Psychosphere (2 page)

Palazzi sat upon a spread handkerchief, his slim legs nonchalantly crossed, his back to a merlon of the ancient battlements, high over Lindos on the precipitous wall of the Acropolis itself. He held a pair of powerful binoculars to his eyes in slender, highly articulate and well-manicured hands, his gaze fixed upon the vine beneath which he could just make out the light blue of Garrison's T-shirt and the coolly contrasting greens of Vicki's skirt and top. He smiled to himself, idly reflecting upon his own cleverness.

His
modus operandi
was simplicity itself, perfected over the last three seasons. Three seasons, yes, for he had discovered Lindos three summers ago. Lindos and its mighty rock.

From the old battlements, courtesy of the crusading Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, he could see virtually all of the village. Not a single house or home, shack or taverna was hidden from his scrutiny. Sitting here, warm in the brilliant sunshine and breathing the sweet, clean air of the Aegean, he could study any victim's to and froings at will, picking and choosing the perfect time to strike. And occasionally, just occasionally, there would be enough in it to keep him in luxury for…well, for a little while at least.

As for the way it worked:

Tomorrow evening, for example, Garrison and his lady would very likely go out. They would eat, drink, talk a little in one or another taverna late into the Lindos night. Their movements would be languid, leisurely. They were on holiday, in no mood to hurry. Later they might go to a disco, burn off a little excess energy. But whatever they did, it would make little difference. Palazzi, having seen them leave their rooms, would have plenty of time to get in, discover their hidden valuables (they all did that, hid away their jewelry and spare cash), take what he wanted and get out.

And of course Garrison would not be his only victim tomorrow night. There was also a fat, rich Frenchman and his mistress, who Palazzi knew were booked to see a show tomorrow in Rhodes; and finally there was a Swiss playboy and his girlfriend, who invariably danced and drank the night away. And all of them would be leaving their accommodation at approximately the same time, their movements entirely visible in the magnifying lenses of the thief's binoculars. And the cost of remaining up here when the crowds of visitors were finally ushered out of the place and the Acropolis locked its door? Oh, a few hundred Drachmas, enough to keep the gnarled old watchman in ouzo for a night or two.

And in the early hours of the following morning—with the sun not long up and the local constabulary still rubbing the sleep from their eyes—why, Paulo Palazzi would be gone! Lone passenger in a taxi headed for Rhodes town, where he would change his suit, his style, unload a few choice items for cash and re-adopt his real name. Under which, four or five days from now, he would fly back to Genoa and business as usual. And if what he had seen of Mrs. Garrison's jewelry alone was anything to go by…it would be quite a long time before he needed to do any “serious” work again.

Which was probably why he was so cheerful, nodding a bright good morning to a couple of pretty British girls with Birmingham accents where they leaned out over the wall close by and
oohed
and
aahed
their awe at the scene spread below. Yes, it was a very pretty scene, and a
very
good morning. Hopefully tomorrow would be just as good, and especially tomorrow night.

Putting his binoculars away, snapping shut the catch on their case and standing up, Palazzi smiled at the girls again. One of them had the most exquisitely jutting breasts. He licked his lips. A pity this was a purely business trip, but—

Well, business is business…

F
IVE MINUTES AFTER
J
OE
B
LACK LEFT THE ELEVATED PATIO WHERE HIS
intended victim now breakfasted, Garrison paused with a forkful of scrambled egg raised halfway to his mouth. Suddenly upon his mind's eye, leaping into view from nowhere, he had viewed—something. A scene. Not a true memory but something else entirely. Just what…he couldn't say, except that for a moment all of his senses had seemed electrified into a tingling defensiveness. The scene had been dim and smoky and had depicted a male figure, seated, his hand spinning a small roulette wheel which he held between crossed legs. The thing had lasted no longer than a split second. Now it was gone, beyond recall.

“Richard?” Vicki's voice reached him. “Something with your egg?”

He unfroze, relaxed shoulders grown too tight, and lowered his fork. “No,” he smiled, “it's fine. I've had enough, that's all.”

“You looked so strange just then,” she was concerned.

“Did I? Oh, I was probably miles away.”

She tilted her head questioningly. “Is it nice there?”

“Um?” He was still distant.

“What were you thinking?”

“Thinking?” He shrugged, shook his head, said the first thing that came into his mind—something which mildly surprised even him.

“Did you notice the man who left a few minutes ago? With the leather pants and flowery shirt?”

“Yes, a German like me. Or rather more typical—or at least how you English believe a typical German should be.” She smiled. “A bit loud, really. You were thinking about him?”

“Too loud,” Garrison answered, “and not at all German. And yes, I suppose I must have been thinking about him.”

“Not German? But he looked so—” She stopped smiling. “You were eavesdropping? Listening to his thoughts? But why, Richard?”

“Actually, I wasn't,” he said truthfully. “Hell, I hardly noticed the bloke. But—oh, I may have seen him before somewhere. He's not German, though, you can be sure of that.”

“And does it matter? His nationality, I mean?”

He wrinkled his nose, gave her question perfunctory consideration, grinned and said, “Shouldn't think so.”

Now Vicki relaxed, reached across the table and took his hand, laughed out loud. “Oh, Richard, you really are the strangest man!” And because it had been spontaneous, she failed to see the significance of her words.

Garrison continued to grin outwardly, while inside:

Oh, yes
, he thought,
I really am. But there are stranger things in heaven and earth, Vicki, my sweet. Stranger by far
.

And he knew that one of those things, those oh-so-strange things, was even now beginning. Or perhaps it had started long ago and only now was coming to a head, like pus gathering in a boil.

All about Garrison the Psychosphere eddied and swirled, pulsing endlessly, apparently ordered and serene. But occasionally it carried the ripples of far, distant disturbances beyond his understanding. Such ripples were there even now; they did him no harm, but they troubled him. He felt like a fish swimming in the Great Sea of the Psychosphere, and like a fish he sensed the presence of some mighty predator. Out there, somewhere in the fathomless deeps—a shark!

That was an interesting thought:

A shark in the Psychosphere, and Garrison not so much a fish as a spear-fisherman. While he preyed on smaller denizens of the deeps, somewhere close at hand a large predator circled him. But he wasn't afraid, or at least not wholly afraid, for he had his spear-gun. Except…if a confrontation was in the offing, would his gun be powerful enough? Its once-tough rubber hurlers were getting old, growing weaker from continued stretching
.

Worse than this, would he even see the enemy if it came—or would it coast up silently behind him, jaws agape?

Suddenly fearful, lost in his fantasy, Garrison cast about with his mind. Terror was the spur, boosting his ESP even as it boosted his adrenalin. Searching, he peered deep into the Psychosphere. Somewhere, somewhere…

…
There!

That mottled, marbled shape, silent as a shadow, intent upon the pursuit of some other prey, showing no interest in Garrison whatsoever. Until—

—
The shark-shape turned suddenly in Garrison's direction, came at him in a blind, head-on fury, a dull-gray bullet snarling through the matterless stuff of the Psychosphere
.

It was close, looming closer…it sensed him!

“Richard?” Vicki's voice reached in to him, causing him to start as if slapped—which in turn made her jump. “Wandering again?” she nervously asked.

Garrison's face felt drained of blood—but he forced a grin, rose and reached across the table to draw her up with him. He hoped she couldn't feel the trembling in his arms. “Good idea,” he said. “To wander, I mean. Let's walk down towards the beach…”

But even as they set out she could tell that he was still not entirely with her…

More than fifteen hundred miles northwest of Rhodes it was midday and brilliant with sunshine. London was abustle—but in Charon Gubwa's mind-castle all was cool, shaded and calm as a somnolent beast. The Castle did
not
sleep—it never slept—but Gubwa had been alone all morning in his private quarters and not to be disturbed; which was about as close as the Castle as an entity might ever get to the stasis of slumber.

The Castle's staff, Gubwa's “soldiers,” went about their tasks almost robotically, corpuscles in the Castle's veins; the machines and computers and support systems throbbed and pumped, rustled and ticked and whirred, organs by which the Castle lived; but Charon Gubwa himself—rather, the Gubwa consciousness, the id, the mind of the place—he had in part removed himself. Physically he was there, for he was also the Castle's pulse, without which it could not function and would have no purpose, but mentally…

This was one of those days when Gubwa practiced his arts, when he exercised his mind as more orthodox men might exercise their bodies; except that where the latter were bent upon physical creativity, the structural improvement of themselves, Gubwa's exercise were designed for the mental degradation and eventual destruction of others. And they were in truth “exercises”: training tasks he set himself to carry him to the very threshold of an objective—but not to cross it. Not yet. Not until the time was ripe, when the result could only be total victory.

And in this respect Gubwa was a general, whose weapons were the telepathic and hypnotic powers of his own mind. The Castle and its staff: they were merely his armor. The world outside, the world of common men: that was his objective. Eventually.

But Gubwa was tiring now. His exercises had lasted for close on three hours and he was beginning to feel that mental strain which ever accompanied such excesses of mind.

He was seated in a massively padded armchair before a great glass tube which reached vertically from floor to ceiling. Within the tube a large globe of the world, with its continents and oceans etched in realistic bas-relief and color, hung in electro-magnetic suspension. Gubwa's eyes were closed; he sat completely relaxed—physically. Indeed he might well appear to be asleep, but he was not.

Upon his lap lay a computer remote, its tiny screen glowing with this word and coordinates.

Moth 3°95'—64°7'

“Moth” was the codename of one of Britain's Polaris submarines and the coordinates told her location: midway between Iceland and Norway roughly halfway along an imaginary line drawn due North between the Shetlands and the Arctic Circle. On Gubwa's globe this location showed as a steady point of light in the western reaches of the Norwegian Ocean, a telltale glow which served purely as a guide, a focal point, for his intense telepathic transmissions.

The coordinates had been snatched from the unsuspecting mind of the Duty Officer at the pen in Rosyth, roughly corroborated by a similarly unwitting mind in the Admiralty, and given final definition by Moth's Captain himself where he went about his duties 400 feet beneath a sparkling, choppy, sun-flecked surface. And that was where Gubwa's mind was at this very moment, seated astride the mind of Moth's commander.

The Castle's master was well pleased with the way the morning's exercises had gone—so far. But this was his last “visit” of this session and it was the most important; it would determine his mood for days to come—it might one day determine the fate of the world.

As for the rest of the morning's work, work already completed:

Strategic Air Command had been a hard one. The Americans—especially their military elements—had a rigidity of mind difficult to crack; they were mentally obstinate. USAD's pilots were no exception. The United States Airborne Deterrent had often been described as a never-ending flirtation with disaster, but it was also the symbol of a nation's security-consciousness carried to the nth degree. Never a moment of the day or night went by without some of those planes were in the sky, and the minds of their pilots were never easy to find and had proved singularly difficult to penetrate.

Be that as it may, Gubwa knew most of them by now; and yet not one of them knew him. His knowledge was the result of over three years' covert surveillance, a gradual insinuation of himself into their minds. This was a continual process which he must forever update and change to suit circumstances. Air patrol routes were changed from day to day (deliberately, of course, to confound the Russians; but as often as not to Gubwa's confusion, too) and pilot turnover was fairly frequent. Because of the nature of the task, however, pilot substitution or replacement never occurred
en bloc
; there were always half-a-dozen easily recognizable, susceptible minds open to him, most of which he had learned to control in one degree or another. For control was the real object of these exercises. To control minds such as these was to control world destiny. Literally.

This morning Gubwa might well have started World War III, and it was his intention one day to do exactly that. For example: he might have caused one or more of the supersonic, nuclear-armed American bombers to enter into Russian airspace, ignoring all commands to turn back. Simultaneously he might have bombed or “nuked,” as current jargon would have it, Detroit, Boston and Ottawa. And if he had also managed to maintain radio silence there would have been no way to convince the Pentagon and US authorities that such an attack had been carried out by their own planes! Even had they accepted the unacceptable, conditions worldwide would by then have been rapidly disintegrating, with every country of major military capability elevated to or accelerating towards a “red alert” situation. At which stage…a little pressure applied to a certain jittery mind controlling the firing-buttons of a nest of missiles in their silos at Vytegra, USSR, and—

—And then there had been the Chinese.

Gubwa had been there, too—to a selected location in the scattered chain of silos along the border of the North Sinkiang Desert. The Chinese still did not have the West's or Russia's targeting technology, but what they lacked in sophistication they more than made up for in muscle. And their bombs were incredibly dirty. A chain-reaction of hysterical button-pushing there could well result in a thousand-mile wide band of nuclear destruction and desolation reaching from the Aral Sea to Siberia!

All very gratifying, and Charon Gubwa might well congratulate himself on the success of the morning's exercises so far. He had broached these various thresholds without breaching them, which remained a step for the future. But now, in the mind of Moth's commander, he desired to apply one last test before terminating today's training session. And this was a test which would require a delicate touch indeed—or a brutal one, depending on the point of view.

Gubwa had long since learned all of the atomic submariner's habits and idiosyncrasies, and he was well aware of Captain Gary Foster's wont to catnap. The sub's commander was one of those people who work best under pressure, the more extreme the better; whose mind and body performed at their highest levels of efficiency under a workload others would deem crippling. And when called upon he could perform under such stress for long hours at a stretch, even days. His secret (or so he himself believed) lay in an equally impressive ability to fall asleep, however briefly, at the drop of a hat.

This he was given to do as often as three or four times in any period of twenty-four hours, always to the amazement and occasionally the consternation of his immediate subordinates and crew; for while they themselves would normally sleep for six or seven hours at a stretch between duties, their Commanding Officer rarely went down for more than two hours and often made do with as little as fifteen minutes! In the middle of a watch—or a good read of
Playboy
, or a hand of poker—when by all rights Captain Foster should be deep in slumber, he would silently, unexpectedly appear in a hatchway or through a bulkhead door, his sardonic, humorless grin cold as the wind from the pole. So that Moth's company was aware to a man that there was never a time, nor even a moment, when they could guarantee that their Captain was “off-duty.” It made, he was in the habit of reminding them, for a “very tight ship.” It was good for discipline.

And it made Charon Gubwa's task that much easier.

Sleeping minds were far simpler to penetrate; in sleep a man's mental defenses are down, where often a mere suggestion may carry the weight of a command. Using his usual technique of gradual insinuation over many short visits, Gubwa had found that he could slip in and out of certain minds as easily as unlocked rooms, inhabiting and using them as he saw fit. And from the sleeping mind—where certain deeply embedded post-hypnotic commands could be left to take root and germinate—it was usually only a short step to the waking mind, when Gubwa's unwitting host would become quite literally a zombie working to his command. Thus it was with several of the USAD pilots, and thus he intended it to be with Moth's commander.

It is, nevertheless, a rare brand of hypnotism indeed that can cause a man to do that which his nature would not permit at its normal level of consciousness. And this was the purpose of today's test run: to see if it were possible so to manipulate Gary Foster's mind that he would perform
contrary
to the fundamental elements of his own nature, ideals, and training. In short: to see if he could be made to press the button! Not to actually cross that threshold, no, but certainly to stand upon its doorstep.

Gubwa had found Foster taking a catnap, a habit of the Captain's around midday, and had crept into the unguarded, sleeping mind. There had been no dreams as such, merely an awareness of the great gray metal shape surrounding mind and body as it cruised in the deeps, powerful as the atomic engine which propelled it and semi-sentient with its computer-controlled “mind” and sensors. With no dreams to usurp, Gubwa had simply inserted a phantasm of his own:

IT'S COLD OUTSIDE, BITTERLY COLD. WE ARE THREE HUNDRED MILES INSIDE THE ARCTIC CIRCLE, EDGE OF THE BARENTS SEA, LYING STILL ON THE BOTTOM AT THIRTY FATHOMS. MOSCOW IS 1300 MILES AWAY. THIS IS NO EXERCISE. THE ALERT STATE IS RED. IT IS RED ALL OVER THE WORLD. THIS IS WHAT YOUR TRAINING WAS ALL ABOUT, GARY. THIS IS WHAT IT WAS FOR…

NOW YOU CAN ONLY WAIT. YOU WAIT IN THE OPS AREA. YOUR RADIO OP HAS JUST RECEIVED INFO THROUGH THE DECODER. HIS FACE IS WHITE, DRAWN…

In his tiny cabin, Foster moaned and turned over on his narrow bunk. Droplets of sweat stood out suddenly upon his brow. He mumbled some incoherent query, but in his dream his words were sharp-etched, brittle with tension. “What is it, Carter?”

“Russian bombers are on the edge of our airspace. Others are coming over the roof, closing on Canada. American bombers are already inside Red airspace. And…and…”

“Yes, Carter?” Foster snapped. “Come on, Sparks, what is it?”

Carter nodded, gulped. “We're to initiate NUCAC 7.”

NUCAC 7: first phase of a missile launch! Following which there would be NUCACs 8, then 9…and finally 10. And 10 would signify the launch itself!

Foster almost said: “No, I don't believe it,” but he held the words back. Instead he said: “Action stations, all. NUCAC 7 op immediate. Other NUCACs…imminent. Mate?”

His 2IC, Mike Arnott, nodded briefly, grimly. NUCAC required both of them: in the hands of one man alone it would be too dangerous. Unthinkably dangerous.

Carter called out: “Coms cut between Moscow and Washington…”

The keys code had come through with the NUCAC 7 order; Carter had already punched the code into Moth's ops computer. Twin red lights were flashing on panels in the curving walls; the panels slid open. Foster reached up and took out a bunch of harmless looking keys from one recess; likewise Arnott from the other.

To one end of the ops area, built into the bulkhead, stood a booth only slightly larger than a telephone kiosk; its windows were dark, tinted; its sealed door bore the legend:

Nucac Cell

Foster and Arnott crossed to the booth, inserted duplicate keys in locks on opposite sides of the door, turned them. The seals snapped open, interior lights flickered into life. Foster slid the door aside and they entered, cramming themselves into tiny padded seats and facing each other across a table whose center was a screen. Foster reached up and pulled the door shut. Outside in the ops bay Sparks plugged in their audio system and gave them direct access to all incoming signals.

GOOD! said Gubwa, fascinated by the progress of the dream he had instigated.

Foster glared across at Arnott and barked, “Good? What the hell's good about it?” The other stared blankly back. Both men put on headphones.

NUCAC 8, said Gubwa.

“Jesus Christ!” Foster hissed through clenched teeth. “It's all coming apart!” Almost automatically, he and Arnott pressed twinned buttons, fed coded coordinates into the computer for its translation, watched the illuminated, reticulated table-screen coming to life between them in lines of red and blue light, glowing with figures, times, ever-changing computations.

Gubwa was now the voice of incoming signals. He painted a scenario of chaos, madness:

SEVEN RED BOMBERS INTERCEPTED AND TAKEN OUT OVER MANITOBA. SATELLITES REPORT INCREASED
ACTIVITY
ROUND SILOS IN RUSSIA AND INTERMEDIATE MISSILE BATTERIES IN EAST GERMANY. FRENCH SILOS SABOTAGED BY 5TH COLUMNISTS. PARIS NUKED! ICBMS FIRED IN USSR! AND IN USA! CRUISE MISSILES LAUNCHED ON USSR FROM EUROPE! INNER LONDON NUKED!

“
Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!
—” Foster was whispering over and over.

NUCAC 9, said Gubwa.

“No!” Foster gasped. “It's all wrong! It has to be wrong! We would've been the first to know, not the last. They're blowing up the world out there—bombers, ICBMs, Cruise—and we're only on NUCAC 9?” Sweat dripped from his chin, plastered his shirt to his back. Outside his dream, Foster's body struggled out of his bunk, staggered from his tiny cabin.