The House of Doors - 01 (36 page)

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Authors: Brian Lumley

BOOK: The House of Doors - 01
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“This way!” Gill howled above the frantic shrieking of the storm. And plunging through the drifts like a madman, he went after Sith-Bannerman.
We have maybe ten minutes in this
, Gill thought.
Fifteen if we’re lucky
. Following which they’d be part of the permafrost.
Gill lunged after the lurching figure—which already had stopped moving and stood swaying, leaning into the icy blast—and wondered why his body felt made of lead. And a moment later knew why as the whole truth of the situation hit him. For this was a cold world and a world of high gravity.
And as Gill had supposed it would be, it was indeed his enemy—the enemy of his entire race—who leaned like the stump of some strange lone tree out of the deep snow and against the blast. The Bannerman construct and what was inside it: a murderous alien intelligence who had been first through the door, triggering the synthesizer’s automatic and inexorable response. And here he was trapped in his own version of hell, his own worst nightmare: a cold, high-gravity world.
No escape, he’d said; and who would know better, for he was the one who’d programmed it. What was more, the House of Doors had improvised: it denied Sith the use of his antigravity harness, refused to beam power to it. Likewise his Thone instrument, which was now useless to him. To allow these things would have been to provide an escape route, and Sith’s instructions had been explicit. To top it off he faced the ignominy, the ultimate irony, of dying before the very eyes of the one he’d most desired to destroy.
But … no mercy. The stored power in the construct’s battery was almost expended and the cold was seeping in, and the one thing above all others in the entire universe which was guaranteed to terrify any member of the Thone was to freeze. To lie undead forever, turned to ice, and to know the gradual petrifaction of the aeons!
Gill stumbled up to him, saw the fading red glow of his eyes, and knew the truth.
Got you, bastard
!
Sith forced the last ounce of energy from his construct, lifted his death-wand. It was merely warm where its tip prodded Gill’s chest. He knocked it aside, out of the construct’s unresisting fingers. And: “Which way?” Gill shouted into Bannerman’s almost immobile face. “If you want to live, tell me where’s the node?”
For answer Sith tried to lift the construct’s arm again and point. The arm came up like a rusted robotic lever, stuck, and overbalanced he fell facedown in the snow.
Turnbull and Angela came stumbling out of the blizzard. “Spencer, we’re done for!” Turnbull yelled, his words blowing away in streaming white plumes.
“Not yet,” Gill shouted back. “Help me with this bastard.”
“What? There’s somewhere to go? So why take him along?” But still Turnbull grabbed one of Bannerman’s arms.
“Because he has the last of the answers, and I want them. Without him we can’t solve the puzzle. And there’s a hell of a lot hanging on it. Anyway, save your breath and work, you big sod!” Angela helped, too; with one arm crooked round Bannerman’s thick neck, she shared the load as they hauled him over the snow. And in her other hand she carried his walking-stick weapon.
It was maybe a hundred yards to the node, but it felt more like a thousand. Ten more yards and they wouldn’t have made it. Later Gill would think back on it and wonder why the node was so handy, and he’d reason that in a place like that Sith would naturally want exits placed at frequent intervals; even under normal conditions, with all of his support systems working, he’d feel uncomfortable in that sort of Thone hell.
But eventually the node did loom up out of the storm: a House of Doors in the shape of a block of ice! It was simply that, an ice cube of nine-foot sides, a crystal-clear cube containing nothing but ice—apparently. And it didn’t seem to have any doors.
Frustrated, all in, unable to concentrate his new, alien knowledge, and almost willing now to accept death in any form, Gill hammered with his naked fists on the cube’s nearest face—and the ice caved in! It was a quarter-inch thick, no more. They dragged Bannerman across the shattering threshold, and—
 
“F
rostbite!” said Turnbull, when at last he could speak again. “We should at least be frostbitten.” He examined his hands with an almost. childlike astonishment. “Nothing! Not even a chilblain! But what the hell … another five minutes of that and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. God, do you know how lucky we are to be alive?”
“Are we lucky, Spencer?” Angela wanted to know. “I mean, is it over, or is there more still to come?” She looked all around and most of what she saw made her feel sick, so that she half-shuttered her eyes to diminish its confusion. “In a way I almost hope there
is
more to come—or at least something different to this!”
“A hothouse,” said Turnbull, his voice gaining strength. “One extreme to the other. Where the hell are we, anyway? Inside one of those screens we saw on the world of mad machines—on your world, Spencer?”
“Something like that, yes,” Gill answered. “In fact we’re at the nerve centre. This is the control room. Part of it, anyway. It’s just like Haggie described it, remember? You’ll find it easier to take if you ignore the ‘walls’ and concentrate on the floor. The walls are screens, of a sort. Scanners. The swirling colours are unformed scenes, that’s all. They are memories of worlds, some of them. The House of Doors doesn’t keep its records on tape but as frozen actualities which can be recalled, synthesised, down to the smallest detail. But some of these scanners are focused on our world, too. When I’ve dealt with this bloke, I’ll try to show you what I mean.”
“Dealt with him?” Turnbull repeated him. “You mean put an end to him?” Now his voice hardened. “Just a few minutes ago we saw him ‘deal’ with Anderson. You know what mercy we could expect from him, so what are you waiting for?”
Gill shook his head. “No,” he said, “I’m not going to kill him—unless I have to. Indeed I’m keeping my fingers crossed that he’s still alive. But if he is, I intend to disable him. Power is flowing back into this weapon of his, this tool, even now; and it’s doubtless flowing back into the construct, too. This human—or’inhuman—figure is the alien’s exoskeleton, his vehicle. The controller’s inside. And he also controls the House of Doors. But not anymore, because I’m not going to give him the chance.”
Angela barely had time to avert her eyes as Gill used the Thone instrument to shear through the construct’s tentacles where they joined with the body. And at that Bannerman rolled over onto his back and sat up. Turnbull gasped and Gill bared his teeth and stepped back a pace; but as the construct’s empty eye sockets began to glow again with a red life, Gill took a grip on himself. This wasn’t mayhem; he was slashing the alien’s tyres, that was all. Removing his rotor head, immobilising him.
He struck through both of the construct’s legs at the knees and kicked the bleeding pieces aside. At which Sith-Bannerman shuddered violently, balanced himself with one hand on the floor, and held up the other in a sort of horror, as if to hold Gill back. “No more!” he croaked. “If you cut the construct any deeper, then you also cut me. My fluids are already more than sufficiently depleted. Or … if you’re intent upon destroying me, then at least do it quickly: simply strike the construct through the chest.”
“We didn’t save your life out in that frozen hell just to kill you here, Bannerman—or whatever your name is,” Gill told him. “We saved it because there are things only you can tell us. But first, snail, I want to winkle you out of that shell of yours.”
“Out of my … ?” Then Sith understood. “You want me at my most vulnerable,” he said. “I shall come out, if you wish it—but there ends our conversation: I speak through the construct’s system. My own has neither the articulation nor the volume. The Thone do not converse in that manner:”
Gill nodded. “Then since I need to talk to you, you’d better stay where you are. First I want to know about Clayborne, Anderson, Denholm, Varre and Haggie. Where are they?”
Turnbull and Angela had found their feet; averting their eyes from the flowing, liquid-colour walls, they looked at each other. Angela was plainly mystified by the question Gill had asked of the captive alien; Turnbull, equally at a loss, could only shrug.
“Clayborne, Anderson and Varre—I can show them to you,” Sith Bannerman answered. “Or I could have, before you took away my mobility. Now I can only direct you.”
“Liar!” Gill snapped at once. “Your antigrav is working. I can feel it like my own pulse. You’re only waiting for a chance to use it, that’s all. You could lift yourself and that wreck up off the floor and be gone out of here in a moment—but not before I’d cut your construct and you in half a dozen pieces!”
Turnbull said, “What the hell’s going on? He can show us Clayborne and the others? Is there something I’ve missed?”
“Something we’ve missed,” Angela corrected him. “What’s happening here, Spencer?”
Gill said, “You’re in for a shock, you two. And so am I—probably. I mean, I know what’s coming, but I’m not sure how I’ll take it. Anyway, if my butchering of this thing offends you, look away for a moment. I can’t trust him while he has hands.”
Angela saw Gill’s intention and quickly looked away; she heard Turnbull’s sharp intake of breath; when she looked back Gill didn’t have to worry about trusting Sith-Bannerman. With certain exceptions, there wouldn’t be a great deal that he could do anymore.
Gill looked a little pale but his voice was as hard as ever. “Very well, and now maybe you’ll show us the others.”
“
And
yourselves,” said Sith-Bannerman, causing the construct to grin its soulless grin. He floated up from the floor and Gill took a firm hold on his left elbow.
“No higher than that,” Gill warned. “And no tricks. The first inclination I get that you’re up to something … you won’t be up to anything. Understand?”
“Oh, yes, I quite understand,” Sith-Bannerman answered. He pointed the stump of his right hand into the kaleidoscoping colours and led Gill and the others a short distance into the control centre’s mazy interior. They passed between banks of living screens and around several “corners”—until finally they were there.
“I told you it would be a shock,” said Gill, his voice very small.
Standing upright against a backdrop of coloured motion, suspended there with their arms crossed on their chests and apparently asleep, were six fully clothed people. Their chests rose and fell; their flesh was a natural, healthy pink; pulses were visible and they were quite clearly alive. Three of them were Miles Clayborne, David Anderson, and Jean-Pierre Varre.
And the other three were Spencer Gill, Jack Turnbull and Angela Denholm!
“Clones!” Turnbull gasped.
Gill shook his head. “Sorry to keep contradicting you,” he said, “but they’re the real thing—we’re the clones! You—” he held his weapon close to the floating alien, “—you’re responsible, so you explain it to them.”
“You are not clones,” the alien said. “Nor are you constructs as such, for you are governed by your own brains. That is to say, your memories are true memories and not created artificially, and apart from the fact that your recent experiences are yours and yours alone, you
are
the beings you see here in repose. In short you are duplicates, synthetically copied to resemble in almost every respect the original pattern or creature.”
“We’re not …
creatures
!” Turnbull scowled. “Not the way you use the word, anyway.”
“On that point we beg to differ,” said Sith-Bannerman. “Should I continue?”
“Get on with it,” said Gill.
“Indeed you are superior to the original specimens … will you allow me the use of that term, specimens? Good. Several microsystems were introduced into you at the moment of duplication to assist with your primitive healing processes, to change your metabolisms, to remove many of the weaknesses inherent in your race. The Thone cannot abide physical handicaps or abnormalities: ‘illnesses’, as you term such disorders. But your psyches, your mentalities, were left quite alone. For it was these that I was testing. But physically? When a Thone invigilator examines a specimen group, he is bound to ensure that they have every possible advantage. Most of the worlds you have seen were poisonous to you in one way or another: their atmospheres, pollens, species, some or all of these things could well have proved fatal to you. Without the alterations I have mentioned, the examination would be invalid. You could all very well be ‘dead’ by now.”
“Like that runt Haggie?” Turnbull again interrupted. “Is he ‘dead’? Why isn’t he here?”
“And Rod—what about him?” Angela wanted to know.
“Alas,” said Sith-Bannerman, “Haggie came here by error. He was not synthesised. The man you know is the true man. And a remarkable man! Somehow he has avoided the more poisonous places, found sustenance for himself, kept one jump ahead of his pursuer, the machine I sent to find him so that I could expel him.”
“But it did catch up with him once,” Gill said. “You could have expelled him then—but instead you tossed him back into the game. Which was murder pure and simple. He
will
die out there, somewhere, eventually.”
“Presumably.” There was a shrug in Sith-Bannerman’s response.
“And Rod?” Angela had to know.
“I introduced your husband into this in order to … add flavour,” Sith answered. “But please, do not accuse me of
his
murder! No, for I believe that was your doing … .”
Suddenly it was all too much for Angela. Her knees wobbled; she swayed and sat down at the feet of her likeness—no, at her
own
feet! Gill and Turnbull turned instinctively towards her—and Sith took his chance. He used his antigrav to its full, jerked upwards toward the ceiling haze and out of Gill’s grasp. Gill made a wild leap, his weapon buzzing angrily, and missed by all of twelve inches.
Sith drifted away into the high haze of soft light and was gone … .
For a few moments Gill raged, but silently. At first furious beyond words, he hurled down the Thone weapon and shook his fists, then finally commenced cursing himself for a fumbling, bumbling clown. All of his frustration poured out of him in seconds, leaving him pale, limp and trembling.
“My fault!” Angela was aghast. “I’m sorry, Spencer. But when he—”
“No,” he rasped, shaking his head. “Nobody’s fault. Or mine, if anyone’s to blame. He would have escaped sooner or later. This is his place, not ours. And we aren’t up to his sort of trickery. Not even in the same league.”
“He wouldn’t have escaped if you’d killed him,” said Turnbull matter-of-factly, but without accusation.
“I couldn’t, Jack,” Gill told him helplessly. “Not because I didn’t want to or he didn’t deserve it, but because it wasn’t my place to kill him. I wanted—I don’t know—to bring him to trial? Yes, I think so. But trial by his own kind. You see, I’m pretty sure that they’d consider him a criminal, too. There were rules to this game and he broke every one of them. But to kill him out of hand … that would simply be to invite their wrath.”
“So what now? Do we hunt him down?”
“In this place? We’re the ones who’d be hunted! We don’t know what he has here, what he can do.” Suddenly Gill felt trapped—even more so than when he’d been a true prisoner of the House of Doors, in worlds utterly beyond his control. “Jesus,” he panted, throwing up his hands, “there’ll be stuff here he can use against us! And …” He paused, chewed his lip and gradually fell silent, became thoughtful.
“And?” Angela prompted him.
“And … stuff I might be able to use against him!” Gill’s smile was grim when finally it came. “The synthesizer—the House of Doors-is just a machine after all. Think of it as a car, and the alien as the driver. But I’m an unwilling passenger and I can give him real problems.”
“Like fiddling with the knobs on the dashboard?” said Turnbull. “Stamping on the brakes, and so forth?”
“Maybe even the accelerator,” Gill answered.
And as the big man helped Angela to her feet, Gill in his turn sat down. He offered them one last hot and harassed glance—and even managed the ghost of a smile—then closed his eyes and put his head in his hands. And all around them the House of Doors was a great maze of eerie, multihued mobility, and very, very quiet … .
 
But in Gill’s mind—within the world of his machine mentality—it was not quiet. Sith was already at work, mobilising the synthesizer to the attack. And Gill could feel the alien’s agile “fingers” at work as surely as the hand of some careless thief in his pocket. Careless because he thought he had Gill’s measure, and that this merely “human” being was more or less helpless. Gill knew this and was determined to prove him wrong.
Poisonous gases were in the process of being produced; which Gill channelled from their target—his area of the control room—into an unspecified but long-dead world many light-years away in the synthesizer’s memory. Frustrated, Sith answered by “dimming” the lights and other life-support systems; and Gill at once cancelled his command and “switched” them on again. Sith located his grotesque correction construct (even now pursuing Haggie across a frozen, alien ocean, where now and then great whale things would crash upwards through the ice to spout) and ordered it back to the House of Doors. Gill countermanded the instruction, told the hunter to bring Haggie to the control room with all possible speed—and then to pursue Sith! An order which Sith at once cancelled.

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