Jeffrey Lord Blade 30 Dimension Of Horror

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divides mechanical computation from conscious thought?
Who can say? Richard only knew that somewhere, sometime in the years they'd
been working on
Project Dimension X, that line had been crossed without them noticing it.
KALI was not a thing.
KALI was a person.
Like a worshipper approaching an altar, Richard approached the control
console. A small red light shone like a ruby eye above the only two switches
that were active, the Program Stop and the Program Start. KALI was on standby.
She was waiting for him. He laid aside his tranquilizer pistol. He knew she
would not transport it. He slipped off his swimming trunks. He knew from
experience they would not follow him into the worlds beyond the gateway, into
other space-time continuums, other universes. Only naked would she take him.
Only naked would she give him a new birth on a different plane of existence.
He glanced at the box in which he would stand when he was launched. How like a
coffin it was!
And at the same time, how like a womb. Its copper-colored many-segmented
interior gleamed in the subdued light. It stood open, waiting.
Like a hand. Like a mouth. Like a Venus's-flytrap.
Richard hesitated no longer, but stepped forward and firmly pressed Program
Start. The red light went out. A green-glowing digital clock lit up and began
the countdown.
He crossed to the center of the room, to the wire-bedecked sarcophagus, as
KALI inexorably raced through her preliminary sequences.
He stepped inside, leaned back against the cold metal, and thought about the
Ngaa. I'm coming, Ngaa. Nothing stands in my way now.
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And he thought of Zoe. He thought of Zoe for a long time.
The clock went on flickering, moving into the low numbers. Fourteen. Thirteen.
Twelve.
Suddenly Richard heard the vault door open with a swish. He turned his head.
Lord Leighton was standing in the doorway, swaying drunkenly.
Behind his thick glasses, the little hunchback's eyes were round and owl-like,
black pupils rimmed with yellow. His mottled face was ashen, his halo of white
hair a disheveled mop, his green smock more dirty and rumpled than Blade had
ever seen it before. He took a halting step forward on his ruined legs, then
almost fell, catching himself with an outthrust bird claw of a hand on the
door jamb.
Only one word did the old man utter, but that word he shouted, setting the
echoes ringing in the high-ceilinged rock-walled room.
"No!"
Richard watched him helplessly. It was too late to leave the launch box to try
to stop Leighton. In an instant the box would shut, and he did not want to be
outside then.
Steadying himself against the wall, Lord Leighton shambled toward the Program
Stop button.
Richard could see the sweat break out, glistening, on Leighton's high wrinkled
forehead.
Eight. Seven. The numbers were flickering.
On the count of six the heavy curved door of the launch case swung shut,
plunging Richard into darkness. A low hum began. Richard thought, What's
Leighton doing? If only I could see him . . .
Imagination supplied an image of Leighton's bony finger extending toward the
Program Stop button.
Then darkness turned into blazing golden light.
Chapter 14
Each voyage into Dimension X was different, yet all had certain features in
common. There would be a period of wild imagery, dreamlike, but with an
urgency unmatched by any except the worst of nightmares, then there would be
sensations of motion, of incredible speed. Then there would be physical
sensations experienced with a curious detachment. Cold. Heat. Unbearable pain
that somehow did not really hurt. Always before Richard had taken these things
passively, letting them happen.
He could no longer afford that luxury.
It had been because of a failure of critical judgment that the Ngaa had
trapped him. The Ngaa, master of illusion, had made him believe he was still
between dimensions for some time after he had arrived on the "other side." It
had taken advantage of his passive attitude to establish a hypnotic control
Richard had not been able to break until that night in the plane over London
when he had been commanded to kill J and had resisted, a control that even
then had only gradually faded, a control that-Who knows?-might still exert
some influence on Blade's subconscious mind.
Richard thought, I must distinguish illusion from reality, or the Ngaa will
win.
Sometimes Richard landed in a new universe fully conscious, but more often he
blacked out for some undetermined period before awakening in an unfamiliar and
usually dangerous environment. This time he must not black out! The Ngaa knew
he was coming.
Richard thought, I am awake now. I will stay awake.
The golden light was rushing past all the while in total silence, as if he
were falling faster and faster into clouds of bright gas or dust. Falling. A
terrible vertigo threatened to possess him, but he pushed it away with the
thought, This is illusion.
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The light seemed to hold faces, naked bodies. They flashed by like streaks of
flame, gazing at him with gaunt anguish. Illusion, Richard thought again.
But their eyes were so haunted, their bodies so wasted with disease,
starvation and age, their heads so skull-like. Could there be concentration
camps here in the void between universes?
Could there be Spanish Inquisitions? Plagues? Witch hunts? Illusion! Illusion!
But now he could begin to hear their voices, their wails of wordless agony.
Nothing but illusion!
Wordless? It seemed to Richard he could begin to understand them.
"Help!" they were crying. "Help! Help us!"
The golden light was shifting to a dull, dim blue, and Richard felt cold, an
infinite cold that made his swim in the Thames seem summery.
"Help!" they called out again and again.
How could he refuse them? He was a human being, and so were they.
Or were they? An instant before he stretched out his hand to one of the
passing figures, he noticed the teeth.
The teeth! Long, stained with brownish red.
These were not humans at all, but vampires.
"Help!" they howled, grinning, leering, mocking.
Illusion! Yet here between one space-time continuum and another, could
illusions kill? Perhaps, if you believed in them.
I must not believe. I must not sleep.
Sleep!
At the thought he became suddenly weary, suddenly like an old man who can go
no further, who must lie down and rest even if he never gets up again.
The light grew dimmer, redder. The headlong rush of the vampires slowed. Were
they watching him with their glowing red eyes? Were they waiting for him to
sleep?
I don't care. If only I can get a little rest.
Consciousness was fading. Time itself seemed to be coming to a stop.
Richard shook himself awake.
No! It's illusion! All illusion!
The vampires drew back, hissing with fury. There were so many of them! [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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