J felt a curious numbness. A thousand times he'd hoped, he'd almost prayed-and he was not a praying man-that something would happen to terminate the project that put Richard, the nearest thing to a friend J had ever had, repeatedly into danger. Now it seemed J would get his wish. Why wasn't he happy? He shuffled over to the grate, picked up a poker and began aimlessly rooting around in the fire. He muttered tonelessly, «All that time, energy and money wasted. All Richard's risks gone for nothing.» He looked up suddenly. «But we still have two weeks, you say. We can bring in one of those boys we've been training and send him through the machine. Maybe he'll make it through. Whatever happened to Richard, it happened over there, in that other world. That's where the secret lies, so…»
Leighton raised a restraining hand. «The PM thought of that. He has forbidden us to send anyone else through.»
«The devil you say! How in the bloody blazes are we supposed to cure Richard if we can't find out what happened to him? The answer is there, on the other side, and we have to be able to go looking for it!»
«So you think the PM is a fool?»
«Worse than a fool! I can't find a word…»
«It may surprise you, but I can see his logic. That's the curse of imagination! One can see the opponent's logic every time. Damn near paralyzes a man! Here's how he reasons. Blade is the only chap who ever went through into the X dimensions and returned alive and sane. Now Blade is out of the picture. Ergo we have no one we can safely send through, and moreover if we have no one we can safely send through, we actually have no project. We're all done and we might as well go home.»
«Did you tell the PM about the flying dresser? About what happened to poor Dexter?» J demanded.
«Heavens no! If he believed me he'd shut us down as a public menace this very day. If he didn't believe me, he'd send me up to Scotland to act as Dexter's replacement in the giggle factory. Thank God I managed to keep my mouth shut about that part of it at least.» He laughed nervously. «I haven't even told you everything that's been happening.»
J carefully replaced the poker in its stand and straightened up. «Then tell me, Leighton, damn you.»
«Better sit down first, old chap,» the scientist advised dryly, tobacco-stained teeth showing in an unpleasant grin.
J took a chair and waited expectantly.
Not looking at him, Leighton said awkwardly, «The fact is that since you've been gone, a lot has happened in the underground lab and in our little hospital. To begin with, Blade shows no improvement whatsoever. Dr. Ferguson has been doing as much as anyone could, which is almost nothing, and all he can tell us about the cause of Blade's amnesia is that it's caused by fear. Blade saw something on the other side so awful his conscious mind cannot accept it, something that's trapped in his subconscious and trying to get out. You could say Blade can't remember it with one part of his mind, but can't forget it with another.»
J was annoyed. «That's nothing new, is it? I'm no psychiatrist, but I could have told you all that.»
«There's more. From the moment of Blade's return until now the project has been harassed by a veritable plague of poltergeist phenomena.»
«Poltergeist?»
«It's a German word for «playful ghost,» and indeed it would appear that a full battalion of playful ghosts has been running amuck in the installation. We've had more furniture tossed around. The VIP lounge is a ruin! Unexplained markings have appeared on the walls, looking for all the world like the scratches of gigantic claws. Mysterious fires have been starting all over the hospital complex. One started right before the eyes of one of the nurses, and scared her half to death. Another started in a chemical storeroom. Thank God the fire alarm sounded before there was an explosion. We put that one out not a moment too soon. We've been hearing odd noises, too. Thumpings. Bumpings. Whooshings. And at all hours of the day and night. I myself have heard what sounded like someone whispering to me in a foreign language, but when I looked around there was nobody there. The oddest thing of all was when one of the nurses met a little girl in one of the passageways. They exchanged greetings and it was a moment before the nurse stopped to ask herself how a little girl could get into such a closely guarded place, deep underground. The nurse searched high and low, but the little girl was nowhere to be found.»
J mused, «Too bad we don't have a photograph of Dr. Saxton Colby's daughter.»
Lord Leighton squinted. «How's that? Oh, I see what you mean. Do you think those two little girls might be one and the same?»
«I'd be surprised if they weren't, the way our luck has been running.»
Leighton continued, «I've fed all the data on the poltergeists into the computer, and they've detected a pattern.»
«A pattern? What sort of a pattern?»
«There seems to be a kind of sphere of energy in the complex. Everything that requires a great deal of force, such as the moving of heavy furniture, happens near the center of the sphere. A little further out we find lower-energy phenomena, such as fires and scratches and odd noises. Everything that happens at the outer edge of the sphere could be accounted for as strictly mental; voices, the little girl and so on.»
«The little girl was strictly mental?»
«She could have been. Remember, nobody actually touched her. She could have been an illusion. The computer also detected a definite trend in all these happenings.»
«What kind of a trend?»
«The sphere is growing, slowly but steadily. In fact, this morning, quite early, we began to hear the whispering for the first time in the computer section. The computers, as you know, are a good hundred feet closer to the surface than the hospital. This thing, whatever it is, is gradually working its way upward. Unless it changes its rate of growth, it should start to manifest its presence in the streets of London some time late the day after tomorrow, at least in the neighborhood of the Tower. What we do then I have no idea.»
«At least we have some data to work with.»
«You like data? There's one thing more, and I don't think you'll care for it. At the exact center of the sphere-the exact center, mind you-is our friend Richard Blade.» He added softly, «I think we should face the possibility that Blade is the source of the trouble.»
«And what then?»
«To protect London, we may have to kill him.»
J put down his pipe, which had gone out unnoticed. It toppled over in the ashtray on the desk, spilling cold ashes. J had anticipated the direction Leighton's logic would take, but now that the conclusion had been reached, he felt sick with horror. His voice shaking, he said hoarsely, «I cannot accept that.»
«Better one man than hundreds.»
«The thing has killed no one yet, Leighton. It has damaged property, but it has killed no one. Before we take a human life, we must be certain human life is in danger, particularly-«He hesitated.
«Particularly if the life is Blade's,» Leighton finished. «The thought of a poltergeist frisking about in the computer rooms like a bull in a china shop cannot help but appall me, but of course you're right.» These words were uttered in such a faint gloomy voice they were almost inaudible. J realized with a chill that it had been his beloved computers Leighton had been worried about all along, not the people of London.
J stood up and began pacing the floor, head lowered and hands clutched together behind his back. «If Richard were sane, all this nonsense might stop. Let's suppose it's a kind of demonic possession.»
«Demonic possession!» Leighton snorted with contempt. «There's no such thing as a demon!»
«Need I remind you, sir, that something came through KALI with Blade. Didn't you see it? A kind of blue glowing cloud?»