The Dreaming Dragons Part 3

'I see.' Alf slipped into sarcasm, to avoid facing this latest burst of guilty retrospective terror. 'Such as old-fashioned pre-electronic ray guns.'

Fedorenko inclined his head. 'The merit of a laser beam, Dr Dean, is that it can be transmitted quite a long way, if it is of the appropriate frequency. The pump does not need to be situated near the glitch zone. When we found the Gate you activated, it was still responsive to human proximity.'

An image seared Alf's mind: a huge box-like interior of white light, a vast sphere in its centre. The pseudo-memory flashed off, a neon sign extinguished. 'Serpent's egg,' he mumbled.

'I'm sorry?'

But the image was gone, tangled with sc.r.a.ps of nightmare.

'Nothing,' Alf said. 'I've been hallucinating pretty badly. It was just -- '

Lapp stared at him with interest. 'I wanted to ask you about that, Alf. Any details?'

Beneath his black skin, blood coursed. The flush made his face glow. 'Some. Meaningless. The garbage you get in any nightmare.' Deliberately, he directed his gaze to the Russian physicist. 'You were talking about lasers.'

Lapp nodded almost imperceptibly. The scientist went on at once. 'We wished to establish if the Gate was still tuned to the Vault. Geometric constraints prevented us viewing the steps without sending someone into the defensive zone, and that would not work. Alf, you are the first adult to come out of the zone with your sanity intact. And it would have been equally pointless to send a scout through the Gate, since we had established that it is a one-way trip. So I decided to emplace mirrors along the cavern course, to direct an optical laser pulse on to the roof of the Vault. There, it would be visible from our own access point.'

'You bounced the beam along the tunnel? Then into the Gate, angled parallel to the steps?'

'Precisely.'

'And the laser beam put the Gate out of business?'

'The Gate turned itself off. That is my estimate. Fortunately, the beam was indeed visible for several microseconds. It flashed on the roof of the Vault simultaneously with its pa.s.sage through the Gate. That distance, in four-dimensional s.p.a.cetime, is of the order of 600 kilometres. Had the beam shone directly through s.p.a.ce, such a journey would have taken one five-hundredth of a second.'

Mirthlessly, Alf said, 'At the speed of light.'

'Quite. In reality, our calibrated instruments showed that it covered the interval instantaneously.'

'You can bet your a.s.s Victor was pleased,' the astronaut said. 'He's the reigning champ in non-local physics. The quantum connectivity Czar.'

Another piece jumped into place. Of course. He'd heard Fedorenko's name last year, as a hot n.o.bel Prize candidate.

'Unfortunately,' Sutton said, with a disgruntled glance at the Russian, 'that item of data cost us. The Gate went off and stayed off. We're back to square one.'

No wonder the blacks had been terrified and awe-struck by the Gate, Alf told himself. One-way, it was lethal. Vividly he remembered the warning signs on the tunnel wall, the ancient aboriginal interdictions. A dozen questions clamoured for his attention. Why had the extraterrestrial engineers placed their exit at the end of a natural tube worming through an escarpment in the middle of one of the world's most inhospitable deserts? Was that location imposed on them, perhaps, by some geometric law of hypers.p.a.ce? Were there, after all, authentic 'places of power' which an advanced science might link together?

Or was his scale wrong? Even mountains creep and buckle and erode given sufficient time. With premonitory trepidation he asked, 'Have you established the age of the Vault?'

'Not the Vault.' Fedorenko pursed his lips. 'The Gate roughly, yes. We've taken extensive mineral samples. Radiological estimates put the worked surface of the Tanami tunnel at some 60 million years BP. Yes, Alf, I felt that way when I saw the report. It is simply beyond the imagination. But the figure is, if anything, conservative.'

All the cert.i.tudes of Alf's professional life seemed to skid, to slide away. Oh Jesus, he thought. I imagined that my hypothesis of an embedded Rhaetosaurus fossil was radical, at the boundaries of credibility. And in reality the Rainbow Serpent was a machine, for the love of G.o.d! A machine erected when this bleached heartland steamed with hot swamp, when the dinosaurs I sought were browsing like voracious tanks in the brackish seas of Central Australia.

His heart had accelerated. It smacked in the bruised cage of his chest, drove blood in painful jolts through throat, wrists, groin. He closed his eyes. For a dreadful moment he thought that once again he was on the verge of snapping free of his body, evaporating out of his damaged flesh to hover above them all in a blue sphere of light.

Desperately he said: 'The Tanami cavern might not be the only Gate exit connected with your Vault. Have you considered that?'

Lapp laughed. In a cadaverous voice he intoned: 'Beware the Bermuda Triangle.' More soberly he said: 'Hey, are you okay? Maybe you've had enough for one day.'

'There's a place my mob call the Ruined City,' Alf said, clinging to the restraints of reason, to the limitations of his body. His heart gradually slowed with his slow, dogged words. 'Burruinju. The Malanugga-nugga used to live in the vicinity. They've been absorbed into other tribes now, what remains of them. Blood-thirsty b.a.s.t.a.r.ds they were, famous for raiding the women of their neighbours. We weren't all stalwart n.o.ble Savages.' His lips peeled back. 'It's terrible country, I drove through it once. Worse than the Tanami, worse than Simpson's Desert. All sharp cliffs, granite, stone escarpments, wind screaming like animals. I think you might find another Gate there.'

He swallowed hard. 'There are doc.u.mented reports. Lights. Incredibly bright, flickering on and off all across the b.l.o.o.d.y cliff face. Everything else dead black at night except the stars. Naturally, as a trained anthropologist with a white man's degree, I wrote it all off. Superst.i.tion. Jesus.'

General Sutton said without hesitation: 'Electric lights. A mineral survey team.'

Wearily, Alf said, 'Impossible. The reports go back too far. And I've spoken to a man who saw them, Phillip Waipuldanya. He was an ambulance attendant, a skilled mechanic. Also a hunter, trained in the traditional techniques. You couldn't ask for a better observer. And it scared the s.h.i.t out of him.'

'Might have been worse.' Looking intently into Alf's eyes, gripping his gaze, Lapp said: 'It could have scared him out of his body.'

Alf felt his heart cramp, falter for seconds, lurch again into action.

'What?' Fingernails drove into his palms. 'What?'

The astronaut sat down on the bed's edge, touched his arm lightly. 'I know,' Lapp told him. 'It happened to me too.'

Without any need to speak explicitly, they had bridged the gulf. It was untenable that Lapp might be lying, or intend some other meaning. Alf said: 'You've been in there.'

'Not inside the Vault. Something similar, on a miniature scale. We have teams in Russia and the States working to duplicate the Vault's defensive fields. That's where I've been. I don't look forward to going back into it again.'

'It didn't happen.' Alf stared ferociously into the man's clear eyes. 'Hallucination.'

'It happened,' Lapp told him. 'Maybe it's hallucination. Harris Lowenthal insists that it is. He's our princ.i.p.al civilian psych consultant. I think I have news for him. It was real.'

'We left our bodies.'

'Sure felt like it.'

'delFord,' Alf said faintly.

'What?'

With animus, the anthropologist snarled: 'G.o.d d.a.m.n it, you heard me. We left our bodies. I don't believe it.'

'Yes,' Lapp said. 'What did you say after that?'

Alf stared. 'I didn't say anything.'

'You said "delFord". William delFord? Do you mean you've already studied the OOBE literature? That's a rather strange coincidence.'

'What the f.u.c.k are you talking about? I don't know any delFord. And what in h.e.l.l is "ooby"?'

From the corner of the room, General Sutton snapped: 'Out-of-body-experience. O-O-B-E. Lunatic fringe. Occult pseudo-science. Captain Lapp, you're out of line. Dr Lowenthal has accounted adequately for those hallucinations.'

Lapp stood his ground. 'He doesn't satisfy me, Dwayne. And I've been inside the gluon field. I know what it felt like. I believe Alf Dean's experience corroborates mine. And if delFord is still working on OOBE, we could usefully bring him in on this. Christ, yes, he's the perfect choice. I've read his Huxley reports. He's the only one in the OOBE regiment who's making any sense.'

'Are you seriously recommending that we contract Bill delFord? Hugh, you shock me. The man's a, an anarchist!'

'Of whom do we speak?' asked Fedorenko.

'A West Coast nut who might have been a powerful research innovator,' Sutton said, like a man personally affronted. 'We worked together briefly. He's a transplanted Englishman, came over here, uh, to the States I mean, in the early seventies. He did some very good psychophysical work in conjunction with specialists from the Department of Defense.'

With a touch of mockery the Russian said, 'Really? An anarchist?

'That was later. The hippies got to him. Before that he'd married an American girl, got tenure at UCLA -- and then walked away from it with his brain bent by New Age bulls.h.i.t. He directs a place in California, Big Sur someplace, full of hairy freaks running away from the cruel hard world. It sickens me to my belly.'

In some puzzlement, Fedorenko asked Alf, 'How do you know of this delFord?' Ponderously, he proposed: 'The anthropology of "hippies"?'

'Why is everyone asking _me?_' cried Alf in exasperation. 'I've never heard of the b.u.g.g.e.r in my life!'

'But you mentioned his name.'

'You're crazy. It _is_ a lunatic asylum.'

With abrupt decision, Hugh Lapp told Sutton: 'I'm going to do just that, Dwayne, I think delFord could provide just the degree of off-centre impetus this Project needs. A touch of English to keep the ball spinning.' He uttered his own preemptive groan, but went on seriously: 'Don't you find it significant that Dr Dean raised delFord's name -- and instantly blocked his short-term memory of doing it?'

'Not in the least. You mentioned hallucinations of leaving the physical body. Unconsciously, he then recalled the name of a self-styled "authority" on the topic.'

Alf objected strenuously. 'But I've never read or heard of -- '

'Right now, I believe we've taxed Dr Dean sufficiently. In fact I'm astonished that the medics haven't been in here yet to chase us out.'

'It's your ferocious reputation, General. They're quaking in their boots.'

'Me?' Sutton raised his eyebrows. 'It's only psychic charlatans I eat before breakfast.' He turned to Alf. 'Accept my best wishes for your recovery, Dr Dean. I'm returning to the States tonight, so I mightn't have a chance to see you again. No doubt, however, you'll continue to suffer the attentions of these two.' He opened the door.

When they had all gone, Alf ground his large teeth together in furious bafflement. At least his headache had let up. He felt disabled, shockingly weak. The door opened again.

'Just one thing, Alf,' Hugh Lapp's voice said apologetically. 'I meant to mention it earlier. We're making arrangements for you to see Mouse later today.'

Thanks. I don't see why there's been any need for delay.'

The captain stepped into his field of vision. 'The boy has been behaving oddly. Nothing to worry about, though. He's a nice kid, I've been spending some time with him. Tragic.'

'Yeah.' With a deliberate show of insensitivity, Alf added, 'Fortunately he's tractable. I can take him with me on field trips without losing him. Until recently.'

'Ease up on yourself, buddy. You could hardly be expected to take precautions against a teleportation system.'

'I never should have left him alone.' Alf caressed the sweat on his face. After a silence he said, 'He's a good kid. We have him placed with a new stimulus enrichment program they're developing at Monash University, but they insist that it does him good to get out here occasionally with me.'

'Lowenthal diagnosed Non-Specific Cerebral Dysfunction,' Lapp said dryly.

'Dr Fish used the same term. Wonderful, isn't it? Pinpoints Mouse's problem precisely.' Alf exhaled. 'His mother Eleanor was the last of the Goth punks. All black make-up and New Age claptrap and telepathic whales and promiscuous raves. Industrial quant.i.ties of Ecstasy for a while, then LSD. She was knocking down thousands of micrograms a day when she got impregnated by some nameless tongue-pierced wonder. Of course, she considered the contraceptive pill an unnatural chemical, the stupid b.i.t.c.h. She kept dropping LSD doses of that magnitude during the five months it took her to realise she wasn't just getting back her puppyfat.'

'Christ. Let's hear it for good ole dead Doc Leary.'

'The acid got into Mouse through her blood stream. He's been on a constant trip from the day he was born. Zonked, smashed, flying out of his mind. What there is of it. She thought he was going to be the new Messiah. My white sister.'

The sheet had wrinkled and slipped from Alf's torso. The black man stared down at his own glistening chest. Incision welts made his flesh a barbaric shield.

They take the children and slit their bodies with rusty old razor blades, Alf thought distantly, alienated equally from the world of his genes and that of his adopted culture. Of course, no doubt razor blades are a technical advance over the ancient fire-hardened stick. Then they pack the open wound with dry soil and ashes, to contain infection and produce handsome, bubbling scarring. This is my people's notion of decoration, of manhood, he told himself.

He did not notice the astronaut leave, or hear the sick bay door close quietly on his confusion and misery.

*Two: The Belly of the Whale*

*4. California*

Down in the Pacific's flecked jaws, corroded by spume, a rusty automobile sh.e.l.l hung on the rocks, a gutted turtle. Bill delFord leaned out from the Inst.i.tute's cantilevered deck, solid timber against his bulging belly, and imagined he felt gusts of spray rising a third of a kilometre to blow in his face. Rain had ceased, but the dull, drenched ocean punished Big Sur under a winter sky.

I'm getting crotchety in my old age, delFord told himself. Like a talkback announcer's lagged tape, the reflection cycled in his brain. Its pseudo-objectivity shocked him, catching him unawares.

Jesus, I'm not that old, he thought. But it was forty years and more since he'd teased the panties off his first girl in the back seat of a lumpy, ancient Morris Oxford. He grinned at the memory. It had nearly shot his Histology finals to rubble. What could compete with that moist welcome? Certainly not the nephritic truth that the parietal layer of Bowman's capsule, into which the glomerulus is inv.a.g.i.n.ated, is continuous with the glomerular epithelium.

He stepped onto the s.h.a.ggy lawn and bent vigorously back and forth, touching his sandalled toes, giving vent to hearty, full-bodied snorts. The brisk exercise cheered him immensely, as always. He almost found it in him to regard General Sutton's visitation with some avidity.

'f.u.c.k the Pentagon,' he muttered, with a ritual sign, 'and all who sail in her.'

From delFord's breast pocket his personal phone farted, juicy and antiphonal. He sn.i.g.g.e.red merrily, and started back through the damp gra.s.s to the large A-frame perched on the bluff. A sly gift from Benedict, his fifteen year old, the phone's slim case was an auditory jack-in-the-box, a maze of solid-state vulgarity and _joie de vivre_ programmed to appall pompous dignitaries. It had exposed itself for the first time in the middle of an exquisite chamber recital in Durham, although he had it switched to mute: a Daughter of the American Republic dowager had bridled most satisfactorily at the brief squeal of a cow elephant in heat and drawn away aghast when Bill, stiffening in his seat, had collapsed again with coa.r.s.e guffaws. He'd chided the impudent youth, of course, but kept and cherished the software hack.

The day brightened, and rays of splintered light gleamed beautifully from droplets trapped in a fern-spanning spider web. A large official automobile was parked in front of the gla.s.s and copper entrance, with a small official driver dozing peacefully behind the wheel. Bill delFord knew the species: the merest glimpse of military man would bring the driver's shoulders up, firm his features to instant alertness. How wonderful, thought Bill, to be so contained within the matrix of known and predictable necessities. How pitiful.

A spot of golden light caught his eye. Morning sun smeared the bronze plaque above the main doors. Commonplace after so many years, the etched words failed to hold his attention; again, the chiding inward critic noted the dulling of his attention, its mere utilitarian focus. He stopped himself, took several paces backwards and looked up at the plaque. We're somnambulists, he thought.

The quotation was from Laura Archera Huxley, the visionary eclectic's widow: _It is easy for someone without scientific knowledge to accept an unorthodox approach. But for the people learned in any field it is very difficult to accept a conclusion totally different from that which they have formulated through years of work and study_.

Indeed. And thus had Aldous earned his peers' contempt, and the adulation of buffoons. And yet, delFord realised, he felt refreshed by the implied admonition. He wondered if General Sutton had paused here, minutes ago, to read the plaque; he imagined the slight tightening of nose and mouth. They need us, he thought, but they don't have to enjoy it.

Whistling, he stepped into the foyer. Erica indicated the reception annex with her chin, and grimaced. Bill grinned back without a word.

A pair of philosophical opposites framed the annexe door. To the right hung his lovely Rothko, limpid and transparent, films of light blurred at their boundaries. Instinctively, the eye penetrated its planes to infinity, invited to a levitation of spirit. On the left was a statement by Mark Boyle: planar, gritty, a surface of old pitted brickwork from the putrid Liverpool docks where Bill had spent his childhood. Like the fabulously-expensive Rothko, a rich New Age dotcom donor's gift. The painting was in two planes simultaneously, the vertical wall of dark, purplish bricks, the horizontal of some pre-asphalt alleyway; in either orientation, a definitive, workaday squalor. The paintings, comparable in size, strained against each other, until the heart led the brain into their complementarity.

Janine met him with an earthenware mug of steaming dark-roast. It burnt his fingers; he extended his right hand to the general. 'Good morning, gentlemen. You're looking exceptionally fit, Dwayne. How's Barbara and the girls?'

'Fine, fine, Bill. Another grandson last month. And Selma?'

'Dwayne, you should give up all this military nonsense and get down here to the Coast. Selma's health has improved out of sight since we made the move.' He sipped at his mug. 'I gather you have some startling whizbang thingee you want us to road-test for you.'

The general's eyes flickered to Janine. 'Bill, I don't believe you've met these two fellows before.' One was a dour, sandyhaired man in dark suit and tie. 'Lennox Carrington, from Caltech. Lenny's been working long-distance with Ed Witten at the Inst.i.tute for Advanced Studies in Princeton on M-theory's technological implications.' The other was young, an Air Force captain, a burly, eager type who surely possessed more brains than immediate impressions would credit. 'Dr delFord, Captain Hugh Lapp. Hugh has done astronaut training for the Shuttle program, and spent five months with Lilly's team studying cognitive distortion in the isolation tank.'

DelFord ushered them to leather seats. 'Of course,' he said. 'I recall your name on a couple of the final reports. You must be older than you look, Hugh. Maybe the military life does have some virtues after all. And call me Bill, we work on first name basis here. Janine, nip out and make sure the kids are ready. Buzz me.'

She departed, closing the door quietly behind her. Harrington visibly relaxed, though the muscles in his shoulders remained hunched and tight. What he needs to make him a human being, Bill thought, is about fifty hours of Rolfing. The implication was nervous-making. How could broken gauge theory make a man so uptight? The man's muscular rigidity certainly had a more specific cause than general cerebrotonic blocking.