Mike ran his hand over the arm of the chair. "We get into the aura and wish ourselves somewhere else."
"But now that we're out, can we use the nether world to teleport? We didn't wish ourselves there. We Faded Out and ended up in it."
"We can try. Maybe now that we've used it once, now that we've been through the other dimension—"
"Back to the Appalachian shelter?"
"We can always do that later," he said.
"Where, then?"
He pulled her into the chair with him. "To Show studios," he said. And they were gone.
VIII
The technicians in the shelter studios listened carefully to their instruments and watched—with awe—as the two ghost figures on the stage, the two, almost invisible smoke forms, continued to broadcast hate even though they seemed to have no body or brain to use. People were still turning off. The huge board was mostly dark. And the ghosts went on, hating. . . .
IX
The aura shimmered brightly in the corner of Andrew Cockley's office. He had just stepped from under it. His face was white as a fish belly. "Someone is jamming it!"
"The viewers are tuning out," one of the intent young men at the makeshift desk reported. "By the millions!"
A gray-haired man stepped forward from the bookshelves. "There's no telling how much mental damage this self-hate thing has done already. There will be many people, raised on self-love by Show, who will collapse under it. And those who do survive it with their minds intact will never tune into Show again. If they think the Performers really hate them so violently, they will lose confidence in us." There was no particular desperation in the man's voice, merely resignation.
"It is the Appalachian shelter that's broadcasting," one of the young men said firmly.
"Very bright," Cockley scowled. "I know what's causing it. Find that damn shelter!"
"We're trying, sir."
And they were.
The van moved more swiftly now. The studios were only a few blocks away. They would ram down the stage door with the reinforced front of the bus, pull inside before disembarking. Every man in the line was wearing a seat belt. Every man in the line was afraid.
Pierre looked across the aisle at Nimron, winked. Nimron looked back, turned to the other men. "We'll teach them a few lessons tonight, boys. You are in on the making of a new world. There was a book once called Brave New World, but it was a bad world. Most of you are familiar with it. We are creating a Brave New World of our own. But I promise you it will be a good world. Damned good!"
Pierre admired the speech. Nimmy was good at that. Nimmy would make their mission a success.
Success and failure.
There was a thin line between those two things. He was bathed in thoughts of a girl lying in a casket. A closed casket. Then the casket was being shoved into a flaming mouth that ate it. The ashes were few. A small bottle. It was in the pocket of his fatigues right now.
"Arm straps!" the driver shouted back at them.
They grabbed for the loops of leather, slid their arms through them, hanging like so many crucified Christs against the metal wall. Pierre looked out the front window. The door was directly ahead. It appeared to be simu-wood. They veered to the left, flashed around shrubs, wobbled back to the right again. They hit the door. Wooden slabs sprayed to the left and right. The van kept moving through the lower floor of the building, crashing through racks of props and onto a broadcasting stage where technicians and two Performers were fighting to overcome the jamming.
The doors of the bus opened. They went out, guns drawn, before any of the Show people could think that a van full of armed men did not belong there. Pierre held a vibra-beam in one hand, a stunner in the other. The technicians and Performers were stunned. Little narco-darts filled the air, biting into thighs, arms, chests, buttocks. The effect was almost instantaneous; they began dropping like flies, collapsing across machines and one another. A guard stepped around the corner of the main transmitter, fired. The shot took the face off the Revolutionary next to Pierre. Pierre fired back, had the satisfaction of seeing the other man spill intestines and undigested dinner onto the floor before he toppled forward to lie in his own mess.
After only a few moments, there was no more action, no more shooting. A half dozen corpses lay on the floor, three of their own men and three of the Show guards. Bad odds. They had to do better than man-for-man. The enemy outnumbered them to begin with. The stage, however, was secured. The unconscious bodies of technicians and Performers were scattered about, the slight rise and fall of their chests the only indication they had not been slaughtered.
"Floor by floor, according to plans," Nimmy said.
Floor by floor, upward. Sealing off all escape.
Pierre led his group of four men to their appointed sector. Their job was to clean out the left wing of the building, moving from floor to floor via the left wing elevator. On the first floor, they narco-darted more than they killed, for their victims were merely young men and women, future executives who were scurrying this way and that on errands for their respective bosses in an effort to please so that they might not be swallowed by the monster called Show but ride, instead, upon its shoulders. He hated them for Rita. But the orders were to kill only those with weapons, only the guards.
When the elevator doors hummed open at the third floor, there were two Show guards waiting to go down. Their silver and black uniforms were spotless, the silver braid over the right shoulder sparkling under the wash of the ceiling lights. Pierre fanned his vibra-beam at them before they could draw their own. One had both his arms torn off, his chest seared and cracked. The other went spinning, round and round, losing little parts of himself—a finger, a hand, and one eye. The remains, a jigsaw man with missing pieces, crashed to the floor, wiggled a moment, and lay very still.
"Oh, my God!" one of the men gasped.
"They would have done worse to you," Pierre snapped. "They have done worse to many!"
They lost a man on the fourth floor.
Every fifth floor, there was a rendezvous of groups at the central elevator. Nose counts on the fifth floor showed that five had been killed. They were now an even dozen, since three had been wiped out in the initial landing. An even dozen. With twenty-five floors yet to go.
"Don't worry," Pierre said. "Those who were killed so far were the softest ones. Survival of the fittest is the law here. The rest of us are better fighters and will have a much better chance of making it In fact, I should be surprised if we lost another man before we reach the last floor."
They all knew it was hogwash, but they all agreed.
"Okay," Nimmy said, "see you in five floors."
They moved up.
Mike and Lisa popped out of the aura of a monitor's console resting on a platform slightly above and to the right of the main stage. What they saw below assured them that the Revolution was going on, that Nimmy and Pierre and all the others had been here and moved on, were, indeed, somewhere overhead fighting their way to the uppermost story.
"Down," Mike said, pointing to the ladder at the edge of the platform.
She found the rungs that led to the stage. He followed her closely, not bothering to be quiet, conscious only of the necessity for speed. From the stage, they moved into a hallway. Everywhere there were dead bodies and sleeping bodies. They moved to the right, found the center stairwell, and moved up. Nimmy's group would be working on the stairs, cleaning out the Show people and blocking passage downward.
They moved up. At the same moment, in the shelter far away, two ghosts continued to broadcast hatred while technicians hurried about or stood gaping in awe at the smoke people who did not seem to know they were smoke people!
Pierre had one man left
He was desperately afraid that the invasion was going to fail. Vaguely, he was aware that there were many other buildings under attack at this very moment. Hundreds of them. Everywhere there was a Show installation—guard dormitories, executive houses, training camps—the
re was a battle raging. And not every raiding party would win. But, somehow, it seemed essential that they win here, now, and quickly.
The guard ahead was well concealed around the sharp bend in the corridor. They had to down him, well concealed or not, before they could go on. And if they did not down him, they would fail.
"You're sure?"
"There is no question about it, Mr. Cockley. They are up to the twentieth floor. We have no communications with areas below that point. We cannot go down. The phones have been disconnected. Wires cut somewhere. We can't even call out of this building."
Cockley was shivering. Chills swept up his spine, throbbed across his scalp and forehead.
Somewhere, a skeleton hand with transparent veins full of clotted blood . . .
Pierre overturned the giant flower vase. He flattened himself behind it, then raised onto elbows and knees, shoved the barrel-like container. It rolled, and he shuffled after it. He had covered a third of the hall before the guard at the other end caught on. The Show man's first shot was wild, tearing a chunk from the wall, sending up a little cloud of plaster dust. Pierre returned the fire. Behind the Frenchman, the last man in the detail blistered the wall about the Show guard with beams, trying to force him to keep his head down and his gun hand still.
The vase rolled on.
The air was thick with the odor of burning lathe, charred plaster, and smoldering carpet. Blue-white smoke lay close to the floor like a heavy fog rolling in from the sea.
In time, however, the guard got enough courage to brave the covering fire, leaned around the corner and shot. Half the vase exploded in a shower of pottery fragments and dirt. Large yellow flowers fluttered to the floor, their petals shredded and burned. Pierre continued rolling the half that was left, skittering behind it as it wobbled insanely along the corridor, bumping into walls and rebounding to weave further along. He kept firing. The guard raised, fired. The vase was gone. Fragments spun at Pierre, cut his face and hands. He ran then, dodging and weaving, toward the hiding place of the enemy.
The Show guard fired.
Fired again.
And again.
Pierre was shouting wildly. It was one of many tactics that would throw the enemy off balance. It seemed to be working. He screamed even louder, a pre-historic animal caught in tar pits.
Another shot struck toward his rear, five feet away.
The fifth shot tore off the Frenchman's foot.
He was running on the stump of his ankle. There was blood.
He turned, suddenly astounded, stared at the shoe lying back there with the foot still in it. His foot! Muscle reactions still going on in his foot, wiggling the toes.
Another shot burned past his ear, left a thunder pounding there that drowned out everything else.
He was losing! That was the only thought in his mind. He was consumed by a hot desire to kill, hotter than it had ever been.
The guard was excited too. He fired again, wild.
Then Pierre was running and shouting again. It was a strange run, a hop that now and then brought his footless leg onto the floor. He was not sure whether or not there was pain. There was lightning that coursed through his body and flashed into his eyes, but there was not a thing that could be called pain. He rounded the corner.
The guard jumped to his feet, screaming even though he had not been wounded.
Pierre fired, tore the man's side out.
They stood screaming at each other, two savages in a death trance ritual. Time seemed to have been halted in its tracks, stuck on the apex of their scream for all eternity. They were transformed into two toy soldiers with real-looking wounds, screaming death at each other. Their screams mingled, blended, became one scream that vibrated between their two sets of lips in an almost visible arc.
The tableau was broken by the guard firing recklessly as he began to wobble. One beam vibrated through Pierre's chest, shredded a few things there. Blood foamed out of his mouth, spattered across the guard's face. Only seconds were passing, Pierre realized. He had slipped into the slow-motion, third person viewpoint that he taught his students. Or was there more to it than that, something darker and more dreadful? Was this Death? Were the last few moments of life an eternity of horror and ugliness?
Another shot tore open his kneecap, spilling blood and yellow fluid.
Pierre brought his gun up, fired. All of it was very slow and terribly agonizing. He could just about see the waves of the beam. The man's face disappeared in a spray of unmentionable things. The teeth chattered inanely for a moment in the raw flesh of his face, then clicked shut like a bear trap's jaws. A black tongue thrust its way between them, lolled from the corner of the mouth. The guard fell forward.
Pierre felt himself falling too. He struck the carpet softly, lay staring at the wall which seemed to tide like water, rushing at him and then receding. The grain of the simu-wood was like the waves of an ocean pouring upon the beach of the carpet. The strands of the carpet were very suddenly snakes wiggling and writhing about him. It was like a psychedelic illusion, colorful and unreal. He was distantly aware of his last man checking him, taking his weapon and departing to let him die. They were going on with the battle. Nothing was going to stop them, least of all his death. It would be a success. He was conscious of dark, dream hair and wine lips and scented breath. Then he was enclosed once more between her large, smooth breasts, enclosed in the darkness there. In the warm, inviting darkness . . .
Mike and Lisa rounded the corner, searching for the babble of voices that had attracted them from the stairs. And they found the source. Nimmy and eight other men were gathered before the central elevator shaft, talking animatedly, waving arms and shaking heads.
"Nimmy!" he called out.
The men turned almost in unison, bringing up their weapons. There was a general insucking of breath and a clicking of triggers as they prepared to fire.
"No!" he shouted, throwing up an arm to ward off a beam if it came, a futile but instinctive action.
"Mike? Lisa? What the hell is this all about?" Nimron was hurrying toward them. "You're supposed to be at the studios."
Mike explained, briefly, the developments of the last minutes, the beginning of the broadcasts, the Fade Out, the journey through the other world to the old woman's house, the teleportation here.
"But how—?"
"That's something your own physicists or whatever are going to have to figure out. I haven't the faintest idea."
Nimron thought a moment, wrinkled his brow, bringing his eyebrows together in a dark line "Do you mind taking a few more risks?"
"We came to help."
"The next floor is the last, Cockley's floor. If you could take vibra-pistols behind their barricades, teleport to their rear—"
"We can."
Nimron smiled, ordered two of the guards to hand over their pistols, leaving them with stunners only. "Good luck," he said to Mike.
"We have to find an aura—a departure point," Mike said.
They searched the rooms, stepping over sleeping executives and gore-covered guards, opening every door and peeking around every corner. They finally found a lounge with three chairs. They flipped one on. Both of them squeezed into the multicolored haze that was the aura. They made their wishes.
One moment, there was light . . .
One moment, darkness. . . .
And a swirling of all imaginable colors, blending into one another, separating into weird shapes that pulsated and flowed.
Ocher, lapis lazuli, crimson, maroon . . .
An infinity of golden squares, concentric, popped up before them and was swimming all about them as they plunged down the very center toward a pinpoint of shimmering sunlight.
One moment, there were voices that moaned and screamed.
Then darkness and no voices . . .
Then light and a room. . . .
Cockley's office. Mike moved quickly from the chair to stand upon the familiar carpet. There were two men working at a table, a guard by
the door, and Cockley at his desk. No one had noticed them, as the chair rested in a shaded corner.
Lisa was at his side.
Mike raised his pistol, smashed the guard up against the wall and held the beam on him until the spattering of blood and flesh grew great. One of the young men at the table went for something to throw. Mike swiveled, ruptured both the boys' stomachs. Lisa choked.
Then there was only Cockley, sitting at his desk with his mouth hanging open and his eyes more than a bit wide. "Malone—"
"No. Not Malone."
"I—"
"Mike. Mike Jorgova. Plastic surgery. You should have checked my fingerprints against those in your files, Cockley."
The man looked very old now. The air of youth had dissipated; the air of self-assurance had gone stale. His eyes were filled with the horrors and weariness of decades —too many decades. His chin was quivering. Mike was suddenly able to understand why Cockley was cowering instead of leaping and attempting to kill him. Now there was no chance that the old man would be given to his metal surgeons and repaired. If he was killed this time, there would be no coming back from the dead. This would be final and everlasting. And Cockley was afraid.
Mike dropped the gun, kicked it behind for Lisa to pick up. He began practicing what he had been taught. He began to allow his hatred to bubble upward. He pictured Cockley not as the sniveling thing he was now, but as the arrogant and ruthless man he had once been. "I'm going to kill you," he said quite evenly.
Cockley stood, swayed from side to side. His flesh was the color of a dead gull lying in the backwash of the sea.
"I'm going to shred you into pieces and toss you down the incinerator shaft where all garbage goes," Mike continued.
"Stay away!" Cockley said gruffly, gritting his teeth.
Mike smiled. "That won't work. You can't fool me this time. You're scared stiff. If you weren't—if you had been self-assured like the old Anaxemander Cockley—you would have jumped that desk and beaten me to a pulp. But you have no courage left. If you get killed this time, there will be no new organs for you. You won't be able to continue living off other people's bodies. Your vampire days are over. And that scares you."
Koontz, Dean - The Fall of the Dream Machine Page 13