Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04 (28 page)

 
          
By
the time he reclaimed his car, it was already getting dark. Fortunately the
engine started without incident, and soon Colin was driving across the
Oakland
Bay
Bridge
toward home.

 
          
In
the dark, the other cars on the highway seemed like faceless threatening
animals, and Colin's mind turned wearily upon the same fruitless paths. What
was he to do about what Dame Ellen had told them? He still had a few contacts
from the old days; perhaps he should call someone, investigate to see what
corroboration he could dredge up. . . .

 
          
No.
The intuition was so sharp and clear-cut that it was impossible to mistake for
mere wishful thinking. He had left the Service without ever suspecting it was
riddled with double agents and traitors bent on undoing everything he had
worked so hard to accomplish, and thus his cover had been perfect. If there was
anyone within its ranks still watching him, let them believe he was still blind.
A political confrontation was not within his brief.

 
          
But
now more than ever it was important to be firm in his beliefs; not to
compromise, no matter how tempting the offer. Compromise was a slippery slope
that led step by reasonable step into darkness and damnation.

 
          
When
Colin reached the bungalow it was already after seven. He opened the door to
the ringing of a telephone
—
hopeless, insistent. He dropped his suitcase to the rug
and rushed over to it, leaving the front door still hanging open.

           
"MacLaren," he said
—
slightly breathlessly
—
into the receiver.

 
          
"Colin!
Oh, thank God; I wasn't sure if you'd gotten back yet. Can you come to the
clinic? We have an emergency," Claire said.

 
          
Claire
did not ask for help lightly, and the word "emergency" was not often
found in her vocabulary. Weary as he was, Colin turned around, got back in his
car, and drove to the Bellflower Clinic.

 
          
He
could hear the screams from the front door; a harsh sound neither human nor
animal, but almost machinelike in its monotonous ululation.

 
          
"Colin!"
Maria said with relief, getting to her feet and coming around the end of the
receptionist's desk to him. Maria was a pretty, petite
chkana
who was
one of the clinic's few full-time paid staff.

 
          
"Thank
heaven Claire was able to reach you. Come on."

 
          
Colin
followed her almost at a run as she hurried into the back of the clinic, toward
the examination rooms. As he did, the mechanical screaming got louder.

 
          
"He's
been here since
six o'clock
this evening. We don't know what to do with him, and
Claire said you'd have some idea. In here," Maria said. "And I only
said I'd stay until you got here, so I'm getting out of here. I don't want to
see anything like that ever again!"

 
          
Colin
opened the door.

 
          
At
one point, this had been one of the clinic's standard examination rooms, with a
table, cabinets for supplies, and posters on the walls that explained the
symptoms of the most common social diseases and the commonest forms of birth
control. But that was before some force had taken the entire contents of the
room and shredded them as if it were an enormous Mixmaster.

 
          
The
examination table had been reduced to kindling, the cabinets battered into a
twisted mass. The posters had been shredded, and tiny pieces of paper, like
insanely festive confetti, were scattered about the room like snow.

 
          
There
was a young man crouched in the corner, naked except for a pair of boxer
shorts. His arms were wrapped around himself, and he rocked back and forth, his
face expressionless as he screamed. His face and body were sheened with the
sweat of his exertion, but he gave no sign that he knew what he was doing.

 
          
Claire
was standing in the opposite corner of the room. She was wearing her white
nursing uniform with a blue cardigan over it, but her starched white cap was
missing and her normally neat hair was in disarray.

 
          
Colin
stepped into the room as Maria retreated back to her desk. He glanced at his
watch. It was
9:30
, already half an hour past the clinic's usual closing
time.

 
          
"Colin,"
Claire said. Her blue eyes had heavy shadows beneath them. "I thought
you'd be back today." She took a deep breath, as if even speech was
exhausting. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the screaming.

 
          
"He
should be in a hospital," Colin said, nodding at the crouching man.
"Bad trip?"

           
"We think so. Some kind of a
voodoo cocktail with Lord knows what in it; an honest tab of windowpane would
be a godsend in comparison. His friends dropped him here earlier this evening
—
just put him out of the car
in front of the clinic and drove off. He managed to make it inside and tell us
that his name is James Rudbeck and that he's from
Virginia
, but we couldn't get anything
more out of him. We brought him in the back and started to examine him, and I
guess we found out why his friends dumped him.

 
          
"He
did this."

 
          
Colin
looked around the room again. He didn't think that any amount of physical
strength could have accomplished the destruction he saw here.

 
          
"With
his mind?" Colin said. Almost unconsciously he had ruled out magick as the
source of this disturbance. It would have to be black magic, to cause such
harm. Evil had a distinctive signature, and he felt no trace of it here.

 
          
"Yes.
Every time we try to do anything for him he throws another fit; can you imagine
what would happen in a hospital emergency room if that happened? At least we
haven't got much in the way of fancy equipment here. But we haven't been able
to get any tranquilizers into him, or even a saline IV, and that isn't good.

 
          
"Jimmy?
Can you hear me?" Claire crossed the room and crouched down in front of
the rocking man. She spoke gently, but did not touch him. "Jimmy, it's
Claire. Can you hear me? You're safe now. Nothing bad is going to happen to
you. You took some drugs
—
do you remember that? And you're having a bad trip, but it
will be over soon. There's nothing to be afraid of
—
"

 
          
She
tried for almost ten minutes, coaxing gently, but without any result. Whatever
Rudbeck was seeing within his own mind, whatever had wrenched open the doors of
perception to let him reach
—
and to make him defend himself with
—
the untapped wells of
psychic power inside himself, it was still very much in possession of him.

 
          
And
even if psychic powers were only manifest in ten percent of the population,
and if even only one percent of those had a truly stellar level of power, that
still meant hundreds
—
thousands
—
of people in California alone with this level of ability.
Training could never reach all of them. But mind-expanding drugs could, and
did.

 
          
Claire
sighed, getting to her feet. As she did, she swayed forward, off balance with
exhaustion and the awkwardness of her position. As she put out her hand to
steady herself against the wall, her wrist brushed Rudbeck's shoulder.

 
          
The
contents of the room exploded into life.

 
          
Colin
didn't need to see it begin to know what was happening. All the hairs on his
body stood straight out with the sudden charge that filled the room. Before he
had even decided to move, he'd reached Claire and yanked her to her feet. As
the first of the heavy pieces of wood hit the walls, Colin shoved Claire
through the door to the examining room and slammed it behind him.

 
          
The
rattle of debris against the door was like the impact of machine-gun fire.

           
"And besides," Claire
said, as though finishing a sentence, "he does that every time somebody
touches him." She looked hopefully at Colin. "Know any good
exorcists?"

 
          
"I
used to be a fairly good one myself," Colin said, "but that isn't
what that boy needs. There's nothing of the occult here, only the power of the mind."

 
          
"'Just'
the parapsychological," Claire said wearily. "Whatever that word
means. I don't think I know anymore. I do know that Jimmy Rudbeck needs help .
. . and if we can't touch him, we can't treat him."

 
          
"Claire.
Any luck?" Dr. David Soule, the senior member of the staff, came around
the corner. His face fell as he heard the battering of the psychic vortex
against the closed door. "I guess not. Are you our expert
consultant?" he asked hopefully.

 
          
"I'm
Colin MacLaren," Colin said. "And I don't know how much of an expert
I am. I'd say that you were more of an expert than I am, except I'm not sure
that's true in this particular case."

 
          
Dr.
Soule sighed. "Professor MacLaren, since I stated working here I have seen
the dead walk, pigs fly, and a number of things that I would have relegated to
the realm of nursery rhymes not two years ago. Nothing in all of God's creation
can possibly surprise me anymore. But how do I treat someone I can't touch? For
bad trips like Rudbeck's we try to support the patient
—
give a vitamin shot and
maybe a mild sedative, replace fluids, provide a quiet environment for reentry
if we can. But we can't do any of that here. I've seen people die of
self-induced exhaustion before. I hate to say this, but you're our last hope."

 
          
As
Dr. Soule spoke, the sounds from within the room
—
other than the robotic
screaming, which had almost managed to vanish from Colin's consciousness
—
stopped.

 
          
Claire
sighed, straightening her shoulders with an effort. "There's my cue, I
suppose," she said. She opened the door cautiously. All was quiet. She
stepped inside.

 
          
"Let
me think for a moment," Colin said. "Mind if I smoke?"

 
          
"Go
ahead
—
although
as a medical man, I feel duty-bound to advise you to quit. Personally, I'm
planning to let overwork kill me," Dr. Soule said with gallows humor.

 
          
Colin
retrieved his pipe from a pocket and began to fill it. Tobacco, like alcohol,
was a poison
—
he knew that cigarettes weren't called
"coffin-nails" for no reason. Still, his mind was still half-addled
by the long flight, and the tobacco would help him think.

 
          
He
set the bowl of his pipe alight and smoked in silence for several minutes,
mind working furiously.

 
          
"Tell
me," Colin said suddenly. "Have you any idea of Rudbeck's religion? I
think I may have a few ideas."

 
          
Dr.
Soule frowned. "When we went through his wallet, we found a card for one
of the campus Christian Fellowships, and he was wearing a cross when he was
brought in, if that's any help to you."

 
          
"Hm'n,"
Colin said, thinking.

           
James Rudbeck wasn't possessed by
any supernatural entity. A believing Christian, and a devout one, whatever he'd
taken had opened some deep-rooted psychic center in his mind and made it a
channel for Rudbeck's darkest fears. It was these he lashed out against, not
anything in the material world, but that was small consolation to those who
were trying to help him. An exorcism would be of little help in dispelling the
force that was destroying him
—
a force within his own mind, mundane as his own muscles,
wielded by some part of his
self.