Destroyer of Worlds (7 page)

Men seeking to kill.

Men hating him for what he was and what he had.

Animals which would take him and send his spirit shrieking from his flesh to linger in an everlasting agony.

He crouched, trembling, the beat of drums matching the pounding of his heart. He could smell the stink of his own sweat redolent of his own fear. Beneath his naked feet the mud sucked at him like a living thing.

Behind him a giant computer reared to the sky.

The Computer — his God.

He straightened and the drums became a rolling susurration, the leaping torchlight a ruby illumination painting the faces before him; rapt faces alive with awe and respect. Those who had come to kneel and worship at the base of the god and its priest. The god Computer and the priest Saha.

Saha the priest. He Who Learned. He Who Knew All Answers. He Who Served.

Turning he lifted his arms towards the rearing bulk of the god-machine. Behind him the worshippers sucked in their breaths and the drums, more sonorous now, rolling with a relentless deliberation, boomed like distant thunder.

The Computer was god. The Computer knew all things. The Computer was all-powerful. Great was the Computer’s priest. Great was Saha.

‘Saha!’ The shout lifted towards the stars. ‘Saha! Saha! Saha!’

The clash of spears and the throbbing of tribal drums, the racial memory of long-lost days, oiled bodies like ebon in the torchlight, paint, masks, blood — one who challenged.

‘Saha!’

The law of the jungle — kill or die!

‘Saha!’

An image of himself, tall, oiled, naked aside from paint, hands tipped with claws which reached to rip and tear. His own hands reaching in turn, gripping, holding, his jaws open to bite.

Teeth closing to crunch on something brittle.

Darkness!

*

In Medical something stirred. A man who had turned into a vegetable and who now became a man again. Ivan Gogol sighed and lifted an arm and sat upright holding the reins of his horse, feeling the pound of its hooves as it carried him towards glory.

He had slept, he thought, dozing in the saddle, an old trick of the Hiung when engaged on a long journey. Now he turned to look at the massed riders behind, a loose column which stretched back to the horizon. They were heading south, to Rome, to the loot of the ancient world.

To the woman of his dreams.

She was tall and blonde and he had seen her face limned against the stars. From her he would gain fine sons, men-children who would grow into warriors and be an added strength to his arm. Once he had been afraid of her, of the power she held, but that time was over and now she would crumple in his hands.

‘On!’ He yelled. ‘On!’

Claire heard the cry.

She sat at her desk, motionless, even her eyes unshifting in their sockets. In her bloodstream flowed a complicated mass of chemicals, a stronger combination than what she had given to the others, one whose efficiency she was now testing.

From an instrument before her a light winked at one-second intervals. Reality.

With the light came a high-pitched bleep. Reality.

Two checks at least — if she could remember them. Two anchors to a familiar world. A pair of signposts which would remain unaffected by whatever mental storm might overwhelm her.

Now she stared at a light which burned continuously, heard a sound without break.

Like worms her thoughts crawled to match the observed phenomena.

‘…time sense affected…disorientation of associated stimuli…no sense of physical contact with chair or desk…vision affected…bodily temperature seems higher than normal…metabolic change…hearing…’

‘On!’ A harsh yell, repeated ‘On!’

Ivan Gogol riding with his warriors to the sack of Rome.

He came running from the place in which she had left him to halt, staring, hands moving before him as if they held reins, body twitching to the motions of an invisible mount. Like a child riding a hobby-horse, she thought, and resisted the impulse to laugh.

What an amusing hallucination!

In turn he saw a shimmer of gold.

Rome!

In Rome was all the gold of the world and now it was before him, lambent in the glowing sun, rich, inviting, waiting for him to touch it, to scoop it into his arms. Dismounting he ran towards it, seeing it change to become a piled mass of delicate strands.

A change which left him un-mystified — all men knew of the magic owned by the ancient keepers of hallowed temples. And gold was gold no matter in what form it came.

Claire rose as he came forward, feeling her fragile defences begin to crack, the chemical walls splinter so that the world dissolved into a shower of shattered gems which filled the air with a smoking, scintillating kaleidoscope. Shapes became distorted, the desk turned into a crouching, snarling beast carved from obsidian, the walls vanished to be replaced by an endless vista of rolling plains, the roof became an emerald sky.

Gogol became a nightmare.

She backed from the squat, hairy, snarling thing which came towards her, hopping like a toad, webbed hands extended, bulging eyes glowing with a killer’s rage. Her back hit something solid and she turned and saw a row of jars each containing a severed human head. Eyes watched her, unblinking, the whites of the balls veined with a tracery of red.

On them spiders fed.

‘No!’ The sight was vile. Disgusting. ‘No!’

A hand clawed at her side, ripped at her uniform, fingers touching her bared skin. A foetid odour stung her nostrils and slime spattered her hair. Weight pulled at her, threw her to the ground, sent her sprawling, looking into the ridged and mottled face of a repulsive monstrosity.

‘No!’

Pressure flattened her hips, forced apart her thighs, held her shoulders hard against the floor. The stench of rotting teeth filled her nostrils, the odour of suppuration and gangrene wafted about her, slime touched her, filth embraced her.

‘No!’

Once, ages ago, she had been attacked by crazed degenerates while working in a hospital. They had intended rape and murder. She had escaped then and hard-won experience came to her aid now. A scream followed the upward jerk of a knee. Another the stabbing action of her thumbs. A third, followed by a liquid gurgle, the savage chop of her stiffened hand.

The weight holding her fell away and she rose to run, to stand, to gasp while the universe spun around her.

The anchors!

Where were her anchors?

The light and the sound. The desk on which the instrument sat. The drugs which lay beneath housed in their air-powered hypodermic. Release from the nightmare which held her, the madness in which she was lost.

Moving she tripped and fell to rise, sobbing, hands extended, groping as if blind. A flash and a high, thin note. A flash, a sound, another flash. An eye winking…winking…winking…

Something like a dagger which hissed as she thrust it against her throat.

*

Maddox stirred, feeling the hardness beneath his cheek, the wetness on face and chin. There was a bitter, acrid taste in his mouth together with something sharp and jagged. He spat it out, stirred sat upright, his head swimming with a momentary nausea. Touching his chin, he found it thick with blood.

It had come from his nose and from a minor gash on his tongue; the result of the sharp coating of the capsule he had crushed beneath his teeth when, at the end, the battle for his sanity had been lost.

Sitting, eyes closed, head lowered to rest on his knees, he saw again the parade of nightmare.

The ship a wreck, rooms shattered, panels splintered, the screens ripped free and hanging blind and dead. As the personnel lay broken and lifeless all around. Like a bereft ghost he had wandered through the ship, seeing nothing but desolation, unable to understand why he alone had remained alive.

Pictures remained; Frank lying with his spine broken, one hand twitching, blood streaming from his parted lips. Saha, face distorted with the rictus of death, arms clutched around his precious machine. Eric, his stomach spilling intestines, skull pulped, one eyeball resting on his cheek. Claire —

He didn’t want to remember how she had appeared.

How she could still appear.

‘No!’

He was dead and damned, alone in the ruin of his command, all he had ever held precious gone for all time, ruined, thrown away by his stubborn refusal to retreat, to withdraw, to return. The tears had stung his eyes even as he had fought the sickness mounting within him. Empty rooms, laboratories, machine rooms, the Hydroponics Section, and living quarters looking like a shambles, red against the white, red against the green, red against blue and yellow and orange. Red, red everywhere, a deluge of blood.

‘No!’ Even in memory it was too much and he shivered, fighting the sickness, feeling again the rage which had joined it, the killing fury against whoever or whatever had done this thing to him and to his crew. ‘No!’

The viewing ports had been shattered, an airlock gaped open to the void, the air gone, but he was still alive. The power had failed and shadows had accentuated the horror, grim shapes limned by the pale glow of the emergencies, yet he could feel the beat of light against his lids. He had been hurt, dying, yet the wetness was only that of sweat and a little blood.

Maddox opened his eyes.

Manton stared at him, his skull intact, both eyes in place, forehead bearing a familiar crease.

‘Carl!’ he said. ‘Carl! Thank God!’

Maddox rose. At his console Frank Weight was shaking his head even as his fingers danced over his controls. Saha, looking a peculiar shade of grey beneath his brown skin, was at his position. His eyes were bloodshot and scratches marked his cheeks but his lips were free of the ugly smile Maddox remembered.

‘Commander!’ Rose Armstrong, pale, fragile, looked like delicate porcelain. ‘You’re alright. I thought — thank God you’re alright!’

‘Frank?’

‘It’s over,’ said Manton before Weight could answer. ‘We’ve passed through whatever it was caused those hallucinations. Claire’s drug helped us. Without it I doubt if we could have survived. Even as it was it — well, never mind. Carl?’

‘I’m alright.’ Maddox wiped at his face then rubbed his smeared hand against his uniform. He was still a little dazed, still unable to fully grasp that the death and devastation he had seen had only been a nightmare. An illusion. Something born of fear and the disorientation of his sensory apparatus. And something of the horror remained. ‘Claire!’

‘She’s alright, Carl.’ Manton was quick with his reassurance. ‘Frank has checked out Medical.’

‘I must talk to her.’ His fingers were trembling too much and the communicator fell as he snatched it from his belt. ‘Get her on screen. Get her!’

A moment and it was done and Maddox felt a sudden relaxation as he looked at the pale face framed by the mass of golden hair. Not dead, then. Not torn and ravaged, ripped and abused, left like a foul obscenity on the sterile floor. Not a ghastly travesty of the human form left in careful array; the art-form of a diseased and degenerate beast.

‘Carl?’ Her eyes widened as she searched his face. ‘Carl — what is wrong?’

‘Nothing. Are you alright?’

‘Yes, but —’

‘Get up here.’ Duty overrode inclination; the need to have her close, to reassure himself that what he had seen had truly been an hallucination. ‘Wait. Can Ted manage? He can? Good, then join me at once.’

‘But, Carl, I must —’

‘Join me!’

As he blanked the screen Weight said, ‘I can tell you what she wanted to report, Commander. Ivan Gogol went crazy and tried to kill her. She had to defend herself.’

‘And?’ Had the attack been the cause of his nightmare? Her fear somehow transmitted to his fevered brain? Sadistic images born of fear or received from her attacker? ‘And what, Frank? Answer me!’

‘He was dead when they found him.’

Killed without intent, a victim of the general distortion — and how many others would have died had they not been locked away and safely drugged? Maddox drew in his breath and shook his head. He still felt dazed, divorced from his surroundings, and he guessed that he had crushed the capsule later than he should have done. The others had obviously recovered before him and appeared to be showing less of the effects of the mind-distorting field through which they had passed.

‘Here, Carl. It may help.’

Silently he took the container of water Manton handed to him, swallowing the pills which accompanied it, washing them down together with the acrid taste of chemicals and blood.

Claire appeared as the drug began to take effect. Quickly she examined his face, wiped away the blood and gave a tremulous smile.

‘Carl, I must tell you. Something dreadful happened and —’

‘I know. Frank told me.’ He stared at her, devouring her with his eyes. Tall, whole, clean, unhurt — thank God it had only been an illusion!

‘Ship intact, no damage, all systems operational,’ reported Weight from his console. ‘One dead, three with minor injuries — all self-inflicted. Defence screens at optimum.’

And nothing lay before them.

Maddox stared at the screens, seeing only what had been visible before, the cold glitter of distant stars, the fuzz of distant nebulae. They had passed through hell and arrived — where?

‘Rose?’

‘Nothing, Commander. All — no, wait! I am receiving positive indications of a strong force-emission lying directly ahead. Magnetic field of incredible density.’ She gave the figures and Manton shook his head.

‘Amazing! Such firm control! Do you realise what this means, Carl? A near-total restraining of all leakage. Obviously the outer barrier through which we have passed utilised any seepage of energy to power the psychic force-field which serves as a warning and defence. How far, Rose?’

‘Close.’ She looked up, her face strained. ‘We should reach it within two minutes.’

‘Full boost on defensive shield!’ snapped Maddox. ‘Sound the red alert. Activate all external scanners.’

He felt Claire at his side and took her hand in his own, his fingers firm against the warmth of her skin. He caught the scent of her perfume, a delicate floral aroma, and a strand of her golden hair caressed his cheek.