The Fourth Guardian Page 13

  He leaned back, his voice hoarse and strained. “But at midnight the matter was taken out of our hands. Whatever it was that was affecting her, augmented physical and psychic powers tenfold, maybe even a hundredfold. It was as close to a horror as I'd ever want to come."

  He composed himself. “She was out there in the dark, screaming. Boulders the size of cars came flying at us, smashing lights, tearing down tents, and there was a glow around her, making it easy for the others to track her movements, but no one wanted to get close enough to calm her.

  "Delambert cried out she was possessed, and he tried to catch what had hold of her when he froze himself, sobbing, clutching at his skull, and then right before my eyes, the same thing happened to the others, one after another, as if each were taken over by an entity."

  Sir Pembroke trembled, and Regis felt the same shiver crawl down his spine.

  "Elizabeth walked into the campsite, looked around, and for the life of me I did not know what she was looking at. She smiled, nodded, and stepped to the north point of the pentagram. Like automatons the others took their places.

  "I'm not certain what was happening, but I had an idea it might help if I could drag them away. I and the other technicians tried doing just that.” He grimaced. “But we couldn't get near them. When anyone got close the person was thrown aside as if by some invisible, giant hand."

  "Then I could see Elizabeth struggle with something in her, and in some miraculous fashion, she broke free.” He grinned sardonically. “When this business started, she proposed that each of the team have a hypnotic command inserted into the subconscious. We thought she was playing us for fools, but she was so serious at the time we went along with the idea.

  The command was telepathically inserted, and if anyone lost control, it was supposed to trigger a psychic shock. That's what happened to her."

  Pembroke's eyes closed wearily and Regis let him rest. Then he looked up and continued.

  "Delambert was the next to break out enough to shout that ‘something’ was coming through, and it had to be held back. Then Godrenn of the Thousand Years, fiercely proud of his Viking ancestry, broke free and ran around gathering us up, which was when I'd become aware that the rest had frozen in place, and with hard slaps in the face we were moving again.

  "Electrical power cables were grabbed, and before I, or anyone else, thought to stop him, he went around shocking each of the others in the pentagram.” He blinked. “Did I tell you while this was going on there was one hell of a storm?"

  "No."

  "Well, it came out of nowhere. It wasn't natural. She had said something was trying to get through, and damned if I didn't see what she meant. The way nature was reacting around us, I don't think it was compatible to our space and time."

  "Something out of the continuum?"

  Pembroke chuckled dryly. “I couldn't have put it better."

  His scrawny frame scrunched deeper into the chair. “So,” he went on, struggling with some inner resolve. “Elizabeth and the other talents finally got themselves together, and then we were all fighting for our lives."

  "What was it?” Regis whispered.

  "A nightmare given a form that we fashioned. If I hadn't lived it, I would have thought it a story for Halloween. But it was real. Lightning flashed, the wind threatened to pick us up and toss us like fluffs of lint, and with Elizabeth as the focal point—don't ask me what they did because I don't know—they started to close the portal they'd created.

  "That was when whatever was trying to get through attacked in another way. The sheer fury was unimaginable. Lightning shot all around us. Several bolts struck Elizabeth, but somehow, she warded them off. Then one by one the others formed a barrier, and the lightning struck it repeatedly.

  The ground beneath their feet erupted, the grass caught fire, and the air turned pitch black. That was when it broke through—"

  Regis shot up. “Broke through?"

  The hands in his lap gestured with emptiness. “Then it was over. I and the others grabbed what we could and got the hell out."

  The story had shaken Regis, for never in the history of his people had he come across such an event. “So the rumors were true then about the place being cursed."

  "Oh, yes, the rumors were true. I tried to make the authorities see that, but as usual, they didn't. I moved heaven and earth to make them stop experimenting there, but they wouldn't listen."

  "They continued the experiments?” Regis asked incredulous.

  "No need to worry, young man. It was a useless effort. They poured millions of pounds into the project, and whatever it was Elizabeth and the others had done, whatever it was they stumbled across, the key to doing the same eluded everyone else."

  A shudder worked its way down his body as he said with a benediction, “Thank God for major miracles."

  "That's the end?"

  "The end. It was luck, I tell you. For years they tried to break through her shield, or whatever it is that's around her, preventing her from communicating, needing to eat ... hell, I think the entity prevents her from aging!” He cackled insanely and then had to stop as a coughing fit choked him.

  "Imagine it. Imprisoned in the very shield that saved her, unable to escape, preserved for all time.” He groaned in a soulful agony of despair. “What a bloody hell it must be for the child—if she's aware!"

  Regis stared at him, wondering if he heard correctly. Wasn't the famous Elizabeth Drew dead? Was she ... or wasn't she?

  "Sir Anthony, forgive me, but for a second I thought you alluded to your friend being alive."

  "My friend? Son, she was my niece! The only family I had. From my genes came her talent. That's why I was involved. The fault was mine!"

  "But didn't she die?"

  He shook his head despairingly. “Oh, she's not dead. She's alive, but whether she knows is the telling point. No one can tell."

  "Sir Pembroke, I'm lost here. You say it broke through, imply that it was finally closed off, but that your niece survived...? Which is it?"

  "All of it. The damned thing broke through for an instant, and then the shield snapped shut. Only Elizabeth was caught in the mix of shield and entity. So, she's alive, and then she's not alive."

  "How do you know this?"

  "Eh? Oh, she moves. Ever so slowly. It seemed a trick of the light, but measurements were made, and she does move. It's as if she's in some type of stasis. However, knowing that doesn't help. Everything that could be done has been done. And there you have it. The story of how a curious archaeological artifact like Stonehenge can destroy people who didn't know enough to mind their own business. See where it got us!"

  "Well now,” Regis murmured softly. “I'd like to see her. Perhaps there's something I can do."

  The statement froze the old man as if turning him to stone. Making an elaborate production of straightening, he stared Regis in the face, one eyebrow raised haughtily.

  "And pray tell,” he asked with a solemn air. “What can a young telekinetic do that couldn't be done by the best medical and psychic minds gathered in the last twenty years?"

  Regis smiled. “Amongst my people we use stasis techniques for everything that has to keep. You people use refrigeration. To a primitive it might seem like magic. Sorry if it upsets you."

  "Why should being called primitive upset me? That's exactly what we are, but what is it you mean, when you say ‘you people'?"

  He told a little about himself, and the reaction was as he might have expected.

  "Don't believe a word of it!” Sir Pembroke glared. “You think I can be taken for a fool? You've wasted my time. Get out!"

  "Sir Pembroke, you've had twenty years working on it. What would a few more hours cost?"

  "You're a fraud. That's what you are. A confounded fraud!"

  "Do you have a stethoscope?"

  * * * *

  With a sluggish movement, the bars moved out of their sleeves, and with a hiss the steel door was pulled open revealing in the round doorway a group of
grim, determined-to-be-difficult-people, most of whom were doing their damnedest to bore eyeholes into the figure standing beside Sir Anthony.

  One broke the strained silence and bent with a conciliatory gesture that wasn't appreciative of the great man's presence, considering the other's rank, privilege and request.

  "Sir, are you sure you want to go through this farce again?"

  The air marshal in charge of scientific operations at that base was disturbed because he'd thought he hadn't needed to give way to Sir Anthony Pembroke at all, but found that with a phone call from his superiors, he was doing just that.

  Still, he argued with himself. This was nonsense. The group moved as one, stepping into the threshold, sniffing the musty taint in the air, pausing one final instant before a technician brushed a hand across light switches. Fluorescents flickered and then lit up the lab.

  Plastic-covered electronic instruments, tables littered with chemistry equipment, and a now obsolete computer against an entire wall captured their attention. To the center of the large chamber a plastic tarp covered something pointed resting on a cement block.

  A tech pulled back the tarp and without comment folded it neatly, his eyes neither meeting those around him, nor bothering to look at what he'd uncovered. They all knew what it was. Elizabeth Drew and the years of failure to save her from what she had become.

  A plasticine vat with attached electronic cables and sensors waited to sense the slightest tremble, which would have rung alarms. Held in semi-liquid gel suspension was the half-submerged form of a woman in her mid to late twenties frozen in the act of crying out, lifting an arm to ward off some invisible blow.

  "Good God,” said Sir Anthony, a knot forming in his throat. “I'd forgotten what this looked like!"

  From the canvas shoes she wore to the topknot of her hair, the form, the clothes, the features—everything about her from the fateful day of the event had never been touched by man, instrument, or God.

  "At the end, even lasers couldn't touch her,” said a soul-weary scientist. “She moves. We know that. But it's measurable in micrometers as if she were in a different time zone."

  They stood fixed as Regis halted before the cylindrical vat, and then he touched it. Everyone leaned forwards as he concentrated.

  Ten minutes was all Marshall Brand could stand. He was about to say so ... when the alarms went off. An eyelid started to close. They could see it closing. It was slow ... slower than any eyelid moved, but they could see it.

  "Great guns!"

  Then the gel inside the vat steamed, evaporating, and the other eye closed.

  Technicians and scientists rushed about, throwing off plastic covers, recording everything. Someone shouted that he needed a blood sample. Another that they should use a video camera instead of still shots. Still another, that she shouldn't be using this antiquated junk.

  Sir Pembroke's mouth opened and closed, and the air marshal who had been the first to exclaim, stepped back as a pulsating light glowed within her, then spread to the steaming gel, then the inside of the vat, and then through the cylindrical walls. Her form moved and gestured.

  "Good heavens!” cried a technician, pointing to his screens. “She's emitting radiation!"

  There was a similar glow from Regis, and Pembroke cried out as both formless lights merged, and then struggled for dominance.

  Her eyes snapped open, her face twisted in horror, and she screamed.

  * * * *

  She remembered shouting orders about the earth portal they'd opened, and what was coming through it from the other side. At first there was little comprehension, but extending her senses, making them see what she saw, they reacted.

  Delambert shouted a warning about the kind of force they were dealing with. It was vast, powerful ... but terrified. It wasn't fighting to get through. It was fighting to stay where it was. Its home. Its universe! It struck back at those it thought was its enemy. It struck with deadly force.

  Godrenn screamed as “something” touched him, and he remembered a Viking story about a place that shifted. A place that came and went, taking and giving. It was called the Breath of the Gods. It wasn't what they'd tried to do. It was what they'd already done!

  A momentary opening was one thing. That was probably why the place was built. The Druids understood the place was a natural door. But opening by force had been a terrible mistake. Now it was too big. Now it was growing, and they had to close it!

  They would have done it had not Jacqueline failed. The woman never could crystallize her thoughts long enough to hold a glass of water. She clutched her throat, seeing herself torn apart by the forces they were dealing with, and turning, she tried to flee.

  At the movement, the entity on the other side panicked and struck her. She was turned into pure energy and pulled through.

  With nothing less than her life-force, Elizabeth used it like a hammer, striking the edge of the being, folding it over, folding it in, preventing it from encompassing the area—and she was tiring—tiring!

  The others joined her, using whatever tools they could fashion, and together they changed its warping signature to make the breach smaller, and smaller still, and ... it cost them everything they had. The power on the other side still behaved as if they were the enemy. With the warp getting smaller, its focus was on those attacking it from without.

  But there was a change in its energy as it scraped the warping edge of time and space, and negative charged particles struck freely. Elizabeth never learned that her friends gave up their lives to shield her from its determination and its fury ... while she was restored in strength and in desperation hammered back.

  When it was done, and nothing less than the eye of the monstrosity remained, the being on the other side struck one last time. Relational dimensions shifted back to normal and shut.

  The nightmare of the moment, that never ended for one trapped in the splitting time of infinity, now filled with the thought of failure. And in failing, what was certain to happen stood as some dark, vast dread before her eyes forever.

  She continued to scream, until Regis entered her mind, and snapped off her sudden awareness.

  * * * *

  In a short passage of time, she found herself in a hospital room, with an old man who looked familiar, hovering over her. His eyes were filled with compassion and pity. She knew this man from somewhere, knew him, and trusted him, and smelling the sweetness of the air, hearing the murmur of concerned voices, she dropped into a more normal sleep.

  "This is best, you know,” said the physician at her side. He shushed the group that had hung around and shooed them away. “It will be the first real sleep she's had in years, and it will help enormously with the psychic scars she will have."

  "It's unbelievable,” murmured the air marshal, unwilling to break his gaze from their patient. “One moment she was nothing but some freakish artifact, the next, alive and...” He frowned. “Well as could be expected.” Then he grimaced with distaste. “Do you remember the smell of the stuff that evaporated? What in the deuce was it?"

  One of the scientists grunted. “It was a form of jellied antiseptic. An early development to contain any infestation, especially what we couldn't identify."

  "Yes, I know all about that. But there was something else. Something like..."

  Sir Anthony Pembroke nodded abstractly. “I know what you mean. That odor was at the site. Charred meat and ozone. You were smelling the remains of the team."

  The air marshal felt like gagging. “Jesus H. Christ!” Then he looked towards the door. “Will that young man be all right? He looked pretty shaken.” His attitude towards the “interloper” had changed dramatically since the rescue attempt succeeded..

  Sir Pembroke nodded. “I think so."

  Air Marshal Brand looked at him appraisingly. “I trust you realize this news mustn't be released."

  "I understand."

  "Does the young man know that?"

  "The last thing he needs is publicity. He was clear a
bout that before he made the attempt."

  "Good."

  "Fine. We'll do some experiments now. Now that we know what happened. We'll be more careful. It's a great discovery. Want in on it?"

  Pembroke stared at the man. “You have to be joking."

  "What we've got here might end up something that can knock the space program back on its ear. Imagine it.” The Air Marshal's voice lowered. “The stars, right here from mother earth ... right here for the taking..."

  "Perhaps it's escaped your memory that seventeen good people died twenty-seven years ago because what they discovered was something they couldn't handle,” Sir Anthony retorted.

  This time it was the air marshal's face that turned red. He motioned Pembroke into the hall outside the room.

  "I haven't forgotten that. But we still have to know what happened. When the girl comes round, we're rather hoping you'll help us debrief her."

  The tapping of an angry cane made Regis look into the waiting area. He grinned. It didn't take a telepathic probe to see what was happening.

  Sir Pembroke fumed. “Let's get out before I vomit!"

  "Matters have taken a turn for the worse?"

  "Unbelievable,” exclaimed Sir Pembroke.

  In the car park, Roger met them, nodded to Regis, and both took the old man's elbows and quick-marched him into the back seat of the car.

  He gasped. “Is there a reason for this unseemly haste?"

  "Afraid so,” said Roger. “We've got to get you home and fast."

  "Why? And will you please explain how you became my chauffeur? I don't recall hiring you."

  "He's my associate."

  Roger jumped behind the wheel and started the car. Then with a squeal of tires on the gravel, he raced for the guard station. They slowed long enough for the gate to raise. The guard saluted, and Regis saluted back.

  "What the devil!"

  "He thinks I'm Air Marshal Brand."

  "How in hell could he think that!?"

  "He just saw the marshal taking his most revered scientist and explorer home."