Over the man’s shoulder, Niall saw the glue spider lowering itself silently out of its hole in the ceiling. The man heard it as its feet touched the floor, and started to turn. Before he could do so, he was struck by the will power of the spider and immobilized; moments later, he was being held down on the floor by the spider’s front legs, and a fine spray of glue was being squirted into his face. At the same time, Niall’s vision cleared, and he became aware that Simeon was bending over him and helping him to his feet.
He knew what would happen next, and the thought sickened him. Even as he was pressing the “off” button, the man was leaping to his feet and reaching for the knife hidden inside his garment; then, like a light being extinguished, he vanished.
The old man said: “You learned what you wanted to know?”
“No.”
“What happened?”
“The man was about to commit suicide, and I didn’t want to see it.”
“I see.”
The calm, level voice made him feel ashamed of himself. In the silence that followed, he said: “I’ll try again.”
“One moment.” Niall paused, his finger on the control. “Every time you do this, you use up mental energy. The more tired you become, the less you are likely to discover — the tired mind is unobservant.”
Niall knew he was right; his brain was feeling heavy and dull. “I’ll try just once more.”
“Very well. But a word of advice. The longer you hold down the second control, the deeper the alpha state. This will increase your sensitivity. But it will also make you more vulnerable. I would suggest that you keep your finger on the off control.”
“Thanks. I will.”
He closed his eyes and made his mind a blank, deliberately inducing relaxation. Then he pressed the “on” switch and touched the second button. The dreamy sense of unreality was a little like sinking into a sea of some soft, silky material that caressed his senses. He was aware of hovering in the borderland between sleeping and waking, where the slightest relaxation of attention would allow him to drift into sleep. A huge wooden cart with massive timber beams trundled across the threshold of his mind, while a female voice stated clearly: “All elephants are misfits in the world of fleas.” An effort of will propelled him back toward consciousness, and he depressed the ninth button, on which his finger was already resting. He was immediately back in the corridor, running after the man in slave uniform. As he seized the shoulder of his tunic, the man stumbled and crashed sideways against the wall. The scene had the clarity of a dream, and was in such vivid detail that it seemed to be taking place in a kind of slow motion. The man was turning his head, and Niall was looking into the large eyes, and experiencing his sense of panic and desperation; it was so acute that Niall felt sorry for him. Then came the sensation of a violent blow, and the choking sense of suffocation. But this time, Niall saw the “blow” coming: the concentration of the will, the focusing of a beam of aggression, the deliberate assault on the control center of his nervous system. Then, as their minds came into contact, his own identity seemed to blend into that of his assailant, as if they had become the same person. For a few seconds, the man’s whole life was spread out for Niall’s inspection. What he saw shocked and repelled him. Once again, he experienced the unpleasant sensation, like a disagreeable smell, and this time was aware that it sprang from a certain ruthlessness and brutality. The sheer complexity of what he was seeing was bewildering, although its salient features were clear enough; it was a little like looking down on the Earth from outer space. He needed time to study and take it in.
But already the man was springing to his feet and reaching into his bosom; his hand was emerging with the knife as Niall touched the “off” control.
“Well?”
Niall said: “He was a trained killer.”
“Was Skorbo the intended victim, or was he chosen at random?”
Niall had to search his memory. It was like trying to remember a dream. “The intended victim.”
“Where do they come from?”
“Somewhere. . . underground.”
“Dira?”
“No, not Dira. Some. . . other place.”
“Do you know where?”
Niall closed his eyes and tried to focus the memory, but it was no good.
“No. It all happened too quickly.”
“That can be remedied, of course. What else did you find out?”
“Hatred. . . I could sense hatred. This man was a kind of trained butcher or executioner. And there was something else I didn’t understand. . . He wasn’t entirely human.”
“In what sense?”
“I don’t know. It was just something I felt.”
There was a silence. Niall said: “It seems incredible. . . that there could be another underground city. Surely you’d know about it?”
The old man shook his head. “I am afraid our information-gathering system is not infallible.”
“But a whole city. . .”
“There is a curious legend that dates back to the twentieth century, a legend of space travelers from a distant galaxy who landed on Earth when they were at the end of their resources. Solar radiation was deadly to them, so they built colonies underground, and created a complex civilization when mankind was still living in caves. But the hardships of living underground gradually caused their numbers to decrease. Many of those who were left began to suffer from a kind of insanity, so they turned into monsters.”
“Monsters?”
“They ceased to behave rationally. Some of them began to eat human beings. The stories declare that these people were the origin of legends about vampires, ghouls, troglodytes, and other sinister creatures from underground.”
“But is that true?”
The old man chuckled. “Torwald Steeg would have said that it was obvious nonsense. But he would also have acknowledged that it is impossible to know how much truth there is in a legend.”
“Then how can we find out about this underground city?”
“At the moment, your main hope lies in the internalizer. Your minds were only in contact for a moment, yet you may have learned far more than you realize.”
Niall reached for the control unit, then hesitated. “You say I should wait until tomorrow?”
“That is your decision. If you are tired, the results will be poor.”
Niall’s head ached and he felt exhausted; yet his curiosity was stronger than his fatigue. “I think I’ll try just once more. . .”
He lay down, closed his eyes, and touched the “on” button. The headache dissolved away, and he experienced an overwhelming temptation to fall asleep. He resisted this and touched the second button. It was even more difficult to resist the waves of dreamy relaxation that tried to wash away his consciousness. Before this could happen, he touched the ninth button.
Once again he was in the rubble-strewn corridor with its smell of damp plaster. But this time the experience was so vivid that it was hard to believe that it was unreal. As in a dream, the walls looked quite solid, and the floor under his feet was obviously hard. His underlying tiredness seemed to sharpen his perceptions, with the effect of slow motion. Even as he was pursuing the man along the corridor, he could see the glue spider looking out of its hole in the ceiling, and this observation made him aware that his perceptions were not confined to his memory of the event. As if in a real life situation, he could direct his attention to anything he chose. As he reached out to grab the man’s shoulder, he noticed a few links of the gold chain showing from under the slave garment. Then the man stumbled and turned — Niall felt that he now knew his face as well as that of his own father or mother; he also noticed the badly shaven chin and the oddly feral quality of his teeth. When the blow came, it seemed to be like a kick deliberately aimed at his solar plexus. He was interested to observe that the man was using a kind of emotional negative energy; it was as if he had looked at Niall with hatred, and the hatred had somehow turned into a physical force, like a clenched fist. And this, Niall now realized, was because it had been directed at his own emotional center.
As their minds came into contact he was again aware of his distaste, a desire to turn away his face, as if from an unpleasant smell. But this time he resisted the impulse, determined to try to understand as much as possible of the killer’s life and background. Again there was a vertiginous sensation of seeing too many things, so many that his mind had no chance to retain them.