Part 8 (2/2)
”d.a.m.n you! I was not in this alone. You, too, were involved.”
”For the very good reason,” said the Monitor, ”that I knew there had to be something more in the scheme than appeared on the surface. There was a h.e.l.l of an undercurrent at work and I was just waiting for one of you to show your hand. I must confess to being misled in thinking that the operation was directed against Failway. Only recently did I realise that it was not Failway but Dalroi who was the target.”
”What the h.e.l.l do you mean?”
The Monitor smiled grimly. ”That's right, Baron! Continue to proclaim your innocence. Frankly, your life depends on it. Let me ask you, do you know what Failway is?”
”Yes, it's a big business proposition - dirty but highly profitable.”
”No,” said the Monitor. ”Failway is not what it seems. What you see is only the facade. But a facade for what? That's what I needed to know. And suddenly ... it's all clear to me. Failway is a trap - a G.o.dallmighty trap laid with terrible jaws set to catch a few certain gifted individuals. It is baited with the most irresistible of lures - power, corruption and oppression; who set it up and who designed it is something I have yet to learn. But its intended victim I do know. They were after Dalroi. And with the connivance of your committee we've thrown him to the wolves.”
”This is madness!”
”I wish it were. Did you never ask yourself about Dalroi, how he came by that immunity to murder? Did you never think any further than that?”
Before Cronstadt could answer, the communicator on the Monitor's lapel sounded briefly.
”Monitor.”
”Communications Lab, Sir. We have the radio receiver down here which was removed from Gormalu's laboratory. It's similar to a sub-etheric set but it won't tune over the usual bands. There's a shoal of stations on it the like of which we've never heard before.”
”d.a.m.n!” said the Monitor. ”I'm coming down to have a look.”
”Trouble?” asked Cronstadt.
”I don't know yet. You'd better come too. We've had a team stripping Gormalu's place. There's stuff in there which will take all of twenty years to understand. Gormalu got out of there so fast he didn't even bother to arm the mines he'd left in the bas.e.m.e.nt. That seems to be a measure of the panic which Dalroi had induced into everyone connected with Failway. Gormalu must have been a very frightened man.”
”I still can't understand how we let him take us in so completely.”
”My dear Cronstadt,” said the Monitor, ”none of us is beyond suspicion. I don't think Gormalu is the only traitor. You yourself are on record as once having bid for the Failway monopoly. Presley is firmly convinced that it's an antechamber to h.e.l.l, and Hildebrand ... ”
”What are you going to do about Hildebrand?””I don't know yet. Shoot him probably ... and how many others also? I've had to place my trust in some very imperfect material. It would only take me about an hour with any of you to come to the real truth in your hearts - but I fear you'd be very little use to me by the time I was finished. You'd be incurably insane.”
”You're a strange cuss yourself,” said Cronstadt, unabashed. ”You don't even have a name. What do we know of you and your ambitions?”
The Monitor laughed lightly, almost boyishly, and pushed back the lank hair which disturbed his brow.
”Count yourself lucky you know neither. It doesn't pay to be too curious about the hierarchy of the Black Knights. It is an estate which is entered through a very small doorway.”
”So I've heard,” said Cronstadt dryly.
When he came out again through the door of the Communications Laboratory, the Monitor's smile was gone and his confidence was ripped to shreds.
”My G.o.d! Cronstadt! What have we got ourselves into? At a rough guess there's around half a billion stations broadcasting on bands covered by that receiver and not one of them comes from Earthside. It's like a window into another sort of universe, a little keyhole where you can listen in on something which cannot possibly exist. It's unholy, and I don't mind admitting I'm frightened.”
”There must be some rational explanation.”
”There is. That receiver is picking up transmissions originating from somewhere in transfinite s.p.a.ce.”
”That's impossible!”
”You think I don't know that!” said the Monitor. ”Ask any scientist and he'll tell you that there are only seven even remotely habitable transition levels in transfinite s.p.a.ce, and Failway has them all. There are a series of equations which prove quite simply by means of progressive variables that no other levels through to infinity can ever contain anything which we can construe as life. I tell you now that those sub-radio transmissions represent not only life, but life on a scale such as we can only dimly conceive.
There must be whole galaxies populated and jabbering at each other on sub-radio channels which we don't even know how to tap.”
”Is that so shocking? We've never doubted the possibility of intelligent life in our own cosmos. Is it so terrible that thinking beings should exist in some other continuum?”
”Only,” said the Monitor, sickly, ”when you hear one of them speaking in English, issuing orders that the destruction of Ivan Dalroi must be accomplished absolutely regardless of the cost.”
”Fiends in Hall!” said Cronstadt. ”And this apparatus belonged to Gormalu?”
”Yes. I just wonder how many more there are around, how many other people I sometimes have to trust, sit at home at nights and receive their orders from the other side of nowhere. You know, Cronstadt, there are times when I hate the whole b.l.o.o.d.y human race. There isn't one of them who wouldn't sell his soul for money or revenge or martyrdom or whatever their petty spirits crave. The whole race is rotten with the pursuit of cheap excitement.”
”I've never doubted it,” said Cronstadt. ”May I hear these transmissions?”
”Help yourself,” said the Monitor wearily. ”For all I know they may be intended for your ears anyway.”When Cronstadt turned from the apparatus his face was the colour of putty. ”You're right,” he said.
”We're in trouble. Dalroi versus Failway was odds enough to shake the Devil: but Dalroi versus whatever lives in the transfinite irrational planes could be sheer disaster. What the h.e.l.l will he have to contend with now?”
”I don't know,” said the Monitor, ”but whoever engineered this played a masterful hand. The whole set-up was designed to get Dalroi where they wanted him - and like b.l.o.o.d.y fools we played along.
h.e.l.l, if Dalroi really cuts loose they're going to have to settle him in a big way.”
”But if that happens in Failway it'll be the biggest catastrophe of the age.”
”And if it happens out of Failway it won't be a catastrophe, it'll be extinction. I'm going to war: I don't have any option any more. The pogrom we sought to avoid is being thrust upon us, so I don't have any alternative. I'm going to take a task-force and seal off Failway Terminus so tight a mouse won't be able to get his whiskers in or out unless I say so. And if you don't know any prayers, Cronstadt, you'd better learn some fast because unless I miss my guess we're so far out of our depth that we'd better become amphibious fast if we're going to survive.”
It was a heavy metal door, gas but not pressure tight, and fitted with a flux lock. There were ways of tricking the magnetic tumblers of such locks if the sensitivity of the reading-heads had fallen sufficiently low. Dalroi had a magnetic pick-lock in his wallet. He inserted it into the lock and tapped the end with a small magnet. Once. Twice. The ferrite rod of the pick-lock read the residual magnetism in the tumblers and the magnet cycled the magnetic flux to produce the characteristic hysteresis.
He pressed the rod into the reading position and waited. The relay went over with a reluctant click.
Kicking the door to upset the tumblers, he pulled sharply, broke the seals, and seconds later was through into the terrain beyond.
Under a pale, blue, artificial moon lay a field of black mutation poppy, a vast sea of broad-petalled poisonous blossoms upturned to an impossible sky - the source of the cepi on which the Failway slave empire was based. Dalroi swore.
The cepi was at once more potent and more degrading than the opium from which it had been mutated. If this was a sample of the almost legendary cepi fields of Failway, then its masters could easily produce enough narcotics to bring the civilised world to its knees. With this ample source of raw material Failway could afford the multiple essential distillations to produce the rarer drugs which, once experienced, were impossible to withdraw without madness intervening.
He moved into the field and examined the broad black petals without touching them. The rare fullness of the growth was surprising, for cepi does not take kindly to cultivation; in this he realised the significance of the ultraviolet moon hanging on a tracery of girders perhaps two miles above his head. These were unnatural plants growing in unnatural conditions under an unbelievable moon. All the s.h.i.+fting madness of transfinite s.p.a.ce had seemed more natural than the alien deliberateness of this one field of terrible flowers.
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