The Prayer Machine
Christopher Hodder-Williams
© Christopher Hodder-Williams 1976
Christopher Hodder-Williams has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1976 by Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
This edition published in 2016 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
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11
1
The acrid heat from the tarmac of the lane roasted the nettles, enormous and overgrown, so that they nuzzled the car suggestively as Neil searched for the signpost. It was not easy to find; dead insects formed a sticky juice on the windscreen where the wipers crushed them; and the convecting air distorted the view ahead. But a rusting sign-board fingered toward Norton.
High on the left was an old water tower, half-concealed in a plantation belonging to the Forestry Commission. The trees grew healthily and would soon meet their fate in the sawmills. Beyond them was the shadowy contour of Dartmoor. It looked forbidding. An unhealthy pile of cumulo-nimbus soiled the sky and laminated the hills with layers of aquamarine. You could feel the supercharged electrode that hung there in the sky; the humidity made you sweat at the collar and the outer shell of the stormcloud rouged in patches, indicating the crackling exchange of high voltages inside the cloud itself. The familiar anvil shape at the top must have been twelve miles long. No rain fell; the high tension was still building between thunderhead and the ground below — a tangible force that made the nerve ends prickle.
The lane met with the newly surfaced road from Exeter; and here a more official-looking roadsign announced NORTON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. There were no other cars. Only a farm labourer riding slowly on a bike with a yapping dog in tow indicated that life could exist in such a barren atmosphere. The farm hand was whistling in defiance of the sour sky.
Neil stopped the car. ‘Is this the way to the hospital?’
‘Which one would you be looking for?’
‘Norton.’
‘That be the Exeter Hospital Annexe.’
That’s the place I mean.’
‘You’ll find it in Norton Complex East. Just keep right on, straight through the Bowl and follow the signs, see? You’ll find it easy enough.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I think we’re in for a storm, looks like.’
‘Yes, it does.’
The labourer seemed reluctant to let him go. ‘You know what’s been going on, yonder?’
‘No. What’s up?’
‘Don’t know, ‘zactly. You’ll find there’s a road block. They may not let you through.’
‘You came from there?’
‘No. Norton. I mean the old village … There’s a lot of talk. Rumours. There’s some madhouse, or some such, in the Annexe. Ain’t there?’
‘There’s a psychiatric unit.’
‘I don’t rightly know what you call it, but all hell was let loose, so they say.’
‘When?’
‘In the night. Folks around here don’t care for it, I don’t mind telling you. Think them planning people take any notice? Not on your life. I hope you’re not one of ‘em.’
‘I’m not.’
‘We never wanted that ugly place stuck here … the Bowl, nor that madhouse in particular. Lord knows what they’re up to anyway … I’ll be off. Goodday to you.’
‘Thanks.’
The road block was a mile farther along the road, near the Injunction leading to the old village. A white-painted police Land Rover straddled the highway. Coils of barbed wire had been slung from the pines on either side. A police radio croaked from a parked patrol bike. No one came forward.
Neil got out and walked across to the Land Rover. In it a fat sergeant sat with his arms folded. He seemed curiously hostile. Disconcertingly he darted his eyes at Neil without turning his head.
‘What do you want?’
‘I have an appointment in the Complex.’
‘We’re not allowing movement either way.’
‘Look. I’ve driven all the way down from London.’
‘Too bad.’
‘And I have a pass.’
‘Let’s see it.’ The eyes rolled upward and zeroed in on Neil’s. ‘You’re Mr Prentice?’
‘I was trying to convey that impression.’
‘Mr Andrews isn’t going to like this.’
‘Who’s Mr Andrews?’
‘You’ll soon see.’ The sergeant called out toward the bushes. A man appeared at an overgrown farm gate, just visible through the trees. He wore the insignia of an inspector.
He was young — almost baby-faced, as if he delegated even his facial expression to the lower echelons of the hierarchy. Only the dark shadow of scrupulously shaven stubble testified to his years. Now, he had a few quiet words with the sergeant, then approached Neil halfway between the Land Rover and Neil’s own car.
‘So you’ve turned up.’
‘I have an appointment with Dr Schuber. I have a letter from him.’
‘Her. She’s a woman. How did you wangle that?’
‘I don’t take your point, Inspector.’
‘My point is that Special Branch are interested in your movements. Yet all the time it turns out you have an invitation to come here anyway.’
‘Why should my movements interest Special Branch?’
‘Several reasons. One might start with the fact that you have entered into correspondence with some of the patients in the Annexe.’
‘Inspector, I think you’re going to have to concede that my letters to them were both responsible and discreet.’
‘That depends on how much you actually know.’
‘I know enough to make it extremely embarrassing for the people carrying out experiments in G Block.’
‘I wouldn’t advise you to bandy that about. How did you get to know, anyhow?’
‘Privately.’
‘Illegally.’
‘You’ll have to prove that.’
‘Don’t worry, we will. Your letters also touched on an unusual phenomenon sometimes termed “an Earthless Quake”.’
‘And there’s been one?’
‘Several people claim to have felt it, yes.’
‘Did you?’
Andrews’ eyes did not blink. ‘Did you deliberately try and manipulate those patients into … getting out of hand?’
‘How out of hand did they get?’
‘Don’t get clever with me.’
Neil said, ‘If you know Dr Schuber you presumably can judge whether or not I should be allowed to see her.’
‘Then I’d better see this letter.’
‘The letter is private.’
‘It can’t be all that private if you didn’t even know she was a woman.’
‘Wouldn’t the simplest thing be to call Dr Schuber from your radio bike?’
‘It might. I’ll see the letter first though, if you don’t mind.’
Neil went back to his car and dug the letter out of the glove compartment. All this time the sergeant was following him with restless eyes. The inspector just stood and waited and said nothing. The radio on the bike squawked a message. Neil wondered how anyone could make out such a distorted signal. But another voice said, ‘Oscar. We’re extending the cordon as far as Dartmoor.’
The first voice said, ‘My instructions are to take over from Oscar Seven and report.’
Then just the crackle and hiss.
Neil handed the letter to the
inspector, who took a long time to read it. ‘What on earth is the Institute of Metapsychology?’
‘A body sponsored by a newspaper.’
Inspector Andrews was visibly antagonized. ‘So you’re from the press?’
‘No. The IoM is a recognized body.’
‘Recognized? — Who by?’
‘Dr Schuber, among others.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘That would take a long time.’
‘I’ve got plenty of time.’
‘I haven’t. An important experiment has been set up and I am the volunteer.’
‘At present what is important is to cope with a break-out of mental patients from the Annexe.’
‘That makes my visit all the more urgent.’
‘How?’
‘If you read Dr Schuber’s letter properly you’d see.’
‘I did read the letter properly, Mr Prentice. I took note of the signature and evidently you didn’t. Jane Schuber. Moreover she implies in the letter that you should know her personally … if you really are the bona fide Mr Prentice.’
‘Are you deliberately being offensive?’
‘I am deliberately being cautious. Let’s see your driving licence, please.’
Neil produced it and the Inspector nodded. Neil said, ‘It’s the Registrar I know personally — not Dr Schuber. And your co-operation would be appreciated … unless, of course, you merely enjoy being obstructive.’
The inspector sighed, and addressed the sergeant. ‘Ask them to do the hook-up again, will you?’ He indicated the radio-equipped bike. ‘Get it connected with Dr Schuber’s phone.’
The sergeant took the maximum possible time to get out of the Land Rover and crossed to the motorcycle. To Neil the inspector said, ‘Just for you, we’re connecting the radio at the far end to the telephone switchboard of the Norton Complex. I shall monitor the conversation. If in my judgement the situation warrants your being let through then you can go and see her.’
‘At long last. Why the Geiger Counter?’
‘You don’t miss much.’
‘I’d very much like to know the connection between the escape of some pathetic mental cases and your driving around with radiation detectors.’
‘I’m not going to enlarge on that. All the same, if you are familiar with equipment of that kind you must be aware of the need to protect the public.’
‘If not the patients.’
‘And the patients.’
‘I’m glad of that.’
The sergeant strolled across from the bike and thumbed back toward it. The inspector briefly told Neil how to work the radio, which squawked, ‘Dr Schuber is on the line’.
Neil pressed the switch and said, ‘This is Neil Prentice. I am at a police road block. They can’t let me through.’
The crisp, rather priggish voice of a young woman cracked the silence just as the rain started coming down. ‘Can they hear me?’
‘Yes.’
‘The task of locating the patients is directly connected with the experiment which has been set up. Who is in charge at the road block?’
‘An Inspector Andrews.’
‘Put him on.’
The inspector took over the radio. ‘I had to be careful. Some press boys tried to shoot their way in. Mr Prentice is sponsored by a newspaper. He also seems somewhat cloudy about your identity.’
‘He’s only met the Registrar. The newspaper concerned has no access to this operation. It’s merely a research foundation. You can let Mr Prentice through.’
‘He’ll be along.’
‘Thanks, Andy.’
Neil said, ‘So you know her?’
‘I know everybody. I’ll have the barrier cleared.’
As if waiting for this very cue, the cunim cloud overhead burst apart from its enormous burden of water and drenched everything in seconds. Printed lightning appeared and thereafter remained in the sky, forking down several times in one spot before seeking another. Thunderclaps split the air down the middle, leaving a smell of burned dialectric.
The men ran for the cars. Neil started the wipers but they made little impression except on squashed fly. The sloping road had become an aqueduct, slooshing water back toward the roadblock — now behind him — and turning layers of dried mud into a red soup, which swashed up from the front wheels and tinted the windscreen.
The permanent checkpoint of the Complex itself loomed ahead; but the men on duty had evidently received the necessary clearance, for they raised the boom immediately and let Neil through.
The Bowl of the Complex looked more like a lake, from which tower blocks pronged towards the sky. The lightning conductor of the tallest ignited a thick, tubular arc from the base of the cloud, and impacted with a monosyllabic gunshot which would have split the building like cheesewire but for the thick copper strip that ran down the side of the tower.
The buildings in the Bowl, blurred and swamped except when a fresh flash brought something into highlight, were elongated bungalows. For a moment the lights inside all the buildings failed, then flashed on again in time to reveal a barely visible sign saying G Block. The electricity kept fizzing on and off like this as the safety devices controlling the power lines triggered the current.
Illuminated signs indicated the route to the Annexe, which turned out to be the farmost tower block, or part of it. The Annexe was a division of Exeter Hospital. To get to it you had to drive up a curving ramp, a spiral road which climbed to the podium running at tenth-floor level all the way round the outside of the Bowl, servicing the various buildings to which it was connected. Mercury lights perimetered it in perspective, and glissed the angle of downpour — oblique because of the sea wind. The harsh lighting apparently converged to vanishing point but was distorted by fine spray which churned from gutters and cantilevered slabs that looked as if buildings were sticking their tongue out. Norton Complex was uninviting.
Once in the approach tunnel for Building Five, you were cut off from the desolate impression of the place. And the far end of the tunnel led to a canopied main entrance, providing roofed parking for privileged persons. Neil didn’t qualify but had had quite enough of a soaking, so he poached a space reserved for Deputy Directory Industrial Coordination.
*
By comparison with the storm outside the foyer was eerily quiet, as if nobody ever used the place. There was a long marble reception desk but no one occupied it. Instead, a video screen like a television set flickered its message:
*
MR N PRENTICETO SEE DR SCHUBER
FLOOR 18 ROOM 1807
*
Dr Jane Schuber was unexpectedly young. Spectacles gave her the appearance of schoolmarm severity and her lips, though not thin, gave the impression of being unused to sensual contact. She was not the sort of person whose figure seemed eligible for detailed examination but her build was not angular, as the lips suggested it might have been. The eyes were difficult to read.
She said, ‘I’m sorry you got wet. Did you bring a change of clothes?’
‘I left my bag in the car.’
‘You’d better change straight into a gown.’ She produced a new one, still in its polythene bag. ‘I’ll order some tea. You’d better restrict yourself to one cup. Please change behind that screen. We’ll talk as you do so.’
‘Right.’
‘In the first place, Mr Prentice, I have to make it clear that the Institute of Metapsychology is regarded here as little better than an authorized centre for latent schizophrenics at play.’
‘I’m used to that image.’
‘It doesn’t upset you?’
‘No. In view of our definition of so-called schizophrenia how can it?’
‘You completely believe the theories you have published?’
‘Yes. Don’t you?’
‘You’ll be treated here exactly as all other schizoid patients are treated.’
‘That sounds severe from this side of the screen.’
‘You’d better come o
ut, then. The tea’s arrived … Dr Braknell would strike you as severe — screen or no.’
Neil emerged in the gown. ‘Who’s Dr Braknell?’
‘Senior psychiatrist. He’s based on the main hospital in Exeter.’
‘I see. And is he in with your policeman friend?’ Neil watched her carefully. ‘Now, there’s a thing. If I’d stayed behind the screen I wouldn’t have seen you blush. What nerve have I hit?’
‘You’ve hit quite a few but they’re not mine.’
‘Meaning that you object to Special Branch being called in when you’re concerned with pure research?’
Schuber answered without looking at him. ‘I feel I should have been informed earlier.’
‘When were you informed?’
She said, ‘I’ll express it another way: I feel that you should have been more circumspect about the way you offered your services as a guinea-pig. As it is, people are now saying that you have been tampering with my patients and that as a result they made a concerted attack on G Block.’
‘I have the carbons of both my letters to your patients. G Block is not mentioned once.’
‘They know that.’
‘Then, if Dr Braknell’s a rational man he can only regard it as coincidence that the patients chose G Block as a target.’
‘Do you?’
‘— Regard it as coincidence? No, I don’t.’
Schuber put her head slightly on one side. ‘Isn’t it typically schizoid to attribute everything to the same cause?’
‘Yes. Typically. But then I don’t claim to be a rational man.’
‘You’re a bit of a new one on me, then. Why does Dr Braknell have to be rational and you not?’
‘Psychiatrists usually claim to be rational.’
‘Including me?’
‘I think you’re making a noble effort at trying to keep it up, yes.’
‘From that I take you as meaning that most psychiatrists would argue that everything has a straight cause and effect — rather than accept paranatural explanations?’
‘On target, doctor. So I’m sure you have a perfectly logical explanation for thoughtquakes.’
‘For what?’
‘Earthless Quakes.’
‘So you’re tying that into the parcel too, are you? All the things you can’t explain you lump together as if they must have some common factor. Yes?’
The Prayer Machine Page 1
