Ah! I knew this one. ‘ Cheeuuuurch ill!’
More whirring, but less tension this time. I’d got that bang on.
‘ Correct. Level two security question . . . ’
How many questions were there going to be? I tried to think as Quanderhorn might . . . ‘Don’t bother me with pettifogging details, dammit!’
‘ Is the correct answer. Level three . . . ’
‘I really need to get on. Dammit. Emergency override. Dammit.’ Was I over-doing the ‘Dammits’?
This time there was a much longer, louder whirring. Hopefully I hadn’t pushed my luck too far . . .
Suddenly a small hatch slid open about waist height in the wall panel.
‘ Quandermetric Emergency Identification Reader activated. ’
I had pushed it too far.
‘ Please place the designated body part into the aperture provided. ’
I looked at the aperture provided, and its height above the ground. ‘Which body part would that be?’ I asked, really hoping I was wrong.
The metal-voiced harridan taunted: ‘ You may need to unzip. ’ Good grief. Why on earth would anyone install such a device?
‘Remind me again—’ what had Guuuurk called her? ‘— Delores! Why did I fit this particular precaution?’
She sighed. ‘ The troglodyte shape-shifters only mimic what they can see of a person, so will not have this particular appendage. Please place the designated body part into the aperture provided. ’
I looked at the aperture again. She couldn’t be serious. Could she?
‘ Alarms will be activated unless the designated body part is inserted into the— ’
‘Yes! Yes! I’m doing it! I’m doing it right now!’
And I did. There was an electronic swishing sound and a bright blue light slid across inside the aperture, rather disturbingly.
More whirring. Then:
‘ Have you put it all in? ’
‘Yes! Yes! Please hurry up!’
Another swish and the bright blue light again. And more whirring.
‘ Are you sure? ’
‘Come onnnnn!’ Was she teasing me, the witch?
‘ Thank you, Professor. Please leave it in there for the duration of the trip .’
The lift clunked into action and shot down rapidly.
I was on my way to the infamous cellar. So focused had I been on getting there, I’d completely forgotten to be utterly terrified.
But now I remembered.
Chapter Eleven
The Rational Scientific Journal of Dr. Gemini Janussen, Friday 4th January 1952 (Again)
I spent most of the day trying to restore my room to its simple efficiency. I can’t understand how it had got so disordered: I only come here to sleep and wash and change clothing. Is Jenkins subletting my room to someone else in the hours I don’t use it?
I boxed up all the perfume bottles – why would anybody need more than one? – took down the Tony Curtis poster, threw all the cushions and soft toys out of the window, collected up all the shoes (dozens of pairs!) and discovered, of all things, a Plus~a~Gram record player under the bed! Not only that, there was a collection of disgustingly maudlin Johnnie Ray records beside it. Honestly, each time I put on a new song, thinking it might be better than the last, it turned out to be even more syrupy and sentimental.
For some reason, I suddenly needed a tissue. Hay fever, I expect, as it was January. I went to my bag, only to discover it had been switched with one made out of some kind of lizard leather. Most impractical. Really, I’m going to have to have this business out with Jenkins, once and for all.
I rooted through the unfamiliar bag. Needless to say, it had been cluttered up with all kinds of lipsticks, compacts, scented unguents and some sort of strange greasy black pencils, which I can only assume were meant for scribbling on your face in some frivolous way. I came across the letter I’d almost given Brian last night in the attic, when it looked as if our number might be up. Virginia had asked me to give it to him the last time I’d seen her, and I’d been waiting until the fog cleared from his memory loss, but that didn’t seem to be happening. If anything, he seemed to be getting foggier. As the thought of Virginia crossed my mind, I noticed a faint tickle on my cheek. Curse this wretched pollenosis!
But wait: the letter had been opened! When can that have happened? It’s certainly not something I would ever do.
Still, now the seal had been broken, as it were, and presumably the contents scrutinised by someone unknown, pure rationality suggested I should read it.
So I did.
And what I read changed everything.
Chapter Twelve
From the journal of Brian Nylon, 5th January, 1952 – Iteration 66
The lift finally lurched to a stop. And so, for a second, did my heart. My nerves jangled like a set of cowbells dropped on the floor in a funeral parlour.
‘ The Cellar ,’ the metallic voice announced, and the doors slid open creakily.
I snatched my ‘designated body part’ from the aperture, zipped up and stepped out.
‘Thank you,’ I tried to say, but only a hiss of wind escaped my throat.
‘ Maximum safe exposure time: three minutes. ’
‘What?’
The doors shut behind me.
‘Wait! Wait! What d’you mean, “Maximum safe exposure time”?’
But all I heard was the sudden rapid whine of the lift’s electric motor as it wisely fled back to safety, taking with it my only escape.
I was alone.
But I did not feel alone.
Slowly, I turned. The cellar was not as I’d imagined. It was more like a huge tunnel, hewn through the limestone, presumably created during the quarry mining phase. The white walls seemed wet, but when I touched them, my hand came away coated in some sort of vile, sticky slime.
There were strips of dim fluorescent lighting running along one wall. Some of the tubes were old, almost black at either end, some were dead, and others flickered off and on at random.
The tunnel stretched away ahead, fading into an impenetrable gloom.
And was it my fevered imagination, or did that sound like a not-quite-human cry in the distance?
Now, I’m not a believer in ghosts and spirits and such foolishness – though I admit my beliefs were being challenged in this place on an almost hourly basis – but every hair on my neck was telling me there was something down here.
Something not of this world.
I bit my lip hard. The pain helped me pull myself together. Three minutes? I didn’t have long. Nor, in all honesty, did I want long. I took a tentative step towards the source of the sound, and then another. And somehow, without having to muster up the courage to do so, I was walking.
Each footfall echoed around the curved walls. The fluorescents buzzed and sputtered into the distance. Occasionally, I’d imagine I’d heard something skittering behind me, but when I wheeled round, there would be nothing there: just the fading impression of my footprints on the damp floor.
There were a number of doors lining the tunnel wall, with foreboding messages like ‘Do Not Open This Cupboard Under Any Circumstances!’, and ‘Under No Circumstances Open This Cupboard!’. There was an ominous angry buzzing sound behind one of them. I had every intention of obeying the instructions.
Suddenly, I realised I’d had to start hunching my shoulders, as the ceiling got lower, and eventually, I was shuffling along in a crouch.
As I grew closer, what I’d thought had been the sound of a human voice became a throbbing harmonic hum, a babble of incoherent buzzing that was at one and the same time in the background, yet also drilling deep into my subconscious. Somehow both plaintive and sad, like a million dying wasps all trapped in a giant bottle.
I became aware that the air was getting thicker, in some way. Soupier. As if I were being enveloped by a mink-lined fog.
Then, in a sudden flicker of light, I saw something inexplicable.
The space at the end
of the tunnel pulsed and warped, as if reality itself had no hold in this place. That, or my mind didn’t have the capacity to interpret what it was seeing, as if I were a caveman wandering into Battersea Power Station. I stood transfixed as the warping resolved into a shifting series of impossible shapes, and I perceived I could step forward through a small opening.
Instantly, the sound became deafening. All around me, stretching up into a vast vaulted chamber, were huge, shining metal tanks. Although they seemed solid, their actual shape was beyond my comprehension.
Then all the sounds resolved at once into a single voice. And the voice was saying:
‘Help us.’
The voice was mine.
Chapter Thirteen
From the journal of Brian Nylon, 5th January, 1952 – Iteration 66
‘Help us!’ Where was this strange omni-voice coming from? I peered at the closest ‘tank’. Its surface shimmered as if in a heat haze, and became filmy and opaque, then melted away to translucence, and I was staring straight at me.
But not quite me. I looked slightly older. Harrowed. My hair was parted in the centre now, not quite disguising the thinning locks. This other me banged his fist against the tank. Somehow, it made the whole chamber shudder.
‘Help us!’ he howled.
‘You . . . you’re me?’
He was roughly pushed aside by another figure. Another me. This one considerably older: stooped and with even less hair. ‘We’re all you!’ he yelled, his open maw exposing a distressing poverty in the tooth department. But worse by far was the hollow stare of his yellowed eyes where hope had died some time ago.
And then another me thrust his face forward. Middle-aged and gone to seed. Would I really let myself accumulate such a paunch without caring? ‘You’ve got to get us out of here!’
I stepped back. The tank seemed to wobble and bulge, as if it could barely maintain its integrity. And now there were dozens of ‘me’s: Some young – though none younger than my present age – some old, some positively decrepit . All of them elbowing each other aside for attention. All of them pleading with me.
Looking at them, these ragtag editions of myself who were never incarnated –these phantoms who had never had the chance to be – I felt the deepest pity in the hollow of my soul. Didn’t Quanderhorn realise the unspeakable consequences of his infernal time loop? And presumably not just to me: to everybody. The innocents who never got to exist. The millions and millions of lives unlived.
‘You’ve come before,’ an eighty-year-old me with a hearing aid croaked. ‘And you never help us!’
‘What do you mean I’ve come before?’ I cried back at them. ‘When? When did I come before?’
And then others took up the cry: ‘You never help us! You never help us!’
‘How? How can I help you?’
And as one, a giant chorus of Brian Nylons howled back. ‘Releeeeeeeease us!’
I had to do something. I stepped towards the tank again and took a closer look. I couldn’t perceive any kind of hatch or gateway, nor any controls that might operate such a thing. There were patches of peculiar-looking deposits at its base, like glowing orange frost, as if there was some curious seepage. I had a vague idea I’d seen it somewhere before, but who knows where?
Slowly, tentatively, I reached out to touch the bulging, pulsating walls of the silo. Perhaps I could . . .
A deafening siren screeched into life.
‘ Cellar breach attempt! ’
As one, the Brians reared up and keened the most plaintive, miserable wail, then swirled into a vortex as if they’d been stirred up by a giant spoon, spinning away from me, shrieking as they were snatched into the maelstrom: ‘Help! Help us! Let us live!’
‘Wait! Wait! What do I have to do?’ But the tank was solid again, and the only sound was that infernal siren. Red warning lights were strobing accusingly.
‘ Unauthorised personnel detected . . . ’
‘No, no, Delores! It’s me! The Professor. Dammit!’ I staggered back towards the entrance to the chamber. Suddenly, a magnesium flare flashed straight into my eyes, momentarily blinding me, and for a terrifying few moments, I couldn’t locate the exit at all. I thrust myself forward, but persistently found myself back where I’d started, without any apparent travel. Then, finally, a wild desperate charge and I burst through whatever orifice had borne me here, and back into the tunnel.
‘ Deploying anti-intruder defences . . . ’
‘No, don’t do that!’ I pleaded, scrambling wildly along the narrow passage as fast as a crouch would allow. I had just managed to haul myself upright when the metallic voice continued:
‘ Releasing slow-motion gas . . . ’
Slow-motion gas?
With a flash of insight, I realised just too late that the invisible ink note had been warning me the cellar was ‘BOOBY TRAPPED’. I cursed my dunderheadedness as I pumped my legs in the direction of the lift. I thought I could make it before . . . Suddenly, there was an ominous hissing from all sides.
And I slowed motion.
Suddenly, it took all the muscles in my body straining to their maximum to move forward just a tiny fraction of a step at a time.
It was frustrating, physically draining, and, given the terror that was thumping thickly through my heart, oddly boring. Every half inch of progress was like running a marathon while pushing a cricket roller.
The lift was only three yards away, though my advance was now so languorous it would surely take me weeks to get there, and I feared I’d be completely exhausted within a couple of minutes.
The lift doors slid open. I don’t know why. But it gave me hope. The light inside spilled out a warm glow of safety. I strained every sinew for a desperate sprint. I might just make it . . .
‘ Dropping ball bearings .’
I wasn’t going to make it.
Chapter Fourteen
The Rational Scientific Journal of Dr. Gemini Janussen, Saturday 5th January 1952 (Again)
The lift doors opened onto a tumult of sirens and flashing lights, and amidst it all, to my surprise, there was Brian.
For a second I thought he was frozen to the spot, then I noticed his leg moving forward slightly, and realised he must have triggered the slow-motion gas. Far from standing still, he was actually running for his life.
‘ Dropping ball bearings .’
Brian’s eyes widened slowly. Very slowly. His body inched towards the lift almost imperceptibly. ‘Ooooohhhhhhh . . . Shhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiping . . . Foooorecaaaaaast,’ he drawled, as the hatches opened overhead and discharged their painful load.
Being non-organic, the ball bearings were not subject to the effects of the gas. They rained down upon him like hail from a blunderbuss, clunking off his skull with sickening regularity as he ineffectually attempted to dodge them like Tom Brown running the gauntlet past Flashman and his cronies. ‘ Ooooooooowwwww! Ooooooooowwwww! Ooooooooowwwww! ’
Covering my mouth with my handkerchief, I reached out my arm. ‘Brian! Grab my hand! Quick!’
‘I’mmmmmmmmmmm tryyyyyyyyiiiiing . . .’
‘ Engaging corridor flame-throwers . . . ’
Already I could feel the gas beginning to slow me down. If I didn’t grab him right now, all would be lost.
I stretched as far as I could, fingertips straining, and managed to grip his flailing hand. I pulled him to me with all my might, simultaneously kicking the ‘Door Close’ button with my heel, praying it wasn’t too late.
I heard more hatches flying open in the cellar walls, and caught the distinctive garlic-like odour of phosphorus.
There would be no second chances.
With a terrible roar and a blinding flash, the phosphorus spontaneously ignited in the moist air and a giant fireball bloomed towards us.
I hugged Brian tightly and closed my eyes, preparing for the worst. There was a jolt, and I opened them again.
The lift doors had finally closed.
I prayed they’d hold bac
k the intense heat long enough for us to get out of there. They began to glow as the pungent stench of scorched air seeped under them.
Then suddenly we were on our way upwards. We could begin to breathe without fear of scorching our lungs as the air began to cool. We took in great gulps of it, gratefully.
Slowly, I became aware Brian and I were looking into each other’s eyes, our chests heaving, still locked in a close embrace which, on reflection, might no longer have been appropriate.
‘Oh! Sorry!’ I tried to disengage, but my arms seemed to have developed a will of their own – a side effect of the slow-motion gas, no doubt. Strangely, Brian didn’t attempt to disengage either.
‘Yes!’ he burbled. There was a very, very embarrassing pause whilst we looked at each other, then several ball bearings fell out of Brian’s bra and clattered to the floor, mercifully breaking the spell.
We hastily separated.
‘That was close.’ I brushed down my skirt quite unnecessarily.
‘Yes,’ Brian agreed wittily. ‘That was close.’ He tried to make it look as if a man casually plucking metal spheroids out of his cleavage was the most natural thing in the world. He failed.
He looked up and caught me staring. His eyebrows contracted. ‘Wait a minute: how did you manage to work this lift? Surely you need . . .’
I didn’t want to go into that, most definitely, but my hand involuntarily checked the clasp of my crocodile bag was firmly shut. I changed the subject skilfully. ‘Never mind that. What were you doing down there?’
He looked, for a second, as if he genuinely wanted to answer. But then the impulse passed. ‘What were you doing down there?’
Somebody had to make the first move. I heaved a sigh. ‘Brian. There’s something you really need to know . . .’
There was a ping ! ‘ Ground floor .’
The doors slid apart on a very animated Troy. ‘Brian! Gemma! There’s an intruder in the basement!’
Guuuurk pushed his way past the lad into the lift. ‘Exactly. Delores – take us to the roof.’
‘No,’ Troy stepped in behind him, ‘the intruders are down .’ He bustled Guuuurk away from the button array. It was like watching schoolboys squabbling over the last Wagon Wheel at the tuck shop window.
The Quanderhorn Xperimentations Page 15