Flicker of Doom

by Paul Kenyon

  Dr. Funke stared at Penelope's body, breathing hard. If he was interested in any of her glands, it wasn't her pineal body.

  "One theory," Don Alejandro went on, "is that the pineal body is the remains of a third eye we all once had in the middle of our foreheads. It responds to light — some think through the skull. In some creatures it does actually function as a sort of primitive eye… in lampreys, for example. But in human beings, it seems to affect the endocrine system."

  "I know about the pineal gland," Penelope said.

  Don Alejandro looked pleased. "Then you know that light — reaching the pineal body through the optic nerve — can influence body rhythms, hormone production, vital functions. What I propose to do is to explore the extent of that influence."

  "It won't do you any good to close your eyes," Dr. Funke said. "The light will reach your optic nerve through your closed eyelids."

  Don Alejandro was fiddling with the thing that looked like a giant corkscrew with a chromium shaft through it. He pointed it at Penelope's head. There was a shiny metal bowl at the end with an odd-looking light bulb screwed into it.

  "I'm afraid you'll die at the end," Don Alejandro said. "All your body systems will be racing madly, out of sequence. It will make a mess out of your adrenals, your ovaries, the brain structures that regulate liver function and so on. You'll be in excruciating agony before it's all over. And you'll be quite mad. But that's the price of knowledge."

  "I'll die in a noble cause, is that it?" Penelope said dryly.

  "Precisely." He turned to Dr. Funke. "How long will it take you to set up the computer programs?" he said.

  The little man wiped beads of sweat from his skull. "About an hour. Maybe a little longer."

  "All right. Call me when you're ready."

  Don Alejandro turned and climbed the broad stone steps. There was the sound of a heavy door closing at the top.

  Dr. Funke hopped over to Penelope's side. He was already ready, as far as she could tell. There was a noticeable bulge at the fork of his little trousers.

  "Ach, so," he said. "Actually, I have the computer tapes already prepared. But it is not necessary for Don Alejandro to know that, hein?"

  "How are we going to while away this hour?" Penelope said. "Don't tell me, let me guess."

  "Sexual rhythms are also affected by light," Dr. Funke said without a trace of humor. "In female rats, for example, light of a certain wave length and intensity disrupts their oestrus cycles. It causes them to become sexually aroused."

  "Why don't you get yourself a female rat, then? I think it would be a perfect match."

  "Stupid woman!" he shouted in a rage. "You will listen when I speak!"

  "I know what you're leading up to, Geliebte. The same hanky-panky that got you kicked out of Munich."

  He looked startled. "You will be quiet!"

  "What's the matter, little man? Do you have to pretend to yourself that the maiden is willing?"

  "You will see!" he shouted, hopping up and down in rage. "You will enjoy it! I will make you enjoy it!"

  "Is that an order?" she said. But he was already fiddling with the corkscrew apparatus. He opened a cabinet door and came out with a reel of computer tape as big as a dinner plate. He fit it into the tape drive and punched buttons on the computer console.

  She felt nothing at first. Then a sudden wave of heat washed over her body. She felt herself breathing faster.

  Dr. Funke stood next to the Rack, watching her intently. He was panting.

  Penelope looked down at her breasts. The nipples suddenly sprang erect.

  Dr. Funke fidgeted, like a child waiting for a treat.

  Between her outspread legs there was a warm, moist sensation. There was no doubt about it now.

  Dr. Funke began to unbuckle his belt.

  Penelope gritted her teeth, fighting the sensations in her body. It was no use. The metal bowl yawned in her face. She closed her eyes, but Dr. Funke was right: it didn't do any good. She felt a sense of shame at her unwilling readiness, and told herself that her endocrine system was being played upon without her volition. The thought of that nasty little man crawling on top of her was revolting.

  But her entire body was flushed with heat. She was sopping wet. Dr. Funke grinned in triumph. He dropped his little trousers. He had a big blunt blimp of an organ that stood out like a thumb. He grasped the edge of the Rack and gathered himself to leap up on top of her.

  There was a movement behind him, and he suddenly fell over, flat on his back. The blimp deflated instantly.

  The heavy iron Boot swung back and dangled limply, with Ahmed's poor crushed foot inside of it. He hadn't been dead, after all. There had been just enough life in him to kick Dr. Funke in the head.

  "Ahmed!" she cried.

  But his head slumped. He really was dead this time.

  "Thank you, darling," she said with tears in her eyes.

  She was beginning to feel sick to her stomach. Her endocrine system was racing out of control, as Don Alejandro had said it would. She had to free herself quickly.

  And then, miraculously, one hand was loose. There was a smell of burning hemp in the air.

  Ahmed's kick had knocked over the brazier of burning coals. Or perhaps Dr. Funke had hit the tripod when he fell. Some of the coals had scattered on the Rack.

  With one hand free, it took only a minute or two to untie the rest of the ropes. She climbed off the rack, rubbing her wrists.

  Dr. Funke was sleeping peacefully. There was a lump as big as an egg on his shaved skull. She looked at him with distaste.

  Ahmed's torn and burned body swayed in the flickering torchlight. She stared at it thoughtfully for a while, chewing her lip.

  Then she dragged Dr. Funke over to the Iron Maiden. He weighed about ninety pounds, as near as she could judge. She opened the lid of the coffin-size device and studied the wicked spikes. There was old, crusted blood on them. The blood might have been centuries old, for all she could tell.

  She propped Dr. Funke upright inside the Iron Maiden.

  "You wanted to get inside a maiden, little man," she said. "All right. Here you are."

  He groaned, and his eyes fluttered open. She waited until he realized where he was, then slammed the lid shut.

  14

  The President had a big grin on his face. He waved at the crowd, then strode swiftly across the tarmac toward the waiting limousine, followed by a retinue of aides and Secret Service men. He climbed into the back seat. The bulky figure of the Secretary of State climbed in beside him.

  "Hurry, Tommy," the Baroness said. She glanced worriedly at the television screen. On it, the President's motorcade was dwindling in the distance. The face of the Moroccan announcer appeared, and then the scene shifted to a conference table with a lot of smiling men, some in business suits, some in Arab costume.

  Sumo was fitting a complicated harness on the Baroness's shoulders. There was a black metal fishbowl hinged to it, something like a diver's helmet, except that there was no faceplate to see through. The entire glob was featureless, opaque.

  "Don Alejandro could've zapped him just now, at the airport," Sumo said.

  "He's waiting for the speech. Ten o'clock this evening. That's five p.m., New York time. They'll broadcast it live by satellite, then pick up the highlights for the evening news. The President wants the maximum audience. So does Don Alejandro."

  Sumo glanced at his watch. "We haven't much time, then."

  He was threading some tiny electrical connections into the fabric of her body stocking. It was skin-tight and black, and seemed as gossamer-fine as nylon hose. If you looked closely, you could see a mica-like glitter running through the material. It came from the millions of dust-speck-size MOSFET circuits, doing a job that once was done by transistors or chips.

  "My stretch computer," Penelope said, smoothing the clinging fabric over her bust and hips. "Can it really handle all the input?"

  "Here's the program," Sumo said, holding up a miniature tape unit the
size of a pack of cigarettes. He plugged it into her belt kit, next to the battery pack. He plugged in a second tape unit. "And here's the back-up program."

  "Let's hope I won't need it," the Baroness said.

  He frowned. "I wish you'd wait for the rest of the crew to get here."

  Inga and Paul were in the hospital in Qatar. Wharton and Eric had gone to Iraq to check out the remnants of the PAFF force there; she'd already received a report that the Iraqi government was booting them out of the country. Skytop, Fiona and Yvette had remained behind in the Persian Gulf to cover up all traces of what really had happened at Bandar Abbas.

  "I can't wait. Don Alejandro has to be stopped tonight. Before ten o'clock."

  She looked over at the television set again. The cameras had picked up the President's arrival at the conference hall. A little girl was presenting him with flowers. The King was standing by in a uniform covered with gold braid. The OAPEC ministers were lined up on the steps to greet him.

  Sumo finished wiring the connections. "That should do it," he said. "But I wish I'd had more time to study Funke's computer programs."

  She'd brought Sumo a present when she'd escaped from Don Alejandro's villa: several reels of the computer tape she'd found in the dungeon. Added to the components they'd swiped at Bandar Abbas and the phony camera Fiona had acquired at Gibraltar, it had given him a lot to chew on. Penelope had made her way across the deactivated optical maze and climbed over the wall before Funke's body had been discovered.

  But getting in again was going to be harder.

  She stood up and stretched, a sleek, powerful female form sculptured in black. The metal bowl hung gleaming on her back. She glided to the glass doors and looked at the sky. "It's getting dark," she said.

  She slipped a loose, flowing caftan over her outfit, and she and Sumo walked across the sand to the little fishing boat he'd rented. The Baroness waded out a couple of feet and climbed over the freeboard. Sumo, his trousers rolled up, pushed off.

  The little computer and the powerful transmitter that was hooked into it crowded the tiny cabin. He was going to have to monitor her constantly.

  They chug-chugged along the shoreline for an hour. It was a warm, humid night with a faint breeze coming across the strait from Spain. Somewhere out there across the waters, the Gibraltar apes precariously safeguarded Britain's presence. Don Alejandro didn't own this part of the map yet.

  "There it is," Sumo said, pointing.

  She looked at the tall cliffs looming behind the strip of beach. Perched on the heights was a medieval fantasy of turrets and battlements: Don Alejandro's castle. It was a forbidding, gloomy sight against the threadbare fabric of the night sky: a monument to a daydream. Un sueño. It was up to her to see that it remained a dream.

  "Not too close, Tommy," she said.

  They putted past the sound of laughing voices: people from one of the neighboring villas out for a night swim. And then Sumo had drifted in toward shore, the motor cut. She jumped off into water that came up to her thighs, and gave the boat a shove to send it out again. Sumo waved at her, then ducked into the little cabin to monitor his computer link.

  She waded ashore. There was no one on this stretch of beach, though she could see a glowing cigarette end further down, where the swimming party was. She climbed the steep cliff, pulling handfuls of vegetation to steady herself. The legs of the body stocking were dry by the time she got to the top; wearing the finespun fabric was like wearing nothing. It stretched with her movements, hardly more than a feather touch on her skin. The big bowl bouncing between her shoulder blades was light, too: a thin bubble of metal.

  She darted between scrub bushes until she was within fifty feet of the wall. Were there guards? Don Alejandro had trusted to his high walls and the optical defenses inside, but now, on the eve of his big move, perhaps he was being more cautious.

  There was a sound near the wall. A little trickling splash. She strained to see.

  She grinned. Don Alejandro wasn't being too awfully cautious. There was a single Moorish guard there, squatting to urinate Arab-fashion, his robes hitched up. He was resting his rifle, butt down, against the ground like a staff.

  She was on top of him before he'd finished, clubbing him behind the ear with the hardened edge of her hand. He collapsed in a little puddle. Should she kill him? She decided regretfully that she'd have to. She couldn't take a chance on his waking up or being found. She clamped his chest between her knees and pulled back on his head until his neck broke. Then she pulled him over to the cliff edge and tumbled him down the steep slope. She threw his rifle down after him.

  She drew the Spyder out of its holster and fired it at the top of the wall. The fine plastic filament leaped out of the muzzle, pulled by a bullet-shaped projectile. The projectile bit into the wall and flowered into a miniature grappling hook. She tugged to test it, then, holding the butt of the Spyder in both hands, she walked up the wall. The powerful spring reeled her in as she went. At the top, she severed the thread with the little snicker blade and holstered the pistol-winch again. There was enough liquid plastic in the little reservoir to manufacture a mile of line if she needed it — a line that would harden and solidify like a spider's silk as it sprayed out of the nozzle.

  She dropped twenty feet to the ground, landing in a crouch.

  Ahead of her was a vast, empty field, stretching toward the castle. The optical maze. It surrounded the villa on all four sides now, a phantom thing of hundreds of concealed flashing lights. It wouldn't have done a bit of good to try to locate the tiny spots and damage them. The computer in the castle would simply redistribute the load. The maze would work with as few as ten percent of its lights intact.

  She thought she could detect a ghostly twinkling, but perhaps it was her imagination. Those phantom flashes flicked in and out of existence in a millionth of a second, before the nerve cells connecting the eye to the brain had a chance to fire.

  She lowered the metal bowl over her head. Now she couldn't see at all. The bowl was opaque.

  It cut off all forms of electromagnetic radiation — visible light, infra-red, ultraviolet, even the radar frequencies. The computer in the castle depended on feedback it got from the behavior of the victim. If it didn't get through to her, it would keep trying all the frequencies. Even the flicker of invisible light would make her synapses fire in sympathy if the rhythm were right.

  But, of course, she had to see where she was going.

  She thumbed the little switch, and a fuzzy world of cobwebs swam into view before her eyes.

  She was seeing with sound — ultrasound, the way porpoises see under water. The high-pitched impulses were generated by the miniaturized projector built into her helmet. The sound waves bounced off solid objects, back into her receiver. The microscopic computer components embedded in the threads of her body stocking sorted out the returning waves and translated them into a visual image. She could see them on the little screen inside the helmet.

  The deadly flicker was strained out of the image. The image was manufactured without using any outside light at all.

  She was fighting light that you couldn't see, with sound that you couldn't hear.

  She twisted a knob and refined the focus. The cobweb world became quite sharp and clear. There wasn't any color, of course, but the shapes of objects seemed sharp and familiar. She saw her goal — a big iron-bound door about a thousand feet away.

  She moved swiftly across the open field, aware of her exposed position. There were the remnants of some low shrubbery, and she caught sight of some of the little spotlights. They were tracking her, turning their cylindrical heads to follow her progress. It was like treading through a forest of little wicked elves, casting an enchanted spell to entrap her. But she was protected by a more powerful charm: technological magic to match Don Alejandro's sorcery.

  She pounded on through the little swaying black heads. She was halfway across. The computer must have been going mad, trying to figure out why she refused to stay w
ithin the invisible chalklines.

  And now she could half see it, the illusion: a faint, smoky image of thorn hedges. The spots must be radiating in the microwave frequencies. Enough was penetrating the metal helmet by induction to create a faint spectral image. She didn't let it bother her. A magic spell can't harm you when you know it's an illusion. She plunged straight through a writhing wall of vines that had dragon's heads. It was as insubstantial as mist.

  And there was the heavy oak door in front of her. She grasped the iron ring and pulled it open.

  A startled servant was there, sweeping up with a broom. He looked up in astonishment at this strange black creature with a metal glove for a head, and then a pair of strong slender hands was on his neck, choking him unconscious.

  She took the metal globe off to listen. There were no sounds of activity in this part of the villa. The servants had gone to bed or had been dismissed.

  She glanced at her watch. Almost ten. There wasn't much time left.

  She crept up a flight of steps toward the great hall. There was the sound of a television set, getting louder as she approached. The announcer was speaking in English; it was one of the American networks' feed. There was the sound of a cheering crowd in the background.

  At the top of the flight of stairs, she peered cautiously around the corner into the great hall. Don Alejandro was sitting with his back to her in a high-backed chair next to the fireplace. There was a low table with a glass of sherry next to the chair, and, as she watched, a long slender hand came out and toyed with the glass.

  From where she was crouched, the Baroness could see the television screen he was watching. The announcer was leading up to the President's speech. The camera focused on an empty desk bearing the Presidential Seal.

  There was something else beside Don Alejandro's chair: a remote computer terminal on wheels. It was about the size of a typing table, with a pushbutton console and a small CRT display tube.

  The hand put down the sherry glass and punched keys. A readout appeared on the CRT. She could make out the glowing words: linkage established.