Downtime - Marc Platt [82]
Thunder rumbled distantly as fragments of the Yeti pawn spun across the floor. The air crackled. Travers was thrown back into the chair, flares of blue light playing under his skin, silhouetting his bones, as if lightning was flickering inside his body. He gasped and croaked, his hands flying up to cover his eyes.
Finally he uncovered his face, squinting slowly about him.
The voice in Travers’s throat was no longer weak. It was in shock, but it deepened with a growing malevolence.
‘Light...Symmetry of colours and shapes. No more tomb of darkness. My strength is growing again.’
His hand rose and clawed at the texture of the air.
‘I grasp it. Form and substance. Now let my Great Plan take its shape!’
The pyramid of ivory on the desk was flickering with white light. It began to steady, pulsing in time with the bleeping signal of the Yeti.
Victoria felt a pull of fascination in the light. She saw Christopher and the army officer, their cold eyes filling with the pulsing glow. They were being drawn in.
The officer’s file tilted from his grip and spilled a cascade of documents onto the floor. Among them, Victoria saw a photograph of the young Lethbridge-Stewart.
Her thoughts, chilled with shame and remorse, appeared resilient as marble. Decorum, deportment and carriage, just as her mother had taught her. She pulled away and left her office.
A tiny bolt of light cracked from the eyes in Travers’s face and arced into the pyramid on the desk.
The old man jolted back in shock. A vice had just released its grip on his thoughts. He croaked from his dried throat and stared about in alarm at the office that he had never seen before.
A woman in a dark green suit was hurrying out of the door.
A huge Yeti-like creature, rearing on its hind quarters, stood rocking to and fro on the other side of the desk. Dzu-teh? Ye-teh? No. Those species both had grey fur, camouflaged for the rocky terrain they inhabited between the forest and snow lines.
Not a recognized species then. Unless....
He listened to that wretched high bleeping in his ears.
Damned tinnitus again. They were always playing this tune.
Two figures, one on either side of him, were leaning forward, staring intently into the strobing light from the pyramid.
Either they’d finally put him in a home or a disco. He was sure he’d forgotten to do something important, but was damned if he could remember what. He struggled painfully to his feet and pushed his way out past the tubby fellow with the hideous jumper.
He peered at the Yeti and it growled softly at him, but did not hinder his departure.
Why should it when he was already dead?
The corridors of New World were not a place to wander in.
The walls and fixtures, all inlaid, maintained and serviced by the computer, had become oppressive and threatening. The air did not move and the lighting had dimmed as the output of the university generators was redirected into the computer.
Victoria needed air and space before she could think, so she headed for the upper terraces of the Bryce Gallery. The quickest route was through the computer studies room, but when she reached the entrance she heard the chanting begin.
She edged a glance round the side of the window. In the half-light, she could see the rows of Chillys seated unmoving at their terminals. Their chanting was no longer the gentle litany of their daily meditation. Their voices had deepened into an unearthly unified growl. It turned the Lotus prayer into a repeating ground bass of elemental power over which some new chaconne of horror, some dance of death, would be composed.
She thought of Danny Hinton and suddenly guessed his fate. Doors that had been deliberately slammed shut in her memory were creaking open to let in the cruel light of truth. It was an ominous grey dawn with clouds gathering like storm crows.
Behind her, she heard scuffled movement and the approach of something that wheezed as it breathed. She ran the full length of the corridor away from it and tried the lift. The response was sluggish. It was quicker to use the stairs.
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