Hunted Head

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“How about the others?”

“They were not in this department. I believe, though, that they were all people with no family or close friends. I’m told letters have been received from them, occasionally… but again, no published work. It seems… well, a waste… But it would do no harm to hear what he has to say.”

It would harm my nerves, anyway. Sandy thought as she walked away. Hearing Marius was exactly what she did not want to do, ever again. It probably was not his fault that he sounded exactly like the man who had visited her in nightmares, regularly, for years—still did, once in a while…

She had worked out, many years later, that it must have happened when she was four years old. She and Mom and Da had all been together downstairs, though it was long after her bedtime… and Mom kept asking Da whether he had locked the door. Da said he had. but all the same the big man got in and took him away…

That was all she remembered. Some time after that she and Mom were in what in retrospect must have been a Greyhound bus, and she got tired and went to sleep… It must have been after the end of the journey that she got left at the orphanage, though who took her there she could not remember; anyway she never saw Mom again, or Da either.

No way to find out, when she got old enough to try, whether the big man was a member of the Mafia or a plainclothes cop… The horror of the dream had been pretty well worn out by the time she got to high school. She had forgotten how the big man sounded until she heard that accent again…

Well, whoever she might have been born, she was now Sandy Jennings, B.Sc and halfway to Ph.D. What mattered now was getting the other half. The big problem was to keep her cultures alive and uncontaminated until she could afford another year’s research. Keeping herself alive was less of a problem; she had been working part-time for a small firm which supplied cultures of various organisms for teaching and research, and they would be glad to take her on full-time. She could have had bench-space there, but there were no facilities for sterile working.

Sandy found that she had somehow gravitated to her cubicle in the lab. There was nothing she needed to do there—none of the cultures would need fresh medium for another three days. No point in starting any of her planned experiments; she would have to clear out before any of them were complete—

“Miss Jennings? I wonder—”

The voice—

Sandy gave a yell of fright, whirled, and in the same movement backed away. She came up against the wall of the cubicle—and it gave way like so much tissue paper, so that she fell backwards through it and went sprawling on the floor.

On a floor. The lab floor was of bare hardwood. This felt… padded. And the ceiling was far too close. And it shone. And what she could see of the walls—

“Are you hurt?”

That voice again. Sandy shuddered. Then, because lying on her back felt vulnerable and undignified, she sat up… and stared.

Marius was standing a few feet away. Directly behind him was a solid, unbroken wall. Not only that, it was plastered with high-tech stuff—switches, dials, digital readouts and other items so way-out she had no idea what they could be.

“Are you hurt, Miss Jennings?” Marius kept his hands rather ostentatiously at his sides. “I would offer a hand, but since I appear to alarm you—”

“I’m all right,” Sandy said, and scrambled to her feet.

She was standing inside a twelve-foot cube. No furniture; but the walls to the left and right were loaded, like the one behind, with switches, indicators, matte black oblongs that could be some kind of VDU. The style of even the simplest items was somehow unfamiliar. The opposite wall had a door in the middle—slightly recessed, as though it slid rather than swung. On one side was another door, narrower; on the other a tier of smaller panels—locker doors?

The floor looked like marble, despite its softness. The ceiling, devoid of light fittings, diffused a soft glow.

One thing was certain; this didn’t belong on the other side of her cubicle wall. Or in any other part of the laboratory.

She said, “What the hell is this place?”

Marius sighed.

“That is not easy to explain. I had intended to talk to you before bringing you here, but—”

“Bringing me? What for? How?”

“For convenience I had virtual interfaces set up at a number of points. One was in the wall of your cubicle. Again for convenience, the activator is built into this ring.” He lifted his hand. Turned towards his palm was a flat black stone. “When you… er… fell back against the partition I put out my hand automatically, and apparently touched the sensor-point.” Regretfully, Marius shook his head. “An unlikely accident; finding the point takes several seconds, as a rule. The interface opened and you fell through.”

“Interface with what, forgodssake?”

“This universe…

Presently Sandy realised that her mouth was hanging open. With an effort she pulled it shut. Universe? The place was weird, all right—but it was a human sort of weirdness, not—not—

Marius was speaking again.

“Miss Jennings, we can go on forever like this. You ask a question, I answer, you do not know what to believe. Since you are here, I suggest two possibilities. Either you come with me and I show you something of this place, which will answer many questions in a way that leaves no room for doubt; or I will re-activate the interface for you to return.”

“You mean—you’d let me go? Just like that?”

“Of course. Go, if you wish; and I will never trouble you again.”

Sandy opened her mouth to ask another question; then realised that she knew the answer. Telling people would be like claiming to have been carried off in a flying saucer. Marius knew he was safe on that score…

She said, “Right. Open it.”

Marius turned to the wall behind him—the one through which she had fallen, now a solid mass of gadgetry —made a few adjustments, and depressed a switch.

Part of the wall was replaced by an oblong of grey nothingness, high and wide enough for a man to go through.

Marius stepped aside. Sandy approached and peered at the greyness. This was uninformative. She extended her hand and poked it cautiously. No sensation resulted, but the end of her finger disappeared.

Summoning all her nerve, she leaned forward and pushed her face into the nothingness. This time she felt the faintest possible resistance; then she was looking into the laboratory.

How shabby the place was—stains; chips; comers picked out with indurated grime… Footsteps sounded from beyond the partition. She drew back hurriedly.

In front of her, the mass of gadgetry reappeared.

“The interface was set for one passage only,” Marius observed. “Now you have used it you will not be able to go through unless I activate it again. I will do so if you wish it.”

That, Sandy thought, was not an offer; it was a threat.

If there was one thing she hated, it was being manipulated… Moreover, she was damned sure the switching on of the “interface” through which she had fallen had been no accident. He had just seen a chance to get her here without a lot of discussion, and jumped at it.

On the other hand if she walked out now she would never know what this was all about, and the itch of unsatisfied curiosity would be worse than letting him get away with it…

Just how stupid a risk would she be taking, if she stayed? Or, to put it another way, what did Marius want from her?

Between her ninth and twelfth years, Sandy had been fostered by a family whose eldest son was addicted to fantasy. During most meals he read steadily the second-hand paperback of the moment; but once in a while he would recite the plot of the latest one, instead. Like the rest of the family Sandy tended to tune out after a minute or two, but she had grasped that the protagonist of about half these epics got lured/seduced/kidnapped/accidentally transported into some other universe, where his/her task was to save civilisation/locate some talisman/rescue, restore or replace the local ruler; on account of special skills/experience/bloodlines/ availability.

None of these seemed to fit. However it was a good bet that Marius did want her to do something here. The alternative, that she had been chosen as a victim of unspeakable rites or a guinea-pig in unspeakable experiments, didn’t make sense. She might not have any family, but that didn’t mean she could be whisked away and no questions asked. Plenty of people would be looking for her in the next few days, to collect her lab and locker keys and check the inventory of equipment issued to her and get her signature on various documents and asked if she had any textbooks to sell. The chairman knew Marius had been looking for her, and already mistrusted him. Elizabeth Wong apparently hadn’t suffered at his hands, unless failure to publish meant suffering…

“Don’t bother,” she said.

Nothing showed on Marius’s face, but he gave a tiny nod, as though some calculation had been proved correct.

“Outside this room, we shall wear isolation suits.” He pressed a button beside the narrower of the doors. It opened and an arm slid out, two one-piece garments hung limply from it. They were made of what looked like plastic, opaque and white except for a transparent part at the top. There was a long slit down the middle of each of them; the thickened edges curled back in a way Sandy found unpleasant.