Psychosphere

by Brian Lumley

  “So what do you want of me?”

  Gubwa pursed his lips, then shrugged. “Again, it can do no harm to tell you. I have—‘a friend’—in a rival branch of your so-called ‘secret’ services. He would dearly love to see Garrison dead, also to discredit MI6, your branch…”

  “Sir Harry,” Stone scowled.

  “Close enough,” Gubwa nodded. “Actually Sir Harry’s boss, working through him.” He smiled again. “But you see, you are intelligent! And being so intelligent, perhaps I need explain no further?”

  “I’m getting the picture,” Stone answered, “but I’d still be happier hearing it from you. I mean, you’re the telepath, not me.”

  Gubwa raised his eyebrows. “You disappoint me. But as you will, I shall explain:

  “By using you to achieve my aims, I will kill Garrison—eventually—and at the same time perform a service useful to Sir Harry. MI6 will carry the burden of the blame. Now this is not all-important to me, this ‘service’ I propose to perform. No, for eventually I will be obliged to deal with Sir Harry, too. That is to say, kill him. But being ‘in league with him,’ shall we say, does give me a little security in the event that my plans are not immediately successful. It is simply a matter of being careful.”

  “Let’s get this straight,” said Stone. “You see yourself as the future Emperor of Earth, right?”

  Gubwa nodded. “Yes.”

  “I see. And you’ll bring this about through, er, holocaust?”

  “Not ‘er’ holocaust, Mr. Stone, a holocaust. The neutron bomb, chiefly, though there will be other nuclear devices involved, yes.”

  Stone nodded, very slowly. “And after that you intend that the human race—what’s left of it—should become a gang of freaks, Hermaphro Sapiens, like yourself?”

  “I will see to it that several genetic engineers, clone technicians, etc., survive, yes. They will be the fathers of the New Earth—figuratively speaking, of course. I, in fact, shall be the true father. My own sperm shall be the seed of future generations.”

  Stone sighed, nodded, slumped down in his chair as best he could. After a moment he looked up. “You really are quite mad, you know that? I mean, surely this is something straight out of James Bond. Just let’s suppose for a moment that you can do all you say you’re going to do: mentally manipulate the world to disaster, kill us all off and start again with a selected few—yes, and even breed a race of superfreaks to—”

  “Ah!” Gubwa stopped him. “No, I said nothing about that. I would never allow the development of another whose powers were as great or greater than my own. That would be strictly controlled.”

  “I see…”

  “What do you see?” said Gubwa, looking into the agent’s mind. His great gray face grew angry then. He approached, towered over Stone’s chair, looked down on him. “You’re wrong, Stone, I fear no man!”

  “Except Garrison?”

  “I said I fear no man, Mr. Stone! No m-a-n.” Gubwa spelled it out. “You are Homo Sapiens; the world I envisage will be a world of Hermaphro Sapiens; but if I am right in what I suspect of Garrison—”

  “He’s not a man?”

  “A man—of sorts. Homo Superior, I suspect.”

  “And you want to know what it is he’s got that makes him Homo Superior, right?”

  “Correct. And when I have the answer—then he dies.”

  “So what it boils down to, man or superman, you do fear him.”

  “You see?” Gubwa hissed, towering closer still. “So very intelligent! Wasn’t I right about you, Mr. Stone?” He clubbed one mighty fist and raised it, and for a moment Stone believed he would strike him. Then—

  —He quickly turned away and pointed, throwing out the fingers of his fist straight and stiff in the direction of the bas-relief figure astride the Earth-image. “Nothing must be allowed to interfere with that, Mr. Stone—nothing!”

  “And Garrison could, is that it?”

  Gubwa turned and stared at him. “Perhaps,” he nodded. “Yes, perhaps he could. But that in itself is not my dilemma. No, you were right the first time. I want to know what makes him tick. You see, I know where my powers come from: they are born of the atom, as were the body and mind that house them. Therefore I will admit to being, as you say, a ‘freak,’ a mutation. But Garrison is not. How then is he what he is?”

  “A telepath?” Stone seemed surprised. “Surely lots of people have claimed to be—”

  “Claimed!” Gubwa exploded. He threw back his great head and laughed. “Telepath! How little you know! You have no idea, Mr. Stone, what Garrison is, what he can do. Telepathy, indeed! Oh, much more than that. So much more. He is—” he threw his arms wide, forming a great cross, “—incredible! Let me tell you about Garrison. Let me fill in a few more of the gaps in your knowledge. Where to start…oh, yes!

  “I have always been aware, you see, that certain minds are different. My own, for instance, and those of several others I’ve come across over the years. There are a great many men—women, too—whose ESP centers are developed away and beyond the norm or average. Indeed, one might grade them as the numismatist grades his coins.

  “First there is ‘Ungraded’ or ‘Poor,’ common man in all his billions, who knows nothing whatsoever of ESP let alone controls the power. And ‘Fair,’ who occasionally finds himself whistling some obscure tune precisely at the same time another begins to whistle it, for he has received an impression of it from that other’s mind. Then there is ‘Fine’ who knows ‘instinctively’ when his father dies—though they are miles apart—or who can ‘feel’ that something is about to happen. Of him there are many thousands. Do you see the structure?”

  Stone nodded. “I follow you. Go on.”

  “Very well. Above ‘Fine’ we would place ‘Very Fine’—the man who can fairly accurately read the minds of his wife or children, and who usually has a leaning towards the so-called ‘occult.’ That is to say, this one knows he is different. Alas, he is only a little different. But rising through the grades we now find ‘Extremely Fine’—the gambler whose chances are far better than average; perhaps the policeman or detective whose ‘hunches’ always seem to work out. These are few and far between, and with them the power goes far beyond mere blood-ties or friendships. Rarer still, however, are the topmost grades, who can read most minds with little difficulty and whose control of ESP is far more extensive than mere telepathy.

  “Recently, in Tibet, I discovered an entire cache of this latter grade—a rare find indeed. I became jealous, caused the Communist Chinese authorities there to suspect them of being Fifth Columnists—which they were—and was directly responsible for their extermination. All of this without once leaving this retreat of mine.”

  “How utterly charming of you,” said Stone.

  “Coins,” Gubwa continued, ignoring his sarcasm, “and their grading. I wandered there for a moment. Finally I must grade myself…

  “Well, as I have said, I am unique. I suppose you might say that I have been overprinted—a rare coin made rarer still by having been struck twice on one disc…or perhaps I am an exceedingly high denomination mistakenly minted in a base metal. Just so—but this is a far different grading to the one I used to apply to myself, before the advent of Garrison.

  “Oh, yes, for there was once a time when I considered myself FDC—that is to say Fleur de Coin. But…I graded myself too highly. It was a gigantic vanity. Only Garrison is truly FDC, and only he is truly unique. There is no other like him.

  “Telepathy? That is the most meager of his talents. No, untrue, it is merely one of them. Consider: he was blinded. Now he sees. Consider: his woman was also blind. She sees. Ah, but that is not all: she was dead!”

  At this Stone snorted his derision. “The body of a certain Vicki Maler was placed in cryogenic suspension at—”

  “Not ‘a certain Vicki Maler,’ Mr. Stone—the Vicki Maler. Garrison revived her. I know. I have been inside her mind. She was frozen against the chance—the million-to-one chance�
�that science might one day discover a means of reviving her. Garrison already has that science. And consider this: she was riddled with the terrible cancer which killed her. Now she is perfect. That, too, is Garrison’s work…

  “Finally there are his most recent—shall we continue to say—works? Occurring within the space of the last twenty-four hours, they are perfect examples of his power. Only yesterday—for you have been unconscious overnight, Mr. Stone—his plane was bombed. That was over the Aegean Sea. He flew that crippled plane to England, to Gatwick, and landed it there safely. Without engines, without any means of aerodynamic control, without wheels! And the plane landed like a feather, the most perfect of perfect crash-landings.”

  “I know about that,” said Stone. “A miraculous escape, a—”

  “Rubbish!” Gubwa snapped. “You know nothing. A miracle is in the eyes of the beholder. It is usually the occurrence of a highly unlikely event. The impossible on the other hand cannot occur because it is impossible. What will the authorities make of it, I wonder, when they discover that Garrison’s plane came in ninety minutes too soon? From the moment the bomb exploded and crippled it, it must have been travelling at a speed far in excess of its maximum possible speed!”

  Stone’s mind was whirling again.

  “Now that is what I call levitation!” Gubwa continued. “The pilot is still convinced it was an act of God. Oh, the effort tired Garrison, certainly, for which reason he is now resting—but is that difficult to understand? Think of it! Think of what he did! Moreover, he discovered the author of the crime and struck back. Except that here he was much more lenient than I would have been.”

  “Now you’ve really lost me,” said Stone.

  “Ah! Of course, for you do not yet know who tried to kill him. Well, I shall tell you. It was the Mafia—or rather, a small member of that crude and unwieldy organization. His name is Vicenti.”

  “Carlo Vicenti? We’ve been interested in him and his pals for some time. Are you sure it was him? How did you get onto him so quickly?”

  “I am sure, yes,” Gubwa answered. “The bomb could only have been planted in Rhodes; an ugly pair called the Black brothers are there; I have been in “Bomber” Bert Black’s mind. It was them. He himself planted the device.”

  “Wait,” said Stone, his gravelly voice suddenly weary. “Too fast. If they are still in Rhodes, how could you have been ‘in’ Bomber’s mind? How do you know they are there anyway?”

  Gubwa turned Stone’s chair to face his huge desk. “You see my computer there? I know the Blacks are in Rhodes because my computer told me. It talks to the computer at Gatwick. Also to those at New Scotland Yard, and to many others. Even to your own machine at MI6 HQ.” His smile was broader now than Stone had ever seen it. “Ah, and at last you begin to see, Mr. Stone! And perhaps I am not so crazy after all, eh?”

  “But how did Garrison know it was Vicenti? And how did he strike back at him?”

  Gubwa sighed, losing patience. “When the bomb went off he became aware that he was a target. He looked for people with a grudge. Vicenti was one such. A quick look inside his mind—” He shrugged.

  “You mean he tackled Vicenti after his plane landed, before he went into hospital?”

  “While his plane was in the air, Mr. Stone. Distance is nothing to the true telepath, not if he knows his target. He visited Vicenti’s mind as I visited Bert Black’s. At least I suppose that is how it was. And he then delivered Vicenti a psychic blow, several of them, but not fatal. Vicenti, too, is hospitalized. He should consider himself lucky; if I were Garrison I would have killed him.”

  Stone now seemed weary to death. “But you can’t be sure that Garrison did it to Vicenti. He might simply have been involved in an accident.”

  “But I have been in Carlo Vicenti’s mind, too. He knows that it was Garrison. He doesn’t know how, but he knows it was him.”

  “It’s all over my head.” Stone seemed genuinely lost. “Maybe I’m not as smart as you think.”

  “Oh, but you are,” Gubwa laughed. “You have a very agile mind. You have soaked up every word I’ve uttered, even as a sponge soaks up water. Your weariness is an act. You must not take me for a fool, Mr. Stone, for I am not. Nor have you led me on, as you assume. I have told you nothing I did not wish you to know.”

  Stone wasn’t a good loser. “Shit!” he said through clenched teeth. He sat up a little straighter. “Okay, I’ll stop pretending. And let’s say I believe all you say. Or at least let’s say I’m open to suggestion. There are still some things I’d like to know. For one, how did you get onto Garrison in the first place? That is, how did you twig him for…an ESP-master?”

  “Two years ago,” Gubwa answered, “a good many strange things occurred, all centered about him. Until then I had not been interested in Garrison, did not know he existed. The world is full of minds; I visit only those I wish to visit. Garrison was of no interest to me. Since then, however, I have discovered all that I now know of him. Which isn’t yet enough. But it will be…soon.

  “It was then, two years ago, that he regained his sight; then that he returned Vicki Maler to life, cleansed her of her disease, gave her back her sight. In other words that was when Garrison first became aware of his power, or gained full control over it. As to how I know it—” again his shrug, “I am a telepath. And every telepath in the world must have felt something of it!”

  Gubwa’s voice had fallen to a whisper, was filled with awe. “If I believed in God, Mr. Stone, which I do not, then I would have known that God was come down amongst men. Do you know what is meant by the biosphere?”

  Stone nodded. “It’s what you’ll pollute with neutron bombs.”

  Again Gubwa chose to ignore the jibe. “Then picture a great meteorite rushing through Earth’s atmosphere and causing the most violent storm you could ever imagine. Picture the air and the ocean whipped to a frenzy, the elements enraged. Do you have it? Good! Now take it one step further. Picture a psychic biosphere—a Psychosphere, if you wish—in which ESP talent and potential takes the place of life in the biosphere. And picture that Psychosphere torn as by some mental meteor! That was Garrison’s coming, his awakening, Mr. Stone. And that explains the paradox: why on the one hand I want him dead, while on the other he must not die.”

  Stone looked blank.

  “Numismatics, my friend,” said Gubwa. “He is Fleur de Coin, the only one in the batch. Where was he minted, by whom? If you were a collector and such a coin came into your hands, wouldn’t you ask yourself these questions? Of course you would. And if you checked the metal, discovered that it had been melted down from old stock and re-stamped—”

  “A counterfeit!” said Stone.

  “Just so,” Gubwa excitedly agreed, “but better than any original, the work of a genius! And what question would you next ask yourself?”

  “Who made it?”

  “Correct!” Gubwa clasped the agent’s shoulders in iron hands. “And surely—how was it made?”

  He looked down, looked deep into Stone’s unflinching gaze. “What happened to him two years ago, that gave him powers comparable to those of a god?”

  Stone narrowed his eyes, believed for a moment that he had found Gubwa out. “Why don’t you ask him?” he said. “Why don’t you just get inside his mind and—” He saw his error.

  Gubwa’s eyes had shot open, were now wide and pink and bulging. “What?” he hissed. “Have you learned nothing? Believed nothing? Man, I would not even approach Garrison’s mind! I would sooner swim in a pool of piranhas—yes, with the veins of my wrists open and bleeding!”

  Chapter 14

  Of course I sought to discover the source of this vast disturbance in the Psychosphere. I had to; the thing was wild, it lured me. And to find it—why, all I had to do was close my eyes and send my mind blindly out, out…and the very aura of Garrison did the rest! I found myself hurled about like a twig in a whirlpool, a leap in the very maelstrom. Enter his mind…?

  “I have been on the t
hreshold. It seethes, boils, crashes with energies. I would be a fly caught up in a high-speed fan. And if I survived—if, mind you—he would know me, would follow my limping trail home. And knowing me, he would destroy me.”

  “He didn’t destroy Vicenti,” Stone pointed out.

  “But he hurt him!” Gubwa was quick to return. “And how then would he deal with me, who stands at the back of it all? Charon Gubwa, the grand engineer of all his trials.”

  “You? How?”

  “How? But didn’t I set those minds in action which now work against him? It was a testing, don’t you see? Only it got out of control! I dared not go against Garrison, not personally—dared not try him out—and so I arranged for others to do it for me. Who else do you think put Garrison in the minds of all those oh-so-interested parties if not me? I can influence the minds of others, Mr. Stone, don’t forget it. Indeed, I am an adept. Haven’t I told you I destroyed those monks in Tibet? Ah, but they weren’t of Garrison’s mettle!

  “Still, the wheels I have set in motion must eventually crush him, one way or the other. Or I will crush him, by discovering his secret. But until I know it he must not be crushed.”

  Stone slowly nodded his head. “And that’s where I come in, right?”

  “Correct. Garrison has a weakness, a chink in his armor. The woman Vicki Maler. I believe that she knows his secret. Or if she does not actually know it, then at least the clues to it are buried in her mind. I shall dig them out.”

  “Why haven’t you already done so? If all you say of your telepathy is true, you—”

  NO, NO, NO! Gubwa shouted in Stone’s mind, electrifying him afresh. “You still don’t understand, do you? Garrison is close to the woman. She is like his child. Resurrected her?—why, one might go so far as to say he made her! He is never very far from her mind. And if ever he found me there…”

  “And so you can’t really tackle her,” said Stone.