Dimension Of Horror

Chapter 11

The three men sat in Dr. Colby's office. The room was no longer dim, as it was during therapeutic sessions, but flooded with morning sunlight. Richard sat on the couch, Dr. Colby nearby in his usual chair, and J behind the heavy darkstained desk.

Richard said, «What do you intend to do now, sir?» The question was addressed to J.

J sighed. «For the moment, nothing.»

Richard stood up to face him angrily. «Nothing?»

«Calm down, Richard,» the old man said soothingly. «We have our men combing the neighborhood, of course, but…»

«Your men? Is that all?» Richard advanced toward the desk. «What about the local authorities? The police? The FBI?»

«It's best we keep this to ourselves,» J said tonelessly. «Some word of it might get back to the Prime Minister…»

Richard's fist crashed down on the desk, leaving a crack in the veneer. «What are you saying, J? That you're planning on keeping this a secret from the Prime Minister? That you won't even call on Copra House for assistance?»

J templed his fingers. «That is essentially correct. You understand…»

Richard broke in, «Yes, I understand. Any sort of bad news might influence the Prime Minister to shut down the project.»

«Quite so,» J admitted.

A new thought flashed into Richard's mind. «Or is there more to it? J, have you told the PM about the Ngaa?»

«Well, as a matter of fact, no.» At last J's voice betrayed a hint of embarrassment.

Blade was angry. «I don't like this, J. I don't like it one damn bit.»

«I didn't expect you to like it, Richard. I did, however, expect you to listen to reason.» J looked up with troubled eyes at the giant looming over him. «Would it help, really, to broadcast our little problems all over the world? Think, my boy, think! Would all the police we could possibly summon find your Zoe if the Ngaa chose to keep her hidden?»

«Perhaps not.» Richard's broad shoulders slumped.

J leaned forward. «Dr. Colby and I believe the Ngaa and Zoe are somewhere in the neighborhood. Isn't that right, doctor?»

Colby agreed quickly, «Yes, sir. It is Richard the Ngaa is trying to influence. The Ngaa will stay close to Richard, and keep Mrs. Smythe-Evans with it.»

«Let me look for her,» said Blade. «Set me free and let me look for her.»

«That I cannot permit!» J spoke sharply. «You must stay here until the government examiners arrive, and then you must put on the most convincing performance of sanity for them that your mentality can conceive, and that's an order!»

Richard thought, We shall see about that.

«And not a word to them about the Ngaa,» J added. «Is that understood?»

«Yes, sir,» Richard responded.

J studied his face suspiciously. «You worry me more when you say yes than when you say no. You must realize that if we lose Zoe-and I don't think we will-she is one of us now. She's a soldier, like you and I, and expendable.»

«Expendable. Yes, sir.»

«So you will obey my orders?»

«To the letter, sir.»

«I hope you won't take this personally, but I'm going to lock you in your room until the examiners arrive. A routine precaution, since you've given me your word…»

«Of course, sir. If I were in your place, I wouldn't believe me either.»

Dr. Colby stifled a nervous laugh.

London and Berkeley have one thing in common: fog.

Berkeley's normal pattern was summer fog and winter rain, but the drought had made nonsense of normality and turned meteorology from a science into a gamble. The fog came now almost every night, though the season was all wrong for it, and instead of drifting in from the sea, it built up on cold windless evenings over the inland marshes east of the Berkeley hills, finally, in the frigid hours before dawn, spilling through the gaps in the coastal range to cascade in silent gray cataracts down upon the sleeping city and out toward the Golden Gate.

Richard lay on his bed, fully dressed and wide awake, watching the fog outside his window.

And snoring.

The snoring was for the benefit of J and whoever might be listening on the headphones down the hall. Was the fog thick enough yet? Yes. Soon it would start to thin again as the first rays of the morning sun burned it off.

The time to move was now.

Still snoring lustily, Richard rolled carefully out of bed and, on stocking feet, tiptoed to the door. He stopped snoring a second to listen, then proceeded to remove the hingepins from the hinges, first the top hinges, then the bottom.

He returned to his bed and picked up his pillowcase, from which the pillow had been removed. He put his tennis shoes in and lay down a moment, then rolled noisily, giving the impression to his listeners, he hoped, that he was turning onto his side.

Then he stopped snoring and waited.

Nothing happened.

He got up and once again padded noiselessly to the door. From his pocket he took a short length of wire he had earlier removed from the lightcord of his bedlamp. The wire was thin, no more than a few strands he had carefully separated from the rest, but he was sure it would be strong enough for his purposes.

He looped it around the door hinge and gently opened the door on the hinge side. The room, fortunately for him, had never been intended to hold a determined escapee. Colby had not bothered to change the hinges he had inherited from the ballet school that had been the building's previous tenant.

Richard squeezed through into the dimly lit hallway, then, pulling on the wire, drew the door back into its frame so that from the outside there was no way to tell the hingepins had been removed. Smiling, he pulled out the wire and pocketed it.

Still in stocking feet he moved swiftly to the door of the room where the tranquilizer pistols were kept. The combination padlock was no serious problem, though he missed the faint, almost imperceptible clicks of the falling tumblers the first time he tried, and had to spin the dial and start over. The second time it opened easily.

He entered the closet and found the pistols, six of them. With his bare hands he bent the barrel of each weapon slightly, enough to keep it from firing accurately, except for the sixth, which he left intact and dropped into his sack, along with several boxes of tranquilizer darts. If these darts are intended for me, he thought, they'll be powerful, powerful enough to knock a man unconscious.

Remembering that the guard would soon be coming to check his room, Richard left the closet and locked it quickly, then descended the back stairs into the pitch-dark kitchen. Guided mainly by memory he threaded his way through the stoves, tables and shelves to the pantry, where, again by memory (for he had watched everything that was happening even before he had begun to speak), he found the burglar alarm and shut it off.

Next he glided to the back door, unlocked it, and stepped out onto the porch.

So far so good!

He put on his tennis shoes, knotted his pillowcase bag to his belt, and proceeded softly down the steps. Crouching, he rounded the corner of the building, moved through the side yard and, after a pause to look and listen, continued into the front yard.

In the distance he could see a blob of indistinct light where the guards at the front gate were talking in low voices. Richard could not make out what they were saying, but their tone of boredom clearly showed they knew nothing of Richard's intentions. Richard checked the fog, the lighting. Some dim yellow light came from the front porch, but not enough to illuminate the thing that interested him.

The flagpole.

He darted across the weed-cracked paving stones to the base of the pole and gripped it firmly. It was better anchored than he'd expected, but three good tugs, with feet planted on either side of it, and it pulled free, making a scraping sound that Richard was afraid the guards might hear.

He paused, the pole swaying above him.

No, the guards went on talking in the same bored tone.

Richard, balancing the pole in his hands, sped across the paving stones toward the side fence. As he entered the grove of trees on one side of the walkway, he again relied on memory to guide him. In the darkness and fog his eyes were not much help. Up ahead must be the wire-mesh fence topped with barbed wire. Exactly how high had it been? Exactly where was it located? If he was going to vault it, he'd have to be high enough not to get caught in the barbed wire, but low enough so he wouldn't fall back or, clearing the fence, break his neck on the other side.

He set the base of the pole on the ground, then lowered the shaft carefully, finding the point where he thought he should hold it. Here? No, here!

He lifted it, hefted it for balance. Yes, that felt right. He was now holding it parallel to the ground.

He advanced toward the unseen fence, careful not to strike anything with his awkward seesawing burden.

There was the fence, exactly where he'd expected it.

He measured it with his eye, then retreated for his run. It would have to be perfect the first time. It wasn't likely he'd get a second chance.

He wheeled, swinging the pole into position, took a deep breath, and started. Even now, running full tilt, he made very little noise, less noise than the distant guards, who now burst out in a gale of harsh laughter, as if at some particularly obscene joke.

The fence appeared out of the fog, looming ahead.

The point of Richard's pole dropped, dug into the ground. Richard, clinging to the pole, soared upward and, at the top of the arc, thrust the pole back and himself forward.

The barbed wire grazed his elbow as he plunged.

The ground, though he tried to do a parachutist's roll, socked him with the force of a wrecker's demolition ball, knocking the wind out of him, setting the universe spinning. Had it not been for the soft ground cover of pine needles, he could easily have cracked a rib.

On the other side of the fence the pole fell with a clatter that seemed deafening.

The conversation of the guards ceased.

A flashlight beam swung from side to side in the fog. One of the guards-perhaps both of them-was coming. Richard, rolling from his back to his belly, could hear the tramp of heavy boots. Yes, both of them were coming. He could tell by the sound.

Richard thought, Shall I run for it?

He realized he could not. He was still too dazed from the fall. He waited, hardly daring to breath.

The flashlight beam passed directly across the fallen pole and continued on. Didn't those idiots know this was no mere stick of wood? Didn't they notice the old flagpole was not in its usual place?

«Nothing here,» said the first guard.

«Always a lot of funny noises around here at night. Maybe it was a deer. A lot of deer have been coming into town because of the drought. Nothing green out in the woods anymore,» said the second.

«Yeah, right. It must have been a deer,» agreed the first.

The two men turned and tramped back toward the front gate.

Richard exhaled.

When he felt able, he crept away, listening to the resuming bored conversation of the guards, and scaled a high wooden picket fence, dropping catlike into someone's backyard. From the yard he passed along the side of a stucco-faced cottage and found himself on a narrow winding street lined with parked cars with their wheels up on the curb, sparsely lit by fog-shrouded yellow streetlights.

«I can't believe it was so easy,» Richard whispered to himself, as his previous anxiety was replaced with a rush of delighted exhilaration. He picked a direction and started to jog along at an effortless mile-eating pace, pausing to crouch in the bushes only when eyes or ears warned him of an approaching car.

When he had run what seemed to him at least three miles, he came in sight of a small two-story brown shingle-sided house where he could see, through the picture window, a flickering television screen.

He slowed to a walk, climbed the front steps, and pressed the doorbell. From the other side of the door he could hear some sort of beast roaring on the TV, and a woman screaming, then approaching footsteps.

A peephole opened at about eye level, and someone looked out. «Who is it?» demanded a gruff, weary voice.

Richard stood back so the man could see him, saying, «My name is Howard DeVore. I'm an ambulance driver. We've had an accident down the road. Could I use your phone to call in?»

«Well, eh, all right. I suppose so.» The man grudgingly opened the door, after first unlocking a deadbolt lock and removing a door chain. «The phone's right here in the hall.»

Richard entered, brushing past the man, glancing at him only long enough to notice that he was bald, middle-aged, and wearing a T-shirt decorated by a picture of Howard the Duck.

«I saw your light,» Richard said.

«Yeah,» the man answered with a yawn. «I couldn't sleep, so I stayed up to watch the Creature Feature show on the boob tube. You know how it is.»

«Yes, I know how it is.» Richard located the telephone and lifted the receiver.

The man hovered around, apparently hoping to listen in on the conversation.

«Do you mind?» Richard demanded acidly, and the man retreated into his front room, muttering. The television continued to roar and scream and play violent crashing symphonic chords.

Richard dialed a number, thinking, It's been fifteen years. I hope they're still keeping this number going.

The answer came on the second ring. «Tomcat Skip Tracer Service.» The man's voice was cultured, slightly contemptuous. Thank God, thought Richard. But then he realized he needn't have worried. The Tomcat Skip Tracer Service was a wholly-owned clandestine subsidiary of the CIA. Once opened, a CIA front business never closes, no matter how little money it makes or how useless it is as an intelligence tool. The theory is that someday, somehow, it will come in handy.

«This is Richard Blade. I need help. Can you patch me through to Ordway?»

There was a silence, then the voice on the other end of the line said, «We haven't heard anything about you for a long time, Dick.»

«You're not supposed to hear things about me if I'm doing my job right.»

«You've got a point there. Okay, I'll put you through to Ordway, but for your sake I hope you're in deep trouble. If you're not, you will be. Ordway likes his beauty sleep.»

In the small gymnasium with the disquieting mirrors J stood by the wall phone frowning, the yellowish naked lightbulb overhead accentuating his unhealthy complexion and the flaccid purple sacs under his eyes.

«Lord Leighton, is that you?» J demanded.

«Of course it's me. Who did you expect?»

«I don't know. I don't know. Listen, Leighton. «

«You sound upset, J old boy. Has there been some new disaster over there?»

J drew out his pocket handkerchief and clumsily mopped his glistening brow. «Exactly. Two new disasters in fact.»

«Give them to me one at a time, and pause in between. Let me savor the first to the full before I proceed to the second.»

J noted with annoyance that Leighton's dry sense of humor, normally dormant, was becoming active under stress. «The first is Zoe. She has vanished.»

«Run off somewhere, no doubt, to have a bit of fun.»

«No, literally vanished-poof-before the eyes of witnesses.»

«Some sort of shabby stage legerdemain, I'll wager. A cheap magic trick to make a fool out of you!»

«The magician, in this case, was the Ngaa.»

«I see. That puts a different face on it, doesn't it? Has the Ngaa been up to any other tricks?»

«No, but isn't that enough?»

«You mentioned two disasters. What's the second?»

«Richard Blade has vanished, too.»

«Poof? In front of witnesses?»

«No. He escaped.»

Leighton began to chuckle. «Really? Right out from under the noses of the head of MI6 and a squad of our best cloak and dagger boys? Out of a high-security sanitarium? Tut tut!»

«It's not our fault. This place was never intended to hold someone like Blade. Damn! If only I'd insisted on a decent door on his room!»

«He would have gotten out anyway. You know that. It might have taken him ten minutes instead of five, or whatever it did take. Richard has never stayed very long anywhere he didn't want to stay, no matter how decent or indecent the doors.»

«I suppose you're right, but you see, I'm sure, that this means a change of plans. We can't have those examiners from the Prime Minister's office coming here to examine Richard now.»

«What do you expect me to do about it?»

«Stop them! Stall them somehow!»

«My dear boy, they're already on their way. I'll wager they're halfway across the Atlantic by now.»

«Oh my God.» J slumped against the wall.

«Are you turning religious on me? They say there are no atheists in the front lines, and we're in the front lines in a sense, aren't we?»

«Damn you, Leighton! How can you be so calm?»

«I've given up all hope. You should try it. Does wonders for the nerves.»

«Given up? But. «

«If you're quite finished with your disasters, I'd like to tell you mine.»

«No, not more. «

«Yes, more. The good Doctor Leonard Ferguson, he of the atrocious Hawaiian sport shirts, has come down with a fit of terminal patriotism, trotted over to Downing Street, and told all.»

«Then the PM knows…»

«About the Ngaa? Yes.»

«Oh my God.»

«There you go again, J. You're beginning to worry me.»

«The Prime Minister, Leighton! How did he react?»

«As we expected. He's shutting down the project, and please spare me your habitual blasphemies. You can forget about that deadline. You can forget the entire matter. In slightly more than twenty-four hours the PM's bully boys will be here with sledgehammers to smash KALI and everything else in the underground laboratory into very small bits. And what do I intend to do about it? Absolutely nothing. I am drinking, J. I am drinking the most excellent brandy. When the PM's men arrive, I venture to predict that I will be either unconscious or dead or, at worst, in an advanced and dignified state of delirious inebriation. I highly recommend to you, sir, a similar course of action. As to our friend Richard Blade, I suggest you quite simply call the police and whatever other local sheriffs, deputies, U.S. marshals and unwashed vigilantes, who are entrusted with the administration of justice out there on the western frontier. Let them turn their hounds to the chase! I'm sure they'll run Richard to ground in no time.»

«But the question of security.»

Leighton laughed outright. «Security? Why my dear old friend, security assumes we have some secret left to keep!» J clearly heard the scientist sip and swallow.

«Yes, yes, you're quite right, of course.» J suddenly felt weary and incredibly old. He thought, With the project dead, how long will Leighton live?

Leighton demanded, «Have you anymore nasty news to disturb an old man's well-earned retirement?»

«Well, no.»

«Then with your permission I'll ring off.»

Abruptly the phone went dead.

Numbly J held the receiver until it began to make impolite noises, then he hung up.

He thought, Leighton's right. I should call the police. An all-points bulletin would probably lead to Richard's arrest within hours. After all, Richard could not leave the country without a passport or money, and in that absurd white T-shirt and white slacks he would be highly conspicuous anywhere outside of Berkeley. True, Richard was armed, but only with an air-powered tranquilizer dart pistol that couldn't hit anything more than fifteen or twenty feet away. Richard could not get far. In fact, he was probably still skulking somewhere in the neighborhood.

For a moment J considered the notion that Richard might somehow get back to London. But how? And if he did manage to reach London, there was no way he could get into the underground project, and if he did get into the underground project, it would be too late. He'd find nothing there but wreckage.

Still, if Richard thought the Ngaa had taken Zoe back to its own dimension… J shrugged and thrust the thought from his mind. It returned, stronger than before. Yes, Richard might very well try to get back to London, and…

Suddenly J realized that there was one way Richard might succeed.

He closed his eyes, reaching far back in his mind for a telephone number he had not called in fifteen years.

Hoping he had it right, he dialed.

The voice came, «Tomcat Skip Tracer Service.»

«This is J of MI6. Could you patch me through to Ordway?»

The man took it in his stride. «Right away, sir.»

J heaved a sigh of relief, congratulating himself on a good memory. There were several clicks, then the sound of a telephone being rung. Ordway, of course, would not be in the same building with the Skip Tracer Service. Ordway could be literally anywhere in the world.

«Yes?» The voice on the other end was familiar, a soft, almost gentle baritone, with a hint of a Southern accent.

«Is this Ordway?»

«Ordway speaking.»

«This is J of MI6. «

«Yes. I recognized your voice. I had a report you were in the Bay Area. You're up at Saxton Colby's shabby excuse for a sanitarium, aren't you?»

«Why yes, that's right.» Ordway always had been a showoff, like most of those CIA bastards. A British agent would never have revealed that he knew J was in the region. A British agent would have made sure the flow of information was all one way.

«I thought you'd phone when you had time. Want to have supper with me? Talk over old times?» Ordway was charming as always. Charming, charming, charming! Yet somehow never quite a gentleman.

«No,» J answered, trying to be even more charming. «I'm calling about a bit of a problem we're having.»

«A problem?»

«You remember Richard Blade? The chap who was with me when I was here last?»

«I'll never forget him. He was some kind of agent.»

«Yes. Quite. We've had him here at Colby's for examination and-er-treatment «

«You don't say. Hey, that sounds bad.»

«It's nothing serious. We were doing some deprogramming. I should say, we were treating some-er-battle fatigue.» J felt a flush of embarrassment. He did not like lying about Blade, but was fairly sure the whole truth would not be believed. His compromise lacked the conviction of either sincerity or a well-crafted fabrication.

«I'm sorry, but I don't…»

«The long and short of it, Ordway, is that he has broken out and we have to get him back. He might hurt someone or himself. He's not altogether right in the head, you know.»

«I see.»

«It struck me that since he was an old friend of yours, so to speak, he might try to contact you.»

«That seems reasonable.»

«Well, has he?»

«No.»

«If he does, will you call me?»

«Of course.»

«I'll give you my number.»

«I have it already, if you're still at the sanitarium»

«Yes, I am, and could you put out the word? Could you get your men to dig around for him? I have his picture and fingerprints.»

«So do I.»

J thought, Damn showoff. Always was a damn showoff. But J's voice, when he spoke, was nothing but charming. «Don't hurt him, Ordway, but bring him in as soon as you can.»

«You can count on me.»

«Thank you, sir.»

«Think nothing of it, J old buddy. I'm happy to be working with you again.»

After hanging up, J stood a while in thought before gathering the moral force to dial.

«Information,» chirped the operator.

«Give me the number of the Berkeley police department.»

Glen Ordway of the CIA turned pensively away from the phone and regarded his guest, who lounged in a black leather-upholstered overstuffed chair under a Picasso cubist painting.

«What'll you have?» Ordway smiled broadly.

«Brandy and soda,» answered Richard Blade.