Brian Lumley - Psychomech 03 - Psychamok

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IN THE MADHOUSE...

'Are you ready?' Phillip Stone asked, his voice a little shaky. Vicki half-heard him, half-read his lips, nodded

and took off her headphones. 'Why don't you leave them on?' he pleaded.

'I want to speak to him,' she answered, 'if I can. And when - if- he speaks to me, I want to hear what he

says.'

Her husband took off his own headphones and hugged her. 'Have it your own way, but-'

She didn't hear him, was listening to something else.

'I hear it too,' he said, his colour grey. 'It's louder this time, not only Richard but all of them. You can hear it

coming through the walls, the floor. They're gibbering, every damned one of them!'

'Mama!' came a bubbling, rising, tormented scream from behind the security door. 'Oh!-Mamaaaaaaa!'

By the same author

The Caller of the Black

Beneath the Moors

The Horror at Oakdeene

The Burrowers Beneath

The Transition of Titus Crow

The Clock of Dreams

Spawn of the Winds

In the Moons of Borea

Elysia

Khai of Ancient Khem

The House of Cthulhu & Others

Tarra Khash: Hrossak!

Ghoul Warning & Other Omens (poetry)

The Return of the Deep Ones

Hero of Dreams

The Ship of Dreams

Mad Moon of Dreams

Iced on Aran

The Compleat Crow

Psychomech

Psychosphere

Demogorgon

The House of Doors

Necroscope

Necroscope II: Wamphyri!

Necroscope III: The Source

Necroscope IV: Deadspeak

Necroscope V: Deadspawn

BRIAN LUMLEY

Psychamok

Grafton

An Imprint of HarperCollinsPMh/w/zew 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

A Grafton Original 1985 9876543

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

ISBN 0 586 06409 5 Set in Times

Printed in Great Britain by HarperCollinsManufacturing Glasgow

transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,

without the prior permission of the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired

out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than

that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the

subsequent purchaser.

For Les.

May his cup ever flood over.

na.ture (na-char) n. 1: The character, constitution, or essential traits of a person, thing, or class, especially if

original rather than acquired. 2: The physical or psychic constitution of characters or persons or things,

whether native or acquired. 3: The entire material universe and its phenomena . . .

Dictionary definition.

There are minds precisely so sensitive as a thread of melted lead: every breath will fret and trouble them:

and how about the hurricane? For such this scheme of things is clearly no fit habitation, but a Machine of

Death, a baleful Immense. Too cruel to some is the rushing shriek of Being - they cannot stand the world.

Let each look well to his own little shred of existence, I say, and leave the monstrous Automaton alone!

M. P. Shiel, The House of Sounds.

Resume One:

Psychomech

For each force there exists a counterforce, and every action has its reaction. For darkness there is light, for

day night. Time is measured in space and space in time, and neither may exist without the other. These are

Laws of Nature which apply to all matter, to every living creature in every biosphere, and to every psychic

emanation -every thought - in the great Psychosphere which encompasses all the worlds of space and time

wherever life exists.

And the Principle Law is this: There Shall Be A Balance. For laughter there shall be sorrow, and for life

death. That is to say: for every birth or emergence there shall be a life or existence, running its course and

coming to an end. With time tipping the scales, even mountains die and turn into sand . . .

. . . Except that in 1952 a man was born on the planet Earth who would break that Prime Law. His name

was Richard Allan Garrison, and his destiny was immortality.

Garrison's childhood was never easy, rarely happy. Life's knocks were hard; he was shaped on an anvil of

pain. Finally the loss of his mother, the only one who ever cared or mattered, finished the job. Dipped naked

in his sorrow, he emerged case-hardened. Cynical, a little - a rebel, somewhat - and bitter, yes. But not

completely.

Garrison's flesh was weak as all flesh, but his will was unbendable. He had taught himself a trick: he could

take disappointments, hurts and frustrations, and absorb them, drown them in the deep dark wells at the

back of his mind. A trick, a defence mechanism. One which would serve him well.

But there were other tricks in Garrison's mind of which he was unaware . . . until September 1972, in

Northern Ireland. By then he was a Corporal in the Royal Military Police, a 'target', as he and every other

soldier out there thought of themselves. Boots and a uniform, a flak-jacket and a Sterling sub-machine-gun,

and eyes in the back of your head if you fancy a pint in the mess tonight.

September 1972, and a dream - or nightmare - that persisted in bothering Garrison. A warning, an omen, a

glimpse into a strange future, the dream had concerned a man-God, a dog and a Machine . . . and Garrison

himself. And it had ended with a bomb. While its repetition worried him he could hardly hope to recognize it

for what it was; in Northern Ireland many men dreamed of bombs. But Garrison's bomb was real. . .

Thomas Schroeder was in Belfast, too, on business. Millionaire industrialist, ex-Nazi, arms manufacturer,

international financier, he was there with his aide, Willy Koenig, and with his family. Schroeder's young

wife, their baby son and the child's nanny, had rooms in a hotel in an assumed 'safe area' of the city. From

there, upon conclusion of his business, they were to .fly to Australia; a holiday in the sun. That holiday

never happened.

Garrison was on duty when the bomb warning came, was there at the Europa when Schroeder and Koenig

returned from certain 'business' talks with the IRA (whose proposals they had viciously rejected) to find the

building cordoned off and in process of evacuation. In an effort to get Schroeder's wife, child and nanny out

of the hotel, Garrison had killed two young terrorists - after which he had been caught in the bomb blast. He

was blinded, Schroeder crippled, the nanny killed outright. But Schroeder's wife and child were saved,

unharmed.

At the last, however, when the blast came, Garrison had expected it. He had known it was coming and also

that it would blind him - as it had in his dream. He later remembered Schroeder's face from that dream, too

- the face of the man-God . . .

In early 1973 Garrison accepted Schroeder's invitation out to his estate in the Harz Mountains. There he

became aware of the man's consuming interest in ESP and the 'fringe' sciences, theories and beliefs -

especially reincarnation and immortality.

Like any vastly rich man as he grows old, the German loathed and feared death's inevitability. His intention

had been gradually to transfer his own mind and personality into his child. A man is after all 'reborn' in his

son; but Schroeder had been intent upon a far more substantial rebirth. Now, however, it could not be. The

boy was as yet a baby, his mind unformed, and Schroeder was dying as a result of the bomb. If he had had

ten more years . . . but he had not even one.

On the other hand, he did have Richard Garrison . . .

Under Schroeder's tuition Garrison began to discover and practise the hidden talents of his mind, finally

coming to believe that indeed a man might achieve immortality! They made between them a pact, which

was this:

If Schroeder could return from beyond the grave - if there was any way in which his psyche could subsume

or Gestalt itself within Garrison's - then that Garrison would accept him, become host to another's mind. In

return . . .

Schroeder numbered among his friends the world's greatest seer, Adam Schenk. Schenk plumbed the

future for Garrison and it was seen he would become rich and powerful beyond all dreams of human

avarice. But money and power were not everything, there would be much, much more. The future was

never lucid, ever misty; but there would be ... a machine, the Machine of Garrison's dream. And through

the Machine his sight would be restored to him.

His pact with Schroeder was sealed . . .

During his stay in the Harz Garrison met Vicki Maler. She, too, was blind and already beginning to burn

bright with a rare cancer. But they loved each other, however briefly and intensely, before he lost her.

Since she knew she was dying - unwilling to burden Garrison - Vicki simply went away.

Within six months Thomas Schroeder was dead, and not long after that Vicki Maler too. Schroeder was

cremated; Vicki's ravaged body was cryogenically 'suspended' at Schloss Zonigen in the Swiss Alps. This

latter had been Garrison's wish and he had his reasons - even if he did not fully understand them.

Meanwhile, much of Schroeder's wealth had passed down to Garrison. Along with it came Willy Koenig, to

look after the blind man as he had once looked after his beloved Colonel Schroeder; for Koenig believed

that something of Schroeder had already found its way into Garrison. And there was also a dog: Suzy, a

black Dobermann bitch.

Years passed and Garrison married. Perhaps he loved Terri initially, it is doubtful that she loved him; there

had been a man before Garrison and eventually she would turn to him again, though not for some years yet.

He was the psychiatrist Gareth Wyatt, into whose hands had fallen a certain machine. A machine called

Psychomech, a mechanical psychiatrist.

Wyatt was desperately in need of funds. His practice, once flourishing, was almost defunct; to make

matters worse, there was a problem of a far more serious nature. Wyatt was a murderer. His victim had

been the war criminal Otto Krippner who deserved death (even if he did not die for his crimes), and the

weapon Wyatt had used was Psychomech.

Perhaps ironically, Psychomech had been built by Krippner, a man whose origins, background and ideals

were as far removed from Thomas Schroeder's as the dark side of the moon. Krippner had been a

psychiatrist in a so-called 'remedial medicine unit' of the SS. Certain of his practices there had guaranteed

his name's later appearance on the world's most-wanted lists of war criminals. Some years after the war,

with the help of an organization known as Exodus, he had made his escape from Germany to England.

Wyatt, of sympathetic persuasions, had been recruited by Exodus in Germany while a student of psychiatry.

When Krippner's escape was planned, Wyatt was contacted and instructed to 'employ' the man and assist

with his absorption into his new identity and environment. There was no way he could refuse (Exodus

would take such a refusal very badly) but things would not be so bad. Krippner had been, still was, a

brilliant psychiatrist in his own right. There was a great deal Wyatt might learn from him . . .

And so, after his many years of fear, flight and evasion, Krippner settled in to work - ostensibly as a

gardener in the grounds of Wyatt's large but largely untended country home in Sussex - and at first he had

seemed more than grateful. He displayed his gratitude, again ostensibly, by slowly constructing Psychomech

in an empty upstairs room of Wyatt's house.

Psychomech was to be the culmination of many years of research and experiment, and through the

machine Wyatt's fortunes would be restored to their previous standing. The German did not tell Wyatt that

Psychomech was an unfinished Nazi project to create supermen - and that he, Otto Krippner, intended to

be the very first of such!

By the time Psychomech was completed in 1976, Amira Hannes and her network of Israeli bloodhounds

had already tracked down many of Krippner's contemporaries; it was only a matter of time before they got

him, too. Exodus got in touch with Krippner, advised him to move on. Wyatt was also contacted, told to

waste little time seeing Krippner on his way and covering the Nazi's tracks.

He did no such thing but used Psychomech to murder Krippner, weighed his body down and slipped it into a

deep, dark, tree-shaded pool in the grounds of his home. This way Krippner could never be tracked down;

Wyatt's connection with Exodus would never be discovered -

- All of which occurred three years before Wyatt's second affair with Terri Garrison.

In 1980 Terri arranged a meeting between her lover and her husband, and Garrison's ESP at once

pinpointed Wyatt as a crucial factor in his future. In short, he 'knew' that Wyatt was the key to the

Machine, 'knew' also that the psychiatrist actually had possession of Psychomech.

Wyatt was still desperately in need of money. He claimed that while Psychomech was incomplete and in

need of much more work yet, nevertheless its potential was enormous. It would repay any investment many

times over. If Garrison were willing to fund the project, he would surely reap a large share of the eventual

profits. Garrison did better than that: he employed an expert in micro-electronics to strip Psychomech down

and replace bulky, obsolete and dangerous parts with new and compact high performance components.

When in 1981 the new Psychomech was ready to be tested, Garrison demanded that he himself be the

guinea pig. This suited the illicit lovers very well. Their original plan had been this: that when Psychomech

became a success, Terri would desert Garrison for Wyatt. They would manage a living on Psychomech's

commercial earnings. But now . . . Wyatt had used Psychomech once to commit a murder. Why not twice?

Terri's inheritance would be vast.

As for the Machine itself, Psychomech was supposed to function like this:

The patient would be caused to dream, to experience nightmares born of his own wokst fears. This would

be achieved by the stimulation of his brain's fear-centres. Psychomech would blow up his neuroses and

psychoses out of all proportion, simultaneously supplying him with the physical (more properly mental)

strength to overcome these fears. The conflicts within the patient's mind would be utterly real to him;

having subconsciously 'defeated' his personal, inner demons, he would discover upon awakening that the

conscious manifestations of his neuroses were similarly vanquished.

And indeed the Machine might well effect just such cures - but that was merely a spin-off from its primary

function, which was this:

That the subject's mind be utterly cleansed of all fear, and that his ego and potential ESP abilities - latent in

all men - be expanded almost infinitely. So that he would emerge a fearless mental giant, a near-superman!

The mad dream of an insane Fuehrer? Perhaps . . .

Garrison went on to Psychomech on a Sunday morning in June 1981. Certain precautions had been taken to

ensure that the 'experiment' would not be interrupted; surprisingly, Garrison himself had been responsible

for the arrangements. Willy Koenig had been sent on holiday to Hamburg; Suzi the Dobermann pinscher -

Garrison's 'familiar' - was safely lodged in the kennels at Midhurst. Be that as it may, both Koenig and Suzy

knew the exact moment that Garrison went on to the Machine, and they would later hear and answer his

mental SOS when Wyatt tried to kill him.

Wyatt's method was simple - or should have been. He would magnify fear-stimulation to the full and cut the

Machine's relief systems to their minimum. Garrison would be driven mad and the Machine would not be

able to help him; its failsafe would not function; eventually, in paroxysms of absolute terror, he would

expire. The log of the experiment would be falsified, the controls re-set. It would all be seen as a terrible

accident; Wyatt would sigh, shrug and point out that Garrison had known the dangers, had known that

Psychomech was, after all, only a prototype . . .

But Garrison did not go insane and he did not die. While his wife and her lover sated themselves, he

reached out from his mechanically-induced nightmares and took control of Psychomech with his mind,

turning certain of the Machine's energies to his own advantage. The battle was joined, unendurable mental

horror against almost limitless psychic strength! Something had to give, and because Psychomech was a

machine that something must be the flesh-and-blood Garrison himself.

Unless -

The pact! That pact he had made with Thomas Schroeder, dead these eight years. Schroeder was there

now in Garrison's bloated nightmares just as he had been in that much earlier dream in strife-torn Belfast,

and his plea now was that same plea he had made then: that Garrison let him in\ Even Psychomech could

not destroy both of them.

Garrison capitulated, freely admitted Schroeder into his mind, subsumed the long-dead German's

disembodied psyche within his own id, his own being.

After that. . .

Hitler's advisers had envisaged a machine to turn ordinary men into supermen. But what would happen if

the subject was a man whose powers of ESP were already honed to an extraordinary edge? What if,

instead of one mind returning from such a voyage, a multimind should emerge - a psychic sentience

expanded to almost cosmic proportions? Superman - ?

Or God?

Not God, no - not even a god - but a man with near-godlike powers. This was the Garrison/Schroeder

which Psychomech had created. And this was the Garrison/ Schroeder who freed himself from the

Machine to find the lovers desperately, fearfully coupling in their bed - find them out in all their treachery.

Then . . . miracles and madness!

By the will of Garrison/Schroeder, Vicki Maler was brought from Schloss Zonigen to England and returned

to life. But it was Schroeder's will alone which transferred the living cancer that killed her into

Gareth Wyatt and Terri Garrison! And it was Garrison, humane as he had always been, who ended it by

destroying both of them in an instant.

Outside Wyatt's house when all was done, Garrison/ Schroeder and Vicki found Koenig waiting. Suzy was

there, too, but she was dead; Wyatt had blown her apart with a shotgun. No longer blind - golden-eyed and

awesome - Garrison/Schroeder had looked at Suzy, commanding her that she be whole again and live. And

Suzy lived.

And Koenig, too - the ever-faithful Koenig - he also was rewarded. He and Garrison/Schroeder embraced,

and when it was done Koenig's clothes fell empty to the earth.

Then, as the house of Wyatt and all it contained melted down behind them and became slag, Garrison/

Schroeder/Koenig, Vicki and Suzy moved on towards their futures . . .

Resume Two:

Psychqsphere

Garrison's dream was now reality, all of its elements fulfilled. But still there were problems. The world was

not ready for a superman, certainly not one whose mind -whose multimind - was flawed and faulted as is

any human mind. (Or any three minds.) Nor would the world be willing to accept a resurrected woman

whose body had lain frozen in death for eight long years!

Perhaps more to the point, men had laws. Prime amongst these and accepted world-wide was this one:

Thou Shalt Not Kill. Terri Garrison and Gareth Wyatt, however, were indisputably dead. And what of Willy

Koenig? No court of law on the entire planet, presented with the facts, would ever accept that Koenig was

not dead. In short, with all Garrison's expanded ESP powers, there was still no way he could reveal himself

to the world.

Not that he considered this of any great importance in itself (in all truth Garrison did not desire to be the

new Messiah), but its implications most definitely were. For if he could not reveal himself, then he must

keep himself hidden. Certainly he must hide his eyes, which were not the eyes of any ordinary human

being; and Vicki must likewise hide hers. This was not difficult: the two remained, as it were, 'blind,' or at

least part-blind, wearing deep/sided, dark-lensed spectacles whenever they were to be seen in public.

A vaster problem far was Garrison's multimind, the fact that he had a Gestalt psyche. The Schroeder facet

was less than satisfied with the 'immortality' he had achieved for himself: while Garrison lived, he 'lived',

yes, but not freely and by no means fully. True, the Schroeder/Koenig facets did occasionally surface and

take ascendancy in their own rights, but usually Garrison himself was master. It was hardly the 'sharing'

Thomas Schroeder had envisioned, but it had to be a great improvement on death! Schroeder had been

there, and he had not liked it.

In Koenig's case matters were far simpler. He had only desired to serve Schroeder and Garrison, and now

as a Gestalt facet he was closer to both men than he had ever dreamed of being. The conflict between the

two, of which he was of course aware, CQuld never blossom into open warfare; there was no way in

which they could spite or harm one another; anything one of them might maliciously engineer in his

ascendancy could certainly be cancelled by the other in hi£, which would only ensure mutual chaos. In short

their relationship was balanced, as all Gestalts are; and all three facets knew that in the event of some

accident, should Garrison die, then that all of them were dead. Yes, and Vicki and Suzy too . . .

But between times:

When Schroeder was ascendant he lived as Schroeder; likewise Koenig. Both sub-facets had their foibles,

their idiosyncrasies. Schroeder kept a woman in London; Koenig, as had always been his way, paid for his

women wherever he found them. Vicki Maler was inviolate: she belonged to Garrison himself.

And yet in Vicki, too, a problem. While she knew it was not Garrison who went off on occasion to seek his

pleasures in other beds, it was Garrison's body. And this created stress in her.

Finally, the greatest problem and by far the most disconcerting was this: ever since Psychomech had given

Garrison's Gestalt mind its powers, those powers had been leaking into the Psychosphere. Each time he or

his sub-facets used those powers, the battery of his mind grew that fraction weaker. For almost two years

Garrison had suspected it, worried about it, before he finally became convinced that it was so.

By that time his financial empire was enormous. If he was not already the richest man the world had ever

known, he soon would be. And yet, paradoxically - and chiefly because he must maintain a low profile - this

was a fact of which the world was la, gely unaware. Certain people did know, however, and t.*"re was one

person in particular who knew very nearly .'11 there was to know about Garrison. That person's name was

Charon Gubwa . . .

Gubwa was a freak, the cumulative result of mutating genes piled one upon the next and passed down by

successive generations.

An obese hermaphrodite albino (in fact of pure African Negro descent, with typically negroid features,

however leprous), Gubwa was also enormously ESP-endowed. Frighteningly so. He had known of

Garrison's 'coming' from the instant Psychomech created the Garri-son/Schroeder Gestalt, for he had 'felt'

the other's presence rending the Psychosphere as a great meteor rends the atmosphere. And Gubwa had

feared Garrison.

Gubwa knew that while his own mind was a mere glowing dustmote in the Psychosphere, Garrison's was a

rising star. Of all men, Garrison was the one who might one day stand in Gubwa's way, prevent him from

achieving his awful ambition. For the albino, too, desired immortality - desired to make himself the immortal

and omnipotent Emperor of Earth!

And his ambitions were greater (or more dire) than even that. Gubwa was both man and woman, a freak in

the eyes of mankind's great majority. But in the future he envisioned - after the world had been devastated

and when the remnants of the human race began to climb back out of the nuclear pit - hermaphrodism

would be the norm, bisexuality would cease to be. And only Garrison, unknowing, unsuspecting, standing in

his way.

And so Gubwa set wheels turning to crush Garrison. An attempt was made on his life, and more would

follow.

And Garrison's powers deserting him now, running out like water from a leaking bucket. And of all three

facets of his multimind, his the ascendant one, and him the most vulnerable.

Gubwa's weapon against Garrison was two-pronged: he manipulated certain elements of both the Mafia

and a largely underground and somewhat suspect branch of the Secret Service. And with Garrison

apparently on the run, finally Gubwa kidnapped Vicki Maler and took her to his subterranean headquarters

deep beneath London.

Gubwa's 'Castle' originally had been designed as a nuclear shelter and command post towards the end of

World War II, but was now largely forgotten. Gubwa had equipped it to his own needs, staffed and ran it in

a paramilitary fashion.

There in the Castle, captive along with Vicki Maler, Gubwa also held Phillip Stone, an agent of M16. Stone,

a dangerous man in his own right, had been the unwilling tool the albino had used in Vicki's kidnap; but he

would later cause Gubwa to regret his enforced involvement.

Using telepathy to probe Vicki's mind, Gubwa found out about Psychomech, discovered the facts of

Garrison's 'creation'. Since Garrison's death now seemed inevitable, Gubwa looked forward to the next

phase of his plan for world domination. He would build a bigger, better Psychomech - and this time he

would be the Machine's subject. His powers of ESP were spawned of radiation and mutation, and were

greater far than Garrison's had been before Psychomech. Garrison had emerged an incredible, awesome

power - Gubwa would emerge a God! An actual God: omniscient, omnipotent, and utterly evil! Building

Psychomech would take a little time, but time was on Gubwa's side.

Meanwhile . . . Garrison fled north for Scotland. He had dreamed again, a precognitive dream no less

important than his Belfast dream of 1972. In this new dream he had courted the Goddess Immortality, and

She had shown him the panoply of infinity, the glorious pathways of the universe. Also, there had been the

glimmer of dawning awareness, the recognition of an imminent transition. Garrison knew that he was ready

to take the next step, a step which must be taken. The gateway to his destiny lay in a wild valley where a

new hydroelectric scheme was due to come into operation, but he must get there before his pursuers took

him or his powers failed him entirely.

He was within an ace of his objective when the Mafia caught up with him. In the ensuing confrontation,

Suzy was again fatally injured and Garrison driven to expend most of what was left of his ESP power. Of

his pursuers . . . they were no more.

But Garrison was now merely a man once more, his powers very nearly spent, and still a way to go. He

absorbed the essence of the dying Suzy into himself, adding her as a new facet to his Gestalt psyche, and

with a dog's instinct set out on foot to cover the last leg of his journey . . .

With the fall of night he found the valley, taking shelter in a deserted house which stood in the shadow of a

great hydroelectric dam of still, slumbering waters. And there, even as the last dregs of his power leaked

from him, Garrison accidentally stumbled upon his salvation. By then he was very nearly blind again and the

old house was dark. Fumbling with an electric lamp, attempting to insert naked wires into a socket, he

received a shock - and a shocking, marvellous revelation!

For an instant, even as his body had been shaken, vibrating with the current surging through it, Garrison had

felt strong again. His eyes had brightened and his multi-mind had been illumined. Then, deliberately, he had

plugged himself into the electrical source, jamming himself into a corner where he throbbed and burned and

absorbed power as a sponge soaks up water.

Electrocuted, he felt only strength. Fingers, hands and forearms crisped and blackened, he knew no pain.

Twice-blind, he saw again, saw more than mere eyes could ever show him. For at last he knew how to

recharge his sorely depleted mental batteries, and charge them as never before!

With his mind he opened the great dam's gates, drawing off millions of volts from the energy so released.

And when that was not enough he sought more power still, stretching out his mind and leeching from the

atomic power station at Dounreay - until Scotland's very grid was dampened and lights burned low all

across the land. Strange aurorae filled the skies, and the valley where the dam now thundered became

luminous with eerie radiations and weirdly flickering energies.

And at last, in one great blast of raw power - a Titan bolt of energy from the sky - finally Garrison

underwent his transition. Every last physical vestige of Richard Allan Garrison was removed forever from

the world of men, but the mental Garrison had ascended to a higher plane.

In his dream the Goddess Immortality had shown Garrison her abode - her House in the Stars, which was

nothing less than the Infinite Universe itself - and now Garrison would go there, would venture to the limits

of the very Psychosphere. Nor would he venture alone, for Schroeder and Koenig, yes, and Suzy too, would

be with him.

But first there were things to do.

And Garrison reached out into the Psychosphere and made adjustments. He touched things and changed

them. And as if the world were a vast book where Garrison's era was a single chapter written in pencil, he

rewrote certain passages and erased others completely; all of which took a single microsecond of time

before he wrote finis on that chapter. And in the world of men things were changed at a stroke and would

never be the same again.

In the world of men . . .

... In Charon Gubwa's Castle, Phillip Stone and Vicki had made a bid for freedom. Recaptured by the albino

madman, they had been inches from death when Garrison's transition took place - his and the world's!

Gubwa was one of the changes Garrison made.

In his pre-supposed moment of triumph the leprous hermaphrodite felt defeat, felt another mind within his

own. A mind awesome in its power and pitiless in its resolve. Garrison had seen the stars themselves and

would now show them to Gubwa. But Gubwa's body was of flesh and his mind still mortal. Plunged like an

upward-hurtling meteor into the vault of the sky, the ESP-master died horribly, his menace removed

forever.

And also removed, dug out at their roots, many of the world's worst evils; and it was as if they had never

been.

Another change was this:

That Vicki Maler was merely a woman now, whose husband, Phillip Stone, was rich and successful. And

they were happy and had never known any other way. What memories there were were good ones,

however vague or misty, but what mattered was not yesterday but today and tomorrow.

Especially tomorrow, for Vicki was pregnant. . .

Thus it was that Garrison and his companions left behind them a world very nearly perfect, a world largely

purged and purified. They left a good world, a sane world. In short, they left a world where the Balance

had been disrupted almost irreparably.

But the Balance is the Law. And just as there is Good so is there Evil, and for Great Good there is Great

Evil.

And slowly but surely the Psychosphere moved to restore the Balance . . .

Part I

Chapter One

There had been twenty years of a tranquillity beyond all of Man's former expectations, such as

never before existed in all his long and bloody history. Hot wars had simmered down into cold wars,

into uneasy, puzzled periods of dialogue and treaty, finally metamorphosing into blossoming

friendships. Border disputes and territorial arguments had fizzled out, been replacedfby mutual

trust, sharing and understanding. The Great Nations had made a prolonged, concerted effort to

help the Not So Great, with the result that they were finally seen to be great and were no longer

feared for their might; and the Lesser Lands in their turn had adopted those so long neglected or

ignored technologies by use and means of which they were at last able to help themselves.

Economic crises had receded; creeping ideological terri-torialism had crept to a halt; the population

explosion had not novaed but had in fact sputtered and gone out like a damp squib. The old

agricultural science of the land and the new science of sea-farming, together with an expanded and

sympathetic awareness of Nature beyond the wildest dreams of the early conservationists, had for

the first time provided food aplenty for the world's billions.

It was an age of peace and plenty.

Twenty years, and 1984 left in the wake of the world's well-being (and Big Brother nowhere in

sight), and the old arts and cultures revitalized and the new sciences surging ahead, reaching for a

fair tomorrow. The turn of the Century only four years past, and life never so good on the green

clean planet Earth . . .

And then the plague - or at least recognition that it had come amongst us. A plague not of vermin,

not born of the new sciences or the atom, not of radiation or of wild chemicals or poisons - not

physical in any way. A plague of madness!

The doctors had no explanation, no cure for it. To them and to those who suffered it, it was known

only as The Gibbering. . .

The hospital was set in fifteen acres of landscaped gardens, its three floors spaciously appointed, its

many-windowed, fresh-air appearance belying the conditions existing within. Not the physical conditions, for

they could not be better - not in the circumstances. But the twelve-foot tall tight-meshed wire security

fence surrounding the entire estate spoke all too ineloquently of its function. Tucked away in belts of

shrouding pines and oaks, still that fence could not be hidden completely - neither it nor the fact that it was

not there to keep people out.

Typical of dozens of similar retreates the hospital was new, had been standing for less than five years, was

wholly state supported - and was filled with inmates. With poor mad people who had heard and heeded The

Gibbering. The hospital had a name, Calm Lawns, but the lawns were the only calm things about it.

It was a sunny Saturday, early June of 2004 when the Stones made their eleventh monthly trip seventy

miles north from their Sussex home to Calm Lawns in Oxfordshire, for it was just a month short of a year

ago that their son, Richard Stone, had been committed. The thing had first come to him on a hot Friday night

last July.

A tall, well-built youth of previously sound physical and mental strength, he had suddenly got up from his

bed to prowl the house and complain of a sound in his ears: a faint mumur like the beating of waves heard

in a sounding shell. A susurration of whispers growing ever louder, a tumult of tiny voices in chaotic

conflict. In short, he heard The Gibbering.

The symptoms were unmistakable, their development inevitable. Before the eyes of his stricken parents

Richard Stone's deterioration had accelerated with demonaic speed. Friday night the first shaking of his

head, as if to dislodge some leech of the brain, to still the murmuring in his ears; Saturday his reeling and

rushing about, and the sickness, the bile, the maelstrom of mad winds or waters howling in his skull; and

Sunday . . . Sunday his imitation of those imagined sounds, the gabbled cries of souls in torment. The

Gibbering.

Snatched aloft by unseen harpies, by Monday Richard had been a candidate for the strait-jacket.

Heartbroken, they had visited him every third day through that first month; following which their visits had

been restricted. It was known that too much proximity tended to induce the symptoms in certain people, and

Phillip Stone was secretly glad when their trips to the asylum were curtailed by medical restrictions. Vicki

had been almost 'out of her mind' since Richard's committal; her husband did not want to see that condition

become permanent.

He had even tried to persuade her that the monthly visit was too much - protesting that it could only damage

her already ravaged nerves, or at best increase her unhap-piness - but all such arguments had gone

unheard. She loved her son, as did Phillip Stone himself, and she could see no harm in him express or

implied, neither deliberate nor incidental. Heartbroken she was; faithless she could never be. She would

always be faithful: to her son's sanity, to his memory as he had been. He was not the same now, no, but he

could recover. She ignored the fact that no one - no single victim - had yet fully recovered from The

Gibbering. Richard was different. He would recover. He was her son.

And there had been a girl. Vicki could not forgive her. Lynn had been the love of Richard's life. He had

lived for her, and she had seemed to live for him. But the plague had taken him and she had visited him only

twice before her father stepped in and forbade it. She had her own life to lead. She must forget Richard

Stone and leave him to his padded cell and his gibbering . . .

Phillip Stone's large expensive car purred up to the gates of Calm Lawns and stopped at the security

barrier. The guards were grey-uniformed, carried rifles that fired tranquillizer darts, wore helmets that

filtered out all sounds except face-to-face conversation. In addition to filters the helmets contained radios

tuned in to the hospital's security computer; through them the guards could 'talk' to the computer, and to

each other. The other function of the helmets - some would have it the main function, quite aside from

communication - was isolation. No one, not even the doctors, liked to listen to The Gibbering for too long.

For which reason Security and Staff alike worked in staggered six-hour shifts, and no one lived permanently

within the Calm Lawns perimeter except the inmates themselves.

The Stones had visitors' passes but even so their prints were checked at the security barrier. Then, with

their passes stamped, the barrier went up and they were allowed in. And while they drove through patrolled

gardens - along gravel roads between lawns and fountains and low, rocky outcrops of moss-covered stone,

where shrubs and rose bushes luxuriated and vines crept on arching trellises - Security alerted the hospital

of their coming. At the car park they were met by a helmeted receptionist, a girl who smiled and checked

that the doors of their car were locked, then gave them headphones that covered their ears and issued soft,

calming background music; following which they were led into the hospital complex itself.

Richard's cell was on the second floor. His parents were taken up by elevator and Idd along a

rubber-floored perimeter corridor where dustmotes danced in beams of sunlight through huge, reinforced

glass windows. There were many, many cells; their inhabitants did not need a great deal of room. And

while the soothing music was fed to the Stones through their headphones, they plodded on behind their guide

until they reached Richard's cell - his 'room', as Vicki termed it, but it was a cell like all the others.

Its door had a number, 253, and there the guide paused, smiling again as she tapped out the three digits on

her electronic wrist-key. The door hissed open, admitting them to a tiny antechamber no bigger 'than a

cubicle. Inside were three chairs, one of which the girl in the helmet took out into the corridor, leaving the

Stones on their own. Just before the doors hissed shut on them, she said, 'I know you've seen him in a

strait-jacket before. It's for his own good,' and she nodded sympathetically.

'Are you ready?' Phillip Stone asked, his voice a little shaky. His wife half-heard him, half-read his lips,

nodded and took off her headphones. 'Vicki,' he pleaded, 'why don't you leave them on?'

'I want to speak to him,' she answered, 'if I can. And when - if- he speaks to me, I want to hear what he

says.'

Her husband nodded, took off his own 'phones and hugged her. 'Have it your own way, but - '

She wasn't listening. As soon as he released her she turned to the inner doors, stared for a moment at a

slip-card in its metal frame, read the words she had come to dread through many previous visits:

'Richard Stone - No Positive Improvement.'

Then, hands trembling, she reached towards the doors, reached for the handles which would slide those

doors back on well-oiled rollers. An inch from grasping them she froze. The flesh of her cheek quivered.

She glanced at her husband. 'Phillip?'

'I hear it,' he said, his colour grey. 'It's louder this time. Not only Richard. It's all of them. You can hear it

coming through the walls, the floor. They're gibbering, all of them!'

'I... I feel it more than hear it,' she said.

'Feel it, hear it,' he shrugged defeatedly. 'That's why they give you headphones.'

'Ma/ Ma!' came a bubbling, rising, tormented scream from behind the doors. 'Oh! Mamaaaaaaaar

Hissing her horror from between colourless, twitching lips, Vicki grasped the handles and rolled back the

doors. On the other side a wall of lightly tinted plate glass separated the Stones from their son, who lay on

the thickly-padded floor coiled in a near-foetal position. He was in a jacket, as they had been warned he

would be, with a white froth drying on his lips; but his face was turned towards them and his eyes were

open. Open wide and wild. The eyes of a terrified animal, a rabid dog, their gaze wasn't quite concentrated,

their focus not entirely correct. There was a vacancy, a nameless distance in them.

The antechamber and padded cell were audio-linked. 'Richard!' Vickie reached out her arms uselessly

towards him. 'Oh, Richard!'

'Ma?' he repeated, a query in his voice, a half-prayer. 'Ma?'

'Yes,' she sobbed, 'it's me, son - it's only me.'

'Do you understand, son?' Phillip Stone asked. 'We've come to see you.'

'Understand? See me?' Richard's eyes were suddenly awake, alert. He rolled, sat up, hitched himself

across the floor by inches, came up close to the glass - but was careful not to touch it. On his side the

plate's surface was electrified. In the early days he had used it deliberately, when things got too tough, to

shock himself unconscious. Since then he had learned better. Learned the lessons of any poor dumb

trapped animal.

'It's us, son - Ma and Da,' his mother told him, her voice close to breaking. 'How are you, Richard? How

are . . . things?'

'Things?' he grinned,, licking his lips with a furred tongue. 'Things are fucking bad, Ma,' he said

matter-of-factly, rolling his eyes.

'Son, son,' his father gently admonished. 'Don't talk to your mother like that, please.'

'. . . Fucking, cunting, arse-picking, shit-stinking bad,' Richard ignored him. 'Why don't you get me out of

here? Why did you put me in here? Do you know what it's like in here? Do you realize that I can hear them

every second of every minute of every hour of every day and night? Did you know that, Ma?'

'Richard!' his father snapped. Then, less harshly, 'Son, old chap, try to control -'

'Son?' Richard's eyes had shrunk down to yellow pinpoints burning into his father's through the tinted plate.

Perhaps it was only a trick of the coloured glass, but Phillip Stone could have sworn those pupils pulsed like

a pair of amoebas, brimming like blobs of molten gold. 'Did you say son?' Richard shook his head, his eyes

fixed in their stare. 'Ah, somebody's son, yes! But not your son, "old chap"!'

Vicki could no longer hold back her tears. 'Richard, oh my poor, poor boy! Oh my poor love, my lovely boy!'

Her husband threw an arm about her shoulders. 'Vicki, don't. He understands nothing. We shouldn't have

come. It's too much for you. He doesn't know what he's saying. He's . . . just gibbering!'

'Ma!' Richard screamed again. 'Maaaaa! I do understand, I do! Don't listen to him. He's not my father.

You don't remember, do you? No, but I do. Ma, you named me after my father!'

His words seemed to conjure something within her. For the merest moment mad, impossible memories

seemed to burn upon the surface of her mind's eyes - only to be brushed aside. The Gibbering was, after all,

infectious. *Oh, son, son!' she collapsed against the plate glass, going on her knees, her face only inches

from his and wet with tears. 'You don't know what -'

'But I do I do I do!' he insisted. 'Oh, I do! I'm the only one who does know!' He rolled his eyes again, the

yellow pupils going up, up until only the whites showed. And slowly, slowly his lips drew back from his teeth

in a horrific lunatic grin, and the saliva trickled and bubbled thickly from his gaping jaws. In mere moments

his face had become a total nightmare.

'No want in all the world,' he said, the words breaking glutinously through phlegmy foam like oily bubbles

rising in mud. 'No wars, no misery, no fear - except the misery of this, the fear of thisl No prayers where

there's nothing to pray for. Religion dead, faith dying. What use faith when the future's assured? No famine,

no flood, no pestilence - except this pestilence! Nature herself bows to Man's science . . . but does she

really? Peace and plenty? The land of milk and honey? A perfect battleground! With all the lesser evils out

of the way, the field is clear for the greatest Evil of all. And it's coming, it's coming! The Gibbering is only

the advance guard, and we are the fathers of the New Faith!'

The white balls of his eyes rolled down, seemed almost to click into place, like the reels of some sentient

slot-machine. Their yellow pupils blazed . . . and then a further deterioration.

The Stones had seen this twice before, this abrupt and still more hideous alteration in their son, which must

invariably terminate any visit in which it occurred. It was a transformation from sub-human to complete

alien. Without warning his cheeks, all the flesh of his face seemed sucked in, shrivelled, wrinkling like a

paper bag with its air extracted. The yellow fires behind his eyes flickered low. His head wobbled upon his

neck, jerking and twitching without co-ordination. His colour became chalk-white - a pale amber as seen

through the tinted glass - then rapidly darkened to a purplish blotching. The rise and fall of his chest beneath

the strait-jacket slowing, stilling. Breathing coming to a halt. And the purple spreading. His wrinkled,

monkey-face darkening, tongue protruding. And finally the blood trickling, then spurting from gaping nostrils

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INTHEMADHOUSE...'Areyouready?'PhillipStoneasked,hisvoicealittleshaky.Vickihalf-heardhim,half-readhislips,noddedandtookoffherheadphones.'Whydon'tyouleavethemon?'hepleaded.'Iwanttospeaktohim,'sheanswered,'ifIcan.Andwhen-if-hespeakstome,Iwanttohearwhathesays.'Herhusbandtookoffhisownheadphonesandhuggedh...

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Brian Lumley - Psychomech 03 - Psychamok

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