by Mick Farren
Now Gibson did smile. "That's bullshit and you know it. For some reasons of your own that I can't even get near, you want to take me out of this dimension."
Silence filled the room like physical pressure, and the sightless eye sockets of the rattlesnake skull in the glass dome on the mantel seemed to stare into space as everyone waited to see what the streamheat were going to say or do next. Smith had the look of a woman backed up into a corner, and after being cornered so often himself Gibson couldn't help but relish the spectacle.
Finally she let out a careful breath. "Yes, you're right. It's our mission to remove you to another dimension. We received our orders while we were at Greene Street."
Gibson stood up and faced Smith. He allowed a few seconds to pass before he spoke. "So let me ask you one more time, what is it about me? Why am I so important?"
"I can't tell you that."
Gibson sighed. "Here we go again."
"I can't tell you that because I don't know."
Gibson's face was hard. "I don't believe you."
Smith was on the defensive. "All I know is that you are a key figure in one of our future projections. Because of that, we were ordered to get you to safety even if it meant transporting you to another dimension."
"You're just following orders?"
"Exactly."
Windemere coughed. "That phrase has unfortunate connotations in this dimension."
Gibson abruptly sat down again. "Does anyone have a cigarette?"
Montgomery pulled out a pack of Silk Cut and offered him one. "I think you getting screwed, mon."
Gibson looked up at the big Rasta and grinned. "So do you want to take me in and look after me?"
Montgomery shook his head. "Fuck, no. You too much trouble for jah man."
Gibson scanned the room. He'd miss it when he was gone. Despite the problems, the mysteries, and the dangers, he'd begun to really enjoy the company of Windemere and Christobelle. "So it looks as though I'm going to another dimension."
"I have a question." Madame Voud had apparently been deep in thought, but now she was looking at Smith. "Was it you that caused the psych attack on Gibson in New York?"
Once again there was a split moment of hesitation on the part of Smith. "Of course not. Why should we do a thing like that?"
"Perhaps you thought you had to convince Casillas and the others at Greene Street that Gibson needed your special protection."
"And we staged it? That's an outrageous suggestion, particularly coming from someone who's supposed to be an ally."
"Allies sometimes play games with each other. It's hardly unknown."
Smith took refuge in anger. "I suppose we also arranged for the UFO to follow our plane?"
Abigail Voud smiled from behind her glasses. "It was just a thought." Without pausing, she looked up at Montgomery. "I think we can leave now. Gibson will be going with the streamheat, so what we came here for has been accomplished."
To Gibson, this sounded too much like a dismissal. "So the Nine are washing their hands of me?"
As Montgomery helped the old woman to her feet, she looked sadly at Gibson. "These are troubled times, Joe Gibson. None of us is exempt."
Madame Voud and her Rasta escort had left the room with Windemere and his two bodyguards going along to show her out. Gibson and Christobelle went to the window to watch them go. When the old woman emerged from the house with her Rastafarians on either side, the crowd outside immediately surrounded them and, en masse, they headed up Ladbroke Grove on foot.
Christobelle put a hand on Gibson's arm. "Are you scared?"
Gibson glanced back at the three streamheat. They seemed to be locked in a muttered conversation in a language that wasn't English. "I'm not crazy about going anywhere with that bunch, let alone to another dimension,"
"You'll make it through."
Gibson raised an eyebrow. "You know something I don't?"
"Just a feeling that you're not the total fuck-up that you pretend to be."
Windemere came back into the room alone, brisk and businesslike, cutting short both convocations.
"So you're out of here, Joe."
Gibson nodded. "So it would seem."
"I'm sorry I couldn't do more to look out for you."
"That's okay, you did your best."
"I wouldn't worry too much. Another dimension shouldn't be so bad. A lot of them are very like our own."
" Have you ever been to another dimension?"
Windemere shook his head. "No, but…"
"So let me worry."
As soon as he'd said it, Gibson felt bad. Windemere had done his best for him and he didn't need to be on the receiving end of Gibson's panic and anger. After the near snub, Windemere turned to the streamheat to hide his resentment. "Where are you taking him?"
Smith looked at Windemere as though it was hardly any of his business. "A nearby semiparallel."
Gibson detached himself from Christobelle. "What's a semi-paiallel?"
"A dimension very like this just twelve or so points across the divides."
Gibson's face hardened. "I know it's company policy to not tell poor dumbfuck Joe Gibson anything if you can possibly help it, but since we're going to have to be traveling together, I'd suggest you start talking to me in terms that I can understand. We'll get on a whole lot better if you do."
Smith had the expression of a woman who'd been pushed far enough. "Okay, Gibson, this is the start of the first lesson. Semiparallel dimensions are those in very close tuning, ones that follow paths in the time stream that are only slightly divergent."
"How divergent?"
"Some parallels are very close, varying in only minor details. Others have undergone radical changes at some point in the past and, although they follow similar courses and share a broadly common pattern of events, the differences are major."
"And this one?"
"There are some significant differences."
"Like what?"
Klein answered this question with a grin. "Like this one never had a World War II the way that you did here."
Gibson thought about this. "It must have slowed them down some."
Smith looked puzzled. "Slowed them down?"
"Yeah, think about it. Here in this dimension, we went from the first powered flight to a landing on the moon in a little over sixty years, just one human lifetime, and a hell of a lot of the momentum for that dizzy surge of progress was World War II."
Smith nodded as though surprised that Gibson should have the brains to come up with an idea like this. "In fact you're right. The UKR in many ways resembles North America in the fifties."
"The UKR?"
"United Kamerian Republics. Our destination will be the capital city of Luxor. We have a primary installation there."
Gibson was thinking about something else. He turned to Klein. "The fifties?"
"Similar."
"Did they invent rock 'n' roll yet?"
Klein shook his head. "I really don't know."
Smith looked sourly at Gibson, clearly disapproving of this flippancy about rock 'n' roll. "There is a footnote to the lesson."
Gibson didn't like the sound of this. "Yeah? What's that?"
"You are now in my charge. The transition to Luxor can be either easy or hard. I suggest you remember that."
Gibson's gaze didn't waver. "So I've been warned, have I?"
"Indeed you have."
Gibson and Smith continued to stare each other down until Windemere stepped into the conversation. "How do you intend to make this transition?"
Smith finally turned away from Gibson. "We have to go to the south of Germany."
Windemere frowned. "Why Germany?"
"We have access to a hidden transition substation in the Bavarian Alps. It was built by the Nazis in 1944 with some extradimensional help. I believe it was designed to be an escape route for Adolf Hitler at the end of the war. Later it was carrier plugged and modernized."
"Did Hitler actually use it?"
Smith shook her head. "I've no idea."
French was eyeing Smith and frowning. "Should you have told him all that?"
"Any harm that could be done has been done already."
Gibson was thinking again. "How are we getting to Germany?"
"I imagine we'll have to take a scheduled Lufthansa flight to Munich and drive from there. There isn't time to do anything fancy."
"Isn't that kind of exposing ourselves?"
"Perhaps, but it can't be helped."
Windemere laughed. "You don't have to do that. There's a transition point just a couple of hours out of London."
Smith's eyes narrowed. "What are you talking about?"
"It's a very ancient one, near a village called Glastonbury. It' s under a pyramid earthworks
"Are you sure about this?"
"It's been there for fifteen thousand years."
Smith was not quite buying the idea. "You've used it?"
Windemere shook his head. "Not me, I've had quite enough fun to keep me busy here, but I do know a couple of individuals who have."
Gibson stuck his iace into the conversation. "They came back intact?"
"They looked okay."
Smith glanced at French and Klein. "You think we should take a chance on this?"
Klein shrugged, but French looked doubtfully at Windemere. "I don't think we should trust either it or him."
Now it was Gibson's turn to start running out of patience, "You don't trust Windemere but you're prepared to trail all across Europe with me being a sitting duck for whatever may turn up next to have a shot at me? That's real smart, French."
Klein nodded. "I hate to say it, but I think Gibson's right,"
Christobelle joined in. "I don't know if I'm supposed to have an opinion, but I also think Gibson's right. You say your orders are to get him to this Luxor place alive, and it would seem obvious that the less he's exposed to danger the better."
Smith actually looked worried. "I'd use the transition point in a moment, if I thought that it would actually take us to where we wanted to go."
Windemere poured himself a drink and then did the same for Gibson. "I imagine that it would be a damn sight more reliable than a bunch of botched-together Nazi mad-scientist gear. This is superbeing hardware. I don't know how much you people have studied this dimension, but that stuff was supposedly built to last to infinity." He glanced slyly at Smith. "Of course, if you don't know how to operate the ancient stuff, maybe you'd better stick with this Kraut setup of yours."
Smith wasn't going to let Windemere's slur on her competence go unchallenged. "I think what we'll do is go to this Glastonbury place and see what's there. If it doesn't seem right, we can always fall back on the Bavarian transition point."
French still wasn't happy. "Suppose Windemere's sending us into a trap of some kind?"
"That's a chance we'll take."
With a decision made, Smith got down to the details. "How long will it take us to drive to this place?"
Windemere put down his drink. "Two, maybe two and a half hours, but you could be there a lot faster if you used the lays."
"The lays?"
"The laylines, imposed tracks of magnetic force also laid down by the superbeings. This whole island is riddled with them. The Glastonbury Tor, that's the name of the earthworks, is a major convergence. Any line in southern England will take you right inside. I assume you have a Cody Groove?"
Klein nodded. "Sure, its hard-wired into the subframe of the Caddy."
"So all you have to do is hook into the wavelength and that's it. If you don't have a computer that can figure it, I'm sure one of mine can. Why don't you come down to my study and I'll show you some charts
Windemere and the streamheat left the room. Gibson and Christobelle were alone.
Gibson put his hands on her shoulders. He suddenly felt a great deal of warmth for the woman. "You think we'll see each other again?"
"I'm optimistic."
Gibson raised an eyebrow. "You mean that?"
Christobelle looked him straight in the eye. "Yes."
Gibson stroked her hair. "I sure as hell hope so."
"Why don't you kiss me?"
He kissed her. She let her robe fall open and pressed herself against him. Her body felt good. "I wish there was more time."
"You're not the only one."
"Are you scared?"
Gibson buried his face in her hair. "I'm fucking terrified."
For a long time, they just held each other; then Christobelle pushed him away and held him at aim's length. She looked at him sadly. "I'm not going to stand at the door and watch you go."
Gibson sighed. "I'll just vanish into the night."
The first phase of the journey to another dimension was anticlimactically normal. They drove to the bottom of Ladbroke Grove and turned right onto Holland Park Avenue. There was very little traffic, just the odd taxi and a couple of newspaper trucks. The tree-lined street was still wet from the day's rain. At the start of Shepherds Bush Green, they passed a small gang of skinheads, no more than eight or nine of them in bother boots and ankle-swinger jeans, gathered round a banner, a Union Jack with a swastika in a white circle superimposed on it. They glared sullenly at the car as it went by.
Gibson watched through the rear window as they dwindled in the distance. "You think they know something?"
French shook his head. "What could they know?"
"A lot of people seem to know a lot of things."
Smith made a dismissive gesture. "They probably just resent big American cars."
Gibson, keyed up for the start of what promised to the weirdest experience of his life, was surprised at how things continued to remain normal. Klein drove the Cadillac through the western suburbs of London like any other traveler getting a jump on the morning traffic. They might have simply been heading for Heathrow Airport rather than another dimension. Before the airport, however, they took the route to the M4 motorway. Gibson finally had to say something.
"What happened to the mystic laylines we were going to use?"
Klein glanced back at him. "According to Windemere, it isn't possible to enter the grid while we're still in the city. Most of the ancient access points have been built over and there are too many man-made magnetic fields. There's the underground rail network, the electrical power system; even home stereos and TV sets do their bit to distort the original pattern and make it unusable."
"So what's the plan?"
" Windemere claimed that our best option is to take the M4 until we see an exit for a place called Kings Ridley. We take that exit and follow this country road until we pass through the village, then we go on for another two miles. At that point we'll be almost over what they call a barrow, a prehistoric burial mound. It's also a grid access point. We simply engage the Cody Groove and that's it. Inside of a matter of seconds, we should be inside this Glastonbury pyramid. Unless, of course, your friend Windemere has been lying to us."
There was a certain amount of traffic on the six-lane motorway, but not enough to conceal the fact that they were being followed. It was Klein who first spotted the tail. "Slide's behind us."
"Are you sure?"
"There can't be too many '51 Hudsons in this country."
Smith didn't even bother to look round. "Go. Use the overdrive."
Klein stamped hard on the gas pedal. The Cadillac suddenly rocketed forward, pressing Gibson back into his seat. Klein shouted over the tortured howl of the engine. "I have a feeling that we aren't going to be able to lose him."
Smith leaned forward, holding on to the seat in front of her. "I don't think so either, but this sudden burst of acceleration may take him by surprise and gain us a few minutes. I'd like us to have all the slack that we can get."
Gibson looked out of the window. The Cadillac seemed to be traveling at an impossible speed. The speedometer was hard over, and the car appeared to be moving at something well in excess of the 120 mph that was showing on the clock. The tree
s at the edge of the highway were flashing past as though the Caddy were about to sprout wings and fly. He knew that there had to be some advanced gizmo from another dimension juicing the mill.
It seemed that Klein must also have had something juicing his reactions. The signs were coming too fast for Gibson to read, but Klein was quite able to spot the one for the Kings Ridley exit and send the car hurtling into the off ramp in a scream of tires.
On the country two-lane, they had to slow down considerably, but Klein was still able to throw the car through its twists and turns at an average of ninety. Kings Ridley was a picturesque piece of rural England with cottages set around a village green, a Saxon church with a squat, square tower, a pub called The Ox, and even a duck pond, but Gibson saw almost nothing of it as they roared through like a motorized banshee. Two miles outside the village, they halted, just as Windemere had suggested. Klein turned off the headlights, and Gibson looked through the rear window, but he could see no signs of Yancey Slide's Hudson. Smith peered out at the fields that surrounded them. The sky was overcast and vision was further hampered by the lack of a moon.
"Does anyone see this burial mound thing?"
Klein was also staring into the darkness. "There's something over there but it's hard to tell what it is."
Smith thought for a moment. "We can't go back with Slide somewhere behind us. I fear our only course is to engage the groove and see what happens."
French scowled. "If there's nothing there for the groove to lock on to, it could create a random displacement and that'd be the effective end of us."
"We're going to have to take that chance."
French was not only scowling but also shaking his head. "You're placing one hell of a bet on the accuracy of Windemere's information."
Smith nodded. "Believe me, I'm very aware of that. If there was an alternative course of action, I'd take it."
Gibson watched with a frightened fascination as Klein dropped the flap of the glove compartment. A complex keypad was built into its inside surface with three decks of keys, one marked with normal roman characters, the second with Japanese, and the third with an alien script. Klein tapped in a twelve-character code, six roman, four Japanese, and two alien.