He picked up the shotgun, got his finger around the second trigger and waded the last few paces on to dry land. The first thing he saw was a hunting rifle lying at the base of the willow tree. On the far side of the tree was visible a khaki-clad shoulder and arm, and Jerome realized that the man from the filling station was sitting with his back to the trunk, facing away from him and the lake. What he could see of the man was perfectly motionless, but the exposed hand was very close to the rifle.
Jerome considered the idea that he was being toyed with, lured into a trap, and was able to dismiss it. The personality with whom he had been in telepathic contact had been far too cold and inhuman to countenance any kind of indirection. Had he been in a position to kill Jerome during the last few minutes Jerome would be dead—it was as simple as that—but perhaps he was only lightly unconscious. Easing his feet out of his waterlogged shoes, Jerome approached the tree in silence. He stooped and gripped the rifle by its muzzle and flung the weapon aside. The exposed hand did not move.
Paradoxically more anxious than before, Jerome circled to the other side of the tree, keeping the shotgun at the ready, and halted as he got his first direct look at the seated figure. The man from the filling station had taken the 12-gauge shell on the right cheekbone. That side of his face was caved in and at the centre of the bloody depression was visible the bright orange plastic of the cartridge tube, barely projecting from the ruptured tissue. His head was in an upright position, tilted back against the tree for support. His right eye was ruined, hidden by pulverized flesh and skin, but the left one was open. He was still alive, in spite of the dreadful wound, and the single eye was staring at Jerome with a kind of serene malevolence.
Jerome backed away, shaking his head, and turned to flee—but he was too late.
The light seemed to appear inside his skull, whiting out his surroundings, whiting out his consciousness, then he was falling through the whiteness into an ocean of white radiance.
CHAPTER 5
There was something strange about the three men and two women who were regarding Jerome so anxiously.
It was not the shoulder-length hair of the men, although that was a style he had not seen since around 1990; nor was it the dress of all five, although that in itself was highly unusual. They were wearing short blue-grey skirts which looked like silk, and loose upper garments of a similar material which was cut into narrow strips and appended from black collars. The only differentiation for sex was that the men’s collars were chokers, while those of the women sat lower and were cut square.
Beyond the group Jerome could see part of a circular, windowless room with a domed ceiling, and that too had an indefinable strangeness which was nothing to do with the architecture. He sat quite still, aware of the pressure of soft upholstery against his body, and tried to isolate and identify the unfamiliar element which was common to everything in his surroundings.
The tallest of the three men shook his head and said, “Na tostin arvo kald.” The woman beside him gasped, covered her face with her hands and turned away.
Jerome watched her in a kind of numb bemusement and far down in his consciousness, like a prisoner awakening in a dungeon, a sly uneasiness began to stir. Perhaps, instead of pursuing the elusive subtlety in the environment, he should be asking himself where he was and who these…
I’ve got it! The discovery filled him with dull wonderment. I’m not wearing my glasses—but I can see perfectly. It’s all hard-edged and detailed…near and far…I’m in a hospital and they’ve done something to my eyes!
He felt a momentary satisfaction before the uneasiness returned amid a swirl of questions.
Exactly where am I? Did the man from the filling station shoot me? If this is a hospital, why aren’t the staff properly dressed? And why is it that I don’t really give a damn about any of this?
The tall man moved closer to Jerome, leaned over him and said, “My name is Pirt Sull Conforden. Are you Raymond Jerome?”
“My first name is Rayner,” Jerome replied, wondering at the odd timbre of his own voice. It’s a family name.”
“Very well, Rayner. There are many things you will want to know and are entitled to know, so you and I are going to talk for a while.” Conforden glanced at his companions and they immediately turned and walked away, one of the men putting an arm around the woman who appeared to be in distress. They went through an archway and moved out of Jerome’s view in a narrow corridor which seemed to have curving walls like those of a tunnel. Jerome began to wonder if he was in some kind of an underground complex, but the curious apathy he was experiencing prevent him from pursuing the matter.
“Why is that woman upset?” he said, again noticing an unusual quality in his voice.
“A close friend has just died. You will understand later.” Conforden’s English was unaccented but spoken with a precision which suggested he was a good linguist using a slightly unfamiliar tongue. He appeared to be in his late thirties and had an oval face which was boyish and at the same time stamped with a look of world-weariness. His skin was pale and so uniformly flawless that it could have been sprayed with matt plastic.
“I know you are feeling muzzy and detached,” Conforden said, “and there will probably be some nausea, for which I apologize in advance. Those are the effects of drugs in your system and they will be short-lived.”
“Drugs? Anaesthetics? My eyes…”
“Don’t worry about your eyes. Is your vision better or worse than before?”
“Much better,” Jerome said. “Is this a trauma unit? Have I been shot?”
Conforden shook his head and spoke with a persuasive gentleness. “You are in perfect health. I want you to relax. Allow yourself to float, but try to absorb the information I am going to give you. Much of it will be difficult to assimilate in the beginning, but I am here to answer all your questions, and I can assure you that you will come to no harm in this new phase of your existence.”
Jerome considered the other man’s final words, dreamily aware that he should have found them ominous. “That sounded like a welcome to heaven or hell or some place in between.”
“No, you are still very much alive,” Conforden replied. “It was a welcome to the planet you know as Mercury.”
Jerome stared into the dome of the ceiling for what might have been one minute or five. His brain had been turned into a ball of cotton, a pliant mass which was unable to respond properly to any kind of stimulus. He could feel the objects which were his heart and lungs going about their customary business, but they were as remote as pulsars, lost in druggy distance.
All right, the proposition is that I’m on Mercury, he thought. Shouldn’t be too hard to deal with that one.
He drew his lips into a smile. “Are you going to tell me how I got here?”
“It is essential that you be told everything.”
“Just tell me how I got to Mercury.”
Conforden frowned, detecting the verbal challenge, but his voice lost none of its softness. “First, it is necessary for you to understand that Nitha Roll Movik—the Dorrinian you knew as Pitman—never had any intention of killing you. We are an ethical people who do not countenance the taking of life.”