He didn't want to be
contained.
He watched as Dr. Helman moved the suppressor completely out of range of the three containees —and well away from Gulcher. He noticed the guards bringing their guns to bear on the containees when the suppressor was out of range.
“They going to use those guns?” Gulcher asked.
“Not unless they have to,” Sean said, his voice barely audible. He reached up and caught a moth in his fingers and slowly crushed it.
“Talented containees,” Forsythe went on, “are instruments for other beings to act through—and I suppose you can say it's kinda like being a useful machine. But of course that's what you call your oversimplification.”
“I could do this, Forsythe,” Sean said. “We don't need him. This Gulcher thing.” Gulcher ground his teeth. This Gulcher
thing?
“If you could have done it, Sean,” Forsythe said vaguely, “you would have. You have...other specialties. And sure as the devil it's a process of specialization. We need Mr. Gulcher here for this.” “Could end up a mess,” Sean muttered. “But come to think of it, that might be entertaining.”
Forsythe shrugged and called, “Are we ready, Dr. Helman?” “We are!”
“Then, Mr. Gulcher—come over here with me, please.” Forsythe led the way to a seven-pointed star, about four feet across, painted in black on the concrete floor. “If you would stand on the mark there...thank you. I believe you require no special focusing devices.... So if you will simply stand here and”—he lowered his voice, speaking in a tone only Gulcher could hear—”reach out to the Great Power you call the whisperer.”
“It hasn't been answering me much lately. Just once and that was...almost no answer.”
“I believe, for this experiment,” Forsythe said confidently, “you will get an answer.”
Again Gulcher had that sense of something peering at him from behind Forsythe. Or maybe from inside him. He was beginning to suspect what that might mean.
Gulcher had been briefed, barely, on what he was to do. Now he stood on the appointed spot and looked at the three containees sitting in folding metal chairs with their backs to him. The spotty-headed Asian woman on the left was fidgeting, the Krasnoff guy in the middle was slumped like he was in despair, the fat kid sitting on the right, no longer in handcuffs, was picking his nose with an air of boredom. They sat about forty feet from Gulcher, facing the concrete wall. The soldiers and Dr. Helman had gathered behind Forsythe. Gulcher was supposed to apply the whisperer to these three losers in the chairs, and do it in a specific way.
It occurred to Gulcher that if he contacted the whisperer, maybe he could get it to obey his wishes again and send influences into Forsythe and the guards and that Sean asshole—Gulcher
really
didn't like that fucker—and get them to take each other out, like at the prison, then he could get out of this place, be on his own again.
“And if you are considering any digression from our agreed-on course of action here, Mr. Gulcher,” Forsythe said suddenly, giving him that hooded-eyed look he'd given Sean, “why, it won't work, and we'll be forced to punish you as we punish all problem containees.”
The general had shown an ability to look into his mind, Gulcher remembered. Seemed like the old prick was doing it again.
Okay,
Gulcher thought,
there's guns all around me, and the whisperer isn't doing what I want it to all the time. But it seems to need me to talk to it here. Maybe I can play along, do something useful for these spooks and get some kind of good deal for myself in return.
“That'd be fine and dandy, Mr. Gulcher,” General Forsythe said, in a more courtly tone, stepping back out of the way.
Gulcher didn't like people getting into his head that way. But he suppressed imagining what he'd like to do about it. And he went to work.
He looked at the back of Krasnoff's head. He focused, calling out, inside, to the whisperer, using the names he'd been given. Wondering for the first time why there was more than one name.
Focus, focus!
The ethereal steam formed; the man-faced serpents wriggled through it. He stretched out his astral hands and the transparent serpents followed...
Finally converging on Orrin Krasnoff; making him sit up straight and cry out.
“These containees are difficult for us to control.
“ Forsythe had told him, on the way to the courtyard. “Often they'll do just the opposite of what we want—especially the youngster. Control is what you do, with your...special interface. So what we're gonna do, here, Mr. Gulcher, we're gonna use you as a channel for forces that will control these problem containees. You, my friend, are uniquely suited to be of use. There is something Krasnoff does not want to look at. You will control him, make him look into the darkness between the worlds.”
Gulcher felt abstract, now, like he wasn't even here. He felt like he was watching from a million miles away, though he saw it all crystal clear up close.
All the while, the energy of psychic invasion built up around him—until, suddenly, it found an outlet through Krasnoff.
Who screamed—and the scream cut off abruptly, stopped by the projection from Krasnoff's open mouth and eyes, the three beams converging on the wall next to the metal door: a circular, swirling image, edged with multicolored sparkles, a projected vision of a place where shapes constructed and deconstructed constantly; where buildings grew out of buildings, like growths of crystal in fast action, clusters of asteroidal shapes that weren't made of stone at all—you could tell, some way, that it was the stuff thoughts were made of—and boiling out of holes in these constructs were nasty shapes chasing others: some, the pursuers, were decidedly demonic, though in some way humanoid; the pursued were vaguely human, but also buglike.
“One perspective on the Wilderness,” Sean muttered dismissively, behind. The general hushed him.
Krasnoff writhed, as if trying to escape this vision; as if by projecting it, he was within it.
Then the metal door opened. Three women came through into the courtyard—were pushed through from outside the door, really—wearing identical prison-style, institutional-blue shifts, identically bobbed hair, and blue canvas slippers. The door closed after them with a muted clang. The women huddled together and looked around in confusion.
One of the women was blond, with high cheekbones and small eyes. Russian-looking, to Gulcher, or Ukrainian. The other two, much smaller, looked like they might be from Thailand or Laos, one of those places. They all looked scared but also dulled, and resigned. Like they'd been through a lot before they got here. Gulcher knew the type. They were probably sold women, who'd belonged to brothels. What the Internet news called sex slaves. Eastern Europe and Asia had a great many of them. Probably these spooks had bought some for this experiment.
Gulcher didn't really care. He'd learned not to, a long time ago.
“It's your turn, Billy,” Forsythe said.
The Blunt kid was writhing in his seat—then he jumped up and pointed a finger at the blond Eastern European woman...and his face went blank. And the blond woman went rigid in response, her back arching, then she sank to her knees beside one of the other women, who shrieked and drew back —but the blond had the shorter of the Asian women by the knees, was gripping her hard, was
biting into the woman's
7egjust below the hip.
The girl screamed and pounded on the blonde's head but couldn't get her loose. Blood ran down the Asian woman's quivering leg. The third woman tried to back away, but a guard stepped in and shoved her back in place.
Billy Blunt's jaws made biting, chewing motions. The bitten woman squealed and struggled to escape.
“No, Billy,” Forsythe said mildly. “That's not what you were told to do. Now, Gulcher...control him. Control Billy, in turn.”
Gulcher whispered to the whisperer and gestured, and the steamshapes swirled over Billy...and entered him.
Let her go.
The blond woman Billy was controlling jerked back from the Asian woman, her mouth rimmed in blood. She turned to glare at Forsythe.
The bitten woman struck the other woman resoundingly on the back of the head, knocking her down. The blonde lay stunned—and the wounded woman staggered back, hunched down, clutching her injured leg, murmuring in her own language, rocking back and forth.
The other Asian woman turned and ran—and stopped, suddenly, standing a step away from the swirling image on the wall, caught up, gazing at it, fascinated, gawping...then she gasped and her back arched and something ectoplasmic slipped out of the top of her head...and the ghostly shape went
into
the image of the Wilderness projected on the wall, as a solid person would step out of the open door of an airplane to fall through the sky. She was staring at the vision of the Wilderness—and she was
in
the image too: her soul, floating along, tumbling, clawing at nothingness. Even as her body stood there shaking with rigidity, ogling at the image of her own soul drifting away.
“This ain't right,” Forsythe muttered. “Gulcher—take control of the woman sitting in the chair there, Soon Mei. Bring that woman's soul back. Control!”
Gulcher was having trouble maintaining control over Billy and Krasnoff. But he sent a whispering spirit toward Soon Mei. Felt resistance. Felt it thrust at her...then...her back went rigid.
And there was an explosion of ghosts.
The apparitions erupted from the swirling circle on the wall, drawn to the patchy-headed little medium sitting in the chair, Soon Mei. Figures of wailing translucent gel were whirling around her— dozens of them becoming scores more, becoming hundreds, lost spirits compacted into a swirling, living vortex; terrified faces, translucent and tormented, all around Soon Mei—who jumped up, screaming, tearing at her hair, running toward the guards, babbling...
And one of them, prompted by a gesture from Forsythe, knocked Soon Mei down with a gun butt. She fell onto her side, weeping. The ghosts circled in the air over her, a living ectoplasmic vortex, howling.
Krasnoff was standing, shaking, eyes screwed shut, slapping at his own face.
But the Eastern European woman was up then, blood on her mouth like sick lipstick, crouching, turning toward them, her eyes savage, her blond hair wild—Gulcher's control of Billy, who controlled the woman, incomplete. Gulcher struggled to hold her back.
The armed guards tensed. But Forsythe gestured at them to hold off and shouted, “Gulcher—let them all go, release them!” Gulcher was glad to obey. He was way out of his depth.
As Gulcher released Krasnoff, the image on the wall shrank away, as if swirling down a drain... and sucking the eruption of ghosts with it. They were drawn into the drain of the wall and were gone as the image became a pinpoint...and vanished.
Krasnoff collapsed, wriggling on the concrete floor. The Asian woman who'd lost her soul in the image crumpled onto the ground. Lay sprawled on her back, staring.
Dead.
Billy, freed from Gulcher's uneven control, started toward Forsythe and Gulcher, raising his hand, the woman with the blood on her mouth stumbling ahead of him, near the sprawled form of Soon Mei.
Billy was sending the blonde to attack them, Gulcher realized. “Doctor!” Forsythe said sharply. “The boy—the suppressor!”
Helman rushed the dolly with the machine on it between Gulcher and Billy Blunt, and the boy seemed to shiver and shrug...and turned away, giving up, when the machine got close.
The blonde sank to her knees, her eyes going blank. She hugged herself, muttering in some foreign language, near Soon Mei. Who lay there chattering in her own dialect. The surviving woman from Southeast Asia came to sit next to them—some impulse of moral support—weeping and babbling. Three women crying out in three separate languages, voices overlapped and tangled.
The fourth woman, the dead one, just stared emptily at the blackened sky.
Billy sighed loudly and simply sat down on the ground, talking to himself. “This totally like fuckin' sucks, man. I wanta be back in my cell. I got a hella headache, dude.”
Gulcher closed his eyes. He felt sick himself. Like someone had injected sludge into his veins. Like he was tainted.
“Well,” said Sean, behind him, “there you have it, General. Like I predicted. A goddamned fiasco.”
“Not at all,” said the general. “I'll admit it was a mite messy—as you predicted. Pressure on Soon Mei created some kind of backlash, opening a doorway we never intended to open. I did not anticipate losing that subject's soul. Billy proved to be more resistant than we supposed. But the
principle
was proven. We had control—and then we lost it. But we made progress. We just need to refine our approach. There were a few damned good moments there, when the one who came through Gulcher controlled Krasnoff—and to some extent, Billy and Soon Mei. The image of the Wilderness showed us the possibility. The mass visitation. We could use that, on purpose, if we wanted to. Send a mass
visitation against those who get in our way, and then the Great Wrath will be...” Forsythe let the sentence trail off, unfinished.
Gulcher just closed his eyes and wished he could smell something besides blood and fear.
Where the hell have I gotten myself to?
***
RIGHT ABOUT THAT TIME. Generals Swanson and Erlich. In that same Pentagon office, staring into the same computer surveillance window. But they were looking through another set of cameras, a new vantage on the Containment Authority: the courtyard of Facility 23.
General Erlich toyed with a cup of coffee, untasted and gone cold. “Can we be sure Forsythe doesn't know we're monitoring him like this?”
“I don't think he'd have said some of the things he did, if he knew,” General Swanson pointed out, unwrapping a piece of chewing gum. Hard to find Juicy Fruit anymore. Had to order it online. He folded the stick into his mouth, chewed meditatively a moment. “That thing about those who get in their way. Who'd that be? Us maybe? The senators that are down on this project? Foreign enemies? Who? Forsythe knows we're trying to talk the president into closing this thing down.”