The Lost Perception Page 2

  The Englishman grinned. “Where were you? You’ve been missing out on some jolly good fun.”

  He leveled off, brought the plane’s nose up and veered sharply to starboard—just in time to maneuver out of the way of a slicing laser beam that clipped half a foot off their port wingtip.

  Then Gregson caught sight of the attacking craft. It was an aeronautical caricature. The wing configuration was that of a Russian transport, the Vorashov II, while the jet engines were apparently British. Its fuselage was decidedly of modified French design—of an early, pre-Nuclear Exchange era. Beneath the pilot’s window was emblazoned a crude sunburst, reminiscent of the Imperial Japanese insignia of the early ’40s.

  It pulled back into attack position and triggered another laser blast. But the beam’s intensity was obviously weak.

  Even though it raked the Security Bureau ship across the midsection, only negligible damage was inflicted.

  “They’ve discharged their laser potential!” Wellford chuckled. “We’re home free if they don’t have anything else up their sleeve. Wonder what’s detaining our escort.”

  “I’ll give Corsica another buzz.”

  “Don’t bother. This situation should resolve itself within the next few minutes. But I do wish we had some armament It would be a more even match. Remind me to take it up with Radcliff when we get to Rome.”

  The angel did, indeed, have more up its sleeve. On the next pass—one which Wellford had been unable to elude—it cut loose with an ancient .50-caliber machine gun. Slugs lore through the bureau plane’s starboard powerplant, which promptly cut out with a groaning clunk.

  Wellford thrust the control column forward and they dived toward the glittering water.

  “Care to take over and share in the fun?”

  “You’re doing all right. I’ll try to raise our escort”

  But as Gregson reached for the mike, the cabin speaker rambled: “SecBu Flight LR303, we have you and your angel in sight. This is your escort Make for minimum altitude—and stay out of our way.”

  Shortly thereafter Gregson watched the attacking craft plunge aflame into the sea.

  CHAPTER II

  Gregson guided their crippled plane to an emergency landing at New Aprilia Jetdrome south of Rome. Nearby, the original airport had been swallowed by a gaping crater where, even after two years, decontamination crews were still scouring the inner slope.

  Antimissile defenses had, of course, prevented ’95’s Nuclear Exchange from gutting most of the world’s population centers. And use of “clean” devices had kept the requirements of land reclamation within tolerable limits. But the scars of that wanton havoc were now geographical constants.

  As Gregson taxied to the parking apron, the cabin speaker rasped out the Security Bureau Control Tower’s disclosure that they would have to use surface transportation into Rome, since hopper flights were now prohibited over the city.

  “Must be that crash into Via del Corso last week,” Wellford guessed. “Killed fifty persons. I should imagine they’ve concluded the pilot went Screamie.”

  Minutes later then—Italian driver, with arm-waving abandon, was threading the traffic lanes on the elevated highway. Below, on either side, the ancient sepulchral monuments that lined the Appian Way sped by in a blur of indistinct form. And Gregson could only speculate that by the time it would have taken a Roman Centurion to cover a couple of hundred cubits along Via Appia, Antonio would have them in the heart of the city.

  On the edge of his seat and swaying with the swerving car, he protested, “We’re not in this much of a hurry.”

  “Perbacco, signore! But Antonio is!” The driver bared a full-toothed grin. “Not good to be on highway with Screamies. Yesterday—three.” He held up one hand to indicate the number and used the other to simulate the erratic course of a runaway vehicle. But he managed to retrieve the wheel before they veered into the rail.

  “We get off quick, no?” he chortled.

  “Yes,” Wellford agreed uncertainly. “One way or another. It would appear Rome absorbed a rather good pasting in ’95.”

  Gregson stared at the sprawling city as the car swept around a curve. The metropolis, renowned as a site rich in ancient ruins, had evidently acquired quite a few modern ones.

  “Ah yes, signore.” The driver nodded morosely. “We get three—boom, boom, boom! But we have some time for evacuation. Now all we worry about is work and where find food and clothes.”

  “It’ll all straighten out,” Gregson assured. “The Security Bureau’s gettings things back on an even keel.”

  “Security Bureau—ha!” Antonio snorted. But before he could pursue his impulsive thought, he hunched forward and pointed. “There! See? I tell you, do I not?”

  Even before they reached the broken rail, Gregson heard the ululations of the Italian-style hypodermic siren rising from below. Apparently the new Screamer had injected himself before losing control. Fortunately, a Pickup Squad car was already on its way.

  * * *

  The Central Isolation Institute in the heart of Rome was a ponderous, glass-surfaced edifice of post—’95 vintage that reared up on naked, columnar stilts for some thirty feet before it became a complete building, then climbed on to soaring heights. Like a proud mother hen, it squatted protectively over the ruins of the Trajan Forum, untouched for centuries, and received into its lower levels the majestic ornate pillar commemorating the Dacian War.

  Mouthing a string of fearful Italian expletives, Antonio braked to a stop a block away from the building, scattering a queue of persons in front of a food distribution point.

  “Here…” he shouted. “You get out here—no? Up ahead—Screamer. I no go there.”

  Agitation swept the street like a wave almost in front of the institute. Magnetically, an angry, gesticulating mob was still attracting scores of scampering, shouting Romans, many in tattered clothes.

  Wellford objected to the balking driver, but Antonio insisted, “No! I stop here!” Then he hurled the door open and waved his passengers out.

  Curious, Gregson pushed into the horde. Above the indignant voices he could hear the agonized shrieks of a male Screamer.

  “Why doesn’t someone call the Pickup Squad?” Wellford demanded. “The institute’s only just across the street!”

  Breaking through, they found the Screamer trussed, face to the sky, in an open cart.

  With each shriek and convulsion of his body, the throng roared its protest to the threat of contamination. Only a woman, wielding a knife, and an elderly man with a pitchfork held the mob at bay.

  Wellford advanced on the cart, withdrawing the hypodermic syringe from his belt case.

  The woman, seeing the glinting needle, eagerly pulled him toward the Screamer.

  It was, ironically, the sudden eruption of the sedative injector’s siren that ignited panic.

  And Gregson was swept aside by the surging throng.

  Helpless, he watched the pitchfork rise and plunge again and again. The hypodermic siren’s screeching wail broke off abruptly and the crowd began dispersing while the lone woman wept over the body of her slain Screamer husband.

  Such was Rome in late October, 1997—fourteen years after the first human had gone Screamie in the Swahili tribal territory of Zanzibar; two years after the same fate had befallen a Russian whose only duty was to keep his hand poised, figuratively, over a nuclear switch in his submarine beneath Arctic waters.

  * * *

  On their way up in one of the Central Isolation Institute’s plexiglas elevators, Gregson traced the ascending spirals of the Trajan needle’s helical band and stared at the noble bronze features of the ancient emperor atop the column.

  In the administration office on the fortieth floor, they were told by a dark-haired receptionist that they could wait by the observation window while she located the Security Bureau director.

  Below, the broad swath of Via del Fori Imperiali lay in the shadow of many skyscrapers.

  On the right, most o
f the buildings were stilted, rising above the Roman Forum ruins beneath them. At the end of the street, though, the Colosseum loomed in all its aged splendor, defying any suggestion that it be overbuilt, as had the city’s other vestiges of antiquity.

  While waiting for word from Radcliff, Gregson reminded himself that hidden under the superficial crush of modern Roman architecture were evidences of a tyranny that had once plagued the civilized world. And he was confident that the terror of the Screamie scourge, too, would bow before man’s ingenuity. Then he frowned as his analogy also suggested that the Fall of the Roman Empire had been followed by the crushing millennium of the Dark Ages.

  The receptionist snatched him back to 1997. “Mr. Radcliff will meet you in Laboratory 271-B.”

  On the threshold of the laboratory, the stifling acridity of formaldehyde vapors engulfed them. It was a large room, dominated by chemical equipment and tenanted by technicians at stainless steel workbenches. Before the nearest such table, a short man with little hair and a well-smudged frock hunched over a human brain.

  “If you’re Gregson and Wellford,” he said without looking up, “Radcliff’ll be along in a minute. I’m McClellan—Research.”

  He inserted his scalpel into an incision in the brain and pried it open. “We deal in cerebrums,” he said, smiling abstractedly, “… that organ which Screamers complain is ‘on fire.’ But I see no evidence of nuclear holocaust here.”

  He turned toward Wellford. “Seriously, though, don’t you suppose that ‘searing pain’ might be mainly psychic?”

  “Oh?” the Englishman said, amused.

  “But, then, isn’t all pain psychic in a sense? Your hand can’t feel pain. Only the brain does. But the brain doesn’t experience the agony of a smashed thumb. It simply records it”

  Gregson faced the window and let his gaze settle on the hulking Colosseum, fearful that involvement in a discussion of the Screamies would have the same consequences it had had in the plane.

  McClellan yawned. “Enough abstract speculation. I don’t think we shall ever find out what causes the Screamies. What brings our Security Bureau agents trickling into Rome?”

  “Weldon Radcliff,” Gregson replied curtly. “And I’ve a hunch you already know why.”

  “Unfortunately, I do. It’s something in the nature of not being able to bring the hill to Mahomet The hill, for lack of a better designation, is under here.” He touched a jar whose contents were concealed by a plastic cover. “Part of it, at least How’s the Screamie situation Stateside?”

  “Rough,” Gregson said, turning quickly back to the window.

  “Research making any progress?” Wellford asked.

  “Not one single, rotten, goddamned bit! We still lose nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand. If they don’t kick off from fright or pain, they break through sedation and kill themselves.”

  “Why don’t you try some of the suspended animation techniques?”

  “You don’t get the point. The object isn’t simply to keep them unconscious for two years. You have to hold them on the fringe. Let them come around occasionally and wrestle with the effects, build up immunity in small doses.”

  * * *

  Weldon Radcliff charged into the laboratory, tossed a perfunctory “Be with you in a minute” to Gregson, then continued toward McClellan.

  But he paused and returned to the two special agents. He’ was a huge man, exceptionally broad from the waist up and obviously compounded of great energy and drive.

  Although his eyes were alert, the lines drawn across his stout face were etched more deeply than would be expected for a person in his early fifties.

  “Hear you had a rough time over the Med.”

  “Something old, something new,” Wellford offered casually. “Laser beams spiced with .50-caliber slugs. Lost a wingtip and an engine. I should think you’d be more interested in equipping our craft with a few stingers of their own.”

  “We intend to. Modifications get under way tomorrow.”

  Gregson frowned. “Then there is a pattern of calculated attack against our planes?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Radcliff looked down at his hands. “Against our planes, personnel in some cases, and even our facilities. We had a nuclear generating station knocked out by mortar fire just yesterday—in Tehran.”

  “But, who? Why…?”

  “We know some of the details,” the director said grimly. “And that’s why you’ve been summoned here. Something’s developed that gives new dimensions to the Security Bureau’s mission.”

  He turned toward McClellan. “You’re not still pursuing that glial cell angle?”

  Bent over a microscope now, the technician nodded without looking up. “On the flimsiest of hunches.” He straightened. “And I’m about to decide there is slight distention.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “You see, glial cells—the neuroglia—are in strategic anatomical position to be a contributive factor in Screamie attacks. In the glial processes you have sustentacular tissue, probably of epiblastic origin, that…”

  “Stow the shop talk.”

  “All right. The glial cells cover all the neurons in the brain. They are present in every area. And if there is distention of those cells, then constriction of the neurons could be responsible for any type of hallucination. You name it”

  “What does it all add up to?”

  “The possibility that glial distention causes the Screamies.”

  Radcliff appeared skeptical. “Mightn’t such distention be a result of the disease instead?”

  “That’s what Dr. Elkhart suspects. He’s afraid I’m wasting my time with this line of investigation. Says the distention isn’t pronounced enough. What do you think?”

  “I’ve only the greatest confidence in Elkhart. And I’d advise that you adopt whatever he suggests.”

  The Security Bureau director beckoned Gregson and Wellford over to the other end of the workbench. Then he withdrew the plastic cover from the jar which, according to McClellan, contained part of the reason for summoning special agents to Rome.

  It was a moment before Gregson recognized the objects immersed in formaldehyde.

  “Two hearts.”

  “I would suggest you take another look,” Radcliff proposed.

  Wellford drew erect, then bent more attentively toward the jar. “They’re joined together! See? The aorta forks here, with one section going to each left ventricle. All of the veins and arteries are branched in a dual network!”

  “I don’t understand,” Gregson said. “Is it simply a malformation, or the result of surgery?”

  Radcliff led them toward die door. “I just wanted you to see that before we go on to the morgue. Hold it in mind as part of an over-all picture. I’m about to fill in the rest of the details—as many as are available, at least.”

  While they waited for an elevator, the director ran a neatly-folded handkerchief over his suddenly drawn face. “We’ve spent a lot of time reviewing tapes on the Nina’s messages, Greg; I understand you had access to them because your brother was a crew member.”

  “Manuel sent the last two messages,” Gregson reminded.

  The elevator arrived. They stepped in and Radcliff pressed the “down” button. “He said something about a ship—a ‘great, glowing sphere’—and ‘presences’—a tenth of a light year out of the system.”

  Wellford’s eyes darted from Gregson to the director. Then he laughed. “In case you haven’t heard, Greg is inclined toward the aliens-among-us belief. You’re encouraging his persuasions.”

  But Radcliff’s expression remained humorless. “Manuel may not have been as distressed as we imagined.”

  Wellford suddenly didn’t appear quite so jaunty.

  The elevator stopped and they exited on a floor restless with unnerving sounds that wrested Gregson’s thoughts from his brother, the Nina and the twin hearts in McClellan’s laboratory jar. From the corridor on his left came an almost unbroken successi
on of screams from many throats, muffled by the intervention of closed doors. Down another corridor passed a funereal procession of nurses trundling sheeted bodies through double portals.

  Radcliff led them on in silence. In the next corridor they encountered a gaunt woman in robe and slippers who was mumbling to herself in Italian that Gregson could understand. “I know what the Screamies are! I know what they are!” she was saying.

  Nodding in her direction, the director observed, “Not a few ‘know what the Screamies are’ after they’re released from sedation: mankind’s evil catching up with him; the Second Coming; bugs imported from Lunar or Mars Base before we recalled those establishments; monstrous shadows out of space eating into our brain.”

  Still muttering, the woman drew up numbly before a window at the end of the hall.

  * * *

  At the entrance to the morgue, Radcliff paused. “What you’re about to see is the body of a would-be assassin. Two days ago he made an attempt on the life of the provisional President of Italy, who is also a member of the Security Bureau’s Advisory Council. Our assassin was shot down trying to escape. Skin along with him was a Sicilian.”

  They went inside and drew up at the nearest tagged drawer in one of many tiers that reared to the ceiling.

  “The assassin was killed outright,” Radcliff resumed. “But we were able to question the Sicilian a bit before he died. Most of what he said, however, seemed almost incoherent—until we examined the assassin’s body.” He pulled open the drawer.

  Reluctantly, Gregson looked down at the pale, rigid features of a middle-aged man whose head was almost bald. The nose was thin and long. The lips, small and compressed, seemed to soften the sharpness of a tapering chin. His complexion was olive, grayed somewhat by the pallor of death.

  “Here’s another exhibit.” Radcliff reached into the drawer and displayed four false fingernails.

  Then he brought the agents around to the side of the drawer and pointed to the man’s hand. There were no nails—only a crescent-shaped incision on the upper surface of each finger. And it was apparent that the artificial nails could be inserted into the surgical slots.