“Not today,” the scientist replied, putting in her code. “We're short-handed, it seems. And Lucy has been inert for so long, I think they've become blasé.”
There was a strong chemical smell in the room. Disinfectant mingled with another odor. It was one Frankie recalled from a visit to a funeral parlor owned by one of her many uncles in New Orleans.
Embalming fluid.
Frankie almost gagged at the sight of the Interloper. It resembled an illustration from some old anatomy textbook. The creature's ribs had been broken and peeled back, exposing the internal organs. As she looked on, a grayish-blue sac of tissue pulsed slowly. Zoffany stooped close to the Interloper's head while Frankie skirted the edge of the room, which suddenly seemed small, and cramped.
This could look so damn fake, Frankie thought, as she zoomed in on the un-dead being.
“Benson,” Zoffany asked. “Tell us about Benson.”
The rebels agreed that Lucy had to be filmed and conversed with. A conventional interview, though, made no sense. The creature would know exactly what they were doing. But the creature might still disclose information to suit its own ends. Frankie had asked how they would know if it was telling the truth. Gould and Denny had both argued that they wouldn't, but the more disturbing the revelation, the better it would sound.
“Tell me about Benson,” croaked Lucy.
Smart gambit, Frankie thought. Answer a question with a question.
“He's an asshole,” she said, “Grade-A, large.”
The creature's head turned slowly to face her. Now that she could observe it full-on, Frankie saw signs of dissection with stitches across the inhuman features. There were only slight traces of scarring, though. The Interloper clearly had extraordinary powers of recuperation.
“How does he screen his thoughts from us?” Lucy asked. “When he was very close I heard nothing.”
It took a moment for the question to sink in. While Frankie was struggling to grasp it, Zoffany answered.
“He has the talisman,” she said. “He must be using it.”
The creature again turned its head, and the muzzle-like mouth moved painfully.
“No,” it rasped. “A talisman … does not … obstruct … mind sight.”
The two humans looked at one another.
“Then what the hell is Benson doing?” asked Frankie. “Does he have some cool gadget he's keeping to himself?”
Zoffany looked helpless and scared. Frankie decided to focus on the purpose of the 'interview'.
“Hey, Lucy,” she said. “What's it all for? Why are you attacking us? What did we ever do?”
“You destroy the barriers between worlds,” said Lucy.
“How?” Zoffany demanded, sounding frustrated. “You keep saying that, but how do we do this? Is it by scientific experiments? Particle accelerators? Or nuclear testing?”
“By existing!” Lucy rasped, raising its head off the dissection table. “Swarming … vast numbers … psychic overload. Too many minds.”
“What? That makes no sense!” Frankie protested.
“Maybe it does,” Zoffany said quietly, holding up a hand. She leaned closer to the creature. “Do you mean that too much psychic energy breaks down the barriers?”
Lucy turned a hideous face toward the scientist. After a moment the Interloper's flesh rippled, the baboon-like muzzle retracted, eyes and other features softened. Now Lucy resembled the child whose place in the world it had tried to steal.
“Your swarming minds tear holes in the universe. All your stupid, loud thoughts!”
Zoffany nodded, stood up, and looked at Frankie.
“Gould suggested something like this,” she said, her voice unsteady. “It's a quantum-mechanical thing. Perception alters reality, just as reality alters perception. So people are, to some extent, going around tinkering with reality just by perceiving it.”
Great, we're back in quantum-land, Frankie thought. Let's see what I can remember.
“But all that stuff's happening on a really small scale,” she said aloud. “We're talking about electrons. It doesn't apply on a human scale, or larger. Old-style cause and effect still applies. Galileo, Newton, all those guys. You can't just wish away the truck that's about to hit you!”
“No, but we're not just considering our reality, are we?” Zoffany countered. “We're talking about the effects all those over-complex human brains are having on other dimensions. Destabilizing them. So, indirectly, our minds are changing reality. And not in a fun way.
“People have been around a long time,” Frankie protested.
“But only as scattered tribes, hunter gatherers, subsistence farmers,” Zoffany pointed out. “Just a few million minds for most of our species' existence. Not enough to put a burden on the fabric of other realities. Just enough to weaken the boundary here and there, allow gateways to appear. Now there are billions of us. And from the Interlopers' perspective, it's all happened very suddenly. Time flows differently for them.”
Frankie thought about her own experience in the Phantom Dimension. She had tried to grasp Interloper viewpoints when trapped with them in the Soul-Eater. She had not made much progress. But one overwhelming impression remained. There was a strong sense that the balance of 'nature' in the alien world was gone. The Soul-Eaters themselves had been evidence of that. Frankie had been surprised to learn that the beings had once been small and marginal, but had somehow grown vast and destructive.
“So it's like putting too much weight on a supporting wall in a house?” she suggested. “Or overloading a ship so that it breaks up in rough seas? I'm struggling to visualize all this cosmic chaos.”
“The point is,” Zoffany said, “that if their world is being destroyed they have no choice but to come to ours. They're fleeing a reality that soon won't exist. It's far more drastic than humans going to Mars, say, to escape the destruction of our planet. They have to adapt to new natural laws. You could say they're the ultimate refugees. ”
And even less welcome than the human kind, Frankie almost said aloud.
***
Davenport signed out of the Romola Foundation to find London still in the grip of February snows. The sidewalks were treacherous with frozen slush and another blizzard seemed set to descend from the low, gray clouds. He made his way to the nearest Tube station, dodging through the throng in the automatic way of the big city dweller. What he had seen and heard kept running through his mind, so that he bumped into a couple of people at the entrance to Wells Lane Underground. It was only then that he realized crowds were surging out of the station, in unusual numbers.
Bomb scare? Usually is.
Davenport's mind snapped back into focus. People were looking scared, confused, a few grinning in excitement. A single uniformed police officer was just visible inside the foyer. The man seemed to be trying, and failing, to get a response from his radio. The station lights were flickering ominously.
Davenport tapped a suited stockbroker-type on the shoulder and asked, “Hey, mate, what's going on?”
The man in the suit looked Davenport up and down, then snorted.
“The usual cock-up,” he said. “The whole Thames Line. Absolute disgrace! Don't these bureaucrats know some of us have actual work to do? Whole country's going to the dogs!”
The businessman's tone suggested that the Tube had been sabotaged to inconvenience him personally. Davenport was about to ask for more detail but the man pushed past him, followed by another surge of travelers. This time there was a sense of genuine panic, and from inside the station Davenport heard a scream. It was hard to tell if it was from a man or a woman. He began to push through the mob, abandoning even the pretense of big city politeness.
The surge ended and Davenport found himself close to the ticket barrier. The policeman had given up trying to get orders or information and was helping an elderly woman outside. As Davenport hesitated the lights flickered, then went out. More screams echoed up the escalators. With the sound came a whiff of putrefaction, a vi
le stench as if all of London's myriad sewers had somehow been re-routed into the tunnels below.
Davenport thought of the odor of decay when Interlopers died. This was far more pervasive. He looked around for signs of inhuman corpses, but could see none. The stench was definitely being wafted up from below ground.
There must be hundreds of them down there, he thought. Killed by a train? Electrocuted?
Training took over, and Davenport decided to investigate. He took out a handkerchief and held it over his nose, then pushed through the ticket barrier. The flickering lights went out, and Davenport hesitated. Someone collided with him in the dark, and he heard a faint scream
“Just keep going, head for the light,” he snapped.
Davenport took out a torch and went to the top of the escalators. He could see other lights. People were holding up their phones as they fled the short, pedestrian tunnels that led to the platforms. As Davenport watched, a huge, dark mass lunged from one tunnel and slapped down a couple of screaming travelers. The stench increased. The rotting limb withdrew, dragging with it a man who was half-submerged in the bubbling protoplasm. The tentacle left behind a black smear of rotting organic matter.
Not a lot of them, he thought. Just a single big one. Decaying, but evidently not fast enough.
He retreated, fighting his panic, and in seconds found himself out in the cold winter air. People were milling around, shouting questions, not listening to answers, and inevitably filming on their cell-phones. He thought of his girlfriend, who would now be at their home in a distant North London suburb, then of his colleagues at the foundation. He decided to call them, and then go to her.
“What's happening in there, mate?” demanded a middle-aged man in a trench coat.
“Monsters from another dimension,” Davenport responded.
“Oh, piss off!” responded the man.
Davenport worked his way out of the crowd then sent a message back to the foundation. Then he called his girlfriend and told her to buy plenty of tinned food, batteries, and candles.
“Just in case, love,” he told her. “Better safe than sorry.”
Chapter 8: Pre-emptive Strike
The Crazy Committee was poring over online maps when Frankie and Zoffany returned. There was a quick exchange of information, interrupted by a text message from Davenport.
“'SE - check the news',” Jim said, looking up from his phone. “That's all it says.”
A few seconds later, they were watching a special BBC broadcast. The announcers seemed fairly clueless, but the crawler along the bottom of the screen spoke volumes. It mentioned a 'huge leakage of toxic waste' into the Thames Line.
“I'm guessing that it's living toxic waste, at least for now?” suggested Frankie.
“SE – Soul-Eater,” Jim said, aghast.
“What can we do?” asked Zoffany. “Apart from wait for it to die?”
“We can take advantage of the chaos,” replied Denny. “The Tube system will be shut down, right? So can we get in using your security clearance, Jim?”
Jim nodded, albeit hesitantly.
“We can get to Hobs Lane easily enough,” he said. “But what exactly do we do when we get there?”
“Prove the gateway exists, film the Phantom Dimension,” Denny said. “And let's be clear who 'we' are.”
She looked around the group.
“Frankie and I have been through and know the score,” she said. “We'll leave what footage we have with you guys, okay? Plus the password for my YouTube channel. Which is also the password for everything else – yeah, I know. Ted, Harriet, you put it out there. Leave 'em wanting more.”
The others began to protest, but Denny held up a hand for silence.
“I'm pulling rank,” she said. “I'm the expert on going over and coming back. And I've got this.”
She held up the talisman.
“I think it can protect the two of us, at a stretch,” she said, with a smile at Frankie. “But I reckon a third wheel would get picked off. So Jim, I'd like you to stay on this side of the gateway. Frankie, you up for this?”
“Sure, boss,” Frankie replied, removing a memory card from her camera. She handed it to Gould. “Got any more of these, Ted?”
***
Denny and Frankie left the foundation with Jim. The roads seemed to be one big traffic jam, which they presumed had been caused by the incident at Wells Road. They headed away from the station until they found clearer streets and could hail a cab. The driver had the radio on, tuned to a London news channel.
“Nobody seems to know what's going,” the cabbie remarked. “Makes you wonder what they're not telling us.”
“Sure does!” replied Frankie in her most touristy voice.
By the time they got to Hobs Lane, a police cordon had been set up at the station entrance. Jim took a while to find an officer, senior enough to recognize his security clearance. In the meantime, Frankie took a few discreet shots of the crowd. Finally, they were admitted, and Jim led them down the stopped escalator onto the platform.
“If we're right,” he said, gesturing at the gaping tunnel mouth, “the gateway is in there.”
“We're sure the power's off?” asked Frankie, gazing dubiously at the tracks.
“If not we'll soon find out,” said Jim.
He took out a coin and tossed it onto one of the two power rails. Denny flinched, half-expecting a flash and an explosion. But the coin just bounced with a dull ringing sound and came to rest on the dirty gravel under the tracks.
“Looks good,” Jim said, and lowered himself carefully off the platform.
Denny was about to follow when her phone chimed. She hesitated, then checked the message. It was from Russell Wakefield. The message was titled 'Jedi Mind Trick'.
“What's up?” Frankie asked.
“Somebody we know,” Denny replied, opening the message. The image that appeared was of a patch of brownish-gray matter in a field of snow. It only took her a moment to recognize the badly-decomposed body of an Interloper. Denny read the text underneath, then looked down at Jim.
“Some bad news from Machen,” she said quietly. “Forster's guys got wiped out.”
***
Sir Lionel Bartram's limousine pulled up outside the Romola Foundation.
“Can't guarantee your security inside that place, sir,” the officer said dubiously. “Probably quite a few entrances. Old building like that. Don't you think we'd be better off back at the Home Office?”
“No,” said Bartram, flatly, and opened the car door. “Wait here for me. I will be collecting a passenger.”
Hang on, the bodyguard thought. That's against protocol. You can't just shove random strangers into this car.
But before the man could speak, Bartram turned to look at him with deep-set gray eyes.
“Don't argue,” said the minister. “Your job is to follow orders.”
The bodyguard was so surprised by this that the Daimler's door had slammed shut before he could think of a response.
“He just put you in your place, mate,” drawled the driver, with a wry smile.
“Bollocks,” retorted the bodyguard. “He thinks you're an Uber, how does that feel?”
“Hey, I'm getting paid,” replied the driver. “If he wants to pick up another floozy, doesn't bother me.”
“Doesn't it strike you that he's … changed?” the bodyguard asked.
“Maybe he's sobered up,” the driver suggested. “That'd make a change.”
The bodyguard grunted noncommittally. The car's short-wave radio squawked, and the driver picked up the handset.
“Yeah? What?”
The driver's laconic manner vanished, and he glanced around at the bodyguard.
“Okay,” he said, replacing the handset. “Seems our boy's needed back at the aitch-oh. Maybe you'd better–”
Before the driver had finished speaking, the bodyguard had clambered out of the limo and was dodging through the dense throng on the pavement. The Scotland Yard man was
vaguely aware that the other pedestrians seemed panicky, excited, confused. He took out his own radio as he entered the atrium of the Romola Foundation.
“Is it a Code Black?” he asked, using the code for a terrorist attack.
“Negative,” crackled the reply. “Possible Code Silver.”
It took the officer a moment to recall what Code Silver was. It had been covered briefly during training when he had joined the ministerial protection unit. He paused just inside the door, frowning.
Chemical spillage? No, not that, he thought. Oh yeah, hazardous outbreak, like Ebola or anthrax.
“Okay,” he snapped into the radio. “Will move cargo to safe haven.”
The bodyguard strode over to the reception desk where a uniformed security man was sitting, looking oddly unconcerned. The Scotland Yard officer took out his ID, held it steady in front of the guard's face.
“Can I help you?” the security man asked.
“Yeah, Sir Lionel Bartram, I need to get to him. It's an emergency so I need to go straight through–”
The bodyguard paused. A group of people had approached quietly and formed a semi-circle around him. He glanced around the group. There seemed to be two young women in cleaners' overalls and another security guard. The latter's uniform looked a bit sloppy. A couple of buttons had been torn off.
“Yeah, what's up? I haven't got time for this.”
One of the cleaners brought up a mop and drove the handle, hard, into the bodyguard's stomach. It was such an unexpected attack that he doubled over more in shock than in pain.
“You bitch!” he gasped, groping for his pistol.
He heard a creak and clatter as the guard behind the desk jumped up. The other three were closing in, reaching for him with oddly long hands. The bodyguard backed against the desk, drove an elbow backwards into where he guessed the first guard's face would be. He felt a sharp pain as something lacerated his elbow. He looked up to see the cleaner who had attacked him start to crouch, and her mouth gape wide to reveal a circle of sharp, inhuman teeth.
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