He grunted, strained. The chair he was in sagged and creaked but wouldn’t let him out. Yet the feel and shape of it was oddly familiar. He realized that he was in a fold-out directors’ chair of the sort you found in their hundreds at any studio, and that he was tied to it by neatly knotted lanyards of rope at his ankles and wrists.
“Well bloody done, Clark.”
His neck ached, but with an effort he managed to turn around to his left, and saw that Barbara was tied and seated a few yards off in pretty much the same way.
“Haven’t you heard you’re supposed to rescue me from this kind of situation, not get stuck in it yourself?” She hissed.
“That only happens in the feelies.”
“What does it look like we’re in?” She nodded forward. The front of the stage-set was crowded with looping wires and banks of equipment. He recognized microphones, the bulbous glass eyes of iconoscope lenses, and many wire recorders, and what he took to be the plates of Bechmeir field generators. This whole set-up must be costing someone a fortune, the ridiculous thought passed through his brain… Then, peering as one might through the boughs of a strange forest, he saw that another figure was tied and seated ahead of them amid all this equipment. The beard, the face, were unmistakable even without the glasses, but Daniel Lamotte’s mouth was loose, and his eyes were closed, and, apart from something around his waist which looked to be an adult diaper, he was naked. Clark could tell from the quiver of his ribcage that the guy was alive, but he was either unconscious or deeply asleep.
He twisted toward Barbara again. “What happened? How did you—”
A dart of her eyes silenced him. A figure had appeared from behind the backdrop and was moving through this electronic forest. There was a soft, atonal whistling as they quietly checked the tightness of ropes and the fit of connections in much the way that a regular gaffer or stagehand would. But the scene was so bright and confusing that it was hard to make them out as much more than a shadow. The buzzings and whinings and an accompanying discomforting feeling, which had always been there but which he’d somehow assumed were coming from inside him, increased. Then, when the shadow had finished whatever it was doing, it stepped closer to them, and its identity became plain.
If anything, Doctor Penny Losovic’s eyes seemed kinder than Clark had seen in that photograph, and her jaw less square. There was a sorrowful curiosity—a sort of bland compassion—about her features as she studied them. It was exactly the kind of expression, he decided, that you’d hope to find on the face of a good doctor. She was dressed in an open-neck blue shirt with an RTS Taxis logo stitched across the breast pocket, a pair of light gray pressed trousers, and had on well-polished man’s brogues. Her shortish light brown hair was tied back to a stub pony tail which would fit easily under a uniform cap. She was broad-shouldered for a woman, and he wondered if she wasn’t wearing one of those chest flatteners which had been popular back in the twenties.
“I’m sorry you’re here,” she said. Her voice was lighter than the one she’d assumed when she’d first confronted him disguised as a security guard, although it had the same accent and timbre.
“If you’re sorry…” He coughed to clear his throat. “If you were sorry, you’d…” Glancing again toward Barbara, he saw that she was gazing at Penny Losovic with an expression of undisguised loathing. It was clear she’d already tried the conversation he was now attempting about their being released, about no harm being done, about there being no need to involve the police… That, or simply pleading for mercy—he suspected she’d tried doing that as well… But at least Barbara showed no obvious sign of injury. At least, unlike Daniel Lamotte, they were both still conscious and fully clothed. But he couldn’t help wondering how much longer any of these states would last. We’re going to die in here … The thought passed through him like a cold wind, and he could see from a change in the glint of Penny Losovic’s calm gaze that she saw it as well.
“You obviously know who I am,” she said mildly. “I presume you finally got around to breaking into my house—is that what has finally brought you here? I suppose illegal entry is part of your stock in trade?”
Clark thought of saying nothing, but he guessed that it might help if they could keep this woman talking. He’d heard, at least, that that was what heroes did in the feelies, although his belly throbbed and his neck ached and he didn’t feel particularly heroic. “So—are you going to tell us what Thrasis really means?”
“I suppose I could…” She tilted her head as if considering the idea. “Explanations are always helpful, even when they’re not entirely necessary. Of course, everything that I’ve done has been governed by necessity, although I’ll admit that necessity has taken me along some unfamiliar roads…”
As Penny Losovic talked on in this softly musing way, she continued to move around the stage-set, checking and straightening things. She even had a rag in her pocket which she used to wipe off coatings of dust. Bizarrely her whole manner was oddly familiar to Clark; he’d seen it from dozens of clients. Normally, it was about some stupid detail of their own or their partner’s infidelity. Like—I suppose you’d expect him to be naked, but why on earth was he wearing those dreadful socks? Or—I was finishing with her anyway, so why did my wife have to choose that of all evenings to turn up at work? They’d ring a year later to put you back on the case, and when they talked it was like simply giving voice to a conversation which they never ceased to have in their heads. For whatever else she might or might not be and despite the things she was saying, the way Penny Losovic spoke now was much the same.
“I suppose you already know I was an intern at the Met…? Although I’d already published original research by then on the psychology of pain, and I hoped that I was destined for better things. So I was interested when I received an approach about a well-paid research post in some unspecified new field.
“I took a train back east for the interview. It was in one of those giant brownstone castles overlooking Central Park which have now all been turned into hotels and apartments. The men who saw me didn’t introduce themselves, and they were mostly age-spotted and tremulous, but I understood that they were the colossi who held up the pillars of Wall Street. And this—have I mentioned it?—was in the summer of 1929.
“The project they wanted me to work on was to be entirely secret—as far as I was concerned, that was never in question. They’d identified an old mining town back west in California as the site and building was already underway. As to exactly what this project would achieve, the brief was wide, but the basic premise was to prove or disprove the mind’s so-called psychic abilities, and, if they existed, to see if they had any commercial application. You haven’t been out to Thrasis, have you—either of you? Not that there’s much left to see. The site was bulldozed when we finished, and the desert winds have probably done the rest…”
Penny Losovic was now working a winch, and its pulleys were bringing some object from up among the lighting gantries to hover above the soundstage. It swayed slightly, and creaked. It was a strange-looking thing. For a disconcerting moment Clark mistook it for a giant birdcage. But then he saw that the bars and the mesh had yet more wires looping into them, and he realized that the winged shape which flickered within was in fact the charged plasm of a Bechmeir field.
“Thrasis was never a large project as far as numbers were concerned,” she continued, wiping her palms and securing the rope. “Most staff and subjects were either recruited from the Met, of through a certain theatrical agent. As for the rest, an influential group was established in California—I suppose you might call it a steering committee. They supervised the money side of things. I won’t bore you with their names, but I suppose you’ve already worked out quite a few.”
The thing in the feelie cage was stretching, humming. Clark swallowed back saliva and a sense that he might soon vomit. “You mean guys like Herbert Kisberg, Howard Hughes?”
“No—not Hughes. He was just a stepping stone who was used when the t
ime came for the research to be marketed, someone who could be persuaded to produce some plausible real world backing. But Herbert, yes. I might say he was once a fellow visionary. He’d been in the trenches and seen too much needless slaughter, much as Lars Bechmeir was supposed to have done. He really did once share the dream that the world might be made a better place if people could genuinely share their feelings. This was vitally important work. It was understood from the start that all the usual restraints which hobble most medical and scientific research would have to be set aside. No one had ever trodden as far as we did to discover what the human mind is capable of. Except, perhaps, the servants of some Chinese Emperors and certain medieval kings…”
“So you tortured people to see if you could measure their pain?”
“You put it very bluntly. You have to understand that the signals at first were the faintest flicker of the dials—they were extraordinarily difficult to detect. But we succeeded, as is evident. By early 1931, little more than a year after the Thrasis project had started, we had prototypes of machines which could record and transmit what we then simply called a thought field. And the rest, I suppose, is what you might call history…” She paused to thread a wire out from its reel and across the head of a feelie recorder. “… Or history remade. If I’m honest, the over-emphasis on entertainment has been a disappointment to me. But then I’ve never sought the limelight. All of us involved—those who survived anyway—have been considerably rewarded and have no cause to complain.
“I took on the work of overseeing the distribution of the immense wealth which has been gathered by the Bechmeir Trust. The job is almost ideal. But there was always another side to what I had to do which was equally necessary. For all the reasons which I believe you now understand, the truth about Thrasis had to be kept from the public. At first, that simply involved monitoring gossip and the newspapers, and making sure that those who knew about Thrasis remembered that this was knowledge they could never disclose. But it was surprising how quickly people weakened. So threats sometimes necessary…” She paused again, clicking and re-clicking a switch until something engaged. All of the time now as she worked, there was a heightening sense of things increasing. “… and it’s obvious that, once you make a threat, you have to be prepared to carry it out.
“At first, I tried using grubby little men much like yourself, Clark, when it became necessary to remove some weakening link, but I always found them unsatisfactory. Sadly, that old phrase about if a job needs doing it’s best done by yourself is often true. Of course, few people knew that it was me who performed these necessary activities. A sense of fear and uncertainty was obviously an important element. Even Herbert and his business friends, the men in Wall Street or their successors who set this project going—they’ve long ceased to be interested. Nor have I ever received much thanks for what I do. All people care about, I sometimes think, is living their lives unhindered.”
“Whilst you’ve been dressing up in men’s uniforms and pretending to be the Power and Water guy?”
“As an ex-actor, I thought you’d recognize the challenge…” She altered her stance. “Some fine morning isn’t it, Mr Gable?” Her voice had slipped down an octave and the effect of her becoming the Gladmont Securities guard was eerie. “But I’ve also taken some intellectual pleasure from doing this kind of work. Breaking in, following people, tracking down rumors, issuing threats—”
“And killing people?”
“The so-called Bechmeir field has been of huge economic, scientific and artistic benefit to America, and there are times when one cannot be squeamish. So, yes, I’ve killed people.”
“Like April Lamotte?”
“April and I had known each other since before Thrasis. But, like everyone else who was involved, she knew that bad things happened to those who tried to disclose the truth, although she may have imagined that that early recording she stole when the project ended and that Dan found was providing some protection. Of course, there was no harm at all in her husband writing a feelie script about the supposed life of Lars Bechmeir. In fact, there was much to be gained. But when Dan started to have other ideas… Well, she called me as one of the few people she could genuinely confide in to explain her worries. She even described her plans for faking their deaths and making an escape…”
Penny Losovic had moved on from threading feelie wires to winding reels through projector gates. Now, as she pulled down a main power lever, several began to clatter at once. They were angled up toward the feelie cage and their beams fingered through its bars in changing shadows, although it was hard to tell how much of what Clark now saw was projected, and how much was already there. Legs and arms wavered in a Dervish dance. Bodies flickered like candleflames.
“I suppose we always sensed there was some kind of presence around Thrasis…” She was having to talk more loudly now. “… although we all might have expressed it in different ways. A ghost? A spirit? I don’t know. For it often seemed that we were dealing in ghosts and spirits anyway. Then, when the world moved on and the project was disbanded, many of us felt that that presence remained. I think it may have been what sent so many to one or another kind of madness. But I think it’s beautiful. Don’t you agree?”
She was standing back now, admiring the thing which floated and twisted above them in the cage. It was brightening, and gave off a roaring sense of power. This was worse than any feelie Clark had even encountered but at the same time it was impossible not to look, and he was sure that he could see the most extraordinary things. Not vague shapes now, not the suggestion of auras, but actual limbs, real faces—as if something teeming and alive was trying to break out. But the one thing which endured as these figures spasmed was a sense of injury and pain. Many of these untwisting limbs were broken. Others were torn and bloodied. Bones were ruptured. Skin boiled and bled and suppurated. Skulls were laid bare. And the mouths, the eyes, the faces, were all differently distorted, but all equally agonized, as loudspeakers crackled an accompanying feedback howl of screams. This, Clark finally realized, was what Thrasis was. Not some empty place in the desert, but an existence, a thing.
“Resolving April’s plans was never any particular challenge. The poor woman even stopped her car when she saw me standing by that overlook on the way up to her lodge because she imagined I was trying to warn her of something ahead. But Dan—he was of interest. I’m sure the process was largely subconscious, but I believe that the Thrasis presence was what led him to write about Lars Bechmeir in the first place, and then to find April’s hidden feelie reel. I think he was even clumsily attempting to recreate what he was experiencing when he commissioned that peculiar wraith…
“I suppose one great discovery is more than any one person can expect to encounter in a lifetime. But this is something else again. I believe it has a kind of intelligence, a sort of consciousness. Yet clearly, for all that there are human elements in it, it is not human. Perhaps people in older times would have called it an angel. I really don’t know. It’s certainly drawn to Dan for some reason I don’t pretend to understand, and most strongly when he is in a hallucinatory state. But, as you can see, I can only make the presence appear by using all this energy. Effectively, it’s a whole series of feedback loops. And look what happens when I reduce the power…”
She crossed the stage-set, flicked a few switches. Like a guttering candle, the presence in the cage immediately dimmed. “You see—in these controlled conditions, it isn’t self-sustaining.” She shrugged, shook her head. “And that, at least for now, is about as far as I can currently get.” She then walked slowly and carefully around the tripods and wires to the very far stage of the set. There was a small steel table there which Clark hadn’t previously noticed. On it were a serious of bottles and small glass objects. She raised one bottle up, tapped it, and proceeded to fill first one and then a second syringe. Once again, a soft whistle crept from her lips.
“I’ve seen it,” Clark said.
“Seen what?” She was still m
ostly absorbed in what she was doing.
“That presence—that bloody thing.”
“You have …” She turned slowly, laid down the syringe, and walked over to him. Her manner, as she leaned forward to study him, hands on knees and a few strands of hair fallen loose across her clear brow, was still somehow curious and compassionate rather than threatening. “I do believe you have.” She straightened. Considered. Then, in a characteristically neat gesture, she took out the tortoiseshell glasses which she herself must have placed in Clark’s top pocket and hooked them over his ears and down across his nose. “I suppose it does make a kind of sense.” Once more, head slightly cocked, she examined him. “After all, you have been pretending to be Dan. In which case…” She turned away to consider the stage-set, and raised her hand for a moment and twirled her fingers as if the thought which she was chasing might be grabbed from the passing air. “… perhaps we could try something before I’m finished with you. After all, faint heart never won fair maiden, did it?”
Clark wasn’t sure what exactly he’d won for them here as Penny Losovic disconnected and rearranged equipment until the blind white eye of one of the several iconoscopes was turned and staring back at him. Except perhaps an hour’s extra torment. He heard Barbara mutter, This is fucking preposterous, which, he thought with an odd, sad, twinge was as bad as he’d heard her swear. She had a sweet tongue on her, too. Was a nice piece of ass, as well. God alone knew why he hadn’t done the obvious thing last night when he had her leaned up beside her door… Then, as Penny Losovic began to remake connections and pull switches, even the kind of stupid, jagged thoughts and regrets which any man might allow himself in his last few minutes on earth were blown away.
The dreadful sense of the Bechmeir field was overwhelming, yet he was being sucked in and back through what seemed to be tiers of his own memories. All those stupid arguments and the endless electrical breakdowns which had ruined his acting career, and then that first session with bucktooth Hiram and his friends in the depths of MGM. But from there he was back on board that gambling boat, and down in the scuppers with Hilly Feinstein. And the cards, the symbols, were flickering, and he was The Star and Peg was The Falling Tower, and then he was sitting up with Peg beside that Goddamn sign again, yet the city which was spread below them was peeling as if it was composed of nothing but cheap canvas and paint.
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