He noticed that Veronica was looking up.
A bulb was suspended from the ceiling on gossamer cables, around which wound a multitude of insulated wires that sprawled out to their connection points on the upper surface of the ovoid. The room’s lights gleamed on the shiny curved surface. On one side was the outline of a door. From the bottom of this dribbled liquid, which collected at the bottom of the egg-shaped thing, then dripped down, forming a puddle on the floor below.
A red puddle.
Charley went to the spreading puddle, dipped a finger, sniffed.
“Either my judgment is addled or this is definitely blood,” he said, lifting it up to show Veronica.
“Oh my God! Earnest! The Arachnid must—”
“Still a little soft on him, huh? There’s no guarantee that this is Hurt’s blood.” Pursing his lips, he looked up at the bulb. “Now, how do we go about getting that thing lowered?”
“Earnest always operated it from within—” She put a finger to her chin. “Except once, I saw him ... Just a moment.” She sped over to a panel full of buttons and switches, hit a few.
Nothing happened.
Charley joined her. “Eenie meanie meinie moe,” he said, then selected a random control and punched.
With an angel’s whisper, the bulb lowered to within half a meter of the floor.
Charley slipped his hand down alongside the doorway until he felt a protuberance, which he twisted.
The door slowly opened. Purplish mist began to flow out, like the tendrils of an evaporating spirit. A limp foot fell out, its patent leather shoe clacking on the floor.
Veronica grabbed Charley’s arm, gasped, then turned away.
Slouched in the cushioned center of the bulb was Earnest Evers Hurt. His face was barely recognizable, split raggedly in two from crown through temple through jaw. The entirety of his chest and abdomen was torn open, raw and bloody.
A glint of metal ...
“Come to think of it,” Charley Haversham managed to choke out, “maybe that Arachnid did have something to do with this. But why?”
Suddenly a leg dropped from the shadows of the ceiling, landing squarely on the corpse’s belly, splashing a gout of blood onto the couple.
Charley Haversham gaped.
Veronica screamed.
In one of the creature’s metal hands was a bloody scalpel. Cog held the other out defensively. “I realize this looks very bad.”
“I was waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Charley said. “But this is ridiculous.”
* * *
They found their destination tucked away in a rocky valley in the middle of nowhere.
A small thing in terms of castles, the building was a ramshackle affair, covered with moss, lichens and ivy. Tattered pennants hung from crumbling towers. Rusted metal barred the windows. It smelled of age and rot and stale whiskey.
The cracked sign that hung over the broken gateway announced in Old English lettering: FISHER’S BAR AND GRAIL
Merlin said, “You know, somehow I believe that in the Collective Unconscious you speak of, the concept of the Holy Grail has changed somewhat.”
“This can’t be the place,” Angharad said, shaking her recently chipped horn back and forth. “I mean, I was expecting at least a general halo around the place, and trumpeting angels.”
She sniffed around and discovered no bestial smell to indicate dangerous guardians. “Well, shall we venture inside? This may be just a delusion, a sidetrack. Then again, this may be the best the human mind can do in constructing a transcendental portal to total communion with the species Collective Unconscious.”
Merlin uttered a few protective spells under his breath, then suggested they walk through the door instead of yapping. Despite the magician’s sarcasm, it was clear that his estimation and opinion of his companions had risen since they had dealt with the Questing Beast so well and restored him to health. One swallow of unicorn horn powder had immediately stanched his bleeding. Within minutes, healing had begun. Merlin had immediately expressed his gratitude to be retaining his particular form, Fabricated or not. He had come to like it, he claimed.
Finding the Grail Castle (if indeed that was what it was) took only another hour of travel through the ever-bleaker landscape. No other beasties had barred their way, to their general relief. The strange sun had dipped toward evening, and strips of ominous cloud had flowed over the horizon where they now huddled, moaning thunder, touching ground tentatively with fingers of lightning. The air tasted of storm and danger. It was difficult to realize that it was all just a gigantic supersensory real-fic plugged into thousands of souls.
Angharad was first. She paused to knock on the door with a hoof. The door promptly toppled from its hinges, pluming up a large cloud of dust. Angharad jumped back, startled, then warily addressed herself to the slow exploration of the shadowy interior foot by foot—or, rather, hoof by hoof.
Her swishing tail disappeared into the gloom. “Coast clear!” she called eventually.
One by one they passed through a small corridor which deposited them in a courtyard, choked with weeds and overgrown with bushes. They picked their way across the brambled pathway, careful of the briars and thorns that hung down.
“You’d think we were trying to wake up Sleeping Beauty,” Todd commented. Angharad cursed as a drooping branch of thorns caught in her side. Merlin advanced and gingerly tugged it out.
“That looks like our destination,” the magician said, flopping along on sandaled feet, indicating a candle glowing in a stained glass window. “The door must be on the other side of that hedge.”
They navigated the obstacle, not without a few prickings, then found themselves facing a large closed door of oak, etched with runes.
“Can you decipher these, Merlin?” Todd asked.
Merlin approached, squinted and said, “Yes, I believe so. It reads, ‘Abandon sobriety, all ye who enter here.’ To the point, I’d say. Well, come to think of it, this does correspond interestingly with Celtic custom and legends.”
“Oh? How so?” Todd asked as he examined the doorknob for any kind of trap.
“The Celts, of course, were notorious drinkers and they often brewed their version of beer—made of bracken often as not—in vats or caldrons. These were served at feasts and celebrations, and no doubt the legendary ideal of horns of plenty extended to caldrons of plenty. The story goes that in some otherworld of the gods there existed a caldron of beer that had no bottom. Endless alcohol. According to the Mabinogion, a Welsh book of legends which precedes all the English and French books, Arthur and his men stole it. When the Christians got ahold of it, they naturally changed it to more ethereally spiritual themes. Thus the caldron became variously the cup that held the Last Supper’s wine, or more distastefully, a vessel that had caught the flowing blood from Christ’s side when He was crucified. Slowly the tales were woven of seeking the Grail as a way to achieve final spiritual perfection.”
“You’re saying that one of the most exalted and symbol-laden myths of Christianity started with a bunch of drunken barbarians telling tall tales between belches?” Angharad asked.
Todd remembered suddenly that her father had been a Christian missionary to Raxes Three.
Merlin raised his eyebrows. “This is the origin, I’m afraid, of many myths, to say nothing of religions.”
“But Druidism is the One True,” she said tartly.
“Of course,” Merlin returned with a superior air, comical beside his general emanation of confusion and dishevelment.
Angharad added, “Come to think of it, I’ve heard a number of planetary anthems that had their starts as drinking songs.”
The magician tried the doorknob after Todd had determined nothing was amiss. The door was locked.
“Didn’t notice that,” Todd said. “I think I’ll have a quick look inside to make sure everyt
hing is all right before we attempt anything rash.”
Todd slipped his head easily through the door. Inside was a warm, brightly lit antechamber connected with a corridor leading deeper into the castle. Todd separated his ectoplasmic self from the solid oak. “Perhaps we should try knocking?” he suggested thoughtfully.
“Just for chuckles, I think we should do the mind trick,” Angharad proposed.
“Why not? This time we even have Merlin to help us. At least we won’t have to kick the door in or use one of those fireballs.”
As one, they turned their willpower on the door, imagining it to be open; no lock.
Merlin tried it again. It swung open easily, revealing the room that Todd had told them of. The corridor in turn led directly into a large room with tables, a leather-upholstered bar, slowly revolving fans, and a mirror behind it all, complete with bar paraphernalia from all over the universe, no doubt dredged from the minds of passengers. The air felt cool; a genial dimness held sway. Somehow, the room seemed to hold the best possible atmosphere for a drinking place: relaxed and detached from the rest of the universe, a place to sit and put beer or cocktails between oneself and any kind of unpleasant reality. Background music piped over invisible speakers—music that changed merely upon the desire of the hearer.
“Hello?” Angharad called. “Anyone at home?”
No response.
“I rather like the chamber music they’re playing,” Todd remarked.
“Funny,” Merlin said. “I hear chants. My favorites.”
They discovered that although they agreed upon how the lounge looked, certain elements, such as the music, were different to individuals. Essentially, the ambience of the place ... the feelings each got, depended on individual taste. Merlin’s version naturally differed most from the other two. He claimed to experience a moderate-sized, well-appointed drinking hall that would have done King Arthur himself proud.
Merlin was elected bartender by default, as neither Todd nor Angharad could do the job. Graciously, the magician complied, moving behind the polished wood, tapping a beer for Angharad in a bowl so she could lap it easily. Todd looked dismally at the stuff, wishing he could partake. However, his ghostly state prevented him. He sighed. “Well, there was no guarantee that our particular format was the right one. Probably it was just a ploy to keep us busy, keep us from finding the right portal and doing something to prevent Hurt from using his gateway to immortality and mastery.”
“Yes, but why use us? Apparently we’ve had some important role in the proceedings,” Angharad pointed out. “Was it Ort Eath’s revenge simply to involve us in all this? I mean, if he had power over our separated brains, he could have placed us in a truly hellish scenario.”
“This hasn’t exactly been teacups and roses,” Todd said, watching with fascination as Merlin mixed some kind of bubbling, smoking potion, then sipped it with obvious delight.
“So what do we do?” Angharad said impatiently. “Sit around and drink, waiting to see what’s going to happen?”
“It occurs to me,” Todd said, “that if we concentrated very hard—”
At the end of the bar, a door opened.
All heads turned its way as a creature strode out.
Angharad choked on her beer. Merlin dropped his glass and it smashed to pieces on the floor. Todd simply stared.
A bright crimson robe covered the body, which bulged here and there with the characteristic protuberances. The vaguely humanoid head stared at them with large eyes that registered no decipherable emotion.
A Morapn, no question.
But could it be—
Even as the thought entered his head, Todd saw the tubular device undulating from the base of the alien spine.
The beaded curtain parted and something on the other end of the connecting line hobbled out.
“Ort Eath!” Angharad cried, hackles rising on the back of her neck.
However, instead of an orgabox shadowing the Morapn, the puppetmaster was the Arachnid, wheezing with laughter, a grin on its parody of a mouth.
“Just call me Mr. K. Fisher if you like,” he announced gaily. “You may well be wondering why I’ve summoned you here today. I believe you have at least one question to ask before we get down to brass tacks.”
THE LEG hopped to the vu-tank, leaving a trail of bloody footprints. Hastily, its extended digits danced over buttons and verniers. When only a tankful of static erupted under his ministrations, Cog impatiently leveled his tiny energy cannon, blew a small hole into the console and commenced some hot-wiring.
Charley Haversham looked over Veronica March’s shoulder. She clutched him now, shaken from what she had seen. “All right, Cog, or whatever your moniker is. I think you owe somebody an explanation, and as long as we’re the only somebodies around, you might as well start with us.”
The leg’s screwdriver buzzed and squeaked within the guts of the vu-tank. “Save your tears, Ms. March. Earnest Hurt isn’t dead.”
A spark snapped. Cog leaped back to the controls, tapped a toggle or two with a whoop of glee, then hopped over to other control consoles, where its frenzied fingers flew.
“Not dead?” Veronica glanced quickly back at the mess that was Hurt’s body, and grimaced. “He looks very dead to me. What do you mean?”
Information in words and numbers began to spew on a multitude of screens. “Holy moly!” Cog screeched. “I suspected as much, but I never really thought ...” Its oculars began to swivel about excitedly. “This explains everything.” With a hop and a skip, it was back at the lip of the vu-tank, where a blurry image had begun to form.
“Do you want to answer the lady?” Charley demanded angrily.
“Take another look at the deceased. That’s what I was examining when the door closed on me and lifted me up. And that after hours of work getting out of that force beam. By the way, thanks for letting me down,” the leg said distractedly.
Containing his nausea, Charley examined the limp body again and saw what Cog was talking about.
“His brain,” Veronica said. “It’s all metal and wires—what ... ?”
“When I found him here, he was stone dead. I did a quick autopsy. The pseudobrain is quite similar to the one used in Blicia Ginterton during the Star Fall’s first voyage, possibly programmed to match Hurt’s identity spectrum all the way from subconscious to ego, with certain remarkable and unique other properties ... or it was operated from a distance, most likely by Hurt’s true brain, safely tucked away somewhere aboard the Star Fall. And I’ll wager anything that in either case the real Hurt was not in control of himself. He was just another manifestation ... a stepping-stone.”
“What are you talking about,” Veronica asked, hands placed on hips.
Cog did not respond. His attention was fixed on the image in the vu-tank. In vivid colors, the view seemed to represent the inside of some gigantic brain in the midst of Underspace, vortices of bright energy coursing through strands of nerve ways, through axons, neurons—cosmic synapses.
“I wonder if this machine has a memory. Then I’ll know for sure ...” Already Cog’s eyes were searching. Its arms struck out, fiddling with a knob.
Instantly the image was replaced from an interior to an exterior view. To Charley Haversham, it looked like a radiant combination of a paramecium and an amoeba, streaming through the raw stuff of Underspace. Some kind of humungous one-celled animal—
“That’s the Human Collective Unconscious?” Charley said incredulously. “It looks like something you might find in a bit of swamp water!”
“No. I thought that the human mind-fields might be too nebulous at this point. Nothing like the sophisticated concentration the Morapns have developed.” Quickly, he examined compositional readouts. “Not that there aren’t human radiations swirling in cosmic broth, in vitrio as it were. In fact, that’s what the gigantic thing that’s swallowed the Star Fa
ll is tapped into.”
“Huh? You’ve lost me,” Veronica said, gazing in wonder as the image in the vu-tank returned to a view of the Underspace creature’s interior.
“We Crem have a word for it, which roughly translates into Terran as Thought-Egg. Something from an entirely different universe. A Jakror, Mr. Haversham, Ms. March. We call it a Jakror.”
“What does that mean to us, though?”
“A great deal, actually. Jakror are fascinating creatures, vital to the multi-universal ecology. What you say of it is quite true. It’s a one-celled creature, an egg laid by goodness knows who, or by what cosmic process. At any rate, it drifts through energy-dimensions—such as this plane you call Underspace—until it finds what it needs to begin its growth process. Life-energy fields. Life fields, if you will. Call it the Collective Unconscious if you like—but this Jakror is firmly nestled in the human fields, a harmless parasite. It forms its identity by recording what it finds, allowing itself essentially to be seeded. When the seed is firmly in place, it will detach itself, journey back to suitable territory, where it will begin to grow into whatever Jakrors become—even the Crem aren’t sure of what. Jakrors are wonderful, mysterious creatures when grown, somehow beyond the boundaries of time and space.”
“This thing isn’t God, then?” Veronica said, dazzled.
“No. Even my mind is much too tiny to even begin to encompass the idea of God.”
“So there’s no threat, then. Hurt can’t take over the Human Collective Unconscious, wherever he is now.”
“I didn’t say that. In fact,” said Cog somberly, “this solidifies my worst fears.”
“What are you talking about?”
Absorbed in thought, Cog studied the pulses zapping across the Jakror. Information continued to run excitedly across the screens. Finally a blinking red light caught his attention. He examined the figures below it and said, “Oh, oh. There’s less time than I thought.”
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