TEXT: Chapter
  i
  TWO FAIRS OF EYES WATCHED RlCHARD GARRISON and Vicki Maler leave their holiday
  residence and disappear into the maze of steep narrow streets leading down
  into the heart of the Greek island village; two pairs, neither one aware of
  the other. One pair belonged to a thief, the other to an assassin.
  The latter, Joe Black by name, was seated at a table on the raised patio of
  the taverna where the pair he watched normally breakfasted—a taverna they were
  obliged to pass on any excursion away from their accommodation—whose open-air
  eating area presented Black with a distant but unobstructed view of the door
  to their courtyard, seen above rising tiers of flat white rooftops. The
  village, dropping down into a valley or bay, seemed to have been built on much
  the same lines as an auditorium or amphithea-
  1
  Brian Lumley
  tre; for which kindness Black gave the ancient architects a generous ten. It
  made his task as observer that much easier.
  Black wore Lederhosen and braces, a wide-brimmed straw hat and an open-neck
  shirt loud with red and yellow flowers. He was not German—despite his dress,
  his fat face and cigar— but Cockney: the hired hand of a middling Mafia boss,
  Carlo Vicenti, who once owned a quarter-share of one of London's less
  reputable and far more profitable casinos. Richard Garrison now owned that
  quarter-share, a fact which irked Vicenti more than a trifle. Hence Joe
  Black's presence here in Lindos, Rhodes, the Aegean.
  Black was not alone on Rhodes: a second hitman, his brother Bert ("Bomber Bert
  Black," to his dubious circle of friends), waited in Rhodes town itself. Bert
  was the "hard" part of the team on this occasion. That is to say, his was the
  hand which would directly terminate Garrison's life. Brother Joe's role was
  simply to tell him when to do it.
  Just a minute or so after 11:00, the subjects of Black's covert surveillance
  emerged from an alley into the narrow "main" street, crossing it to climb
  wooden stairs to the breakfast patio. He waited for them to seat themselves
  close by, waited again until they engaged the waiter's attention and started
  to give him their orders, then folded his shielding newspaper and left.
  He glanced only once at the pair as he went, his eyes lingering momentarily on
  the black-as-night lenses and frames which Garrison wore. A blind man, this
  Garrison, allegedly. Black
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  snorted as he descended the stairs to the street and made his way towards the
  open village square and coach-and-taxi booking office. "Huh!" The damnedest
  blind man he had ever seen! And his mind went back to the first time he ever
  came into contact with Garrison . . .
  That had been at the Ace of Clubs, where on occasion Black had used to do
  bouncer (or "floor attendant" as the dealers and their minders preferred it).
  The "blind" man had come in one night with his woman, also blind, the first
  time they had ever visited the place. The last, too, if Black's memory served
  him correctly. As patrons, anyway. He snorted again: "Huh!" Well, and hadn't
  once been enough?
  That had been, oh, six or seven months ago, but Black remembered it like
  yesterday . . .
  ... Remembered Garrison buying one large pink chip worth fifty pounds
  sterling, and the way he had casually crossed to the central roulette wheel to
  toss the chip onto the table's zero. And how with the next spin the ball had
  dropped, as if pre-ordained, directly into that very slot—how in fact it had
  fallen into that slot twice in succession. And how Garrison had let the spoils
  of his first incredible gamble ridel
  The gasps of shock, astonishment and appreciation that went up then had been
  the summons which brought the boss, the raven-haired Carlo Vicenti himself,
  hurrying up to the table, his face darkening under brows already black as
  thunder. "Mr, er, Garrison? Yes, your custom was recommended. The club's
  
  misfortune, it ap-
  Brian Lumley
  pears." He forced a smile. "Well, sir, you have won a great deal of money, in
  fact a fortune, and—"
  "And I want to let it ride one last time," Garrison had unsmilingly cut him
  short.
  "On the zero?" Vicenti's jaw had dropped.
  Garrison had frowned thoughtfully, only half-seriously, almost mockingly.
  "Certainly, on the zero, why not?"
  "But sir, you have already won over sixty thousand pounds, and—"
  "Sixty-four thousand and eight hundred, to be exact," Garrison had cut him
  short again, "—including my stake, of course. But please do go on."
  Vicenti had leaned towards him then, staring up into his dark, heavy lenses
  and stating in a lowered tone, but perfectly audibly, "Sir, unbeknown to you,
  the operator of this wheel has already been obliged to ask the house for
  permission to cover your second bet. normally, you understand we would have a
  limit of one thousand pounds on this wheel. And besides, the zero cannot
  possibly come up a third time."
  Garrison had stood rock still, apparently frozen to the floor by something
  Vicenti had said. His answer, when finally it came, was delivered in a voice
  steady, firm and chill: "Am 1 to understand that this wheel is fixed?"
  Vicenti was astounded. "What? I said no such thing! Of course the wheel is not
  fixed. I did not mean that the—"
  "Then it can 'possibly' spin a third zero?"
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  "But certainly, sir—except it is most unlikely, and—"
  "Unlikely or not," Garrison cut in for the third time, "I wish to bet."
  A half-apologetic shrug. "We cannot cover it. And sir—" this time Vicenti's
  voice had been almost conspiratorial, wheedling, "—aren't you being just a
  little frivolous with your money?"
  "Not with mine," and now Garrison smiled broadly. "With yours, perhaps, but
  not mine. I only started with fifty pounds."
  All of this Joe Black had witnessed from a position close at hand. Also the
  way Vicenti had turned an explosive purple at Garrison's last remark. At that
  moment Joe had known, whatever the apparent outcome of this confrontation,
  that the little Sicilian would take a terrible revenge on the blind man—in one
  way or another. The one thing Vicenti had never been able to stand was to be
  laughed at—and here he stood, an object of ridicule. Certainly in his own
  eyes. Possibly in the eyes of half of the club's regular clientele, who now
  gathered about the table in various attitudes ranging between awe and delight.
  In fact it was mainly Garrison's lucky streak which had fired their
  imaginations, not Vicenti's discomfiture; but the Sicilian had taken their
  smiles, their subdued laughter, chuckles and excited whispers as being
  derogatory to himself.
  "Wait!" he had snapped. "I need to confer." And the wheel had remained
  stationary for a full five minutes until he returned.
  "Well!" Garrison had remained cool, smiling—
  Brian Lumley
  at least with his mouth, for of course his eyes had been invisible.
  And now Vincenti had seemed eager that everyone should hear him. "Mr—er,
  Garrison?—I am a part-owner of this club. Indeed I own one quarter of all its
  assets. Even so, I personally could barely cover tonight's losses. Your
  winnings, that is. But ... I am a gambler." And he had paused to smile a
  shark's smile, teeth white and gleaming in a veritable death-grin. "Since you,
  too, are a gambler—a most extraordinary gambler, obviously—I have a
  proposition which might interest you."
  "Go on."
  Vicenti had shrugged, continued: "I have been authorized to take full
  responsibility in this matter. Responsibility for the current, er, damage,
  
  shall we say?—and for my, er, proposition."
  "Which is?"
  Vicenti had then taken out his personal checkbook, written a check for
  £64,800, folded it neatly and delicately placed it on the table's zero. "Take
  my check by all means, or—we spin the wheel. But on this understanding: since
  the club does not have that sort of money, if you win you accept my share of
  its ownership by way of payment."
  Which was where, if Garrison was a normal, sober man and in his right mind, he
  should have backed down and taken his winnings. Everything was against him:
  namely the incredible odds against the zero and the fact that he could win no
  more real cash. And at the same time Vicenti stood to gain immeasurably. For
  despite
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  the fact that all the odds were on his side, still he had shown that he was
  indeed a gambler— that he personally was willing to risk his all on this one
  spin of the wheel—and that Garrison was up against a man of equal verve,
  daring and determination. But more important by far to Carlo Vicenti, there
  was no longer any laughter from those patrons crowding the table, no more
  amused sniggers and whispers. Instead the mood had become one of tense
  excitement, of breathless suspense. Quite simply, it was now Vincenti against
  Garrison. This had become a very personal matter.
  Then—
  Joe Black remembered a very strange thing, something which even now, six
  months later, made him shudder in a thrill of almost supernatural intensity.
  Garrison had seemed—to change. His very shape inside his evening suit had
  seemed somehow to bulk out, to take on weight, solidity. He had
  become—squarer. His face, too, had taken on this squareness, and his smile had
  completely faded away.
  No one else appeared to notice these things— with perhaps the one exception of
  the blind man's woman, who backed off from him a little, her hand going
  nervously to her mouth—but Joe Black was absolutely certain of what he had
  seen. It was as if, in the space of only a few seconds, a different man stood
  in Garrison's shoes. A man with a different voice. A harsh, arrogant,
  authoritative, somehow Germanic voice:
  "1 accept your gamble, my little Sicilian friend. Let the wheel spin. But
  since so very much rests
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  upon it—in your eyes at least—please be so good as to spin it yourself."
  "That's most. . . unusual," Vicenti had grated in return. "But so is
  everything tonight, it appears. Very well — " and in utter silence he had
  moved through the throng, which opened to let him pass, spun the wheel, raced
  the ball against the spin—and waited.
  Rock steady he had stood there as the wheel gradually slowed and the ball
  skittered and clicked, ramrod straight at the head of the table, his face
  split in a frozen, almost meaningless grin. And the ball jumping, rolling,
  skittering, and the wheel slowing. And a sea of faces watching the
  wheel—except Garrison's which, blind or not, seemed turned upon Vicen-ti's
  face—and Joe Black's, which watched only Garrison.
  And the wheel still turning but the ball now firmly lodged in its slot.
  Vicenti's eyes bulging. A touch of foam at the corner of his madly grinning
  mouth. Concerted gasps, sighs, amazed little utterances going up from the
  onlookers—and all of them drawing back from the swaying Vicenti to give him
  space, air.
  And his half-gasp, half-croak, as the fingers of his left hand clawed at the
  table's rim, giving him support: "Zero!"
  "You have my address," Garrison's voice was still the new, cold Germanic one.
  "I shall expect the documents delivered in the near future. Goodnight to you."
  And he had picked up Vicenti's check and pocketed it, and without another
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  word had led his wife across the floor, out of the room, out of the club and
  into the night.
  Oh, yes, Joe Black remembered that night, flow rage and utter hatred had
  blazed in Vicenti's fever-bright eyes as he watched Garrison leave; how he had
  then switched off the table's overhead light and given the dealer and his
  assistant the rest of the night—indeed the rest of their lives—off, telling
  them never to return; and how he had retired rubber-legged to the club's
  offices. There he had consumed large amounts of alcohol, being quite drunk
  later when, after the club had said goodnight to its last patron, he
  staggeringly returned—returned with a fire axe and great gusto to reduce the
  table, wheel and all to very small fragments.
  Mot a night Black might easily forget... it was the night Vicenti had offered
  him the contract on Garrison's life ...
  The second pair of eyes watching Richard Garrison and Vicki Maler belonged to
  a gentleman from Genoa named Paulo Palazzi. A gentleman, that is, to
  unacquainted eyes. Unlike Joe Black, Palazzi had no prior knowledge of
  Garrison beyond the fact that he was a very rich man. Anyone with his own
  chartered aircraft sitting idle in a hangar at Rhodes airport would, of
  necessity, be very rich. This had seemed indisputable to Palazzi;
  nevertheless, he had made several discreet, local inquiries to prove the
  point; and if further confirmation were needed there was always the fact that
  Garrison and his lady had paid for and were now enjoying the luxury of
  Brian Lumley
  rooms large enough to accommodate three to four times their numbers. Privacy
  costs money. A lot of money . . .
  Paulo Palazzi was small, slim, immaculate in a white, lightweight Italian suit
  and patent leather shoes, and bareheaded to show off his mop of curly black
  hair. Light-skinned, clear-eyed and fresh-faced, he could be anything between
  twenty-five and forty years of age. A cheerful, fairly well-to-do Italian
  tourist—to anyone offering him less than a very close scrutiny. And indeed he
  was fairly well-do-to, on the spoils of various illicit occupations, including
  his very successful summer trips. This was one such: a week on Rhodes which,
  with a bit of luck, would pay for itself many times over.
  He had been watching Garrison's comings and goings for three days now,
  sufficient time to acquaint himself quite intimately with the man's humors and
  habits. Only one thing continued to concern him: Garrison's blindness. For
  plainly Garrison was not blind, despite the heavy dark glasses he constantly
  wore. Or if he was, then his four remaining senses had expanded out of all
  proportion—or, more likely, he was richer than even Palazzi had reckoned. For
  who but an extremely rich man could possibly afford the very special and
  miniaturized aids he would need to make so light of so serious an infirmity?
  Mot that Garrison's blindness—real or assumed—gave Palazzi any sort of moral
  pause, on the contrary. The thing was a positive boon, or might be if
  Palazzi's plans needed to be altered. Mo, it was just that Garrison seemed to
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  see so very well... for a blind man. Well, doubtless he had his own reasons
  for the subterfuge, if indeed it was such. And for Palazzi ... it must remain
  simply a curiosity, one of the idiosyncrasies of a victim-to-be.
  Palazzi sat upon a spread handkerchief, his slim legs nonchalantly crossed,
  his back to a merlon of the ancient battlements, high over Lindos on the
  precipitous wall of the Acropolis itself. He held a pair of powerful
  binoculars to his eyes in slender, highly articulate and well-manicured hands,
  his gaze fixed upon the vine beneath which he could just make out the light
  blue of Garrison's T-shirt and the coolly contrasting greens of Vicki's skirt
  and top. He smiled to himself, idly reflecting upon his own cleverness.
  His modus operand! was simplicity itself, perfected over the last three
  seasons. Three seasons, yes, for he had discovered Lindos three summers ago.
  Lindos and its mighty rock.
  
  From the old battlements, courtesy of the crusading Knights of St. John of
  Jerusalem, he could see virtually all of the village. Not a single house or
  home, shack or taverna was hidden from his scrutiny. Sitting here, warm in the
  brilliant sunshine and breathing the sweet, clean air of the Aegean, he could
  study any victim's to and froings at will, picking and choosing the perfect
  time to strike. And occasionally, just occasionally, there would be enough in
  it to keep him in luxury for . . . well, for a little while at least,
  As for the way it worked:
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  Brian Lumley
  Tomorrow evening, for example, Garrison and his lady would very likely go out.
  They would eat, drink, talk a little in one or another taverna late into the
  Lindos night. Their movements would be languid, leisurely. They were on
  holiday, in no mood to hurry. Later they might go to a disco, burn off a
  little excess energy. But whatever they did, it would make little difference.
  Palazzi, having seen them leave their rooms, would have plenty of time to get
  in, discover their hidden valuables (they all did that, hid away their jewelry
  and spare cash), take what he wanted and get out.
  And of course Garrison would not be his only victim tomorrow night. There was
  also a fat, rich Frenchman and his mistress, who Palazzi knew were booked to
  see a show tomorrow in Rhodes; and finally there was a Swiss playboy and his
  girlfriend, who invariably danced and drank the night away. And all of them
  would be leaving their accommodation at approximately the same time, their
  movements entirely visible in the magnifying lenses of the thief's binoculars.
  And the cost of remaining up here when the crowds of visitors were finally
  ushered out of the place and the Acropolis locked its door? Oh, a few hundred
  Drachmas, enough to keep the gnarled old watchman in ouzo for a night or two.
  And in the early hours of the following morning—with the sun not long up and
  the local constabulary still rubbing the sleep from their eyes—why, Paulo
  Palazzi would be gone! Lone passenger in a taxi headed for Rhodes town, where
  he would change his suit, his style, un-
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  load a few choice items for cash and re-adopt his real name. Under which, four
  or five days from now, he would fly back to Genoa and business as usual. And
  if what he had seen of Mrs. Garrison's jewelry alone was anything to go by ...
  it would be quite a long time before he needed to do any "serious" work again.
  Which was probably why he was so cheerful, nodding a bright good morning to a
  couple of pretty British girls with Birmingham accents where they leaned out
  over the wall close by and oohed and aahed their awe at the scene spread
  below. Yes, it was a very pretty scene, and a very good morning. Hopefully
  tomorrow would be just as good, and especially tomorrow night.
  Putting his binoculars away, snapping shut the catch on their case and
  standing up, Palazzi smiled at the girls again. One of them had the most
  exquisitely jutting breasts. He licked his lips. A pity this was a purely
  business trip, but-Well, business is business . . .
  Five minutes after Joe Black left the elevated patio where his intended victim
  now breakfasted, Garrison paused with a forkful of scrambled egg raised
  halfway to his mouth. Suddenly upon his mind's eye, leaping into view from
  nowhere, he had viewed—something. A scene, not a true memory but something
  else entirely. Just what . . . he couldn't say, except that for a moment all
  of his senses had seemed electrified into a tingling defensiveness. The scene
  had been dim and smoky and had depicted a male figure, seated, his hand
  spinning a small rou-
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  Brian Lumley
  lette wheel which he held between crossed legs. The thing had lasted no longer
  than a split second. Mow it was gone, beyond recall.
  "Richard?" Vicki's voice reached him. "Something with your egg?"
  He unfroze, relaxed shoulders grown too tight, and lowered his fork. "Ho," he
  
  smiled, "it's fine. I've had enough, that's all."
  "You looked so strange just then," she was concerned.
  "Did I? Oh, I was probably miles away."
  She tilted her head questioningly. "Is it nice there?"
  "Um?" He was still distant.
  "What were you thinking?"
  "Thinking?" He shrugged, shook his head, said the first thing that came into
  his mind— something which mildly surprised even him. "Did you notice the man
  who left a few minutes ago? With the leather pants and flowery shirt?"
  "Yes, a German like me. Or rather more typical—or at least how you English
  believe a typical German should be." She smiled. "A bit loud, really. You were
  thinking about him?"
  "Too loud," Garrison answered, "and not at all German. And yes, I suppose I
  must have been thinking about him."
  "not German? But he looked so—" She stopped smiling. "You were eavesdropping?
  Listening to his thoughts? But why, Richard?"
  "Actually, I wasn't," he said truthfully. "Hell, I hardly noticed the bloke.
  But—oh, I may have seen him before somewhere. He's not German, though, you can
  be sure of that."
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  "And does it matter? His nationality, I mean?"
  He wrinkled his nose, gave her question perfunctory consideration, grinned and
  said, "Shouldn't think so."
  flow Vicki relaxed, reached across the table and took his hand, laughed out
  loud. "Oh, Richard, you really are the strangest man!" And because it had been
  spontaneous, she failed to see the significance of her words.
  Garrison continued to grin outwardly, while inside:
  Oh, yes, he thought, / really am. But there are stranger things in heaven and
  earth, Vicki, my sweet. Stranger by far.
  And he knew that one of those things, those oh-so-strange things, was even now
  beginning. Or perhaps it had started long ago and only now was coming to a
  head, like pus gathering in a boil.
  All about Garrison the Psychosphere eddied and swirled, pulsing endlessly,
  apparently ordered and serene. But occasionally it carried the ripples of far,
  distant disturbances beyond his understanding. Such ripples were there even
  now; they did him no harm, but they troubled him. He felt like a fish swimming
  in the Great Sea of the Psychosphere, and like a fish he sensed the presence
  of some mighty predator. Out there, somewhere in the fathomless deeps— a
  shark!
  That was an interesting thought:
  A shark in the Psychosphere, and Garrison not so much a ftsh as a
  spear-fisherman. While he preyed on smaller denizens of the deeps, some-
  15
  Brian Lumley
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  where close at hand a large predator circled him. But he wasn't afraid, or at
  least not wholly afraid, for he had his spear-gun. Except ...ifa confrontation
  was in the offing, would his gun be powerful enough? Its once-tough rubber
  hurlers were getting old, growing weaker from continued stretching.
  Worse than this, would he even see the enemy if it came—or would it coast up
  silently behind him, jaws agape?
  Suddenly fearful, lost in his fantasy, Garrison cast about with his mind.
  Terror was the spur, boosting his ESP even as it boosted his adrenalin.
  Searching, he peered deep into the Psychosphere. Somewhere, somewhere...
  . . . There!
  That mottled, marbled shape, silent as a shadow, intent upon the pursuit of
  some other prey, showing no interest in Garrison whatsoever. Until—
  —The shark-shape turned suddenly in Garrison's direction, came at him in a
  blind, head-on fury, a dull-gray bullet snarling through the mat-terless stuff
  
  of the Psychosphere.
  It was close, looming closer . . . it sensed him!
  "Richard?" Vicki's voice reached in to him, causing him to start as if
  slapped—which in turn made her jump. "Wandering again?" she nervously asked.
  Garrison's face felt drained of blood—but he forced a grin, rose and reached
  across the table to draw her up with him. He hoped she couldn't feel the
  trembling in his arms. "Good idea," he
  16
  said. "To wander, 1 mean. Let's walk down towards the beach ..."
  But even as they set out she could tell that he was still not entirely with
  her . . .
  17
  Chapter
  2
  MORE THAM FIFTEEN HUMORED MILES NORTHWEST of Rhodes it was midday and
  brilliant with sunshine. London was abustle—but in Charon Qubwa's mind-castle
  all was cool, shaded and calm as a somnolent beast. The Castle did not
  sleep—it never slept—but Qubwa had been alone all morning in his private
  quarters and not to be disturbed; which was about as close as the Castle as an
  entity might ever get to the stasis of slumber.
  The Castle's staff, Qubwa's "soldiers," went about their tasks almost
  robotically, corpuscles in the Castle's veins; the machines and computers and
  support systems throbbed and pumped, rustled and ticked and whirred, organs by
  which the Castle lived; but Charon Qubwa himself— rather, the Qubwa
  consciousness, the id, the mind of the place—he had in part removed himself.
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  Physically he was there, for he was also the Castle's pulse, without which it
  could not function and would have no purpose, but mentally .. .
  This was one of those days when Qubwa practiced his arts, when he exercised
  his mind as more orthodox men might exercise their bodies; except that where
  the latter were bent upon physical creativity, the structural improvement of
  themselves, Qubwa's exercises were designed for the mental degradation and
  eventual destruction of others. And they were in truth "exercises": training
  tasks he set himself to carry him to the very threshold of an objective—but
  not to cross it. Not yet. Not until the time was ripe, when the result could
  only be total victory.
  And in this respect Qubwa was a general, whose weapons were the telepathic and
  hypnotic powers of his own mind. The Castle and its staff: they were merely
  his armor. The world outside, the world of common men: that was his objective.
  Eventually.
  But Qubwa was tiring now. His exercises had lasted for close on three hours
  and he was beginning to feel that mental strain which ever accompanied such
  excesses of mind.
  He was seated in a massively padded armchair before a great glass tube which
  reached vertically from floor to ceiling. Within the tube a large globe of the
  world, with its continents and oceans etched in realistic bas-relief and
  color, hung in electro-magnetic suspension. Qubwa's eyes were closed; he sat
  completely relaxed— physically. Indeed he might well appear to be asleep, but
  he was not.
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  Brian Lumley
  Upon his lap lay a computer remote, its tiny screen glowing with this word and
  coordinates:
  MOTH: 3°95' —64°7'
  "Moth" was the codename of one of Britain's Polaris submarines and the
  coordinates told her location: midway between Iceland and Norway, roughly
  halfway along an imaginary line drawn due North between the Shetlands and the
  Arctic Circle. On Qubwa's globe this location showed as a steady point of
  light in the western reaches of the Norwegian Ocean, a telltale glow which
  
  served purely as a guide, a focal point, for his intense telepathic
  transmissions.
  The coordinates had been snatched from the unsuspecting mind of the Duty
  Officer at the pen in Rosyth, roughly corroborated by a similarly unwitting
  mind in the Admiralty, and given final definition by Moth's Captain himself
  where he went about his duties 400 feet beneath a sparkling, choppy,
  sun-flecked surface. And that was where Qubwa's mind was at this very moment,
  seated astride the mind of Moth's commander.
  The Castle's master was well pleased with the way the morning's exercises had
  gone—so far. But this was his last "visit" of this session and it was the most
  important; it would determine his mood for days to come—it might one day
  determine the fate of the world.
  As for the rest of the morning's work, work already completed:
  Strategic Air Command had been a hard one. The Americans—especially their
  military ele-
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  ments—had a rigidity of mind difficult to crack; they were mentally obstinate.
  USAD's pilots were no exception. The United States Airborne Deterrent had
  often been described as a never-ending flirtation with disaster, but it was
  also the symbol of a nation's security-consciousness carried to the nth
  degree. Never a moment of the day or night went by without some of those
  planes were in the sky, and the minds of their pilots were never easy to find
  and had proved singularly difficult to penetrate.
  Be that as it may, Qubwa knew most of them by now; and yet not one of them
  knew him. His knowledge was the result of over three years' covert
  surveillance, a gradual insinuation of himself into their minds. This was a
  continual process which he must forever update and change to suit
  circumstances. Air patrol routes were changed from day to day (deliberately,
  of course, to confound the Russians; but as often as not to Qubwa's confusion,
  too) and pilot turnover was fairly frequent. Because of the nature of the
  task, however, pilot substitution or replacement never occurred en bloc; there
  were always half-a-dozen easily recognizable, susceptible minds open to him,
  most of which he had learned to control in one degree or another. For control
  was the real object of these exercises. To control minds such as these was to
  control world destiny. Literally.
  This morning Qubwa might well have started World War III, and it was his
  intention one day to do exactly that. For example: he might have caused one or
  more of the supersonic, nuclear-
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  Brian Lumley
  armed American bombers to enter into Russian airspace, ignoring all commands
  to turn back. Simultaneously he might have bombed or "nuked," as current
  jargon would have it, Detroit, Boston and Ottawa. And if he had also managed
  to maintain radio silence there would have been no way to convince the
  Pentagon and US authorities that such an attack had been carried out by their
  own planes! Even had they accepted the unacceptable, conditions worldwide
  would by then have been rapidly disintegrating, with every country of major
  military capability elevated to or accelerating towards a "red alert"
  situation. At which stage ... a little pressure applied to a certain jittery
  mind controlling the firing-buttons of a nest of missiles in their silos at
  Vytegra, USSR, and— —And then there had been the Chinese, Qubwa had been
  there, too—to a selected location in the scattered chain of silos along the
  border of the North Sinkiang Desert. The Chinese still did not have the West's
  or Russia's targeting technology, but what they lacked in sophistication they
  more than made up for in muscle. And their bombs were incredibly dirty. A
  chain-reaction of hysterical button-pushing there could well result in a
  thousand-mile wide band of nuclear destruction and desolation reaching from
  the Aral Sea to Siberia!
  All very gratifying, and Charon Qubwa might well congratulate himself on the
  
  success of the morning's exercises so far. He had broached these various
  thresholds without breaching them, which remained a step for the future. But
  22
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  now, in the mind of Moth's commander, he desired to apply one last test before
  terminating today's training session. And this was a test which would require
  a delicate touch indeed— or a brutal one, depending on the point of view.
  Qubwa had long since learned all of the atomic submariner's habits and
  idiosyncrasies, and he was well aware of Captain Gary Foster's wont to catnap.
  The sub's commander was one of those people who work best under pressure, the
  more extreme the better; whose mind and body performed at their highest levels
  of efficiency under a workload others would deem crippling. And when called
  upon he could perform under such stress for long hours at a stretch, even
  days. His secret (or so he himself believed) lay in an equally impressive
  ability to fall asleep, however briefly, at the drop of a hat.
  This he was given to do as often as three or four times in any period of
  twenty-four hours, always to the amazement and occasionally the consternation
  of his immediate subordinates and crew; for while they themselves would
  normally sleep for six or seven hours at a stretch between duties, their
  Commanding Officer rarely went down for more than two hours and often made do
  with as little as fifteen minutes! In the middle of a watch—or a good read of
  Playboy, or a hand of poker—when by all rights Captain Foster should be deep
  in slumber, he would silently, unexpectedly appear in a hatchway or through a
  bulkhead door, his sardonic, humorless grin cold as the wind from the pole. So
  that
  23
  Brian Lumley
  Moth's company was aware to a man that there was never a time, nor even a
  moment, when they could guarantee that their Captain was "off-duty." It made,
  he was in the habit of reminding them, for a "very tight ship." It was good
  for discipline.
  And it made Charon Qubwa's task that much easier.
  Sleeping minds were far simpler to penetrate; in sleep a man's mental defenses
  are down, where often a mere suggestion may carry the weight of a command.
  Using his usual technique of gradual insinuation over many short visits, Qubwa
  had found that he could slip in and out of certain minds as easily as unlocked
  rooms, inhabiting and using them as he saw fit. And from the sleeping
  mind—where certain deeply embedded post-hypnotic commands could be left to
  take root and germinate—it was usually only a short step to the waking mind,
  when Qubwa's unwitting host would become quite literally a zombie working to
  his command. Thus it was with several of the USAD pilots, and thus he intended
  it to be with Moth's commander.
  It is, nevertheless, a rare brand of hypnotism indeed that can cause a man to
  do that which his nature would not permit at its normal level of
  consciousness. And this was the purpose of today's test run: to see if it were
  possible so to manipulate Gary Foster's mind that he would perform contrary to
  the fundamental elements of his own nature, ideals, and training. In short:
  24
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  to see if he could be made to press the button! fiot to actually cross that
  threshold, no, but certainly to stand upon its doorstep.
  Qubwa had found Foster taking a catnap, a habit of the Captain's around
  midday, and had crept into the unguarded, sleeping mind. There had been no
  dreams as such, merely an awareness of the great gray metal shape surrounding
  mind and body as it cruised in the deeps, powerful as the atomic engine which
  propelled it and semi-sentient with its computer-controlled "mind" and
  sensors. With no dreams to usurp, Qubwa had simply inserted a phantasm of his
  own:
  IT'S COLD OUTSIDE, BITTERLY COLD. WE ARE THREE HUNDRED MILES INSIDE THE ARCTIC
  CIRCLE, EDGE OF THE BARENTS SEA, LYING STILL ON THE BOTTOM AT THIRTY FATHOMS.
  
  MOSCOW IS 1300 MILES AWAY. THIS IS NO EXERCISE. THE ALERT STATE IS RED. IT IS
  RED ALL OVER THE WORLD. THIS IS WHAT YOUR TRAINING WAS ALL ABOUT, GARY. THIS
  IS WHAT IT WAS FOR . . .
  NOW YOU CAN ONLY WAIT. YOU WAIT IN THE OPS AREA. YOUR RADIO OP HAS JUST
  RECEIVED INFO THROUGH THE DECODER. HIS FACE IS WHITE, DRAWN . . .
  In his tiny cabin, Foster moaned and turned over on his narrow bunk. Droplets
  of sweat stood out suddenly upon his brow. He mumbled some incoherent query,
  but in his dream his words were sharp-etched, brittle with tension. "What is
  it, Carter?"
  "Russian bombers are on the edge of our air-
  25
  Brian Lumley
  space. Others are coming over the roof, closing on Canada. American bombers
  are already inside Red airspace. And . . . and . . ."
  "Yes, Carter?" Foster snapped. "Come on, Sparks, what is it?"
  Carter nodded, gulped. "We're to initiate NU-CAC 7."
  NUCAC 7: first phase of a missile launch! Following which there would be
  NUCACs 8, then 9 . , . and finally 10. And 10 would signify the launch itself!
  Foster almost said: "No, I don't believe it," but he held the words back.
  Instead he said: "Action stations, all. NUCAC 7 op immediate. Other NU-CACs .
  . . imminent. Mate?"
  His 2IC, Mike Arnott, nodded briefly, grimly. NUCAC required both of them: in
  the hands of one man alone it would be too dangerous. Un-thinkably dangerous.
  Carter called out: "Corns cut between Moscow and Washington ..."
  The keys code had come through with the NU-CAC 7 order; Carter had already
  punched the code into Moth's ops computer. Twin red lights were flashing on
  panels in the curving walls; the panels slid open. Foster reached up and took
  out a bunch of harmless looking keys from one recess; likewise Arnott from the
  other.
  To one end of the ops area, built into the bulkhead, stood a booth only
  slightly larger than a telephone kiosk; its windows were dark, tinted; its
  sealed door bore the legend:
  NUCAC CELL 26
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  Foster and Arnott crossed to the booth, inserted duplicate keys in locks on
  opposite sides of the door, turned them. The seals snapped open, interior
  lights flickered into life. Foster slid the door aside and they entered,
  cramming themselves into tiny padded seats and facing each other across a
  table whose center was a screen. Foster reached up and pulled the door shut.
  Outside in the ops bay Sparks plugged in their audio system and gave them
  direct access to all incoming signals.
  GOOD! said Qubwa, fascinated by the progress of the dream he had instigated.
  Foster glared across at Arnott and barked, "Good? What the hell's good about
  it?" The other stared blankly back. Both men put on headphones.
  NUCAC 8, said Gubwa.
  "Jesus Christ!" Foster hissed through clenched teeth. "It's all coming apart!"
  Almost automatically, he and Arnott pressed twinned buttons, fed coded
  coordinates into the computer for its translation, watched the illuminated,
  reticulated table-screen coming to life between them in lines of red and blue
  light, glowing with figures, times, ever-changing computations.
  Gubwa was now the voice of incoming signals. He painted a scenario of chaos,
  madness:
  SEVEN RED BOMBERS INTERCEPTED AMD TAKEN OUT OVER MANITOBA. SATELLITES REPORT
  INCREASED ACTIVITY ROUND SILOS IN RUSSIA AND INTERMEDIATE MISSILE BATTERIES IN
  EAST GERMANY. FRENCH SILOS SABOTAGED
  27
  Brian Lumley
  BY 5TH COLUMNISTS. PARIS NUKED! ICBMS FIRED IN USSR! AND IN USA! CRUISE
  MISSILES LAUNCHED ON USSR FROM EUROPE! INNER LONDON NUKED!
  "Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!—" Foster was whispering over and over.
  
  NUCAC 9, said Qubwa.
  "No!" Foster gasped. "It's all wrong! It has to be wrong! We would've been the
  first to know, not the last. They're blowing up the world out there—bombers,
  ICBMs, Cruise—and we're only on NUCAC 9?" Sweat dripped from his chin,
  plastered his shirt to his back. Outside his dream, Foster's body struggled
  out of his bunk, staggered from his tiny cabin.
  NUCAC 10, said Qubwa.
  "It's all yours, Captain," said Arnott, feeding the final code into the
  computer. A tiny panel snapped open in the table's surface beside Foster's
  right hand. In the recess, a large red firing-button blinked on—off—on—off—on—
  "Captain?" said Arnott.
  NUCAC 10! Qubwa snapped.
  For a moment Foster's right hand hovered over the button—then shot across the
  table and grabbed Arnott's throat. "Dream!" he was babbling.
  "Dream—nightmare—it has to be—!"
  NUCAC 10! Qubwa squeezed Foster's mind.
  But Arnott was dissolving away in Foster's grasp, the outline of his face and
  form melting down. And the NUCAC cell's lights and fittings were blurring,
  shifting like melting wax. Foster was waking up!
  Despite Qubwa's every effort to restrain him,
  28
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  the man was breaking free. His situation had been too nightmarish, the
  ultimate nightmare, and he must—
  —"Wake up!" Foster gasped.
  NO!
  "Must!"
  Failure! Qubwa was furious. There must be a fault in his scenario. He hadn't
  built it carefully enough.
  Foster was almost awake. And his mind was agitated, a whirlpool, crowded with
  terror, confused and yet resolute. Qrimly determined to ... to wake up!
  Useless in this condition. Useless to Charon Qubwa.
  The exercise was over. The Castle's master withdrew from Foster's mind.
  At which precise moment, in Lindos, Rhodes, Richard Allan Garrison was
  fantasizing about the great mottled mind-shark . . .
  "Captain! Captain Foster! Qary!" someone was yelling. The voice was Arnott's,
  but choked, strangled. Foster felt his grip broken, was hurled back. The
  slender thread which remained, linking him to the world of dreams, snapped.
  The last revenant of Qubwa's hypnotic scenario vaporized as Foster felt the
  pain of slamming backwards into a bulkhead . . . but hands were there to grab
  him and hold him up. He shook his head, stared about through eyes which
  refused to focus, shrugged off the two crew members who stood gaping at him.
  "What in hell—?" Then he looked down at himself where he stood trembling in
  shock,
  29
  Brian Lumley
  dressed in loose, sweat-soaked issue pajamas! He remembered now: he had
  intended to sleep for an hour, maybe a little longer.
  Across the ops area Mike Arnott was perched on a table, massaging his throat.
  Foster moved unsteadily towards his 2IC. "Mike, what—?"
  "You tell me, sir," said the other hoarsely. "You floated in here like a ghost
  just a minute ago. You were gabbling something—don't ask me what. I only
  caught one word, NUCAC—then you grabbed me by the throat!"
  Foster wasn't yet oriented. "I grabbed you? You're on watch?"
  "Of course."
  "And nothing . . . unusual? No incoming signals?" Foster's eyes were wide now,
  staring.
  "Only . . . well, this!" Arnott answered. "The rest was routine." He grabbed
  the other's trembling arms, held him steady. "Gary, what is it?"
  "Where are we?" the Captain's breathing was slowing down, regulating itself.
  
  He peered at location charts, sighed his relief. "An hour from turnabout.
  Thank God!"
  "Where did you think we were?" Arnott was incredulous. "Were you asleep,
  dreaming?"
  Foster nodded. "Only explanation. Sleepwalking, too, apparently." He almost
  fell into a chair, reaction catching up with him. "It was the Big One-NUCAC
  10!"
  Arnott's eyebrows went up. He nodded to the crewmen. "You two wait outside a
  minute." They left. "Sir, that's a funny sort of dream you've had." He
  shrugged. "Understandable, consider-
  30
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  ing our job, but . . . been pushing it too hard, perhaps?"
  Foster looked at him, narrowed his eyes. "That could be the answer, I suppose.
  Don't concern yourself, I'll have a checkup. But. . . I'd like it if this
  didn't go any further. Speak to those two, will you?" He nodded towards the
  hatchway.
  "Of course."
  "Good. Now I'd better get some clothes on." Foster turned away, glad that his
  cabin was close by. As for the checkup: he would speak to the ship's doctor.
  And he'd see another doctor later—just as soon as Moth got back to Ros-yth . .
  .
  Thwarted, on leaving Foster's mind Qubwa should have soared instantaneously
  back to his own seat of consciousness in the Castle, but something intervened.
  Another mind moved in the Psychosphere, was close, almost on a collision
  course. There was no real contact but an awareness—from which Qubwa recoiled
  no less sharply than the other. Two wary forces facing each other, drawing
  back, finally fleeing in mutual panic—
  —And Gubwa snapped open his eyes in the Castle, starting at once to his feet.
  If he had been furious before, now he was doubly so—and not a little worried.
  Now what had that been? Who?
  Of course there were other minds in the Psychosphere: the Psychosphere was the
  essence of all sentience, of mental intelligence. But the vast majority of
  minds were no more aware of
  31
  Brian Lumley
  the Psychosphere than a bird is aware of air. This mind had been aware, or had
  seemed so. And Qubwa had sensed . . . fear? Perhaps. In which case the close
  brush had probably been accidental.
  The Castle's master knew that the Russians had their own telepaths, as did the
  Americans. They had a certain raw talent, these ESPers, but they were amateurs
  compared with Qubwa. Fifty percent of what they learned was guesswork, none of
  it could ever be trusted. Polaris submarines were almost impossible to detect
  through technology, so it could have been a Russian mind Qubwa had come up
  against— even an American for that matter. And because it had been unexpected,
  Qubwa had panicked.
  He snorted. Obviously the USA and USSR—one of them, at least—was making some
  progress in the training and use of ESP-endowed surveillance agents,
  telepathic spies. It was something which would bear looking into.
  But meanwhile, there was the other problem, the fact that Foster had broken
  free of Qubwa's control, had refused to press the NUCAC button. Oh, in a
  genuine crisis he would respond to training, of course he would—but even then
  he would have to be absolutely certain of the nature of the situation. This
  u?as his training, had to be; the world could not afford that kind of mistake.
  Given the smallest loophole or blind spot in even the most perfect scenario,
  Foster would reject it. Qubwa couldn't win!
  The Castle's master cursed vividly. It was a problem. If he could not control
  Foster's single
  32
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  
  mind, how could he hope to control both his and his 2IC's simultaneously?
  Trust Great Britain to build these sort of dual-control, failsafe systems into
  its hardware!
  Well, facts must be faced up to. Moth was out of the question. The other
  Polaris subs, too—
  — Unless.
  Slowly a poisonous transformation took place in Qubwa's gross features.
  Suddenly smiling, he cursed again—cursed himself for a fool. The easy way is
  always the simplest way. Why even attempt to control two minds simultaneously—
  or four/or six—when you can control the mind which controls those minds?
  After all, Moth got her orders by radio, didn't she? And the operator who sent
  them was only one man, wasn't he? One mind! And if there was trouble there,
  why, Qubwa could always take it higher! He laughed out loud. Of course he
  could ...
  . . . Right to the Admiralty itself!
  33
  Chapter
  3
  VICKI MALER, RED-HAIRED AND MARVELLOUSLY golden-eyed (her eyes had once been
  green and blind), her slim elfin face cocked a little to one side—Vicki Maler,
  once-dead and cryogeni-cally suspended at Schloss Zonigen in the Swiss Alps,
  returned to life through the will of her lover, Richard Allan Garrison—stood
  now beside the bed where Garrison tossed and turned in the throes of
  nightmare. She did not wish to wake him, despite the occasional spastic
  twitching of his limbs and the starting of salty droplets from his neck and
  the hollow between his shoulder blades; no, for one could never be certain of
  his mood when first roused from sleep. Not these days. Hot any longer.
  Vicki's thoughts were her own; they were as private, vital and original as any
  she had conjured in her previous life (or, as she thought of
  34
  PSYCHOSPHERE_____
  it now, in that "earlier" time), before the final, hideous acceleration of the
  creeping cancer which had ravaged her body to its painful death. And because
  she was intelligent, because she knew Garrison to be the instrument of her
  revival, her reincarnation, the fact that her mind retained its individuality
  vaguely surprised her. For not only had Garrison replenished her body and
  driven out the killing cancer, but also her mind; he had revitalized it
  intact, inquiring and unique as any mind, and not at all a product or
  substructure of his own expanded muitimind.
  She was, in short, her own person. Mo, she corrected herself, she was
  Garrison's person; for he had left her in no doubt as to her fate should any
  accident befall him, when she must surely return to her previous state, whose
  clay shell, however vital now, must crumble as a centuried mummy exposed to
  air and light. Oh, yes, for if Vicki seemed bright and unflickering, an
  electrical glow in life's filament, then Garrison himself was the light
  switch. And if he were switched off...
  As a girl in her teens Vicki had read Poe, Love-craft and Wilde. She well
  remembered the horrific demise of M. Valdemar and that of Dr. Munoz: her fate,
  too, should Garrison die. But she was more inclined to associate Garrison
  himself with the terrible fate of Dorian Gray. Not that Garrison had ever been
  a man of great vices, he had not. But. . . things had happened to him. Things
  ...
  Vicki supposed she should be grateful for those things, but still she
  preferred to remem-
  35
  Brian Lumley
  ber Garrison as he had been in that "earlier" time. Then he had been, well,
  just Garrison. But that had been before the changes, before her rebirth.
  Odd, but despite the fact that she was the same girl she had been "earlier,"
  Vicki nevertheless felt . . . yes, reincarnated. After all, eight years had
  
  gone by without her active, physical presence in the world, when she had
  lain—dormant?—in her cryogenic crypt at Schloss Zonigen; but for Garrison they
  had been real, waking years. And strange ones. Moreover, Vicki's body had all
  the vitality and strength of her pre-cancer years, or at least of those years
  before the disease had commenced to drain her. So that in a sense she had been
  born again into a younger body than the one she last remembered.
  She shuddered at the thought: the body she remembered.
  The husk. The pain-riven shell. The bewildered flesh whose contamination had
  bloated and burned and filled her veins with the fire of stricken cells in
  ravenous, monstrous mutation. A body full of cancer. Livid with pain. No, with
  agony!
  Vicki shuddered again. She not only remembered the cause of her death (for she
  had died) but Death Itself—or Himself. She had actually known His touch, the
  cruelly constricting fingers of the Grim Reaper; and not merely His touch but
  His iron grasp. And in her case those bony fingers had been of fire—or of
  acid.
  Death. The Old Man. The oldest man in the
  36
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  world, who could not die Himself until He had snuffed out the very last life.
  Immortal, therefore. Immortal, and . . . cruel.
  Certainly in the worst of her pain-racked days Vicki had felt that someone
  enjoyed her agony, else why should she suffer it? If all were to balance, then
  there must be an enjoyment equal to her suffering. Well, finally she had the
  last laugh, for Death the One Immortal now had a second immortal to contend
  with. The Old Man must now wait on the demise of one Richard Allan Garrison,
  and Garrison did not intend to die— not ever.
  Garrison stirred and mumbled something in his sleep, then flopped over on to
  his back. He was through the worst of his nightmare and the sweat was drying
  on him. Vicki listened to his near-inarticulate mouthings. He mentioned
  Schroeder, she thought, and Roenig, the sounds coming out in a jumble. Vicki
  allowed herself a third, this time quite deliberate shudder and peered
  intently into his face. It seemed calm now, resigned almost. But beneath those
  closed eyelids . . .
  She straightened and stepped silently to the room's gilt-framed mirror. The
  gold of her eyes matched the yellow glow of the frame, burning in the
  reflected fire of the day's last ray of sunlight. She marvelled at her own
  eyes—those golden eyes which had been blind in that earlier time, blind for
  many years—their sight now restored through the will of Garrison. His own
  eyes, too, blinded by fire and blast, repaired miraculously in glowing,
  uniformly golden orbs.
  37
  Brian Lumley
  Eyes which saw more, much more, than those of other men.
  Miraculous, yes. Garrison performed miracles. His powers were very nearly . .
  . infinite? They had seemed so at one time, but ... he himself did not
  know—had never fully explored—the extent or limitations of his powers. In fact
  of late he had kept an uneasy silence on the subject.
  She turned to him again where he lay, her movements edgy, nervous. And
  silently she repeated to herself. Miracles . . .
  But wasn't that a God-given gift? The power to work miracles? And if there
  really was a God (Vicki had always doubted it) why should He so reward
  Garrison? Or any human being for that matter. Or perhaps there actually was a
  God-now.
  Had there been others with Garrisons's powers, Vicki wondered? What of the old
  legends? What of Merlin and the great wizards of immemorial myth? Her thoughts
  became blasphemous. What of Jesus Christ? He too had restored sight to the
  blind, raised up the dead, walked on the water. Hadn't He?
  But no, cases were different. His miracles were generally accepted as having
  been all to the good. Garrison's were sometimes . . . other than that.
  
  Her thoughts turned abruptly to their whereabouts . . .
  The decision to go to the Aegean had been made, as were most of Garrison's
  decisions, on the spur of the moment. His pilot (he owned an executive jet
  aircraft) had been on holiday and
  38
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  so not immediately available, which was why just one week ago he had chartered
  a private plane and crew to fly them out to Rhodes airport. There was a second
  route he once might have taken—a rather more esoteric route—but in the world
  of passport controls, a world where "miracles" would doubtless attract
  attention, he had chosen the much more cumbersome and, in his own words,
  "mechanical flight" method.
  The house they had hired in Lindos consisted in fact of a nest of three
  holiday villas or apartments with their own secluded courtyard. They occupied
  only the largest room, leaving the other two standing empty. They had eaten
  out with only one exception, when Garrison had cooked a pair of large gray
  mullet, self-caught on the trident of a rubber-powered spear-gun purchased in
  Rhodes. Garrison was an excellent swimmer and spear-fisherman, his prowess in
  the latter deriving from three sun-drenched years in Cyprus as a Corporal in
  the Royal Military Police. Here in Lindos, however, he had quickly lost
  interest in the "sport." He had soon realized that there was little skill
  involved and no thrill whatsoever when one might simply command the fishes to
  impale themselves upon the tines of one's harpoon.
  And so in a matter of days they had settled down to an existence of hot, idle
  days and balmy nights, of not unreasonable wines and cheap island brandy
  (another legacy of Garrison's soldiering), and of good local meats and fruits
  in the village tavernas. And yet even in this near-exotic, idyllic setting of
  Lindos—with its narrow
  39
  Brian Lumley
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  white labyrinthine streets, church towers, elaborate archways, its
  drain-dwelling, night-venturing frogs and tumult of cats—even here they had
  not felt totally at ease. The problem, as most of their problems, had its
  roots in Garrison's multi-personality.
  Usually the Schroeder and Koenig facets took a back seat or were subsumed in
  Garrison's far stronger seat of consciousness—but on occasion they would come
  bursting to the forefront. Often, Vicki thought, unnecessarily and far too
  forcefully. Her thoughts took her back to an incident as recent as yesterday,
  one which perfectly illustrated her point . . .
  After their open-air, patio breakfast, Garrison had suggested they walk. They
  had taken the path that led out of the village to a quiet, sheltered bay of
  yellow sand between white flanking rocks and looming perpendicular cliffs.
  Feeling the heat of a suddenly breathless midday, they had wandered from the
  path to seat themselves on tumbled boulders beneath the overhang of scree-shod
  cliffs that reached up to the mightier, precipitously concave Rock of the
  Acropolis itself. At their feet where they sat lay a large bed of
  cabbage-leaved plants sporadically decorated with small yellow flowers much
  similar to the English primrose; with many green, oval fruit-pods some two
  inches long, each pod hanging heavily from its own individual stem.
  As they had sat down, so Garrison's leg had brushed against one of these
  fruits which, with a quite audible squelching or popping sound, had at once
  jet-propelled itself from its stem to
  40
  go bounding about amidst the thick leaves until it found a gap and fell
  through to the shaded earth beneath. At the moment of the explosion Garrison
  had jerked away from the plant, but not before feeling a splash of liquid on
  his hand and forearm.
  "You should wipe your hand," Vicki had been a little concerned. "That juice is
  mildly caustic—or poisonous, I can't remember which. But I've read about it
  
  somewhere or other."
  Garrison had sniffed at his wrist, wrinkled his nose and grinned. "Catspissl"
  he snorted—but he had nevertheless used his handkerchief to clean the affected
  areas. And Vicki had laughed at his exclamation, for of course this had been
  Garrison pure and simple. Garrison himself, the man she had loved in that
  earlier world. A natural man and unself-conscious.
  A couple of Greek youths had taken the same well-trodden route to the beach,
  walking a little to their rear, neither Vicki nor Garrison had attached any
  significance to this; it was a free world. In any case the youths seemed
  little more than kids, fifteen or sixteen at most and brothers by their looks.
  And by far the great majority of Lindos people were kindly and utterly
  charming.
  There had been few people about—one or two couples slowly negotiating a rough
  ramp cut in the cliff's face down to the beach, and a scattered handful on the
  beach itself—but that was just exactly how Garrison had wanted it. This had
  been his prime purpose in coming out to Rhodes in the first place: an escape
  from the
  41
  Brian Lumley
  rush and bustle and pressures of a life which, for the last year at l^ast, had
  seemed to catch him up like an insect in the cogs of some vast machine. But an
  insect of carbon steel, which could not be crushed and without which the
  machine itself could not function.
  For Garrison controlled—no, he was—that machine. Not quite self-made but
  certainly self-sustaining, self-servicing. Even the finest machine needs a
  little oil, however, and this holiday was to have been just that: light
  lubrication for the gears of a life suddenly grown vastly complicated. More
  than that, it was to give him time to consider his future. To ponder what best
  to do with the powers his multimind controlled—those powers which, with each
  passing day, he felt weakening in him, draining from him like the slow trickle
  of sand from the glass globe of an hourglass.
  Vicki had been silent, dwelling a little Sntro-spectively on her life with
  Garrison, happy just to sit beside the calm, apparently greatly relaxed and
  benign figure of her companion—at least until she heard the clatter of pebbles
  and the indolent slap, slap of sandals which announced the arrival of the two
  Greek boys. At that she sighed.
  She had known then why they had been followed, taking little pride in the
  knowledge that her own brown and beautifully proportioned body was the magnet
  which had drawn these adolescent islanders after her. She felt only a niggling
  annoyance. She was skimpily dressed, true, in a tiny green halter, green
  figure-hugging
  42
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  shorts and white sandals—but surely these lads could find themselves a pair of
  girls more their own age to ogle? While it was still fairly early in the
  tourist season, still the village was full of just such apparently unattended
  young ladies: English, German, Italian, Scandinavian. Or perhaps the youths
  had mistakenly suspected that Vicki and Garrison had something other in mind
  than merely sitting in silent contemplation in the shade of the rocks?
  Garrison, too, had noticed the approach of the boys and for a moment he had
  grinned good-naturedly. He had of course immediately guessed their motive, and
  a glance—the merest peep—inside their minds had confirmed it. Well, boys are
  boys and Greek boys are Greek boys, and no complaints there. But then, as the
  youths had taken seats upon rocks in the middle of the pod-bearing plants and
  openly stared at Garrison and his lovely companion—particularly and pointedly
  at Vicki—the grin had quickly slipped from Garrison's face.
  One of the minds his own had touched upon was a distinctly unpleasant one,
  whose strong sexual overtones were warped and vicious. He was full of animal
  lust. In Garrison's brief glimpse inside the youth's head he had found him
  savagely assaulting Vicki. Slimy with sweat and sex, the attack was unnatural
  
  as it was murderous. Nor were these mind-scenes mere fantasies but repeats of
  an earlier assault, a real assault, but with Vicki's face and figure
  superimposed. The youth was, or had been, the author of a rabidly cruel rape!
  43
  Brian Lumley
  And. as Garrison's face had hardened and taken on a grimmer aspect, so he had
  slowly risen to his feet. Drawing Vicki up with him, he had hissed in her ear:
  "That older boy's a rapist!"
  "What? But how could you possibly—" she began—and paused. For of course she
  knew that if anyone in the world could know such a thing, that someone was
  Garrison.
  "And when he can't do it he likes to think about doing it," Garrison's voice
  had turned to a snarl. "Doing it to you!" His face had twisted in rage, its
  color rapidly draining away.
  Vicki knew that behind Garrison's heavy sunglasses with their built-up sides,
  his golden eyes were burning bright. "Come," he said. "Wir gehen!"
  He half-dragged her from beneath the shade of the rock, hurriedly picking a
  way through boulders and coarse shrubs and grasses back to the path. Stumbling
  behind him, she had known fear. His being was in flux, its change betrayed by
  a voice which retained very little of Richard Garrison's true nature. There
  was a certain harshness about that voice, and those words he had spoken in
  German—
  He paused to fill his lungs, drew her up alongside him. His fingers tightened
  on her side, digging into the flesh of her waist. He glanced back—and his face
  was no longer Garrison's. Not quite.
  "Thomas!" Vicki whispered.
  Her companion's eyebrows formed a frown, drew together, dipped down in the
  center be-
  44
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  hind his special glasses. His gaze was upon the pair of youths where they
  stood now amidst the patch of pod-bearing plants. For their part they stared
  back, the face of the older one wearing a contemptuous grin.
  "Swine!" Garrison/Schroeder said, but the word had sounded more like Schwein
  to Vicki. She had known instinctively that he scanned the youth's mind. More
  deeply now.
  "Richard," Vicki had clutched his arm. "It's not your business."
  "But it has to be somebody's!" he told her harshly. "And you are my
  business—and that bastard's thinking things about you! He needs a lesson." And
  again his eyebrows had drawn together.
  At that very moment Vicki had heard the sudden yelping of the youths. She had
  followed Gar-rison/Schroeder's gaze—and behind her own special sunglasses her
  golden eyes had gone very wide. She gasped at what she saw.
  The younger Greek was stumbling jerkily out of the patch of pod-plants,
  backing away from the other youth until he came up against the white rock of
  the cliff. The older boy, the unwitting subject of Garrison's manipulation,
  stood as if rooted to the spot—while all around him the sprawling bed of
  vegetation went totally insane!
  It was a scene of madness, an alien scene, or one perhaps from Earth's prime,
  when the flora could more ably match the fauna in ferocity. The plants tossed
  and churned, each leaf violently flapping, pods straining, swelling and
  bursting
  45
  Brian Lumley
  from their stems with sounds like muted machine-gun fire. And their
  juices—concerted, directed—fell upon the Greek youth where he stood wildly
  windmilling his arms, his feet apparently mired in the now sodden earth. Then,
  in a final frenzy, a last burst of vegetable violence, the entire patch
  ejaculated into his eyes.
  The youth screamed and clapped his hands to his face. His hair, the skin of
  
  his face, his entire upper torso was drenched in plant fluid—but at last he
  could move, and now he commenced a grim, hopping dance of agony.
  "No!" Vicki had cried. "Nein, Richard! Bitte, blind ihm nicht!"
  Garrison had glanced down at her. In his face she had seen something of him,
  also a lingering trace of Thomas Schroeder—but mainly the blunt hardness of
  Willy Koenig. Garrison's third facet had surfaced, the most ruthless facet of
  all.
  "As you will," Garrison/Koenig's voice rasped. "And you're right, of course,
  Vicki—for we know what it's like to be blind, don't we? But—" Mis gaze fell
  once more upon the terrified youth.
  The pod-bearing plants were dead now, wilted and shrivelled, black and
  stinking. Their stench wafted to Garrison and Vicki on a breeze suddenly blown
  up from the sea. The Greek youth's agonized dance had slowed to a moaning
  stagger, his feet stumbling in the slop of decaying vegetation. He still
  clutched at his face but, in another moment, stood still and tentatively took
  away his hands, peering gingerly, unbelievingly all about him. The pain went
  out of his eyes and
  46
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  blotched face and he began to laugh hysterically. But only for a moment.
  "A lesson," Garrison/Koenig repeated—and with his words the Greek youth's eyes
  suddenly stood out from their sockets. He gave a great howl, threw his hands
  down as if to protect his groin, bent forward and fell face-down in the rot of
  decay. And there he lay, his body threshing spasmodically upon the putrid
  earth.
  Garrison climbed up on to the path and turned towards the village. Vicki ran
  after him, her red hair flying behind her. "Richard, you didn't—?"
  "Mo, I didn't," he answered her unspoken question. "I didn't ruin them, merely
  kicked him in them. A sort of forever kick."
  "A forever kick?" she caught him up, grabbed at his hand. He paused in his
  striding to put an arm around her. The strength in his fingers was hard,
  rough, in no way the gentle, firm grip of Richard Garrison. Not of Garrison
  alone.
  He nodded. "I simply put another kink in his mind—a kink to counter those
  already there. From now on, whenever he looks at or thinks of a woman that
  way, like a beast, he'll feel like he's just been shot in the balls!"
  "But in effect that's—"
  "Castration? Right! But it's less than what I'd have done to him if you hadn't
  stopped me . . ."
  47
  Chapter
  4
  THAT HAD BEEN YESTERDAY, AMD BY THE TIME THEY got back to their rooms Garrison
  had been himself once more—or as much himself as he ever could be. There was
  an aftermath, however, inevitable in the wake of any resurgence of his
  Schroeder and Koenig facets: a scratchy, unreasoning irritability.
  Vicki, totally aware of Garrison's Jekyll and two Hydes existence and as well
  versed as could be expected in such matters, had coped with the problem in a
  manner tried and trusted. Namely, she had plied Garrison's senses with a
  bottle of dirt-cheap brandy!
  Strange how this simple device always seemed to turn the trick, or perhaps not
  so strange when one thought about it.
  Bad brandy had been Garrison's tipple ever since his Cyprus "initiation," when
  on occasion,
  48
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  usually after several losing hands of three-card brag, a bottle of one-star
  had been all he could afford to buy! And so he had actually come to like, even
  to prefer the stuff.
  On the other hand, but of equal consequence, bad brandy had certainly not been
  
  Thomas Schroeder's drink, whose taste had always been impeccable and therefore
  far more expensive. Nor had Koenig, a born Schnapps drinker (though when the
  mood was on him he could generally drink anything), ever greatly fancied
  Garrison's favorite.
  The way brandy worked, Vicki suspected, was simply as a stabilizer: it helped
  him stay "in character"—or helped his character stay in him. On this occasion
  Lindos, too, had helped, for the old Garrison had been very "Med-conscious,"
  had loved the Mediterranean from first sight; and a third stabilizer (Vicki
  liked to think of it as the most important) was their sex.
  Even though their affair in that earlier time had been brief, it had been
  intense. She had remembered his preferences and, in the two years flown since
  her resurrection, had practiced pleasuring him until she was expert. No woman
  knew or had ever known Garrison's body or the way it responded to sexual
  stimuli better than Vicki Maler. As for the Schroeder and Koenig facets: their
  tastes were entirely different. Moreover they respected Garrison—so far, at
  least—and they had never intruded or in any way attempted ascen-dence in this
  respect.
  For that Vicki was naturally glad; but in another way, and however
  paradoxically, she was
  49
  Brian Lurnley
  not so glad. She was fairly sure that Garrison himself was faithful to her,
  but there had been more than a few occasions—always when he had found it
  necessary to let one of his alter-facets take ascendency—when his body had
  absented itself from her bed, often for two or three nights at a stretch.
  Twice she had found evidence of his visiting high-class London call girls; and
  she was well aware that a onetime "secretary" of Thomas Schroeder, one Mina
  Qrunwald, now lived in Mayfair where Garrison (or rather Garrison/ Schroeder)
  was in the habit of seeing her.
  This then was Vicki's problem, the reason for her . . . yes, jealousy: that
  while she knew that the Schroeder/Koenig facets respected Garrison's privacy,
  she could not be one hundred percent certain that he respected theirs. After
  all, his was the original, dominant facet, and it remained housed in its own
  body. Vicki was not yet quite used to the idea that when the subsidiary facets
  were in ascendence they could use that body to sate their own sexual
  appetites. Fortunately neither one of the subsumed or adopted characters had
  been overtly sexual in their own bodies, else Vicki might not have been able
  to live with her own feelings and emotions. But then again, what could she
  have done about it? She knew for a certainty and quite literally that she
  could not live without Garrison. Or so she had been led to believe . . .
  At any rate, her ploy had worked yet again, when the cheap brandy, her own
  body, and the Greek island atmosphere had all combined perfectly to dampen
  Garrison's excitability and
  50
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  bring about a complete resurgence of his true identity. At eight in the
  evening he had desired to go out; they had eaten in the village's best
  taverna, where he had consumed a little more of the local brandy; following
  which they had found a disco and danced the night away, so that the stars had
  already started to fade in the sky by the time they had returned to their
  rooms.
  Garrison had been tired by then, perhaps too tired to sleep, and it was plain
  there was something—perhaps many things—on his mind. Things he must talk
  about.
  Having changed into cool night clothes, the pair had sprawled themselves upon
  a wide, raised Lindos bed to talk and sip coffee. And after a while Garrison
  had asked: "Vicki, how much have I told you? Ever, I mean? You never asked me
  a hell of a lot—never pushed it, anyway—but how much have I really told you?"
  "Some things you told me, Richard. Some I guessed. After I woke up—1 mean when
  1 lived again—you told me a lot of things. You didn't really say anything, not
  
  in words, but 1 was made to understand a lot. You remember?"
  "Oh, yes," he nodded. "1 was kind of a god, wasn't I? 1 could just get into
  your mind and make you understand." For the first time since her
  reincarnation, Vicki definitely felt his uncertainty. Amazingly, Garrison
  seemed to be displaying insecurity! His words were all past tense. I was a
  god. I could get into your mind.
  "Your powers are still godlike, Richard," she told him.
  51
  Brian Lumley
  "You mean demoniac!" he replied, but without venom. "My powers, when / use
  them, are . . . safe."
  "Safe?"
  "They don't hurt anyone, not much anyway. Not deliberately. But Vicki—" he
  caught up her hand " almost pleadingly, "—when they use them . . ."
  "Oh, Richard, 1 know!"
  "But you don't know, not everything. Some of the things they've done . . .
  they go way over the top. They protect me, yes, but they over-protect. They
  won't let me run my own life, my own body. Hell, it's riot 'my own body'—it's
  theirs too!" He was nervously massaging her fingers, drawing comfort from her
  presence.
  ''How did it come about?" she eventually asked. "I mean, at the beginning."
  Garrison sighed. "Let's see if 1 can break it down for you. Thomas Schroeder
  wanted to be immortal. He was deep into parapsychology, augury,
  transmigration—all that stuff. 1972, we were in Northern Ireland. Him on
  business, me as a soldier. I'd been having this recurring dream, about bombs.
  That wasn't odd in itself, lots of the boys over there dream about bombs. It's
  all part of the job. But my dream, my nightmare, was different. It wouldn't go
  away. It came to me night after night. A warning about something I could
  neither escape nor even avoid.
  "So ... it happened, my first glimpse of ESP in action. The first hint that
  maybe my mind was different from the minds of other men. There was a bomb
  blast. I saved Schroeder's life, the lives of his wife and kid. They were OK,
  but he was
  52
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  badly chopped up inside and I was blinded. Afterwards—well, it worked out that
  he thought he owed me."
  "He did owe you, Richard. I remember all of that like it was yesterday: you
  coming out to the Harz. How proud you were, how smart in your uniform."
  "Oh, yes, all of that," Garrison grunted, "but before I got out there things
  had happened. For one thing, Schroeder knew by then that he was dying. And he
  didn't want to stay dead. Reincarnation—in me!"
  She nodded. "I knew something was going on, that his interest in you should be
  so—consuming."
  Garrison smiled wryly. "Consuming, yes," he repeated her. "Anyway, I had
  always had a quiet interest in Schroeder's sort of thing, the paranormal 1
  mean, and I admit he fascinated me. But at the same time I didn't believe he
  could do it, you know? It was too weird. I might just have washed my hands of
  the whole thing. But . . . there was a carrot for the donkey. That carrot was
  a friend of Schroeder's, a guy called Adam Schenk. He predicted Schroeder's
  death, yours too, a lot of things. And for me: he predicted I'd see again.
  This would be made possible through Schroeder himself, and through a machine.
  What sort of machine . . . ?" he shrugged. "I didn't know, not then . . .
  "Anyway, out there in the Harz, things were happening to me. Schroeder had a
  lot of tricks up his sleeve. A whole building full of them. Gear for testing a
  man's ESP potential. He tested mine and it was high. Very high. And all the
  time I was
  53
  Brian Lumley
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  
  becoming more and more convinced that he really had something. And anyway, how
  could I lose? All the dice were loaded in my favor.
  "I was blind—he offered me sight!
  "I was an ex-soldier, crippled—he offered me money. Money beyond my wildest
  dreams.
  "I was a nothing, a nobody with nowhere to go—and he offered me power and
  position.
  "How could 1 refuse?"
  "You couldn't," Vicki answered.
  "I didn't. We made ... a pact," Garrison shrugged again. "Simple as that. No
  big deal. We just agreed that when he died, if something of him remained and
  if it could find its way to me, then that I'd receive it. He could live again
  in me.
  "In return there was the chance, however remote, that I'd see again; meanwhile
  there were a couple of tricks to help me find my way around the blindness.
  "I had special 'spectacles' that worked on sound instead of vision. I had
  bracelets for my wrists, too, which worked the same way. And I had Suzy. My
  dear, wonderful Suzy. She's getting old now, but I look after her. Hell!—and
  hasn't she looked after me?" For a moment he grinned. "Damned right, she has!"
  The smile slipped a little and he nodded. "And of course there was Willy
  Koenig.
  "Willy looked after me, too—just as he'd always looked after Thomas, his
  beloved Colonel." The smile slipped away completely. "Just as he's looking
  after us even now—damn him!"
  54
  "Richard!" she gripped his hand. "Don't! You only make it easy for them."
  He relaxed, grunted: "You're right, of course. I do make it easy for them, and
  I really can't afford to. riot any longer." Again the insecurity.
  "What is it, Richard?"
  He shook his head. "Let me tell it my own way, in my own time ...
  "Schroeder made me rich before he died. After he died I was incredibly rich,
  now—? Even I don't know how rich I am. You see, since coming back he's opened
  up sources only he had the keys to, funds which had doubled and sometimes
  trebled during the years passed between. His interests were worldwide. Even in
  his lifetime he made some of your so-called 'tycoons' look like penniless
  paupers by comparison! And all of that is mine now—or ours. His, mine,
  Koenig's. Thirty guys have a big office in London—more a block of offices,
  really. They look after my interests. Some of my interests, anyway. There are
  other people in Zurich, Hamburg, Hong Kong— you name it. But none of them
  knows what I'm really worth.
  "Suddenly the world of international finance was open to me, and I couldn't
  resist it. And no risk involved. With my ESP powers working for me I couldn't
  pick a loser. I was a Midas. Everything I touched turned to gold! And then . .
  . then one day I heard about the machine. I stumbled across Psychomech."
  As he paused Vicki said: "You've missed something out, Richard. What about
  your wife?
  55
  Brian Lumley
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  You never did tell me about her." Vicki's voice was soft, low. "Or does it
  hurt too much?"
  He shook his head. "It doesn't hurt at all, not now. Terr! was something that
  had to be—she'd been 'foreseen' by Adam Schenk—and without her I'd never have
  found Psychomech. You might have remembered something about Terri and her
  lover, something unpleasant, but I made you forget. I removed it from your
  mind. Believe me, it really doesn't matter now." Again he paused, then
  continued in a burst:
  "Anyway, I found Psychomech. A machine that could blow up a man's darkest
  fears to giant size—until they're about to crush him or drive him insane—and
  then give him the strength to fight back, to defeat them. A tremendous boon to
  
  psychiatry. A mechanical psychiatrist. A tin shrink.
  "But think about it:
  "What happens if you totally liberate a man's mind, if you rid it of all its
  fears? Would there be any limits to the scope of such a mind? And what if that
  mind were already rich in psychic energy, powers almost beyond imagination?"
  Vicki's golden eyes were wide behind dark lenses. "That's what happened to
  you," she sighed. "The birth of a god!"
  He nodded. "Or a demon, yes. But on my own I wasn't ready for it, wasn't big
  or strong enough. I had to have help, had to let Schroeder in, fulfill our
  pact. Then . . . we let Koenig in."
  Vicki shuddered. "I seem to remember something of that. Willy was there, and
  you told me
  56
  not to be afraid, and then—he wasn't there any more."
  Garrison said: "It was the only way. He wasn't like Schroeder and me. He was
  clever in his own way, but not in ours. And 1 was a god! Psychomech had blown
  me up into something awesome. I was bigger than myself, bigger than Schroeder
  and myself, bigger than Psychomech—or so I thought. My powers seemed
  immeasurable. God!—I brought you back, didn't I? Took away your agony, gave
  you life, sight?
  "Absorbing Willy was—" he shrugged, "—a mere nothing. Ultimate power, ultimate
  ego, infinity stretching away and out before me. Infinity, Vicki, with all its
  infinite possibilities! Until-"
  "Yes?"
  "Until something went wrong. I'm not sure what ... Or maybe I am. Maybe I'm
  ready to admit it now." For a moment he was silent, his mind miles away. Then:
  "Anyway, I destroyed Psychomech." He sat up and took her hands. "With
  Psychomech I was, could have been, immortal. Without Psychomech? I'm a man, a
  three-dimensional body, flesh and blood. How could I hope to contain all of
  that power in this little battery? I couldn't. The battery leaks. The power is
  leaving me, more every day. And now? Each time I use—each time they use—that
  power, I grow just a little weaker.
  "Do you remember my gambling phase: London, Monte Carlo, Las Vegas? Do you
  know what that was all about? I mean, didn't you ever ask yourself what I got
  out of it? Me, rich as Croesus, playing cards and roulette? Winning money on
  57
  Brian Lumley
  the horses, the football pools? Hell, I would've enjoyed that sort of thing
  when 1 was in the army, but with my sort of money? So why did I do it? I'll
  tell you why: at first it was the sheer excitement! Oh, I knew I couldn't
  lose, but still it was exciting to win! Do you see? Every gambler's ultimate
  fantasy.
  "Maybe my powers were wasted, eh? Fantastic, beautiful, wonderful powers, all
  locked up in an ordinary, greedy, conceited little body. But in the end I
  stopped gambling. I realized that the thrill had gone out of it—that I was
  doing it now for an entirely different reason—doing it because I had to! Mo,
  It wasn't a vice, I wasn't hooked on it. Mot that way. But I had simply been
  testing myself. Because I knew that if ever the day came when I should lose .
  . ."
  "Then that your powers would be failing you," she finished it for him,
  nodding.
  "That's it," he said. "That's it exactly. I mean, after Psychomech I was a
  god—for a fortnight, a month? Then I was a godling—for how long, a year? Mow a
  superman. And tomorrow?"
  She wrapped her arms around him. "1 would be satisfied with you as a man,
  Richard. Just a man. That's all you were when you first loved me, when I fell
  in love with you, and—"
  His laughter, brittle as ice, choking itself with its cold bitterness, cut her
  short. "No, Vicki, no!" he finally shook his head. "You don't see, do you?"
  Mow his words sounded strangely hollow, and yet full of a sadness. "You would
  
  not be satisfied because you simply would not be\ You
  58
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  are—you exist—because of my power, because I commanded it."
  "But I-"
  "I've tried to explain before, Vicki. What would become of you if I were
  simply a man? What will become of you if that day should ever arrive when my
  commands go unheard, unheeded?"
  She had no answer, only a memory. The memory of acid in her veins, a burning
  current in her blood, the white-hot grip of Death's bony fingers.
  "Yes," Garrison had nodded grimly, "that's it exactly . . ."
  After that . . . there had been little more to say, and then it had taken them
  a long time to get to sleep. When finally they did, Garrison had dreamed . . .
  59
  Chapter
  5
  GARRISON'S DREAM BEGAN, AS HAD ANOTHER DREAM some ten years earlier, with a
  Machine. The Machine. The Machine known as Psychomech.
  It was not a car or a motorcycle or an airplane, that Machine, not any sort of
  conveyance one might readily imagine, and yet Garrison rode it. His journey or
  "quest" was symbolic, for symbolism is one with the very nature of dreaming,
  but like any ordinary dreamer he was not given to know that. He had not known
  it in that earlier dream, neither did he know it now—nor indeed that this new
  dream would be equally prophetic and much more of an omen.
  But... he rode the Machine.
  He rode it through weird, alien valleys where tall, lichenclad rocks cast
  ominous ochre shadows, flew it high over dazzling furnace deserts
  60
  ______PSYCHOSPHERE_____
  and yast tundras of yellow marshland, sailed it across strange gray oceans
  whose giant squid-like denizens rolled up their saucer eyes to gaze
  unblinkingly upon him, and with it threaded previously unvoyaged paths through
  the mazy gorges and passes and precipitous needle-peaks of scarlet mountains.
  He rode effortlessly, with authority, towards quest's end . . . without ever
  knowing what the end of the quest would be. But for all his apparent mastery
  of the Machine—that Machine which, while it seemed almost omnipotent for the
  moment, he nevertheless and naggingly suspected to be slowly failing,
  gradually leaking its energies and wasting them uselessly—still he knew there
  would be obstacles in the way. In this world, as real to Garrison as the
  dreamworld of any dreamer, there were always obstacles. Had he not faced them
  before?
  Oh, yes, he had been here before, several times. This much he knew. But he
  could not remember when or why. Or what his quests had been on those previous
  occasions. He did know he had not been alone. There had been—friends.
  Friends, yes. Suzy had been one such.
  Suzy. The name was warm in Garrison's mind, a comfort to him. Suzy the dog,
  the black Dober-man bitch. And almost as if he were a magician, as if
  remembering her had conjured the physical Suzy out of midair, he became
  suddenly aware of her presence. She was there even now, seated on her
  haunches, close behind him on the broad back of the Machine, one great paw
  firm on his shoulder, her warm breath on the back
  61
  Brian Lumley
  of his neck and her occasional, muted whining a reassurance in his ear. Suzy,
  Garrison's familiar spirit.
  How long she had been there he could not say. Perhaps he really had conjured
  her out of thin air, for certainly he controlled stange powers. He remembered
  that now: how he was gifted with powers far beyond the grasp of mundane men. A
  magician? Garrison smiled at the thought. Yes, a magician, a wonder-worker, a
  warlock; and Suzy his familiar. But what sort of warlock who could not
  
  remember the nature of his quest or how he came to be here ... or even where
  he came from?
  Or perhaps some other warlock, more powerful yet, had robbed him of his memory
  . . .
  Garrison became wary. Were there enemies here, close by?
  In his mind he began to check off points in his favor. He was strong and he
  had powers. He had the Machine (for all his anxiety about its ebbing strength)
  and he had Suzy. And—
  He frowned, forcing himself to concentrate. There had been other—friends?
  Their names came to him in a sudden, vivid flash of memory.
  Schroeder and Koenig.
  Strange names—and stranger friends!
  Now he remembered. Schroeder had been the man-God, and Koenig his familiar.
  But that all seemed so very long ago, and where were they now, these two?
  Garrison shuddered as a tiny voice from within seemed to whisper: "Closer than
  you think, Richard. Much closer ..."
  The images of Schroeder and Koenig burned bright a while longer in the eye of
  Garrison's
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  memory: the former lean and pale, small and balding; older than Garrison and
  wise in the ways of men, wise as the bright eyes that gleamed huge behind
  thick crystal lenses. And Koenig, huge and blocky, bull-necked and pig-eyed,
  his sandy hair cropped in a crew-cut, with hands and feet and body and head
  all honed to a perfect razor's edge in death-dealing arts. Their images burned
  bright before flaring up and blinking out like snuffed candles. They were
  gone, but their names remained.
  Schroeder and Koenig.
  And again that tiny voice seemed to whisper in Garrison's mind—or perhaps it
  laughed? Or maybe it was not one voice at all but two . . .
  A sudden chill drew him from his reverie, that and Suzy's great paw
  insistently scratching at his shoulder. Lost in thought as he had been, his
  mechanical mount had continued to forge ahead under its own direction. The
  Machine had negotiated the maze of mountainous needle-peaks and now paused at
  the rim of a canyon whose sides sank sheer into a haze of mist and depth and
  darkness. It was a canyon whose deeps were un-plumbed, whose secrets remained
  unfathomed, and whose name—
  —was Death!
  Death has many shapes and sizes, colors, creeds and guises. Garrison knew
  that. Also, instinctively, he knew that this canyon was one such guise. He
  jerked his body back from the yawning gorge, hauling on mental reins—and the
  Machine reared beneath him like a startled horse. Cold and afraid, he yet
  gentled his metal and
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  Brian Lumley
  plastic steed; while behind htmSuzy's breathless barking and pawing warned him
  that his fear was not unjust.
  Garrison felt it in his guts like an icy blade. He feared Death,
  But how so? He was a wizard and immortal and—
  Immortal? His mind grasped at the word, the concept, crushed it and held it
  close, examined it.
  Immortal. Undying. Why then should he fear Death? Unless . . . unless he was
  mistaken.
  Perhaps he was not immortal after all: Perhaps that was the nature of his
  quest: to seek out and seduce the Goddess Immortality? And to do that—why,
  naturally he must first overcome Death himself, in whichever guise he found
  him! Very well, the canyon was one such guise and so he must cross it. But—
  What if he should fall?
  He nodded and smiled, however wryly. Fall? He could not fall The merest
  command, by word or thought, and he would bebuoyed up. He remembered the word
  
  for it: levitation. And himself a master of the art. How then might he fall?
  Consciously he could not. Unconsciously? The fall would crush his body and so
  kill him. A large stone banged against his head would break it and also kill
  him. Left alone he might just be immortal, but if some accident should
  occur—or an unsuspected hand directed against him ...
  Oh, yes, a clever enemy could kill him. He could be made to die.
  Perhaps that, then, was his quest: the search
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  for true immortality. And only Death standing between himself and quest's end.
  Death and his minions.
  Motionless the Machine stood in air, with evening on the one hand staining the
  far horizon, and on the other a sinking sun whose rim showed like a scythe
  above far purple hills. And directly in Garrison's way this canyon, whose
  gaping maw split the land as far as the eye could see.
  No way round it. Garrison knew now. It was here to test him.
  A moaning wind came up and stirred the dry dust of the canyon's rim into
  spiralling devils, whipping at the legs of Garrison's tattered trousers. It
  was a chill wind, reminding him of night, which drew closer by the minute. No
  good to be caught out here, exposed, in the open, when darkness fell.
  He scanned the far side of the chasm: a flat expanse, wooded in places,
  reaching back to low hills beyond which a darkening horizon merged with a
  darkening sky. He must cross. And soon.
  He felt a sudden urge to ride furiously forward, now, out over the rim,
  without another second wasted—but Suzy seemed to read his mind and whined
  afresh in his ear, her paw digging insistently into his shoulder. He turned to
  her. "Where are they. Girl, eh? Where do they hide. Death's soldiers?"
  She licked at his ear, her moist eyes anxious, then pointed with her muzzle
  down into the gorge. The loose flesh of her mouth drew back in a snarl,
  exposing sharp ivory fangs, and her ears lay flat upon her head. Left and
  right she gazed,
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  Brian Lumley
  and up Into the high sky, and her black coat bristled Into a million spines
  that stood out stiff from her body.
  Then . . . the spell was broken. She lay down, panting, offering up a series
  of baffled, curious short yelping barks.
  Garrison smiled grimly. "Everywhere, eh? Well, I suppose I knew that" Then his
  grim smile became a frown and he grew angry again—at his own frailty, his
  indecision, weakness. And him with such powers to command.
  'Tool!" he cursed himself. "Wasting time like this!"
  He quickly set the Machine to rest upon the canyon's rim, climbed down from
  its back and stretched his limbs. Suzy jumped down beside him, easier now, her
  tongue lolling, her eyes gazing at him inquiringly. He patted her great black
  head. "Let's see what's in store for us, eh, Qlrl?"
  And placing his hands on his hips he lifted up his head and arrogantly threw
  out his voice across the darkening gorge:
  "Death," his voice was strong, echoing loudly, "I know you seek to claim me.
  Well, that won't be so easy. I'm no ordinary man simply to die at your
  command, be sure. And now I command you! Show yourself, Death. Show me your
  soldiers, your devices, your pitfalls, so that I'll know them and give you a
  better fight. Or are you really the great skulking coward I suspect you to
  be?"
  He waited expectantly—perhaps just a little nervously, despite his bold
  stance—but...
  No answer.
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  The wind from the gorge moaned louder and Garrison felt its chill more keenly.
  He shivered, his flesh shuddering as shadows started to creep.
  
  And what now? For plainly he had been correct in the first instance: not only
  had some greater warlock robbed him of his memory, but also of his powers.
  There once was a time when he might have drawn strength from the Machine, but
  now—?
  It was worth a try.
  He laid his hands upon smooth metal flanks, searching for those weird energies
  which had sustained him through so many strange adventures, nothing. The
  Machine was cold, lifeless as an old log.
  "Steed?" he snarled, snatching back his hands in frustration. "You, a steed? A
  beast of burden? A burden, sure enough. An anchor! Carry me? On the contrary,
  I carry you! Yes, and you weigh me down." He turned his back on the Machine
  and roared his rage and defiance out over the shadowed gorge:
  "Death, I'll not be denied. If you won't show yourself then I'll not come to
  you. Why should I meet a challenge / don't understand? right opponents I don't
  know, can't see? No, I'll simply wait here, or go back the way I came—and to
  hell with questing!"
  "Richard," came a faint whisper, seemingly from within his own mind. "Richard,
  I can help you—if you'll let me."
  Garrison's hair bristled on his head and his flesh grew clammy. He knew that
  voice, soundless except in the immense caverns of his own
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  Brian Lumley
  mind, that insinuating whisper from within. It was the voice of the vanished
  man-God Schroeder, who in another world he had called his friend.
  "Is that you, man-God?" he sought confirmation. "Or are you in fact Death,
  seeking to make a fool of me? If you really are Thomas Schroeder, then show
  yourself."
  The voice within chuckled, however drily. "Oh, you know me well enough,
  Richard. And you know I cannot show myself, not in the flesh. Not any more.
  But I can still help you, if you will let me."
  Garrison was still suspicious. "You, help me? True, you were a man-God,
  Thomas—but no more. How would you help me, ghost? I am flesh and blood, and
  you—a mere memory, a voice in my head."
  "More than that, Richard," the whisper was stronger now, gaining in
  confidence. "And if your memory was whole you'd know it. Myself—and Willy
  Koenig, too—we're more than mere voices in your head. And we can still help
  you, just as we helped you before."
  Garrison listened to the whispering voice and frowned more darkly, and at his
  side Suzy whined and tugged at his trousers with her teeth. Finally he said:
  "I do remember something of It. That you helped me, yes—but also that your
  reward was greater than your effort warranted."
  "But you paid readily enough in the end," the voice in his head answered.
  "Else your life, your sanity, your survival were forfeit."
  "That's a lie!" Garrison snarled. "I paid grudg-
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  ingly, despite the fact that I bought my mind, my life. But you had tricked me
  into a pact, and I would not break it..." He calmed himself down before
  continuing. "This much I remember, at least: that you sought to serve
  yourself, not me." He shrugged. "Still, I suppose that's in all of us. As for
  Koenig: he was my true friend. But you—"
  "I, too, was your friend, Richard. I am now. I seek only to help you. And
  night draws on ..."
  Garrison turned up the collar of his ragged jacket. Schroeder was right, for
  the sun was almost down and the shadows advanced visibly. But still he was
  suspicious. "I paid you once for your help, and didn't like the price you
  asked. Oh, I can't remember what you took from me, but I know it had great
  value. I know that it was worth . . . too much. What fee is it you'll demand
  this time, eh?"
  The whisper grew stronger, almost eager, and its reply was instantaneous.
  
  "Equality!"
  "Equality? Explain. You want to be my equal?"
  "Yes."
  Garrison pondered it. What did it mean? What's in a word? Equality? Is a stone
  equal to another stone? And men? A man is a man, after all.
  "But I," came the whisper, knowing his inmost thoughts, "am little more than a
  revenant. A ghost, you said so yourself."
  "You desire flesh for your thoughts, is that it?"
  "I'll explain no more. I desire equality. Nothing else."
  "And for Koenig?"
  In answer to that Garrison sensed a mental shrug. Then, as if an afterthought:
  "Koenig is
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  Brian Lumley
  Koenig. I am me. Or desire to be ..." The echoes of the whisper faded away,
  and Garrison suspected that the unseen whisperer had almost said too much.
  But. . . equality. What did Schroeder the ghost who was once Schroeder the
  man-God mean? This was very important. If only Garrison could remember all of
  it. But—he could not.
  "How can I promise what's not mine to give?" he asked eventually.
  "Simply promise it," came the eager whisper.
  "Very well—" (a sigh inside) "—on one condition."
  "Name it."
  "That you'll aid me wherever you can, to quest's end."
  And now laughter, welling up from inside. Pealing laughter from within,
  subsiding slowly into a dry chuckling and finally petering out. "My friend,
  how can ! deny you? Yes, and you shall have Koenig's help, too."
  "Agreed!" said Garrison. "And now—show me what you can of the way ahead. Show
  me my enemies, the soldiers of Death. Show me—the future!"
  "Ah!" the whisper was thin now, receding. "Not so long ago you would not have
  needed me for that. It would have been a very small magic. But your powers are
  deserting you, Richard. You are their master still, but for how much longer?"
  "You're right!" Garrison snapped. "The Machine is dead or dying, and my powers
  are failing along with the Machine. But—" his anger went out of him in a great
  sighing breath, "—why are
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  these things happening, Thomas? Do you know the answer? If you do, and if you
  really are my friend, you'll tell me."
  Faintly, a mere tremor in his mind: "Don't you remember, Richard? You stopped
  the Machine. You killed the beast. This thing you carry with you is only a
  cold metal and plastic carcass. Even more of a revenant than I am. Psychomech
  is dead!"
  "Don't go!" Garrison cried, afraid once more. "The future—you promised."
  "Indeed," came the very sigh of an answer. "Very well, let's see what we may
  see . . ." And the whisperer was gone.
  Garrison blinked his eyes, started, gazed wildly all about. The Machine sat
  there, leaden, dead; Suzy whined and cringed at his feet her tail tucked
  between her legs; crag-cast shadows crept closer still and the vanished sun
  shot up a few last beams to lend a dying glow to the distant horizon. Soon
  that horizon would be black. Soon night would spread her blackest cloak upon
  the land. And the canyon still to be crossed. And the tale of the future as
  yet untold.
  Then, when Garrison had all but given up hope—
  A spark in his mind. A glowing point of light emanating from that inmost
  region where Schroeder's ghost held dominion. A light growing brighter by the
  second, expanding, blossoming into—a vision!
  A vision so dazzling that the earth seemed to reel under Garrison's feet,
  sending him staggering, stumbling, falling to his knees. A vision so
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  Brian Lumley
  real that he not only viewed it but lived it, was part of it. A dream within a
  dream, seeming more vital than the dream itself. A dream of the future. His
  future.
  A dream . . . and a nightmare!
  But in the first instance, the dream. The beautiful dream ...
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  Chapter
  6
  GARRISON SAW THE GODDESS IMMORTALITY. BE-yond any doubt, even though Her back
  was towards him, he knew that it was She. And he believed he knew why Her
  face, as yet, was denied him. For who might guess the consequences of gazing
  unprepared upon such a face? But certainly it was, could only be, the Goddess
  Herself.
  The beauty of Her form was . . . undying. Her figure, Her posture, the
  incredible garment She wore—the very throne upon which She sat, carved from
  the rock of Life Everlasting—all offered mute witness to Her immortality. But
  Her face was something which, for the moment, mercifully, Garrison could not
  see.
  Of Her flesh, however, of thigh and shoulder and neck where they showed: they
  were of the misted Marble of Eternity, the softest and yet
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  Brian Lumley
  most durable surface imaginable, so that Garrison's entire being seemed to
  sigh and sway forward, drawn by the magnet of Immortality's flesh. Her hair
  was the jet of Deepest Space; the nails of Her fingers and toes were crimson
  as the Blood of Time; and Her garment: it was of the shimmering silver
  micromesh of Unbreakable Continuity. But Her voice—that voice when it
  came—must surely be the final proof positive of Her Identity.
  Who might describe it, that voice? Whose texture, if ever Garrison should
  later attempt its recall, was or would be all things to all men. Soft as
  winter snows, warm as summer suns, pure as purest gold and yet earthly as
  living loam:
  "Someone seeks my seduction. The million millionth man would live forever/'
  the voice laughed. And slowly, majestically, She rose up from Her throne,
  turned and allowed Garrison to gaze upon Her face. And framed by those
  blackest tresses of space he saw—a void!
  The void. The Great Void, which is filled with all things. The roaring rushing
  reeling sucking space-time continuum itself—into which, in a single instant,
  he was irresistibly drawn! Sucked in, rushed like a mote across the vault of
  the universe to gaze down upon—THE ALL!
  The sight was blinding, unbearable, and Garrison closed his eyes. Not in
  terror or horror but at the sheer awesome beauty of it. And the thought
  occurred to him: "If there is a place 1 would be, this is that place. If
  there's wine I might drink, this is the wine. If for every man there's a
  destiny, then let this be mine. And if I
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  am not to be immortal, if I am to die, then let it be at once, here and now .
  . ."
  But that was not to be. In another moment, whirled and hurled out into a cold
  and cruel reality, he cried out his agony and vainly grasped at that which was
  already beyond his reach. He grasped, clutched—
  —and the nails of his fingers split open where they scrabbled uselessly at
  stone made slimy under a beating rain.
  Garrison cried out again—howled his frustration this time—as crazed lightnings
  beat all about him, amidst the roaring of tumultuous waters and the
  earth-shaking pounding of great hammers, or of engines built by gods. He made
  to rise, found himself upon a steep, slippery slope, slid and rolled and
  clattered down the face of a scree-littered decline to a jutting rocky ledge.
  
  Finally he came to a halt and lay there in the mud and the downpour, all the
  wind knocked from him, soaked and sucking at sodden air. Here, in the partial
  lee of black rocks where they balanced on this precarious ledge, at last he
  dared open his eyes fully and drag himself wearily to his feet. And now he
  gazed out upon a bleak and monochrome scene, a scene of wild desolation—and of
  man's imposition on raw nature—a scene monotonous in its power and wearying to
  the eye. With one exception.
  Lightning crashed again, lending the air a momentary brightness and causing
  Garrison to shrink down and shutter his eyes. But the scene of a moment ago
  still burned on his retinas. His
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  Brian Lumley
  location was halfway down the wall of a small valley perhaps a mile across,
  dammed at one end where a man-made lake reached back its wind-tossed expanse
  of dark water into the cliff-guarded recesses of a forbiddingly gloomy
  reentry. Water arced in six enormous spouts from the dam's face, its thunder
  the mighty hammering Garrison had mistaken for the engines of gods. He gazed
  out from a position almost directly above the great wall of the dam, and the
  trembling of the earth was the vibration of its mighty generators, and the
  rain which soaked him was that thrown up by the controlled eruption of
  pressured waters.
  Shielding his eyes against stinging spray and cold mist, Garrison peered
  across the valley at a wild skyline, where once more he spied an unmistakable
  mark of man: a platoon of titan pylons carrying ropes of cable, marching
  double-file away across the hills. But while both dam and pylons were
  certainly human artifacts, in the valley itself, towards the far wall and in a
  timbered belt higher than the course of the old dammed river, there stood that
  sole exception to the scene's almost awesome drabness: a hemisphere of golden
  light like the bulge of some small sun half-sunken in the earth, whose
  pulsating dome rose tall and dazzling over the tall pines it dwarfed.
  Lines, altered by ego, crept into the observer's mind from some forgotten
  source: In Xanadu did Garrison a stately pleasure-dome decree . . .
  But—was this really a pleasure-dome? Or might it not be a temple? A temple to
  a goddess.
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  The Goddess of Immortality! The thought persisted: that this was indeed that
  temple wherein a moment ago (or a month, a year?) he had come face to eternity
  with the goddess of his desire. But why here, in this desolate spot, with the
  works of mere mortals so much in evidence? And the throbbing golden glow of
  the dome: why should it tug at his memory so? Of what did it remind him?
  A good many questions and no time to explore them; time barely to pose them
  before—
  The scene shrank, grew small as Garrison was drawn out of himself, his spirit
  snatched up in some great unseen fist and lifted at breathless speed into the
  sky; until he looked dizzily down upon valley, dam, dome, himself and all,
  from a windy aerial elevation amongst the boiling clouds. Except—
  Except that, even as he watched, the scene grew dim, and under his eyes the
  valley, dam and dome disappeared, were replaced by a parched plain of bones
  and skulls and hot white sands—and himself, ragged and desiccated now, gaunt
  as a starveling, with puffed, cracked lips and red, staring eyes. And behind
  him, dragged inch after interminable inch across those burning sands, the
  Machine, all rust red and trailing frayed cables and crusts of corrosion.
  And now Garrison felt his aerial observer-self being set down upon a floor,
  and he saw that the desert of bones and the starveling Garrison and the
  crippled Machine were only images trapped in an otherwise milky sphere. A
  scene viewed in a shewstone, a crystal ball; and he himself (or
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  Brian Lumley
  his spirit) now sat cross-legged in a circle of wizards or demons, all intent
  
  upon the struggles of the Garrison in the shewstone. And the place where they
  sat was like the floor of a great pit, with smoky flambeaux to give a little
  light, and the atmosphere of the place was full of the reek of death and the
  sting of sulphur. Then, knowing these seated beings for his enemies, Garrison
  gazed upon them each in turn and fixed them as best he might in his mind's
  eyes, so that he would know them if ever he saw them again.
  And he saw that they were dressed in the various robes of wizards and that
  they carried the wands and charms and injurious devices of such. One of them
  wore a black, immaculate evening suit and bow-tie, and his features were dark
  and greedy. And he spun a small roulette wheel between his crossed legs,
  occasionally pausing to deal sharp-edged cards at the shewstone, as if to
  pierce its crystal and so harm the struggling Garrison within. And his wand
  was a heavy one and hung unseen in his armpit like a familiar toad, causing
  the breast of his jacket to bulge where he sat among the wizards.
  Another was tall and slender and gray as a night cat, covered head to toe in a
  zippered suit, with bandolier and belt, grapples and grenades and all; and
  this one's eyes were steel in his face (what little of it could be seen) which
  was pale, cold and emotionless. And he toyed with a string of dark
  prayer-beads (except that its cord was of steel and carried no beads at all!)
  sometimes
  78
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  slipping its noose over the shewstone, as if to snare the beleaguered man
  within.
  Yet another was small and yellow, with slanting eyes set in a face inscrutable
  as that of the sphinx, and he sat motionless as carved from yellow
  stone—except for his eyes, behind whose slanting slits the feral pupils
  followed each tiniest action of the miniature Garrison trapped in the crystal
  ball. And there were others, all at odds and different in dress and mode of
  application; but all of them muttering runes of destruction, so that
  Garrison's fear grew in the face of their massed enmity.
  And he started slightly as he noted a pair-seated close together and a little
  apart from the rest, where shadows obscured them—whose looks were as the looks
  of two he remembered from a former time. The looks of Schroeder and Koenig!
  But he could not be certain, for their forms and faces were made lumpish and
  vague in the flickering light from the pit's flambeaux. Their interest did not
  seem inimical, however— rather the reverse, for they shied from the others and
  their occupations about the shewstone—but still he gained the impression that
  their business here was a sly one and more in their own interests than in
  those of the tiny Garrison.
  One other he especially noted there in the gloom. This one stood, arms folded,
  well back from all the rest, and overlooked them. And his outline was very
  wavery and unsolid, so that Garrison thought perhaps he gazed upon a ghost. A
  ghost cloaked in a Robe of Secrecy,
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  whose face and eyes, even as Garrison strained to see them more clearly,
  turned full upon him.
  And beneath the cowl of the Secret One's robe . . .
  . . . Gray eyes of a keen intelligence, set in a face of stone! A very solid
  ghost, this, or a most mysterious and secretive man. But certainly not an
  enemy, Garrison could sense that much. Rather a covert watcher: a guard,
  perhaps. And perhaps a friend.
  A Secret One indeed, this man of stone.
  At that very moment it seemed to Garrison that following the lead of the
  Secret One, all of the other pit-dwellers slowly began to turn their faces
  towards him. It was as if, for the first time, they sensed that he was here.
  And such was the malignant effect of this concerted movement— this awful
  awareness—that he sprang to his feet in a terror; in which same moment he felt
  himself drawn up as if on invisible strings, out of the pit to hover, light as
  
  air, over the concentric tiers of a great amphitheatre of the gods.
  Gods, yes, and the amphitheatre full of them about their pursuits—but false
  gods. Garrison quickly saw, who used their powers entirely to their own ends
  and not those of their followers. And occasionally one such false god would go
  to the pit's rim and look into it, and nod his satisfaction or frown his
  disdain or disappointment, so that Garrison knew that the false gods
  controlled and approved the vile sorceries of the pit-wizards.
  For these gods were worse than the sorcerers and demons they governed, and in
  their su-
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  preme arrogance and insolence they had put on such robes of honor and wisdom
  as were never theirs rightly to wear. They wore the great wigs of judges and
  the bowlers of politicians, the learned aspect of leaders and scholars and the
  airs and manners of gentlemen—but behind their backs they carried the whetted
  knives of assassins, and in their mouths were words of treachery, and one and
  all they wore in their eyes the monocles of jewellers and did obeisance to One
  who was everywhere present in the amphitheatre, whose name was Avarice.
  And Garrison knew them now, that they were the false gods of High Finance, and
  occasionally of Justice and Power, and sometimes even of Law and Order and
  Government. So that even as he was taken up yet again in the fist of the
  unseen giant—taken up and whisked aloft into a darkness from which to gaze
  down upon the amphitheatre of false gods—Garrison took note of them and nodded
  grimly, and vowed never to worship them.
  But even peering upon them from on high, suddenly he sensed that he was not
  alone, that some Other was here who also observed and took note. And hovering
  there in darkness over the amphitheatre, over its central pit of wizards, over
  shewstone and all—buoyed up and suspended in air by some force or power beyond
  his knowledge and great (he suspected) as any power of levitation he had ever
  controlled— Garrison strained his senses to locate the whereabouts of that
  Other, whose presence was like a dark omen.
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  And he heard . . . the breathing of the Other, slow and measured and
  deliberate. And he sensed the slow pulse of blood through the Other's veins,
  like a throb of power. And he felt the very eyes of the Other, burning through
  him and unaware of his spirit, as they too gazed down upon the works of the
  beings below. And in the silence of that high place these signs of the Other
  caused Garrison's hair to rise up on his head, so that he shrank down into
  himself and grew afraid.
  But he grew angry, too—at his own fear, partly, but also angry that the things
  he had seen, which could only be of that future he had desired to know, had
  not been shown to him more clearly. For which omission, having no one else to
  blame, he illogically blamed the Other. And so he deliberately turned his eyes
  upwards to seek out the Other's form—and what he saw was strange beyond all
  strangeness.
  Above him the darkness writhed, was filled, brimmed over with evil! A diseased
  evil insidious as cancer, gray as leprosy and warped as insanity itself. A
  vast octopus of evil, whose countless tentacles twisted and twined, with many
  sucker mouths that gaped and showed their sharp hooks, whose tossing flesh was
  livid with inimical energies, and whose eyes—
  Whose eyes burned feral with a bestial lusting beyond any lusts Garrison could
  ever imagine as existing in the mind of man.
  The mind of man? The thought was icy in its utter terror, freezing his brain.
  But surely what he saw was not, could not be, a man? And yet
  82
  Garrison drew breath in a gasp. For his every instinct told him that it was
  some sort of man, this creature of evil. A man whose true form lay hidden
  behind or had been overwhelmed by the massive evil within him, so that
  
  Garrison saw only the evil itself. But what sort of man, whose aspect must
  needs carry this monstrosity of a mask?
  Garrison called upon his own powers, the ESP magic he controlled (or which, in
  another world, he had once controlled) to seek beyond the octopus guise he
  saw. Me closed his eyes and concentrated his will upon the discovery of the
  octopus-obscured Evil One, and . . .
  . . . And in a flash—one brief instant of clearsightedness—he viewed upon the
  surface of his mind's inner eye the being behind the monster. He saw him—and
  in turn was seen!
  Two minds touched, Garrison's and that of the Other, touched and
  explored—however briefly— and drew back in mutual shock and astonishment! And
  both knew that this was not the first time they had met, and despite their
  shock both were equally curious.
  But though Garrison might have attempted to look again, that single glimpse
  was all that he was allowed; for in the next moment he felt himself snatched
  up yet again and . . . transferred. His spirit melting down into his body . .
  . his body starting to shuddery life where It kneeled at the rim of the canyon
  . . . his brow cold where it rested upon the metal flank of the Machine.
  And in the fast-fading light he saw streaks of rust like fresh-dried blood
  upon those same
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  Brian Lumley
  flanks. And he heard Suzy's whining where she tugged at his ragged sleeve. And
  he saw that night walked the land and touched the stars into cold, glittering
  life.
  Then Garrison sighed and gathered shaky legs beneath him and stood up, and
  before that last vision could escape him utterly he gave thought to what he
  had learned of the Other, that Evil One who wore the guise of a bloated,
  diseased octopus. Neither white nor black, that Other—neither man nor woman;
  neither sane nor insane—and yet all of these things. And human!
  Human, yes. How?—Garrison could not say, could only shake his head in wonder.
  And finally he sighed again and climbed wearily up on to the Machine's broad
  back, calling Suzy to jump up behind him. Then, lifting the now pitted Machine
  into the air, he pointed its prow out over the canyon and with a gradual
  acceleration moved out beyond the rim and started across. And he knew no fear.
  For if what he had seen of the future was real, then he knew that the canyon
  could not stop him. No, for there was a long, long way to go yet before his
  eyes would light upon Immortality's temple, and—
  And why then was he falling, curving down into the throat of the gorge like a
  hurled pebble at the end of its flight?
  Faster and faster the Machine plummeted into blackness; and Suzy howling like
  a banshee where she crushed to Garrison's clammy back; and the chill air of
  the canyon whistling through his hair and^ ragged, billowing clothes; and
  Gar-84
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  rison straining to bring the rushing descent to a halt, straining to use
  powers seemingly defunct in him, of which he had once been master.
  And his own voice screaming his desperation, his hatred: "Liar! Schroeder, you
  lied! You showed me a false future!"
  And in his head Schroeder's whispered denial: "No, no, Richard—I told you no
  lie. There is a future, our common future—but this is merely a warning . . ,"
  And a throaty chuckle fading and becoming one with the bluster of rushing air.
  And man and dog and Machine, falling, falling, falling...
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  Chapter
  7
  CMAROPi QUBWA HAD ALSO DREAMED, BUT AT THE moment of contact he had been
  shocked awake. A minute later—a mere minute to allow for orientation—and he
  lay still in his vast bed, listening to his own pounding heart, A dream, yes,
  
  but more than just that. Qubwa's defenses had been down, breached. And such
  turbulence when the barriers were broken! A potential enemy, a powerful enemy,
  had located him, had penetrated his mind-castle.
  But how? It had never happened before, should not even be possible; but. . .
  yesterday's incident was still fresh in Qubwa's mind, took on a new
  significance in the light of this latest incursion. He had thought the Polaris
  encounter an accident, but now. . . ? No, whatever had gone wrong, it could
  hardly be accidental. Once, maybe—but twice?
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  _____PSYCHOSPHERE_____
  Which meant—Qubwa must now assume that Garrison had been looking for him, had
  actually sought him out.
  "Richard Alien Garrison," Qubwa whispered the name to himself, his thoughts
  darkly seething and more than a little awed. "Oh, I've sought out your mind on
  occasion—or rather, the minds of those close to you—but I hardly suspected you
  would ever come looking for mine! Not twice in twenty-four hours!"
  Garrison, yes—it could only be him. Who else could create such a turbulence in
  the Psycho-sphere? Only two men in the whole world had that sort of power.
  Garrison was the other one.
  Qubwa heaved his great trunk upright and rested for a moment, panting from the
  exertion, until he could exercise his will upon himself and take command of
  his huge, obese and obscene body. Then, as the blood began to course more
  freely in his veins and his respiration regulated, he peered about in the dim
  glow of a tiny red ceiling light.
  8:20 A.M. Qubwa stretched, yawned.
  On his right lay a sleeping white woman who should have been beautiful, her
  face almost perfect but a little too thin. Her chest rose and fell evenly,
  smooth and unscarred despite the absence of breasts surgically removed.
  Perfect plastic surgery, it could almost be a male chest. Except there were no
  nipples. Not even the perfunctory nipples of a boy. And yet she was not
  sexless. On the contrary.
  She lay on her back, shapely legs spread wide, exposing a huge and gaping
  vulva that vanished
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  Brian Lumley
  into her body like a tunnel. In sleep her mouth was wide open and even as
  Qubwa looked at her gaped wider yet. Utterly toothless, it was the entrance to
  a second tunnel: the ribbed vault of her throat. Her master knew both
  entrances intimately—yes, and a third for the moment hidden.
  On his left lay a young male, black, entirely naked of hair. He was
  heavy-lipped, squat-nosed, slope-headed, utterly ugly—but his breasts were a
  woman's breasts, with great square ebony nipples. His penis was a flabby pipe,
  without the support or benefit of testicles. A eunuch, but hardly the harem
  guard. Rather an intimate, a favorite at the Court of Qubwa.
  Yes, both of them were of The Flock. Both "man" and "woman" (if such terms
  were at all applicable), "wives" to Charon Qubwa. Two among many.
  Qubwa eased his bulk down the bed until he sat, feet upon the floor, at its
  foot. He stood up, his great flaccid penis reaching close to halfway down his
  thigh, its glans like the head of some dead cobra dangling in the shadow of
  his great belly. Folds of flesh heaved as he crossed the room, the effort
  quite literally more mental than physical. He lightened himself as he went,
  the closest he could come to actual levitation. His forte was of course
  telepathy, with hypnotism coming a close second and the other ESP abilities
  trailing behind. And while he was greatly practiced in his powers, still he
  knew their limitations.
  As for Garrison's limitations: Qubwa would
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  give a lot to know them. They were what made the man so dangerous to him, and
  to his cause. Too dangerous. But. . . Qubwa was satisfied that the contact had
  
  been too brief to constitute a real breach of his security. He had after all
  been asleep and presumably dreaming. And it was not impossible that he, Qubwa
  himself, had subconsciously sought out Garrison. It wouldn't be the first time
  he'd visited the minds of others in his sleep. Oh, it was unlikely, but . . .
  the man had been on his mind a lot lately. But even that couldn't explain
  yesterday, and it certainly didn't explain the failure of the mind-guards. Mot
  this time . . .
  Qubwa donned Eastern-styled slippers and a red, voluminous knee-length robe.
  Doors opened for him with a pneumatic hiss as he billowed towards and through
  them, out of his bedroom and into his general living quarters. This room was
  spacious: high-ceilinged, with resilient rubber-tiled floors, its dimly
  lighted decor almost industrial in slate-gray and silver tones. To one side
  stood a great heavy metal desk above which, carved into the striated bedrock
  of the wall, the squat, angular bas-relief figure of a naked man, arms akimbo,
  stared stonily down into the room.
  The carved figure was that of Qubwa as he had been fifteen years ago when
  first he took up residence here, and closer examination of its stony features
  would show that he was not—not entirely—a man. Or perhaps something more than
  a man, depending upon the mental perspective of the viewer. For like Qubwa
  himself, and like
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  Brian Lumley
  the eunuch still sleeping in his bed, the great bas-relief had pendulous
  breasts; but there any comparison between Qubwa and the eunuch ended. For
  between the spread legs of the carving the heavy penis was deliberately shown
  erect, with bulbous testicles drawn to one side, displaying the parted lips of
  a female organ, clitoris swollen and extended like a small penis. The figure
  was hermaphroditic—as was the living creature it depicted. Its feet were set
  firmly upon a great globe in bas-relief, bearing carved representations of
  Earth's islands, continents and oceans.
  Qubwa crossed to the desk, stabbed at a button with the forefinger of a
  massive left hand and spoke into the grill of an intercom. "Qubwa to
  guardroom. There has been a mental intrusion. Check the mind-guards and report
  to me at once."
  He took his finger off the button, moved round behind the desk and seated
  himself in a padded steel chair. He waited, mused, explored the possibilities
  of the situation.
  The mind-guards were Qubwa's answer to the insomnia of the telepath, a
  sleeplessness he had suffered at intervals for twenty-five years before
  discovering the remedy. Awake he could control, channel and direct his contact
  with outside minds. They were at his mercy, to be read like books and picked
  clean of information. Most of them anyway. But asleep it was a different
  story. Asleep they impinged, infested his mind with their own innumerable
  fears and poisons. Or they had used to, before the mind-guards.
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  There were always four mind-guards "on duty" at any one time, men and women
  whose narcotic dependence was total. Addicts long departed the real world to
  dwell in the permanent twilight zone of their own deliriums. Qubwa was happy
  to let them live this way, to supply the drugs which alone kept them alive.
  When he was awake their chaotic nightmares could not affect him, and when he
  slept the mind-guards slept, guarding his mind. That was their sole function.
  There was a drug, supplementary to their addictions, which effectively
  switched them offcast them into a mental void, created within them what
  amounted to temporary brain-death—which was the absolute negation of thought.
  And which created around them a barrier impenetrable to the random
  thought-streams of the outside world. Impenetrable also to any thought-probe.
  Or so Qubwa had always believed.
  And that was important! For there were people who could probe with their
  thoughts just as Qubwa himself but without his expertise, often without even
  
  knowing that they did it. Their minds were simply broadcasting stations,
  sending out a constant stream of telepathic waves. And they generally ignored
  or failed to recognize incoming messages. The dangerous ones were those who
  could actually read the minds of others, and one such was Garrison. Garrison,
  the world's greatest telepath, whose thoughts— whose directed thoughts?—had
  now seemingly penetrated Qubwa's barriers and shocked him from sleep.
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  Brian Lumley
  Garrison would not have recognized him (sleeping minds are mere caricatures of
  the waking consciousness), but he most certainly would have detected something
  of Qubwa's strength. And if he had been probing, why?— unless he actually
  suspected the presence of one whose ESP abilities might challenge his own! If
  that were so ... then it was also Qubwa's worst fear realized.
  Where was Garrison now? Suddenly anxious, galvanized by an insecurity
  previously unvi-sioned, Gubwa typed Garrison's name into his computer. The
  machine's screen immediately responded:
  AEGEAN . . . DODECANESE . . . RHODES . . . LINDOS ...
  Gubwa questioned the machine's authority. It quoted date, time, destination
  and departure flight number from Gatwick. Its source was the airport computer.
  Gubwa's anxiety turned to impotent rage. One day the tentacles of his
  organization would reach out to envelop the entire world, and then—
  —He calmed himself. For the present he had nothing on Rhodes. The island was
  one of the many places as yet beyond even his ever widening technological
  sphere, which was the best money could buy. As were the completely illegal
  systems through which that technology was channelled.
  He stabbed the intercom's button again. "Guardroom — " his voice was harder
  now, slightly threatening. "When I say at once 1 mean at once!" He released
  the button, stood up, took
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  his computer remote and went to his globe in its clear glass cylinder. Seating
  himself before it, he keyed GLOBE, RHODES and LIMDOS on the remote and watched
  the miniature world rotate until the Greek island came to rest directly before
  his eyes. A pencil beam within the globe shone outwards upon Rhodes, its
  center the village where Garrison and Vicki Maler were staying.
  Gubwa began to sweat. This wasn't to his liking. There was always the
  possibility, by no means remote, that he might reveal himself. But he had to
  know.
  Vicki Maler's thought patterns were familiar to him. Very well, since he dare
  not carry out direct mind-surveillance on Garrison he must go instead to the
  girl. He stared once more at the Aegean island, the point of light, the
  location of the tiny village. He pictured the girl and allowed her image to
  swell large in his mind's eye. His physical eyes he slowly closed, sending a
  telepathic probe out, out, searching the ether, searching ...
  . . . until he found her ...
  ... touched upon her mind ...
  ... a touch, nothing more ...
  ... no awareness of his presence. Innocence. Innocent thoughts ...
  . . . mildly worried thoughts . . . worried for Garrison ...
  ... he entered, unsuspected, less than a ghost in her head ...
  . . . and in the next instant Charon Gubwa
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  Brian Lumley
  gazed out through Vicki Mater's eyes at the sleep-Ing Garrison . . .
  . . . sleeping for the moment, yes, but in the throes of nightmare . . . and
  even now she was reaching to wake him!
  Qubwa withdrew at once, soared back into the Castle, into himself and opened
  his eyes. Garrison was asleep, or had been asleep at the moment of contact
  some minutes earlier. Garrison and Gubwa both.
  Gubwa sighed and sank down heavily into his chair. What he had seen made for
  
  an easy, acceptable explanation. It seemed that Garrison had not sought out
  Gubwa but that indeed the reverse had been the case. Because he had been
  concerned about Garrison, in his sleep he, Gubwa, had unconsciously,
  involuntarily sought him out!
  All well and good—but what if the other had been awake? Garrison's telepathic
  ability was in a word fantastic! Gubwa hated to admit this even to himself,
  but it was so. The man might easily have trailed him back here, back to the
  Castle itself. And what then? Gubwa did not want to kill Garrison, not yet.
  There might be a great deal he could learn from the man, but secretly.
  Which brought him once again to the question of the mind-guards. For just as
  their mental negativity kept unwanted thoughts out when Gubwa wished to sleep,
  so should they keep his in, or at least suppress them, when he was in fact
  sleeping. That is if they were operating with their accustomed efficiency. And
  four of them
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  had always been sufficient, until now. Yesterday's "meeting of minds" had
  occurred, as it were, outside the Castle—-but this morning's intrusion . . .?
  It was most suspicious.
  As if to confirm Gubwa's doubts, his intercom suddenly barked: "Number Three
  mind-guard has pegged it, sir. She's dead."
  Gubwa quickly crossed to the desk and pressed his button. "Stay there!" he
  snapped. "I'm coming."
  Gubwa's Castle was not the most heavily fortified inhabited retreat in the
  world, but it was one of the most secret. Indeed its ramparts were not at all
  in evidence.
  Small by any ordinary castle's standards, the Castle had but one level. It was
  square in shape, some thirty by thirty yards, with one perimeter corridor and
  two diagonal corridors; in plan, a square with a cross in it, forming four
  triangles equal in size and area. One of these contained Gubwa's persona!
  living quarters, his Command Center and (set quite apart and forbidden to all
  but The Flock and Gubwa himself) his "harem"; another held his extensive
  library, study, mind-lab and swimming pool; a third contained the "barracks,"
  accommodation for his two dozen "soldiers," also a gymnasium and other
  recreational facilities; and the fourth was the utility area, housing the
  Castle's air filtration, heating, electrical and general life-support systems.
  The four mind-guard cells were located in the Castle's "turrets," that is to
  say at its four corners, which could only be reached along the perimeter
  corridor.
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  Brian Lumley
  The corridors were better lighted than Qub-wa's private rooms, so that he was
  obliged to squint his eyes as he made for cell Number Three. His eyes were
  weak, unable to cope with any but the dimmest light; for which reason, here in
  the Castle, all lighting was subdued, riot even the corridors were bright by
  normal standards, but they were still too bright for Charon Qubwa. Outside the
  Castle, there Qubwa wore tinted contact lenses, but such trips as he was
  obliged to make were extremely few and far between. Being physically
  agoraphobic (mentally to the contrary) he went out only when he had to go,
  which had become virtually never. With the exception of food and stores, which
  Qubwa's "quartermaster" must of course periodically replenish, the Castle was
  to all intents and purposes self-sufficient.
  Moving his bulk along the perimeter corridor whose outer wall was solid rock
  and whose inner wall was plastic-coated steel, Qubwa arrived at the cell in
  question. There a white man named Gardner, one of his most trusted
  lieutenants, waited for him, coming to attention at his approach.
  "What took so long, Mr. Gardner?" Gubwa's voice was cold.
  Gardner was dressed in the Castle's gray T-shirt and slacks uniform, his left
  breast emblazoned with a silver "G." He stood himself at ease before
  answering. "Guard on duty was showering, sir. It's his right, a shower before
  
  knocking off, as you well know, sir. I chivvied him up, sent him to check the
  mind-guards. He checked this one last, couldn't
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  get any readings. He unlocked the cell, entered, checked, found she was dead,
  contacted me. I contacted you at once."
  Gubwa nodded. "Who is this guard and where is he now?"
  Gardner inclined his head towards the heavy metal door of the cell. "Inside
  with the girl."
  Gubwa pushed by him and entered the cell. The girl lay upon her bed dressed in
  the attire of the mind-guard: a short, sleeveless shift that reached halfway
  down her thighs. She was—had been—quite pretty. Her breasts were small beneath
  the material of the shift, but firm; her legs were long and shapely; her mouth
  was full in a young/old face which showed all too well the stresses and
  strains of her addiction. Gubwa looked at her, laid his great hand upon her
  breast, drew his forest of white eyebrows together in a grim frown. Then he
  looked at the guard.
  His glance this time was cursory, apparently disinterested, flickering from
  the features of a nervous young black to Gardner's own impassive face.
  "Gardner, I want to speak to you in private. You—" again he glanced at the
  young Negro, "—go and fetch one of your fellows—for disposal duties. And a
  stretcher."
  "I'll call one up, sir," the guard answered, his Adam's apple bobbing. He
  undipped a tiny walkie-talkie from his waist-belt.
  "I said fetch," Gubwa stopped him, his thick voice suddenly icy. "Now go and
  /etch!"
  The young man nodded, gulped, turned on his heel and went out. His footsteps
  echoed away
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  Brian Lumley
  down the corridor. "Close the door, Gardner," said Qubwa, his voice now soft.
  "And now—help me get her shift up."
  Gardner lifted the dead girl's hips while Gubwa hoisted her single garment.
  Then the two stood back. "Ah!" said Gubwa, a word which carried all the menace
  in the world.
  Gardner glanced again between the girl's legs. "It could only have been him,"
  he said. "Jackson."
  "Or you," Gubwa told him.
  Gardner shrugged, knew better than to argue. "Or me, yes, sir."
  Gubwa probed his mind, discovered no fear. At least, not in connection with
  this. "But it wasn't you who attacked this girl, no—it was Jackson. Or ...
  what about the others on duty?"
  "Seven of them, all sleeping—but I was awake, of course. And they'd have to
  get past me. They'd all done their stint. Jackson's was the last. He'd
  finished, was getting ready to knock off for the day, showering when you
  called. He's not usually so particular, but this explains it. It was Jackson,
  all right."
  Together they pulled down the girl's shift.
  "My orders are clear enough, wouldn't you say?" Gubwa's voice had grown
  softer, more dangerous yet.
  "Yes, sir."
  "The mind-guards are not to be disturbed in any way, isn't that so?"
  Again: "Yes, sir."
  "And I pay enough, that my orders should be obeyed?"
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  "More than generous, sir," Gardner nodded.
  "Yes," Gubwa mused, "and I also keep the men well supplied, with all of their
  personal little needs. So—why?"
  "A bit of illicit crumpet," Gardner shrugged. "You know what they say, sir:
  
  stolen apples are always the sweetest? Even the sour ones . . .?"
  Gubwa smiled grimly, nodding his agreement. He pursed flabby lips. "I shall .
  . . dismiss him, of course. Today, personally. Will you be able to recruit a
  replacement?"
  "Of course, sir. Any time. As many as you like, within reason."
  "Good!" Gubwa answered as footsteps sounded in the corridor. "Then recruit. .
  . two." He turned away from the bed. "I shall attend to the, er, disposal
  arrangements myself. As for you, Gardner: as soon as your shift is relieved
  you may fall out. No need to wait for these two . . ."
  "I understand, sir."
  The lift cage descended from the Castle into black bowels of rock and earth.
  At its lowest extremity the shaft bottomed out on to a ledge over a natural
  chasm. A single red fluorescent tube flickered into life, illuminating the
  shelf and, as it came down the shaft, the cage. The doors folded back and
  Gubwa stepped out, followed by the stretcher-bearers, Jackson and Smith.
  "Put her down," said Gubwa, his voice echoing in the unseen but felt
  subterranean vastness, where the dim red light of the fluorescent tube covered
  and colored them with its
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  ruddy wash. He stood on one side of the stretcher, facing across it and out
  over the rim of the fissure. "Stand there," he pointed, "and there."
  Smith was white, a little older than his colored colleague. With nothing on
  his conscience, nothing to fear, he was quick to obey; Jackson moved a little
  slower. They positioned themselves, as indicated, opposite Qubwa and facing
  him, their backs to the chasm. Qubwa steepled his fingers, forearms horizontal
  in front of him. He lowered his head and its great round bush of white hair
  until his forehead rested upon the tips of his fingers. Jackson and Smith
  glanced at each other, their eyes puzzled, questioning.
  "We have come," Qubwa kept his head bowed, his voice deliberately sepulchral,
  "to send this poor girl to her last resting place. It is her due. She was a
  faithful servant." He put down his hands, lifted his head, straightened up. He
  nodded, then:
  "Put your hands between her body and the stretcher and lift her up," he
  commanded. They did as they were instructed, holding the girl's corpse before
  them like some grisly offering. She was surprisingly light.
  "Good!" said Qubwa, towering over the men and the dead girl they supported in
  their arms. He lowered his head again, reached out across the empty stretcher
  and laid one great hand on the girl's thigh, the other on her shoulder. It was
  as if he were about to bless her.
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  Perhaps in that last moment Jackson and Smith—especially Jackson—sensed Doom's
  rushing approach; but they were much too late to avoid it.
  "Go to your rest, my children*." said Qubwa, his sepulchral tone sharpening on
  the last word. And with that last word he pushed with all the weight of his
  great body.
  The two men shouted their alarm, were forced back, off balance. They flailed
  their arms, their cries turning to screams. The rim crumbled beneath their
  feet. . .
  They were gone, the body of the girl, too. Only their echoing screams
  remained, fading.
  Seconds later there came a clattering of dislodged rocks and stony rubble,
  followed by three distinct splashes and the sounds of lesser debris striking
  deep water. Then silence.
  Qubwa stood for a moment at the rim, then bent down and dragged the stretcher
  into the lift. His face was without expression. The cage doors closed on him
  and the lift climbed its shaft. The red fluorescent light flickered out...
  As Charon Qubwa rose up through the strata of centuries, so a second lift
  moved in another shaft, carrying Gardner and the six remaining members of his
  
  team. Gardner's cage moved slowly, would take all of fifteen minutes to pass
  through two hundred and seventy feet of shaft-but this was not inefficiency.
  On the contrary,
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  the slow-running cage was necessary to the complete efficiency of Charon
  Qubwa's operation, his organization. For these fifteen minutes were the
  minimum required for the "debriefing" which occurred whenever his people left
  the Castle; and that debriefing was in progress now, perfectly synchronized
  with the monotonous creep of the cage.
  The cage itself was in near-darkness, its gloom barely relieved by the regular
  pulsing of a single electric-blue ceiling light. And in that strangely
  ethereal atmosphere the seven men leaned against the walls and listened to
  Qubwa's deep, even, sonorously hypnotic voice. Although it was only a
  recording, still that voice was not one to be ignored, denied or in any way
  defied, for Qubwa was a hypnotist without peer and his words merely reiterated
  and reinforced previous orders.
  This was the third and last time that the seven men would hear those orders on
  this occasion, for the lift was slowing more yet as it approached its
  terminal. This was what the voice of Qubwa said to them:
  "Your work is done," (the monologue began) "and you are now free of duty. You
  will next report for work at the time shown on your duty roster. Only genuine
  sickness will prevent such reporting, in which case your immediate superior
  will be informed in advance. Of the work you have performed and the things you
  have seen you will remember nothing. You will take nothing, neither material
  nor memory of the Castle with you. When you return you will bring noth-
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  ing, neither material nor intent with you into the Castle. Your only intent
  will be to do my service.
  "You will know only those things I require you to know, and your answers to
  questions concerning myself, my organization, the nature of the Castle itself
  or anything at all concerning the work you perform for me will be the prepared
  answers I have ordered you to learn.
  "You will keep your minds open and receptive to mine at all times. You will
  obey without question or hesitation any and all commands I care to issue,
  spoken or telepathic, except the occasion arises when to do so would not be to
  my benefit. At any such time you will offer explanation and I will decide the
  outcome.
  "You will do no deliberate wrong outside the Castle but obey the common laws
  of the land, causing no unwanted attentions to be focussed upon yourselves;
  neither will you proceed furtively or in any manner likely to arouse
  suspicion. You will in short live your lives normally within the periphery of
  my beneficence, and you will be satisfied.
  "In the event that you are compromised and that any enemy of mine seeks to
  subvert you or extract from you information whose divulgence I have forbidden,
  and further that you are in any way made incapable of refusing such
  information—then you will simply cease to function. You will die.
  "These are the words of Charon Qubwa. I have spoken, so let it be . . ."
  The lift came to an almost unnoticeable stand-
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  still and the pulsing blue light went out. The doors opened and Qubwa's
  zombies stepped out. They were in a dim basement room. Behind them the doors
  closed and the lift sank from sight.
  Gardner took out keys, went to the room's single metal door, unlocked its twin
  locks. He and the others passed through and he locked the door behind them.
  Now they were in what looked like an underground car park, thick with dust, in
  which no cars were parked. From somewhere overhead came the dull rumble of
  traffic.
  
  Footsteps echoing, the seven crossed the concrete floor and entered another
  lift, and Gardner thumbed its single button. Three levels up they walked out
  into sunlight, crowds and a street full of heavy traffic. The lift's doors
  closed automatically behind them. An outer door closed over the inner doors. A
  sign above the outer door said:
  NOT FOR PUBLIC USE.
  And down below, more than three hundred feet straight down, the Castle lay
  hidden, mysterious and . . . forgotten. For them, at least.
  Silent until now, Gubwa's men yawned, blinked their eyes in the light of day,
  nodded farewells and went their own ways. To all intents and purposes they
  were ordinary citizens about their business, clad in the ordinary clothes and
  wearing the ordinary expressions of common, everyday life.
  Gardner's way took him a couple of streets to where he would catch his bus.
  Waiting at the
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  stop he lit a cigarette and engaged himself in conversation with a sweaty fat
  lady in a feathery hat. Just across the road, a sign on the corner of a
  building said:
  Oxford St Wl
  105
  Chapter
  8
  NINETY MINUTES EARLIER in LlMDOS, VlCKI MALER had awakened, stretched, and
  checked the time: 10:30 A.M.
  10:30 A.M. local, and the sun was high in the sky and blazing over the great
  Rock of the Acropolis. Vicki yawned and stretched again. She had had, oh,
  maybe six, six-and-a-half hours' sleep? The same for Richard. It was almost
  time to wake him up. While he didn't particularly like being awakened, neither
  did he care to sleep too long. He had begun lately to complain that things
  "passed him by" while he was asleep.
  In any case, now would be a good and sensible time. He was nightmaring again
  and had started to moan. She had heard him mention Schroeder and Koenig, and
  he had cursed once or twice. His temperature was up, too; sweat gleamed on
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  his brow and in the hollow of his collar bones; he shook his head from side to
  side as if seeking a way out of some terrible predicament. Yes, she should
  wake him. After all, he had awakened her, with his tossing and turning.
  "Liar!" the word suddenly gurgled from between his clenched teeth, seemingly
  in denial of Vicki's last thought. And: "Falling! Falling!"
  She went quickly to his side and laid a hand upon his shoulder. But as his
  frantic jerking and tossing grew still more pronounced, she shouted, "Richard!
  Richard, wake up! It's all right!"
  He came awake in a moment, his golden eyes flashing open, his body jerking
  upright from the waist, back ramrod straight on the raised wooden bed. As his
  hands flew into a defensive position in front of his face and chest, so Vicki
  stepped quickly back out of range. Then ... his wide, molten golden eyes
  blinked, focussed, and he saw her.
  He licked bone-dry lips, lay back trembling. "God, a bad one!" He angled his
  head to stare at her, managed a shaky laugh. "A beauty!"
  "It must have been," she told him. "You were shouting."
  "Oh? What was I shouting?"
  "Something about a liar—and falling?" She deliberately left out the other bits
  of mouthing, about Schroeder and Koenig.
  "Falling? Oh, yes," he frowned. "I remember that. Something of it anyway. But
  a liar?" He shook his head.
  "Do you remember anything else?" she asked.
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  He got up, still shaky, and put his arms around her. Then he released her,
  tugged open her robe and hugged her again. She held him tightly, feeling
  something of her old love for him flooding her veins, her body.
  Her "old" love for him? Had something changed, then?
  With her face buried in his shoulder, she bit her lips, controlled her
  thinking. Occasionally (unconsciously, she liked to believe) Richard
  eavesdropped on her mind. He was not doing so now, but he nevertheless felt
  the tension in her body. "Something wrong, Vicki?"
  "Only that I worry about you. What we talked about last night, and these
  dreams of yours . . ."
  He released her and began to pull on his clothes. "I know," he said. "But you
  know they're not entirely my own. I mean, I am dreaming for three of us. Do
  you understand?"
  She nodded. "Yes, I do. And surely you understand why I worry."
  He returned her nod. "Of course—"he paused, frowned, then pulled on a T-shirt.
  "Only this time—with this dream—"
  "Yes?"
  He shrugged. "This time I believe I was dreaming for myself. I only wish I
  could remember more about it. I feel it was special, important."
  "Important? A dream?"
  "I've had dreams before, Vicki, and some of them were damned important. But—"
  and again he shrugged. "—Maybe it'll come back to me later."
  But for all his shrug, as he finished dressing
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  and slipped his feet into his sandals, she could see that the dream continued
  to preoccupy him. She tried to drive it from his mind, asking: "Aren't you
  going to wash?"
  "Eh?" he looked up, half-smiling. "Oh! No—1 won't bother now. A dip in the
  sea, a shower on the beach—it's today we're to visit the Acropolis, isn't it?"
  "Oh, yes!" she was enthusiastic. "We'll have a wonderful view from up there.
  As long as you promise not to go too close to the edge . . ."
  His smile disappeared completely and she bit her lip again, knowing she had
  erred. "1 only dreamed I was falling, Vicki," he reminded her. "Awake ... it
  simply can't happen. You know that."
  Oh, yes, she knew it. "Of course. I only—"
  "Get dressed now, won't you?" He turned away from her, gazed out of the window
  into the vine-shaded, black and white cobbled courtyard. "We can have brunch
  in the village on our way down to the beach."
  Some nine hours later, right on cue, Paulo Fal-azzi's fat Frenchman departed
  Lindos. He and his much younger mistress—a nymphet with big loose breasts
  which she loved to bounce about all over the lesser of the village's two
  beaches-left town in a local taxi, their faces glowing shiny-red from too much
  sun. The girl wore a loose evening gown, presumably for the sake of her
  sunburn. Palazzi was pleased to note that she didn't seem to be wearing too
  much jewelry; doubtless the weight of gold and stones
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  would constitute a great irritation against rapidly roughening skin. How then,
  he wondered with a grin, could she possibly cope with the far greater weight
  of her lover? The poor, rich fat slob! But, .where there's a will ...
  Then, a nervous twenty minutes later, he saw the Swiss party appear from the
  doorway of their spacious high-priced villa, laughingly making for the village
  center where already the tavernas were growing boisterously raucous. Happily
  the pair left an upper window hanging ajar. True, it was unseasonably warm
  even for the Aegean, but . . . there would be more than the breeze off the sea
  and a couple of mosquitoes going in through that window tonight! Palazzi
  grinned again, this time at his joke and at the thought of the mosquitoes. The
  buzzing little vampires would have to wait their turn for rich Swiss blood
  tonight. He, Paulo Palazzi, would be taking first fruits—and his sting was far
  
  more painful.
  And then there was Garrison. At the thought of the so-called "blind" man
  Palazzi's eyes narrowed. This one was more problematic, erratic, less likely
  to adhere to any sort of regular schedule. He might not even go out tonight,
  which would be bad news but not necessarily an insurmountable problem. The man
  probably slept quite heavily, certainly would sleep heavily if the amount of
  local brandy he consumed was anything to go by. Or perhaps he drank the brandy
  because he slept badly? Whichever, only time would tell. And time, for the
  next few hours anyway, was on the side of the thief.
  It was growing dark now, would be quite dark
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  by 9:00 or 9:15. Palazzi had promised the night watchman he would be off the
  rock by then. That promise had been made as he returned from his midday meal
  in Elli's Taverna toting a small, cheap bottle of ouzo to reinforce their
  friendship. But still, Palazzi didn't wish to outstay his welcome—or give the
  old boy any reason to question his motives.
  He picked at his well-groomed fingernails for a little while, then took up his
  binoculars one last time and found Garrison's courtyard where it was lighted
  by the glow of shaded lamps above the inner doors. And even as he watched, so
  the lights went out one by one, and straining his eyes he saw a pair of dim
  figures moving amongst the courtyard's shadows. Then-There they were! Hand in
  hand, their pace leisurely as they descended into the maze of streets. And
  dressed for dancing, yes! Garrison in a paper-light white suit and open-neck
  shirt, his woman in a halter and culottes. H?s woman ...
  PaSazzi's eager, wolfish grin slipped a little. Another enigma: she, too, was
  supposed to be blind. At least she, too, wore a blind person's spectacles.
  Well, blind she may or may not be— but beautiful she most certainly was. And
  her figure . . .!
  Palazzi allowed his thoughts to wander back to the topless girls he had
  watched on the little beach. Funny how binoculars, bringing those naked
  breasts so close you could almost pucker your lips and kiss them, seemed at
  the same time somehow to set them in another, alien
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  Brian Lumley
  realm. Much more exciting to actually be within reach, even if one mustn't
  touch. And the pretty English girls he had seen two days ago: they had been
  close, especially the girl with the big ones. Braless, her nipples stiff with
  excitement, shaping her blouse as she leaned out over the ramparts ...
  Palazzi suddenly felt himself erect, his penis huge in his pants, nothing new.
  The thrill of anticipation. Piot sexual (he told himself), rather
  environmental. But pleasing anyway. He stroked his hard through his
  trousers—then jerked guiltily alert as he heard a rattle of stones, a jingle
  of keys, and a wheezy, boozy, inquiring Greek voice.
  "Coming!" he called out, his Greek only so-so. "Just coming." He scrambled
  from the wall, dusted himself off, made for the great stone arch which would
  lead him to the steep, winding descent. "But such a lovely night. I quite
  forgot the time. It's the solitude I like, you know? Just sitting up here on
  my own." He wasn't sure the old fellow really understood him. "You enjoyed the
  ouzo? Good! And yes, thank you, the sunset really was quite beautiful."
  From far below, music and the sounds of muted revelry began to drift up into
  the darkening air. Lindos was rising from its evening torpor. Palazzi could
  feel its spiced lamb and retsina breath in his face, beckoning him to the
  feast...
  All through the day Garrison's mood and morale had gradually deteriorated.
  Vicki had sensed it,
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  had seen how he tried to keep a rein on feelings and emotions he himself did
  not fully understand, and she, too, had grown restless in sympathy with his
  
  near-schizophrenic mood. She had known (mercifully) that it was his own
  schizophrenia, springing perhaps from a delicate suppression of the two
  "live-in" mentalities which were now permanent facets of his id, his
  psyche—had known that neither Schroeder nor Koenig had outwardly manifested
  themselves during the course of the day—but the mere thought of the effort of
  will he must exercise simply to remain ascendant was chilling. She doubted if
  she would ever become accustomed to it.
  She traced the source of the trouble back to this morning's dream, possibly as
  far back as their encounter with the Greek youths. Until then all had seemed
  to be going well, their holiday had been doing both of them a great deal of
  good. But now, tonight—?
  Now he fidgeted and frowned a lot. He had toyed with his food and argued over
  the bill, then stomped angrily out of the taverns where they had eaten. He had
  also consumed too much brandy, had allowed himself to get upset too easily
  when the music of a particular taverna (they had tried several) wasn't just
  exactly to his liking, and had complained bitterly of "rowdy, drunken
  grockles," when in fact the holiday-makers were as yet quite sober and
  extremely well behaved. He was, in short, on the point of boiling over,
  blowing up to release the tensions
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  seething within. And that was the last thing that Vicki wanted.
  Oh, no, for she knew that just beneath the surface of the Garrison she had so
  loved (again that doubt, that niggling past tense) there lurked others only
  too ready to spring into being. Vicki knew that she—and Lindos, too, for that
  matter—could well do without the advent of flerr Willy Koenig, late of the
  Schutzstaffel and personal bodyguard to his beloved Colonel Thomas Schroeder.
  And her sentiments, or lack of them, applied just as well to the Colonel
  himself. Oh, she had been fond of both of them in life, in the flesh, but now
  that they dwelled in Garrison's head, in his very being, she was afraid of
  them and hated them. Neither one of them must be allowed to surface tonight.
  Which was why, at her first opportunity, she allowed Garrison to "catch" her
  frowning and stroking her brow.
  "Oh?" he was quick to query, leaning towards her across their wicker table.
  "Nothing. A headache coming on, I think."
  Garrison was immediately sympathetic, reaching to touch her brow—and his face
  clouding over in a moment, knowing she lied. "If you had a headache," he told
  her quietly, "I could cure it in a moment. You know that."
  "Tired, then," she tried desperately to cover up. "Perhaps I'm just a little—"
  "Tired?" he shook his head. "No, not that either. We slept for an hour or two
  this afternoon after our climb." He pursed his lips, breathed deeply, began to
  look angry—then let
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  out all of his air and anger in one great sigh. "What the hell-it's me, eh?"
  "Oh, Richard!" she gave his hand an urgent squeeze. "It's just that you seem
  to be working yourself up to something. And 1 don't know what ... to ..." She
  let the sentence taper off, her voice breaking a little.
  He stared at her for a moment, and it was as if she could feel the warmth of
  his golden eyes right through the dark, heavy lenses of his glasses. A warmth
  that drew something of her anxiety right out of her. "I don't know either," he
  admitted. "It's a feeling, that's all. That I'm missing something. That
  something's wrong. With the world, with me. Hell, you know what's wrong,
  Vicki!"
  "Look," she squeezed his hand again, "why don't we call it a day, have an
  early night? We can sit in the courtyard. I'll make coffee—a lot of it. Coffee
  and brandy—and a cigar for you. You'll like that. We don't have to do anything
  except sit there and relax, and listen to that little bird singing his one sad
  note."
  Garrison nodded, smiled however wanly. "Yes, he is sad, that little bloke.
  
  With his poop! . . . poop!. . . poop! I wonder what he looks like?"
  "Maybe he's ugly," Vicki said, rising and putting down money on the table.
  "Perhaps that's why he only comes out at night."
  And later, as they climbed through the narrow streets and rose above the
  babble of bright, crowded tavernas, Garrison added: "And maybe
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  that's why he's so sad, eh? Being ugly, I mean, and only one note to sing."
  "But such a beautiful note," Vicki answered as they reached the door to their
  courtyard. "Like liquid moonlight."
  Garrison caught her round the waist, kissed her hungrily and gently fondled
  her breasts in the darkness. "Listen, what do you say we forget the coffee and
  brandy, eh? Why don't we help the little guy out and make some music of our
  own?"
  Together they stepped over the threshold, closing the door quietly behind them
  . . .
  Palazzi had started with the Swiss pair. Staying only one narrow street—or
  rooftop—away from his own less than splendid accommodation, they had seemed
  the obvious choice.
  On leaving the rock of the Acropolis he had spent a few minutes on the lower
  slopes of the climb, talking to the old Greek lace ladies where they tidied
  away their wares for the night, finally telling them goodnight and ensuring
  that they were watching him when he entered his accommodation at the foot of
  the rock. Then—
  —Five minutes to change into his "working clothes" and climb out through a
  window high in the rear wall of his room, and a few more to flit across the
  flat, shadowy roofs. And ah!—how the adrenalin had flowed in Paulo Palazzi's
  veins.
  Night was his element, in which he was less than a shadow, and the sheer
  excitement of the night was an almost physical force within him.
  But. . . his excitement had quickly ebbed. The
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  Swiss couple were a bitter disappointment; pickings in their rooms wouldn't
  even cover the cost of Palazzi's holiday. A fistful of cheap jewelry, some
  Drachmas, a few Swiss Francs. Miserable!
  Disgruntled, he was out of the burgled room only a little after 10:15 P.M.
  Now he was tempted to go after Garrison, the Big One—but he resisted. He knew
  that his urgency was spawned of disappointment and greed. No, better first to
  do the French job and let the Garrisons settle into their evenings'
  entertainment. Besides, the Frog's accommodation was closest. Also . . . well,
  Palazzi still had a sort of feeling about Garrison and his woman. Something
  about them that made him nervy.
  The thief's instinct served him well, for at 10:25 as he entered the darkened
  courtyard of the French couple's villa and began silently to pick their lock,
  Garrison and Vicki were just having their conversation about the music of a
  different sort of night-venturing bird and entering their own accommodation.
  Had Palazzi gone there first he must certainly have been disturbed as he went
  about his business.
  Of course he was not to learn this until some thirty minutes later when,
  coming at a crouching, gliding lope across the roofs, he saw the lamp over
  their door glowing yellow and heard their muted voices from within. At that
  Palazzi cursed long, vividly and silently—before resigning himself to a
  serious revision of his plans. And while his mind worked he stretched himself
  out on the roof almost directly above the pair
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  on their raised wooden bed, listening to the sounds of their lovemaking.
  Of their actual conversation he could hear very little: breathless/hoarse
  murmurs, panting sighs and moans of pleasure. But the soft slap, slap, slap of
  
  perspiring bodies in loving collision was very distinct—and protracted! They
  knew how to do it, these two.
  Despite the necessary revision of his plan, Pal-azzi began to feel
  excited—sexually this time— and his penis grew fat, elongating itself within
  the zippered confines of his jump suit. For he could picture that beautiful
  body down there, the body of Garrison's woman, all open and soft and pinkly
  moist, her thighs spread wide, inviting, as Garrison rode in and out of her,
  in and out. And those breasts of hers, nipples erect, slippery with
  perspiration and spittle as the blind man's mouth worked on them and sucked
  them into a life of their own.
  Blind man. Jesus! The poor bastard didn't even know how good she looked! How
  good and ripe and golden. Not if he really was blind. Pal-azzi licked his
  lips, stifled a lump rising in his throat, forced himself to concentrate upon
  the plan's revision and gradually calmed down.
  Actually there wasn't a great deal to revise. If he was to be out of Lindos
  tomorrow he must do the job tonight. He didn't like the idea of doing it while
  they were asleep in there, but—they must at least be part-blind, mustn't they?
  And certainly they'd be exhausted and sleeping like the dead.
  In any case, he had no choice, for the Froggy
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  too had disappointed him. Less than ten thousand Drachmas, no French currency
  at all, only an old gold-plated Rolex Oyster and some bits of jewelry worth
  maybe three hundred thousand Lire in the right market. Terrible!
  But Garrison . . . Ah! He was different. His woman's jewelry alone—no, half of
  it—would be worth a small fortune. If only they'd get finished with their
  rutting and get to sleep. 11:20 already, and they were still at it.
  Five minutes later the noises began to come faster. For a moment or two they
  grew frantic and then: a little cry, sharp and sweet, gurgling down into a
  sigh, and Garrison's hoarse panting gradually subsiding. And finally silence.
  Silence for a few minutes. Then the weary slap of naked feet upon the floor,
  and the lights blinking out. The courtyard light, too, and again silence. The
  rustle of a sheet. A sigh. And Pal-azzi patiently waiting on the roof ...
  Neither Garrison nor Vicki dreamed anything of any importance that night. Not
  before Palazzi's visit, and certainly not afterwards.
  As the thief had expected, their lovemaking had drained them. Except for their
  deep, regular breathing, they lay still and silent as he went about his
  business of discovering and pocketing their money and personal valuables. And
  there was plenty to find. More than enough to make up for all other
  disappointments.
  But it hadn't been all that easy; there had been a point when the thought had
  crossed Palazzi's mind that perhaps he had better turn back. That
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  Brian Lumley
  had been shortly after entering through an open window—to discover Garrison's
  woman stretched out at his very feet!
  Palazzi's night vision was trained to a marvellous degree. Gloomy as the large
  room was and the moon in the wrong quarter of the sky (the right one for the
  thief), and only starlight ghosting through the small windows, still he had
  been able to make out every object in the room with clear definition. The
  faint beam of a pencil-slim torch had supplied what little extra light was
  needed for the serious work.
  But the girl, Garrison's woman sprawled there at Palazzi's feet. With her face
  turned to one side and a handkerchief loosely knotted over her forehead, its
  folds covering her eyes. Her chest rising and falling, rising and falling.
  Waked under a sheet, the points of her breasts sticking up and forming peaked
  hillocks of white linen on her chest. Her arms thrown wide, legs open under
  the sheet, feet protruding. An attitude of unconscious abandon , . .
  Across the room Garrison had the large bed to himself—the bed where the two
  had made love. It was typical of the raised Greek beds much in evidence
  
  throughout the village; but the woman's bed was also raised, higher in fact.
  Lying-upon a sort of square landing or platform, its deep mattress rested upon
  the ceramic-tiled roof of the tiny bathroom, shower and toilet unit. And
  spread-eagled, the woman's form almost filled the railed-off bed space; so
  that the thief had to step carefully indeed to avoid touching or disturbing
  her. Careful, too, to avoid the possibility
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  of his shadow falling on her face. Even with her eyes covered by the
  handkerchief, still she might sense his presence.
  And then the wooden stairs to negotiate (without making them creak), and upon
  the floor the jumble of their discarded clothing, piled where they had
  stripped their bodies naked. A little heap of the woman's jewelry lying on a
  tiny casual table—her open purse hanging from the knobbed newel at the foot of
  the stairs—and Garrison's wallet in the inside pocket of his coat, flung
  casually across the back of a chair.
  And the jewelry, not half but all of a fortune! Palazzi was tempted to
  whistle, tempted again when he saw the contents of Garrison's wallet. A fat
  wad of crisp English £20 notes, at least thirty of them, and an equal amount
  of high denomination Drachmas. The woman's purse also bulging.
  At that point some of the pieces of jewelry had moved and chinked dully in
  Palazzi's pockets. Garrison too had moved. Only a slight movement, true,
  accompanied by a little grunt of discomfort, but sufficient to freeze Palazzi
  to the floor as if taken root there. He waited, watching, listening. Garrison,
  lying face-down, was starting to snort a little, blowing air into his pillow.
  He threw out an arm and automatically adjusted his position, stopped snorting.
  Palazzi waited.
  Starlight silvered and softened the room's sharper edges.
  All was quiet once more . . .
  Palazzi waited no longer. It was time to get
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  out. The night was moving on. When they had finished making love, he had
  waited on the roof for over an hour before making his first move, since when
  he'd been in here with them for a full fifteen minutes. The time now was
  exactly 1:08 A.M. The Swiss couple would still be dancing; the Froggies on
  their way back from Rhodes, unless they had decided to stay over for the
  night; and Palazzi was still one hundred percent safe, but he knew he couldn't
  afford to waste any time now. And nothing to waste time on, not really.
  Nothing to linger over . . .
  Climbing the open stairs back to where Vicki Maler lay stretched out on her
  back, Palazzi found himself glancing across the room at the sleeping form of
  her lover. The man must be wearing a luminous watch on his wrist, its dial
  glowing close to his face, for there was a distinct patch of yellow light on
  the pillow where he lay face-down. A sort of golden luminescence.
  Suddenly Palazzi's desire to be out of there swelled up strong in him. He
  foolishly allowed a stair tread to creak as he crept higher, which caused him
  to freeze again for a moment and hold his breath before he dared to continue.
  He was allowing himself to become spooked. But why? What was there to worry
  about?
  He had removed light bulbs as he went, putting them all safely out of the way.
  Even if Garrison and his woman woke up and hit the switches the room would
  remain in darkness. And of what use bright lights to their eyes anyway? No,
  nothing to worry about here. Why, they
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  didn't even have a telephone! The entire village could only have a dozen or
  so.
  Palazzi stepped over the sleeping woman's form and seated himself on the
  marble sill of the open window. As he swung one leg over the sill onto the
  
  flat roof outside, she stirred. Her right knee bent, straightened; the sheet
  got hooked up on her foot, sliding down her perfect body. Her brown, beautiful
  breasts were exposed. Starlight gleamed on the round globes of flesh,
  increasing their desirability tenfold.
  Palazzi's hands were free, and so was his personal demon. He slowly, carefully
  unzippered the front of his jump suit, took out his suddenly stiff penis,
  gripped it and stroked the taut skin to and fro; then released it and raised
  his hand over the girl's right breast. He readied his other hand over her
  mouth, and—
  —lowered both hands simultaneously.
  She came awake, felt the strange hands on her mouth, her breast. One hand
  clamping, the other squeezing, molding, pinching. Hot hands. Feverish. Not
  Garrison's.
  "Richard!" she would have cried out, but couldn't.
  It made no difference. Garrison "heard" her anyway.
  Three of them heard, struggled to come awake, to take command. And in
  situations like this—for all that Garrison had been a soldier in his own
  right, with lightning reflexes—Willy Koe-nig, ex-Schutzstaffel specialist, had
  always been the fastest. And by far the deadliest!
  Garrison's body rolled over onto its back and
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  Brian Lumley
  sat up, its eyes flying open. Their light filled the gloom with golden lances
  of fire. Palazzi released Vicki, gurgled some inarticulate thing as he gazed
  across the room into the blazing eyes of hell.
  "Go to sleep, Vicki," said the icy voice of the owner of those eyes. "Forget
  this—it isn't happening—it's all right. Schlafen Sie." And she simply
  collapsed back onto her pillows.
  Palazzi made to dive through the window but found himself picked up
  instead—snatched up like a toy and suspended in air, floating towards the
  center of the room. Now he, too, would have cried out, but couldn't. The zips
  on his jump suit flew open, his loot tumbling free.
  The naked man seated upon the bed smiled— a nightmare smile humorless as that
  of some ghastly, luminescent zombie—and pointed with a zombie's stiff arm,
  hand and finger. "Go," he said.
  Palazzi felt himself shot out of the window, rushed across the rooftops in a
  great hand, high over the tavernas where they catered to their late customers.
  He soared up into the night-mouth gaping, cheeks filling with air—eyes
  bugging, streaming tears as the rush of his motion stung them—his suit
  billowing and flapping like crazed black wings. Up and away across the great
  rock of the Acropolis, and the lights of Lindos glowing far below, and the
  lanterns of small fishing craft bobbing on the gentle swell of the slumbering
  Aegean.
  And out across the sea sped Palazzi. A mile,
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  two, and a great jet plane thundering by overr head, its windows like rows of
  eyes. And—
  —And Palazzi floating, stationary now, with only an icy wind blowing on him
  across the sky. Floating and spinning a mile high in the air, and the deep,
  deep sea below.
  "No!" he screamed, hoping that someone, somewhere, somehow would hear him.
  "Mo, I didn't intend to harm her. Mercy! Have mercy!" But no one was
  listening. Certainly not the owner of the great invisible hand, which now,
  without warning, hurled him down . . .
  125
  Chapter
  9
  AT 6:00 A.M. GARRISOM~->IL/, GARRISON now, FOR the Koenig facet had retreated
  once more—drank his fifteenth cup of coffee, smoked his twentieth cigarette
  
  and shivered in the light of the new day. It was not cold but he shivered. He
  sat on the edge of his tumbled bed and gazed out of his window, listening to a
  frantic cock's crowing and the early morning rumpus of distant donkeys.
  His thoughts were confused, in disarray. Lin-dos, Rhodes, the Aegean . . .
  what the hell was he doing here anyway? And last night—no, in the early hours
  of this morning—he had killed a man. Ho, he gritted his teeth, correcting
  himself again, Willy Koenig had killed a man. And he, Garrison, had been
  unable (unwilling?) to stop him or even try to stop him. And Schroeder had a
  hand in it, too: Thomas Schroeder, protecting
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  not only Vicki (his one-time ward) and Garrison (his present host) but also
  himself.
  Oh, yes, and that was the rub, as Garrison saw it. He, Garrison, wasn't
  allowed to live his own life because the others lived it for him. What
  happened to him must also happen to them, and so they must protect him. And
  the constant conflict (Garrison sighed, his shoulders slumping), the conflict
  was draining him.
  He had to face up to it, he was being drained. Of physical strength, of his
  psychic energies, perhaps even of his sanity. And no use a stake against
  vampires such as these; no, for they dwelled within him. Sometimes he felt
  quite (he shivered again), quite mad. He had felt it just a few hours ago, and
  even knowing it was not madness but maddening frustration—the frustration
  which comes of having no control, which in itself might or might not be a
  definition of insanity—made it no less frightening.
  He was not his own man. His body was not his alone. He shared his powers,
  too—and they were being used up. A leaky battery in a communal torch in an
  eternal night. And no way to recharge. Pretty soon the light would go out. The
  battery would spill its acids. The whole thing would melt into a rusty mass
  and become totally useless. And darkness would reign over all.
  His mind clung to part of that last thought and examined it. No way to
  recharge.
  And at the very back of his mind it seemed that he heard a tiny whispering
  voice say, "Don't you remember, Richard? You stopped the Machine. You killed
  the beast . . ." It was Schroe-
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  Brian Lumley
  der's voice and he recognized it, but it could only be memory for his
  alter-facets were incapable of independent communication. He couldn't talk to
  them and they couldn't talk to him, or to each other. He was them, they were
  him. So where had he heard those words spoken? And what did they mean?
  Garrison believed he might at least have the answer to the second half of the
  question, and he paled.
  Psychomech!
  Oh, yes—that was one beast he really had killed. Out of jealousy. So that no
  one could ever follow him into' .•> . into what? This misery?
  Misery, yes—born of fear. His powers were failing and he knew it. Right now he
  felt utterly exhausted, drained (again that word), unable to face up to
  whatever it was he felt closing in on him. It wasn't simply lack of sleep,
  wasn't the knowledge that he had killed a man—that bastard had probably
  deserved it anyway—wasn't even the way Vicki sometimes looked at him now, with
  something less than her old, customary adoration.
  It was simply that he felt—usurped?
  Usurped, yes. The incident with those Greek youths, for instance. His anger,
  certainly, but Schroeder's and Koenig's action. And this morning's burglar:
  the same thing. And Garrison paying for it. His energy draining away. A
  battery leaking its vital spark, or having that spark leeched by parasitic
  thieves.
  And no way to recharge ...
  But maybe there was a way.
  
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  He shivered again, stood up and crossed the room, glanced at and caused the
  water to boil in its kettle atop an unlighted gas ring. He climbed the open,
  wooden stairs. Behind him the jar of instant coffee poured two perfect
  measures into a pair of mugs; a carton of milk tilted itself, the kettle, too,
  until the mugs were filled. The level of sugar in its bowl went down by
  exactly one spoonful; a little whirlpool raced in Garrison's mug.
  There had been a time he would have performed these small feats in front of
  Vicki, but no longer. She was asleep now, anyway, and so could not see them.
  But once—
  Once, in the beginning, she would have been amazed, would have laughed
  delightedly. Later . . . then she became apprehensive. And now? Mow such magic
  only served to frighten her.
  He sat down beside her where she lay and touched her arm. Warm, alive. And yet
  once, not so very long ago ...
  He knew that she would remember nothing of the affair with the burglar. No,
  for he had told her to forget it, that it wasn't happening. Since then she had
  not stirred. Had not even changed her position. Her chest rose and fell, rose
  and fell. Garrison stared, looked closer, listened to her breathing, felt his
  own pulse quickening. Was there something wrong here? Some imperfection? Some
  . . . deterioration?
  Her skin looked paler somehow, despite her tan, and her respiration seemed a
  trifle jerky. There were previously unnoticed lines at the corners of her
  eyes, her mouth. Wot age lines,
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  Brian Lumley
  no. not crow's-feet. More the marks of a subtly altered metabolism, of—
  —Of something he did not wish to contemplate!
  With fingers that shook slightly he eased the knotted handkerchief from her
  eyes, lifting their lids with the pressure of his thumbs. She slept on as he
  jerked back, horrified.
  Beneath those now trembling eyelids, sightless orbs had seemed grotesquely
  huge and pallid in the frames of their scarlet sockets. The golden glow had
  been missing from Vicki's eyes!
  Garrison's panic fuelled his powers. "See!" he commanded. "Be filled with
  light, life, warmth, energy. Take of my own energy . . ." And slowly—at first
  a faint pulse of yellow burning beneath her pale eyelids, then brightening to
  a glow—the gold returned. The lines faded out, smoothed into her skin. Her
  pulse and respiration steadied.
  "Awaken!" And she came slowly awake, opened those great golden orbs of eyes
  and smiled at him.
  And Garrison leaned his back against the window's frame and tried to control
  his trembling. "It's morning, Vicki," he managed to tell her at last. "I've
  made coffee."
  Morning, yes, and Garrison had determined that this would be their last
  morning in Lindos. There were things he must do—and without delay.
  While there was still time ...
  Joe Black had left small sums of money in the hands of various unsuspecting
  informers in Lin-
  130
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  dos, advance payment for that tip-off which was vital to his and brother
  Bert's planned hit. One of these informers was not the young, pretty,
  shorts-clad local representative of a small British tour operator who awakened
  him that morning bright and early, and being only half-awake when he answered
  her knock Black might easily have given something of his real interests away.
  He was not dull-minded, however, and quickly caught on to her own interest in
  Garrison's affairs.
  "Yes," he mumblingly admitted, yawning and rubbing sleep from his eyes, his
  
  face peering from behind his door. "I am interested in the, er, Adonis
  Studios? In all three rooms, yes. Far superior to this place. But—" and he
  shrugged. "To my understanding the chap who has them will be there for another
  four or five days."
  "Piot at all, Mr, er, Schwartz?" she smiled. "He's moving out this morning—him
  and his lady. Flying back to London, I understand. I got the tip from Costas
  Mekos, one of the taxi drivers here. That was just before he set off to drive
  the Garrisons into Rhodes—about twenty minutes ago."
  now Black understood all. Costas Mekos was one of those into whose eager hands
  he'd placed a little cash. But—twenty minutes! Black's heart gave a lurch. "I
  see. And you being a Skymed Tour representative, and the Adonis Studios being
  Skymed accommodation, you—"
  "I hate to see such good rooms go to waste, yes!" she sweetly answered. "You
  see, Mr. Gar-131
  Brian Lumley
  rison has paid for his rooms in advance, and the money is non-returnable, and
  so—"
  "You can let me have the rooms at reduced rates?"
  "Well, I-"
  "Maybe a thirty percent discount?"
  "Now I can't be absolutely specific off the top of my—"
  "Of course not, I understand. Well, Miss, er—?"
  "Just call me Linda. Skymed's Lindos Linda, you see?" She tilted her head and
  smiled sunnily.
  "Of course. Well, Linda, I'd invite you in but behind this door I'm quite
  naked. Can I contact you later? You see, I'll have to get in touch with
  friends of mine in Rhodes. And I really can't make any spur of the moment
  promises. They may have got themselves fixed up by now."
  "Oh, I see," she was a little disappointed. "Well, my office is in—"
  "I know where it is," Black smiled, thinking: go away, you silly bitch! He
  decided to speed her departure. "Listen I know it's early yet, but I have a
  very nice bottle in here and I was just going to make myself a little
  breakfast. If you'd care to, er—?" and he opened the door a fraction wider.
  She got a glimpse of a muscular hairy thigh.
  Black was not a pretty sight. Not any time, but worst of all unshaven and
  after a night's uneven sleep, with whiskey fumes still heavy on his breath.
  The trick worked, as he had known it would.
  Lindos Linda backed off in the face of his leer,
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  her smile becoming falsely fixed, her friendly tour operator manner
  evaporating in a moment. "Thank you, but I've already breakfasted. The early
  bird, you know?"
  "Ah, yes. Pity." He started to close the door.
  "But-"
  Jesus, what now?
  "You're not German. I mean, you know, your name? And I've seen you in the
  village and I thought—"
  "My wife is German," he lied. "I've spent a great many years there." He opened
  his door wider still. "Of course, my wife isn't with me right now, and—" But
  Lindos Linda was already smiling her farewell, backing away into the
  sun-splashed, cobbled village street . . .
  Bert was the "suave" one. He had played his part with his usual efficiency,
  fixing up Garrison's two-man aircrew with booze and birds, worming his way
  into their confidence and along the way acquiring the affections of their
  leggy air hostess. It had been one long party ever since he arrived, and he
  hadn't needed to be too careful about protecting his identity. After all, they
  weren't going to be talking about him. It had been expensive, true, the
  masquerade; but the brothers could afford it on what Carlo Vicenti was paying.
  And anyway, Bert had always liked the good life.
  
  He had played it that way, too: a lucky punter on holiday, looking for
  pleasant company to help him spend his winnings—but not too fast, for he
  wasn't quite used to being rich yet. The
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  Brian Lumley
  crew of Garrison's jet at loose ends and not wishing to blow too much of their
  earnings on the high life, had proved an easy mark. After a day or two Bert
  had mentioned his interest in aircraft, they had fixed it to take him out to
  the airport and see their plane, he had been like a kid with a new toy. Like a
  malicious kid, who pulls the wheels off. Or in this case the guts,
  undercarriage and all the major flight-control cables.
  The device had been small, deadly, something he could carry in his pocket. A
  limpet, armed it would cling to metal. It now clung behind a bulkhead in the
  plane's tiny hold. As yet it did not tick, wouldn't until Bert gave it the
  remote control signal. Which would be as the plane took off. Then—
  Then the bomb would tick away the seconds to disaster. It would tick for one
  hour. And somewhere over the Aegean, midway between Greece and Turkey ...
  The sea was five, six hundred feet deep there; the plane and its
  contents—specifically its human contents—would probably never be found. Bodies
  would decompose, turn to sludge. The plane would rot, crumble away. The sea
  would roll overhead, as it had for half of time, and Carlo Vicenti would be
  very happy. And Joe and Bert Black would have earned their bread.
  Bomber Bert Black rarely dreamed, and he never suffered from nightmares. He
  was a man without a conscience, which was just as well in his line of
  business. Lacking morals, his morale was abnormally high; unlike his brother
  he
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  could wake up happy, at peace with the world. Even on a day when he would
  shatter that peace beyond restructuring—for some.
  This morning he woke up at the buzz of his telephone and lifted the handset
  smoothly from its cradle before it could awaken the girl curled beside him. It
  was Joe on the other end, and the other's tense whisper told Bert all he
  needed to know:
  "They're on their way. The word is they'll fly today."
  "Sure," Bert answered, giving nothing away, taking no chances that the girl
  wasn't really asleep.
  "You can do it?"
  "Yeah, it's done—all but the coup de grace!"
  "Oh, yes? And you still in your hotel? Get your arse down to the airport!"
  "Be cool," Bert grinned into the mouthpiece. He glanced at the girl and she
  snored obligingly. Fast asleep, and little wonder after the night they'd just
  had. "They won't leave without me being there. They can't!"
  "What? Listen, what the hell are you—"
  "Cool, cooH" Bert insisted. "I'll explain later. Just believe me it's all
  fixed, that's all. Hell—I'll be there to wave them goodbye!" He put the phone
  down, cutting off Joe's sputtering.
  Then he turned over, carefully spilled the girl onto her back, gently parted
  her legs and kneeled between them. He was drawing up her
  135
  Brian Lumley
  knees when she awakened and blinked at him sleepily. "Bert? My God! Again?"
  "Hey!" he told her. "It's a beautiful day. If we start it right it'll stay
  right." He eased himself into her. "Enjoy, Baby!"
  And to himself: cop it while you can. Sweetheart. The next guy who takes a
  bite at your sweet little pussy will have gills and ftns and slimy, slimy
  scales!
  "Who were you waving at?" Garrison asked the stewardess when she came into the
  plane's tiny, luxurious lounge after the takeoff. "You were all at the hatch,
  laughing, waving."
  
  "Oh," she smiled, "that was just a friend we met up with in Rhodes, nice chap.
  More money than sense—but, you know, nice."
  "Ah!" Vicki smiled. "Romance on a Greek island, eh?"
  The girl wrinkled her nose. "Well, not exactly. He was pleasant enough, I
  suppose, but—oh, I shouldn't think I'll see him again. Anyway, there was
  something about him." She shrugged. "Good fun, yes, but a bit too calculating
  for my likes. Too cold by far."
  She frowned for a moment, thoughtfully, then smiled. "It helped pass the time.
  Now then, Mr. Garrison, Mrs. Garrison, what can I get you to drink while you
  choose a meal for yourselves?"
  Garrison and Vicki drank a little ice-cold lager, picked at cold meats and
  salad from the limited menu, finished with ice cream, coffee and liqueurs.
  While they ate they talked.
  136
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  "You promised you'd tell me what it was all about," Vicki worriedly pressed
  him when they were alone, dropping the witty, happy attitude she had adopted
  for the benefit of the crew. "Why are we going home, Richard? Why now, halfway
  through our holiday?"
  Garrison gazed out of his window for a moment, sipped lager, used his fork to
  toy with a piece of chicken breast. "Vicki, you remember our conversation the
  other night? Well, now I'm ready to face up to what's wrong. And I'm ready to
  start doing something about it—while there's still time."
  "And is there something you can do about it?" she asked.
  "With a bit of luck, yes. What went wrong was this: I destroyed Psychomech.
  Simple as that. But that's not an end to it. Flo, for I'll build the machine
  again. Or rather, I'll have it built. The man who modified Gareth Wyatt's
  original Psychomech now works for me. If I give him a helping hand—or
  mind—there should be no problem."
  "Mo problem," she nodded and sighed. "But you felt it was sufficiently urgent
  that it couldn't wait." She sighed again. "I really did like Lindos a lot,
  but—"
  "No buts about it, Vicki," he cut her short. "It is urgent. I thought you
  understood that from our conversation the other night. If I told you just how
  urgent I believe it is, then I'm sure it would frighten you—as it frightens
  me."
  "It frightens me anyway," she answered. "The
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  Brian Lumley
  thought of a mind-expanding machine—and you at its mercy!"
  fie chuckled, however mirthlessly. "Psycho-mech wasn't a monster/' he told
  her. "Even if the men who built it were monsters, the machine was . . . just a
  machine. I was at its mercy, yes, but only because I placed myself in
  unscrupulous hands. Anyway, that backfired on the people who would have hurt
  me. Backfired badly!" Again his chuckle. "My multimind was the result, but
  that's all history now. Except. . . I have to do it again. For myself, yes—and
  for you."
  She knew what he meant, could suddenly feel it in her bones. She fed on
  Garrison's power no less than the others, was kept alive by it, and his
  battery was leaking. She shuddered, cringing as her mind conjured once more
  the agony she had known in those tortured days before . . . before she had
  died.
  Remembering, she clutched at Garrison and began to say something. Perhaps she
  had something to say, perhaps not; in any case it went unspoken. One hour had
  gone by since the plane had taken off in Rhodes. They were now out over the
  Aegean, heading for the Yugoslav-Bulgarian border.
  Beneath their feet, down in the little jet's luggage hold, Bomber Bert Black's
  device stopped ticking. An electrical connection was made. The floor jumped as
  from the blow of some mighty hammer, and the plane gave a great shudder in
  answer to a strangely dull, booming explosion.
  
  138
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  Debris flew past the windows as the small craft lurched and shook. Then—
  Like a mortally wounded dragon the jet screamed her agony as her nose tilted
  and she commenced a tight spiral down the sky . . .
  139
  Chapter
  10
  CHARON QUBWA SAT IN HIS STUDY. ALTHOUGH THE metal-walled room was a large one,
  with two great desks and with steel shelves along three of the high walls,
  still the place was cluttered. Its chaotically untidy appearance was, to
  Qubwa, a luxury. In his own eyes his life was very ordered, so tightly ordered
  indeed that a measure of personal imperfection or imbalance was a necessity.
  Books were piled everywhere in apparent disarray, and empty spaces gaped along
  all of the shelves.
  Those books which were in their places, however, displayed Qubwa's passion for
  so-called "fringe" sciences, his consuming interest in that paranormal of
  whose powers a perverse Nature, aided and abetted by the equally perverse
  Science of man, had gifted Qubwa excessively. But quite apart from these there
  were dozens of
  140
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  works offering mute witness to their owner's other leanings. For alongside
  books on parapsychology (mainly volumes concerning telepathy but including
  levitation, prevision, telekinesis and a half-dozen others) there were
  numerous volumes dealing with politics and political doctrines, world
  religions and mythologies, war-its causes and effects—aftermath and survival,
  and a host of biographies of warlords, dictators, kings, emperors and tyrants.
  There were, too, a large number of books concerning themselves with man's
  inhumanity to his fellow man, and bulky treatises on the effects upon human
  beings of narcotics, carcinogens, other poisons, acids and lethal chemicals,
  and radiation.
  A workbench displayed a fantastic array of half-assembled or disassembled
  instruments and gadgets, some of which—intended eventually for Qubwa's
  mind-lab—were or would be tools for the measuring of forces and stresses other
  than those of mass, space and time; and in and about the general clutter stood
  devices of hypnotic or brainwashing natures, ranging from revolving mirrors
  and faceted crystals through common stroboscopes to a small pulse-laser. The
  fourth wall was a melange of large framed photographs depicting sex in all its
  many phases and facets, from simple love through gross indecency to the
  lewdest forms of perversion, sadism and bestiality.
  In short, the study was nothing less than the den or lair of a
  twentieth-century sorcerer; and its magics were not white but black.
  Amongst all of this apparent disorder, the sole
  141
  Brian Lumley
  item kept impeccably tidy was the tall filing cabinet in which Qubwa kept the
  records of his workforce. From this cabinet he had taken a file whose cover
  bore the name: Charles Edwin Jackson. The case was now closed, the file dead
  as its subject. Qubwa felt no sorrow, no regrets, no guilt. Such feelings were
  for fools. He riffled once more through its pages, scowled, tossed it into a
  wastebasket.
  Waste, yes, as everything and everybody must waste in the end. Unless one were
  immortal, of course. Qubwa did not pursue that line of thought; it was one
  which already occupied enough of his time, and time was always a pressing
  matter.
  More than twenty-four hours had gone by since he mind-probed Vicki Maler, and
  they had been busy ones. The Castle's internal security had been shown to have
  loopholes and Qubwa had needed to plug them. The rape of one of his
  mind-guards should not have been possible and that was worrying; it had showed
  
  a weakness in the systems Qubwa employed to make and keep his soldiers
  subservient.
  All of them were addicts to a greater or lesser degree, slaves of the common
  and occasionally not so common drugs available to Qubwa through various
  markets, not all of them had come to him that way, however. But ... their
  complete dependence upon him was his most powerful ally. Dogs were loath to
  bite the hand that fed them.
  Jackson, apparently, had been a dog of a different color! At least until Qubwa
  had looked
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  a little closer at the man's records. Then a previously overlooked pattern had
  become immediately visible.
  First of all, Jackson had been partially resistant to hypnosis. But resistant,
  not immune. There were men who could not be hypnotized (Qubwa had come across
  several in his time), but Jackson was not one of them. His resistance probably
  sprang from a constant battle of wills between himself and his parents during
  his teen years, which had made him not only highly argumentative but also very
  strong-willed and single-minded. There was that in his mind which resisted
  outside interference or "commands" contrary to his nature or natural desires.
  This was present in all men but had been more so in Jackson; an additional
  manifestation of which was his "closeness" of mind, the fact that Qubwa found
  some difficulty in reading his thoughts. Having for so long been obliged to
  hide his feelings and thoughts from his parents, Jackson had developed a real
  resistance to mind-probing.
  Secondly, his metabolism had been erratic: the drug he used would take him in
  a variety of ways, normally Qubwa could keep a fine control over the dosages
  his soldiers required—they could not be allowed to become inoperative through
  their addiction—but again in Jackson's case there had been complications.
  During the last twenty-four hours outside operatives had discovered at least
  one external supplier who had admitted catering to Jackson's needs. And how
  many others? Obviously Jackson had
  143
  Brian Lumley
  "moonlighted," supplementing Qubwa's drug allocation with privately contracted
  and often inferior supplies. This meant, quite simply, that he had made
  himself partly independent of Qubwa's control, had become a rogue in the
  organization.
  Not only was he less likely to listen to Qubwa's hypnotic commands but he
  might well read or translate them to his own advantage. Especially considering
  his ghetto background and upbringing. For instance, Qubwa's orders that his
  soldiers would "do no deliberate wrong outside the Castle" but "live their
  lives normally," and so on. Jackson had never considered it "wrong" to take
  drugs; it had been a way of life in the circles he frequented. And his view of
  "normalcy" was hardly the common one. The ghetto is not a normal place, and it
  has its own "laws of the land." In this connection Jackson could no more be
  said to be contemporary with society's majority than Charon Qubwa himself.
  And finally there had been the simple fact that Jackson was a rapist. This had
  not been proven and Qubwa had not seen fit to follow it up, but in 1979 the
  police had twice connected him with attacks upon women. In enlisting Jackson,
  Qubwa had merely noted this additional warp in the fabric of his psychology,
  this additional appetite to be fed; for it was one which, along with drug
  addiction, must in the end increase Jackson's dependence. Less fortunately, it
  had also increased his unpredictability. Where sex is free and freely given,
  the rapist's violent psychological need becomes starved!
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  And so a lesson learned and Charon Qubwa had no one to blame but himself.
  Indeed he might be seen as more to blame than Jackson. By the simple expedient
  of allowing his soldiers more knowledge of the purpose and nature of the
  
  mind-guards, he might well have avoided the entire incident. In this episode
  the need-to-know basis he usually employed had failed him; for the fact was
  that, in the mentally negative condition in which the mind-guards protected
  him, they were totally susceptible to even the slightest physical movement or
  exertion. Their condition could be compared to a dreamless, mental
  hibernation, when all their brains were capable of was the basic control of
  bodily life-support systems. And they must be allowed simply to sleep the
  condition off and the drug out of their systems. Just as creatures forced from
  hibernation will often die, so, too, Qubwa's mind-guards.
  Fortunately there was in his harem a woman whose drug dependence fast
  approached critical. She was useless now except as a sex surrogate, for even
  her lovernaking was unreal. Well, her fate was decided: she would finish her
  service to Qubwa as a mind-guard, and at the last . . . the pits beneath
  Qubwa's Castle were deep and uncaring. For full fifteen years those pits had
  offered mute, unprotesting service and would continue to do so as long as they
  were needed ...
  The Castle's master stirred himself from his musing. Time was wasting and that
  irritated him. More than twenty-four hours on this one
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  investigation, and important things waiting to be done which could wait no
  longer. Qubwa had set pots boiling all over the world; unless he stirred them
  occasionally his special brew might lose something of its flavor.
  He left his study, passed through the mind-lab, out into the Castle's central
  corridor junction and made for the Command Center in his private quarters. The
  entire route was no more than thirty strides from start to end, but as he went
  Qubwa planned ahead, singling out those garden minds he must once more
  infiltrate, and the seeds he must sow in them.
  Gadaffi, for example. A little pressure there and Qubwa could turn Libya's
  eyes south to Nigeria, Chad and the Sudan. Not too much pressure, however, for
  here there was a fine balance to be maintained. The mind was volatile enough
  without external influences; too sharp a probe might well overbalance the
  whole thing. Better to keep things on the brink; just keep the pot boiling.
  Then there were the generals Chan Tan Ma-sung and Li-pan Dang on the
  Sino-Soviet border. An incident or two there wouldn't go amiss. And it was
  time, too, that France offered Argentina the new Excism III air-to-sea
  missile, with its infallible anti-jamming system. That would give the
  Falklands and the British government something to think about; for of course
  Qubwa would see to it that news of the sale was "leaked" worldwide.
  Nor must he forget the FLO: since Israel's crippling blow against them almost
  a year ago, they
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  had been far too quiet. A gentle squeeze or two— an idea implanted—in the
  minds of the at present low-lying leaders of the organization might just
  succeed in elevating young Ali Zufta into prominence and power overnight! But
  there was a mind to be watched! Qubwa must be careful not to create that which
  might grow beyond the measure of his control. But at the same time it would be
  remiss of him to forego a little mental agitation in certain Israeli
  power-circles . . .
  He reached the Command Center and issued instructions that he was not to be
  disturbed, then took his computer remote and seated himself before the great
  globe.
  Now where to start?
  Qubwa smiled, keyed GLOBE and WASHINGTON DC on the remote. And as the globe
  spun and steadied he fixed his eyes and thoughts firmly on the North American
  capital. In his mind's eye he formed a picture of the White House,
  remote-viewing its inner chambers. The mind he sought was in residence, was .
  . . taking a nap! Preparatory to a busy evening ahead. That was all to the
  good.
  
  Gubwa probed ...
  . . . Dreams of grain, wheat . . . endless conveyor belts carrying countless
  bags of it ... buckets and bushels and tons of it ... golden grain to fill the
  rambling bellies of the USSR . . .
  . . . Peace and goodwill. . . and ice splintering and melting from a glass
  containing cold-war cocktail. . .
  . . . Leaders of nations smiling, shaking hands
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  across a table, embracing . . . their flags side by side on a wall behind them
  . . .
  . . . Money for the farmers, the poor folk . . . work for all . . . peace . .
  . prosperity . . . votes!
  NO! Qubwa insinuated his own thoughts. WOULD YOU FEED THE DEVIOUS BASTARDS AND
  MAKE THEM STRONG ENOUGH TO GO TO WAR WITH YOU? WOULD YOU REALLY BOW TO THE
  DIRT-GRUBBERS, PANDER TO THE WORK-SHY FOR THE SAKE OF A FEW VOTES? AND IN ANY
  CASE, WHO IN HIS RIGHT MIND WOULD VOTE FOR A MAN WEAK AS THAT?
  . . . Chaos! . . . A dream growing into nightmare . . . pictures chasing
  themselves in endless procession . . . grain wasting . . . empty Russian ships
  turned back . . . thin Russian faces . . . hungry children . . . grain again,
  heaped in the docks, rotting, rat-infested . . . chaos and horror!
  NO!—Gubwa pictured a vast iron hand smashing down, destroying the idle
  conveyor belts, scattering mountains of foul grain left and right. He pictured
  Russian factories, workers building missiles; pictured them weakening as they
  exhausted their supplies of food. Missiles rusting in their silos. Armies of
  tanks grinding to a halt on the plains of Europe, their skeleton crews leaving
  them and advancing, arms outstretched, begging for food. A HUNGRY ENEMY IS A
  WEAK ONE!
  . . . A weak enemy. . . Cossacks falling from their mounts . . . Mongol hordes
  throwing down their weapons, their arms too weak to carry them. . .
  STARVE THE BASTARDS!
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  And again: STARVE THEM!
  Yet again: STARVE THEM!
  . . . A world map, Russia and its satellites in relief, packed with a sea of
  gaunt, hollow-eyed, starving faces . . .
  AND ONLY FEED THEM IN YOUR OWN GOOD TIME—WHEN THEY COME TO YOU ON THEIR KNEES!
  . . . The All-Giver handing out food to a silently bowed multitude . . . the
  USSR, the entire world on its knees, praising the great, the mighty, the
  almighty America, A-m-e-r-i-c-a!. . .
  . . . The Star-Spangled Banner . . . the White House. ...
  . . . Retreating now in the mind's eye of Charon Gubwa. He opened his eyes,
  sighed, smiled.
  Good! Very good!
  Now then, in Moscow the time would be, oh, early morning. Very well, now would
  be as good a time as any to see what he was up to. Gubwa keyed GLOBE, MOSCOW
  into the remote, his mind seeking the Kremlin, his eyes narrowing as the
  suspended sphere reacted to meet his requirement ...
  The plane spiralled down out of the sky like a lazily falling autumn leaf, or
  a great silver moth singed by the candle sun. Ten seconds had passed since the
  explosion. Inside, the floor tilted at forty-five degrees and G-force held
  Garrison and Vicki together, crushed to each other and to the curving wall
  beside Garrison's seat and window. The engines had stopped, their howl
  replaced by the whispering hiss of sliced
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  Brian Lumley
  air. Cabin pressure had somehow been maintained but the main controls were
  gone. The situation was hopeless; the spiral was tightening as the angle of
  descent increased.
  
  Forward, the door to the cockpit slammed back on its hinges and a moment later
  the hostess staggered through billowing curtains, literally dragging herself
  or climbing up the length of the small lounge. Blood poured from her nose. Her
  eyes were wide, bright in a face filled with fear. "Going down!" she
  needlessly gasped.
  Garrison half-pushed, half-levered Vicki back into her own seat, said: "How
  bad is it?"
  Before she could answer he had read her mind. Very bad. She was totally
  panicked, a mind full of chaos and thoughts of imminent death. And yet her
  training had brought her back here, an automaton working only to the book.
  "Your seat belts," she gasped, and: "—life jackets . . ."
  Garrison shot his probe past her into the cockpit. The co-pilot's mind was
  blank, unconscious. He must have banged his head. The pilot was fighting with
  the controls, knowing he must fail but still desperately trying to command
  some sort of response from the crippled aircraft. A frightened man who knew he
  was going to die. But brave.
  Garrison probed deeper:
  Abombabloodybombabloodybomb, over and over again. And,
  Nohopenohopenohopenohope-nohopel And, Bombnohopebombnohopebomb-nohope! And,
  Shitshitshltshitshitshitshttshitshit!
  Garrison spoke in the pilot's mind: THERE IS HOPE, and was at once denied:
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  Nononononononononono!
  HAVE FAITH!
  Faith? It was as if the man had suddenly realized it was not his own voice he
  heard in his head but that of some other. Even above his fear and horror
  Garrison could now sense awe in him. The man was Catholic, deeply religious, a
  believer.
  FAITH! he repeated. FLY HER.
  Can'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan't! She'scrippledcrippled crippledcrippledcrippled!
  Garrison knew he could save himself. And he could probably save Vicki.
  Teleportation. He could get them out of the plane, set them down on terra
  firma somewhere, anywhere. But—
  —What about these people?
  And just how much power could he muster? What if he was wrong? And anyway—damn
  it to helll—he couldn't just leave them to die. But if they were to be saved
  he needed the pilot's help, needed his faith.
  IT IS nOT YOUR TIME, MY SON, he told him.
  MyQodGodGodQodGod! The pilot's hands worked at the controls. Garrison lifted
  with his mind. Levitation. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, gripped the
  plane, levelled out its plunge.
  My God! Adrenalin ebbed a little in the pilot's system. His hands shook—but
  the plane seemed to be answering the controls! My great heavenly merciful. . .
  God—!
  CORRECT YOUR COURSE, said Garrison.
  Yes, oh yes! Yes, yes, oh yes!
  Garrison kept his eyes closed, his mind tightly in control, and spoke to the
  girl. "We seem to
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  have levelled out. The pilot will need you. If only to make coffee."
  She blinked at him, gave him a silly grin, giggled hysterically, then spat,
  "Coffee!" Her sudden laughter was a cackle. "Fucking coffeel" she laughed. And
  again: "Holy fucking mother of ... coffee!" Terror had almost robbed her of
  her senses. Tears were in her eyes, her face a mad white mask stained with
  blood from her still dripping nose.
  "Coffee, yes," said Vicki, standing up and slapping the girl's face, almost
  knocking her from her feet.
  The blow stung some sense back into her. She held her face as hot tears
  
  gushed, more freely now, before turning and stumbling back towards the
  cockpit.
  Vicki fastened Garrison's seat belt, half-collapsed into her seat and fastened
  her own. She knew Garrison was doing this—saving all their lives—knew it and
  dared do nothing which might interfere.
  LIFT HER UP, Garrison told the pilot. TAKE HER UP TO HER NORMAL ALTITUDE.
  No power! Ho engines! Impossible! the pilot was crying, tears streaming down
  his face. He was talking to God!
  FAITH!
  The plane began to climb. Powerless, she flew higher, her wings slicing the
  wind.
  "Vicki," Garrison gasped from between clenched teeth. "I need your help."
  "Richard, what can—?"
  "Tio, don't touch me!" he shrank back as she
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  leaned across. "Just. . . liftl Will the plane to fly, to keep on flying.
  Repeat over and over to yourself these words: we'll make it, we'll make it,
  we'll make it. Repeat them and believe them."
  Vicki took a deep breath, sat back and closed her eyes. She clenched her
  fists. We'll make it, we'll make it, we'll make It...
  The co-pilot was coming out of it. Garrison probed him. WAKE UP. WE NEED YOUR
  HELP. WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT. WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT!
  Garrison cut the probe and groaned. He could feel his mind beginning to
  buckle. It wasn't strong enough. He needed help. Much more help. He felt
  himself beginning to slip, to slide, to fall.
  It was as if he fell into a great hole in the earth, a chasm. But even as he
  rushed down into blackness, others were released to finish what he had
  started. His mind split. The Garrison facet receded, but the other facets
  surfaced, were free!
  Garrison's body slumped in its seat, his face pale as death, his hands
  twitching. The body was useless now, except as a shell, a house for three
  minds. Two of these were now free to fly the plane, but Garrison himself—
  —He fought a Different battle, flew a different machine. The machine.
  Psychomech. Except Psy-chomech wasn't flying but plunging to destruction!
  "Liar!" Garrison's yell drowned out Suzy's
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  howling. "Liar, Schroeder, liar!" But Schroeder was gone and still the Machine
  plunged.
  Garrison hung on for dear life—or death?—and bared his teeth in the rush of
  frigid air from the depths below; and behind him the bitch clung to his back,
  her fear no less than his own. And suddenly, from nowhere—like a cold cloak
  thrown upon him by some unseen hand—there was a chilly calmness, a clearness
  of mind, a feeling which went beyond fear. A desire to know whose design this
  was, whose hand had brought him to this end.
  Who was it down there, down in the depths and the darkness, whose magnet mind
  drew him like a meteorite falling from the night sky? Oh, yes, for someone had
  engineered this, be sure of it! This was the work of some dire enemy—perhaps
  one of those enemies spied in the pit of the wizards! But which one? Garrison
  must find out. His magic was weak now, true, but not so weak he didn't feel
  the urge to fight back. He must at least try to fight back.
  Garrison sent his mind winging back, back to his dream within a dream. He sat
  once more in the circle of wizards, and he gazed once more upon them where
  they cast their strange runes and made their dark magics. And one he saw whose
  face he knew at once: a dark face and greedy, belonging to a swarthy wizard
  whose immaculate attire could not conceal the evil that lurked within.
  He shuffled cards and occasionally spun a small roulette wheel which he held
  between his crossed legs, this one, and his eyes smouldered
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  with hatred where they stared unblinkingly at the tiny Garrison-figure in the
  crystal ball.
  And sure enough the Garrison in the shew-stone rode a tiny Psychomech, and man
  and Machine and dog all plunging to their doom in a lightless chasm. And now
  Garrison knew that this was the one!
  Still falling and knowing the fall soon must end, Garrison quit his useless,
  ineffective levitating and drew his powers in. He wrapped them about himself
  as a man wraps a robe—or coils a whip! He reached out his mind into another
  world, another place—the pit of the wizards—and hurled his energies in one
  final blast full in the face of the wizard with the cards and the wheel...
  It was business as usual for Carlo Vicenti, and as usual his business was
  dirty. A thoroughly dirty game. His Knightsbridge penthouse flat was the
  venue; two of his boys' were bit-part players; the star performer was one of
  Vicenti's girls, caught once too often taking too much of the ante. She had a
  lesson to learn, as all of them did at least once in their short working
  lives, and Vicenti was just the one to teach her.
  Now she was held down in a straight-backed dining chair, Fatso Facello on one
  side and Toni Murelli on the other. They had torn her dress down the front and
  jerked up her brassiere, so that her normally proud breasts were forced down a
  little beneath the black material of the bra and made to bulge. Vicenti
  considered all women cows to be milked dry; and now, the way this little
  tramp's udders flopped there—swollen
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  Brian Lumley
  and bruised by the rough handling of his thugs, who'd taken turns with her on
  the thick pile carpet for a warmup—they only served to affirm his conviction.
  "Mary," said Vicenti almost genially, waving his thin cigar in the air in an
  expansive gesture as he drew up a second chair in front of her and hung his
  arms lazily over its back, "you have given me problems. Things to think about.
  Fiow this I don't like. Smooth operations I like. Girls doing as they're told
  I like. Whores making money and taking their cut, I like. But taking my cut,
  too—or not even telling me there's a cut to take—this I really do not like!"
  His voice had hardened. "Wot one little bit do I like it ..." He reached out,
  caught up her bra in one tight fist and wrenched it from her. Its elastic had
  left a horizontal groove in the flesh of her breasts two inches above her
  small nipples, just over the rim of her large, prominent areolas.
  Scared to death, the girl panted. She was blonde, young—no more than twenty,
  twenty-one years old—and the perspiration of panic and terror gleamed on her
  face. She would normally be pretty, but now her eyes were bright darting
  pinpoints in the bloodless face of a trapped animal. Vicenti thought: why is
  it that when they're scared they always look so ugly?
  Finally she gabbled out: "They were just a few spare tricks, Mr. Vicenti,
  honest! And in my own time ..."
  He gave a short, harshly barking laugh, which was echoed by amused grunts from
  the thugs holding her down. "Your own time? Hey—your
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  time's my time, little woman. Didn't anyone ever tell you anything? And my
  time you've been wasting."
  "But I didn't-"
  "But you did!" He leaned forward, tilting his chair. "Wow listen and I'll tell
  you how it's going to be. You've maybe been working too hard and got kind of
  confused, forgot your loyalties. You know? So ... see, I'm a nice guy really.
  What I'll do is this: I'll give you a couple of weeks off. A holiday. Wo work.
  Of course that also means no money, but you'll get by on what you got stashed.
  And just to make sure you don't work—" he drew deeply on his cigar, blew the
  white crust of ash from its glowing tip, reached it towards her breasts.
  "No, Mr. Vicenti, no! Please don't mark me! Please!" She cowered down, then
  tried to surge upright. Facello and Murelli grunted as they tightened their
  
  grip, holding her rigidly immobile.
  "See," Vicenti said again, almost conversationally, "there's not too many guys
  will suck on scabby tits. You know, they get to wondering how they got that
  way. They think, you know, maybe she has a bad case, eh?" He reached out his
  free hand, pinched her left nipple until it stuck out between his thumb and
  forefinger, brought the hot tip of the cigar closer.
  What happened then was too fast and too fantastic for Vicenti, Facello or
  Murelli to follow. The girl, half-fainting, her eyes shut in a face
  death-white and quaking, didn't even see it.
  Vicenti seemed suddenly to squash down into
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  Brian Lumley
  himself, as if someone had placed a massive unseen weight upon his shoulders.
  He crashed through the debris of his splintering chair and slammed against the
  floor. He didn't cry out, had no air left in him for that; and even as his
  soldiers let go the girl and went to help him he was lifted up away from them
  and hurled against the wall. Fortunately for him the wall was of soft-board on
  thin timbers, more a fancy partition than a true wall, with tiny shelves for
  expensive knick-knacks and odds-and-ends. Fortunately because it gave beneath
  his weight caving in on him as he went through it. Then—
  —For a moment it was as if a howling wind filled the room. Curtains flapped
  angrily and magazines were scattered in the rush of frenzied air; pictures
  rocked crazily where they hung on the walls; doors and windows slammed and
  small ornaments fell from shelves. In all it lasted no longer than three or
  four seconds. Then the winds were gone, and in their place . . . silence!
  Vicenti lay groaning, barely conscious, half-in, half-out of the wall's
  debris. His soldiers crept towards him, eyes wide, mouths agape, unable to
  take it in.
  The girl, seeing her chances, bunched up the tatters of her dress in front of
  her chest and fled the room. Facello and Murelli may have heard her go but
  they made no move to stop her.
  "Boss—?" Murelli croaked, shocked almost dumb where he kneeled beside his
  hoodlum master.
  "Get me . . . uhl ... a doctor," Vicenti told him. "And , . .later . . . you
  can pick up those
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  . . . uhl . . . sons of bitches, the Black brothers. Jesus, I want to see . .
  . uhl . . . those bastards! They were supposed to . . . uhl . . .kill the guy,
  not him kill me!"
  "Guy?" Murelli turned bewildered eyes upon the gaping Facello and shrugged
  questioningly. Obviously Vicenti had banged his head. He wasn't making much
  sense. "What guy, Boss?"
  Vicenti coughed and tried to lie still. He didn't know which part of him hurt
  the most. "What guy?" he managed to reply. "You have to be kidding! Are you
  ... uh! ... blind, you two? Didn't you even . . . uhl . . . see him?"
  "Who, Boss, who?" Facello kneeled beside Murelli and stuck his fat, scarred
  pig's face close. "Who do you mean, eh?"
  "Uhl . . . Garrison, that's who! You two . . . uhl . . . you didn't even see
  him? Idiots! I don't know . . . uhl . . . how he got in here or what he ...
  uhl ... hit me with. But—oh, God! Get me a fucking doctor, will you?—but it
  was . . . uhl . . . him OK. Yeah."
  And with that he lay back his head and let the pain roll over him, bearing him
  swiftly away upon a dark red cloud of unconsciousness . . .
  Garrison hurled his bolt of ESP-energy—and in his mind's eye he saw the wizard
  struck and hurled back from the satanic circle. But—no time to stay and savor
  the event. No time to wait and see if this wizard lived or died. Time merely
  for a ftnal glance at the shewstone before returning his mind to the plunging
  Machine. One glance . . . but sufficient to tell him all he needed to know.
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  Brian Lumley
  For in the shewstone the toy Machine's monstrous descent was halted and a
  tiny, triumphant Garrison stood upon its back, howling his victory, shaking
  his fists and beating his breast!
  Garrison thrust the vision away, returned his mind to the Here, the Now, the
  Chasm and the Plunge. And ...
  . . . The wind no longer howled past his head, Psychomech no longer plunged,
  Suzy no longer yelped her terror but licked his ear and whined worriedly. The
  Machine stood still upon the air, held there by Garrison's power returned. And
  if he had stepped down from the Machine, then he could have stood upon the
  chasm's boulder-strewn floor.
  That close!
  He did not step down but stood up, stood tall upon the Machine's broad back
  and howled his victory and shook his fist—behaving even as the tiny Garrison
  in the crystal had behaved—and Suzu's sardonic baying gave strength to his
  own, until the chasm rang to the echoes of their laughter.
  Then, upward to the narrow crack of star-scattered sky which was the great
  rift's mouth. Garrison rode the Machine. Upward and outward, and away upon his
  quest. . .
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  Chapter
  11
  THE MEETiriQ WAS OF TEN MEN; IF MOT THE MOST IM-portant or influential men in
  the British Isles, certainly their representatives. It had been convened
  secretly, through government channels, and its Chairman was the head of an
  obscure branch of the Secret Service. Obscure in the sense that it dealt with
  "obscurities," current jargon for tasks which were too intricate, problematic,
  sensitive or bloody for the talents and tastes of its contemporaries. -
  The Chairman was an extremely tall, slim man whose high-domed head and shifty,
  piercing blue eyes spoke of a foxy intelligence. His hands were very long,
  delicate and fragile-looking, as were his features, but there was nothing
  fragile about his mind. That was a steel trap.
  Of the others gathered about the long, polished table: with the sole exception
  of a small
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  Brian Lumley
  and wiry yellow man, they were white, in the main British or of European
  extraction. Their fields were Finance (mainly banking), Mineral Rights and
  Mining (oil, gold and diamonds, etc.), Transport (shipping and airlines),
  Telecommunications (including computers), Weapons (the manufacture, sale and
  control of such), and Espionage (on a more general or at least more easily
  recognizable level than that of The Chairman, namely MI6.) There was also an
  Official Observer, governmental of course, and finally a Man from the Inland
  Reserve.
  MI6 had brought someone along for the ride, his aide, apparently: a silent,
  gray-eyed, stony-calm wedge of a man whose movements, despite their almost
  robotic precision, were remarkably adroit, hinting at great speed, strength
  and coordination. He sat back a little from the table, unobtrusively reading
  from (or writing in) a file which lay open in his lap.
  Some of those about the table knew each other, however vaguely, or knew of
  each other, but in the main they were strangers and in other circumstances
  might be more than a little cagey. Though their interest was a common one,
  still they made strange bedfellows.
  The object of the meeting was that which formed this common bond amongst them,
  making friends or conspirators—for the moment, at least—of otherwise potential
  antagonists. The venue was The Chairman's country house not far from Sutton,
  Surrey, and the meeting was set to commence at 2 P.M. on an early June day. Mo
  one had been late.
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  
  "Gentlemen," The Chairman rose to his feet when all were settled down, "thank
  you for being here and for your punctuality. I'll try not to waste your time
  but get straight to the point. When this, er, get-together was planned some
  months ago it was not projected as an extraordinary meeting but more an
  overview from which to glean essential facts upon which to act—" he shrugged,
  "—in whichever ways were considered necessary. In short, while a problem was
  foreseen, it was not yet known quite what we were dealing with. And . . .
  we're still not sure." He paused, looked around the table at each face
  individually, and finally continued in his dry, well-modulated voice:
  "Since then continued investigation has lent the matter a deal more urgency,
  so that we must now consider the subject extraordinary as stated, but with a
  definite emphasis on extra! All of you, with the exception of—" he almost said
  "our Oriental friend," but at the last second checked himself, merely
  including his head in the Chinaman's direction and receiving a similar
  acknowledgement, "—who has his own sources, were furnished with brief details
  from which to prepare your own points'of information. The findings of your
  preliminary or subsequent investigations are what now bring us together to
  discuss—again as an overview, but with more positive action in mind—the very
  serious nature of the, er, possible disruption?" Again he paused.
  While his opening address had been couched in terms which must surely mystify
  any unin-
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  formed observer, the circle of faces meeting his own showed no sign of
  misunderstanding or misinterpretation. Each and every one of them knew what he
  was talking about.
  "To be more specific," he eventually went on, "the problem quite simply is a
  man. A very strange, immensely talented, highly enigmatic and incredibly rich
  man. His name, as you are all aware, is Richard Garrison." The assembled
  personages stirred. Someone cleared his throat. Another shuffled his feet.
  "Yes," The Chairman nodded, "you all know his name well enough. Individually.
  But perhaps as a group you are not aware of the interactions of his ...
  influence? His influence, that is, in so many—and such diverse—spheres.
  Perhaps the Bank of England would like to start us off?"
  As The Chairman sat down, B of E (or Finance), a stocky, middle-aged man of
  medium height whose small-lensed spectacles and jutting jaw gave him a sort of
  aggressively fishy, pike-like look, stood up. "Wine years ago, ahem!" he
  began, "Mr. Garrison was a customer of ours. A fairly important, respected
  customer—ahem! That is to say we held—er, you understand I am not at liberty
  to disclose actual figures—some ahem, millions of pounds of his money in cash,
  disposable assets and various investments. A lot of money for one man, yes,
  but a mere drop in the overall financial ocean. Recently, however . . . well,
  things have changed somewhat. In fact" they have changed a great deal." He
  paused to take out a handkerchief and wipe his suddenly perspiring brow.
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  "To illustrate my point I might say that if Mr. Garrison, ahem, were to
  withdraw or transfer his cash—his cash alone, you understand—then there could
  be problems. The 'drop in the ocean,' you see, has become a bucketful, indeed
  a lake! Oh, we could cover it, of course, but even the B of E might have to
  call on certain reserves . . ." He paused again to let that sink in, though no
  one at the table seemed in the least surprised.
  "A little over a month ago," B of E continued, "acting on rather special
  instructions, I contacted friends in Switzerland to confirm their backing in
  the event of just such a massive withdrawal or conversion. This had become
  necessary when, in the space of just a few weeks, Mr. Garrison had added,
  ahem, considerably to his account. Various deposits totalled half as much
  again as his original holdings.
  "Well, as a result of consultations in Zurich, it came to my knowledge—and of
  course this is in the strictest confidence—that Garrison's accounts abroad,
  
  ahem, make his British holdings seem a pittance by comparison!" The sweat was
  heavy on his brow now and he had stopped wiping it. "In fact, gentlemen, he is
  capable of moving millions about like you and I might move pieces in a game of
  chess, but far more devas-tatingly—ahem! And he never loses a piece!
  "Before we sat down at this table I took the opportunity to speak to an
  acquaintance of mine whose interests also are financial. Perhaps he would care
  to enlarge upon what I have said?" He carefully sat down, his eyes steady upon
  165
  Brian Lumley
  those of a red-haired, very fat and florid man seated opposite.
  As Financial Friend heaved wheezingly to his feet the general consensus of
  opinion taken from those seated about the table would have been that if
  overeating didn't get him, pressure of work would. And at least half of those
  present would not have minded that at all. Financial Friend was from the
  Inland Revenue, and he was not in the right job. His shirt and jacket were far
  too tight, and when he spoke his voice was far too highly pitched:
  "Gentlemen," he wheezed pufflly, "Mr. Garrison pays his taxes—some of them,
  anyway. He pays an awful lot. He would pay a great deal more except that he
  has the very best accountants in the land, possibly in the world, working for
  him. That is no exaggeration: I suspect that he pays them more than he pays
  us! What he does pay us is . . ." he shook his head and blinked his eyes
  rapidly in an expression of astonishment, "is an awesome figure! 1 believe
  that someone once said of The Beatles, that if we had another ten equally
  successful groups, then we could abolish, income tax for the masses. That was
  an exaggeration, of course, but if said of our Mr. Garrison it would be much
  more literally true! Awesome, yes, and yet—as has already been said in
  connection with him— a mere drop in the ocean. In Garrison's ocean, that is!
  And getting hold of even that drop might well be likened to squeezing blood
  from a stone ...
  "I only wish there was a way—and you may
  166
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  believe me when I say we are working at it—of getting hold of some of the
  taxes we're sure he has avoided paying. That's all . . ." He continued to
  wheeze for a few moments more, then collapsed flabbily into his seat.
  The Chairman at once rose and took up the thread; redirecting the meeting's
  course:
  "Of course, gentlemen, we must be careful not to allow ourselves to dwell too
  deeply on Mr. Garrison's considerable—or should we say incredible—wealth, nor
  upon his attachment to it, which is only natural. Some might even say
  laudable. How he got it might be much more illuminating, for quite frankly his
  roots were only very austere. In fact only a little over ten years ago he was
  a Corporal serving in the Royal Military Police. And he might still be a
  member of that estimable Corps if a terrorist bomb had not blinded him in
  Belfast. After that ..." and he went quickly on to vaguely outline something
  of Garrison's relationship with Thomas Schroeder, and of the benefits he had
  acquired upon the German industrialist's death. In all he was on his feet for
  some twelve minutes, after which he was glad to sit down again and hand over
  to MI6.
  Intelligence was not at all typical, in no way a stereotype. Small, grubby,
  with badly bitten fingernails and unevenly cropped sandy hair, he more readily
  portrayed a sleepless, bankrupt greengrocer. Only when he spoke did it become
  apparent that his appearance was a front. His voice was clear and cutting, his
  sentences short and void of the usual security or police jargon. He gave the
  impression, too, that he would have
  167
  Brian Lumley
  been delighted to avoid the use of the word "alleged," but that in Garrison's
  case such was quite impossible.
  "Gents, the implication of this meeting is that Garrison's a crook. By crook I
  
  mean a criminal, local or international or both. Well, if he is then he's the
  cleverest of them all. Put it this way: he's off and running and already
  overtaken the hare! He's so far ahead we don't have a hope in hell of catching
  him. Not yet. But . . . if he is a crook then he'll make a mistake. They all
  do sooner or later.
  "Okay, let's assume he is. First of all I'll tell you what he's not
  into—simply because we don't yet know what he Is into! He's not into gambling,
  even though he owns a big slice of a London casino. That's not to say he
  doesn't gamble; he does, and phenomenally well. But there's no legislation
  against a man's good luck. He doesn't organize gambling, that's all. He's not
  into drugs; he doesn't use them or push them. He's not into sex—vice, that is.
  Oh, he occasionally fools around with a couple of high-class ladies, and he
  has a regular ride in the city—that is to say a mistress, a kept woman—but his
  heart would seem to belong to the woman he lives with, one Vicki Maler, an
  alleged German national. Actually, we don't quite know what to make of her.
  Her case is as weird as his, maybe weirder, but I'll explain that in a moment
  . . .
  "Right, so we can strike narcotics, prostitution and gambling. He is not into
  the protection rackets, not into smuggling or gunrunning or fraud. Not that we
  can discover, anyway. He has
  168
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  no big deals going with any known crime syndicate, here or abroad. Which means
  we can also strike the Mafia, extortion, etc." He paused and sighed.
  "Garrison would appear, therefore, to be on the up and up, honest as the day
  is long. Well, maybe not too honest. Inland Revenue doesn't like him because
  he dodges," he shrugged. "But if that's a crime we're a nation of criminals!
  So what are we left with?
  "He doesn't mug old ladies, doesn't even spit on the pavement. A thief? A
  terrorist? That isn't even in his nature! He's an ex-cop, albeit a military
  cop. So, to echo our Chairman's question, where did he get his money?
  "You'd think we'd have trouble finding out, eh? Well, we had a little trouble,
  but not a lot. In fact as soon as we stopped hunting haggis and began to
  accept the facts at face value it was easy. Everything he has is legitimate!
  Everything!" MI6 glanced out of the corner of his eye at Inland Revenue. "With
  the possible exception of what he is alleged to owe certain parties in certain
  quarters ...
  "So why has it taken us so long to discover he's legitimate?" Again he
  shrugged. "Easy. How can any guy with that kind of money be legitimate? Is it
  possible?
  "Well, it would certainly appear to be—but not without a few mildly disturbing
  discrepancies, ambiguities and anomalies. Let me explain:
  "I said Garrison isn't a racketeer or terrorist. That seems to be true
  enough—but there do appear to be tenuous links. As you already know
  169
  Brian Lumley
  he was blinded by a terrorist bomb. IRA, Belfast 1972. Mow let me make a point
  here and say he is officially blind. I've seen the records. Army records,
  medical records, the lot. Permanently blind." He stood nodding his head for a
  moment, knuckles on the table. "Blind, yes . . . but I'll come back to that.
  "Two years ago the IRA were after him again. At least that's the way it looks.
  A London-based Irishman with old IRA coSinections tried to kill him. Something
  went wrong. The Faddy blew himself to bits instead. That sort of thing
  happens. But leave it for the moment.
  "Then there's a much more sinister sort of organization called Nazism. Thomas
  Schroeder was an ex-SS Colonel. That's not strange—a great many of their top
  ranks were set free and lots of them still occupy positions of power. Contrary
  to popular belief, they weren't all villains. Schroeder, so far as we know,
  wasn't a villain. Or he was, but not in the usual poisonous, Jew-killing sort
  of way. Anyway, he wasn't taking any chances. He never was brought to tria!.
  
  Him and a young SS-Scharfuhrer called Wilhem Klinke^-later Willy
  Koenig—knocked over a truckload of SS bullion and disappeared with it,
  probably into Switzerland but we don't know that for sure. We don't know that
  they stole the gold, but it seems a fair bet. That was towards the end,
  February 1945.
  "When Schroeder died some ten years ago Koenig went to work for Garrison. For
  some reason known only to himself, the old Colonel not only made sure his
  money was transferred to Garri-
  170
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  son but also his main man. So, a link, however tenuous, with Nazism.
  "And another link is a guy called Qareth Wy-att. Wyatt was a doctor, a
  psychiatrist whom many supposed to be a quack. Certain parties tried to tie
  him in with a British escape route for the type of Nazis who were villains.
  "Well, when the IRA had their second bash at Garrison, they also had a go at
  Wyatt. We don't know why, except that Garrison had been undergoing treatment
  at Wyatt's place. The psychiatrist had a house in Sussex. 1 say he had a
  house, because when the IRA or whoever were finished there was no more house.
  They took it out. They also took out Wyatt and Garrison's wife. That is to
  say, the two died in the explosion—if it was an explosion . . ." He paused and
  frowned.
  "Mow this is a funny thing. Funny peculiar, not ha-ha. Wyatt's house was big
  and old, your old country home sort of place in its own grounds, much like
  this one. Just what happened there— what really happened—will never be known.
  But the house isn't there anymore. Mot a brick. The grass grows green over the
  place where it stood. Underneath—" he shrugged, "the foundations are fused
  like blast furnace slag!
  "Anyway, about the same time we also have the disappearance of Willy Koenig.
  Not dead, no, simply . . . let's say 'retired.' Where to, who knows? But
  definitely not dead. Koenig is a very rich man in his own right, as well you
  might expect if you remember the SS gold, and he still makes good use of his
  money. A lot of it is tied
  171
  Brian Lumley
  up with Garrison's. But 'disappeared' is certainly the right word because no
  one seems to know where he is. He simply isn't seen anymore . . .
  "Let's go back to Garrison's blindness. To put the record straight, and no
  matter what the old medical records say, Garrison is not blind! He hasn't been
  for at least two years, since about the same time as his wife and Wyatt got
  hit. One theory in my branch is that his blindness was psychosomatic, and that
  Wyatt was treating him and was successful. That might also explain the link
  between them. Anyway he was blind, isn't now, but continues to wear a pair of
  blind-man specs. So does the new woman in his life, this Vicki Maler,
  "Plow for a long time, apparently, Garrison has had dealings with a German
  firm of oculists—or not exactly oculists but specialists in mechanical aids to
  sight. This firm supplied him with a lot of expensive equipment when he really
  was blind. Their latest job for him is the manufacture of several sets of
  contact lenses, for both him and Vicki Maler. But these are to be very special
  lenses. Contact lenses to let light in but not out! Like one-way windows. He
  wants to be able to see things without his eyes being seen. Okay, but surely
  ordinary contact lenses would suffice? Or again, maybe it's a special
  condition of his eyes." He paused, stood for a moment longer, said: "A break,
  I think, gents. You'll excuse me but I'd like a cigarette; also I'd like to
  sit a while. Would you mind if I carry on seated and smoking?"
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  No one minded. All of them were fascinated. MI6 sat, produced cigarettes, lit
  one and relaxed a little in his chair before continuing. "Okay, we were
  talking about special conditions, anomalies and such. Garrison's lady, Vicki
  Maler, is just such an anomaly. She's in the process of becoming British but
  
  holds a German passport which says she was born in 1947. That would make her
  thirty-six years old but she looks ten years younger than that. Red hair,
  elfin features, lovely figure—beautiful!
  "They travel a fair bit, Garrison and the woman, and they use airports. Her
  passport has been checked out—discreetly. It's genuine and was issued in
  Hamburg in 1960 when she was thirteen. The only thing is—" he paused, cleared
  his throat and looked at the faces watching him, "—that the Vicki Maler the
  passport was issued to died in 1974! Oh, and one other thing. She, too, was
  blind ...
  "Fine, so for some unknown reason Garrison's woman has 'assumed' an identity
  other than her real one ... Or has she? Well, here are a couple of pretty
  macabre facts for you:
  "One—in the early summer of 1974 the body of one Vicki Maler was placed in
  so-called 'cryogenic suspension' at Schloss Zonigen in the Swiss Alps.
  "Two—this was done on the posthumous instructions of Thomas Schroeder, dead
  since '73 ...
  "And three—two years ago that same Vicki Maler's frozen remains disappeared
  right out of the Schloss!
  173
  Brian Lumley
  "As for the Swiss authorities: well they've neatly tied the who'e thing up and
  buried it— and I can't say I blame them. One thing, however, is very definite:
  Vicki Maler's name has been lifted from the register. That is to say, not only
  is there no longer a corpse answering to her description in the fridge, but
  the records say there never was one.
  "Now, there's a lot more about Garrison that we know, some of it very
  interesting, some not so interesting. 1 don't propose to bore you with trivia,
  and there are those of you yet to have your say. But there are two more things
  of major importance. One is Garrison's money, its source. It wasn't easy to
  dig up all the facts out of their various crevices, and there's doubtless a
  lot we've missed, but most of his bedrock resources—his bulk cash and
  holdings—all came his way at that same time two years ago. Through Thomas
  Schroeder. now Schroeder had been dead since 1973, but he'd left his executors
  with clear and foolproof instructions. Garrison got the lot.
  "Next, I said he didn't control gambling. That's true. But he does—or
  did—gamble. Not so much now, not at all that I know of, but he did. This was
  something else that started two years ago. In fact for a period of something
  like four months, shortly after the Wyatt business, he seems to have done
  little else. And very successfully.
  "He hit just about every major football pools syndicate in the world—eighteen
  of them in all, top wins that is—and jackpots every time! But
  174
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  never with any publicity. We were called in by Littlewoods to see how he was
  fiddling it. He wasn't. But we stuck to him anyway, and what that led us to
  was literally unbelievable. Gents, when Garrison gambles he doesn't lose.
  Ever! He doesn't even come close to losing!
  "Under various pseudonyms he reduced almost every major bookmaker and gambling
  consortium in Great Britain to near-bankruptcy. He did the same in the world's
  greatest casinos, some of the smaller ones, too—and finally he took Las Vegas.
  And he took Las Vegas like no one ever took it before. So well that overnight
  he went to Number One on the Mafia hit list! Except that when they got around
  to it there was no one to hit. He'd simply disappeared, moved on with money
  and credits totalling some twenty-seven million dollars!
  "And all of this done more or less openly, with only a minimum of effort to
  cover his tracks, as if he had absolutely nothing to fear. And why not? For as
  an honest, upright member of society what would he have to fear?
  "Oh, he went to Vegas in a sort of disguise, with a retinue of his staff also
  disguised—but can you blame him? My guess is he knew he would clean up, knew
  it for a certainty, and when it was over he simply desired to fade out of
  
  sight—which is what he did. Since then he hasn't gambled a penny. It's as if
  it was something he wanted to try—a system, maybe, or just something in his
  blood—and having got it out of himself he lost all interest in it. Crazy!"
  He sat shaking his head, lit a second ciga-
  175
  Brian Lumley
  rette, finally looked up. "That's me finished. My branch is still on Garrison,
  of course, but at a distance. We don't intend to harass him, and I'm pretty
  sure we won't get anything on him. He's clean ...
  "One very last thing: I think you'll discover pretty soon, when the rest of
  you have had a chance to speak, that we've all of us underestimated Garrison.
  It's just a feeling I have, that's all."
  "Underestimated?" The Chairman was on his feet again. "Will MI6 take a moment
  more to explain?"
  MI6 nodded. "Okay. I think that if we could really see Garrison, all of him—I
  mean if we could really get under his skin—we'd find we're fooling about with
  one of the most powerful men in the world. Powerful in just about any way you
  care to mention. And barring any accident, any deterioration in his health,
  shall we say, I think he's destined to be the most powerful very shortly."
  Mo one spoke. After a moment The Chairman said, "Thank you." He stood looking
  round the table, unsmiling, tall and gaunt and strangely cold. Finally he
  suggested, "A break for coffee, gentlemen? Following which we'll continue. And
  I think by now that we're all beginning to see just why this meeting was
  called."
  The seated men remained silent. Then one by one they began to stand up and
  stretch their legs ...
  After coffee it was the turn of Mineral Rights and Mining, followed by
  Transport, and finally Tele-176
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  communications. All told similar tales. In the last two years Garrison had
  gone from strength to strength; he and/or his companies were the majority
  shareholders in almost every big business one might care to name; he was the
  man behind the men in control. And no one outside this room knew it. But—
  "—That's just the problem, gentlemen," The Chairman took pains to point out,
  when once more he had the floor. "If Garrison were the Aga Khan, or the
  Maharaja of Mogador, or some despot oil sheikh—if his name was Rockefeller or
  Getty or Onassis—if he was the President of the USA or the head of the Cosa
  Wostra, then we'd know what or what not to do about him. And if he had any of
  those backgrounds we'd more ably understand him and not need to fear him. But
  he isn't and he doesn't. What he is is an ex-Military Police Corporal turned
  big businessman—no, Super-Tycoon—who seems destined to become the richest,
  most powerful man in the world. And no one knows except us and a handful of
  others. How he does the things he does is not important—though I'd dearly love
  to know. What's to be done about him is important. Quite simply, if Mr.
  Garrison turned nasty he could pull the chairs out from under all of us! He
  can ruin our economy—the world's economy! He can cripple airlines, shipping,
  communications, industry . . . may have already begun to do so, if only as an
  exercise in the manipulation of power. Oh, yes, that's a possibility: already
  he may have flexed his muscles, maybe more than once or twice!"
  177
  Brian Lumley
  "That is very true," said Finance, jumping to his feet. "Look at the recent,
  ahem, fluctuations—supposedly inexplicable fluctuations— in precious metals.
  Look at the collapse of certain airlines, the much more devastating collapse
  of entire economies, the shuddery state of banking, of Wall Street and the
  Stock Exchange ..."
  "My God!" Inland Revenue wheezed, also on his feet. "But I didn't know the
  half of it! Not the tenth part of it!" He was trembling in every ounce of fat.
  He ran jelly fingers through his flaky hair. "He's made complete fools of us—
  must owe us millions. He's—"
  
  "Wait!" The Chairman thumped the table. "Gentlemen, please remain seated . . .
  Please!" They sat. "Obviously you have seen the light. Yes, Garrison is a
  potential bomb, and yes he would seem to have his finger on his own trigger.
  But—"
  "—But you'd be advised to stop right there!" MI6 broke in, his voice calm,
  controlled.
  "I beg your pardon?" The Chairman's voice was sharp, his eyes suddenly hooded.
  "Before you say anything else," said MI6, "there's another little thing you
  should know." He glanced at Government Observer, a very young man whose
  silence throughout had been generally mistaken for lack of understanding or
  experience, then stared directly at The Chairman. "I was given the option of
  telling or of holding back. Now I think you'd better know, all of you, before
  hysteria sets in. It's just one
  178
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  more 'anomaly,' if you like. Simply this: Garrison Is British and he is
  patriotic."
  With the exception of The Chairman, MI6's audience looked blank. The Chairman
  guessed what was coming and groaned inwardly. He had hoped MI6 didn't have
  this information . . . but too late now. A pity. It had all been going so
  well.
  "Garrison has made out a will," MI6 continued, pausing to wave the others down
  as they all began to question at once. "Please! His will is simple—within its
  vast scope, of course—and so worded or constructed as to be quite irrefutable,
  incontestable. It was received by Her Majesty's Government just a few days
  ago, before Garrison went abroad on holiday. He also left instructions that he
  didn't want to talk about it. The government is to be executor in the event of
  Garrison's, er, sudden demise. And everything—that is, everything—is to go to
  the country, to England!"
  There was stunned silence. The Chairman bit his lip. Someone must have leaked
  this to MI6, as it had been leaked to him. Perhaps Observer, on instructions
  from above ...
  Finally MI6 went on. "So you see he doesn't intend to pull the chairs out from
  under us after all. Doesn't want to be King of the World. Isn't bent on chaos,
  destruction. Which makes me wonder just what we're all doing . . . here . . ."
  As he slowed and came to a halt, so his eyebrows lowered in a dark frown. He
  gave a last look around at the staring faces, then turned
  179
  Brian Lumley
  his eyes down and began to pick at his already ragged nails.
  The Chairman decided to take a chance, find out what their reactions would be.
  "Nothing has changed," he said. "This . . . this will of his could be a blind,
  a ploy, a safeguard against deeper investigation. The fact remains: while he's
  alive Garrison is a potential bomb. But—"
  "Gentlemen," said the small yellow man. For the first time he was on his_feet,
  smiling, bowing. He straightened up. "Now, if I may speak?" his voice was a
  whisper, extremely gentle and soothing, exemplifying everyone's conception of
  an English-speaking Chinaman. Almost a caricature. "My master arrived at these
  same conclusions some time ago. For which reason he has taken a special
  interest in Mr. Garrison. Now he wishes it to be said that whatever else may
  be decided, Mr. Garrison is not to die. That would not be—beneficial?"
  Again the stunned silence, or maybe not so stunned. But in another moment the
  entire room was on its feet.
  "What?" The Chairman had watched and was guided by the immediate reactions of
  the rest and was the first to shout his denial, covering his tracks. "Can 1
  believe my ears? Do you really imagine that I was suggesting . . . that we
  would even consider . . ."—until even his strident denials were lost in the
  general hubbub. However, and for all that he continued to protest, his mind
  was on different things. Such as his master's instructions that indeed
  Garrison was to die. The country would benefit beyond the wildest, most
  
  180
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  optimistic dreams of any economist—and so would the branch! The potential for
  the expansion of espionage and counter-intelligence would be enormous. The CIA
  would soon be small-fry by comparison.
  These were the reasons The Chairman's boss, the head of the branch, had
  supplied—but The Chairman knew there was at least one more. His boss was a man
  of means, and greedy. He had admitted that he more than merely "played about"
  with stocks and shares; everything he had was tied up in the game. And he had
  hinted that he might easily double his holdings in certain areas but for the
  interference of a couple of large shareholders, namely Messrs. Garrison and
  Koenig. Thus Garrison's death would be of great personal advantage to him.
  As thoughts such as these passed through The Chairman's head, the row taking
  shape about the great table had increased twofold. Mineral Rights and Mining
  was also shouting the little Chinaman down. "Who the devil is your master
  anyway? Does he think the authorities in this country are cold-blooded
  murderers? Mr. Chairman, 1 demand to know . . ."—until his voice also became
  one with the uproar. But in the back of his mind he, too, was already
  considering the prospect of Great Britain as a major controlling influence in
  OPEC, and of the advantages of large slices of the South African and
  Australian mining pies.
  It was the same with most of them—with the notable exceptions of the Chinaman
  himself, MI6 and his 2IC, and Observer. The first of these
  181
  Brian Lumley
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  had merely followed Charon Qubwa's instructions, was not greatly interested in
  the furor his cautionary words had sparked. MI6 simply sat back and took stock
  of things; his narrowed eyes were on The Chairman, and his mind seethed with
  dark suspicions. He had always believed in the Service as a whole, but never
  in The Chairman's somehow sinister, self-governing branch of that body. Honor
  among thieves indeed! As for Observer: he sat still, bland-faced, and
  observed.
  After a while the din died down a little. Through it all the Chinaman had
  remained on his feet, smiling still. Mow he took the opportunity to make for
  the doors, which at that moment opened to admit The Chairman's uniformed man.
  He went straight to his employer and handed him a note, then turned on his
  heel and left. He would have closed the doors behind him but the Chinaman
  stood there, smiling.
  For no apparent reason, suddenly everyone's attention seemed riveted on The
  Chairman. He seemed to be having some difficulty reading the note, but at last
  he cleared his throat and looked up, the corner of his mouth twitching a
  little.
  "Gentlemen," he finally said, "it seems that any actions we, er, might have
  considered—any further investigations, that is to say—have been pre-empted."
  His voice was just a little shaky. "By that I mean," he hurriedly went on, "it
  would appear that some other or others have found Mr. Garrison's, er, talents
  equally troublesome-even more so."
  182
  He cleared his throat again. This had not been of his doing. If it had been
  then it wouldn't be bungled. As it was it was an embarrassment, but on the
  other hand it might provide the cover of an authentic precedent in the event
  of a future, more successful enterprise.
  "Mr. Garrison's plane," he went on, glancing at the note, "has recently landed
  at Gatwick. The landing was—it says here—'a miraculous escape!' The plane was
  sabotaged. A bomb. Pio one was hurt, but Mr. Garrison has been taken to a
  private hospital. Severe shock, it appears ..."
  His words sank in. Slowly their heads turned to stare at the little Chinaman.
  He stood at the doors, smiled back at their frowning expressions. Then he
  bowed and his sighing voice seemed to fill the room:
  
  "Gentlemen, I am sure you will now have other items for discussion. Hopefully
  one of them will be measures for the protection of Mr. Garrison. My time,
  however, is limited. I bid you good day."
  No one objected as he silently left the room . . .
  183
  Chapter
  12
  THE MEETING HAD BROKEN UP SHORTLY AFTER RE-ceiving the news of the sabotage
  attempt on Garrison's plane.
  MI6 and friend had come up by train from Waterloo, Government Observer in his
  car. How, walking across The Chairman's drive together, Observer invited the
  other two: "Can I give you a lift back into the city? That way I could save
  both of you some time, and perhaps we could have a little chat. . .?"
  "Thank you," M16 agreed at once. All three got into Observer's old Rover and
  sat there, waiting for the rest of the departing delegates to move their cars.
  When the way was clear, Observer drove out of the grounds, down the driveway
  and onto the road for the city. From an upstairs window of the house, The
  Chairman watched them
  go.
  184
  _____PSYCHOSPHERE
  The Chairman was not happy. He was in fact angry. Angry with MI6 (though of
  course the man had only been doing his job); with whoever had tried to blow
  Garrison out of the sky, for failing; but mainly with Charon Gubwa, who for
  some time had been getting a little too big for his boots.
  The Chairman used Gubwa as an intelligence source, had done so for more years
  than he cared to think about, and in his turn Gubwa used him. Like Garrison,
  Gubwa was into business, did a little "financing" and etc. The Chairman had
  never worried too much about the etc., but it had made Gubwa rich. Very rich,
  The Chairman suspected, though not on Garrison's scale. But then, who was rich
  on Garrison's scale?
  Oh, Gubwa was bent, most definitely, but he was also one superb grass! The
  Chairman had built his early reputation on Charon Gubwa's tip-offs. What he
  couldn't understand was Gubwa's sudden interest in Garrison—in his continued
  good health, that was to say.
  It could be, of course, that Gubwa worked for Garrison, but The Chairman
  doubted that. Gubwa didn't really work for anyone, except himself. In many of
  their dealings—certainly in recent years—he had always suspected that Gubwa
  got far more out of their intelligence transactions than ever he did! It had
  dawned on him, too, that perhaps Gubwa was a double-agent, working not only
  for The Chairman and his branch but also for a number of foreign agencies.
  Yes, unfortunately that did seem a strong possibility.
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  Brian Lumley
  But . . . Qubwa's organization did have a serious weakness: The Chairman knew
  the location of its headquarters. And he had long ago formulated certain
  courses of action. This was not a thought he let himself dwell upon too often:
  Qubwa had an uncanny knack of "knowing" or "predicting" things before they
  happened. It would not be in The Chairman's interests to have Qubwa discover
  the axe that he held over him. Not until he was ready to let it fall, at any
  rate.
  As for Qubwa's headquarters:
  In early 1944 when it had been rumored that Adolf Hitler might get the A-bomb
  first, several underground command posts had been built in and around
  London—subterranean shelters from which the war effort could be directed to
  the last. These had been kept operational until the late 60s, when costs had
  gone through the roof. The least viable of these shelters, in Central London,
  had been due for closedown: an unused, dusty, dark place deep underground,
  built in a natural cave halfway down a great fault in the bedrock. Charon
  Qubwa had bought it and turned it into his home and headquarters. The place
  
  had always been secret and Qubwa had kept it that way; but The Chairman knew
  of its existence and had even been down there—once.
  That had been all of ten years ago, but The Chairman remembered it well. Now,
  despite the fact that the house was quite warm, he shivered. The thought of
  that great steel coffin down there in the bowels of the earth, Qubwa's Castle,
  always did that to him. He hadn't seen all of the place, but enough. Enough to
  know that he
  186
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  could have put Qubwa out of business there and then, and that he should have.
  The reason he hadn't was simple: the man had more leads than a telephone
  exchange! If The Chairman had wanted to know something about anybody or
  anything—literally anybody or anything— Qubwa could usually get that
  information for him. In return all The Chairman had to do was keep people off
  Qubwa's back, at least until he was better established.
  Well, perhaps he'd done a little bit more than that. The Chairman soured at
  the thought. No, he'd done a lot more than that. When the computer age had
  come rolling in, he had been instrumental in extending Qubwa's eyes and ears.
  That is to say, he had seen to it that Qubwa's own computer had access to
  external sources and systems. He had known of course (he tried to excuse his
  error) that he could shut down Qubwa's operation whenever he desired, as soon
  as the man outlived his usefulness. But what he had not foreseen was the
  massive build-up of computer technology, the extensive use of the damned
  machine in almost every aspect of life and facet of society. He had in effect
  given Qubwa an intelligence system second to none, had built a wall of
  technology about Qubwa's already formidable Castle of Secrets. And that was a
  weapon which eventually might be turned against The Chairman himself, and
  against his branch. It would not be used, no—not as long as he played the game
  with Qubwa; but there had been times recently when he had not wanted to play
  the game. Like at this very moment . . .
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  Brian Lumley
  And of course if The Chairman's chief ever discovered that old mistake of
  his—that old, old mistake with all its implications, including the fact that
  it had remained unreported, uncor-rected through all of these long years—then
  The Chairman was finished. Then his head would well and truly (and literally)
  roll! But who was there to tell him? Mot The Chairman, and the only other
  person who knew of it was Charon Qubwa himself.
  Of course, the only way to put Qubwa out of business now would be to go down
  there with a squad of trusted branch heavies and literally rip the place to
  bits—and in the process destroy any evidence linking Qubwa to himself. Yes,
  and it just might come to that if the man had any more tricks up his sleeve
  like this last one!
  The Chairman had known of course that Qubwa was sending a representative to
  the meeting. He himself had agreed to it. But he had certainly not foreseen
  the idiot demanding that Garrison's life be spared! Mot there and then, just
  like that! The way it had been done had only served to accentuate the fact
  that The Chairman's branch had considered Garrison's removal as a serious
  proposition. Indeed, only the timely arrival of that note telling that someone
  else had already tried to kill Garrison had averted what might have proved to
  be a very damaging scene.
  The Chairman's anger began to boil over. He snatched himself away from the
  window, poured himself a drink, tried to control the heat he felt bubbling up
  inside. The last of his guests had
  188
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  gone now and the day had grown well into late afternoon. Pretty soon The
  Chairman's chief would be on the blower demanding an explanation. Or at least
  asking awkward questions.
  The Chairman took his drink down to his study, locked himself in, picked up
  
  the telephone ...
  Qubwa was more or less expecting the call. He half-sensed it was coming. If he
  had attended the meeting—through the mind of Johnnie Fong—then he would have
  been sure it was coming. But he had not done so. Too frequent or prolonged use
  of his ESP-talents invariably tired Qubwa, so that wherever possible he used
  them sparingly. In any case, there had been other things to do.
  Therefore, when the telephone in his study buzzed, a precognitive tingle told
  Qubwa that it was The Chairman. He smiled as he picked up the telephone. "And
  how are you today, Sir Harry?" he inquired, his voice oily.
  "Listen, Charon, you know bloody well that I'm angry!" came the answer. "Have
  you any idea how much you might have embarrassed me today?"
  The "might" puzzled Gubwa; he had been sure that the other would be
  embarrassed. He did not yet know of Garrison's brush with disaster. He decided
  to play it straight, but without being too inquisitive.
  "But it was my intention to embarrass you!" he laughed. "I knew you would be
  considering Garrison's . . . removal—for 'the good of the
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  country/ and all that—but it doesn't suit me to have him removed, riot just
  yet. I simply brought it out in the open, that's all: showed how it might
  serve a variety of purposes if he were eliminated. That's my way of ensuring
  that nothing does happen to him. For if anything does, now—why! — they'll all
  be looking to you for the answers. And that really would be embarrassing!"
  Sir Marry listened to all of this in growing dismay and anger. Qubwa had got
  too big for his boots. He might have to bring his plans for the man
  forward,somewhat. "Mow listen, Charon, I—"
  "Ho-, you listen! Garrison must not be harmed! There is a lot I have to know
  about him first. Things which could be of great benefit to both of us. After
  that—" He let the sentence hang there, incomplete.
  Qubwa could almost hear Sir Harry grinding his teeth. "Qubwa, you . . . who
  works for who around here?"
  "Oh, now, Sir Harry," Gubwa's voice was dangerously soft. "You know better
  than that. Who works for who, indeed! Why, we're partners, you and 1! And I've
  just explained that it's to our benefit that Garrison lives—for a while
  longer, anyway."
  "Charon, you're pushing your luck. I have my orders. You can't interfere with
  that. And anyway, if 1 don't get him it's likely the others will. They'll make
  a better job of it next time, you can be sure of it."
  Qubwa's pulse quickened. The others? What others? And what next time? He did
  not want to
  190
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  ask The Chairman what he was talking about, not directly, so—
  "Wait!" he said.
  He knew where Sir Harry was. He closed his eyes, sent his mind soaring out,
  entered the other's thoughts. They were guarded, as usual, but Gubwa could get
  in. He probed, saw, withdrew. Sir Harry didn't even know he'd been there,
  wouldn't have believed it if Gubwa himself had told him.
  "There won't be a next time," Gubwa said, his mind racing. Damn it, who had
  tried to kill Garrison? And why? It looked like he must now put everything
  else aside and concentrate all of his energies on this one project, on Richard
  Garrison. "Not until I'm ready. As for my pushing my luck: if that's a threat,
  Sir Harry, forget it. I would survive. You, on the other hand, might not be so
  lucky."
  "Now who's threatening, Charon?"
  Gubwa didn't like the sudden chill in the other's voice. This was a man you
  mustn't squeeze too tight. "Look," he said, "why are we fighting?"
  "Damn it, you know why! That was a dirty trick of yours, Charon. I'd never
  have let your Chinky Chappie in the house if I'd known what you were up to.
  His presence at the meeting would have been difficult to explain away as it
  
  was, but now—? People are bound to start asking who and why and what. Don't
  you understand? I've been told to deal with Garrison. Now I can't—not without
  difficulty, anyway—because you've screwed it up!"
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  Brian Lumley
  "Then let me do the job for you—but in my own time, when I've got what I
  want."
  This sounded better. "How much time?" Sir Harry was cautious.
  Qubwa thought about it, said, "A month, six weeks at the outside. That should
  be time enough."
  "Time enough for what, Charon? What is your interest in Garrison?"
  "Ah, Sir Harry! Can't we keep a few little secrets to ourselves, you and 1? Be
  satisfied that I'll kill him, that's all."
  The Chairman still wasn't quite satisfied. "I don't know . . ."
  "And I'll do it in a way that lets you and the branch out entirely, rio
  possible connection."
  That sounded much better. Sir Harry lingered over the proposition, letting
  himself be swayed. And why not? After all, no one had set a time limit on
  Garrison's life. Six weeks should be quite satisfactory. And when Gubwa had
  done the job . . . that would be time enough to sort him out! fortunately
  Gubwa was not probing any of this; fortunately for Sir Harry. "All right," he
  finally agreed, "we'll do it your way."
  "Good!" said Gubwa, "and there's something you can do for me. I could do it
  myself, but this way is quicker."
  "Oh?" Sir Harry was cautious once more.
  "Yes, I'll need to know the name of Garrison's minder."
  "I don't know if he'll have one yet."
  Gubwa laughed. "Oh, I'm sure he will! Proba-
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  bly your friends at MI6. They're a trustworthy lot, in the main. Do find out
  for me, won't you?"
  "I'll do my best," The Chairman growled.
  "Fine! Well, that about concludes it, I imagine. Unless there's anything else
  you'd care to mention? Mo? Well, then. It was good to hear from you again, Sir
  Harry, and—"
  "Save it for true believers!" The Chairman told him drily. "Six weeks then.
  And Charon ... no mistakes, eh?" And without waiting for an answer he put the
  phone down ...
  On their way back into the city, MI6 and Observer engaged in what was at first
  a wary conversation. The man in the back of the car, MI6's "aide," sat in
  silence, apparently little interested.
  "Er, what you were saying about Garrison," Observer opened. "Did you mean it?
  About him being straight, I mean?"
  "Oh, yes. Straight as you or I—no disrespect, you understand—and probably a
  sight straighter than a lot of the others at that little get-together."
  Observer grinned, relaxing a little. "I know what you mean. We rub shoulders
  with some strange ones, don't we?"
  MI6 nodded. "All part of the game, I suppose."
  "You've little in common with Sir Harry, then?" A tentative probe.
  "The Chairman? When I started with MI6 during the war, his branch didn't even
  exist. It came later. Most of the murky stuff came later. I mean, it's all
  cloak and dagger, you'll appreciate—but
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  with that lot it's mainly dagger! But—I suppose we need 'em. You know what
  they say: it takes one to know one? Well, they deal with some pretty weird
  jobs, with unpleasant people and nasty situations. So-called 'obscurities.' "
  He glanced at Observer out of the corner of his eye. "But you know that, of
  course."
  
  "Something about it, yes. They're a close-mouthed lot, I know that much. Sort
  of a law unto themselves. I'll not mislead you—I've a good many colleagues
  who'd like to see them shut down!"
  MI6 nodded. "You don't surprise me. They're a damned sight too heavy-handed
  for my liking. And as for Sir Harry . . ." he sucked his teeth. "That guy's a
  snake! Er, my personal opinion, of course. But it's common knowledge he
  numbers several more than shady characters among his friends and informers.
  And he probably protects them. That Chinaman, for instance. Who did he
  represent, eh?"
  "Umm," said Observer. "I'd wondered about that myself. But, as I've said,
  they're pretty close-mouthed—and so far they've had good cover from up top."
  He let his eyes flick up, brought them down to glance knowingly at his
  passenger. " 'She' is happy with much of their work. Personally—Sir Harry's
  being a snake isn't just your opinion, I'm afraid." He chuckled wryly. "That's
  why I want you to look after Garrison. It really wouldn't do if anything were
  to happen to him."
  "Oh?" Mj6 seeme<j genuinely taken by surprise. "You mean me personally?"
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  "You—or your best man. We trust you, and that covers anyone you care to
  recommend. In fact I especially appreciated the way you stuck your neck out
  for Garrison. Yes, I liked that..."
  MI6 thought about it. "Of course I'd need authority, orders?"
  "You shall have them. In fact you have them, as of now. The papers will come
  later."
  "Okay, I'll see to it. To be truthful I half-expected the job, and I have the
  very man for it. He's not much known over here. Worked mainly abroad. But he's
  good stuff. Flame of Stone— Phillip Stone—but of course that's strictly
  between you and me ..."
  Behind him, in the back seat, Stone merely sat and said nothing. He had
  wondered why he'd been called to attend this meeting today, and now he knew.
  "Good!" said Observer, "then get him on the job. Just one thing: make sure he
  does it with discretion. This Garrison's a funny type. If he was to cotton on
  that someone was minding him, well he'd be almost sure to make a fuss about
  it. Which would only make the job that much more difficult."
  "Oh, he'll not get wind of this guy, I can safely promise you that. He's one
  of the best."
  "I'll take your word for it," said Observer, easing his foot from the
  accelerator as they moved into heavier traffic. "Incidentally, do you have any
  idea who might have bombed Garrison's plane?"
  MI6 shrugged. "Could be the IRA are still after him. Or the Mafia."
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  Brian Lumley
  "Mafia?"
  MI6 nodded. "That Vegas job I was talking about. And if he's been holidaying
  on Rhodes ... it's their neck of the woods, you know. Close enough to it,
  anyway." He shrugged. "On the other hand it could be anybody. He must've
  stepped on a few toes to get what he's got."
  Observer grunted his acceptance of that, then said: "Well, let's just make
  sure—for the immediate future, anyway—that nobody steps on him ..."
  Fhillip Stone suited his name well. He was like stone. A crag of a man,
  seventy-three inches tall and all of it with hard edges. And they had needed
  to be hard. As an intelligence agent (he hated the word "spy") Stone had
  several things going for him. No one who looked (and was) so rough and ready
  could possibly be that intelligent. And no one who acted so unconcerned and
  disinterested could possibly be the data-collecting machine which Stone was.
  His third asset was his hardness itself, which over the years he'd accumulated
  like a stalactite collects calcium. Layer upon layer. The hard way.
  Nothing had ever been easy for Stone. When you're big and rough-looking
  there's always someone waiting to knock you down, if only to prove he's bigger
  
  and rougher. Stone had been knocked down a good many times, in a good many
  ways, until at last he'd learned to stay firmly on his feet.
  Life that offered neither threat nor thrill was no life for Phillip Stone. At
  eighteen he'd joined
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  the Parachute Regiment just to jump out of airplanes, and at twenty-three he'd
  been cashiered out for his persistent disobedience to the orders of his senior
  officers, which had culminated in a brawl with one such where he'd broken the
  man's jaw. Stone had never understood how he'd become an officer in the first
  place—he hadn't wanted to be one—but being broken out of the army hadn't
  bothered him. Jumping out of airplanes had bored him in the end, and anyway it
  had entailed all that other junk—like doing what you're told to do.
  No, he was a lone wolf and the Regiment had been just a little too clannish.
  He still had fond memories, even now, but . . . there had been other places to
  see, other things to do. He had inherited a little money from an aunt he'd
  never known, and the army had given him a thirst for travel, and so—
  His idea had been to work his way round the world, except it hadn't turned out
  that way. He'd got as far as Cyprus before falling in with a bunch of lads in
  Nicosia on a drunken night out. Believing they were squaddies from one of the
  local British camps, he'd gone along with them, had even let them talk him
  into going through some form of silly ritual. He'd been drunk and couldn't
  remember a lot about it. But they hadn't been squaddies—regular soldiers
  anyway—and the ritual hadn't been silly. Not in their eyes. No, it had been
  their form of enlistment. And when Stone came out of his drunk he was
  somewhere in Africa and someone had given him a rifle!
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  Brian Lumley
  Under orders again, this time from Colonel "Crazy" Dave Clegg, also late of
  Her Majesty's Forces, Phillip Stone had found himself a mercenary in the
  wildest outfit any man could ever wish to desert from. But he hadn't deserted;
  instead he'd proved himself worth his weight in gold to Crazy Dave; the
  business they were involved with came to a rapid and fruitful (if bloody)
  conclusion; Stone had soon found himself back in Blighty and a civilian once
  more.
  Two weeks had been too much. There was a girl he'd known in Minden. He decided
  to look her up and boarded a plane for Germany.
  Meanwhile . . . Crazy Dave Clegg hadn't forgotten him. Stone's name was soon
  being whispered in the esoteric vaults of MI6. Connections were made . . .
  Stone's reunion with his fraulein didn't work out; he fell in with a couple of
  middle-aged but sprightly American tourists, ex-QIs who'd been through this
  way during the war; in a few days they'd persuaded him to accompany them to
  Frankfurt. Shortly after that Stone had mislaid his passport, but a call to
  the British Consulate soon solved that one—with a speed and efficiency he
  later had cause to remember! His new passport, unlike the old one, made no
  mention of him being an ex-Army officer, but since he no longer was an officer
  he'd seen nothing sinister in that. Mor in the next port of call of his
  American friends, which just happened to be Berlin. Only a few jumps later had
  seen him ferrying innocuous-looking little letters to and fro between East and
  West Berlin (his ex-QIs had ladies
  198
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  over there remembered from the war, but they hated tearful and fruitless
  reunions and besides they were married now), and the jump after that had been
  straight into jail—on the wrong side of the wall!
  Only then had he stopped to add things up— things which, in all his prior
  experience, had only ever happened in thriller or "spy" novels— by which time
  he was on his way to Moscow. Apparently he'd asked for political asylum there,
  or at least that's what the reds told MI6. He was interrogated, brainwashed,
  became a double-agent without ever (in his eyes) first being a single-agent!
  
  Later, having been returned to Frankfurt where he was picked up by the CIA, he
  was "de-briefed," shipped back to Blighty, interrogated by Intelligence and
  re-employed in Hong Kong. There he "went to school," became a fully-fledged
  agent, improved his unarmed combat and surveillance techniques, was finally
  moved on into China as a "student of Oriental customs, architecture and
  antiquities."
  In 1977 the Chinese authorities finally cracked his cover; he was given the
  full treatment by the nasties in Peking; only the blossoming Chinese love
  affair with Great Britain and the USA saved him. He was kicked out with a
  minimum of publicity and a fresh-scrubbed mind, had his brain repatriated by
  MI6, and finally ended up back in Germany as a junior counter-intelligence
  adviser to WATO.
  Well (he'd often consoled himself), and he'd wanted to see the world, hadn't
  he? But the
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  world hadn't quite finished with him yet, nor he with it.
  The job in Germany wasn't to his liking—too quiet. He became restless—possibly
  as a result of hearing a rumor that certain parties were trying to recruit a
  gunrunner for Afghanistan, supplying the Khash-lun tribesmen with arms to
  fight the coming Russian invasion. And so Stone had moved on, becoming part of
  the Afghan underground. The invasion had come; on his own initiative Stone had
  founded a well-organized guerilla group; London had got wind of this and
  whipped him out of there. Lawrence of Arabia had been different, they told
  him: we had been at war then!
  Since when he'd puttered round with the idea of selling himself to the
  Israelis, or of removing to South Africa where several ex-soldier friends had
  settled, or of moving into industrial espionage in America. Meanwhile Mis 5
  and 6 had kept him employed, however low-key, usually on surveillance or in a
  minder capacity.
  How he was to be minder to Richard Garrison, which Stone had already decided
  would be far too tame for him. But ... a job is a job, and at least you could
  live on the money. This was the last time, though, and after this it would
  probably be the good old US of A for him. You could still find a little fast
  action across the Big Fond.
  These were his thoughts as he left the MI6 offices in Whitehall, where he'd
  chosen his cover and been "kitted-up," and made his way across London via the
  underground for his flat in Richmond. There he'd pick up his car and head for
  200
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  Haslemere, where Garrison was in a very private and very exclusive hospital.
  He did not see the small, sturdy, business-suited Chinaman who followed him
  out of the tube and into the evening at Richmond—Johnnie Fong was an expert at
  not being seen—and he was not greatly interested in the pushing-and-shoving
  argument between two hulking, boozy yobs in a shop doorway along his way. But
  after that—
  —The "yobs" were on him like sacks of coal, pinning him to a wall in a moment.
  And in the next moment, before he could muster either mind or muscle, the
  little Chinaman was in front of him, unloading the contents of a large
  hypodermic right through his shirt and into the wall of his stomach! Stone
  recognized the Chinaman at once—and then he reacted.
  He hurled one of his attackers from him and swung his free fist round in an
  arc, crashing it into the face of the other. But by then he already knew that
  it was all over. A car had pulled up; the street was melting like soft toffee;
  his attackers, one of them with a mangled, profusely bleeding face, were
  levering him into the back of a large black station wagon. He still moved his
  arms a bit but they felt like rubber, with no bones in them. His legs had long
  since surrendered and his mind was last to go, or maybe his vision. He would
  later recall that before passing out he saw the Chinaman's face, close up, and
  his broad slash of a smile.
  
  That sinister yellow smile receding down a long black tunnel, and Stone's
  thought going with it: you just wait, Fu Manchu. I'll be seeing
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  you again . . . you again ... again . . . again-againagainagainagain . . . But
  in fact, he never would see him again.
  Richard Garrison wasn't the only one in hospital: Carlo Vicenti was there,
  too, in a "gentleman's" ward in a large Central London general. He had been
  there all afternoon and evening while they fixed him up, and was now mildly
  sedated where he sat propped up, deep in painful conversation with three
  sharply-tailored, mean-looking and somewhat swarthy visitors.
  "Yeah, yeah, we know," Marcello Pontellari's nasal voice was full of sarcasm.
  "Three cracked ribs, a busted collarbone, a sprained wrist and a busted
  pinkie. Oh, yeah, and lots of bad bruising— wowl" his sneer was deliberately
  exaggerated. "Isn't that terrible? Girls we carve with razors or burn with
  cigarettes; guys we pave roads with or dump in the river; and you. . . ?
  Somebody breaks a small bone or two and you scream like all hell!"
  "Not just somebody," Vicenti snapped, grimacing at the pain his reaction
  caused in his bandaged shoulder. "Garrison! It was him—must've been him—or his
  twin brother!"
  "Your boys saw nothing," Mario "the Dwarf" Angelli blew rings from his cigar.
  "They say you acted crazy but nobody was there."
  "Idiots!" Vicenti snapped again, and again groaned. "What in hell's wrong with
  you guys? You think I threw myself through that wall?"
  "Frankly," said Ramon Navarro de Medici— "Ramon the Rat," as he was known
  throughout
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  the rank and file of London-based Mafia—"yeah, that's what we think. Least,
  that's what your boys tell us. A fit, they said. He went nuts, they said."
  "Went nuts!" Vicenti snorted. "I tell you I saw the guy!"
  "Yeah, we know—that's what we came to check. It's why we're here. The Big Guy
  sent us, you know?"
  Vicenti grew silent. The Big Guy? The first successful Mafia Boss in England?
  He was interested in this? Why?
  "See," de Medici went on, "your boys have to be right. Dead right. Garrison
  wasn't there, couldn't be there. He was trapped in a crippled plane somewhere
  between the Greek islands and England."
  A crippled plane? The Black brothers!
  "A bomb," Vicenti nodded his understanding.
  "Yeah, your bomb!" de Medici answered. "You had him contracted out. The Black
  boys. We got it from Facello. You did it personal and private, which ain't
  exactly in the rules, but—"
  "But—" Vicenti shook his head, "—but he was there!"
  "Mo," Medici was emphatic, "he was on a plane with Bert Black's bomb. But this
  time Bert fucked up. The plane didn't go down. Anyway, that don't change
  anything. Garrison was on the plane—couldn't have been anywhere near you."
  Vicenti's mind was chasing itself in ever-decreasing circles. "I don't
  understand," he said. "I just don't—"
  "Hour and a half after you say he worked you
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  over, Garrison's plane was coming in on a wing and a prayer at Qatwick. Pio
  wheels, controls, no nothing. But a neat landing. Garrison in hospital:
  nerves. Pilot crazy as a loon, says they were saved 'by God!' "
  Vicenti fell back on his pillows, groaning as his shoulder gave him more pain.
  But his injuries now took second place to his confusion, his disbelief, "What
  the hell . . .?" he whispered. He squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head
  again.
  "Yeah," said Marcello Pontellari, his tone sarcastic as ever, "what the hell
  
  ..."
  "Listen, Carlo," said de Medici, "just ignore Pontellari and listen. The Big
  Guy is interested in all this. See, you're not the only one who hates this
  Garrison. The boys in Vegas hate him, too. But see, they don't want him dead."
  Vicenti's eyes popped open. "What's that?"
  "Yeah," de Medici continued. "You remember Vegas a year, year and a half ago?
  Something big went down there. Bunch of punters cleaned 'em out good. Took
  millions and disappeared. And all legitimate, they won the fucking money! Can
  you imagine that? They won the mother!"
  Vicenti's eyes were narrow now. He ground his teeth. "Jesus! Oh, yes, I can
  imagine it. Christ! Didn't he do the same thing to me, this Garrison? Didn't
  he clean me out?" He stared at de Medici and his lips curled back from his
  teeth. "So the Big Guy and the boys in Vegas think-?"
  "Mot think," de Medici cut him off, "they know. He did it to Vegas just like
  he did it to you. They know it was him 'cos they finally tracked him
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  down. A guy with more tricks up his sleeve than a cardsharp! But . . . well,
  you can see why the Big Guy has to cancel your contract on Garrison, okay?"
  Vicenti frowned. "Come again?"
  "See, right now this guy is worth a lot more alive than dead. The Vegas mob
  wants to know how he does it. Yeah, and so do we. We'd like for no one else to
  do it again—not ever! So, after they let him walk, we're going to pull him in.
  Then, when we get through with him—" he shrugged. "He's all yours, if you
  still want him."
  Vicenti nodded. "Okay. But what about the Blacks? Can you find 'em, get a
  message to 'em, call 'em off?"
  "Yeah, it's done already. They get back from Rhodes three days from now,
  Monday, 7:00 P.M. into Gatwick. By that time you should be out of here and on
  the mend. There's a general meeting Monday 8:30 at the Big Guy's usual
  offices. The Blacks'11 be there. You, too. All of us. Hey!— this is big,
  Carlo."
  Vicenti pursed his lips, rolled his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. He
  frowned. "Yeah, big," he grunted. "But it still doesn't explain how I thought
  I saw him when he wasn't there. And yet, you know, somehow I had a feeling he
  wasn't really there."
  He paused and gazed into the eyes of his visitors, then lowered his eyebrows
  in reproof. "Hey, don't look at me like that! We're talking about the same guy
  bust me out of the Ace of Clubs, remember? Tricks up his sleeve? Brother, you
  can say that again!"
  205
  Chapter
  13
  PHILUP STONE HIQHTMARED, AND WHEN HE WOKE UP he had difficulty deciding just
  where the bad dream ended and the reality began. He had dreamed of the KGB, of
  the goons in Peking, of man's inhumanity to man. But he had never in his life
  dreamed of anything quite like Charon Qubwa.
  The man was a hill of pallid flesh!
  Standing, he would be inches taller than Stone; he had at least twice Stone's
  girth, must weigh almost four hundred and thirty or forty pounds; and his arms
  and hands were like great knotted clubs, making Stone's seem fragile by
  comparison. As for the pallor of his flesh: it wasn't sickness, Stone saw, but
  albinism: he was a pink-eyed, mottled gray albino Negro! And that wasn't all
  he was. Stone's eyes weren't quite in focus yet, and his mind was certainly
  way out,
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  PSYGHOSPHERE
  but he knew a monstrosity when he saw one. Whoever the big man-woman was, he
  was a monstrosity.
  The light was pretty dim and Stone's senses were all in conflict with one
  
  another. Either he was upside down or gravity had no meaning here—wherever
  "here" was. But his orientation, chiefly the weight of his own body and the
  way his clothing fell, told him that he was seated normally and that "down"
  was where his feet were; while the crick in his neck said that his head was
  tilted back, which meant that what he was looking at was on the ceiling!
  He closed his eyes for a moment, thought about shaking his head to clear it (a
  mistake, that, for the very thought hurt), and very slowly, carefully opened
  his eyes again. And this time he understood.
  The ceiling was a mirror, or at least a large area in the ceiling's center was
  a mirror. What seemed to be happening up there was actually happening directly
  in front of Stone, but for the moment he was content to witness it secondhand.
  He didn't want to attract anyone's attention, not just yet. First he would
  like to know where he was; he already knew how he came to be here. More or
  less.
  But... he would also like to know why he was tied to his chair. Or maybe he
  knew that, too. For if he wasn't tied down, then by now somebody, even several
  somebodies, would be suffering a few choice agonies from Stone's extensive
  list of such.
  All of that, however, could wait—would have
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  Brian Lumley
  to wait. For the moment he would just sit here and watch the action. And the
  action was . . . something else!
  The great mottled albino freak lay on what looked like a wider-than-average
  masseur's table, where three girls worked on the doughy obesity of his body.
  Their punching and pummelling was performed to the tune of the monster's
  sighing, grunting and moaning, and all four—slaves and master alike—were naked
  as the day they were born. Time was when Stone would have looked at the girls
  first, but right now he was more interested in the (man? woman?) creature on
  the masseur's table.
  With his white hair forming a huge frizz of a bush upon his head, and his
  incredible pink eyes—themselves anomalies in a typically negroid
  physiognomy—and above all else, the sexual organs of both man and woman . . .
  . . . Stone's mind reeled!
  Not only from the contemplation of this most inhuman of human beings, but also
  from the effects of the drug which had stunned him and facilitated his
  kidnapping. Whatever the stuff had been, his head now felt as if it had been
  kicked twice too often. There again, it might have been kicked; he remembered
  making a mess of the face of one of his attackers—perhaps the man had avenged
  himself while Stone was out for the count. Whichever, it was like the very
  worst hangover he'd ever known, and Stone had known quite a few. He fought
  back the nausea he felt welling up and looked at the girls who were working on
  ... on the thing.
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  Another mistake, another anomaly. Only two of them were girls. As for the
  other—Stone wasn't sure. It had breasts, small but definitely female, but the
  rest of the gear was male—again small, like a young lad's, but male. And he
  liked his work, that one. He had an erection, anyway, what there was of it.
  And so did the mountain of meat he was working on.
  Stone now saw that this was more than simple massage. It was the full
  treatment. Fascinated despite his nausea, he watched the thing through to its
  end. One of the girls was plying the hermaphrodite's great penis with one
  hand, and toying with his opposing parts with the other. The second girl, and
  the boy-girl, were rubbing warm oil into his flabby body; the latter was also
  sucking with feminine lips upon the black giant's great swollen-slug nipples.
  How long this had been going on, Stone couldn't say. But the end came quickly.
  The huge body began to quiver and heave; massive hands flopped over the side
  of the table, fluttering like stunned birds; the hermaphrodite's sperm erupted
  into the face of the girl working his shaft, who smiled her relief and
  
  pleasure . . . obviously it was important in more ways than one that her
  master should be completely satisfied.
  Stone turned his eyes away then, as that swollen knob of muscle emptied itself
  in long bursts; but not before the hermaphrodite's pink eyes had met his own
  in the mirror, and not before he had seen the slow smile—of sexual pleasure,
  yes, but also in recognition of Stone's recovery,
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  Brian Lumley
  his consciousness—which gave the thick, gray-mottled lips the curve of a
  sharp-horned, leprous moon.
  The pink eyes were like magnets: they held Stone's gaze, drew his head round
  to look again, as a snake draws a bird before striking. Then—
  "You're awake, Mr. Stone. Splendid!" It was a deep, sonorous voice, negroid
  but with its charm and lilt almost cultured out. Possibly an adopted voice,
  falsified, but Stone thought not. And deep underneath, despite its
  masculinity, there were strangely feminine nuances, girlish or womanish
  undertones. But the female facet was definitely subservient. Stone found
  himself wishing he knew more about hermaphoditism in human beings—in anything,
  for that matter.
  "Oh, it wouldn't do you any good, Mr. Stone," said the voice, "believe me. I
  am in no way typical. Indeed I am not a 'type' at all. I am unique!"
  The effect of those words—so casually but fluently composed, so easily
  spoken—was like an electric shock in Stone's mind. He knew his thoughts had
  been read as accurately as if he'd spoken them out loud, but the concept was
  simply too incredible for him to accept as fact.
  "More accurately," the creature on the masseur's slab smiled again. "And that
  is a fact! Men don't always express their thoughts accurately— but they do
  think them accurately." Now Stone believed. He was stunned, but he believed.
  "Precisely the point of the exercise," said the creature.
  The proof of the pudding, Stone thought, quite deliberately—
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  "Is in the eating, Mr. Stone, I agree!"
  "Impressive," Stone found himself hard-put to be phlegmatic, "but why bother
  to show me?"
  "It is important that you know. And if I had simply told you, you would not
  have believed. This way I would hope that you will not try to hide anything
  from me. The talent is tiring, you see? All of the ESP-abilities are, and I do
  not wish to tire myself unnecessarily. On the other hand I don't wish to be
  duped. For which reason I will, from time to time, occasionally read your
  mind. Do we understand each other?"
  So far. Stone thought.
  "Well? I am waiting."
  "Yes," said Stone, "we understand each other." And he realized he'd learned
  nothing at all from that last ploy—except that perhaps the freak spoke the
  whole truth. And why should he lie? After all, he held all the cards.
  Stone knew there were ESPers in MI6, but he would never have believed that
  anyone could reach such heights of perfection in the art. Actually, he'd
  always considered it a waste of time and money. But now . . .? ESPionage,
  indeed!
  "Good," the other nodded. He held out his arms and his paramours—slaves?—eased
  him upright until he could swing his legs from the slab. He stood, and a robe
  of towelling was draped across his shoulders. He fastened it about his vast
  waist, waved the two girls and the boy-girl away. Stone heard a door open and
  close pneumatically.
  "That must be disconcerting," said the creature, approaching, looming larger
  in the ceiling
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  Brian Lumley
  mirror. "You can move your head, Mr. Stone. Why not look at me directly? I am
  
  not of the Qor-gons, you know."
  Stone raised his head upright and it hurt. Lights flashed before his eyes and
  inside his skull, causing him to wince. "Jesus!" he said.
  "It will pass," said the other.
  Stone winced again, screwed up his eyes, blinked them rapidly. He was glad the
  lighting was subdued. "Okay, Mr. whoever you are, what's it all about?"
  "Qubwa," said the other, "Charon Qubwa. I doubt that you ever heard of me."
  "No need to doubt it," said Stone, trying now to be flippant, "I never heard
  of you. But I'm all ears if you want to tell?" By now he had ascertained that
  he was securely strapped in his chair, his arms as well as his legs. Apart
  from his head, he couldn't move by so much as an inch. There was absolutely
  nothing he could do, no physical action he might take, and so it seemed best
  simply to sit here and listen. At least that way he might learn
  something—before the other decided he had learned enough.
  "Oh, but I want you to learn everything, Mr. Stone," said Qubwa, proving his
  point yet again and paying no heed to Stone's wit. "Everything—for reasons
  which I shall now explain:
  "First, when you know all about me you'll stop wondering about me. This will
  leave your mind free to think more clearly about what I require of you.
  Second, you are intelligent—indeed a member of an 'intelligence'
  organization—and wily, devious minds have always fascinated me.
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  Third, your natural curiosity pleases me, as that of a child pleases his
  instructor. And finally—"
  "—Finally, nothing you tell me will do me any good, because I'm never going to
  talk about it?"
  "Correct!" Qubwa agreed, smiling again. "In fact when I'm finished with you,
  not only will you not talk about it, you might not even think about it."
  Stone nodded, flexed his muscles one last time against his bonds, shrugged and
  gave it up. "I'm very angry, Qubwa, but I'm sure you already know that. You
  probably also know that if I could get out of this chair I'd wreck you, so /
  don't suppose it does much harm to tell youl As for the rest of it: I suppose
  you could cail me a captive audience."
  "That is also correct!" Qubwa laughed, but to Stone his laughter sounded like
  the rattle of a snake. Qubwa was rubbing it in, gloating on Stone's
  helplessness. And knowing it brought out the agent's mean streak.
  "Listen, Your Uniqueness," he growled. "Did you ever stop to think that maybe
  you're not so unique? That maybe you're just another freak?"
  Qubwa moved behind him, surprisingly quickly for a being of his size and bulk.
  Stone's ears tingled but nothing happened. Then the chair spun silently round
  on rubber wheels. Qubwa steered it towards metal doors that hissed open. "Oh,
  but I know I'm a freak," he said. "That's what makes me unique. I was born
  before my time. Like Jesus, da Vinci, Einstein. And I am no less than them, in
  my way. Indeed I am more than them. I am the destiny of the
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  Brian Lumley
  human race, Mr. Stone. And I shall remold that race in my own image. Homo
  Sapiens? Bah! Her-maphro Sapiens!"
  They passed into Qubwa's Command Center and Stone found himself wheeled to
  where he could stare up at the massively-carved figure of the albino where its
  feet straddled the globe of the world. And at last the agent began to know
  something of awe, and of fear. The man meant it. His aim was conquest,
  empire—with himself as Emperor of Earth! He was as mad as a hatter.
  "Right on the one hand, wrong on the other!" Qubwa snapped. "I dream of
  empire, yes, but 1 am not mad. Indeed I am utterly sane."
  "Most madmen think they're sane," Stone growled.
  "I do not intend to argue with you, merely to inform you. Then you shall work
  for me—at least for a little while, longer if you are sensible—and finally . .
  . welt I shall leave the end of it up to you. You are, as 1 have said,
  
  intelligent. I could find a place for you in my organization. But do please
  remember, Mr. Stone, that yours is hazardous work at best, and no one will
  worry too much if you simply go missing. That is why you are paid so well,
  after all. The 'X' Factor: danger-money!"
  Stone remained silent.
  "Very well. Mow listen to what I have to say. I shall begin at the very
  beginning . . .
  "My great-grandfather was the son of a South-African chief, of the blood of
  Shaka and Cete-wayo. Unlike those two, he mined yellow metal and blue stones
  for his white masters. And the
  214
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  earth was also rich in pitchblende, uranium. That was one generation. As a
  child and a young man, my grandfather worked the same mines, until the
  precious metals and stones were gone. By which time there was a new interest
  in the previously useless metal. Finally, my father and mother worked for
  whites, too, and my father ended his days cleaning the vats in a refinery. He
  had been bald since he was eighteen and his teeth had fallen out before he was
  twenty-five. But do not think I hold all this against you white men, for I do
  not. No, in a way I owe you a debt.
  "Perhaps I was meant to be twins, I don't know, but that's not how it worked
  out. You see, I was really the product of three parents. The one in the middle
  was radiation!
  "I was born neither black nor white but gray-not even a true albino, you see?
  Unique! I had the parts of both male and female, equally well developed. I do
  not have a womb, no, but all the rest of the equipment is there—sensory
  certainly. My breasts are real, not merely cosmetic adornments, and my
  passions are of both man and woman . . .
  "I have pink eyes and they are weak, but in the darkness of a post-holocaust
  world they would be ideally suited. My size is godlike, towering, and my body
  has the mass of solidity. My frame, freakish according to you, is a leader's
  frame, that of a great emperor. And my powers ...
  "What do you know of ESP, Mr. Stone? Mo, do not answer; first let me tell you
  what I can do. I am telepathic, as you have discovered. I read
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  Brian Lumley
  minds. But that is only one of my powers. I cannot yet levitate, not yet, but
  I do have great potential. Here, let me show you . . ." He went to an upright
  weighing-machine and stood upon its platform. The needle spun dizzily and
  twitched to a halt at just over four hundred and thirty pounds.
  "Now watch!" ordered Gubwa. He closed his eyes. In a matter of moments a fine
  beading of sweat stood out upon his brow. The needle on the dial crept down,
  down. Three hundred pounds. Two hundred and ten. One hundred and seventy.
  Qubwa opened his eyes, sighed—and the needle shot up again. He stepped off the
  platform. "And that is a measure of power I must use constantly, Mr. Stone,
  else movement itself would be cumbersome. Hypnotism is another art of mine, in
  which I excel. But you will discover that for yourself soon enough. I am also
  what you might call a seer: I prognosticate. Not, unfortunately, very
  accurately—but I can see something of the future. The immediate future, quite
  clearly—the distant future, dimly. Suffice it to say that when I put my money
  on a horse it usually wins. In all matters of gambling, I am rather
  unbeatable."
  Stone frowned. In all matters of ... gambling1. His mouth fell open. Garrison!
  So that was how he did it!
  Qubwa had chosen that very moment to read his mind. His pink eyes became slits
  in his puffy, leprous face: his version of a knowing smile. "Indeed," his
  voice was very low, very
  216
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  sinister. "Richard Garrison—and you have been given the task of protecting
  
  him."
  Stone's mind went back to Garrison's file—all he had read and memorized of the
  man—but in the next moment he gasped, gritted his teeth and bit his lip until
  it hurt, deliberately dragging his mind away from that subject.
  Gubwa laughed, a deep, almost hearty laugh. "Oh, do not concern yourselfl I
  know more of Garrison than ever you could tell me. Far more, though not yet
  enough. Sincerely, Mr. Stone, there is nothing I want of you in the way of
  information, nothing I want out of you at all. Instead, let me tell you
  something about him." He quickly outlined the relevant facts, even went so far
  as to mention several things Stone had not previously known, until the agent
  once more relaxed in his chair. Gubwa was right: there was nothing Stone had
  that he didn't already know.
  "So what do you want of me?"
  Qubwa pursed his lips, then shrugged. "Again, it can do no harm to tell you. I
  have—'a friend'— in a rival branch of your so-called 'secret' services. He
  would dearly love to see Garrison dead, also to discredit MI6, your branch . .
  ."
  "Sir Harry," Stone scowled.
  "Close enough," Gubwa nodded. "Actually Sir Harry's boss, working through
  him." He smiled again. "But you see, you are intelligent! And being so
  intelligent, perhaps I need explain no further?"
  "I'm getting the picture," Stone answered, "but I'd still be happier hearing
  it from you. I mean, you're the telepath, not me."
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  Brian Lumley
  Qubwa raised his eyebrows. "You disappoint me. But as you will, I shall
  explain:
  "By using you to achieve my aims, I will kill Garrison—eventually—and at the
  same time perform a service useful to Sir Harry. MI6 will carry the burden of
  the blame. Now this is not all-important to me, this 'service' I propose to
  perform. No, for eventually I will be obliged to deal with Sir Harry, too.
  That is to say, kill him. But being 'in league with him,' shall we say, does
  give me a little security in the event that my plans are not immediately
  successful. It is simply a matter of being careful."
  "Let's get this straight," said Stone. "You see yourself as the future Emperor
  of Earth, right?"
  Qubwa nodded. "Yes."
  "I see. And you'll bring this about through, er, holocaust?"
  "Not 'er' holocaust, Mr. Stone, a holocaust. The neutron bomb, chiefly, though
  there will be other nuclear devices involved, yes."
  Stone nodded, very slowly. "And after that you intend that the human
  race—what's left of it-should become a gang of freaks, f/ermaphro Sapiens,
  like yourself?"
  "I will see to it that several genetic engineers, clone technicians, etc.,
  survive, yes. They will be the fathers of the New Earth—figuratively speaking,
  of course. I, in fact, shall be the true father. My own sperm shall be the
  seed of future generations."
  Stone sighed, nodded, slumped down in his chair as best he could. After a
  moment he looked up. "You really are quite mad, you know that? I
  218
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  mean, surely this is something straight out of James Bond. Just let's suppose
  for a moment that you can do all you say you're going to do: mentally
  manipulate the world to disaster, kill us all off and start again with a
  selected few-yes, and even breed a race of superfreaks to—"
  "Ah!" Qubwa stopped him. "No, I said nothing about that. I would never allow
  the development of another whose powers were as great or greater than my own.
  That would be strictly controlled."
  "I see ..."
  "What do you see?" said Qubwa, looking into the agent's mind. His great gray
  
  face grew angry then. He approached, towered over Stone's chair, looked down
  on him. "You're wrong, Stone, I fear no man!"
  "Except Garrison?"
  "I said I fear no man, Mr. Stone! No m-a-n." Qubwa spelled it out. "You are
  Homo Sapiens; the world I envisage will be a world of Herma-phro Sapiens; but
  if I am right in what I suspect of Garrison—"
  "He's not a man?"
  "A man—of sorts. Homo Superior, I suspect."
  "And you want to know what it is he's got that makes him Homo Superior,
  right?"
  "Correct. And when I have the answer—then he dies."
  "So what it boils down to, man or superman, you do fear him."
  "You see?" Qubwa hissed, towering closer still. "So very intelligent! Wasn't I
  right about you, Mr. Stone?" He clubbed one mighty fist and
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  Brian Lumley
  raised it, and for a moment Stone believed he would strike him. Then—
  —He quickly turned away and pointed, throwing out the fingers of his fist
  straight and stiif in the direction of the bas-relief figure astride the
  Earth-image. "Nothing must be allowed to interfere with that, Mr.
  Stone—nothing!"
  "And Garrison could, is that it?"
  Qubwa turned and stared at him. "Perhaps," he nodded. "Yes, perhaps he could.
  But that in itself is not my dilemma. No, you were right the first time. I
  want to know what makes him tick. You see, I know where my powers come from:
  they are born of the atom, as were the body and mind that house them.
  Therefore I will admit to being, as you say, a 'freak,' a mutation. But
  Garrison is not. How then is he what he is?"
  "A telepath?" Stone seemed surprised. "Surely lots of people have claimed to
  be—"
  "Claimed!" Gubwa exploded. He threw back his great head and laughed.
  "Telepath! How little you know! You have no idea, Mr. Stone, what Garrison is,
  what he can do. Telepathy, indeed! Oh, much more than that. So much more. He
  is—" he threw his arms wide, forming a great cross, "—incredible! Let me tell
  you about Garrison. Let me fill in a few more of the gaps in your knowledge.
  Where to start . . . oh, yes!
  "I have always been aware, you see, that certain minds are different. My own,
  for instance, and those of several others I've come across over the years.
  There are a great many men-women, too—whose ESP centers are developed away and
  beyond the norm or average. Indeed,
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  one might grade them as the numismatist grades his coins.
  "First there is 'Ungraded' or 'Poor/ common man in all his billions, who knows
  nothing whatsoever of ESP let alone controls the power. And 'Fair,' who
  occasionally finds himself whistling some obscure tune precisely at the same
  time another begins to whistle it, for he has received an impression of it
  from that other's mind. Then there is 'Fine' who knows 'instinctively' when
  his father dies—though they are miles apart—or who can 'feel' that something
  is about to happen. Of him there are many thousands. Do you see the
  structure?"
  Stone nodded. "I follow you. Go on."
  "Very well. Above 'Fine' we would place 'Very Fine'—the man who can fairly
  accurately read the minds of his wife or children, and who usually has a
  leaning towards the so-called 'occult.' That is to say, this one knows he is
  different. Alas, he is only a little different. But rising through the grades
  we now find 'Extremely Fine'—the gambler whose chances are far better than
  average; perhaps the policeman or detective whose 'hunches' always seem to
  work out. These are few and far between, and with them the power goes far
  beyond mere blood-ties or friendships. Rarer still, however, are the topmost
  
  grades, who can read most minds with little difficulty and whose control of
  ESP is far more extensive than mere telepathy.
  "Recently, in Tibet, ! discovered an- entire cache of this latter grade—a rare
  find indeed. I became jealous, caused the Communist Chinese
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  Brian Lumley
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  authorities there to suspect them of being Fifth Columnists—which they
  were—and was directly responsible for their extermination. All of this without
  once leaving this retreat of mine."
  "How utterly charming of you," said Stone.
  "Coins," Qubwa continued, ignoring his sarcasm, "and their grading. I wandered
  there for a moment. Finally I must grade myself . . .
  "Well, as I have said, I am unique. I suppose you might say that I have been
  overprinted—a rare coin made rarer still by having been struck twice on one
  disc ... or perhaps I am an exceedingly high denomination mistakenly minted in
  a base metal. Just so—but this is a far different grading to the one I used to
  apply to myself, before the advent of Garrison.
  "Oh, yes, for there was once a time when I considered myself FDC—that is to
  say Fleur de Coin. But ... I graded myself too highly. It was a gigantic
  vanity. Only Garrison is truly FDC, and only he is truly unique. There is no
  other like him.
  "Telepathy? That is the most meager of his talents. Mo, untrue, it is merely
  one of them. Consider: he was blinded. Mow he sees. Consider: his woman was
  also blind. She sees. Ah, but that is not all: she was dead!"
  At this Stone snorted his derision. "The body of a certain Vicki Maler was
  placed in cryogenic suspension at—"
  "Mot 'a certain Vicki Maler/ Mr. Stone—the Vicki Maler. Garrison revived her.
  I know. 1 have been inside her mind. She was frozen against the chance—the
  million-to-one chance—that
  222
  science might one day discover a means of reviving her. Garrison already has
  that science. And consider this: she was riddled with the terrible cancer
  which killed her. Mow she is perfect. That, too, is Garrison's work . . .
  "Finally there are his most recent—shall we continue to say—works? Occurring
  within the space of the last twenty-four hours, they are perfect examples of
  his power. Only yesterday— for you have been unconscious overnight, Mr.
  Stone—his plane was bombed. That was over the Aegean Sea. He flew that
  crippled plane to England, to Gatwick, and landed it there safely. Without
  engines, without any means of aerodynamic control, without wheels! And the
  plane landed like a feather, the most perfect of perfect crash-landings."
  "I know about that," said Stone. "A miraculous escape, a—"
  "Rubbish!" Gubwa snapped. "You know nothing. A miracle is in the eyes of the
  beholder. It is usually the occurrence of a highly unlikely event. The
  impossible on the other hand cannot occur because it is impossible. What will
  the authorities make of it, I wonder, when they discover that Garrison's plane
  came in ninety minutes too soon? From the moment the bomb exploded and
  crippled it, it must have been travelling at a speed far in excess of its
  maximum possible speed!"
  Stone's mind was whirling again.
  "Mow that is what I call levitation!" Gubwa continued. "The pilot is still
  convinced it was an act of God. Oh, the effort tired Garrison, cer-
  223
  Brian Lumley
  tainly, for which reason he is now resting—but is that difficult to
  understand? Think of it! Think of what he did! Moreover, he discovered the
  author of the crime and struck back. Except that here he was much more lenient
  than I would have been."
  "Now you've really lost me," said Stone.
  "Ah! Of course, for you do not yet know who tried to kill him. Well, 1 shall
  
  tell you. It was the Mafia—or rather, a small member of that crude and
  unwieldy organization. His name is Vi-centi."
  "Carlo Vicenti? We've been interested in him and his pals for some time. Are
  you sure it was him? How did you get onto him so quickly?"
  "I am sure, yes," Qubwa answered. "The bomb could only have been planted in
  Rhodes; an ugly pair called the Black brothers are there; 1 have been in
  "Bomber" Bert Black's mind. It was them. He himself planted the device."
  "Wait," said Stone, his gravelly voice suddenly weary. "Too fast. If they are
  still in Rhodes, how could you have been 'in' Bomber's mind? How do you know
  they are there anyway?"
  Qubwa turned Stone's chair to face his huge desk. "You see my computer there?
  I know the Blacks are in Rhodes because my computer told me. It talks to the
  computer at Qatwick. Also to those at New Scotland Yard, and to many others.
  Even to your own machine at MI6 HQ." His smile was broader now than Stone had
  ever seen it. "Ah, and at last you begin to see, Mr. Stone! And perhaps I am
  not so crazy after all, eh?"
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  "But how did Garrison know it was Vicenti? And how did he strike back at him?"
  Qubwa sighed, losing patience. "When the bomb went off he became aware that he
  was a target. He looked for people with a grudge. Vicenti was one such. A
  quick look inside his mind—" He shrugged.
  "You mean he tackled Vicenti after his plane landed, before he went into
  hospital?"
  "While his plane was in the air, Mr. Stone. Distance is nothing to the true
  telepath, not if he knows his target. He visited Vicenti's mind as I visited
  Bert Black's. At least I suppose that is how it was. And he then delivered
  Vicenti a psychic blow, several of them, but not fatal. Vicenti, too, is
  hospitalized. He should consider himself lucky; if I were Garrison I would
  have killed him."
  Stone now seemed weary to death. "But you can't be sure that Garrison did it
  to Vicenti. He might simply have been involved in an accident."
  "But I have been in Carlo Vicenti's mind, too. He knows that it was Garrison.
  He doesn't know how, but he knows it was him."
  "It's all over my head." Stone seemed genuinely lost. "Maybe I'm not as smart
  as you think."
  "Oh, but you are," Gubwa laughed. "You have a very agile mind. You have soaked
  up every word I've uttered, even as a sponge soaks up water. Your weariness is
  an act. You must not take me for a fool, Mr. Stone, for I am not. Nor
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  Brian Lumley
  have you led me on, as you assume. I have told you nothing I did not wish you
  to know,"
  Stone wasn't a good loser. "Shit!" he said through clenched teeth. He sat up a
  little straighter. "Okay, I'll stop pretending. And let's say I believe all
  you say. Or at least let's say I'm open to suggestion. There are still some
  things I'd like to know. For one, how did you get onto Garrison in the first
  place? That is, how did you twig him for ... an ESP-master?"
  "Two years ago," Qubwa answered, "a good many strange things occurred, all
  centered about him. Until then I had not been interested, in Garrison, did not
  know he existed. The world is full of minds; I visit only those I wish to
  visit. Garrison was of no interest to me. Since then, however, I have
  discovered all that I now know of him. Which isn't yet enough. But it will be
  . . . soon.
  "It was then, two years ago, that he regained his sight; then that he returned
  Vicki Maler to life, cleansed her of her disease, gave her back her sight. In
  other words that was when Garrison first became aware of his power, or gained
  full control over it. As to how I know it—" again his shrug, "I am a telepath.
  And every telepath in the world must have felt something of it!"
  Gubwa's voice had fallen to a whisper, was filled with awe. "If I believed in
  
  God, Mr. Stone, which I do not, then I would have known that God was come down
  amongst men. Do you know what is meant by the biosphere?"
  Stone nodded. "It's what you'll pollute with neutron bombs."
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  Again Qubwa chose to ignore the jibe. "Then picture a great meteorite rushing
  through Earth's atmosphere and causing the most violent storm you could ever
  imagine. Picture the air and the ocean whipped to a frenzy, the elements
  enraged. Do you have it? Good! Mow take it one step further. Picture a psychic
  biosphere—a Psychosphere, if you wish—in which ESP talent and potential takes
  the place of life in the biosphere. And picture that Psychosphere torn as by
  some mental meteor! That was Garrison's coming, his awakening, Mr. Stone. And
  that explains the paradox: why on the one hand I want him dead, while on the
  other he must not die."
  Stone looked blank.
  "numismatics, my friend," said Gubwa. "Me is Fleur de Coin, the only one in
  the batch. Where was he minted, by whom? If you were a collector and such a
  coin came into your hands, wouldn't you ask yourself these questions? Of
  course you would. And if you checked the metal, discovered that it had been
  melted down from old stock and re-stamped—"
  "A counterfeit!" said Stone.
  "Just so," Gubwa excitedly agreed; "but better than any original, the work of
  a genius! And what question would you next ask yourself?"
  "Who made it?"
  "Correct!" Gubwa clasped the agent's shoulders in iron hands. "And surely—how
  was it made?"
  He looked down, looked deep into Stone's unflinching gaze. "What happened to
  him two years
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  Brian Lumley
  ago, that gave him powers comparable to those of a god?"
  Stone narrowed his eyes, believed for a moment that he had found Qubwa out.
  "Why don't you ask him?" he said. "Why don't you just get inside his mind
  and—" He saw his error.
  Qubwa's eyes had shot open, were now wide and pink and bulging. "What?" he
  hissed. "Have you learned nothing? Believed nothing? Man, I would not even
  approach Garrison's mind! I would sooner swim in a pool of piranhas—yes, with
  the veins of my wrists open and bleeding!"
  228
  Chapter
  14
  F   COURSE   I   SOUGHT   TO   DISCOVER   THE
  source of this vast disturbance in the Psychosphere. I had to; the thing was
  wild, it lured me. And to find it—why, all I had to do was close my eyes and
  send my mind blindly out, out . . . and the very aura of Garrison did the
  rest! I found myself hurled about like a twig in a whirlpool, a leap in the
  very maelstrom. Enter his mind . . . ?
  "I have been on the threshold. It seethes, boils, crashes with energies. I
  would be a fly caught up in a high-speed fan. And if I survived— if, mind
  you—he would know me, would follow my limping trail home. And knowing me, he
  would destroy me."
  "He didn't destroy Vicenti," Stone pointed out.
  "But he hurt him!" Gubwa was quick to return. "And how then would he deal with
  me, who
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  Brian Lumley
  stands at the back of it all? Charon Gubwa, the grand engineer of all his
  trials."
  "You? How?"
  "flow? But didn't I set those minds in action which now work against him? It
  
  was a testing, don't you see? Only it got out of control! I dared not go
  against Garrison, not personally—dared not try him out—and so I arranged for
  others to do it for me. Who else do you think put Garrison in the minds of all
  those oh-so-interested parties if not me? I can influence the minds of others,
  Mr. Stone, don't forget it. Indeed, I am an adept. Haven't I told you I
  destroyed those monks in Tibet? Ah, but they weren't of Garrison's mettle!
  "Still, the wheels I have set in motion must eventually crush him, one way or
  the other. Or I will crush him, by discovering his secret. But until I know it
  he must not be crushed."
  Storte slowly nodded his head. "And that's where I come in, right?"
  "Correct. Garrison has a weakness, a chink in his armor. The woman Vicki
  Maler. I believe that she knows his secret. Or if she does not actually know
  it, then at least the clues to it are buried in her mind. I shall dig them
  out."
  "Why haven't you already done so? If all you say of your telepathy is true,
  you—"
  no, «O, NO! Gubwa shouted in Stone's mind, electrifying him afresh. "You still
  don't understand, do you? Garrison is close to the woman. She is like his
  child. Resurrected her?—why, one might go so far as to say he made her! He is
  never very far from her mind. And if ever he found me there ..."
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  "And so you can't really tackle her," said Stone.
  "Oh, but I have tried, I have tried. It had seemed to me that recently, within
  the last six months, Garrison's strength was waning. When chance permitted, I
  actually found and entered Vicki Maler's mind. There were several such
  occasions, and I was always lucky. Or perhaps it was not simple luck. Perhaps
  my ESP told me the best times. But in any case the contact was always
  brief—never long enough to learn much, no time to be discovered. The last time
  was only a matter of days ago, while she and Garrison were still in
  Rhodes—since when he has performed these 'miracles' we've spoken of, proving
  that he's as powerful as ever. Or at least powerful enough to constitute a
  real threat."
  Stone frowned. "So how will you do it? If you can't get at her, how will—"
  "I can't 'get at her' as you have it, while she's out there, beyond these
  walls. But in here there are ways! Here I am the master, and I am not without
  protection."
  Stone saw it coming. "I'm to bring her here?"
  Gubwa smiled, nodded. "Indeed you are."
  "So you really are crazy after all! If what you've told me of Garrison is only
  half-true—why, he'll mince me!"
  "That is a distinct possibility," Gubwa blandly agreed. "And one to be
  avoided." He smiled again.
  "And through me he'll find you, and—"
  "Mo," the other snapped, his smile disappearing in an instant. "He will not
  find me. If you are
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  Brian Lumley
  discovered your mind will simply self-destruct. It will burn itself out before
  telling anything about me. Oh, yes, Mr. secret agent Stone—you would die
  before talking, or before having the facts extracted."
  "—And in any case, I won't do it." Qubwa's smile was back, growing wider by
  the minute. He began to nod his great white head. "Oh, yes, you will." He took
  Stone's chair and wheeled it across the floor. Doors hissed open at their
  approach. "I'm now going to show you my mind laboratory, Mr. Stone. Being as
  you are a secret agent, you'll be familiar with the term brainwashing. Yes,
  I'm sure you are. Well, my mind-lab is a veritable laundry. And of course I've
  already mentioned my expertise in the field of mesmerism? yes . . ."
  Along the corridor the great albino paused for a moment. "Dear, oh, dear, Mr.
  Stone! Why, I'm really quite surprised at you! Those are not very kind
  
  thoughts at all, now are they?"
  While Charon Qubwa worked on Stone in the mind-lab, Vicki Maler sat by
  Garrison's bedside in a small whitewashed hospital room in Hasle-mere, Surrey.
  It was an austere place by any standards, but Garrison's private doctor—a much
  respected man, whose patients were extremely rich and/ or very important
  persons all—liked austerity. To him sparseness was synonymous with
  cleanliness, and cleanliness was the basic necessity of all good medicine. At
  the moment Vicki was alone with Garrison, indeed at present he was the
  232
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  only resident patient, but Dr. Jamieson was about somewhere.
  The room's window look out under the branches of willows across a
  close-cropped, fenced garden. Beyond the fence a stream or beck sparkled in
  early morning sunlight. In fact the place was not a hospital at all in the
  accepted sense of the word but Jamieson's home. It was very expensive but not
  at all an easy place to find, and Vicki was satisfied that Garrison was safe
  here. Safe from what she could not say. From his own waking fears, maybe. From
  killers—such as the would-be killers who had sabotaged the plane—that remained
  to be seen.
  Until now their personal security had not been a problem to concern her.
  Safety usually went hand in hand with Garrison; to be with him was to be safe.
  Or had used to be. She looked at him; sedated, he slept. And he needed it. His
  face was drawn, his forehead lined. His hands twitched occasionally, however
  faintly, on top of the bedclothes . . .
  Vicki had arrived an hour earlier. She had been greeted by the doctor and his
  nurse-assistant, probably his wife. Richard (they had told her) would not be
  up and about until Monday morning. Since today was Friday, that would give him
  three more full days and nights of rest, and Dr. Jamieson would ensure that
  they were three full days.
  The police had been on the telephone twice, requesting a statement from
  Garrison in respect of the bombed plane, but the doctor had put
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  Brian Lumley
  them off. His patient could not be disturbed, he had told them. Garrison was
  physically and mentally run-down, teetering upon a nervous brink, and the only
  sure way he could be revitalized was by resting.
  There had also been the matter of the contact lenses, which had arrived while
  Garrison and Vicki were in Rhodes. She did not know what Richard had done to
  Dr. Jamieson, but the business of her own and Garrison's eyes didn't seem to
  be at all problematic. He had already fitted Garrison's lenses (in accordance
  with previous orders, apparently), and upon VScki's arrival he had worn a pair
  of tinted spectacles to fit hers. After a few minutes she hadn't even known
  she was wearing them. Then she had been taken to Richard's room and left
  there, since when she had simply sat here at his bedside.
  Very carefully, she now took one of his hands in hers. His flesh was cool,
  seemed somehow fragile, almost brittle. A plastic hand. She squeezed it, just
  to reassure herself. But of what? To confirm that Garrison was real? That she
  was real? Vicki found herself trembling. Was she real?
  The fact that she no longer loved Garrison suddenly bloated in her mind like
  some strange orchid. One minute it was absent, the next it had opened, hybrid
  and scentless. It was not beautiful, but strangely it was not ugly. It was
  merely there: a fact, not even a hard one to assimilate. For how can one love
  a constant threat? The axe that hangs over one's head . . . the fraying
  threads of rope by which one hangs from the
  234
  PSYCHOSPHERE
  cliff. . . the clock relentlessly ticking away one's final hour.
  You cannot love that which you don't know. She had once known Garrison,
  briefly, and through her long illness his remembered beauty had remained with
  her, buoyed her up; the joy of having had him sustained her to the end. And
  
  she had thought that she could have loved him. And she had loved—adored him—in
  the new beginning. Then . . . the rope had started to fray. The axe had seemed
  so heavy hanging over her. The ticking of the clock had grown incredibly loud,
  a roar of sound in her ears.
  If Garrison died, she died—and this time she would stay dead. Vicki had been
  there once. It was a fearful place. She couldn't remember the limbo of it and
  didn't want to, but she had hated it. She hated the thought of it, the threat
  of it. Garrison was that threat. Him she did not hate, but she was even more
  certain that she did not love him. And how long before she did hate him, and
  how shortly after that must he know it?
  Being Garrison, perhaps he had already seen it coming ...
  She stayed with Garrison for a further half-hour. Suzy, Garrison's black
  Doberman pinscher bitch whom Vicki had left waiting patiently in the car, sat
  still until she had the door half-open, then squeezed out. The dog's tail
  wagged and she iolled her tongue at her mistress but no amount of persuasion,
  cajoling or threatening could get her back inside the car again. Angry, Vicki
  followed Suzy back to the door of
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  Brian Lumley
  the doctor's house. Dr. Jamieson stood upon the step, smiling a little
  awkwardly, waiting for her to leave.
  He was a stocky, moon-faced man in a very old tweed suit. "It's all right, my
  dear, she can stay," he reassured Vicki. "Richard said she'd probably be
  along."
  "Oh!" said Vicki. "Yes, she doesn't like to be too far away from him."
  Suzy wagged her tail, came and licked Vicki's hand. She was aware now that she
  could stay. But her head kept turning in towards the house; she wanted to be
  with Garrison.
  As Vicki finally drove away, both Jamieson and Suzy came down to the gate at
  the bottom of the drive to see her off; but as soon as the car cornered out of
  the leafy lane, Suzy left the doctor's side and ran back to the house. In she
  went and straight to Garrison's room, where she waited until Jamieson opened
  the door for her. Then she entered and jumped up on the chair beside her
  master's bed.
  She sat there straight-backed, her head slightly forward, ears erect, eyes
  fixed firmly upon him where he lay. She watched him intently, listened with
  twitches of her ears to his steady breathing. Then she settled down a little,
  gave one small whine, lay back her ears and made herself a little more
  comfortable.
  Jamieson left the door open for her. She would come to him when she was hungry
  ...
  Garrison had reached a junction in the dried-out bed of the stream he
  followed. Here where it split,
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  the walls which miles back had been mere banks were now cliffs of red stone,
  rising sharp and sheer for hundreds of feet. The bed of the stream had seemed
  the easiest trail to follow, but now Garrison snoofc his head in disgust. It
  seemed unthinkable that the lie of the land could have changed so swiftly.
  There had been green banks, a little water gurgling below, a gently winding,
  watery way to follow. Then the grass had become scrub as the banks grew
  boulder-strewn and steep, and finally the water had petered out. Then Garrison
  might have left the stream and headed for higher ground, but he had been tired
  or lazy or both, had failed to make the effort but simply allowed himself to
  drift on. And the banks had grown even steeper and craggier above a narrowing
  river gorge, until now at last the way divided, a cleft in the shade of the
  towering cliffs.
  And now which way to go? Right or left?
  Left would be the wizard's way, of course: the left-hand path. That would seem
  Garrison's natural choice, but...
  
  The way seemed narrower to the left. He would hate to find the trail narrowed
  suddenly to an impassible crack in solid rock, and then have to come back all
  this way. The right-hand path seemed fairly wide; its dusky veil of gloom was
  parted here and there with shafts of light from above; there should be no
  baleful magics there to blight his course.
  Suzy crouched closer to his back and whined ominously. Garrison frowned—edged
  the Machine forward right, then left, and paused—
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  Brian Lumley
  cursed and set Psychomech down upon the cracked bed of the stream. He climbed
  down from the broad, now rust-tainted back of the Machine, Suzy jumping down
  beside him. Where its base stood upon hard earth the Machine's metal was
  actually scabbed with rust, some of it already flaking, and its hard plastic
  casing was showing cracks. Within, fraying cables were visible behind
  blistered tubes and blackened piping.
  Garrison grunted. Better to leave the thing here and go forward on foot.
  Except that that would be like shooting an old horse just because he'd lost a
  shoe. Garrison grunted again and shook his head. No, it was worse than that
  and he knew it. A horse with a broken leg... or even a broken back!
  But in any case he could not simply leave the Machine behind. No, for it had
  been there with him in his vision of the future, that agonizing vision of the
  parched desert glimpsed in the shew-stone of the circle of wizards. And so the
  Machine must go on with him, but along which path? If only he might glimpse
  the future again, see his way clear ahead . . .
  "Richard . . . oh, Richard!" came the merest whisper of a soft female voice,
  fast on the heels of his fleeting thought.
  "What. . . ?" Garrison fell into a crouch, gazed all about, first at the
  left-hand path, then the right. "Where? Who?" But Suzy, her coat bristling,
  knew no such indecision. No, the bitch stared straight into that well of
  shadows which was the left-hand path, and her growl was all the answer
  Garrison needed—for now.
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  "So that's the way, is it, girl?" he said, his eyes narrowing. "And you heard
  it, too, did you?" Suzy whined in answer, pressed closer to his knee.
  "Richard, please!" came that woman's sigh again. "Please help me! Oh, please,
  please let me go!"
  Help her? Let her go? What did it mean? Garrison's flesh crept. Wizardry?
  Witchcraft? A very black magic, certainly. And yet he knew, or had known, that
  voice. In some other place, some other time. He grasped at that last thought:
  some other time. Could it be, he wondered? A voice from his future, auguring
  some event yet to come? He had, after all, expressed his desire to glance once
  more beyond the veil of the present and into future time. And was this his
  answer?
  He strained forward, his limbs shaking, his eyes already stinging from
  fathoming or attempting to fathom the vault of shadows which lay behind the
  entrance to the left-hand path. Did something move there? The figure of a
  girl, seen fleetingly, a wraith amongst the shadows? A girl, hiding, fleeing
  from shaded place to shaded place? Fleeing from whom? From Garrison? Possibly,
  for she 'had begged to be let go. Why, then, had she called on him for help?
  And if not fleeing from him, fleeing from—what?
  Something else moved in there! Garrison's flesh crept again, violently,
  rippling on his limbs and body like the ripples on a pool. Cold sweat started
  from his forehead. Something moved, hanging from above, drifting, swaying
  along the zig-zag, flitting
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  Brian Lumley
  route taken by the girl. Several somethings. Trailing somethings—like
  tentacles.
  The Other! That diseased evil insidious as cancer, gray as leprosy, warped as
  
  insanity. That vast octopus of evil from Garrison's dream within a dream! His
  enemy of enemies!
  He waited no longer but clambered back onto the Machine. Suzy made no effect
  to mount behind him but raced beneath as he rode Psycho-mech into the gap of
  the left-hand path. In there was a deeper gloom than had been expected, a
  chill gloom and clammy as fog, but Garrison knew it for a psychic thing. The
  depression was in his mind, its external oppression springing from the
  heaviness of spirit within.
  But now, too, he found that he must go cautiously; for here, where overhead
  the cliffs actually met in places—or rather where the upper strata remained
  but had been undercut by ancient waters—great stalactites depended to bar his
  way with their looming mass, forming columns where upthrusting spires had long
  ages since cojoined. And between and around these limestone relics he must
  drive the Machine, never knowing what lurked beyond or when it would strike,
  but ever aware that terror was here, breathing in the centuried stone.
  Then, far down the cleft where the way grew narrower still—another
  movement'.—a fleeting inkblot amongst the shadows, pressed low to the ground.
  "Suzy!" cried Garrison. "Wait, girl!" And her bark coming back to him, echoing
  with his own voice and dying into chill silence. But no, he
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  must not call her back. She scouted the way for him and that was good.
  tie urged a little more speed from the Machine (in truth he merely exerted
  himself the more, for Psychomech was now worse than useless), and as his eyes
  grew more accustomed to the ever-deepening darkness bore along the old
  watercourse, whose walls continued to close in on him. And thus, suddenly,
  from a claustrophobic realm into a wide, expansive elfland! Or perhaps a place
  of ogres ...
  So it seemed to Garrison as, bursting from the now completely arched-over
  tunnel, he entered through a portal into a huge irregular cavern of strange
  beauty and even stranger horror; and here he brought his Machine to a halt.
  Perhaps it was the sight of Suzy, cowering, that caused him to apply mental
  brakes; perhaps the sure knowledge that this was the subterranean lair of Evil
  itself. Oh, of shimmering beauty the cavern had its share, but so does the web
  of a spider.
  The place had a domed, stone dagger-festooned ceiling, irregular perimeter
  columns of stalag-mitic rock, a fairly even floor, though dotted here and
  there with weird mushrooms of dripstone, and the ghostly luminescence of the
  long-entombed: a firefly glitter that lent illumination and wonder to an
  otherwise lightless hole. Garrison skirted a column of massive girth which
  obstructed his way and his view, and came to where Suzy crouched, panted and
  whined. She immediately scrabbled up behind him, pressing to his back and
  shuddering as from a drenching in icy water.
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  Brian Lumley
  And now Garrison saw the reason for Suzy's dread and understood his own. For
  without a doubt the Being which sat upon or floated over its stalagmitic
  throne at the far side of the cavern was that same Other of his inmost dream,
  the many-tentacled blasphemy whose nature was neither male nor female, neither
  black nor white, neither truly sane and human nor insane and inhuman but Other
  than these things.
  Red-eyed, that horror, and glaring intently, sear chinglu—but not in
  Garrison's direction. No, for at the foot of that Being's throne here lay the
  phantom girl, whose sobbing was audible only as a distant sighing, whose shape
  and form were hidden in an ethereal glow or nebulosity from beyond the grave.
  And though Garrison could swear he knew or had known this creature, now he saw
  that she was indeed a wraith, a ghost; and knowing this he knew the Other for
  a necromancer, a wizard who raises up and questions the dead! But to what end,
  and how and why should it concern Garrison? In what way might the dead
  instruct the living, and how might Garrison possibly be endangered by such
  
  instruction?
  With his flesh freshly acrawl, still he urged the Machine forward across the
  open floor of the cavern, and emerging from the shadows of encircling columns
  . . . was checked. He found himself shut out. . . beyond a certain point,
  roughly halfway, the Machine would not go, had seemed to come up against some
  invisible wall or impenetrable barrier. Garrison had met with such before and
  knew their breaking was impossible or at best most difficult. Weary and
  debilitated as he
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  u?as through his fear, he could not summon the strength even to attempt such a
  breaking. How then might he help the ghost-girl or in any way interfere with
  the wizard's necromancies?
  It seemed that he could not; moreover, slowly it was dawning on him that what
  he saw was not real, or at best some symbolic vision from an as yet inchoate
  future. Else why had the Other failed to detect him? The answer seemed simple:
  he had asked to see the future, the Other in that future had not asked to see
  the past. Garrison could observe but could not interfere.
  His frustration knew no bounds. He must help the poor, shrinking luminescence,
  the ghost-girl of whom no single detail could be gleaned beneath her ethereal
  glimmer but whose whispered pleas had raised ghosts of their own, the ghosts
  of Garrison's memory. But how might he help? Too weary now even to think
  clearly, he could only look on as the tableau enacted itself beyond his and
  the Machine's and Suzy's range—but in another moment he held his breath at
  something else he saw.
  For within the impenetrable area were not two figures but three, the third
  emerging with some stealth from behind a row of thin stalactites that arrased
  the upward curving far wall like a curtain—and Garrison knew the intruder. It
  was the Secret One, also from his dream within a dream, and clad in his Robe
  of Secrecy. An acolyte of the Other? Perhaps. But that did not explain the way
  he glided, silent and stealthy, now darting to place himself between
  ghost-girl and monster and
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  Brian Lumley
  drag her up and out of the clutches of that dread Being.
  Across the floor of the cavern they fled, the Secret One bearing up her
  luminescent form where she lay half-fainting in his arms. And after them the
  now enraged Other, clearly bent upon their destruction, his many tentacles
  outstretched, with all their hooked sucker-mouths gaping and constricting in a
  frenzy of loathsome anticipation. For a moment it seemed that all would be
  well, that the pair might possibly escape—but then they came up against the
  inside of that very wall which kept Garrison out—and behind them the monster,
  leprous-gray and pulsating with rage!
  "No!" Garrison cried out his frustration, his anguish. "No, this must not be!"
  And whatever part of him it was that issued forth from him at that moment to
  sear the wall—whatever ESP power he inadvertently unleashed, which attempted
  to transcend time Itself and strike for the future—it seemed that it drained
  him utterly. For the moment, at least.
  The Machine settled to the floor and teetered there an instant, then lay
  inert; and Garrison fell in a half-faint to sprawl across its broad back. Yet
  still he clung to consciousness long enough to see the Secret One straining
  forward through the weakened wall, and the ghost-girl bundled in his arms, and
  long enough to watch them make away, safe now from pursuit.
  Then the darkness swept in upon him, and only with the greatest effort of will
  was he able to keep his eyes open and witness the final wonder: that
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  of the Other in all his monstrousness, writhing and raving and fading away,
  back into that future whence Garrison had drawn this strange and inexplicable
  vision . . .
  
  It was not unconsciousness that claimed Garrison then but a psychic numbness,
  a spiritual exhaustion or weary lassitude; from which, with her pawing and
  whining, Suzy eventually contrived to rouse him. She knew, wise creature, that
  this was no place to sleep, that they must be up and about, away on their
  quest.
  And surprisingly, for all the aching weariness of his body, head and limbs.
  Garrison discovered that he could now sit up; moreover that he could lift
  Psychomech up from the floor and however sluggishly guide the Machine from the
  great cave. Where the Other had writhed on or over his stalagmite throne there
  now opened a gloom-shrouded tunnel, and far along its curving length a glimmer
  could be seen as of daylight.
  Slowly, yard by aching yard, man, dog and Machine made for that glimmer, that
  glow of life which grew and expanded with each passing moment. Of the three
  Suzy seemed least affected, merely eager to be out of the place. Garrison had
  gone beyond tired, could only sway and nod and groan where he sat. And the
  Machine . . . ?
  Below Psychomech's belly a worn-through, fraying cable dangled, and In the
  Machine's wake lay frequent patches of red, fallen rust. . .
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  Chapter
  15
  AT 11:00 A.M., ON THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, CARLO Vicenti released himself from
  care. His doctor argued with him, likewise the nurses on his ward, but
  Vicenti's boys helped him dress and gave him what assistance they could to
  limp out of the place. Through the worst of it one thought made it all
  worthwhile: that when the Big Guy was finished with Garrison, then it would be
  his turn. Vicenti knew exactly what Mr. Garrison's fate was to be: concrete
  boots and a deep, very damp grave. And Garrison going down slow with a gag in
  his mouth, terror in his eyes and gaping, bubbling nostrils.
  As for the subject of Vicenti's plan: as coincidence would have it Garrison
  left Dr. Jamieson's house in Haslemere at about the same time. Vicki Maler
  took his great silver Mercedes to pick him up, but from the moment she parked
  the
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  car and got out of the driving seat she knew something was wrong. There was a
  sign she could hardly fail to recognize, one she had come to know all too
  well. Suzy was sitting outside the open front door of the house, her
  expression one of complete dog-despondency. The great black bitch had not been
  beaten or even chastised, Vicki knew that. It was simply that she had sensed a
  change in her master; this was how she was affected whenever one of Garrison's
  Gestalt facets took ascendence.
  On this occasion that facet was Thomas Schroeder, and Vicki knew him as soon
  as he appeared with Jamieson in the open doorway. Oh, it was Richard
  Garrison's body and shape-though even these seemed strangely altered, so that
  at best his suit was ill-fitting—but the alien gestures and posture and voice,
  particularly the voice, quite gave him away. While the vocal cords were
  Garrison's, the accent and inflection could only be Schroeder's.
  "Vicki, my dear!" he greeted her. "And punctual as ever. Thank you for coming
  for me." He took her hand like an old friend, which of course he was or had
  been, but there was a chill in his flesh and a feel to it that Vicki couldn't
  quite stomach. His kiss, for all that it was the merest peck, was almost
  unbearable. She knew exactly how Suzy felt and was glad when finally
  Garri-son/Schroeder released her and turned to Dr. Jamieson.
  "Just let me know what I owe you," he told him, smiling. "You shall have my
  check by return."
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  Brian Lumley
  "Of course, Mr., er, Garrison." The doctor briefly took his hand and shook it,
  then turned to Vicki. "Piow do take care of him, young lady, won't you? He's
  
  still not as strong as he should be, and—"
  "And you fuss too much, my friend!" Garrison/ Schroeder was smiling still, but
  his tone had grown harder, the German accent coming through a shade stronger.
  "I shall be just fine. I needed a little rest, that's all. Some peace and
  quiet—which you and your home provided most admirably. And for which you will
  be paid."
  "Of course, of course," Jamieson was quick to placate him. "It's just a
  doctor's natural concern for his patient, that's all."
  "Quite," Garrison/Schroeder nodded his head. "Well, thank you again, but now
  we must be on our way. Time is mistakenly thought of as a commodity—but none
  of us ever really has enough of it, and it is something we can't buy more of."
  He led Vicki to the car, helped her into the front passenger seat and opened a
  back door for Suzy. The black Doberman whined as she jumped into the back to
  sit there, staring at him curiously, but Garrison/Schroeder merely smiled as
  he started the car and nodded a last farewell to the doctor.
  Jamieson was still standing there as the car turned out of his drive and onto
  the country road beyond the gardens . . .
  "Vicki," said Garrison/Schroeder when they had found a first-class road and
  were speeding for home, "you know of course who I am?"
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  "Oh, yes, Thomas," she answered, sighing, "I know."
  He nodded, never taking his eyes from the road. "Very well, then know this
  also: I am not here through any ordinary resurgence of psyche. In future I
  will be here more often. Willy, too. He shall have his place. This is not a
  late recognition of status, more an equality of the same. True we all inhabit
  Richard's body, his mind, but not in the way I envisioned it when I was . . .
  before.
  "We are, in a way, completely separate identities. But Richard's was the
  strongest identity-yes, I said was—and he would not relinquish control
  lightly. Despite my earlier generosity, he quickly grew jealous over his right
  of tenancy."
  "Your generosity?" she broke in when he paused. "Are you talking about the
  money you left him? His right of tenancy? But you said it yourself: it's his
  body!"
  "But our mind! We're all in here, Vicki. We share knowledge. Even suppressed,
  kept down, Keonig and I know when Richard is well, when he is unwell. Happy,
  unhappy. Threatened. Hurt! And we know that when—if—he dies, then we must die
  with him. riot only us, the three of us in here, but you, too. Oh, Vicki,
  Vicki child! You are resentful of us, Willy and I, but don't you see? We are
  your protection!"
  "That's a ... a side-effect, a spinoff," Vicki protested weakly. "Thomas, you
  were my father's friend, like a kind—a very kind—uncle to me. I appreciated
  that, but now I—"
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  Brian Lumley
  "How, now, nowl" Garrison/Schroeder snapped. "Like it or not we are both of
  us, all of us, in the same boat!" His voice had risen in pitch, was harsh as
  chalk on a board. "Mein Qott'.—was ist los mit dir?"
  "Mil mir? Nichts!" she answered, her own heat rising. "But with you . . ? Is
  this the immortality you wanted, Thomas? What of our 'immortality' now?"
  He was suddenly livid, Vicki could see that, but he made a concentrated effort
  to retain or regain his composure before answering. "Vicki, my dear, there are
  two flies in the ointment of 'my' immortality," he rasped. "You are one, the
  other is Richard himself. You because you interfere, Richard because he is the
  ascendant one: he is more often in possession. What an irony that of the three
  of us—myself, Willy, and Richard—Richard is least well-equipped to protect
  himself!"
  "Is that why you're here? Now, I mean? To protect Richard?"
  "To protect us ail!" Garrison /Schroeder was calmer. "You know that the power
  
  is draining, Vicki. When it goes you will be the first to suffer. Don't you
  see how you will suffer? Blindness first, then death. You will . . . decay,
  Vicki! And very quickly. And like me, you have already been there once. You
  know what death is like ..."
  She shuddered. "Please don't!"—and turned to him sharply. "Thomas, I—"
  He took a hand from the steering wheel, qui-
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  etened her words before she could give them form. "Let me finish," he said.
  "The loss of power is not all. The plane was sabotaged, you know that. And so
  you must also know that an unseen, unknown agent is at work against us. Who?
  Why? Oh, I've had enemies enough in my time, but that Thomas Schroeder is no
  more. Likewise Koenig. And who would want to murder Richard, for what reason?"
  "I ... I don't know," she answered frowningly. "He's crossed people, I
  suppose, but—"
  "—But murder? Mo, I think it goes deeper than a mere feud. That is merely its
  guise. We have become aware recently of another power in the Psychosphere,
  Vicki. An incredible, hostile power. That is the other reason I am here, the
  reason why I may yet have to call up Koenig in our defense. It is the sort of
  work Willy and I understand far better than Richard. So you see, there are
  problems enough without your adding to them with merely mundane, personal and
  emotional troubles of your own . . ." He looked at her shrewdly as her hand
  went to her mouth.
  "You . . . know?" her eyes were wide, incredulous. And they were frightened.
  "That you have started to doubt your love for Richard? Yes."
  Mow she sobbed openly, had difficulty controlling the ache inside her body,
  her soul. Finally she said: "I've tried to hide it . . ." She dabbed furiously
  at her tears. "But I knew that sooner or later you, he—all three of you—must
  read it in my mind, no, I don't love him!"
  She had finally said it, was terrified of what
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  Brian Lumley
  she had said, and now clutched at Garrison/ Schroeder's arm and wept harder
  yet. She buried her head in his breast, and as he pulled off the road and
  stopped the car on the grass verge, she said, "Oh, Thomas, Thomas—I can't help
  it! He ts my life, but I don't love him. Yes, you're right, I have been . . .
  there. I have been dead. Oh, God!-and I fear it, fear it, /ear it! But how can
  I love someone who must in the end kill me?"
  "Vicki, Vicki!" he patted her shoulder, held her close and tight. "Don't,
  don't. Do you consider yourself a sinner? You haven't sinned. Were you
  disloyal? Mo, merely afraid. So you don't love Richard. Is that a crime? Not
  in my eyes—not even in Richard's, I am sure. What did you think he would do,
  will you out of existence? Is he-was he ever—that sort of man? Richard did not
  take lives, he saved them! He saved mine, for what it was worth ..."
  She looked up, dabbed at her tears; and for the first time it was as if
  Schroeder were actually here, that this was indeed that kind old uncle she
  used to know so very long ago. "He'll forgive me?"
  "He'll be hurt, no doubt," Garrison/Schroeder answered. "He may not forgive
  you, not immediately. But is he a murderer? Is he a coldblooded killer? Vicki,
  I Thomas Schroeder have killed men. I will not admit to murder, for those 1
  killed or caused to die deserved it. Willy Koenig has also killed men, but for
  him I cannot answer. Still I tell you nothing could bring us to harm you. Why
  should we? And Richard—how
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  could he? fio, on that point you needlessly impale yourself."
  "Oh, Thomas, if only—"
  "My child, listen to me. We both fear death, you and I. Yes, for we of all
  mankind—and Christ, too, if you believe—have been dead and returned. Can you
  believe that while it is in my power to live I will suffer death again? You
  
  know I will not. But. . . someone wants to kill Richard. And however
  unwittingly, he would kill all of us with Richard. That is a terrible threat
  and my first task is to remove it. After that—" He shrugged, started the car.
  "Yes?" she prompted him as he eased the Mercedes onto the road.
  "After that I shall turn my attention to a much more difficult problem. Having
  removed the threat of immediate death, I hope to solve the riddle of eternal
  life. For I—we—are not immortal, Vicki, not yet. We lost that when Richard
  destroyed Psychomech. But the machine can be rebuilt, or a greater power may
  yet be discovered. Richard has dreamed, is dreaming even now, and his dream is
  a quest. He seeks that greater power."
  "But what of me?" she asked. "Am I tied to him forever, without love?"
  "I can't speak for Richard, Vicki," Garrison/ Schroeder answered. "He may want
  to keep you, even without your love, but I doubt it. But whichever way it goes
  there is one thing I can promise you: while I live, you live. And, Vicki— you
  may believe that life is still very dear to me . . ."
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  At the house in Sussex Qarrison/Schroeder wasted no time but took a heaped
  tray of food with him and locked himself in the study. He did not want to be
  disturbed. At midday a constable and police inspector called at the house,
  having driven up from Chichester to record statements. They had been requested
  to do so by the Metropolitan Police. Garrison/Schroeder emerged from the study
  for twenty minutes to offer them food and drinks and give them the statement
  they required. Vicki declined, saying that her experience on the plane had
  been more or less the same as his.
  One thing Qarrison/Schroeder did ask of the police was the names and addresses
  of the crew and hostess. During the outward flight to Rhodes the crew had only
  used shortened forenames, nicknames, and of course neither Garrison nor Vicki
  had known anything of their personal particulars.
  When the police left, Qarrison/Schroeder went back into the study. Before he
  locked the door, Vicki saw him take down a street map of London. A short while
  later she heard him using the telephone but could make out nothing of what he
  said.
  He was in there for a further hour, finally came out looking pale and tired.
  His tray was empty and he was still hungry. While Cook prepared him a "proper
  meal" he sat and smoked, talked to no one. He ate his fill—not enjoying his
  food, simply stoking the fire, Vicki thought—then rested in the study,
  sprawled out at his ease in
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  a great padded chair. At 4:00 P.M. he left the house, but before going he said
  to Vicki: "My dear, I'm not sure how long this will take. Do nothing out of
  the ordinary. Merely stay here and live as normally as you may. One of us will
  be back. Myself, Richard, or Willy."
  Then he drove away in the big Mercedes, with Suzy (who appeared to be over her
  indecision about him) sitting beside him. Vicki waved them goodbye from the
  drive.
  She would never see either one of them again . . .
  At Qatwick airport Johnnie Fong used a public telephone to contact Qubwa.
  "Charon, I am at Qatwick. I followed Garrison here from the house."
  "What's he doing?" Gubwa's interest was immediate.
  "He appears to be waiting," Fong sighed. "He sits in the arrivals lounge with
  an airport magazine, but I do not think that he reads it."
  "This is interesting," Qubwa answered, his excitement mounting. "Perhaps we
  are about to learn something new about our Mr. Garrison. He will be waiting
  for the Black brothers, a pair of common thugs. They are due in at seven
  o'clock. How, Johnnie, I want you to watch most carefully what happens, and .
  . ." he paused. "No, better still, I'll watch it for myself—through your eyes.
  Let me know when the plane lands and position yourself so that you can see
  everything. After that—do nothing until I tell you. Understood?"
  
  "Yes," Fong whispered. "But—"
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  Brian Lumley
  "Yes?"
  "There is something . . . strange."
  "Go on."
  "It is Garrison," said Fong. "I know of course that it is Garrison, and yet—"
  "He seems a different person?"
  "Yes. It is ... strange, Charon."
  There was a thoughtful pause before Gubwa answered. "Another of Mr. Garrison's
  more mysterious aspects, Johnnie. You are not the first to note his
  changeability, not by any means. I will wait for your call. One last thing: do
  not be seen to be interested. Don't get too close."
  "Of course not."
  "I trust you above all others, Johnnie. Your rewards will be great."
  "My reward is great, Charon. I love you."
  "Until later, then." And the Chinaman waited for the metallic click from the
  other end before he replaced the phone in its cradle ...
  Good as his word, Gubwa was watching through Fong's eyes when Joe and Bert
  Black passed through customs and emerged from the arrivals gate. They were
  tanned, seemed healthy enough, but their minds were patently preoccupied. They
  had tried to carry out a Mafia-contracted hit and had failed; their presence
  had been "requested" at the Big Guy's place tonight; and that would be more
  than sufficient to occupy or preoccupy anyone.
  They spoke to each other in lowered tones, found a trolley for their luggage
  and made for the down-passage to the trains. But suddenly,
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  as they reached the center of the arrivals hall, their footsteps were
  arrested.
  Garrison had moved from his seat and was standing with his back to a pillar,
  his magazine held up before his face. There was no way the Blacks could know
  it was him, no reason why they should suspect him or anyone else to be waiting
  for them—but they nevertheless turned through ninety degrees, until they faced
  in his direction, and went up to him. And Gubwa saw that their movements had
  grown automatic, zombie-like.
  Now Garrison lowered the magazine. Gubwa might have expected the brothers to
  flinch, attack, almost anything—but they merely stared, their faces strangely
  blank. Nothing was said, no movement was apparent. For thirty seconds, maybe
  even a full minute, the oddly frozen tableau held. Then—
  As if they had not interrupted their exit from the hall, the brothers wheeled
  their trolley away and disappeared round a corner. Garrison watched them go,
  turned and began to follow the route indicated to the car park. He paused,
  leaned for a moment against a tiled wall, stood upright—but shakily—and
  finally continued walking.
  GO AFTER HIM, said Gubwa in Fong's mind. FOLLOW WHEREVER HE GOES. REPORT WHEN
  YOU CAN, DAY OR NIGHT. BUT DON'T LOSE HIM.
  "As you wish, Charon," the Chinaman whispered to no one, walking quickly after
  Garrison but keeping a good distance between himself and the man's back.
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  AND JOHNNIE, YOU MAY HAVE TO PROTECT HIM. I WANT HIM TO STAY ALIVE-FOR THE
  MOMENT, ANYWAY.
  "Yes, Charon."
  Qubwa withdrew and opened his eyes. He was seated at his desk in the Castle's
  Command Center, a Qatwick area Ordnance Survey map spread before him. He
  stared at the map thoughtfully, frowned, folded it carefully and turned in his
  seat to replace it in its rack.
  His frown grew more severe as he tried to analyze what he had just seen. If it
  was what he suspected, then Garrison's strength was indeed incredible. He
  
  could of course check it out, could visit the minds of the Black brothers and
  discover what had been done to them, but that might be dangerous. Garrison
  could be maintaining a mind-link. That might account for his momentary
  weakness as he left the arrivals area: it could be the result of his
  continuing use of ESP following the initial surge when he had done to them
  whatever he had done.
  No, Gubwa couldn't risk it. For one thing he did not wish to overtax his own
  powers, and anyway he had other things to do, other minds to monitor. Phillip
  Stone's, for instance . . .
  Stone's car was parked on the hard-standing of a lay-by where the road climbed
  to a low hill half a mile to the west of Garrison's house. Stone sat in the
  driver's seat, a pair of binoculars hanging round his neck. He had seen
  Garrison drive away towards London, had seen a gray Jaguar pick up his tail as
  he approached the A27, but beyond
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  that he had not been interested. He was simply following instructions. More
  than that was quite beyond him.
  Oh, he could perform his normal functions, could talk, eat, drink, smoke and
  answer the calls of nature—anything, providing he did not stray from the
  mental course directed by Charon Gubwa. The awful thing about it was he knew
  what he was doing—or what he was not doing. For one thing, he was not
  protecting Garrison. No, he was waiting on Gubwa's command to snatch the man's
  wife, or mistress, whatever she was.
  For what must have been the fiftieth time, Stone looked at his car telephone.
  All he had to do was pick it up, get his chief on the other end, put him in
  the picture. Or he might try digging a tunnel to Australia. An impossibility.
  He could think about doing it, want desperately to do it, but actually do it?
  No way. Gubwa had seen to that. A pretty thorough laundering of Stone's mind
  (done with an efficiency and speed that would have left the KGB in tears), a
  mind-block, and just to polish things off nicely a rather comprehensive list
  of post-hypnotic commands. These things were Gubwa's legacy to Stone: forming
  a governor on his mind like the governor on a car's carburetor or accelerator,
  limiting his performance. And until Gubwa's ends were served—until the albino
  had Vicki Maler to use as he would in the Castle—Stone would simply have to
  obey.
  QUITE CORRECT, MR. STONE, said a voice in his mind, so clear and close that he
  jerked his
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  head round, fully expecting to see the hermaphrodite standing there, just
  outside the open door of the car. NO, NO, said the voice, amused, YOU CAN'T
  SEE ME, MERELY "HEAR" ME—AND OBEY ME, OF COURSE.
  Stone swallowed hard, took a sip of coffee from the plastic lid of his thermos
  flask, thought: What now, Qubwa?
  JUST CHECKING. WHEN IT GETS DARK I WANT YOU TO GO TO THE HOUSE. THERE YOU WILL
  KEEP OUT OF SIGHT AND AWAIT FURTHER ORDERS. THERE IS A POSSIBILITY THAT YOU
  MIGHT HAVE TO PROTECT THE OCCUPANTS. THERE ARE OTHERS WHO SEEK TO BRING
  GARRISON DOWN. I CAN'T WATCH EVERYONE AND I DON'T KNOW EVERYTHING, BUT-
  But it only seems that way? Stone's thoughts were sarcastic.
  YOU FLATTER ME—Gubwa ignored them— BUT I DON'T WANT THE MALER WOMAN HARMED IN
  ANY WAY. I'LL BE IN TOUCH. And he withdrew.
  Left on his own, Stone was suddenly cold. The sun wasn't down yet, the evening
  was warm, and yet he was cold as ... (he grinned mirthlessly) stone cold. It
  had finally dawned on him that Gubwa could do it. Mad he might or might not
  be, but he could actually do it. He could conquer the world. He could become
  Emperor of Earth. He could refashion men in his own image. And here was
  Phillip Stone—hard-man with fists of steel, secret agent with all the
  resources of Mis 5 and 6 to back him up—and helpless as a newborn babe.
  He finished his coffee, smoked a cigarette,
  
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  waited. As night began to fall, he locked the doors of his car and started off
  towards the house...
  The London Mafia sat in extraordinary meeting. The Big Guy's "usual offices"
  were in a city center office block, on the tenth and top floor. The largest
  room, overlooking a busy London street, was the venue. There, about a table
  similar to the one at which another group had recently discussed Richard
  Garrison, was gathered The Coven, the Cosa Nostra's thirteen foremost
  London-based men.
  At the head of the table sat the Big Guy, Joseph Maestro—a bullnecked,
  scar-nosed, hulking thug whose ugly, swarthy features and blocky frame seemed
  hugely incongruous with the immaculate cut of his suit—and from there down to
  the foot of the table sat his lieutenants in descending order of importance.
  Towards the foot sat Carlo Vicenti, quite clearly showing signs of wear and
  tear. One sleeve of his jacket hung loose; his arm was bandaged across his
  chest. One hand was swathed in bandages. His face showed severe bruising.
  The meeting had been in session for a little over half an hour and it was now
  just after 9:00 P.M. Several minor items had already come up for discussion,
  clearing the way for the big one, but now it was Garrison's turn. The Big Guy
  had started it off and he was now almost through speaking.
  ". . . So it really would seem that this guy has an unbeatable gambling
  system. Hey! —not just
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  Brian Lumley
  one system but a system for every game. Now I don't have to tell you guys what
  that means . . . but I will 'cos I know a lot of you can't see past your
  fucking noses. If Garrison's methods get loose—if he lets this big cat out of
  the bag—in no time at all ten thousand Garrisons will be hitting our tables
  and machines and clubs. And a high percentage of our backing comes out of
  those clubs . . .
  "On the other hand, if he tells us how he does it ... well, there's a lot of
  clubs still belong to other people, yeah? So, that's why we're bringing the
  guy in. Hey!—and anybody who doubts how good he is only has to ask Mr. Vicenti
  down there how he lost his personal share in the Ace of Clubs, and I'm sure
  Carlo will oblige. And not only money, Carlo lost a lot of face. We don't like
  that, none of us.
  "What it boils down to is this guy Garrison's a menace, but when we've
  finished with him and picked his brains a little he'll be a very thirsty
  menace—which is fine 'cos we figure to fix him up with a great big drink.
  Hey!—you think he can drink the river dry? Ha!"
  "When?" Vicenti asked, his tone surly. "When are we bringing him in, Joe?"
  (Nobody called the Big Guy Joseph.) "See, I have a big interest in this
  bastard!"
  "Yeah, yeah, we know. Stay cool, Carlo. Like I said before, he's yours when
  we're through with him. But being a democratic organization—and technically
  this being a hit, which it will be eventually—we need a vote. Ain't that why
  we're all here tonight? Sure! So, let's see a show of
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  hands that we bring in this Garrison, that we get him to tell us his story,
  and then that we fit him up with concrete boots."
  Along with Maestro's hand, eleven others were swiftly raised, Vicenti's more
  slowly and with a deal more effort. They were still in the air when the doors
  crashed open to admit Joe and Bert Black. Joe carried a levelled automatic,
  Bert's arm's cradled a folded-down Sterling submachine-gun.
  "Now get the other arms up!" Joe's voice was cold.
  "Up!" ordered Bert, the snout of his machine-gun moving to cover the entire
  meeting. All eyes were on that weapon, and all present knew Bert's reputation.
  The muzzle of the Sterling seemed to flare like some single obscene nostril in
  
  the face of a mythical beast. Before that beast could snarl they raised their
  other arms.
  All except Carlo Vicenti, He pushed his chair back, made to stand. "You guys
  nuts?" he yelled. He mistakenly thought that they were here to pre-empt
  reprisals. "You come busting in here like . . . shit, you were invitedl So you
  missed your hit, so what? It works out right. We want Garrison alive. We have
  no grudge with you guys."
  While he talked Joe and Bert had moved to flank him; they pushed him down in
  his chair as he struggled to rise. Then, without another word—even as Vicenti
  continued to rage—Joe Black put away his pistol, took out a cut-throat razor,
  yanked back the suddenly shrieking man's head and slit his throat ear to ear.
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  Vicenti coughed, choked, made noises. The sounds issued from his gaping wound,
  not his gaping mouth; and a moment later, along with the sounds, blood in a
  crimson gush. Bert and Joe stepped back from him. He floundered in his chair,
  rose, sat, sprayed blood, clawed at his throat. He was drenched scarlet. He
  flopped facedown on the table, arms flailing. He slid off the table, leaving a
  spreading pool of blood.
  While Vicenti died the Black brothers moved to the large casement windows. Now
  every living, bulging eye in the room turned from Vicenti's body to them. The
  Big Guy and his colleagues were on their feet, arms raised high. Maestro tried
  to speak but choked on the words.
  "Compliments of Richard Garrison," said Joe, and for the first time the
  remaining occupants of the room noticed how vacant the faces of the assassins
  seemed. "And a warning, in case anyone else wants to try it on. This is to
  show you what he can do ..." And the brothers turned on their heels and hurled
  themselves headlong through the closed windows, taking weapons, shattered
  glass and their spent lives with them.
  For a moment no one moved, then there was a concerted rush for the door.
  "Hold it!" Maestro found his voice as cries of horror began to float up from
  the street below. "Hold it right there. This place will be thick with filth in
  less time than it takes us to get out. And why should we run, eh? We're
  innocent bystanders, ain't we? If the Blacks want to cool Carlo and then jump,
  that's their business. As for us, we all tell the same story, okay?"
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  They all began to babble at once but Maestro held up his arms. Quick thinking
  was his forte. "Listen, for fuck's sake! We ain't carrying heaters, are we?
  The only prints on those guns down there are theirs, the Blacks! All we do is
  leave Garrison's name out. The rest of it we tell like we saw it. Shit, how
  should we know what was going down between Carlo and the brothers, eh?"
  The rest of them looked at each other, nodded, began to relax. "Okay," Maestro
  continued, "so get your minds tidied up. Hell, we've seen worse than this."
  As they began to gather into small groups and mull over what they had seen,
  the Big Guy called over Ramon de Medici and quickly took him to one side.
  "Ramon," he kept his voice low, "what you told me earlier—about Carlo being
  sure it was Garrison beat him up—that was straight-up stuff?"
  "Sure Joe—except it don't look so silly now, eh?"
  Maestro's face twitched. "This Garrison, I don't want him brought in anymore.
  I don't want to know anything about him. I just want him dead. I think he's
  safer that way."
  De Medici nodded, "This we can do. We bugged his car while he was out of the
  country. A big silver Mercedes. Our technical boys can tell us where it is
  whenever we want to know. And Garrison is usually where the car is."
  "Okay, as soon as they cut us loose from this mess, get somebody on it.
  Somebody reliable."
  "You've got it."
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  Brian Lumley
  
  "In fact, you better get the hell out of here now. Go out the back way and
  over the roof. Don't let anyone see you. I'll tell the guys to forget you were
  here, right?"
  "Right," Medici nodded, taking his departure.
  Outside, the mechanical whoop, whoop, whoop of police sirens was beginning to
  fill the air. Fists were already knocking on the external doors of the
  executive office suite, and authoritative voices demanded entrance.
  A spider-splash of shadow, Ramon de Medici hurried over the dark roofs . . .
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  Chapter
  16
  GARRISOM/SCHROEDER CAME OFF THE Ml AT Leicester and found a good hotel. He
  would have driven on but it was past 11:00 P.M. and he was weary to death. It
  was late for eating but he bribed reception to fix a meal for him; and while
  he was on about it he ordered an extra steak, raw, for Suzy. He took her
  supper out to the car and she gratefully wolfed it down. Then, leaving one of
  the Merc's windows open a fraction, he told Suzy to go to sleep and returned
  to the hotel. The bar was still open for residents.
  Halfway through his fourth whisky the weasel-faced receptionist sidled up to
  him and asked if he would mind eating in his room; there were others here who
  had been refused food at this late hour. Garrison/Schroeder didn't mind,
  gulped down the rest of his drink, made his way to his room and ate his fill.
  Then, having made
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  Brian Lumley
  himself a coffee, he stretched out on his bed and opened up a magazine he'd
  picked up at Gat-wick Airport.
  That magazine—an airline throwaway full of advertising, duty-free offers and
  such, plus a couple of articles to occupy the passenger during his flight—was
  the principal reason he was here. He had picked it up off a table at the
  airport, used it for a shield to hide his face while he waited for Joe and
  Bert Black; but before then, as he had idly skipped through its pages ...
  Garrison/Schroeder's knowledge of the paranormal—not his experience of it,
  which was another thing entirely—was second to none. As Thomas Schroeder he
  had always been interested in parapsychology, especially in the nebulous
  region of prophetic dreaming. How such dreams worked he did not know, but he
  did know that he was here today as Garrison/Schroeder because they worked. It
  had been just such a prophetic dream which had helped convince Richard
  Garrison to accept his offer, his pact, and finally to become the host body
  and mind to his mind. Yes, his very reincarnation could be traced back to just
  such a dream.
  And now . . . now there was this. This simple photograph in a magazine.
  Monochrome, not especially interesting, even dull. Dull, too, the
  text—boastful product of the British Energy Commission—but when
  Garrison/Schroeder's eyes had first glimpsed the full-page spread, then the
  paper had seemed illumined with some magical inner light.
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  The picture showed a valley, a dam, and in the background a range of great
  gaunt hills. The legend below said that this would be the biggest boost to the
  grid since the opening of the atomic power station at Dounreay. It also said
  that the dam, close to Glen O'Dunkillie, was due to go into production on
  Wednesday, the day after tomorrow, and that the Minister for Energy would be
  there for the opening ceremony. But Garri-son/Schroeder had already determined
  to be there sooner, by tomorrow at the' latest. His reason was simple:
  This was that same valley and dam, the selfsame wild hills that Garrison had
  seen in his dream. The Schroeder-facet had engineered that dream, had been
  "awake" while the Garrison-facet "slept" and had promoted the sleeping facet
  to probe the future—had even loaned his own natural, not inconsiderable
  ESP-talent to facilitate that probe—and of course he had shared the dream, he,
  
  too, had seen that part of their joint future.
  Elements of that dream flickered once more like scenes from an old silent
  movie through the inner recesses of Garrison/Schroeder's mind. He saw the
  storm and the lightning, the six sprouting ares of shining, steaming water,
  and felt the dampness in the air and spray in his face—and all superimposed
  over the photograph on the printed page. And down in the bottom right-hand
  corner of the picture, the bleak gables of an old house in the pines where
  once . . . where once had reared a golden dome!
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  Brian Lumley
  In Xanadu did Garrison a stately pleasure-dome decree . . .
  A pleasure-dome? Unlikely, unless "pleasure" represented the fulfillment of
  the ultimate dream, not really Garrison's this time but Schroeder's own: his
  lifelong dream of immortality. And hadn't that been the very purpose of
  Garrison's dream-quest? To seek out and seduce the Goddess of Immortality?
  Well then, the quest might soon be at an end. Garrison/ Schroeder could sleep
  this night knowing that in the morning, no matter which facet took as-cendence
  upon awakening—be it himself, Gar-rison/Koenig, or just Garrison —his journey
  would be completed. And that somewhere ahead, in a valley close by Glen
  O'Dunkillie, destiny waited.
  For now he could simply sleep and dream his own dreams, except that he somehow
  knew they would no longer be filled with terrors. Or rather the One Great
  Terror: Richard Garrison's death, by natural causes or design, which must of
  course signal his own, Willy Koenig's, Vicki Mal-er's, yes, and Suzy's death
  too.
  Vicki . . . Poor child; he thought of contacting her before sleeping, of
  finding and touching her mind, just to see if all was well, but—
  The battery was leaking its energy into the great boundless Psychosphere.
  Energy which could not for now be replaced. Another good reason to sleep.
  Garrison/Schroeder undressed, put out the light and got into bed . . .
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  Garrison's quest meanwhile continued.
  He, too, sought the valley of the dome, but subconsciously, in a world which
  was grown more real to him now than any waking world.
  Since that terrifying episode in the cave of the Other—the interrogation of
  the girl-wraith and her escape, aided by the one who wore the Cloak of
  Secrecy—Garrison had come far. He had skirted great green oceans, millpond
  calm, because he dared not cross them. Not with the Machine to weigh him down.
  The weariness was on him continually, and every furlong of the way seemed a
  mile. Even Suzy was weary—Suzy of the boundless energy—and spent a great deal
  of her time curled behind him, adding her weight to the general burden; but he
  would leave neither dog nor Machine behind. He must go on and they must go
  with him.
  As for the Machine itself:
  Psychomech's back was raw rust now, chaftng at Garrison's thighs through
  tattered trousers. Cables trailed behind, their plastic sheaths eaten away,
  exposing dulled wire cores. Cracks gaped in the plastic body and flanks, and
  spots of corrosion marred even the gleam of chrome.
  "A junkyard!" Garrison found strength for a feeble curse. "And still I carry
  you with me. Another folly of a fool upon a fool's quest!" But still he went
  on.
  And where once he would have soared over the highest mountains, now he sought
  passes through them, making the way longer and his temper shorter. Forests of
  giant, twisted trees he would not enter for fear of what might lurk
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  Brian Lumley
  within, but had to skirt them; and remembering the circle of wizards and how
  they had gloated over their shewstone while he burned in the sand, he steered
  clear of all deserts.
  
  Yes, and the memory of those wizards haunted him. He especially remembered the
  yellow, slant-eyed one. Indeed he could hardly forget him, for now it seemed
  that the Oriental mage followed him upon his quest, that wherever he turned
  his head the small yellow man would be there, distantly glimpsed, merging with
  trees or rocks or skylines the moment he was spotted. Aye, and possibly there
  were others on Garrison's trail, vague, furtive ghosts who disappeared at once
  if ever he tried to focus his eyes upon them too keenly.
  Of sleep Garrison had had none, for he wished no more dreams within dreams;
  but it seemed to him his weariness was such that it transcended mere sleep, so
  that he could not even if he would. And in this condition, finally he crested
  a range of low hills and saw spread beneath him the Valley of the Mists.
  Now, whether he actually "saw" it or not (he could not be sure for his senses
  were no longer reliable; his exhaustion was such that this might simply be a
  hallucination, a vision) he could not say, but certainly there was something
  very strange and ethereal about the entire valley. Its expanse lay parallel to
  and between the hills now behind him and an even lower range of foothills to
  the fore, and to the right and left the valley or low ground between these
  ranges stretched away and out of sight. And along its entire length the mists
  curled and eddied like vapor over a lake or
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  moat of milk. And the silence there might be that silence which will come, one
  day, at the end of time.
  This time Garrison did not hesitate. This was an obstacle beyond avoidance,
  which must be crossed. There were at least three good reasons. For one: it
  might go on forever, this misty valley, and not have a way round at all. Two:
  time pressed and Garrison grew weaker. Three: a storm seemed to be gathering,
  a doomful oppression of atmosphere manifesting in dark clouds that boiled in
  the sky all around and momently closed with the as yet clear patch of sky
  directly overhead. Also, the temptation to cross the valley was great; it did
  not seem wide; the foothills beyond seemed to beckon Garrison on.
  And so, as these thoughts passed through his dully aching mind, he rode the
  maimed Machine down and into the sea of mist, and uncaring of the terrors it
  might conceal passed forward until the milky stuff closed above him and the
  external world was shut out beyond eerily drifting walls of white.
  Lulled by the silence and veritable creep ofPsy-chomech through the mist, and
  by Suzy's slow panting where she sat close behind him. Garrison's initial
  alertness gradually dissipated and he closed eyes already heavy from lack of
  rest and from peering ahead in this milky submarine realm—and at that very
  moment the storm broke.
  Thunder smote like titan hammers and lightnings flickered down, their
  transient trails hissing through the mist and stabbing the sodden ground to
  steaming, lighting up the way in glow-
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  Brian Lumley
  ing, blue-burning phantoms of rocky outcrops and shaly piles. And at any
  single moment one such bolt might have struck Garrison, or the metal of the
  Machine. But no, they were spared. Then, in the afterglow of a particularly
  vicious blast, Garrison saw, or thought he saw—
  But no, in the booming confusion of thunder, the kaleidoscopic flicker of
  lesser lightnings and the blinding glare of that greater bolt, his eyes had
  deceived him—must surely have deceived him. He moved forward again, his flesh
  tingling, and not alone from the static electricity that plucked at his hair
  and the tatters of his clothing. And there it was again, but closer now and no
  longer limned by lightning. It was, could only be, a Machine like Psychomech .
  . . but no such Psy-chomech as Garrison might ever have imagined!
  Huge, gigantic, the thing towered, until its uppermost parts were lost in the
  ceiling mist. Vast and squat it sat there, pipes and panels and bulkheads
  sprawling away until, on both sides, their outlines became dim and
  mist-wreathed. It would take fifty, perhaps a hundred, no, a thousand
  
  Psychomechs such as Garrison's Machine to fill the same volume! And deep
  within lights flashed and power surged, but silently, without the faintest hum
  of sound; and where the Machine should have had hard edges, they were instead
  blurred and indistinct; so that Garrison knew that in fact this was a vision,
  but of what strange place or event he could not say.
  A vision, yes—a mirage such as men see in the desert—the mirror image of some
  distant thing or occurrence. Except that Garrison knew that the
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  truth of this mirage was not distant in space but in time. It had been sent,
  or he had willed it, as a sign that he pursued the right path, had not strayed
  from the course which might yet carry him to quest's end . . .
  He moved closer still, but carefully, unwilling even to disturb the air or
  milky mist lest the vision dissolve away. But a moment later he stopped again,
  this time with a gasp. The incredible MACHINE had a platform—a raised central
  dais or bed beneath a pair of huge copper rods with knobbed ends, like vast
  electrodes—but it was the thing, the creature lying upon the bed, which caused
  Garrison to gasp.
  He knew instinctively what the creature was, even found a word for it
  squirming its way up to the surface of his mind. A word from another place,
  another world. Frankenstein! The thing on the dais was a monster, composite of
  corpses, an unnatural creature created by a crazed science. And as the
  lightning crashed again Garrison moved closer still for there was something
  here that he must discover, must see for himself. Something to do with this
  manufactured, composite creature.
  He got down from his Machine, approached the MACHIME until he stood in the
  shadow of its awesomely ethereal bulk, lifted himself up on tiptoe to gaze
  amazed at the monster spread-eagled upon the dais. It was in the shape of a
  man, yes, but a massive, powerful man. Garrison gazed along its length between
  huge, naked, callous-hardened feet, beyond which the trunk formed a horizon of
  flesh. He took a pace to one side, let
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  Brian Lumley
  his gaze follow the creature's thigh up above the knee to where a great fist
  lay loosely clenched. Relaxed, that fist, certainly—in sleep or death Garrison
  could not say—but there was that about it which mutely spoke of deadly
  dexterity. The hand of a killer.
  Garrison wondered at the sheer size and apparent hardness of the creature's
  limbs, which were huge even compared to its body. Upright and awake, with arms
  and legs, fists and feet like these, the monster would be walking death to any
  ordinary opponent.
  And yet there was also a slyness about it, the suggestion of wily
  intelligence, like that of a fox. Where this idea sprang from in Garrison's
  mind was a mystery, but it persisted. This composite creature was made up of a
  brilliantly clever if morally suspect or even unscrupulous man, and of a
  simpler but definitely more brutal man—and of one other.
  The thunder and lightning seemed to have moved on a little, lulling Garrison
  into believing that the storm had passed, but in the next moment he knew that
  he was mistaken. With a roar and a multiple crashing that near-stunned him,
  four great bolts, falling almost simultaneously, shredded the milky mist to
  tatters to strike at the MACHINE like hammers of Thor. In that one moment the
  entire MACHIPiE was bathed in flickering blue energies—Garrison, too, with his
  own nimbus of eerie fire—and in the next the lights burned brighter in the
  great engine's guts and a mighty pulse of power rocked its towering structure.
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  Then—several things—culminating in a sheet of flame and a rending explosion
  that hurled Garrison head over heels, skidding and tumbling until his back and
  shoulders came up against the rusty bulk of his Machine. And there he lay with
  reeling head and aching bones.
  
  But before that tremendous blast. . . he would never be sure.
  His senses seemed no longer reliable, were dulled from exhaustion and dazed
  from a succession of shocks. He had thought that the great copper rods with
  their huge electrodes had suddenly swelled up, as from an unbearable power
  gathering in them; and he had thought to see a lashing, streaming
  incandescence of energy unleashed between those terminals to cojoin and strike
  down at the naked monster. Then, finally, before the ultimate blast, he had
  thought that the entire body of the creature shuddered and jerked, and that he
  had smelled the reek of roasting flesh. And then with a shriek of absolute
  agony the thing had bent upright from the waist, glaring at him with mad
  golden eyes in a face which he had at once recognized—
  —as his own!
  Later (he had no way of knowing how much later), Garrison emerged from
  delirium to find himself on all fours, clawing uselessly at the rust-scabbed
  base of the Machine, Psychomech. Suzy was beside him, nuzzling his neck with a
  nose that was mainly dry, urging him back to his senses with little barks and
  whinings. Of the MACHINE: no trace remained. Neither of
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  Brian Lumley
  MACHINE nor of monster, no trace—except in Garrison's mind. He remembered the
  monster's face, his face, and knew there must be a meaning. Doubtless he would
  discover that meaning at quest's end.
  Quest's end. Hah!—that was a laugh. For all Garrison cared it could end right
  here and now. And yet—
  He set his jaw stubbornly. "Suzu, up, Qirl!" His voice was cracked, throat
  dry. "You're not so heavy." She scampered aboard the Machine. Then he
  straightened his shoulders, took hold of a dangling cable, willed the Machine
  to float free of the ground. It did: one inch, two. But that was sufficient.
  Walking ahead, he led the Machine out of the valley like a man leading some
  strange lame prehistoric beast.
  The stars of night were bright above. The gentle slopes of the foothills rose
  dark ahead . . .
  Johnnie Fong sat in his gray Jaguar in the hotel car park and watched until
  the light blinked out in Garrison's first-floor bedroom. The man up there was
  in fact Garrison/Schroeder, but Fong didn't know that. To the Chinaman he was
  simply Garrison.
  Fong waited a few minutes, left his car and found a public telephone. Moments
  later Charon Gubwa answered his private telephone in the Castle and was
  brought up to date. It was late but Gubwa had already slept. Precognition had
  told him that the upcoming hours would be busy ones.
  Having quickly absorbed all of Fong's infor-
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  mation, now the albino sent his mind out to Phillip Stone where he kept an eye
  on the Garrison residence. MR. STONE. GO BACK AND GET YOUR CAR. THEN BRING
  VICKI MALER TO ME.
  Stone, a cigarette dangling from his lips, shielded by his hand in the
  darkness where he stood beneath trees not far from the house, jerked to
  attention. Or rather his mind did. He ground out the cigarette with his heel
  and looked around carefully in the empty darkness.
  YOU STILL FIND DIFFICULTY IN BELIEVING, MR. STONE. PERHAPS YOU ARE NOT SO
  CLEVER AFTER ALL.
  "How am I to get her to come with me?" Stone asked in a whisper, finding it
  too much of an effort to simply think his question. "And where to?"
  It was as if he heard a chuckle. YOU ALREADY KNOW THOSE THINGS. YOU WILL
  REMEMBER THEM AS YOU GO, IMPROVISE AS REQUIRED. SIMPLY OBEY.
  "Like shit!" Stone spat out the words—but already he was making his way back
  towards the spot where his yellow Granada was parked.
  At the house it was easy. Stone found his mind whirling as his mouth ran on of
  its own accord— or of Gubwa's accord—as the simple fact of what he was doing
  
  triggered a stream of post-hypnotic commands which could not be denied. He was
  Phillip Stone from MI6, he told the Maler woman; Richard Garrison was now in
  the care of the Secret Service; it was believed that a second attempt on his
  life was in the offing; Garrison had asked that Vicki Maler be picked up and
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  brought to him, for her safety. While Stone's mind might be in utter chaos,
  his words and actions were under a firmer discipline than ever he himself had
  mastered; and of course he carried proof of his identity. The woman had no
  choice but to trust him.
  She had been preparing for bed but now she dressed, quickly packed a small
  case, gave the servants one or two cursory instructions and allowed Stone to
  take her to his car. Through all of this he wanted nothing more than to tell
  her to run, make herself scarce, phone the police— anything but go with him.
  Instead he smiled concernedly, told her not to worry, held the door for her
  while she got into his car after dumping her case in the boot.
  And in a very short time they were on their way to London ...
  Meanwhile Gubwa dared do nothing. Word had already reached him of Vicenti's
  murder and the double-suicide of the Blacks, and he knew who was responsible
  if not quite how. But obviously Garrison was still a force to be reckoned
  with. A terrifying force.
  Qubwa had taken a nail-biting chance when he had Stone pick up the girl; with
  powers such as Garrison commanded things still could have gone wrong. They
  still could, for which reason Gubwa would not rest easy until she was here, in
  the Castle, shielded by the mental blackout of his mind-guards. As for them:
  there were eight of them "on duty" now. Gubwa could take no more chances.
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  But with Garrison asleep and at a distance (though distance, as the albino had
  explained to Stone, made little or no difference) Gubwa had not been able to
  resist the opportunity to strike. Success was now well within his reach. The
  girl would know the source or secret of Garrison's power, and she would also
  know his weaknesses.
  Meanwhile, in a dark car park not too far away, Stone would have parked his
  Granada. He would then have wound down his window and at his signal one of
  Gubwa's lieutenants would have stepped forward, broken the top off a tiny
  phia! and splashed its contents into the car. A knockout gas, instantaneous,
  would then have put Stone and the girl to sleep. By now they were on their way
  to the Castle, and no power in the world could possibly follow their trail
  here . . . hopefully. That last because Gubwa knew, or strongly suspected,
  that Garrison's power was not of this world but of the Psychosphere. But at
  least every human precaution had been taken.
  And for now it was simply a matter of waiting. . .
  Ramon de Medici's call roused Joseph Maestro from an uneasy sleep. The Big Guy
  grumbled, switched on his bedside light, snatched the telephone handset from
  its cradle and checked the caller's identity. "Ramon? Okay, wait." Maestro
  turned to the girl in his bed and shook her awake. "You," he said, "out!"
  "What?" she drowsily blinked sleep from her eyes, wrapped too-willing arms
  around him. He
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  grunted and shrugged her off. She was very young and very beautiful—worthless,
  to Joseph Maestro.
  "Wake up, dummy!" he snapped. "Go clean your teeth."
  "But Joe," she mumblingly protested, "I already cleaned my—"
  "Then take a shower. Just get the hell out of here. I have to speak to
  somebody. I'll call you when I'm through."
  Qrumblingly, she got out of bed, moved in the direction of the bathroom.
  "Yeah," said Maestro into the phone, "what is it? You found Garrison?"
  "Right," came the answer. "His car, anyway. He's not at home so we figure he's
  
  with his car."
  "Where?"
  "In Leicester."
  Maestro frowned. "Leicester? What the hell is he doing in Leicester? Where in
  Leicester?"
  "We don't know. Have to go up there to get a positive fix."
  "So get on it."
  "Tonight?"
  "Right now!" Maestro snapped. "Hey!—we owe this guy. And not just for Vicenti.
  You ain't telling me you enjoyed last night, are you? Three solid hours in the
  beautiful company of the filth—and then spat out like so much stale gum? Mow
  get on it. I want Garrison dead!"
  "Okay, Joe, you got it. His car's not moving so we figure he's staying over
  somewhere. I'll go personally, take Carlo's boys with me. They'll enjoy it."
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  "Yeah, right," said Maestro. "That's good. The filth don't know you were there
  when the Blacks snuffed Carlo and jumped. If they do somehow figure out that
  Garrison was involved with that, they still won't be able to tie you in with
  it. You're in the clear. Okay, the job's yours."
  "Right."
  "Don't screw it up."
  "I won't."
  "You're a good guy, Ramon."
  "Thanks, Joe."
  Maestro put down the phone. The glass door of the bathroom was steamed up now
  and he could hear the hiss of the shower. It was hot tonight. He threw back
  the sheets, stretched and yawned. "Hey, baby? Okay, you can come back to bed."
  She came out of the bathroom towelling herself down. He silently admired her
  breasts, the firm globes of her buttocks. "When you're dry," he told her, "you
  can do us both a favor and get your mouth round that."
  She came over to the bed, wrinkled her nose, looked pointedly down on him.
  "Round what?" she asked without malice.
  Maestro grinned. "So work on it," he said. "Hey!—I should keep a dog and bark
  myself?"
  283
  Chapter
  17
  WHATEVER FORCES OR CURRENTS THEY ARE which circulate in or permeate the
  Psy-chosphere may never be known, but that Tuesday morning at dawn they roused
  neither Richard Garrison nor Garrison/Schroeder from sleep but
  Garrison/Koenig; and it was this third facet of Garrison's multimind which
  drove the big Mercedes back onto the Ml heading north. As fortune good or bad
  had it, de Medici and his "boys" arrived seconds too late, just in time to see
  the silver car making away into the distance. Then it was a case of turning
  about and driving back to the Ml, and of waiting there until their detector
  indicated that the Mercedes was heading north once more.
  As for Johnnie Fong: he stayed fairly close behind Garrison/Koenig until he
  was certain of the route, then fell back to a respectful distance and
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  ___ PSYCHOSPHERE _____
  settled down to driving at the motorway's maximum of seventy miles per hour,
  which was the speed Garrison/Koenig was doing in the Mercedes. A man who held
  the law in some respect, Garrison/Koenig—when it suited him.
  But having followed so close on his quarry's heels from hotel to motorway,
  Fong had given himself away. Richard Garrison would never have noticed him and
  neither would Thomas Schroeder, but Willy Koenig had been—still was, even as a
  facet of Garrison—a different kettle of fish entirely. As his beloved Colonel
  Schroeder had often used to say of him, Willy had an infinite capacity for
  thinking bad thoughts before others thought them. Whatever the circumstances,
  
  he invariably suspected the worst and prepared for it. And where trouble was
  concerned he was the most capable of men. Moreover, he was loyal to a fault.
  These were qualities which had earned him Schroeder's undying trust and
  friendship; yes, and Richard Garrison's too. Through them he had succeeded to
  a place in Garrison's Gestalt psyche. And right now they were qualities which
  made him by far the most worthy Garrison-facet to be at the wheel of the big
  silver Mercedes.
  For upon spotting Fong's Jaguar in his rearview mirror, even though he had
  never seen him before (except perhaps in a mental "echo" of one of Garrison's
  dreams) it was Garrison/Koenig's nature to dislike and distrust his motives;
  also to begin to consider what steps might have to be taken to dislodge the
  Chinaman—perhaps permanently— from his tail. To this end he pulled in at a
  lay-by
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  Brian Lumley
  and went to the boot of the car. In there, where he had secreted them away
  some time ago while ascendant, were certain weapons. Now he placed these
  strategically about his person and closed the boot. As he did so the gray
  Jaguar sped by, its driver staring straight ahead. Perhaps Garrison/ Koenig
  was worrying needlessly.
  But fifteen minutes later the big Mercedes passed a cluster of lorries in
  another lay-by, and shortly after that the Chinaman was back once more on
  Garrison/Koenig's tail; he must have been waiting behind the lorries, waiting
  for Garrison/Koenig to pass. Very well, it was decided: the Chinaman in the
  gray Jaguar was a tail, an enemy. How Garrison/Koenig could put it out of his
  mind—until later. But he had no doubt that there would be a later.
  What neither Garrison/Koenig nor Johnnie Fong had noticed as yet was the
  powerful black saloon, almost a hearse in its design, sitting well back behind
  both of them but gradually drawing closer.
  They would notice it soon enough , . .
  8:15 A.M., and Charon Gubwa was tired. He had earlier taken a couple of uppers
  (though he was generally against using drugs of any sort personally, except
  perhaps as an aid to sex) and was now prepared to take more. Today would be
  crucial and he knew it. There were vibrations in the Fsychosphere which were
  boiling towards a climax. That he himself would be involved he could not
  doubt, and certainly Garrison would be part of it. Garrison ... or Garrison's
  passing.
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  For certainly the man must die. If there had ever been any question of that it
  existed no longer: he must die! And that was a thought which thrilled Gubwa as
  he had not been thrilled for a long time, and which at one and the same moment
  frightened him mightily. For he knew now that Garrison was not one but three
  men, and he further knew that he, Charon Gubwa, would never be safe until
  Garrison's multimind was utterly erased.
  As for Phillip Stone and the Maler woman: they still lived. Gubwa had enough
  on his hands at the moment and they were neither a physical nor a mental
  threat. Vicki Maler's mere presence here was something of a threat, of course;
  but the mind-guards were in place, two to a cell, and the Castle had never
  been more mentally inaccessible from outside interference. Between Gubwa's
  mind and the outside world lay a great mental moat, a vacuum in the
  Psychosphere impenetrable to any but the most powerful mind. Not a two-edged
  sword by any means, for knowing the nature of his mind-guards Gubwa could
  direct his own probes outwards as easily as if the guards did not exist at
  all.
  But let Garrison discover Qubwa—let him find a thread to lead him here, the
  smallest suspicious echo in the Psychosphere—and the huge albino had little
  doubt but that he could send his mind crashing in on the Castle, and that then
  all would be lost. This made him reluctant even to contact Johnnie Fong, and
  fearful of Pong's contacting him, as he sat alone in his Command Center and
  
  considered his course of action.
  Gubwa knew now about Psychomech, almost all
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  Brian Lumley
  there was to know. That it had been a machine dreamed up by Hitler or his
  scientific aides to create fearless supermen; built in England thirty-odd
  years later by the Nazi lunatic Otto Krippner, and used by Richard Garrison to
  rid his mind of elemental fears and boost his ESP-talents to an incredible
  degree. An experiment which had almost ruptured the Psychosphere itself! Qubwa
  knew, too, all about Schroeder and Koenig; how the sheer ego of the former had
  bent causality forces in the Psychosphere; how the defensive and destructive
  abilities of the latter had guided and protected Garrison through to that time
  when all three minds could meld into one.
  But the machine, Psychomech! That wonderful machine!
  So Garrison had destroyed the thing. Well, of course, he had—so that no man
  might follow him into the awesome flux of the Psychosphere. He had been
  jealous of his power. For in those early days he had been to the ESP ether
  what a black hole is to space and time: a complete disruption of psychic law
  and order, an insatiable feeder, a dark star of infinite gravity.
  And what then? What had brought about the reversal, the decline, the
  power-failure? Gubwa had considered this and had come to the same conclusion
  as Garrison himself. A man is after all only a man. He has his span in which
  to do those things fate decrees. Even a superman's powers are finite, if only
  because as long as there is time he can never have enough of it to do all he
  is capable of doing. One cannot outlast time itself. Not even an immortal can
  do that.
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  And what if three men—three "facets," three brightly burning wicks—are feeding
  on the same fat? How much more rapid the waning of the candle then? Garrison,
  yes, and Schroeder and Koenig too, were simply burning themselves out!
  Garrison's mistake had been in the destruction of Psychomech, by which he
  might have revitalized himself. But Charon Gubwa would not make that mistake.
  If he—when he—had Psychomech, he would make of the machine a god! It would
  stand in his innermost temple, and Gubwa would be High Priest. Yes, and when
  he hungered his god would feed him, and the Psychosphere would be his to
  command, and all would be possible, and he would live in power and glory
  forever! And—
  —It seemed incredible, beyond belief, that this future Gubwa envisioned—this
  dream of infinite, eternal power—should lie in the hands and minds of one
  small perfectly normal-in-every-way human being. But it did. Not in Garrison,
  no, nor in Schroeder or Koenig or Vicki Maler. In a man whose name was Jimmy
  Craig—James Christopher Craig—the micro-electronic engineer whose skills had
  prepared Psychomech for Garrison's use. At present J. C. Craig was on the
  board of one of Garrison's companies, but soon he would work for Gubwa. And he
  would not have power of refusal. Under the twin pressures—irresistible
  pressures—of Gubwa's hypno-telepathic and narcotic controls, Craig would soon
  become little more than a puppet dancing to the albino's tune.
  Oh, it would seem quite impossible that any
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  Brian Lumley
  man, even the world's greatest electronic genius (and it was doubtful that
  Craig was that) could remember all of the titan bulk of technical information
  required for Psychomech's reconstruction. It would seem so ... but falsely.
  Under the spell of Charon Qubwa's hypnosis he would remember everything. Would
  recall the most minute details, and soon Psychomech II would be a reality.
  But this time—ah, this time!—it would not be any mere man whose mind the
  machine expanded. It would be a man whose powers were already developed to an
  extraordinary degree. Charon Qubwa would lay his obese and unnatural body down
  upon Psychomech's couch, but it would be God himself who stood up!
  
  And this thought also frightened Gubwa (not of being God, for he already
  considered himself a god of sorts), the thought that his dream, so very close
  to becoming reality, could be obliterated at a stroke. What if J. C. Craig
  should die? At a stroke, an end to Gubwa's dream. What if he were already
  dead?
  Well, he was not, for Gubwa had checked up on him as soon as he had his name,
  no, Craig was alive and well. He worked for Garrison, as a director of MME,
  Miller Micro-Electronics, to which position Garrison had elevated him
  following Psychomech's success. Moreover Gubwa had already issued those orders
  necessary to bring Craig directly under his control. Within the space of a
  day, two at most, the man would be on his way here, kidnapped and drugged, to
  wake up in the Castle and commence work at
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  once upon Psychomech II. And the soldiers Gubwa had assigned to this task were
  of his best and knew only too well the price of failure.
  Nor were these the only arrangements Gubwa had made. He had twice "visited"
  Craig and on both occasions, brief though the visits had been, had inserted
  certain post-hypnotic seeds in the man's mind. And he had found Craig's mind
  very open to subversion; a talented mind, yes, but one lacking in personal
  conviction, which could be directed or re-directed by the very smallest of
  pressures. As to what Gubwa had actually done—what "seeds" he had planted,
  which would now blossom—that was simple:
  He had generated within Craig the need to question Garrison's authority in the
  matter of Psychomech. Just what was this machine which had made Garrison so
  powerful? Why should Garrison alone benefit from Psychomech, when Craig
  himself had been so essential in the matter of the machine's reconstruction?
  Indeed, why should there not be an improved model, over which
  God-Almighty-Garrison would have no say or sway whatsoever? These were the
  questions Craig would now begin to ask himself—or which he would believe he
  was asking— and so, slowly but surely, his conversion to Gubwa's cause already
  had commenced.
  But of course Craig was only one problem; there were others of far greater
  importance. Garrison, for example. What of him? How might his death be
  engineered without a direct connecting link to Charon Gubwa?
  As if the thought itself had causality, Gubwa's
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  Brian Lumley
  telephone purred; and on the other end of the line Johnnie Fong was waiting
  with what might be the answer to his albino master's problem. "Charon,
  Garrison is in danger from others!"
  "Who? How many?"
  "They have the looks of killers—Mafia, I think. Three of them, in a black
  saloon."
  "Have they seen you?" Qubwa's pink eyes opened wide as his heart picked up
  speed.
  "no, Charon. They are only interested in Garrison."
  Gubwa sighed, relaxed a little, said, "Stay well out of it, Johnnie. Follow,
  watch, but do not interfere. Where are you now?"
  "Still heading north, about an hour from Mew-castle. Garrison has stopped to
  eat. I can see him from here, through the glass of the kiosk. He eats in the
  open air, at a wooden table in the sunshine. There are many people around him.
  He seems very tired, hungry. He did not breakfast in Leicester. And Charon—"
  "Yes?"
  "He has changed again. This is Garrison, but it is not the same Garrison. This
  one knows no fear. There is an arrogance about him, the strength and sureness
  of a great cat. Even weary, he looks dangerous. I am a master of the martial
  arts, as you well know, Charon, but even I would be wary with this Garrison
  now."
  "And rightly so," said Gubwa. "Oh, this is Garrison, Johnnie, but it is also a
  
  man called Willy Koenig. When all is done I will explain—perhaps. But for now
  you may wish those Cosa Fiostra dogs the very best of luck. They pursue a stag
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  whose antlers are steeped in purest poison! Where are the Mafia now?"
  "They stand near the exit from this place, which is a petrol station and
  restaurant. They are in shirtsleeves, leaning on their car. They drink beer."
  "Does Garrison know they are onto him?"
  "He appears preoccupied. He does not seem aware of anything."
  "And yet he makes you wary?"
  "Yes . . . yes, you are right, Charon. There is a tension about him. He is
  tired, but he cannot relax. He even eats quickly. He desires to be on his
  way."
  But to what? Gubwa asked himself. Where does Garrison think he is going? What
  is he doing? "Follow," he repeated. "Where they go, you go. I will not contact
  you. Contact me when you can." He put down the telephone ...
  Phillip Stone had not been present at Vicki Mal-er's telepathic and hypnotic
  interrogation. When he had awakened, without a headache on this occasion, he
  had found himself alone in a room with two single beds, a chair—and a locked
  steel door. The place was much like a padded cell, with solid walls (metal, he
  guessed) beneath the padding. The door had a small barred window for
  observation. He had banged on those bars until they brought him his breakfast;
  and shortly after that, while he was still eating, the door had been opened
  again and Vicki Maier thrust inside with him. Food had been left for her, too.
  Then Stone had explained all, and after initial doubts she accepted him and
  his assurance that
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  Brian Lumley
  from now on in he would do whatever was in his power to protect her; though
  that might not be a great dea!. Finally, exhausted both mentally and
  physically, she had gone to sleep on the bed Stone had not used, and he had
  seated himself close to the door and calculated the odds against him,
  reckoning his chances and building up his anger. When angry, Stone had the
  reputation of being a very dangerous man.
  Since then the hours had passed very slowly. At noon Vicki had awakened a
  little fresher for her sleep, had asked the guard outside the door for water
  to wash with and had received it. They had been given more food, left to their
  own limited devices. And with time on their hands, slowly but surely each had
  come to know the other's story almost as intimately as a well-read book. And
  with a future bleak as theirs appeared to be, literally no future at all, they
  did not hold back but talked with a frankness amazing to both of them in any
  other circumstance.
  Long into the afternoon they had talked. Stone told her something of his life,
  loves and adventures; she in return advised him of her own far different
  background. She removed her contact lenses to show him the golden glow of her
  eyes, subdued now and seeming to have that varying brightness seen in a light
  bulb before the filament exhausts itself. And looking at her—her beautiful
  elfin features and perfect figure, which even her simple clothes could not
  completely conceal—Stone felt moved as never before.
  "You know," he said on impulse, "this might seem sort of ungallant—I mean, 1
  may feel this
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  way because you might be the very last woman I ever get the change to talk
  to—but . . ."
  "Yes?"
  "Oh, hell, it doesn't matter." He shrugged angrily. "Yes it does matter. Damn
  it all, I got you into this. I mean I ..." His words tapered off.
  "What are you trying to say, Phillip?"
  He sighed. "Just that it hardly seems fair, that's all."
  
  "What doesn't seem fair?"
  "Your life, mine. Yours because it's been—" again he shrugged, "rough on you.
  Mine because—"
  "Yes?" she again prompted him.
  ". . . 'Because I had to wait until the end of it to meet you."
  She managed a wan smile. "That is not ungallant at all. I think it very sweet
  of you. And I know what you mean. I too feel quite . . . quite small. I feel
  that everything is much too big for me, and that I am being swept aside in the
  rush of things."
  Stone's anger—at himself—flooded over. He slammed his fist into the padding of
  the steel door. "I feel so bloody . . . useless! So weakl"
  "You, weak?" She shook her head. "No, there's a great strength in you. It's
  being powerless that makes you feel weak. I'm the weak one, and growing
  weaker. Would you do me a favor?"
  "Is it within my power?"
  "Oh, yes. Simply sit here beside me and put your arms around me. After all, we
  have only each other. But this is a lot in itself. For such a long time now I
  have had nothing at all . . ."
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  By midday Garrison/Koenig was in Edinburgh, which was where his entourage lost
  him. That was deliberately contrived, and no man better equipped for the task
  than former Feldwebel (SS-Scharfuhrer) Wilhelm Klinke. All one needs do is
  jump a couple of red lights (they seem somehow to stay red longer in Princes
  Street), turn a few corners with one's foot down and tear headlong into a
  multi-story car park. Garrison/Koenig did these things, parked the car ready
  for a rapid takeoff, walked to the open-air concrete balcony and looked down
  on the city.
  Traffic was heavy. No sign of the gray Jag and black saloon. In a way it would
  be easier if there were. That way it would be over—one way or the other—that
  much sooner. He had spotted the saloon along the last couple of miles of Al
  and had known why it was there. Revenge for Vi-centi. It hadn't excited him;
  the Koenig facet was of an unflappable breed.
  He waited until the middle-aged, tubby attendant came puffing up the
  spiralling ramp, red-faced and angry. "An' what the bleddy hell d'ye think
  ye're on, Jimmy?" he asked. "When ah lift the barrier ye pull up tae man
  window an' pay—not come tearin' straight up here like a cock up a cunt!"
  "I'm a stranger here," said Garrison/Koenig, letting his German accent come
  through as strongly as possible. "My apologies. Please accept this for your
  inconvenience." He handed over a crisp tenner.
  "Oh! Ah see! Well, noo! Indeed! That's most kind ..."
  "Please don't mention it. Listen, I wonder if
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  you could do me another favor?" He crackled a second tenner between thumb and
  forefinger.
  "Oh, aye, certainly. What is it, sir?" The tubby Scot's face was now wreathed
  in affable smiles.
  "First you could send someone for a few sandwiches—ham, I think—and perhaps a
  thermos full of coffee? Oh, yes—and some raw meat, a steak perhaps, for the
  dog? I'm going to sit up here for an hour or two, maybe take a nap in the car.
  Also," (he took out a third tenner), "I would appreciate it if you could keep
  your eyes open for a gray Jaguar and a big black saloon. The Jag's driver is a
  Chinese gentleman. The saloon has three men in it, I think, probably Italians
  or some such. Mediterraneans, anyway."
  "Oh, aye, sir—ah kin do they things, certainly. Er, friends o' yours, these
  gentlemen?"
  "Mo," Garrison/Koenig smiled, shaking his head, "no, not friends. I would
  expect you to tell me before you let them in here. I would very much
  appreciate that. It would be well worth your trouble."
  
  "Consider it done, sir!" the attendant cried. "Ye'll no be bothered, ah'll see
  tae that."
  "Dan/ce schon," smiled Qarrison/Koenig. "I'm sure you'll do your best."
  Under the Merc's dashboard the Mafia bug continued to send out its silent
  signals, and less than a mile away the black saloon nosed slowly through the
  city's streets, returning along its own tracks, covering the distance between
  . . .
  "Charon!" Sir Harry's voice was sharper than the albino had ever heard it.
  "What's going on?"
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  "Going on?" Qubwa cursed to himself, wishing the man had chosen a more
  opportune time to call him. He himself did not know quite "what was going on,"
  not right now. "Why, what do you mean, Sir Harry?"
  "You know damn well what I mean! Garrison's gone missing, the Maler woman too.
  His servants got in touch with their local police. I found out from
  'upstairs.' He wants an answer. Mow what do I tell him?"
  Gubwa relaxed a little. This was something he could handle. "Tell him
  nothing," he said. "Or if you must, tell him that Garrison is as good as
  dead."
  "Explain."
  "The Mafia are after him." "Oh?"
  "Revenge for Vicenti, among other things."
  "Vicenti? That was Garrison?"
  "He engineered it, yes."
  Silence for a moment, then: "And Stone? What of him? He took the Maler woman
  and disappeared."
  "Yes, and they will stay disappeared—always." Gubwa waited, smiled at the
  suddenly silent telephone in his hand. He could tell from Sir Harry's
  inability to frame another question that the man was stumped. "You wanted MI6
  tied in with this, didn't you?"
  "Yes, but-"
  "Well, now you have it. Obviously Stone was on the Cosa Ptostra payroll.
  That's what will be thought. He took the woman as Mafia bait for Garrison. All
  part of a feud between Garrison and
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  the Mafia. For proof we have the Blacks and their bombing of Garrison's plane.
  And Vicenti, of course—and then the 'suicide' of the Blacks, which will now
  plainly be seen as the work of the Mafia, covering up the Garrison
  connection."
  "Yes, yes, I see most of that. But Stone working for the Mafia—that's a bit
  strong, isn't it?"
  "Do you think for a moment that MI6 is any clearer than your own outfit?"
  Gubwa laughed. "Well, maybe they are—but they too have their dirty washing, I
  assure you. Listen, how does this sound: Stone's body will be found in the
  river, weighted down, and there will be sufficient evidence hidden on it to
  clean the Mafia right out once and for all. Because you'll have advance
  knowledge, your branch will shine. You will make yourself directly responsible
  for any investigations. The very foundations of MI6 will be shaken apart. Mow,
  how does that sound?"
  Again the silence, them "That sounds . . . fine. And when does all of this
  happen?"
  "It is happening."
  "Now? But you said six weeks!"
  "I said a maximum of six weeks. I underestimated myself, that's all. It has
  worked itself out sooner—and without complications. By tonight Garrison should
  be dead, and by first light tomorrow you'll know where to start looking for
  Stone's body."
  "Jesus!" Sir Harry's voice was a hiss. "That means I have things to do, and
  
  time is short."
  "Then let's stop wasting time," said Gubwa. "I'm quite busy too, you know."
  "Very well, but let's get one thing straight. It's
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  important that I know- the very minute Garrison's dead. I can't be seen to act
  before the fact, but I will need to move pretty fast. Do you see any
  problems?"
  "None at all. And you shall know Garrison is dead one minute after I myself
  know it. Is that satisfactory?"
  "Yes, good man. But, Charon?"
  "Yes?"
  "I'd give my right arm to know how you've managed all this."
  "Oh, I'm sure you would," Gubwa laughed again. "But that's a secret!"
  Replacing the telephone, Gubwa found himself tempted to read Sir Harry's mind.
  He decided against it. Right now the man's thoughts must be in utter chaos;
  he'd make little of them. It was just that he felt a sort of niggling
  suspicion in the back of his own mind, like a bad taste at the back of one's
  throat. Sir Harry was, had always been, a man to watch. But Gubwa was tired
  and there was still much to do. Better to save his talents for now, hold them
  in reserve against a time in the very near future when their use might prove
  all-important.
  That was Charon Gubwa's third error and probably his biggest. His first had
  been when he became interested in Garrison in the first place. His second had
  been to interfere, in any degree, with Vicki Maler. But this one? This failure
  to follow up his own instinctive hunch in respect of Sir Harry's immediate
  intentions . . . this was the beginning of the end.
  For at the other end of the now dead line Sir
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  Harry's thoughts were anything but chaotic. They were crystal clear, as they'd
  rarely been in many a year. Gubwa had offered him two pots of gold at the end
  of the rainbow, but he was aiming at three.
  Garrison was one, because he had already been given that contract. The
  London-based Mafia came next, because crushing them would fuel his rocket to
  fame and a position of even greater power. And Charon Gubwa himself, he was
  the third pot. Partly because he was a loaded pistol at Sir Harry's head-but
  mainly for the fun of it...
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  Chapter
  18
  JOHMMIE FONG RELOCATED THE BLACK SALOON AT about the same time that Ramon de
  Medici, Fatso Facello and Toni Murelli came to the conclusion that indeed
  Garrison was parked up and hiding in the multi-story. Their detector had
  indicated that he was stationary and close at hand, and the car park seemed
  the only likely place.
  The Chinaman parked in a side street close by, got out of his car and watched
  what was going on from a safe distance. He kept himself out of sight, however,
  as Qubwa had ordered, which made the actual mechanics of the affair a little
  vague to him. What actually happened was this: De Medici had driven up and
  stopped on the road opposite the entrance to the car park but without actually
  entering the drive-in lane. In effect he had blocked off both the drive-in and
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  -out lanes. Then Murelli and Facello had got out of the car, ducked under the
  barrier and gone to the booth. De Medici had watched from the driving seat of
  the car. Words had passed between Facello and the tubby attendant where he sat
  in his booth. For a little while the latter seemed a bit garrulous, waving his
  arms and reddening up a little, but he'd quietened down when Facello had gone
  into the booth with him. Murelli had then turned and given de Medici the
  
  thumbs-up, had disappeared up the ramp with his gun out and ready. Garrison
  had done them a favor; they couldn't have picked a better place for a hit if
  they'd chosen it themselves!
  Garrison/Koenig was parked four floors up, almost directly above the entrance.
  He had finished his coffee and sandwiches the best part of an hour ago. It was
  time to move on, Except . . . there was something not quite right.
  Too quiet, and Suzy strangely nervous where she sat in the back of the car.
  Traffic sounds from below, but subdued somehow. Seagulls wheeling round
  Edinburgh Castle, their plaintive cries carrying on a breeze off the sea. A
  beautiful day—but the Koenig-facet was thinking his bad thoughts, and Suzy's
  restlessness must have a meaning.
  Up on the castle ramparts they fired the One o'clock gun.
  Garrison/Koenig's head jerked round, eyes staring, his mind awash in psychic
  awareness. There was a flicker of movement in the Merc's rearview mirror. Toni
  Murelli had appeared up the entrance ramp, was crouching there, waving
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  Brian Lumley
  a gun In front of him, peering in the car park's dusty haze. Strong sunlight
  outside and gloom within. Murelli's eyes weren't quite accustomed yet.
  . -
  He saw the Merc; its front doors were wide open, sticking out like comic ears.
  Creeping closer, Mureili saw the thermos flask still steaming where it stood
  on the front passenger seat. Empty sandwich wrappers lay opened out beside it.
  Mureili grinned. That's right, Garrison baby, he thought. Take it easy. Have a
  break.
  Mureili was half behind the car, creeping up on its left. Now he could see
  that the driver's seat leaned back, in the half-recline position. His grin
  grew wider. He straightened up a little, covered the last three paces quickly,
  gripped the wrist of his gun-hand and thrust both hands into the car. His
  finger began to tighten on the trigger—but in the next second his grin slipped
  right off his face.
  Garrison/Roenig stepped out from behind a massive square concrete support
  column and kicked the door of the car shut on Mureili's wrists. At the same
  time Suzy snarled and darted her head forward from the back of the car,
  snapping at the gunman's hands. Her deadly fangs ground together where they
  met through the bones of his right wrist.
  Murelli's scream and the dull plop of his silenced weapon came simultaneously.
  Garrison/Koenig leaned his weight on the door, kicked Mureili in the groin
  where he flopped against the car. The gunman blew the rest of his air out in
  one great gasp. His gun fell from
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  nerveless, ravaged fingers inside the car. Suzy had severed two of his fingers
  and was working on the rest. Garrison/Koenig let the door fly open, grabbed
  Mureili and waltzed him away, half-supporting, half-propelling him. He waltzed
  him towards the concrete balcony. Mureili, in agony and scared witless, saw it
  coming and made one last desperate effort. He whirled a bloody, torn fist at
  Garrison/Koenig's head. Cold-eyed, Garrison/Koenig ducked, grabbed the other's
  knees, lifted and pushed.
  For a moment Murelli seemed suspended in air beyond the balcony. His white
  face puffed in and out, like that of some strange fish slowly sinking from
  view in bright water. And he was gone without ever mustering the sought-for
  scream. His body smashed down in front of the black saloon like one hundred
  and seventy-five pounds of lead.
  For long seconds de Medici simply sat at the wheel of his car paralyzed,
  staring. His window was down and he had heard the sickening crunch as Murelli
  hit. Finally he gunned the engine, began to back away from Murelli's body— and
  at the same time heard the roar of the Merc's powerful motor as
  Garrison/Koenig's car came careening like some great silver beast down the
  out-ramp. Sparks flew where its metal sides jostled the ramp's low concrete
  wall.
  
  Garrison/Koenig saw the bonnet of the saloon pulling back. He saw, too, Fatso
  Facello where he stood ashen-faced in the booth. There was no sign of the
  tubby Scot, but that probably would not have made a deal of difference. A
  grenade
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  Brian Lumley
  dangled by its ring from Garrison/Koenig's grinning teeth, its weight roiling
  a little on his chin. The metallic chink! was lost as he armed the grenade and
  tossed it into the booth. Then the Merc's nose crashed into the front couple
  of inches of the saloon and slammed it out of the way. At the same time
  Garrison/Koenig wrenched the wheel over, so that the combined action had the
  effect of throwing the Merc round the bend and into the street, its wheels
  skidding in Toni Mureili's blood. Then, tires screaming and throwing out
  smoke, the big car rocked on its springs as it hurtled away up the street.
  In his rearview Garrison/Koenig saw Facello leap from the booth, the fat man's
  arms and legs an impossible blur of movement. Then—
  The booth disappeared in a lick of white fire and smoke and deafening
  detonation. Facello was picked up, all eighteen stone of him, and tossed over
  the roof of the saloon. The blast blew in the saloon's nearside windows. That
  was as much as Garrison/Koenig saw, for in the next moment he was round a
  corner and applying his brakes, slowing down as he moved into a stream of
  traffic and picked up signs that aimed him towards the Forth Bridge.
  He had killed one of them, possibly two, and with any luck the saloon would be
  out of commission. He must hope so. That would only leave the little yellow
  man to worry about, and Garri-son/Koenig wasn't really the worrying type . . .
  He did wonder momentarily what had become of the tubby car park attendant; he
  couldn't know that he had already been dead, knifed
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  through the heart, in the bottom of the booth when the grenade exploded, and
  that a ten pound note was now flapping in the updraft on the concrete base of
  the car park's first-floor level, stuck there with blood and a little gristle.
  It was only later, on the wide approach road to the bridge, when
  Garrison/Koenig stopped to examine the surprisingly small amount of damage to
  the Mercedes, that he thought of those powers he had neglected to use in his
  confrontation with the Mafia. He had known he had them, certainly, but their
  use had barely crossed his mind. Why take a machine-gun to swat a fly? And of
  course the power was not limitless; the well was rapidly running dry. Perhaps
  he had simply been saving what little was left.
  What the hell ... it wouldn't have been the same anyway.
  At a little before 3:00 P.M. Johnnie Fong reported by telephone to Charon
  Gubwa, telling him all that had happened since his last report, especially
  detailing the incident at the car park. He phoned in from a garage high on a
  winding road overlooking a Grampian hamlet. Down there, at a second garage on
  the far side of the village, Garrison's Mercedes was undergoing a cursory
  inspection. On the nearside of the patchwork of lanes, fields, church and
  houses, the Mafia saloon sat at the side of the road with no movement visible.
  All of this Fong had seen through his binoculars.
  "I do not know, Charon," he said, "how they got back on to his trail, but they
  did. And I, of
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  Brian Lumley
  course, simply followed them. Now, however, I am obliged to stay well back for
  even if Garrison does not know I am here, it is very likely that they do."
  "Then stay back," Qubwa ordered at once, "until after they have dealt with
  him. He must be weakening rapidly, Johnnie, for knowing they are there he
  should by now have disposed of them. He has powers, this Qarrison, but they
  are leaking out of him like rats deserting a sinking ship. Still, I prefer not
  to take any chances. As to how the Mafia picked up his trail again: his car is
  bugged and they are carrying a tracking device . . . But tell me, what reason
  
  do you think he has for running north?"
  "I think he is a fool, Charon. Brave, but a fool. The country grows wilder,
  the day wears on. His car has long been losing power. Perhaps the blast and
  collision caused it, I don't know. But I think that with the fall of night
  they must surely close in and kill him. If I had a rifle, I myself could kill
  all of them without ever being seen."
  "No!" Qubwa snapped. "Through you he might yet find a way to strike at me. You
  must simply observe all that occurs. Observe and report."
  "As you will, Charon. But for now 1 think I might get ahead of them. They are
  off the main road. I can go straight through the village and on into the
  mountains. Perhaps I can find a high place, watch and wait for them."
  "Do it," Qubwa agreed. "1 will give you one hour. Do not let yourself be seen.
  In one hour exactly I shall come to you, to your mind. In this 1 shall be at
  risk, you realize that?"
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  "You will be safe, Charon, I swear it." "Good! You are a faithful servant,
  Johnnie." "1 love only you, Charon . . ."
  When three of Qubwa's soldiers came for Vicki and Stone, both of them felt
  that this must be the end of the line. Stone could be of little use to the
  albino now, and under hypnotism Vicki had already surrendered all she had to
  offer by way of information. Stone might have made a fight of it (Gubwa's
  influence over him had only extended to the completion of his task) but he
  wasn't given the ghost of a chance. The three men, dressed in the Castle's
  uniform, were armed and very efficient. They quickly tied the captives into
  wheelchairs, and while two of them pushed, the third followed up the rear, a
  machine-gun cradled in his arms.
  They were taken to the Command Center, where Gubwa had his own reasons for
  wanting them present during the coming hours. And in keeping with his nature,
  Gubwa's reasons were anything but pleasant.
  The huge albino wore only a dressing gown and slippers, marking comfort as
  essential to any use of his powers as might become necessary. His face was
  lined but not yet haggard despite lack of sleep, and his captives saw that
  there was a sort of wildness about him now: that eager, barely controlled air
  of anticipation, the hysteria of mind and spirit which invariably marks the
  egomaniac or otherwise manic personality under pressure or in time of crisis.
  "My dear Miss Maler," he opened, having sent
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  his soldiers away, "and Mr. Stone, of course," he nodded an exaggerated
  welcome. "And doubtless you're both wondering just why I've had you brought
  here."
  "Mot really," said Stone drily. "Since we're the only human beings in the
  place, naturally you'd want to talk to somebody. It must get hellish lonely
  amongst the freaks you call your servants and the zombies you use for guards!"
  Qubwa smiled indulgently. "Not at all, Mr. Stone, on the contrary. 1, too, am
  a 'freak,' remember? And as for my 'zombies': no general ever knew the
  obedience my word commands. Haven't you experienced that for yourself?" He let
  that sink in.
  "But ... I didn't bring you here for the sake of mere banter, however
  amusing."
  "So let's not banter, Mr. Qubwa," said Vicki, finding a little iron to stiffen
  her voice. "Just why are we here?"
  He stared at her and the false geniality slipped slowly from his gray-mottled
  face. His eyes became pink pinpoints. "Fire in your glance. Miss Maler. Fire
  in your heart. Admirable emotion. Enjoy its heat, for you'll soon be cold as
  these steel walls."
  "We expected nothing more, Qubwa," Stone snarled. "We just wondered if it
  would be sooner or later, that's all."
  "For the young lady, sooner," the albino answered. "If what she has already
  
  told me and what she believes is true."
  "Richard!" Vicki at once gasped.
  "Yes,  your man  Garrison,"  Qubwa  nodded
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  gravely. "You told me that when he dies, you die. It struck me not long ago
  that this would be an admirable test: to have you here in sight, at the moment
  he dies. He will die, you see, in the very near future. I have seen to that."
  Vicki hung her head, sobbed.
  "You're a bastard, Qubwa, you know that?" Stone grated the words out, his face
  twisted with hatred. "A gray, slug-like, murderous, slimy freak bastard!"
  "But tomorrow I shall be alive!" Qubwa cried, his eyes suddenly blazing. "And
  very soon I shall be a god!"
  "You?" Stone sneered his derision. "A god? A freak god of a nuclear
  wasteland?"
  "What?" Qubwa was raving now, strutting to and fro. "Don't you ever learn
  anything, man? What nuclear wasteland? Hasn't the girl told you by now all she
  told me?"
  "I don't follow you at all, Qubwa," Stone spat disgustedly. "What the hell are
  you getting at?"
  Vicki Maler was less slow. She had seen more, understood more than Stone
  possibly could from his short acquaintance with matters paranormal.
  "Psychomech!" she gasped.
  "Aha! The girl knows!" Qubwa cried. "Explain to him, if you please, Miss
  Maler. Tell him my meaning."
  She shook her head, not knowing where to begin.
  Qubwa read her whirling mind. "Begin with Garrison," he laughed. "Before
  Psychomech."
  "He was . . . just a man," she sobbed. "Oh, he was strange—he saw things, knew
  things others
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  Brian Lumley
  couldn't see or know—but he was a man. In a way he was little more than a boy,
  and a blind boy at that! Then . . . then the machine." She paused.
  "Yes, yes!" Qubwa cried. "Go on, Miss Maler— you're doing so well."
  "His powers were increased a thousandfold, almost infinitely. At first he was
  like . . . like a god! For a year or more. Then—"
  "Then his powers began to fail him, and no way to replenish them," Gubwa cut
  in. "He had destroyed Fsychomech, and the fool didn't know what was wrong!
  Only now, too late, has he recognized the truth. flow, as his ESP-talents ebb
  and he himself fails, he flees from enemies he would once destroy with a
  glance, with a thought! He will die—all three of you will die, and Garrison's
  alter-facets, too, tonight—but Psychomech shall live on. I have made
  arrangements. The man who built the machine for Garrison will be here
  tomorrow, and—"
  "Jimmy Craig?" Vicki blurted. "You have him, too?"
  Gubwa smiled delightedly. "Indeed! Mr. James Christopher Craig himself. I have
  him, yes—or will have him. Already I have visited him in his dreams and made
  certain . . . suggestions? Ah!—and how susceptible, our Mr. Craig."
  "But Jimmy wasn't the builder," Vicki said desperately. "Psychometh was built
  by a man dead now or disappeared. Jimmy only improved on what was already
  there. He stripped away outmoded parts and replaced them. He—"
  "I know all of that, Miss Maler," Gubwa cut her
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  off. "You told me, remember? Well, perhaps you don't," he shrugged. "Anyway, I
  have been in Craig's mind. I told him he has a mission, a Great Mission, which
  is to build Psychomech again —a mightier, more powerful Psychomech—and this
  time to build it for me. I told him that with the completion of this marvel,
  this Oracle, he himself will become a wondrous power in the world. I told him
  
  that he had erred in working for Garrison, and that Garrison was a great
  sinner! But I also said that I would strike Garrison down, and then that
  Craig—through his work for me—would be redeemed. And I told him that through
  Psychomech, one day he would communicate with the One True God himself. Yes,
  and I shall be that God!"
  Gubwa chuckled and folds of fat heaved. "Do you see, Miss Maler, do you see?"
  "Yes," she bowed her head. "Yes, I see. What Psychomech did for Richard, it
  will do a hundred times over for you."
  "There!" Gubwa turned triumphantly to Stone. "And now do you understand?"
  "You're mad!" Stone struggled with his bonds.
  "And you are a fool!" Gubwa snapped. "Or utterly stupid. Man, you've seen what
  I can do without Psychomech. Just think what ! shall do with it! Neutron
  bombs? Holocaust? No more, Mr. Stone. Genetic engineering? Unnecessary. With
  Psychomech's aid I shall simply command the things I desire—and they shall
  be!"
  Gubwa's eyes gave him away. He was quite mad now, really mad. "Homo Sapiens?
  Oh, yes, indeed, Mr. Stone—but in a month's time, or
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  Brian Lumley
  maybe less, when Psychomech has made me God—Hermaphro Sapiens! Every man,
  woman and child, in the twinkling of an eye, at my command, in my own image,
  and I shall simply will it! Emperor of Earth? Of this one miserable planet?
  no, no! No longer, Mr. Stone, Miss Maler. My new plan is mightier than that.
  Why rule a mere world when the entire universe can be, will be mine? My
  titles? 1 shall tell you my titles:
  "God of Earth and all the stars, Master of the Universe, and Lord of the
  Psychosphere! These shall be my titles!"
  As Qubwa grew more and more animated, striding about the Command Center like
  some nightmarish, leprous windmill, gesticulating and gabbling, Stone turned
  his head to Vicki and whispered: "He's right over the edge. Just look at him."
  "You are wrong, Phillip," she shook her head, and followed up quickly with,
  "Oh, he's insane in himself—but his reasoning is sound enough."
  Stone's jaw dropped. "Sound reasoning? He thinks this machine, this
  Psychomech, can make him into a god!"
  "The God," said Vicki simply. "Yes, it can."
  "Vicki, I'm no believer, but that's a real blasphemy!"
  "Oh, yes—yes, it is," she nodded.
  "Out!" Qubwa suddenly shouted. "Out, out! Insane? Blasphemy? We shall see, we
  shall see." He pressed a button on his intercom. "Guards, in here now." The
  doors hissed open and a pair of Gubwa's soldiers entered. "Take them out. Let
  them wait in the corridor. I have something I
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  must do now. I shall call when I want them back. Quickly, quickly! I have much
  to do."
  Vicki and Stone were wheeled out into the corridor and the doors hissed shut
  behind them . . .
  Johnnie Fong had driven through the town and up into the Grampians. The road
  was narrower here and uneven, and the way not so easy for driving. There were
  steep slopes on the one hand and gorges on the other, with dark streams
  rushing below. At the end of the year, when the snows came, these would be
  among the first roads to go; villages like this one would be shut off from the
  outside world for weeks at a time. That was the kind of country it was: wild
  and beautiful. And dangerous. Fong knew that this was perfect ambush country.
  The Chinaman had parked off the road up a narrow track where he could hide the
  car in thickly-grown pines. Then he'd climbed to a saddle between bald hills
  and seated himself upon a flat stone. From this vantage point he could once
  more train his binoculars on the village and see all that transpired. His
  timing was perfect; no sooner had he found the garage and the silver Mercedes
  than he saw a matchstick Garrison get into the car and turn its nose towards
  
  the mountains. Soon the car would be lost to his sight as it climbed into the
  pass, and then he would have to wait until it came round the contour of the
  mountain and onto the road directly below him, close to where he'd parked his
  gray Jaguar.
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  Brian Lutnley
  Charon Qubwa's timing was also perfect. He had said one hour and the hour was
  up.
  Johnnie, the voice was the merest whisper in Fong's head, is it safe?
  "Oh, yes, Charon!" the Chinaman never failed to be awed by his master's
  telepathy.
  GOOD! NOW BE QUIET, LET YOUR MIND DWELL ON WHATEVER HAS OCCURRED SINCE WE LAST
  SPOKE. LET ME SEE IT. EXCELLENT! AND NOW LET ME SEE WHAT IS HAPPENING AT THIS
  VERY MOMENT-RIGHT NOW-THROUGH YOUR EYES!
  Fong put his binoculars to his eyes and found the Mercedes where already it
  had climbed up along the winding road and into the foothills. Then he followed
  the road back where it ribboned along behind Garrison's car, finally
  focus-sing on the black saloon about a mile to the rear. Speed was dangerous
  down there, Fong could testify to that, but the saloon was leaving a trail of
  dust billowing in the summer air. The Mercedes was moving much more slowly and
  it would not be long before the saloon caught up. In a few more minutes the
  silver car passed out of sight; shortly after that the saloon, too.
  WHERE DO THEY COME BACK INTO VIEW?
  "Here, Charon," Fong trained his binoculars on the spot.
  GOOD. I FANCY THIS RACE IS ALMOST RUN. WE SHALL WAIT AND SEE.
  The road was steep round the mountain and through the pass. Very few cars were
  visible, with empty miles between them. It was almost twenty-five minutes
  before the Mercedes came into view, by which time the saloon should have
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  been hard up behind it. But it was not. It was all of five more minutes before
  the shiny-black hearse-like car put in its appearance, and by then
  Garrison/Koenig had had all the time he needed.
  Where the road made a sharp bend round a jagged outcrop of rock, hidden by the
  slate-gray mass and facing the road, there the silver Mercedes waited, its
  motor running and Garri-son/Koenig at the wheel. Coming out of the pass and
  onto the straight, the occupants of the saloon couldn't possibly see the Merc
  until it was upon them.
  But Fong and Gubwa saw it all.
  FOOLS! the albino's mind cried out at the last moment. THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT
  THEY'RE DEALING WITH!
  The silver Mercedes hit the saloon from the side, sending it skidding clean
  off the narrow road and into the shallow gorge. The black car fell, bounced,
  hit bottom and burst into flames. In moments the car was a blazing inferno.
  Garrison/Koenig got out of the Mercedes and stepped to the edge of the gorge.
  He looked down.
  Then—
  WHAT? Gubwa's mental cry was one of astonishment.
  Garrison/Koenig threw up his arms and staggered forward, propelled by some
  invisible force. He went flailing over the edge and out of sight.
  And in that same instant the sharp crack of a rifle echoed up to an astounded
  Johnnie Fong
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  Brian Lumley
  where he stood in the saddle between rounded peaks.
  The Chinaman traversed his binoculars right, scanning the road, found what he
  was looking for. It was Ramon de Medici, emerging from behind a cluster of
  boulders, walking forward. He carried a rifle. For the first time in the
  Koenig-facet's life he had come up against someone whose capacity for bad
  thoughts was equal to his own.
  
  As Fong and Qubwa watched, de Medici broke into a run. A moment later he stood
  looking down over the edge of the gorge. Down there the fire still blazed.
  Medici was satisfied, he turned away.
  Qubwa, too, had seen enough. His mental voice rang in Fong's head, full of
  elation. JOHN-NIE, IT IS OVER! STAY HERE. WHEN THAT ONE LEAVES, GO DOWN AND
  TAKE A QUICK LOOK-BUT TOUCH NOTHING. CONTACT ME LATER IF YOU CAN, AND IF
  THERE'S ANYTHING YOU THINK I SHOULD KNOW.
  "Wait!" said Fong. "Look . . ." But Gubwa was already looking. De Medici had
  left the edge and was now examining the Mercedes. After a moment he seemed
  satisfied, opened the door and reached inside. With something of an effort he
  dragged out the Jimp black mass of—
  GARRISON'S DOG, said Gubwa. DEAD! BUT OF COURSE SHE WOULD BE. SHE TOO ONLY
  LIVED BY COURTESY OF GARRISON. He was reminded of Vicki Maler. NOW I MUST GO.
  YOU ARE A GOOD AND FAITHFUL MAN, JOHNNIE FONG, AND YOU SHALL BE THE PRIEST OF
  THE TEMPLE.
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  "Thank you, Charon," said Fong, aware of the other's swift departure. Then,
  carefully, so as not to attract the attention of the man below, he began to
  make his way down the steep side of the hill . . .
  Gubwa jerked alert where he sat before the suspended globe. "Sir!" an urgent
  voice was repeating. "Sir, sir?" Gubwa stood up, drew breath, swelled huge.
  The guard's voice, now worried, came once more over the intercom. "Sir, sir!"
  Gubwa strode to the desk, said: "Bring them in."
  The doors hissed open and Stone and Vicki were wheeled in. Stone was in tears,
  sobbing uncontrollably. The reason was Vicki. The faces of the guards were
  white, drawn. Something had seemed to age them. It was that same something
  which had "aged" Vicki Maler, but in her case the effect would be far more
  permanent.
  She sat in her wheelchair like a wrinkled old mummy, her hair white and the
  yellow flesh loose on her bones. Senile, she mumbled and coughed; even as
  Gubwa watched she pushed out her tongue and a blackened tooth fell out of her
  mouth on a thread of yellow spittle. As Stone continued to sob she lifted an
  ancient hand from straps which were too loose now to contain the withered
  flesh and clawed at her face. Contact lenses fell to the floor. The eyes
  behind were fish-white, totally blind. She mewled like a kitten, beginning to
  drool. The smell of age and infirmity wafted from her ...
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  Brian Lumley
  "To see is to believe, Mr. Stone," said Qubwa, unmoved. "Garrison is dead and
  she, too, is dying—but it will get worse before the end. Soon she will begin
  to rot! Since you got On so well, you two, I would not deprive you of her
  company in these her final moments." He looked at the guards. "Take them back
  to their cell."
  When they were gone he picked up his telephone and dialled Sir Harry's number
  . . .
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  Chapter
  19
  JoHMniE FOHG GOT DOWN THE HILLSIDE WITHOUT BE-ing seen. As he had climbed
  down, so Ramon de Medici had jacked up the front of the Mercedes and had been
  at work with a crowbar, forcing the front-right fender and wing back from the
  wheel. Mow he had the job finished and was climbing into the driver's seat. A
  moment later the big engine roared into life.
  Fong stood in the pines, peering out through their branches. As de Medici
  backed the big car away from the edge of the gorge and aimed it back along the
  road south, a wheel went over the body of the dog. Fong saw blood gush from
  her jaws. But as the car pulled away he saw more than that.
  An arm came clawing up over the rim of the shallow gorge . . .
  Fong gasped his amazement, jerked his bin-
  
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  oculars to his eyes. The distance was not great but he had to be sure. The arm
  stretched itself through dust and pebbles, its hand and fingers bloody and
  scrabbling. The hand found a hold and drew up a shoulder, a head and a face.
  Garrison's face, pale as a sheet, the red burn of a bullet scarring his temple
  into vivid contrast.
  Fong blinked his eyes, quickly rubbed at the eyepieces of his binoculars and
  looked through them again. The top half of Garrison's body was now visible,
  face-down, and even as Fong watched the man somehow managed to drag his trunk
  and lower limbs up from the gorge. But it was Garrison's face which chiefly
  interested Fong, that white face with its red blaze . . . and its eyes.
  Something about those eyes.
  Mow Garrison lifted hfs head and looked along the road at the cloud of dust
  which half-obscured the receding Mercedes, and again Fong saw that phenomenon
  which had caused him to doubt his own eyesight: that flickering golden glow,
  like a stirring of strange energies, flowing out from Garrison's eyes.
  Garrison lifted an arm, pointed after the car. His lips formed silent words
  and for a single instant of time the golden glow suffused his whole face.
  Then a brighter glow intruded, a white brilliance originating in the
  incandescent fireball which had been the Mercedes! Even at this distance the
  flash burned Fong's face. He dropped his binoculars, gasped his utter
  disbelief. He had been with Charon Gubwa many years, but never
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  in all those years had he seen anything like this. Then the blast hit him.
  As a red-blooming mushroom formed over the spot where the car had been, the
  Chinaman was snatched from his feet in a great fist of wind and tossed into
  the branches of suddenly whipping pines. For long moments the hot wind blew
  like the breath of some fire-elemental, then died away as quickly as it had
  come. Echoes of the blast came rumbling down from the hills, gradually
  receding. And finally Fong fell to the earth in a hail of pine needles and
  tangled, broken branches. Beneath him where he lay half-stunned, slowly the
  ground stopped trembling.
  Fong climbed shakily to his feet. His Jaguar lay on its back. Several pines
  had been snapped off close to the ground and lay pointing away from the scene
  of the blast. The mushroom rose higher, white and writhing, like the cloud
  that forms above a nuclear explosion. The cliff face was coming down in great
  slabs of rock, filling the massive crater in the road. Automatically, all of
  his senses numb, Fong found his binoculars and looped their strap round his
  neck. But for the pines he might well have been whirled away and killed.
  And now he understood something of his albino master's unusual caution where
  Richard Garrison was concerned. The man's powers were . . . Fong shook his
  head. Gubwa was awesome, but Richard Garrison was awful!
  When Garrison/Koenig had fallen after being shot at, his unconscious body had
  thudded
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  down onto a stony ledge some nine or ten feet below the level of the road. A
  small avalanche of dust and pebbles, falling on him, had hidden him from view
  from above, and the ledge had protected him from the heat of the car blazing
  below. He had only been out for a minute or two, following which consciousness
  had slowly, ach-ingly returned. Another man might have taken hours to
  recover—might not have recovered at all—but there was that in Garrison which
  drove him on.
  It was that same drive which had brought him through all the trials of his
  dream-quest, even the final trial of the burning desert. For such had been his
  dream—of the furnace wastes, of dragging Psychomech inch by agonized inch
  behind him, and of a desiccated, dying Suzy—when there had come that titan
  blast, that stunning physical agony of a searing, scarring bullet which had
  
  ripped Koenig's mind from its ascendency into unconscious oblivion and roused
  Garrison's mind up from nightmare.
  And it was Garrison who had come awake and clawed his way back to the road
  above the gorge; not his alter-facets but Richard Garrison himself. It was
  Garrison now, picking himself up to stumble raggedly over to where Suzy's
  crushed body lay, sliding his hand under her faithful head. Life flickered in
  those black eyes of hers even now, but its light was quickly dimming.
  Garrison cried. Cried burning tears from eyes already dim and robbed of most
  of their golden glow. His anger had robbed him—that anger ex-
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  pended in rending the Psychosphere in that great blast of vengeance—and power
  must pay for the waste. Useless now to attempt Suzy's resurrection. Once it
  would have been the very simplest business, but no longer. What psychic power
  remained in him would not run to that, not now. Even in the Psyehosphere it
  was far easier to destroy than to create. But he must do something.
  Garrison smiled through his tears as an idea dawned. He and Suzy were close,
  closer than any other animal and master gone before them. She was almost a
  part of him. Why not make her a part of him? He prayed he still had the power,
  the ability.
  Gently he entered her mind, found a great love there and a great pain. Her
  tongue flopped loosely between bloodied jaws, licking his hand.
  SUZY, he said. STOP HURTING. GOOD! MOW, GIRL . . . COME INTO ME. COME INTO ME,
  SUZY ...
  Her eyes looked at him and went dim. Her head lolled lifelessly back. Garrison
  struggled wearily to his feet, the tears drying on his pale cheeks. He had
  many miles to go and the day was growing older. Which way now?
  He knew the answer instinctively, with the instinct of a dog: along the road
  for a mile or two, then over the hill and . . . and that way, over there!
  He smiled, however wanly, and began to plod slowly along the road. And in the
  back of his mind something bounded and barked joyfully, and he was not alone.
  Behind him, the spot where the great black bitch
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  had lain was vacant now. Bright motes of dust spiralled and shone in the
  yellow sunlight. . .
  Fong followed at a safe distance (was any distance safe?), keeping Garrison in
  sight but barely so, along the road and over the hills and for miles and miles
  across country rougher than any the Chinaman had ever known before. The man in
  front was weak and his pace had grown gradually slower, but still he pressed
  forward and never once looked back. Fong found himself trailing footprints in
  boggy peat, climbing steep inclines where shale slipped and slithered
  underfoot, digging his heels in down almost precipitous slopes and trudging
  weary miles through valleys of drear, boggy sedge. But while Garrison
  occasionally faltered, always he recovered and went on.
  He had to, for he knew now that he approached quest's end. Somewhere to the
  west lay the picturesque Glen o' Dunkillie, but not far ahead was the reality
  of his dream within a dream. Me had started his quest in the strange world of
  the subconscious, but he would finish it here—or it would finish him.
  For a moment panic struck at Garrison. Night was coming on, true, but still it
  seemed darker to him, or gloomier, than the hour demanded. He knew the answer
  but dared not even dwell upon it, dared not admit of its existence. And yet
  he'd always known it: his eyes would be the first to go.
  Garrison would dearly have loved to lie down and go to sleep (a mental rather
  than a physical
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  weariness, he suspected, despite the miles behind him and the ravaged state of
  his body) but the very thought was out of the question. He was not tired,
  could not allow himself to be tired. Too much—too many—depended upon him. But
  
  cresting a shaly rise onto a fiat tableland, suddenly he knew that he would
  have to face up to the worst. Not even the clouds of a gathering summer storm
  would explain the darkness creeping gradually across his vision. The battery
  had almost run dry.
  At that very moment, fifty yards to his rear, Johnnie Fong made up his mind to
  act independently of Charon Gubwa. The albino wanted Garrison dead, Fong knew
  that, and he also knew that Garrison could die, almost had died. Very well,
  this could not go on. The man ahead was almost finished. He staggered, a
  silhouette against the gray, troubled sky. A perfect target. Fong lifted his
  pistol, took careful aim and squeezed the trigger.
  Garrison must have tripped at that very moment. His silhouette jerked out of
  sight simultaneously with the pistol's report. Fong believed he had hit him
  but—
  He held his breath, waited, half-expected destruction in a white-hot fireball.
  That would be all right, nothing left of him to connect him with his beloved
  Charon; but nothing happened. An unseasonal chill was in the air and the
  clouds were turning in the sky, but that was all. The Chinaman began to
  breathe again, waited two more minutes before climbing to the crest.
  There was blood on the rocks where they
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  leaned out of shallow soil, heather and lichen. Fresh, wet blood. As for
  Garrison:  a shadow moved ahead, stumbling over the tableland, arms pumping.
  Incredibly, he was running!
  It was 9:00 P.M. by Stone's reckoning when Vicki suffered her relapse. For an
  hour or two he had dared hope that . . . but in Stone's scheme of things hope
  had rarely been seen to spring eternal. He was a realist. For himself: he
  would take whatever chances came his way. He certainly didn't intend to go out
  without a fight. But Vicki? She was a woman with one hell of a handicap: her
  lifeline had just snapped. Richard Garrison was dead and Vicki Maler must soon
  follow him.
  Stone didn't know her, not really, but he felt he had known her better than
  most. She had turned her heart out to him and he had listened. And he had held
  her in his arms—just that, nothing more—but they had shared, now?
  The thing lying on her bed wasn't Vicki Maler. It had been her once more, for
  an hour or two, but wasn't it of old renown that people brighten before they
  die? The flaring-up of the candle's flame before it flickers out. Well,
  Vicki's flame had flared up. The golden glow had not quite returned to her
  eyes, but some color had come back into her face and her flesh had seemed to
  firm out a little. She had even spoken a few words, telling Stone not to cry
  for her. Perceptive, yes. But he had also cried for himself, cried his
  frustration, his hatred. How very badly he
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  wanted Gubwa,  and how massive the odds against getting him.
  Talk of the devil!—or in Gubwa's case think of him—for at that moment the
  albino's face appeared at the barred window in the door.
  "Ah, Mr. Stone—and so distressed! You surprise me. I had thought you harder."
  His pink eyes went from Stone, seated in his chair, to the bed where Vicki
  Maler's bundle of living bones lay wrapped in her now voluminous clothing. Her
  chest rose and fell with a slow, jerky, shallow movement.
  Gubwa nodded, smiled at Stone. "She is fading. You may see the end, you may
  not. It depends how quickly she dies. You see, you only have forty minutes.
  When the night-shift comes on duty, Phillip Stone goes off duty—for good! I've
  promised Sir Harry that your body will be in the Thames in the morning, and it
  will be."
  Stone stood up, moved to the barred window. His hands were huge white knots at
  his sides. "Some god, Gubwa, when you're obliged to keep your promises to scum
  like that bastard!"
  "I shall do whatever is necessary, Mr. Stone, to maintain ... a balance," he
  
  shrugged, "until Psychomech is mine. After that
  "Do you really think I have enjoyed my relationship with Sir Harry? Of course
  not. He shall be among the first to go."
  Stone forced a laugh. "A god with a hit-list?" he sneered. "You get funnier by
  the minute!"
  Gubwa maintained his equanamity. "But you would agree," he said slowly, "that
  gods do have the power of life and death, Mr. Stone. Why are
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  they given such power, do you suppose, if not to use it?"
  "In your case?" Stone answered. "I would say for the same reason a dog is
  given rabies! And funny, isn't it?—but 'God' reversed is 'dog!' How far is a
  rabid dog removed from Christ, Gubwa? Well, that's you, in my eyes—the
  Antichrist."
  Gubwa scowled. He was tired of Stone now, but he could not leave without a
  parting shot. "I do not merely mouth words when I speak of life and death, Mr.
  Stone, though I will admit that my meaning is occasionally
  obscured—deliberately. But you see, what Garrison did I shall have the power
  to do one hundred times over. And there is one particular thing that he did
  which quite intrigues me." His smile was monstrous.
  "Miss Maler was quite beautiful," the albino went on. "Garrison chose her for
  his mate and I consider his taste impeccable. So console yourself with this
  thought: I shall be merciful with her. She dies now, but when next she wakes
  she shall sit upon the right hand of God! flermaphro Sapiens, yes—and she
  shall be the mother of the race, the mother of my children. What a Goddess she
  shall make, don't you agree, Mr. Stone? Why, even Jesus rose up only once!"
  "You mad, mad bastard!" Stone hissed through clenched teeth. But Qubwa was
  already striding away down the corridor. His booming laughter came echoing
  back . . .
  Garrison ran. For an endless time (it seemed to him) he ran and ran. He had
  lost a lot of blood, was losing more even now, but no longer cared
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  or gave it thought. All sense of feeling was absent from his right shoulder
  where Johnnie Fong's bullet had passed through it, and his eyesight was
  three-quarters gone along with his physical strength, but still he ran. It was
  a race against time and he must run it to its end, even knowing that only
  willpower kept him going— and that even that was failing.
  And somewhere back there a killer, and Garrison powerless to strike back. He
  ran until the earth fell away beneath him and he crashed headlong down a steep
  slope. The wall of the valley went down in dips, and it was one of these in
  which he found himself when his head stopped spinning. Wearily he sat himself
  upright in sliding scree, grit and coarse grass. Distant lightning flickered,
  firing his sight in its split-second duration. Garrison gasped, sucked on air,
  prayed. In answer the far lightning flickered again.
  Dim as his sight was he could not mistake the vast bulk of the dam rising on
  his right, the dark mass of the solitary house where it squatted below. And
  now he knew. This was it, the valley of his dream within a dream. Only one
  thing was missing and for a moment it stumped him. Then he remembered.
  The dam was quiet, its waters pent, the merest trickle bubbling from six great
  vents in its face. It would remain so until the official opening tomorrow. But
  everything else was here; and behind him, up there, the shadowy, looming
  spires of marching pylons. Oh, yes, this was it.
  And with that knowledge, as the first stirring
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  Brian Lumley
  of hope tightened his guts and heightened his awareness, Garrison also became
  aware of his pain, his weakness. Blind instinct had driven him before, the
  will to live, to survive. There had been no time, no room for pain or
  exhaustion. And there must be none now, not when he was so close, not with a
  
  killer on his trail.
  Somehow he struggled on, and somehow, after endless ages of pain and
  weariness, he found himself at the foot of the path leading to the door of the
  lone house. Deserted, the place looked gloomy as its surroundings, as doomful
  as the great dam rising high above. Its roof had partly caved in, most of the
  windows were broken and the chimney stack was crumbling. These things Garrison
  could still see, but even seeing them his vision was blurring, the silhouette
  of the house merging with the dark valley and the darker horizon of
  valley-wall beyond.
  Fear drove him forward in a surge he had not believed he could muster. He
  reached the door and found it locked. Sight was almost gone, but he could not
  tell how much of that was due to the night, the gathering storm. He sobbed,
  threw up his arms against the stout timbers of the door. He leaned against it
  and felt the contours of metal letters pressed against his forehead. The place
  had a name.
  He traced the letters with his left hand, the hand with feeling: X-A-N-A . . .
  Xanadu!
  Mo one was late. Gubwa hadn't programmed his soldiers to be late. There were
  sixteen of them,
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  double the normal requirement. Top ranker was Gardner, and he was in charge of
  the shift. Sixteen was the maximum the lift could take, else Gardner was sure
  there would have been even more of them. Something big was happening and the
  Castle's master was taking no chances.
  The sixteen had arrived more or less individually, but at the hour appointed
  they had come together as a body in the underground car park at the access
  door to the lift. On their way here, on foot or in the city's transport, they
  had been articulate, at their ease, completely "normal" citizens; but now they
  were a crowd of zombies. That was in their program; for now, out of sight of
  the crowds surging in the streets above, they rapidly reverted to the human
  machines Gubwa had caused them to be. And that was a condition which left them
  particularly vulnerable to Sir Harry's attack.
  He had arrived all of an hour earlier, him and six highly-trained operatives
  from the branch's Special Assignments Group. Killers all, they were utterly
  loyal to him; he had enough on each of them to guarantee their loyalty, now,
  as Gardner counted heads, nodded and stepped up to the door, keys jangling,
  Sir Harry gave the agreed signal. This was simply his voice yelling "Now!" and
  the beam of his torch swathing the unsuspecting sixteen where they bunched in
  gloomy, concrete-cast shadows at the door. His agents did the rest.
  Qubwa's soldiers didn't know what hit them. They were trained and conditioned
  for possible action in the Castle, not outside of it. They went
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  down like thistles under a scythe as the branch men stepped out from cover and
  caught them in a withering, short burst of intense fire. For no more than five
  seconds the machine-guns yammered, their insane chattering drowning the echoes
  of Sir Harry's yell and bringing down rivulets of accumulated dust from the
  concrete ceiling. Then it was over, and in the stunned silence Sir Harry
  stepped forward and took Gardner's keys from fingers that were still
  twitching. Moments later he was through the door, his men dragging the bodies
  of the sixteen in after them. Somebody outside threw down sand on the blood
  and someone else swept it away into darkness. Then they were all through the
  door and Sir Harry locked it behind them.
  He stepped forward and pressed the button for the lift. Far down below the
  empty cage jerked and began its slow climb upwards. All unaware, the men of
  the shift coming off duty were beginning to convene, moving towards the foot
  of the shaft. Two of them had been assigned a special duty—one which concerned
  Phillip Stone . . .
  Garrison got in through a broken window. In doing so he cut himself badly, but
  
  he was far beyond caring about pain or loss of blood now. Indeed his
  near-delirium sprang from these sources, so that even he did not know how
  close he was to death. But still he hung on.
  The darkness was his biggest immediate problem. Inside the house he felt
  literally buried in darkness, his near-blindness adding to his confusion. He
  found an open fireplace with crum-
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  pled newspapers already lying in the grate, brought out his cigarette lighter
  and struck flame. The paper, mercifully dry and crisp, blazed up. Garrison
  fuelled the fire with pieces ripped from an old, broken wicker chair—and
  sobbed his relief that he could still see, however dimly, the leaping flames.
  The fire warmed his chill flesh, bringing comfort on the one hand and on the
  other a sure recognition of his condition, the fact that the life-force within
  him was ebbing. And yet there was something here—right here in Xanadu— which
  could yet save the day. Else all had been pointless. But what was it?
  Stumbling about the room, one of three rooms on the ground floor, Garrison
  flopped into a chair and allowed himself to sprawl for a moment across a heavy
  wooden table. His hand came into contact with a table lamp, naked wires
  dangling from its flex. When the occupants, whoever they had been, left the
  house, they had taken the plugs with them. A pity, he could have used a little
  extra light. . .
  Why not?
  The thought spurred him on. The odds were all against there being any
  electricity, but he could at least try.
  He half-fell from the chair with the rotten flex in his hand, found a socket
  in the skirting-board, shoved the naked wires in with fingers that shook so
  badly they seemed to vibrate. Then they did vibrate. He was holding the bare
  cores!
  Even as the fact got through to his brain, Garrison was hurled across the
  room—but in that
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  Brian Lumley
  same instant of contact things had happened. Marvellous things!
  For one thing his sight had returned, fully restored, however briefly. For
  another, strength had seemed to flow, however fieetingly, in veins and muscles
  and bones hollow as empty vessels. And finally . . . finally Garrison had
  remembered a dream. That dream in which a monster—the
  Gar-rison/Schroeder/Koenig monster—had been galvanized into life on the bed of
  the ethereal MACHINE.
  Like the Frankenstein monster of youthful horror films, the Garrison-creature
  had been brought alive by Nature's own raw energies. By lightning. By
  electricity!
  Now, blind again, he crawled back across the floor. The moment of contact had
  been too brief, had lasted for a single instant of time before his body
  reacted to the shock. This time it must be longer. It must be ... as long as
  it took.
  Weaker than ever, he clawed his way across the floor. Blood still flowed
  freely from his fingers, lacerated hand, scalp, perforated shoulder. He used
  the cracked nails of his hands to strip the age-brittled plastic from copper
  wires, wound them round his wrists, held them in his hands, found the socket
  and plugged the wires in, first one and then the other.
  And where he had jammed himself between the heavy table and the wall, his body
  jerked and shook and fluttered—all of his limbs writhing, his hair standing
  out from his head, his eyes bulging—as his fingers smoked and blackened and
  the wires glowed red in his hands.
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  For five, ten, fifteen seconds he sucked energy from the socket. He would have
  gone on, continuing until something fused, but that wasn't to be. The
  
  vibration of his body increased in violence until, driving the huge wooden
  table before him, he flew once more across the room and the wires snapped.
  Ah!—but now the battery was charged again. Not fully, no, not yet. But quest's
  end finally lay in sight and Garrison knew what he must do. He lifted his head
  from the naked floorboards and the entire room burned gold in the light from
  his eyes. A light which would suffer no barriers. A light which engulfed the
  entire house. A light which once, in a dream, Garrison had taken for the
  shining hemisphere of a stately pleasure-dome—or the temple of the Goddess of
  Immortality!
  At the foot of the garden path Johnnie Fong stopped dead in his tracks, drew
  back, finally fled as the wall of that golden dome seemed to advance upon him,
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  Chapter
  20
  THE TWO SOLDIERS DETAILED BY GtlBWA TO TAKE care of Stone arrived at his cell
  and opened the door. Inside the metal room Vicki Maler—or the thing she was
  now—lay sleeping or dead, completely hidden under a blanket Stone had thrown
  over her. The two men weren't interested in her, however, but in him. Youngish
  men, they were no longer dressed in their Castle uniforms but in normal street
  clothes.
  Stone took them in at a glance. Smart and reasonably well-groomed, they would
  not look out of place as young executives in any of the city's firms or
  businesses. It seemed somehow unreasonable that they should be trained
  killers, working for a creature like Charon Qubwa. It also seemed unreasonable
  that he would have to kill them—which he would, quite cheerfully, if the
  opportunity presented itself.
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  They ordered him out of the cell at gunpoint and into a wheelchair. Then, as
  one of them held a pistol to his tempte, the other prepared to strap him into
  the chair.
  "Hurry it up," said the one with the gun, his tone urgent. "The cage will be
  down. They'll be waiting for us."
  The other looked up as if to answer—but at the precise moment there came the
  loud rattle of automatic gunfire and whine of ricocheting bullets,
  interspersed with shouting and screams. It was exactly the chance Stone had
  been looking for. What was going on he couldn't say, but whatever it was he
  wanted to be part of it.
  His two guards were momentarily startled; Stone didn't give them the least
  opportunity to recover. His arms shot up like pistons and he got a two-handed
  grip on the wrist of the one with the gun, deflecting it. At the same time he
  came to his feet like a coiled spring, his head smashing into the face of the
  man crouching over him. To complete the job on that one and without releasing
  his grip on the gun-hand of the other, he lashed out with a kick that
  pulverized the man's groin. The one with the gun had meanwhile started yelling
  and driving his free fist repeatedly into the side of Stone's head. Stone
  ignored the sticky, pulpy feel of a torn ear and brought his knee up and the
  soldier's wrist down in one sharp movement. The wrist snapped across his knee
  . . . the man screamed . . . the gun flew across the corridor and bounced off
  the wall. Before it could clatter to the floor Stone
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  Brian Lumley
  had whirled his agonized victim in a half-circle, crashing him headlong into
  the steel wall.
  In the next moment the pistol was in Stone's hand and he fell into a crouch as
  a pair of combat-suited, woollen-helmeted men, armed to the teeth, came round
  a far corner. They could have been from MIS or 6, could be more of Gub-wa's
  soldiers, he had no way of knowing—until they began to sprint towards him,
  their weapons spitting fire. After that it didn't matter who they were.
  Stone snapped off a shot and saw one man stopped in his tracks, spinning like
  
  a top as he fell. The other slowed down a little, then came on at a charge.
  Stone took cover behind the wheelchair, took careful aim, fired. As the chair
  was torn from his grasp by a spray of bullets, so Stone saw the muzzle of the
  machine-gun floating towards his face. Floating, yes, in a sort of slow
  motion. But the gun was in free-fall, its owner already sailing past with a
  neat red and black hole between his staring, dead eyes. Then things speeded
  up.
  Stone snatched the machine-gun from mid-air, pocketed the pistol, stepped to
  the dead man's body and glanced at him. He'd seen him before, he was sure. Sir
  Harry's branch. Just like that treacherous, lousy, wonderful bastard! Stone
  snatched a magazine of ammunition from the man's belt, a couple of grenades,
  turned to the door of what had been his cell and shot the lock off. He went to
  snatch Vicki Maler from her bed and was surprised at her weight. Throwing back
  the blanket he saw her and his jaw dropped. She
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  had firmed out again. She wasn't quite the youthful, beautiful girl he had
  briefly known, but she wasn't a hag either.
  He thought to try and waken her, changed his mind and simply wrapped her in
  the blanket. Then she went over his shoulder in a fireman's lift, and a moment
  later he was back out in the corridor. Things were still chaotic in the
  Castle, but in the main Sir Harry's crowd had taken Qubwa by surprise.
  Grenades detonated somewhere as the invaders commenced a methodical
  destruction of the place, and there were still occasional bursts of fire and
  screams of agony and death.
  Having no idea yet where he was going, Stone simply ran with Vicki bouncing on
  his shoulder.
  Somewhere someone was shouting: "I want Qubwa, the big fat albino! I want him
  dead! I want all of these freaks dead! Wreck the place as you go but make sure
  you get every last one of them!" Stone recognized Sir Harry's voice. A long
  time since that pig had seen active service. Qubwa must have angered him
  mightily!
  He reached a right-hand bend in the corridor at the same time as a member of
  Qubwa's harem came staggering round it. The transsexual's face was covered
  with blood which dripped from his chin. His heavy woman's breasts were scarlet
  with it. He carried no weapon.
  "Don't shoot!" he cried in a falsetto voice. "Don't shoot. . ." But he was
  already crumpling to his knees, collapsing face-down on the floor's rubber
  coating.
  More gunfire and screams, from close at hand.
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  Stone took a deep breath, threw himself round the corner with his machine-gun
  spurting lead. A combat-suited man took off in mid-air along the corridor as
  Stone's bullets chewed into him. He had been standing guard over a lift cage.
  Bodies littered the area, all of them dressed for the street. Qubwa's men,
  about to go off duty. Stone felt nothing for them.
  He yanked the cage's latticed doors open, stepped through them—and as he did
  so heard the hiss of a door opening behind him. He whirled . . . and across
  the corridor stood Qubwa, The albino saw Stone, saw his gun, and he skidded to
  a halt in the middle of the corridor. His hair was wild, his pink eyes wide.
  "In!" Stone snapped. "Now, before 1 change my mind!"
  "Yes, yes, I'm coming. Please don't shoot, Mr. Stone."
  "Shoot? Kill you? You have to be joking! If I shoot you who'll explain all
  this? And believe me you've got some explaining to do. And while you're doing
  it I'm going to sit there and grin. And I'm going to be able to tell them the
  right questions to ask!"
  The cage was a big one. Qubwa got as far away as he could from the muzzle of
  Stone's machine-gun. His arms were in the air, trembling uncontrollably; his
  entire frame wobbled like jelly. "The button, Mr. Stone," he babbled. "Please
  
  press it. We have to get out of here—now!"
  Stone became suspiciously aware of the other's urgency. It was understandable,
  of course, but. . . he hovered his finger over the lift's button, his
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  shoulder supporting Vicki. "What have you done, Qubwa?"
  "Press it, for God's sake!" the hermaphrodite gibbered, his hands fluttering.
  "The Castle is mined! I've set the detonation sequence in motion!"
  "For 'God's sake,' eh?" said Stone mockingly—but he pressed the button. As the
  cage jerked and started upward, a tremendous explosion blew the debris of
  bodies along the corridor beyond the latticed doors. Then they were out of it,
  but beneath their feet they could still feel the concussions of further
  explosions. As the thunders receded, so Gubwa began to relax, his hands
  starting to fall towards his sides.
  "Keep 'em up, fat thing!" Stone snarled. He took two paces forward, stuck his
  gun in Gub-wa's belly, shoving hard through the towelling of the albino's
  robe. "Also, you can close your eyes—close 'em! And keep 'em closed. And let
  me tell you now: I only have to feel the tiniest tickle of an alien thought in
  my head, just one, and a second later you're going to weigh at least a pound
  heavier. And I'll love it!"
  Through all of this a speaker in the ceiling had been droning Gubwa's recorded
  hypnotic orders, accompaniment to the pulsing of a blue strobe light. Stone,
  however, had not been conditioned to receive such orders. His lips twisted
  into a mirthless grin as he stepped back from the albino, lifted up the snout
  of his gun and fired off a burst at the speaker and strobe.
  "There," he said as Qubwa's recorded voice squawked into silence and the light
  went out,
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  Brian Lumley
  leaving them in near-darkness. Once more he prodded Qubwa's belly with the
  smoking muzzle of the machine-gun. "That writes finis on that shit! And that
  only leaves you, mister. It only leaves you. And if you've any sense at all,
  you'll just stand perfectly still and do absolutely nothing . . ."
  Garrison had lain quite still for some minutes, but while his ravaged body had
  rested his mind had been intensely active. First he had stilled the incredible
  pain in his limbs, trunk and head; which had required the merest effort of
  will, a simple command that the pain would stop. Then he had soaked up the
  essence of the house, the valley outside, the dam and surrounding countryside,
  over which a freakish summer storm was about to break in unprecedented fury.
  In doing so—in this systematic mental examination of his whereabouts—he had
  once more triggered memories of his prophetic dreams, stripping them of their
  mysticism until all that remained of them was the fact that they had been
  prophetic. Through them he had seen the future, a future, inalienable and
  unchangeable as the past.
  The past was gone, but the future, as any future, began here and now. And
  however obscurely, the way into that future had been delineated. Garrison was
  powerful now but not nearly powerful enough to go that way, not yet. But how
  close the analogy had been, when he had likened himself to a battery leaking
  its power. And how easy and how terrible the solu-
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  tion. He had dreamed of a great MACHINE and knew now that this valley, this
  place, was that MACHINE. As for its power source-Garrison reached out his mind
  to the dam and explored its mechanisms ...
  Johnnie Fong sat one-third of the way up the wall of the valley and stared at
  the golden glow of the dome. It had stopped growing, stood taller than the
  pines, enclosed what had been the entire garden of the house. Fong didn't know
  if it had substance and he wasn't ready to find out. But it was, must be, a
  manifestation of Garrison. About that the Chinaman had no doubt. If only
  Charon would contact him now, perhaps the albino would be able to tell him how
  
  to deal with things. Always his beloved Charon had the answers to such—
  Fong jerked to his feet. The first warm raindrops were beginning to fall and
  the clouds were boiling madly overhead, but even the moaning of the wind could
  not drown out the new sound— the sudden, rapidly increasing roar of power
  unleashed. Fong's eyes went to the face of the dam, took in the spectacles of
  the six silvery trickles that ran down its concrete face erupting into
  gigantic spouts; and his ears heard the thunder of waters in chaos.
  He backed away, turned and scrambled higher, not looking back until he no
  longer dared ignore what was happening behind and below him. Full fifteen
  minutes that climb, and Fong's limbs trembling with his exertion when finally
  he did stop and turn. But now he knew
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  why he had fled, that it had been instinct which drove him up from the house
  and away from the dam. Instinct and fear.
  Mot fear of the rushing waters, no, for already his elevation had been such
  that they could not possibly reach him. Fear of the power which had caused
  those waters to rush, the Gigantic Unstoppable Power whose heart throbbed at
  the center of the golden dome!
  Throbbed, yes, for the dome was unstable now. It pulsed with an irregular
  expansion and contraction like some vast alien beacon. It struggled with
  itself, or within itself, like molten lava in a volcano's cone, tossed by the
  turmoil below. And finally—it broke!
  A figure—upright, manlike, golden, glowing, like some sort of anthropomorphic
  fragment of the dome itself—came through its wall and stood for a moment on
  the night wind, then rose up the slope of the valley directly towards the
  Chinaman where he trembled and gasped.
  Ho part of that figure of golden fire touched the slope itself. Utterly
  suspended on air, it levitated itself a full two feet above the whipping grass
  and stunted shrubs; and as it passed close by Fong the truth of its nature,
  which of course he had known, made itself apparent. Namely that this was
  Richard Garrison, but shrunken, dried out, almost desiccated. It was Garrison,
  but devoid of life, or life as Fong understood it. Garrison, and yet less than
  Garrison, and yet greater, far greater.
  He lifted his pistol as the figure passed, fired off shot after shot and knew
  that he struck the
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  target each time; but the figure made no pause, showed no interest, paid no
  heed at all. And when Fong's weapon was empty, then it fell from his nerveless
  fingers; and still the mummied figure of Garrison sailed on, its eyes blazing,
  its skin a mass of golden wrinkles, its arms blackened stumps whose frayed
  threads hung in sticky tatters just below the elbows.
  And behind it, down in the valley, the agonized fluctuations of the psychic
  plasma about the deserted house came to an abrupt end, the glow blinked out,
  and in the next moment the house went down in dust and ruin and the frenzied
  spume of the flood that rushed and roared down the old bed of the river.
  Then, like an automaton, almost without knowing that his hands and feet bore
  him up, Johnnie Fong clawed his way to the crest of the valley wall, following
  the floating figure of Garrison as a moth follows a bright light. He had to
  know, had to see—even if it blasted him . . .
  But even before reaching the crest Fong could hear the humming of the
  heavy-duty cables where they draped their loops between the pylons. They were
  drawing off power from the dam, power which Garrison required. And as Fong
  crawled exhaustedly up those last few yards of slope and emerged above the
  valley, so he became witness to the most awesome scene of all.
  It was Garrison, a living cross of golden fire, the blackened stumps of his
  arms outstretched, floating in air between and beneath two of the pylons. And
  it was Garrison who, a moment later, received the tribute of the pylons—a
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  Brian Lumley
  massive, crackling bolt that smashed down, was sucked down from blazing
  cables, enveloping him and hurling him down to the ground. Nor did it stop
  there. The smell of ozone filled the air, and of burning flesh, as that
  lashing, living, weirdly snarling and snapping pulse of raw energy spent
  itself in Garrison . . . who now, impossibly, stood up and held himself erect,
  welcoming the very fires that consumed him!
  And as if the storm itself knew Garrison's bizarre thirst, it added its own
  energies to that awesome, fearsome funeral pyre, sending down bolt after bolt
  from the madly wheeling clouds, each bolt absorbed at once into the crumbling
  skeleton thing which was Garrison.
  Witless, tingling, himself glowing with the excess energies that filled the
  air and plucked at the hair of his face and head, Johnnie Fong kneeled with
  jaws agape and rain streaming from his chin. The very elements seemed crazed
  now, and the undersides of the clouds were awash with St. Elmo's fire as the
  bolts continued to rain down. And all of his raw power focussing upon Garrison
  or what had been Garrison—and his megamind thirsting for more still!
  More still—more energy to power the ultimate quest—more physical fuel for the
  psychic fire.
  The megamind reached out, sought, discovered ...
  More than one hundred miles away at Doun-reay the pile went crazy. Rods of
  uranium which would have lighted entire cities for weeks were consumed in
  seconds . . . and nothing to show for it. Throughout the length and breadth of
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  Scotland lights dimmed as the power was drawn off.
  A magnificent aurora filled the skies. A shaft of fire split the heavens and
  lanced down, down, down, to Garrison, removing every last physical vestige of
  him from the world of men. Removing, too, Johnnie Fong.
  But while the physical Garrison was dead the mental Garrison was newborn and
  borne up to penetrate, to become one with the Psycho-sphere ...
  As the lift slowed to an almost imperceptible halt, Charon Gubwa tensed
  himself. In fact Stone had done him a great favor by ordering him to keep his
  hypnotic eyes closed. Despite the apparent failure of so many of his plans,
  still there was the chance that he might yet achieve a final victory. With the
  Castle destroyed—which by now it surely was, beyond recovery, by plastic
  explosives and flre bombs which would have turned the entire interior to a
  raging inferno— Gubwa also would be thought to have perished, if or when the
  matter was looked into. But there were other places ready and waiting to
  receive him, and a car in the underground car park to take him to one of them.
  There would always be men he could buy or bend to his will, and Psy-chomech
  would still become a reality.
  Moreover, Gubwa knew something that Stone didn't know: namely that one last
  bomb remained, located at the bottom of the liftshaft, and that its detonation
  would be triggered when the cage's doors were opened up here. Which
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  Brian Lumley
  was why the albino had ignored Stone's warning not to mind-read, an idle
  threat at best for Qubwa was a master of covert telepathy. Another tele-path
  might have sensed him, but he had been in Stone's mind for all of five minutes
  without the slightest fear of detection. And he was still there when the lift
  cage slowed to a halt and Stone yanked the doors open. With his great arms
  held rigidly over his head, and with Stone's gun in his back, Qubwa was the
  first out of the lift—a split second before the bomb went off down below and
  its blast, channelled up the shaft, shook the cage like a terrier shakes a
  rat.
  With his mind taking off at a tangent, and Vicki Maler in her blanket still
  balanced on his shoulder, Stone stumbled and went to one knee. Before he could
  recover, Qubwa's right arm came down at lightning speed and his great gray
  hand clamped like a vice on the stock of the machine-gun, wrenching it from
  
  Stone's grasp.
  Demented but triumphant in his madness, the albino laughed as he turned the
  gun on Stone and ordered him out of the cage.
  "It would appear, Mr. Stone," he said, "that even a god can err. I said you
  were intelligent— but even an idiot would have killed me when he had the
  chance!" He made a motion with the gun. "Put her down," he ordered, indicating
  an empty space amongst the stiffening bodies of his former soldiers. "Put her
  there with the rest of these corpses. Then we shall play a little game, you
  and 1.1 shall close my eyes and stand quite still, and you shall prepare
  yourself. Then, when you are ready, you shall attempt to take
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  the gun back from me—or perhaps to take that pistol from your pocket and shoot
  me."
  "Qubwa, you blackhearted bastard, I—"
  "Of course you can't win," Qubwa cut him off, "because I shall know your move
  even as you make it. But surely it's worth a try? And to make the game more
  interesting, we'll limit its duration to fifteen seconds, after which I really
  must be on my way."
  "In a hurry, eh, Qubwa?" Stone ground the words out.
  "Oh yes, indeed! The Psychosphere is astir, Mr. Stone. It prepares to welcome
  a new Messiah. I feel its excitement, its psychic concentration. It beckons,
  and I must go."
  He very deliberately closed his eyes and began to count: "One . . . two . . .
  three . . . four . . ."
  In the matterless flux of the Psychosphere, three entities conversed, "Well?"
  said Garrison. "And are you satisfied?"
  "I'm not sure," Thomas Schroeder answered. "It is, I suppose, equality of
  sorts. Not quite what I had in mind."
  "You could hardly be my equal while you were part of me," said Garrison. "And
  so I have expelled you. Yes, and Willy too. How about you, Willy? Are you
  satisfied?"
  Koenig's answer contained a shrug. "I think," he said, "therefore I am—I
  think!" And he laughed. "I'll get used to it."
  "But what does one do?" Schroeder asked, "when one is unbodied, all-powerful
  and . . . immortal?"
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  Brian Lumley
  "You do what you want to do," Garrison answered. "Do you want to go back to
  that blob of mud that spawned us? So go, make yourself a body—make yourself
  mortal! You can do it. You can do almost anything you can imagine."
  "You're right, of course," said Schroeder. "So why don't we?"
  "We?" Garrison chuckled. "You, maybe, but not me. 1 can always do that later,
  if I get bored. But I doubt it."
  "Bored?" Koenig queried.
  "Let me show you something," Garrison answered.
  He showed them THE ALL—or rather, he showed them something of it. To show them
  all of THE ALL would take forever.
  "You see?" he said. "Unbodied, all-powerful and immortal you may well be, but
  never omniscient. How can you ever know all of space, which goes inwards and
  outwards forever? Or all of time, which goes infinitely back and inexorably
  forward? Look again."
  And they saw a sight whose beauty would be unbearable, blinding, blasting to
  mortal men. A sight which, in a dream, only Garrison had ever seen before
  them.
  "That cosmic mote Earth?" he laughed. "Oh, no! If there's a place I would be,
  it's out there. Who would drink the waters of Earth when he can drink the wine
  of the universe? The ultimate quest, my friends—and the ultimate destiny! Make
  up your minds, for Suzy and I can't wait."
  "Your battery ran dry once," Schroeder cautioned. "Remember?"
  
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  .Again Garrison laughed, a ripple in the Psy-chosphere. "And who could thirst
  for energy in a great sea of suns?"
  For a millimoment Schroeder was silent. "Very well," he finally conceded, "let
  the ayes have it."
  And "Aye!" they all three cried in unison.
  Then, soberly: "One moment," said Garrison. "First. . . there are several
  wrongs to right." He let the Psychosphere wash over and through him, making
  small adjustments in its matterless structure. And, "There," he finally said .
  . .
  "... Eleven . . . twelve . . . thirteen," said Qubwa, his eyes tightly shut,
  his smile a nightmare. Stone was reaching for his pistol, and the albino knew
  it.
  "Oh!" Vicki moaned where she lay, throwing back her blanket as she came awake.
  "Fourteen!" cried Qubwa, his eyes popping open as he turned to stare at her,
  then bugging in his leprous-gray face. His jaw fell open as the girl sat up,
  young, beautiful, green-eyed—fully alive.
  Qubwa's face screwed up in an agony of terror. Someone else was inside his
  head with him. A terrible someone. "Garrison/" he screamed.
  The machine-gun turned white hot in his hands, melting even as he dropped it
  from blistering fingers. Foaming at the mouth, his pink eyes seeming to stand
  out almost from his head, the albino floated free of the floor. He flew
  forward towards the steel doors, which opened before him. He passed through
  them out of sight, his last scream echoing back to Stone and Vicki
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  Brian Lumley
  where they hugged each other in that subterranean room of the dead:
  "Q-a-r-r-i-s-o-n!"
  And up the spiralling concrete ramps went Charon Qubwa, doors crashing open at
  his approach and barriers lifting. Up and out into the night. Up and over the
  city. Up, up and ever up. His rate of ascent accelerating, his dressing gown
  leaping into flames along with his hair—only to be extinguished a moment later
  in airless space, where his friction-cindered shellpopped open like a fried
  grape.
  And then, because Garrison had named him for an abhorrence, the Psychosphere
  simply erased all trace of him.
  Several things were erased, changed, rebuilt. For Garrison had been both right
  and wrong about time. Time is infinite, yes—but nothing is impossible in
  infinity.
  Joseph Maestro and his gangsters were no more, had never been.
  Likewise the less savory members of a certain branch of the Secret Service.
  They had never existed.
  Oh, and several other things.
  Several millions of things.
  And when they were done the Earth became a better place to live.
  Phillip and Vicki Stone certainly thought so, though they could not remember
  it ever having been different.
  She looked out of the window of their Sussex home into the starry night sky
  and found a name
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  on her lips. "Richard," she sighed—which was strange because she did not know,
  had never known, a Richard.
  "What?" her wealthy, loving husband looked up from his book. "Did you say
  something, darling?"
  But already she had forgotten. "1 ... I thought I saw a shooting star," she
  answered, feeling foolish.
  "Then make a wish!" he smiled.
  She stepped to his chair, leaned over and kissed him. "I believe I already
  
  have," she said . . .
  355
  Epilogue
  ONE MONTH LATER . . . James Christopher Craig tossed and turned in his sleep.
  The weird dream was back, bothering his subconscious mind as always. The dream
  about a man he had never known—a man called Richard Garrison—and about an
  impossible, insane machine. A dream overshadowed by a commanding voice, the
  voice of a man dead now thirty days, whose every vestige had been erased with
  the sole exception of this one psychic echo. A voice like the voice of some
  strange, sinister god, demanding that Craig remember—and that he build the
  machine of his dream.
  Craig's agitation increased. The dream was not frightening in itself; the
  source of his torment lay deep, deep down in forgotten recesses of his psyche.
  It lay in the darkest vaults of his
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  PSYCHOSPHERE
  subconscious mind, which should remain forever locked—vaults which now, at the
  post-hypnotic insistence of a dead man, were slowly but surely re-opening
  their doors to him.
  And at last Craig stood before the final door, the Sanctum Sanctorum, the Room
  of Innermost Secrets. And even as he stood there, so the massive doors swung
  silently open. Within—
  Craig saw a machine. The Machine . . .
  He saw it—and he knew its name!
  "Jimmy!" his wife, Marion, shook him awake. "Are you all right? What is it?
  Are you dreaming again?"
  Craig sat up in bed, brushed cold sweat from his brow, trembled as he stared
  about the shadowy room. The luminous hand of his watch told him it was 2:00
  A.M. The night was a cool, silent blanket all about the house. And the dream
  receding, fading, crawling back down and disappearing in deepest caverns of
  mind,
  "You were shouting something," Marion told him, drawing him back down into the
  bed beside her. "One word, over and over again."
  "Was I?" he sleepily mumbled, his mouth furry and tasting foul. "What was it?
  Do you remember?"
  She told him what it had sounded like, then snuggled close and hugged him.
  He lay in the darkness of their room thinking about it. He thought about it a
  long time before he finally went back to sleep. A strange word that, and yet
  it seemed to ring certain bells . . .
  And drifting back into sleep, Jimmy Craig shuddered. Ominous, cracked,
  discordant bells
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  Brian Lumley
  were ringing in the back of his mind. They tolled a knell of horror and
  madness.
  A strange, strange word.
  A word to haunt him forever.
  A word to haunt the whole wide world.
  Psychomech.
  358
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Necroscope/EXTRA/Novel/Psychosphere/Psychosphere - Brian Lumley.pdf