get her to come closer.
Her heart breaking, she moved along yet another of the organic tunnels. Little Brian went back on her teat, made a small sound of discontent. Her milk was going, she knew it.
As she crossed a down-spiraling opening, she heard another cry. It was much closer, so close that she was certain.
It was Brian, it had to be him!
Her heart lifted—and then a great pain stabbed it. What if he was being melted?
Another scream, and she heard the depths of his anguish, and her heart all but broke in half.
She hesitated, crouching, trying to think what to do. She gritted her teeth, clutching the baby so close that he wriggled uncomfortably. A shaking hand felt downward, seeking the hole from which the screams were issuing. It was narrow, but she knew she could squeeze through.
Could the demon even kill a baby as fresh and beautiful as this one, still wet with the dew of heaven?
She couldn’t risk it. But then her husband wailed and she thought she had never heard such agony. She entered the hole, descending quickly through its twists and curves, her infant cradled between her breasts.
Brian threw himself about in the grip of the claws. They could have cut him to ribbons, but they only held him. He screwed his eyes closed against the purple light.
“Brian!”
Loi’s voice—but where? “Loi?”
“I am here,” she replied.
Instantly the hands released him, went questing off into the dark. “Look out, Loi!”
He used his sudden freedom to hurl himself with all his strength in the direction of her voice. As he pulled her down he could hear the claws snapping.
To get her away from them, he shoved her hard. Those sinewy arms could stretch, but not instantaneously. They had a few seconds.
“Be careful,” she cried.
Then his arms found her, he felt the familiar coarse Asian hair, felt her shoulder, the softness of her body as he folded her in his embrace.
He realized that she was holding something, something soft and wonderful and deliriously warm. “Oh my God.”
Wet cables were oozing out of the machine that he carried.
The last moment had come. By making the man scream, he had skillfully lured the agile, tricky woman into his hands. He was just about ready.
Brian’s fingers raced over the small body. “Oh, Loi!” The baby made a contented sound.
“This is your son,” she said.
Brian went beyond fear, beyond everything but the love that defines the human heart. In wonder and gladness he felt the soft, giving curves of the tiny, naked baby.
He took the little creature from her arms. His son wriggled, seeking a teat. Brian buried his face in the flesh of his child, inhaling the wonderfully sweet smell of his skin. “You’re OK,” he asked her, “both of you?”
Brian and Loi heard a curious vibration, as if a snake of enormous size was quivering its rattle. The sound was thick with menace, very close.
“He is here with us, Brian, the demon.”
Protecting his baby in his left arm, Brian reached out to his wife. She pressed against him. “He could not harm the baby,” she said. “The light did nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“It doesn’t hurt the baby. He did it right in his face.”
That terrified Brian. He wished to God he could see—just one little glimpse. He remembered Father Palmer—that horrible, cancerous change—the loamy excrudescences, the stench…
Again his hands touched his son. The baby’s cheeks felt soft, perfect. Brian ran his fingers along the damp tiny lips, his button of a nose. Shaking fingers crossed the vaporous suggestion of hair on the tiny scalp.
Carefully, he gave back the baby, tucked him into Loi’s arms.
Out in the dark there was a splash. Then the purple light started. In its flashes he could see Loi moving off with bird-like speed. Claws snapped the air where she had been.
“Come on, Brian!” He followed her crouching form, moving as best he could through the ruined office. “We’ve gotta find a way out,” she said.
“Not yet!”
“Are you crazy?”
“The controls are around here somewhere. I’ve got to get to the controls!” He was blundering, feeling his way.
Suddenly there was light—ordinary light sparking in his eyes. Loi was twenty feet away. She’d found a headlamp.
Brian rushed to her, threw his arms around her. “Turn it off!”
“They can see in the dark, so light only helps us. There’s got to be a way out around here somewhere.”
“We have to find the controls.”
When Loi cast the light about, Brian caught a glimpse of black water dancing with wavelets, of a misshapen mass of flesh rising out of it—the source of the long arms and the claws. Ellen? He couldn’t bear to consider it.
There was something very different perched on its broad armored carapace, something with huge fly’s wings and compound eyes.
The head of this creature turned toward them.
The gaze was so terrible that he gasped as if struck a blow.
Then the thing took flight, came buzzing straight across the small room.
Like quicksilver Loi stepped through a door. She’d been standing right beside it, poised, waiting for the thing to commit itself. “Brian, fast!”
He went racing after her. Her light darted about. “There’s a desk,” she said. “Block the door.”
No sooner had he shoved it against the plywood door than it began to leap on its hinges. Her light flashed from wall to wall. “This is a trap, Brian.”
He was looking at the equipment. There was a forest of wires and switches. Here and there were piles of gel filled with the blurry remains of body parts.
He swept the tangle of wires with his eyes. This wasn’t his area of expertise, but he knew enough about modern switching techniques to understand a fail-safe system. There were three switches, meant to be thrown at exactly the same time. He stretched, strained, but could not touch more than two of them. It was an “agreement” system like the one used in missile control centers. “Loi, help me with this.”
He had to get it turned on. But which side of the forbidden zone was this control room on? Would the breaking of the l
ink catapult Brian and his family into that other world, or leave them here? Best not to think about that now.
The door cracked loudly. In a moment it would burst.
“Brian, we’ve got to find a way out!”
“Loi, it’s our only chance. You have to do this!”
“What do I do?”
“That switch—stand there—turn it—”
The door came off its hinges.
She turned the switch, but not at the right moment. “Honey, we have to do all three at the same time.”
Two of the arms came into the room, swarming along the ceiling, their claws cocked wide.
“One, two, three—now!”
Something started groaning. A generator? Pumps? He said a silent prayer. Clanging followed, from above, from below, and suddenly a crackle of energy, the hum of one generator starting, another harmonizing with it, a third starting.
Light.
He stood before them with all the dignity of a dark god, this tall, segmented presence—
He came toward them, the buzzing roar so loud that he could not hear, could not think. But the baby regarded him with slow eyes, calm and full of peace.
He faltered.
Loi and Brian saw that they were standing before an awesome tragedy, something proud that had fallen lower than any human being had ever fallen.
He had been glory itself, once, when the world was very, very young.
But then he raised his eyes, and in them there was no glimmer of defeat. Rather, he seemed full of… laughter.
With a long, crackling sigh of static, the waveguide started.
Then they were moving, they were sweeping through a blur of changes, into the very well of loneliness and Brian knew that the control room had indeed been on the far side of the zone.
They came to rest in a huge square, a place miles on a side. It was paved with gigantic blocks that reminded Brian instantly of the Bimini Roads, thought to be an ancient geologic formation in the Bahamas.
Loi gasped with surprise, the baby coughed on the yellow, clogged air. A hundred yards ahead there stood a ruined building, once massive, but now tumbled down, its exposed chambers jammed with oozing egg sacs. Thick masses of glowing, red-legged insects swarmed across them, tearing into them and wolfing the contents with complicated jaws.
